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bestworstcase · 3 years

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Okay but what is the general consensus on Zhan Tiri eating Ri Ni’n I would like to know

the general consensus is. there is no general consensus ALKSDFJK

in ye olden times, by which i mean ~500 years prior to the consumption and earlier, the dominant belief in the citir region where ri ni’n grew was. ri ni’n in a protector/guardian role and the... entity that would become zhan tiri (known by various names but most commonly gat as’la) as this... slumbering devourer figure kept at bay by ri ni’n the gatekeeper. really early on gat as’la was considered... frightening but not evil. a force of primordial violence and part of the natural creation/destruction cycle that the abralians, who were the dominant culture in the area at the time, believed in. this mythology began to drift more and more towards malevolence as gat as’la began to “wake up” ie take more of an active interest in humankind.

then! during the last decade or so before the shattered era begins, gat as’la encounters dione, who survives. no one has ever escaped before so gat as’la spends the next nine or ten years chasing her until that enmity sort of evolves into a mutual fascination. in 0 SE they make a bargain, gat as’la renames herself ẓanti’ri, and dione founds a cult in her name (the host of the rotted vulture). HRV’s characterization of ẓanti’ri has a lot in common with late-abralian characterizations of gat as’la—a cruel, violent devourer—but with the key difference of there being no notion of ẓanti’ri being held at bay by ri ni’n. she’s already here. they coexist.

(early HRV ẓanti’ri is a goddess of war and vengeance, pretty much, with a pinch of apocalypse death cult thrown in for good measure. it is not a nice organization.)

*deep breath*

to zoom out a little, zhan tiri’s domain is hunger and she is, to a much greater extent than the average sublime entity, sort of malleable in nature. most gods form when a significant amount of magic coagulates around an anchor point, and anchor points come from widespread shared beliefs or doubts or feelings about the cosmos at large. so, like, cathay for example began to form once sentient races started asking questions about what happens to people when they die. zhan tiri, on the other hand, actually predates the cosmos by a wide margin. she’s an abyssal parasite that crawled out of the dark country eons ago, killed jinarche, ate part of her corpse, absorbed and corrupted a big chunk of her power, and became... sort of a cosmic personification of hunger and sort of a cursed reincarnation of jinarche. and that cataclysm created the current cosmos with the separation between the profane and sublime realms etc.

ANYWAY THE POINT IS, zhan tiri is what she eats. i mean this in the most literal way possible. when she struck that deal with dione, dione’s soul became... hm. tethered to ẓanti’ri’s sphere of power, so while ẓanti’ri didn’t eat it in the literal sense it still became, in a way, part of her. likewise for the other acolytes of the HRV. so an unintended side-effect of ẓanti’ri being worshipped is that it infects her with little bits of humanity. this had already begun to happen a little bit during her pursuit of dione (and was the impetus for her to choose her name) but it accelerates as the cult took off.

around 420 SE, ẓanti’ri has a divine existential crisis and spends a few years wandering and brooding until she ends up in the peatland of what would become saporia and meets sorchā, who is a young poet and philosopher afflicted with her own ennui. they talk a lot, and sorchā starts to crystalize her own philosophical theories and, in particular, the idea of “choimghē” as an ideal combination of the profane and sublime. (ẓanti’ri also adopts the spelling of zhan tiri around this time.) the concept of choimghē fascinates zhan tiri, who goes to ri ni’n to seek advice or help achieving it.

(she goes to ri ni’n because, as the cosmic bridge, ri ni’n is of both the profane and sublime realms.)

now! zhan tiri and ri ni’n are not and have never been enemies. their relationship is more akin to the relationship between zhan tiri and huma or turul, i.e. they belong to the same, in a manner of speaking, family. there’s no like... biological relationship because sublime entities do not have biological relationships, but the four of them all developed around the same time and their spheres of power all overlap pretty extensively, and they’re all, like, compatible with each other. if turul is your patron it would be reasonable for you to petition zhan tiri for a one-off favor, for example, that kind of thing.

which is to say zhan tiri does not approach ri ni’n in an antagonistic way or at all with the intention of killing her, but... ri ni’n a) couldn’t help zhan tiri with this even if she wants to and b) doesn’t want to, because zhan tiri has spent the last several centuries being horrible and ri ni’n, who understands things like pain and fear because she exists on the physical plane and has a body, disapproves of that. so she tells zhan tiri that the only way to get what she wants is through more violence, which ri ni’n will not under any circumstances help her with, and that if she does go through with it she’ll bear the consequences forever. and zhan tiri is like #YOLO and eats her.

so like i said, zhan tiri is what she eats, so... there is a strong theological argument to be made that rather than ‘killing’ ri ni’n, zhan tiri engulfed and became her—this is the standard doctrine of the modern HRV. in any case she absorbed all of ri ni’n’s power, supplanted her as the cosmic bridge, and (this part is important) grew a body. (said body is a vast blobby mass of random things but she can smash bits of it into more... uh, coherent shapes when she wants to appear on the planet.) and part of having an actual physical body was that it came with physical sensations and real emotions rather than just vague impressions left by all the human souls she’d collected over the years so this whole process was a nightmare alksdfk and sorchā got to deal with this trillion-year-old god having a sensory overload meltdown for several months.

the point being, in the aftermath of eating ri ni’n, zhan tiri mellowed out a lot. became... gentler. experiencing pain for herself and the realizing she had done that to people herself was horrifying for her. and this is also when her sphere began to really branch and grow into the eclectic monstrosity that it is today, because while attempting to process all these new things she was experiencing her only real frame of reference was ‘hunger.’

( zhan tiri: love is when you want to eat someone but have them not, like, die because of it right

sorchā: no )

so ANOTHER perspective on the eating ri ni’n situation is that it was kind of a last time pays for all type of thing. zhan tiri slaughtered one of her own siblings for personal gain and, just as ri ni’n warned her, she’s going to carry the consequences of that and every act of violence that came before for eternity and the nature of those consequences also mean she now has the capacity to be better. one last shattering atrocity in exchange for her becoming, not an entity driven by the compulsion to take and take but one capable of choice even though she does still feel that urge. this is the framework the thorn syconium teaches.

then you also get myths here and there where zhan tiri and ri ni’n are understood as always having been one and the same, and their mythological enmity and the subsequent consumption of ri ni’n is interpreted as an individual entity having an internal conflict with itself, torn between its cruel and destructive urges (represented in the figure of gat as’la) and its compassionate and creative urges (represented in the figure of ri ni’n). in this conceptualization, ri ni’n is actually the triumphant half and zhan tiri’s ‘consumption’ of her is representative of zhan tiri embracing that side of her nature and bringing herself into balance. this view is especially popular with the sect of the HRV that resides in antares.

then of course there’s another perspective that is more grounded in scholarship on the abralian faith, where ri ni’n was this gatekeeper who kept this dangerous, malevolent force of destruction at bay and guarded the wellspring of life and so on, and from that perspective this is a matter of zhan tiri having triumphed over ri ni’n and the world now being in an apocalyptic epoch that will ultimately end in the utter destruction of everything.

and there’s the, like, demanitus framework, which is based on his writings and accounts of his battles with not just zhan tiri but also other gods, which takes things a step further to suggest that all gods are hostile to mortal life and the only way to avert the growing apocalypse is to cut off the sublime realm’s access to the profane realm altogether by removing the cosmic bridge. which is precisely what demanitus did when he banished zhan tiri to the dark country.

and then there’s the entities of the sublime realm themselves, who have myriad personal opinions on zhan tiri slaying and devouring another god because she felt like it and tend to pass those views on to their own cults. one of the reasons it is nigh impossible to kill one of zhan tiri’s scions is you would need the help of another god to do it, and zhan tiri is the largest, oldest, and most powerful god around, notorious for being extremely attached to her scions, and also a proven god-killer. nobody wants to get eaten. even cathay, however willing she might be to antagonize zhan tiri in other ways, wouldn’t do it.

and then there’s huma and turul, who as i said belong to the same ‘family’ as both zhan tiri and ri ni’n, and who i think were kind of like “zhan tiri what the fuck” about it. but it’s not like—despite the sibling analogy i keep using—it isn’t equivalent to the human horror that this situation, of one sibling killing and eating another, would provoke. everything ri ni’n was—her power, her magic, her essence—still exists. she isn’t dead, in the way that gods can die (by becoming unmoored from their domain, which shreds them and causes their magic to disperse into the sublime realm itself). she’s just. part of zhan tiri now. so for huma and turul it’s more of a “why in the world did you do this to yourself” sort of “zhan tiri what the fuck” than it is a “you murdered our sister?!” thing.

...so yeah. the general consensus on this depends a lot on where and whom you ask gjksdjkf. i think the thorn syconium framework is the one closest to zhan tiri’s feelings on the matter, unless she’s in a mood.

#bitter snow #Anonymous

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leviathangourmet · 4 years

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(Archive Link)

I recently attended a Washington-D.C. event focused on community-building hosted by The Aspen Institute’s Weave project, which works to reduce social isolation and build bonds between Americans. During one portion of the event, various activists described how racism had impacted their lives and their communities. Following a number of such testimonials, a white woman from southeast Ohio named Sarah Adkins spoke about her own community work, which involves raising money to provide post-trauma support to individuals affected by tragedies.

Perhaps because several speakers had discussed racism and issues related to white privilege, Adkins spoke about her own self-perceived racial privilege. “I followed the perfect mold…I did all the things, I went to college, and I keep thinking of white privilege in my head so forgive me, that’s what’s in my head right now, very much white privilege,” she said, while reflecting on her middle class life in an affluent neighborhood.

But Adkins also went on to describe the reason she originally had become involved in community work—which is that her then-husband had killed both of her sons and then later took his own life. One can only imagine how much suffering this caused her. Yet she still viewed herself as privileged due to her race.

“I was wealthy, okay, I was a pharmacist, I made a lot of money, right? So after that happened, I really wanted to understand that for me there definitely was a lot of white privilege. I had money, I had health insurance, so people came in and cleaned up my house. I was able to pay for a funeral for my children,” she said.

I wondered how someone who’d lived through such an awful tragedy could consider themselves to be in any way “privileged.” Yes, she had the funding to clean up her home and bury her relatives. But nearly everybody has at least some advantages in life. It feels perverse for someone who has suffered so much to be confessing their perceived advantages.

When activists and academics invoke the phrase “white privilege,” they typically are speaking of advantages that whites, on average, have over members of other ethnic minority groups in our society. And there is no doubt that racial inequality is both real and persistent in the United States, where I live, and elsewhere. There is a sizable racial wealth gap, a life expectancy gap, and an incarceration gap. Many of America’s most pressing social problems disproportionately harm people from minority groups.

But there is a danger that, by talking about this inequality as an all-consuming phenomenon, we will end up creating a flattened and unfair image that portrays all whites in all situations and all contexts as benefiting from unearned advantages. Indeed, it’s possible that we will cause people to confuse a structural inequality that exists on the level of group average with the circumstances of every individual within a particular racial group.

In the case of Adkins’s tragic story, it’s not even clear that being white in any way constituted a form of privilege. Recent research has found a huge surge in white working-class suicides. In 2017, whites in the United States had a suicide rate of 17.8 per 100,000; for Hispanics, that rate was 6.9; for African-Americans, it was 6.9. The only group with a higher suicide rate than whites was Native Americans, at 22.2.

The phenomenon of suicide is not perfectly understood, but it is generally believed that loneliness and alienation are driving factors. Whites in America tend (on average) to be more culturally individualistic, while those from other groups tend (again, on average) to exhibit more collectivist social values. The group of which I am part, Asian-Americans, would be “privileged” on this index, since our rate (6.6) is well below that of whites. But would it really be wise for me to tackle the social problem of suicide by zooming in on some idea of “Asian privilege?”

In fact, research recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that such an approach wouldn’t just be unhelpful. It would actually be harmful.

I recently interviewed Erin Cooley, a psychology professor and lead researcher at Colgate University, about her research for Greater Good magazine. She studies prejudice and structural inequality and her research has illuminated the ways in which persistent racism continues to negatively impact the lives of racial minorities in America. A study she recently published, for instance, shows how participants were more likely to associate poverty with blacks as opposed to whites. Her team found that this association helps predict opposition toward policies that involve economic redistribution, since it is widely believed that these policies benefit blacks over whites.

Her team was curious about the impact of teaching people about white privilege. Would it make people more sympathetic toward poor blacks? As part of their research, Cooley and her colleagues offered study participants a reading on white privilege—based partly on the seminal work of Peggy McIntosh, who originally formulated the concept in the 1980s—and then described to them the plight of a hypothetical man, identified as either white or black, who is down on his luck.

What the researchers found is that among social liberals—i.e., participants who had indicated that they hold liberal beliefs about social issues—reading a text about white privilege did nothing to significantly increase their sympathy toward the plight of poor blacks. But, as Cooley told me, “it did significantly bump down their sympathy for a [hypothetical] poor white person.” (Among conservative participants, there was observed no significant change in attitudes at all.)

What accounts for this? One possibility is that social liberals are internalizing white-privilege lessons in a way that flattens the image of whites, portraying all of them as inherently privileged. So if a white person is poor, it must be his or her own fault. After all, they’ve had all sorts of advantages in life that others haven’t.

When we talk about racial inequality, it is important to understand that we’re often talking about structural or society-wide averages, not the status of all individuals at all times. It is true, for instance, that African Americans are disproportionately impacted by poverty. That means a higher percentage of African Americans live in poverty as compared to whites. But the largest number of individuals in the United States who live in poverty are white. We can’t, and we shouldn’t, assume anything about any individual’s life solely based on his or her race, or based on larger facts about racial inequality.

Racism exists, of course, and its impact is disproportionately felt by society’s minority populations. I have personally spent a decent chunk of my reporting career documenting this. But the fact that disparate treatment is inflicted on racial minorities doesn’t prove the existence of an all-encompassing pattern of white privilege. “If you’re white, chances are seeing a police officer fills you with one of two things: relief or gratitude,” writes one advocate of a privilege-centric worldview. But around half of the people who are killed every year by U.S. police officers are white. True, police violence falls disproportionately on ethnic minorities, especially African Americans. But if you’re white and you’ve been abused by a police officer, your individual experience may be just as painful as that of a black person who’s suffered similar abuse.

If we extend the logic of privilege beyond the issue of race, it’s easy to see the flaws with this approach. We know, for instance, that 93 percent of people in U.S. federal prisons are men. In nearly every part of the criminal justice system, in fact, men on average have it worse than women do. But does that then mean we should be discussing “female privilege”? Would it be beneficial to the men behind bars for women to proclaim awareness of their “privileged” status?

A typical conservative response to privilege discourse is to downplay the very real inequalities that exist. This isn’t helpful. We can’t escape talking about inequality in a diverse society. For instance, we shouldn’t shy away from looking at high maternal mortality rates among black women and how it may be linked to inadequate cultural competence among medical staff. However, what I would suggest is that we change the way we talk about this inequality. Asking whites to publicly confess their white privilege—in a manner that often resembles a religious ritual more than anything else—may lead us to unfairly flatten the experience of whites while, ironically, actually shifting attention away from those who are underprivileged. The Cooley study shows that this isn’t just a hypothetical concern; it’s a reality that has been demonstrated through research.

One alternative to white-privilege discourse would be to focus on the causes and consequences of deprivation rather than on naming groups of people we believe to hold special advantages—and to stop referring to things that we should expect for all people as “privileges.” It is not a privilege to have a decent and safe childbirth, or avoid harassment by the police, or to have enough to eat. All of those things should be something we expect. While we can and should aggressively address inequality, we should make sure the methods we employ serve to strengthen our sense of empathy rather than sap it.

#social science #social justice #racism #critical race theory #equity #affirmative action #equality #anti-racism #article #faq

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moneypedia · 4 years

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By Drew Shepherd

“You’re so judgmental!!!”

That’s the response I get when I delve a little too deep into my analytical side.

I’m somewhat of a perfectionist myself, so it’s no surprise that I hold others to my own lofty standards. And that’s one of many flaws I’m still working on.

There are certain times, however, when I’m unapologetic in my ways. And as you can see by the title of this article, this is one of those times.

The ability to screen out promiscuous women is one of the most valuable skills any man can have. It keeps you from wasting precious resources on a girl who couldn’t care less about you, and it protects you from being yet another clueless man in the dark.

A girl who sleeps around is never a good choice for your investment. And no matter what our culture tries to prove, the truth is that past sexual experience will always affect future relationships for the worse.

That’s why I created this list of 15 red flags to look for when you evaluate a potential partner.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and I’m sure there are plenty more signs you should be aware of too. But this one is intended to be a relatively quick check, and I’ve tried to limit it to signs you can notice within a few weeks at the most, or that you can easily find out with a scan of her social media.

Now I’m sure both you and I will catch some flak here for being “judgmental”, but remember, it’s not wrong to look out for your own interests. And in order to protect those interests, you need to discern the character of the people closest to you.

Being judgmental is assuming people’s character based on qualities outside their control. Discernment is deducing their character based on info they freely provide.

Only a fool would need a DNA test on an apple tree to confirm what it is…

Smart people just look at the fruit.

The 15 Red Flags Every Man Should Know

#1 She can’t stay at home. / She’s a party girl.

What it means: She needs excitement.

If she can’t enjoy a quiet night at home, walk away.

These kind of girls seem fun and interesting at first, but their lifestyle gets old fast. Plus there’s no telling how many intoxicated guys have taken their shot at her.

So find a girl who would rather read a book, watch a TV show, work out at home, cook a new meal, or talk to her friends on the phone.

“But that doesn’t sound like fun…”

No, most guys would say it doesn’t. But you know what’s more important than fun in relationships?

Stability.

A girl who runs out of her place every night has a need for excitement. And that need will find a way to bite you.

Sure, everything will be great when you’re both in a good mood, but what happens when she gets bored, or worse, when she’s unhappy?

If she needed excitement before she met you she will need it afterwards. And those thrills won’t be limited to a few drinks with the girls.

Most people are plenty fun when you get to know them anyway. So instead of worrying about that, ask yourself some more important questions:

Will she be there during a rough patch in your life?

Will she say “no” when a bigger fish comes along?

Does she avoid situations where she’ll be unnecessarily tempted?

Those are the questions you want answered (indirectly of course—actions speak louder than words).

Work on all those first. Then you can talk about fun.

#2 She has too many male friends.

What it means: She’s addicted to male attention.

Notice I said friends here and not acquaintances.

There’s nothing wrong with a woman having a conversation with a man. And if you do have a problem with that, you’re too possessive. A woman making small talk with her male coworker isn’t cause for concern.

But if she has close relationships to other guys, and she consistently talks to them about personal issues, that’s when you should be worried.

The true number of platonic male-female relationships is very small, and most of them only exist due to special circumstances.

But for the most part, men and women do not just become friends.

The truth is that the two sexes are equal, but different. And it’s tough for us to form close bonds outside of a romantic or sexual relationship.

Any girl who has tons of guy friends is bad news because almost all of them are attracted to her. And since she hasn’t made an effort to turn them down, it means she’s addicted to their attention.

If you don’t meet the requirements of such a popular girl, she’ll eagerly pick a replacement from her pool of waiting “friends”.

#3 She has tattoos or piercings on interior body parts.

What it means: She’s impulsive.

I’ve never been a fan of tattoos, so I wouldn’t look for a significant other who has any. But this red flag is more about the positioning of the ones she has.

If a girl has tattoos or piercings on any interior body parts (i.e. her upper thighs, torso, etc.), it is not a good sign. And here are only a few reasons why:

Someone had to put it there

People don’t get tattoos to cover them up

She makes long-term decisions based on short-term results

It’s just a terrible choice all around. Why would you taint the natural beauty you have with a man-made distraction?

It doesn’t make sense to me.

But in a way, I guess you should be happy when you see a girl like this. She’s made your job easy by effectively saying, “Don’t take me serious.”

#4 She’s a (moderate to heavy) drinker. / She does recreational drugs.

What it means: She allows unnecessary temptation.

Contrary to popular belief, human beings are not inherently good. And when given the choice, we will always be inclined to do what’s morally wrong.

Many times our conscious thought overrides this inclination, but whenever alcohol or drugs are involved, that inhibition goes out the window.

The point here is related to the first red flag about party girls—she allows herself to be tempted. And why would you ever trust a girl who intentionally lowers her self-control?

You are playing with fire and you know it.

Yes, crimes like theft will always be wrong, but we all have a responsibility to lock our doors.

#5 She’s a man hater. / She tests you to see if you’re man enough.

What it means: She lacks healthy relationships with the men in her life.

“All men are blah blah blah…”

“Guys only care about blah blah blah…”

“Men don’t deserve blah blah blah blah blah…”

Yeah, it’s annoying.

Man haters are the worst. I understand that some of us really are terrible, but if every guy she meets is like that, take a look at the common denominator.

Yes, I’m tough on the opposite sex sometimes, but even I know that there are fantastic women out there.

You can’t let the good ones convince you that all girls are sweet and innocent, and you can’t let the bad ones blind you to the praiseworthy women either.

The same is true about our side.

So if a girl always complains about the men in her life, she’s either still bitter about a failed relationship, or she presents herself as an object for men to lust after.

#6 She can’t put her phone down. / She’s addicted to social media.

What it means: She craves attention and drama.

The online version of too many male friends.

A smart girl knows that male attention doesn’t result from her “amazing personality”.

The number of friends and likes she gets is directly proportional to how attractive people think she is.

This stuff is honestly common sense by now but you still see the same thing all the time. A fairly attractive girl only has to post a few pictures, and boom, she’s got 50 dudes trying to hit her up.

She probably won’t give any of them the time of day—unless one of them is like, so hot—but at least she got her daily attention fix. Plus she’s found a new group of reliable “friends” to support her.

It’s ridiculous. And don’t even get me started on the drama.

If she’s more interested in her phone than she is in you, don’t try to change her mind.

#7 She’s comfortable in revealing clothes. / She’s insensitive to male touch.

What it means: She’s used to it.

Do you really think she dresses that way for you?

Do you honestly believe it’s normal for guys to hug and hold her like it’s no big deal?

She’s used to it, man. And even if she isn’t promiscuous now, it won’t take much effort for her to get that way.

But going back to her style of dress, you might believe her choice of clothes doesn’t matter anymore. You think that times have changed, and this girl is different. So different in fact that she’s above all of human nature.

Yeah, keep believing that.

The reality is that men are visual creatures. And both men and women instinctively know that the way a women dresses determines the type of attention she gets.

Our society doesn’t like to acknowledge that fact nowadays, so we try to ignore it as best as we can.

Instead, we say she has high self esteem, that she deserves to show off her body. And if you don’t like it, you’re living in the past.

But please don’t buy the “I’m-proud-of-my-body-so-I-need-to-be-half-naked” excuse.

People who are comfortable with a fit body, or great wealth, or whatever else they have don’t feel the need to show it off. They rest assured in the knowledge that it’s there.

The only people who show off are the ones who need validation. And they always need it from multiple people.

So if any girl shows too much skin, or if she’s fine with being hugged or touched any kind of way, you need to reconsider.

#8 She believes that things just happen. / She follows her heart. / She’s in love with “love” and relationships.

What it means: She lacks emotional control.

These girls are tricky for inexperienced guys, so let me explain.

It feels great at first to be the focus of a girl’s undying love. And the highs of having a beautiful woman enraptured by you is something straight outta the movies.

But guess what?

You will never be the only one.

You just happen to be her drug of the month. And all it takes is a more attractive or manipulative man to change her loyalties.

That is the dark reality of girls who “follow their heart.”

So instead of chasing a girl who’s crazy….about you, find a girl who tempers her heart with her head.

Don’t be afraid of love. Just make sure it’s the real thing first.

#9 She uses profanity.

What it means: She doesn’t value purity.

I don’t like profanity.

Sure, I went through a phase where it was cool to sprinkle in some “sentence enhancers”, but even then it still felt wrong.

Pure speech is something I value now, and it really does bother me to hear people—male or female—casually drop f-bombs. I don’t give them a stare or anything, but I know that profanity usually indicates that something is off in your life.

That’s one reason why I never use profanity on this site. Out of all the posts on HFE, I haven’t used a single curse word, and I plan to keep it that way.

But getting back to the meaning of this red flag, it just shows a lack of class.

If a girl doesn’t have the decency to control something as simple as her conversation, think about how ugly the rest of her lifestyle is.

#10 She’s friends with known promiscuous women. / She takes an interest in promiscuous celebrities.

What it means: She won’t be shamed for sleeping around, and she will probably be encouraged to do so.

Men compartmentalize their friends.

Of course not every guy is the same, but usually he’ll have his videogame pals, his college study group, his boys from work, his basketball squad, his fantasy football crew, and so on.

And what’s funny about all these friend buckets is that they usually include men from all walks of life.

You’ll have a mix of low income guys, wealthy guys, smart guys, dumb guys, you get the point. But as long as they all have that one thing in common, they don’t really care about much else.

Women are different.

Almost every girl I know has friends who are very similar to her. Everything from the way they dress, to the grades they get, to the income they earn, to the guys they like, and even their political stance—it’s almost always the same.

While men care more about the one activity they have in common, women focus more on similar lifestyles.

And now you see where I’m going.

You may not be able to tell if she sleeps around, but if you know her friends do, it’s a giant red flag.

Even if this girl is completely innocent, she knows her friends won’t look down on her if she does indulge, and that’s why she’s surrounded herself with them.

It’s even worse if she takes an interest in promiscuous celebrities. They’re just like her friends who get around but with additional influence and social status.

If [blank] can do [blank] and still be [blank], why can’t she?

#11 She uses New Age lingo. / She’s into horoscopes.

What it means: She won’t take responsibility for her actions.

If you meet a girl who always goes on about people’s “energy”, the workings of karma, or the meaning behind her horoscope, you need to run and run quickly.

I have numerous reasons why I wouldn’t get with a girl like this, but one of the more practical ones is that she won’t take responsibility for anything.

The stars are what drive her behavior, and she will be justified in spiting you because her negative-energy-sense was tingling.

It’s bad enough dealing with people who can’t control their impulses, but if she truly believes that “the universe” is causing her actions, avoid her at all costs.

#12 She has no discernible skills outside of her physical appearance.

What it means: She’s going down the wrong career path.

Everyone needs money. And if that need is not met, people will resort to all kinds of evil to meet it.

If this particular girl doesn’t have any marketable skills outside of being “hot”, she is going down the wrong road.

Eventually she will…

A. Find some way to make money off her appearance

B. Get bailed out by another man, or…

C. Be left in a financial hole when her beauty fades

Now you could argue that A wouldn’t be too bad of a scenario depending on the work involved (e.g. innocent modeling), but none of these are favorable to her developing a solid set of skills when she had the chance.

Not only has she put herself in a position where her beauty can be abused, but she’s also shown that she’s fine with being a drain on people’s resources.

That’s not good.

Everyone needs a strong work ethic, no matter who they are. And if she doesn’t have one, she’ll be pressured into compromising situations.

#13 She rushes the relationship. / She’s a little too perfect. / She tries too hard to seem like a good match.

What it means: She’s overcompensating.

Another tricky one here.

The average guy won’t deal with many girls like this, but the name of this site isn’t Hunger for Average, so you need to look out for this one.

As you start to care more about your appearance and get your life in order, you’ll notice that girls will seemingly come out of nowhere. And the ones you were invisible to before will make it obvious that they’re interested.

Sounds great right?

But the problem is that some of these girls won’t have the best intentions.

Almost every semi-attractive girl has been treated like a princess her whole life (and that’s one reason why a man who’s trained himself to be immune to beauty is so attractive to them).

But the side effect of this treatment is that many women expect partiality from every guy they meet. So now when they see you—a man who’s in good shape and has his life together—they don’t see a person, but rather, a tool who has the means to carry “her highness” through life.

This is particularly an issue with a girl in her late 20’s or early 30’s. Her internal clock is ticking and she knows she has to find a man before her beauty fades.

But you can’t let her clock dictate your life.

People get burned all the time by making hasty choices. And it’s a known manipulation tactic to rush people into big decisions.

Yes, there will be girls who genuinely like you, and they’ll be eager to start something special together. But you need to be aware of the other scenario too.

Beauty doesn’t get ignored. And if an attractive girl hasn’t locked down a man by this time in her life, it’s very possible that she used her beauty for other means when she was younger, and now she’s scrambling to find a man who doesn’t know any better.

Of course this isn’t always the case. Breakups happen and some people just have an unfortunate streak with relationships. But barring any significant change to her appearance, and without any other special cause, the former is a real possibility.

Remember that your interests are important too. And you are not obligated to take any dude’s leftovers simply because she needs a man now.

“But she’s changed! She’s not like that anymore! And she’s committed to doing better!”

That’s great. And I applaud her. But that doesn’t mean you owe her a relationship.

I’m all for acceptance and forgiveness, but I also know that forgiveness isn’t the removal of all consequences.

#14 She accuses you of being promiscuous, or worse, tries to prove you are.

What it means: She’s telling you how she would act if she was in your position (a.k.a. projection).

A girl who makes accusations like this doesn’t understand how any decent looking person could say no to their suitors. Especially since she could never hope to do the same.

You’re just a stupid boy who couldn’t possibly deny easy pleasure, and it’s her job to prove that assumption right.

It’s all so silly.

I’ve dealt with girls who tried to find faults that weren’t there and I had a real good laugh afterwards.

But while it is funny that a former acne-faced, overweight, emo guy would have to convince anyone he’s not about that life, I am very serious about guarding my integrity.

So if any girl accuses me of something like this, I know we need to part ways.

#15 Your gut tells you so.

What it means: You’re not comfortable with her.

Attraction is weird.

The first time anyone sees a person they like, comfort is nowhere to be found. There’s excitement, there’s anxiety, and there’s interest—not comfort.

But that all changes as time goes by.

The more you get to know someone, the more comfortable you feel around them.

The guy you thought was an antisocial creep just happens to be the life of the party. The girl you thought was such a snob before is actually kind and warm-hearted. And this new familiarity generally leads to more comfort.

But if time passes and you still don’t feel comfortable around this girl, it’s a bad sign. Your body is subconsciously telling you that something about her is off. And you know deep down that you can’t trust her.

“But didn’t you just make fun of girls and their ‘negative-energy-sense’? So how is it okay for guys to do the same thing?”

Because what I’m talking about here isn’t just a feeling. What I’m describing are physiological changes that happen solely because of this person.

Yes, it sounds far-fetched, but if you are fine around every person except her, something is wrong. And I’m not talking about a few butterflies in the stomach here.

If you start breaking a sweat when she shows up, if your sleep schedule suddenly changes, and if you’re always on your toes around her, your body is in alert mode. And instead of being able to work, or perfect your craft, or do anything else, you will constantly be thinking about her.

But again, don’t confuse this with some middle school crush obsession. This is about a girl who won’t give you any assurance that she is committed to you.

You will have to do everything to keep the relationship afloat, and that always leads to disaster. The minute you fall short in her eyes your worst fear will come true.

Of course you still want to be as attractive as possible to make her decision easy, but if the success of the relationship depends solely on you, find someone else.

Good leaders set an example for others and create a vision for the future…

They don’t do all the work.

Successful relationships will always take effort, but if you can’t relax at all with her, it’s a bad sign.

Weed ‘Em Out

So if you read this whole post, you’ve probably noticed a theme here.

All of these are signs that stem from a lack of one character trait:

Self-control.

This list is all about discerning if a girl has that one critical trait.

If she doesn’t have it, don’t try to change her, don’t make excuses for her, and please don’t waste time thinking about her. Just walk away.

And if you have a hard time doing that, ask yourself if you would help a man who acted the same way.

Sure, this may all seem cold-blooded, but when the stakes are this high, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. There is simply too much at risk when you choose a long term partner. And if you can’t trust someone you’ll eventually think about marrying, you need to end it as soon as possible.

No amount of beauty is worth the headache and embarrassment. If a woman’s actions show that she doesn’t respect you, move on and find a girl who does.

Just remember that nothing here is foolproof either. Some girls are crafty and they won’t show many of the signs listed here—but that’s okay.

The point isn’t to catch every girl who’s like this. The point is to save time by weeding out the easy ones. And once you do that, you’ll be closer to finding a girl who’s worth the investment.

So be smart, stay strong, and have a little fun too. It’s easy to get too serious about things like this, but keep a good attitude and you’ll be fine.

If you know what all to avoid, just imagine how much you can cherish a keeper.

-Drew

#relationships

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latenightcinephile · 4 years

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#701, ‘Olympia’, dir. Leni Riefenstahl, 1938.

This is a very, very difficult film to write about. It’s tempting to write it off as simple propaganda, or to examine its failings as a documentary, and there are many people who have taken this approach to Olympia in the past. It’s often cited as the first film of an Olympic Games (although it isn’t), as a glorification of Hitler (more on that later), and as a dull repetition of sporting events (it most assuredly is not that, either).

The thing is, I quite admire Olympia, both as a documentary and as a piece of art. I think that Riefenstahl’s artistic prowess is often denigrated because she is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the mouthpiece of the Nazi regime. But I’m inclined to agree with Taylor Downing’s argument that Olympia is not the result of a concerted propaganda effort. As Downing points out, if Riefenstahl had set out to make propaganda, a very different film would be the result. It’s hard to deny that Olympia is a colossal work of art, made in political circumstances that make it unsettling to admire. But I think admiration is the only appropriate response to the film.

(Most of my details come from Downing’s book on the film for the British Film Institute. If you’re interested in the processes involved in making Olympia, I highly recommend it. I’ll try not to steal too liberally from Downing’s ideas here.)

I’ll point out from the very start that just because Olympia wasn’t the result of a conscious attempt to propagandise, that doesn’t mean it isn’t propaganda by itself. Any film made under the rigours of the Nazi regime is going to reflect the values of that regime, both deliberately at the hands of various political actors and socially through the ideologies that Riefenstahl replicates uncritically. On a base level, the film shows no more footage of, or deference to, Adolf Hitler than any documentary about the Olympics would show to the leader of the host country. In fact, the film sets the record straight about some of Hitler’s rumoured excesses - he didn’t, as popular myth has it, use the opening ceremony to make a political or self-aggrandising speech, he just announced the games open, as was expected of him.

On a deeper level, though, the film is quite happy to ‘bread and circuses’ its way out of some of the worst types of propaganda. In Olympia, the 1936 Olympics are an opportunity to show a games unparalleled in history. These games, and the film about them, are only possible through the benevolent patronage of Hitler’s government. Riefenstahl was certainly talented at drawing further funds from the regime to make her films, and at dodging the restrictions imposed upon her by government factions that wanted her under their thumbs. But the people she made this film for were not stupid, and they were not blindly throwing money at her for no purpose. They knew the soft power a film like Olympia could have, and the kind of goodwill and mythology that it could foster.

Riefenstahl uses this kind of mythologising to represent the Berlin Games as the apotheosis of a long history. The first section of the film opens with the lighting of the Olympic flame, after some protracted and dignified shots of Greek ruins. Visiting the actual ceremony, Riefenstahl was somewhat distressed by the presence of the crowds ruining the profundity of the moment she had in mind. So she did what she would do frequently during the production of the film: she restaged it. The more grave footage she recorded for this event draws the lighting of the flame back into the depths of history, making the idea of a lineage from Berlin back to ancient Greece almost literal.

Riefenstahl has no qualms about restaging events throughout Olympia: she brings back the entire cast of the men’s pole vault finals to reshoot their contest the next day, and she films divers and marathon runners during training to get unusual angles and extra footage (in many of these shots, you can tell because the stands of the stadia are suddenly empty). At her request, the American athlete Glen Morris stayed several days after the games finished and helped her recreate events. Most directors these days would have some concern about using this type of footage - indeed, taking footage out of context is one of the main things we think of when considering the propaganda toolbox - but Riefenstahl was dedicated to creating a complete retelling of the Olympics and resorted to these measures when filming the original events was impossible. Beyond this she also wanted to create a film that was interesting on its own terms. Some of these restagings enabled her and her team of cinematographers to access viewpoints that would be impossible in actual competition, because the large cameras would actually impede the running of the events.

That said, there are some limits on what she was willing to do, and finding these limits tells us for sure that she was not interested in making direct propaganda at this point. Much has been made of Hitler’s refusal to congratulate Jesse Owens for his spectacular performances during the games, but Riefenstahl has no such compunctions. She’s fascinated with the movement of the athletes, the American champions especially, and doesn’t pay any less attention to Owens because of his race. (Side note: there’s a troubling undercurrent throughout Riefenstahl’s career of fetishising the black body, and it might be on display here. Either way, it’s interesting to note the love-hate relationships fascist regimes have with many different things.)

It’s also clear that Riefenstahl is enthusiastic about being able to tell an actual story, beyond simply relying on metaphor. Triumph of the Will is cinematically innovative, but it doesn’t have a story that she can draw on. The Olympic Games, however, have a set of narratives that Riefenstahl can refer back to: narratives of winning and losing, using a sporting contest as a representation of a wider cultural struggle, or the pastoral origins of ‘sport’. In this last regard, the openings of both halves of the film feature depictions of the classical ideal of sport: naked athletes performing aesthetically-pleasing activities in the open air, and a community spirit built around these activities.

Riefenstahl goes further, creating new narratives to activate otherwise boring events. Some of the running races, including Lovelock’s sub-four-minute mile and the British victory in the men’s relay, are shown in a single shot taken from the upper tiers of the stadium, letting the natural rhythms come forward. For the diving events, though, Riefenstahl abandons any sense of naturalism and breaks the events into components of an avant-garde mosaic, playing shots in reverse, cutting back and forth across the line of action so it appears divers are leaping towards each other, and filming so closely that there is no sense of where the ground is. Whatever Riefenstahl’s political leanings in making the film, she is clearly dedicated to making each element of the film as interesting as it can be,

The technical aspects of this film are truly admirable. During the process of filming, Riefenstahl’s team developed entirely new techniques of filming, dug pits next to tracks to get good shots of athletes’ faces during competition, relied on five different sizes of camera, strapped small cameras to runners, and devised a camera that could film above and below water. They borrowed an airship from the Luftwaffe. The rushes were reviewed each day, totalling about two hundred cans of film every day of the games. In addition, with the exception of Hitler’s opening speech, every single piece of sound in the film was dubbed in post-production. As Downing points, out, this would be a mammoth task with modern technology, but in 1936, every ten-minute reel of film had to be mixed in real time, from start to finish, and then processed for a day before you could even tell what the result would be like. The engineers invented several entirely new sets of audio filters to reduce ambient sound, and did this during post-production. The entire final mix took two months of twelve-hour days to complete. It practically invented the genre of the sports documentary. If this had been done under any other circumstances, it would be hailed as the greatest production in history. Instead, its reputation collapsed under the weight of history. Nobody wants to like a film made by the Nazis - no matter how innovative and interesting it is, it is permanently a smokescreen to put a happy face on an appalling and destructive regime.

I have been asked if a film like Olympia could be made today. I think the answer to that depends on whether you’re looking at the film as a sports documentary or a propaganda film. Pretty much every sports documentary since Olympia has used this toolbox, so in a very real sense, this film has been made today, many times, and has often claimed innovations that Olympia made as their own innovations. As far as propaganda goes, though, I don’t think you’d need to make this film. Olympia has a very subtle hand - its statements about the superiority of the Nazi regime are implicit rather than explicit. Contemporary regimes, though, have found that you can just say that kind of thing explicitly and it will often be accepted. I also think there are very few regimes that would bother to go to this kind of expense for a film.

Riefenstahl’s complicity with the Nazis has often been hotly debated, and I think the most likely explanation of her stance is this: she wanted to make films, and the Nazis wanted films made. That she was either unwilling or unable to deny their patronage, or that she actively embraced their beliefs, is perhaps the harshest truth. She was given the opportunity to be an innovative filmmaker. All she had to do was climb into the lion’s mouth, and her films would be remembered.

She climbed in. The lion made no promises about how or why she’d be memorable.

#1001 movies #leni riefenstahl #olympia #propaganda #long post

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aaetherius · 3 years

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@niaevum asked:

“ warriors are not born they are made, and so are broken souls ”

Poetry Prompts || Accepting (feel free to turn into threads)!

★ ☆ ✮ ✯ ―☼ ― ★ ☆ ✮ ✯

Crisp, autumn leaves slowly flutter downwards from the worn tree, collecting at its base in a mosaic of browns, oranges, and reds. Its old branches creaking gently against the pleasant breeze, and the scorch marks that had once been present have become little more than lingering scars from his mere presence alone. He looks out of place amongst the muted colors of fall with his iridescent locks, and sleek armor standing out rather drastically against them. The brilliant wings that typically emerge from his back are missing for the time being, or rather, hidden to avoid attracting unwanted attention, as Veronika had once warned him of. If they had been visible, though, he would have looked all the more drastically out of place where he sat calmly beneath the tree, leaves clinging to his hair, sat upon his shoulders, or spread out over his lap. Above him, he can hear the faint song of a scarce handful of birds that have yet move elsewhere for the winter, but he imagines they will leave soon enough. The melody they sing is pleasant, and he had forgotten what their voices had sounded like when he had still been in the lonely temples and ruined buildings that composed the once grand land Canaan had been. And he leans his head softly against the trunk of the tree, watching them chirp curiously at him or take flight into the gray sky above. A gentle smile stretched out over his doll-like features as he observes them - a certain fondness lingering in his tired gaze. The touch alone is enough to make those aged branches thicken and become more lively - colorful leaves speckling their fingers once more. And he doesn’t bother to temper the power that flows from him for the time being. After all, this very well could be the last time he sees this tree when they’re intending to set out come tomorrow, and he’ll witness the extent of what this war has done to this world.

His almost peaceful expression looks out of place with that knowledge lurking in the back of his mind, fingers resting absentmindedly over the sheath of one of the swords he carries - the other two having already been cleaned and sharpened earlier that day. While it’s not truly necessary given his own powers, and how they function, he still cares for them - the act alone something to pass the time, and it feels only right to treat them properly given the thousands of years they’ve served him. He supposes he has a sentimental attachment to them, strange as it might be. But they’ve kept him company for so long now that even having one removed from its typical position felt a tad odd, despite it still being on his present; fingers resting upon it beneath a thin cloth. He still doesn’t understand much about this world or the people that inhabit, or rather, on a deeper level. He has observed them for many centuries, and understand them in the most logical and scientific sense of the word. But nothing more than that. Their drive, emotions, culture, and passion were all new to him. For countless years, he had believed himself incapable of harboring such things. Yet, he had learned he had been wrong in that assumption - he had simply stored his emotions away in the depth of his core with the belief that doing so was for the best. It was something he had been proven wrong on time and time again, and now he simply wished to do what he could to right his mistakes. Perhaps make amends, and step down from the position he holds, though those are only dreams.

His thumb traces the ornate designs etched into the sheath of his sword, gaze only pulling away from the birds to look over at Veronika where she’s sat beside him when he hears the sound of her voice. And, ah, he had forgotten they were in the middle of a conversation - his attention pulled away by birdsong and the dazzling colors of the leaves. A soft, apologetic smile crosses his sooth lips as long, willowy bangs tumble in front of his sky blue eyes. “I suppose they are,” he admits quietly as his eyes flicker to the silver of his exposed blade. He had never been created with the purpose of violence in mind - he was not crafted for warfare and bloodshed, yet both fell upon his shoulders as a result of the purpose he harbored and the power he contained. He had never been made for fighting, but he had been crafted with both the ability and power to do so. If the option to remain passive and to never harm another had been available to him, he would have gladly taken it. He has never enjoyed violence. He has never taken pleasure in killing. No matter how many lives he’s personally had to end, he never grows accustom to it. His heart is too kind - his mind too weak. His soul too broken. He doesn’t know if her circumstances or feelings align with his own, though he’s of the opinion her own fortitude on the matter is greater than his own from what little he has learned. “But, I believe, sometimes, broken souls are enough. Perhaps, somewhere, there exists someone who does not believe those souls have been lost.”

He offers her a smile, though his words carry a strange hint of melancholy and nostalgia. “To be honest, autumn is my favorite season,” he speaks softly, and seemingly out of blue as he admires the red and brown leaves that fall onto his hands. “I have always found the leaves to be at their most beautiful during these months.” The fondness he had looked at the birds with a moment ago is now reflected in his voice, and he turns his hand over so they tumble into his palm, holding onto them with great care not to wrinkle or break them. “If I may, Veronika, I am curious to know what your favorite season is? Though, if you do not wish to discuss the matter I understand. I am afraid there is still much I do not know about you or of this world, and I would like to hear more, if you would be willing to share such things with me.” He fingers runs his index finger down the red leaf in his palm, still seated back against the tree. Though dread remains within his mind, and he worries greatly for the world as a whole, for the moment he seems vaguely at peace. And his chest doesn’t feel quiet as tight as it normally does despite their previous conversation. Perhaps someone exists to accept those broken souls. “It will be some time before we reach our destination, while it would be best for you to get more rest before we set out, strangely, I find myself wishing to speak with you more.”

#niaevum #| ☩ And once again the sky rises; sincere and melancholic ☩ (IC) |#| ☩ Cradled within the gentle breeze ☩ (ask) |#| ☩ You are bird in flight; searching the skies for dreams ☩ (verse: au - metahuman) |#{ Veraaaaaaaa }#{ I love her fdjhfjk }#{ She's just aiming for kicked puppy at this rate lol }#{ I love them I love that kicked puppy Lucifer is sad sad that she's just like wait stop don't do that }#{ Thank you for sending this! }#{ That was supposed to be so sad not sad sad but I feel like sad sad is valid so I'm leaving that tag lol }#{ this seems like a jump but it's not I promise Lucifer is just being Lucifer jehfgjfdkjghjd }#{ We all know how he is by now sorry Vera lol he's trying his best he wants to be friends fdjshgfjdg }

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mentornationpodcast · 3 years

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2020 in America: One big “SAW” movie being orchestrated by a “mastermind?”

I am John Abbas. I am the host of the Mentor Nation Podcast where we bring world class leaders, entrepreneurs, and people doing interesting things and we get them to mentor you by sharing their journeys, their stories, and their best advice. Think of it like having a personal mentor every week who is there to give you a tip, a kick or an aha moment so that you are more equipped in your success journey.

The year was 2001. Leigh Whannell (Director of Upgrade, The Invisible Man) and James Wan (director of Aqua man) were in their early 20s in film school. Little did they know that their simple idea for a scary movie would turn into a global franchise doing a BILLION DOLLARS in revenue and would lead to 7 sequels and counting?

They would go on to change the Horror/Thriller genre forever with a concept that in my opinion is more frightening than any Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers movie will ever be. There is just something about a horror movie based on things that could “actually happen” that scares me to death.

The entire movie was shot by these young ambitious kids in 18 days with an ultra-modest budget compared to any movie released today.

The film I am referring to is “SAW.”

A Horror/Thriller that took the country by storm, many people wondered just “HOW” this film shot by young students with little money and very little life experience could capture the attention and interest of the whole world.

I believe the answer is in the plot and how it relates to us all on a very deep and dark level.

The premise: An evil genius mastermind nicknamed Jigsaw, kidnaps a group of people, locks them in a dungeon, sets up a labyrinth of riddles and clues, puts them in an unimaginable situation where they have to make near impossible decisions forcing their true character to come out, and then they have to do unbelievable things to escape or they will die.

When I watched the film, I found my own emotions and thoughts stirring. I found myself wondering. “Holy Crap, What would I actually do or what kind of person could I truly become given a situation of that magnitude?”

What would I do if I had to kill a complete stranger in cold blood or else my own family would die? Would I be able to live with myself in either situation?

Would I saw through my own leg with a hacksaw risking shock and bleeding to death in order to escape being chained up in a dungeon where I would die a slow and agonizing death?

What truly interested me however, was watching how simple it was for jigsaw to create a set of circumstances that caused seemingly good people to do evil things that you would NEVER think they were capable of.

STAY WITH ME, You see,

One thing that I actually believe, is that there is a delicate balance to many of our lives, and as long as our environment is predictable and manageable, most of us are good, and we go about doing what we need to do each day with very few issues.

A very wise mentor of mine once told me. “Most people are good when things are good. If you want to see someone’s true character, watch how they are when everything in their life is falling apart.”

So what in the hell does this movie have to do with the current events in America?

Well, let’s look at what’s going on right now. It kind of looks like a plot straight out of SAW.

For the last decade things have been pretty good. The economy has been flourishing, and for the most part there haven’t been any world changing events other than the occasional natural disaster or the 24/7 coverage of Donald Trump. People have been generally good to each other, working together, and living their life.

Then 2020 hits. The coronavirus becomes the single greatest GLOBAL event that derails life as we know it in the blink of an eye. Months later, just when we think we are getting a handle on it, the George Floyd murder happens, leading to social and political unrest everywhere. There is a big divide now happening in a country where we are all supposed to be on the same team regardless of sex, race, or religion. Differences of opinion between friends are turning into severed relationships full of animosity. Distrust of our government, politicians, and the people who are here to protect us are higher than I have ever seen in my 37 years of life.

A simple post, pic, or video leads to huge arguments, threats, and sometimes, even worse.

Protests are turning violent, monuments are being destroyed, and now people everywhere are walking on eggshells scared to offend someone with an opinion.

People are going to war with each other over masks, race, politics, beliefs, etc. Even the smallest thing seems to push some people over the edge.

Doesn’t it seem like people are turning against each other, and the true nature of many are coming out front and canter for everyone to see?

Could there be an “evil genius mastermind(s)” or “Jigsaw(s)” out there taking these events and using them as a catalyst to have the people in our country turn on each other?

Even if something like this were possible. Why, would anyone want this to happen? Who would want this to happen?

One possible candidate is another country.

If you are reading this and you live in America, I want you to think about something.

The U.S. has had the largest economy on earth since at least the 1920s

The U.S. is regularly and rightly so called the “Land of the free” and the “Land of Opportunity.”

There are many other things the U.S. leads the world in but here’s my point. When you are the top dog at something, especially the top dog at something as important as the economy, influence, and money, you better believe others will be gunning for you and trying to overtake you, often by any means possible.

There’s an old saying that goes something like, “The higher you climb the pole, the bigger the target on your back” or “the more your ass is exposed” and I believe there is a lot of truth to this.

Imagine for a second that this were true. To beat the U.S. if you are another country. You can’t just do it face to face. David didn’t fight Goliath in bare knuckled hand to hand combat. The U.S. is full of smart people, the defence/military budget is 100 times larger than any other country, and has been for decades. The only way to win if someone wanted to, would have to be “very strategically.”

If you’ve ever watched the movie “War of the Worlds,” the story is that Aliens that have been living under the ground for thousands of years come up and start killing everyone by the millions. No weapon, missile, or gun can even scratch them, let alone kill them. Just when it seems humanity is about to be wiped out for good and nothing will work. The aliens start dying out. We find that it wasn’t a weapon that did the job, but a virus. A virus harmless to humans, as we have evolved and developed immunity over the centuries, but deadly to them. A microscopic virus caused the Aliens bodies to attack itself leading to their death. Isn’t that fascinating: The Aliens perished, not from an exterior attack, but rather from within.

Another issue that we are dealing with in the U.S. is the fact we are a relatively new country in terms of history and others know this. We don’t have thousands of years of history and tradition that we have built upon. As with most cultures in their early days, ours too was built on conquest, treachery, oppression, and often times brutal savagery. This is not a new concept unique to the U.S.

The difference with the U.S. from other countries however, is that we are much more fragile and so “new,” that many of the wounds of the past still feel fresh to people since our country as a whole only dates back a few hundred years.

Why is all of this important?

Well, because in my fictional world, these events would make a perfect recipe for an outside country with the ambition to be the largest economy or power in the world to get there, not by conquering us, but rather by having us conquer and destroy ourselves from within. Not to mention it’s much easier to do this than one would think. Given an “event” or “some events” happen that can be used as a catalyst. (AKA Coronavirus, George Floyd, Donald Trump and election time.)

Unlike Jigsaw, who had to create extremely elaborate environments that needed to be well thought out, planned, and executed perfectly with zero room for error, all someone or some group would need to do here is feed the fire that has already started with more fuel.

What’s the fuel? False Harmful Information.

How do you feed the fire? Spreading False Harmful Information Quickly.

Posting false negativity on social media where uninformed people will see it, believe it, and become angry based on misinformation.

Feeding the anger by sharing anything and as much as possible that which is relevant to the core of the anger.

I can’t tell you how many so called “facts,” I read, posts I see, and articles I watch that when I just dig a little deeper and do some research, I realize are so totally and completely wrong. But by then it doesn’t matter. The damage has been done. I look at the comments and see that most people are believing it and it has been shared 57,000 times already.

We all know people who get emotional and share things, regardless of whether it is true or not. But have you ever thought or asked yourself. Who first posted it? Where did it originate? What was that person/person’s intention?

Think about how dangerous that could become.

With social media being global, think about how EASY it would be for ANYONE, ANYWHERE in the world to create content designed to turn people against each other.

My point is to compare the ACTUAL events of what is going on in the US to the premise of the movie “SAW.”

What if Jigsaw was another country or countries, and what if the intended target is the entire United States?

I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS THE CASE, OR THIS IS WHAT’S HAPPENING. MAYBE IT’S NOT ANOTHER COUNTRY, BUT RATHER JUST ANGRY PEOPLE SPREAD OUT ALL OVER THAT ARE FULL OF HATE, AND GET JOY IN PEOPLE DESTROYING EACH OTHER.

There could be thousands of “JIGSAW’S out there who are just stirring up things for their own personal enjoyment.

Is it actually happening? Maybe.

Should we at least consider the fact that it IS happening? I think so.

Are the issues going on real? Of course they are.

The problem is not that these issues aren’t real, but why they are turning into something a thousand times bigger. I think one of the main reason these issues are getting out of hand and turning violent, angry, and dangerous, is because of the sinister acts of bad people who want to take a bad situation, and make it infinitely worse.

To add insult to injury. If it’s true and it is happening, it would be almost impossible to know who is doing it, who started it vs. who is exacerbating it, and where they are doing it from.

It’s kind of like “Jigsaw” is also “The Invisible Man.”

AGAIN, AND PLEASE HEAR ME,

I am not saying all of this is happening, and I am not someone who believes in the million conspiracies out there.

What I want you to think about is. How realistic it “could” be that outside influences are taking the events of 2020 and using them to destroy a country from within. Kind of interesting when you think about it.

Have you ever watched an episode of Law and Order or CSI and thought to yourself. Wow that was freaking clever! I wonder if these shows give anyone ideas in real life.

If you do, then it isn’t too farfetched of a thought to wonder if “SAW” is really happening, only to a much larger scale.

To read/listen more podcast kindly visit - Mentor Nation Podcast

#mentor nation #mentor nation podcast #mentor podcast #podcast #podcasting #mentor podcasting #world class podcasting #world class podcast #business podcast

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years

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Smashing the Petri Dish: Abbreviated Inquiry Into Abandoning the Concept of Culture

The following are questions I have recently asked myself:

Why abandon culture? There are countless reasons to begin to challenge, seriously realign our relationship with, and perhaps abandon the concept of culture — the historic, contemporary, and projected assemblage of social dynamics and features by which we define ourselves and which collectively frame us as social groupings. Culture contains the all-tofamiliar civilized notions of expectations, projections, customs, taboos, values, morality, and rituals, as well as being anthropocentric in nature, and in general, limited as it defines the human condition of a place, time, and context only in terms of human relationships or how we use other things. The human-animal, unrestrained by such an understanding of reality, and in tune with applicable concerns of connected subsistence and curious play, needs not for culture as something to belong to or to be guided by. Instead, they are what they are, a composition of all they are connected to, yet unique unto themselves. And if relationships are fluid, unbounded by artificial concepts, and based on mutual desire, than what use or need is there for culture, except to define and confine these relationships. It might be proposed then, that our search for liberation may fall outside the parameters of the concept of culture, and in fact, may be in contradiction with its very existence. Culture, whether ethnic, religious, national, tribal, pop, alternative, or counter, acts as a definer rather than minimalizer of the borders within and between ourselves, each other, and the rest of life.

Can we challenge the current basis of our relationships to each other? For many, to abandon culture seems a project too daunting, shocking, and counter to what we may have always believed. But when we talk of undoing the entirety of civilization, are there questions too colossal to ask and material too compact to cut through? To dispute culture itself, and the physicality of its politicized manifestation, society, is to question civilization’s very premise, that we are controlled and manipulated by external forces that have an agenda ultimately incompatible with that of the individual, regardless of their desires (although there may be illusory moments of adaptability). Whether there are direct lines drawn to individuals or groups in power, or the rigid formation of patterns and textures over time, culture controls. It must, or it ceases to exist. Culture can be viewed as the summation of who we are as social beings, or the parameters we live within. Both are unsatisfactory for one attempting an uncivilized and unrestrained existence. If we are to live entirely different, than what seems foundational and what binds all of this (civilization) must be unglued. The imprint must be erased. The structures must be shattered, so as to open up the space for our unimpeded wild selves to roam.

Is there an intrinsic element of cultivation that leads to the formation of rigid socialization? The cultivation of crops and tillage of the earth created a different context in which we dwell then that of the human-animal in a pre-civilized context. With the domination of the land, stratification of society, accumulation of power, creation of economy, and religious mystification of the world, culture takes root as an all-encompassing means of control. To put it simply, when there are things to keep in order, an orderly society is preferable. With this comes the standardization of society, the suggestion of values, the implementation of codes, and the enforcement of regulations, be they physical, intellectual, or spiritual. Overt force is always adjacent (at least the allegation of it), but to convince people they are a part of an abstract grouping, and that it is superior to any other, cultural identity is a much more effective means of control. And, to convince them of their need to view contrary or deviant inclinations of the belief system as an Other, also sets the ground for the defending of culture. The abstraction of unmediated relationships might be where we start to see concepts of culture as necessary. Before (or outside this perspective) what purpose would it serve?

What about the process of domestication is inevitable in culture? Development of humans as individuals and societies in general through education, discipline, and training, seems to require obedience to societal norms, recognized largely as cultural. The goal, as with any other form of domestication, is to obtain a uniform and productive crop or yield in as efficient means as possible. Individuality and fluidity are seen as hazards to be reigned in or plowed under. Possibly, depending on how bumper a crop that season, or how much power the domesticator has accumulated, some unruly weeds are allowed to exist on the periphery, but even they are still largely controlled, if only due to the proximity to the disciplined ones.

Are socialization and control implicit in the perpetuation and acceptance of culture? Culture attempts to express and prescribe meaning to our world. This meaning is typically, and I would argue inevitably, used to obtain and maintain power and control. Culture regularly has both a conservative and progressive character to it. Both securing society and pushing it forward stability and innovation. Traditional cultural values which sustain the contemporary aims of a society’s influence and momentum are often supported while the proposed future for that society is often portrayed as intrinsic trajectories for that culture. The tension between them keeps things moving. At any particular stage of advancement in a civilization, the characteristic features of such a stage are described as its culture. So that what is described as permanent, is never so, and that which is promoted as temporary is often an illusion of change. The bottom line is, the path of a society, and the cultural aspects of it, are quite arbitrary, yet presented as predetermined. To not be acquiescent in this set-up places one, for all practical purposes, outside of cultural reality. But the rejection of culture is certainly not a rejection of social interaction. The isolated human, rarely a healthy, connected, and successfully functioning being (by any standards), is typically the product of extreme alienation and trauma. Anti-social behavior, as a specific description, is relative to the context of the society, but it describes more of a disconnect from the ability to interact then a rejection of that society’s values. One can be positively a social being (and possibly they must be) and still attempt to dismantle that society and its social characteristics, especially if their processes of social interaction are from outside that society. As interaction and relations removed from the alienated and mediated civilized methods tend to be more direct, fluid, and intuitive, without the clunky dominating, and often insincere methods we are instilled with, it seems key to any sort of positive alternative.

Ever notice the “cult” in culture? Socially, there is great pressure, from authoritarianism to tension between “civilians”, to create a mindless following that is pervasive throughout society. There develops an affiliation of accomplices who adopt complete and societal belief systems or faiths. Those who move too close to the margins are regarded and handled as outsiders, which strictly maintains the definitions applied to a culture. In addition, the progressive linearity of cultural enlightenment and refinement through intellectual and aesthetic training occurs at all levels, from fashion to philosophy. Details and motivations of our actions that are obtained, recorded, and remembered through vastly different perceptions and bias perspectives, acquired through a cultural context and individual views, are filtered, averaged, and distilled to create a prevalent, repeated response system.

But what about primitive people and useful traditions? There is probably more from the past that we have carelessly discarded than we have critically shed, especially concerning earth-based peoples from gatherer hunters to horticulturists to pre-technological agriculturists and homesteaders (in my opinion, there is less to appreciate as we move onward in domestication, but from where we are located in history, there is still some value in critically assessing small-scale cultivators for some useful aspects). Examining the dynamics and methods of these various types of groupings for everything from food procurement to social organization (not that they aren’t inevitably linked) will reveal a great diversity between peoples and the strategies and patterns that have developed, and typically, unfortunately, formed into a culture. This investigation can also reveal common threads in how situations, needs, and problems are dealt with, which we can filter through our own unique and communal desires and contexts to apply to our lives, without adopting cultural parameters and definitions. Techniques are valuable, cultural explanations are useless, unless they reveal a relationship between things that can be utilized without socializing.

Life contains some underlying stability of circumstance, yet within it is an infinite and intricate shifting, fracturing, and supporting over time. A never-ending improvisation of reinforcing and interfering, but never repeating. Even the seemingly firmly structured parts are composed of limitless variables. We might be inspired by the way the Kaluli tribe of the Papuan Plateau perceive and interact with the world. For instance, they do not hear singular sounds in the rainforest, but instead an interlocking soundscape they call dulugu ganalan, or “lifting- up-over sounding”; millions of simultaneous sound cycles, starting and ending at different points. People’s voices layer and play off of this reality, as drums, axes, and singing blend together in rhythms and patterns creating an instinctual vocabulary understood by the group.

So what might living outside of culture look like? To start with, it would be free from moral and social frameworks that limit our freedom to explore, experience, and connect. We would still be “bound” by certain biological and geographical limitations, but not those determined by any experts or leaders. Instead we would experience directly these limitations, and along with shared experiences with others, develop our own unique understandings. Collective experience would not fit into any prearranged formation or contain any unified meaning. It would be the infinite intersections of support and divergence that make up the rest of what we call life. Rather than thinking in cultural terms, perhaps we can look at other social animals for inspiration. Flocks, herds, and packs can be contemplated for their manifestations and dynamics of living patterns. Instinctual rather than intellectual in motivation and stable yet flexible in an organic manner, rather than enforced or altered through mechanistic and projected means. Is this not closer to how humans live(d) outside of civilization?

Can we smash the petri dish and abandon the stifling concept of culture for an unobstructed reality? If we are content with the role of microorganisms in a prepared nutrient media or the product of such cultivation, then life as part of a culture is acceptable, even desirable and beneficial. If we are not satisfied as bacteria, segments of tissues, or fungi in a scientist’s test tube or observation dish, then we need to begin to seriously review how we relate to, coordinate, and view ourselves, each other, and the world around us. We can trade the abstraction, symbolic, efficiency, control, and completeness of superimposed culture for the connected, direct, dynamic, openness of unalienated existence.

The choice really is ours.

#A. Morefus #anti civ #communism #anarchism #green anarchy

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fifthimageart · 5 years

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Bloom & Decay (Draft XX)

Introduction:

Propagation in the Wasteland

Memories announce themselves as degrading reels of film, playing over and over, with subtle variations depending upon how forcefully we try to change the moments long-since experienced. However, even in the best imagined outcomes, reality molds the mind back to the inevitable result of the things that have already come to pass. So much of our early lives, simple joys, and ignorance based bliss is lost into the void of the mind and its need to distinguish, pasts, presents, and futures*.

In writing on the Destruction of Art Symposium, a month-long symposium focused on the exhibition of destructive and destroyed works that took place in 1966

London, Art historian Kristine Stiles describes Destruction in art as not being the same as destruction of art. Moreover, she went on to write that the destruction in art addresses the negative aspects of both social and political institutions, and manifests as an attack on the traditional identity of the visual arts themselves. While these artists were responding to their individual overarching philosophies of destruction in the form of ephemeral art object and performance based works, there was never an established movement nor manifesto unifying the practice. Though the symposium itself was formulated by the artist Gustav Metzger, who coined the term ‘Auto-Destructive Art’ seven years prior, it would seem final meditations of both destruction and decay as separate from any particular canon following the month-long event would end there.

Eight years later, In the 1974 essay Theory of the Avant-Garde, Peter Bürger presents a similar problem, more directly asking the question as to how the development of art and literature could be reconstructed within a bourgeois society. This question, alluding to a later point made in the piece in which definitions of individual works are thus not made through the autonomy of the object itself, but rather solely through socially institutionalized investigation. The institution of art itself, then presents itself as the system of production and distribution of the prevailing ideas that dictate an object's reception of what we would consider to be Art. Dadaism had poised itself as a radical movement 50 years prior within the European avant-garde, in their manifested criticism of art as an institution (TAV_PB.22). The movement, in fact challenged nineteenth century aestheticism and art object through the self-criticism of art, or rather the theoretical destruction of Art within the realm of the institution. The Dadaists were among the first to introduce a means of subverting capitalist ideas directly within the western art canon, while also destroying traditional comprehension of what we would call aesthetic experience. Though, the paradox in the base ideas of an anti-art itself, reside in the fact that such concepts have long since been inducted into institutional canon, and by extension the greater art market. As recognized by Gustav Metzger, ‘They did not destroy enough’(ADA_GM_30). Object even in a Dadist manner, acting as a signifier to nothing but itself and the meaninglessness nature of the modern world, was still left with meaning by its physical presence in the facet of a world it was attempting to critique.

In Antony Hudek’s The Object (pub.2014), objecthood is understood as a thing that has obtained verified value through the perception of the individual, or a conformed and collective intellect. In both cases, objects become subjects themselves. Later in the text, Hudek addresses the relationship between this valued and venerated thing, as being made object in relationship to the specifically thinking subject (Tobj.HudPg17). However, arguably in both cases, the object is nothing more than a thing, oppressed with meaning and extensions of two subjects’ own ego and narcissism. Consider an art object. In the process of making, a cumulation of things that would have otherwise been overlooked (in the most general sense where one does not actively seek the particularly used material, or in the more ideal situation in which the material is sourced other than otherwise commodified or sentimental means), suddenly become object. That object then becomes one of subjective perceptions by a larger body. The art object, in that particular moment of exhibition, transforms into a mirror, in which this primary subject observes and make reflected judgment on a now secondary subject, the maker. The object itself then operates as if both hiding its own past thingness and intent, in ambiguous form and meaning. However, as the object becomes further commodified through institution, original thinghood transcends to proposed magnificence.

While opulence often has (understandably) more association with physical tokens of wealth, this can be arguably more abstracted in that opulence is the way in which we manifest, cast out, and assert our productions of grandeur into a system that demands it in exchange for the false promise of value (heroism) in the greater and perversely commodified heroic machine*(EB). Post-opulence then, is a theory aimed at dismantling and reversing the deconstruction/reconstruction process. Though the relationship to the art object is similar to that of destructionist practice, it is also a recycling practice between a materials’ thingness and objecthood. Post-opulence introduces unpredictability in material presence, rather than finding comfort in the stable image or object. It aims first, to reveal the sought ideal and iconic states as nothing more than a mimetic reflections of questionable institutional/social standards (Destruction of Art). Secondly, actively creates afflictions and ambivalence toward a conventional aesthetic, through the destruction of the art object (Destruction in Art). Post-Opulence highlights the investment in an idealized form, to then reduce the object back to a state of “thingness”. Moreover, explores a struggle that ensues between the formerly idealized art object (Icon) and new variable form revealed, through a process of deconstruction and decay. Post-Opulence rejects notions of value and stagnation in a commodified system, and operates as institutional disruption in that it consistently makes reference to both actions and signals of changed circumstances and time.

The Reality of Decay

Every moment of our life belongs to the present only for a moment; then it belongs for ever to the past. Every evening we are poorer by a day. We would perhaps grow frantic at the sight of this ebbing away of our short span of time were we not secretly conscious in the profoundest depths of our being that we share in the inexhaustible well of eternity, out of which we tan for ever draw new life and renewed time (*VE).

In his essay, On the Vanity of Existence (1924), Arthur Schopenhauer describes our existence as a fruitless struggle amidst a life dictated by instability and confusion. In that the living body is a dedicated mechanism to strife, in the pursuit of a recognized sustainable present of satisfaction. However, this journey will inevitably end in vain as that which was meant to embody a lasting existence, would not have non-being as its preordained goal(*VE). Arguably, the objective reality is that at one moment life is, and eventually it is not. Moreover, it’s in our subjective reality during the process of life, that such definitions become skewed and distorted through culture and institution. It is through such domineering vessels of that even our basic realities are taken from us, being supplemented by false promises of eternal life, hollow examples of transcendence, and vacant reward for allowing our individual realities to be managed by forces no better nor worse than ourselves. In this, the made environment shapes the way in which we define and find value in our own individual definitions of what our realities are.

Post-Opulence then is eventually interested in both the exploration and disentombing of this turn from humanity's rebellion toward a false dominance of a commodified society. This being said, the visual experience should not be reinforced to just seek the supplementation of permanent images and icons, but go on to embrace the decay of them. While representation is inherently mimetic of reality, Modernist ideology called for the delusion of it and is thus much more dangerous. Where the physicality of the made form is a manifestation of tangible truth, paintings manipulate the texture of the mind. To quote Harold Rosenberg, “Art as action rests on the enormous assumption that the artist accepts as real only that which he is in the process of creating”. In what could’ve been unknowingly hinted by him at the time, was the potential for narcissism in self-referential types of art that creates a volatile iconization of itself in the form of artistic commodity. Good art being overdetermined by economy, while external society is abstracted away.

The Icon

‘It doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to form a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. They earn this feeling by carving out a place in nature, by building an edifice that reflects human value: a temple, a cathedral, a totem pole, a skyscraper, a family that spans three generations. The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count (*DeDeath5). ‘

An icon is representative of something otherworldly. Moreover, is by extension defined as an object or image deployed to aid devotion/action toward such heroisms. Secondly, an icon is defined separately as a representative symbol, or as being worthy of veneration. Even in such surface definitions, there’s a redundancy in both definitional cases, as an icon serves as nothing more than a manifested access point to something perceived as greater than the self. Whether in a composition, place of worship, or in our pockets, we imbue faith and define reality via iconic vehicles of reconciliation and promises of fixed access to the infinite.

In The Denial of Death (pub.1973), cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker poses that the human mind is occupied by both anxiety and despair as we meditate upon impending demise. Moreover, as humans we seek a buffer or antidote to this truth, in adopting a greater urge to heroism - an application of significance to one’s own existence*(also freud). However, while certain imagined heroisms are inaccessible to most, we find ways of seeking heroism in our daily routines (i.e. work, religion, politics, relationships). This heroism is short lived, in that its destined for failure. This is because the cosmic significance of the individual person is nonexistent. Additionally, we subscribe to what is ultimately the illusion of permanent meaning. As religion was the once prominent means of establishing this illusion of greater individual significance, the institution in this form began to lose its hold as modernity began to supplement this need via a cultural heroism defined by its respective culture.

It’s in the latter that we begin to see the rise of cultural heroes (or icons), and the creation of heroic machines. These apparatuses, being of the institution, dictate the rhetoric that the average individual can only hope to fold into the illusion of being a part of the greater heroic movement. Again, this machine being directed and represented by the culture in which it grows, for better or worse. Becker, asserts that this quest for cultural heroism is the most actualized form of heroism that an individual could hope to achieve. There are rare instances, however, that Becker coined as being called genuine heroism. For Becker, genuine heroism refers to a small population of people that do not require any form of heroism illusion to live, and can face the impossible situation of living that we find ourselves in.

I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever [humanity] does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise, it is false (DD_EB).] good quote

Applying such a context once again to this idea of the physical icon, the Post-Opulent role is that of the institutional iconoclast, and the introduction of an aesthetic anti-heroism. In that while one accepts that we are indeed subject to the individual limitations of the unconscious drives to cultural heroism, the objects and images we produce in this world are fleeting offerings to the two facts of our current temporal finitude: being and non-being. Moreover, by redirecting the productions of oneself away from satiating the cultural/institutional beast in favor of starving it, one may produce an aesthetic theory or practice similar to that which can be viewed as a genuine heroism.

Final Notes: Anti-Heroism & Reverence of the Non-Opulent Object

In the 1995 piece by John F. Schumaker, The Corruption of Reality, When an individual is in need of order in a chaotic system, the solution requires the individual to establish and maintain an unjustified or artificial order. Schumaker goes on to assert that this develops into a second system of operation that begins to eliminate competing data from the individual consciousness. Thus, the ordered institution becomes dependent on a social body of individual dissociation(CR.34). The example Schumaker provides in regard to the way in which the artificial reality takes hold, is the institution of religion. Much like hypnosis, such institutions produce a state of complacency by way of deconstruction of the individual scope via disassociation, and supplementing through a reconstructive process of suggestion (CR.81). Object and icon begin to then form as waypoints, or rather as gaslights along a darkened street, leading the collective consciousness down a path laid down by unknown entities that claim such passages safe.

Some worthwhile examples come to mind that would reveal the bridge between “hypnotic” and religious behavior. Consider the recently publicized miracle that took place when a figure of Christ on the cross began to shed tears. The cross was situated high against the front wall of the church, too high in fact for anyone actually to see the drops of water firsthand. Yet a great percentage of people who visited the church were convinced wholeheartedly that tears were being shed by the figure. At a later point, zoom cameras were able to show that there were no changes to the figure’s eyes, even while people reported seeing the tears. // They stared at the eyes for long periods of time, which had a trance-inducing effect due to the visual monotony*. At the same time, the staring caused eye fatigue and some inevitable perceptual variations // These effects were then interpreted in relation to believers’ original suggestion, namely, that Christ’s eyes would water (CR.81).’

Here is one example of iconic object, fulfilling the role as a vessel of prescribed imaginative illusion and suggested magnificence, or rather opulence. The maker venerates the thing to object with meaning and direction toward a subject, the object then becomes a mimetic representation and reflection, of the once subjected target. This new observer, with prescribed reason, imbue in the cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction of meaning. In short, an object and the concept of its meaning, means little compared to the amount that institution itself can

There is no art without ourselves, or acknowledgement of the lack of it.

Chapter I

On the Destruction of Ideology:

Post-Opulence & Critique in Early Iconoclasm

If all that changes slowly may be explained by life, all that changes quickly is explained by fire. Fire is the ultra-living element. It is intimate and it is universal. - (PF/GB)

Icon and sacred object have always served as powerful means of instilling pillars of power. While we may think of the word icon in solely western terms, such as digital representation of files or in relationship to objects of Christianity, this use of object or image as vessel to areas beyond our conceptual understanding is a cross cultural phenomenon that has spanned throughout time. From the objects of polytheism and pagan era deity worship, to contemporary vessels such as photographs that capture and represent memory, all can fall within the theoretical characterization of the ‘Mimesis’. This, being the concept that artistic expression and creation are nothing more than a re-representation and imitation of both internal and external realities. In this sense, the iconoclast or destroyer (in terms of being an antithesis to the ‘maker’), inadvertently still holds a specific aesthetic sensibility and potential to create a work that reveals an opposite reality than the initial object implies. Aesthetically and socially speaking, we now exist in a time where iconoclasm thus can be argued to have the ability to present itself as an evidence of progressive victory over historically problematic institutions. Iconoclasm then could be argued to better be described as a conceptual construct, that has evolved in relationship to an auto-destructive culture that in fact created the environment that fosters it. Reframing the negative associations of the destruction of Icon based on Byzantine era victors and influences, iconoclasm overall serves as both a powerful aesthetic strategy and political tool. The legitimacy of the destruction of the icon, has found both evolution and intersection within whole practices of sociopolitical life and contemporary aesthetics. The French Revolution, being one way that iconoclasm had found its most drastic shifts in narrative following the period in which it was defined solely by it’s religious targets, French revolutionaries destroyed artworks and portraits of the wealthy, as these symbolized the luxury, vanity, and opulence of the aristocracy. However, as the social valuation of art itself began to grow, these revolutionaries evolved once more this concept of iconoclasm, and created new techniques of destroying and transforming symbolic meaning through the process of renaming, rededication, and the full removals from sites where display and interpretation can be institutionally controlled.

Hugo Ball, a key theorist and practitioner of the Dadaists in early twentieth century Zurich, took this concept of reframing in the realm of iconoclasm by motivating the Dada movement though complex thinking on language, philosophy, theology, mysticism, history, and politics. Not only did the views of Dada contradict Christian mysticism, but characterized similar institutions (such as the museum), as ‘outdated, hierarchical repositories of power’. Dada thus was at an intersection between iconoclasm, anarchism, and aesthetic experience. Moreover, viewed the iconoclastic movements as being a singular mold of both religious and secular, although its participants would claim one or the other. Dada was responding to aestheticization of late 19th century art, which itself was the aristocratic bourgeoisie response to industrialization - While the use of the term iconoclasm in Balls essays were in relationship to a historical ‘Bildersturm’, otherwise known as the 16th century’s Great Iconoclasm during Europe’s Protestant Reformation, it was treated as an important means of force in political conflicts that continued to resonate into the twentieth century.

Prefacing Modernism, it was thought that ‘Because man is unable to escape the concrete, all abstraction, as an attempt to manage without the image, leads only to an impoverishment, a dilution of, a surrogate for the linguistic process.’ Moreover, that ‘Abstraction breeds arrogance; it makes men appear the same as or similar to God (even if only in illusion)’. In which case, the museum presents itself as it’s church.

In his essay, Functions of the Museum (1973), Daniel Buren describes the museum as being a privileged place with three specific realms of function: In the Aesthetic, Economic, and Mystical. First, it frames itself as the central viewpoint in which to consume the narratives of the collection, under the guise of individual emphasis or freedom from agenda. The museum exhibits what it wants to show, to which point the institution itself becomes synonymous to stage. Secondly, the museum removes object from commonplace, creating an inclusive value system based on the privileged/selected. Thirdly, perpetuates a self-reflecting mythysism of omnipotent power over what is consumed as ‘Art’, in both it’s implied promise and intention of self-preservation. This preservation, perpetuating the idealistic notion of becoming eternal*DB within it.

The museum has been tasked with a cultures’ protection against time itself. It is an artificial space, ‘granting it an appearance of immortality which serves a remarkably well discourse which the prevalent bourgeois ideology attaches to it*DB. The museum presents itself as self-evident, all while protecting itself and it’s own fragility through the serving upward collection of voice and gesture. This collection, becoming where art becomes born and buried* in the museum’s ability to create the space for simplification. The two roles of the collection then presents itself as either a silencing of the many, or the embedding of value upon the privileged few.

Chapter II

Destructive Nature:

Modernism, Auto-Destructive Art, and Post-Opulence

In the western canon, following the end of World War II, iconoclasm via the abstract form (i.e. Tachisme and Abstract Expressionism) became the predominant means of cultural expression within a mass episode of cultural forgetting within the western world. That being, there were no means of both accurately confronting and aestheticizing the horrors of the post-war world that remained grounded in both its reality and truth. In the destruction of recognizable imagery, In favor of the abstract form, reality was even further removed and that unpleasantness successfully buried.

Auto-Destructive Art (1959) was acutely concerned with the problems of the repressed aggressions of and toward the individual, as well as those within the greater society. Additionally, operated against a system that was viewed by Metzger as being the maker of its own destruction, responding to WWII, and the increased Industrialization of war and nuclear armament. In three separate manifestos, he went on to criticize privileged institutions and their dominion of both nature as a tangible entity, and in more metaphysical forms in relationship to the greater society. Metzger viewed people as being vessels of the unresolved and suppressed aggressions against ourselves. Moreover, That this predisposition toward destruction served as a critical threat to the continuation of the institutional illusion of balance and control. It is for this reason that he rationalized, that due to this conflicting unconscious allure, any art celebrating this pleasure would be quickly rejected*(GMB).

How have we progressed in regard to the way in which we in a neo-gilded culture, invest in the ideals of the ideal, consume art, and adorn creation as a half-realized concept; keeping in mind that no product of creation can or will exist in its most opulent or idealized form forever. Additionally, within a culture that both appropriates and consumes the aesthetic and moral principles of it’s would be counter. Mass media, as an example, serves us daily reminders of the realities of our modern day capacity for destruction, disruption, and decay. Through it, catastrophe and their sediments are made both palatable and distant, creating a cognitive distance as a kind of means of not looking, alienation, and disassociation. The question as to whether or not art object can both accurately describe reality and catalyze redemption, is one I put before Post-Opulence to answer, through the reclamation of destruction within the infrathin* moments between a completely destructive process and its inherent aesthetic manifestation following.

The contemporary ways of viewing of this progression/interaction with the perceived and ‘finalized’ art object, mirrors Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality, in which reality itself is formed from an endless reproduction of the real. Moreover, Developing into a relationship of equivalence, indifference, then the extinction of the original*. The way in which mass production has shaped our way of viewing, has both destroyed and altered the relationships we have with our own experienced reality. Additionally, it has created a perceived hierarchy of these two visual forms of completion and degradation into two opposing icons of status.

Where Auto-Destructive Art and Post-Opulence diverge, is in the intention toward the intimate actualization of a specific set of ethical and political ideals, rather than solely becoming a grand spectacle of them. Auto-Destructive Art was interested in complex and large-scale forms, somewhat hypocritical (ironic?) relations to the art market itself, and rings problematically absolute in its overall practice. The practice always needing something tougher (GM-pg34), and was characteristically power driven and hungry in it’s goal of being a ‘constructive force in society (GM-36)’. Auto-Destructive Art craved destruction in the form of violence, expelling through force of action, rather than decomposition. Post-Opulence is based on the passing of time, rather than a specific and complex manipulation of it. Moreover, it strives to relinquish control, rather than perform it. Where the theory of Auto-Destructive Art was an attack on the capitalist art market through performance in conjunction with maximal material form, Post-Opulence is rejection of the idealized or fixed state of material form, as well as an attack on the notions of extended iconization through similarly problematic traditional gallery systems.

Aside from acknowledged relationships to Dada, Auto-Destructive Art sucessfully lacked being a complete theory. However, the work of Auto-Destructive Art began to be defined by its scientific motivations, idealizing the future machine based experiences ‘that we need’ (GM_ADAC-191). These, being equally fallible frameworks subject to the draw of institutional self-preservation. Auto-Destructive Art found manifestation (or lack thereof) not only in the physical practice of deconstructing works, Destruction in art, but also by means of the manifesto/lecture format. Much like Post-Opulence, acting somewhat beyond a means of a self-authoritative or object based artistic practice, Auto-Destructive Art worked as a synthesis of the aesthetic values of destruction, and the performative aspects of public/collective engagement. Specifically to Post-Opulence, the lecture/manifesto takes form in events which have been informally called ‘burnings’. However, the overall criticism of Auto-Destructive Art in relationship to Post-Opulence, is in the synthetic and violent texture of the Auto Destructive movement itself.

(Image credits for Key)

As a continual modernization process provided the western world with a means of dealing with the traumas of war and its disasters, it additionally left open the questions surrounding whom truly carries the authority over the conventions of art and its institutional value. Clement Greenberg, a prominent art critic of the mid-twentieth century, adopted a new iconoclastic ideology and championed Abstract Expressionism within the western canon. His rejection to representation was not due to a personal dislike of the narrative image, but rather out of necessity as aesthetic progress called for it. Abstract expressionism created a standard and climate for the privileged to foster the grand modernist narrative, in that it demanded critical analyses, interpretations, and informed opinions (BJM_37). Here, iconoclasm has found itself appropriated as a tool of illusionary progress in the form of the abstract. Illusionary, in its failure in this form to provide a genuine challenge against normative consumer/capitalist ideology at the time.

The modern studio itself can be seen to conform to the limitations of the neutral space, to which the hope it is to be selected, exhibited, and sold. While on the one hand the studio was a private space, a heroic space, the studio was and remains a space with the intention of convenience for the organizer, curator, or exhibitors own designs*(DB_FS). Institution provides an easy to understand space, in which it’s own values characterize the studio into a described, ‘boutique where we find ready-to-wear-art’ *(DB_FS); tailored and fitted to the markets’ needs. Said institution, abstracting that which challenges between its space of production and its space of exhibition and distribution.

It would seem the case that such institutional powers (Which were/continue to be problematic and white-male dominant) would continue to provide answers. To that point, and the institutionalization of art itself in the development of higher conceptual frameworks belonging to those who can access it, has transformed Art into a vessel

(or icon) of a flawed social order. The concepts and aesthetics of the artistic field grew in relationship with the post war period, which today are still taught as fundamental knowledge. However, Abstract Expressionism eventually removed a necessary conflict between an ‘Advanced Art’ and the dominant culture, in that it kept alive the social and political norms of the west, and thus became an icon in both its material reality and lack of image.

Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power

Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future. Instead of being made of natural materials, such as marble, granite, or other kinds of rock, the new monuments are made of artificial materials, plastic, chrome, and electric light. They are not built for the ages, but rather against the ages. They are involved in a systematic reduction of time down to fractions of seconds, rather than in representing the long spaces of centuries. Both past and future are placed into an objective present (RS_NM11)

Minimalism acted as a theoretical reversal of power relations between individual values and those of society. Where in reality, in its compositions, minimalism represented authority. It not only embodied a prevailing social authority, but also the currency of power of the social patriarch. Moreover, made a case of an inherent discourse of implied power that was present in minimalist work, contextualized by inscribed problematic meaning. These included implications of industry, representations mimicking the rhetoric of a perceived dominant figure (the male), and a visual violence/aggression that would be directed toward the viewer, and as a complete occupation of communal space.

In Anna Chave’s essay, Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power (1990), Robert Morris’s work is described as being reminiscent of “carceral images of discipline and punishment”. The images themselves portray imprisonment or and repression, and Chave goes on to comment that even in [Morris’s] writings, he was more interested in power, rather than the countering of the current political/social context of the time. As an example, the Morris piece Hearing was a gallery installation made up by a copper chair, zinc table, and a heated led bed. In the description of the piece, all the installed objects were connected with live electricity, with load speakers playing an interrogation. While the compositions are a clear reference to a prison setting, the implied and forced narrative is that of a context of intimidation and the policed state.

Dan Flavin’s work is described as having including corporate references, in its recontextualizing the mass produced fluorescent light. Moreover, generated a market practice that was solely supported by its authorship over the readily available material, in short, selling the name.

‘Flavin’s Diagonal not only looks technological and commercial - like Minimalism generally - it is an industrial product and, as such, it speaks of the extensive power exercised by the commodity in a society where virtually everything is for sale’ - (Adorno, Pg.46)

Donald Judd’s work can also be argued to be making reference to an implied inner figure or ‘Strong body’. Through composition and scale, Judd’s work captures the characterization of the proverbial ‘strong silent type’ as described by Chave. Moreover, in the work there is the expression of power, which similarly lacks feeling or communication.

While Minimalist sculpture did succeed in its aim of expressing an implicit power over time and space, the model and phallic heavy references to outdated notion, exposed the monuments to their own overcompensation evolving since the previous period. It’s not until pieces are introduced having other dilapidated form via destruction or judgment from time and the elements, that the absolute nature of the works begin to feel less absolute and thus less authoritarian in nature.

Chapter III

Destruction on Display:

Practice & Presentation

It’s in these created moments of chaos, destruction, and broken silence, that we momentarily operate outside of a reality constructed by the mundane. The spectacle of the broken glass, engages our most primal drives, alerting us to the space in which we’re operating, but also instantaneously connects us to a space we presently share with others. By means of joining a destructive process with the power invested in a sought idealized state, a struggle over iconic form through its breaking, salvaging, and reuse begins to be exhumed. Additionally, creates reference to the actions and signals of changed circumstance & time.

In recent years however, we have seen a progression toward the dismantling of this resonant flawed modernity in both iconoclastic aesthetics and social intervention in the Contemporary. The practice and concept, both being free from the confines of institutional structure and influence. As an example, Earlier in 2017, the city council of Charlottesville voted to remove a confederate statue of Robert E. Lee and the surrounding park. Later, on August 12th a ‘Unite the Right’ Rally was scheduled following months of earlier protest from white nationalists. This rally, resulting in the death of one and injury of nineteen others when a white nationalist, James Alex Fields, drove his car through a crowd of counter protesters.

By no means do I make this illustration lightly, but it's worth exploring the fantasticism and need for the illusion/safety found in connection to such a fetishised preservation of toxicity as monument. Moreover, the social revelations made by such progressive iconoclastic action toward said icon and monument, comprised of nothing but material and thing. Ernest Becker might understand this relationship as being the essence of transference as a certain taming of terror, by means of creating order in a chaotic universe (*EB_DD145-9). In that certain monuments, or icons, represent what we aim to be loved by or to hate. In the former, comes with the consequence of Transference Terror*, in which one fears to lose the love of the object that manifests as an icon of one’s heroistic ideal(*EB_145-9). Iconoclasm in this sense, successfully disrupts and challenges the heroic projects/objects of the oppressing institutional body, while revealing it’s reality and greater insignificance. Following the events of Charlottesville, there was a wave of stated illegal and legal instances of iconoclasm of Confederate monuments in Durham, North Carolina, and Baltimore, Maryland**(NI_pg1-9). While the subject is still one between proposed ‘heritage’ and social progress, iconoclasm now manifests as an aesthetic tool that still makes the propositions of progress, however through actual physical instances and evidences of destruction.

During the same year as this Iconoclastic wave, contemporary artists Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson), came out with their two-person exhibition White Man On A Pedestal (WMOAP), opening at Pioneer Works in 2017:

Installation view of ‘White Man On A Pedestal’ at Pioneer Works, 2017

‘Pioneer Works is pleased to present White Man On A Pedestal (WMOAP), a two-person exhibition by Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson), from November 10 – December 17, 2017. WMOAP questions a prevailing western history that uses white-male-heteronormativity as its persistent model.

Both artists approach WMOAP from an individual practice that is responsive to their individual experiences as black women, operating in a system of white male supremacy. At a time when removing Confederate statues—literally white men on pedestals—were cultural flashpoints of whiteness and class, Garner and (Robinson) play with the size, texture, and scale of white monumentality itself, referencing both real and imagined figureheads of historical exclusion’

Installation view of ‘White Man On A Pedestal’ at Pioneer Works, 2017

Iconoclasm has thus serves as a subtle force of change, beyond the conventional ideas surrounding it as simple brutality. The questions remain open in the aesthetic exploration of the destruction in art, vs. the destruction of art. Moreover, aesthetic iconoclasm being a matter of politics, art, and navigated areas of intersection in relationship to the greater social body. Other exhibitions and areas of site are considered when visualizing some successful means of destruction both in and of art.

Spiral Jetty and La Jetée are two examples of a makers attempt to reconcile with such destructions through time. In each, we get a sense of an acknowledgement and understanding of a descension of the past into a present chaos, entropy. In Spiral Jetty, it’s in the form of the natural degrading archaeology of the pieces’ direct exposure to the elements. The variable and unstable manifestation of form at this location, act as as both a time-marker and the exhumed nature of these decaying themes in relation to the present. Likewise, in the film La Jetée, the subject character of the film, is in constant reference to an abstract time before the dropping of the bomb.

In the present, both works express a returning to a work in progress, both with the intention of resolution, albeit a resolution resulting in decay each time. With the spiral jetty, in it’s created intention, is inevitably going to find itself eroded, as our protagonist in La Jetée is to be ‘liquidated’ as the task becomes complete.

Nothing distinguishes memories from ordinary moments. Only later do they become memorable by the scars they leave. (Narrator, La Jetée)

In the film, there is also a sense of the auto-destructive attitude toward technology and humankind’s industry both to create and destroy. However, the Spiral Jetty again better represents the idea of passive destruction vs. that based around its violet nature. In the former, it’s either the implied violence of individual erasure or world ending catastrophe, and the latter being a relinquishing of something of human production to the natural progress of time and decay.

Lastly, in the documentation piece (Spiral jetty), there’s an interesting shot of Smithson in his film as we follow the maker via helicopter. He runs down the jetty for what seems like an endless amount of time as he progresses towards the center. However, as he follows this spiral form and begins to get closer to the eye, past and near future parts of the track began to be revealed in the frame. Until reaching the center and conclusion of the track, leaving the artist nowhere to go. Likewise in La Jetée, the protagonist asks those residing in the future to return to the beginning, but once returned and as he runs down the pier, it’s revealed that at the end is in fact the inevitability of death. It’s in these final moments, that past, present, and future clash for our subjects, leading to a progressively quickened state of entropy and closure.

Show the line between Bloom & Decay

When Attitudes Become form

Formalized

Passive/conceptual disruption

HS - LA Exhibit

Theme/theatre

aggressive/violent disruption

Contrast to Post-Op

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maevelin · 5 years

Note

what do you think of sansa and dany's relationships this season? you are the best at metas, maybe you can analyze these ladies?

I am actually finding their confrontation to be predictable. And in a way interesting. Now let me start by saying that I am not very fond of the characterization this show gives to most characters. I find the GoT writers to be lacking the ability to write nuanced dynamics and to move past the superficial. But given where we started with the characters and where we are now both Dany and Sansa, Sansa more, have went through major character development and they are both women with agency and personalities that they are able to own completely and thrive in them.

I always find the clash of powerful characters to be interesting because this is where the interesting conflict that is essential to every storytelling comes from. Especially characters that rely in their mental and emotional strengths, in strategy, in manipulation, in power games and in their beliefs. And I think there is nothing to fear into characters arguing or not getting along. Especially female characters. The fact that both are women does not mean they must get along by default. That would actually be an equally harmful representation as to have writers not understanding women and having them being toxic to each other because of the prejudice that surrounds the hostile attitude women are believed to have towards each other in real life. But in writing and in this particular narrative women should be simply be written as people and when the conflict is based on serious reasons and makes sense then it is a great source for interesting storytelling.

This is after all the Game of Thrones. And both Dany and Sansa are major players in it now. They have to establish their power and their dominance and they have to do it with whatever means necessary. Foremost with their intelligence but also with their endurance. This has been their journey so far after all. They have beat the odds, they grew, the came into the people they are now. And the people they are now are having ideological differences and their goals are not similar. And this is a deadly game with many things at stake so it would make sense for both of them to want to maintain their power and territory.

In many ways both Sansa and Dany have led parallel lives. They started with a certain level of innocence, naivety and powerlessness. They were known for their beauty. Their nobility was their strength but also their fatal weakness that led them into all sort of horrors. Both of them are survivors. They faced an extremely misogynistic world that viewed them us pawns. They faced abuse, rape, terror. They rose from the ashes stronger and took down their enemies one by one so to get the power that was never handed to them but was owned by them each step of the way. And they did it using all possible means. By pretending to be stupid, by seduction, by strategy, by brutality, by their name and legacy. Both of them driven by the need to reclaim what was lost. Both of them learning from their enemies. Both of them facing betrayal. Both of them bending but not breaking. The fact that Sansa still holds on to her femininity and propriety more while Dany has embraced the conqueror persona still makes them two sides of the same coin. They have faced endless obstacles and in a way they are seeing in each other one more obstacle.

Sansa is more practical while Dany is more of a dreamer. Dany is like Robert Baratheon in a way...she is more able to fight a war than dealing with political aspects in the aftermath while Sansa is better with the practicalities of running a Kingdom rather than securing it by force where there she needs warriors for the front lines.

Both of them are entitled. Both are regal but in different ways. Dany is more arrogant but she is able to take council better than Sansa while Sansa is more observant and calm in her responses but she relies far too much on her own judgement thus making herself the only voice she will hear and if she makes a mistake then it is game over (and it only takes one under these circumstances).

Dany is lacking the self awareness Sansa has and while Sansa is more or a political figure she is lacking the military abilities that are necessary for the imminent threat that is in their way. Dany has a major savior complex and believes in her absolute right to rule to a degree that creates blinders all around her that don’t allow her to see that she is -despite any of her good intentions that do exist- in a way invading the north (even with Jon’s blessings) and given the culture and the history of the Northerners she should acknowledge how she would not be accepted and that another approach could have been more fruitful. While on the other hand Sansa (that let us face it at this point is the total collective brains of the Stark family) does tend to undermine Jon and not comprehend the very real danger the Night King poses against all that she wants to keep. Jon refuses to accept Sansa’s intelligence but Sansa is doing the same with him while he has knowledge on certain subjects she definitely does not. Sansa knows how to play the game which in the long run will be very essential after the dust settles but right now the fire is at her door and she is unable to create bonds and allies past those she can handle politically without realizing that what is coming is not only political. Sansa wants to keep the North and Winterfell but first she will have to ensure the survival of both. And for that she needs Dany so antagonizing the one power that can actually save all that Sansa holds at heart is not the smartest thing to do. And on the other hand Dany was judging Viserys for believing the lies he was fed about the commoners praying for their rightful ruler but she is effectively acting as if any other behavior towards her face is irrational.

It is a very interesting pull and push actually. Not to mention the current romance that is in the way that does complicate things for everyone because it distorts the way every character sees the intentions of the other characters.

Anyhow either Sansa and Dany will find common ground or not remains to be seen but it would make no sense for them to jump into something like that without clashing first. Both of them crave power. Power they believe is their birthright. Both of them are ready to defend what they perceive to be their right with any means necessary. Both are amoral grey characters and I can see where both are coming from.

For now I am enjoying this because it is between the lines. They are side-eyeing each other, they are negotiating, they are testing the waters. The confrontation is not direct and you can feel the power shifting between them as they are taking in and studying each other with subtle threats and meanings that emphasize on their point of views and on what makes each one a serious opponent. I think this is just a prelude and the real power moves between them are yet to be seen.

But given how they are only but a few episodes left and a very real zombie threat in the way we will have to see how the writers will work with all that into the story. I hope they don’t rush things just for the sake of it and then create a convoluted mess with an anticlimactic resolve that won’t do justice to either woman. Like they did with Sansa and Arya last year actually.

#game of thrones #got #Sansa Stark #Daenerys Targaryen #Sansa #Dany #mymeta #Anonymous

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grass-skirt · 6 years

Note

thanks for answering my fisk ask! i appreciate it. can you think of characters that are good examples for a well done sympathetic villain? aside from fma's scar

Your welcome! (And sorry to other folks who’ve sent asks that I haven’t answered yet, but sometimes it’s easier for me to think of how to answer some questions than others and again time and energy are very limited resources for me these days) (And here’s the link to the preceding ask on my thought for what constitutes a sympathetic villain, how Scar is one, and how Wilson Fisk is not)

And let’s see here. If I had to think of some more well-done examples of sympathetic villains…

Meruem from HxH: amazing example. As someone not human, born not just socially, but biologically, to be king with the massive power to back it up and no reference point for what it meant to care or have feelings for others. And yet, he met someone who could best him in one thing, one simple thing, and slowly fell in love with her and through her uncovered the humanity no one thought he had. (Not to mention, he was manipulated by Pouf who tried to stamp out the love he had learned to feel and set him back on the path of a heartless conqueror, so we can also feel sympathy for his character on that front as well)

Tetsuo Shima from Akira: this is possibly a more (lowkey) controversial choice. Because yeah, he’s a 15-year old asshole who got psychic powers and became an even bigger asshole. But I feel like he’s an incredibly understandable character precisely because of that. To me, he’s an exploration of the effects that insecurity, powerlessness, poverty, and environmental instability can have on kids. Take a kid who feels miserable and doubts himself and isn’t supported by the society around him who wants desperately to be respected and in control and give him power… He couldn’t control his powers well, they caused him massive pain and made him fear what they would do to his mind and body. He could control through fear but he couldn’t control himself and that pain and uncertainty and fear never left him. One of the elements of a good sympathetic villain to me is that their choices make sense. And Tetsuo is a character whose choices were almost all bad, but IMO make sense from the sad, angry perspective of the view he had and the world around him. (Long ago I made a cool graphic about him)

Jasper from SU: now here’s an actual potentially controversial choice. Steering clear of the whole Malachite discourse and just focusing more broadly on her character, she was a huge jerk who beat the snot out of people and seemed to relish in it. She was the biggest villain in SU for a good long while, and there was little reason to think of her as sympathetic. That is, until we found out that the reason she hated the Earth and the Crystal Gems and was so fixated on strength is because thousands of years ago the Crystal Gems murdered the person she most loved and adored and the person she was literally created to serve. Then we start being able to see how her villainous beliefs and actions were shaped by the culture and society of the Diamond Authority that doesn’t give it’s members much in the way of choice or freedom. And then we also find out that the person who Jasper’s very existence was for had faked her own death and everything Jasper believed for the past 5000 years was a lie. Again, she’s a villain whose horribleness can be seen as a result of the circumstances around her, and we can see that if she had been told the truth and given different opportunities she perhaps could have been someone good instead of eventually devolving into a literal monster.

Eric Killmonger from Black Panther: he was someone who fought for a cause he believed him, and that was righteous and justified in his eyes. He grew up in poverty, his father was murdered, and he lived his life on the outside of a great society of wealth and equality, always aware of what they had but wouldn’t share with him or others who were also suffering. He looked at the imperialist, racist, oppressive actions of the world and thought, “Wakanda’s neutrality is acceptance of injustice. If the nation of my birth has the ability to reshape the world, punish the injustice of nations and societies, and give power to our oppressed people, we should do it.” T'challa’s view was that you can’t hurt and kill innocent people in the name of justice. Killmonger’s view was that harm, death, and suffering were constantly happening anyway, and that T’challa’s stance was accepting and tacitly endorsing this injustice. Again, his villainy came from a place of understandable suffering and genuine belief that fighting fire with fire was better than standing on the sidelines and simply watching the fire burn.

And two final characters:

Donquixote Doflamingo from One Piece gets an honorable mention. He could have been an amazing sympathetic villain, but for some reason Oda took a character who was born into a culture of ignorance, corruption, and greed, who lost everything and was tortured by angry mobs who blamed him for sins he hadn’t committed, who was then raised by a group of older boys and men who again groomed him and lead him down a road of villainy…. and then said, “Hey, this guy? Doflamingo? He was just born evil. Yeah, that’s it. He was born evil. So don’t worry so much about all the environmental stuff, because he was born evil anyway. Even his brother said so.” (Again, here’s a graphic and analysis I did on the subject for those who have forgotten)

Lady Eboshi from Princess Mononoke. (I also wrote a big post about her and the overall movie and how great it is.) She isn’t a sympathetic villain. Not really. She is both ends of the moral spectrum simultaneously in every move she makes. She was a monster, a destroyer of gods, an environmentalist’s nightmare who burned nature in the name of industry. She was also a savior, a humanitarian, a veritable saint who took in the sick and the downtrodden of society and gave them respect, empowerment, and a home they were happy in. And all the while… we never actually know what she’s thinking. One could argue that she’s still a villain (rather than simply an antagonist), but the key point here is that she is not sympathetic. Does she help others because she cares, or because through helping them she ultimately benefits herself? We don’t know for sure. The story does not invite us into her internal world. She’s not a sympathetic villain because we’re never asked to sympathize with her. Instead, we’re asked to think of bigger ideas. We’re asked to take a look at the ways human society can benefit itself, advance equality, and lift up the powerless by using and destroying the natural world around us. Is it worth it? What are the unintended consequences of these actions? Can humans harm nature without inevitably also hurting ourselves? Lady Eboshi’s thoughts and feelings and true motivations don’t matter. We don’t know, and we can’t know, and at the end of the day does it matter either way? Even if she was calculated and selfish it wouldn’t change that she’s helping people, and even if she was motivated by love and compassion it also wouldn’t change the harm she’s done. She’s a representation of ideas, forces, and choices larger than herself. Those ideas are what’s important to the film, and they are explored without ever diving into the mind of Lady Eboshi herself because what the thinks and feels has no bearing on the consequences of her actions.

A villain is someone who hurts others who do not deserve to be hurt. A person is sympathetic when we feel for them. Villainy is external. That person harms others, so we hate them. Sympathy is internal. We feel another’s pain, and understand the reasons for their choices, which includes the possibility that they never even had a choice at all. Lady Eboshi is so interesting to me because she is completely external. We are tasked with viewing and judging her based entirely on the consequences of her actions without factoring in what she thinks, what she feels, and why she’s doing it. We don’t have sympathy for her, rather we have sympathy for the people she helps regardless of whether Lady Eboshi is doing it out of kindness or doing it to benefit herself.

It’s odd that I spent the most time in this ask about sympathetic villains talking about someone who I think isn’t one, but I think that it’s both helpful and interesting to dive into how a character can completely subvert and dodge the label of a sympathetic villain while still fully capturing their contradictory essence. We hate and condemn the actions of sympathetic villains while also understanding them, respecting the “why” behind what they do, and potentially even loving them. With Lady Eboshi, we’re not supposed to care about the why. We’re not supposed to care about her. While I do love her, that’s not the part that matters. Instead, that same contradictory dynamic takes the form of the audience loving who she she helps while also loving who/what she hurts in the process. The thing’s we’re supposed to care about are entirely outside her.

I think that sympathetic villains are so interesting because they prompt us to think about why a person hurts others and see that something more than just innate evil is often there–that there are reasons why evil exists in villains’ hearts and that there are things that we can and should do about that. Whether it’s a character like Meruem who was “born” evil but learned to love and ultimately chose to embrace it, or a character like Scar who started out a decent young man who became a serial killer because of the genocide his people suffered. Either way, through them we are given an exploration of evil that emphasizes heartfelt understanding–understanding the “why” of evil so that we can either heal it or address the circumstances of its creation in the first place. If a sympathetic villain is well written and well handled in their story, the audience should be able to learn about the sources of evil in the world and how it could be made a little better.

#gs thoughts #princess mononoke #lady eboshi #studio ghibli #DAMN this took me a long time to write whoops #time to go hole up in the library and work for 7 hours #Anonymous #villains

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the-chronicles-of-homo-sapiens · 6 years

Text

Masculinity is What You Make it:

Within the scope of the past year or so, most recently demonstrated by the Gillette’s controversial advertisement a few weeks ago, there has been much debate regarding the state and status of masculinity. Of course, if you ask someone who deems masculinity toxic, they may claim that masculinity at its core is about being overly aggressive, hiding emotions or being stoic, and about being aggressive when pursuing women. When you ask someone who finds toxic masculinity an obscene concept what masculinity means to him or her, you may hear that it’s being courageous, perhaps something about knowing how to fix things, or maybe being the family protector of women and children. Why could the answers possibly be so different? If masculinity is this thing in society that is tangible and can have definite impacts on the culture, shouldn’t everyone have a roughly consistent answer on its definition? I propose instead that because masculinity is an abstract and intangible idea created by humans to describe or give meaning to the world around us and ourselves that how society defines masculinity is based not on what it indeed is but rather who the person you are asking thinks it is.

How Perceptions, lenses, and worldviews shape the definition of masculinity:

As humans, we view our world through our own lenses, ideas, perspectives, and beliefs. If you don’t believe me, consider this thought experiment. If you were to ask a conservative and a liberal what the central issue surrounding abortion is you could possibly get two different responses. I would postulate that the conservative may claim it’s about life beginning at conception based on some religious reasoning. It may be a safe assumption to say that the liberal would say it’s about a woman’s right to choose. And because of this difference in political preference, the entire way in which they frame their arguments is widely different; they looked at the issue from different lenses. Abortion is a tangible and legitimate thing in the world, but the concept of whether or not it should be allowed and why has much more to do with a person’s beliefs and values.

Similarly, because there is no exact definition of what masculinity is, two people may very well come to different interpretations of it. If you were to take a man who works as a construction worker, is a married with two kids, goes out drinking with the boys on Friday nights after work, and drives a truck; he would probably claim that masculinity is a positive thing and that its definition is something that fits his own life. That is, he may define masculinity as knowing how to do “man stuff” (fixing and building things), providing for and protecting your family, and drinking and watching sports on your days off. But, if you were to ask a feminist who grew up with an abusive father, went to college and got caught up in a women’s activist group, and maybe did her thesis on United States rape culture; you would most likely receive a negative view of masculinity or of its definition. Again, because of life differences, they define the same concept entirely differently.

What this Means about Re-drawing Masculinity.

How does all this relate to the hoopla about re-defining masculinity as a society? It means that there is really no way to do it. Why? Because there is no supreme entity that defines masculinity, Sure, there are dictionary definitions out there, and marketers at corporations do sell gendered items based on gender stereotypes; however, masculinity is still just an arbitrary and abstract concept. It’s this fact that is causing so much of controversy around needing to redefine masculinity.

To someone who genuinely sees masculinity as being a collective of toxic traits, it seems reasonable to re-draw what masculinity is. Yet, to someone who considers masculinity as a collective of positive traits, there’s no reason to even deem masculinity toxic. And, you cannot redefine what society thinks about something when everyone has different opinions on what that something is.

Furthermore, there’s no real way to objectively say what true masculinity is or isn’t. As Mark Manson asserts in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, people are never “right” about anything; we just go from being wrong to being slightly less wrong (as an aside, he also discusses the concept how people see the world). So that feminist who claims masculinity is toxic is wrong, but so is the Trump voter from the south.

The bottom line here is that from my point of view, which in being truly fair is probably wrong and slanted as well, there is no point in the media or society arguing about a concept which no authority could objectively give a definition to.

So, what are We to do?

I propose that you define what being masculine or being a man is to you. If it’s an abstract concept that nobody can define, you may as well give it the meaning that you can live with.

And, ultimately, I’d argue that this is also the best expedient for fixing anything the anti-masculinists may see as problematic with masculinity. I say this because what relatively sane person being as objective and self-aware as their opinions be would be able to justify defining their core values as being overly aggressive or hiding from their emotions or raping women? In that same logic, what sane person could find fault in being courageous enough to run into a burning building or for protecting and providing for his family? While these examples are more reflective of my views, the basic argument is that it’s hard for a person who isn’t a sociopath to have shitty values if they are forced to write out what their values are and critically examine them. In the same note, it’s hard for someone to look at values that the average human wouldn’t call reprehensible and deem them as such.

The other thing I’d say is that we should all try to be a little more understanding of where we are all coming from and why we say and claim what we do. I think that it’s essential that those who wish to reform masculinity to understand that lots of men don’t believe in harassing women nor do they believe masculinity should embody that. It’s also important to examine why you may feel that men are taught sexual harassment is okay. And, perhaps those same people should realize that most men are also just living their lives. On the flip side, those on the other side should potentially consider the arguments being proposed; maybe men on average do try to hide our emotions. Perhaps we need to examine why some of us may hide our feelings. And maybe that feminist claiming rape culture is herself a rape survivor. But, regardless, we should be at least aware of why we hold the views we do and why others hold the views that they do.

So, what is my Definition of masculinity?

Of course, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t mention my own definition of what being a man is. Well, I’ll tell you. The majority of this comes from my personal mission statement; the rest from what I like doing in life and other worldviews I hold.

Regarding character, I believe that all men should act honorably. We should have the integrity to do the right thing and the courage to stand up for what we believe is right. I believe that men ought to be honest in all circumstances, even when it is uncomfortable to do so.

Regarding women, I believe that chivalry shouldn’t be dead. Being overly aggressive in trying to woo a woman to the point where she is uncomfortable should be considered obscene; however, there needs to be understanding that there’s nothing wrong with making an approach or trying to compliment women. I believe that fidelity is one of the most important things a man can show to a woman. I also believe that it is man’s role to act as the provider and as a protector should the need arise; an American man should have one arm around his girl and his shotgun in the other. With all this said, men’s relationship statuses shouldn’t define their self-worth as relationships are volatile and potentially hard to come by.

Regarding technical ability, I personally think it’s important for a man to have it. I believe that a man should be able to work on an engine, find studs in a wall, and not be afraid to get dirty. However, this is my definition of masculinity, and as such technical ability shouldn’t be a metric for those who may very well not have it. But a man should be equally as competent in ironing a shirt, doing laundry, cooking, and cleaning as he is in doing shop work.

I also believe that men should be intellectual. We should never stop learning nor should we ever stop questioning things.

I personally do not see any bearing sports should have on a man; however, I understand that sports bear importance for many men in society. I also believe that trying to live vicariously through your children by forcing them to play a sport is abhorrent and should never be tolerated by anyone.

I believe that a man should be able to ride a motorcycle. I also believe that a man should be able to drive a manual transmission and pull a trailer. But these are my values, not anybody else’s.

I do not believe men should hide their emotions. It is better to cry than to hide behind alcoholism or violence. I also think that men should be comfortable experiencing their softer side. However, I also believe that a man needs to learn how to handle his emotions and possibly mask them at times; a warzone is no place to start bawling because your feelings are hurt. In his children and his peers, I believe that a man should also promote this belief.

Synopsis and Conclusion:

Masculinity is an abstract concept that nobody can really define. In the same tone, what people define masculinity as is really more a reflection of them and their lives than of what it truly is. Because of this we shouldn’t really try to “re-brand” what masculinity should be, and those who are trying to do so are not objectively right about what masculinity should be. But this is really a great thing and should set us all free. Since it’s an abstract concept, we can all define for ourselves what masculinity and being a man is or ought to be. Furthermore, in knowing that we can only go from being wrong about stuff to being slightly less wrong, we can change our own opinions on the definition of masculinity when we hear or learn about opposing opinions on the topic. If nothing else, just know that nobody is really “right” or “wrong” on what masculinity in our culture today is. We all just see the undefinable concept differently, and that’s okay too.

#men #masculinity #toxic #toxic masculinity #gender #society #gillette #male #boy #boys #feminism #egalitarian #egalitarism #equality #perspectives #truth #life #polarization #conflict

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nonamememoir · 5 years

Text

Grief and Its Better Alternatives by Tori Bloom

It makes little sense to define grief only in terms of sadness upon recognition of the loss of a loved one. This perspective is dismissive of the other feelings associated with grief such as anger, anguish, and regret (Goldie, 2011). Therefore, in this paper I will first address what grief is and how it can encompass this range of feelings. I also wish to present the idea that while grief involves loss, one can feel loss without grief. Through an analysis of several texts, I will argue that grief is a narrative that is saturated by a fear of mortality. This fear of mortality is the key difference between feeling loss, and more particularly sorrow, and feeling grief. Furthermore, this distinction is often overlooked in arguments concerning whether or not grief is bad. In the case of sorrow at the loss of a loved one when feelings of anger are involved they are usually aimed at the circumstances of the loss, whereas with grief the anger is directed at death itself. This difference means that sorrow allows us to more easily focus on the reality of losing our loved one, where grief separates us from reality and can have detrimental effects on the psyche, leaving us with a disposition for anger, sadness, and depression. Based on these distinctions between grief and sorrow I intend to argue that grief is something that we should overcome and the only way to do that is to accept our own mortality and to embrace feeling sorrow as a more reasonable and healthy response to death.

Peter Goldie (2011) presents a picture of grief that explains how the emotion can envelop a multitude of feelings and yet still be identified as a single emotion. Goldie fights the conception of emotions as episodic feelings, judgements, perceptions, or mental states and suggests that emotions are narratives. He compares pain and grief to show that emotions are not simply feelings. Where it might make sense to say that someone experienced pain for a brief moment, we would question whether or not someone could feel grief for only a moment. Grief, unlike pain, is not just a sensation. Goldie mentions some other conceptions of grief, such as Martha Nussbaum’s. She identified her grief as recognizing that someone valuable to her was dead. This conception of grief concerns Nussbaum’s judgment that the person was valuable to her own eudaimonia (flourishing and wellbeing). Goldie also presents several other accounts of emotion in less depth, but ultimately concludes that they have a similar thread. This common thread is that most philosophers identify emotions with a particular mental state or event and that they look at these emotions in the context of how they present at the time of the event. Goldie argues that emotions are actually dynamic and unfold over time and that grief, as such, is actually a process rather than a state. He gives the example of writing a check to explain this. The process of writing a check is temporal. It involves the consecutive laying of ink droplets on paper. Just by looking at a single instance where an ink droplet falls on the check we would be unable to determine if a check was, in fact, being written. Furthermore, we would not know much about the entirety of the process itself just by looking at a particular moment. Goldie argues that grief is the same. He says that grief follows a pattern that involves judgments, feelings, and actions that unfold over time. None of these things are grief in themselves, nor are they necessarily essential at a particular time, but they are a part of the process. Goldie, unlike Nussbaum, would say that someone who has realized that their loved one is dead and makes the judgment that the deceased was valuable for their eudaimonia cannot use this particular judgment itself to determine whether or not they are experiencing grief. To explain his narrative account of grief, Goldie discusses how grief impacts not just the present mental state, but our perception of the past. Take, for instance, a dinner guest who gives the host a compliment that, under the surface, is actually a slight. At first, the host may see the comment as harmless. However, upon later realization that the comment was a slight, the host no longer remembers the comment as harmless. The memory itself changes. The same is true of grief. We might, for example, remember the last time we saw a loved one as more gloomy and sad than we had perceived it as at the time. Our new knowledge and emotions actually change our memories of events. Goldie also points out that grief is not only concerned with particulars, like particular memories, but that general descriptions play a role as well. When we recall experiencing grief we do not typically define the experience as particular moment. For example, a husband who lost his wife and was grieving might recall, years later, how he would wake up and pour her a cup of coffee before realizing she was gone, or that he would stay up late and cry or have trouble falling asleep without her. We call this grief. Of course, grief relies on an event, a real loss of a loved one, the judgment of that loved one as valuable, but this is only one part of the process of grief. Goldie’s account of emotions, and particularly of grief, is unique in that it explains how it is possible that an emotion could involve different feelings. It also suggests that emotions have an effect not just on a particular mental state at an exact moment but that they can affect our past, present, and future.

While grief is a process, and therefore no one particular event can determine if grief is present, there are certain features of the emotion that differentiate it from the experience of loss without grief. Jane McCracken (2005) says that the perception of grief as a reaction to loss is not completely accurate. Grief is not simply about the loss of something, but it is an emotion that one has for the object that is lost. We say that we are angry at someone, or we love someone, but with grief we say that we grieve for someone. McCracken says that this suggests that we grieve not just for the loss, but that we do it in honor of that thing. This is what she says differentiates grief from just loss. The loss of a relationship for example, even if the separation is permanent, does not have the same sense of obligation and dedication for the lost object. McCracken points out that often, in trying to get over a lost relationship, a person’s family may remind her that the loss is not one of “life and death”. This suggests that loss in itself does not entail grief. Death, then, is intimately related to grief. In particular, when we make the initial judgment that a valued loved one has been lost we must also recognize that the loved one has been lost to death. Furthermore, we have to judge death to be a bad thing. McCracken, drawing on Donald Gustafon’s distinction between grief and sorrow, says that a daughter who is grieving for her father truly desires, despite her beliefs in what is possible, that her father was alive again. She demands that the world change the way that it is, perhaps facing denial and anger at the fact that her father died. This desire ultimately puts her into turmoil because it cannot be fulfilled. According to Gustafon, sorrow, unlike grief, involves wishing that, for the sake of one’s happiness, the deceased person were alive. It makes no demands that the world change how it is, but only wishes that things could be different, and so sorrow does not create the same turmoil that grief does.

When a loved one passes we feel as though time should stop, and we are arrested by the hopelessness, fear, and anxiety that our conception of death brings with it (Bilimoria, 2011). Purushottama Bilimoria analyzes several philosophies concerning the loss of a loved one and the reminder of mortality. He mentions, first, Heidegger who says that the anxiety in the face of death stems from being placed in a position of the realization of becoming nothing, which is always a possibility but is then affirmed by the death of a loved one. Bilmoria also mentions Robert Solomon, who says that the fear of dying is entwined with the loss of the loved one and that, in this relationship the death of the person becomes one’s own burden. Bilimoria notes that Solomon believes grief to be a moral emotion, reflective of one’s love for their lost loved one. He says that grief is indicative of the fact that one has endured a serious loss and, therefore, it should be felt and is good. We might question the emotional health or morality of someone who does not grieve for their dead loved ones. The literature I researched, in fact, had a similar thread. Bilmoria himself argues that, in some cultures, grief and mourning allow the person who is grieving to connect to the greater community and share in the experiences. Janet McCracken (2005) said that grief is something we participate in to honor the dead’s wishes. When we cry at a funeral, for instance, we feel as though justice is being done for the deceased and in doing so we give up our grief to the dead. She argues against Gustafon’s idea that grief does not motivate action, and she says the grieving motivates people to dedicate themselves to the deceased. I do not wish to argue against the idea that grief can have benefits, such as social connection and a dedication to the dead which helps to relieve one of their grief; instead I would suggest that the benefits of grief are also found in sorrow as it relates to loss. Grief is not necessary to reap these benefits, and responding with grief is a sign of one’s judgment of death as bad, a judgment which leads to the impossible desires of grief and which make one more vulnerable to anxiety, regret, anger, and other feelings.

The distinction between grief and sorrow is where I form the basis of my account of grief as a narrative that is pervaded by the judgment that death is bad and that it should not happen to us or our loved ones. We grieve for our loved ones as though something terrible has happened to them in death, not necessarily in relation to the circumstances of their death (although that is sometimes involved). Terence O'Connell (2009) presents an analysis of the morality of death through narrative, though I will focus only on a few key points for the sake of argument. First, Terrance outlines the argument that death is deprivation of the good things in life and is therefore an evil. He says that deprivation is intrinsically evil because it involves the taking away of good things. Though it could be argued that the dead are unaware that good things have been taken from them, this does not mean the death is not evil. O’Connell argues through this narrative that life has intrinsic goods that should be sought for their own sake, so whether or not the dead person is aware that they have been deprived it is evil that the person has been deprived of what would have occurred had they not died. As I see it, O’Connell’s argument is contingent upon the idea of death as deprivation. Let’s suppose that O’Connell’s conception of death as deprivation is true. It makes no sense to conceive of death as evil for the dead because of what would have been had it not occurred. If we assume death means non-existence, how could we say that death deprives the non-existent? An apple that is destroyed cannot have anything done to it because it no longer exists. In response to this, O’Connell says that deprivation does not require existence, because we are also deprived before birth and before we come into existence. This, however, is still contingent upon existence. We cannot even fathom the notion of deprivation of something without it existing. If that were true then we might say that something which never comes into existence is deprived. If anything, death could be argued to be evil for the living as it is the living, and not the dead, who are deprived, but ultimately this argument is contingent upon one conception of what death is. In the case of a Christian person, who is fully certain in their beliefs, they may say not to grieve for those who have died for they are in a better place. In order to defend his notion of death, O’Connell would first have to prove that death is deprivation, a task that I would argue is impossible based on the notion of the transcendent, but which I will not address here in favor of brevity. In the end his argument only stands if we claim to be certain about what happens to a person in death.

Grief is difficult to overcome as it involves the desire to change the inevitability of death (McCracken, 2005). The reality is that we do not know what happens when we die and this leaves us vulnerable to anxiety and anger. O'Connell (2009) presents another argument in his book in which he addresses death’s inevitability as consolation. Not only does he say that the inevitability of death does not provide comfort, as he believes that death is intrinsically evil, but he says that fear of death, which I have suggested is an essential judgment involved in grief, can have instrumental value in prolonging life. Concern with postponing death often helps to prevent it, such as in the case of suicide. Without concern for death, there might be no reason to put it off. I disagree with this. All we know about death is that it will happen to all mortal beings one day. We can try to think through it logically, but as of today we have yet to come up with a conception of death that is, without a doubt, true. If we allow the fear of death to pervade our reason to live, we will be bombarded by the constant anxiety of the inevitable. I may know tomorrow that I will be fired, and that there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop it. Should I avoid my boss to avoid being fired sooner rather than later? That would be irrational, as I am prolonging the inevitable for no good reason. That being said, I believe that we can both embrace the inevitability of death, and subsequently do away with grief, while also having an appreciation for life. Life is reliable. We know that life has good things, the possibility to make memories with loved ones, happiness, sensations, love, and more. Death is unknown. It may be good, and it may be bad. This mystery is precisely why we should enjoy our reliable, good life while we have it.

Finally, there is the question of whether or not grief itself is bad. Loretta Kopelman (1995) put forth her own perspective of grief by analyzing the arguments of other philosophers who believed that grief is either good or bad. The problem in my addressing Kopelman’s work, however, is a difference in our conceptions of what grief is. She says that normal grief begins with the realization of losing a treasured loved one, object, limb, life goal, etc. However, as I have outlined grief with its relationship to death in particular it makes little sense to critique her argument, as I am inclined to agree that it is not bad to feel sadness at the loss of a treasured person or object. However, this very difference between our definitions of grief points to a problem in the literature in differentiating between the loss of a treasured object and the loss of a treasured person. Furthermore, Kopelman does still present relevant points on the side of grief being good versus it being bad. On the side of it being bad she discusses philosophers like George Engel, John Bowlby, and Myron Hofer who argue that grief is like a wound, in that it is associated with pain, morbidity, dysfunctioning, low productivity, and more. These philosophers argue explicitly that grief is a disease. Like a disease, grief impairs the individual’s ability to function and is a pattern that can be studied and used to make predictions. Kopelman points out that this definition of disease, however, is not suitable because it makes room for things like poverty, forgetfulness, and bad manners but also does not include diseases that do not cause dysfunction, like symptomless cancer. The idea that grief is a disease because it is predictable and can be studied is also flawed, as this can applied to many things that aren’t diseases. I agree with Kopelman that grief is not actually a disease, but it is still possible that grief is bad despite this. She addresses this as well in her discussion of whether or not grief is nonmorally bad. The first question is whether grief is instrumentally bad. Certainly grief is associated with pain and loss of function and therefore might not be considered useful. However, as Darwin, Freud, and Pollock pointed out, grieving allows for a period of inactivity and adjustment to the new circumstances in order for the person to adjust to their changed world without the lost person. A period of reflection, brought on by grief, can be useful for overcoming the pain of loss. Then there is the question of whether grief is inherently bad. The contemplation of grief, Kopelman says, can actually help one in overcoming the loss and survive. Someone who does not grieve, either because they are unwilling or unable to create a new life without their treasured loved one or because they feel ambivalent toward the deceased are at risk for pathological grief. Kopelman says that the narrative of grief requires intentionality, coherence, and closure. The notion of the intentionality of grief is particularly relevant. Intentionality is involved in the placing of value in something and, in particular, the lost loved one. This is an important defense for grief, as it means that in going through the process of grieving a valued thing, the person is overcoming that loss, accepting separation, and establishing new values. If a person goes through the grieving process in the manner described by Kopelman, I do not disagree that it can be beneficial, in that it can help a person overcome loss, through reflection. Rather, it is the fixation on death and particularly the fear of it, and all of the impossible feelings of anger, denial, regret, and anxiety that come with that fixation that make grief bad. The productive part of grief is not inherent in grief itself, but in the emotion of sorrow that often accompanies it.

The difference between grief and sorrow according to my understanding is that, in grief we often direct our feelings toward both the circumstances and death itself, and in sorrow we direct our feelings toward the circumstances alone. That being said, grief often entails sorrow, but sorrow does not entail grief. We may feel sorrow over the loss of a beloved object, such as a childhood home, but any feelings of anger we have would be directed toward the circumstances of the house being destroyed and not typically destruction as some intrinsic evil. According to this understanding of sorrow, then, we might still have much of the same pitfalls that grief has including unjust anger toward oneself or others. However, in grief we feel angry at death itself for taking our loved one, as if death were a person capable of slighting us. This, unlike anger at the circumstances, has no outlet. In anger at the circumstances we can reason and say that we did not know, at the time, that we might have been able to prolong our loved one’s life. We can explain our anger toward the circumstances by trying to understand why those circumstances occurred. Anger at death, however, has no answer. We cannot explain why death took our loved one, but we must just accept that it happened and that it was inevitable. Second, in grief we feel anxiety over our own mortality and the mortality of our loved ones. In particular, we have an irrational desire to escape an inevitable fate that we have little knowledge about. We grieve for the dead as though they are suffering, when in actuality we do not know what death is like. One might compare this anxiety to post-test anxiety. After handing in an exam, the anxiety might eat away at you. You could let it affect how you behave, whether you go out that night, if you get enough sleep, or you can simply accept that, good or bad, you cannot affect the outcome of the test. All you can do is enjoy yourself in the meantime. In grief we may go through denial, unable to accept that death could happen to our loved ones, or depression and a sense of hopelessness in the face of a fate we believe to be bad but with little evidence to support that. In sorrow sadness, depression, regret, and anger are all still possible, but they are easier to cope with because they involve the real loss and absence of the beloved person or object. Sorrow without grief allows for the person to feel and overcome the loss of their loved one without feeling anger and anxiety concerning death.

Grief is a narrative that affects the past, present, and future of the grieving person’s life (Goldie, 2011). The difference between grief and sorrow is that, while sorrow has much of the benefits of grief, grief requires the judgment that death is a bad thing that the deceased person is suffering through. I made this distinction through an analysis of what we might feel at the loss of a treasured object in comparison to a person, a distinction which is not made in much of the literature discussing whether or not grief is bad. Grief can be beneficial, allowing the grieving person to reflect upon their relationship to their lost loved one and create new values to move forward, build bonds with the greater community in certain cultures, and give up their grief to their deceased loved ones (Bilmoria, 2011; Kopelman, 1995; McCracken, 2005). However, the fixation on death can lead to anxiety about the perceived nothingness we face, as suggested by Heidegger or, as Gustafon suggested, it can lead to turmoil because the desire to overcome death is impossible. Ultimately, grief is a reflection of our misguided perception of death as bad. The truth is that we do not know whether death is good or bad, and feeling bad for those who have died and allowing that anxiety to affect the way that we view our past, present, and future can lead to frustration and, ultimately, pathological grief. For these reasons I believe that sorrow without grief is a more healthy response to loss, as it gives us an outlet, the circumstances of the death, for our feelings. Furthermore, sorrow would allow us to still show that we cared about the loss object, displaying our human capacity to love and form social bonds. In the end, the best response to death would be acceptance of the unknown and inevitable, and the impossibility of changing a past death, but a love for other people that might bring us pain when we learn that they are gone.

References

Bilimoria, P. (2011). On Grief and Mourning: Thinking a Feeling, Back to Bob Solomon.

Sophia, 50(2), 281-301. doi:10.1007/s11841-011-0257-1

Goldie, P. (2011). GRIEF: A NARRATIVE ACCOUNT. Ratio, 24(2), 119-137.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9329.2011.00488.x

Kopelman, L. M. (1994). Normal Grief: Good or Bad? Health or Disease? Philosophy,

Psychiatry, & Psychology, 1(4), 209-220. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved

from muse.jhu.edu/article/245026.

Mccracken, J. (2005). Falsely, Sanely, Shallowly. International Journal of Applied Philosophy,

19(1), 139-156. doi:10.5840/ijap20051917

O'Connell, T. (2009). Dialogue on grief and consolation. Retrieved from

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

#philosophy #i apologize for the formatting but this is the best i can do so #lol #essay #grief #emotions #death

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hereliesbitches--me · 6 years

Text

~Atrolian~

What the hell is that?

Well, it's the root of why Rosie has animal features.

She's not just a product of being a furry at some point in my life [not entirely] but there is in fact an explanation within her lore.

Atrolians are an Alien race to humans. They were the test run subjects before humanity, and by test run I mean they are humanoid in all aspects, except they were given animal attributes to them. They are.larger, faster, with more keen sense and durability than any human thanks to the added animal features. They developed as a race with the aid of other older races which cultivated and inspired them to develop into their own civilization of a rather peaceful, technologically advanced society.

Upon learning of Earth’s new formation of growing life [Taking into consideration that the presence of sentient life was a gradual process and did not happen simultaneous across the universe. Some races and sections are much older and more developed than others. ] The race figured they would pay it forward and travel across the galaxy to meet the developing race and aid them- much like many other alien races did. For them, and to Earth.

Earth proves to be a melting pot planet. It was significant in creation, it being the place of battle where the heavens were divided because of opposing views on the significance of human life.

Before then, Many races felt the need to aid along the developing life with secrets and skills that would push them along as a civilization. It was only natural at the start that the naive humanity would so eagerly accept these beings and revere them as Gods ( The definition of gods and delties will be worked on innanlther post- there is a difference by what makes them so, but humanity didn't know the difference)

The Atrolians never cared for titles, and simply enjoyed coming to the aid of the small humans. They, along with the other otherwordly beings, would be the greatest influence inspiring and guiding the development of human culture across the regions of the planet. Over time, much like many other races, Atrolains too would take mates among humanity

And eventually, that offspring would be the first halflings in a long line to start bearing the animalistic Qualities.

It was a typically dominant trait that overpowered human genetics, to have a child with an Atrolain could almost always guarantee the animal features. Even Halflings continued to carry the strong trait for centuries to come, up until the divide.

~The Divide~

Atrolian are a naturally peaceful race. They didn’t believe in having currency, and rather bargain and trade goods, believing in taking what was needed and never just hoarding because you could. They had allies among the stars but never affiliated with tyrannical or war-prone species that fight for selfish reasons to conquer one another. As you imagine, Humanity down the line would eventually evolve into just that. Much to the horror of the Atrolians, humans had begun to show signs of greed and aggression over time as their population grew. They slaughtered each other, they conquered and sold each other, and turned a blind eye to each other in times of need. They had divided themselves into groups that warred for the sole purpose of claiming to be the more supreme, and they slaughtered anyone who did not agree. They used the technology and the skills taught to them to harm each other, and the view of their race had begun a rift in Atrolian society of just what to do with them.

For centuries, as mankind grows, develops, and divides themselves over self-created differences and greed, There was increasing unrest and debate in Atrolian society. It was going against their ways to continue to aid a violent race, and yet they continued to do so because of their shared religious beliefs, being guarded by the same angels. They insisted neutrality and continued to make routine trips with new tools and goods, up until the betrayal.

When one fleet of Atrolian aids failed to come back from the routine trip to Earth, there came instant backlash and demand to investigate. Another military group had been sent on the rescue mission to retrieve them, perhaps suspecting something had happened to the ship and the fleet could not communicate; But what they found were the bodies of Atrolian comrades, stripped of their armor, and the ship raided for all its weapons and other goods. In response is absolute outrage.. To find the culprits, Atrolian blood is easily traceable by scent.. *(Within their society, Violence is only a factor in mating season when defending or trying to win over a mate. The scent of blood will linger on a champion no matter how many times it is washed away, no matter how long. The poignant scent proves as a warning to what the bloodspiller is capable of. Violence is also incited when rules have been broken and betrayed- once you’re considered an outsider, or someone being punished, there is no sympathy or kindness, and the Atrolians demand bloodshed and death, or banishment) The military team wastes no time using tech and their noses to find the group, a group from a warring kingdom, and with little hesitation they are slaughtered- though the team does not bother in recovering stolen technology. The team takes the bodies of their comrades back to the home planet to report the events.

The event proved to be the final straw amongst the Atrolian society, and despite their normal preaching of peace, when outraged they turn as savage and sporadic as the animal genetics that make them. They demanded that ties be cut from the humans of Earth, and that included wiping it from their bloodline and home planet. In a rather frantic mass order unanimously decided by the Kings and Queens of each kingdom, Humans who had been taken as mate on Atrolize at the time were rounded up and were going to be shipped back to earth where they came from. Halflings who lacked animal features were to be sent with their human parent, and the full blooded Atrolain has the option to either go with their mate, or stay behind. Any who fought this order were killed if they interfere with the divide in any way, shape, or form. The option was to go quietly, or else be part of the cleansing, and it would mark a defining part in Atrolian history.

Though Earth is never forgotten, over the centuries it comes as a sensitive subject to discuss. Many Atrolians did not share the agreement with the order but nonetheless had to comply to the wishes of their kingdom’s leaders. The tarnished view of humanity was passed down with the generations, and though many Atrolians today would have never known what Earth is like for themselves, it is a strict law against returning to the wretched place- many older generations hold the belief that Earth can simply not be helped. Up until now..(To be elaborated later )

~What became of the Halflings on Earth?~

Thousands of families had been separated in the mass divide. Hundreds killed in their refusal to go, and those left scattered at different points across Earth were left to pick up the shambles of the life they knew. Many of the full humans had grown accustomed to the peace of Atrolize, the system of simple bargaining and caring for your neighbors- they were not used to the ideals of using money, or that there were legitimate threats from stranger whose intentions could never be clear. They would have to adapt and thrive in this new world.. And it is with them that the last roots of the Atrolians can be found.. Only to become lost in history.

Over time, the typical dominant trait of Atrolian genetics became diluted in a similar fashion as it did with Angels and their wings. It becomes recessive, and the visible animal features such as ears, tails, feathers, or even wings have become a rarity that occured. Over time, it becomes a recessive trait that needs to be such a perfect setup in order to actually produce a child that has animal features, but the dormant gene shows itself in other ways. Easily dismissed as simple gifts, having the gene can manifest itself in subtle features such as in the Eyes( be it in the pupils, the coloration, the keen sight), Ears (might be more pointed at the tips with some ability to be moved and twitched in response to stimuli) , Teeth ( Longer Canines, stronger jaws, sharper teeth varying by person), Body structure (Sturdier, higher metabolism in some cases, stronger nail growth, higher endurance capability and damage resistance, stronger bones, etc) , and even in some behavioral mannerisms.

The appearance of animal features has steadily become rare for the same reason the features of angel wings are- these sorts of people are often victims of human trafficking for their exoticness, and often die away before ever having any child. The appearance of features is primarily an occurence in female, the genetic proven to be carried more in the X chromosome, but a male still has the potential to carry the gene in their chromosomes as well. It's rare, but not impossible, for a male to have visible features under the right circumstances given that both parents carries the gene (Which is often unknown to the parents, thus their surprise that the child is born with these foreign features ) . It is uncommon in the world to find anytone with visible features anymore, however it still exists in the world. The history of Atrolians have been lost in time through human history, and the genetic can only be regarded as a mutation from an unknown source.

Things to know about Atrolians that can be found in their earthly descendants :

- If the females have a heat, they do not have a period. Like most animals, at the end of a cycle, there is no bleeding, the body simply reabsorbs the endometrium that would have been shed during a period. Having heats means, unlike a regular person, fertility has specified windows in the cycle for ovulating (depending on the Atrolian gene basis, the animal gene which its based on will determine that window per person ). A person can have the atrolian gene dormant in them, showing only subtle physical qualities, and not experience heat. And that is because their system is more primarily human based.

- A male with traces of Atrolian genes may find themselves with a keener sense of smell and other senses, and are subconsciously incredibly receptive to scents. They might find themselves drawn to a person who’s emitting, and become aroused instinctively to appease- which can be incredibly inconvenient , especially if its a female that rejects them. Can easily be mistaken for the usual random boner incidents. Two people with Atrolian genes can strengthen the instinct they don’t even know they have, and if one goes into heat then a male might just go into his own form of it in order to stay with his mate. - A male, once finding a partner, can become rather territorial over their lover. Especially one which they’ve marked in some way (Atrolian tradition is a bite scar to the shoulder, but in huan terms it can be expressed through hickies left behind in visible places ). They may become moodier, more clingy , and standoffish against others. Have a tendency to bare teeth and get between other, though again it can simply be passed off as typical guy behavior, Its an almost unbearable impulse when the gene is carried. They also might rub on things in an unconscious act of leaving their scent behind. You might also find they’re much easier to set off and prone to fighting easily when it comes to a significant other.

- A person can display certain quirks, even certain vocalizations, of an animal their genes may have descended from. Atrolians had a wide variety of animalistic qualities they were mixed with, though primarily mammals and even birds. That means farther down the line, sometimes old qualities do come back and certain abilities are granted. - Elongated life. A full blooded Atrolian age at a slower rate once they hit adulthood, and can life on average about 200 years maximum, with a minimum of at the very least of 130. This is because of their sturdy builds and rather healthy lifestyles, combined with genetics, lets them thrive for so long within consideration of their life duties. In their halfling descendants, That sturdy build passed down can allow them be withstand and live healthier for a longer time. They are less likely to succumb to illnesses or hereditary diseases, and can enjoy appearing to age at a slower rate. If the environment and lifestyle allows it. Someone can easily push past 100 and still function well.

#:world building:#I put this under readmore since its long af #But now u know there are half animal aliens out there #Thank u for reading #Atrolians are a v important background race to the story

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patrick-yates · 6 years

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Forefront - The Legend of Korra

Today I shall be revisiting one of my favourite animated shows ever, The Legend of Korra. The show’s inception falls just outside of the 5 year recency bracket, first airing in 2012, but the dramatic 3rd and 4th seasons and season finale debuted in 2014, and I regard it as one of the most well realised and successful Western animated series of recent years.

fig 1. a shot from the show’s opening sequence, featuring Korra herself

This show, alongside its parent series Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005), is one of my greatest animating inspirations, and so I wish to take a look at what makes it special, and try to relate it back to how I wish to incorporate that inspiration into my own work. Many of these points are mostly relevant to the narrative and storytelling side of animated film, but as this is a big part of my practice, my love of the form and my career aspirations, I want to take a look at each of them. There are a great number of reasons why I count this show as one of my favourites, so many that I feel I may have to list them in bullet point form as a primer: 1. The well-written characters, and character-driven narratives. Variety, humanity, humour, flaws, emotion, the works. 2. The worldbuilding and lore. As fantasy series go, this presents an extremely well-rounded synthesis of real world philosophy and culture with fantastical elements, complete with political discourse, personal/emotional problems, and often obscure and interesting presentations of morality. 3. The plot itself. Spanning 4 seasons or ‘books’, each one explores a different philosophical conceit, eg. power, change, balance, often through the decisions and successes or failures of the eponymous lead Korra. In many ways it is a coming-of-age story about her personally learning to deal with responsibility, while developing relationships and self-sufficiency too - and saving the world, of course. It is a deeply relatable story, told through a ridiculous lens. This is one of my favourite narrative modes, and one at which animation excels. 4. The animation. While mostly impressive for the superbly choreographed fight scenes (which always make exciting and inventive use of the rules of the world and the characters’ abilities, drawing on real world inspirations), there is so much to love about the sense of scale and style in this show, especially in the award-winning 2 part miniseries ‘Beginnings’ from Season 2. 5. Representation. This is increasingly a strong feature of modern media, and one I am very excited to see personally, but I remember having such a wonderful experience watching this show and thinking to myself, midway through an episode, how many strong and unique female characters took the lead of much of the story, but how it felt so natural I never even noticed. Not only that, it features many characters of different skin tones, religious denominations and philosophies, and sexualities, none of whom are ever reduced or reducible to those characteristics. It’s a very human and very powerful way of writing characters, and something for which I will always appreciate this show. It would be a dream come true to have the chance to work on a show half this accomplished, as it has meant so much to me personally. But what aspects of my own practice can I relate to it, and what elements of it can I learn from? Let’s go back to these bullet points.

1. CHARACTERS. It has been taken as given, as part of my creative heritage in writing, that characters form the crucial basis of any powerful story. They must be complicated, sympathetic, dynamic entities that can exist outside of the page or screen, whose reactions to situations we as readers could anticipate as if they were our friends or family. I hold these ideas central to any narrative process I undertake, and often keep in mind the strong sense of character shown in shows like Korra. I also make it a priority for the stories I wish to tell to be character-driven - for narrative advances to be made based on how characters react to what they are given. As character often forms the strongest basis for relatable story, so it follows the importance of individual personalities in narrative decision-making is difficult to overstate. The very best stories tie this into a larger schema involving several characters, their relationships, their circumstances, the wider politics of the world and its central themes, while staying true to their respective tone. It’s a difficult thing to do, but if it wasn’t, everyone would be doing it.

2. WORLDBUILDING. This is generally only relevant to fantasy and sci-fi storytelling, but given how many animated films and series focus on these genres, I esteem it a big consideration alongside character in creating an effective undertsanding of animated storytelling. The Reality Effect is something discussed by writer Roland Barthes in his essay of the same name: it deals with the presentation of minutiae in storytelling, often needless or tangential to the plot, in order to achieve a greater sense of realism - the idea that the film world is not only comprised of an interlinked tapestry of character and plot, but of a thriving ecosystem completely independent of the narrative thread. Korra/ATLA establish world on a massive scale, incorporating nations, culture, history, food, wildlife, religious praxis, politics, technology, etc etc. All of this, whether helpful to the plot or not, builds a great impression of what this world would actually be like, and has the effect of increasing the viewer’s overall investment in it. When writing any scenario, I try to include as many tiny hints and illusions to the broader idea of that world. I am reminded of a famous quote from Ernest Hemingway, someone of whose work I am not a massive fan personally, but was undoubtedly a great creative force:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. (fig. 2)

3. PLOT. Korra is a wonderful story because, as discussed, it combines many different tenets of great storytelling, but (almost) always manages to tie together its many threads and come to a satisfying conclusion. Above these superficial successes, however, I am a firm believer that the duty of a storyteller should be in telling stories that need to be told, which Korra manages to do all the time. It tells grown-up stories about trust, about change, about growth, depression, pain, belief, abuse, parenting, sexuality, fascism, and it communicates them all to a young audience without ever being consdescending or reductive. This kind of balance is something I hope to achieve in my own stories, but am still getting the hang of. Something I am always considering is, who will receive the messages I am trying to communicate? How ‘difficult’ should I make my narrative, and how do I ensure I strike that balance? What choices will impact the tone of my work, and what aspects of the story should I focus on making the most prominent? It’s a real balancing act, but I am hoping practice will make perfect.

4. ANIMATION. This one is slightly more pertinent to how I am learning at the moment: how can I make characters’ feelings and personalities shine through movement? Korra has a very strong sense of body language, partly because it ties very strong links between spirituality and physicality: the martial arts practised by each character, and the way in which they move their bodies to use them, almost always reflect in some way how that person thinks, an in some sense how they might react to a personal problem rather than a physical one. In some ways I realise this is hyperliteral and relatively specific way of approaching physicality, however I think engaging with the subtlety of body language is one of the great tools both actors and animators have at their disposal in telling a story, and something which can be largely lost in literature. Here are a few examples of how characters in Korra may be understood by their body language:

fig 3. Korra and Opal bond with ‘airbending’. Their smiles, open positions and relaxed lines show us they are content in each other’s company

fig 4. Lin, hardline chief of police, stands cross armed and wary, yet clearly demonstrates emotion in her face and movement. She is personally attached to this interaction

fig 5. Child of the streets and pro-fighter Mako is guarded yet quick and efficient. He has the air of someone deteremined yet cool under pressure

Hopefully these examples demonstrate some of the admirable ways in which character is presented in Korra (as well as the relatively quality and conciseness of movement, which I also love about this show’s style).

5. REPRESENTATION. At this juncture, I have yet to attempt any broad stories, or even any with more than 2 characters. I am also aware of the dilemma of faithfully representing characters of different backgrounds than myself. Yet I believe in a world of colour, variety and synthesis, not renditions of the same experiences over and over, and animation, as a radical form and as my chsoen art, is as good a place to enact those beliefs as any. I take Korra as a prime example for reasons already mentioned, and hope to refer to its wonderful, dynamic world as often as possible in my own work, and keep diversity and representation politics at the front of my practice both on-screen and behind the scenes.

References

1. Korra

2. Hemingway, Ernest. Death In The Afternoon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. pp. 316

3. http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Opal

4, 5. Tumblr

#practice 1 #forefront #reflective

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