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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 7 months

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By: Colin Wright

Published: Mar 5, 2024

The field of “gender medicine” has been under intense scrutiny in recent years. This attention arises from the sharp increase in the number of children and adolescents—predominantly girls—seeking treatment, with some estimates indicating more than a 40-fold rise since 2010 in many Western countries.

[ Graphs from the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM) website. ]

Critics are particularly concerned with this previously overlooked branch of medicine because it treats what is fundamentally a psychological condition with extreme and irreversible body modification procedures that often result in infertility. This practice would be alarming enough if it were limited to adults, but its widespread application to children has prompted widespread alarm.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) is frequently referenced as the leading authority on transgender medicine, and its Standards of Care (SOC) are considered the gold standard. However, even a cursory examination of this ostensibly serious medical organization reveals significant issues. For instance, the latest version of their standards (SOC8), published in 2022, eliminated recommended minimum age limits for certain interventions, removed the ethics chapter entirely, and introduced a chapter on individuals who identify as eunuchs, exposing WPATH’s radical agenda.

The release of the “WPATH Files” by Environmental Progress delves deeper, exposing the extreme ideology driving the push to transition children, as revealed through WPATH’s internal communications. These documents highlight a discrepancy between the activist doctors’ private agendas and their public statements, suggesting that their outward confidence masks a reality: they are aware they are conducting a vast, troubling experiment on mentally distressed children and adults.

The details of the WPATH Files will be fleshed out in many articles in the coming days and weeks. Rather than rehash the shocking details and revelations, I want to focus on a particularly striking aspect of the Files. This aspect metaphorically resembles a situation where first graders are tasked with overseeing kindergartners.

The section in question, titled “WPATH Knows Children Do Not Understand the Effects of Hormone Therapy,” features video footage from an internal Identity Evolution Workshop held by WPATH on May 6, 2022. During this workshop, panel members candidly discuss, contrary to their Standards of Care, why it isn’t possible to obtain proper informed consent from young patients seeking cross-sex hormones.

Canadian endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Metzger pointed out the difficulty in explaining complex medical information to individuals “who haven’t even had biology in high school yet.” He noted that even adults often lack a basic medical understanding of concepts that medical and mental health professionals consider basic knowledge. He emphasized that children do not comprehend how hormones function, as evidenced by their mistaken belief that they can selectively masculinize or feminize individual traits with cross-sex hormones, not understanding that hormones affect any tissue with the appropriate receptor systemically.

I find it darkly amusing that while these doctors express concern over their patients’ lack of basic biology knowledge regarding hormones, biologists like myself express dismay at the profound ignorance of basic sex biology exhibited by these medical professionals. Indeed, the entire premise of “gender-affirming care” rests on extreme biological pseudoscience.

Proponents of gender medicine hold the belief that each individual has a unique, unchangeable “gender identity,” akin to a soul, that can be discerned as early as three years old, and perhaps even earlier. They argue that biological sex—being male or female—is a social construct rather than a natural fact. According to them, “male” and “female” are merely arbitrary groupings of traits we have culturally labeled as sex-specific. They suggest that rather than individual humans being distinctly male or female, a person’s sex exist on various “levels,” including chromosomes, hormones, genitals, behavior, and even brain structure. Most consequentially, they believe that a person’s sex can vary along a spectrum at each level, potentially leading to discrepancies between them. When a person’s “sex assigned at birth,” based on observing their genitals, does not align with a person’s brain sex (i.e. “gender identity”), this person is deemed transgender.

The objective of gender medicine is to align a person’s physical sex with their self-perceived brain sex through “gender-affirming care,” which may include social transition, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery.

[ A graphic depicting the goal of gender-affirming care. The top scale with a male and female symbol represents a person’s physical sex, and the bottom scale with a pink and blue brain represent a persons “brain sex” (i.e. “gender identity”). In this case, the person has physical traits that place them toward the female end of the physical sex spectrum, but has a “gender identity” that’s closer to the male end of the brain sex spectrum. The goal of gender-affirming care is to modify the body with hormones and surgeries to eliminate the perceived brain/body mismatch. ]

None of this is remotely scientific.

In reality, males and females are real natural categories universally defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) an organism has the function to produce, and in humans it cannot be altered with hormones and surgeries.

The controversy surrounding “gender-affirming care,” particularly its impact on children and vulnerable young adults, often overshadows the critical examination of the underlying biological misconceptions. It’s crucial to challenge the flawed premise that sex exists as a spectrum on multiple levels and can be altered through medical intervention. This premise ignores the fundamental biological differences between males and females, which entails that the objectives of gender-affirming care are unattainable. Simply put, you cannot fix a “mismatch” between different levels of sex if those levels do not in fact exist.

Biologists have wrongfully assumed that medicine could not stray far from the biological sciences, given its task in repairing and maintaining healthy human bodies. Fixing gender medicine will require normal biologists to challenge the sex pseudoscience rotting its foundatiocpsn. Until then, we will continue to focus on treating symptoms rather than addressing the core issues.

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dreamsatdusk · 11 months

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I've been thinking about this a lot and I need to share it with someone: I'm not going to lie by saying that I understand the feudal politics of tsarist Russia, but, at least on a superficial level, it's incomprehensible that no peasant resistance movement and no peasant uprising has taken place in Ravka after years of intensified exploitation and precariousness made worse by the geopolitical/war scenario.

Like… From what we can see of court life, the royal family and the nobles - although they don't live as luxuriously as they might if the country wasn't in the situation it was in - continue to live a comfortable and carefree life, with items that should be delicacies in that situation being part of their daily lives. This shows that the taxes collected from the peasants have increased so that their greed can continue uninterrupted, doesn't it? And, in a reality where the citizens of Ravka are being crushed by the price of lack of assistance to the families of deceased soldiers, of the maintenance of the national army, of poverty, of servitude (work accidents, planting difficulties, hunger, taxes) and of The Fold, how come they haven't done anything yet?

PS: As someone who hasn't consumed the official Shadow and Bone media, I have another question. Do you believe that Ravka's trade relationship or even political alignment* with Fjerda and Shu Han was maintained on some level during the reign of Alexander III, since the monarchs of the countries technically did not have a divergent policy (the tsar did not take any active steps to protect the grisha to keep them in a state of vulnerability and to control the power of the Second Army)? In your perception, how and why did or could tensions between them exist beyond the grisha problem?

* I faithfully believe that the leaders of these countries – or at least of Fjerda and Shu Han armies – could meet unofficially, as many liberal and far-right leaders have done in history, with the British royal family and Hitler being an example.

First off, huge apologies for the delay on responding. I’m working on replies to all three Asks and will post each as I get done. I’ve been dealing with some health stuff and between pain and tired brain, my focus for writing (and tons of other stuff, sigh) keeps getting zapped. But I really appreciate the messages! Hopefully the replies are at least somewhat worth the wait.

I think the question of revolution in Ravka is a very interesting one and likely has several aspects feeding into it, both in-universe and out of universe.

On the latter point, I suspect broader political implications didn’t factor into what the author ’s plans were for the story. It was her first set of books, it was YA, she was very focused on the situation of Grisha powers, etc. There is a move to more storyline complexity in later books like SoC and in KoS, we even have mention of a revolutionary: Andrei Zhirov, who is indicated as having been a “radical” in Nikolai’s grandfather’s time, executed for treason.

In-universe, Alina just doesn’t strike as someone who was likely very exposed to those ideas. While her origins were a peasant's, it’s clear that upon arriving in Keramzin, she was brought up in an environment that supported the nobility and the royal family and did not think that highly of the poorer people of Ravka. If Alina was taught of past revolution attempts, I’m sure it was couched in denigrating terms. The Keramzin children may not even have been taught such things in whatever history lessons they received. Also, Keramzin itself sounded like it wasn’t a very fancy environment. It sounded like people were well fed, they shelter and beds, and all of that, but it wasn’t draped in the opulence shown of the rich in Os Alta. When Alina first walks through the Grand Palace and sees the decor, she thinks:

I’d always assumed that Ravka’s hungry peasants and poorly supplied soldiers were the result of the Shadow Fold. But as we walked by a tree of jade embellished with diamond leaves, I wasn’t so sure.

Later in S&B, Alina and Mal have a conversation:

He wasn’t at all shocked to hear of the contempt with which most Grisha regarded the King. Apparently, the trackers had been grumbling more and more loudly amongst themselves about the King’s incompetence. "The Fjerdans have a breech-loading rifle that can fire twenty-eight rounds per minute. Our soldiers should have them, too. If the King could be bothered to take an interest in the First Army, we wouldn’t be so dependent on the Grisha. But it’ll never happen,” he told me. Then he muttered, “We all know who’s running the county.”

So THAT is super interesting. We see that a group of people of non-Grisha, peasant origins, has noticed stuff sucks for them in their area of experience (the military) AND that they blame it on the Grisha/the Darkling to some degree and not the king alone. I know that some readers interpret some of the Darkling’s remarks to indicate he is deliberately trying to suppress Ravkan technological development to keep the Grisha relevant. And I can see how one could interpret the situation that way. But I have not done so personally, because it doesn’t really make sense to me in terms of the intelligence the story tells us he has and his long view of matters, his ability to read “flow of power”, all of that. Yes, he has recognized that technology will increasingly put more people on par with Grisha capabilities and that’s a threat. But it’s not a threat that’s going to stop increasing in OTHER COUNTRIES just because Ravka doesn’t have, for example, better rifles. There’s nothing to indicate he thinks that it will either.

I also don’t think the story supports the idea the Darkling is really running the country. That said, he may be a big part of the reason it hasn’t gotten smooshed by Fjerda recently or something, as he does seem to spend a lot of time in the field working with his people, while the King? The King does not.

Anyway, we see that finished guns are something that comes over the Fold to reach eastern Ravka. Seems likely most if not all of them are imports, which adds to the difficulty: we know there have been blockades of Ravka ports on the True Sea. I also suspect nice rifles aren't cheap. We also see that the nobles seem to have been resistant to upgrading what production capabilities they are responsible for on the front of things like textiles. Nikolai coaxed some into doing more; there is no reason to think his father was attempting that. Ravka is repeatedly mentioned as being behind other countries in innovation and I don’t think there’s solid reason to think the Darkling is to blame for their failure to weave cotton, etc. in a more efficient manner. . But I do think there’s a lot of anti-Grisha sentiment running through Ravka that IS to blame for the idea that unhappy soldiers would think so.

The situation is also complicated by the fact of what came up in the Crows books and Nikolai duology: things like Fjerda leveraging enslaved Grisha for all sorts of stuff. Again, (out of universe), I don’t think the author had conceived of any of that at the time of writing S&B. But now that it exists, it raises questions such as, okay, Fjerda’s technological development is apparently being accelerated by Fabrikators, etc. And furthermore, things are so incredibly locked down information-wise that the Darkling has no idea that his people are being used in that fashion and that it relates to why Fjerda is innovating more than Ravka. Some intriguing fanfic possibilities there though.

(I am now distracted by the idea of Tailor abilities being more broadly cultivated for espionage purposes, but that’s another thing complicated by the evolution of the books. Genya could only do little things, per her own words, in the original trilogy. But then later she’s doing MUCH more, people who aren’t specialized in it are doing much more, people with practically NO training are executing minor miracles…. Yeah, a small mess to rationalize.)

To bring it back around to the original topic, taken all together:

To an unclear extent and degree, there have been revolutionaries in Ravka’s past.

The power of anti-Grisha sentiment in Ravka has likely diluted the amount of blame placed on the royal family and nobility of Ravka, compared to similar situations in Russia.

Many people are not in a position to pull all the pieces together to understand why Ravka is in the state that it's in. That doesn't mean they would not revolt, but it would have an impact on their approach, the likelihood, etc.

Ravka, Shu Han, Fjern Relations

If we take all of the tidbits revealed across all of the Grishaverse books and put them together, I think it shows that there has been on and off war between the three countries ever since Ravka became a nation in its own right (and prior) and that they have had periods of relative peace between wars.

It seems like they were not actively engaged in a hot war, so to speak, at the time of the S&B trilogy, but had been engaged in combat with Fjerda not all that long prior to it - Nikolai fought in the Halmhend campaign against Fjerda during his stint in the infantry, when he was barely 18. He later refers to an area on the border as territory having been mostly taken back by Ravka during that campaign. There's also a quote somewhere in the trilogy that implies they aren't currently fighting on two fronts, but may be again soon.

We know from the end of S&B that there were ambassadors from Fjerda on the skiff when the Fold was expanded, as well as a “delegation” from Shu Han (they seem to be lumped into the overall ambassador group in later references). During KoS, a Fjerdan ambassador is at one of the formal dinners in Os Alta. Vasily negotiated with Fjerda in S&S, and even though it turned out they were in cahoots with the Darkling at the time, the point is that there was a BELIEF that good faith negotiation was possible. In RoW, we learn Tatiana, Nikolai’s mother, had been a Fjerdan princess: “a younger daughter sent far from home to forge an alliance with Ravka that no one intended to adhere to.”

In KoS, Shu Han is seen as an option from which Nikolai might find a suitable bride (though again it turned out that this negotiation was not actually in good faith). And I have suggested previously that the fact tea is readily available to all social classes in Ravka in spite of the Shadow Fold could quite possibly be due to ongoing trade with Shu Han.

So in short, I absolutely think there were ongoing non-war relations between the countries, with the degree varying at different times.

In your perception, how and why did or could tensions between them exist beyond the grisha problem?

That’s a really interesting question. For Fjerda, I would expect resource contention would be a factor regardless of the Grisha. Fjerda seems to be a conglomerate stand-in for Scandinavia, but it is entirely above Ravka, Tsibeya sounds like a stand-in for Siberia, Siberia has harsh, enduring winters, and yet Fjerda is north of not!Siberia? Where I’m going with this is I’ve long had questions about the details of Fjerda’s climate, farm land, etc. and what it means for their society and so on. So I suspect they'd really like some additional land that's not as cold.

She Han, I have less of a sense of what could be the in-universe drive, beyond also wanting more territory. It seems Shu Han though, likely has a nicer overall climate than the other two.

EDIT: I realized I should clarify on the point about Fjerda enslaving Grisha. I realize Fjerda was using parem and that situation is later than the Ravkan civil war. I have not gotten to the Crows books for my detailed reread yet and so have not confirmed the specifics of what's revealed about timing. But I do remember some things that at least suggested some of the coercion of Grisha predated the use of parem (obviously the options would have been different without parem). If I feel otherwise after the reread, I'll post about it at that time ;)

#Grishaverse #Grishaverse Meta #Shadow and Bone #The Grisha Trilogy #The Darkling

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variousqueerthings · 7 months

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happy aromantic awareness week!

I've been slowly exploring and poking at my aromanticism throughout the last year or so. while I've been happy to id as such for about 10 years (however long it was after I learnt the term) I definitely felt a certain reticence about thinking too much about it, and mostly deep-dived into other facets of my self -- aromanticism makes even other queer and lgbt+ people uncomfortable, and since I was living my life as I wanted to anyway, I was able to be open about it without insisting on understanding (call that a mix of internalised aro-phobia, fear, and probably just not being ready)

I think as I get older the aro part of me feels like it's coming to the fore as the constructs of society affect me more and more. it's not easy being a part of the world without conforming to normative ideas about relationships and family

this has made me both more radical in my aro-based politics, while also asking more questions on a personal level: what do I want out of my time around other people? what matters to me about connection?

it's been leading me to exploring the term "loveless" -- a pretty heady word I think, a lot of people have a kneejerk reaction about it, but it feels good to me. this could be something in flux (similar to how i inhabited what I call a void space in terms of gender before feeling comfortable exploring masculinity-as-drag, and with asexuality before I started poking at kink), but honestly I've never understood the term or its apparent accompanying feelings. I enjoy the company of other people, I like sharing things with them, and I have connections that for one reason or another have shared more than others due to the ways we've met and our history together, but I'm also not deeply emotionally affected by people on the whole, nor do I feel like I'm "missing" a certain kind of connection that I need to pursue to feel whole

I mostly spend time with others through the lens of specific community spaces, in which we have the same goal (be that political, artistic, fandom-based, sharing rent, etcetc.) and that's really what I want -- shared goals, having a fun time, building spaces, communally caring for one another

so that's where my aro-based poking has lead me so far. it's still a tad reticent, because... well I do worry. I worry that people in my life will take this to mean I'm uncaring about what we've done together or the plans we've made, or that I'm in need of some kind of fixing, and I'm worried as I have been since I was a kid that in the next 10, 20, 30+ years I could really be struggling to survive, because I'm not able to create the kind of social safety nets that are "acceptable" in the eyes of government structures

I do have a safety net currently, and it's a good one I think, with people I really like, and who care about me, but its legal ins and outs, as well as my internal being that will always have this particular lens through which I experience the world, make it less stable than if I'd been in a romantic relationship or even if I experienced "love" in some other way (and tbh ending up in this scenario was pure happenstance and I'd never have been looking for it otherwise)

so to think about the future: what forms of connections do we value, materially? what kind of people do we allow to thrive and under what structures? how do we build (queer) community spaces in which we provide care for one another that aren't predicated on finding the exact special person/s that potentially leave others behind? how can this kind of ethos on a massive, societal scale, potentially make us more able to care for people with no social safety nets, especially homeless, disabled, elderly, and underage people, who get stuck in systems that can't -- and often won't -- adequately support them?

and what sort of connections do you like forming that aren't strictly romantic or fall under "the special person" categories? personally I just joined the local theatre group and am going to their social events and it's been a massive boost to my self-confidence

#aromantic #aromanticism #aro stuff #me #personal

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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In a time when life expectancy in the U.S. is declining for the first time in decades and Americans can expect on average to enjoy even fewer years of retirement, Republicans are considering a radical plan to shrink the retirement window.

House Republicans have been working out the details of their deeply unpopular plan to cut Social Security and Medicare in order to deepen poverty and shackle people to the labor force further into old age.

The party is considering a proposal to raise the retirement age for Social Security to 70, per The Washington Post, which means that workers and retirees would have to work an additional 3 to 4 years to receive full benefit. This proposal would mostly affect younger workers who have not yet started to receive benefits from the program.

Under this proposal, Americans could expect to be able to enjoy retirement for only about six years, if the most recent life expectancy estimates hold: In 2021, the average life expectancy in the U.S. dropped to 76 years and one month.

This is 2 years and 9 months less than the pre-pandemic average, which is a larger drop than other wealthy countries had experienced in the same period of time. It is also already harder to retire in the U.S. than in other countries, as older Americans have a higher poverty rate than those in other wealthy countries; by contrast, over a million people in France are striking to protest the government’s proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 to qualify for a full government pension.

The GOP is also considering a proposal for panels that would recommend changes to Social Security and Medicare, which are at risk of facing solvency issues in coming decades thanks in part to Republicans’ efforts to chip away at the program for years. This supposed solution would likely be crafted to ensure that the panel would suggest cuts to the program — but could be done in a way that makes it seem as though the GOP isn’t directly responsible for the cuts.

Cutting Social Security and Medicare could have disastrous consequences for middle- and lower-class Americans, who are already having trouble affording basic expenses like medical care. Social Security is the single most effective anti-poverty program by far in the U.S., even with payouts that are still too low to prevent poverty for many. Medicare is similarly an extremely effective anti-poverty program, and, importantly, helps millions of Americans afford medical care that would otherwise be out of reach.

“We have no choice but to make hard decisions,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Oklahoma), who leads the Republican Study Committee, the largest House GOP caucus which endorsed the retirement benefit age last year. “Everybody has to look at everything.”

Democratic lawmakers have said that Republicans are focusing on Social Security solvency because they think cutting the program under President Joe Biden could hurt Democrats.

If they were truly worried about the funding of the program and maintaining its anti-poverty effects, Republicans could support efforts to make it so that the rich pay an equal share of their income into Social Security as the working class does, for instance; a proposal introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) last year to “scrap the cap” at which people’s incomes are taxed for the program would fully fund the program until 2096, while also upping payments by $2,400 a year.

Democrats in the House, meanwhile, have advocated for decreasing the Medicare eligibility age to 60 or even 55, which would provide tens of millions of people with easier access to health care.

Implementing a change like this would be popular among voters. Polling last year by Data for Progress found that a bipartisan majority of Americans support raising taxes on those making over $400,000 in order to fund Social Security expansion. Meanwhile, more recent polling by Data for Progress found that a majority of voters — Democrat, independent or Republican — say that Republicans should allow the debt limit to be raised without cuts to Social Security or Medicare.

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jewishdainix · 2 years

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English Books I Own Tierlist

Gonna be honest I almost put Six of Crows in A and Crooked Kingdom in B but then I listened to Trouble by Valerie Broussard and remembered the soc radicalism era as @ravenousgf called it and had to put them higher

#My books #Books tierlist

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ravenousgf · 2 years

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tbh. missing the soc radicalism era

#im too scard to venture into the main tag to find it inundated w show stuff lol #and im wayyy less harsh on the show now than a year ago bc ive started seeing it as a completely diff work of art separate from the duology #but i want to talk extensively abt the books JUST abt the books. so so bad #need more soc mutuals tbh #scared* lmao not going back and changing that typo #raven talks #six of crows

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samwebsteruniblog · 2 years

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Penguin Book Cover

Complete Process

-Research

To start this project I wanted to look at all the books in a bit more detail, I wanted to get a better understanding of their concepts and story to help me visualise potential art direction for each book. To start I went through the blurbs and meanings.

-To Kill a Mocking Bird, by Harper Lee

‘Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice.’ ‘In this story of innocence destroyed by evil, the 'mockingbird' comes to represent the idea of innocence. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence."’

-Animal Farm, by George Orwell

‘When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master, Mr Jones, and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless elite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control.’ ‘The grand theme of Animal Farm has to do with the capacity for ordinary individuals to continue to believe in a revolution that has been utterly betrayed. Orwell attempts to reveal how those in power—Napoleon and his fellow pigs—pervert the democratic promise of the revolution.’

-In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

‘Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved.’ ‘In Cold Blood is a new form of journalism that is referred to as a “nonfiction novel,” which tells, as if it were a novel, the story of how Dick Hickock and Perry Smith conspired, prepared, and killed the Clutter family in rural Kansas in the fall of 1959′

-A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking

‘A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?’

-How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran

‘Caitlin Moran wrote How To Be a Woman with the goal of making feminism more approachable for every woman by telling stories of her own life's struggles. She wants women to stop seeing feminists as radical man-haters and to start seeing them as advocates for true equality.’

-James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl

‘When his parents are unceremoniously eaten by a rhinoceros that escapes from London Zoo, James is forced to go and live with his unpleasant aunts. Through a series of peculiar and magical happenings, James finds himself in a giant peach with a bunch of friendly giant insects for travelling companions.’

-Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman

‘They've been friends since they were children, and they both know that's as far as it can ever go. Noughts and Crosses are fated to be bitter enemies - love is out of the question. Then - in spite of a world that is fiercely against them - these star-crossed lovers choose each other.’

-The Outsiders ,by S. E. Hinton

The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs.

-Penguins Briefs

This has given me a bit more information on each book I now will be looking into a few that catch my eye from content alone. I am interested in How to be a woman, Noughts and Crosses, The outsiders and Animal farm. I am now going to take a look at each brief for these books and see penguins guide on a successful cover to help me see if that can thin my choices.

‘The outsiders, The original teenage rebel story . . . The Socs’ idea of having a good time is beating up Greasers like Ponyboy. Ponyboy knows what to expect and knows he can count on his brothers and friends – until the night someone takes things too far. S.E. Hinton was only seventeen when she wrote The Outsiders. Told in a direct, first-person voice, it is a miracle of honesty with immediate appeal and is still every bit as powerful now as when it was first published in 1967. You are invited to design a whole new cover look for The Outsiders, in order to bring this classic to a new generation of readers, ensuring that this timeless story remains an integral part of every teenager’s bookshelf.’ This book sounds like a lot of fun with ideas of coming to age, rebellion and mistakes. I am also impressed by the age of the authour at the time when she wrote such a successful story. This brief needs to appeal to a new generation of readers.

‘Noughts and Crosses, So you are going to kill me... You set me up so your friends could capture me. You’re real good at letting others do your dirty work... First published in 2001 Noughts & Crosses deals with racism, terrorism, the class system and the artificial divides we always seem to put between ourselves and others. It is as relevant now as it was then.’ At first glance this seems to take inspiration from classic love stories like Romeo and Juliet but modernises them with newer first world problems, it deals with gritty often taboo topics so would be a really interesting task to visualise these issues.

‘Animal Farm, Orwell's chilling 'fairy story', is a timeless and devastating satire of idealism betrayed by power and corruption.When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless élite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced with another. 'Animal Farm is a timeless satire on the central tragi-comedy of all politics—that is, the tragi-comedy of corruption by power' Timothy Garton Ash‘It is the book for everyone and Everyman, its brightness undimmed after fifty years’ - Ruth Rendell‘Remains our great satire of the darker face of modern history’ - Malcolm Bradbury’. Im drawn to this book for its visual identity that already exists in other covers, however the political aspect could be fairly difficult to represent without reading the book in full.

‘How to be a Woman, It’s a good time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven’t been burnt as witches since 1727. However, a few nagging questions do remain. . . Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should we use Botox? Do men secretly hate us? And why does everyone ask you when you're going to have a baby?Part memoir, part rant, Caitlin answers the questions that every modern woman is asking.‘This might just be the funniest intelligent book ever written’ Stylist ‘Moran’s writing sparkles with wit and warmth. Like the confidences of your smartest friend’ Simon Pegg It would almost be unkind to call this an important book, because what it mostly is is engaging, brave and consistently, cleverly, naughtily funny, but actually it is important that we talk about this stuff’ Katy Guest Independent on Sunday’ This book seems like a lot of fun to create visually, I also think the topic is very important and it should be spoken about and expressed to a new generation.

-Penguins guide to a successful cover

The cover design should encapsulate the essence or key themes of the book in an imaginative, instant and engaging way.

The design should give the prospective reader a sense of the tone and content of the book, and appeal to the broadest possible audience for it.

Evoke an emotion in the reader similar to the emotion when reading.

Be an attractive piece of design.

Be an original and unexpected interpretation of the brief.

Stand out, whilst still appealing to readers in the target audience.

Have a strong use of typography.

Have executed the use of colour carefully.

Use type, images and colour that work seamlessly together.

All elements of the cover (front, back and spine) need to work together.

The spine needs to be clear.

-Existing book covers

Here I wanted to look at existing book covers of the books I'm interested in redesigning, I wanted to get a feel for the visual work that represents and sells these books to help inspire me on picking a book but to also help me start to think of new ways to bring these stories to life in a new audience. I also looked at the authors other books and books with similar themes.

-Chosen Book, Animal Farm

I am going to pick Animal Farm I am interested in the concept and will try and listen to the book while I continue with this project, I was interested in How to be a woman however I don't think I could create it successfully or meaningfully without individual experience. So by picking a fiction book I feel like it could be a more successful project. So after this I then focused purely on this books story and message and researched this in more depth. I started by looking at the summary and drawing out points of interest that could be explored.

Quest for equality

Russian Revolution

Personified animals

Totalitarian Government

Animalism, 7 Commandments.

Soviet Union

George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair

Corruption

Exploitation

Deception

Idealism

Apathy

Characters

Old Major, Boar, Carl Marks.

Snowball, Boar, Abstract of evil.

Napoleon, Boar, Communist Tyrant.

Squealer, Pig, Propaganda Machine.

Mr Jones, Man, Corrupt Government.

Pilkington, Man, Allied Countries.

Frederick, Cruel Man, Hitler.

Boxer, Horse, Uneducated exploited working class.

Whimper, Lawyer, Profit of Dictators.

Sheep, Ignorant masses.

Benjamin, donkey, Ignorant complacent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFP1IMyKyy4&ab_channel=GradeSaver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4wze-K9G3A&t=29s&ab_channel=CourseHero

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIZ8i9UUQMI&ab_channel=ClickView

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XMeoJbpL-k&ab_channel=Lisa%27sStudyGuides

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGqrR_UZGPs&ab_channel=FirstRateTutors

Further Research

As this story is an allegory it is important that the work represents and portrays these symbolisms successfully, for that I need to understand the context in as much detail as I can, these summaries have been very helpful so far.

‘Radical leftist revolutionaries overthrew Russia's Czar Nicholas II, ending centuries of Romanov rule. The Bolsheviks established a socialist state in the territory that was once the Russian Empire. A long and bloody civil war followed.’

‘Most industries were owned by private industrialists. Though the government supervised factories’ working hours and wages of the workers, but still rules were broken.’

‘All political parties were illegal in Russia before 1914. ‘

‘Between 1928 and 1940, Stalin enforced the collectivization of the agricultural sector. Rural peasants were forced to join collective farms. Those that owned land or livestock were stripped of their holdings. Hundreds of thousands of higher-income farmers, called kulaks, were rounded up and executed, their property confiscated.’

‘The grand theme of Animal Farm has to do with the capacity for ordinary individuals to continue to believe in a revolution that has been utterly betrayed. Orwell attempts to reveal how those in power—Napoleon and his fellow pigs—pervert the democratic promise of the revolution. The emotional force of the novel comes from the author's depictions of those ordinary animals who unthinkingly give themselves in good faith to working for the very system by which they are ruthlessly exploited.’

‘Drawing on fable conventions, Orwell tells a farmyard story, casting revolutionary leaders Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), and Stalin as pigs, which—along with other common farm animals such as horses and hens—rebel against the tyranny of tsar-like farmer Mr. Jones. Set on a small English farm, the novel follows a collective of working animals that, as the pigs exploit them anew, toil pathetically day after day in the belief that they are remaking the farm as a republic.’

‘Napoleon later revises the history with contradictory details—announcing that Snowball actually fought alongside Jones against the animals. When the animals resist the new story, the pig Squealer (a master deceiver) convinces them that their memories are faulty. This pattern of firsthand experience superseded by revisionist propaganda underscores the tragedy, as Orwell sees it, of ordinary individuals who forego their better judgment in letting a totalitarian regime dictate a false reality.’

These sources and analysis will help me draw clear links to Orwell's fiction and reality, it will also help me continue with my research picking out specifics in both worlds to help me visualise the concepts of animal farm.

https://byjus.com/question-answer/what-are-the-main-causes-of-the-russian-revolution/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/history-of-the-soviet-union

https://www.gale.com/open-access/animal-farm#:~:text=In%20his%20short%20novel%20Animal,Stalin%20(1879%E2%80%931953).

Alongside this research I also wanted to look at existing art for Animal farm and then I will be looking at other relevant visual sources such as soviet era propaganda, George Orwell's other novels likes 1984 and more.

Visual Research

Looking at different book art and art inspired by the story,

Illustration art by Ralph Steadman’s,

Work on Behance,

Properganda Art,

Animal Farm theatre design,

Penguin Book Covers,

I know that to represent this book I want to create an original idea not just a design I want to create a cover that stands out from the existing covers but still heavily links to the novel, for this I will revisit the story’s connotations and look into these meanings and ideologies further. When I think of Russian Symbolism I think of vodka, cold weather and Russian nesting dolls. These don't link directly to soviet union Russia however if I was to experiment with these ideas Imo sure there could be links visually. I do quite like the idea of using Russian dolls as it fits nicely into the books story by having ideas and ideologies passed down, its also quite fitting with the links to Russia.

Potential Ideas

-Russian Nesting Dolls

‘Matryoshka dolls, otherwise known as Russian nesting dolls are one of Russia’s most iconic toys and vintage symbols. These stackable and nestable dolls resemble a vibrant babushka, or traditional Russian grandmother. The very first matryoshka doll came about thanks to Sergey Malyutin in the late 1800s. Just a decade or so later, the doll won the prestigious bronze medal at Paris’ World Fair.’

The way I would use them would be quite different than they are intended it would be almost opposite to the values these dolls share, however I think the visual representation of the ‘equality’ shown throughout the book could be really successful. I will have to learn more about these dolls before committing to the potential idea.

‘Matryoshka dolls are often designed to follow a particular theme; for instance, peasant girls in traditional dress. Originally, themes were often drawn from tradition or fairy tale characters, in keeping with the craft tradition—but since the late 20th century, they have embraced a larger range, including Russian leaders.’

‘In the late 1980s and early 1990s during Perestroika, freedom of expression allowed the leaders of the Soviet Union to become a common theme of the matryoshka, with the largest doll featuring then-current leader Mikhail Gorbachev. These became very popular at the time, affectionately earning the nickname of a Gorba or Gorby, the namesake of Gorbachev. With the periodic succession of Russian leadership after the collapse of the Soviet Union, newer versions would start to feature Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, and Dmitry Medvedev.’

I think that using Russian dolls would be a really powerful way to show the ideas being passed along down the chain to the most innocent, I think that because Russian leaders have already been created as nesting dolls it adds a layer off my original worry which was the dolls aren't representing there usual fertility.

I don't want to commit to any idea just yet so I will continue to add to this research and think of other potential ways to show this story in a unique way.

Experimenting with Composition

Here I began to experiment with the layout, I didn't have a finalised idea but I knew I needed to roughly begin experimenting with the format of book covers and spine. I also thought that getting used to the space it could help me chose an idea from my research based on the frame to work with. These are really quick experiments using squares to represent the use of Russian dolls, I found that a lot of these didn't look like they would work. I thought it was really hard to create a composition that clearly gives space to a back cover and titles etc. A few ideas were created that would be really cool to refine further to see if they could work, all of them being numbers 7, 8 and 9. These will be ones I will try out with some further experimentation. I also did a few rough drawings of the nesting dolls to see how they work with different shapes and stacked upon one another, again these are really quick and basic just to help me visualise the concept quickly.

Refining these composition ideas,

After experimenting with a few rough composition ideas I now I have an idea to use and to refine, I'm thinking of stacking up the dolls half open to show the ideologies being passed down through the animals. I am thinking of doing the main doll as the only animal as they will be the only full doll, the others will be a representation of their beliefs and who George Orwell based the characters on. So it's likely that these will be in uniforms/people clothes. I have a little template of 3 stacked up however I will also think about adding a fourth doll depending on the characters. I have done previous research into who the animals represent, I will take a closer look at the story to make sure that they stack in order of events or rumours like in the book.

Before going into the design I wanted to look at other illustration artists, to help me pick the style most fitting for this work. I am leaning towards water colour because I personally think it looks really well and means I don't have to be too realistic with the character designs. The artists I looked at where born or lived through the time of the Russian revolution, though they aren't Russian I found it unhelpful looking at artists way before the soviet union.

Water Colour Artists

-Paul Klee, I really like Klee’s use of colour, creating unique shapes and patterns with only a handful of colours. His work feels minimalistic yet every time I look back at the paintings I see something new.

-Winslow Homer, the detail in these watercolours are completely different to Klee and shows the range of using watercolours as a median.

Charles Demuth, I am drawn to these surrealist almost collage like watercolours as they are an altered state of reality similar to the altered worlds characters on animal farm exist in.

Development

I then began to assign each layer to a character, the first layer being Old Majors, then snowball, Frederick or Squealer and then Napoleon. I started by doing rough sketches which I then was going to colour with water colour paints however when I started this they didn't turn out well at all and I instantly didn't like it so I decided to create them digitally but editing them and manipulating the design to look like it was water colours.

I then experimented with the fonts I wanted a messy font so I experimented and manipulated different punk and gothic fonts till I found something I liked.

I also created a spine I have a few different versions already and will continue to experiment with the composition until I find one I want to keep. However I wanted some mock ups to show in my tutorial so I am using the one I find the most successful though this could change as I still have to create the back cover for the book.

Mock ups for tutorial,

Changes after the tutorial,

I was told to change the font sizes and to experimenting with text to fill in the white space, as I was doing this even changing the colour and opacity it felt very busy and I much preferred the white space to draw attention to the illustration of the cover. I then made the back cover, as I was designing the back cover I had to redesign the spine and front cover to make everything match as the different colour font felt too harsh on its own when I looked at the overall net of the design.

Final Design,

The design here is the most successful at first I didn't love the red text however now that it is equal amongst the covers and spine it works nicely, I think this cover is really successful and I think its eye catching and different to existing covers for the book.

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