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walkuntilthedaylight · 3 years

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The people have spoken! How can I not give them what they want?

I'm gonna put this all under a cut, since it's a bit long, and also because it's highly interpretative/speculative and not everyone likes those kinds of posts as they can be rather subjective and, I suppose, invasive. I want to give two major caveats to my thoughts below: first is that I tend not to buy the idea that Paul was the "stable/normal" Beatle, mostly b/c I view marijuana dependency and workaholism as addictions and I take them pretty seriously. Second is that I really do love this kind of tabloid/gossip/personal account shit; I think it should be taken with a handful of salt, but I don't think it should be entirely dismissed out of hand either. I read this stuff like I'm piling up sheets of stained glass: I'm intrigued by the places where the colours blend and overlap, and ignore things that fall outside the prism. Anyway, let's dig in:

Okay, so what I found fascinating about 'Body Count' is that it's one of the only sources which observes Paul McCartney's mental health during the period between the India trip and when the band breakup really got rolling. I think it's overall a fairly self-absorbed text that definitely has some lies and exaggerations peppered in there to make things spicier and more dramatic, but its broad characterization - as I mentioned in my first post - isn't exactly libelous or out of left field. Some elements that make me think it's generally if not wholly authentic are: Paul's simultaneously forceful and dorky seduction style, his terrible Liverpool diet and poor housekeeping, the bouts of thrill-seeking recklessness, avoidant adventure crafting, dark moods when drinking non-socially, the occasional hot and cold bouts with the Apple Scuffs camped out at his gate, and the way in which he underplays his drug habit, which is SO "in truthfulness we spent most of the filming of Help! slightly stoned":

These details are so bizarrely specific and have significant overlap with both sympathetic and spurned personal accounts of Paul I've read in the past, so I believe Francie is just telling "Her Version Of The Truth" here rather than crafting a piece of pure fiction. The most important and revealing anecdote in the book is this one.

There's no reason not to believe this is a fairly accurate representation of something that actually happened, imo, since we know that anxious purse strings were an ongoing issue in the unusual turnover rate within the band Wings, and there are plenty of confirmed and rumoured cases alike of extended family members feeling entitled to a "piece of the pie"; this is just like, the kind of thing that happens to working class people who get catapulted into fame and fortune. And Paul in particular already had deep-seated financial anxiety for whatever reasons he'll never fully admit (as is his right, but I think his offhand claim that he "once heard some adults arguing about money and that's why" might actually be alluding to having heard some adults - y'know, like his parents - arguing over money fairly frequently). What esp interests me about the anecdote is the way Paul seems to connect the conflict b/t his dual "identities" with these financial expectations. Perhaps the CAPSLOCK emotional hysteria related in the book is puffed up for drama, but it does bring to mind one of the most revealing comments Linda ever made about their relationship, which is that Paul needed to be told he would still be loved when the cameras weren't rolling. And that's the thing: Francie caught Paul at the exact moment that the pillars of his Smile-For-The-Camera "Beatle" identity were collapsing; the dissolution of his relationships with John and Jane.

Whatever all this could possibly mean re: the breakup of the Lennon-McCartney partnership is a post for another time. What I wanna do instead is apply the level of speculation we usually reserve for that relationship to the endpoint of Paul and Jane's courtship.

So like, Paul and Jane: I know people are resistant to this specific POV, but I honestly just don't... think it was that deep? "Not deep", mind you, doesn't mean "not significant". Paul was obviously Jane's first love (u never forget), but the feeling I get from Paul's side (as a subconscious process I mean) is that Jane's importance was primarily as a lynchpin in his London Socialite persona. He loved her family, he loved the friend group, the artistic scene dating her gave him access to, as well as the leg up he got in the class system, etc. He liked to be the kind of guy who was dating Jane Asher. But I don't know that he was the guy who was dating Jane Asher, you get me? When people describe their "great love" they accidentally tell on them (Cynthia innocently describing Paul as being pleased to have her on his arm like a trophy; John: "it was an ordinary love scene"; Alistair Taylor noting that Paul was humiliated by the breakup). Paul's a serial monogamist who U-Hauls like a lesbian, of course, so he definitely took the relationship VERY seriously, but it's telling that all of his love songs to her were either about hitting a brick wall in arguments (certainly not dreamy, fond, yearning of "sunday morning fights about saturday night"; and occasionally expressing hints of class tension too), or completely non-descript Guy With A Guitar Trying To Get Laid shit. I could extrapolate a lot about Linda just from listening to McCartney I/RAM and the Wings discography, but 'And I Love Her' doesn't tell me a single thing about Jane besides that she's pretty. It could be about literally anyone the same way 'My Love' or 'Maybe I'm Amazed' could only be about his dynamic with Linda. Some of this is obviously the natural result of getting older and gaining emotional maturity; what I'm saying is that Paul's behaviour and self-expression in this relationship does not suggest to me that it was one in which his emotional maturity was able to develop or flourish.

I want to stress again that I don't think this belittles the significance of the relationship or makes it "bad" or "fake". Like, sometimes hot people just date for a while in their teens and twenties and love each other without necessarily unlocking their inner emotional cores, usually because they don't know how to. It's, like, fine. You need to experience relationships like that as stepping stones. I simply believe that this sort of front-facing social importance being prime in the romance is a major factor in why it ultimately didn't work (and probably in Linda's reported lingering jealousy of Jane, who wasn't just an ex, but also a symbol of the life Paul ditched to build a new identity w/ her, and sometimes still pined for). With Jane, Paul was dating the "right" kind of girl (didn't put out on the first date, erudite and middle class, as serious about her career as he was, a good "celebrity" match), but the relationship often wasn't doing what he wanted it to do. Francie's observation is that by 1968 it also wasn't doing what he needed it to do either. This is the overwhelming "mood" in her affair with Paul McCartney: that he needed something very badly from a romantic partner that he just was NOT getting, and Francie couldn't figure out what it was either:

(note that she means "queer" as in "mad", not "gay")

This was an EXTREMELY roundabout way of asking: well, what WAS it that Paul needed a relationship to do for him? And I think this is Francie's big, accidental insight. The most scandalous claim in 'Body Count' is that Paul told Francie that he hit Jane and it "turned her on".

I personally think this is p. absurd absent any real proof to back it up, but like, what is Francie actually saying HE'S saying here? If she's exaggerating or lying, she's trying to make it believable within the psychological parameters laid out, right? It's not an expression of some secret desire to dominate women she's accusing him of, but emotional disturbance and confusion at the idea that the woman he was with might like that sort of forceful, masculine violence more than his softer, feminine side, which he was - yeah, we all know it - deeply insecure about.

Regardless of whether specific details are true or false (and I think there's both in this story, all hyper-magnified to make it, y'know, a ~STORY~), I think what might be true is the emotional undertow of the retelling, that this all taken together is actually representative of the side of Paul McCartney she was exposed to, at a time when his public and private facades had both become unbearable to the point of cracking and the drug-fueled optimism of the Summer of Love was getting scrubbed off of everyone and everything. It's the Paul McCartney who eviscerated frogs because he was worried he was too "soft" for compulsory military service. The Paul who modelled his masculine teen behaviour off John Lennon's fake "Marlon Brando" swagger, but was actually more fond of the velvet "Oscar Wilde" interior.

What's SO FASCINATING about all this to me, is I deeply believe that one of the key factors in what makes The Beatles music so unique and compelling is that both the songwriters experienced psychological strain from the tension b/t their parochial socially-defensive "masculine" pride, and their sensitive "feminine" core, the latter of which they were able to express in the unburdened emotionality of their music. The reason I care about doing these totally unhinged psych analyses is because I do think it reveals something about the underpinnings of the music, as well as the reasons why the band was such a hysteria-inducing phenomenon (the rise of psychology, imo, is almost as important as the rise of industrialization as a defining factor of the modern and postmodern eras; mass psychology can be understood and wielded in precise ways, and The Beatles were one of the first empires built on that). The subconscious drives caused by this tension have been ENDLESSLY picked apart re: John's psyche, but Paul's "mirrored" issues are very under-discussed (mostly b/c he's still alive so people are a little more leery about putting him on the "couch" as a historical figure). 'Body Count', intentionally or not, painted a portrait to me of someone who was drowning in their own ill-fitting celebrity "suit", collapsing under the weight of "Being" "Paul McCartney". A guy who desperately needed some sort of space to be vulnerable without feeling emasculated for doing it. By 1968, there was no one in his life anymore - and maybe there hadn't been for a while, or ever - who was giving him this space.

In other words: the thing he needed to avoid going "stark raving queer and killing himself" was simply someone who would love him 'after the ball'.

EDIT: read the comments for further clarification and discussion! ;)

#/#//#///#////#/////#the beatles #mccharmley #analysis #long post #Talking About Paul The Way I Talk About John lmfao #Taking Tabloid Bullshit Seriously #(if not literally)#*gets out my fake spectacles and jumps into the psychiatry armchair*#idk if i laid out my thoughts v well here but i hope it satisfied all the people who asked #i also tried to warn what genre of post it was for those who hate this kinda thing lol #i feel like i have more to say re: how toxic 'The Beatle' facade got for all of them by this point #and paul and john's mirrored post-india breakdowns #but francie's perspective is specifically on how it felt to be the girl he used to divebomb his relationship with jane asher SO

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wisdomrays · 3 years

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TAFAKKUR: Part 389

CHANGE OR CHOICE: IS THE UNIVERSE AN ACCIDENT: Part 3

The most ubiquitous examples of orderliness in the universe are the stars. They represent an extreme departure from thermodynamic equilibrium because they burn brightly in a cold, dark space. The source of starlight is the nuclear furnace at the core of the star, where the chief nuclear reaction is the fusion of hydrogen to helium. This is a downhill process, leading to nuclei of greater stability, and the cost paid for achieving it is the redistribution of nuclear energy into the surrounding space in the form of heat and light. This particular orderliness, and with it most familiar examples of terrestrial organization, leads to the question: Is the present structure of the universe-which is made mainly of hydrogen and not helium or heavier elements-just luck, a coincidence? Because, if the universe were made of, say, iron (the most stable element) there would be no stars like the sun.

Also, the structure of our world depends vitally not only on the availability of free hydrogen, but also on the reasonably smooth distribution of the primeval matter. If the big bang had only coughed out black holes-the ultimate triumph of gravity-in which everything is completely obliterated and disappears, no life would have been possible.

Can all these peculiar ‘coincidences’ be understood in terms of some self-evolutionary mechanism?

In its standard form, the big bang theory assumes that all parts of the universe began expanding simultaneously. Observations confirmed this assumption and showed that the expansion is remarkably uniform in all directions. This would seem to imply a collaboration between widely separated regions of the cosmos to expand at the same rate everywhere. Such highly organized behaviour leads us to ask how all the different parts of the universe could synchronize the beginning of their expansion?

Where does the energy that makes the universe expand come from? What could be a permanent, decidedly nonzero source of energy in the universe, with cosmic consequences? Could it be vacuum-as the source of everything yet itself nothing? This is one of the hottest topics in contemporary physics and lies at the heart of perhaps the most important new concept in cosmology of the past decade. If it is correct, could the creation of being out of nothingness occur without the mediation of a Creator?

There are many such peculiar ‘coincidences’ in the universe. Is it just our luck that they have worked out that way, or is there a deeper explanation? One understanding would be that the world is the way it is because it is the creation of a Creator who wills it to be capable of fruitful process: His command, when He desires a thing, is to say to it ‘Be!’, and it is (Ya Sin, 36.82). Without an Organizer, chaos can never be transformed into cosmos. This explanation is not a temporary sop to satisfy our curiosity about phenomena for which we cannot yet work out a satisfactory physical explanation; rather, it is a step guiding us towards a better understanding of the real world.

That does not mean that these mysteries constitute a barrier beyond which science cannot pass. As in the past, we may reasonably expect that, in the future, deeper understanding will be achieved and a more profound pattern discerned at the basis of physical reality, in a new, perhaps new kind, of explanatory theory. It may be some version of supergravity or it may be the novel theory of ‘superstrings’. Or some other theory that we have not yet thought of.

However, we should bear in mind that both our growing knowledge about the universe, and the need, alongside it, to revise it continually, is clear evidence for the inconclusiveness of science and the limitation of its methods.

In addition, the finititude of man’s existence (in this very small part of a vast universe) and the limitations of his senses mean that all our efforts must be considered ‘relative.’ The results of pure and experimental sciences are a limited portion of reality as man can grasp it from his location in the universe and within the very limited time allotted to him, and not the truth itself. There is of course, a great difference between being aware of things and knowing their actual truth. The former is limited to sensible events only, while the latter lies beyond the capacity of our senses.

No inquiry into the nature of creation or any part of it can be closed and concluded. The patterns of God in creation are infinite: there will always be more of them to discover. As we strive to do so, understand more and more about nature, the scientist’s sense of wonder will not diminish but become sharper, more narrowly focused on the mysteries that still remain. The worth of science lies in its commitment to understanding the Divine handiwork. The comprehensibility of the reality around us is among the greatest of God’s favours to us. Einstein remarked this: ‘The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.’

The Qur’an contains many scientifically accurate statements, some of them still relevant to cosmology; it does not contain any statements which are in conflict with the findings of man’s scientific research nor open to criticism from modern science. Many of its verses allude to, and urge, reflection upon the reality around us as a form of worship, as a way to draw nearer to the Creator. I shall conclude by citing (in translation) a verse which draws our attention to the fact that, in a general sense, the future will be the age of knowledge and information, and that as a natural consequence of this, it will be an age of faith and belief:

Soon We shall show them Our signs on the furthest horizons, and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses all things? (Fussilat, 41.53)

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sternbilder · 4 years

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Camille Has Many KDrama Thoughts

As some of you have possibly noticed, I have recently fallen into a KDrama hole and I can’t get up, and I have just finished my 10th drama, which seems like less of an accomplishment than I thought now that I say it out loud, but anyway,

As a checkpoint/thinly veiled plug of some shows I love very much, here is a very long post with some of my thoughts on all the KDramas I’ve seen so far, as well as what’s next on my list, in case you too were interested in joining me in nonexistent fandom hell!

So firstly, all of the dramas I have watched to completion, in the order of how much I like them. First, my top five:

1. Sungkyunkwan Scandal (2010). My #1 favorite drama to date. I’ve probably watched it in full 4-5 times, and it’s still an absolute treat every time. Is it the best drama I’ve ever seen? Probably not. But it’s so fun and charming that it’s just gotta be at the top of my list.

The best way I can describe this drama is Ouran High School Host Club, except in Joseon era Korea, and instead of flirting with girls the main characters learn about Confucianism and solve mysteries and play sports (twice) and end up accidentally involved in a complicated political scandal. Also, that one text post about how Shang from Mulan is bi because he falls for Mulan while he thinks she’s a man...This drama has that, except actually canon. And while I won’t pretend this is show is a shining beacon of representation, there are multiple main characters who are explicitly not heterosexual and several others with very plausible queer readings, which earns it a very special place in my heart.

As for the actual premise of the show, it’s basically about a wonderfully determined and kind and clever but lower-class girl whose writing skills catch the eye of the most stubbornly strait-laced but idealistic aspiring politician-type on the planet. She ends up getting a one-way ticket to the most prestigious school in the country, except she has to pretend to be a man the entire time because women aren’t allowed to be educated at this time.

It’s a bit of a silly, cheesy show, and here are many wacky shenanigans, but the main cast is full of incredibly highly endearing and multifaceted characters, there is a lot of sexual confusion, the slowburn roommate romance has an incredible payoff, and it’s also full of deeply moving social commentary about class, privilege, and gender roles. This drama is a blast and I could go on and on about what I love about it, I absolutely adore it to pieces.

2. Six Flying Dragons (2015-2016). I debated between this and Tree With Deep Roots (next on my list, to which SFD is a prequel) as my #2 but I do think I want to place SFD higher just because it's the drama that I keep thinking about even after finishing it. of course, it has the dual advantages of 1) being released chronologically later (and having better production value, etc., because of this) and 2) being twice as long, but there’s just so much stuff to unpack with SFD that it makes me want to keep coming back to it.

The show is about the founding of the Joseon dynasty, and six individuals (half of whom are based on real historical figures and half fictional) whose lives are closely tied to the fall of the old regime and the revolution that brought in the new. It has an intricate, intensely political plotline based on the actual events that happened during this time, and though this may sound kind of boring if you’re like me and not super into history (admittedly, the pacing in the beginning is a tiny bit slow), it quickly picks up and becomes this dense web of character relations and political maneuvering. Though none of the major events should come as a surprise if you’ve seen TWDR or if you happen to already know the history it was based on, the show adds such a depth of humanity and emotion to every event and character that nothing ever feels boring or predictable. As a matter of fact, there are several events that were alluded to in TWDR that, when they actually happened in SFD, left me breathless--because although I 100% knew these were foregone conclusions that were coming up at some point, I still had a visceral moment of, “oh no, so that’s how that came to happen.”

But though I really enjoyed following the story of SFD and learning about the history behind it, the highlight of the show for me is definitely the great character arcs. I loved TWDR’s characters, too (especially Yi Do, So Yi, and obviously Moo Hyul), but with double the episode count SFD just has so much time for rich, dynamic character development, and I absolutely loved seeing how these characters grew and changed over time when their ideologies and fates collided in this turbulent and violent age: How young and ambitious Yi Bang Won eventually spiraled into a ruthless tyrant, how the naive and kind-hearted Moo Hyul struggled to retain his humanity in a bloody revolution that challenged his values and loyalties to the core, how the fiercely determined and idealistic Boon Yi grew into a pragmatic and capable leader who comes to realize what politics and power mean for her and her loved ones.

SFD was also everything I wanted as a prequel to TWDR--I loved seeing the contrasts between some of the TWDR characters and their younger selves in the SFD timeline: The hardened and ruthless Bang Won as a passionate and righteous adolescent, the cynical and resigned Bang Ji as a cowardly boy who grows into a traumatized and bitter young man, and my personal favorite character, the comically serious bodyguard Moo Hyul as the very model of the dopey, lovable himbo archetype. And though the ending was controversial among fans (particularly those who watched SFD first), I loved how it closed all the loops and tied it back to the events of TWDR, both providing that transition I wanted but also recontextualizing and adding new meaning to the original work. I think it's still a very good drama on its own, but this hand-off is what really sealed the deal for me personally, because it was not only super emotionally satisfying to watch how the stories connected, but it elevated TWDR to something even greater (suggesting that Yi Do and the events of TWDR was the culmination of everything the six dragons fought so long and hard for), which is exactly what I expect from a good prequel.

I’ve already talked so much about this drama but I also do need to mention that the soundtrack to SFD is A+, and the sword fights are sick as hell. There is also some romance, though it’s not really a focus--and all the pairings that do exist are extremely tragic, which is exactly up my alley. Overall, this is a hell of a historical drama, coming of age, villain origin story, and martial arts film in one, and I highly recommend it.

3. Tree With Deep Roots (2011). The sequel to SFD, though it aired first chronologically. Although this show isn’t one of those shows that I could rewatch once a year like SKKS or keep ruminating on like SFD, TWDR (much like Les Mis, or Fata Morgana) is thematically the kind of story that just makes my heart sing.

The story centers around the creation of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, by Yi Do (a.k.a., King Sejong the Great, who is the son and successor of Yi Bang Won, the main character of SFD) as well as two fictional childhood friends whose backstories and ambitions become central to the story of how and why this alphabet came to exist. Not only is the actual process of creating this alphabet absolutely fascinating from a linguistic and scientific POV, but the show dramatizes Yi Do’s motivations in a way that’s so incredibly touching and human--portraying the king as a soft-hearted and extremely charismatic yet fundamentally flawed and conflicted figure who tries so desperately to do right by his people.

The show explores both a number of personal themes like redemption, atonement, and vengeance, as well as broader societal themes such as the ethics of authority, the democratization of knowledge, and the power of language and literacy. Though the show never forgets to remind the audience of the bitter reality of actual history, it’s still a deeply idealistic show whose musings on social change and how to use privilege and power to make the world better are both elegant and poignant.

Romance definitely takes a backseat in TWDR, even more so than SFD, though this isn’t something I personally mind. There are, however, a lot of interesting politics surrounding the promulgation of the alphabet, including a string of high-profile assassinations--if SFD is historical/political-thriller-meets-action-film, then TWDR is historical/political-thriller-meets-murder-mystery, and it’s an incredibly tightly written and satisfying story whose pieces fall into place perfectly. Though not the sprawling epic that SFD is, TWDR is an emotional journey and an extremely well-written story with a TON of goodies if you’re as excited about linguistics as I am.

4. White Christmas (2011). My first non-sageuk on this list! White Christmas is, in a lot of ways, an odd drama. It’s an 8-episode special, and featured largely (at the time) new talent. it’s also neither a historical work nor romance-focused, but instead a short but intense psychological thriller/murder mystery.

The premise is this: Seven students at a super elite boarding school tucked away in the mountains receive mysterious black letters that compel them to remain on campus during the one vacation of the year. The letters describe various “sins” that the author accuses the students of committing, as well as the threat of a “curse” as well as an impending death. The students quickly find that they’re stranded alone at the school with a murderer in their midst, as they are forced to confront their shared histories and individual traumas to figure out 1) why they’ve been sent the letters, and 2) how to make it out alive. At the center of the survival game the characters find themselves in is a recurring question: “Are monsters born, or can they be made?”

If you’ve been following me for a while, it’s easy to see why I was drawn to this drama. In terms of setup and tone, it’s Zero Escape. In theme, it’s Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. It’s Lord of the Flies meets Dead Poets Society. or as one of my mutuals swyrs@ put it, Breakfast Club meets Agatha Christie. The story is flawlessly paced with not a scene wasted. There’s so much good foreshadowing and use of symbolic imagery, and though I’ve watched it at least 3-4 times, I always find interesting new details to analyze. The plot twists (though not so meta-breaking as ZE) are absolutely nuts, and aside from the somewhat questionable ending, the story is just really masterfully written.

Above all, though, WC is excellent for its character studies. Though I typically tend to stay away from shows that center around teenagers because I don’t find their struggles and experiences particularly relatable, WC does such an excellent job of picking apart every character psychologically, showing their traumas, their desires, their fears, and their insecurities. We see these kids at their most violent and cruel, but also their most vulnerable and honest. Their stories and motivations are so profoundly human that I found even the worst and most despicable characters painfully sympathetic at times, as cowardly and hypocritical and unhinged as they became.

Like I said, it’s only 8 episodes long with probably the best rewatch value on this list. My only complaints about it are its ending, as well as its relative lack of female characters, but otherwise I would absolutely recommend.

5. Signal (2016). Okay, this might be the recency bias talking because I just finished this series but I'm sure but I'm still reeling at the mind-screw of an ending and I feel like it deserves a place on this spot just for that.

Signal is a crime thriller based on a number of real-life incidents that happened in Korea in the last 30 or so years. In short, a young profiler from the year 2015, who has a grudge against the police after witnessing their incompetence and corruption twice as a child, happens to find a mysterious walkie-talkie that seems to be able to send and receive messages from the past. on the other end is an older detective from 2000 who tells him that he’s about to start receiving messages from his younger self, back in 1989. Through the seemingly sporadic radio communications, the two men work together to solve a series of cold cases, which begin to change the past and alter the timeline.

As they solve these cases, expose corruption within the police department, and correct past injustices, the two men (along with a third, female detective who has connections to both of them) also begin to unravel the mysteries of their pasts, as well as why and how they came to share this connection.

Like WC, the story and pacing of this drama were flawless, reminding me of an extended movie rather than a TV series. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and the 16-episode run went by in no time at all. I always love timeline shenanigans and explorations of causality and fate and the consequences of changing the past, and this show has oodles of that peppered with the heartbreakingly tragic human connections and stories that the main characters share. The main pairing has great chemistry and gave me exactly the pain I crave from a doomed timeline romance, and the cinematography and soundtrack were also beautiful, which also contributed to the polished, cinema-like feel.

My only complaint is that I wish that the ending felt more like an ending, such that the drama could stand on its own. I do realize this is because there’s a second season coming, but right now the show feels somewhat incomplete, ending on a huge, ambiguous cliffhanger/sequel hook and with several loose ends. I obviously can’t give a final verdict until the entire thing airs (and I typically don’t like multi-season shows, so I will wait for the next season to come out both reluctantly and begrudgingly), but even where the show leaves off I still did enjoy it immensely.

...And now, some brief thoughts on the other 5 shows I’ve watched, because I ran out of steam and have less to say about these:

6. Healer (2014-2015). It’s been a few years since I’ve seen this show, but I remember being really impressed by this drama at the time, especially the storyline. Unfortunately though I don’t remember too much about the drama itself, which is a shame. It’s a mystery/thriller, I think, and there is hacking and crimes involved? The main character is a very cute and sweet tabloid writer and she falls in love with a mysterious and cool action boy who helps her uncover the truth behind a tragic incident that relates to her past, or something. Judging from my liveblog it seems like this was an extremely emotional journey, and I enjoyed the main couple (who are both very attractive) a lot, and it was just overall a cathartic and feel-good experience. I feel like I should rewatch this drama at some point?

7. Rooftop Prince (2012). It’s also been forever since I watched this show but I remember thinking it was hilarious and delightful and I definitely cried a lot though I do not remember why (probably something something time travel, something something reincarnation/fated lovers??). I do remember that the premise is that a Joseon-era prince and several of his servants accidentally time travel into modern-day Seoul and end up meeting the main character who is the future reincarnation of his love (?) and he is hilariously anachronistic and also insufferably pretentious, which the MC absolutely does not cut him any slack for, and they have an extremely good dynamic.

8. Coffee Prince (2007). I watched this around the same time as Rooftop Prince and I remember really enjoying it! it’s basically just SKKS, but the modern cafe AU, and I mean that in the best way possible? It definitely shares a lot of the same tropes--crossdressing/tomboy female lead, sexually questioning male lead who falls in love with her despite being “straight,” very good chemistry and also extremely charming secondary characters.

9. Shut Up Flower Boy Band (2012). This show...Was just OK. I enjoyed it at the time, but I can’t say I found it particularly memorable. As I said, I don’t typically find stories about high school students particularly relatable, and the battle of the bands-type plot was interesting enough at the time but didn’t really leave a lasting impression. As expected, the music was pretty good. I kind of watched this mostly to hear Sung Joon sing tbh?

10. Rebel: Thief Who Stole the People (2017). I wanted to like this show. I really did. I wouldn’t say it was bad, but the beginning was painfully slow, and I only really enjoyed the last 10 episodes or so, when the vive la révolution arc finally started kicking off. The pacing was challenging--the pre-timeskip dragged on about twice as long as it needed to, and I just wasn’t really interested in the Amogae/Yiquari storyline very much. I also really, really disliked all the romances in the show, especially the main pairing, since I didn’t particularly love either the male or the female leads until pretty late in the show. Overall I think I would have enjoyed the show more if the first 2/3 of it was about half as long, and it either developed the romance better or cut it out altogether.

What I’m thinking of watching next:

1. Chuno (2010). Mostly because the soundtrack to this show is so goddamn good, but also because I’m craving more historical dramas with good sword fights after SFD. I was kind of hoping Rebel would fill that need but I was a little disappointed tbh?

2. Warrior Baek Dong Soo (2011). Same reasons as above, honestly. also has a very good soundtrack, and Ji Chang Wook, who is a known nice face-haver, doing many very cool sword fights.

3. Mr. Sunshine (2018). Late Joseon era is something I’ve never really seen before in media so I’m pretty intrigued? Also Byun Yo Han was one of my favorites from SFD and I definitely want to see him in more things.

4. Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung (2019). A coworker recommended this to me and the trailer looks delightful. first of all it’s a sageuk with the gorgeous and talented Shin Se Kyoung in it playing a smart and plucky female lead, which have historically been extremely good to me, but also it gives me massive SKKS vibes, so how could I not.

5. My Country: The New Age (2019). This caught my attention because it’s based on the same historical events as SFD, so it features some of the same characters. I am very very interested in Jang Hyuk’s take on Yi Bang Won, even if he is less of a main character here compared to SFD, and he’s already an adult so he’ll already be well on his way to bastardhood. I also hear it’s very heartbreaking, which is instant eyes emoji for me?

6. Chicago Typewriter (2017). It’s about freedom fighters from the colonization era, which I’m very intrigued by after The Handmaiden and Pachinko, plus a reincarnation romance. I am very predictable in my choice of tropes. Also, Yoo Ah In is in it.

7. Arthdal Chronicles (2019-). Ok, it’s a gorgeous-looking historical fantasy set in Korea written by the same writers as TWDR and SFD, plus it has not just one but TWO Song Joong Ki characters, one of which is a pure, doe-eyed soft boy and the other an evil long-haired fae prince looking asshole who I hear is a complete and utter Unhinged Bastard Supreme. Nothing has ever been more Camille Bait than this, but unfortunately this show hasn’t finished airing, which does pain me deeply. speaking of,

8. Kingdom (2019-). It’s a fantasy sageuk with zombies, is about the extent I know about this show. The fact that it also hasn’t finished airing turns me off a bit but it looks absolutely gorgeous and I also just found out it was written by the same writer as Signal, so,,,,,,,,,

9. Gunman in Joseon (2014). I honestly don’t expect too much from this drama but I just enjoy its premise a lot? From what I understand it’s just Percy from Critical Role, but make it Joseon era.......Like, they just straight up took a Shadow the Hedgehog, “let’s make a sageuk, but guns,” approach, and I kind of unironically love that. Also the soundtrack kicks ass, which like...you can really see where my priorities lie here, huh,

10. Misaeng (2014). I don’t remember at this point why this is on my list but I found it in the Keep note I have of all the media I want to watch?? I have no idea what this show is about, except that it takes place in an office. Apparently Byun Yo Han is also in this one? I’m sorry this is the only non-sageuk or sageuk-adjacent show in this list, I know what I’m about, and it’s fancy old-timey costumes and cool braids.

#/#//#///#////#/////#cam thoughts #KDrama #this is the most self-indulgent thing i've written in a while but it felt good to shout my many thoughts into this void of a blog #also i typed most of this out a few days ago since which i already started watching misaeng #so far it is very good but also the exact opposite of what i was expecting..whatever that is??#long post /#Television

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Dune Trailer Breakdown and Analysis

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This article contains spoilers for the Dune book and probably the movie. You’ve been warned.

The first trailer for Denis Villeneueve’s Dune is here and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. Showcasing a spectacular all star cast, truly epic visuals, and a surprising Pink Floyd song choice, this looks like a faithful adaptation of Frank Herbert’s legendary sci-fi novel.

Well…half of it, at least. Y’see, Warner Bros. and Villeneueve have (wisely) opted to split the book into two films. So everything you see in this trailer is roughly from the first half (or less) of the story.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is…

Pretty spectacular, right? Now, let’s dive in…but before I start, a note about spoilers.

Look, if it’s in the marketing material, it isn’t a spoiler. And it’s tough to truly spoil a book that is almost 60 years old, especially when David Lynch adapted this back in 1984, in a version that has been widely seen and is inexplicably beloved. Nevertheless, I’m keeping this spoiler light, and trying not to allude to stuff in the latter half of the book, although you can draw some pretty strong conclusions from what’s shown in the trailer.

My own analysis here is mixed in with quotes from the cast, taken from a Q&A that was moderated by Stephen Colbert.

Paul Atreides

That’s Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides, the protagonist, if not the actual “hero” of Dune, inasmuch as this story has any actual heroes. He’s only 15 years old, leaving his comfortable existence on his home planet, because his family has just won the contract to mine the most valuable commodity in the galaxy, the spice Melange, on the planet Arrakis.

And yes, as you expect, there is more to him than there might seem to be at first. We wrote more about Paul here.

Chani

Zendaya is Chani, a Fremen of the planet Arrakis. Some of Paul’s narration in this trailer seems to be based around prophetic dreams he has had of eventually meeting Chani on Arrakis.

“I think upon their first meeting, she doesn’t … She’s tough,” Zendaya said in a cast Q&A. “She’s a warrior. She’s native to this planet. This is all she knows. And so, this kind of other kid coming in, she’s not really feeling it. And that’s to the Fremen culture, that they have strong culture and bond within and amongst each other…she obviously doesn’t know about these visions and things. And he knows her, she doesn’t know him. And there’s these moments that … don’t want to give anything away, but these moments where she sees something in him that is obviously an indicator of what is to come.”

We have more on Zendaya’s role in the film here.

Speaking of dreaming, here’s Paul in his bedroom back on his home planet of Caladan in the Atreides ancestral home, Castle Caladan. Based on the book, this scene takes place shortly before the Atreides family departs for Arrakis.

For an even more fun detail from the book, the headboard of Paul’s bed is exactly as it’s described in Herbert’s novel.

Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam

This is the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (played by Charlotte Rampling). She reports directly to the Emperor, but was also the teacher of Paul’s mother, the Lady Jessica.

Fans of David Lynch’s film may remember the key role she played in determining that young Paul had an extraordinary destiny, and that scene plays out throughout this trailer.

Notably…

“What’s in the box?”

“Pain.”

This box literally causes pain, but with no physical damage. What’s happening here is the Reverend Mother has summoned Paul to see if he has some of the Bene Gesserit physical/mental control powers. When Paul’s hand is placed in the box, nerves are stimulated causing pain.

In the book the level of pain is described as if the flesh is being seared from his bones, although no actual damage is done.

The Gom Jabbar

Ah, but what’s a test without consequences, right? To make sure that Paul takes this little test seriously, the Reverend Mother holds this nasty little device to his neck.

It’s called a gom jabbar, described in the book’s “Terminology of the Imperium” appendix as “the high-handed enemy; that specific poison needle tipped with meta-cyanide used by Bene Gesserit proctors in the death-alternative test of human awareness.

In other words, if Paul pulls his hand out of the box of pain (please, no Grateful Dead jokes), he’ll be pricked with this extremely poisonous needle and die an agonizing actual death.

Shields

So you know how in Star Wars and Star Trek ships have shields and deflector screens? In the world of Dune, you get personal energy shields!

According to the “Terminology of the Imperium” these defensive shields “will permit entry only to objects moving at slow speeds (depending on setting, this speed ranges from six to nine centimetres per second).”

In other words, no guns or projectile weapons work with someone wearing a shield, making the art of personal combat that much more important in this universe…

…hence Paul training with blades here. And his instructor?

Gurney Halleck

That would be Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), who is responsible for teaching Paul how to use weapons and defend himself. And kick his ass when necessary.

“Gurney is the war-master,” Josh Brolin said. “He’s also kind of a parent of sorts, where Duke Leto is obviously busy, extremely busy, in what he’s doing. And he’s taken a real liking to this kid, and I think he has a real soft spot. So Gurney Halleck is like a great dichotomist character, because he’s this great kind of brave-heart warrior, but at the same time, has a love of poetry and kind of heart, and there’s a softness to him…It was fun to play.”

Duke Leto Atreides

Paul’s father, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) appears to be taking one last look at his home planet of Caladan before departing for Arrakis.

“He’s a father, and he’s got all the qualities of, I think, what the epitome of what a father should be,” Isaac told Colbert. “He’s noble … and under incredible pressure to save his family, save his house, but to adapt to this new existential threat situation, which is moving to this strange planet, and being forced to, and being able to see that there could be a trap, that it could be … there’s a lot of things at work, and yet, trying to live up to those bigger ideals, which is sensitivity and empathy and love and order, and trying to give that and show that to his son, knowing that he’s not going to be there forever, in the hopes that they can use this dark, strange situation to their advantage.”

The Planet Caladan

This is the surface of planet Caladan, the lush, watery planet that the Atreides family leaves for um…dryer pastures on Arrakis.

Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson)

This is the Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), the Duke’s concubine and the mother of Paul Atreides. Don’t mistake her for a passive observer, though. She’s a Bene Gesserit, which makes her something like a combination of a psychic badass and a superspy. She’s absolutely central to the story.

“She’s [Leto’s] dearest partner in greatness, but she has her own weird, Bene Gesserit, prophet, spy thing going on,” Isaac said. “And I think he kind of doesn’t really get too much into what that’s all about. He understands she has this specific role to play. And then he’s got a son that might be the messiah, so there’s a lot going on there.”

“She’s the engine of the family,” he continued. “She’s the engine of the events that happen, and it’s a long game that’s being played, over millennia, and she’s part of that…she’s in a very interesting place too, because she understands that there’s a much greater mission to accomplish, and yet, she also loves her family and wants to protect them in any way she can. So it is. They’re a family in an insane amount of pressure and a lot of conflict. But I think at the core of that, it’s an intense love that they have for each other.”

Timothee Chalamet also sings the praises of both the character and the actress.

“There is no Dune without Lady Jessica,” Chalamet said. “And without giving anything away, although the book has been out for decades, anybody can read it, they … Lady Jessica ignores the order of the Bene Gesserit. She’s supposed to have a girl, and she has a boy instead. And that’s one of the triggering events of Dune.”

The Planet Arrakis

Arrakis, the titular Dune of the film, is quite a change from Caladan, isn’t it? It’s a planet of great strategic importance, with an incredibly valuable natural resource, that powerful factions are willing to go to war over.

So, you know, nothing political about this at all.

Thufir Hawat

I’m pretty sure that’s Stephen McKinley Henderson as Atreides family Mentat (and Master of Assassins) Thufir Hawat visible between Paul and Gurney here.

Duncan Idaho

Meet Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), swordmaster of the Atreides and one of the most trusted lieutenants of Duke Leto. Duncan was sent ahead to Arrakis which is why he’s so pleased to see everyone here.

Momoa described his character with his typical aplomb as “basically the greatest fighter in the fucking world,” before adding, “he just would do anything to protect Paul…and looks up to all these guys.”

The “these guys” in question are the Fremen, the fierce natives of Arrakis who the charming Idaho is trying to make into allies for the Atreides.

Stilgar

Stilgar (Javier Bardem) is a powerful Fremen leader and potential ally of the Atreides as they acclimate to Arrakis.

“Stilgar is the head chief of the people that live deep in the desert of planet Arrakis, which is also known as Dune,” Bardem said. “He’s a leader, and he’s a fighter. He has a lot of ethics and morals, and he’s taken by the message that the messiah, Paul Atreides, is bringing with him…They are kind of protecting their environment and their planet…So there’s a lot of ethics and morality and also environmental thinking in their ways, which I think is brilliant in the book and in the movie.”

The Harkonnen Homeworld

I’m not completely certain, but I’m pretty sure this is Giedi Prime, the homeworld of House Harkonnen.

Beast Rabban

That’s Dave Bautista as “Beast” Glossu Rabban, the nephew of the film’s nasty villain, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. He doesn’t look particularly healthy, does he?

“I grew up a massive WWE fan, and I’d never met Bautista… let alone Bautista, the real human,” Timothee Chalamet said. “And his excitement being there, having already worked with Denis [on Blade Runner 2049]. And when you see an actor that’s already worked with a director and is more humbled than ever and is more excited to be there than ever…just kind of set the bar on these kind of movies.”

Anyway, speaking of the Harkonnens…

Baron Harkonnen

This might be a completely unrecognizable (and disgusting) Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

“I will say that my secret weapon for that was Stellan Skarsgård, because you put Stellan with the way we designed the Baron and we shoot him,” Villeneuve said. “People will understand right away what his position regarding the Atreides and what is the difference of moral values between the Atreides and the Harkonnens.”

If the above shot is any indication, he ain’t kidding.

I’m not totally sure what we’re looking at here, but the most likely explanation is Harkonnen soldiers.

Liet Kynes

Sharon Duncan-Brewster is Liet Kynes, an ecologist studying Arrakis. In the book and Lynch film, Kynes was a male character, but that has been swapped here.

“Denis was adamant that we just concentrate on what Kynes represents and thematically, the sense of … he’s an integral role,’ Duncan-Brewster said. “He connects all the dots. He connects the Harkonnens, he connects House of Atreides, he connects the Fremen, planet Arrakis, the sand-worms. This is somebody who understands … and moves in between each and every one, seemingly with one agenda. But however, as things go, we start to understand that there is more gameplay-ing or survival or preservation for the good of certain people or individuals or beings.”

Dr. Yueh

This is Dr. Wellington Yueh (Chang Chen), a doctor who works for the Atreides. The black diamond tattoo on his forehead identifies him as a member of the Suk School, the greatest doctors in the known universe.

Spice Harvester

There’s a great scene in the book (and in the Lynch film) where a spice harvester gets swallowed by a sandworm and, well…here it is.

Ornithopters

These weird dragonfly like vehicles you’re seeing here are Ornithopters. They’re man made aircraft that flap their wings like birds.

Sandworms

And there it is, Shai-Halud, the notorious and iconic sandworm of Arrakis. These things can be 400 meters long, are essentially immortal, and unless another sandworm kills them or they drown in water (which isn’t exactly in great supply on Arrakis), they aren’t going anywhere.

The “Terminology of the Imperium” gives an ominous indicator of how powerful these are, with “most of the sand on Arrakis is credited to sandworm action.”

Dune is currently scheduled to open on Dec. 18.

Did you spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Dune Trailer Breakdown and Analysis appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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clairvoyantxatu · 5 years

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On Pokémon and Insensitive Portrayals

WARNING! LEAKED CONTENT FOR POKEMON SWORD AND SHIELD AHEAD! AS WELL AS DISCUSSION ABOUT CONTROVERSIAL TOPICS! AND PLEASE, DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS UNTIL YOU FINISH READING THE TEXT, I TRIED MY BEST NOT TO DEMONIZE ANY OF THE PARTIES INVOLVED IN THIS DEBATE!

So, I’ve just found out that some Jewish fans have condemning the design of Impidimp’s final evolution, Grimmsnarl, for being eerily similar to antisemitic caricatures from Nazi propaganda.

They claim his green complexion, curly dark hair and long, pointy nose is pretty close to Third Reich-era depictions of Jewish people. The issue is similar to the controversy surruounding Jynx that happened when the series first came to the West. I decided to write this in order to expose my opinions on the matter, and maybe prevent further conflicts between defenders and accusers. Keep in mind, I can’t speak for Jewish people since I’m not one of them, but I personally believe anyone can share their opinions about controversial topics as long as they don’t commit the mistake of thinking they know more about a group they don’t belong to than themselves. Here goes my thoughts:

I personally DON’T believe Game Freak, as a company at least, is actively discriminatory against any group in particular; the majority of their employees, even the main members of its staff, might hold some biases coming from the still pretty conservative Japanese culture they’re inserted in. But they’ve already shown thorugh their actions throughout the years they’re not trying to perpetuate hatred towards any group in particular, even taking some measures - some of them, even too drastic, IMO - to secure that, like changing Jynx’ color palette starting from Gen III, temporarily replacing Brock in the anime with Tracey and slightly altering Gym Leader Lenora’s default design to please the fans concerned with their possible racist implications. But I think the biggest proof of that is how, starting from Gen V, they’ve been making an effort to include more diversity among their human cast, including more and more characters with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds with each passing generation, and even alluding to sexual diversity from time to time - if only through subtext, in the latter’s case (save for that post-op trans woman in the Battle Chateau, which got slightly less explicit in the English localization). Of course, not everything is perfect in that department, as can be attested by their reluctancy to depict the Player Characters in their more dark-skinned variations, as of X and Y, (and before that, the complete absence of that possibility in-game) in promotional art and spinoff media outside of screenshots of main series games designed specifically to showcase character customization, but I’d like to think this had more to do with the Japanese market - still their main target audience, despite the franchise’s success over the entire globe - being hesitant to accept character designs outside certain “standards” for their PC’s even to this day, to a lesser extent than in the past, of course. But one thing that people need to understand is that companies are complex entities encompassing many individual minds; them having flaws and making mistakes from time to time does not necessarily mean they are rotten to the core, even if, in the end, their main priority is making money for themselves (altruism is NOT a strong point in capitalist societies, sadly, but I digress).

With all that said, I’d like to point out as well, that sometimes, good intentions are not enough to perform a good deed; in fact, they can lead to grave consequences! And it’s not different with representation; sometimes, one can intend to portray a character from a certain group in a positive light and end up being tremendously insensitive, usually due to their own ignorance towards that group. I believe that’s the case with Jynx and other examples from Pokémon; while I’m one of the fans who prefer to believe Jynx is based on the Youkai Yama-Uba (refer to this link for more info on that: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Jynx_(Pok%C3%A9mon)#Origin), I cannot deny there is a strong similarity between Jynx’ original design and blackface caricatures, specially since the Yama-Uba is usually portrayed in Noh theatre by performers wearing blackface - even if without the intention to emulate actual black people. It doesn’t help that the anime chose to portray this species as Pokémon’s equivalent of Santa Claus’ usual elf assistants, possibly linking Jynx to Zwarte Peit, a infamous folklore figure heavily associated with Santa as well. In regards to the substantially smaller Lenora controversy, I personally believe it was the case of GF misinterpreting some depictions of black women from less-enlightened times, in particular those borrowing from the mammy stereotype, as something more positive than they actually were, possibly connecting them to traditional Japanese ideals of femininity and motherhood, but that’s just a wild guess, I admit. What I’m sure, however, is that while Lenora’s apron could be excused as a means to carry her archeological tools, even if I’ve never seen an actual archeologist wearing aprons to do so, her original Gym Leader Title in the Japanese version of the Gen V games, “Natural-born Mama” raises a lot of suspicion against the intent behind her design, specially since she’s not known to have children, have a particularly “motherly” personality, act as a mother figure towards any character in-game or have an occupation that could be interpreted as being akin to a mother’s role; the best I can think of is Lenora and her husband referring to each other as “mama” and “papa”, but considering other Gym Leader titles refer more to their main character features, and Lenora’s relationship with Hawes is more of side note in comparison to her role as Nacrene Museum’s director... the fact the rest of her characterization is pretty straightforward, lacking any racial elements to it, however, lends credency to the idea GF didn’t intend her to be a caricature of black women.

Nevertheless, the closeness between those depictions and real world racist depictions of minority groups is still unsettling, at least to some. And just because the author’s intention wasn’t to offend a certain group, it doesn’t mean people don’t have the right to dislike their work for that. After all, so many people hate Palkia’s design for resembling male genitalia despite that obviously not being the intention! What if they coloured Cloyster light pink instead? Would you blame people for associating it (even more) with a vagina? I’m not saying we should storm off GF’s office demanding they change Grimmsnarl’s design while accusing them of being bigots, specially since I don’t believe it’s the case at all; all Im saying is that there’s a strong point of favour of those discontent with the characters’ design, despite all claims that it’s not meant to represent something they despise. I don’t know if GF should feel impelled to change Grimmsnarl’s colouring to solely please those people, but I’m sure I’d also hate if they created, even unintentionally, a character who bore too much resemblance to a particularly negative depicition from a group I belong to, say, some Fuu Manchuu-esque Evil Team Leader or the like. If they simply made a new Pokémon with a Chinese-inspired aesthetic, even if some elements were a bit cliché, like Ludicolo is for Mexican people, I wouldn’t mind nearly as much.

And I don’t think anyone should dismiss those concerns, much less with weak arguments such as “if you see racism in that, then you’re the real bigot” like I’ve seen out there, just because they don’t grasp the ideas I exposed above. Neither do I approve the attitude of people who react with too much intensity to opposition towards their accusations or jump the gun and accuse GF of being prejudiced towards a specific group without enough evidence or incite violence of any kind towards them because of those unfortunate depictions. Remember, they come from a culture far away from our Western issues, so it’s more likely than not that they aren’t even aware of them, specially more relatively obscure elements like old Nazi propaganda. Having a British man as one of their main designers can help, but even Western people aren’t aware of all Western problems, so...

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon leak #pokemon leaks #pokemon swsh #swsh spoilers #racism #game freak #grimmsnarl

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saltylikecrait · 5 years

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Happily Ever After - Royalty AU

For @finnreyfridays; bringing this AU to a close after working on it for a year, I invite everyone to attend the wedding of Prince Finn and Rey Solo.

This fic is looooong, so if you’d rather read it on AO3, the link is here.

The weeks before the wedding had seen a noticeable change on the streets of the capital, mainly by vendors. Unofficial memorabilia in colorful designs and well-wishes to the couple were in high demand, particularly when the palace’s own official merchandise sold out within days. It told the royal family that Finn and Rey’s marriage was popular and they were a little shocked to find that the wedding was getting a mass intergalactic following, particularly in the core worlds. Fashion designs inspired by the past looks of the prince and his wife-to-be were being found all over the galaxy and the HoloNet. Florists were thrilled that such a hardy flower was Rey’s favorite and rumored to be part of her bouquet. Chefs all over the galaxy were preparing specials for viewers to eat while they watched the recording of the event. It was a little over the top, but at least the occasion was a happy one.

And Prince Finn’s popularity with the New Republic only grew, which some entertainment analysts contributed to the popularity of the royal wedding. He had found a board of trusted directors to help with the starting phase of his charity and found a lot of support among the New Republic, especially from individuals that had traveled the galaxy and seen the state of worn-torn and poverty-stricken worlds. Though Rey did not like to discuss her childhood with the public and would only allude to it in bits and pieces, Unkar Plutt – the slime – found that he could make a pretty amount of credits by giving “exclusive” interviews to the press, making himself out to be far more generous than he ever was when Rey depended on him for food. Rey had become the unofficial poster child for Finn’s charity, cited as his muse and an example of hope to all the children in the galaxy that found themselves in terrible situations. Rey spat at that last bit, knowing that her situation was extraordinary and that most of the children on Jakku would always go to bed with half-empty bellies and look towards a future with a short life-expectancy and things that children on wealthier worlds would never have to live in fear over. The beings in the New Republic that made her story as some sort of fairy tale that all children should try to emulate were the ones that had never cared to begin with.

But between all the changes, the victories, the failures, and planning, time seemed to both fly by and drag by. One day, Finn and Rey would complain to each other that the date seemed too far away and the next day they were signing pre-written thank-you notes for gifts that had arrived early.

And then, after a nearly sleepless night, they were up before dawn to get ready for the ceremony.

Finn’s father and Poe are the ones to help Finn get ready. There are staff members assigned to help with specific last-minute details, but on Duuna, it is traditional for the men in the family to help the groom get dressed. Finn has no siblings of his own and had thought to ask a cousin to help, but he decided to invite the one person in the galaxy that he thinks of as a brother. Poe had looked so touched that Finn had almost thought he needed to offer Poe a tissue.

They don’t need to do much, it turned out. So excited and happy, Finn had actually put on his uniform pants and undershirt long before they turned up, not that Finn really needs help to get dressed – he is an adult and men’s suits are not particularly tricky to put on. But he had laid the frock coat on a hanger, waiting to be put on the groom. It was a dark red in color, nearly burgundy, as many citizens had argued, but not quite. It hung a little low to the waist, almost resembling a tunic, traditional wedding attire for the royal family. Though Finn never had to fight in his life – and his parents thanked the Maker every day for that – the royal family had still been instructed in some military practices

“Have you ate yet?” Poe asks, looking over at the tray sitting on a small table in a corner with a small assortment of light breakfast foods. Finn probably asked for it to be brought up for them to share as the morning went on.

“Not yet,” he says. “Though I could probably do with some food now.”

So the three of them sit down and spread jams over toast and pour tea and help themselves to some eggs. Suddenly, as they begin to eat, Adron looks serious and clears his throat.

“I wanted to say something…” he begins.

Finn swallows his bit of toast and looks over at Poe briefly before he waits for his father to continue.

"A father is supposed to give his son advice before his wedding, at least, that’s what my father told me before mine. Maybe one day, you’ll be sitting at this table with your own son and do the same.”

Finn sits up a little straighter, listening.

“I think you and Rey got a lot of this already figured out, so forgive me if I say anything that’s a little redundant,” he chuckles. “You’ve already taken on the responsibility for caring for someone else… actually, for many someone elses, but now you will have additional responsibilities to take on the moment that you agree to taking Rey as your wife at the altar. You must always protect and provide for your wife – as she will no doubt do for you. And you must do the same for your children. You’ve never wanted for anything,” he points out, “but as we’ve seen in the past, the galaxy changes and not always for the better. Remember that, and if the worst does happen, Rey and your children must always come first.

“But I promise you, marriage – a happy, loving one – is not all work. You will not have to give up everything you love to do by yourself because you’ve gotten married. You will feel pride knowing that Rey did not need you, but she wanted to be with you anyway. You will be proud to see your children grow up and to see what they become. And one day, when I have left this world, you will be king, and a king is nothing without the love of his family to support him.”

And then, on a lighter note, Adron tells stories of all the funny and stupid things he did back before Finn was born and he and Maia were newlyweds. Finn knows that his father was doing this to end his talk on a lighter note and to make Poe a little more comfortable and not feel like he was intruding on an intimate moment between a father and his son.

When one of the aids knocks on the door to let them know they are ready for Finn, they stand up and Finn holds his arms out to let his father pull the frock coat over him. Poe then finishes the task by adding the different medals to his coat that identify him as the heir to the throne. Poe himself wears a dress uniform from the New Republic military, decorated with real honors from those he had served - far more impressive, in Finn’s opinion.

To finish, the king places a simple gold circlet around his son’s head, fitting snugly across his forehead. The ruby in the center of it matched Finn’s clothes perfectly.

Adron looks his son up and down. “You look like a king today,” he said, pride noting his voice.

Then the three follow the aid to the back entrance to the gardens. Another tradition. Duuna prefers outdoor weddings, another way to honor the land that had provided them with so much. A last-minute check is made to ensure that everything is ready for them, and Finn and his family shake hands with the people waiting in the back to give the prince their well-wishes.

Also that morning, Rey finds herself in one of the royal suites with an army of staff members at her disposal and a million and one things to do to get ready. Both Finn’s mother and her own adopted mother are with her to see her through the process. It had been a little tricky to find a compromise between two different cultural traditions, but since Rey’s culture was technically of Jakku and it wasn’t a world particularly noted for glamorous weddings, she looked to the two women for advice.

“I know you had your heart set on green for the dress, Maia,” begins Leia, “but you’ve got to see why I thought white would be a wonderful choice for Rey.”

The queen looks the dress up and down. “As much as I hate to admit it, but you’re right. The silver is a nice touch for her skin tone, too.”

The dress had been a point of conflict between the two women. Ultimately, they knew the choice was Rey’s, but they each selected three dresses, hoping that Rey would favor one of theirs. As a child, Rey had no idea of a dream wedding, but occasionally spotted holos of women wearing elaborate white dresses. She thought Maia’s selections of green fabrics were beautiful, but she kept finding her hand skimming the fine white silk and silver embellishments of one dresses that Leia had selected and found herself enamored with the dramatic image it gave her. Rey thought the caplet that fell along her shoulders and cascaded in a long train behind her was a little unnecessary, but she noted how it brought attention to her collarbone and neck, places on her body that she knew Finn’s gazed seemed to wander to when her skin was bare to him.

The dress also served as a good compromise to get Han to calm down. Monster-in-law, Master Luke had teased his old friend as he watched Han pull his hair out over how little of say Rey got in the choices of the wedding planning. Rey even told him that she hadn’t minded much; she didn’t know much about weddings to begin with and she did get to choose her dress, flowers, and meal preference, and that was really all she thought that mattered. Even Chewbacca was getting annoyed to the point that he had threatened to lock Han in the latrine of the Millennium Falcon until the wedding began.

“Rey,” Maia finally asks, “how are you feeling? About all of this?” She gestures to the outfit as Rey’s hair is being done in a traditional Alderaanian braid for the occasion. If she didn’t know better, Leia was getting a little teary-eyed as she watched the droid do the work; few humans still knew how to do all the hairdos.

“I-” she begin. “It’s a little overwhelming, but I have my family around me to support me, and I think that’s made it easier. I was worried that you and the king might not have approved of me as a wife for Finn, but I am happy that you accepted me.”

“You are our family,” Maia affirms. “We’ve thought of you as such since you and Finn moved in together. We knew it was just a matter of time before you became a part of it officially.”

“You had a lot of reasons not to accept me,” Rey points out.

“You’re taking on a lot by marrying him,” counters Maia. “I think Leia and Han would agree with me on that one.”

Watching the exchange with quiet interest, Leia nods her head. Rey can tell it's not easy, but Leia is trying to remain the diplomat in the situation by staying quiet and not butting in too much more on the wedding planning. She already caused an uproar over the dress.

Then, she finally speaks. “When Han first messaged me that he was taking a girl under his wing, I had no idea how special you were going to be to him. After I met you finally, even though you were older, Han and I didn’t argue about bringing you in to our family. We knew you were meant to be a part of it.” She pauses, looking a little sad. “I wish Han had found you sooner, is all. When you told us about Finn, we thought you might be taking on more than you could handle, but Han told me you could handle yourself… and well, Finn’s devoted to you. That’s something in a partner that some people will never find in their lifetime.”

“You are pretty amazing,” Maia agrees with a wink.

“And you make a good match,” says Leia. “Finn will not be an ordinary king, I can tell. You compliment him.”

As the droid places a silver band around her head, Rey grips Maia’s hand. “I’m glad you both were part of this moment,” she tells them. “That you’re here with me now. I never thought that I would ever know a mother, and now I get to know two.”

And if Leia had been composed for most of the morning, now she looks like she was about to burst into tears. “Oh, come on,” she huffs, obviously trying to keep on the face she had been putting up so far. “We better get going. Don’t want the bride to be late to her own wedding.”

Luckily, the suite they had selected is close to one of the back entrances to the atrium where the ceremony would be held and Rey does not have to walk far. She does, however, need help with her train. Rose and Paige – her bridesmaids – help with it, carrying it with care and trying to instruct Finn’s littlest of relatives that were volunteered to help with this part to behave themselves. Leia takes time to make sure that everything is straightened out and in place, fumbling one more time with the band before she has to declare that her work was done.

“You two look pretty,” Rey tells her bridesmaids as she looks them over. She had helped them pick out the dresses (with the additional aid of a designer) and thought that the cut and materials flattered Paige and Rose. They both are wearing red dresses, and hold small bouquets of white and red flowers to match. Their hair has been curled for the occasion – Rey briefly wonders how long they had been up – and decorated with white ribbons that curled and cascaded down to their shoulders.

"Not as pretty as the bride today,” Rose quips but Paige looks Rey over with a little concern.

"You look a little tired,” she comments. “Did you and Finn get any sleep last night?”

Stammering, Rey protests. “W-we did… or at least we tried. It was hard.”

“But you feel okay?” Rey wonders if Paige is just checking last minute to help with any pre-wedding jitters. That was something that she always liked about her, maybe it was because she had always tried to look after her own sister. Paige checks on everyone else first before worrying about herself.

But one of the aids rushes in before she could answer. “Are you ready?”

Feeling the nerves settle in the pit of her stomach – really? Now? – Rey takes a deep breath. “We’re ready.” She tries to keep her voice clear and strong. It has nothing to do with hesitation in marrying Finn, but rather, it has everything to do with the fact that this is being filmed for the galaxy to see. But she still doesn’t want anyone thinking she has any doubts.

Leia does one last check of the silver headband to make sure it is perfectly adjusted, then, with a final nod and wistful glance, she steps out of the way and is led out of the hallway by a guard to be shown to her seat next to Ben (who didn’t seem too thrilled to have to go to such an extravagant event, but at least was polite enough to suck it up and deal with going for the sake of family appearances). The queen has already left to take her seat on a throne close to the altar with her husband.

Han approaches her, preferring to keep out of the way of the bride’s prepping up until this point. “Ready?” He offers her his arm.

Rey takes it, and is glad that she has someone to call a father to give her away at her wedding. When she looks up at him, there is a note of pride on his face and she recalls this as a look that Han often had when he talked about the other children that he had taken under his wing that had met their potential or found their own happiness.

“You’re doing fine, kid,” he says. “I think you’ve chosen a good one.”

“Thank you for doing this for me,” she tells him, gratitude not hidden from her voice.

Han looks at her with a little bit of shock. “I- It’s an honor.”

“No, I mean: thank you for being my father.”

And then he sighs and tries to wave the thought away. “Now’s not the time. Don’t wanna make me cry now, do you?”

The guards swing the doors open, and the heralds see their cue to start the wedding march. The guests in the seats of the atrium look behind them, trying to crane their necks to see the bride make her entrance along with her party.

As Rey and Han take their first steps out to the atrium, the guests all stand for her. She knew this would happen, but she is not use to having this many eyes on her at once and in one place. Taking a deep breath, she begins her slow procession down the aisle and makes slight glances to see who in the crowd that she knew personally. Most of the people here have connections to the royal family.

In the front, Luke stands next to a bored-looking Ben Solo. They are both wearing ceremonial Jedi robes from what they had gathered from the old archives. Luke is smiling quietly and makes a shallow nod of his head when his eyes catch Rey’s gaze. Ben makes a similar gesture, acknowledging their familial connection, thought their relationship is nearly non-existent. There had been a time that she had thought to message her adopted brother for advice on how to control her Force abilities, but she ended up thinking better of it, not wanting to annoy him and straining their already tense relationship further. She was surprised to see him here, actually, once believing that he would simply make a polite rejection of the invite. Perhaps he is doing this because his family pressured him to, or maybe he is thinking this as practice for the future when he might have to attend events as a Jedi even if he was uninterested in them.

Besides her son sits Leia, actually in tears now, and Rey realizes that she had never actually seen her adopted mother cry before. She wonders if Leia thought back to her own wedding, where she and Han made their commitment to each other despite the odds and the criticism against them. Rey and Finn have that in common with them. Or maybe, the rare feeling of being overjoyed has just broken through her usual calm demeanor.

She spots the king and queen on a dais closest to the tree and the platform. They too, look overjoyed by the ceremony and glance back and forth between their son and Rey as she approaches the tree.

Rey had walked this aisle in practice a few times before, but now the aisles seem longer than she recalled them ever being. It feels like she wasn’t making any progress at her slow speed, and she knows that Han wasn’t lagging behind either. Finn is waiting for her at a circular stage in the center of the atrium, under the branches of an ancient tree that the royal family had exchanged vows for generations before. He isn’t actually looking at her, and she can tell by the way Poe looks over his shoulder and then turns to whisper something in his ear that Finn is desperately trying to be the very last person to see the bride. It isn’t a tradition of Duuna, though it has been for many of the core worlds and Finn wanted to do just that.

“No such thing as too much luck,” he had told her when they went over potential new traditions to add in to the ceremony.

Finally getting to see his outfit, she admits that the weavers that helped create his jacket have outdone themselves. The gold threads glitter under the sunlight and the red makes him look regal. He reminds Rey of the princes in the stories she sometimes heard on Jakku, the ones that were obviously not real and told for entertainment value. Beings all over the galaxy are probably swooning over Prince Finn, handsome and so, so loving, at this very moment.

And when she finally reaches the stage and stands behind him as Han lets her go and goes to stand to the side next to Poe, the smile Finn gives her as he finally turns around to look at her as his bride for the first time could replace the sun in brightness. Finn is often happy, but here, the happiness reflects in his smile is contagious. He offers her his hand and leads her to stand in the center of the stage with him, underneath the tree.

Then, he raises her hand to his lips and kisses it as he stared up at her face. A flirt until the very end, she thinks, though she doubts that Finn will ever stop acting that way with her even after they married.

Someone in the seats laughs loudly and Poe leans over to whisper, “You might want to save that for tonight, you two. Gotta keep to royal protocol and all.” He winks.

The officiator, a priest from one of the local temples that worships the Force, approaches them and lifts his hands up to the audience. “You may be seated.”

As the audience scrambles into their seats, Rey hands her bouquet of daisies and roses to Paige and then turns back around to face Finn. They hold their arms out, linking their hands together and find themselves lost in each other’s eyes. Rey only hears bits and pieces of the priest’s speech and how the Force had willed these two young souls to be together.

Then, it is Finn’s turn to speak.

“Do you take this woman as your wife, Your Highness?” asks the priest in a rehearsed manner. “Under the tree that has watched over the unions of your ancestors, do you commit yourself to her and swear by the Force to honor and cherish her?”

Finn looks serious when he speaks. “I do.”

Then the priest turns to Rey. “And do you, Rey Solo, take this man as your husband? Do you commit yourself to him and swear by the Force to honor and cherish him?”

“I do.”

Poe approaches them, holding the rings out on a woven tray. The rings are almost too extravagant in Rey’s opinion, studded in diamonds that feel too luxurious for a woman that had to work her way off of Jakku. In the audience, towards the far side of the front row, BB-8 makes a low hoot out of excitement at seeing Poe do his part in the ceremony. There are quite a few chuckles that can be heard.

With the rings exchanged, the priest finally makes his pronouncement: “You may kiss the bride.”

Finn puts his arms around her waist and kisses her, finalizing their marriage.

Finally, they are married.

“I love you,” Finn whispers, his voice barely audible over the applause of the guests.

“I know," she pauses, teasing him. "I love you, too."

The wedding party then begins to escort the newlyweds away from the atrium, back towards the palace for the start of the celebrations. Behind them, Han escorts Paige out with Poe and Rose trailing close to them. The king and the queen will follow after, a rare breech in normal protocol, but one to acknowledge that today is to honor the bride and groom and the future heir to the throne.

The way back up the aisle is a lot less stressful than it was going down it. Now, all they need to do is get to their next step in the ceremony and politely nod and smile to everyone as they pass. Some people, Rey notes, looks like they had even cried during the ceremony.

An open carriage waits for them near the entrance of the atrium, hovering just a few feet above the ground. Paige and Rose rush up to help Finn with Rey’s dress train as she gets in and the three of them makes sure it is draped so that it will not wrinkle or get dirty during the ride. Then Finn climbs in to sit beside her.

When Finn gives the cue to the driver to tell him that they are settled, the driver calls to the two riders on fathiers ahead of them, carrying the banners of the royal family. The speeder begins to creep forward at a slow pace and the guard of four more fathiers and riders behind them follow, carrying the red flags of the world. There is additional security riding in speeders behind them, of course, security is tight, but this guard is here more for ceremonial purpose than actual security.

The gates of the palace swing open, and they are led to the streets of the capital, beginning their procession. Crowds huddle and push together on the street for a glimpse of their prince and his new bride, and if not for the set barriers on the street, the crowds would have probably gotten too close for the speeders and fathiers to get through.

Rey squeezes Finn’s hand and he turns to give her a kiss – the crowd goes wild with cheers and flashes of cameras nearly blind them – before he turns back to the exterior of the speeder and begins to wave to the onlookers.

A white daisy, like the ones that decorate Rey's bouquet, is tossed as an offering by a young admirer. Rey laughs as she catches it and tucks it into the pocket of Finn’s uniform. Now, she turns and waves to the crowd with Finn in genuine happiness and before they know it, the procession is over and they are back at the gates of the palace.

“Lunch time, I think,” Rey says with a bit of relief.

“It’ll be dinner once it’s ended,” chuckles Finn. “Those things go on for a while.”

He offers his hand to Rey, and she takes it, letting him lead her into the formal dining room where a crowd of guests had been seated. Finn and Rey will sit side by side, next to the king as the guests of honor, since Adron and Maia formally are the only ones to be allowed to head the table. Across from them would sit Han and Leia as the parents of the bride. Rey had noted that Luke was seated next to her, on her right from the dining arrangements and she wondered if he or Leia had requested this so that he would be able to speak with her and Finn without having to yell across a table.

The meal is long, with small ensembles of food to taste instead of large feasts. Each region of Duuna contributed a favorite meal as a wish of good health to the new couple and so shorter courses were done to prevent people from feeling sick and to prevent waste.

Occasionally, Rey glances at Finn, noting how he talks to guests and servers with grace and dignity. This is a side that she only gets to see on rare occasions and she realizes that she will probably get to see a lot more of this. She knows Finn doesn't like formal gatherings, so maybe this is the one exception, but had she met him under these conditions she would have found his charm and demeanor impossible to not find attractive. In fact, she might say that seeing this is making her fall in love with him again. He treats everyone with respect and, funnily enough, keeps a notepad with him to take notes after tasting each dish.

“What’s that for?” she nods.

“Taking notes on the meal to make the formal thank you notes to each region a little more personal.”

Poe laughs a few seats away. “And now you see why half the New Republic is in love with him. Thoughtful as ever, even on his own wedding day.”

Towards the end of the dinner, Finn leans over to kiss Rey on the cheek. “You hanging in there?” he asks. “These formal occasions can just dragsometimes.”

“Guess I’ll be getting used to it, then.” She smiles, though she is eyeing one of the first dessert courses that is finally being brought in. “Though I could be convinced to like them if I always got to eat stuff like that.”

He laughs. “Noted.”

They are all feeling fairly stuffed at this point in the celebration, though most of the guests take the advice of the king and pace themselves on the small amounts of food they are given for each course. The newlyweds are feeling a little jittery, knowing that they still have to change out of their wedding clothes and into something a little less formal for their evening celebrations. Then they will be off tomorrow to travel a short distance to a small private estate with minimum staff to have their honeymoon. They will be there for a week to be given privacy as a new couple, then Finn and Rey will begin their tour around the world, greeting the leaders of each region and sightseeing. Finn knows that Rey will be particularly interested in a recent development in a state-of-the-art greenhouse that protected endangered species to Duuna. And once that tour was over, they will return to the capital for a short breather before starting their intergalactic tour. They will stay with Leia and Han for a short time, and also have a visit with Luke at his school, among visiting the New Republic military spots with Poe as a guide.

At last, Finn rises from his seat and offers Rey his hand. The rest of the dining room rises with them and Finn and Rey glances around the room.

Finn clears his throat. “Rey and I want to thank all of you for joining us today. This may be the happiest moment in our lives and we feel honored to be able to share it with you.” He looks to his wife with a fond smile. “I remember the moment we met like it was yesterday. Rey nearly gave me a heart attack shimmying up my balcony to water my plants. Actually, I think she nearly had a heart attack too.”

There are a few laughs around the table.

“Now, we must be excused. The night is going to go on a little longer and we are going to be exhausted tomorrow, no doubt.”

Rey knows that Finn wasn’t being lewd about his wording, alluding to the start of their travels in the morning, but a few of the guests take the expression as a double-meaning and laugh. Across the table, Paige gives her a wink.

Then they head for the door as the king and queen and Han and Leia follow them. They had their things stored in a spare guest bedroom, since they would not have the time to go back to their apartment a few blocks away.

Their parents retrieve boxes from the bedroom and exchange it with their new son-in-law and daughter-in-law. The newlyweds open the boxes and Finn finds that Han and Leia has gifted him with a jacket that looks like it had been custom-made. It's a party jacket with a subtle, blue woven pattern, like the baskets and cloth that Duuna is famous for.

“I- I don’t know what to say,” says Finn. “This is beautiful.”

Rey, meanwhile, opens her own gift from the king and queen and reveals a green dress that looks like it would fall mid-calf. “Guess you’re getting me to wear a green dress after all,” she laughs.

“We thought you’d want to wear it for the evening party,” Maia explains and she goes over to embrace her new family member. “We hope you like it.”

“I love it,” says Rey.

The women and an aid follow Rey into the ‘fresher to help her get out of her wedding dress. Finn laughs as he watches it be carefully wrapped up and taken away for safekeeping. His change is pretty easy, though he takes extra care with the coat and the medals to make sure he didn’t snag anything. Soon, he finds himself waiting out in the guest living room with Han and his father.

Rey emerges about a half-hour later in the new dress and her hair loosened into a new braid.

“Ready to go have one more festivity before we settle into our new life together?” she asks, offering Finn her hand.

He takes it and kisses it before standing up. “Rey, I would be more than happy to do these events for the rest of my life if it means I get to wake up next to you every morning for the rest of my life.”

“You can’t kick me out now,” laughs Rey. “I’ve just finally moved in the last of my stuff into the apartment. You’re stuck with me forever.”

“Nothing sounds more perfect.”

While this series was a way for me to practice world-building, I had a lot of fun coming up with ideas for clothes and traditions for this particular installment. Rey’s dress was inspired by a dress that I am very fond of and that looks very royal-like and is something I could imagine seeing in the Star Wars universe.

Finn’s outfits were designed in my head. I see his wedding clothes be a sort of combination of military jackets commonly seen in royal weddings with tunics often found in fantasy films/television. Rich, deep colors and thicker fabrics would be the look. John Boyega looks wonderful in burgundy and I thought it would be a nice change from the typical black tuxedos that we normally see worn by men at weddings. As for his circlet, I imagine it as a solid band with a simple red gemstone placed at the front. A crown would have been too much for the wedding, but a circlet would be a nice touch.

#finnrey #finnreyfriday #finnreyfridays #my stuff #royalty au #finnrey aesthetic #aesthetic

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dungeonecologist · 5 years

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WILD ARMS 2 - Raline Observatory

The Raline Observatory is a neat set piece, albeit one riddled with issues in English. It distracts us with side characters, but actually sets up a pretty core feature of the world that will come back much later in conjunction with the Live Reflectors (which are about to become defunct once we finish this quest and unlock our flying ship) The name however is yet another mistransliteration from the Japanese for “Ley Line.”

Ley Lines came from the observations of one Alfred Watkins, an amateur archaeologist/explorer of the 1920s (as was not terribly uncommon at the time) who made note of the arrangement of major historical landmarks in straight lines across the British country side, from which he questioned the meaning, cause, or function. In the 1960s this work was incorporated along side Chinese fengshui to theorize that a kind of natural flow of energies across the Earth existed, and that spiritually attuned cultures all across history had been drawn to places where such streams of energy intersected, either by divination or by the consequence of ideal circumstances for settlement or ritual structures stemming from said concentrated energies.

Here, it those theories are applied rather literally, and will be revisited more explicitly at a later point in the story. Not coincidentally, this dungeon is located on a string of volcanic not-quite-islands, volcanoes being a rather on the nose example of a point at which energy has built up and been released from the Earth, literal energy obviously but in many belief systems spiritual energy as well. Oddly there aren’t actually any apparent Ley Lines on the Filgaia map; the dungeons are all pretty evenly distributed. The only semblance of patterns* are that various locations that come in 4s are deliberately scattered across 4 quadrants, but that’s less meaningful and more just practical when you don’t want your game’s marathon of dungeons to take place right next to each other.

*(The ones I’ve marked here are the 4 Live Reactors: red, the 4 Diablo Pillars: Blue, and the 4 Ray Points: Green. Perhaps the only real deliberate design here is that the finale dungeon which is tied by lore to the Raypoints, is located right in between the 4 of them; the intersection if you draw lines between opposite points. On this note: the Raypoint dungeons may also be a mistransliteration, meant to be “Ley Points.”)

Anyway we get into this neat abandoned lab setting and immediately have a boss thrown at us.

I think I’ve mentioned both the Kobold, and accidentally the Salamandra, now but among those iconic elemental monsters is also the Undine; Generally portrayed as a beautiful humanoid water nymph. The boss monster, Undines (I don’t know why there’s an “s”, the Japanese even reads ウンディーネ:u-n’-di-ne) is very much not. Actually, given the circumstances I’d almost assume this was some kind of mistransliteration, but the boss card even says “Elemental Spirit,” so what else could it be other than a water spirit? (although when I looked over the epithet in Japanese the phrase is 素体精霊獣, so what they translated as “Elemental” actually means something more in line with “base form” as in a chemical element, not an alchemical one.) Also of note are its moves: Hookey Bust, Intafada, Reject all Fools, and Shocking Guinea.

We’ll start with Shocking Guinea, as it might be the most straight forward; it alludes to Undines being a manufactured monster, and presumably kind of a lab experiment. It has turned on its creators so perhaps it was inhumanely experimented on until it lashed out? This move is also perhaps the outlier in the set. Intafada I can only assume refers here to the literal meaning of “shaking” or a small tremor and not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in Gaza in the early 90s... Ignoring the bizarre language choice for that, the move Hookey Bust is a little confusing but suggests one of two things to me; either being caught playing hooky, or rolling a losing number in a game of dice. The former fits with the idea of an escaped experiment, but the latter along with Intafada and the general jester look of Undines seems to suggest shaking and rolling dice? That in some vague sense seems to match with the Reject all Fools, if it means Fool like a court jester.

Okay you know what, I gave the translators too much credit. The moment I started digging things got all kinds of muddled. The move Reject All Fools in Japanese is ��解できないモノは拒絶: “[I] reject things [I] don’t understand.” I take it the translators interpreted 理解できないモノ as “things/people that can not understand” i.e. “Fools,” but it might also be, “things/people that cannot be understood.” I make the distinction because I think it has to do with ghost stories and belief in the supernatural, although what “supernatural” would really mean in a fantasy setting isn’t super clear...

The move Hookey Bust is 学校の怖い胸像: “Scary Bust of School” as in a scary sculpture found in a school, which I’m pretty certain is a reference to the trope of Japanese middle or high schools having a kind of local hauntings where some kind of ghost turns out to be the anatomical model in the science lab or the nurse’s office. It ties into the science lab/experiment theme going on all throughout here. Spooky science lab also explains the “shiver”/”shake”/”tremor” we get from Intafada.

Speaking of terrible translations, the baffling Lilly Pad monster appears here, a bizarre imp with a little sword and cape, and boobs on its head??? The katakana here is I believe meant to be a transliteration of Lilliput, as in Lilliputians from Jonathan Swift’s novel, Gulliver’s Travels. The actual design doesn’t make much more sense in light of that, as they aren’t especially tiny, but at least the basic idea gets across, as opposed to the entirely nonsensical Lilly Pad. I’m not sure they add to the theme going on exactly, but the visual aesthetic of a tiny or shrunken person does resonate with some classic mad science lab cliches.

And we also have the Jelly Blob, which is just a staple of RPGs by this point. Technically speaking I think the origin is, again, Dungeons and Dragons, with he Gelatinous Cube and Ooze monsters, and in turn any number of variants on the both as well as the off shoot Slime family of monsters. Again, very in line with the science experiment vibes.

The one thing that presents a tiny hiccup in this is the Pas de Chat; in Japanese simply named Laughing Haunt. It might be a stretch, but I think it’s just another reference to school hauntings, like the Hookey Bust reference. It’s the only way I can think to fit this into the overarching themes of the dungeon. The “English” name, Pas de Chat, is a ballet term referring to a jump in which the legs are brought up toward the opposite knee in quick sequence before landing. It is French for “Step of the Cat.”

I have no idea why it looks the way it does, but it does display some interesting animations with leaps and twirls that is understandably evocative of dancers. It also fights with a pair of stiletto daggers.

I kind of neglected to mention, but throughout this whole dungeon we’ve been followed by the wacky comedy relief duo, Liz and Ard. (Toka and Ge in Japanese: You get one guess as to what the word “Tokage” translates to.) As we reach the end of the dungeon they of course spring on us that they too are after the rare Germatron mineral, and that they are apparently Odessa’s free lance monster engineers. The two jump us with a second boss fight where the two showcase a host of battle tactics about as wacky as everything else we’ve put up with from them thus far:

Liz, the self-styled lead researcher of the duo can throw concoctions to ail the team, but that also hit himself and his assistant, Ard. Meanwhile Ard is a tank and a powerhouse, even as the inevitable Poison ailment from Liz’s attacks chips away at his HP. But to add to it, his strongest attack deals huge recoil damage to himself trading off for yet more offensive power. If you focus your attacks on Liz and heal as needed, Ard will likely kill himself even before Liz falls. An appropriate end to the mad science theme of the dungeon all around. And naturally, we’ll be seeing more of the lizard duo as the game goes on.

#wild arms 2 #jrpg #psx

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fantroll-purgatory · 5 years

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Cirina Kairos

(I just wanted to let you know that for some, unknown reason, this submission has a green checkmark on the side? And if you hover over it it just says “Octopus”. And only happens for me. I’ve laughed every time I’ve seen it.) -SA FIRST: Alternia or Beforus or some type of AU? Alternia.

Name: Cirina Kairos. Cirina is a shortened version of the octopus genus Cirrina, and Kairos is the Greek concept of quantitative time. (Solid. Brings out her basic thematic components right off the bat. Steampunk troll? Steampunk troll. (Or I guess one would be Clockpunk, but You Know.))

Age: 6.9 sweeps

Strife Specibus: Windupkind- Cirina uses her skill in clockwork engineering to a deadly extent with things like windup ballistic missiles and clockwork anti-aircraft lasers. You name it, she’s got a gear-operated version of it that you turn on with a key. Her main weapon is a clockwork-operated whip with eight lashes that can extend, retract and be manipulated separately like octopus tentacles.

Fetch Modus: Timer. Every time she captchalogues an item, she has to set a specific time, and the card will eject the item at that time. This requires careful planning, which Cirina is good at. (I like also that this punishes her situation changing unexpectedly, which I’m sure must drive her bananas.)

Blood color: Violet.

Symbol and meaning: The alchemical symbol for brass, a metal famously used in many steampunk and clockwork contraptions. I haven’t picked an Extended Zodiac symbol yet, though. (If you already have one in mind, you don’t need an EZ one! I’m gonna link a picture of this Brass symbol for reference:)

(I’m almost 100% certain what you were aiming for with her is:)

(AQUARIES, SIGN OF THE HEROIC) (What I’m going to suggest as an alternate is:)

(AQUO, SIGN OF THE OBSESSIVE)

Trolltag: eightfoldHorology, alluding to both her obsession with building and destroying clocks and windup gizmos (see personality) and her connection with octopuses. Quirk: Breaks syl-la-bles with da-shes to simulate a stuttering, mechanical sounding voice. This was inspired by a character from The Wizard of Oz.

Special Abilities (if any): Breathing underwater like all seadwellers.

Lusus: A Hydrapus, which is a massive octopus with hundreds of tentacles that grow back whenever they’re cut off, much like the heads of a hydra. Hence the name. It’s had some injuries and missing (non-tentacle) body parts over the years that Cirina had to make clockwork replacements for- for example, it has a mechanical bottom jaw. (I’m loving this vaguely cyborg-leaning she has. Gotta upgrade everything herself. Just a quick point here: Octopi don’t have jaws to begin with. They have beaks- which are a very different kind of biological construct.)

Personality: Cirina is blunt, cold, sarcastic, and exceedingly closed-off. She seems to absolutely hate company and kills any troll coming near her hive, regardless of whether they want to befriend her, attack her, or just exist near her. She secretly is achingly lonely and desperately wants company but has repressed those feelings her entire life; her only friends are online, and she probably only has one or two. Those close to her might see a softer, kinder side that she almost never shows to anyone. Cirina is also a chronic shut-in who never leaves her hive and makes her own machine parts instead of buying them. She likes planning her day out to the tiniest particulars, and doesn’t get anywhere near enough sleep. (There’s a fun twofold theme here that runs contrary to your Classing of her- and I think creates the core of your finding her “confusing”. Because you have a really solid and sensible character here- but her basic storyline conflicts with the vision you have for her. We’ll touch more on it when we get to the Classpect portions.) (I think a way you could help flesh this character out is maybe giving her something else to her personality besides, like, being rude to everyone. Based on my later comments re: her interests, I think maybe she should be a really caring person, but has issues letting people close! Maybe that’s why she’s so close to her lusus, which she’s helped augment and repair over the sweeps! It’s just not a side you ever see unless you’ve wormed your way into her physical presence.)

Interests: Building windup and clockwork mechanisms, then either using them as weapons or destroying them to vent her stress. Think Vriska with 8-balls, except Cirina builds them before smashing them. She also uses them around the hive for various tasks- imagine hilarious Rube Goldberg-esque machines for, like, feeding her lusus or making her breakfast. (You’re committing too heavily to gimmick here. I definitely agree that the creation of things has to be one of her interests, but she has to have other things. Given her repairing her lusus, I definitely think at least a passing interest in biology is in order, perhaps transhumanism as well? Trying surpass the limits of flesh with clockwork? I think, personality wise- this might extend into an interest in medicine and caring for others, even if she just wants to use them as experiments for her clockwork technologies.)

Title: Prince of Time. Cirina destroys her own time by overplanning her days and wasting her life hiding away in her hive, and the time of others by killing them, literally cutting their time alive short. She also uses time as an actual weapon to destroy others via time bombs, clockwork weapons, and homing missiles that constantly follow their target, never giving them time to escape. Clever, no? (Clever, perhaps. Fitting? Debatable. I’m going to take the obvious out of the way first: If you’re going to make her a time player, a lot needs to change on the motivation spectrum.) (Time players are aggressive, even when it seems like they aren’t. They are always struggling against something, usually fate. The symbol of Time is a Gear for a reason, and not a clock. Endless churning, turning over and over again. Characters are chosen by Time not because they like clocks or timing, but because they are suited to endless struggle and suffering the red mantle brings with it. Remember that characters like Dave and Aradia were not obsessed with clocks and sundials in their pre-Sburb storylines. Dave’s big things were music, fighting, video making, and a very slight interest in archaeology. You don’t need to base your character’s entire life on her Classpect.) (This character is most likely a Knight of Time, in that she literally weaponizes time- both to her enemies and to herself. In doing so, she acts a Rogue of Space and passively creates distance between herself and her friends, using her intense timetables as a weapon to cut them out of her life inadvertently.) (Besides the name of the sign fitting very well, I think Cirina is an inverted Heart player. Something clicked as I was reading down her profile- the damaged lusus, the splitting hydra metaphor, and then to cinch it together, the core of willful loneliness.) (The inverse of Heart is Mind, the Aspect of Choice, of Decision. Her obsession with time is destroying her. She pushes people away, and struggles to show off her softer side (which I would posit is the “real” Cirina). This is a Heart player’s dilemma, who can put on masks and costumes as easily as they breathe. Sometimes, the problem is figuring out how to take it off- and if you wanna face whoever it is beneath the mask.) (An obsession with schedules dovetails very nicely into an inversion into Mind as a character weakness. Much like Terezi was paralyzed about whether to kill Vriska by understanding the ramifications of her actions, this character seeks to remove all aspects of deviation from her life by planning ahead. An interest in modding living beings with clockwork robotics once again reinforces this removal of thought, removal of decision, removal of ramifications. She’s acting as a Prince of Mind) (The core narrative of this character you’ve created is letting people in, letting go of control and allowing life to simply happen around her, letting that true self of hers shine. This would make her into a Sylph of Heart at character actualization, who passively brings out people’s emotions and true selves out.)

Land: Land of Ticks and Tension. The ridiculously complex clockwork mechanisms covering the planet have a flaw somewhere, that causes them to endlessly pull and twist on each other, destroying their efficiency- Cirina’s quest is to find this break in the clockwork and eradicate it.

Ancestor: Calender Bergilde, an ancient sea native of eons past and the troll who invented the Alternian time system. However, she was also ruthless and bloody in defending her ocean citadel from anyone who came her way, earning her a reputation as a merciless killer, hence the name CalENDER.

Dream Planet: Unsure. I was hoping you guys could help me figure this one out. Cirina is confusing. (This is a Derse player if I’ve ever seen one. Constantly fiddling with things? Pushing people away to hide themselves? Notably, all of our canon time players (Aradia, Damara, and Dave) are Dersites.)

#violetblood #seadweller #submission #Cirina Kairos #SA Review

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nacsygen · 5 years

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i was going to go on a further rant about how i wish i didn’t know as much as i do about ww2 but y’all don’t need that, writing it out and deleting it was enough. i’ll just say there was a big difference between growing up with the narrative “nazis were evil, we were the good guys, and it’s very sad that your grandfather died on the beaches of normandy without ever meeting your not-yet-born father but he died a Hero so it’s okay,” and then growing up and reading appallingly realistic and detailed descriptions of the firebombing of dresden and other german civilian cities by the allies, and - and - you know what yeah maybe writing it out and deleting it wasn’t enough bc now i’m dwelling on atrocities again, and the void’s giving me a speculative eye. i’ll stop.

i think maybe it is the difference between my grandfather dying a hero (posthumous medal of honor and everything) and my father living as a murderer for having the same damn job. my father lied about his age very early on in the vietnam war so that he could enlist with his older friends, because he was an impressionable 16-year old idiot (who’d started drinking at 15) who wanted to go off on an adventure with his friends to the other side of the world, and maybe end up like a war hero like his sainted forever-22 father. maybe hoping he could be something more than the ever-worse sequence of deadbeat/abusive stepdads his increasingly depressed and alcoholic mother brought in to futilely try and replace the lost love of her life. to be better for and also get away from a whole bunch of half-brothers and sisters that he was never really suited to be the oldest brother they needed him to be, who he still did his best to shield from the various violent men in their life, with the backdrop of a mother too drawn into herself to intervene. and my father was always a stocky and strongly-built man, but he never grew to more than 5′4″.

so at 16 years old, in 1962, they shipped him off to vietnam to become a jarhead and, when they saw his skills on the range (skills my brother and i share, so maybe it is kinda innate), they put him into training to become a full scout sniper. yeah, like in Jarhead, except in a real on-the-ground combat war. he was in the war for a lot longer than a draftee - maybe five, six, even seven years. it was good for him, the regimentation, the control. he liked it. he needed it. he’d never had it before. it was good for him. i remember asking my dad once, and i remember it very clearly. it had to have been either before my parents got divorced, so i would have been maybe six or seven, or one of the few occasions after i saw him before he moved to jamaica for a few years, so maybe nine or ten. i think it was more like seven, though. by this time my father was on 100% disability from the VA due to PTSD and in maybe the worst of his alcoholism. but i asked him once while watching him work on a job in the sweet florida sun, with me having just enough of a grasp of knowing what the vietnam war was, what war was, and that he’d been in it, “daddy, did you ever kill anybody in vietnam?” and he laughed and said “yeah, quite a few people. it was my childhood that really fucked me up, though.”

and understand that apart from that last part, which is one of my earliest very clear memories (and how fucked up is that?) this whole narrative, i’ve put together from bits and pieces of information over the years from both parents, and knowing how similar to our core my father and i are. it’s a big part of why we haven’t talked in going on five years, bc as sad as this all paints him to have as an origin story, he’s still ultimately an asshole who doesn’t know how to deal with feelings and turns everything into a fight (bc, again, became an alcoholic at 15, got worse and worse, and didn’t get dry until his late 40s and was pushed into a swift divorce with two young children involved). i understand him at his core because we have always, my whole life, been too similar in all our worst ways, and some of the good ones too. but i still feel great empathy for the 16 year old boy with one drunk neglectful, distant, incredible at times mother and a series of abusive alcoholic not-dads and a stream of half-siblings, with the legend of his heroic, wonderful, brave orphan hard worker forever-22 father hanging over his head literally since he was born. and then he went to war, like his father did. he killed enemies, like his father did. he earned medals, like his father did - my father has a purple heart from both physical and psychological wounds, he has a gold star and a silver star from saving his brothers in arms from dying at the hands of the enemy. and he came back from the war to be treated not as a hero, but to be branded as a murderer in an unjust conflict, a living symbol of national shame. that shit sticks with you. i know it has for him for fifty long years.

upon getting home, he immediately grew his hair and beard out (not unlike how my brother does when on leave, but granted, for both it happens within a couple days of not shaving) and went straight back into commercial art, pinstriping, sign-painting and cartoonery back in the ‘70s, which is when he met my mother (who was 11 years younger than him but still technically his boss, and told him she was a lesbian when he first flirted with her, but then they ended up together 20 years) and the rest is history. i’ve inherited from him an addictive personality - my grandmother (who herself died of a heart attack just before i was born, only in her 60s), my father, my brother and i have alcoholism. and sometimes, really, i feel like i’ve inherited his trauma too, his trauma from the always-there presence of his father’s death, his abusive childhood trauma, his war trauma. i feel like maybe my brother, who’s way more chill than me but also joined the military at a young age and now classes himself as a binge alcoholic, inherited at least some of the trauma too. and yeah, my brother’s never killed anybody, but he fixes the planes that drop the strikes and has for a decade, and it weighs on him. he and i don’t talk often for a pair of siblings that were once as close as twins, but we’ve occasionally had long, very late night inter-continental skype talks where we talk about this stuff. talk about how our mom found healing in our stepdad, who was also in the military but never killed anybody, and was maybe gruff and rough with us growing up but never abusive like our dad had the potential to be when he was drinking, or like his own father, who served under patton, was to him. talk about how we respect that he refused as much as he could to continue the pattern of abuse. talk about how my dad and i are too similar in our core nature to ever really get along, even though our traumas are different, but there all the same.

the part of me that’s from my mom’s upbringing (and she’s alluded to having quite a few alcoholics in her family too) wants to spit at this man, get the fuck over it! it’s in the past! but that part of me lead to me not getting proper treatment for my mental health until i was 25. so maybe, for once, my mom’s not right about everything. for once.

if this was a proper thought-out treatise, this would be a great final pragraph to sum up everything above in a beautiful way. but it’s not. it’s me working things out as much to myself as for anyone else. quite a few things in this i hadn’t even realized were so obvious until my brain typed them out as i thought about them. it almost makes me want to talk to my dad again. yeah, my dad’s alive, he’s in his mid-70s bc he was in his late 40s when i was born, and he’s been an old man since his 40s but he’s also probably gonna live well into his 90s. but he’s also like. such an asshole, you guys. (again, mental maturity of a 15 year old). i’m also an asshole. we’re too similar in the exact same way we’re assholes. since i was 16 years old, talking to him on the phone bc i really did want to talk to my dad, pacing around my old room and getting increasingly agitated, he always goads me into a fight. it’s not enough for him to be happy, it’s not enough for him to be friendly, he can’t be sweet unless it’s for a passive aggressive bit. and i won’t put up with his shit the way my very sweet (and god knows where he got it) brother does. generational trauma! lachaim!

#sorry to everybody who's followed me not knowing i occasionally go into for-real diary entries/treatises #long post #t #what is a proper blog only 33 people follow if not to be a journal

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the-resurrection-3d · 4 years

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🔥 + cartoons

I’ve made some posts alluding to this, but the reading that the Diamonds and their redemption are not about forcing you to forgive your abusive parents and are instead part of a fantasy where your abusive parents finally listen and take your pain seriously is probably 100% right. And that’s the issue.

By right, I mean “in line with the author’s intentions,” not an objectively correct reading. Not only has Sugar stated famously that “SU has no villains,” but this reading of SU as wish fulfillment for abused children falls right in line with several plot elements, such as the resolution of the conflicts between Connie/Sadie and their respective mothers. Sure, not every family in SU is good -- Greg has still not reconciled with the majority of his family, Marty (unless I’m forgetting something) is not really a part of his son Sour Cream’s life, Pink will never be able to reconcile with the rest of the Diamonds. Still, considering how much time and attention is poured into resolving (physically or metaphorically) familial conflicts, it's fair to say this is a core tenant of the show.

The problem, however, is that I don’t know if this show does enough to responsibly give this fantasy to its younger audience -- if said message could at all be given responsibly. The fantasy of abusive parents who finally listen is an appealing one, sure, but one best reserved for adults who understand why it’s an unrealistic fantasy.

It reminds me of a fic I once found tagged with “feminist rape fantasy.” Obviously we’re all rolling our eyes, but it’s hard not to see the appeal of taking a form of violence you, as a woman, are taught to fear (and on some level expect) and instead reform the assailant through the force of your own moral goodness. It’s an extreme “reform the rake.” And the author stated plainly in the opening notes that this was only meant for adults who understood why it was unrealistic and dangerous to apply to real life. If you act like Sephiroth, stop and get help.

And that’s basically how I feel about this reading of SU - just because it’s emotionally gratifying to you now as an adult does not mean it’s suitable to the actual target audience of children. (Hard as it is to even remember SU has a non-teen/adult fanbase).

The big question is: Does the show do enough to show how feigning guilt and begging for forgiveness is part of the cycle of abuse? We have some episodes that gesture at this theme, sure (see “Room for Ruby” and “Bluebird”), but are these bit characters enough to balance the show out? Considering that characters like Pearl, who I’ve seen multiple people drop the show over because of how much she reminds them of their own abusers, got to pull that sadboy card over and over while the narrative held guns to others’ heads to forgive her, I don’t really think so.

Then again, SU Future is trying its best to pour cement in every crack in OG show's foundation, right up to Steven hiding his own feelings from Pearl because he fully expects her to break down and make it all about herself. It may not be exactly what I outlined above, but it’s great nevertheless to show the audience how the CGs’ actions have negatively affected Steven. [There’s a great post floating around in my likes about how the CGs have a really hard time even telling Steven “I’m sorry,” and how much it’s probably impeding his healing even as they try to make up for it in their actions.]

Also keep in mind this isn’t a reading I’ve poured tons of time into fact-checking and refining, so I’m willing to hear I’ve missed some episode or important nuance -- I’ve not watched a lot of the “”filler”” episodes of SU, and I probably won’t even consider doing so until Future is honest-to-god over. (I have seen pretty much every episode the fandom considers important to character development / the plot, however).

#rape ment

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rheanimalsachikokassielynn · 6 years

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Major Essay 2

Rheanne Harkness

Professor Timothy Greenup

English 112

28 November 2017

Aspects of the Self: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Over this last month, if there’s anything I’ve taken away from our rather in-depth class-wide examination of the concept of bildungsroman and how it forms the backbone of works like Mariko Tamaki’s “Skim”, it’s that the influence of external forces on transitional periods in young adult lives shapes everyone a little differently. However, the emotional upheaval such forces put us through often comes into conflict with our identities, calling who we are and what we stand for into question so much that it results in we ourselves needing to reestablish a more permanent sense of identity altogether. Sometimes though, this type of conflict can constitute a rift between how we carry ourselves in the public eye verses the private eye depending on the kinds of impressions we want to give off so that others may see us in a certain way. A lot of this is true for the character of Skim as it is for so many of us, she herself is trying to figure what kind of person she is to the point where there is a rift that was brought to my attention very clearly during group presentations between how Skim acts around others verses when she’s alone, yet her public and private selves always feed into each other. This got me thinking: if Skim’s goal as well as the audiences’ is to take stock of who she is based on how and why she carries herself at different times, then what is it we learn about Skim from her diary entries (the main manifestations of her private self) compared to her conversations with other characters (the main manifestations of her public self) and how do both sides serve to paint a picture of Skim’s true identity at its core?

It’s a bit ironic that the entire story of “Skim” is told from the main protagonist’s point of view mostly by way of her diary entries because most people who’ve never read it before would probably take this to mean that Skim is giving the audience a first-hand account of all the turmoil that’s befallen her life along with her reaction to it. (See for example, a broken arm has hindered Skim’s ability to write, her dad nearly died twice due to heart attacks, there’s a lack of any genuine support coming from her mother and supposed best friend, etc.) Now Skim does do this, but only on a very base level, summing up her thoughts and feelings with equal signs rather than full statements such as when she’s describing herself and her parents in the most dismissive black-and-white manner possible - “Mom says the heart attacks have turned my father into a cream puff...My dad says my mother is a cold cynical women who has no appreciation for a broken heart...My parents = serious issues...My dad signed my cast with an ugly happy face that I am scratching off. Me = serious issues” (Tamaki and Tamaki 10). From this and other snippets of her diary, whether paired down by shorthand or not, it’s easy to gather that Skim is feeling depressed, angry, even confused about all these sudden changes that’ve soaked up all the attention in her life and are putting a damper on who she is. The irony? Even though the whole point of having a diary in the first place is to be able to have something to bare your soul to without fear of being judged by anyone else for the way you think and feel, Skim writes about what she’s feeling but keeps vague as to the reasons why. It’s almost as if the character herself was aware that the diary would be published and read by millions in real life so here she is making a last-ditch effort to save face!

In all seriousness, Skim in a sense really is trying to save face through the act of ”self-censoring”, as put so eloquently by Margaret Lang in our first group presentation. Much of this can be cited in the comparatively detailed commentary Skim makes that is laced with more overtly irrational cynicism than usual - think of when the whole school is hung up over John Reddear’s death and Skim is treated by Mrs. Hornet and Julie Peters as a premature suicide statistic just by virtue of being associated with goth culture, to which she wrote this in response: “Truthfully, I am always a little depressed but that is because I am sixteen and everyone is stupid (ha-ha-ha). I doubt it has anything to do with being a goth” (Tamaki and Tamaki 22). Additionally, there are many times throughout the story when Skim writes a complete thought that would give everyone, including herself, some proper insight as to why she feels the way she does if it wasn’t, say, followed by a question mark or delayed with an ellipsis: “Things That Make Me Sad - Love. Things That Make Me Happy - “Love?” (Tamaki and Tamaki 67). Perhaps most striking though, are the thoughts that Skim crosses out (as Luke Langton called particular attention to in the second group presentation) and sometimes replaces with other deliberately less direct comments which at best reveal half-truths in place of whole truths: “I didn’t know what to write. Because...I’m not sure. I didn’t know what other people would think about my answer. It’s a stupid question” (Tamaki and Tamaki 61).

All the above examples to me suggest that Skim not only has trouble being honest with herself, but is also afraid of offering any outright explanations as to why she’s been so depressed, even in her diary. This is because doing so might make her appear too vulnerable on top of already being unsure of who she is as an individual. Consider Skim’s pentacle, a doodle of a star that shows up quite a few times throughout the book. We see it drawn twice on Skim’s list of things that she still needs for her altar, Skim paints a tiny star on her face (but washes it off) right before the Wiccan AA meeting, there’s even a pentacle drawn on Skim’s cast. We find out towards the end of the story through a conversation Skim has with Katie Matthews that the pentacle is meant to protect her from “everything” but “It’s mostly just symbolic” (Tamaki and Tamaki 109). I think the pentacle has held more significance to Skim than she’s actually letting on at this point. It’s shown up enough times that I can’t help but deduce it is meant to be a safeguard, a way for Skim to protect herself against obstacles she’s having a hard time overcoming or things she’s feeling uneasy about (like a casted right arm and the strange Wiccan meeting). This is especially important because up until the end of the book, anything having to do with Wicca, as the star does, is a huge part of the new identity we see Skim trying to forge for herself. It’s only after Skim talks to Katie about it and later signs her cast with a pentacle “for good luck” does the star take on a meaning for Skim that really is just symbolic and nothing more, since by then, Skim has grown confident enough in herself that she no longer needs Wicca or the star doodles to feel validated.

But while we’re on the topic of conversation, I notice a correlation between the most positive and negative interactions Skim has with other characters at the beginning of the book and the diary entries that are written about them after the fact. When Skim tries to speak her mind towards her “friend” Lisa, she is often shut down and insulted for it. In those situations, the best thing Skim can do to vent her frustration is insult Lisa back. Not surprisingly, these scenes in themselves tend to make it even more clear as to why Skim feels so dejected whenever she’s with Lisa than the diary entries do. The ramifications of such a relationship where Skim is almost never allowed to get a word in edgewise (and when she does, Lisa verbally abuses her for it) center around a lack of confidence Skim has in her ability to channel her thoughts towards other people and herself simply due to the fact that Lisa has never given Skim the option to do otherwise. However, Skim’s first meaningful conversation with Ms. Archer really puts things into perspective for the audience, as not only is she the first character in the story to let Skim speak freely without any fear of a hostile response, but she also asks why the students call the central protagonist “Skim” when her real name is “Kim”, to which the latter answers: “Because I’m not” (Tamaki and Tamaki 27). This little exchange here conveys by far the most important thing we ever learn about Skim as a person throughout the entire story - she does not think of herself as a light or superficial individual, (as two separate dictionary definitions of the term seem to allude). I dare say, that serves to make her nickname quite a contradiction to what I would claim the character of Skim is really like in spite of the confidence lapse she has to wrestle with for so long in public and private!

Yes, Skim most certainly is quite the introspective and layered character. Thus the climactic pay-off of when she is finally able to express herself, (effectively giving the GCL members a piece of her mind in defense of Katie and John Reddear without any care as to what will come of it afterwards) is made so much sweeter. Though please do not take this to mean there’s a great discrepancy between the Skim we get to know while writing diary entries and the Skim we get to know while interacting with others. Skim’s fear of appearing weak in the eyes of herself and of those around her was always present until we saw her get past that fear at the end of the story by standing her ground against unfair treatment instead of just blowing it off in the first respect, and by slowly becoming a lot more truthful and censoring less as she writes in the second respect. Neither of these public and private sides of Skim are any more in line with who she truly is by themselves because, to put it simply, you can’t fully understand one side without the other.

Works Cited

Lang, Margaret, et al. "Skim: A Social Commentary." English 112 Group Presentations, 16 November, Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, WA. Student Presentation.

Langton, Luke, et al. “Skim.” English 112 Group Presentations, 16 November, Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, WA. Student Presentation.

Tamaki, Mariko, and Jillian Tamaki. Skim. Groundwood Books, 2008.

#Rheanne Harkness #English 112 Final #Digital Portfolio #Major Essays

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clubofinfo · 6 years

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Expert: Should the media include positive editorial content secretly paid for by major corporations, as London’s Evening Standard newspaper has begun doing, according to new revelations? Most of us instantly recoil from any blurring between editorial and advertising in the media. How would we know if what was reported was factual, truthful and newsworthy or there simply as public relations spin? How could we trust anything we read? But here’s a seditious idea. Would that be such a bad thing? Maybe it would better if we were far more wary of the corporate media and began to think of it chiefly as a sales platform – selling us an ideology harmful to our individual welfare and that of our societies. But before we continue with that line of thought, let’s first recap. James Cusick has an important article on the Open Democracy website about a £3 million agreement between the Evening Standard and six major corporations, including Google and Uber, to let them buy favourable news coverage and commentary. The project, called London 2020, offers these corporations the chance to covertly influence the paper’s nearly 1 million readers in London. Corporate cheerleaders The idea is the brainchild of George Osborne, the paper’s editor. It is perhaps not surprising that it has been left to Osborne to clear the path for newspapers to become more overt cheerleaders for major corporations. For six years prior to 2016, he was chancellor of the exchequer (Britain’s finance minister) for Conservative governments overseeing strict economic austerity, a policy designed to bleed the British public of money that was used instead to revive the private banking sector and major corporations. Additionally, Osborne has his finger deep in various lucrative corporate pies. In a blatant conflict of interest since he became the Standard’s editor last year – and one that predates his offer to sell favourable coverage to these six corporations – he has a £650,000 contract to work one day a week for BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager. BlackRock, meanwhile, has a £500 million stake in Uber – the taxi-app company that is among the corporations that signed up to Osborne’s deal. Uber desperately needs an image makeover as it fights through the courts to keep its licence to operate in London. What is good for big business is very good for George Osborne’s bank balance. Which is why Osborne’s commitment to real journalism comes a far second to his commitment to his pals in the City. ‘Public relations death’ Nonetheless, it would be foolish to imagine that this is really a battle between Osborne’s slash-and-burn economics and journalistic ethics. First, we should remember that all corporate media have been blurring the line between editorial and advertising over the past two or three decades. In the past they called it “sponsored content” and advertorials. More recently it has been transformed into “native advertising” – a euphemism for media outlets prostituting themselves to large corporations. Osborne’s crime is simply that he is doing it more brashly and on a larger scale than his competitors. Second, a senior executive in Starbucks, one of the corporations Osborne approached, says the firm rejected the deal for the following reason: “Buying positive news coverage is PR death… something you might do in Saudi Arabia, but not here. This wasn’t right for us.” As the statement implies, Starbucks are not averse to manipulating public perception of their activities to counter a poor image – in their case, because they and other corporations have rigged the UK system so that they pay hardly any tax. But the company was worried that Osborne’s plan might backfire. Presumably they suspected that this dishonest deal would eventually become public – as it indeed has – and would further dent their image. Or, to use their terminology, it risked becoming “PR death”. As one should expect, the only consideration when corporations try to influence public opinion as they pursue their relentless battle to maximise profits is whether the effort will prove beneficial. Not whether such efforts are honest, or ethical, or in the public interest. Only whether they work – whether the public will think better of the company as it seeks to increase its profits, whatever the costs to the rest of society or the planet. Invisible deal In fact, far more sensible than the Evening Standard’s plan for each major corporation to make a one-off deal with a newspaper is for them all to have a permanent, collective and invisible deal with all media outlets – to promote a business environment that allows them to maximise their profits. And that is precisely the situation we already have. It is not primarily because the media is dependent on advertising, though, of course, that helps to ensure the corporations get their way. What newspaper or commercial TV station is going to attack the very corporations they depend on for the bulk of their income. Attacking these corporations would be the media’s equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot. But more significant still, the media are themselves corporations, no different from Google, Uber and Starbucks. Jon O’Donnell, the commercial director of ESI Media, which publishes the Standard as well as the Independent newspaper, alludes to this in a statement cited by Open Democracy. He says ESI is no longer simply providing advertising services but is now a “media business”, adding that the “strict divide between the so-called ‘church and state’ [editorial and advertising] was doing more harm than good.” What Osborne and O’Donnell have done is make explicit what was until now largely veiled. Shared ideology The media aren’t just dependent on advertising from corporations. They are corporations – enormous ones. Today, six media corporations own 90 per cent of all US media. That destroys even the pretence of media choice and pluralism. But it signifies much more. It ensures that these massive media corporations share the ideological assumptions of other major corporations, because all of them are driven by the same two considerations. First, to maximise their own profits whatever the external costs, including to the real world. And second, to maximise profits while minimising the damage to their carefully crafted public reputations for being ethical or caring companies pursuing the public good. That means the core activity of media corporations is to act as the public relations arm for a turbo-charged neoliberal ideology that sanctions the pillage and plunder committed by all corporations – including media corporations – in the pursuit of endless “economic growth”. The superficial differences between the various media outlets are there only to persuade us, readers and viewers, of yet another myth: that we have choice and control over the media, and that there is some kind of healthy debate taking place in our societies expressed through a supposed media “pluralism”. The reality, however, is that our choice is between two wings of the corporate public relations industry: one advocating a confident corporate capitalism unapologetically pursuing activities that are destroying our societies and the planet, and another apparently committed to making minor adjustments to corporate capitalism to slow down – but not halt or reverse – the ongoing destruction. Consumerism as panacea Through adverts and editorial, all corporate media lobby relentlessly in favour of a mythical – and suicidal – endless “economic growth” and for an intensification of consumerism as a panacea for the very troubles inflicted by consumerism on our societies. Regarding the most vital issues we face, there is already no distinction between the editorial and advertising sides of the media. Lonely and depressed? Spend more time on your smart phone that isolated you from meaningful relationships and that bombards you daily with messages telling you that you will be happier if you improve yourself, or at least distract yourself, by acquiring more things. Want to save the planet? Salve your conscience by ditching your old, polluting car and buy a greener, hybrid car. Soon you’ll need to trade that in for an electric model. Later you can scrap that one to buy a more efficient vehicle running on hydrogen, or maybe pixie dust. And while you’re pondering a greener lifestyle, maybe we can sell you a top-of-the-range bicycle and accessories. Corporations are now so much in charge of our societies that our main political parties – whether nominally of the left or right – represent their interests above all else. It is no accident that the Evening Standard’s London 2020 campaign to promote these planet-destroying corporations as our allies was timed to coincide with the London mayoral election. What better idea than to use the corporate media to sell us the idea that other profit-obssessed corporations are really there selflessly to help improve life in London. If the campaign is successful, those same rapacious corporations will have even more leverage over the winning mayor than they do over the present incumbent. What is happening in London is occurring in every city, from New York and Los Angeles to Paris and Frankfurt. And it is being replicated on the national level. We will remain powerless over our lives as long as the corporations have power over our cities and countries – and our media. So let Osborne sell the Evening Standard’s soul to the highest corporate bidder. In truth, the newspaper had no soul to begin with. It is time we ditched the Standard and the rest of the corporate media, and created new models of a pluralistic media that represents us, not billionaires. http://clubof.info/

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: An Experimental Book Tests Our Ability to Perceive Multiple Mediums Simultaneously

Pages from Nicolas Jaar’s Network (courtesy Nicolas Jaar/Printed Matter)

Living up to its name, the book Network, a project by Chilean electronic musician Nicolas Jaar co-published by Printed Matter and Other People, can be opened at pretty much any point and read — if reading is even what you call it. Upon opening the book I saw a series of onomatopoeias, several pages featuring blocky text about wealth, a full-page spread of two hand-drawn Xs, some already filled out crosswords, multiple internet windows, and words arranged like numbers on a spreadsheet. Whatever you want call this, reading with Jaar is more akin to a cross between an art experience and solving a book of logic puzzles. Or seeing, hearing and reading simultaneously.

Or failing to do so entirely.

That failure defines the central structure of the book, which is a series of experiments that test our ability to simultaneously perceive more than one medium, or to interpret more than one ambiguous image. In addition to the hundreds of pages of free-verse text, Jaar includes black-and-white posters advertising shows from his series of semi-fictional online radio stations along with three short, text-based works from graphic designer Linda van Deursen, artist and provocateur Lydia Lunch, and the musician himself.

Together, the puzzles, rhythms, and words of Network read as a meditation on the success and failure of our current social, political, and economic structures. How Jaar got to that point, though, involves a bit of backstory. Jaar began the project as a radio play for a BBC commission, but when the play turned into an experiment making alien sound energy for a fake DJ, the network jumped ship. Jaar decided to finish the project on his own; in the end, it took the form of a book and a website hosting 111 radio stations with fixed loops of his own DJing and mock talk radio. Graphic designers Jena Myung and Maziyar Pahlevan worked with Jaar to draw text from show transcripts and use it in the book.

The result feels a bit like browsing an analog Internet, where memes mutate into free-verse poetry, while simultaneously channel-surfing noise radio stations. Catching a wave of thought can feel exhilarating and powerful, but just as often the organization of the book feels too chaotic to make sense of anything. It was several days before I even realized the three essays in the book were each only a few pages long, rather than making up entire sections.

As a reflection of the current mood, the book can feel eerily accurate. Columns and fonts of varying size and weight add a level of anxiety and confusion to even flipping through its pages. So do the anti-Trump, anti-income-inequality themes. In one spread, we see a play on the Trump/Pence “Make America Great Again” logo that transforms the words into the shape of a flag with the slogan “Jump the Fence.” Another consists of a list of billionaires that did not make the Forbes 100 list because their net worth was too low. Still another reads simply: “I feel a little helpless.”

As confusing as all this sounds, the book also offers ways to opt out of the culture. Don’t like what you see? There’s an “x” in the corner of some pages suggesting you can simply close the window. Or you can skip to another page. You won’t miss anything, and — unlike the Internet’s unreliable archives — the text will still be there when you return.

Pages fromNetwork (image courtesy Nicolas Jaar/Printed Matter)

For me, the most compelling aspects of the book were those that used optical illusions and text puns like the Trump/Pence logo. They read like the kind of secret messages people once thought you could find on records if you played them backwards. In one instance the words “Don’t you wish you could listen to both at the exact same time” alert the reader to a construction on the following page. That page consists of a poster, advertising one of Jaar’s radio stations, that features the stacked words “LIVE GAZA.” Each letter of the word is made by repeating the letter in the word above or beneath it, thus creating “GAZA LIVE.” As with the famous “vase or face” perception puzzle, it’s impossible to read “LIVE GAZA” and “GAZA LIVE” at the same time: the brain can see both, but it can’t process them simultaneously.

But “Don’t you wish you could listen to both at the exact same time?” also alludes to the radio station itself. When I visited the station online (#219), I found a series of short news items about a Gaza zoo that painted their donkeys to look like zebras after they died of neglect in the Israel/Palestine conflict. “Children treat the donkeys with less respect than an actual zebra,” reported one journalist. I switched channels.

Station #69. The sound of a flag in the wind. Station #153. Beatles songs, but with a LOL ticker running above. Station #93. A long documentary on how economy of “the self” lead to pervasive belief that satisfaction of our individual needs and desires should be our highest priority.

There’s a corresponding poster for each of these stations peppered throughout the book, but it remains unclear what text was drawn from which poster, and mapping that out seems beside the point. It’s just one piece of a network that doesn’t rely on any single page in order to work.

Even Jaar’s three-page essay midway through the book could have been removed, and the book would still stand on its own. It would have suffered without that essay, though, as it does the best job of expressing the book’s core concept. Jaar writes, “When and if human “x” looked into the eyes of human “y” then x with two eyes saw only one eye of y.”

The essay goes on to tie this relationship to rhythm, (and visual relationships), but the base point is this: we only have the ability to perceive one thing at a time — an idea significant enough that it’s repeated throughout Network and even gets a nod on the book’s cover (“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII see eee eee too”). That phrase is drawn from text later in the essay and is part of a larger imagined conversation. “What if we just had one eye?” it reads, “It’s surely good to have two eyes. One eye says to the other: eye, I see too.” As I understand it, the message is an address from one eye to the other, informing it that there are two eyes seeing. Spoken, though, it could mean any number of things beyond the original reading. “Yes, I see two” or “Yes, I see too”, or “Eye, I see too.”

All this resembles wordplay, but for me, it illustrates how much more mutable words are when they are said aloud versus written down. In the context of business, this slippery definition might have me decide that written communication is more reliable. In the world of sound, I might conclude that there’s far more room for creativity. In the world of politics, it reads “Watch your back.”

Network doesn’t offer solutions for synthesizing these worlds, but it does suggest that we might be able to draw meaning from pre-existing relationships. For example, Linda van Deursen’s visual essay uses two side-by-side columns with images, captions, and text to focus on linguistic play as it pertains to agriculture, radio communication and its relationship to authoritarian rule. On one side, we read about how broadcasting is considered the most economical method of applying seed to large areas of land. On another we read about how, in the mid 1920s the USSR started producing street radio speakers that anyone could use for the purpose of broadcasting. Ideas need tending to grow.

As an exercise, van Deursen took enough pains to make sure her narratives never completed themselves too easily that I could write an entire piece on her essay alone. It was thoughtful. Lydia Lunch, the book’s final contributor, did not manage this, offering only a long, stream-of-consciousness rant. Everything is terrible: the offense of Kim Kardashian’s selfies, the constant surveillance of citizens, an election that gave us no one to vote for last November because Hillary Clinton is friends with Henry Kissinger. Lunch’s tirade was clearly written prior to Trump’s inauguration, but it would have been just as unmoored then. Unlike Donald Trump, Clinton isn’t friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who continues to undermine the electoral process and destabilize the NATO alliance. But potato potahto, right?

Pages from Network (photo by Paddy Johnson for Hyperallergic)

Eh. I immediately worried that complaining about politics is petty in a book as thoughtful as Jaar’s. I didn’t need to go there. But, such is the nature of our present political climate, where no differing opinion goes unrefuted. No one is immune: not me, not Lydia Lunch, and not Jaar. And there are real reasons for this. Vast income inequality, widespread corruption, and weakened democracies threaten everyone’s well-being. We’re scared, we’re tired and we don’t have the patience to hear any more bad ideas. The book seems to implicitly acknowledge this unpleasant physiological peculiarity through pages of splintered text. “Listen. So many arguments not worth having,” reads a blurb of text early on — only to later have Lunch dive in. There’s always someone who can’t resist.

Which may be why the rant is followed by spreads of quietly undulating single-color pages. At first, this section seemed out of place and superfluous, but every time I needed a break, I’d end up back there. It’s the one place in the book where every sense a reader has isn’t being taxed, and it’s a relief. “I see a color or two,” I thought as I paged through the book. That felt like more than enough.

The post An Experimental Book Tests Our Ability to Perceive Multiple Mediums Simultaneously appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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futurealitiesbfn · 7 years

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“WORLDS WE DON’T KNOW WE DON’T KNOW”. A SET OF FUTURES FOR SOCIETY 5.0

Society 4.0 has become a widely adopted name for a new phase of human socio-economic-political development. Underlying this name is a model where human development is described in ‘stages’, from the first, the hunter-gathering stage, through agricultural and industrial stages, to our current, internet-dominated, fourth stage.

However …what next? Whatever we feel are the dominant changes shaping today's society, Society 5.0 posits a world radically transformed in the next 30-40 years. We all come to accept that expanding technological developments in almost every aspect of human existence, and especially the widespread adoption of AI, will create future worlds that are different from the present. In order to understand what is possible tomorrow, it is essential that we look today for the building blocks present today.

We began looking for these building blocks for Society 5.0 by gathering approximately 1000 current actions and events, reviewed in a number of workshops, to see what influence they might have on future worlds. In order to understand what these factors are and will eventually influence, we used a framework to analyze uncertainties in order to frame the notion of change.

Thus change can be disruptive or adaptive in character. It can also happen abruptly or gradually. Finally it can be driven from the top-down, or evolve from the bottom up. Analyzing present realities and actions within these axes of change produces a rich complex of possible futures.

We know that “future worlds” descriptions can never be prophecy. The future hinges on things yet to come, even unpredictable, “black swan” events. But looking at today's actions, discoveries and trends as they are emerging, before we know whether they will develop further or simply die creates a view of why one of many possible futures would develop while the others do not.

Below are the summaries of 14 building blocks, which we call super-clusters. Supporting evidence for these super-clusters emerged from our analysis of forces at work today as identified by our global team.

Super-clusters:

Futures Uncertain & Futures Possible

- NEW DARK AGES OR AN UNEXPECTED ENLIGHTENMENT?

There is supporting evidence for a continuing period of social and economic instability as the ‘perpetrators’ of globalization are ‘punished’ for their success and a process of ‘Amishisation’ is enacted in an attempt to take us back to the ‘good old days’ of manufacturing and Empire.

- ALTERED REALITY

Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Reality substitutes, Brain-Machine Interface, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Abilities dominate society.

- NEW WORLD ORDER 2046 – DISAGGREGATION

There is a fundamental shift from the familiar growth/development paradigm. This includes a move from nation states and groupings of them, such as the EU, and their replacement by cities and/or cross-conventional-border interest groups, faiths, etc.

- TECHNOLOGY-ENABLED ISOLATIONISM

Populist leaders are increasingly able to gain political support inside small enclaves that follow a certain set of rules, religions and cultural norms. ‘Undesirables’ will be identified by technological methods.

- DATA WORLD

Data of everything (e.g., humans, foods, goods, services, environment, and social systems) will be measured. Everything will be designed, operated, produced and/or consumed optimally, based on its data.

- PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE

Despite vast technological developments, some things never change. In a Realpolitik world, global cooperation and international law falter even more, producing a self-reinforcing spiral toward short-term self-interest. A new Balkanization emerges.

- THE HUMAN ZOO

The Human species will become hybrid, or at least depend for its existence upon technology.

- THE I-OTTTOMAN EMPIRE

The world is formed by 3Ts. T1 is Things as in IOT. T2 is Thoughts as In Detecting Our Thoughts, and their political correctness (or lack thereof). T3 is Treatments as in health.

- BEYOND CRIME AND RETRIBUTION

The possibility of there being no way to hide our true feelings and thoughts implies that we may well be able not just to diagnose why some behave irrationally, or violently, but possibly predict those who harbor these tendencies.

- EXISTENTIALISM 3.0 – WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Robotic developments will force us to question both what it means to be human as well as the purpose of life in the age of intelligent robots. The answers will be fundamental influencers.

- TOWARDS THE AUTONOMOUS ECONOMY

. The next 30 years will see increasing tensions between the “wealth creators” and the “wealth users”, mostly manifest through issues of taxation.

- CAPITALIZING ON LOCAL CULTURE

The creation of context-rich experience is a source of new wealth and societal interactions. It leads to more “inclusive economic growth” for all societies.

- TRANSPARENT HUMANITY

A digital ‘make-believe’ world that is superimposed onto the real world. The boundary with digital realms will become increasingly indistinguishable.

- CONFEDERATION URBIS ET CIVES

A Confederation of Cities and Citizens, or otherwise “War as Usual”. The dichotomy is between an economic paradigm change or pervasive conflict.

Making sense of these super-clusters

Clearly within these super clusters there are elements of alternative narratives about the future, i.e., a dichotomy between adaptive/disruptive … aka ‘good’ / ‘negative’’ and a subject of debate.

For example, only one describes a world based on benign application of technology to improve human capabilities. Others anticipate strongly malign political consequences of undermining social diversity.

Two anticipate significant economic change that might shift the balance between wealth creators and wealth users. “Local cultural economy” offers a vision of new, largely positive communities engaged in wealth creation locally.

But by far the largest set is associated with significant social change. These appear to run in parallel with political changes that contrast increasing segregation and potential conflict with the possible decline of liberal democracy in favor of a new economic model.

What factors might shape these paths?

We identified three major groups of clusters.

One group addresses aspects of how individual human behavior might adapt to a world of transparent digital intelligence concerning us all. Personal belief systems might pose challenges to accepted norms, such as scientific discipline.

Our conclusion?

They illustrate changing self-organizing possibilities within society.

Another group alludes to widely differing outcomes between integration and isolation or segregation.

Profound uncertainty is a major theme, and break-up /Balkanization is clearly a distinct possibility.

Finally, another group envisages different kinds of economic outcome, from regional/urban autonomy, to local culture, to technology-induced isolation.

Again uncertainty, and thus the potential for downsides and dislocation, is clear.

Fields of Possible Change and Impact Patterns

To analyze these with a time perspective of 2050 or thereabouts, we described the set of possible issues and outcomes on twelve facets (or areas) of the future. The four main fields describe core elements of what we consider to be “society” namely

- Habitat,

- Livelihood,

- Wellbeing,

- Relationships

Main Field 1: Habitat

Facets - Urban Living, Climate and Place, (Planetary) Space

Main Field 2: Livelihood

Facets - Learning, Leisure, Service/Work

Main Field 3: Wellbeing

Facets - Ageing/wellness, Security, Behavior

Main Field 4: Relationships

Facets - Governance, Identities, Communication

For each of these twelve facets we produced a summary of what factors might suggest an adaptive future, and/or conversely what might predict a disruptive outcome. On balance the workshop suggested a range of clear uncertainties about a positive (adaptive) outcome overall. And some – e.g. security - posit an almost Orwellian dystopia to come.

What is particularly significant is that the tendency towards greater integration may be associated with strongly disruptive outcomes.

This tends to be almost counter intuitive, but might be seen to be entirely consistent with the struggle for greater integration within Europe at this time, for example.

Change Factors and plausible futures

We identified four change factors summarized below, and the pattern of possible impacts each was judged to have for each of the 12 facets of a future society.

(a) Nature 5.0 awaits

Technology powered fascination with nature will explode.

(b) Regeneration via Robots

Virtual Social life expands with ever more concerted efforts to attribute personalities to inanimate objects. Urban regeneration based on AI and robotic systems.

(c): Harnessing the idealism of the next generation (GENEXT)

Will the young seek to exercise power or commit their energy to more practical purposes? How they deploy their idealism will shape the future.

(d): Creating a Global Transaction Value Chain.

Creating trust in a global disintermediated transaction value chain is critical to a self–employment dominated ‘gig economy’.

Final Conclusion:

Implications for developing a future model of Society 5.0

(a.k.a “The Quinary”).

The output from this latest workshop shows why a future Society 5.0 is much more than a new technology-driven economic era. It suggests that change will occur at varying rates and intensity across different facets of a future society.

The super-clusters we developed suggest that there is a wide range of potential sources of change and that technology is a more or less given factor. The change signals identified clearly highlight that these changes can shift the balance between both disruptive and adaptive outcomes across all facets of a future society.

This short outline has demonstrated how it is possible to distil a possible range of future outcomes from a very rich set of inputs and experienced judgments. It also reinforces the significant value of maintaining a continuous ‘futures scanning’ effort to ensure ‘early warning‘ of shifts that can suggest different future paths toward Society 5.0

Finally as Foreign Affairs recently notes “Polling has taken a beating … having failed to predict the victory of David Cameron in the British general elections, then Brexit, and now the election of Donald Trump. … fundamentally, what polls do is to treat these phenomena as isolated events when they are in fact the product of a common set of causes 30 years in the making.“

We wholeheartedly agree!

For more information on BFN/Futurealities, the workshop on which this summary was based, and how we help clients develop ‘future foresight’, please contact [email protected], or any member of the team.

Visit us on Linked In at https://www.linkedin.com/company/8350053. \

Our blog on Tumblr is at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/futurealitiesbfn