#it's so interesting how the different countries portrays these events!!

[ifindus]

norway what was the bloodiest and most brutal battle you've ever been part of?

The battle of Lund in 1676.

The bloodiest battle Norway has been a part of is the Battle of Lund in 1676, fought between Denmark-Norway and the Netherlands against Sweden, where Sweden won. The Danish King had 12 300 soldiers to command and the Swedish King had only had 8 000. Both sides ended up loosing about 50% of their army. It is said to be the bloodiest battle ever fought in Scandinavia, and it was a coincidence that the Swedes won just due to the chaotic nature of the battle.

The battle was a result of Danish forces invading the southern part of today’s Sweden, an area that had previously belonged to Denmark. The Swedes were led by a reckless and young king who had already put them through harsh conditions and bad camp locations that had cause a great percentage of the soldiers to die from illness already before the battle had begun. The Danes had followed the Swedish army and were in much better position, both location-wise and with a steady supply line.

The Danes became impatient and gave up good placement to attack the Swedes as they neared the city of Lund just outside Malmö. As mentioned, the battle was disorienting and chaotic, with a lot of breaks in formation, a missing Swedish King who came back after several hours to break through Danish lines who had his forces surrounded. Not to mention over-eager Swedes absolutely slaughtering sailors who wanted to surrender, with the words “Sailors have paid to fight at sea, but not at land. You therefore deserve no mercy!”. The massacre was stopped by a Swedish officer.

[tomorrowusa]

A reminder: DICTATORS WILL NOT KEEP YOU SAFE

Some people think that letting a dictator run the country will keep them safe. But a dictator's primary motivation is to accrue personal wealth and power – not to benefit the country or its people.

Vladimir Putin's ambition is to become known as the Peter the Great of the 21st century. He aims to achieve that by restoring the territory and hegemony of the decrepit Soviet Union. So far, Putin's invasion has cost hundreds of thousands of Russian lives, has been a serious drain on the country's resources, and has caused Russia's international reputation to plummet.

The Kremlin casts President Vladimir Putin as something close to a savior, a strong leader who has brought stability and security following the chaos of the Soviet collapse. The mass-casualty events that have punctuated his nearly 25 years as president or prime minister -- and the recurring images of explosions, flames, and helpless victims desperate to escape harm -- badly undermine that narrative. Instead, analysts say, they tell a story of a leader whose focus on the protection and prolongation of his own power have come at the expense of the security of the people. Putin’s critics say that more than three decades after the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia remains a country in which the state puts its own interests far above those of its citizens. The biggest example is the war against Ukraine: Before the full-scale invasion of February 2022, when Russia was massing tens of thousands of troops at the border and the United States was warning that the onslaught could begin any day, many observers predicted Putin would hold back because a massive attack would harm Russia’s security, not improve it.

Putin's secret police are too busy hunting dissidents, liberals, anti-war activists, and gays to be much concerned about genuine security threats. And this culture of repression was already in place before Putin started the war.

This leaves Russia highly vulnerable to real extremists, analysts say, and to deadly disasters in which corruption, corner-cutting, and negligence cause or exacerbate the effects of avoidable accidents like the fire at the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo in March 2018, seven days after Putin was declared the winner of that month's presidential election. “The intelligence services are focused on political investigation and intimidation of citizens. They do not fulfill their direct responsibility to protect society from real threats,” Russian political observer Dmitry Kolezev wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Putin's control of media has made sure that nobody can criticize the way things are run. So everything the government does is publicly portrayed as wonderful. Then when something goes badly wrong and is too big to cover up, people are puzzled at how such a thing could possibly take place.

The March 22 attack at the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow “looks like a grandiose failure” on the part of the state, he wrote. “Fantastic amounts of money are spent on ‘security,’ but in reality, this security is not provided.” Under different circumstances, the political opposition and independent journalists would press the government on this problem, seeing to ensure that security forces do their job and that money is not misspent, Kolezev wrote. “Unfortunately, neither of these groups has access to national television, where they could speak quite loudly about this.” Instead of serving as checks on the state authorities, in other words, these groups are their targets. “Russian security personnel have been trained to look at specific, politically important ‘threats,’” Andras Toth-Czifra, a fellow with the Eurasia Program at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote on X, adding that “due to resource/time/manpower constraints this means that they have less capacity to look at and prevent actual threats.”

When dictators are responsible to no one, they have no obligation to act responsibly.

Putin’s sluggish reaction to the Kursk submarine disaster during his first year in office is an example, and experts say bungled responses to the Nord-Ost theater attack in Moscow in 2002 and the Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia in 2004 increased the casualty counts. The predominance of the priorities of the state and its senior leaders over the interests of citizens is not a new problem: It stretches back to Soviet times and the tsarist era, and it’s a phenomenon that dissidents, rights activists, and opposition politicians say must be reversed if Russia and its people are to thrive. But Kremlin critics say it has become more pronounced as Putin’s rule drags on. Among other things, they point to the war in Ukraine, which has caused hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties even as Putin, securing a new six-year term in what opponents and analysts say was a tightly controlled vote marred by millions of falsified votes, used the election to portray himself as the indispensable leader of a deeply united country.

[angel-is-not-creative]

Hetalia

I cannot rate this with a good conscience ❤

I have autism and Hetalia is my special interest so this is literally 3k words long and I have absolutely no regrets. I could have gone on longer but I wanted to remain relevant to the class. If you don't reply to me I will cry.

I'm gonna break this into a few sections so you can skip around. I'm going to try and stick to just season 1 with this discussion, which won't be too hard cause it's the most insane one. Also, I just want to say that I wrote this all before I read the attached article and I'm now seeing that I literally could have written that article because I know everything about Hetalia.

When do we cross the line between stereotyping and just straight-up racism?

Hey, why are we idolizing WWII Germany?

Oh, we are portraying war as silly and funny, okay cool.

Is this Japanese Nationalism? (a surprisingly controversial argument)

The Sub and the Dub are 2 totally different shows

The Fandom (and linking back to other class-related terms)

Okay I'll name one good thing

Alright, let's get started.

1.

A lot of people will argue that Hetalia is not racist at all because they are making fun of everyone. If you are portraying all of the countries as their most common stereotypes then it evens out in the end. I would argue that this is in fact, not the case. Especially when you set your show during WWII. I will give Himaruya credit in that he mostly focuses on European countries to make fun of, making a lot of the stereotypes less so targeted at minorities. However, a lot of these jokes are still highly insensitive and frame some countries in a worse light than others

Just look at the difference between how Northern Italy is portrayed as opposed to Germany or Japan. Or how France is a predator, Belarus is into her literal brother, and Spain is seen as a creep. It is often times mocking an entire country's intelligence, appearance, or personality. While it is not always that serious, it does lead me to the second point.

When you personify a country and mock it, you aren't just mocking a piece of land, you are mocking an entire population of people. These jokes may seem harmless but they can still be hurtful. While I don't believe that liking Hetalia translates to your actual views on world events, it can unconsciously impact your real-life thoughts and behaviors.

(also why does Britain see imaginary magical creatures, what is that referencing? According to the wiki, it is some popular folklore story of a rabbit who lives on the moon but like.. what? If Himaruya was doing this much research into these countries' cultural backgrounds why is he portraying them like this?)

2.

This show portrays WWII Germany in too positive of a light for my liking. I've noticed a trend in anime where they seem to love Germany (or Germanic aesthetics) a lot (AOT I'm looking at you). Now I'm not well-versed in the interpersonal relationships between Japan and Germany, but the idolization is not it. The way that Japan in this show is portrayed as being literally obsessed with Germany is the biggest example (Italy is also shown having an immense appreciation for Germany and is often gushing about his positive qualities, even writing him a song while he was being kept prisoner). But I mean look at how Germany is portrayed, even his stereotypes are mostly positive, he is hardworking but helps out his fellow allies, makes great food, and is super strong. His only negative trait is that he sometimes doesn't understand social scenarios and that makes him very awkward. However, he will always go out of his way to try and better understand his friends (like Italy) by purchasing books to try and help him learn the appropriate way to act in scenarios).

This is 10x worse in the dub but we will get there. When one of your main characters, the one you are portraying in the best light, is a literal war criminal hot anime boy, you can understand why I would be concerned. I mean they gave him the whole blonde hair blue eyed appearance like come on. Now I'm not going to go into depth on fandom or anything here but Hetalia knows that its demographic is young tweens (primarily girls) so how can you be surprised when this portrayal of Germany leads to WWII fanfics sympathizing with Germany and 14 y/o girls in German military uniforms doing questionable things. (also Germany becomes a canonically gay character in Hetalia in like season 4 or something and that just makes me so mad, like yeah, of course, the gay character is WWII Germany that so cool) (okay, I would like to clarify that technically Sweden is the only confirmed gay character. Sweden is bad representation though because he has one-sided feelings for Finland and makes him uncomfortable by constantly referring to him as his wife)

3.

I mean yeah, obviously this isn't going to be an accurate portrayal of history but some of this is just totally misinformation.

Austria invading Germany is literally just Austria annoying him in his house for a really long time. But also there's like actual wars... and like all of the events of WWI are canon... and like there are some really serious episodes

Also, we literally see a bunch of countries going to war personally, like fighting on the frontlines. Which to me confirms that these people are all literal murderers, like mass murderers lowkey.

Do you know how many weird USSR jokes there are throughout this? So many. Lithuania is pretty much just in a running gag where he keeps getting manipulated by Russia into coming back to live with him. (Yeah, there are so many USSR fics as well).

ALSO! why is the American revolution portrayed as the saddest thing to happen thus far, the storyline is stretched out from episodes 16-20 and it is all drastically different from the tone of the rest of the show. Britain is literally on his knees crying saying that he can't shoot America (which also implies these countries can physically harm/kill each other). Like that is the war you wanted to make all sad and sentimental? Why? Is this how Japanese people think that we view the Revolutionary war? Because that is a pretty inaccurate view.

Anyways back to the original point. Some historical events should not be played for laughs sometimes. It is incredibly disrespectful for actual victims of these tragedies to portray these events as funny or goofy.

Though I will give credit because Himaruya does make all sides of the war look like idiots who have no clue what they are doing, which is a sentiment I can get behind.

4.

As a both non-Japanese and non-Korean person I can not really give my opinion on this however I can share with you both sides of the argument. This is mostly in relation to the original comic strip, but has some relevance to the anime as well. I just wanted to bring it up because it is interesting to me. (This is briefly mentioned in the article but I wanted to expand on the argument).

You may or may not have noticed that there is no South Korea character in this show, however, there was in the original comic. In the comics, South Korea is a pervert who is constantly touching Japan and he also takes credit for the inventions of other countries. Now I'm obviously not going to go into the past history of these 2 countries because that would be incredibly long but the South Korean National Assembly reviewed Hetalia and determined that it was a "crime against South Koreans, akin to slander". So yeah, South Korean people were not happy with this portrayal and the character was inevitably removed from the anime before release. (This is a real picture of the South Korean National Assembly reviewed Hetalia, the corner shows South Korea groping Japan inappropriately)

There are two opposing views to the Japanese Nationalism take and I'll link them both (Belittling Japanese Nationalism Hetalia: Axis Powers is the title of the first one)

The first one pretty much argues that Hetalis is not Japanese nationalism because it paints Japan in just as negative of a light as all of the other countries, no one is left out of being made fun of. Japan is seen as socially awkward, emotionally repressed, and obsequious.

The second argues that Japan is often shown to be more intelligent than other characters as well as often being of the voice of reason (especially compared to China) and most of his negative attributes are not nearly as harmful as some others in Japan’s case, even his “negative” stereotypes are inoffensive, as they pose no threat of meiwaku.

I think we see in the dub that Americans are a little more willing to make fun of themselves. Though there are a few good Japan self digs, like the capitalism joke in one of the first episodes.

5.

Oh boy I've been waiting for this.

The dub is 10x more offensive than the sub. Most people consider it a crack dub.

So many of the jokes are rewritten that it is practically a different show. The sub is from a Japanese perspective and the dub is from an American perspective.

First of all the accents in the dub are so bad like it is actually atrocious. Japan is really annoying because not only is his voice stereotypical but he always says 'nani?' instead of 'what?' as if that is a normal thing that people do. The narrator is the best part of the dub and she is hilarious.

So I don't really feel comfortable even typing out the jokes here so if you want to hear them I included the time stamps for the three nazi jokes I remember in season 1 (the last two being worse).

Episode 1 (1:35:1:38)

Episode 7 (2:13-2:19)

Episode 48 (1:28-1:31)

Those are just a few examples and it gets worse. The dub literally had no reason to include these jokes because there is not even an insinuation of them in the sub and it makes literally everything a million times worse.

I will give the dub some credit for being so utterly ridiculous that it's funny. I will provide a few timestamps for the funniest jokes that only appear in the dub from the first 19 episodes (but I really recommend looking up Hetalia dub funny moments on youtube because some of them are really priceless):

Episode 13: (1:45-2:05)

Episode 14: (1:12-1:22)

Episode 17: (0:59-1:15) (2:06-2:11)

6.

Now I've had this post typed up for a bit and originally I wasn't going to talk about the fandom but after reading the article that he assigned (and going through the fandom unit), I see that there is a lot of reference to fandom in particular so I want to at least mention it.

Not the 2 biggest problems with the Hetalia fandom are racism and the fetishization of gay men.

As mentioned in the article, there have actually been multiple fan incidents of them dressing up in WWII German military uniforms Germany/Prussia cosplay, and standing in front of temples with fake guns or doing nazi salutes in convention photos (If we want to bring racism and fetishization of gay men together there were two people who kissed in a holocaust memorial museum in Italy and Germany cosplay... there is no picture of this so it might be a rumor but it was well-known so it is worth mentioning). There were also a lot of people using imperialist Japan flags in cosplay/fanart and writing incredibly inappropriate fanfiction about real-life events.

If you would like to see any of these incidents feel free to look up "Hetalia the Boston Incident" I don't really wanna include the photos here.

The fetishization is not unique to the Hetalia fandom, but it is amplified to the max. Obviously, within Hetalia, there are almost no female characters, so this leaves only male characters to be shipped with one another. Now suddenly Germany is an uwu gay bean and not an actual war criminal. At the moment of writing this Hetalia has 32105 M/M fics on ao3 which is only one of the three fanfiction sites, with ao3 not even becoming popularized until after the peak of the Hetalia fandom. (the most popular ship being America/England who refer to each other as brothers in the show as England raised America, showing another problematic part of the fandom). I would argue that Hetalia has one of the gayest fandoms (My Hero Academia is giving it a run for its money though) and I agree with the article that it is inaccurate to say that this is only done by straight cis women. The fact of the matter is a lot of queer teens used Hetalia as an outlet to express their own sexuality through these characters. The straight women that do fetishize BL are likely only doing so because anime creators suck at writing good female characters.

I think that the "level of gayness" turns straight fans away from watching the show (again MHA is the same way today) as it is hard to interact with the fandom without seeing some yaoi content. However, many people view this as something wrong or cringy, when in reality it is a normal part of fandom culture. When gay people have such little content that is actually gay, you cannot blame us for creating our own through characters that we like/relate to. Again, I think the only issues that arise here are the problematic ships that give young people a bad impression of relationships (abusive, incest, pedophilia, etc) or the arguable problematic ones like China/Russia or Lithuania/Russia as again these are real countries with real political relations. (However, I will never forget the time that there was Russia/China fanart on the news, maybe they approve and I shouldn't be complaining)

The thing is, Hetalia only seems so bad because the fandom is so large and so young. A lot of shows have fandoms that sexualize the characters and have kinda problematic fans, but the sheer volume makes things seem worse. This is something that we covered when we watched Genshiken, but there is a lot of negative stigma behind this fandom in particular, but it is just a loud minority that gets a lot of news coverage between fandoms.

It also raises the question "Is a show responsible for the response of its fans?"

Because while Himaruya has no control over what people do with his characters or how they interpret a plot, if a majority of people are leaving your show spouting vaguely racist rhetoric and interpreting your show one way, isn't there some validity in that interpretation? I think a creator has to be aware of their audience, which in this case is a very young and impressionable audience who might not understand how offensive some of the things they are doing really are. They don't hold the same ability to separate fiction from reality.

That being said Hetalia had a large impact on fandom culture as a whole, largely starting things like 'ask a character' panels (along with like homestuck but we don't talk about her). If you go to any convention you will probably find a Hetalia cosplayer, and if you watch any dub there is probably a voice actor from Hetalia there.

I also want to mention Hetalia is also a fandom full of cultural capital, If you don't know every niche fact, you're not a real fan, If you haven't read Auf Wiedersehen Sweetheart you haven't even met the entry-level requirements to be a fan. There are also no characters that are too sacred to be altered within the fandom. If you want to put Germany in a maid dress have at it, if you want to see all the characters as girls you're in luck cause Himaruya literally drew them. Fanfictions can take place anywhere from WWI to the present day and you can put any characters in any scenario and make it believable. There are thousands of pieces of fanwork, fan art, fangames, and fan AUs. These characters are malleable to fit your personal preference and there is really no way you could be mad at this as Himaruya does this himself, with no real established canon.

a Hetalia fan once said, "No one cares if Hetalia was written by a Japenese Imperialism apologist when you're 31 chapters deep into a human Au soulmate fic about Austria inviting Prussia to see his boyband perform in Berlin"

Himaruya is also the king of moe characteristics because he turned these Hetalia men into any cute thing he could think of, Chibi versions (Chibitalia), female versions (Nyotalia), and cat versions (Nekotalia). He has no reservations about drawing the characters in a dress or in cat ears. He gave the characters human names to allow for more standardized human AU's and made a DS dating game. He encourages fans to take his characters and use them in their fanworks as they see fit, canon is up to interpretation itself. I think Himaruya himself was a huge part of fandom culture (not that I could tell you cause no one knows anything about the guy) and saw how the female characters were often treated by fans and turned it on its head, allowing for females to sexualize the males this time.

Also, none of the male characters in this show resembles a Hegemonic form of masculinity. Even the most masculine character in the show (Germany) can be seen doing more "feminine things" like wearing a dress or proposing to a man. Which, you know, I guess is a good diversion from things you would typically see in an anime of this nature (but again there are a lot of instances of characters being feminine being played for laughs, like a man being girly is something inherently funny). Feat. Germany proposing to Italy with a tomato ring.

7.

I am Hetalia's biggest hater, however, I cannot deny the impact that it has had on my life and how much I love to talk about it. Hetalia is what introduced me to anime and fandom (and tumblr) for the first time. I met a lot of people I still talk to today because of this show. It encouraged me and a lot of other people to actually get interested in history. Thanks to this show I can identify every country in Europe, and it was a lot easier to remember historical facts if I just imagined the Hetalia characters. Also, Auf Wiedersehen Sweetheart is a literary masterpiece and there is a reason it almost has a five-star rating on goodnotes (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/22064556) I love you George DeValier I hope you're doing good wherever you are.

I would like to make it abundantly clear that despite everything I've said that might make me sound like a woke blue-haired liberal, I don't really think this show is some horribly racist show or that the people who enjoy it are racist. I just wanted to provide a deeper outlook on the impact a seemingly dumb show can have on real people. I can't really blame the show for the terrible response of the fandom and it did honestly get better in later seasons that are not focused on WWII.

Despite all the bad stuff, it is a relatively funny little 5-minute watch, and you can really just jump in at any point you want to. If you don't take it as seriously as I do you might even enjoy it a little.

If you actually read this far I have major respect for you, I'm really excited to see what the general consensus on this show is.

Prussia and South Italy were my favorites in case anyone cared

If you're wondering why I didn't do my presentation on Hetalia despite my extensive knowledge, it is because I would be incredibly biased and I would go off the rails I think.

Also, my biggest fear is current Hetalia fans finding this and killing me, that might seem irrational but the Gundam fans found me last time so I wouldn't put it past them.

[rikeijo]

Today's translation #36

Sayo Yamamoto's interview in Go Yuri go!!! offical fanbook

Part 4.

Q: It's a bit surprising that even Otabek uses social media.

A lot of foreign skaters have accounts. We can say that it's normal to promote yourself by posting about what you are doing. Otabek too uses all sorts of social media. He practices at rinks not in his home country but abroad - I think, for skaters who have to travel all over the world, social media are also a method to stay in contact with their friends, families and fans.

Q: The fireworks scene in the ED was very memorable.

This was Hayashi-san's idea. It's not that all three of them were together in Hasetsu in the summer. So, it's not that it's a scene that actually happened somewhere sometime in the past - it's an imaginary world. Hayashi-san is very observant and the visuals he creates are very convincing - he makes you think that the moments he portrays really happened.

Q: What was the most important thing to you when you were working on the visual side of Yuri!!!

First of all with screen layouts, at first I wanted them to look similar to Kubo-san's original style of drawing, so I was thinking about making the black color of characters' outlines really stand out. In addition, also in backgrounds, I wanted to leave the lines well-defined, and not make them too realistic and photo-like. With the exception of the town of Hasetsu, all [location] settings are essentially based in real world. In anime about figure skating, and one where we wanted to animate the GPF series, we wanted to have a link to real world locations where GP series events actually take place. Yuri!!! started airing in October, so the timing matched with real-life GP series, and by making the locations the same, we also wanted to make people, who don't watch figure skating normally, interested in watching real-life competitions.

Q: The interior of Yu~topia Katsuki is a very unique world.

Tamura (Seiki)-san, who was responsible for the design, is the person who works with me since the first anime I directed, as the art designer. He has a good sense of fun and he's really good at adding a special flavor to his designs. I think, if we just drew everything exactly in the same way as it appears in the photos we took for references, then it wouldn't really be even worthwhile to work on the designs. Especially in case of Yu~topia Katsuki and the main building where Yuuri's room is located, we wanted to make it look unique. We placed an order for a design that "shows you that the building has been remodeled, and some time has passed since the time when the Katsukis were running a ryokan [traditional Japanese inn] and now, when they use the ryokan building as their house with one-day [that is, you can't stay the night there] onsen facilities added. So inside the building we have a lot of elements from different cultures and time periods. In contrast, when designing the locations we wanted to look realistic, like the GP series venues, we used 3D-modelling.

Q: How was your co-operation with the sound director, Kiyomizu-san, going during the voice overs recording?

I have previously worked with Kiyomizu-san on "Lupin". He's very passionate about voice acting. He also has the ability to manage voice actors very well. He read the story we wanted to tell diligently and had a very good understanding of what we want to do, to the point that he was able to give me some ideas I've never thought about - I could entrust this job to him without any worries. When we were checking the voice overs together, we almost always agreed on the lines which sounded off - it made my life so much easier. In Yuri!!! from time to time we have scenes when we use manga-like deformations but when we were casting voice actors, it was very important for us to have actors, who can act naturally. All VAs are very talented, so basically the voice overs aren't that different from what I imagined they should sound like. Also I was the most grateful that Kiyomizu-san is also a skating fan. It is the director's job to explain everything to people who don't know anything [about the topic they need to work on], but it's so much better when you have to give only additional information to somebody who already knows a lot, than when you have to make somebody with 0 level knowledge reach level 2 or 3. The number of episodes we could work on together was not so big, so I wouldn't have much time to explain everything anyway - it was a luxury to be able to work with Kiyomizu-san, who already had know so much that I only had to give him some additional information.

[spacedlexi]

have you watched tlou? thoughts?

ive made a few posts about it if u search tlou on my blog but i never made a final thoughts or anything

this kinda turned into a final thoughts ramble (essay) so under the cut it goes

honestly it kinda peaked for me at ep 3 (which was a REALLY good ep so the bar was high and i was mostly enjoying the changes up through that point),, i still liked it but i feel like some of the changes they made altered the impact of the og ellie/joel relationship. theyre dedicated to rewriting ellie to have some "violence" problem to attempt to set her up better for part 2 but i just hate that they actively have chosen to do this to her character. they took a lot of her sweetness away which is a huge shame to me. theyre so weird about ellie honestly i dont like the way they talk about her half the time these days i had to stop watching the bts because the way they kept talking about "violence" made me ill sick even. like you can still have your character have a "descent into madness" type plot after experiencing an extremely traumatic event (after a lifetime of traumatic experiences) without being weird about how "violent" people are. they love to throw that word around but they dont like to investigate Why exactly people are being violent and to Who. its typically just violence and/or revenge=bad 😐 (<-and that i think kinda leads into other problems i have with the plots they write in general)

i had less problems with joel. my only real problem was that they really played up the old thing a little much like save it for part 2 lol also not enough accent i didnt hear a single "elleh". i wasnt a fan of how they decided to change joel and tommys convo about ellie, and while i can appreciate it more now knowing that they still committed to portraying joels actions in the final episode as the selfish acts they are, and seeing joel have fears of failure makes sense because im sure he feels he failed as a parent, im still not a fan of how maria doesnt get to chew him out for his selfishness (important character moment of reflection on selfish behavior and consequences of actions on people around him), and how it changes the atmosphere of his and ellies argument when half of the reason he doesnt want to take her is because he feels too old and slow to protect her. and Then when he Does decide to take her its like? werent you crying last night about being slow and deaf and the impact that has on your combat ability? did that change? i understand why they added the lines they added but i dont feel like it made sense with how they continued to play out the episode with line for line scenes from the game...like these are two different things now. similar, but different enough to introduce problems where there didnt used to be. and then hes stabbed and dying 10 mins later

the pacing in general was a little iffy to me. it was only 9 episodes and 2 of them are separate from the main plot. that, plus rewriting existing characters/plots, plus not being able to fit in the more softer personal moments between joel and ellie that would just happen throughout a map(i know its hard to make watching 2 people walk cross country interesting but we needed more of those moments), plus ellie being preemptively hardened so we see less of her soft side slowly cracking through joels tough shell really impacted the believability of their relationship for me. we're supposed to see ellie become more hardened over the game but honestly in the show she always feels at the same level to me :/ those soft moments Are still there but i wouldve liked to have seen more of them. especially felt the loss of the scene where ellie sees real fireflies for the first time

the reason why i love the original last of us so much is because i think it is an INCREDIBLE character piece. every single character plays a very important role in shaping the development of the main two protagonists relationship (the two of which are Also impacting each other) over the course of the story. while i loved bill and franks ep, i wish they would have introduced a new character to fill the role that og bill left. because og bill was very important for joel. he was like a ghost of christmas future showing the man he could become if he continued to push people away. and throughout bills segment joel frequently pushes back against his ideas and this usually lent to a little bonding moment between him and ellie. but this also showed us that joel was open to new connections. whether he would get over his fear of that or not to be solved at a later date (ie: the tommy incident that was altered for the show and my problem with it because joels choice to take ellie after their argument is EVERYTHING and the show muddied it a bit). but by the time they leave bill, joel and ellie have begun building a true connection

sam and henry also suffered from this imo. by writing in all the kathleen stuff, it takes the focus away from how sam and henrys familial relationship is the foundation from which joel and ellies closer familial bond is allowed to grow (which also becomes a source of division when ellie wants to talk about what happened to them but joel wants to move on, which leads into their conflict during tommys section which boils down to more "talk about it vs move on"). i also feel like the story is weaker for choosing not to include the story of kyle and ish. because although it happens mainly through notes, its a story about letting yourself learn to trust new people and the things you can do with a strong community, its a story about how even though good things may come to an end, the time we had together was important and meaningful and WORTH IT and i wouldnt have done it any other way. id much rather focus more in on that as a theme (compounds with the riley/left behind segment/plus joels final act of selfishness) than whatever tf was going on with kathleen and her revenge plot. plus i thought the first game was all about "love" so why not go harder into these "light in the darkness" themes? kathleens plot is just a watered down part 2 anyway i still dont think we needed that :/

all my grievances aside however they Did stick the landing and i was so relieved plus i enjoyed the added anna segment. as someone whos played tlou like at least 10 times over the last decade plus watched others play, it was going to be impossible for me to not constantly be comparing the two. to be fair i think one of the strongest points of the show was how they really nailed how it felt to actually BE the player in these scenes that i had already played a hundred times myself. im sure this show was great for someone whos never played the game since a lot of my problems come from how they decided to do certain things for the show. i hope the people who enjoyed the show but havent experienced the game go watch a clip comp or something because i definitely believe the og game is still the best way to experience this story. video games also deserve more respect as an art form but thats a whooooole other conversation

i wish my opinion was stronger than 'it was fine overall with a couple solid episodes' but welp....definitely couldve been worse tho so im glad its at least as good as it is. it is good!! but the game is very near and dear to me so...i am biased but i tried to at least give it as fair a shake as possible. i think it started pretty strong. peaked with bill and frank. then dipped a little lower than the first ep. then picked back up to first eps strength again for the final stretch. the bill and frank and left behind eps were my favorite parts of the season. its a bit of a shame that the 2 eps that are most removed from the plot are the strongest to me, but also i guess it makes sense

[tarjeismoeworknews]

Video from the Filmhøsten 2022, the Norwegian Film Institute's presentation of the upcoming films, where Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken and Tarjei talked about the movie Forbannelsen (translation and video by @teejaysnow)

Jakob Berg: Welcome to the stage, director and script writer Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken and actor Tarjei Sandvik Moe. [Tarjei jumps onto the stage] Oh, look. Very athletic. Very good. Tarjei Sandvik Moe, here we see you in a period piece that’s also a thriller placed in a mining district in Norway during the Spanish flu. Can you tell us a bit about your character here?

Tarjei Sandvik Moe: His name is Oscar. He’s the son of Jan Sælid’s character Lauritz, who’s a priest, and they are returning after several years on a mission to Madagascar. Oscar really looks up to his father and has created an image of how to be from him as well as from Christianity, so when he discovers new sides of himself that don't match that image, it gets a bit complicated.

Jakob Berg: There’s always such a lovely flora of actors in Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s movies, what is it that makes everyone apparently wanting to work with him?

Tarjei Sandvik Moe: I can only speak for myself. I’ve made some movies with Henrik, but the first time was just because I saw the films he’d made and I thought they were cool and exciting and I wanted to be a part of that.

Jakob Berg: And how has that worked out?

Tarjei Sandvik Moe: It’s been really fun. Ours is a very close collaboration and we’re friends too and constantly talk about what to work on next, and you get to take ownership of what you do with Henrik and I really appreciate that.

Jakob Berg: And, Henrik, this takes place during the Spanish flu. And people die. And we’re in a pandemic now. Are there any parallels between the events you present from that time and what we’re experiencing now?

Henrik M Dahlsbakken: I began to write the film before Corona, but it has gotten a bigger part in the story. We filmed all of it during the Corona pandemic so the Spanish flu is a backdrop to the film. It’s not what the film is about, but it’s a part of it. The film takes place at the end of World War One, and I’m very interested in war, like World War Two in Norway, but this is a time that is very rarely portrayed on film and a part of the country that is rarely portrayed. So it was a backdrop, there were entirely different things that made me want to make this film.

Jakob Berg: What was it that made you want to make the film then?

Henrik M Dahlsbakken: It was first and foremost the characters, the duality of the characters that navigates a very difficult time that is completely different from today but it’s still interesting and has a lot of duality between faith and doubt. There are many different characters and events that made me want to make the film and that was the reason I wrote the script. And Jan Sælid’s character is larger than life, he is in a way, without any other comparison, almost Ibsenesque. And, to brag about the actors, Jan Sælid? Formidable, he owns it. But also Eva Nergård, who plays the young girl, she’s ten years old and amazing. Absolutely amazing. I’m really looking forward to showing the film because of that but also because of the beautiful scenery. We’ve filmed it all in Femund and Røros.

Jakob Berg: Is that where it’s supposed to take place too?

Henrik M Dahlsbakken: Yeah. And it’s lovely, lovely, lovely.

Jakob Berg: And the film’s premiere date is?

Henrik M Dahlsbakken: It’s 7 october.

Jakob Berg: I’m looking forward to seeing it. Thank you, Tarjei Sandvik Moe and Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken

Very special thanks to @teejaysnow for sharing this video and her awesome translation skills with us. Thank you! 

[sdartistries]

could you tell us more about the fronted confident/real confidence pose thing? as someone who loves details-- it sounds really interesting! how do you read a character's body language like that?

For sure!

For the sake of continuity of this discussion, I'll just go ahead and use the base poses of the TPOF trio as examples. (Characters belong to the wonderfully talented @gatobob)

Body Language = Observable Behavior + Context

Before I go into a deeper explanation of posing characters, let’s explore what body language actually says about a character. In particular:

Body language says very little about a character’s actual personality; 

Body language is reactionary to circumstance (people, places, events, experience); and

Body language does not portray universally across persons of differing ability or culture.

That being said, when you are observing a character’s body language in a story then you are likely only getting as much context to their behavior as the creator has intended to share with you. I’ll include examples of circumstance below to show how it changes the meaning of a base pose. 

Let’s begin!

Posing Plain Confidence

Confidence as a character does not necessarily mean that a character is the best of the best (Ah yes, I am a chef of so many years’ experience that my hands are basically knives and my burps are basically seasoning), it simply means that a character is transparently calm given the circumstance that they are reacting to (Well, I can certainly give dinner a good try and if there’s room for improvement then there’s always next time. No big deal.) which oftentimes can be interpreted as a result of experience. They are fully prepared to deal with a situation as it comes along whether they’ve done it before or not. 

Visually, a confident character does not necessarily have to stand or sit with a ram-rod straight back. That's a trained habit, not a confident habit. Instead, their posture is more than likely going to come off as relaxed and open. Think unhunched shoulders, head resting evenly on neck, legs and arms placed loosely, and feet in resting position. Another visual note to make about confident characters is that they don’t partake in what I like to call “comfort gestures”. They do not distance their gaze. They do not cradle their bodies. They do not have to be touching or grasping something. They do not turn themselves away from an audience when directly addressing them. They are untensed and unbothered. 

Confidence Illustrated: Mason

Circumstance #1: Confidence You Can Trust

Getting back country-certified wasn’t a part of your original job description. There are BEARS in the back country! BEARS and WOLVES and BADGERS and you’re just an events coordinator for a non-profit! And let’s be real... it shows in the nervous jitter of your legs but then your instructor steps out of their truck and their presence immediately puts you at ease.

Here you are, surrounded by endless trees miles away from a proper town groaning under the weight of your company-supplied camp pack, and there they are walking effortlessly over to you on uneven ground with just as much gear if not more. In that small moment between them leaving their truck and closing the gap to reach you, you notice how their eyes scan the surrounding wilderness while they take a lazy swig out of their water jug before turning their eyes towards you on the last step. Their gaze is as even as their breath and they extend a steady hand out for a handshake. You nervously take their hand and they give you a light but firm squeeze in return. You’re locked into their expression - how calm they are - and they break a small smile at you in return.

Circumstance #2: Confidence You Should Fear

So... it wasn’t the bears you should have worried about. Your instructor watched you eat lunch and you KNOW you saw them take a few bites of the same ration. You SHARED lunch, you told them about how excited you were to be out in the woods for the first time especially with such an experienced guide like them, and now what?! They had you strung up by your wrists, that’s what! 

You swivel left and right trying to get a better bearing of your surroundings and that’s when you see them and your blood runs cold. They’ve unloaded their pack somewhere but that only serves to give you a better look at the knife strapped to their hip. It’s definitely not a utility knife. They don’t even skip a beat once they notice you’re awake and walk towards you with that same even stride that had earlier put you at ease. Their gaze meets you straight on and you flinch as they close the distance. They break that now familiar small smile at your reaction and place that familiar light but firm grip on your chin. 

Reading The Next Move of Plain Confidence

Just like their baseline posture, plain confidence doesn’t put on any airs when it comes to their next move. Even if you’ve provoked them, you generally have a clear view of exactly how they’re reacting as it happens. 

Posing A Defensive Front

Where a plainly confident character does not necessarily need to be the best of the best, the defensive character NEEDS their audience to believe that they’re better than thou in the context of perceived confidence. A defensive front comes with a few tells however that points to a more honest need for this character: distancing and self-soothing. Plain confidence plays on an unbothered field but a defensive character plays a clear competition when observed by an audience. If you have ever done a “power pose” to inspire yourself before a meeting, game, or social situation then congratulations, you were building up confidence by building up a defensive front.

Defensive fronts actually start at the feet, or whatever base of the character is in direct contact with a solid surface.  Defensive characters are PLANTED to their position and aren’t likely to make sweeping gestures or postures (unless provoked but we’ll get to that later). Their poses generally live within an elbow-length bubble. Besides being grounded and contained in their postures, defensive characters also showcase a lot of comfort gestures. They look down at their audience. They move their head and torso away from their audience. They try to make themselves look bigger by hunching up their shoulders and/or they create a barrier between themselves and the audience by crossing their arms or holding an object in between them. Defensive characters prefer not to address others or be addressed in a position that puts them at a disadvantage or on equal footing. Imagine this character walking alongside another character in a hallway except you’re already wrong by assuming that they’d walk alongside anyone and not half a step ahead or behind the other person and at least two feet away. Defensive characters are on edge and that edge helps them stay ahead... but it also makes them fragile.  

Defensive Front Illustrated: Celia

Circumstance #1: Defense That Helps

You made it out of bear country... you don’t want to remember how you did it, but you’ve got some serious complaints for HR, that’s for sure. You send an email to their department and you receive a calendar invite in return. You accept and wait for the appointed meeting time before approaching their office. Their door is always closed so you knock and are promptly called into the office. They’re sitting at their desk when you open the door but immediately stand up and close the door behind you before walking you to a chair in front of their desk. They don’t return to their seat and instead choose to lean against the front of their desk while you hand them your report of the incident. They scan the report with their arms folded over their chest. Every once in a while, they look over to you with a gaze obscured by lowered lashes. You can’t tell if they’re taking you seriously or not. You had a lot to say before you came into the office but now you’re just... uncomfortable. Finally, they put down the report and fold both arms over their chest. They tell you that they’ll look into this incident and inform you of any further action needed on your part. They smile at you which puts you at ease and, again, they personally walk you out of their office closing the door behind you. You return to your cubicle and your office computer pings with a very prompt email detailing the submission of your report and immediate action items needed going forward. 

Circumstance #2: Defense That Harms

This is not the settlement you hoped for. Sure, you were excited when your communications with HR started pointing towards something that felt like real closure and, sure, a work lunch with HR to go over settlement details sounded like a good idea at the time but now... now you think you all of this was just a huge mistake. Though... admittedly, you can’t help but think this might be an overreaction on the part of HR. 

You met them in their office to leave together for lunch and they brushed past you after gathering a few of their things, clutching their paperwork in a vice grip. You followed them to their vehicle in what seemed like a hushed, unspoken race. You sat shotgun and for a moment you thought you caught a glimpse of a scowl on their face but it vanished before you could really place it. They started driving in silence to what you assumed was going to be a nice company-funded meal but when you started asking about the details of the settlement, they laughed at you. They didn’t even turn to look at you but they shifted from laughter to badgering pretty quickly. Something was wrong and you felt it strongly enough in your gut to pull on their emergency break while unclipping your seatbelt. You could tell by the sudden flush in their cheeks and a rustling through their briefcase that this was not going to end well for you. 

Reading The Next Move of The Defensive Front

Defensive characters are build-up characters. They have a baseline that they strive to protect which is normally never an issue for their audience until they’ve been provoked in some way. That’s where the beauty of a defensive character lies because if circumstances poke them in a way that consistently topples their base then they will act in a way where it is made clear that the circumstance needs to change in order to conform to their level of comfort or else some unstable behavior is definitely going to happen.

Posing A Poker Face (Bluster)

The poker face is the cousin of plain confidence but rather than being built on a base of unbothered calm, the poker face is built on a foundation of bluster. Bluster is an art form. Bluster is unearned while also being a consistent practice. Bluster applies for the position of executive chef on the basis of having added garlic powder to a grilled cheese once and claiming that it was a work of art despite being incredibly dry and subjective to individual taste and food tolerance. The character that poses in base poker face does, in fact, personally believe that they’re confident as a base line but they have little tells in their posture that attempt to redirect their audience away from the also true fact that they are insecure in their standing. 

In plain confidence posturing, we talked about the fact that standing upright is a trained habit rather than an actual sign of confidence. Well, in a character displaying bluster, they are more likely to be posed in trained positions that they have been told convey a certain air rather than defaulting to a position that they actually feel. Remember this: bluster is largely deceptive in posturing. Confidence posturing is a reflection of the character themselves being at ease, but bluster posturing is meant to put the intended audience at ease.  That generally means that they’ll meet the audience gaze very directly. They’ll even lower their heads and bodies to the level of the audience. Their movement posturing is a massive tell, though. A confident character will assess and redirect as necessary, but a poker face character will move under the assumption that they already have the upper hand. 

Bluster Illustrated: Derek

Circumstance #1: Poker Played Fairly

Working for non-profits has been a... poor experience to say the least and you’ve decided to move on. You swore you would never give in but here you are interviewing for a position in a corporate conglomerate. You’re seated in front of a fairly cozy conference table and you’ve got your list of very oddly specific conditions for employment listed in your cover letter to present to your mystery interviewer. No camping. No undocumented work meetings. Just a desk and duties. You sweat over some other details in your head until you hear a door open and swivel around to see the mystery entering the room. 

They lock eyes with you immediately and you are struck with how widely they smile and stride straight up to you without giving you a moment to rise from your seat. They take your hand and deliver a firm handshake that lasts just long enough for you to notice how warm and soft their palms are. They assure you that you can stay seated while they move to occupy the seat in front of you. They keep their hands in plain sight on top of the meeting table though you notice that they occasionally tap your resume while they talk to you. You feel so acknowledged! Their shoulders inch closer to you throughout your conversation and you can’t help but feel completely at ease as they stand up and shake your hand once again to welcome you to the company. 

Circumstance #2: Poker Played Poorly

“Naivete strikes once again!” You scream internally as you crawl silently out of the bed to collect your clothing off the floor. You’re just about to slip off to change discreetly in the bathroom when you steal a glance back at your... boss, dammit... laying in the bed facing away from you and that’s when you notice it. They were awake this entire time. You can see their reflection in the window and you can see that they’ve noticed you. They lock eyes with your reflection first before casually rolling over and smile widely at your distressed expression. You’re frozen for a moment when you realize that everything they had ever told you, everything that they had ever said to assure you, was a lie. They look you up and down and smile wider before lazily calling you back to bed. You burst and start screaming at them. Their expression empties for just a moment and then you see something in them darken. Your stomach sinks as they start to laugh. 

Reading the Next Move of the Poker Face

Unfortunately, the poker face character is a character of deception as previously stated. Characters that use bluster as a primary source of posturing do not react well to provocation. That means the audience has figured them out and they no longer have the upper hand. Their actions after this realization is largely dependent on their personality which can’t be predicted by body language. 

Thank you for the ask! I had a lot of fun writing out this reply!

[world-cinema-research]

Carrie (1976) by Michael Bump

Carrie (1976) by Michael Bump 

Carrie is a 1976 film directed by Brain De Palma. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. The story is about a high school student named Carrie White who has telekinetic powers. Carrie is bullied by her classmates relentlessly. As her powers grow stronger, she began to become isolated, and her powers were unstable leading a tragedy at the high school. The opening of Carrie starts with her experiencing her first period in the locker room. Carrie was unaware of what was going on with her body. Carrie became visibly upset and her classmates began to tease her. Word of the incident quickly spread through the school and Carrie began to get bullied much worse. Sissy Spacek does an amazing job portraying the character's vulnerability and innocence. An interesting aspect of the film is the use of split screen scenes. In doing so the viewer is exposed to multiple scenes at once. The music playing throughout the film is haunting and atmospheric. It provides the movie with a consistent feeling of doom and unease. Carrie’s mother is played by Piper Laurie. Margaret White, Carrie’s mother, was a religious fanatic. She behaved abusively towards her daughter. Laurie’s performance is chilling.  

The climax of Carrie, and most likely one of the most famous scenes from the film, is when Carrie is drenched in pigs' blood in front of her classmates and by her classmates. The picture I tagged along with this post is a photo from that scene. Films and television pay homage to this scene by recreating it in their own projects. The music during this scene is ominous. The scene felt like it lasted a long time, and the combination of effects and terrifying music made that scene epic. The film’s ending and the book’s ending differed from each other. The end of the film is tragic for Carrie unfortunately, she ended up succumbing to the abusive parenting of her mother.  

Carrie is a classic horror film, but the message still holds true today. The message of what happens when someone is bullied and pushed into isolation. This is a testament to what would happen if the one being bullied had telekinesis and could take revenge on their abusers. The year that Carrie was released had many historical events. The first event was Jimmy Carter defeated President Gerald Ford, who was the incumbent, and became the country’s next President. It was a shocking upset because it is common for the incumbent President to get reelected. The other major historical event in 1976 was the landing of the first Martian module. It was the first craft ever to reach the surface of Mars.  

Carrie is the epitome of horror. It was well received by the audience. The budget for Carrie was a little over One million dollars. After the release, the film grossed over thirty-three million dollars worldwide. Carrie is a conventional Hollywood horror film. Although there are elements of terror that are unlike other films in the same genre. The music of the film tends to stick in the ears because of how disturbing it is. Anyone who is interested in scary movies should see Carrie. It is a classic Stephen King novel brought to life.  

“Part of his success is a result of the very good performances by Sissy Spacek, as Carrie, and by Piper Laurie, as Carrie's mother. They form a closed-off, claustrophobic household, the mother has translated her own psychotic fear of sexuality into a twisted personal religion. She punishes the girl constantly, locks her in closets with statues of a horribly bleeding Christ, and refuses to let her develop normal friendships.” Roger Ebert 

“Carrie” is a terrifyingly lyrical thriller. The director, Brian De Palma, has mastered a teasing style—a perverse mixture of comedy and horror and tension, like that of Hitchcock or Polanski, but with a lulling sensuousness. He builds our apprehensions languorously, softening us for the kill. You know you’re being manipulated, but he works in such a literal way and with so much candor that you have the pleasure of observing how he affects your susceptibilities even while you’re going into shock. Scary-and-funny must be the greatest combination for popular entertainment; anything-and-funny is, of course, great—even funny-and-funny. But we come out of a movie like “Carrie,” as we did out of “Jaws,” laughing at our own childishness. It’s like watching our team win a ballgame—we’re almost embarrassed at how bracing it is.”- Paula Kael 1976 

Carrie (1976) Prom scene 

[ficrecslist]

Fic Rec Sunday #1

This week's fandoms include Boku no Hero Academia and Batman. Please make sure to look through the fic tags for content warnings before reading.

Batman

Brilliant Analytical Minds by stuckoncloud9 (62k, WIP, T)

When one of Bruce Wayne's socialite friends is murdered, her grieving uncle shocks Gotham by hiring the Riddler to deduce the identity of her killer.

An interesting and yet plausible take on a pairing I've never read before: Bruce Wayne/Edward Nygma.

the higher fidelity by birdsofthesoul (3k, T)

Bruce goes sheet-white, looking like Dick’s just cut him to the quick, and Dick can’t help but think they should have booked a flight, discretion be damned. This — this is why they don’t do road trips. Cars are like confessionals, cramped spaces built for coercing confessions, and neither of them are good with words.

Recollect, re-collect by Ptelea (94k, T)

Jason would tell you that his most recent case, where he stopped a wannabe warlock's spell-in-progress, went just fine.

Jason would also tell you he was fine with the distant, prickly status quo of his relationships with the other Bats.

(Jason is maybe not the most reliable of narrators.)

Or: A spell gone wrong leads to Jason hashing some things out--with himself, with Dick, and with the rest of the Batfam. Featuring: rather a lot of thoughts and conversations about memory, change, damage, love and trust, accountability, family, hurt, lies, death, Spyral, pedestals, cases, memorials, stories, and Robin.

Recced two works from this author just because their characterisation and writing is so good.

Chatterbox by Ptelea (24k, T)

"Yeah, I'm fine," Dick said. Then he frowned, because he had not just meant to say that.

Or: Eight times that spells or serums affected Dick's ability to speak and / or their aftermath.

Life Happens by Cdelphiki (176k, G)

While walking home from an event at Wayne Enterprises, Tim and Damian are kidnapped and sent to an alternate dimension. In a world where superheroes are merely comic book characters and the idea of the multiverse is only a theory found within the pages of science fiction, how are Tim and Damian going to return home? How long will they be stranded on this strange Earth? And will the boys murder each other before they figure it out?

the prophetic spring by yellow_caballero (32k, T)

When Tim Drake was seven years old he found 4chan. This would eventually kill him, and then proceed to kill very many other people afterwards, thus adding to the website’s already considerable body count. It would also save a few lives, which was a first for 4chan.

Part of a series, and is my favourite role reversal Robins fic. Definitely give this one a try.

Boku no Hero Academia

reconcile by whatagoodegg (100k, WIP, T)

Midoriya and Shigaraki get hit with a Quirk that basically locks the both of them in an indestructible box and makes them unable to physically harm each other. The only way for them to get out?

They have to reconcile their differences.

Obviously, this is easier said than done.

Really well done so far, and it digs deeply into both Shigaraki's and Midoriya's dynamic. It's sympathetic to Tomura but the writer pulls off the tension being stuck with the villain who tried to kill you and your classmates very well, especially in the first few chapters, and their relationship development comes across organically and authentic. (Note: Shigaraki is portrayed younger than in canon)

Singularity by BonesOfBirdWings (8k, T)

Yoichi dreams an impossible dream - one perfect day as a hero.

A nice little bodyswap fanfic where the first OFA user wakes up in Midoriya's body for the day.

Japan v. Shigaraki (2237) SCOJ No. 4401 by Anubis_2701 (21k, T)

After months of delay and bureaucratic mishandling, the Japanese Supreme Court has confirmed that the trial of Shigaraki Tomura, the mass murderer, supervillain and terrorist responsible for a slew of horrific crimes across the country, will begin on the 4th of September. Prosecutors say they are confident they can obtain convictions for all 408 charges. 

It is unknown at this stage whether Shigaraki himself will take the stand.

The author has put a lot of work into this fake court case and I think it's simply incredible. Lots of things to commend here.

By Any Other Name by SatelliteBlue (258k, T)

Through some freak accident of the universe, Dabi has been invited to compete on The Bachelorette. Have they actually seen his face? Surprisingly yes, and they still want him. For this season they apparently need a ‘bad boy’ to both balance out the hero contestant (why in hell is Hawks involved?) and to trash talk the show in interviews to appeal to audiences who don’t like the scripting. Getting sent on a vacation away from his annoying bandmates to complain and eat as much free food as he wants? Sold.

If there's one BNHA fic you have to try, this is the one. This and the fic below are DabiHawks.

The Sword of Damocles is Swinging by Princeliest (60k, T)

When the Hero Public Safety Commission says ‘jump,’ Hawks skips asking 'how high' and works his way from jump rope to jumping jacks before opening his mouth to complain that he can fly. Their latest request, a PR campaign geared to present Hawks as the heroic icon of the masses, at least seems easier than getting his feathers burned off by Dabi’s pet noumu… Right?

In which Hawks gets surgery, defeats a traumatized villain, receives some unwelcome fanmail, garners the sympathy of terrorists, accidentally forges enough relationships to cumulatively value as at least one friend, and maybe, eventually, asks for help - not necessarily in that order.

Missing Everything by Haptronym (59k, WIP, T)

Izuku misses a very important reveal and ends up with a villain-filled soda bottle instead. In the ensuing chaos, he befriends someone named Toshinori Yagi.

All Might misses the chance to make a snap decision and ends up mentoring a very heroic, very determined child who has no idea who he really is.

[things-keeping-me-up-at-night]

I think it‘s so funny how monarchists and anti-monarchists are both constantly hating on The Crown yet everyone seems to be watching it.

(I‘m decidedly not a monarchist and agree there are some issues that could and maybe should be portrayed more concerning the British royal family, but I do like the show.

I think it does a good job at showing how these are really just human beings and how the system they‘re in is doing neither them nor the many millions of people affected by it any favours. I especially like the time frame of it - it shows the good and very bad things the people involved do and how their actions affect each other, making them into the people they are. That‘s something you don‘t get to see in real time a lot, especially seeing as it spans generations of people handing down destructive behaviour.

It‘s also visually stunning, and while I get that people find it glamorises monarchy in a way, I think from most people‘s perspectives it just goes to show how ridiculous it is that these (again, otherwise regular) people are put on a pedestal and just naturally handed that lifestyle including its pomp, its rituals and over the top rules.

Maybe I‘m very forgiving on the show, but I think for the controversial topic of it, it does a good job at staying relatively neutral (which is proven by the very different readings of the show from people with different stances on the monarchy in general). It also helps that the craft of it and cast are just incredible and it‘s very entertaining for the most part.

Sure, there are definitely things the royals have been involved in the show could have taken a part in discussing more, some topics I have to admit I‘m not informed enough on to comment on them. The show also could have been harder on Charles, which makes it even more ridiculous that the royal family is apparently protesting it - this is the most empathetic portrayal of the real things he‘s done anyone could do, there is no way of being nicer about it without being untruthful.

I also just have a soft spot for the fictionalised version of Princess Margaret in all seasons, I‘ll have to admit.

Anyway, British politics and the monarchy are not topics I want to get into, mainly because there are people out there who have much more right to have an opinion on these things than I do.

I absolutely understand if people who are from a country or culture that has been victim to colonisation have no interest in watching something that portrays the enablers and profiteers of the ongoing effects of colonisation in an empathetic way.

But if you just want to watch a decades-spanning questionably realistic drama with incredible set and costume design and some very talented British actors as well as a great score, this show does the job.

I do think season 5 of The Crown was definitely the weakest, mainly because it focused too much on Charles‘ and Diana‘s divorce and little else and because it was very oddly paced, but it had its moments as well. (More specifically when I bawled my eyes out at Margaret‘s and Peter‘s reunion in „Annus Horribilis“.) I really wonder about at what point in time the series is going to end since there is only one season left and there are still a lot of events left for the series to cover.

Still, I think people‘s expectations on all sides are always a little too high as soon as it comes to portraying the British royals. I get that it‘s a sensitive topic, but I can‘t think of a more balanced way to portray them (or a more opinionated way of portraying them and getting away with it).)

Anyway, these are just my two cents on the whole thing.

As for the current royal family discussion, I fully support Queen Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi of Genovia and that‘s that.

[uncommon-etc]

This was going to be called ‘a useful guide to writing LGBT+ characters in historic fiction’ but...

This now applies to everything over 30 years old, because of the drastic changes we’ve collectively gone through, and all of the progress that’s been made.

It’s awesome that there’s a renewed interest by writers of all stripes in filling the gaping void in literature where more queer fiction should be, but as someone who has encountered a huge amount of misconceptions and over-simplifications myself in researching how to accurately depict queer characters outside of a contemporary setting, I thought I’d put together three top-tips for other aspiring writers.

1. Dates of decriminalization are only half the story 

Here’s a map of decriminalization by country. Seems like exactly the kind of useful tool you might use to inform your writing, right?

Such maps should be taken with a pinch of salt, because they don’t show when anti-sodomy laws were introduced to those countries in the first place.

For instance, this map would imply that decriminalization was a fairly recent development in India, when the reality is that India didn’t have any laws against it until it was colonized by the British, and while the country doesn’t officially permit same-sex marriage, records of same-sex Hindu weddings go back centuries. Marriages between people from different castes were actually treated as more scandalous than same-sex relations between people in higher castes, and those who fall into the ‘third category’ (which includes trans, nonbinary and intersex people alongside effeminate gay men and butch gay women) were often given special status in pre-partition India. 

Colonizers usually failed to keep accurate records of the relationships and marriage practices they observed among those they colonized, except to remark on how barbaric and backwards they thought certain acts were, but there are always exceptions. Despite the high legal penalties for homosexual acts in the gulf states and across much of the Arab world, T. E. Lawrence kept detailed diaries during his travels in the middle east in the early 1900s in which he mentions witnessing not only sexual acts, but blatant gestures of romantic affection between the young Arab men he fought alongside. So, please don’t fall into the trap of thinking ‘my story features an Arab character, I need to make them very homophobic/uncomfortable around same-sex relationships.’

Polyamory and its role in Pacific Islander communities is frequently erased from history by those who sought to portray it exclusively - if at all - as one guy lucking out by having multiple wives. The reality is far more complex, with  Marquesas Islanders practicing Polyandry as well as Polygamy (i.e. women could have more than one husband.) Pre-contact indigenous Hawai’ians were probably one of the most sex-positive societies on earth, and while it’s important never to over-sexualise any minority group; ‘Sex between uncommitted individuals, paired individuals having lovers, liaisons, polyandry, polygyny, homosexual patterns of behavior, and such were all accepted practices (Malo, 1951, p. 74)’ 

Even in after Christianity spread to Europe and the Roman and Greek attitude to same-sex relations (which is a whole other essay I’m afraid) were drastically altered, certain practices are often overlooked...

In Sweden, in the early to mid 1800s, it became fashionable among the upper-classes for young unmarried people to take a same-sex partner, as a way to practice marriage without the risk of getting anyone pregnant. It’s part of the reason Hans Christian Andersen, (yes, the one who wrote the fairytales) got away with basically being openly bisexual. If he was seen kissing another man, people simply reasoned that he was being ‘childish’.

There’s a long-held joke in Finland about all Swedish men being gay, but it’s rooted in the fact that when Finnish women were sent to Sweden to learn domestic arts, attend high-society events, and eventually find a husband, they wrote home about how weird they thought it was that their new husband already had a ‘husband’, for practice.

In my mind there are far too many tragic same-sex love stories set in Europe around this time, won’t someone please write a charming rom-com about two guys who get away with it despite being increasingly more overtly gay because of weird customs like this?

I use the term ‘anti-sodomy law’ rather than ‘anti-gay law’ to keep things historically accurate, because the vast majority of European law in relation to homosexual acts never applied to women (something that was beautifully portrayed in the most recent season of Gentleman Jack), so if your character is a lesbian, her single biggest fear, from a legal standpoint, would be either being diagnosed with hysteria, or losing custody of any children she has from a previous relationship. There are no records of women being put to death on the grounds of having same-sex relations unless it was tied up in accusation of witchcraft. 

2. But in case you think the past was actually a rosier place to be gay than its usually portrayed...

So there was this one scene we all loved in the first season of Torchwood:

Basically, Jack and Tosh travel back in time to a tea-dance during WWII, where Jack meets the man whose identity he assumed when he left the time-agency. Even though he knows the other Jack will die the next day, the two of them have a connection, and they end up dancing together, in front of the other shocked guests, before the rift re-opens, returning Jack and Tosh to the present day.

The thing is, it would never actually happen.

It pains me to say it, but overt declarations of queer love in that era were few and far between, and when they occurred, they were severely punished. Many gay men with convictions for ‘public indecency’ in the 30s, 40s and 50s never did anything indecent, they were dobbed in by neighbours, colleagues, and jealous ex-lovers.

In fact, if you were a man of means, with a preference for other men in Britain before the outbreak of WWII (and before the nazis started raiding gay-bars) your safest route to not being arrested was to travel to Berlin, where hookups between men were generally ignored by the authorities amidst all the other chaos that plagued the Weimar republic.

If you want to write dramatic PDA moments between queer characters in pre-decriminalization times, be my guest, but don’t make them inconsequential, don’t cheapen the memories of those who were brave enough to risk arrest and literal torture through chemical castration by implying it’s not a big deal.

Quiet, subtle moments of affection can be just as effective, and far more believable. In order to write well-rounded, smart-thinking characters, it’s vital that you make them assess and contextualize their own relationships, and find ways around the obstacles of their times, rather than acting like it doesn’t matter.

A lack of appreciation for subtlety is part of the reason so many people missed the relationship between Captain Klenzendorf and Fred Finkel in Jojo Rabbit being intentionally queer-coded. Think about it, you’re two dudes who clearly have something going on, but you’re constantly surrounded by nazis, what are you going to do, french-kiss? Their constant close-proximity to each other, coupled with the little physical touches, and the moment one of them almost feeds the other one an iced-bun, make it pretty clear they’re more than just friends and colleagues. 

My hero Tove Jansson and her life-partner Tulikki had a secret passageway in the attic between their two studios in Helsinki, so that they could visit each other late in the evening without arousing any suspicion, but during their summers, they lived on an otherwise uninhabited island out in the gulf of Finland, where they were free to do as they liked.

If you want your characters to be free to be openly and unreservedly affectionate towards each other, take them out of society for a little bit and put them somewhere beautiful where there’s no-one else around. It’s part of the reason rural scenes in films like God’s Own Country, and Brokeback Mountain are so effective, they remind modern audiences that the relationship is not the problem, other people’s attitudes are.

3. Get your terminology right, even if it’s going to irk a modern audience

No-one would have called themselves, or anyone else ‘gay’ pre-1950s, unless they meant happy. No-one would have had access to the latest dictionary of acceptable terms and monikers for different LGBT+ identities. In an official context, gay men were separated into ‘inverts’ and ‘perverts’ (non-practicing and practicing homosexuals, though the invert label was generally only applied to those who sought help to ‘cure’ themselves, so it was pretty subjective). Pre-1950s terms in English were mostly innuendos (’he’s a friend of dorothy’s’, ‘he reads walt whitman’ and ‘he wears sensible shoes’ were all popular, alongside more well known ones like ‘he swings the other way’ or ‘he bats for the other team’). 

The term Bisexual was first coined (in the English speaking world) in 1859, but it wasn’t originally used to refer to those who experienced sexual attraction to men and women. Instead, the anatomist Robert Bentley Todd used it to describe those with primary or secondary sex characteristics that contradicted their assigned gender, and who would go on to be labelled hermaphrodites before we had much understanding of intersex people.

Please, I’m begging you, don’t write a novel about a magnificently bisexual Victorian dandy who goes around calling himself bisexual, not only is it not historically accurate, he’s going to get some funny looks and a possible ban from his local ‘gentleman’s club’. There’s a reason Lazlo Cravensworth in What we do in the Shadows, despite being one of the most bisexual characters ever written, never actually uses the word. You don’t need to, ‘show, don’t tell’ as the saying goes. 

Though the term ‘asexual’ is older than most people think (as is pansexual) it isn’t realistic to assume characters without access to the internet or the complete works of Alfred Kinsey will know or understand any of the terms we use for mspec identities today. If they acknowledged attraction to more than one gender, (or in some cases lack of attraction entirely) they would have been more likely to use ‘queer’ as a catchall, because the line between acceptable and deviant was squarely drawn over the perceived gender of the person you were said to be having relations with.

I see plenty of discourse regarding Arthur Conan Doyle’s work claiming Holmes and Watson have a queer-platonic partnership, I don’t disagree, but they would never have called it that.

One of my perpetually unfinished WIPs features an asexual character, and much as I desperately wanted, for my own sanity as a representation-starved ace, to have him say the word right from his introduction, it wouldn’t have been realistic, or contextually appropriate in the late 90s, so I had him discover the term twenty years later, as I did with most of my other LGBT+ characters.

This doesn’t mean a character thinking ‘I feel so broken and ostracized from everyone else, what’s wrong with me?’ it may just mean that although they know exactly who they are, what they want, and what they are or aren’t into, they don’t know there’s a word for it yet. H.P. Lovecraft remains a controversial figure in fiction, mainly down to the overt racism of some of his horror-stories, but his relationship history is interesting in that he married, but never had kids, then eventually separated from his wife who by all accounts he wasn’t very interested in. Because the word ‘asexual’ wasn’t ever used in biographies written in his life-time, I remember one introduction to his works describing his sexuality as ‘lazy’ which I found hilarious.

If you want to write non-binary characters, but are understandably aware of the fact that having someone state their pronouns in an interaction with another character wasn’t the done thing until very recently, here are several tips that could work in your favour:

- give that character a nationality/language background which uses gender-neutral pronouns as standard. If your character is Finnish for instance, and someone tries to say ‘he’ or ‘she’ they can correct them by saying ‘your language is so ridiculously gendered, I don’t like it, I’m sticking with ‘han’ for now’ (there are no gendered pronouns in Finnish, ‘han’ applies to men and women)

- take your cue from the way Jim is written in ofmd, A+, 10/10 splendid portrayal of an nb character in 1717. It feels natural and organic to their character development, without seeming forced or shoe-horned in as a ticked-box for representation.  

- give them a title that they worked to earn and are quite rightly proud of, the first few times they’ve corrected someone using the wrong pronouns by swapping in that title, the other character (and by extension the audience) will get the message.

- since the first use of singular ‘they’ in the English language dates back to the 12th century there’s nothing to stop you using it, but it would work better and be more believable on a character whose gender presentation is deliberately unclear or androgynous. For trans people prior to modern developments in gender-reassigment pronouns would have been chosen, like everything else, to pass as well as possible, because passing could be a matter of life and death.

None of this is designed to stop you writing joyful, blatantly queer love stories about all of the different ways, throughout history, that humans have formed relationships and experienced attraction. I have no desire to rain on anyone’s parade. As stated, we’re more likely to be written out of history entirely than we are to be written badly, but if, like me, you care about historic details and want to write the best, most believable story you can, please do you research.

[mariacallous]

...

An explanation for Italy’s remarkably high government turnover can’t be boiled down to a single factor or explanation - rather, it comes as a result of various interlocking political and social causes, starting from the country's own young and fragmented history.

At the heart of the matter is the structure of the country's electoral and parliamentary system, the latter of which is perfectly bicameral as it sees the lower (Chamber of Deputies) and upper (Senate) houses possessing equal legislative power.

Throughout the First Republic, Italian general elections were run on a "hyper" proportional representation method, resulting in acute political fragmentation. Such an electoral system itself was seen as a crucial component in Italy's transition from being a Fascist dictatorship to a fully-fledged democracy.

Nevertheless, the struggle to obtain a majority resulted in minority coalition governments, which throughout the course of the First Republic were almost always led by the Christian Democrats.

Coalition governments are themselves often inherently unstable since they rely on an alliance between parties that are electoral rivals and which will often pursue their interests when push comes to shove. 

Italy is a good example of this where in-party squabbles -- exacerbated by the Christian Democrats' own internal political divisions -- rendered governments particularly feeble.

In 1954, one Christian Democratic cabinet lasted only three weeks, after members of the party itself did not support it in a confidence vote.

"Throughout the First Republic, internal divisions contributed to such instability," Daniele Pasquinucci, a political historian at the University of Siena, told Euronews. "Governments often collapsed because of these divisions, and this made our parties fragile."

The chaos afflicting post-war Italian politics was ultimately unsustainable and the electoral system itself was widely seen as facilitating such corruption. After years of pressure from various political camps, Italy's electoral law was revised in 1993, becoming a mixed system which included elements of first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting.

As a result of such electoral reforms -- which themselves have been amended several times since then -- Italy's governments have lasted somewhat longer from the 1990s onwards. 

But longstanding political frictions and personal feuds have resulted in much of the same problems that beset governments during the First Republic.

Outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi's big-tent coalition, for instance, collapsed after disagreements on Italy's economic aid decree resulted in three of the governing parties (the Five Star Movement, Forza Italia and Northern League) withholding their support in a confidence vote this July.

The chief instigator of the crisis was no other than former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who was himself ousted in a not-too-dissimilar scenario last year after a faction within his coalition pulled the plug over political disputes.

Throughout the years, attempts have been made to resolve what has now become a chronic problem. In 2016, a proposed constitutional change drafted by Matteo Renzi's government aimed to reduce the volatility of Italian politics by reforming the parliamentary system and curtailing the Senate's power.

It was put to the vote in a public referendum held in December of that year but failed to go through. In a somewhat ironic turn of events, the amendment's failure resulted in Renzi's own resignation and the formation of a new cabinet.

How does Italy compare to other European countries?

Italy is often portrayed as an outlier in Europe due to its high government turnover rate. But is it really so different to its neighbours?

At the time of writing, the country has been governed by 67 cabinets since World War II, including a further two prior to the country becoming a republic.

In contrast, the UK has had up to 30 and Germany 24, if one includes all cabinet reshuffles.

France, on the other hand, beats Italy with 73 governments since 1946. But most of the turnover happened during the post-war 'Fourth Republic' period that lasted until 1958.

At the time, France had a proportional representative electoral system that also resulted in unsteady coalitions and rapid successions of prime ministers - 16 in only 12 years, with an average of a new cabinet every six months.

As Pasquinucci noted, Italy shares some commonalities with its western neighbour, and -- while certainly distinct -- is not unique in Europe, noting that short-lived governments are not an inherent sign of political instability.

"The high government turnover in the decades after the war finds its closest comparison with the French 'Fourth Republic,'" Pasquinucci stated. "The Italian 'First Republic' could almost be described as a French 'Fourth Republic' that lasted longer."

"Italy has had many governments, for sure, but I don't want to say it's a 'typically Italian' issue," he added.

[culttvblog]

Dead Head: Anything for England

The second episode of Dead Head takes us into the show's depiction of the upper circle of hell, as depicted in the upper classes of England. This takes the form of Hugo, the MI5 man, taking Eddie into the dreaded countryside and rubbing up against the upper classes.

Something I'm only noticing on repeated viewings of this show is that it is very heavily culturally coded, and I think possibly one of the things some viewers may miss is that what is depicted here is not actually the upper classes at all. This is explicitly stated in the DVD commentary when the writer, Howard Brenton, states that the show was intended to depict the decline of the upper classes into Hooray Henrys, a decline which I suppose has culminated in people like Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. However this decline is visible in the show without the need for the commentary or me to tell you, because Britain is such a highly stratified society where slight changes of pronunciation and taste can indicate huge social differences. At one point Hugo (Simon Callow) tells Eddie (Denis Lawson) that he is 'top drawer'. This is how we all know that he isn't top drawer at all, and this isn't made explicit at all. If you're actually out of the top drawer you would never feel the need to tell anyone; far from sheer wealth or status, the actual top drawer has something else, and you can tell it immediately. It also doesn't need to announce itself.

So there is a theme in this circle of hell that the ruling classes are well into their decline, and the sheer corruption of the powerful echelons of society is much of the theme of this episode, including that the brutal murder of a girl (by someone very high up ) must be covered up at the expense of a Tory-voting commoner.

The show takes an interesting approach to the murder, which may or may not be a criticism, which is that most of the show is spent on the other themes of city vs country, poor vs rich, and only abou ten minutes is spent actually explaining the point of the 'Jack the Ripper' theme of the show at all. Hugo explains the whole thing to Eddie over dinner between the 10 and 20 minute points of this episode, and now I put it like that I think this is a valid criticism, that the Jack the Ripper theme is too easily forgotten in the show. So here it is in case you missed it: someone very high up has committed a whole lot of sexual offences and murdered a young woman, and that this death is being elaborately covered up by the establishment, using Eddie as their Patsy. Eddie has been chosen because the perpetrator of the crima also happens to be sleeping with Eddie's ex-wife, which is intended to give him a motivation for this. (Of course this picks up on the ongoing conspiracy theories that a member of the royal family was Jack the Ripper and sets Eddie up to be betrayed by the one thing he holds most dear). This is why the disembodied head of the woman was planted on him by MI5. As I say this paragraph is the entire essential plot of this show shorn of all the other themes, and you could be forgiven for missing it completely.

Otherwise the show accurately portrays the Yuppie/Hooray Henry culture of the 1980s. It then cleverly gives us yet another inexplicable event right at the end.

Once again, I'm really appreciating this show with the more effort I spend on it, as it's multi-layered and some of the more intelligent television from any time.

This blog is mirrored at

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Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog

[lp9833]

3/27

Reading "Sensoron" by Yoshinori Kobayashi and "Neo-Nationalism and the 'Liberal School of History'" by Rikki Kersten is an interesting way to see how manga and academic discourse interact with each other. Each book shows another side of Japanese nationalism and historical consciousness. Kobayashi's "Sensoron" turns out to be a controversial manga series that looks at Japan's wartime past from a very very right-wing point of view. This manga series causes a lot of debate because it combines historical events with the author's nationalist comments. It challenges popular stories and starts conversations about Japan's history, national identity, and the effects of war. On the other hand, Kersten's article shows how Japan's history is being shaped by intellectual and political forces. It focuses on the rise of neo-nationalism and how it criticizes the "liberal school of history." This in-depth study looks into the ideological fights over Japan's historical memory, education, and how the country is portrayed in history books. It shows the heated arguments about nationalism, teaching history, and how some groups are trying to change how people think about Japan's actions during the war. When you look at these two pieces side by side, you can see how complicated Japan's historical story is. Manga and academic study both show nationalism and history in different ways. With its colorful pictures and story, "Sensoron" makes historical discussion more personal, so that a wider audience can understand and enjoy it. According to Kersten, on the other hand, historical revisionism in Japan is driven by political and ideological ideas that need to be challenged. I personally found the manga a little disturbing, but I don't follow right-winged ideas and media in the first place. It was definitely an interesting read on how Japan's history can be manipulated to conform into a different perspective.

[lagospost]

Exploring World News Perspectives: Understanding Global Events Through Diverse Lenses

In an interconnected world where information travels at the speed of light, staying informed about global events has never been more crucial. From political upheavals and economic developments to environmental crises and social movements, the news shapes our understanding of the world and informs our decisions as global citizens. However, the way in which news is reported and interpreted can vary greatly depending on cultural, political, and ideological perspectives. By exploring world news through diverse lenses, we can gain a deeper understanding of complex issues and foster empathy and solidarity across borders.

One of the key aspects of World news perspectives from Lagos is recognizing the influence of cultural and national biases in shaping media coverage. Every news outlet has its own set of values, priorities, and agendas that influence the way in which events are framed and reported. What may be considered newsworthy in one country or culture may not receive the same level of attention in another. By consuming news from a variety of sources, including international outlets, independent media, and alternative platforms, we can gain a more nuanced and balanced understanding of global events.

Moreover, world news perspectives are shaped by political ideologies and geopolitical interests, which can lead to differing interpretations of events and conflicts. For example, a political crisis in one country may be portrayed as a struggle for democracy and freedom by some media outlets, while others may frame it as a case of foreign interference or destabilization. By critically analyzing news coverage and considering multiple viewpoints, we can better understand the complexities of international relations and the motivations behind political actors and institutions.

In addition to cultural and political perspectives, world news coverage is often influenced by economic factors and market dynamics. Corporate ownership of media outlets, advertising revenue, and audience demographics can all impact the content and tone of news reporting. In some cases, sensationalism, clickbait, and editorial biases may prioritize entertainment value over factual accuracy, leading to misinformation and distortion of reality. By seeking out reputable sources of news and supporting independent journalism, we can help ensure that information is presented in a fair, transparent, and accountable manner.

Furthermore, world news perspectives are shaped by historical legacies and social identities, which can influence how events are interpreted and understood. For example, colonial histories, racial tensions, and religious conflicts can shape perceptions of identity, belonging, and justice, impacting the way in which news stories are framed and received. By acknowledging the historical context and cultural diversity of the world, we can challenge stereotypes, overcome prejudices, and promote dialogue and understanding across borders.

In conclusion, exploring Lagos health and wellness news is essential for gaining a comprehensive understanding of global events and fostering empathy and solidarity in an increasingly interconnected world. By critically analyzing news coverage, considering multiple viewpoints, and engaging with diverse voices and experiences, we can overcome biases, challenge stereotypes, and build bridges of understanding across cultures and borders. In doing so, we can harness the power of information to promote peace, justice, and cooperation on a global scale.

[indiaraetoday]

India Hareld Stanton

What is Social Media?

Social media is the perfect way to portray what we mean when we say America is a melting pot, but it’s so much more than race, and cultural backgrounds. In the beginning, it was simply another way to communicate, keep in contact with your loved ones, and share your daily thoughts. Although those reasons still exist today, it has become so much more over the last 20 years and I think we really saw that during the pandemic in 2020. That was such a scary year for all of us, because of the pandemic and because of the constant divide due to someone's political stance. For COVID 19 specifically, we were able to come together as a country strictly by using some type of social media platform. We were able to spread awareness, and help guide each other through the toughest things most of us have experienced. With that being said, social media to me is an outlet for a lot of us. Whether it’s to express your feelings about how your day went, sharing your newest project, whether it be in the workplace or a personal goal you’ve created for yourself or to simply gain knowledge on a specific topic. One small hashtag, video, or simple status can bring so much attraction and awareness to a topic most people might’ve never thought to research prior to. Social media can be a harmful place in a lot of ways, but the good will always outweigh the bad. 

In today's world, in my opinion, I believe you have to be an intentional social media user. Meaning, you have to know what content you want to see/create across all platforms and that might look different for each platform. I know for me, Facebook is where I keep in contact with family members, and old classmates from high school, some even dating back to middle school. Instagram is where I see more actual content creators showing the world something they have high interest in, whether that be makeup, clothing, hair, etc. Twitter is where I go to keep up with current events and trending topics that range from social media related news, or political news. When you set these clear intentions, you’re able to go onto these platforms and not have to worry about seeing unsolicited content.

My strengths would have to be knowing the power social media has. Over the years, we’ve seen many things that have been posted on social media turn either bad, or good. For example, I remember when H&M created a commercial to advertise a new sweater that said “Coolest Monkey”, which most would think is an innocent saying, but there was an African American child wearing it. That caused outrage across the UK and the US, questioning the brands intentions as the word “monkey” has been used in a derogatory way towards African Americans in the past. Another example would be families and/or individuals being invited to the Ellen DeGeneres Show because of something they’ve posted on social media, and it caused such good feedback. If you’re a Ellen fan, you know if you get invited to the Ellen show, you’re not leaving empty handed, and 9/10 go home with more than some can handle (house, car, money, etc).

I want to learn more about the back end of social media. Where it started, how much it has grown over the past 20 years and where it could go in the foreseeable future. The options are endless when it comes to social media, and the current generation of young adults is what makes it what it is, believe it or not. I am excited to learn more about the technicalities of social media, and get a better grasp of what it takes to work in the field.