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yardsards · 1 year

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What's your thoughts on: what's the point of the fantasy genre? Why do we tell stories about things that can't exist rather than those based in reality? What is the difference between fantasy and horror?(this is an ask sent to several people to collect opinions, feel free to disregard if you wish not to participate)

i mean the general point of fiction is to tell stories about things that *don't* exist, telling stories about things that *can't* exist is really just the natural extension of that

like, look at most of the oldest surviving stories. a lot of them are fairy tales, or stuff like gilgamesh or the odyssey and whatnot.

and of course there was a wide variety in how plausible the people and cultures creating those fantastical stories thought the stories were, ranging from "this story is purely fantasy" to "this story did not actually happen, but it's plausible and the magic portrayed is real" to "i believe that this story happened with religious certainty" (and i'm sure someone with a bigger background than me in history or anthropology would have something more thought out to say on this matter) but.

it almost feels like fantasy is the *default* for humans telling stories. if anything, "realistic" fiction, creating rules for yourself that this imaginary scenario should be bound by the rules of reality rather than the "rules" of imagination is the unusual one, and is the one that should be considered a genre rather than the default

(though of course it's more of a sliding scale from "totally realistic fiction" to "totally impossible fantasy fiction" rather than a binary)

and also like.

such a large portion of the human experience is internal and intangible. trying to encapsulate it into just describing what characters say and do is generally not enough. so then there's the act of plainly describing what a character is feeling, or narrating their thoughts. but plain words still often aren't enough. saying a character feels melancholy or despondent does not correctly convey the sadness you want to communicate.

so you get poetic. either in your narra*tion*, or in your narra*tive*. you make the intangible into something tangible with symbolism. sometimes the best symbolism to use is something that exists in real life; maybe rotting floorboards in the character's house are the best way to represent the intangible feeling of a painful past. but other times the best symbolism is things that can't exist in real life; maybe a cloud of darkness that eats planets is the best way to represent the intangible feeling of depression and hopelessness.

and sometimes in fantasy, the author doesn't have a singular thing that the impossible thing is meant to represent, and the readers aren't specifically interpreting it as a *metaphor*. like, sometimes the evil dragon isn't specifically meant to represent the terror brought on by fascism or abusive parents or whatever. sometimes the evil dragon is just a generally scary thing that must be defeated. but since a magic dragon is something that we don't have concrete experiences with in our world, i think a lot of people's brains will more readily connect it to our own experiences with scary things like fascism or abusive parents. as opposed to like, a story about an evil guy with a big knife, who is just as much of a scary thing that must be defeated, but is more concrete to us.

and finally: because magic is simply Rad As Hell

as for the similarites/differences between fantasy and horror, i don't have as much to say.

they're two kinda separate concepts. horror can fall anywhere on the fantasy to non-fantasy spectrum. the scary thing in a horror movie could be a magic slime monster or just some regular human with a gun.

"fantasy" is more of a genre description pertaining to the work's relation to reality, akin to "realistic fiction" or "science fiction" or "historical fiction", whereas "horror" is more of a genre description pertaining to the work's tone, akin to "romance" or "comedy" or "tragedy". which i guess kinda illustrates how arbitrary defining what a genre is can be

#eliot posts

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rookie-critic · 1 year

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Rookie-Critic's Film Review Weekend Wrap-Up - Week of 3/26-4/2/2023

This was a bit of a short week. I'm really winding down from my big run of pre-Oscars binge-watching, and have been enjoying the last couple weeks of casual theater outings and video games. This was an interesting and eclectic trio of indie films, though.

Rodeo (2022, dir. Lola Quivoron)

This was a character study that showed a lot of promise. A deeply flawed protagonist that you still wanted to succeed. A very interesting niche subculture as the main subject matter of the film in the form of a group of underground motorbike and ATV riders, and a gripping handheld-camera shooting style all showed so much promise for this French drama from last year. However, I was massively disappointed in the film's ending, which seemed to throw away all of it's potential for something wildly and unnecessarily abstract. It felt like we were coming up on a climax that was going to be a great payoff for all of the film's plot threads, only for the film to fizzle out within a matter of five minutes instead. Roll credits, go home, nothing to see here. It's not as egregious as something like Smile, which not only threw away it's character development, but actively shattered a very pro-healing-from-trauma message in the process. This is relatively harmless in comparison, and the rest of the film was quite good up to that point, so I'll just say that I didn't hate it.

Score: 6/10

Currently available for pre-order on Blu-ray & DVD through Music Box Films.

The Lost King (2022, dir. Stephen Frears)

This was a harmlessly good time. Sally Hawkins, as always, is an absolute delight and commands the screen with her every movement. She is convincing and demands that you empathize with her character Philippa Langley. I am aware that this film has a fair bit of controversy wrapped around it in how it handles fact vs. fiction in this true story. The film paints a very villainous picture of the University of Leicester, and there are claims that this portrayal is wildly hyperbolic and inaccurate. Granted, everyone I've seen complaining about the portrayal is either a graduate or an employee of the University of Leicester, but on the flip side Philippa Langley is an executive producer on this film. I'm choosing to believe the way the film portrays things as accurate. It is a little on the nose, and I'm sure they weren't as cartoonishly evil as the film conveys, but I can see academia treating a woman suffering from ME as horrendously as they do in this film, and I can't see a director as seasoned as Stephen Frears (whose directed movies like Philomena and High Fidelity) making a film that's blatantly propaganda. I enjoyed The Lost King, it maybe wasn't the best, but people interested in the history of it will surely find a lot to like here.

Score: 7/10

Currently Only in theaters.

A Good Person (2023, dir. Zach Braff)

This a very mediocre film that is saved by two spectacular performances. I've never seen either of Zach Braff's other films (I consider Garden State to be a pretty big blind spot in my viewing history), but man, just based off of this, I'm not super impressed in his ability as a writer/director. The dialogue in the film is packed with filler and faux-drama, and the whole thing just seemed so unforgivably on the nose that I just couldn't get behind the characters for most of the film. The movie is obsessively concerned with you sympathizing with both of its central characters that at two separate spots in the film they each say the actual line "I'm a good person." It's would be eye-roll inducing if Morgan Freeman and Florence Pugh weren't acting their asses off, and they do act their asses off. It might honestly be the best performance I've seen out of Pugh, and I'm so bummed that she delivers it in a film that is so undeserving of it. I'm being incredibly harsh on this, so I will point out that I didn't hate it, and if the script wasn't sabotaging the film so often, it would be great, even. Braff touches on a lot of important, timely topics here, and occasionally gets you to care about what he's saying. I'll even admit to falling for some of the emotional manipulation and tearing up a couple times. Would I watch it again? Absolutely not, but I'm positive there's an audience for this out there. Maybe you're one of them.

Score: 6/10

Currently only in theaters.

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hondoohnakasrankings · 1 year

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Inspiration behind the first trilogy

An important aspect of this franchise is that it has many references and inspiration from both real events and other movies and series of the genre.

Firstly I will get into its cinematographic inspirations and influences. The more famous ones are Flash Gordon (photo 1) and Buck Rogers (photo 2) which were famous science fiction and space opera television series of the time. Originally, the idea that became A New Hope was a remake of the 1930's Flash Gordon as a movie. As you can see in the second series, the costumes are reminiscent of many attires of Leia mostly and Padme as well in all white. He was inspired as well by the science fiction movies that were running in his youth, but he wanted to do something different, aimed at younger people, less dark but still as entertaining.

Another source of inspiration are the works of Japanese director Akire Kurosawe, and most specifically the 1958 movie The Hidden Fortress, which inspired the plot and some character. Even Darth Vader's helmet resembles that of a samurai.

If you want to read more on the topic there are some great articles on Wookipedia. There is probably much more to mention about inspiration but those were the major ones.

Secondly, there is the historical inspirations and allusions. First off this is one of my favorite fun facts, Leia's iconic buns are inspired by Pancho Villa "soldaderas" from Mexico. Carrie Fisher had to wanting to portray a strong independent heroine and these revolutionary ladies were a perfect choice. Although it was not a practical hairstyle and not used during the Mexican Revolution it was the inspiration from the phots that were taken, and I believe the message is the all that matters.

On a grimmer note however, the rest of the story is mainly based on conflicts that have happened in history. Like mentioned in a previous post, the dyad of Empire and Rebels mirrors the American forces against Vietnam forces from the 1950s-80s conflict. The USA have also a similar path to that of the empire; they started as a revolution for separation from a colonial group or alliance of sort (Dooku's Separatists and England), then they ruled themselves, but the political system is a bit off and less democratic then they would like it to seem. Then they go to war with states or planets that do not agree with their doctrines ( Like the Cold War or the Vietnam War compared to the bombing of Leia's planet Alderaan).

there are other aspects that are more visual. For instance we have the Jedi, which can be compared to the a mix of samurai and Shaolin monks but also Templar Knights both are warrior monks that wear simple robes, that want peace to thrive. Although they are supposed to not take a side like the shaolin monks, they end up inevitably taking sides with the Republics against the Separatist and the Sith. Like the Templar they originally took vows of austerity, devotion and moral purity and were eventually purged by a ruler who saw them as a threat.

Another visual and historical reference is in this next scene. Overall the Empire has a lot of Nazi symbolism, from the rise of Palpatine, the frustration of the separatist, the implementation of a new armed force (stormtroopers) when it was not really allowed. The costumes of the Stormtroopers and most importantly the hate and authoritarianism of the two regimes.

This scene, also mirrors massive Nazi rallies in Nuremberg with the troops at attention watching their leaders.

If you want to read more on the topic there is this articlehttps://www.history.com/news/the-real-history-that-inspired-star-wars

Overall Star Wars takes a lot of inspiration from real world conflicts and peoples in order to offer a critique of authoritarian orders. Although some fans misread this critique more often then one would think, it is still a very important message, even if the Empire might look impressive.

#star wars #george lucas #history #wookieepedia #leia #darth vader

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lokiondisneyplus · 4 years

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Over five popular seasons, the story lines of “Better Call Saul” have unfolded across nail salons, fried-chicken joints and other strip-mall staples of American life.

When new episodes begin premiering next year, though, the locations that give the “Breaking Bad” spinoff its texture could be reined in or done away with altogether. The culprit? The novel coronavirus, which is limiting where the New Mexico-set AMC show can film, potentially altering both its style and substance.

“Like a lot of other people, we’re going to have to be very creative in where and how we shoot,” said Mark Johnson, the veteran producer who oversees the Vince Gilligan hit, whose writers just began collaborating on the series’s sixth season. “A lot of places just won’t let you in.”

Across the entertainment industry, casts and crew are beginning to return to work after a five-month hiatus. In states with loosened restrictions, such as Georgia and New York, production is starting to crank up under tight controls that alter how sets operate. Instead of crew members freely mingling, they’re being divided into “pods" that limit how production departments such as wardrobe or lighting can associate. Covid-19 officers monitor the health of the cast and crew to determine who is allowed on set. “Zones” dictate where those cast and crew can go.

These changes might seem technical, but they hint at the far-reaching effects the virus will have on final screen products. Interviews with 12 executives, writers, agents and producers across the Hollywood spectrum suggest a dramatically transformed world of entertainment. Until a vaccine comes along, they say, covid-19 will change what Americans watch as dramatically as it has where they work, shop and learn. Forget the new normal — movies and TV are about to encounter the new austerity.

Crowd scenes are a no-go. Real-world locations will be limited. On-screen romance will be less common, sometimes restricted to actors who have off-screen relationships. And independent films — that tantalizing side dish in the U.S. entertainment meal — could be heavily scaled back.

“A lot of people believe this is just about getting back to work,” said Mark Gill, a producer and former head of Warner Independent Pictures, the studio unit responsible for independent hits such as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.” “They don’t realize the massive cultural impact we’re about to face.”

For most of its history, Hollywood created entertainment based on a simple premise: Shuttle in large numbers of people and move them around at will. That’s certainly true of crews. But it especially applies to extras, the low-paid day laborers who pack sets and off-camera holding areas in order to create dense crowd scenes — and, in turn, lend the work real-world atmosphere.

Such scenes have of course been part of some of the most memorable moments in Hollywood history. From “Ben-Hur” to “Braveheart,” on-screen entertainment has become indelible thanks to hundreds of people you’ve never heard of packing tiny spaces, then moving as one when the cameras roll.

Yet the virus has essentially made these hires impossible. Many don’t want to risk their health for a $100 paycheck and remote shot at background glory, and producers don’t want to take on the liability even if they did. “Braveheart" used about 1,600 extras, many from the Irish Army reserves. Experts say the movie couldn’t come close to being shot today.

“Those of us in the entertainment business are not used to being told ‘no’‚” said Lucas Foster, a longtime Hollywood producer who counts the 2005 romantic-action hit “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and last year’s Oscar-decorated blockbuster “Ford v Ferrari” among his credits. “And when it comes to things like crowds, there’s going to be a lot of no.”

Foster understands the challenges personally — he’s one of the first producers to have made a movie in the age of covid-19.

In March, the Los Angeles resident was in Australia, several weeks into preproduction on a new version of “Children of the Corn” when the pandemic began to spread. Millions of dollars had already been committed to the movie, adapted from the same Stephen King story that yielded the 1984 cult hit. So rather than shut down, he decided to proceed — cautiously. Foster created a production bubble, consulted doctors regularly, procured large amounts of tests, and engaged in elaborate workarounds in realms like crowd scenes.

He said it worked, but with major accommodations.

“I had to figure out how to do a crowd with no more than a few people at the same time. And with very specific camera angles. And by taking actors who would normally be close together and making them not close together,” Foster said. “In the end, I’d get the scene I needed but it looked different than it would have before the pandemic.” (Computer-generated crowds, he and other producers say, only work for more distant shots; anything requiring close-ups needs the real thing.)

It helped, he noted, that many of his actors were children, who are believed less susceptible to the effects of the virus, and that much of the movie was shot in cornfields and other vast outdoor spaces, a luxury not all films have.

Producers say the added cost required to implement all the safeguards could also result in a lower-end finished product. Films and TV shows achieve their level of shine through an endless period of refinement, with actors and directors often attempt 10 or more takes of a scene. With everything now going longer — and thus costing more — they may not have the luxury.

One producer of multiple studio hits said he expects the number of takes to drop significantly as the virus balloons budgets. He also expected a diminution in night scenes, which tend to be more involved and expensive than day scenes. He said some productions will be able to make the switch, but not all will be as lucky.

Also unlucky, say Hollywood veterans: movies where characters seek to get lucky. Many insiders say romantic scenes will be a major challenge in movies. Two agents separately reported they had high-profile clients who told them they wouldn’t shoot love scenes during the pandemic.

“I think every agency right now is looking down their client list to see which actors have spouses who are also actors, because then we could try to get them cast, too,” said one of the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their company to speak to the news media. “I’m joking. Sort of.”

The added wrinkle is even if the actors trust each other in real life, many of their characters would still have to take precautions on screen.

“How do you send two characters on a first dinner date when people aren’t really going on first dinner dates?” said a creator of romantic comedies who asked not to be identified because they did not want to be seen as criticizing colleagues who are attempting new projects. “You can send them on a socially distant walk, I guess.”

Writers say that leads to a broader dilemma: how much to incorporate the pandemic into their stories. On one hand, they say they don’t want to pretend the virus doesn’t exist. But acknowledging it poses its own challenges.

“Do you really want your stars wearing masks because that’s what characters would do? Do you want to have people engaging with each other in groups no larger than six? Do you want to write stories where everyone is at a safe distance?” said Mark Heyman, the co-writer of “Black Swan” and “The Skeleton Twins” and creator of the CBS All-Access historical drama “Strange Angel.” “Because a lot of those things won’t be very much fun to watch.”

Yet if creators aren’t willing to do that, he said, it could lead to those shows or movies getting shelved out of a fear that audiences will judge them inauthentic.

Heyman was working on a series set in a high school for Netflix when the lockdowns began. That project has now been put on pause. “It’s not easy to make a show about high school,” he said, “when there is no high school.”

To avoid reminding viewers of the pandemic, creators may take an approach that will lead to an unusual trend.

“I think over the next few years you’re going to see a lot more movies set in the past,” Foster said. “Even movies written for the present will be changed. They’ll make it the ’90s because then you don’t have to deal with these questions. And then you can just put in some cool ’90s music, so everybody wins.”

A few creators have gone the other way, leaning in to the pandemic.

Writers on Apple TV Plus’s “The Morning Show,” set at a news program, have torn up existing scripts to make the pandemic a part of the story line, according to a person familiar with the show who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. But with a lag time of months between shooting and airing, experts say that creators also risk looking out of date by the time episodes release to the public.

Sensing an opportunity, horror filmmakers have also tried to embrace current events.

“The horror genre is very suited to the pandemic and lockdowns — we’re always trying to create a feeling of being trapped anyway,” said the horror filmmaker Nathan Crooker.

When quarantines hit this spring, Crooker gathered nine noted horror filmmakers and had them shoot an anthology film — short fictional movies connected by the larger virus theme — and titled it “Isolation.” He required filmmakers to use only the materials and people they were in lockdown with, even prohibiting Zoom and other technologies.

“I think we’re going to get a very cool effect that mirrors what people are going through,” Crooker said of his work. “But I don’t know that every movie that gets made would want to look like that.”

One consequence of the virus could turn out to be the movies that don’t get made at all.

Some of the most beloved films of the past two decades, from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” to “Whiplash,” “Little Miss Sunshine” to “Fruitvale Station,” were independently financed. But before rolling cameras, independent productions require insurance policies to protect them from workplace lawsuits, along with completion bonds, in which a guarantor assures they will step in with funds to finish the movie if production is halted.

Experts say no company will cover covid-19 with either policy, effectively preventing production.

“Covid is an absolute disaster for the independent-film industry,” said Sky Moore, a partner in the corporate entertainment department of the Los Angeles law firm Greenberg Glusker who has spent several decades putting together film financing deals. “The lifeblood of independent-film financing is loans, and loans need insurance. Now you have this massive hole in the middle of all of it.”

Moore believes the toll will be vast.

“I think 50 percent of the independent industry goes away,” he said.

(Movies financed by large studios do not buy these policies; Netflix or Disney would just absorb a shutdown or lawsuit as the cost of doing business.)

Even if they can work around the insurance issues, many independent films won’t get made because they simply won’t have the money. “It’s already hard to get funding for a lot of these movies,” said Shaun MacGillivray, a producer who makes large-scale independent documentaries. “And now you’re telling investors the budget is going to be 30 percent higher?”

The independent-film world is trying to push ahead, slowly. The Sundance Film Festival, the epicenter of the indie-film business, where companies like Hulu and Netflix sometimes pay more than $10 million for an independently financed movie, will hold a partially physical, partially virtual edition in January, albeit at just about half the length.

“We are reminded daily of the power of what is made newly visible to us, the importance of what we look at,” Tabitha Jackson, the director of the festival, said in a letter to staff this summer explaining why the festival needed to go on. “My hope for this edition of the Sundance Film Festival is that through a multiplicity of perspectives held by artists and audiences in their various communities we will also come to feel the power of where we look from.” Left unspoken: What happens in 2022, when the well runs dry because new movies can’t be insured and produced?

Whatever entertainment can get made, experts say, will have a more hermetic look. Even television shows, once shot heavily on sets, now often rely on the authenticity of locations; a police procedural feels like it does because detectives are popping into pizza places and apartment buildings.

“We don’t want everything to be a chamber piece,” said Johnson, the “Better Call Saul” executive producer. “But if many shows look different, I think that’s okay, because the world looks different.”

Then, considering the challenge further, he added, “And if that doesn’t work, then at least our show has a lot of deserts and open roads.”

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loopy777 · 4 years

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Nickelodeon gives you the task of writing a series based on Korra's earthbending successor with no limits on what you can do. How would you write his story?

Interesting that you say “his.” There’s no rule that the Avatars have to alternate gender, but at this point the fandom assumes it so much that I’d just go with it to avoid controversy.

Anyway, I’d probably turn Nickelodeon down if they wanted me to write Korra’s successor. I have no interest in the future that seems to be getting established in LoK. I want the franchise to stay in the past forever; there’s more than enough room, and I’d even be open to throwing away the concept of “canon” to tell stories that might merely be in-universe legends.

But, I’m going to try to answer the question in good faith. If I was a professional television writer/producer, and my career depended on saying yes to this and trying to do a good job, here’s what I’d do:

Working Title: The Last Avatar

Our star is a poor Earthlands boy. The Earth Kingdom collapsed years ago, Balkanizing into a bunching of struggling nations divided up haphazardly among various tribes, local cultures, and convenient geographical groupings. Our Boy is an Earthbender, but he hasn’t pursued any official training because it’s largely a waste of time and money. Instead, he’s been working his way through an education, learning about robotics and spirit-energy, because demand is high for that knowledge. He repairs old robots for spare money, and even has his own glitchy assistant -- who can transform into a van -- who he likes to trash-talk to show his love. He’s a huge nerd.

Actually, the only reason he can defend himself with Earthbending at all is because of a classmate and friend who’s passed on her own lessons. This girl is one of seventeen young adults who currently use the Beifong name. She’s a Metalbender using her ability to innovate with circuitry, very interested in technology and business, but she also values some of the old ways and thinks Bending is an important part of Earth culture that should not be ignored.

Our Boy knows he’s not the Avatar because the Avatar is a super-famous influencer, activist, pop-singer, and advertising icon. She lives in the Fire Nation and has green hair. You should picture Hatsune Miku for her. There are bigger celebrities, and none of her movies have been huge hits, but the Avatar still has enough culture significance that she was born famous and has managed to stay in the news.

By the way, Fire Nation culture is dominant. All the best stuff comes from the Fire Nation. Their movies, television, music, and video games are popular all over the world. Their technology is better. Their quality is life is better. They have the best doctors, the fastest internet, bigger apartments, the most prestigious schools, and the best jobs. Immigration is limited by law, in order to maintain their high quality of life.

The United Republic and the Water Tribes have seized some former Earth Kingdom territory, so their influence has expanded. The United Republic invested heavily in technology, and they’re now a dystopian cyberpunk nightmare with a government that just does whatever its corporations say. The president of the United Republic is a position that rich men use to become richer. The Water Tribes are a lot better, having managed to transition to a constitutional monarchy and maintain something like a balance between life and technology.

Note that I didn’t say “spirituality and technology,” because the two are one. All technology is spirit-powered. Spirits can meld with the internet. Spirits can inhabit robot bodies. Spirits and humans meet in abstract Virtual Realities where the difference between the two disappears.

And all of this orderly chaos is set to collapse when Our Boy accidentally Firebends during a dangerous action moment. He and Beifong Girl realize he might be the Avatar. But Hatsune Miku has demonstrated command of all four elements. On separate occasions she’s been seen and filmed Earthbending, Firebending, Waterbending, and Airbending, sometimes two at once. So how can Our Boy also do that?

Beifong Girl urges him to contact the Air Nation and the descendants of Avatar Aang to find out. Except, when he does with her family’s help, Dual-Benders -- warriors using two different elements -- try to kill him. He’s been betrayed by the Air Nation- and possibly the Beifong clan. His friend helps him get away, but she isn’t sure she can trust her family. They both go on the run, not sure what to do.

The mystery of what’s going on will drive the whole series. Here’s our cast:

Our Boy: The true Earthbending Avatar, completely untrained. He’s a poor nerd thrown into the deep end of a global conspiracy, but fortunately he has a robot who transforms into a van, so at least he has transporation.

Beifong Friend: Our Boy’s best friend. Not a love interest. She’s the youngest Beifong cousin, an Earthlands patriot who wants to raise the former Earth Kingdom out of its divided state using technology. She’s also far too gentle for her family of power-hungry vipers, but she’s still a great Earthbender and will become a Metalbender warrior before the end.

Fake Avatar Hatsune Miku: An artificial biological/spiritual construct of the Red Lotus, able to Bend two elements at any one time by swapping out a set of four spirits (all of whom are intelligent, devoted solely to her, and have different personalities), and the center of a conspiracy that she’s the Avatar. The Red Lotus built her and are using her to advance their plans. She joins the hunt for Our Boy, officially decrying him as a Disciple of a Vaatu cult trying to destroy humanity. However, she eventually begins to have thoughts of her own and resent how she’s used and abused as a tool rather than a person. She becomes our Deuteragonist, going rogue and having her own journey and arcs that intersect with Our Boy. Depending on fandom reaction, she might becomes Our Boy’s love interest, but might also become just another friend. She eventually frees her spirit friends, giving up all Bending powers.

Water Sage-Candidate: A young man who is training to be a Water Sage/Shaman. He’s a new-age hippie type who distrusts technology but likes people and spirits, wanting everyone to be nicer and more supportive to each other. He’s suspicious of what’s going on with this supposed Vatuu cult, despite his master (a Red Lotus infiltrator) telling him to trust in the true Avatar. When Our Boy and his friends come to Water Tribe territory, he joins up with them to help expose the truth.

Air Detective: An Airbender, a master detective and manhunter, who has been tasked with helping to track down Our Boy. It turns out she’s honest and completely ignorant of what’s really going on, so as she hunts Our Boy, she realizes the greater conspiracy at work- one that seems to have set its sights on the Air Nation back during the height of Avatar Korra’s influence. She’s older than the main cast and largely separate from them, but she does spend a lot of time with Fake Avatar Hatsune Miku and becomes something of a mentor to her. She struggles balancing Airbender ideals and her own cynicism about humanity, and is probably the best fighter in the story.

The Red Lotus: Our villains. They have infiltrated every level of every government in the world, and have figured how to replicate what Raava did with Wan- use a melding between spirits and humans to swap out Bending powers. They have managed to get up to a human/spirit combo being able to actively use two at a time, but they’re hot on replicating the full Avatar experience. The idea is that they eventually want to give everyone full Avatar powers, ruining the office of the Avatar and empowering everyone with the strength to topple governments and businesses. Any single person can knock over a building and kill thousands. And for those who are incompatible with the melding process and explode- well, those are necessary losses. Red Lotus foot soldiers will often have, as one of their two elements, Firebending.

Red Lotus Traitor: A NonBender history nerd from a Red Lotus family. The more he sees as he’s initiated into the family business, the more horrified he becomes, but he successfully manages to hide it- which is good, because recruits who balk tend to wind up dead in ‘accidents.’ When Our Boy comes to the Fire Nation, he and his friends encounter the Traitor, which brings them to the Red Lotus’s attention, but the Traitor finally breaks free and gets the group out, joining them.

Boss Red Lotus: The leader of the Red Lotus. A NonBender. She and her family -- siblings, a father or mother we can maybe tie to a character in LoK, and maybe a kid or spouse -- are running the whole show and have inherited the plan that the Red Lotus are executing. What separates Boss Red Lotus is her personal investment in Fake Avatar Hasune Miku. She thinks of herself as Miku’s mother, and has become more interested in creating a higher form of life than merely giving humanity Avatar powers. She grows more obsessed when Miku goes rogue and commissions a more advanced clone.

Fake Love Interest: A love interest for Our Boy who is a little bit weird and a little bit cool, very pretty in a vaguely gothy way, and fond of bugs. This is actually Koh in disguise as a human, and the romance doesn’t work out. It will be awesome, trust me.

The bulk of the series is Our Boy and his growing group of friends tooling around the world in their robot-van, chased by Fake Avatar Hatsune Miku and the Airbender Detective, slowly uncovering the Red Lotus conspiracy and eventually rising up to save the world with the help of everyone who isn’t evil. The setting is dark and inspired by science-fiction, and there’s a theme of rediscovering the past, but the past doesn’t always hold the solution. Sometimes, the past merely contains the mistakes that led to today’s problems. The redemption of the world usually comes from getting in touch with the culture of the past, and mixing that with the wondrous new technology available today.

The ending I’m envisioning is a kind of embracing of the Red Lotus’s plan, but a non-destructive form. Everyone gets all four elements, but no one is killed by it, and the power level is completely normal. The Avatar, though, is the sole person to be able to Energybend, and it’s this role -- being able to explore the limitless potential of humanity -- that makes the Avatar important going forward. The significant Red Lotus are all sucked into hell or the Fog of Lost Souls or something, except for those who die outright, with the rest being rehabilitated.

Romance will be downplayed, aside from the fakeout with Koh, but if any of the recurring characters show some chemistry, there’s room to develop it. The Fake Avatar Hatsune Miku should be designed to be the audience’s tortured, angsty, badass waifu.

The next level of development for these ideas should come from the Concept Artist team, especially focusing on the weapons used in this setting. This will be followed by a more detailed revision by me with major plot points, and then going to the writers’ room for development of the first season. Entire characters or concepts may disappear or be added during that time.

Merchandising should emphasize the Tron Lines on everyone’s clothing that glow when Bending. Also, the Robot Van can be expanded to a whole line of transforming robots toys, although the word “transform” should not appear in any official material. We see video games as a major licensing opportunity, with a possibility for “canon” stories set in the same time period, intersecting with the cartoon’s main plot. To this end, final character designs should perhaps be modeled on voice actors, so that face scans or motion capture can be employed for AAA video game appearances.

And that’s my pitch.

#Anonymous #warning: i don't hold back with this

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thenightling · 3 years

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Opinion on the rioters who dressed as The Punisher

Opinion on the Rioters dressed as The Punisher:

I recently found out some of the Capitol rioters were dressed as The Punisher from Marvel comics. Do I blame the character? No. However, i have become very cautious in regard to hardcore fans of the character and not merely over this.

First, I admit, I never really liked The Punisher as a character. I thought of him as an edgy byproduct of comics gradually shifting to being darker and grittier. He was one of the first heroes to not preach about justice and redemption but instead wanted to kill. He was not a protagonist. He started as a villain in the Amazing Spider-Man comics. Stan Lee had not liked the character. (This is a fact that is easily checked and Googled).

In the late 80s and early 90s he became very popular as comics became darker and so he was given his own comic and appeared more often and often as a protagonist anti-hero.

I never liked the concept of him. Sure, he had a sympathetic backstory but the “Killing is the only answer” never sat right for me. The lack of mercy he showed even to the repentant, it always bothered me. I got that he was supposed to be mentally-ill but in his own comics his behavior was, far too often, justified.

Other media tried to mimic the character. The Ben Affleck Daredevil behaved more like The Punisher than Daredevil. Instead of a defense attorney he was now a prosecutor. And if he lost a case he would hunt down the criminal and kill him, brutally. There’s one scene where he severs a man’s spine and then gloats as a train comes to hit him, as he lays paralyzed on the track. That’s not Matt.

Ben Affleck again played totally-not-Punisher in his portrayal of Batman. A gun-using batman that was loosely inspired by Frank Miller. And all the Zack Snyder Fanboys came crawling out of the woodwork, insisting that this was “realistic” and “more accurate to the comics” and “but look, he killed in these old comics!” They either were lying by omission or didn’t know about Crisis on Infinite Earths and how main continuity Batman had been anti-gun and anti-killing since at least 1985. The entire plot of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke was based on this established lore.

There’s no doubt Punisher has had a serious influence on popculture and something I called Darkity, dark, dark writing or as others have named it: “Edgelord.”

It’s a sort of “dark and gritty” “realism” popular among boys between the ages of eleven and fifteen who genuinely think crime would end if we shot every criminal and don’t realize that most real world police officers have never drawn their gun, despite what you might see in the news. If murder truly was the norm, people wouldn’t still be horrified by it.

Now on to the fans. There are far too many Punisher fans who think he was and is in the right. They think he is an aspirational figure to admire and look up to. A “realistic” hero by Zack Snyder standards, because hope and mercy are what is apparently unrealistic in a world consisting of aliens, Greek Gods, witchcraft, and even the folkloric Sandman (That’s in DC, not Marvel though Nightmare is arguably the Marvel equivalent).

I used to be Facebook friends with a Punisher fan. He was equally obsessed with The Joker. At first i just let it be. You’re allowed to like edgy or dark characters. There’s no harm in that. But... he got creepy. He would quote the Joker in conversation about “SJWs” and “progressives.” He would say things like “My eyes were opened as yours soon will be.”

He was convinced liberals tried to ruin The Joker movie and posted pictures of the Joker dancing down the stairs with “HAHAHAHAHA! Suck my dick, Progressives!” in at least two of the facebook groups I run. It got embarrassing that when people would search for my Horror Comics group, the sample post Facebook gave was that one.

He kept talking about how both The Punisher and The Joker are right. His facebook picture would alternate between the two characters depending on his mood. He would post memes “explaining” why The Punisher is right.

He would post articles about this or that criminal being arrested and refer to them as “it” and “thing” and how “it should be tortured four hours before someone kills it.” things like that, about various people who did things that were (admittedly) horrific and reprehensible but he would go into graphic detail about what he wanted to do with them Very sadistic, Saw-like tortures before “Mercifully” killing them.

He once casually told me how he wanted to kill all progressives. I gently reminded him that I have liberal leanings and I got a “You’re different” sort of response.

As his behavior got more fanatical and disturbing, the more uncomfortable I became. After the progressives threat I made the mistake of telling someone who was mutually friends with us both that I felt threatened. Needless to say the one I have just described to you called me a liar, insisted he never said anything threatening. And accused me of being “one of them.”

I told him he had been acting increasingly strangely and needed to stop posting the pro-Joker stuff. And it wasn’t just the film The Joker. It was the version from Gotham (TV series) he tried to emulate and praised. A woman celebrity he didn’t like was soon being called “It.” Then some feminist (I didn’t agree with this person) was saying how The Mandalorian didn’t have enough female characters or diversity and should be canceled. It was some stupid opinion piece published by a site like Buzzfeed or Io9 during the first season of Mandalorian.

This guy was very conservative but had a bad habit of seeking out fanatical articles like this to make himself angry. The only time I ever agreed with him on the matter was when he came to my defense for not liking the 2016 Ghostbusters. Someone in my own Gothic Horror Facebook group had decided to call me a self-loathing misogynist and insisted the only reason I didn’t like it is because the characters were women. No, I don’t like slapstick comedy. I didn’t like that they didn’t bother to use real parapsychology or theoretical physics (as the original had done). I didn’t like that the “genius” of the group licked her proton blaster and that was the common promo image for the film. I didn’t like that people who praised the film entirely forgot that there was a diverse team lead by a woman in the 90s. (Extreme Ghostbusters). I didn’t like that they destroyed ghosts instead of trapped them. That violates the law of conservation and most spiritual beliefs as even being possible. It was just a bad movie.

I agreed with him on that one but when this anti-Mandalorian article came out he went too far. He insisted the woman who wrote it should be dragged out into the street and shot. He called her “it” and “thing” and said she didn’t deserve to live . I told him he was going too far, and she couldn’t take the show away, that he was over reacting.

He then blocked me. I thought it was done and over with, then the Pandemic hit.

When the Pandemic happened he unblocked me and in a revisionist history of events insisted he had blocked me because I had “lied” and said he threatened me. No, he had told me he wanted to kill all progressives, knowing that I am one. And that was not why he blocked me. It was because I disagreed about his death threats about the writer of a Mandalorian article. He wanted to fight. He alternated between insulting me and trying to show how good he was to come to me during a world crisis, like he was doing me a favor. I blocked him this time.

That night my Facebook account was disabled. Someone had reported my account as not being a real person, and Facebook wanted photographic proof that I’m real. It was re-enabled as soon as I sent in a photo but as I don’t have a smartphone (I live in a deadzone) and I’m visually impaired it was a little bit of a pain. This was not something that had ever happened to me before. And I had witnessed this Punisher fan report accounts of those he wanted to “punish” before.

And now I find out some of these rioters were wearing Punisher shirts. So yes, I keep my guard up around Punisher fans.

Do I blame the character? No. Not really. If not him they would have found someone else to try to emulate and idolize. Getting rid of the character won’t get rid of this mentality. I never liked the character but I don’t want him banned. I would be happy if less people were obsessed with him. I would be happy if those obsessed with the character didn’t all remind me of the man I described here. I would be happy if fans of the character were more likely to say that they don’t agree with the character’s actions, they just like his story.

There’s nothing wrong in liking a character with problematic behavior. But if you can’t acknowledge that it’s wrong and instead glorify and romanticize the actions of the character, that’s the problem. I love lots of characters who do bad things. I love Count Dracula. I don’t intend to drink blood and sic wolves on people. And I have absolutely no interest in impalement.

I think far too many Punisher fans don’t realize he’s in the wrong, instead want to be like him, and have trouble separating fiction from reality. I do not blame the character. They would have found someone else if not him. But unfortunately, I AM starting to view hardcore / obsessively being a fan of The Punisher as a bit of a red flag considering how many of them behave this way...

#The Punisher #Marvel Comics #MCU #Marvel Cinematic Universe

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sciencespies · 4 years

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Interstellar travel could make human language evolve beyond recognition, study says

https://sciencespies.com/space/interstellar-travel-could-make-human-language-evolve-beyond-recognition-study-says/

Interstellar travel could make human language evolve beyond recognition, study says

It’s a captivating idea: build an interstellar ark, fill it with people, flora, and fauna of every kind, and set your course for a distant star! The concept is not only science fiction gold, its been the subject of many scientific studies and proposals.

By building a ship that can accommodate multiple generations of human beings (aka. a Generation Ship), humans could colonize the known Universe.

But of course, there are downsides to this imaginative proposal. During such a long voyage, multiple generations of people will be born and raised inside a closed environment. This could lead to all kinds of biological issues or mutations that we simply can’t foresee.

But according to a new study by a team of linguistics professors, there’s something else that will be subject to mutation during such a voyage – language itself!

This study, “Language Development During Interstellar Travel“, appeared in the April issue of Acta Futura, the journal of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team.

The team consisted of Andrew McKenzie, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Kansas; and Jeffrey Punske, an assistant professor of linguistics at Southern Illinois University.

In this study, McKenzie and Punske discuss how languages evolve over time whenever communities grow isolated from one another. This would certainly be the case in the event of a long interstellar voyage and/or as a result of interplanetary colonization.

Eventually, this could mean that the language of the colonists would be unintelligible to the people of Earth, should they meet up again later.

For those who took English at the senior or college level, the story of Caxton’s “eggys” ought to be a familiar one.

In the preface to his 1490 translation of Virgil’s Aeneid (Eneydos) into Middle English, he tells a story of a group of merchants who are traveling down the Thames toward Holland. Due to poor winds, they are forced to dock in the county of Kent, just 80 kilometres (50 miles) downriver and look for something to eat:

“And one of them named Sheffield, a merchant, came into a house and asked for meat and, specifically, he asked for eggs (“eggys”). And the good wife answered that she could speak no French. And the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.”

This story illustrates how people in 15th century England could travel within the same country and experience a language barrier. Well, multiply that to 4.25 light-years to the nearest star system and you can begin to see how language could be a major complication when it comes to interstellar travel.

To illustrate, McKenzie and Punske use examples of different language families on Earth and how new languages emerged due to distance and time. They then extrapolated how this same process would occur over the course of 10 generations or more of interstellar/interplanetary travel.

As McKenzie explained in a UK press release:

“If you’re on this vessel for 10 generations, new concepts will emerge, new social issues will come up, and people will create ways of talking about them, and these will become the vocabulary particular to the ship. People on Earth might never know about these words, unless there’s a reason to tell them.

“And the further away you get, the less you’re going to talk to people back home. Generations pass, and there’s no one really back home to talk to. And there’s not much you want to tell them, because they’ll only find out years later, and then you’ll hear back from them years after that.”

An example they use is the case of Polynesian sailors who populated the South Pacific islands between 3,000 and 1,000 BCE.

Though the roots of these sailors are traced to Taiwan (ca. 6000 BCE) this process of expansion led to the development of entirely new cultures by the 1st millennium BCE. The Polynesian languages that emerged bore little resemblance to the ancient Austronesia language (aka. “Formosan”) of their ancestors.

Similarly, the authors cite language changes that take place within the same language community over time, using the example of “uptalk.” Also known as “High Rising Terminal,” this phenomenon involves statements ending with a rise in intonation.

While it is often mistaken for a question by those who are unfamiliar with it, the convention is actually intended to indicate politeness or inclusion.

As the authors note, “uptalk” has only been observed in the English language within the past 40 years and its origins are unclear. Nevertheless, the spread of it has been noted, particularly by members of the Baby Boomer generation that use it today, but did not in their youth.

Another issue they identify is sign language, which will require adaptation from the crew since some crewmembers will be born hearing impaired.

Without someone keeping track of changes and trying to maintain grammatical standards, linguistic divergence will be inevitable. But as they note, that might be irrelevant, since language on Earth is going to change during that same time.

“So they may well be communicating like we’d be using Latin – communicating with this version of the language nobody uses,” said McKenzie.

Last, but not least, they address what will happen when subsequent ships from Earth reach the colonized planets and meet the locals. Without some means of preparation (like communication with the colony before they reach it), new waves of immigrants will encounter a language barrier and could find themselves being discriminated against.

Because of this, they recommend that any future interplanetary or interstellar missions include linguists or people who are trained in what to expect – translation software ain’t gonna’ cut it!

They further recommend that additional studies of likely language changes aboard interstellar spacecraft be conducted, so people know what to expect in advance. Or as they conclude in their study:

“Given the certainty that these issues will arise in scenarios such as these, and the uncertainty of exactly how they will progress, we strongly suggest that any crew exhibit strong levels of metalinguistic training in addition to simply knowing the required languages. There will be need for an informed linguistic policy on board that can be maintained without referring back to Earth-based regulations.”

Just for fun, let’s see what kinds of linguistic changes could take place.

For starters, let’s assume that a generation ship does take a full ten generations to reach its destination – in this case, Proxima b. Ten more generations pass before the next ship arrives, bringing people from Earth who still speak modern English.

Using the language evolution-simulator Onset, and an English-IPA translator, we can get a small taste of how a simple English-language greeting, and a common request (if you’re in a 50s sci-fi B movie), would change over twenty generations:

“Helluhuh fret, goot tu’uh be’yat yu. Took be’ye to’o u’ul ley’eru, pley’yaz.”

As you can see “Hello friend, good to meet you. Take me to your leader, please” comes out a little different after twenty generations of separation.

How about something more complicated, but no less familiar? Here’s a famous speech that fans of space exploration and history should recognize. After twenty years of interstellar travel, here’s how that speech would sound:

“Wu’eh cho’oz to’o go to’o too Bo’od! Wu’eh cho’oz to’o go to’o too Bood id teez dey’ich udh do’oh tey’e de uttur teedgz, dot biga’ozz tey’e ar ey’ery’eh, boot biga’ozz tey’e ar hard; biga’ozz tat goal wool surve to’o olgoodiez uhd bez’hur too bezt oov uhur eluree’iaz uhd skeelz, uhd biga’ozz tat chaludi iz wuhd tat wu’e ahr wooleet to’oh igsept, wuhd wu’e ahr udu’illid to’o postbode, ohd wuhd wu’e iddet to’o wud.”

Can you guess what speech that is? Keep in mind, this is just a basic simulation of how the English language might change for a group of colonists, never mind people here on Earth.

And when you take time to consider all of the spoken language and dialects spoke today, and that any combination of these will be brought with the colonists to the stars, you can see how confounding it all could be!

There is a reason why the myth of the Tower of Babel remains embedded in our collective unconscious. Language barriers have always been a hurdle for human interaction, especially where long stretches of time and space are concerned.

So if humanity plans to “go interstellar” (or interplanetary), we’ll be taking that hurdle to a whole new level!

In the meantime, you can check out several other articles we’ve done on the subject of generations ships, how big they would have to be, and the minimum number of crew they would need.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

#Space

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flying-elliska · 4 years

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What do you think about the concept of separating the art from the artist?

Hey anon ! Thank you, I love these more philosophical asks ! A very interesting question.

At face value it can be an interesting approach in terms of engaging with art, centering your experience of it and not the artist’s experience/intentions/commentaries on it. The concept of ‘death of the author’ speaks to me more because it highlights that aspect. In general, though, I am quite interesting in artist’s lives, because they give an additional dimension to the art, and I find creative processes fascinating.

Let’s be honest, though, that principle is generally invoked when the artist’s done shitty things or holds problematic opinions. I think then, it’s very much a question of degrees of shittiness and your own history with the art - but being completely blind to the artist’s opinions or actions is to me, dangerous, and here’s why.

If we take ‘art’ broadly, for instance, I was a huge fan of Harry Potter growing up, and waiting for these books framed my life as I grew up at the same time as them, they’re a big part of why I love writing and reading, and their impact on my imagination and my construction as a person was enormous. So, of course it was really not fun to see JKR progressively reveal her shitty opinions online (from her appropriative take on Native American culture, to her TERF-y tweets). After that I decided to disengage from anything she did recently (never saw the second Fantastic Beasts and not planning to, for instance) while conserving love for the books in terms of what they brought me and my experience reading them as a kid - even though now being more aware of there already being shitty aspects in them (racism/fatphobia/lack of representation/problematic metaphors about AIDS/antisemitism/etc) and the need to demand better from the fiction I now choose to consume. I think this is a problem that comes back a lot with classical writers, too, when you discover they had shitty opinions (like for instance, Woolf was a huge antisemite, like so many writers of that era), to be able to deconstruct that and where it comes from while seeing the positive of their art, otherwise it’s probable you have to trash the quasi entirety of Western classical art, and I think it’s possible to engage critically with a work of art and consuming stuff that isn’t a hundred procent pure and good in interesting ways. I think, for instance, that most Lovecraft fans acknowledge he was an absolutely horrible human being but they are able to use his base mythos to subvert the author’s racism and make it say much more interesting things about the Fear of the Other. I think it’s possible to ‘digest’ the art, understanding why it is the way it is, and in so doing, engage with prejudice and sort of...subvert/deconstruct it/make it your own, which is a very valuable process. However, coming back to modern stuff, if I know the author is a really shitty person, and I don’t know their art, it’s probably going to prevent me to want to engage with it (like Orson Scott Card’s books, since he is a disgusting militant homophobe, I won’t touch his books with a ten foot pole). I feel like totally ignoring the author’s shitty opinions, as a fan, comes from a place of not wanting to interrogate your own prejudices. It’s okay to like certain problematic things, I think, as long as you’re aware and you don’t replicate it too much in your own behavior - and having discussions about the flaws of something you love is a fundamental exercise in nuanced thought.

In general, however, I think there are some actions by artists that are just too abhorrent, and completely ruin the art for me or the idea of ever engaging with me. This concept of ‘separating the art from the artist’ has come up as an excuse, recently, for why it was okay that the French Film Academy gave a prestigious Best Director prize to convicted child rapist R. Polanski, and it seriously made me want to vomit. I cannot even conceive of anyone willingly watching his movies or working with him and not immediately think about he did and be absolutely sickened (same goes with Woody Allen, for instance), it absolutely boggles my mind. It perpetuates this idea that talent is an excuse for doing horrible things, and it is one of the principles that upheld for a long time - and does it still - this entire network of talented predators in the creative industry, as if the art these people produced was somehow more precious than all the lives they ruined. It’s a massive fuck you to victims and it’s revolting and it makes me so blindingly furious. I’ve been listening to the Catch and Kill podcast by Ronan Farrow lately, which among other things talks about the investigation into Harvey Weinstein, and it really illustrates this network of talented predators who are enabled by the people around them, and it makes it very obvious that this specific construction of talent is very much a ressort of how oppression functions - you’ll notice that the shitty artists that get excused are most often rich white dudes - as if being brilliant separates you from any moral obligations to your fellow humans, and as long as your art brings you fame/money/power, you can do whatever you want. It’s disgusting. I think it’s one aspect of this one larger mechanism of denial that leads to people not wanting to learn that someone they loved/admired did horrible things, and it’s one reason why you should never put someone on a pedestal quite that much. And very much tied into unfettered capitalism and elitism too - this concept that successful people are somehow, inherently morally deserving, which is one of the most poisonous concepts in our entire society. It’s just so...dishumanizing, this idea that the suffering of some people doesn’t matter because their status is lower.

Long story short, I’m not a big fan of the concept, honestly.

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arcticdementor · 4 years

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Something strange happened to the news over the past four years. The dominant stories all resembled the scripts of bad movies—sequels and reboots. The Kavanaugh hearings were a sequel to the Clarence Thomas hearings, and Russian collusion was rebooted as Ukrainian impeachment. Journalists are supposed to hunt for good scoops, but in January, as the coronavirus spread, they focused on the impeachment reality show instead of a real story.

It’s not just journalists. The so-called second golden era of television was a decade ago, and many of those shows relied on cliff-hangers and gratuitous nudity to hold audience attention. Across TV, movies, and novels it is increasingly difficult to find a compelling story that doesn’t rely on gimmicks. Even foundational stories like liberalism, equality, and meritocracy are failing; the resulting woke phenomenon is the greatest shark jump in history.

Storytelling is central to any civilization, so its sudden failure across society should set off alarm bells. Culture inevitably reflects the selection process that sorts people into the upper class, and today’s insipid stories suggest a profound failure of this sorting mechanism.

…

Culture is larger than pop culture, or even just art. It encompasses class, architecture, cuisine, education, manners, philosophy, politics, religion, and more. T. S. Eliot charted the vastness of this word in his Notes towards the Definition of Culture, and he warned that technocratic rule narrowed our view of culture. Eliot insisted that it’s impossible to easily define such a broad concept, yet smack in the middle of the book he slips in a succinct explanation: “Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.” This highlights why the increase in “deaths of despair” is such a strong condemnation of our dysfunction. In a fundamental way, our culture only exists to serve a certain class. Eliot predicted this when he critiqued elites selected through education: “Any educational system aiming at a complete adjustment between education and society will tend to restrict education to what will lead to success in the world, and to restrict success in the world to those persons who have been good pupils of the system.”

This professional managerial class has a distinct culture that often sets the tone for all of American culture. It may be possible to separate the professional managerial class from the ruling elite, or plutocracy, but there is no cultural distinction. Any commentary on an entire class will stumble in the way all generalizations stumble, yet this culture is most distinct at the highest tiers, and the fuzzy edges often emulate those on the top. At its broadest, these are college-educated, white-collar workers whose income comes from labor, who are huddled in America’s cities, and who rise to power through existing bureaucracies. Bureaucracies, whether corporate or government, are systems that reward specific traits, and so the culture of this class coalesces towards an archetype: the striving bureaucrat, whose values are defined by the skills needed to maneuver through a bureaucracy. And from the very beginning, the striving bureaucrat succeeds precisely by disregarding good storytelling.

…

Professionals today would never self-identify as bureaucrats. Product managers at Google might have sleeve tattoos or purple hair. They might describe themselves as “creators” or “creatives.” They might characterize their hobbies as entrepreneurial “side hustles.” But their actual day-in, day-out work involves the coordination of various teams and resources across a large organization based on established administrative procedures. That’s a bureaucrat. The entire professional culture is almost an attempt to invert the connotations and expectations of the word—which is what underlies this class’s tension with storytelling. Conformity is draped in the dead symbols of a prior generation’s counterculture.

…

When high school students read novels, they are asked to identify the theme, or moral, of a story. This teaches them to view texts through an instrumental lens. Novelist Robert Olen Butler wrote that we treat artists like idiot savants who “really want to say abstract, theoretical, philosophical things, but somehow they can’t quite make themselves do it.” The purpose of a story becomes the process of translating it into ideas or analysis. This is instrumental reading. F. Scott Fitzgerald spent years meticulously outlining and structuring numerous rewrites of The Great Gatsby, but every year high school students reduce the book to a bumper sticker on the American dream. A story is an experience in and of itself. When you abstract a message, you lose part of that experience. Analysis is not inherently bad; it’s just an ancillary mode that should not define the reader’s disposition.

Propaganda is ubiquitous because we’ve been taught to view it as the final purpose of art. Instrumental reading also causes people to assume overly abstract or obscure works are inherently profound. When the reader’s job is to decode meaning, then the storyteller is judged by the difficulty of that process. It’s a novel about a corn beef sandwich who sings the Book of Malachi. Ah yes, a profound critique of late capitalism. An artist! Overall, instrumental reading teaches striving students to disregard stories. Cut to the chase, and give us the message. Diversity is our strength? Got it. Throw the book out. This reductionist view perhaps makes it difficult for people to see how incoherent the higher education experience has become.

…

“Decadence” sounds incorrect since the word elicits extravagant and glamorous vices, while we have Lizzo—an obese antifertility priestess for affluent women. All our decadence becomes boring, cringe-inducing, and filled with HR-approved jargon. “For my Fulbright, I studied conflict resolution in nonmonogamous throuples.” Campus dynamics may partially explain this phenomenon. Camille Paglia has argued that many of the brightest left-wing thinkers in the 1960s fried their brains with too much LSD, and this created an opportunity for the rise of corporate academics who never participated in the ’60s but used its values to signal status. What if this dropout process repeats every generation?

…

The professional class tells a variety of genre stories about their jobs: TED Talker, “entrepreneur,” “innovator,” “doing well by doing good.” One of the most popular today is corporate feminism. This familiar story is about a young woman who lands a prestigious job in Manhattan, where she guns for the corner office while also fulfilling her trendy Sex and the City dreams. Her day-in, day-out life is blessed by the mothers and grandmothers who fought for equality—with the ghost of Susan B. Anthony lingering Mufasa-like over America’s cubicles. Yet, like other corporate genre stories, girl-boss feminism is a celebration of bureaucratic life, including its hierarchy. Isn’t that weird?

There are few positive literary representations of life in corporate America. The common story holds that bureaucratic life is soul-crushing. At its worst, this indulges in a pedestrian Romanticism where reality is measured against a daydream, and, as Irving Babbitt warned, “in comparison . . . actual life seems a hard and cramping routine.” Drudgery is constitutive of the human condition. Yet even while admitting that toil is inescapable, it is still obvious that most white-collar work today is particularly bleak and meaningless. Office life increasingly resembles a mental factory line. The podcast is just talk radio for white-collar workers, and its popularity is evidence of how mind-numbing work has become for most.

Forty years ago, Christopher Lasch wrote that “modern industry condemns people to jobs that insult their intelligence,” and today employers rub this insult in workers’ faces with a hideously infantilizing work culture that turns the office into a permanent kindergarten classroom. Blue-chip companies reward their employees with balloons, stuffed animals, and gold stars, and an exposé detailing the stringent communication rules of the luxury brand Away Luggage revealed how many start-ups are just “live, laugh, love” sweatshops. This humiliating culture dominates America’s companies because few engage in truly productive or necessary work. Professional genre fiction, such as corporate feminism, is thus often told as a way to cope with the underwhelming reality of working a job that doesn’t contribute anything to the world.

There is another way to tell the story of the young career woman, however. Her commute includes inspiring podcasts about Ugandan entrepreneurs, but also a subway stranger breathing an egg sandwich into her face. Her job title is “Senior Analyst—Global Trends,” but her job is just copying and pasting between spreadsheets for ten hours. Despite all the “doing well by doing good” seminars, the closest thing she knows to a community is spin class, where a hundred similar women, and one intense man in sports goggles, listen to a spaz scream Hallmark card affirmations.

…

The bureaucrat even describes the process of rising through fraudulence as “playing the game.” The book The Organization Man criticized professionals in the 1950s for confusing their own interests with those of their employers, imagining, for example, that moving across the country was good for them simply because they were transferred. “Playing the game” is almost like an overlay on top of this attitude. The idea is that personal ambition puts the bureaucrat in charge. Bureaucrats always feel that they are “in on the game,” and so develop a false sense of certainty about the world, which sorts them into two groups: the cynics and the neurotics. Cynics recognize the nonsense, but think it’s necessary for power. The neurotics, by contrast, are earnest go-getters who confuse the nonsense with actual work. They begin to feel like they’re the only ones faking it and become so insecure they have to binge-watch TED Talks on “imposter syndrome.”

These two dispositions help explain why journalists focus on things like impeachment rather than medical supply chains. One group cynically condescends to American intelligence, while neurotics shriek about the “norms of our democracy.” Both are undergirded by a false certainty about what’s possible. Professional elites vastly overestimate their own intelligence in comparison with the average American, and today there is nothing so common as being an elitist. Meanwhile, public discourse gets dumber and dumber as elitists spend all their time explaining hastily memorized Wikipedia entries to those they deem rubes.

…

The entire phenomenon of the nonconformist bureaucrat can be seen as genre inversion. Everyone today grew up with pop culture stories about evil corporations and corporate America’s soul-sucking culture, and so the “creatives” have fashioned a self-image defined against this genre. These stories have been internalized and inverted by corporate America itself, so now corporate America has mandatory fun events and mandatory displays of creativity.

In other words, past countercultures have been absorbed into corporate America’s conception of itself. David Solomon isn’t your father’s stuffy investment banker. He’s a DJ! And Goldman Sachs isn’t like the stuffy corporations you heard about growing up. They fly a transgender flag outside their headquarters, list sex-change transitions as a benefit on their career site, and refuse to underwrite an IPO if the company is run by white men. This isn’t just posturing. Wokeness is a cult of power that maintains its authority by pretending it’s perpetually marching against authority. As long it does so, its sectaries can avoid acknowledging how they strengthen managerial America’s stranglehold on life by empowering administrators to enforce ever-expanding bureaucratic technicalities.

…

Moreover, it is shocking that no one in the 2020 campaign seems to have reacted to the dramatic change that happened in 2016. Good storytellers are attuned to audience sophistication, and must understand when audiences have grown past their techniques. Everyone has seen hundreds of movies, and read hundreds of books, and so we intuitively understand the shape of a good story. Once audiences can recognize a storytelling technique as a technique, it ceases to function because it draws attention to the artifice. This creates distance between the intended emotion and the audience reaction. For instance, a romantic comedy follows a couple as they fall in love and come together, and so the act two low point will often see the couple breaking up over miscommunication. Audiences recognize this as a technique, and so, even though miscommunication often causes fights, it seems fake.

Similarly, today’s voters are sophisticated enough to recognize the standard political techniques, and so their reactions are no longer easily predictable. Voters intuitively recognize that candidate “debates” are just media events, and prewritten zingers do not help politicians when everyone recognizes them as prewritten. The literary critic Wayne Booth wrote that “the hack is, by definition, the man who asks for responses he cannot himself respect,” and our politicians are always asking us to buy into nonsense that they couldn’t possibly believe. Inane political tropes operate just like inane business jargon and continue because everyone thinks they’re on the inside, and this blinds them to obvious developments in how audiences of voters relate to political tropes. Trump often plays in this neglected space.

The artistic development of the sitcom can be seen as the process of incorporating its own artifice into the story. There is a direct creative lineage from The Dick Van Dyke Show, a sitcom about television comedy writers, to The Office, a show about office workers being filmed for television. Similarly, Trump often succeeds because he incorporates the artifice of political tropes. When Trump points out that the debate audiences are all donors, or that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t actually pray for him, he’s just pointing out what everyone already knows. This makes it difficult for other politicians to “play the game,” because their standard tropes reinforce Trump’s message. If the debates are just media spectacle events for donors, then applause lines work against you. It’s similar to breaking the fourth wall, while the rest of the cast nervously tries to continue with their lines. Trump’s success is evidence that the television era of political theater is ending, because its storytelling formats are dead.

In fact, the (often legitimate) criticism that Trump does not act “presidential” is the same as saying that he’s not acting professional—that he is ignoring the rules of bureaucratic advancement. Could you imagine Trump’s year-end review? “In 2020, we invite Donald to stop sending Outlook reminders that just say ‘get schlonged.’” Trump’s antics are indicative of his different route to power. Forget everything else about him: how would you act if you never had a job outside a company with your name on the building? The world of the professional managerial class doesn’t contain many characters, and so they associate eccentricity with bohemianism or ineptitude. But it’s also reliably found somewhere else.

Small business owners are often loons, wackos, and general nutjobs. Unlike the professional class, their personalities vary because their job isn’t dependent on how others view them. Even when they’re wealthy or successful, they often don’t act “professional.” It requires tremendous grit and courage to own a business. They are perhaps the only people today who embody what Pericles meant when he said that the “secret to freedom is courage.” In the wake of coronavirus, small businesses owners stoically shuttered their stores and faced financial ruin, while politicians with camera-ready personas and ratlike souls tried to increase seasonal worker visas.

…

Ever since Star Wars, screenwriters have used Joseph Campbell’s monomyth to measure a successful story, and an essential act one feature is the refusal of adventure. For a moment, the universe opens up and shows the hero an unknown world of possibility, but the hero backs away. For four years, our nation has refused adventure, yet fate cannot be ignored. The coronavirus forces our nation to confront adventure. With eerie precision, this global plague tore down the false stories that veiled our true situation. The experts are incompetent. The institutions told us we were racist for caring about the virus, and then called for arresting paddleboarders in the middle of the ocean. Our business regulations make it difficult to create face masks in a crisis, while rewarding those who outsource the manufacturing of lifesaving drugs to our rival. The new civic religion of wokeness is a dangerous antihuman cult that distorts priorities. Even our Hollywood stars turn out to be ugly without makeup.

#james mcelroy #american affairs #read the whole thing

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fireflysummers · 5 years

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Just Fiction (and When It’s Not)

I’ve been tying myself in mental knots for the last while about the “It’s Just Fiction” argument. At this point I’ve heard a lot from both sides that’s actually pretty valid, leading to a lot of general confusion.

The conclusion that I’ve come to, though, is that “It’s Just Fiction” is not a universal defense, and its meaning shifts drastically when it’s shifted out of the originally intended lens.

I propose that there are three lenses through which the “It’s Just Fiction” argument can be viewed: in-universe, authorial intent, and public interpretation.

Before jumping into the analysis, I should note that there are a few assumptions here:

The fiction in question is actually fiction, and does not resemble any real life persons, living or dead in an identifiable capacity. Therefore, things like the Ted Bundy Case Files are immediately disqualified.

We are assuming innocence until proven guilty.

The In-Universe Lens

The “It’s Just Fiction” defense is most often applied to in-universe logic, and is related to the suspension of disbelief--the mechanism by which we can ignore our comparisons to the real world and immerse ourselves in a fantasy.

When you say "It's Just Fiction" about in-universe logic, it understands very clearly that fiction is fake, and that the characters and events do not exist in the real world. It may echo real life, and real people might to replicate it, but no matter how dark or gross or fluffy or fantastical the content, no matter how gritty and “realistic” it is, it is not real.

Arguing that "It’s Just Fiction" is basically stating that you understand how to separate reality from fantasy, and treat characters and in-canon logic as the mechanisms by which an interesting story is told. While they may feel real, especially if you have a special connection with them, they fundamentally are not.

As a result, content creators are generally allowed to use it as space to explore taboo topics and search for relationships and meaning in places that no sane person would enact in real life.

However, this is not free reign to create whatever you want, and expect no consequences, as we will get to in our next point.

Authorial Intent

As stated earlier, the general assumption here is that the content creator did not intentionally have ill will towards anybody. Unfortunately, there have been too many case where this has proven to be bad faith. As a result, how to approach this aspect of the “It’s Just Fiction” argument is very difficult and controversial, because sometimes it is very difficult to “prove,” especially since the creative process is often multi-faceted as content creators draw from multiple inspirational and motivational sources.

Oftentimes, content creators are young, ignorant, and lacking self-awareness. This leads to them not knowing how to take critique, especially if they are approached in a harsh, critical manner, and generally only alienates them in a way that stifles their desire to learn and grow naturally. It is generally not your job to educate strangers on the internet, either, since there are often trolls who disguise actual ill intent as ignorance.

The most surefire way to address this is to curate your own internet experience by blocking liberally those whose content you do not wish to see.

There is another case, though, that needs to be discussed: that of predatory content creators. These people usually straddle the line between “a distasteful lack of mindfulness” and “preying on vulnerable populations.”

Accusations of ped/o/phil/ia against any individual are serious, and in process you have to consider a personal history of predatory behavior, rather than applying a blanket "if it's dark and taboo topics, then it automatically implicates the author as a pervert.”

You can usually identify these individuals based on the content’s tone and approach--that they aren't approaching a taboo topic for the sake of literary exploration, but because they are self-inserting themselves. There are heavy implications about people who self-insert into that sort of fiction, such as people who write or draw cartoon character CP, and you can usually tell on a case-by-case basis whether or not somebody is hiding a gross perversion behind "It’s Just Fiction.”

Public Interpretation

Public interpretation is usually where the “It’s Just Fiction” argument breaks down entirely, because we are no longer working directly with the work (in-universe) or the people immediately responsible for its creation (authorial intent). Public reactions are very, very real and need to be treated as such--but first, you have to consider the likelihood that a work of fiction will actually contribute to swaying that public.

The argument here is “even if the person didn’t mean any harm, that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be held responsible.” And this is another tough one, because on one hand, yes, content creators ideally should exercise mindfulness about how their work will be received and interpreted. On the other hand, the public is beyond the control of any single individual, and things can easily be taken out of context or snowball out of their control, regardless of their intent.

So, for the sake of this particular case, we have determined that the author did not mean to cause harm, the next question is how much harm is being done.

In other words, who exactly is the public, and how many of them are there?

For instance, a bunch of kids filming a shitty monster movie featuring sharks may have the exact same messages as Jaws (sharks are evil and need to be killed). Neither one of them intend to do real sharks any harm; however, the one that needs to be held responsible is Jaws, not the shitty indie film.

Why? Because Jaws was a box-office success that became a cultural phenomenon. It impacted the opinions of the millions of people, leading to a sharp increase of shark hunting.

Yeah, the indie film was equally bad in the messages it was conveying, but it just fades into obscurity without actually doing any harm.

It’s the same spiel with fandom works. Because fandoms are insular spaces, they feel a lot bigger than they actually are. That’s why fan-content creators are not held to the same standards as mainstream content creators, because the public they actually affect is actually quite small.

When people say “It’s Just Fiction” in relation to content that is not intended to do harm, but is controversial in content, what they’re really saying is “fandom is a small, in-bred pocket of the internet, and and because it is not written by somebody intending to cause harm and will never likely see the public eye, the damage that it does is negligible, and any energy that you put into causing an outcry over it is merely a petty waste of time.”

At which point, again, the best course of action is to just block what you don’t want to see.

Applications

This is a long read, and the basic point is to exercise your own critical thinking skills. My general rubric for what I keep versus what I block is:

Is the content actually fictional.

Is the content creator acting out of a desire to hurt others?

If the harm is unintentional, how many people are affected, and how wide-spread is the damage?

Let’s Practice

Case 1

Person A is obsessed with a villainous character from an anime.

They know that the character is completely made up.

They have no desire to hurt other people, since this affection for a fictional character is literally just them. Their actions do not pose a threat to vulnerable groups.

The number of people even directly aware of Person A’s special interest is pretty small, and if you’re squicked out by it they’re an easy block.

Therefore, by this rubric, “It’s Just Fiction” works just fine as an explanation for their actions.

Case 2

Person B’s fanfic reduces your favorite character to LGBT+ stereotypes. The tone of the fic, though, is fluffy and light-hearted.

Again, this is entirely fictional and all parties know it.

It’s difficult to gauge whether this was done intentionally or not; sometimes a quick chat with the author will clear things up; otherwise, the tone of the fic and the lack of mean spirit in any of their other works, so it’s probably unintentional. It’s probably safe to give the benefit of the doubt.

The general readership on the fic and the number of kudos is pretty low, which means that it’s not getting much attention anyways. It was distasteful, it made you feel gross when you read it, but overall the damage is pretty contained.

Therefore, by this rubric, “It’s Just Fiction” still generally works, because of the limited number of people even aware of the fic’s existence.

Case 3

Person C made an AU with characters aged-up from the canon, and there are some N/S/F/W scenes or jokes!

AU = fictional

This is a tricky one sometimes, because there are absolutely people who age up characters just to “legally” draw them in N/S/F/W situations.

However, there is a difference between people who do that, and others who say, project out an entire timeline full of unique character interactions and are looking to explore the various aspects of adult life, which sometimes involves consensual sex. The authorial intent here is usually pretty easy to pick up on, because a well thought-out aged-up AU often takes a lot of mindfulness on the part of the creator.

Again, things limited to fandom spaces are by default pretty small in the public that they reach.

“It’s Just Fiction” absolutely applies here because of the amount of work that has been put into it to create an adult version of the world and characters, and it’s clear that the intent was not to expose minors for the entertainment of perverts.

tl;dr: If you’re going to treat fandom with academic scrutiny, please apply critical thinking to situations as they come. “It’s Just Fiction” does not work as a general statement because it wasn’t originally meant to be a general statement.

#long post #fandom wank #text #idk man #i'm tired

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altcomics · 5 years

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THE MOVIE BLACK PANTHER was released in February of this year. The same month, Herman Bell—formerly of the Black Liberation Army, an underground Black Power group composed of members of the Black Panthers—was up for parole after forty-five years in prison. Black Panther grossed $241.9 million in its opening weekend, netting a handsome profit for Walt Disney Studios. Bell’s hearing was delayed and culminated in an unusually long deliberation period, but he was eventually paroled in mid-March. Fifteen other former Black Panthers remain in prison; some have died while doing time, and all have experienced abuse and torture, including solitary confinement and beatings. At the time of writing, New York’s police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, was fiercely contesting the decision on Bell’s case, hoping to have it revoked.

The grotesque spectacle of police and politicians scrambling to deprive a seventy-year-old man of freedom because of their abstract fear of Black violence looks more vivid in the light of the movie’s release. The accidental convergence of the two events shakes up old ghosts, or it would if the air right now weren’t already so thick with them. Black Panther director Ryan Coogler’s first movie, Fruitvale Station (2013), concerned the murder by police of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, and happened to open the same week George Zimmerman heard the news that he would face no legal consequences for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Five years later, a political turn that we can at least partly credit to the organization and concept Black Lives Matter—inaugurated by a popular hashtag shortly after Zimmerman’s predictable lucky break—has opened so much new discursive ground in US political and cultural life that Black Panther felt not only possible but inevitable. Of course, it was not. The movie, rooted in Black history and reaching confidently and unironically for mass-market appeal, is extraordinary. To lift an aphorism from the first lines of Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow: “It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.”

Ryan Coogler, Fruitvale Station, 2013, Super 16, color, sound, 85 minutes. Second from left: Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan).

Frank B. Wilderson III writes in Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonism (2010) that he is “interested in Black filmmakers of the 1970s . . . not as auteurs, or brilliant individuals, but as cinematic prisms.” Coogler is a great filmmaker, using in Black Panther the same gifts for the kinetic and emotional that gave Creed (2015), his contribution to the “Rocky” franchise, such unexpected depth and swagger. But we will have to follow Wilderson’s example and take him as a prism, especially because the films Wilderson spoke of also coincided with a profound political turn:

I propose that the specter of the Black Liberation Army—and by specter, I mean the zeitgeist rather than the actual historical record of the BLA— provides us with both a point of condensation for thinking Black people on the move and a structure of articulation between the unflinching movement of Blacks, politically, and the unflinching fantasies of Blacks, cinematically.

Cover of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s Fantastic Four, no. 52(Marvel, July 1966).

This is because these filmmakers lived at a special time in history: “special because it culminated in an embrace of Black violence which had not been seen before.” The novelty of the BLA, or at least of its spectral presence in the zeitgeist, was its use of violence. The incomparable Black Panther, which is based on a fiction first dreamed up by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for the July 1966 issue of Fantastic Four, is still marked by its origins today, long after a backlash against the Black and communist revolutionary violence of the ’70s left the would-be revolutionaries of today hyper-surveilled, facing highly militarized police forces, and subject to psychological difficulties wrought by the state’s attempts to persecute the revolution by wrecking communities and spirits.

But chance moves the world, as does the stricter machinery of value and fate. The movie’s marketing exploited the title’s ostensible reference to the Black Panthers, but the connection is mostly accidental: Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the political organization in October of the same year the character first appeared in Fantastic Four, borrowing the name from a panther logo used by the Alabama-based Lowndes County Freedom Organization. The ambient availability of the phrase black panther as a symbol for groups of Black people is illustrated by the 761st Tank Battalion, a World War II unit of African American soldiers who fought a “continuous 183 days at the front,” collectively received some three hundred Purple Hearts, and were later described by their general in the following terms: “Individually they were good soldiers, but . . . a colored soldier cannot think fast enough to fight in armor.” They too were nicknamed the Black Panthers. As the writer Derica Shields notes in an upcoming book, black panther is not a species of cat; it is a designation for a black cat of any type. “The melanistic color variant of any big cat species” is how Wikipedia puts it. The word pantheralso means “black cat,” so black panther is a tautology, a black black thing. Blackness pushes the animal out of its category, perhaps even out of the category of the animal. Blackness cleaves—as in joins and splits—the human and the animal. What a magic property!

Black Panther Party poster featuring cofounder Huey P. Newton, 1968. Photo: Blair Stapp/Library of Congress.

I HAVE NOTICED many times in public and private life that people often hesitate for a beat before enunciating the word black, as if the simple syllable were too hard to pronounce, too much to say. As if they wanted to prove Wilderson—who is often accused of being too emo or dramatic in his Afro-pessimism—right. Black Panther comes trailing this too-muchness as a birthright, crowned by a single now-famous line of dialogue: “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from ships, because they knew death was better than bondage.” It’s spoken to the first Black Panther, King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), by the second, Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), an American-born challenger to the Wakandan throne, who is the blackest thing in the movie. The line echoes—with a certain amount of noise and distortion imbued by more than forty years of political disappointment—the spectral presence of the BLA in the output of ’70s Black filmmakers. The idea that death is preferable to bondage, and, relatedly,that those held in bondage are in a sense already dead, animates the political violence that Wilderson (following Sylvia Wynter) sees as emerging from the fact that white society positions Black people outside of the Human, in the ontological position of the Slave. Wilderson writes, “The question of political agency began to go something like this: What kind of imaginative labor is required to squash the political capacity of the Human being so that we might catalyze the political capacity of the Black?” Blackness opposes humanity insofar as humanity, as it’s politically constructed today—a partial allocation, easily forgotten at the border or in a wrong neighborhood—opposes life. For Wilderson, Black death-in-life opposes white-capitalist life-as-death, whose poison seeps into the tiniest particles of the world.

On his side, the Black insurrectionist has Nothing—the embodiment of nothing, the nothingness of the world.

The grinding reality of the death cult under which we are living is why people cry at the scene where Wakandan planes bust through the force field separating Wakanda from the rest of the world, revealing the country’s bustling cityscape untouched by the horrors of history. Not me, though; there’s just something in my eye. “This never gets old,” says the new king of Wakanda, as the vista of a world without pain opens up before him.

Ryan Coogler, Black Panther, 2018, 4K video, color, sound, 134 minutes. Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan).

WHAT IS TO be done for the rest of the world, the pained world? The struggle between the two Black Panthers, Killmonger and T’Challa, allegorizes a tension between insurrectionist and reformist politics. The reformer has reason, pragmatism, and a chance of a career—he has the world and worldliness. On his side, the Black insurrectionist has Nothing—the embodiment of nothing, the nothingness of the world. T’Challa seems to halfway recognize the truth in Killmonger, who arrives in the fantastical Black kingdom of Wakanda with the full force of reality. But no sooner has T’Challa regretted murdering his revolutionary shadow side than he is off to the United Nations to announce a Wakandan education and outreach program. In the Marvel Universe, the United Nations works perfectly, exactly as it set out to in 1945, but everything in this world is like that: Killmonger as a Black insurrectionist has at his disposal not only the metaphorical and spiritual material of blackness, but also a weaponizable manifestation of it in the form of the Wakandan metal, vibranium, which he has forcibly repatriated from a British museum. Magic and technology are indivisible. No sooner has a true hero conceived of his quest than its materials spring into his hands. The apoliticality of the superhero movie is in the inevitability of success. The supposed apoliticality of Afro-pessimism, according to its critics, is in the inevitability of failure.

Soldiers from Dog Company of the 761st Tank Battalion check equipment before leaving England for combat in France, 1944.

T’Challa is emphatically not in the position of the dead, but, like those already dead, he is invulnerable to violence. His sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), presents him with one of her inventions, a new outfit for his superheroic activities that absorbs and channels the energy of blows and bullets. Wearing this suit, he is almost completely immune to physical attack. I didn’t think of ’70s Black cinema when I first saw Black Panther, but I did think about the specter of Black political violence. In C. L. R. James’s visionary 1938 history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, he describes early attempts at mass uprising, some of which invoked spiritual assistance. During an attack on Port-au-Prince, the twenty-one-year-old slave leader Hyacinth “ran from rank to rank crying that his talisman would chase death away. He charged at their head, passing unscathed through the bullets and grape-shot.” His followers were predisposed to be brave, and fought “without fear or care” of the bullets fired at them: “If they were killed they would wake again in Africa.”

We give

Black Panther

this intensity of attention not because anyone necessarily sympathizes with its aims, but because it’s

so good

In another passage, James describes an extraordinary scene from late in the revolutionary war. A division of the Black army, led by an officer named Capois Death—“so-called on account of his bravery”—attacks one of the failing French army’s few remaining strongholds:

Capois led the assault . . . shouting “Forward, forward!” The French . . . drove off the blacks again and again only to see them return to the attack with undiminished ardor. A bullet knocked over Capois’ horse. Boiling with rage he scrambled up and, making a gesture of contempt with his sword, he continued to advance. “Forward, forward!”

The French, who had fought on so many fields, had never seen fighting like this. From all sides came a storm of shouts. “Bravo! Bravo!” There was a roll of drums. The French ceased fire. A French horseman rode out and advanced to the bridge. He brought a message. . . . “The Captain-General sends his admiring compliments to the officer who has just covered himself with so much glory.” Without a shot fired from the blacks, the horseman turned and rode back to the blockhouse and the battle began again. The struggle had been such a nightmare that by now all in San Domingo were a little mad, both white and black.

Ryan Coogler, Black Panther, 2018, 4K video, color, sound, 134 minutes.

The Haitian Revolution, which took place between 1791 and 1804, was the complicated heart of an era of intense political and social upheaval that inaugurated what we understand as modernity. If the French and American revolutions are more celebrated for what they supposedly tell us about freedom, that’s partly because what they tell us about freedom is more palatable, and partly for the usual reasons: Eurocentrism and plain racism. The image of French troops applauding the bravery of the Black army while prosecuting a war founded on their subhumanity felt consonant with Black Panther, not the movie exactly, but the event. Black panther has, through “the unflinching movement of Blacks, politically,” become a thrilling phrase, while those who moved unflinchingly remain in prison, and the object of their movement—liberation, not of the bourgeois bearers of race like me, but of the ghetto and the slum—feels distant. But all revolutions were nearly inconceivable before they happened.

Kant thought that enthusiasm for the French Revolution among people whom it affected only indirectly was proof of a “moral disposition within the human race.” Does enthusiasm for a fictional Black Panther in a country that jails real ones prove anything? A long time after the beginning of the revolution in 1791, we are all still “a little mad.” In an era of white-supremacist panic, as the police and their allies work to deny Herman Bell his freedom, visions of Black power are capable of moving audiences to wonder.

Page from Le Petit Parisien, December 20, 1908, depicting the Haitian revolution. Illustration: Paul Dufresne.

IN A FAINT ECHO—farce this time, not tragedy—of the war anecdote above, we give Black Panther this intensity of attention not because anyone necessarily sympathizes with its aims, but because it’s so good. The movie is a faultless example of the fantasy blockbuster, from script to shots to costumes and set design. Reeling from my first viewing, I wondered if this was how people felt in 1977 after they first saw Star Wars.

Reduced to its bare bones, the superhero genre usually features an extraordinary individual or small group of extraordinary individuals who are faced with some kind of dilemma. (The dilemma, in which character faces off with fate, is the screenwriter’s primary means of evoking the ambivalences and contradictions of real life; of course, in the movies, as sometimes in life, character often becomes fate.) Circumstances call the extraordinary individual out of retirement or seek him out in obscurity; perhaps, in a weird militaristic fantasy that even the recent mechanization and long-standing misery of war has not ended, he is just so good at fighting that the struggle can’t be won without him. Through guile and force, he triumphs against his enemies and receives love and admiration, though he remains essentially alone.

Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, Captain America: Civil War, 2016, 2K video, color, sound, 147 minutes. From left: Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Vision (Paul Bettany), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and War Machine (Don Cheadle).

In the kickoff to this latest phase of Marvel movies, Captain America: Civil War (2016), infighting breaks out between the superheroes when the United Nations demands oversight and control of their activities. In one of many plot twists, a bomb goes off at the UN and kills T’Challa’s father, making T’Challa the new Black Panther. Amid the background of the heroes’ paranoia and aggression, the simplicity of T’Challa’s quest—to apprehend the person responsible for his father’s death—cuts through. The script is self-conscious and thoughtful about its genre: We see superheroes confronted by the mothers of people they killed as they went about killing the bad guys; we hear about cities left in ruins by their heroic actions. The movie’s critique of the nationalism and machismo of the classic superhero tradition is so evident, it’s like watching something collapse into itself.

Following the tradition of undoing tradition, Killmonger’s presence in Black Panther ruptures the superhero conceit and multiplies the meaning of the movie’s title; his intervention produces two Black Panthers in the same movie, making sense of the title’s lack of definite article: Black Panther, not The Black Panther. The camera articulates the disruption to the natural order of things, so that as Killmonger approaches the Panther’s throne, we see him upside-down and rotating upright. Even the movie’s premise is askance from the superhero model of individuated power: The Black Panther is an ancestral title, not a happy accident. Killmonger doesn’t care; he is here, full of revolutionary fervor, to burn the bad world to the ground.

Contemporary reproduction of the United States Army 761st Tank Battalion’s military patch.

If the presence of the Black Panther T’Challa in Civil War renders bankrupt or irrelevant the political strivings of the white superheroes, then the presence of the Black Panther Killmonger in Black Panther is what renders bankrupt or irrelevant the strivings of the Black Panther. Although the Black revolution has been deprived of means, it is kept alive as an image. For what purpose, the future will find out, and in the meantime the present lives by its light.

Hannah Black is an artist and writer based in New York.

#Hannah Black #2018 #Black Panther

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livvywrites · 5 years

Text

11/11/11

tagged by @aslanwrites, thanks so much~~~ this is one of my favorite tag games tbh xD

1. If your WIP got made into a movie, which actors/actresses would you cast for your main characters?

I’ve never been real good at fancasting, tbh. Probably because I really don’t watch a lot of movies. BUT, I do have some faceclaims that I’ve found through pinterest and other sites?

Alinora Mynerva -- Tuba Buyukustun

Lyr Inerra -- Luke Pasqualino

Talitha Jade -- short haired Halsey

Haven’t found any other fc’s yet, but there’s a short list!!

2. What is a story you’d like to write, but don’t know how to yet tackle?

There are a couple of different ones, actually.

The first is one I’ve talked about before on Tumblr. It’s called Heart Eater. (It’s a temporary title.) It’s a lot darker than my usual stories, though, so I have no idea where to even start. Not to mention I don’t know what kind of genre or setting to use...

The second is temporarily titled Guardians/Overmorrow. It’s more of a sci-fi/fantasy story, with both high technology and a little magic. Or a lot of magic. It was one of the first novel ideas that I came up with and stuck with, though I didn’t finish it. I would love to tackle it one day, but for the moment, I don’t have much for it! Nor much faith in my ability to tackle any of the science that would be involved xD

3. How do you deal with writer’s block?

Crying, begging, pleading, making sacrifices to the writing gods...

I kid, I kid.

I don’t really handle writer’s block all that well, tbh. But there are a couple of different things that (occasionally) work for me.

The first is just leaving the story alone. Focusing on something else, if it’s a specific story block, or just taking a break from writing all together. I’ll do things like read and play games instead.

The second is to stop writing the story, but still do things related to it. Create playlists--none of which I really like well enough to share, tbh, but I’m working on it! Make moodboards/aesthetics, do character questionnaires, revisit the plot with new templates... You know. Whatever I can do that’s still relevant to what I’m writing but isn’t actually writing. Or is, in the case of modern AU’s/pre-series drabbles. (Usually I’m too blocked up even for those, though.)

4. Coffee, hot chocolate, or tea?

All of the above!

I wish I could tell you I had a specific preference, but I really don’t. It switches up on me a lot. I CAN tell you that I’m picky about all of the above, though.

Tea I like to be sweet and a little spicy. I’m a big fan of Chai lattes, but I also have this lovely Warm Fireside tea that I ADORE. Sadly, they’ve discontinued it, though, so I’ll be hunting around again soon. *sigh* I also really enjoy sweet tea! But I like it *really* sweet.

Coffee I like with creamer. A lot of creamer. Like, two thirds coffee, one third creamer. Lattes are amazing, tbh. I mostly prefer vanilla flavoring, but sometimes I’ll go for caramel...

Hot chocolate is probably what I’m least picky about, tbh. I’ll drink it by itself, but I like it best with a bit of peppermint. (I keep peppermint creamer on hand, but I also usually have mints in my purse I can drop in.)

5. Do you believe in the death of the author?

Yes.

I think that an author’s interpretation and intention are still relevant to a work, but I also believe in a fan’s ability to disregard those things and do it their own way. And I don’t think that the author should interfere with that. Conversely, I don’t believe that fandom has the right to control how an author continues their work.

In short, while fandom and author overlap in the middle, there should also be some separation--much like a venn diagram ;)

6. What is a trope that needs more love?

You know, my first impulse was to say “found family” but like. That one is everywhere lately. (I am NOT complaining. I just don’t think it’s in the spirit of the question to answer that way xD)

So I don’t really know specific “tropes” necessarily, and I’m not falling into the void that is TV tropes to answer, so I’m just going to list some things that I, personally, would like to see more of?

male/female friendships that don’t end in romance, pls. AND, if either has a significant other, that SO doesn’t get jealous every time they’re in the vicinity of each other.

healthy M/F ships!!! no unnecessary miscommunication or jealousy please!! unless that miscomm is used for non relationship-threatening humor.

characters that don’t end in relationships??? it feels like in a lot of mainstream fiction lately all the characters end up with someone. i love a good romance as much as anyone, but as an ace and possibly aro person (questioning, majorly) it’s also a little disappointing???

the power of FRIENDSHIP. this probably goes hand-in-hand with the found family, but like. friendship/platonic love being the most important thing to a person??? yes pls.

I’ll stop there ‘cause I think that’s enough, but those are a few things!! :D

7. What is your biggest inspiration?

This question is actually really hard for me, because I don’t KNOW.

Part of me wants to just boil it down to life, to living every day and finding something new about the world/about myself. And that IS a good answer, and true as well, but it doesn’t feel quite... right.

I could tell you that I feel inspired every time I pick up a new book, or poem, or fanfic to read. I could tell you that I feel inspired every time I see a commercial for a movie or a TV show. I could tell you that history articles/magazines inspire me. I could tell you that hearing about different identities and cultures inspires me. I could tell you that I find inspiration everywhere, in everything, and that none of it would qualify as my “biggest” inspiration, because I get little bits from everywhere.

But that still doesn’t feel right either.

I feel like maybe I’m missing the point of the question.

8. Let’s go on a little adventure: One day, you end up in the same world as your characters–or if they’re in ours, you end up with your characters in some way, shape or form. What do you do?

I’m going to assume that either they don’t know who I am or think of me as some scribe meant to tell their story, instead of the person who created it. (Which is how I think of myself sometimes, tbh.) Because otherwise I feel like they would probably be maybe a little mad at me.

So, first things first, I probably give Alinora and Aishlynn a hug. Well. Okay. I don’t hug them because neither of them would be super comfortable with that. (Alinora doesn’t mind, and even appreciates, hugs from people she knows, but not so much people she doesn’t. Aishlynn just isn’t big on hugs in general.)

And then I probably fangirl a little.

Just a little.

I mean. These are my BABIES, and yes they’re flawed and have their weak spots but. They’re also so STRONG and HEROIC and GOOD and I just LOVE THEM.

9. If you had a magical power, what would that power be?

Probably something like empathy. tbh, but I would WANT like... the ability to not have to sleep. Though I guess that would probably get boring after a while.

10. What is a genre that you feel is underrated? What about overrated?

So, I feel like every genre has the potential to be done really well, and I think I could probably enjoy something from pretty much any of them. HOWEVER. Lately I’ve been a little... uninterested in a lot of mainstream YA fiction. Not all of it, necessarily, but a lot of it. It’s not that I think YA as a whole is overrated, because I don’t. But at the same time, I do?? I dunno. I wanna read more about older people??? Not full-on “adult” fiction, but y’know. New Adult. And while I don’t think NA is “underrated” specifically, I do wish they had an actual section for it in bookstores.

11. Have you accomplished anything that you’re proud of?

Yes. I finished my very first novel around 17. (I might have actually been 16 and a half.) I still have yet to complete the second draft/full rewrite, but I’m still really proud of actually FINISHING it.

I’m also really proud of how far I’ve made it into THE MARTYR QUEEN. I’ve started and re-started that story so many times, and actually being THIS close to the end, with a draft I don’t hate... It’s amazing. I mean, it definitely needs changes, but I’m really proud of how it’s shaping up.

Now if I could just finish a short story.... X’D

MY QUESTIONS

Have you ever been so disappointed/unimpressed by a character’s concept/arc/etc. that you decided to take that concept and write it how you wished it had been told? Whether you’ve started the story or not is irrelevant, just if you’ve got an idea built up!

What do you feel are your biggest strengths in writing? What makes you look back over your writing and feel proud?

Are there any characters, themes, setting types, etc that you see popping up over and over again in your writing? Why do you think that is?

If you could give your past self any writing-related advice, what would you tell them?

When it comes to character creation, what are things you HAVE to know before you start writing, if anything?

Similarly, what are some things you HAVE to know about your plot before you start writing, if anything?

How often do find that your characters/plot surprise you?

What do you find the most difficult/what is your weakest point when it comes to world-building?

What experiences do you feel have most shaped your writing? (It’s okay if you don’t want to share specifics, or don’t want to share at all! Or just don’t know. You can say something else that majorly shaped your writing :D)

Do you find it easier to work alone, or to have at least one other writer/person encouraging you?

Assuming you aren’t already, if you were ever to write a story based off of a mythology/fairytale/other, which one would you choose, and how would you do it?

(i won’t be tagging 11 people, i’m sorry! but if you see this and WANT to do it, PLEASE do so and tag me. if i’ve already tagged you in something like this recently, feel free to pick which one you do <3)

tagging: @aslanwrites (yes, i’m tagging you back, but only do it if you want to! or save it for later, when you wanna have something to do. i don’t mind xD) @waterfallwritings, @diabhals, @matterovermindpodcast, @firesidefantasy, @klywrites

#tag games #11 11 11 #my answer for my first question is yes btw #specifically based off of dany's character in got #i wrote the prologue before the final season aired #not that i actually ever watched got #i just read the books #but like #im not sure i like where her character is going in the books???#i dunno #we'll see #but i decided to write my own version of the concept #but v v different at the same time #its called valkyrie #it'll be my next project #cause it's a standalone #i might post a moodboard for it later xD #feel free to ask about it if you want!

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maydei · 6 years

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What is it about Hannibal (the show + person) and his relationship with will that you absolutely love about? They do seem like an interesting couple (I haven’t seen the movie so I cannot relate much) but what about them? I genuinely curious and am interested with your thoughts and opinions.

Hi Anon!! This is a really big question, but I’ll do my best to answer it. I’m definitely gonna put most of this under a cut, because it got really, really long.

First of all, the relationship that I love in regards to the Will//Hannibal dynamic comes from the TV show Hannibal, which was written by Bryan Fuller and ran on NBC from 2013-2015. It was an extraordinarily unique and in-depth take on the Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham friendship that was based on the books, insofar that Will Graham was one of the few who deeply understood Hannibal Lecter prior to the revelation that he was a cannibal. Of course, Bryan took that concept several steps further.

My first suggestion? If you can stomach any kind of horror or gore, watch Hannibal. It is without a doubt the best television show I’ve ever seen, if only because it is visually beautiful, every character is complex and has clearly outlined motivations of their own, and is a really deeply intellectual piece of media. It’s not an easy watch, and I don’t mean that because of content. The story itself, the character drives, even the dialogue will challenge you. It’s not something you just sit down and understand, it really did take a lot of work for me to grasp the full spectrum of what was going on at any given time during my first watch. I’d never encountered something that pushed me that hard before, and even with a week between episodes or more (since I watched when it was originally airing), I was often left like ?????. Think of it like Black Mirror, except every episode is tied together. It’s gonna screw with you a little, so you’ll want to be prepared.

The thing other than the fantastic writing that brings this show and these characters to life: the actors. Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter presents a character that you better not take your eyes off even once. Hannibal says things so smoothly and with such conviction, but it’s only if you watch his face at all times that you will see the micro-expressions of what he is actually thinking and feeling. There’s a reason he’s often referred to as the Devil, as smoke.

Hugh Dancy as Will Graham presents a man who is haunted by his own desires from empathizing too closely with killers. He can feel what murderers feel, and that gives him a unique perspective. He puts himself inside their minds to recreate their thought processes as they kill, and that gets to him. It haunts him, and sticks with him. It puts him in the position of needing someone to help him find his way back to himself when he gets in too deep.

It’s such a unique dynamic. I really couldn’t tear myself away. And that’s only where their story begins.

It starts as a sense of curiosity. Hannibal by nature and necessity is a solitary creature, and he has been pretty damn happy that way. When Jack Crawford asks him to profile Will Graham and clear him for field work, it is a unique opportunity for him as an already-established killer to see inside the workings of the FBI. That’s advantageous for him, of course. He can then keep tabs on the investigation against him. But in the process, he discovers Will, who thinks like a killer. Will, who has forcibly shoved his own personality into a very safe box of isolation and rescued dogs and fly fishing, things that require control and perfection. Will uses these constructs as shields to keep the darkness inside him at bay. He absorbs killers to gain their insights, but once they are inside, he has a really hard time getting rid of them.

It may seem backwards, but despite Hannibal meeting other killers who are very much like him, he ultimately rejects them because he doesn’t want someone exactly like himself. He wants Will because he is so incredibly human, but trying so hard to restrain his own darkness. What Hannibal wants above all is to set him free, come hell or high water. And fundamental transformations can be exquisitely painful, even in their beauty. Hannibal wants to see what will happen.

The Hannibal/Will relationship doesn’t stay stagnant, ever. There is a constantly shifting dynamic of power once we reach S2 and Will is aware of Hannibal’s nature. Will puts himself in a position to learn more about Hannibal, and in doing so, finds himself feeling the pull that Hannibal described, discovering the ways in which they are so alike. And the tension in these scenes is indescribable. If you’ve seen any of the gifsets I’ve reblogged, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Every molecule of space between them is charged with intent. Every word is carefully weighted. Every glance is measured to not be too soon or too late, hoping to glimpse beneath the other’s veneer of civility and see the creature inside. They are so cruel to each other as they learn one another, but in their cruelty, they push each other to higher heights, and the friendship never quite fractures.

In a word, they get close. There are moments standing in firelight and shadow, genuine smiles shared, tension that builds and grows until every inch of darkness between them is thick with it. Flirtatious glances. Familiar, intimate touches that hold such rich subtext. They understand each other like no one else does. They stand on the very edge of becoming something more, becoming family, when everything collapses, and they are both devastated by it.

Their relationship is the very definition of “can’t live with him, can’t live without him”. They are described by others as being “identically different”, as being “nakama [friends, but more like… family. like a group of people tied together by life and circumstance who would not easily be broken apart]”.

Hannibal’s revelation of love for Will Graham comes in their separation. It hits him like a train, to be honest. It’s the first time the viewer realizes that underneath the very polite and elegant and put-together man that covers the vicious killer, he really does crave companionship. Even in his solitary life, Hannibal has never been actually solitary. He fills the gaps in with friends and acquaintances, people he cares for to an extent, but mostly people he uses for their advantageous nature. Will is the first person who really sees Hannibal down to his bones, and the loss of him, and the loss of their mutual potential, deeply wounds him.

Like. I can’t even fully explain all the things about these characters that get to me. I think the thing I like most is that, even as a serial killer, Hannibal is still so very human. He finds pleasure in art and architecture. He enjoys history and philosophy and educational pursuits. He’s a talented artist and musician and chef. He gets annoyed by rude people the same as the rest of us. The main difference is that he eats them.

This show is visceral. It’s a game of cat and mouse, a chessboard of intellectual bad decisions, but every choice is born from emotional need. And the best thing about it is that Bryan Fuller fully accepts, welcomes, and acknowledges the love between Hannibal and Will canonically in the show. Not just “haha that’s gay” jokes. Everyone else can see it. Everyone has some sort of parting shot about it. But in the end, even Will is faced with the point-blank realization that, yes, Hannibal is in love with him, and has the question turned back on him: but do you ache for him?

By the end, there is no doubt that the call has been heard, and the draw between them culminates in what Hannibal has really desired all along: he and Will hunting together, fighting together. Achilles and Patroclus, as they have been described by Hannibal himself.

This show is a masterpiece, honestly. It unfolds the confines of civility and sees predators set free. It sees them together, reunited. It sees them in love. It sees them from beginning to end, where even the end is not really the end.

I dearly, desperately hope for a season four of this show. I’m comforted by the fact that all the writers, producers, and actors have voiced their support of doing so, if they can find a production company to pick them up and get the rights of the other Hannibal characters [re: SotL] the way Bryan desires.

The fandom is incredible. Everyone is a little bit older than my prior fandoms, and people tend to be well-seasoned to the concept of reading what they enjoy and silently passing over things that are not to their tastes. There’s… not really any fighting the way there is in other fandoms. Those who disagree have civilized discussions, because the first and foremost rule of the fandom is the first and foremost rule of understanding Hannibal Lecter: “Whenever possible, one should always try to eat the rude.”

And the fandom is alive!! It’s actively creating new art and new gifsets and new fics and new everything every day, and not on a small scale, either. There are thousands of people still out here eagerly awaiting the revival of a truly groundbreaking show that showcased LGBT relationships (not just Hannibal and Will, mind you. Margot/Alana is real and alive and nourishes my soul to this day), a diverse cast, riveting and powerful female characters, and the kind of plotline and visual storytelling that the ancients would weep if they could see.

TLDR: I love this fandom. I love these characters. I love these monsters, and I see myself inside them in ways that is absolutely concerning to polite society. I love the imagery, the depth of morality. I love that it’s feasible for me to write a fic in which the characters can love each other and are constantly working around one another to achieve their own ends, and that every fic I read by everyone else has a different insight to their relationship. That every fic I read is a fucking masterpiece, seriously, oh my god, the quality of fiction in this fandom is so high, it’s amazing.

Join us, Anon. The Atlantic is a little chilly this time of year, but you’ll get used to it, I promise.

#hannibal nbc #hannibal #hannigram #luc replies #Anonymous #long post #meta #i hope this helps anon i just. really love them. i cannot even fully describe but i tried!!!

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theriannation · 6 years

Text

Therian Dictionary

We’ve covered some of these terms before, but this list is updated with several additions, more information, more history, and more references! See the separate post for references. https://theriannation.tumblr.com/post/174500949057/references-for-therian-dictionary

Terms are below, presented in alphabetical order.

Alt.horror.werewolves (AHWW): a Usenet group created on November 16, 1992. It was created for the discussion of horror movies and books containing werewolves. A year later, in 1993, members began to discuss how they spiritually identified as animals and felt more instinctual. AHWW was the origin of the online Therian community.

Alter-human: Alternative Humanity Personal Identity (AHPI) is "A category of personal identity which encompasses identification that is alternative to the common societal idea of humanity." You may decide to call yourself alter-human if you experience an internal identity that is beyond the scope of what is traditionally considered 'being human'. If you feel nonhuman but your experiences do not fit into Therianthropy or Otherkinity, you may want to learn more about Alter-humans.

Animal-hearted: when a person identifies as human but has a strong "connection with" or feels a "relation with" an animal. The term was coined on The Daemon Forum. It's definition was clarified by a member named Teddy on October 26, 2009.

This is not the same as being a Therianthrope, who identifies as an animal. "I identify WITH wolves." does not equal "I identify AS a wolf."

Some people may use the term Kith. The equivalent term in the Otherkin community is Other-hearted. To use the term correctly, a person who feels close to deer would say, "I am deer-hearted." or "I am deer kith."

Awakening: the process of realizing and accepting that you are a Therianthrope. Typically Therians report experiencing this phenomenon in early adolescence (generally between the ages of 10 to 15) though some have reported time frames for their awakening earlier and later in life. The term awakening was being used in the first days of the community, as early as 1994.

Cladotherianthrope/Cladotherian: a Therian who does not identify as a distinct species, but instead feels a broader identity encompassing an entire genus or family, such as Canis or Canidea, or a larger grouping. Cladotherianthropy was coined in 2003 on the now defunct Awereness Forums.

The term comes from the Greek words klados meaning "branch" and therion meaning "animal." The klados prefix was originally chosen because in scientific terms, a clade is a group of organisms believed to have evolved from a common ancestor, and all its lineal descendants, according to the principles of cladistics.

Contherianthrope (Contherian): a Therian who does not experience mental shifts, but is always in a state of both theriotype and human at the same time (passive). This is considered a level of integration.

The term was coined by Joshua Lion Templin on January 19, 1997. His work "A Short View of Modern Contherianthropy" was posted to AHWW in four parts.

"I bring forth then contherianthropy, adding 'con', from Latin 'contas', meaning unchanging. The unchanging is that of the single mixed agent and its continuous perception."

Copinglink (C'Linker): is a person who consciously creates a coping mechanism which centers around knowingly, willingly, and actively identifying as (or in some cases, with) the user's choice of a non-human entity. This term was coined by Who-Is-Page around September 2015 on Tumblr.

The term is meant to replace "copingkin" because that term implied a form of Otherkin which it is not, because being Otherkin is not consciously chosen.

A Copinglink is able to change and pick who/what they identify as/with as need dictates. This identity can be created by anyone, and thus, is not dictated by one's mental health.

This is not to be confused with instinctual and unconscious defense mechanisms/behaviors which can lead to Therianthropy or Otherkinity.

A person who is a Copinglink could also be a Therian or Otherkin at the same time as long as the theriotype or kintype was an unconscious identity that was not chosen. A person could also be Other-hearted while being a Copinglink.

Greymuzzle: an older member of the community who may be seen as wiser and more experienced. First used on AHWW, they were the 'backbones' of the community who had been in the group the longest.

A remark by Windrunner in the "Our History" section of the AHWW FAQ from 1996/1997 seems to suggest that Smash Graywolf coined or perpetuated this term.

To be considered a Greymuzzle, one has been actively involved in the community for approximately 10 years, around 30 years of age, or has garnered widespread respect in the greater community. Age is not always a factor, as some Therians do awaken in their adult years.

Unfortunately the term has been abused, so don't blindly trust others who label themselves a Greymuzzle. If you are unsure, it's okay to ask for proof of their time and involvement within the Therian community. If someone refuses to answer, then use caution.

Howl: a real life gathering or meeting of Weres/Therians, usually to go camping. The term was originally used on Alt.horror.werewolves. The first "Howl", the 1994 Harvest Howl, was organized by Smash Greywolf in Ohio, USA. To learn more and read about other notable Howls that followed, see references.

Otherkin: real, non-fictional people who identify as other than human. Otherkin identify as creatures from myth and legend, usually elves, faeries, and dragons. This is a sincere identity, not role-play. Being otherkin is a very individualistic thing: each otherkin reaches his own explanation for how and why he is an otherkin. There are both spiritual and psychological hypotheses for the causes or origins of feeling non-human.

The term was coined in 1990 by Torin in the Elfinkind Digest listserve. It is a variant of the word "otherkind," which referred to any creature that was not Elven. In the early 2000's it became an umbrella term that could include Vampires, Therianthropes and other people with animal self-images.

Paleotherianthrope (Paleotherian): a person who as an internal self-identification as an extinct species. The term appears on Alt.Horror.Werewolves in a thread from 1997. The term can appear as "paleokin" in the Otherkin community. Paleotherians are considered uncommon. Often they have feelings of being out of time and place.

Phytanthrope: a person who has an internal self-identification as a plant; experiencing phytanthropy. Comes from "phyto-" meaning plant and "-anthrope" meaning human. The term was created in 2013 by Darahagh (da-re-har-uh), a southern live oak. Plantkin is also an acceptable term that actually came into use earlier that phytanthrope around 2004 in a Livejournal community.

"It was a term I cobbled to together in in February 2013 for myself as a plant-identified person to use due to being tired of people saying otherkin are mythical creatures only even while plantkin being part of the otherkin community." -Darahagh

The term wereplant was being used on AHWW in the early 1990's, and a few people were reported to have identified as plants back then. In 2004 on the website Green Is More Than A Color the term "greenkin" was also used. In 2006 the term "woodkin" was coined on another Livejournal community, unfortunately this profile has been purged.

Polytherianthrope (Polytherian): identity with more than one species of nonhuman animal. Poly is a prefix meaning "many".

This is the current terminology. Polytherian replaced the old term Polywere which had first been use in 1996. It is not known exactly when the term polytherian became standard use within the community. It most likely came into use in 2005/2006 when the term Therianthrope was replacing Were.

Shift (Therianthropic): a temporary change in mentality, mood, sensory perception, or spirit that causes a Therianthrope to feel more instinctual or animalistic like the therioside in a non-physical manner.

Shifting has been discussed since the beginning of the online Therian community. "Your best mental transformation", is a discussion from AHWW which took place on December 1, 1993.

There will be a separate post about all of the types of shifts in the near future. Please also refer to that when available.

Shifter's Disease: "occurs when a person starts reading some therianthropic meaning into mundane, everyday occurrences." Individuals who are researching Therianthropy may begin to trick themselves into thinking that normal feelings and sensations that can be explained rationally, are actually therianthropic shifts or evidence of Therianthropy. This in turn, leads them to falsely identify as a Therian for a short period of time. This term was coined by the members of Shifters.org circa 2001.

This is similar to Medical Student's Disease (MSD) in which medical students perceive themselves to be experiencing the symptoms of a disease that they are studying.

Suntherianthrope (Suntherian): "a therian whose therioside (primary or sole therioside) is integrated into his baseline personality. However, that integration does not prevent him/her from having minor fluctuations of mood that feel slightly more animal, or slightly less animal. He/she can feel them both at the same time, human and animal. He/she can not mental shift into his/her base theriotype (whether primary or sole)."

The term was created by WordWolf on April 18th, 2005. It was not a community coined term. Instead WordWolf created the term to describe his own personal experiences. The terms Syntherianthropy and Syntherian are interchangeable. This is different from the accepted meaning of Contherian.

Therianthrope: a person experiencing Modern Therianthropy; a person who has an internal self-identification as a non-human species. Therianthropes understand that they are still physically human.

Therianthrope was being used in Alt.Horror.Werewolves as early as 1995/96. Therian is shortened slang or jargon that became commonly used around 2005. Before that, members of the community called themselves Weres.

The words therianthropy and therianthrope originate from the portmanteu of the Greek words Therios and Anthropos (animal and human respectively) which combined loosely translates to "human animal" or "animal man".

Therianthropy (Modern): is an identity and ontological phenomenon categorized by a deep integral or personal belief that an individual is to some degree, a non-human animal. This is not to be confused with historical therianthropy. Therianthropes are still human, understand that they have human bodies, and understand that physical shape-shifting is not possible.

The word Therianthropy originates from a portmanteu of the Greek words Therios and Anthropos (animal and human respectively) which, combined, loosely translate to "human animal" or "animal man".

"Therianthropy is an innate part of the person's life. Therianthropy is the recognition and acceptance of the animal within."

Therianthropy is a subjective belief based on personal experiences and not on scientific fact, with most Therians being "self-labelled" or "self-identified". Therefore, both spiritual and psychological hypotheses for its cause or origin are legitimate and acceptable in the community.

Theriomythic: can be used by individuals who straddle the Otherkin and Therian communities, in that they identify (non-physically) as one or more mythical type creatures (IE. Dragon, griffon, etc.). This term is used by people who feel that their theriotype/kintype is more wild and instinctual or a being that does not have what is considered an advanced culture (i.e. a dragon or unicorn that does not speak a language and that does not use magic). These individuals may feel more at home in the Therian community or find it easier to discuss their more feral shifts and experiences with Therianthropes.

The term seems to have been originally coined on the Therian Wilderness Forum in 2010 as theriomythos. It was then translated into Spanish as los theriomitos by Otherkin Hispano. It was re-translated from the Spanish into English as theriomythics by Akhila, on May 24, 2013.

Weremythic was used in an AHWW discussion on July 25, 1996.

"So, apparently the term, "theriomythic" isn't exactly a new concept in the therian community though one that didn't gain a lot of attention. More the new term, theriomythic, is people coming to a similar conclusion and use of phrase as others had once perhaps." - LionGoatSnake (aka House of Chimeras)

Theriotype/Therioside: now the most common words for the animal species which is an individual's nonhuman identity. The term came into use in 1999. Theriotypes are based on known animal species extant and extinct. Some Therianthropes believe that a theriotype develops as part of their mentality much in the same way that their personality develops.

An example of usage is "I have a whale therioside." It is also acceptable to say "I am a whale Therian." The term was developed as a replacement for the old words Wereside and Phenotype.

Vacillant Therianthrope (VacillantTherian): refers to a Therian whose animal side and human side are integrated such that one or the other may still come to the front of the mind noticeably stronger than the other, as needed or as desired. This describes a level of integration when shifts occur more gradually and smoothly, as if on a sliding scale, and shifts tend to follow a more consistent pattern. Although unexpected stimuli may trigger sharper or more sudden shifts.

This is a term coined by the community in 2004 or 2005. It is based on the word vacillate which means to alternate or waver.

Werecard: a personal profile from Alt.Horror.WereWolves. First used in 1994. Also considered a short questionnaire that allows individuals to share information about themselves with the larger community. Anyone could use the template and answer what they felt comfortable sharing with the community. When the Were card was developed, Therians were mostly of adult age. Today, it is not advisable for younger Therians to provide personal information such as their given name or location. A sample of the questions can been seen on the Therian Wiki.

#therian #otherkin #therian history #otherkin history #therian terminology

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