#but it’s flat out not true. it’s their transformation of the material not an interpretation of it

[bigskydreaming]

What kills me in fics is when you have tags going like "Good brother Jason", which, cool, but in the same story there's " Dick TRIES to be a Good Brother" LOL way to switch the dynamics. I also tend to stay clear of the ones where the centric character seems to have a platonic relationship tag with everyone (including the ones where they're antagonists in canon like Jason & Tim) except Dick. You can feel the hate/dislike/prejudice a MILE away.

Yeeeeeeah. You are definitely not alone. Like pretty much every Dick Grayson stan I’ve ever talked to on the subject stays the hell away from any fic tagged “Dick Grayson tries to be a good brother.”

LOL like....it’s basically what I was talking about in that older post I just reblogged a few minutes ago. That thing where Dick’s actions or choices in a canon story or fic aren’t judged on their own merits but are rather inherently weighed against some hypothetical perfect choice that he DIDNT make and so he’s basically evaluated based on how much he falls short of that mark each time instead of anything he actually did.

Sorry not sorry, but I’m just not interested in stories that TRANSFORM the character most commonly referred to as the emotional glue of the family and the only one who consistently even CARES about them all being a family....into the fumbling incompetent relationship disaster man who at best gets credit for at least putting in an attempt at being there for his family.

Especially not when Bruce and Jason and Tim are praised for doing the bare minimum in canon when it comes to family interactions while everything Dick ACTUALLY did is just completely ignored and overwritten in order to make his Failure to People Good the narrative obstacle to be overcome.

Now, the “Dick Grayson Tries To Be A Good Brother” tag applied to Tim-centric fics in particular tho....hoo boy I am out of there so fast there’s a Kool-Aid Man shaped hole in the wall and not a sign of me as far as the horizon.

Like, currently my Pet Peeve Thermostat is set to Battle for the Cowl-referencing fics that don’t use this tag but very much are in that spirit. You probably know the ones, like their summaries suggest they’re open to considering Dick’s side of the situation but turns out the author at most is throwing him a “well at least you tried not to suck” bone while still reading him the riot act for very much still sucking.

Because what drives me up a flipping WALL here in particular, when I naively click on a link that seems different from the usual and ignore the voice of experience because I’m just desperate enough for Tim and Dick food that doesn’t just go on and on about how Dick ruined their brotherhood and it will never be truly repaired....

What makes the fruit bats in my belfry go absolutely B-A-N-A-N-A-S is not just the super fun realization that Psych! You thought this fic might be different but it’s actually the same!

Nah.

It’s how much people, both writers AND commenters, just absolutely LOVE to reference Tim’s shitbag parents and how emotionally abusive and neglectful they were (all true and valid, btw, let’s be totally clear about that)....but bringing them up here specifically to emphasize just how great Dick’s ‘betrayal’ was and how what he did makes him no better than them.

It’s like. Oh. I see.

So because after twenty years worth of stories about Dick dropping everything the second Tim needs him, whether it’s for help or just advice or even just reassurance or comfort or ANYTHING ....because after two decades worth of content showing Dick absolutely doting on Tim in their EVERY SINGLE interaction and buttressing his self confidence at every opportunity, never passing up a chance to call him his brother and emphasize that they’re family and he loves Tim and is so proud of him...

Because after all that there’s a story whose very premise forced Dick to choose between two kids, both still very much his brothers and their shared father’s sons even if one was new to him and didn’t have the same history the other two had....

Because by the very nature of the story Dick had no choice but to prioritize one over the other due to them both hating each other and Dick already being stretched to his absolute limits trying to live his dead father’s life and take on everything Bruce used to do at the cost of giving up everything Dick had chosen for his own life and wants and priorities, all while dealing with his own grief....

And with it being inevitable that the boy he DIDNT choose to prioritize was going to be hurt....

Because after twenty years of never failing to put Tim first the second Tim needed him, never even putting HIMSELF first OVER Tim....because for the first time Dick felt that someone else he felt obligated to, felt a responsibility towards, actually needed him MORE than Tim....

And for that reason and that reason ONLY, Dick picked that other boy, all while trying his best to tell Tim that he still needed him, still valued him, all the things that Bruce DIDNT tell him when he took Robin not even because he thought someone else needed it at the time but simply to take away, with absolutely nothing Dick said in any way negating or contradicting any of his many, MANY assurances to Tim over the years that they were brothers and always would be and with them still very much legally brothers and with concrete ties to each other that declared them family even WITHOUT the connection of Robin....

Because after and despite ALL OF THAT, Dick picked the brother that he didn’t know and frankly didn’t even LIKE, because he knew no one else was going to pick this kid and he also knew he’d already picked Tim a hundred times before and hoped that at least all that HISTORY of past focus and attention he’d given Tim to help build him up, give him foundations to build further upon, that hopefully at least that history that was still there, still relevant, still something Tim had actively benefited and grown from in ways Dick now hoped to help Damian....like surely this would be of at least SOME significance to Tim, SOME kind of proof of how much Dick loved and valued Tim....

Because one time and one time ONLY, Dick DIDNT put Tim’s needs first, not because he didn’t want to or because he was being selfish or short sighted or simply didn’t care, but rather solely because this one time Tim’s needs were in direct opposition with the needs of another young boy Dick saw as his responsibility and in even greater need and with even less of a foundation than the one Dick had helped Tim build....

This puts Dick on the same level as Tim’s shitbag parents, the ones who are infamous for (and practically synonymous with) emotional abuse and neglect. Dick’s basically interchangeable with them now. Certainly no better than them. Tim’s entire emotional well-being rested on Dick and Dick alone and nothing he’d provided Tim with in the past counts, just this one moment in time right here right now, that’s the entirety of their relationship see, it all comes down to this and nothing else, and because Dick didn’t put Tim first, no matter WHAT his reasons or how much he wanted to, he has officially failed Tim as hard as the neglectful parents who did nothing BUT neglect, ignore and just not give a shit at all, simply because they couldn’t be bothered to.

Yeah.

That’s neat.

#and please before certain people get all up in their righteous umbrage and declare a blood feud against me for this #take note of how nowhere did I say Tim doesn’t have the right and reason to be hurt #because of course he does #you will never see me claiming otherwise #but just because someone was hurt that doesn’t mean that someone did it to hurt them #and that is the distinction so many fans don’t seem to care to make #I’ve literally seen people call Dick emotionally abusive and neglectful for this era of canon and holy shit people #in terms of abuse specifically you absolutely can be abusive without meaning to #hell this is basically the nature of neglect. they’re not TRYING to hurt a child because the entire problem is the child #doesn’t even rate as much of a presence in their awareness as they should #but people can yell it’s just their interpretation all they want about this era of canon #but it’s flat out not true. it’s their transformation of the material not an interpretation of it #because you literally have to CHANGE what Dick ACTUALLY says to Tim to paint him as neglectful or not caring about his emotional well-being #you have to CUT OUT all mention of the times Dick tried reaching out to Tim or checking up on him in order to paint Dick as simply moving #on with his shiny newer little brother #that’s not a difference of interpretation. that’s an act of transformation. changing details of a story that isn’t reading the way you want #it to....until it DOES say what you want it to #and the problem has NEVER been some of us just being unwilling to let people have their headcanons #the problem is people’s refusal to call them headcanons or AUs or anything that acknowledges they’ve transformed the source material #in order to CREATE the interpretation they’re going with #AND OTHER FANS HAVE EVERY RIGHT IN THE WORLD TO SAY YEAH WE’RE NOT TRYING TO TALK ABOUT YOUR TRANSFORMATION OF CANON THO #we’re literally trying to talk about what you transformed it FROM....and the fact that despite all your complaints about canon character #choices....some of you repeatedly make the CHOICE to change canon not just to fix or address the poor character choices you don’t like for #your faves.....but also at the same time making this other character do the very stuff you claim to hate canon having your faves do #and that is your CHOICE. AND YOU GET TO MAKE IT. BUT IT IS STILL A CHOICE TO MAKE CHANGES #NOT simply a different interpretation of the foundational material #like you guys keep trying to pass it off as #and that MATTERS #it matters quite a lot in fact

[paragonrobits]

for a while i’ve been musing on the idea of ‘what if Brian Banner, Hulk’s abusive father, was actually an early super villain’ so here are some thoughts for that!

the first point is that my take on him is a mix of his interpretation from the 2003 Hulk movie and the way he’s been depicted in the current run of Immortal Hulk. On the one hand, you have a very manipulative personality who is extremely prone towards flat out constantly lying to everyone when he doesn’t have a self-serving memory; he may well even believe his own lies, in a very mundane way. The flipside of this is that, by combining his original depiction as someone who felt threatened by his infant son’s intelligence and his mother’s love for him instead of him, is an attention hog who desperately craves people constantly paying attention to him, lashing out and going to extremes to force people to pay attention to him, particularly Bruce.

Essentially, he’s a self-centered egomaniac who refuses to ever admit anything is his own fault: a standard abuser with a massive inferiority complex.

As for what he IS, again, I’m drawing from the Ang Lee movie, where he was presented as a combination of Absorbing Man (taking on the properties of matter, able to drain the Hulk’s power) and the minor antagonist Zzzax (an emphasis on energy draining and transformation from that); specifically, I’m suggesting making him be an AU version of Zzzax, with some elements of Absorbing Man. A key point here is that he is literally a leech, sucking away power and influence from others, a toxic presence that has little power on his own. What makes him dangerous is how ruthless he is, and his manipulative abilities. He CAN drain power from others and become as strong as them, but on his own, he’s not much more than a unpleasant person even the worst of the supervillain community doesn’t like much.

His powers simply leech things around him. Materials corrode visibly in his presence, though not enough to cause true structural damage, and he takes on their attributes as he does so. Energy and life force are sucked dry, causing things to flicker or weaken over time. Even grass and plants die around him, so that he’s a walking wasteland. It’s also a very notable inversion of Hulk; where Hulk bleeds, new life sprouts from his blood where it touches the ground. But wherever Brian Banner walks, things get worse.

I see two possibilities here, centering on the crucial point: when Bruce confronted him on his mother’s grave prior to his first true Hulk out, did he kill him, or not?

Option one: Bruce did not, though perhaps not for lack of trying. During one of the earlier times of the rise of superbeings, Brian was transformed by the same kind of gamma events that produced the Hulk’s other antagonists, into his present form; he sort of drifts from place to place, being an unbearable little wretch. He’s something of a precursor to the Leader, in that he’s a mastermind, or at least he wants to be, but lacks his charisma and genuine competence.

Option two: he’s dead, he’s dead as hell. Bruce DID smash his skull against his mother’s gravestone. But gamma is weird, and when the events began, it made a hole through reality, and Brian came through it; he attained a new form in the same way as Zzzax (an energy draining form, perhaps after repossessing his old corpse and rejuvenating it by draining the life force from others), and back from the dead, he’s out to torment his son and everyone he views as responsible for his problems (which is everyone but himself). One interesting possibility is that he’s a Ghost Rider antagonist as well; he’s not just a dead man, he’s one that came back to life through the wrong channels (perhaps related to the mysterious Green Door that the various Hulks have seen) and Ghost Rider is compelled to pursue him for that reason alone, let alone that his sins demand vengeance. The screaming wrath of the Hulk was born from this man’s cruelty, and wherever he goes he spreads more suffering and loss.

For this latter idea, it also makes for an interesting visual: he is a walking corpse. Yes, he’s regenerated his body and healed it, so he’s technically alive from a biological stand point. But he looks... wrong. His skin is this ashen, translucent color. His muscles have grown in erratic ways and are mismatched sizes, and he stares REALLY uncomfortably at everything, like they’re nothing to him. It’s a visual contrast with Hulk, who is VISIBLY a monster, but is quite peaceful when left alone. Brian Banner looks more or less human, but the closer you look (and the longer he goes without leeching something), the more wrongness stares at you.

As far as his place in the villain community goes, I see him as being an outcast that not even the worst of them like to be around; sure, there are some real monsters in the Marvel universe. Bitter robots with misanthropic streaks; actual bonafide Nazis (some made of bees, some just super messed up looking); mutants who are eager to screw their own people over to make a quick buck; superpowered brutes who dont care to do anything but hurt people for the funsies. But none of them like Brian Banner. The man’s a chidlish, self-centered abuser who refuses to ever admit blame for his own misdeeds, and to even hardened villains, that’s just... petty.

(Depending on how hard you want to lean into his scientific background, you can also make the argument that other science guys in the Marvel universe are at least vaguely familiar with him. It’s mostly in a ‘oh, that guy, fuck that guy’ sort of way.)

#marvel #brian banner #ideas #AU ideas #the main idea with him is taking the idea of abusers as a toxic leeches to a logical extreme #it should pervade every aspect of him and his abilities

[jbrockwa]

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him”

Dr. Manhattan, himself, talks about his transformation as a sort of “death and rebirth,” because he marks this event as the sort of turning point in his life, the moment when his newfound relationship to external and internal sensations, and to life and death drove a wedge between his experiences (consciousness) and his humanity (material manifestation). Jon’s initial fascination with watchmaking is very revealing in terms of who he would ‘become” as Manhattan, of what a person like him would make of himself when endowed with the abilities of a god. 

Throughout Chapter IV, there is a recurring image of a black sheet of velvet which has cogs laid out across its surface, and the image is intercut between other temporally nonlinear story panels. The image is meant to draw a resemblance between the stars (as components of a larger “mechanized” universe) that dot the chapter’s background and the watch’s cogs (as components of a literal machine). Watches often have a peculiarly significant bearing on Manhattan’s fate, as each step that he identifies as having led to him being locked in the intrinsic field generator is connected to his fascination with repairing watches. The aforementioned image of the cogs first appears on the chapter's second page, and follows after a panel of Dr. Manhattan fondly recalling his father, formerly a watchmaker, who "admired the sky for its precision.” 

Manhattan says this while he himself is found gazing up at the stars on the surface of Mars, trying to find a “name [for] the force the put them in motion” (IV, 2). This nameless force is to the stars what Manhattan is in relation to the “cogs” of the watches he fixes; he sets them in motion, and transforms them from atomized “parts” into an interconnected system. The chapter’s title, “Watchmaker” is fittingly juxtaposed with Manhattan pondering what is behind the creation and existence of the universe, almost “answering,” his question; whatever “force” is behind the “setting in motion of the stars,” likely resembles him, as he is the closest thing to a legitimate deity, or god, in the story.

This sequence of combined images of and narration by Dr. Manhattan relates the character to his father, and uncovers the reasons for Manhattan’s fixation on “finer details,” on the way in which individual components interact and bring greatly complex “things” (i.e from the vast universe to finely tuned watches) into existence. To Manhattan, there is no discrepancy between the atomized components of a “thing,” and the “thing” itself which is made up of those components, because that “thing’s” existence is contingent on the interrelationship of it’s components, the relationship is direct, and therefore Manhattan views things in their totality, he sees the “bigger picture” as it were.

The next time this image of the cogs appears is on the following page, when Manhattan recalls the very moment in which his dreams were crushed by his father. A 16 year old Jon Osterman sits, fidgeting with a watch he is projected to fix. However, after hearing of the invention of atomic bomb following it’s “successful” deployment on Hiroshima, Jon’s father insists his son pursue sciences in atomic energy and forgo the family trade of watchmaking. 

His father then dumps the pieces of the watch he was working on over their balcony, the final twist of the knife, so to speak. As the cogs fall, the following panel jumps to 15 minutes into Manhattan’s future on Mars, where he watches as a meteor shower grazes the atmosphere of the red planet. This again draws similarities between the meteorites (shooting stars as they are often misidentified), celestial bodies that interact with one another to form of the whole of the universe, and cogs, which are obviously components of a watch. With what we know of Manhattan’s characterization up to this point in the story, we can see how his particular fascination with the intricate beauty of minutia has lended itself to his development.

At the end of the previous chapter, Manhattan is abruptly confronted with accusations that his atomic structure may be linked to the cancer found in Moloc, Janey Slater, among others who have found themselves “entangled” in Manhattan’s life. Here, after an interrogative bombardment on the part of the press, Manhattan is faced with a unique of vulnerability; he is overwhelmed, and for once he doesn't have an immediate, off-hand solution. Nothing that he can “materialize” out of thin air will be of any use to his current predicament. His omnipotence is made useless, and he breaks down because of his lack of foresight and readiness. More interesting, though, and more telling of his exact character, is his response.

After his meltdown he first undresses from his suit, which was more or less a "human costume" for the sake of his on-air appearance. He then teleports to Gila Flats, New Mexico, to revisit where he first met Janey, as the invocation of her name surely put the rest of his life in perspective and had him waxing philosophically about his past. He grabs an old photograph of the two of them before teleporting to Mars, where he reminisces on Janey and their relationship, the first time he was introduced to her, when he touched her hand at the moment she bought him a drink. Notice in his retrospective that he remembers the particular details of the situation that consolidate the image of his memory. This is reflective of how a watchmaker makes their living; looking at the whole of the watch will tell you little in terms to what need’s to be fixed, or what exactly has broken. You must put into perspective the exact mechanisms that allow the watch to function, or in this case which prevents the watch from functioning. 

When he grows tired of looking at the photo, his attention shifts to the stars, where he ponders their existence and remarks that they are merely "old photographs" of what they once were; by the time their light reaches us, they are gone and forgotten about by the void of the universe. Notice how throughout this sequence, while he appears to have a photographic memory that picks up on every detail, he actually has a tendency to focus in on things he personally fines "fascinating," or what he regards as simply beautiful. This is a defining characteristic of Manhattan, I would contest, as it essentially results in his “undoing,” or his detachment from humanity, keeping him distanced from the human experience. 

Manhattan is caught up with and sort of “stuck on” the necessary components of the “things” (i.e., cogs as they relate to watches, the physical beauty of his former and contemporary lovers, old photographs of his personal favorite memories, etc.) constitute his world. In his moments of awestruck wonder and analysis, he often ends up looking at the world around him for so long, that he is only able to see past it. In trying to understand the exact function and nature of larger “things,” he ends up missing the entire “point.” This reveals the flaw of Manhattan’s “godliness,” that cannot merely "be" or exist as an all-powerful, all-seeing, and all-being figure, and it has clearly contributed to his now broken and depressive mindset. It his not despite his “extra-normal” perception and senses that Manhattan is no longer able to find pleasure in his favorite activities, but is, ironically enough, because of these superpowers. His abilities work insofar as they provide him an unparalleled opportunity to get closer to the stars than any human could ever dream of, however this power does not, still, allow for him to fully understand their essential nature or origin or overall place in the universe as a whole; he fails to see past the "bigger picture,” even as a god.

Dr. Manhattan, in the same vein of a traditionalist, Judeo-Christian interpretation of God, has shaped the world (and as a consequence, forged the path of humanity) in his image. His “creations” are reflective of how he, an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent being, operates in a world composed of crude matter. The radical progress in scientific, political, and social developments that America has made as a result of the arrival of Dr. Manhattan are in many ways aesthetic: new and shiny. They are upgraded models of American lifestyles and traditions: the roasted, four-legged chicken, spotted in the first chapter, the futuristic-looking cars, as well as the airships that dot the background of many of the story's panels, all of these progressive technological steps "forward" contribute to society perhaps feeling comforted, and safe; even Manhattan, especially as a means of preventing the escalation of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, is a sort of pillar of security and protection. 

However, these inventions reflect Manhattan's detachment from the true needs of humanity, which very obviously transcend the likes of material indulgences. In the midst of a Cold War, Manhattan's otherworldly might and power have produced what are essentially bandaids, comparatively speaking. In this way, these benchmarks of progress that have cemented themselves into the alternate history of Moore's Watchmen also mirror Dr. Manhattan's relationships, and his troubles with commitment, intimacy, attachment, and sociability, 

Manhattan's inadequate solutions to the ails of man are similar to his failure to reciprocate intimacy with Laurie Jupiter in the beginning of Chapter III, when he is seen sort of "cloning" himself to tend to Laurie while he is meanwhile duplicitously working on one of his many science experiments in the next room over. In both these instances, Manhattan creates a sort of distraction, one that he is able to imagine from the limited perspective of an at once out of touch and omnipotent being, one that will aesthetically please the American people and/or Laurie, but one that also fails to get to the root of the issues eating away at them. 

With Laurie, Manhattan assumes, two being better than one in his mind, that his partner won't mind his mental absence from them engaging in intimacy. Manhattan's intervention in society in general. as well as his interpersonal relationships with others, have worked merely to cover up the blemishes of the more deeply rooted issues by means of fast and fancy cars, genetically modified chickens, and kinky threesomes with clones. These inventions and gestures function as extensions of and, in many ways, metaphors for Dr. Manhattan’s mode of being; their inadequacy in terms of accurately diagnosing and treating the problems humanity is faced with prove that image of Manhattan as a Nietzschean ubermensch that society at large has come to associate him with is ill-conceived.

Speaking more on Dr. Manhattan as being perceived by the public as the "Superman," the character largely exists as a symbol of the best a man can be, a sort of “upgrade” from the prototypical model of “a man.” This indicates that he still possesses and is affected by the same woes and shortcomings that effect humans. This is reflected in his tendency, even prior to Osterman's transformation into Manhattan, to neglect his significant others and prioritize his scientific endeavors and pet projects over their needs. In this sense, we can determine he may not necessarily meet the qualifications for being a god, but an extraordinary man endowed with the ability of a god, and more importantly, left with the particularly human faculties to wield and process these abilities. Manhattan's "powers" certainly give him extra-human senses, such as his heightened perception of time and his teleportation abilities, but even these powers get in Manhattan's own way, and cause him to lose sight of the what’s important to his life and to humanity as a whole. 

This is evident from the very introduction of the character of Dr. Manhattan in the first chapter, where he is  boasted, before we even have a chance of seeing him, as the "indestructible man" by Rorscach. In his establishing panel, Manhattan is shown towering over Rorschach at the foreground of the image, yet in all his might and intimidation, he is distracted, tinkering with an unnamed piece of equipment in his lab, likely where he's been for quite some time prior to this introduction. This panel juxtaposes Manhattan's persona and image as a "God," with his cold detachment from humanity and subtly demonstrates how his God-like intellect, perception, and senses prevent him from seeing the importance of that which is happening right in front of him. Dr. Manhattan is, even in the immediate aftermath of a suspicious murder, a crisis, more concerned with the events occuring on a microscopic level, or dismantling, assessing, and reconstructing some futuristic piece of technology beyond any other character’s understanding; he won't even stop to heed his old friend's warning. 

It is, in addition, no accident that the story ends with Jon teleporting Rorschach in response to Laurie's complaint that he is "upsetting" her. Manhattan's response to her comparatively minor annoyance is performing the miracle of teleporting Rorschach away, outside the facilities. This moment works to show Manhattan can do whatever he chooses, it shows that he is all powerful insofar as he can relocate people to his choosing, can shape-shift, and telekinetically dismantle machinery, but it's more a matter of what personally concerns him, what seems pressing by his own metrics. It should alarm us that Manhattan doesn't see the difference between a living and a dead body, and that he is yet so depended upon in this alternate American timeline.

Finally, an aspect of Dr. Manhattan’s origin (and character as whole) I find most curious is that in the process of “rebuilding” of himself, he had to have had some understanding of what components would be necessary for him to “come into being” again, but in this process he was somehow “unable” to reconfigure himself as fully human. His origin story reveals him as having always possessed a genius level intellect, however, emotionally he has always been absent and distanced. Even before his omniscience allegedly “soiled” his relationship to the material realm and to life itself, he never had a barometer for complex emotional interactions. During the time leading up to his transformation he was a 30 year-old man who was clearly not prepared to be apart of a serious relationship with Janey. He was still mentally absent from her needs as his significant other. Even in that moment of “intimacy” with Laurie, he is constantly trying and failing to please her. This allows us to imagine what would happen if “God” was there to answer every one of our prayers. It would still, as Watchmen notes, leave us unsatisfied, because there are no real satisfying answers, even for a god.

#watchmen #dr. manhattan

[brilliantorinsane]

The Case of the Lady Beryl

As the name suggests, the closest canon analogue for this episode is The Case of the Beryl Cornet. As far as I can tell the similarities are pretty superficial, basically just consisting of the fact that both mysteries feature a suspect taking the fall for a crime they didn’t commit for the sake of a loved one. I didn’t notice anything particularly interesting in the episode’s use of the canon story, however, so I am going to set that aside and focus on Watson.

Introduction, Ep1 Pt1, Ep1 Pt2

This episode features Holmes at his best, but I was initially bothered by the fact that Watson spends the first half of the episode being rather stupider than normal. Now, characters needn’t be intelligent to be loved and lovable, and the fact that Holmes and Watson take their turns being played for fools is frankly one of the strengths of the series. But given the history of adaptations erasing Watson’s capabilities I get touchy when he is being underestimated, so when in the span of 10 minutes he has fallen for a transparent lie from Lestrade, mocked Holmes’s experiments, taken 24 seconds to process a perfectly straightforward sentence, and flat-out forgotten how bullets work, I start getting defensive.

Fortunately, fandom has taught me a great deal about the potential for audience interaction with texts to be transformative as well as analytical, so I’ve brought my stubbornness to bear and found an interpretation that (mostly) satisfies me. I do not know whether the reading I have to offer was in any way intended, but I do think it is consistent with what exists on the screen and adds depth to Watson’s characterization. That being said I don’t suppose I’ll ever entirely forgive them for implying that John Watson, a fricken doctor and soldier, is unable to differentiate between a bullet-wound and a bashed-in head.

The observation that prompted my re-evaluation of Watson’s behavior was realizing that in every instance his slowness is directly related to his following Lestrade’s lead or being more focused on Lestrade than Holmes. This is a curious thing, particularly since I think it would be far too simplistic to infer that Watson is simply looking for someone to follow and imitate. After all, even though Holmes has a deep effect on him, Watson frequently challenges Holmes’s conclusions and never adopts his manner. So of all people, why would Watson choose to imitate Lestrade, a man who is frequently the butt of the joke and at times seems to care about his own image more than the justice he has been given the authority and responsibility to protect?

My theory, counterintuitive though it may seem, is that Lestrade is the sort of man Watson believes he ought to be. I think there is evidence that this Watson, regardless of his actual personality and inclinations, thinks he ought to be a traditionally proper English gentleman. Throughout the show he continually protests Holmes’s eccentricities, and yet far from meaningfully attempting to abate or escape them, he not infrequently joins in wholeheartedly. To me, this seems indicative of a pattern: in this series Holmes and Watson are both eccentric madmen, but whereas Holmes is perfectly comfortable with the fact, Watson has put effort into appearing ‘normal’ and ‘correct’, and periodically struggles to maintain or reclaim that image—both in the eyes of others and himself.

And the funny thing about Lestrade is that, for all his buffoonery, in a very real way he represents the proper English gentleman. When Holmes isn’t busy destabilizing Lestrade’s self-image he is confident, assertive, and takes the lead. His manner (when he feels in control) is dignified and polite. He has the socially sanctioned “correct” opinions about gender and class and English superiority. And granted much of this is a facade which interferes with his accomplishing his job justly and well, but it has been sanctioned by the symbol of the police cap and the power of the Inspector. He has been chosen as the protector of a society whose cultural ideal he (superficially) embodies.

So, all things considered, Watson is very little like Lestrade, but Lestrade is very much like the sort of man Watson has been socially conditioned to aspire to.

(As a side note, part of the reason I enjoy this reading of Howard Watson is that it puts him in conversation with other Watson adaptations and the canon itself. Certainly it fits with my reading of the BBC Sherlock and Guy Ritchie Watsons. I haven’t decided the extent to which I read canon Watson in a similar manner, but the potential for such a reading is there in the way he paints himself as a deeply normal man while engaging in highly abnormal behavior. The Sign of Four, I suspect, provides especially good material for such an interpretation).

Perhaps the best part of this reading is that, if Lestrade leads Watson into performative normality, it is Holmes who releases him. Once Holmes is included in the investigation, a gradual shift occurs. At first Watson maintains his alliance with Lestrade, but for all that Lestrade has the advantage of social pressures pushing Watson towards him, this cannot last long once Holmes has re-entered the picture. By the time they are interviewing the primary suspect, he has returned to his usual intelligent and capable self.

Because that’s one of the many the beauties of their relationship: Holmes frees Watson from the endless task of conforming, and his genuine self is far better than any cheap imitation. And while I didn’t get into in this write-up, Watson returns the favor by loving Holmes as he is while curbing his more dangerous exterminates and keeping him grounded and present. Also in this episode he’s already 2-for-2 saving Holmes’s life and property and they’re just so good for each other and I love them.

  My Story:

I don’t have anything particular to add on this point aside from what I’ve already said, but here’s the link to chapter two of Hidden in the Moments:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12795147/chapters/29238576#workskin

  Highlights:

Although Watson’s behavior around Lestrade isn’t his finest, I quite enjoy the fact that in the second episode Watson has already wheedled his way into cases on his own merit. Then his first move is to convince Lestrade to involve Holmes, which is adorable.

Also when he suggests they bring in Holmes his eyes get all soft and he has this warm little smile, like he’s so pleased and excited at the prospect of seeing Holmes at work again (3.20).

It’s also worth noting that the first thing that gets Watson on Lestrade’s side is Lestrade ranting about how Holmes deserves more credit. I’m pretty sure it’s insincere deflection on Lestrade’s part, but Watson believes him and is so endeared to Lestrade for defending Holmes and it’s honestly quite sweet.

Wilkins!!! Have I mentioned yet that I really love Wilkins? He’s smart without being showy, plays everything straight but is actually rather snarky, doesn't dismiss Holmes’s experiments like most people do and is maybe the only character who always enjoys Holmes’s intelligence without ever feeling threatened by it. I just find him really endearing.

So Wilkins walks into Baker Street when Holmes is doing an experiment, and Holmes immediately drags him into his experiment while absentmindedly offering him tea twice. And I love this scene because this Holmes is actually pretty social, it’s just on his own terms. He’s probably not going to do small-talk most days, but when he’s in the right mood he will serve you endless cups of probably-not-poisoned tea and ramble about his current fixation, which I honestly feel is very true to canon. Also I think he just genuinely likes Wilkins.

When trying to hurry Holmes off to a crime scene Lestrade calls his experiments ‘nonsense.’ Poor Holmes looks absolutely stricken, then passionately lectures Lestrade on the importance of Science and Progress all the way to the crime scene. Holmes is a nerd and I love him.

As they rush off to the crime scene Watson pauses to turn off the burner under Holmes’s experiments, and by Holmes’s estimation very likely saved Baker Street. It’s a lovely little example of how Watson’s somewhat more grounded personality works in tandem with Holmes’s absentminded hyperfocusing.

I quite like Lady Beryl. Granted her performance and circumstances are a bit melodramatic, but she has a quiet and calculating strength that draws me to her.

There’s a scene at 16:15 when Holmes is (rather unnecessarily) ribbing Lestrade and Lestrade begins to get worked up and defensive. Matters could have escalated from there, but Watson quietly leans forward and relays some pertinent facts about the crime scene to Holmes. It’s just a little moment of unpretentious conflict-resolution born of what Watson has already come to understand about these two men, and I really appreciate it.

24:27–24:32: “Brilliant Holmes, absolutely brilliant!”“Thank you Watson :)”

Watson again nabs the criminal efficiently and without posturing, while Holmes watches with all the attentiveness he offers a crime scene before offering one of his secret little smiles.

Holmes runs off in a panic upon realizing he left the burner on, and the episode ends before Watson can catch up and reassure him. And while I have my own (much longer) mental timeline of events, I must admit that what with our not being privy to it, the rush of gratitude and relief when Holmes realizes what Watson has done makes that unseen moment an excellent candidate for a first kiss.

@the-prince-of-professors @tremendousdetectivetheorist @devoursjohnlock@mafief @the-hopeless-existentialist@irishunic0rn @a-candle-for-sherlock@rfscommonplace @acdhw @artemisastarte

#it's 10:24 #which means its still jan 29th here #i mean it's not actually about their meeting #but it still is about them #and at any rate this gave me an arbitrary date to force myself to post it by #anyhow i've been struggling to get this one close to right and i'm currently half-asleep so i've no clue if it makes sense #enjoy! #howard holmes #sheldon reynolds #howard marion-crawford #ronald howard #howard holmes meta

[hirazuki]

I’m going to try and summarize what bothers me about VLD from as objective a standpoint as possible. A lot of people, including myself, have already made posts pointing out specific issues, especially with regards to the messages it sends to abuse victims, so I’m not going to touch on that or any type of emotional issues here at all. I’m going to skip specifics except where needed as examples, and just talk about the nature of story telling itself. As someone who not only has used fiction for escapism, but who has studied story telling both in terms of literary analysis of novels and of religious texts, it’s a subject that I feel very strongly about.

Warning: long ass post.

Okay, a couple of disclaimers first.

One, I am a firm believer in the “don’t like, don’t read” mentality. If I don’t like something, I don’t talk about it, I just move on. Y’all have never seen a single discourse post about The Dragon Prince, right? Yup, that’s ‘cause I really didn’t like it. It goes for countless other things too. I don’t expend time and effort and energy on things I don’t like, that’s just wasteful. So, why am I harping on VLD? Because I really enjoyed it, despite a couple of what I felt were minor issues at the time, for most of its run. That’s why I -- and I imagine the same goes for many other fans -- am so bitter.

Two, I came late into the Voltron universe. I joined in a couple of days before s6 dropped, and only watched DotU as well as the other Western versions in the past couple of months. Haven’t had a chance to see the original Japanese anime yet.

Three, I’m not a shipper, in general. I don’t ship anything in VLD except Zarkon/Honerva. Romance/sexual stuff is just not my thing, I’ll take swords and explosions any day over that. So my saltiness regarding the series has nothing to do with ships.

Alright, so I think my major gripes with the series can be sorted into three categories:

1. Inconsistency of Story Type:

This is, of course, my own opinion, but through my time of consuming fiction, I think there are three types of stories:

Good vs. Evil: the most basic type of story. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and everyone stays well in their lanes. Think Disney movies, typical Saturday morning cartoons -- the heroes are exemplary of good traits, the villains are one-dimensional and unrepentant, evil for the sake of being evil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this story type imo, and there are several stories of this nature that I really do enjoy.   

Grey Morality: a much more nuanced take on the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. Due to the very nature of grey morality, there are varying degrees to which this can be implemented. Probably the most common one I’ve seen is where the heroes do some bad/questionable things, the villains/antagonists do some good things or have the right motives or are “noble” in some way; but overall, there is a sense that there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed, certainly by the heroes but also sometimes by the villains/antagonists too. An excellent example of this is Firefly. Another example, that puts a total twist on it by having the protagonist also be the “villain,” is Death Note -- even though the story resolves in a way that to the audience is, really, the only sustainable way possible, it still leaves neither the characters in-show nor the audience with any sense of victory. This concept is taken to the extreme by a series like Tenpou Ibun: Ayakashi Ayashi, where no one is right and no one is wrong, but at the same time everyone is right and wrong, and simply just human. There is no good and no evil, just context, circumstances, and choices. 

Combination: this type of story starts with the Good vs. Evil dichotomy but, as the story progresses and the protagonist becomes more acquainted and involved with their environment, both the protagonist and the audience come to understand that the picture is actually much more complicated than that, and it evolves into Grey Morality. Bleach is a great example. We start with seeing the Hollow as evil, mindless monsters that need to be killed; we learn that they are actually human spirits that have transformed into “monsters” through pain and grief and, therefore, we pity them but also understand that it’s a mercy to put them down; we then find out that, actually, not all are mindless and they have a complicated society and culture of their own; and, eventually, come to accept them as (reluctant) allies against a bigger threat, understanding that they are creatures in their own right. 

From the moment that Keith -- arguably the character within the main cast that had the most time/character development spent on him -- was revealed as being half-Galra (that is, half the “evil” race of the show), VLD promised to be that third type of story. Because there is no way that the writers would make one of their protagonists evil by default because of his blood in a kids’ show, duh, so by logical conclusion this means that that race is not all evil, after all. This was further emphasized by Lotor’s introduction to the plot -- a severe departure from his character in any previous incarnation -- and cemented by the episode, “The Legend Begins,” where we finally get to see the other side of things and the fact that not even Zarkon and Haggar were “born evil,” as well.

After the Keith reveal, we got shocked reactions from his teammates, notably and understandably Allura; got only an apology from her and not the rest for their treatment of him (which could have been better but, whatever, it was a step in the right direction, great!); and then... back to a weird strained relationship in working alongside Galra without another word on the subject.

Okay. Fine.

Then we get Lotor -- again, some of that initial resentment/treatment could be understandable to some extent, and eventually on the road towards, seemingly, genuine acceptance. Cool.

I won’t go into details about the colony episode, because that’s been done to death already, but, woah, major setback there. Back to the knee-jerk reaction of treating individuals of a race as complicit and responsible for the actions and perception of that race as perpetuated by a handful of individuals. And then -- flash forward to s8 -- we are welcoming Galra allies in our cause! Please join our Coalition! We want to help you!

Look. I’m not saying that you can’t retcon stuff; that you can’t go Good vs. Evil, develop into Grey Morality, and then reveal something and BOOM, jk, it was Good vs. Evil all along, gotcha! I’m sure that there is an author somewhere out there that has pulled that off effectively (I can’t think of any examples myself right now, but I’m sure it must exist somewhere).

I am saying that if you’re going to do that -- if you are going to pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet and sacrifice some crucial character development (and crucial characters themselves, let’s be honest) -- you better have a DAMN GOOD IN-UNIVERSE reason for doing so. And no, shock value or getting rid of a character because they were overshadowing the protags doesn’t count. Otherwise, your protagonists will look like giant jerks. Unless, of course, that’s what you’re going for, but I highly doubt that was the thinking here.

And then, we proceed to flip flop between “I knew it, the Galra are irredeemably evil, what’s wrong with these people?!” (I think Hunk -- HUNK, by far the most empathetic character -- said this at some point in s7?) and “Here, we can work together towards a brighter future” or some shit. You can’t do that. I mean you can, but you’re gonna get major backlash from your audience. Pick a fucking direction and stick with it.

For the past three seasons, it has really felt like the story line is being pulled into two different directions: 1) staying true to the original source material of Paladins = good, Galra/Drule = bad, and 2) providing the viewers with a groundbreaking, nuanced interpretation. 

My dudes. You can’t have both. Trying to implement both of these approaches means having morally grey, nuanced characters operating within a narrative framework that is subject to an overarching principle of a strict Good/Evil dichotomy. Do you know how fucking hard that is to pull off effectively without diving headfirst into the pitfall of punishing your morally grey characters by default, simply because they happen to exist in a universe that cannot, by nature, support them???? I can think of only a handful of authors that have managed that and, I would argue, that the man at the top of the list only managed to be so effective and influential because what he wrote was, in essence, a mythology. Mythologies have a totally different set of concerns surrounding them. And even then, he went to great lengths, both in his works and outside of them in discussions/interviews, to note that the “evil” in his world could never have happened without it intentionally being part of the larger cosmological design, i.e. balance. I’m talking, of course, about Tolkien. 

Why the fuck would you attempt to pull something like this off in a kids’ cartoon?! Avatar: The Last Airbender, since everyone loves that comparison, was defined by a black/white view that developed into a very simple grey morality, and it was this limited scope that allowed it to be presented so effectively. None of this sashaying back and forth. 

Especially when this flip flopping is done for le dramatic effect/shock value, with seemingly no good in-story reason?? Of course it’s gonna fall flat.

2. Concept vs. Execution:

This is probably what drives me crazy the most about VLD. 

As an idea, it was fucking brilliant -- anyone who has watched DotU, even with all the nostalgia, I imagine, can admit that it was very much a cut and dry 80s cartoon, with simple concerns; Vehicle Voltron attempted some nuances, but the Lion Voltron part of the show, which was by far the more popular part, was pretty stiff in that regard. VLD took that and introduced themes like: being biracial (Keith, Lotor, etc.), having to choose between duty and family (Krolia), having to choose between personal dreams and important relationships (Shiro), having to overcome deep-seated understandable prejudice and work with people you never thought you could come to stand for a greater cause and through that see that not everything is black and white and attain a greater understanding of the world (Allura), leaving home and learning to survive in a totally foreign environment in the worst circumstances possible (the paladins), dealing with disability, mental illness/ptsd while also dealing with issues of being in a position of leadership/power (Shiro), parental abuse (Lotor), substance abuse (Honerva and Zarkon), being a clone and coming to terms with that (Shiro/Kuron), learning to compromise and sacrifice personal integrity/morals for the betterment/survival of those you have made yourself responsible for (the paladins), and so much more than that. Lotor’s relationship with Honerva/Haggar had serious undertones of both Mother and Child symbolism, as well as Arthurian legend. The whole quintessence thing drew pointers from ancient and medieval concepts of alchemy.

The inclusion of any of these things, injected into a pretty straightforward and tame original source material like DotU, was inspired. What an absolutely fantastic take, with incredible potential.

... and it was the shoddiest, shittiest implementation and execution of any concepts that I have ever seen. Like... how? How did they manage to not be able to successfully see any of these themes to a close, and to actually offend the vast majority of their fanbase (regardless of background, age, race, sexuality, literally from all walks of life) by the way these themes were handled???? 

I’m sure time restraints, direction from above, etc., played a big part in it, but still. If you don’t have time to properly develop the interpersonal relationships between the core members of your main group of characters -- to the point that, say, Keith and Pidge? Hunk and Shiro? Did they ever properly, truly have any meaningful interactions? -- there’s no way you could properly handle all of this.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew. 

Also? As stories are being fleshed out, they and their characters tend to take on a life of their own. The Lotor/Keith parallels? I totally believe and understand how it’s possible that it was unintentional. But when that happens, you go back and rework the rest of your plot to make sense with what you now have before you. You adjust and adapt. You don’t barrel on ahead headless and not acknowledging it, and you don’t force your characters into straitjackets just because you want to doggedly follow this one idea.    

3. The Female Lead: 

Let me begin by saying that I really, really wanted to like Allura, and the way she was written was one of the biggest turn offs and disappointments for me. I won’t go into specifics regarding her, as there many posts that already address the problematic nature of how she treats people of her race vs. anyone Galra, but I will just look at her character development as a whole.

Perhaps the easiest way for me to voice my frustrations here would be with a comparison. Let’s look at my favorite female protagonist of all time, Nakajima Youko, from Juuni Kokuki (aka. The Twelve Kindgoms).

Youko starts off as a very meek high school girl, from a typical modern Japanese family. Class representative, top grades, is scared of conflict and wants to live up to everyone’s expectations of her, which makes her very submissive, a total coward emotionally, mentally, and physically. She seeks to please everyone and, as a result, harms her own development by never giving any thought to her own desires and ends up bullied by everyone around her. Magic happens, shit goes down, and she is whisked away to a different world that is parallel to our own, along with two friends from school; ripped from her home, her family, with absolutely no way back. This other world has a different language, people who end up in there from our world are treated like garbage and are slaves, has a medieval level of tech/advancement, and Youko with her friends has to figure out how to survive. She finds out she is actually queen of one of the realms in this world, which makes her a target of various groups. She is betrayed by literally everyone around her, everyone she places her trust in, including the two friends that got transported to this world with her. 

She goes from meek and mild to bloodthirsty and brash; lashing out at everyone around her, plotting to kill those that offer her a helping hand, becoming unreasonably suspicious and racist and way out of line. Understandably so, but the narrative doesn’t, for one moment, present this as okay. Some more stuff happens and she finally snaps out of it, comes to a couple of realizations, and has major character development. She develops the attitude that, yes, people have betrayed and hurt her, but their actions towards her and their opinion of her is none of her business. It will not stop her from acting in ways that are in line with her own morals; if people choose to betray and use her, that’s on them. She will simply do what she must, and treat everyone as an individual according to their actions. This doesn’t mean that she adopts a pushover mentality -- it just means that she loses her knee-jerk reaction, and doesn’t rush to conclusions. She becomes a badass warrior and queen, strong and just, and, frankly, one of the most well-developed female characters I have ever seen.

Do I think this is the only way to write a strong female character? Of course not. But I’m convinced this is what the writers wanted to do with Allura, this kind of progression and path, from being angry, lost, and alone to being a confident, capable, magnificent ruler. And, imo, they totally missed the mark.

I think that the writers were so focused on giving us a “strong” modern female character, and getting as far away from her DotU damsel in distress depiction as possible, that they ended up writing her as, basically, a bully. Sure, they tell us -- both through other characters’ words in the show and through interviews -- about her diplomacy, peaceful nature, leadership quality, open-mindedness, etc., but they never show it to us. In almost every key moment in the series, she has been written to be combative and suffering from tunnel-vision.   

And a huge part of this is that they simply didn’t give her any room to grow. Youko’s character started off at maybe... 5% of her potential? She was honestly so “weak,” I thought about dropping the series. But by the point the anime ended (because the story itself is unfinished and unlikely to continue, unfortunately), I’d say she’s at around 70%. That makes for an extremely dramatic, fulfilling, and believable character development. The VLD writers started Allura off much higher than that. Too high. From the get-go she’s a highly accomplished martial artist, has incredible physical strength due to her Altean heritage, a seemingly natural affinity for leadership and for appealing to people, she’s very attractive, well spoken, had a loving and supportive family, is a princess, had a brilliant alchemist for a father, has access to the universe’s greatest super weapon -- I mean, yes, she’s had to deal with immense loss and grief and come to terms with it in a very short period of time, and lost her father a second time so to speak with Alfor’s AI -- but overall, everything has been set up and handed to her in a nice package. Other than overcoming her hatred towards the Galra and idealization of Altea/Alteans, really, there’s nothing left for her to do that would be defining for her character.

That’s not to say that characters that are extremely accomplished from the start are a bad thing. But in their case, their emotional and mental development and maturity is that much more important, because that’s all that’s left to work with. The writers didn’t really give Allura any significant room to grow in terms of any of that. (And no, I don’t consider her new alchemical powers from Oriande as her growing; she expended no effort for that, it wasn’t really a trial at all for her; it was like me playing a video game on casual mode with the “killallenemies” console command enabled). Her overcoming her racism towards the Galra, beginning with Keith and BoM and continuing to do so with subsequent Galra allies, had a TON of potential and I had been so excited to see where it would go; but that fell flat, totally forgotten by the story.

In contrast, you have Lotor -- we see him struggling to claw his way out of the hand that fate has dealt him, to grow beyond his family’s influence and abuse. Both on and off screen, even described by his own enemies in great detail, we see just how much he has had to fight and to earn everything he has and he is, even things that shouldn’t have to be “earned” in the first place. He’s lost Daibazaal and Altea, both his father and his mother, he’s too Galra for anyone who’s not and not nearly enough Galra for anyone who is. Literally nothing has been handed to him. The juxtaposition between him and Allura, had Allura been given more breathing room by the writers, could have been fantastic and I would have shipped the hell out of it, like I do in DotU. She’s had everything he’s ever wanted (loving family, supportive father, Alfor himself, exploration, alchemy), etc.; envy would have been extremely appropriate on his part, and very interesting to work through, but that was never explored either.

So, I feel like what ended up happening was that a huge imbalance in how these two characters came across was created, made only more evident when their relationship with each other was what was front and center. And, at least for me, this is what makes me completely unable to see Allura’s side of things, and I freely admit it -- I simply don’t understand her or her actions, because I don’t feel like I’ve been shown enough of her inner workings as a character to be able to care about her in the slightest. I can definitely see where the writers were going with her, or where they thought they were going. But unless they actually meant for the character that is, for all intents and purposes, their female lead to be a  racist, abusive, immature person playing at being an adult and at being the leader of a coalition spanning galaxies, who has no problem condemning millions of lives to death and devastation at a whim of her emotions because they are Valid™, and who wades dangerously close to “Mary Sue” territory many times due the way the narrative frames her... then all I see on screen is an unfinished character. Unfinished, because the writers didn’t take any opportunities in the narrative for the flaws and issues she does have to be addressed and overcome, opportunities of which there were plenty! I absolutely don’t mind that she has flaws -- flawed heroes are amazing. But, you gotta do something about them, i.e. address them and work through them. Otherwise your heroes remain static in a plot that is evolving and that’s not a good look.

And, you know, I honestly think DotU Allura is a much stronger female character. She works for everything she gets. She works her ass off. She has to fight to not only be allowed to be part of the team and fly a lion, but even just to do everyday common things like be out in the fields or swim or whatever; forget practicing martial arts. Coran literally ties her up at one point to prevent her from participating. Nanny is a constant battle for her. Over everything, from her clothes to her manner of speaking to where she’s going. But she doesn’t stop, she doesn’t give up. And she fucks up, BIG TIME, several times, she does TONS of stupid shit. But she learns, acknowledges it, gets called out on it, tries again, and keeps on trying. DotU Allura’s biggest battles, in my mind, aren’t with Lotor or the Drule forces or Zarkon, but with her own team and those she considers family, and her struggle for the others’ acceptance of herself and her skills within the group. And for that, she is a much stronger, more solid female character than VLD Allura, despite all superficial appearances and frilly pink dresses and 80s voice acting.

Again, like I said in a previous post, I don’t conform to the view that creators owe their fans anything. Write things however the fuck you want. You want to kill Allura off, fine. Do away with Lotor too? Cool. I completely understand people who want happy endings in fiction because, it’s true, reality fucking sucks; there are several fictional works I turn to whenever real life is too much. And I would be lying if I said that I don’t crave stories where characters like Lotor are given happy endings; of course I want my favorite characters to be okay. But overall, I’m the type of person who, as long as things make for an effective, compelling narrative, I’ll be content with it, regardless of whether the ending is tragic or happy or anything in between. 

So you want to kill off your morally grey character and your female lead, who is also one of the only women on the team, who is also a princess figure, who has also been completely visually redesigned in such a way that you know women of color will relate to her? That’s fine by me, go right ahead. But do so in a way that is meaningful and makes sense within the larger narrative you created, and isn’t some empty, sensationalist gesture. 

And also be aware of your fanbase. This is a reboot -- that comes with certain expectations attached, as a number of the viewers will very likely be fans of the old series, watching out of curiosity, nostalgia, etc. Expectations like, the princess lives, the heroes aren’t assholes, etc. (and I’m referring to expectations from DotU and other Western iterations, rather than the original Japanese series). You don’t have to conform to these expectations -- personally, I’m a big fan of tropes being subverted -- but you need to be aware of them. You need to know the rules before you break them, and if you break them, you better break them damn well.

Imo, VLD ultimately failed to deliver on these fronts, and pretty much fell prey to what a lot of series do -- it couldn’t handle the shift from being primarily episodic in nature (i.e., each episode is self-contained, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, while operating under a distant general goal, like defeating Zarkon; so, s1 and s2) to becoming a more complex narrative unraveling a hidden agenda (s3 onwards). Kind of like how the paladins made no provisions for how they would handle things after Zarkon’s defeat, it feels like the writers didn’t really have one solid plan for how to develop past that point as well.

tl;dr: Whoever is responsible for the way VLD turned out should write a book: how to offend your entire audience in eight seasons or less.

#okay i think this is my last personal post on the matter #i think i've vented about everything that's been bugging me for the past couple of seasons #i'll still reblog and comment on things i find interesting #but i'm gonna focus my energy on constructive stuff #like plucking the hairline of lotor's wig and writing fanfic :) #talk: v

[worldly-diversity]

ADDING A NEW MUSE YET AGAIN—

Shé Límíng

Original Character

Finding the choice of name and origin of her friends amusing, Shé too chose her name to be inspired by China, whose myths were varied and contradictory in many aspects but which she still found enjoyable. Like Fèng and Lóng, her first name is a direct translation referring to 'snake' or 'serpent', which is what her true form embodies.

Her last name, Límíng, is a reference to the dawn based in both the Chinese Zodiac as well as Egyptian lore regarding the changing colours that the dawn and dusk bring to the sky. As such, her general motif is all but drenched in the colour red, and she thoroughly enjoys how it looks on her equally in her serpentine, human and hybrid forms.

She, like the others, can shape-shift, but while they rarely make use of their hybrid forms she enjoys embracing hers. With it, her legs transform into the serpent tail of her original form while her fangs lengthen and become capable of emitting venom. Naturally, she can choose whether her eyes see in colour as humans do, or in heat as serpents do.

Her personality has a matching duality to the various interpretations of her being, as she is both kind and cruel, can bring both healing and destruction. Shé comes across as a cultured woman of high status, something reflected both in the perfection of her skin and the costly materials in which she dresses. Upon several places on her body, translucent red scales cover her human skin, giving from a distance the appearance of a intricate tattoo, though upon closer inspection one can tell that the scales are both real and a part of her.

These sections of scales are sensitive, and she will not hesitate to lash out against any scratching over them. She is far more durable in her serpentine form however. Touching her scales gently may elicit different reactions based on her level of trust towards the individual, from physical pleasure to vicious and venomous anger.

Shé does not habitually look down on humans and mortals, or so she claims. Her attitude upon acquiring a human that pleases her tends to be equivalent to how one would treat a beloved pet. After all, they die in the blink of an eye so assigning true value to them is difficult for her.

High society is usually the place she can be found, luxurious parties with their fair share of debauchery especially attract her attention. She enjoys indulging in anything that strikes her fancy, from dinners to dancing to people and sex. She is very aware of her appeal and her skills of seduction are almost effortless as her supernatural heritage naturally attracts others to her.

Shé can also be convinced to bring blessings or fortune upon something, though she'll flat out refuse unless she's courted and worshipped, which involves a lot of money spent in gifts to appease her ego and pride. Should she determine the gifts to have been insufficient, she will turn on them and bring ruin instead.

Her powers, like her outfit, are reflected in flames, despite the many representations of her kind being associated with water and rivers. She prefers to leave the wet elements to Lóng and delves in flames and heat instead. Though certain serpents are also associated with the earth, it is through heat that she can both manipulate and heal people. Or just burn them, really…

#character profile #universe • original character #interactions • she liming #appearance • she liming #musings • she liming #aesthetic • she liming #characteristics • she liming #connections • she liming #and the third of the mythological trio~ =D

[mbcoldstorage]

The Winnipeg-based artist makes multi-media work at the intersection of film, poetry, politics, and architecture.

by Mónica Savirón |  19 MAR 2019

Rhayne Vermette; courtesy of the artist. Punchers, burins, blade knives, and guillotine splicers invade Rhayne Vermette’s working space. Born in Notre Dame de Lourdes, Manitoba, and residing in Winnipeg, for this self-taught artist, collage, photography, and film are the tools that demolish the house of rhetoric. Inspired by architects who infused a reinterpretation of building with wood, glass, and stone, Vermette questions methodological foundations and surroundings—in her case, to make the towers fall. What once was defined as path and pillar do not govern the artist or her work. She breaks down structures that mirror the dysfunctional models and causalities of closed structures. Her schemes and patterns are not affixed or in service to a system. Instead, she shows what is beneath the logic of

make-sense

enunciations, and their own relational dynamics. By deconstructing edifices of rules, meaning takes its power back. Scratches, flares, glue, and tape are the weapons of the artist’s anti-language.Highly laborious and musical, Rhayne Vermette’s works are moving fragments of a whole that transform themselves both poetically and politically. A female character in a film (

Take My Word

, 2012) will continue evolving in another a year later (

Full of Fire

). Each image is a composition of movable motifs that respond and react in disregard to categorical, self-contained conventions. The artist choreographs shifts and alterations in what had been previously built up as truth or context, stratification and alienation. In one of her first films,

Tricks are for Kiddo

(2012), multiple little pieces of 16mm found footage gets overlapped in varying densities and taped to clear leader into different positions. An animation results from reshooting the collage on an optical printer while running the film at constant speed. Scenes that were not meant to convene are assembled together over the flying carpet of the celluloid strip, unmatched juxtapositions in the stream of consciousness.

Tricks are for Kiddo

, by Rhayne Vermette; courtesy of the artist. 2012, 2 minutes, HD from 16mm, color, sound,The concept of rebuilding from what is broken or left out also resides behind Vermette’s

Black Rectangle

(2013), a film that relates to Kazimir Malevich’s painting

Black Square

(1913). The Kiev-born artist adopted the cracked, non-representational, geometric form as a “refuge” for the cultural and social revolts that would lead to the October Revolution. Both protecting and hiding, in Vermette’s film black rectangular sections adhered to transparent celluloid act as barricades or curtains. The placement of each element within the frame is marked by the white spacing that surrounds or cuts them, as in 19th century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s theory of

espacement

between words on a page (

Poem. A Throw of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance

, 1914). Thanks to these delimitations, clusters of similar materials manage to show their own singularities. A closer visual connection comes from Marcel Broodthaers's interpretation in 1969 of Mallarmé’s poem, a translation in graphic forms: black blocks substitute the words, their width stretching in relation to the original type size. In

Black Rectangle

, the obstructing shapes take over the optical track field of the 16mm frame, and create an ominous, seemingly destructive, popping and cracking sound when they travel through the gate of the film projector. Ideas of place and absence translate into visual and audible breaks in the action through rhythmic repetition or silence, an idea developed in Jacques Derrida’s chapter

Différance

(

Margins of Philosophy

, 1972): “An interval must separate the present from what it is not in order for the present to be itself, but this interval that constitutes it as present must, by the same token, divide the present in and of itself... this interval is what might be called

spacing

, the becoming-space of time or the becoming-time of space.” Vermette’s body of work pushes this theory towards a feminist perspective: what matters is not the story that gets repeated as believable, but who is allowed to talk and what their silences speak to.  

Kazimir Malevich’s

Black Square

, 1913. Reproduction from the State Tretyakov gallery, Moscow.

Excerpt from

Poème. Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard

, by Stéphane Mallarmé, 1897: “WILL ABOLISH / AS IF / An insinuation / in the silence / in some close / acrobatics”.

Image from Poème.

Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard

, by Marcel Broodthaers, 1969.

Caption:

Black Rectangle

, by Rhayne Vermette; courtesy of the artist. 2013, 2 minutes, HD from 16mm, color, sound. Indexes of power, the quick images’ shallow depth is brought into the open in Vermette’s work by aggregating layers, both in space and in improbability. The shards of celluloid she brings together from inside the frame or the sprocket hole area, and the sequential cuts, being sharp or dissolved, shed light on materiality and memory. Similarly, the sounds mixed from different sources and at equal volume levels interfere intelligibility. Vermette’s web of sounds mirrors the frustration and aggressivity that take place in communication. Wavering from high to low, and from left to right, sounds have the effect of implacable, movable wind around obelisks of Babelian misunderstanding. By shifting hierarchy among sounds, Vermette may baffle expectations of inattentive listening. A different approach to perceiving sound allows for the creation of new expressions and, therefore, new ways of thinking. Existentially and syntactically, tacit subordinations (“the way things are”) have no part in the calligraphy and cartography of the artist’s work. Constructions are, ideologically and formally, torn down—the beginning and the end of disbelief.  It is inevitable to associate Vermette’s interest in structures, or her detachment, with the Structural/materialist film movement. The repeated use of contrasting patterns and geometric shapes at different exposures and focal lengths speaks to a methodology in which time affords dimensionality. The most important aspect of the presentation of an image is its framing and the passing time between moving parts: the entr’acte. The process and its artificiality are the film. The square or rectangle that surrounds the image is the same of a window, of a house’s wall, the artist’s room, and the flat table she works on. Vermette is interested in what those spaces permit, and how they can be animated through scale, perspective, duration, and imagination. She challenges materials and constructions, and breaks them down to chaotic configurations that, in turn, become a vindication of basic forms. Through fixed camera-pointing, loops, and transitions, perspective gets displaced. “Only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is,” we hear in Vermette’s film

Les Châssis de Lourdes

(2016), made with footage the artist’s father had shot in their family home. The quote is from David Byrne in his film

True Stories

(1986) after his band’s concert,

Stop Making Sense

, and regarding the nature of the chronicles published in tabloid newspapers at the time. His narration is a fitting and cohesive explanation of the metaphysical concerns that ignite Vermette’s work: the evolution of aspirations through time and experience or, what is the same, the pursuit of life after catastrophe.

Still from

Domus

, by Rhayne Vermette; courtesy of the artist. 2017, 15 minutes, HD from 35mm, 16mm and Super-8mm, color, sound.Vermette’s work as a whole is neither experimental nor documentarian or fictional, but something mutable that brings together elements from all those categories, a kind of multi-media architectural settlement of the mind where ruins and reigns collide. For Vermette, the film frame is not a cage or rigid container, but one of those homes whose structures are capable of swinging during earthquakes, adapting to the changing phases, morphing and readjusting, moving along. This is reminiscent of Japanese building design, but also of Italian Carlos Mollino’s work, which Vermette has studied for many years, and served as inspiration for her films

Turin

(2015) and

Domus

(2018). Reflecting on a utopian architecture, and with the versatility that mixing 35mm, 16mm, Super-8mm, black and white paper copies, and negative film affords,

Domus

frees itself from plots, maps, and models. Vermette recites stanzas that channel the free spirit of her subject, inspired by artist Al Jarnow’s time-lapse, stop-motion film

Celestial Animation

(1985):

In this space,divided by time,defined by light,we wait. Through what filter does a dream emerge instrument of precision a constructive prosceniumfor a perspective of vision waiting by night in the shadow  of its framea darkness crowds the landscape and crouching behind this cold partitionborn from memoryand new to my languagehe comes.

Vermette utilizes cutter knives to craft line-based compositions on celluloid the way Mollino used pencils to sketch his buildings. Mollino had a Surrealist eye, and the dream-like two-room apartment he designed and built in Turin, the Casa Miller, was the set to stage his photographic work. He manipulated negatives, prints, and Polaroid film to achieve, if nothing else, at least his conceptual desires. An image of the interior entrance of this apartment became the front cover of the leading architectural journal

Domus

in 1937. In his photographs, the arrangement of furniture, fabrics, shapes, and bodies highlights what his vision as an artist was about: the creation of spaces that bring closer material architecture and sentient beings, shelters to be sentimental shells meant to last. Vermette sees this same potential in the malleability of celluloid, its organic ability to transcend. Connection and progression do not happen naturally, though. They need to be conjured, repeatedly, and often incited by failure. That is the case in

Tudor Village: A One Shot Deal

(2012), a film where Vermette explores the town’s sounds, and her experience trying to capture with her camera a lunar eclipse. Embracing mistakes and defeat, her meticulous work reflects on those aspects of the artistic process that are outside control. The deviations and strangeness of derailing lead the way to wider reach and depths.In search of that place that resembles the trace of the heart, Vermette’s work draws a consistently evolving trajectory. Now in preparation of a scripted film with an all-female crew, she questions her familiar modus operandi, switching the order and routines of her creative process, the labyrinth’s corridors and itineraries. Actors and performative acts further the implications of art as destruction, testing models of command, pushing the artist’s creative walls, and expanding the terrain as in a panoramic shot. The art of architecture in film is no other than light projected in the darkroom of the mind, a sensorial space for the construction of other words, worlds, and politics, those beyond the burned house in the time of rebirth.

Rhayne Vermette transferring the final scene of

Domus

. Image by Ed Ackerman.

The Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF, will present the special program "Enfolded Space: The Work of Rhayne Vermette" on March 20 with the artist in attendance.

Under the title "Armed Woman at Desk," this piece will appear in a forthcoming collection on the work of Rhayne Vermette, edited by Stephen Broomer, and published by Sightline Books.

***

The Very Eye of Night

is a series of columns on nonbinary and female avant-garde film and video artists. The title refers to Maya Deren’s last completed film.

[seams-like-an-adventure]

Anastasia Review: From Broadway To Tour

I adore this musical.

It is a shining example of an adaptation that blossoms with a new interpretation, yet still respects its source material (The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Lion King come to mind). Anastasia is not the film. Frankly, it’s better.

Leaning more on history, and unhampered by a textbook children’s villain, the musical touches on everything the film glossed over for the sake of action. The grandmother’s grief, Anya’s survival, Russia’s struggles after the revolution, and the aristocrats scraping together what little glory they have in exile. It gives the musical more dimension than the film ever had.

But by far the most compelling to watch is Anya’s transformation into Anastasia. We meet her as a street sweeper, when a truck backfiring has triggered her PTSD; even without her memory, her subconscious remembers the firing squad. When she takes up with Dmitry and Vlad, it’s as much for her own ends as theirs, because Anastasia or not, they will get her to Paris. But in the course of her training she remembers more than she was taught. And it is Dmitry’s memory of Anastasia that finally triggers her own; where the film left us wanting on that turning point, “In A Crowd Of Thousands” does not disappoint.

When I saw the production on Broadway, I had the privilege of speaking to Christy Altomare, the Original Broadway Cast’s Anastasia. I asked her about this turning point, and her interpretation of it as an actress, because it had always fascinated me in the film- how much Anastasia remembers, and when she begins to believe herself. Christy gave me a long and in-depth answer, which unfortunately I didn’t record, but I paraphrase from my notes as follows:

“  I had a conversation with the director very early on, and we decided that the tipping point is that moment in “In A Crowd Of Thousands”. After that memory, they all start flooding back, and Anastasia remembers everything. So when she encounters Countess Lily, she knows her, and she remembers. But ultimately she needs her grandmother’s affirmation. When the Empress won’t speak to her, or even look at her, she immediately doubts everything. The line is blurred between what she remembers and what she has been taught. And in their later encounter, she wavers between Anastasia and Anya, because when the Empress can’t see Anastasia, neither can she; she needs that affirmation, but to quote the Empress, ‘you must first know yourself.’  ”

It is a beautiful and heart-rending scene. It ends with Anastasia in her Nana’s arms, with her little exclamation of “oranges!” over the memory of the Empress’ perfume- a validation in herself.

The Tour Cast does an amazing job of bringing the heart of the musical with them. With such talented voices, extravagant costumes, and stellar projections (the cinematography of this show is another essay altogether), it was a pleasure to see the musical again.

It took some time to fall for Lila Coogan’s interpretation of Anya… she felt almost flat for the first several scenes. In retrospect, it’s hard to tell if it was Coogan warming into the role, or Anya presenting a more guarded exterior to begin with. Regardless, she brought a more child-like quality to the character, and the chemistry between the Tour’s Anya and Dmitry was more palpable than their counterparts on Broadway, at least in my opinion.

But the biggest quibbles I have with the Tour were the cut music… in terms of the plot, “Crossing A Bridge” wasn’t as inconspicuous an omission. I liked that moment of reflection on Pont Alexandre III bridge- it tied the musical back into Anya’s search for her family- and the introspective song added to her character’s state of mind in Paris, but the couple lines of dialogue the Tour used did suffice.

More than anything I lament the loss of Anya’s verse in “Learn To Do It.”

“  I’ve had it! And I hate you both! / I’m sorry that we ever met! / I’m hungry, and I’m frightened- / I’m only human don’t forget! / I don’t remember anything, / get out and let me be!  ”

In the first scenes of getting to know her, this outburst was integral to building her character. This is the fiery Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov’s first true appearance, paired with Anya’s frustration and despair with the endless battle in her mind. When a character is pushed to their limits, our understanding of them is greater, and we are able to sympathize with them more. Cutting the verse to appease those more familiar with the film’s soundtrack perhaps hurt more than anything.

However, overall, none of this marred the Tour’s performance overmuch. The story was there, the journey and the emotion the same, and if anything it only strengthened my love of the musical. When I first heard the changes that the Broadway show would make to the film, I was skeptical. But I could not possibly have been more pleased with how the adaptation has turned out. Anastasia is certainly a shining example of how an adaptation can make something achieve new life, and truly flourish.

#Cara Writes

[theplanetlaboratory-blog]

The birth of this lecture happened unexpectedly. I place this birth somewhere in the previous months.

During that period of time, I was addicted to live streaming videos of the earth as seen from the International Space Station.

Additionally, I had to choose an “object” as subject for analysis in the framework of the seminar lectures titled: Anthropology of Material Culture. 

Guess what(!): Earth rose as my object-star.

More precisely, the problem I have chosen to deal with could be presented through the following questions:

 What are the main attributes of the object-Earth analyzed as a product of material culture?

Is there any common human perception of the earth as an object?

 Which are the lines connecting or separating people’s notions about this unfamiliarly immense familiar mother-object?

 Can the diverse representations of the earth tell different stories?

 Can the plenty and unique narratives draw different images or do they form a unique and autonomous mosaic made out of smaller heteronomous parts?

 What is the image of the earth, taking into account the scale of the planet and the distance needed for the “whole picture” to be achieved?

 Is there any ontological difference between the human notion of the earth and the earth itself?

Do these representations work as springs of power that form and effect streams of communication between the human beings?

Throughout history, the earth is represented in many ways. Geometries varies from the flat-plate to the globe, and from that to the deformed ellipsoid. In terms of trajectory, earth could be found either in the center of a planetary system (or even of the universe) or in orbit around other celestial bodies. A variety of orbit or pivot axises, different shapes and positions in the ring-system derive from empirical observations as well as from states of human imagination or formal texts and informal customs or traditions. From Pythagoras and pythagorians, Aristarchus and Aristotle to Galileo and Copernicus, alterations of the dominant model of the solar system count thousands years of life. However, there is no doubt, that empirical and scientific conjunction, which led to the contemporary scientifically proved solar system model, historically collided with quite different versions of cosmic representation. Especially in religious texts, in which Cosmos is God’s creation, priests are responsible for cosmological issues. In other words, each cosmic model is compatible with specific narratives and vice versa.

In Plato’s Republic (380 BC), Er revives on his funeral-pyre and tells others of his journey in the afterlife, including an account of reincarnation and the celestial spheres of the astral plane.

In the sixth book of De republica (54-51 BC) Cicero describes a fictional dream-vision of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, set two years before he commanded at the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC. Scipio Aemilianus is visited by his dead grandfather and finds himself looking down upon Carthage "from a high place full of stars, shining and splendid". His future is foretold by his grandfather, and great stress is placed upon the loyal duty of the Roman soldier, who will as a reward after death "inhabit... that circle that shines forth among the stars which you have learned from the Greeks to call the Milky Way". Nevertheless, Scipio Aemilianus sees that Rome is an insignificant part of the earth, which is itself dwarfed by the stars.

Macrobius, later, comments on the dream of Scipio and therefore he comments upon the nature of the cosmos, transmitting much classical philosophy to the later Middle Ages. Following Macrobius through the combination of knowledge and imagination, many scholars contributed to this ancient dialog. This thought, is obviously relevant and somehow ancestral to our contemporary knowledge for the solar system. Could not be excluded that this thousand year old heliocentric model involving spherical objects, gradually became an arena for religious conflicts. The flat earth as the center of the universe constitutes an exemplary conflict point between the Protestants and Catholic teaching. Let’s make the hypothesis that when someone prefers a God they prefer a Cosmos and consequently a version of the Earth.

 But what happens if, as Nietzsche said, the God is dead or even more critically if, as the “Whole Earth Catalog” begins [W]e are as gods and might as well get used to it?

 The hypothesis transforms. So, could be a fact that different narratives refer to the making of new planets and, therefore, even if we meet each other on one planet's surface, at the same time we reside in different ones. How tragic could be the scenario of human beings making planets with no flight routes to connect each other?

As Heidegger puts it, human dwelling is the residing of mortals on the earth under the sky and in front of the gods. In this philosophical perspective, human life is inseparable from the understanding of the whole earth as home. Apart from this planet-house notion, an ecological consciousness could be discerned. Moreover, ecology definition  (from Greek: οἶκος, "house", or "environment"; -λογία, "study of" implies the dwelling connection of the human beings to their home planet. Around 1970 environmental-ecological movements started to turn global and use the image of the earth as one of their main symbols. The same period the earth day established. The skyrocketing awareness coincides with the first whole earth images captured thank to space programs rockets, vehicles and satellites.

 The “Whole Earth Catalog”, a counterculture magazine first published in 1968, stands as an exemplary evidence of the synchronization of the rise of ecology, political movements, global media communication, space technology and new ways of representation of the earth. In 1966, Stewart Brand initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, the first image of the "Whole Earth." He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. An item is listed in the Catalogue if it is deemed:

1. Useful as a tool,

2. Relevant to independent education

3. High quality or low cost

4. Not already common knowledge,

5. Easily available by mail.

Nowadays, there are innumerable photos of our planet seen from space either shooted from a satellite or an astronaut's hand. The internet seems to make the Catalog’s list irrelevant offering free access to plenty of tools and education in teleporting speeds. But the inverted problem of the access is still there. There so many tools and so much information, that makes all this worthy stuff invisible. A new version of the Catalogue could be just a series of links uploaded redirecting the user to the website of the product previously “advertised” in the printed version.

 What has been already said should be interpreted rather as a comparison than a historical reference. In anthropological perspective, the importance of scientific evidence is equal to the significance of minor beliefs like the flat earth hypothesis. Throughout a rapid digital ethnography taken place in the cyber-field of chat bars and comment lists under and next to earth live stream videos or relevant videos or topics, a nebula of earth’s versions was drawn out. Continuing to speak in anthropological terms, there is no essence in trying to prove which version is true and which is false. What makes sense is the understanding of the living process of information, communication, knowledge, art and imagination that give shape to every version of the planet.

After surfing through the infinite online conversations related to the earth, a spectrum of thousands personal perceptions of what the earth looks like turns into a universe made out of options of Earth, and by extension of the Cosmos.

This process is both global and personal and it is related to the channels of information everyone is randomly exposed to or selects either to plug-in or to unplug.

 I suggest this procedure to be seen as a planet laboratory, a space where planet-making and cosmo-poiesis take place. A metaphorical definition of the objects being produced in this laboratory of material culture is the holographic one. As Roy Wagner puts it, “when a whole is subdivided, it is divided into holograms of itself”. In this way, in the case of Earth, all the planets the laboratory creates as fragmental representations of the earth, could work as autonomous planets. At the same time, the pragmatologically unique planet Earth is the total aggregation of the fragmental representations.

I finish this lecture by presenting one exemplary planet_lab-product: the ISS planet. As referred before, the image of the Earth as a globe was conceived either through science or through dream and imagination since the ancient times. The first visual evidence came out thousand years later after NASA publishing the first whole earth photograph. A few years ago NASA started the HDEV (High Definition Earth Viewing) program, the first live streaming video connection between the ISS and earth. Almost everyone has the opportunity to get themselves in orbit and observe the earth from this inhuman perspective travelling in extreme speed and complete a full spin around the earth in about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Personally, I first stumbled on this video using Youtube. There was a channel transmitting the image of the earth as seen from the ISS. The video was accompanied by an ambient music background augmenting the cosmic feelings of the user by adding some soundscape information. Additionally, as I realised, the video was real-time material edited every time the ISS entered the dark side of the earth. In a nutshell, the original video should be black 45 minutes out of the total 90 minutes ISS needs to complete a spin around the earth. Finally there is a chat bar to the right of the video where the users can post strictly in the english language. I have used many times this video as a relaxing visual and audio background.

On the other hand, the NASA original video is transmitted through the less popular Ustream. In this video there is no soundtrack and some commands break the cosmic silence. The half video is indeed black and there are no restrictions or specific rules for chatting.

If the ISS_Planet is a hologram of the Earth, then the Youtube_Planet and the Ustream_Planet are holograms of a hologram, namely the ISS_Planet.

The Youtube hologram is always bright producing ambient sounds. The chat is quick, overcrowded, often censored, with no specific subject of conversation.

The Ustream hologram is half bright and half black. There is no sound. The chat is more science oriented. It is easier for the users to develop a conversation.

In both planets the image of the earth is watched through the ISS parts’ frame and approximately 1000 users watch.

[sashaburenkov]

CITIZENSFIVE

26 – 28 May 2017

Artists:

Philipp Timischl / Christopher Kulendran Thomas & Annika Kulmann / Albert Soldatov / Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos / Sasha Litvintseva / Alexey Vanushkin / MSL & Jaakko Pallasvuo / Pakui Hardware / CORE PAN / Beny Wagner / Jacky Connolly / Elizaveta Chukhlantseva / Lawrence Lek / Stephanie Comilang / Sara Culman / Viktor Timofeev / Jesse McLean / Eleni Bagaki / Erica Scourti / Bogdan Ablozhnyy / Louis Henderson / Valinia Svoronou / Graeme Arnfield / EKKE (Egor Kraft, Pekka Tynkkynen, Karina Goulbenko, Alina Kvirkveliya) / Patrick Staff /  Egle Kulbokaite & Dorota Gaweda / Felix Kalmenson / Jasper Spicero / Hannah Perry

Curated by Alexander Burenkov

In January 2013, Laura Poitras, an American documentary filmmaker who had been working for several years on a film about surveillance and monitoring programs in the US in the wake of 9/11, received an encrypted e-mail from a stranger who called himself "Citizenfour." In it, he offered her insider information about illegal wiretapping practices of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies.

Since then the world has drastically changed. In the post-Brexit world governed by both post-truth politics and sharing economy, the new urgencies of migration and resettlement as well as the changing concepts of citizenship and nationality and related to it new forms of anxieties emerge to restructure our lives. It’s not only creative prosumers roaming the world or Londoners moving to Athens for affordable rent, but also platform citizenship and social networks that are giving birth to the new digital, nomadic post-Snowden generation, “citizensfive” living a world in which everything is constantly visible and boundaries between the private and the public are blurred. Invisibility has been lost to the digital revolution — but why should that matter?

The idea of temporary spaces of habitation is something that we are experiencing in our daily lives. As we keep plugging more and more into car-sharing vehicles or Airbnb rooms, people own less while becoming more nomadic and less attached to anything like a stable home. This is one aspect of a transformation that is also causing a great amount of pain and anxieties in terms of the forced mobility, precariousness and insecurity, roommate after roommate. On the other hand, there is enormous potential in terms of public space in those small, private places. The only way Edward Snowden was able to do what he did was because he was in a «non-place», transit space of a hotel room 1014 at the Mira Hong Kong, a chic, «eco-friendly» hotel in Hong Kong’s shopping and entertainment district. A screening room of the exhibition CITIZENSFIVE designed as a hotel room referring to a typically blank transit space, where the videos by contemporary artists screened on a large LED screen will replace the «fake news» of modern TV channels, and will take a look at the reality beyond post-truth bubble, constructed by media, corporate, and state interests.

In the age of universal acceleration, our mind and body change, adapting to the environment in which we find ourselves. Blurred boundaries make us rethink our identity, we rethink our goals as human species and our citizenship is also lost in translation and found in transitional spaces of inter-zones, non-places of airports, hotels and Airbnb flats. In somato-, techno- or biocapitalism the body is no longer integral, but is fragmented and penetrated by new technologies that, in Paul Preciado’s parlance, are «soft, featherweight, viscous, gelatinous». Technology and hyper-capitalism have produced us – artists and all – as its «users».

The artists of the video section deal with themes ranging from surveillance politics, precarious lifestyle, hyperconnection and disunity at the same time, the problems of other dimensions of lost corporeality (no longer a «body without organs», but a virtual «body without flesh»), global communication networks and local communities.

Christopher Kulendran Thomas and Annika Kuhlmann in theirs video from their long-term artwork in the form of a startup «New Eelam», are wondering what could a new Eelam be if the idea of a self-governed state based on equality for all its citizens was imagined as a distributed network rather than a territorially bounded nation. New Eelam is based on re-engineering some of these structural operations of art and some of the property relations at the very heart of the present economic system - through collective access rather than individual ownership.

Sasha Litvintseva’s «Evergreen», follows an immortal traveller’s journey through failed and aspirational utopias , a series of uninhabited theme parks, postmodern museums and abandoned cities that signify islands of dislocated time, somewhere in a possible future Japan. Such wanderings allow Litvintseva to create a mesmeric experience, that subtly suggests the perpetual struggle for a perfect society and how the unquenchable desire of civilization to document itself, is perhaps driven by an unconscious awareness of its looming demise.

MSL & Jaakko Pallasvuo’s «Bridge Over Troubled Water» reimagines 1960s musical duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel as time-travelling protagonists whose association with a more hopeful era is at sharp odds with our increasingly precarious contemporary existence. Named after Simon & Garfunkel’s best selling album, Bridge Over Troubled Water follows them as they navigate past, present, and future post-human landscapes. Together they experience personal and ecological loss, entropy, and the impact of our insatiable fossil fuel consumption.

The character of Albert Soldatov's «Main Road» is in some kind of prostration, confusion, being exposed to alien forces, it turns off the usual route, its path is distorted and influenced by global media viruses, penetrating into everyday reality from the outside and infecting the character. The impact of these memes is unclear and unrecordable, only by changing behavior one can determine that something has gone wrong. We can notice the actions of atomized subjects, but do not interpret them, regardless of whether they are strange or ordinary. Their actions are dictated by the hermetic logic of the media entity.

Pakui Hardware's «Imprint»  speculates about imprinting as a form of shaping someone’s memories and experiences. Imagines a scenario when it is possible to ‘imprint’ into someone’s memory experiences that never took place. This way making it impossible to distinguish between real and imaginary things. How will be able to deal with this when we become digital subjectivities? In the era of Anthropocene, imprint has become a term that encompasses the interaction between physical bodies, materials and surfaces as well as between invisible but yet transforming forces such as flows of Capital. Thus imprint is both an intimate proximity between materials, bodies, surfaces and at the same it is a play of forces: there is always the one who presses the other, the softer, which functions as a surface for the other’s hard body (both political and material). It also incorporates temporality – the converge of the past, present and the future – because it requires time to become an imprint, to make an imprint.

Philipp Timischl's «Problems» is thematically and formally embedded in the American series “In Treatment” that deals with the problems of psychotherapy patients and those of the therapist himself. Framed as an image inside an image of the opening sequence of the series—a blue, watery streak swirling across the screen—a dialog commences through the addition of various sequences from the series that do not lack urgency and intensity. However, due to the source material— originally ranging for example from events on an English estate in the 18th century (“Downton Abbey“) to the present in the south of the United States (“True Blood”)—, various actors and actresses and a wide variety of emotions the film is characterized by complete misunderstandings, abrupt subject changes and meaningless data noise.

Patrick Staff «Weed Killer» was inspired by artist-writer Catherine Lord’s memoir The Summer of Her Baldness – a moving and often irreverent account of the author’s experience of cancer. Contrasting a monologue, in which an actress reflects upon the chemically induced devastation of chemotherapy, with comparatively otherworldly sequences, including choreographic gestures shot with high-definition thermal imaging. The video suggests a complex relationship to one’s own suffering and draws into focus the fine line between alternately poisonous and curative substances.

With the UK cast out of the EU, Dalston has degenerated into post-apocalyptic delirium at Laurence Lek's «Europa, Mon Amour (2016 Brexit edition)» video. This is a drowned world of the near future, filled with the ruins of metropolitan life: forgotten nightclubs, DIY art installations, neon-lit music venues, Election booths, Turkish snooker clubs and luxury penthouses. Building upon Lek’s original project for Open Source 2015, this site-specific simulation brings together multiple histories of the area into a single zone. As the player roams around, fragments of European voices appear: samples from Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Lars Von Trier’s Europa speak to them about the nature of dislocation. It is a gradual, but relentless, meeting of past, present, and future.

Jasper Spicero's "Behind The Scenes" is a personal look at the process of filming "Centers In Pain" at Wapato Jail, a maximum security facility built 9 years ago in Portland, Oregon. After it’s completion in 2004 Wapato was abandoned due to a lack of operating funds, and it has been idle and in pristine condition for 10 years and has never once housed inmates, remaining empty aside from a small janitorial staff that maintains the plumbing and washes dusty bed sheets. To carry out "Centers In Pain", one in a series narrative works by Jasper Spicero about Rehabilitation, Correction, Infrastructure and Trauma, the artist rented for 4 days prison Wapato. Occasionally a film crew is allowed to enter for a small fee. The project culminated in a screenplay for an imaginary movie, documentation of the sculptures installed in the prison, and a short film documenting the life of an alienated tribe of people living in a contemporary Panopticon by its own rules.

Sara Culman' s digital video «Props for daily misunderstanding» investigates the political sensibility of objects included in daily household ritual of modern citizens.  The artist puts the focus on individual items, called "props", which simulate human relations concerning the problems of a geopolitical treaty. The image rendering system used in video games, as well as the subjective camera's view, the so-called spectator mode, is put on the basis of the image visualization, which is a mode of the observer in which there is a physically impossible operator floating like  a spirit above the photorealistic world.

Viktor Timofeev's «Continuum» is a short computer-generated video that centers on the relationship between two entities that populate a deserted landscape. These are a group of cockroaches and a pack of hovering drones existing in a symbiotic relationship, engaged in constant observation, mutual surveillance and pursuit of one another without ever coming into contact. The video cuts between first person views of both entities, attempting to elicit an empathetic response to both positions.

Erica Scourti's «Body Scan» captures the process of photographing various parts of the artist's body and parsing them through a visual search app, which attempts to identify them and link to the relevant online data. A documented gesture of mediated intimacy told through iPhone screenshots, the video narrates an exchange between lovers, while making literal the objectification of female bodies on the Internet.

Graeme Arnfield's «Sitting in Darkness» explores the circulation, spectatorship and undeclared politics of contemporary images and new forms of anxieties. Out of the darkness a sound emerges. It echoes and drones. Terrified people take to the streets in search of its source. They get their cameras out and document the sky, searching for an author. We watch on, sitting in darkness, our muscles contract and our pupils dilate.“I hope the camera picks this up.”

The screening program will confront our uneasiness at being swept along by the digital tide, with a view to better understanding of our modern hyperlinked society by offering new perspectives on conceprtualizing our contemporary identities, it will broach the question whether the self is even more otherworldly than we fear it is.

Venue: 

Faliro (Tae Kwon Do) Pavilion, Athens – Greece 

Moraitini 2, Faliro Pavillion Hellenic Olympic Properties, Paleo Faliro 175 61

http://www.artathina.gr/

http://www.flashartonline.com/2017/06/art-athina-athens/

http://www.aqnb.com/2017/06/21/32-international-video-artists-respond-to-new-urgencies-citizensfive-at-art-athina/

https://www.facebook.com/events/2022611044633477/

[charliewstarr-blog]

Lies Atheists Tell (Part One)

Charlie W. Starr

Lookout: “Christianity and Culture” Column

March 2010

                       The Most Popular Lies Atheists Tell (Part One)

Among other things, the decade of the 00’s was a decade of atheist attacks, when anti-Christian writers came out of the woodwork and declared religion both false and evil. The book you probably heard about during this time was The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, but there were others. Christian thinkers responded in force. Here, and in the next issue or two, I’d like to note some of their arguments by focusing on the most popular lies atheists tell.

Religion is the Enemy of Science. Not true. Modern science developed in the Christian West. Only a people who believed in the transcendent power of Reason combined with a belief in an ordered universe made with purpose could give rise to the scientific method. Science did not arise in the wealthy, stable, high cultures of Greece, Rome or China. The first scientists in the world were Christians—all of them—and such remained the case for centuries. You have heard of such scientific greats as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Farady, Pasteur and Mendel (just to name a few). They were all Christian.

The Church Has Persecuted Scientists Throughout History. This argument usually begins with the story of Galileo. If you have heard how Galileo was imprisoned and tortured for teaching that the earth revolved around the sun, you have heard a lie. Galileo was not the only person teaching a heliocentric universe in his day. Scholars, most of whom were Church men, discussed Galileo’s findings openly with him and agreed his beliefs were not a threat to Christianity (even to the point of agreeing that, if science proved Galileo right, they would have to reinterpret much of what they had believed about scripture). They asked Galileo not to teach heliocentrism as fact because they believed there was insufficient evidence for it (even one of Galileo’s own arguments turned out to be wrong). Galileo agreed for about a decade. Then he released a book which insulted the new Pope (who favored heliocentrism himself), argued heliocentrism as certain fact despite Galileo’s agreement not to do so, and took up issues of biblical interpretation which were both radical and written by a man who had no expertise on the matter. Galileo was put on trial, but his own behavior proved he was an arrogant prima donna who, as historians of the era point out, got off easy: Galileo was treated with great respect throughout his trial, he was never tortured, and his only punishment was house arrest (which he spent first at a magnificent palace and then at his own home from which he was permitted to journey to visit family). He was allowed to continue his scientific research for years to come. So utterly false is the popular story of Galileo and the Church that historians have actually been able to trace the origin of the lies to two books written in the 1800’s by antagonists who specifically hated the church. The surprising truth about the history of persecuted scientists is that the Atheistic regimes of Stalin, Hitler and Pot executed far more scientists in the 20th century (hundreds) than the Church ever did in centuries of political power (only two).

In Its Ignorance, the Medieval Church Believed the Earth was Flat. Wrong. In fact, people from many ancient eras and religions, including the learned men of the Medieval Christian West knew the earth to be round, not flat.  

The Medieval Church Believed the Earth Was At the Center of the Universe. Almost. Atheists reference this belief to claim that the Church persecuted Galileo because they feared man’s special place in the universe would be lost. It’s a lie. Though Medieval thinkers believed in the Ptolemaic model of a geocentric universe (until Christian scientists proved the Copernican system to be true), they did not believe man’s place in the universe was therefore special. On the contrary, they believed that, though the earth might be at the physical center of things, it was at the spiritual edge, far from the most important Center who is God.

These favorite lies atheists tell about Christianity and science are just the beginning. In the next issue, we’ll look at more famous lies about Christians in both science and history.

 The statistical material for this series (and some of the Atheistic arguments and responses) is gleaned primarily from a book entitled What’s So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D’Souza. 

 D’Souza, Chapter Nine. D’Souza’s sources include, The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West by Joseph Needham, Science and the Modern World by Alfred North Whitehead, and Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization by Alvin Schmidt.

 D’Souza, Chapter Ten. His sources include Galileo in Rome by William Shea and Mariano Artigas, and Essays on the Trial of Galileo edited by Maurice Finocchiaro.

 The inventor of the war-between-science-and-religion lie was John William Draper in his 1874 book, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. The second book is called History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew Dickson White (published in 1896). Both of these books have been discredited by historians.

 One was killed for heretical theology, not scientific ideas; the other was killed in the insanity of the French Revolution.

 Here my source is C. S. Lewis’s book, The Discarded Image. See Chapter Four.

[nofomoartworld]

Painting on and painting off ISIS propaganda

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, Expanding and Remaining

Very few of us would have heard of Dabiq, a town of over 3000 inhabitants in northern Syria, were it not for the magazine of the same name published by Islamic State (Isis) as part of its propaganda and recruitment arsenal. The town was symbolically crucial for Isis because of a prophecy that it would one day be scene of the final victory of Muslims over non-believers. Last year, ISIL was driven out of the town by the Turkish military and Syrian rebels. The online magazine is now called Rumiyah, the Arabic word for Rome and a reference to an Islamic prophecy about the conquest of Rome.

Navine G. Khan-Dossos‘ painting series Expanding and Remaining is looking at the Dabiq magazine under a whole new perspective. Eschewing the indoctrinating articles and apocalyptic illustrations, the artist stripped back the pages of their content and laid bare the main graphic composition of its layout. The pages of the english-language PDF magazine are turned into a series of geometric panel paintings (and also turned back into a PDF format.) The colours are flat, the strokes of gouache are bold and the imprecise forms are miles away from the glossy pixelated images that characterize on-screen and printed material. All that survives from the textual content of the magazine are the titles of the paintings, each of them drawn from the magazine articles. Some innocuous, other more sinister: Demolishing The Grave of the Girl, Foreword, The Hadd of Stoning, Erasing The Legacy of a Ruined Nation II, The New Coins, etc.

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, series Expanding and Remaining, 2016

The effect of the transformation process is surprising: a sense of familiarity with the structure arises, you start seeing the edges, the imperfections and the human touch.

Several of Khan-Dossos‘s Expanding and Remaining paintings are currently on view at the Fridman gallery in New York as part of Evidentiary Realism, an exhibition that attempts to articulate a particular form of realism in art that portrays and reveals evidence from complex social systems, with prioritizing formal aspects of visual language and mediums.

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, Strange Bedfellows, from the series Expanding and Remaining, 2016

Hi Navine!Could you take us through process of obfuscating the text and revealing the underlaying visual propaganda of a magazine page like Dabiq?

I spend some time with the magazine, leafing through the pages (digitally), trying to concentrate on the layouts, where the text columns lie, where the images are placed. I tend not to read the content if I can. I used to, but I found it clouded the process of analyzing the designs. I then pull the original PDF into Photoshop and create shapes of colour over the content, to preserve the composition but lose the details. It’s the first step in the process of abstraction of the subject and towards painting. As you say, there is a process of obfuscation involved but not of censorship. The blacking out isn’t a means of muting the voice of the author of Dabiq, but to raise the volume of the designer.

How do you chose the pages you are going to intervene on? How do you select the colours, etc?

The process is intuitive as well as informative. I tend to be drawn towards pages with strong visual elements, such as graphs, strange layouts, photos with strong graphic elements, or other pages that catch my eye because of a peculiar design. I also pay attention to the subject of the article, especially if it reflects a story well know to a western audience, such as the continuing capture of John Cantlie, or the last words to camera of James Foley. These subjects are given a lot of space in the publication as it is aimed at a western readership and will know their stories from media coverage.

I work with a strict colour palette of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, Re, Green and Blue. These are the colours of print and the screen. By combining them, I try to find that grey area of the publication that is designed to be printed but only ever appears as a digital file. I then pick the closest colour to that I find on the page from my refined palette. Sometimes the combinations can be surprising and strangely revealing too.

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, If I Were The US President Today (John Cantlie) I, 2016

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, If I Were The US President Today (John Cantlie) II, 2016

How much does the result of your intervention strictly reflect what is already there and how much do add maybe, or change?

The aim of the work is to try to stay as true to the original layouts as possible. It’s a documentation as well as a painting in its own right. If I make changes, it tends to be in the colour rather than the composition. I like the journey that it takes me on if I consistently follow the lines drawn by the designer. It is like copying someone else’s hand. It challenges my senses to inhabit the work of someone else and try to translate that. If my authorship lies anywhere, it is in the language of the brushstrokes.

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, Remaining and Expanding, 2016. View in the exhibition Command: Print at NOME in Berin

I was looking at Dabiq on google images and some of the images saddened me. How did you approach the kind of content, either purely visual or textual, of Dabiq without feeling drawn into the propaganda? Without letting your artistic process be too influenced by the kind of emotional reaction the text and images may trigger?

It is a very saddening experience and also a shocking one too. I have been working with this material for a couple of years now, and it has been an ongoing process of how to manage my own personal relationship with these images. I refuse to perpetuate the content by reproducing it, which is why I concentrate on the form rather than the content. I have ways of looking at the magazines that lessen my contact with disturbing content, such as reducing the scale the PDFs so I can only see the basic forms, scrolling quickly through the issues, even sometimes blurring my vision to be able to focus on the compositions. But it is inevitable that I will see things I would rather not. But it’s part of the work, and the emotional response, the whole spectrum of feelings I go through, are part of that process. I let myself cry if I need to, be angry, confused, shocked. But I also recognize how alluring this content can be for some people and recognize that pull too. I’m not here to pass judgement, I’m here to find some way of understanding for myself, a politics and culture of violence that has been present throughout my time working as an artist since 2001. It has always been my subject.

How important are the titles of each piece? Are they mere reference to texts found in the original page or are they meant to suggest other messages and interpretations?

Each painting title is taken directly from the article title or keys words on the page. The title acts as a key to the painting. It’s there as a link to the original content, but I never suggest that it is required to dig deeper than the surface of the painting to better understand it. Everything that is necessary is there already.

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, Top Ten Al Hayat Videos, 2016

The result of your intervention on the pages is quite abstract. Which kind of meaning can the viewer extract from these works when they leave the exhibition?

I think the key to this question is the word ‘abstract’. I tend not to think of my work within this context especially in western art history. The works are absolutely based on visual references in the real world: they do not diverge from their subject matter. It is clear that the painting shows information, but that it has been rendered into blocks that retain the design but not the content. The paintings are about the nature of information itself.

What I found fascinating about the Expanding and Remaining series is that it provides us (the Western audience) with a very different, less visceral perhaps and more reflective way of looking at Isis propaganda. But do you feel that some of us might also be tempted to interpret and maybe also reduce everything as being inherently ‘political’ because of the ISIS topic, for example? Is this something that preoccupies you when it comes to communicating your work?

The work is inherently political, there is no way of side-stepping that and I wouldn’t want to. I think the issue is that painting isn’t often seen as a medium that can handle and communicate this kind of content and subject matter.

We are so used to digital content being the medium of this kind of research-based and investigative work. Painting is a tool that lets me take all of that research and transform it through an entirely different set of values; those of paint. It is not just a retelling or re-presenting of the material. It is a new form derived from that content, that exists independently of its origin.

It is less visceral, but that doesn’t make the experience of it necessarily less painful or uncomfortable. It’s just that it relies on the fact that the viewer knows what the content it already because they have been bombarded by it in the media. The politics of the work is already embedded in the mind of the viewer, with all its bias, fear and incomprehension. The paintings provide a space of recall, a place to realize how much we have already been exposed to.

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, Yilmaz, Where Is Aïcha? (from the series Studies for Sterlina), 2015

Navine G. Khan-Dossos, The Messenger and the Message (Recto), 2015

Any other upcoming work, field of research and concerns, or events you are currently working on?

As a follow-up to the work I am presenting as part of Evidentiary Realism, I will have a solo show at Fridman Gallery in April that will present the entire series of Expanding and Remaining, alongside a new series of twelve paintings called Infoesque. These new works are based on pages from Rumiyah magazine that has replaced Dabiq in recent months. The paintings focus more directly on the use of Islamic art motifs and data/statistical visualizations in the magazine, and seeing how these two forms fuse together to present an ‘authoritative’ visual language for the brand of ISIS at a time when it is undergoing heavy military losses.

I am also working on a large-scale wall painting project at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (NL) called Echo Chamber, that is based on Samantha Lewthwaite, the so-called White Widow currently in hiding in East Africa.

Thanks Navine!

Several of Navine G Khan-Dossos’s Expanding and Remaining paintings are included in Evidentiary Realism, a group show curated by Paolo Cirio and presented by NOME Gallery + Fridman Gallery. The show is at the Fridman Gallery until 31 March, 2017.

Also part of Evidentiary Realism: Proceed at Your Own Risk. Tales of dystopian food & health industries.

from We Make Money Not Art http://ift.tt/2nDwIvd via IFTTT

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[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

Afrezza Updates: Upcoming TV Ads and Possibly 'The Uber of Diabetes'?

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/afrezza-updates-upcoming-tv-ads-and-possibly-the-uber-of-diabetes/

Afrezza Updates: Upcoming TV Ads and Possibly 'The Uber of Diabetes'?

We're closely following the latest developments with Afrezza, the inhaled insulin that's now been on the market for a little over two years, and has been struggling to gain traction since Sanofi dropped its marketing deal with manufacturers MannKind Corp. last year.

We at the 'Mine have used Afrezza personally with positive results, and we know there's a keen interest among at least a small but vocal group in the D-Community online.

It's been a bit unnerving to see a slew of business headlines and investor updates predicting an end to California-based MannKind Corp. -- especially lately, with talk of complicated "reverse stock splitting" supposedly aimed at boosting the value of stock prices that have been circling the drain for a while now. We Afrezza users are left wondering how long this medication may yet be available.

So our interest was piqued -- to say the least -- when a MannKind exec recently told us: "We think there's an opportunity to be the Uber of diabetes."

Wait, whaaat...?

It's true. MannKind itself doesn't seem to be worried -- at least not publicly -- and in fact the company's Chief Commercial Officer Mike Castagna tells us they're ramping up their next phase of promotion, based on:

New Triple-Variety Packs: In the coming weeks, MannKind will launch a new titration package that has all three dosing amounts inside -- 60 of each the 4, 8, and 12-unit cartridges.

Sales Reps and Educators: They're bringing more players to the table to start selling and helping patients using Afrezza.

TV Presence: We're told the company plans to produce TV commercials, and may even support a new diabetes reality TV show.

The 'Uber of Diabetes Meds': A vision involving flat-rate shipments directly to a PWD's door every 30 days, so they don't have to navigate pharmacy visits or worry about whether meds are out-of-stock or unaffordable due to varying insurance coverage.

Here are some specifics on each of those activities, according to our talks with Castagna:

New Larger Afrezza Variety Pack

A news release issued on Feb. 1 announced a new titration package as well as a sales force expansion to help boost company sales and service.

Sales force training is happening this week, and the launch should happen next week. The new packs will include 180 total units of insulin, divvied up between the three cartridge types -- 60 of the blue 4-units, 60 of the green 8-units, and 60 of the yellow 12-units.

This will allow for better dosing variety and flexibility for PWDs, especially those just starting on Afrezza who might have yet to experience a new way of calculating doses compared to traditional injected insulin. Castagna says a big benefit is that this packaging will also allow for a single co-pay and better prescription-writing for doctors, something that's been a complication for Afrezza users to date.

"There's still a lot of confusion about how to prescribe, and for patients on how to dose," he says. Too true!

Last July, MannKind launched its first new variety pack including 4 and 8 unit cartridges. That's become one of the most popular products for Afrezza, Castagna says, and now this new one including 12-unit cartridges will likely be even more in demand, he believes.

Personally, I'm excited to see this new triple pack. I've been using Afrezza (along with Novolog and long-acting basal insulin) since May, and for the past six months my doctor has been writing two separate prescriptions for my monthly Afrezza -- one box of 4u/8u cartridges, and a box of 8u/12u cartridges -- because that's the only way his computer system allows him to prescribe these varying doses. As a result I've had to pay two distinct co-pays at my local pharmacy each month.

I'm lucky it's affordable for me under current insurance plan, but it's just a pain -- especially since the larger 8u/12u dosing box isn't readily stocked and always seems to take a few days longer than the smaller box. Hopefully with this new triple pack, users like me can avoid those hurdles.

Mobilizing Sales Reps and Educators

Wow, it's amazing how time flies. It seems like just yesterday that MannKind was all excited about its mid-2016 re-launch that would re-energize the company and its inhaled insulin product. Well, here we are in the early part of 2017, having déjà vu.

MannKind says now that initially, they had hired a contract sales force whose efforts were more about "stabilizing sales" than fully transforming the outlook for Afrezza. In other words, the aim of the first-round sales force push was simply to get the word out that Afrezza wasn’t disappearing after Sanofi cut ties.

“Every doctor heard we were coming off the market, so we accomplished the objective of stabilizing and showing we’re still here,” Castagna says. “We could’ve put more reps out there in some places (but) they wouldn’t have worked effectively, and then our 'scripts would have gone down even more than they did.”

Hmmm. OK, then... here's to hoping that the second-round delivers what's needed to get more Afrezza prescriptions rolling in.

There are also two moves the company's working on to improve its marketing to both doctors and patients:

Label Change: MannKind says it's still pursuing a labeling change with the FDA in order to market Afrezza as a medication that's faster-acting (kicks in within 5 minutes) and one that can reduce the risk of hypoglycemia. The company has filed that label change proposal with regulators and it's being reviewed; no response is expected until the latter half of the year.

International Afrezza: MannKind says it's also eyeing international markets such as Brazil, Canada, Mexico, UAE, Australia, and even China. They're also exploring filing possibilities in the European Union. Most of that will be done through partners internationally, though some may remain MannKind-led launches worldwide.

Positive steps ahead, it seems.

MannKind on TV

Afrezza Ads: The company's talking with the FDA about airing TV ads, something they didn't originally have in their arsenal to spread awareness among potential users.

Right now, the company has just received patient feedback on three commercial concepts and they'll be deciding which of those to take forward as an actual TV ad.

Castagna says they're anxious to finalize their ad concept and get it filed with FDA asap, as approval can take generally about 45 days. If all goes smoothly, we should start seeing Afrezza TV spots by the second half of the year. It will likely start off in local markets, to determine what works best, before the pilot ads start going national.

"The thing about TV spots is they're not as frequent, because it takes a lot of energy and money," Castagna says. "We'll look for other mechanisms to get our message out there -- YouTube and diabetes channels. But clearly, you'll start seeing a bigger presence from MannKind on TV and on the web."

Reality TV: Castagna says MannKind is also exploring possible sponsorship of a diabetes reality TV show. This came up during an investor update at the big annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco in January, and it remains in the "exploratory stages" for now.

If that were to happen, Castagna says it wouldn't be a requirement that the people featured on the show use Afrezza or mention MannKind; the company would strictly be a show sponsor.

"It'd be along the lines of The Biggest Loser. There's someone launching a TV show like that for diabetes, and there's another one with Dr. Dre coming (about his battle with diabetes). So... something that highlights what it's like to live with diabetes are what we might consider for sponsorship," Castagna says.

He notes that this is also a discussion topic with FDA, because there's little precedent for Pharma sponsoring reality shows.

"The difficulty is trying to interpret FDA regulations and we're working through all of that... Because with a reality show, we don't control the content or the messaging or products the person chooses to use. There isn't a lot of guidance on this, and that's part of the challenge."

Huh, interesting! Maybe before long, some Afrezza users will be TV stars! Or maybe not... We shall see.

An 'Uber for Diabetes'?

Perhaps most ambitious is Castagna's vision for creating a new type of diabetes drug delivery model.

"It's time for a change, and I'm personally interested in building an Uber-like model for diabetes management," he said. "Anything we can do to streamline people's access to drugs and makes it easier, is where we need to go."

As noted, he envisions shipments directly to a PWD's door every 30 days, eliminating the need for pharmacy visits to pick up the product, which can involve stocking issues and confusion about co-pays.

This delivery model certainly isn't a new concept -- mail-order pharmacies and companies like Liberty Medical were doing this long ago, and newer meter companies like Livongo and OneDrop offer subscription-based test strips delivered directly to you at home. Yet we don't have this for specific medications yet... so that'd be unique.

"I'm really looking to streamline this process, make it a seamless integration into a person's life," Castagna says. "When you think of Uber, you just use the app to get a car, and then you get in the car and everything's done all in one place through the app, the payment and even the feedback. That's what we're looking to do as a company, creating a way for patients to interact in a different way than they have."

Wow, fascinating! We love the idea, and can't wait to see whether Afrezza manages to make this type of business model materialize.

The Road Ahead for Afrezza

No matter the delivery model, it doesn't change the fact MannKind still has an uphill journey (on a steep curvy road) ahead to reach mass acceptance among providers and patients. The overall story of inhaled insulin has been a disappointing one so far, proving that just taking away needles does not a blockbuster drug make.

In our opinion, Afrezza is a really good mealtime insulin option, with a really good design that takes quality of life into account, so we're rooting for it all the way!

We remain cautiously optimistic, in hopes that Afrezza can survive the turbulence of our complex and unforgiving healthcare reimbursement system, and stay on the market long enough for many more PWDs to reap its benefits.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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