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कठिन परिस्थितियों में निडर कैसे बनें?

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Think Not Thinking

Effort is more important than so-called success because effort is a real thing. What we call “success” is just the manifestation of our mind’s ability to categorize things. This is “success.” That is “failure.” Who says? You says. That’s all. Reality is what it is, beyond all concepts of success and failure.

asexyanthropologist:

A moment of silence

Original CN TL and Pictures: here

CN TL: by nyamazing/ kyon_zegao

Disclaimer: This is a Chinese to EN TL, there would be things that would be lost in translation between the languages.

I’m not posting the image of the TL, sorry about that. Stealing images aren’t cool.

Please refer to my policies for more details and do not use the translations for commercial use.

Since there’s no QC - pardon my bad engrish.

The contents are under the cut.

Director: Sakai Kazuo

Born in Kumamoto. An independent anime director and performer. In charge of various storyboards in TV Anime “LoveLive!” He took on the role of overall director in TV anime “LoveLive! Sunshine!!”
His wife “Sakai Kasumi” took part in this project as an animator.

Sakai Kazuo, being appointed the director was at the very front directing the TV anime “LoveLive! Sunshine!!” Inheriting the 1^st seasons and this project’s heavy emphasis on the “Feel of a concert” and “Belonging to that very instant, what further leaps forward is he pursuing?

It’s akin to how after a long night, the sun is finally shining again.

Every day would be a day of contemplating: “What does it mean to shine”, which is something without an answer, while still charging ahead.

Q: First of all, please do share with us your thoughts on how you felt after successfully completing the production work for the 2^nd season of the TV anime.

Sakai Kazuo: I feel that myself, and all the other staff, the most important emotions that we felt was a sense of relief. For all the staff who took part in the production of the anime, the greatest reward is to have all the episodes broadcasted safely.

In the 2^nd season we had scenes of Hakodate, and with Saint Snow in the center stage, along with other very active members as well. Although the production process was tough, but it was fun.

We accumulated scenes one by one in front of us till finally we reached the (promised) future….

I feel that this is exactly “LoveLive!”. Although next up in the movie I would continue to be the director while feeling the pressure, but I am very thankful that I am given the chance to produce it. Although any anime production would encounter problems, but “LoveLive! Sunshine!!” is in the end special – as they have to sing.

Besides having a story, we’ll have to produce songs as well. We have to do so in a limited production schedule, and we choose a task with high difficulty - making it into a TV anime series.

The 2^nd season’s production workflow was the same as the 1^st season. First we had to finish the script, and afterwards begin the storyboarding process, and asking Aki Hata-san to write the lyrics for the insert songs. …The production this time around focuses heavily on their mental journey as they face the reality of their school combining and closing down.

What left the biggest impression on me was that, the production team themselves understood (that) long before and didn’t need further elaboration. Thus we were able to finish the production while heading towards that end goal. It’s the same for Hata-san’s lyrics too, and the same for the series coordinator Hanada Juuki-san as well. We are truly blessed to be able to work hand in hand professionally with so many people.

Q: Next up I’ll ask some questions about the way the story progressed in season 2. For this round, was it made by having Hanada Juuki-sensei create the script, and afterwards using it as a base to craft the story?

Sakai Kazuo: That’s right. Including Hanada-sensei, the production team used it as the original draft of the story as the blueprint, and after discussing through, made the final product.

Q: How did all of you decide on how to describe the essence of the “shine” that Chika was searching for, along with the mental state for everyone facing Uranohoshi having to close down and be combined?

Sakai Kazuo: It’s not just me, but each staff member did contemplate “what was (this) shine” as well. But I feel that, the best method to express the style of “LoveLive!” is for it to be gradually become clear as the story develops. As “not knowing what’s waiting ahead” is truly youth, right? They are just at their teens, so I felt it’ll be fine to just have this particular feeling be recorded in film.

Thus, at the very beginning I decide to not give an opinion on whether the end result of the school having to merge and close down is good or bad. The fact that one’s alma mater is disappearing is naturally saddening, but the one to make that particular judgement is the 9 of them, along with the audiences that had been looking over their struggles.

Originally I had my doubts on the mindset of “that’s how the world is”, I felt that there won’t be just a single answer. Looking at it from another angle, one’s view would also change. As for whether the final ending is good or bad, I feel that this could be left to everyone to make their own judgement.

Q: I remember Director Kazuo mentioning that when trying to gather materials for season 1, you once mentioned that in reality, the number of students in schools located Uchiura were small as well. Then with this situation happening in the real Uchiura, did it affect the story as well?

Sakai Kazuo: Not just Uchiura, to all the students who are in schools in the rural areas, closing and combining schools is something that has become commonplace. Thus, this is a real world problem, and you can’t just ignore it. Although in the future it might not be the same, but unless Uchiura experiences a change like an increase in population or etc, it is not something easy to avoid.

So thinking about that, meeting head on the reality of the closure and the school combining, was destined to be the challenge of the 9 individuals— It is my opinion that, one major plot point of “LoveLive! Sunshine!!” would lie on the point of: “Searching for the shine while in this environment”.

Being unable to accept the results, to struggle, to struggle, and after the struggling – what should they do. This problem could explain how they themselves, simple 10 year olds, and where they shine. Thus I feel that if we are able to depict this, it’ll already be fine.

Q: What made left a deep impression for me was, although having to combine school is saddening, but it wasn’t depicted like it was a bad thing. Just like in episode 11 where it is represented by Ruby’s line of: “Not knowing what tomorrow will bring does make one look forward to it”. Among that, we can also feel the brand new possibilities of the future.

Sakai Kazuo: These are my thoughts: “After the confirmation of their school having to close and be combined, would Chika and the rest spend their days being depressed? Thinking about - they won’t right?

Rather, they should face the reality on one end, and in the other continue their school life looking forward while being uneasy about the future.

They would of course be saddened, but on the next day when the sun rises, it might be the birth of a different kind of hope/aspiration. This awkward but realistic incident does also contain hope within it- I feel that should be “LoveLive! Sunshine!!”. This project’s title is also “Sunshine!!”, it does contain the sun with it.

Q: Next up I’ll like to ask some questions about the members of Aqours. I feel that one of the special part of 2^nd season was that it prominently depicted the bonds of the various members among the school years. What was your intent for each of those interactions?

Sakai Kazuo: The 9 members of Aqours lived in a world where School Idols are popularized, so it has a strong sense resonance with reality. School and School Idols have an inseparable relationship, thus I hope to be able to properly express that. In addition, if we are talking about the various school years, among the 2nd years, Chika and Riko both has an inferiority complex, and wish to change themselves. This resonance pulled You in to be among them too, and together lit up a fiery relationship.

At times won’t there be people who in one glance have their character and maturity being totally opposite, but would still be very similar. Through the meeting of Riko and Chika, You found a brand new aspect and possibility of herself too.

The charm of the 1st years would naturally still be their unique feel of going at their own pace. The 3 of them are the types that would decide what to do with their intuition, if we have to list it out, it’ll be that they are talented geniuses. I feel that, Yoshiko, Hanamaru and Ruby all of them has very strong personalities, and they do have traits of artistes, so it should end up being very entertaining for everyone to hear them chatting among themselves even at the sidelines.

And actually the 3 of them are good kids, telling them to “wait”, they would obediently follow. And their weaknesses are feeling negative due to being too mindful of others, or being too hung up on other’s moods. Through the story developments in season 1 and 2, they were able to gradually voice their own opinions. The biggest accomplishment of this, can be found in episode 8 and 9 (season 2).

Q: Then what about the three 3^rd years? Mari, Kanan and Dia. Previously they did retire from being School Idols before, right? I feel that their mental state is the most complicated.

Sakai Kazuo: The current 3rd years knew about how μ’s and A-RISE ended, they would naturally know how after School Idols graduate, it’ll be drawing the curtains on their activities. So, for the 3 of them who wanted to save the school from the circumstances of being merged and closed down, they were at a loss of whether they wanted to be School idols, or did they wish to save the school.

So when this confusion were dispelled, what kind of choice would they make then? The unclear mindset of the 3 of them gradually converged into one, and we were able to express this through images in every moment of this entire process. To increase the realism, in some parts we used the thoughts of the performers for the 3rd years as reference, and incorporated them in the story.

The initial concept for the project was a story where one gets excited about what they were searching for,

Q: In the 2^nd season it depicts the answer of “shining” that Aqours was searching for. This theme “shining”, was it the director yourself that suggested it?

Sakai Kazuo: No, everyone decided on it. In the April 2015 issue of Dengeki G’s magazine, what was serialized was an advertisement titled: “Help, LoveLive!”, the catchphrase for the TV anime CM was “We all wish to shine!!”, it was a theme that has always existed even before the start of the 1st TV anime. Although we wish to shine, but “here” isn’t Akihabara, but it’s a small town which didn’t have much.

So, they can’t shine - but everyone who had blamed the environment as the cause, took the initiative to actively try and change the current environment, and got to stand at a brand new perspective to observe the world.

This theme of: “a story of rousing oneself to start searching” has existed right from the very beginning. Although I myself might not be able to deliver something concrete/accurate, but the girls are indeed searching for things to drive themselves (forward)….

Q: That is to say, what is termed “shining” is actually an overall theme that everyone individually agreed on in general?

Sakai Kazuo: That’s right. What I imagined the story to be like, was a youthful trendy drama/drama serials where when 2^nd year student Chika wanted to shine, a group of girls who are sympathetic to her cause joins her.

Q: In episode 13, Chika finally found the answer of the question “what is shining” that she has been chasing after all this time. She could have let everyone be aware of it through a performance as well, but Chika instead choose to make her thoughts into words, this part shocked me deeply.

Sakai Kazuo: That particular line was suggested around halfway through the production of the script. If we continued production with the initial plan, it is highly possible that we would not have shaped the answer in that way.

During the production process, the image of Chika seems to have been infused with the elements of Inami (Anju)-san. So I thought that, Inami-san would definitely have found the answer. This is also included in the lyrics of “WONDERFUL STORIES”, Hata-san added “we finally found it!/やっとみつけた！/yatto mitsuketa!”. Thus, I felt that the script should follow the same route as well.

Q: Indeed so, in my impression I feel that as compared to season 1, the members are more able to use their words to express their feelings in season 2.

Sakai Kazuo: That was intentional. When we are doing storyboarding, we are interested to let everyone express their feelings. But in actual practise, to express using words their own “shine” is very difficult. Honestly speaking, I feel that “I don’t know” would what the majority of people would answer. If someone asked me: “What is your shine”, I would answer truthfully that I don’t know.

As the shine could be a particular aspect, or it could be something that oneself wouldn’t know of… for Chika, although she saw the shine of μ’s, and wishes to approach that, but in season 1 episode 13, she reached out with her hands but didn’t grasp it. She originally thought that chasing the shine with all of her might and working hard would make the entire situation better, including the school merging and closing down. But reality isn’t that simple.

“And so that is to say, we didn’t have any shine worth mention at all?” She asked herself this while recounting all the activities that Aqours had done, and subsequently denied this train of thought. The way everyone worked hard all the way, bumping into things left and right, is exactly where the shine of the 9 individual lies.

Because they bore the shine of Mutsu and everyone else in Uranohoshi Girls Academy, they were able to showcase their shine. Not just depending on their own strength, but it is because of everyone could they shine brightly - this is Chika’s answer. It is my opinion that, understanding that: “It is everyone who gave their shine to me” is the greatest aspect of their growth.

Q: Although this project is about the 9 individuals in Aqours, but after watching to the end of season 2, I genuinely feel that the main character is indeed Chika.

Sakai Kazuo: It naturally developed into this (outcome). Of course, undoubtedly this is a story about everyone.

Q: At the final part of episode 13, there’s a scene where everyone was singing together at the gymnasium right? The image of 8 people stretching their hands towards Chika, it does feel kind of déjà vu.

Sakai Kazuo: What’s unbelievable was, that scene just resonates nicely with the OP of TV anime season 1.

When creating the 1st season’s OP, although there any special intent behind it, but wasn’t there a scene where Chika is chasing and running towards figures standing and shrouded by light by herself?

From the very beginning, that entire momentum were their own shadows. And this perfectly ties into and resonated together with the lead up to season 2’s episode 13 “WONDERFUL STORIES”.

Similar to how people are unaware of darkness under light*, Chika became aware that, the shine that she herself was searching for, could it have existed at that moment she saw that illusion in the streets of Akihabara? And this to her, could be the biggest discovery….

But, this is just my own thoughts, and just one way of explaining it, and isn’t the definite answer. I hope everyone would not pay attention to this, and freely see and freely feel what you wish to.

*TL Note: A chinese saying, that basically draws reference to how people wouldn’t realize that they are shadows below a lamp, and is fixated only with the light. You won’t notice something is there even when it really is present.

Trying to express the true emotions, using the method of a documentary to bring realism to a conversation

Q: In the production process of the 2^nd season, what was the most difficult hurdle?

Sakai Kazuo: It’ll be in episode 12, the section in part B where we had to draw the “LoveLive!” finals was especially difficult. As it’s depicting feelings that had always been there, so I did not hope to copy it wholesale, but rather draw it out conversational style…especially so for the latter half.

I did not wish to have them simply only conversing, so I made some amendments matching to each individuals and their circumstances. Thus it changed to modes like visiting Kanda Shrine, looking over the sea etc.

According to the theory of a documentary, those (scenes) should be focused on Chika’s view point. As it’s in Chika’s perspective, so the imagery shouldn’t have Chika in it, but we bravely and purposely added it in.

So the audiences could take a step back and in that distance look at Chika and the rest. In adding another perspective like this, we’ll have the feel of scrutinizing the two’s conversations.

Q: I understand the reason why Chika appeared in the footage then, and I’m much happier about it as well. Then, besides episode 12, are there any other episodes which are harder to produce too?

Sakai Kazuo: Episode 9 I guess? Adding Saint Snow, and “Awaken the power” where 11 of them are performing together was very difficult.

Firstly, as the stage became Hakodate, which was a brand new area, the production of this anime - including the storyboard and scripts - took a long time.

And beyond that, we had to have the song with the most number of people dancing too.

Q: Then was Director Sakai doing the storyboarding for the songs in the 2^nd season too?

Sakai Kazuo: That’s right. I draw them this time too. The dance itself would also reflect in reality the link between characters and their feelings, so only this I won’t leave it to anyone else. Each episodes’ performance we would have new members (at work) joining in, so it’ll be very very tough for someone who is working on this project for the first time.

As for me myself, there would be times when I can draw the storyboard in one go, but I would also have times when I would hit a bottleneck. As every character making an appearance are all important, so at times to ensure fairness, the movement of my hands would unconsciously slow down too.

And at the very end, it’s still because the 9 members of Aqours are too important. So I have to consider situations where I have to rest my pen a bit more.

In fact, my daughter’s birth coincide with the time when we were finishing work on the PV for “Koi ni Naritai AQUARIUM”. And it’s due to this experience, I have very strong feelings towards the 9 girls. When I am drawing, I would like to craft them to living, breathing individuals.

The usage of 3DCGI technology and how love of the project supported the creation of the song sections

CN TL note: 3DCGI: Three dimensional computer generated imagery. In simple terms it is the application of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art and printed media. This technique is used primarily in the song segments in TV anime “LoveLive! Sunshine!!”. Director Kyogoku Takahiko-san who was in charge of TV anime “LoveLive!” specializes in mixing 3DCGI with hand drawn art and mixing both effects. In comparison, Director Sakai had always challenged the production team to raise the bar on special effects, to achieve beautiful dance sequences that aren’t doable by 3DCGI.

Q: Speaking of which, in the Live performance portions, the quality of the members that were drawn by 3DCGI has noticeably increased as compared to season 1. This greatly surprised me. Thus will close ups of facial features be introduced more readily now?

Sakai Kazuo: Thank you for your compliments. The company that took on the creation of the Live sections is “Sublimation”, they could be said to be beyond professionals and an organization filled with weirdos - this description is made totally out of respect (laughs).

When it is time for Lives(events), everyone in the production studio would go on site, and give their full burning enthusiastic support to the performers.

Most importantly they really love this project. Their feelings would definitely show themselves in the 3DCGI that they create, right?

Q: The 3DCGI seems to have gotten lots of changes and is more adorable now, could you raise examples that was changed has changed?

Sakai Kazuo: It mainly was due to the way we handled “shapes” as well as the work we did at the post-production stage? As for how much changes could be made on sections filled with CG… after stepping into this territory, the time spent on it is immense.

The adorable shape of the jaws, a facial model that’s filled with charm, that instant of adorableness when they look back… all of these didn’t happen by chance, rather it’s done by hand; frame by frame by those responsible for the 3DCGI to display the charm points.

And as it is a visual thing, so they did adjustments on every single frame on the portions that they needed to use.

Q: I didn’t know this at all!! I thought that after making a cute base model through CG, it’ll just be simply making it dance….

Sakai Kazuo: Although I do wish to say that to make 3DCGI cute does indeed need technique, but there isn’t any universally accepted single way to do so.

Using the things that were created as the base, adjusting it degree by degree frame by frame to make it even more charming - it is my belief that this is the special technique that was born from Sublimation and their perseverance.

It didn’t come from upgrading of the performance of computers or the version of the production software, all of them came from the “energy” of the creators.

Q: As expected it’s the strength of people right??

Sakai Kazuo: That’s right, it is completely due to the strength of people. The hard work as well as craftsmanship born out of actual experience, finally culminated in this technique. I feel that this really is amazing.

To produce anime in the past, with regards to the facial close-ups or to capture the motion of grabbing something with one’s hands, people would often say that the accuracy of drawing by hand is higher, so we shouldn’t use 3D.

But, this project we intentionally asked the other party to: “Please do the entire portions, including these parts as well!” To this request, the other party didn’t try to shirk away and say: “it’s too hard, we can’t do it…”, but rather responded by saying: “Let’s do some research and take up the challenge then.”

To have a production team like this, I really can’t think of another besides studio “Sublimation”. In my impression, through season 1 and 2 of the TV anime, the departments within “Sublimation” accumulated experience continuously, as if being worked on by an anvil.

And at the end it feels like we manage to forge out a legendary blade. And the sharpness of the blade increases as the days went by, until today…

Actually in episode 12’s “WATER BLUE NEW WORLD” was full of challenges too. If we are speaking of normal circumstances, within the limitations of animated 3D. Firstly: We can’t have long skirts. Secondly: Costumes and the hair style can’t have changes.

But, in order to shock everyone, we did all of these in season 2. Due to this, we are still considering what we are going to do in the movie version.

To create beautiful costumes we have the filming department paste patterns and sequins on them.*

*TL Warning - There’s LOTs of technical terms in this portion of the TL, I’m honestly not very confident in them. But if you have suggestions on how to improve them, please advise me. Thanks!

Q: For μ’s, at the time they change the 3D (model’s) hair only in the theatre version, right?

Sakai Kazuo: That’s right. One of the difficult parts of producing “LoveLive! Sunshine!!” was that, regardless of the design or the performance, all of them had been done by μ’s.

We can’t win fans with just novelty, this part is the hadest to manage.

So that is to say, I declared: “what was done before, we must still do it again”!

In terms of technique wise, the PV for “WATER NEW BLUE WORLD” is one of the biggest accomplishments that we had a hand in creating.

Q: The imagery for episode 13 of the 2^nd season “WONDERFUL STORIES” was great too!

Sakai Kazuo: That song was a challenge too. I remember production team discussing: “Are we really doing this? Can we make the broadcast?!” while still managing to create it.

At the very beginning our plan was to make all the challenging scenes that use 3DCGI be shoved to episode 12, and in episode 13 have them dance strictly in their school uniforms.

But when we were drawing the storyboard, as it’s the final, I decided to make all the costumes that we had created before be added into it, so for the production team in charge of the song, I’m really sorry for that time!!

Q: Speaking of the portions of the songs, the costumes of Aqours is full of charm too. Was Director Sakai-san in charge of the designs too?

Sakai Kazuo: Basically it’s I who make proposals to the animators, but the contents wise are decided in discussion with the production team.

As at the start we already did lots of costumes, so there might not be any attractive or creative creations left… Although that was my thoughts, but it’s really true that by sitting down and discussing with everyone we would still manage to find a new direction forward.

Thinking back, that really is something incredible. I have a question here. In your opinion when it comes to the costumes during the song portions, where would the biggest bottleneck found?

Q: This is a difficult question…. The production cost?

Sakai Kazuo: That is a portion which can’t be mentioned (laughs).

The correct answer is the drawings, that is to say the portion where we draw the art. The reason for that, in the illustrations, the line count* along with the scale (size) of the costumes*, isn’t something to be done by one’s own whim.

As the scaling and quantity has to be set within the limit of people’s ability to draw. On the other hand when filming with real people, there’s a much larger range of clothes that can be made….

But on the flip side, 3D might seem to have no limits, but having the production team churn out many costumes does take lots of time and effort too. Among them, the patterns were especially hard. Even so, we still managed to stick the patterns of the costumes for “MY Mai☆TONIGHT” one by one onto the screens.

So for example if you have 150 different drawings, calculating them simply you’ll need 150 pieces. In addition. “WATER BLUE NEW WORLD” has a costume that was intentionally made with sequins, so the parts which are shiny would also require texture work- so we hope that this focus on detail would make everyone feel happy that: “This is the first time I’m seeing this!!”.

To ensure the beauty of the details, we obtained lots of assistance from many creators from many companies.

*TL Note: I was informed that the term “line count” refers to:  The number of lines an animator has to draw per frame for a given character design, with higher line count taking longer and costing more. Thank you: redditor “csihar”.

Q: T-This is the power of people too?

Sakai Kazuo: That’s right. “Asahi Production” which was responsible for filming put in lots of effort. If the portions with the songs have 9 individuals, we’ll correspondingly need to map the textures of the 9 individual’s patterns piece by piece.

Q: The film department applied the patterns onto the costumes… that is to say that are very skilled in drawing by hand, this part is rather surprising.

Sakai Kazuo: Considering the time (needed) and workload, this is something that is very difficult to accomplish in the schedule of a TV anime series.

There’s many methods to apply patterns, for example masking all of them using chroma keying*, ignoring dimensions and sticking them piece by piece, or just sticking them on sleeves or the collars etc.

If you really wish to go into finer details when it comes to applying textures there’s always even more detailed/finer methods, if you really want to get technical, there’s really no end to it.

*TL Note - Green Screen tech in layman’s term.

Q: Then all of these have to be done with the original creator directing the textures of the scenes, and working on them one by one…. Is that right?

Sakai Kazuo: That’s right. For the portions with the songs it’s due to the highly technical support from “Asahi Production” and “Sublimation” that we were able to ensure its quality.

I really am very grateful to them. The production team members could imagine the happy expressions of the fans who would be watching, and put in their all in the production.

Thank you, Kato Tatsuya-san who was on hand to do the mixing on site along with creation of the background music

Q: Next up let’s talk about the background music work that uses “sound” to showcase the story. The person in charge of music in “LoveLive! Sunshine!!” is Kato Tatsuya-sensei. Please share with us a story with your work together with Tatsuya-san that left a deeper impression than most.

Sakai Kazuo: In my heart Kato-san is a very special individual. During the production of the anime, there’s a work process near the very end called “mixed recording” where one adds the BGM and sound effects into the finalized footage.

Once, I suggested that: “For this project, let’s have all the staff members working on it together!”, and afterwards Kato-san, no matter how busy he is, would take some time to join in, and it seems that he was present for all (the sessions)!

He made precise adjustments that non-music creators wouldn’t be able to identify, and matched the music to the footage, thus it’s definitely worth listening to it closely.

Q: Regarding the mixed recording process, who would usually be on site?

Sakai Kazuo: I guess its each episodes’ performers*, the director, the sound director, and the BGM/Sound effect mixer?

In a normal project, the mixed recording assignment would be helmed by the sound director, with the assistance of the production crew along with the base music score/source from the composers, to do the mixed recording assignment with the footage.

If the music’s original creator themselves would participate too, we could then consider the work site to be very luxurious and special.

*TL Note: The cast for each episode I believe.

Q: For the scores that Kato-san creates himself, if there are some incompatibility with the scene, would he do some arranging of the scores on site…

Sakai Kazuo: Indeed it did happen before. He even created a tune on the spot once to match the setting.

And he’ll also do adjustment work when the sounds of unneeded instruments are too loud, or when needed sounds are too soft, or when there are scenes when the sounds didn’t match the tone of the emotions.

In a normal mixed recording assignment it wouldn’t be possible to make such detailed adjustments. But because the composer, Kato-san himself was on hand thus we are able to make the proper changes immediately, so I would tell him specifically what the impression would be like, and asked for his help directly.

Q: That is to say, that the music that was played in the TV anime, would have portions which are different from the soundtracks that are available commercially??

Sakai Kazuo: We mentioned our requests and submitted our feedback to Kato-san on the music he created, and the other party would use it as the blueprint and make the deliberate amendments.

Afterwards he would deliberate on the site of the mixed recording itself. As the tunes would be created through repeated deliberation, the BGM in the footage itself would almost never come directly from commercial sources.

So from this angle, the creation methodology of this project could be said to be extremely luxurious. As the sound director Nagasaki Yukio-sensei is also in control, the degree of completeness of all the creations are very high. So when I am listening, I’ll feel that each scene’s music would match the scenario seamlessly, I can’t help but feel: “As expected of professionals huh?”

Q: Then this really is a special experience. So, what was the process did you commission for the 2nd season’s background music?

Sakai Kazuo: For the second season itself, after I had completed the script to a certain level, I left it in the hands of Nagasaki Yukio-sensei.

In the production of a normal TV anime, they’ll list/order tunes that would have higher versatility. For example, “Normal Days 1”, “Normal Days 2” are excited and calm respectively, “Normal Days 3” would be soft or by stringed instruments, or jazz etc… but Nagasaki-sensei wouldn’t do that.

He has his own unique method: Firstly he’ll read through the script, and from there filter through it and choose what background music are needed for the scenes. And afterwards have “Chika’s rising emotions”, “Riko’s entanglement”, “The two’s relationships”, he’ll pinpoint and match the music with existing scenes.

That is the reason why the music matches the story extremely well. Speaking of which, he’ll summarize the scenes that require music and summarize them in a sheet to hand it to Kato-sensei, for the two of them to collaborate. This is the perseverance of Nagasaki-sensei.

Due to the production process fitting the scenes, and the feelings of the characters starring in it very well, it’ll sound very comfortable.

(TL Note: Nagasaki Yukio, assigned as the sound director since 2013 on the TV anime “LoveLive!”. He is responsible for confirming the style of the background music, choosing the BGM to be played in each scene, with other assignments like post-recording the lines of the seiyuu etc. The person in charge of the category of “music” in the production of the anime.)

Thoughts towards the 9 performers who were able to individually express the charm points of the members.

Q: Next up, I would like to discuss with you the feelings of the performers who have supported this project. As the director, you’ve taken care of the various seiyuus. In which instance did you feel their growth?

Sakai Kazuo: I am the one that had grown. The work put in by the 9 of them would always give me courage and new discoveries.

Having the just resolve to take on the work on stage, that half-assed resolution isn’t enough.

They were able to make a name for themselves, they accepted criticism and judgment, and all along the way sincerely faced this project head on.

This filled me with respect as well. All along, compared to the things that the staff members had taught them, what they themselves taught me would number even more.

As, in all the hearts of the performers of “LoveLive! Sunshine!!” – the girls truly exists and lives (in this world), and they even helped us by expressing the individual charm points of all the members.

I feel that at the time when they participated in the auditions, they already had this power hidden among them.

Q: The way the performers for Aqours as well as the members synchronized, that is one of the charm points of this project, right?

Sakai Kazuo: That’s right. In my heart, the members and the performers could be said to be equal - for example Chika is Inami-san, Inami-san is Chika.

In a previous recording, when Inami-san was reading the lines her eyes started swelling with tears. I felt that in this scene, Chika would naturally cry too, and thus reflected that in the drawings. Of course, for the other 8 performers, the same feelings apply.

Being Aqours, there would definitely be lots that the 9 members would carry with them. But I feel that, the fans did indeed took note of them working hard selflessly.

The goal of the theatre version is to take on the challenge of finding the epitome of the Aqours style.

Q: As of now the TV anime has it’s curtains drawn midst resounding reviews. The fans should all be looking for the totally brand new theatre version. As the director, are there any announcements or things that you wish to challenge?

Sakai Kazuo: It is thanks to the support from everyone, that we could smoothly made it all the way to the current stage of having a theatre version, I thank everyone from the bottom of my heart.

What we are going to do now, is to put in our all to make an end product that that all the audiences would enjoy.

At the moment, we, the production team members are brainstorming with lots of enthusiasm while progressing with the production, in the hopes of making something that would capture the hearts of people. There isn’t a definite correct answer for the project.

For the audiences of this theatre version, I think they’ll have different thoughts, and what I am looking forward to is exactly that: a product that would be filled with many different possibilities.

In addition, as a theatre version would mean a movie, so we had thoughts like: “Isn’t this 10 times tougher than a TV anime series?” “Can we really do this?”, so we are both nervous and expectant, we spend everyday energetically like Chika and rest.

Although we have our concerns, we feel we can’t be as adventurous like the TV anime series, but having something “new” is the nature of “LoveLive!” - it’ll be that way regardless of whether it’s a TV anime or a theatre version.

Thus, I wish to epitome the “Aqours style”, and declare a challenge towards this. I have to remember firmly the theme of creating something brand new with 3D and the drawings; to work hard and create something for everyone who passionately love “LoveLive! Sunshine!!”

And this would be a new calling in my heart. Actually before this interview, I just had a meeting about the theatre version,we said that we would have Mt Fuji and the Sun as the background for a trio song, and next up would be having them sing among the footage of a fighting game.

I’m just kidding (laughs). In any case, we’re refining our ideas while joking with each other just like this, so everyone please do look forward to it.

Q: Can you reveal in simple terms what is Director Sakai, your own impression of the “Aqours style”?

Sakai Kazuo: “When one sings, and jumps, your stomach will start to be hungry!” I guess that’ll be it? I wish to pursue a pure kind of joy.

Q: Can we put it as a kind of following your instincts vibe? (laughs) I’m beginning to look even more forward towards the theatre version. And our time is almost up. Please do say something to the fans who had supported this project.

Sakai Kazuo: To everyone who tuned in to watch the TV anime each week for season 1 and 2, all I can express is my gratitude.

Among the audiences, there might be people who feel that: “this project is hard to understand”. And without discussing whether it’s good or bad, in this project there would be places where the answers are vague or unclear.

Some of the places we did so intentionally, and some aren’t so, but I feel that these (elements) and the style of “LoveLive! Sunshine!!” and very much linked together.

There was a period of time before where I worried over that too: “Scenes where we rely on reading the emotions and not on the dialogue, would that give pressure on the audience?”

But in the 1st season I realized that the nature of “LoveLive!” is to: “Don’t lie about your feelings”, so perhaps this is a type of methodology that could express it thoroughly. This project in some sense is an experimental thing, in another sense it’s quite sentimental…

In that way you could imagine there’ll be places where it’ll be obscure and difficult to understand.

And to everyone who, even with these elements, still love this project, from the bottom of my heart I am unable to express how grateful I am.

The 1st season who did it’s best to break from it’s shell, to the 2nd season in it’s search of something brand new - and there are times where I was lost too. With the songs from Aqours as my landmark, chasing the “shine” of the 9 individuals who gave carved out the future.

Where would the 9 individuals who had reached episode 13 go from now on?

One of the charm points of “LoveLive! Sunshine!!” is to have changes every day, so I would like to ask everyone to continue to look forward to the activities of Aqours and the release of the theatre version, and to continue to run along with us.

Q: Our final question. When Director Sakai feels uncertain, what song would you listen to to guide your way?

Sakai Kazuo: I guess it’s the 1^st Single “Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru kai?”?

I feel that all of the answers are found in that PV where I myself had first started off, so when I am feeling lost I’ll listen to that song first.

And among the lyrics it’ll include the feelings that I had when I first asked Aki Hata-san (about this project), it can be said to be the starting point of “LoveLive! Sunshine!!”, so at the end it’ll still return there.

When I was asked to take on this popular franchise, I felt tremendously pressured, and the result of my endless worries, was that song. That is something I’ve carved in my heart, and I will never forget that.

Birds, beavers and microparks: experts plan to rewild London

How to consume Writing Advice

There is so much writing advice out there lately, and I mean - a lot! On tumblr alone there are countless writing blogs full of authors and writers making remarkable efforts to provide all their own experiences and writing tips. For me, this is paradise! But I’ve definitely had that experience where it can all be a little bit overwhelming and hearing from some of our readers, so have they. So I wanted to give a little rundown about some good ideas when taking in writing advice. 

To preface, this is not in any way shutting down any of the following tips that you might have found helpful or prescribed to others yourself. The number one rule that writing is an extremely subjective experience and everyone will find different things helpful. So as part of my ‘how to’ post I’m going to tell you to simply disregard whatever tips you don’t find help you personally - including this post! 

So, let’s discuss. 

Try everything first and avoid what doesn’t work for you. See what works for you. If you hear some advice, and you are sceptical, I’d always suggest giving it a go. Similiarly, if you hear some advice many others seem to find helpful but it doesn’t work for you you by no means have to stick to it. The whole idea of ‘you should write every day’ has made writing a stressful experience and turned many amazing storytellers away from the hobby, for example. But the basis of the principle is a good one! As with most advice, routed in good intentions. It will not make you a bad writer to avoid certain pieces of advice that the majority stick too. Speaking of…

Avoid any ‘you should’ or ‘either/or’ statements put forward as if they are fact. As mentioned above, writing is hugely subjective and I tend to find any advice put forward in the form of a command or with no room for movement can be just as detrimental as it is helpful. 

Try not to let writing advice put you down. Because it can. As someone who tries to give others writing advice this is a hard pill to swallow, but check this out: here’s one example. ‘Oh, you’re having a hard time on your first draft? Well, I’m editing my second and you haven’t even started the hard work yet!’ Again, while this statement is not advice in itself it’s such a commonattitude I see in any writing community. It scares a lot of people who are just trying their best. You can’t control what tips are given to you without what hyperbole, you can’t control the actions of others - so I would advise you learn to spot it, so you can absorbing it. 

Keep in mind the country of origin of the advice given and if any dispensation has been given for International readers. The main reason for this is practicality: things like the editing process and how to get published, copyright law, and even common grammar errors might vary from country to country and I don’t want anyone getting themselves in any deep water. 

Learn to recognise negative input. One example would be the trend that tells people that they are ‘not allowed’ to write a certain topic, culture, etc, because of who they are. In my opinion, art including writing should be limitless, should be for everyone. Obviously this one depends on your own personal beliefs, but for me I would advise everyone to learn to recognise the signs of negative input. Some of these include; condescending or negative language or a presumption that the author/writer has done or is doing something wrong. 

If they want to charge you an up front fee, something’s sketchy. I’m sure there’s a lot of articles that I hope you guys have made yourselves familiar with about scummy publisher/editor practises. Please always keep these in mind! Now, it’s not the case advice will be poor if paid for, but it’s not the case it will be better, personalised to you or even given either. You don’t need money to get help, not on this internet. 

Try to avoid having someone else do your research. This one is difficult, because what really constitutes having someone else do your research? I’d say: asking one tumblr blog for a master list of links about, say, Norse mythology, and having this be the basis of your research. Research might not be everyone’s forte but it is a huge aid to the inspiration process! You would not believe the amazing things you could learn about your worlds; the things characters will just tell you stand out to them - the detail your story will bloom with if you research for yourself from many sources. Which ties into another point about cross-referencing different advice and tips given, especially when those tips are factual. 

Be vocal. Talk about your work. Talk about what has worked for you in the writing process and what hasn’t. Share sites, blogs and videos you’ve found to be helpful. Share resources. For example; for me, one piece of advice that has never worked for me is when people say ‘just skip the beginning’ of your story, start in the middle or at the end. There is so much I learn from every page and I find syncing up time lines hard enough! 

Anyhow, that’s just a few things for right now that I hope really help you guys out. This post isn’t about being down upon anyone’s advice, because really, none of us are entitled to someone else’s advice. It’s amazing that there’s such a community for writers online. I just want everyone to thrive! 

j’avais remarqué que la plupart des hommes qui s’est approché de moi dans les clubs, bars ou même par le biais de sites de rencontres en ligne; sont presque toujours les plus jeunes. Le jeune homme, j’ai été sexuellement impliqués avec a 8 ans de moins que moi. Pourquoi ces jeunes hommes ont été dessinés … Continuer la lecture de Cougar Rencontres Conseils – Frais Et Lisse Les Moyens D’Attirer Et De Rencontres Des Femmes Plus Âgées http://dlvr.it/NV0KVJ

bien sûr, vous voulez trouver une femme plus âgée qui est attirée par un homme plus jeune. Vous aurez de meilleures chances de gagner son cœur. Voici quelques conseils pour attirer son. les femmes plus Âgées ont tendance à être plus indépendants. Ils sont bien dans leur carrière et sont généralement plus en sécurité financière. … Continuer la lecture de Datant Des Vieilles Femmes – Relation Des Conseils Et Datant Des Conseils Pour Les Jeunes Hommes http://dlvr.it/NTtglj

Lorsque vous sortez avec des femmes plus jeunes, vous devez tout simplement connaître les différentes attentes qu’ils peuvent avoir. Il y a certainement des jeunes femmes qui sont aussi mature que toute femme plus âgée pourrait être. Et bien sûr, vous allez trouver des femmes plus âgées qui sont moins matures et peut-être même needier … Continuer la lecture de Le Mythe De La Datation Des Femmes Plus Âgées Ou Cougers http://dlvr.it/NTnTGD

exhaled-spirals:

« Several layers of nostalgia are at play with these images [old Polaroids]: not just for the 1980s style on display—the gelled hair, the jean jackets, the oversize T-shirts—but for a time before the internet and phones, before everyone could carry a camera and instantly distribute the images. Sometimes this manifests directly in the images’ content, when someone is talking on a corded phone or listening to a boombox or sitting in a bedroom whose walls are covered with pictures cut out of magazines. You can see how everyday life was saturated with analog media, which makes the relative absence of screens palpable.

But pre-digitality also comes across as a nostalgia for the technology of print photography itself. Its limitations now read as stylistic choices, particularly since they have become filter options for us in contemporary camera apps. In the old photos, the fading colors, the flashbulb glare, the imperfect focus, the chemical blotches and anomalies from the developing process can seem at once both accidental and deliberate, or as accomplishing the deliberate capture of the incidental.

Looking at images like these—a kid sleeping in the back of a Ford Escort; a woman in a bathing suit sitting on a lawn chair in the driveway smoking a cigarette, a guy with a mullet in an apartment complex living room crouched beside a tower of Carling Black Label cans—I’m tempted to romanticize that mystery as a kind of grace that enchants the people in them, who don’t know yet that they are living in the before. None of the images are selfies, which feels strange in itself. The subjects usually know that they are being watched, […] but they can’t imagine, even in theory, that it could be everyone watching. They can’t even frame that as an aspiration, which, to me looking back on them now, seems to animate their behavior with a guileless innocence, an indifference, an aura they’re unaware of, an absence of self-consciousness that I could trace in their faces, though I am certainly projecting it.

An illusion arises that in these snapshots people are somehow more present, more themselves, as though the camera were capturing something more elemental about them because they had less wherewithal to stage the image or manipulate it after the fact. It is as though who they were in general was more fixed and objective, less fluid and discursive. Though they are anonymous, they register more concretely as specific people, unpatterned by the grammar of gestures and looks that posting images to networks seems to impose. [N]ot every image of them will be taken to define them or will be seen as expressing something they were trying to say. The photos appear not as assertions of reality but reality as it was. This is all tantamount to a nostalgia for denotation, for a time when images were less rhetorical, less overtly intentional […].

A photographer once could make an occurrence into an occasion by recording it. Accordingly, one can be nostalgic for the way film cameras could sanctify mundane experience, rather than making experience seem mundane. Cameras are ubiquitous now; they can no longer be added deliberately to a situation. All of [the above] has been displaced by the ability to send things to the network. No longer is it magic to represent and preserve, but to circulate, to influence and tally up the proof of it. Photos that document “reality” as it was are necessarily trapped in a drawer somewhere or in an album buried in an attic. Photos that document intentionality are everywhere and nowhere, disappearing into the way we see everything. »

— Rob Horning, “Found images: On the nostalgia for image scarcity”

♛ Articles I Wrote  ♛

The Basics of Story Planning - Part II (protagonists)

The Basics of Story Planning - Part I (introduction)

Creative Writing - is this what I want to do?

♛ Personal Writing (Mostly FanFiction) ♛

Deserving - (Red Dead Redemption II - John Marston x Arthur Morgan - Secret Cupid 2021 for  @southernlynxx​)

Love Gun - (AO3 - Fallout 4 - F!SS x MacCready)

Run Kid Run - (Red Dead Redemption II - Secret Santa 2020 for @ @onlytherocksliveforever​)

♛ Resources  ♛

None, yet.

venus-macabre:

The Myth of Getting Better

The Myth of Getting Better

When you’re chronically ill or dynamically disabled, it feels like your whole life is about trying to get better

by Brianne Benness, January 19th, 2020.

It feels like I’ve been trying to get better my whole life.

I was trying to get better in middle school when I carried a small cooler pack of homeopathic remedies with me everywhere I went. And I was trying to get better in high school when a naturopath put me on a special diet and my mom and I tried to make our own gluten-free bagels, boiled dough and all. And I was trying to get better in my twenties when I rebuilt my life from the ground up in an effort to cure my terrible eczema and the crushing fatigue that was left in its wake.

In these and many other moments, I thought of my complaints as stubborn but not chronic. With each new protocol, I thought I was one step closer to getting better.

The great thing about trying to get better is that it lets you feel like you have some control over your circumstances, like you’re taking action about your health. The terrible thing about trying to get better is that it might not work, and nobody wants to admit that.

If your body has stopped working the way that you expect it to, then getting better is a worthy goal. And if your body keeps malfunctioning, you might find that a lot of people support you in that goal. Your family wants you to get better and your friends want you to get better and your colleagues want you to get better. Sometimes it even feels like they’re all waiting for you to get better because it’s too uncomfortable or difficult to maintain a relationship with somebody so unwell.

But what if you don’t?

In 2017, I became homebound, nearly bedbound. Most mornings, my husband would help me walk from the bed to the couch for a change of scenery, and he brought me all of my meals because I couldn’t physically prepare my own food. I could barely read, let alone write, and so I’d put a procedural show on the television and close my eyes while somebody with a lot more cognitive function than I had gone about solving a mystery.

At that moment, my doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with me, and my body wasn’t capable of doing all of the research, planning, and labor required to follow Instagram’s latest wellness protocol. Without even realizing it, I’d stopped trying to improve my health.

And that was the first time I heard a whisper in my mind asking, what if I don’t get better?

This question is so, so hard to reckon with. When I tried to share that whisper with other people, they seemed to have trouble reckoning with it, too. People would say, “You don’t know what the future will bring!” or “Don’t say that!” or “Have you tried…?” Anything to avoid engaging my grief.

I learned not to talk about it with other people, but I still didn’t know how to reconcile a lifetime of trying to get better with my current life on our couch. I didn’t have a diagnosis and I didn’t have a plan and I didn’t know that not getting better was even an option. I’d never heard of anybody who got so sick they had to leave their life behind and then… just kept living like that. I’d never heard of anybody who stopped trying to get better but still survived.

And what did it say about me that I was entertaining these thoughts? Had I given up? Did I just want to keep living in my small new world where my husband waited on me hand and foot? Was I choosing to stay sick because of the secondary gains? What would we do if this really was my new normal?

Now here’s the part in the mystery where we got very very lucky: We found out that there was toxic mold in our house, and it was the explanation for my rapid decline. With help from family, we were able to move into a mold-free home. After a few months, I could read again. Sometimes I prepared my own food. I could walk long distances without support, and my brain began to work the way it used to.

My friends and family were elated that I was getting better.

I was elated too, and I couldn’t wait for my life to get back to normal. But it didn’t. Over the last two years, I’ve had great months when I could trust my brain and body to behave as expected for at least eight hours a day as long as I gave them enough rest. And I’ve spent weeks in bed reading or listening to romance novels, trying fervently to believe that my energy levels would stabilize again. I’ve learned that if I try to push my body past its limits for more than three days, I will disintegrate into a shaky heap that needs help getting back to bed. I have become hypervigilant, constantly scanning my body for early signs of collapse.

I’m better than I was in that moldy house, but I’m not better in the way that I’d always used the term. I’m not well.

And so now that whisper—what if I don’t get better?—is much louder. And I know from my podcast interviews and from Twitter that I’m not the only one trying to reckon with this question. And I also know that there are better questions to ask.

Instead of a lunch box of remedies or homemade gluten-free bagels or a full life makeover, I’ve started wondering what little things I can do to make my functional periods even longer. And instead of thinking that my life is over whenever I’m stuck in bed, I’ve started to wonder if maybe I can find a way to accept that time as part of my life right now.

But I wish I’d known much sooner that getting better wasn’t guaranteed or even required. I wish I’d known it when I was a kid who needed much more rest than the other kids in my cabin at summer camp. I wish I’d known it when I was wracked with guilt after backing out of New Year’s Eve plans with the man who would become my husband. And I wish I’d known it when I moved my whole life from Toronto to San Francisco because I thought the whole Bay Area would be more conducive to healing.

I wish I’d known that if you live with fatigue or pain, you might never get better and that’s not your fault. The people around you want you to get better because they want you to be happy, but sometimes it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you put all of your resources into trying to get better, and you find yourself feeling ashamed and guilty and hopeless and inadequate instead of feeling better. Sometimes trying to get better makes you feel much much worse.

But I also wish I’d known that you don’t have to get better to be happy. You can find joy in your favorite characters and you can really truly connect with people online who understand and you can let yourself off the hook just a little because you didn’t choose to get sick but you’re building the best life you can anyway.

As misleading as it can be, God put you in the position you are in now because He has better plans. He has His reasons and I tell you, you won’t understand it right here, right now, but sooner or later the answer to all your unanswered questions will flash before your eyes without you even knowing it. Yes, failures hit hard and most of the time you find yourself sulking and crying and blaming yourself for inadvertent things that have happened and is happening in your life. It’s normal. Cry all your tears, sulk all your days and blame for all it’s worth. But promise me, after all the crying, sulking and the blaming, get your shit together and pick yourself back up. You’re one strong little fighter!

Maybe the answer isn’t really “no” but “not now”

Be a firm believer of perfect timing. Each day you plot things according your way. You set goals, priorities and you work your way to achieve those best laid plans. Little did you know that God is also constructing His perfectly designed blueprint for you. When things don’t work out the way you want them to be, you question Him without understanding that He has His own time frame. Everything will work out in His time, not yours.

Reward yourself for trying

No regrets, just lesson learned. At one point, you’ve already won because you tried. You took chances even with the possibility of failing. Rather have a life of “oh wells” than a life of “what ifs”. Failures give us chances to be better and wiser. And you gave yourself that chance. You may have failed now but don’t stop at once. Remember: there would be no Harry Potter nor Apple nor Disney if JK Rowling, Steve Jobs and Walt Disney stopped trying.

You are destined for greater things

It might be a bit vague for you right now and you still wonder why you didn’t make the cut. And as to why it’s happening for everyone else but you. Honestly, I also don’t know the answer to those questions. But I know He does. All I know is that there is something more in store for you out there. His plans are greater than yours. Maybe this company didn’t hire you cos a much bigger company will pirate you. Maybe you didn’t pass the supervisory exam cos sooner or later you will ace that managerial exam everyone’s been dreaming of. Think of the bigger possibilities!

Giving up is your mortal enemy

Justin Bieber might actually be right when he said “Never say never.” Giving up is the last thing you want to do especially when your heart knows this is the dream you want to pursue. A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. Don’t stop just because you got scarred. Yes, you’re allowed to scream, you’re allowed to cry. But buddy, you are not allowed to give up. Don’t lose your faith. The most amazing things in life tend to happen right at the moment you’re about to give up hope.

So little fighter, believe things will be brighter. Pull yourself up! It may not happen to you now but stay on track and keep pursuing that dream. Never lose your focus. Look forward to the day that you will finally be able to say “I finally made it.” All efforts will be worth it, I promise you. When that day comes, it will be the most satisfying thing that will fill your heart’s content.

Apparently, this is a heartfelt article especially made for you from a 22 year old girl who just came back home from a failed airline screening.

How Disney Movies Program Your Mind by The Cracked Podcast
The Disney filmography from the 1930s to today perpetuates an antiquated American value structure that depicts misogyny, racism, classism and narcissism, yet as kids watching these films and parents showing them to our children, we never think twice about it. Should we be more vigilant in deciphering what these movies are really about instead of just blindly trusting the logo on the Blu-Ray case?

Should we be so cavalier in showing Disney movies to our kids without any kind of pretext or decompressing post-film discussion? I mean, when was the last time your parents sat you down after, like, a spirited viewing of Dumbo to explain that those crows are super not okay, or that like, running away from home when you’re sixteen to marry literally the first human man that you’ve laid eyes on is probably not going to be quite as romantic if you do it in real life? There’s usually not a castle involved. And I’m going to go ahead and say that that’s probably happened zero times. Parents have never tried to do that or unpack any of these things with us, and that’s kind of the problem with all of these movies. DumboandSnow WhiteandSleeping Beauty and like, two-thirds of the Disney catalogue, they were all released in theaters over half of a century ago. The country was a very different place back then. It was dominated by an entirely different value system, a lot of which was actively harmful to lots of people. And our parents, and previous generations, their parents too, helped sort of keep these values alive just by continuing to show their kids these classic Disney movies.

Sexism

When you look at Snow White, […] her superpower is being pretty only when she’s asleep. Her life is saved multiple times – the seven dwarves are about to pickaxe her in the head, and then she rolls over while sleeping and they’re like, “Whoa! She’s so pretty! Whoa, that chick is hot!” And then at the end, the prince comes and kisses her to raise her from the deep sleep from the poisoned apple. Any time she acts with agency, like when she runs away from the castle, she’s just like, running into trees and is just like a dizzy idiot and when a clear witch walks up and is like, “here’s an apple,” she makes the obviously wrong decision. The moral is just, “Women, this is what happens when you think for yourselves – just, better seen, not heard. Better unconscious, actually, if possible.”

Friendship

There’s an undercurrent in almost every big Disney movie of, a lot of weird lessons about how romance works, and also a lot of weird lessons about how friendship works. For movies that can depict everything from the Grimm’s Fairy Tale cannon to Huns invading China to, you know, animals under the sea, they basically depict every romance the same way, and they depict the friend that works – at least for princesses – in a really weird…it teaches you to be selfish, almost, I think, the way they depict friends.

So when you look at most of the princess movies – and I think those movies are almost like the central Disney movies – they make a weird point of almost all the princesses having animal friends or, in Beauty and the Beast’s case, having household object friends, in Snow White’s case it’s a mix of dwarves and animals who come and land on her. But like, Pocahontas has an entire tribe of humans to hang out with – all the other humans in her tribe hang out with humans – but what Pocahontas does is hang out with a raccoon, and a hummingbird, and a talking tree. And Ariel hangs out with fish under the sea, even though she has all these other mermaid friends she could hang out with, and they hang out with each other, and I think it makes a lot of movies have best friend characters for the main character who are kind of subordinate – like, especially romantic comedies will have a subordinate best friend idea, or a less-cool best friend idea – but I think Disney movies push it in a really weird way. They make it very specific that the main character, who you’re supposed to identify with as an impressionable kid, all their friends are not as important. All of them are just a candlestick or a flounder that is there to support you, and help you become a princess, and help you get a prince and live your own life, and I feel like that suggests and implies to a kid that friendship is about gathering companions to help you with your quest.

They’re almost gods in comparison to their friend group because they’re like this higher species that is able to communicate with them. The friends are always cleaning up after them, usually to their own detriment. In The Little Mermaid, Ariel about gets Sebastian executed and like, gets Flounder in trouble, and she’s just ruining all these people who are her friends because she just has to keep pursuing this prince who she’s seen once. […] In Disney movies, every friend is the “ugly best friend”, if you notice. Like, the only attractive characters are the main characters. Like you know instantly if you see an attractive person, oh, they’re the main character, or maybe the bad guy. But like, every other supporting character is either the most cartoonish looking goofball, or like, an animal.

I feel like we give a lot of credit to like, the self-esteem movement of the 90’s for like, raising kids who always think that their point and their point of view is important, but it’s really like, deep down in the Disney universe. You are important – the world literally revolves around you – and other people who look like you, they don’t really matter. You’re better than them, they don’t like books as much as you…

Romance

In addition to not really depicting friendships that are two-way streets, where you can gain so much by giving to people in addition to having them help you win a generic guy, in terms of how the romances work, it’s a very set pattern in a way that feels beyond the reductive that a screenplay needs to make the story interesting. It’s always somebody’s first love, the woman is always in her early 20’s or maybe younger, and also they always pretty much jump from meeting each other and maybe completing some sort of danger (defeating a villain) to kiss and marry at the same time (which I know is, like, working around the realities of sex and everything), but it’s strange to make a whole series of movies that have no room for stories about someone who has dated someone before, or someone who’s like, still getting to know someone, or just any of the different steps in a relationship because there’s so many compelling stories you can tell with that.

It suggest that, once you like someone, they’re going to immediately like you back (because you’re the prettiest person), and if they don’t, you become like, this ruined, weird…you stake your life on it, in all these stories.

They put so much pressure – with that narrative – on kids. So when you hear stories about how, oh, this couple has been married for 50 years and they were high school sweethearts and they were their first boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever and we think, oh, that’s great. Like, why do we think that’s great? Like, sure, I mean, it’s fine for them, but why is that…it’s like, they’ve made it, so that’s like, something to shoot for, or something?

So nice to know that they weren’t out banging around, you know.

Right, so they end up – maybe indirectly, I don’t know – putting a lot of pressure on kids when they first get into high school or middle school or whenever you have your first serious relationship, where it’s like, it feels so serious because it’s your first step, finally, into this adult world that you’ve been learning, or I guess, watching since you were a kid.

It treats the romantic aspect of your life like it’s a video game speedrun. Like, the sooner you get this done, the sooner you have a relationship that works and you did it, you win. There’s nothing meaningful in, like, dating someone once, getting to know them, breaking up amicably or not breaking up amicably, having experiences… And I know that’s a lot to unpack as we talk about it, but there are so many complicated things in these movies that you would think they could do something, at least a little bit, along those lines.

And I don’t know how many exact relationship lessons people are taking from those moments in the movies, but it really does lead you to believe that at least what you care about and who you like is going to like you back. It’s such an unhealthy idea to implant in kids’ heads. Like, Charlotte’s Web is like, oh, you like this spider? The spider is fucking dead now. Because that’s what happens in the world. But Disney princess movies in particular seem to just be really about wish fulfillment in a way that’s super unhealthy.

Classism

The thing I’d never noticed before, and once I saw Anna do it in Frozen, I realized it had happened in every Disney movie I’d ever seen, which is, in the beginning, when she’s singing her song about how excited she is to have her party – her big ball – she runs through the castle and all her servants are there preparing, and she’s there grabbing plates off stacks and putting them on other people’s stacks and shoving them around playfully and is so happy, and all her poor employees – servants – are just like, yeah, this is how we do it. And she’s obviously an aspirational character. And it’s everyone. Everyone in the Disney universe treats anyone who works for a living like a prop that they just have. Simba, when he’s excited about one day being king, torments Zazu by – not just Zazu, everybody, he’s dancing on the heads of his subjects, literally frolicking, climbing over their face and, if any of them defy him or screw up or hurt him…they’re going to get eaten by king lion, they’ll be beaten.

The overall philosophy of The Lion King, like that circle of life speech, when he’s like, “ah, that makes sense, Dad,” is basically like, other people, other beings who also have the same amount of ability to think and act as us, they’re not as good as us, so we eat them…and poop out their bodies. So many rich fathers have given that speech before, like, verbatim. “Well, this is why. It’s the natural order of things. It’s…they’re happy doing what they do for us.”

It’s just shocking how you can pause and think, at any point during any Disney movie, “What about poor people right now?” Elsa freezes Arendelle and like, everyone’s huddled in the castle – all the rich people are huddled in the castle – but if it gets much colder, they’re going to freeze. What about everyone who doesn’t have a castle right now? It’s a coastal village, too. Did Elsa kill everyone? How many people froze to death that are not even mentioned in the movie?

There’s more. Aladdin starts off living in abject poverty and then, he gets the lamp, and his first wish is, “oh, I want to be a prince.” Somewhat of a selfish wish when you live at the bottom of the greatest wealth gap ever seen, and, two scenes ago, you were sharing one lump of bread with two starving children. But then later, Jasmine meets those same two kids who are starving and also shares food with them […] and at no point does that ever come up again. What happened to those kids? Aladdin gets to go and be wealthy, and all the poverty he came from – like, clearly the system of government is not… The point is that life sucks for everybody except the Sultan, Jafar, and Jasmine, and her white tiger pet.

And we see how business as usual is because when Jasmine goes out there, she’s not necessarily being, like, charitable, she just doesn’t understand because she’s been in the palace, so she steals because she’s just like, “oh, here you go, you’re hungry.” She doesn’t understand that the kid can’t pay for the apple, she just thinks that he can’t reach it or something. She’s totally ignorant. And then that dude is about to chop her hand off – like, that’s how business as usual goes in Agrabah, like, that’s just it! And she does nothing with this information. There is no comprehensive reform of Agrabah, of its justice system. She goes back to the castle and is like, “what happened to Aladdin?” not, “what happened to that child?”

It is interesting that before the rise of Disney in the 30′s, 40′s, America had unions and was, you know, labor-conscious, and then Disney rises up and suddenly capitalism and anti-communism – which, Disney actually helped with – they fall out once Disney goes away, dies, if you believe their version of events. And once Disney classics start coming back – The Lion King,Frozen,The Little Mermaid – we’re suddenly…we don’t care about poor people anymore. Disney controls our attitudes toward poor people.

I transcribed a large portion of this podcast episode because it was so good. It may be easy to say, “oh, it’s just a kid’s movie,” or, “it doesn’t matter,” but these movies shape our culture, especially as things that were integral to our childhoods. I can connect with another person really quickly by singing “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You” with them (which I’ve totally done before), but I’ve never then said, “our society’s concepts of masculinity are fucked up, right? why is it that even though Mulan touches on this, and is all about how a woman can excel in what is thought to be a man’s role, we’re still conditioned to think that it was a happy ending because she got a man in the end?”

We accept the ridiculous portrayals of romance, friendship, class structure, gender roles, etc. present in these movies because “they’re just movies” and we’re smart enough to realize that they’re not how real life works – or are we?

This weekend has been full of awesome conversations, connections, interactions, and people.

Relationship Anarchy Basics by Marie S. Crosswell
A relationship anarchist believes that love is abundant and infinite, that all forms of love are equal, that relationships can and should develop organically with no adherence to rules or expectations from outside sources, that two people in any kind of emotionally salient relationship should have the freedom to do whatever they naturally desire both inside their relationship and outside of it with other people.

Relationship anarchy does share with polyamory an overall rejection of sexual and romantic monogamy, its common rejection of legal/institutional marriage, etc, but it also seeks to completely break down what I like to call the Romantic Sex-Based Relationship Hierarchy by erasing relationship categories determined by the presence or absence of sex and/or romance. Relationship anarchy consequently creates equality of all personal/intimate relationships, behaviorally and emotionally. The freedom to interact and value one’s relationships starting with a blank slate, distributing physical intimacy, sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, etc. according to one’s desires rather than preexisting rules and categories of relationship types, is an expression of this equality.

Relationship anarchists do not rank personal, loving relationships. They do not see any set of behaviors as innately restricted to romantic and/or sexual relationships, which certainly makes it difficult to elevate romantic-sexual relationships to a superior position above nonsexual/nonromantic relationships. RA’s see all of their personal, loving relationships—meaning, any relationship that isn’t professional or casual in nature—as equally important, unique, fulfilling different needs or desires in their life, and as possessing similar or identical potential for emotional/physical/mental intimacy, love, and satisfaction. A relationship anarchist does not place an emotional ceiling on nonromantic/nonsexual friendship or on a sexual friendship that’s devoid of “romance.” A relationship anarchist does not limit physical/sensual affection in their nonsexual relationships just because they’re nonsexual or nonromantic. A relationship anarchist does not expect to spend most of their time with just one sexual partner/romantic partner or with their romantic/sexual partners in general, nor does an RA assume that the romantic/sexual relationships (if they have any) automatically deserve or get more time and prioritization than the nonsexual/nonromantic relationships.

I really like relationship anarchy because it recognizes the “Romantic Sex-Based Relationship Hierarchy”, or, how mainstream society promotes putting labels on relationships and ranking them according to if you’re getting some or not, or if you’re “serious” or not (which is often construed as romance). I don’t interpret relationship anarchy as having no hierarchies at all – some relationships will be prioritized because of time constraints, and there will always be differences in how much someone cares about different people – but it’s accepting that there is no value hierarchy in loving relationships (platonic, romantic, sexual, or otherwise).

I think that placing romantic, sexual relationships on a pedestal is dangerous. Esther Perel, in her talk Rethinking Infidelity, remarks, “We have a romantic ideal in which we turn to one person to fulfill an endless list of needs: to be my greatest lover, my best friend, the best parent, my trusted confidant, my emotional companion, my intellectual equal. And I am it: I’m chosen, I’m unique, I’m indispensable, I’m irreplaceable, I’m the one.” To depend on one individual so much, to be depended upon in the same way, to have your sense of self so intertwined – that’s terrifying to me.

I was talking with a friend about this and he noted that a lot of people desire comfort and stability, especially in relationships, and the standard monogamous relationship structure provides them that. It’s a way to make sure that the other person still loves you without having to check every time, and, in a sense, it avoids dealing with relationships as living things (that is, the supposedly terrifying notion that people and feelings change). Something we discussed is how odd it is that romantic relationships are defined by their end – a breakup or divorce automatically classifies the relationship as a failure. It goes back to viewing the end of a comfortable thing as an indication that it was never stable to begin with, along with the sunk cost fallacy. It doesn’t recognize the value of a relationship as the relationship itself.

There’s also a big difference between people who desire children and a family and people who don’t. I find that this correlates with the desire for comfort and stability (which makes sense in the context of raising a child), but also with the desire to be “normal” (or conform to societal norms because they don’t want to be “weird” or be viewed as an outsider).

Another note: RA is important to me as someone who’s asexual. Marie writes, “Relationship anarchy should be important to the asexual community because it is the only method of relationships that removes sex as an indicator of relationship value, of a partner’s value, and as the line of separation between important, serious bonds and less important, casual bonds.” There’s a documentary about asexuality, (A)sexual, that’s currently on Netflix. Part of it follows David Jay, the founder of AVEN (the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, which is the largest online asexual community), as he navigates through his relationships as an asexual person. What devastated me more than I expected was his conclusion when some of his close relationships ended because his partners directed more time toward their own sexual partners:

You know, when I think about intimacy, I still think mostly about communities, but I’ve also been shifting a lot and thinking more and more about intimacy with one person. So, that’s a transition from where I was a couple of years ago. And I think that the biggest thing that created that was what happened in my relationships. […] Feeling those relationships drift apart was really scary for me, and it sort of made me feel like maybe, even if I could make community relationships that were as close as I could possibly make them, they still wouldn’t be relationships that I could depend on in the way that I wanted to. They wouldn’t be relationships that I could raise a kid in. And that was really disheartening for me for a while. And thinking about that, I sort of…that made me more interested in a relationship with one person as a way to be kind of more stable. Even, like, that person could be a sexual person, and I could even be in a relationship that involved sex. I know that that’s something a lot of asexual people do, and that’s not something that I’m opposed to, but I know that I would need kind of that community-building or something else to really be the core source of intimacy in our relationship.

So, I want to clarify a little bit why sex is something that I’d want to have in a relationship with someone. The reason that sex is something that I’m now kind of willing to have in my relationships with people really gets to the fact that sex is how we take relationships seriously and that I feel like I’m gonna have a much easier time having a relationship that gets taken seriously and a relationship that works – envelops more options – if that’s something that I’m willing to put on the table.

I’ve spent so much time in this community fighting for the idea that people don’t need sex to be happy that it is really kind of disheartening for me to feel like I might need to have sex, just because that’s the only way to, like, access the kind of intimacy that I want to access. It feels like I’m not able to really form a connection on my own terms in the way that I would like to, and that’s fine. No one forms intimacy totally on their own terms. But that makes it…yeah, that was a little hard for me to get over.

What upset me the most was the admittance that most people believe that sex is key to intimacy, and in order for asexual people to enter into deeply intimate relationships, we may need to work within the romantic sex-based relationship hierarchical system. It may come down to compromises in the end, which are present in all types of relationships; it’s just that dealing with asexuality and aromanticism exposes the compromises that many allosexual/alloromantic people avoid or believe are “dealbreakers” in sexual/romantic relationships.

5 Ways Powerful People Trick You Into Hating Protesters by David Wong
Let’s say that tomorrow you are elected Secret Ruler of the USA, a position that gives you total power over the government, economy, and the culture at large – everything that hippies refer to as “the system.” Now, your first job is to not get beheaded by rioting peasants, which means your first job is really to maintain “stability” (i.e., “keeping things mostly the way they are”).

Wait For One Of Them To Break The Law, Then Talk Only About That

• “I mean, why can’t they protest within the law? You know, like Martin Luther King? That’s why he was universally respected in his day!”
  

Convince The Powerful Majority That They’re The Oppressed Ones

• Three simple steps – exaggerate the victim’s power to get the public on your side, get the victim to lash out so you can claim victimhood yourself, insist all of their complaints are disingenuous.
  

Focus On Their Most Frivolous Complaints (And Most Unlikable Members)

• […] notice how we’re always making it personal – as demonstrated above, you don’t talk about global warming, you talk about Al Gore. You don’t talk about systemic racism, you talk about Al Sharpton’s unpaid taxes. Don’t talk about income inequality, talk about how Occupy Wall Street kids all have iPhones.
  

Pit Two Disadvantaged Groups Against One Another (And Insist That Only One Can “Win”)

• If you can just convince them it’s a competition, they’ll spend all their energy hating each other and none of it trying to fix the system. The guy in the trailer park doesn’t blame the bankers for the economy, he blames minorities and immigrants. Only one of us can be the true victim here, dammit!
  

Insist That Any Change Will Ruin The World

• Remember, humans are naturally risk-averse – people will stay in bad jobs and relationships and keep destructive habits, for fear that trying to fix the bad shit will result in losing everything. […] all you have to do is portray any criticism of the current system as an attack on everything we hold dear…
  

Overlooking the clickbait title and overly sarcastic tone, David thoughtfully lists out different techniques that the majority uses to control how the public views dissenting minority voices.

My sleep schedule has been all over the place lately – hoping to correct that this weekend.

The Distress of the Privileged by Doug Muder
As the culture evolves, people who benefitted from the old ways invariably see themselves as victims of change. The world used to fit them like a glove, but it no longer does. Increasingly, they find themselves in unfamiliar situations that feel unfair or even unsafe. Their concerns used to take center stage, but now they must compete with the formerly invisible concerns of others.

Once you grasp the concept of privileged distress, you’ll see it everywhere: the rich feel “punished” by taxes; whites believe they are the real victims of racism; employers’ religious freedom is threatened when they can’t deny contraception to their employees; English-speakers resent bilingualism — it goes on and on.

And what is the Tea Party movement other than a counter-revolution? It comes cloaked in religion and fiscal responsibility, but scratch the surface and you’ll find privileged distress: Change has taken something from us and we want it back.

Confronting this distress is tricky, because neither acceptance nor rejection is quite right. The distress is usually very real, so rejecting it outright just marks you as closed-minded and unsympathetic. It never works to ask others for empathy without offering it back to them.

At the same time, my straight-white-male sunburn can’t be allowed to compete on equal terms with your heart attack. To me, it may seem fair to flip a coin for the first available ambulance, but it really isn’t. Don’t try to tell me my burn doesn’t hurt, but don’t consent to the coin-flip.

The Owldolatrous approach — acknowledging the distress while continuing to point out the difference in scale — is as good as I’ve seen. Ultimately, the privileged need to be won over. Their sense of justice needs to be engaged rather than beaten down. The ones who still want to be good people need to be offered hope that such an outcome is possible in this new world.

I appreciate the emphasis on empathy and compassion in Doug’s post. It reminds me of this amazing animated video, Sometimes You’re A Caterpillar, by Chescaleigh and Kat Blaque.

Sometimes you’re a caterpillar, and sometimes you’re a snail. It’s important to step back when you’re feeling attacked and ask if you’re the one with the privilege in the situation.

Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism by Dr. Robin DiAngelo
Mainstream dictionary definitions reduce racism to individual racial prejudice and the intentional actions that result. The people that commit these intentional acts are deemed bad, and those that don’t are good. If we are against racism and unaware of committing racist acts, we can’t be racist; racism and being a good person have become mutually exclusive.

This systemic and institutional control allows those of us who are white in North America to live in a social environment that protects and insulates us from race-based stress. We have organized society to reproduce and reinforce our racial interests and perspectives. Further, we are centered in all matters deemed normal, universal, benign, neutral and good. Thus, we move through a wholly racialized world with an unracialized identity (e.g. white people can represent all of humanity, people of color can only represent their racial selves). Challenges to this identity become highly stressful and even intolerable.

These privileges and the white fragility that results prevent us from listening to or comprehending the perspectives of people of color and bridging cross-racial divides. The antidote to white fragility is on-going and life-long, and includes sustained engagement, humility, and education. We can begin by:

• Being willing to tolerate the discomfort associated with an honest appraisal and discussion of our internalized superiority and racial privilege.
  
• Challenging our own racial reality by acknowledging ourselves as racial beings with a particular and limited perspective on race.
  
• Attempting to understand the racial realities of people of color through authentic interaction rather than through the media or unequal relationships.
  
• Taking action to address our own racism, the racism of other whites, and the racism embedded in our institutions – e.g., get educated and act.
  

I really like all of the examples that Robin gives – of the kinds of challenges that trigger racial stress, and the patterns that make it difficult for white people to understand racism as a system. At work, there’s a document of common derailing anti-patterns that’s similar (some parts of Google culture are really, really great). Just like it can help to identify conflict patterns, it’s important to be able to identify patterns in structural inequality and the way we think about privilege.

The War on Women Is Over – And Women Lost by Molly Redden
While you weren’t watching, conservatives fundamentally rewrote abortion laws.

This is what 2015 looks like: Abortion providers struggle against overwhelming odds to stay open, while women “turn themselves into pretzels” to get to them, as one researcher put it. Activists have been calling it the “war on women.” But the onslaught of new abortion restrictions has been so successful, so strategically designed, and so well coordinated that the war in many places has essentially been lost.

Most abortions today involve some combination of endless wait, interminable journey, military-level coordination, and lots of money. Roe v. Wade was supposed to put an end to women crossing state lines for their abortions. But while reporting this story, I learned of women who drove from Kentucky to New Jersey, or flew from Texas to Washington, DC, because it was the only way they could have the procedure. Even where laws can’t quite make it impossible for abortion clinics to stay open—they are closing down at a rate of 1.5 every single week—they can make it exhausting to operate one. In every corner of America, four years of unrelenting assaults on reproductive rights have transformed all facets of giving an abortion or getting one—possibly for good.

Where providers like Miller and Chelian see an extreme public health crisis, abortion foes see progress. Charmaine Yoest, the president of Americans United for Life, says that “apocalyptic” stories about abortion restrictions are not “an accurate representation.” AUL, which has written most of the model abortion legislation adopted across the country, is responsible for the recent wave of restrictions. Yoest claims that Roe v. Wade implicitly permits abortion for any reason at any time during pregnancy; the legislative changes AUL champions are moderating forces on an otherwise radical and dangerous law.

Because AUL’s measures seem reasonable, not only can legislators from red districts use them to rally the base, but those from purple districts can get behind them without facing a backlash. But the effects of these seemingly moderate and sensible abortion restrictions have, in fact, been breathtakingly radical.

This really, really sucks. What scares me is that the people creating these laws and barriers believe that they’re doing the right thing. What terrifies me is that I used to think the same thing in high school. Embarrassingly, I was staunchly pro-life because it was wrong to kill people (and fetuses are obviously people), and obviously if someone got pregnant, they could just put the child up for adoption. I viewed it as such a black and white decision that even my (conservative but pro-choice) mother was surprised.

I spend a few minutes every day wallowing in remorse when I remember the things I used to believe.

In 2007, the movie Juno came out. I don’t remember exactly what I thought at the time, but I liked it because it was witty, funny, and Juno had a burger phone. Now, I don’t like the movie. I look back on the scenes where she encounters a protestor outside the abortion clinic, has a terrible experience inside, and decides not to go through with it because the protestor told her that her baby has fingernails as harmful. As a teenager indoctrinated by the church, those were the scenes I expected. The lone, admirable pro-life protestor. The unsympathetic, indifferent clinic. The idea that someone can be persuaded to undergo permanent body changes and risk their health for months by something as trite as “a fetus has fingernails”. I’m angry that such a popular movie perpetuated those stereotypes, and I’m angry at myself for not questioning what I was told sooner. I also wish that more people around me had talked about their views; that’s one of the main reasons why I’m working on speaking up about my beliefs now.

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The Peril of Not Dying for Love by Claire Jia
I learned everything about love from movies. Love had a sexy soundtrack. Love was forever. Love almost always involved rain, stubborn parents and irrevocable passionate sacrifice.

It wasn’t heartbreak that became draining, but the lack of it.

I have been told so many times what love should look like that I am unsure what love even is anymore. If it doesn’t look like midnight kisses with my best friend, and it doesn’t look like a booty call from a Tinder match, what is it?

We’re told love isn’t love until he’s begging on his knees, and that heartbreak isn’t heartbreak until you’ve lost your mind. We think we want love, but we’ve rarely seen it, because love is a boundless unknown that no romantic stereotype can capture.

Movies promise us blissful forevers or crushing sorrow, but most of the time, love is neither. Maybe it’s just two people who tolerate each other. Maybe it’s a mutual right swipe. What would I do for love? I’ll let you know when I actually find it.

I have a thingforModern Love stories, mostly because I have no idea what love is. I grew up despising the normative romance type of love portrayed in movies, finding the notion of emotional dependence frightening. If love means feeling things that much, no thank you – so it’s interesting to me how Claire yearned for that type of feeling. One of my favorite quotes is by Douglas Coupland, from Life After God:

“When you’re young, you always feel that life hasn’t yet begun—that ‘life’ is always scheduled to begin next week, next month, next year, after the holidays—whenever. But then suddenly you’re old and the scheduled life didn’t arrive. You find yourself asking, ‘Well then, exactly what was it I was having—that interlude—the scrambly madness—all that time I had before?’”

I love it because I think it encompasses a lot of experiences. Many things in life are dramatized – love, fulfillment, success, even life itself – so when we end up experiencing whatever it is, we’re left with a sense of, “Oh…that was it? That was the thing? That right there?”

Why We Need Less Compassion In The Animal Rights Movement And Why Decreasing Cruelty And Suffering Is Not The Point Of Veganismby legacyofpythagoras
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard “I’m Vegan because I have compassion for animals,” “We should be Vegan to stop cruelty to animals,” or “I’m Vegan because it’s the right thing to do for people, animals and the planet.”

Both “compassion” and “cruelty” are concepts related to kindness. All three terms are about what kind of emotional responses we have and are related more to our own perception of our need to feel a certain way than whether we are meeting our moral obligations. Kindness is also essentially an act of charity from a position of advantage. Animal Rights and Veganism are not about being kind to someone who needs our charity. Animal Rights is about justice, which is born from a basic notion of decency, fairness, and respect. It’s a “Social Justice Movement,” not a “Social Kindness Movement.”

As most non-Vegans will tell you, anyone can feel compassion for someone and still inflict suffering and death on nonhumans merely for their own selfish interests. They will argue ’til they’re blue in the face that they don’t lack compassion, merely because they strive to give nonhumans a good life before “humanely” slaughtering them for “food.” In fact, the very notion that this is not the case is insulting to most people. This is because they irrationally see themselves as the ones who should decide whether the “inferior beings” that they exploit should get to live or die at all in the first place.

The reason it makes more sense to use the idea of justice to drive Animal Rights is because you can’t have justice and still inflict unnecessary suffering and death.It can’t be as easily argued that it’s Just to inflict suffering on nonhumans when there is no necessity.

Another aspect of this issue is that when we say we’re Vegan to decrease or avoid “cruelty” then non-Vegans will argue that it’s not cruel to exploit nonhuman animals, as long as you do it “nicely.” They will argue that breeding animals is not cruel because the animals “have a good life” and “get to have a family” and other such nonsense. It’s much harder to argue against this than arguing that we have a moral responsibility to not exploit anyone, whether human or nonhuman, because humans are not morally superior to nonhumans.

Besides the Very Odd Capitalizations and many emphases, this is a really good post. It insightfully points out that omnivores aren’t lacking in compassion, but have biases that prevent them from acting in a way that is just. I think this is one of the reasons why people get defensive about eating animals – since veganism and vegetarianism are touted as the “kind” or “compassionate” thing to do, they feel like they’re being attacked for being unkind and uncompassionate. Along with learned biases (“some animals are for food”, “milk is good”, “a meal is incomplete without meat”, etc.), they can’t imagine not eating animals, but they can’t imagine themselves as unkind, either.

This is also why the humane myth is so dangerous – by appealing to meat-eaters’ compassion, companies avoid addressing the morality of killing animals. Animals do not want to die. Giving them a “good life” before ending it doesn’t negate the wrongness of slaughter.

Oh summer, you went by too fast.

Appropriation and Animal Rights: The Intersectional Activist by Christopher-Sebastian McJetters
A very valid concern that arises among intersectional animal rights activists is how to be sensitive to the needs of multiple groups without dismissing or appropriating their struggles.

Restrict your role to being the messenger. The best way to avoid appropriating a group’s struggle is to not do it at all. Really, you don’t need to; instead, amplify the voices of people from that marginalized community who are raising awareness about speciesism themselves. Preaching from a place of privilege about things you don’t understand is wrong. Instead, share what you learned from discussions started by people who have had those experiences. For example, I’m not a woman; but I frequently research the voices of vegan feminists who recognize why issues like female reproductive rights make speciesism a feminist issue.

Own mistakes. If you f*ck up, you f*ck up. We’ve all done it—and we’re all going to continue to do it. As much as I use my privilege to support women, I’m still a man who benefits from male privilege. As often as I speak up for people with disabilities, I still recognize that I regularly perpetuate ableism unconsciously. Just OWN it when you do. Accountability goes a long way to legitimizing your authenticity. Apologize. Learn from your mistake, and move on. You’re not perfect, and pretending to be will only get you into bigger trouble.

I’ve been noticing a lot of talk around this topic lately, and Christopher-Sebastian’s post sums up everything nicely. A lot of animal rights activists see connections between oppressions and make comparisons (e.g. the way we treat animals is comparable to slavery, the Holocaust, genocide, etc.) However, this is totally offensive to a lot of people. The “animalization” of minorities is something that has been perpetrated by the majority in the past (i.e. viewing minorities as “subhuman”); therefore, it’s seen as an affront to be compared to animals once more.

It’s important to realize that people who believe in animal liberation have a completely different mindset than those outside of the movement – we don’t believe that animals are “subhuman”, which drastically changes the dynamic. When we talk about the animalization of other minorities, we view it as evidence to how both human and non-human animals are oppressed. Non-AR people view this as dehumanization. Like in the blog post, I think it’s important to realize these differences in thinking and be conscious of how hurtful it can be to some people when their experiences of oppression are compared to those of non-human animals.

Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday? by Nathan Schneider
The United States now leads the pack of the wealthiest countries in annual working hours. US workers put in as many as 300 more hours a year than their counterparts in Western Europe, largely thanks to the lack of paid leave.

A new American dream has gradually replaced the old one. Instead of leisure, or thrift, consumption has become a patriotic duty. Corporations can justify anything—from environmental destruction to prison construction—for the sake of inventing more work to do. A liberal arts education, originally meant to prepare people to use their free time wisely, has been repackaged as an expensive and inefficient job-training program. We have stopped imagining, as Keynes thought it so reasonable to do, that our grandchildren might have it easier than ourselves. We hope that they’ll have jobs, maybe even jobs that they like.

The new dream of overwork has taken hold with remarkable tenacity. Hardly anyone talks about expecting or even deserving shorter workdays anymore; the best we can hope for is the perfect job, one that also happens to be our passion. In the dogged, lonely pursuit of it, we don’t bother organizing with our co-workers. We’re made to think so badly of ourselves as to assume that if we had more free time, we’d squander it.

Congressman Paul Ryan quickly expressed fears that, with affordable [health] coverage, “the incentive to work declines.” Just the thought of the non-rich working less than all the time, and still having health insurance, was an affront to his idea of the American way. He actually said, “It’s adding insult to injury.”

The time-saving gizmos that Benjamin Franklin hoped for are here. But rather than liberating anyone, they’ve become a clever disguise for corporate greed to sneak ever more into our days and nights. Few subcultures revel in staying at the office after hours so much as Silicon Valley engineers. But who really benefits from their late nights of coding?

This reminds me of an article in Jacobin a few weeks ago, Forced to Love the Grind. “Passion as measured by hours has put the workweek on a course of runaway inflation, to the point at which people are actually shortening their lives and endangering others — sometimes in sudden, tragic form — in pursuit of an ever-elusive ideal of capitalistic individualism.” We’re indoctrinated in “The American Dream”, this concept that hard work and sacrifice is the key to everything (success, wealth, basically all material pleasures).

Schoolgirls for Sale in Japan by Simon Ostrovsky and Jake Adelstein
Japan’s obsession with cutesy culture has taken a dark turn, with schoolgirls now offering themselves for “walking dates” with adult men.

Last year the US State Department, in its annual report on human trafficking, flagged so-called joshi-kosei osanpo dates (that’s Japanese for “high school walking”) as fronts for commercial sex run by sophisticated criminal networks.

In our exclusive investigation, VICE News host Simon Ostrovsky will bring you to one of Tokyo’s busiest neighborhoods, where girls solicit clients in their school uniforms, to a concert performed by a band of schoolgirls attended by adult men, and into a café, where teenage girls are available to hire by the hour. But the true revelations come behind closed doors, when schoolgirls involved in the rent-a-date industry reveal how they’ve been coerced into prostitution.

I’m not sure how I feel about white men going in and “exposing” terrible things that are happening in other countries and cultures. I liked how they showed the work of one Japanese woman in helping girls that have been exploited, but their comments on how odd and wrong the culture is made me feel weird. Sure, at the end of the video they stick in a note on how Western culture isn’t perfect: “It would be easy and unfair to single Japan out as the only culture to sexualize young girls. Tens of millions of dollars have been made on American pop culture, exploiting the luring gaze of adults on underage girls.” And then they go on to say, “But there’s something unique and especially unsettling about the fact that, right out in the open, schoolgirls are available for rent by the hour in one of Tokyo’s busiest neighborhoods.”

How can someone who watched the video help the girls and women they talked to? They didn’t post any links to organizations in Japan addressing the problem. What was the point of the video? To raise awareness? Or is this another example of white people going, look at this weird thing happening in this other culture, we need to save them from themselves?

I didn’t read much during the last couple of days because I was writing a hangoutsbot plugin. It creates a Spotify playlist for your Hangouts chat and adds songs that are posted. I’m in a group chat with a few friends that share a bunch of good music, so the obvious thing was to automate our Spotify playlist.

There are still some tweaks I want to do, like mentioning the title of the song that was added (right now it just replies “Song added!”), as well as separating some of the logic into a script that can add songs to a playlist from downloaded chat history.

Lack of Intersectionality: A Moral Inconsistency of the Animal Rights Movement by Raffaella Ciavatta and Lili Trenkova
Animal rights activists are often accused of not caring about humans.

How can we change this view? There are among us those who truly believe we cannot fight one system of oppression (speciesism) by supporting another system of oppression (sexism, for example). It is morally inconsistent to claim we care about the bodily autonomy of hens but to oppose the bodily autonomy of women, just as it is morally inconsistent to say we care about equality but exclude certain species who are worthy of that consideration.

According to Javed Deck, for animals rights “[…] to be a movement that actually transforms relationships between humans and animals it needs to take seriously issues of race, class, and gender, and the ways these impact animal systems. Just like the transformations feminist and queer struggles have undergone as they crossed cultural boundaries, so must animal struggle change across these boundaries.”

This is a cool post by the co-founders of Collectively Free explaining their views on intersectionality. I like how they gave credit to Kimberle Crenshaw for the term “intersectionality” (this is really important because black voices have been erased from talks about intersectionality). CF has been doing some amazing campaigns: We Are All Animals – Starbucks (I participated in one of these protests with DxE),We All Feel Love,It’s Blood On Our Hands, etc. Their community and openness is inspiring. When someone felt triggered during one of their protests, they “learned: always listen when people who have been hurt share their stories, and always listen when someone brings up issues to your attention.”

This reminds me of a great video A Privileged Vegan made a few days ago, Is speciesism the root of all oppression? (Hint: NO.) She talked about how some vegans use the argument that speciesism is the reason that other forms of discrimination exist as a way to ignore all other forms of oppression (since getting rid of speciesism will get rid of all other -isms, duh). That argument is obviously flawed. As vegans, I think we have an even greater responsibility to be intersectional activists.

Raffaella’s and Lili’s post also mentions active listening and nonviolent communication, which is awesome because I learned more about this type of conflict resolution today!

Conflict Resolution Training by Kazu Haga
East Point Peace Academy’s Kazu Haga led DxE organizers and community members in a conflict resolution training.

Yelling. Arguing. Screaming. Harming. These are things that typically come to your mind when you hear the word “conflict.” However, none of those things are examples of conflict. They are examples of things that happen when you mismanage a conflict. By learning to better understand conflict and how we respond to them, we can use them as opportunities for learning and strengthening relationships.

Conflicts are neither good nor bad, but they are unavoidable - especially when working or living in community. This short workshop will provide some basic analysis and tools that groups can use to manage conflict in healthy ways so that we can stay focused on our mission - changing the world.

If we are organizing for change from the world outside of us, we have to first ensure that we are in line with our values in the ways in which we interact with each other in our own communities.

This was an informative introductory workshop to NVC. Below are some of the notes that I took:

• Pathway Conflict – same overall goals, different methods for reaching them.
  
• Mutually Exclusive Conflict – different goals, but choosing to function together.
  
• Distributive Conflict – not enough (or the perception that there is not enough) resources for everyone.
  
• Values Conflict – different values, different visions.
  

Diagnosing the type of conflict is important because you know more information as to how to respond. We must see things in the other perspective, and knowing what type of conflict we’re participating in is another step to resolution and understanding.

What if someone says that there’s a conflict, but I don’t see it?
It’s important to take responsibility for harm. If someone says that there’s a conflict or that they’re being harmed, it’s important to sit in their shoes (and believe them! don’t invalidate their feelings) even if you don’t see the conflict. Often, power and privilege come into play in these situations (e.g. a man can say that they don’t see discrimination against women).

Most times, people don’t mean harm, but if someone says conflict is happening, take responsibility for it. De-escalate and open up dialog by letting people know that they’re being heard. The possibility for dialog occurs.

All actions are attempts to meet needs. If we can articulate what our needs are, understanding can flow through. Being able to articulate someone else’s needs is important; it shows that you understanding where they’re coming from.

Often, we get stuck in strategies – strategies to meet a specified need. Beneath that, though, there’s often something else. Someone once told Kazu’s colleague, “I need to shoot this motherfucker.” That wasn’t an underlying “need” (no one “needs” to shoot anyone). Maybe they needed to feel powerful or respected.

“We need to learn to have compassion for someone’s ignorance.”
We’re trying to draw out their best and have more patience. However, there’s a time and a place for assertiveness in nonviolence where you say, “What you’re doing is fucked up,” and an example of this is direct action. Sometimes you have to say, “We’re not leaving this room until we have this conversation.” Be firm and assertive from a place of compassion. It’s a balance!

Ride This Out by Imaginary Cities is my new jam.

The Tyranny of Tyranny by Cathy Devine
A critical response to The Tyranny of Structurelessness.

There are (at least) two different models for building a movement, only one of which does Joreen acknowledge: a mass organisation with strong, centralised control, such as a Party. The other model, which consolidates mass support only as a coup de grace necessity, is based on small groups in voluntary association.

Joreen associates the ascendency of the small groups with the consciousness-raising phase of the women’s movement, but concludes that, with the focus shifting beyond the changing of individual consciousness towards building a mass revolutionary movement, women should begin working towards building a large organisation. It is certainly true and has been for some time that many women who have been in consciousness-raising groups for a while feel the need to expand their political activities beyond the scope of the group and are at a loss as to how to proceed. But it is equally true that other branches of the Left are at a similar loss, as to how to defeat capitalist, imperialist, quasi-fascist Amerika.

What we definitely don’t need is more structures and rules, providing us with easy answers, pre-fab alternatives and no room in which to create our own way of life. What is threatening the female Left and the other branches even more, is the ‘tyranny of tyranny’, which has prevented us from relating to individuals, or from creating organisations in ways that do not obliterate individuality with prescribed roles, or from liberating us from capitalist structure.

I read “The Tyranny of Structurelessness” yesterday, so I thought it would be fitting to read a critique of it today. I like Cathy’s emphasis on cultural change and building friendships to prevent burnout and relieve “feelings of personal shittiness”, but I think those things can also exist in a structured organization. I think she missed the point Jo made about structure – not as a monolithic organization commanded by a few, but an acknowledgment of power that inevitably arises in groups.

I was completely turned off by her metaphor of sex and organization: “Men tend to organise the way they fuck - one big rush and then that ‘wham, slam, thank you maam’, as it were. Women should be building our movement the way we make love - gradually, with sustained involvement, limitless endurance - and of course, multiple orgasms.” First, that’s exceedingly stereotypical and moderately offensive. I’ve also been thinking about the gender spectrum and what it means when feminism presents a dichotomy of “man” and “woman”. Later on, Cathy says that feminist revolution “means destroying the masculine and feminine roles which make both men and women only half human”. I find it difficult to reconcile the condemnation of binary gender roles while being dependent on some sort of definition of “woman”. When we remove social constructs like gender, what does feminism mean? The more I read, the less I feel like I know; going to add a bunch of social constructionism and feminist theory articles to my reading list now.

I am not a story by Galen Strawson
Some find it comforting to think of life as a story. Others find that absurd. So are you a Narrative or a non-Narrative?

So say the narrativists. We story ourselves and we are our stories. There’s a remarkably robust consensus about this claim, not only in the humanities but also in psychotherapy. It’s standardly linked with the idea that self-narration is a good thing, necessary for a full human life.

I think it’s false – false that everyone stories themselves, and false that it’s always a good thing. These are not universal human truths – even when we confine our attention to human beings who count as psychologically normal, as I will here. They’re not universal human truths even if they’re true of some people, or even many, or most. The narrativists are, at best, generalising from their own case, in an all-too-human way. At best: I doubt that what they say is an accurate description even of themselves.

But Nietzsche is more specific: ‘perhaps by what they are and by their sequence, they will yield… the fundamental law of your true self.’ Here it seems I must either disagree with Nietzsche or concede something to the narrativists: the possible importance of grasping the sequence in progressing towards self-understanding.

I concede it. Consideration of the sequence – the ‘narrative’, if you like – might be important for some people in some cases. For most of us, however, I think self-knowledge comes best in bits and pieces. Nor does this concession yield anything to the sweeping view with which I began, the view – in Sacks’s words – that all human life is life-writing, that ‘each of us constructs and lives a “narrative”, and that ‘this narrative is us’.

This is related to the story I read a few days ago, Seeing Myself: In Search of the Inciting Incident, where the author tries to make sense of his own story, and the related article, Life’s Stories, which states quite boldly, “How you arrange the plot points of your life into a narrative can shape who you are—and is a fundamental part of being human.” This is exactly what Galen is arguing against in his article.

It’s really interesting to me because I had taken narratives as a given – one of my favorite things is to read and listen to people’s stories. On the other hand, I haven’t assembled a coherent life story for myself. The eleventh question in The 36 Questions That Lead to Love is, “Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.” When I did this, I fumbled my way through it. What’s there to say? My mother birthed me, years passed, and here I am now. I don’t have a narrative, and I suppose I always assumed I was too young or naive to assemble one yet.

Thinking on it some more, I have always felt a bit weird when people tell the story of their life; I enjoy hearing singular experiences, but stories that try to wrap up the magnitude of a life through one coherent theme have always felt too facile. They feel too one-dimensional. If I am experiencing life in so many conflicting ways that I’m unable to form a narrative, I expect others to be as multi-dimensional and unsummarizable as I.

“Born This Way” Or Not: No Justification Required by Adam Turner
The “born this way” position is very much like the “right to privacy” and “live and let live” justifications for same-sex marriage. All are largely missing the more radical goal of making human relations — sexuality, marriage, employment, etc. — more gender neutral.

Saying “I was born this way” in the context of sexual orientation still suggests that there is something about “this way” that needs to be explained, excused, or justified. Sexual orientation should require no more justification than hair or eye color, music preference, or height.

The problem is, “born this way” is complicated and hard to take a step back from. Why?

First, biology is quite convincing and difficult to get past. This is an issue the disability rights community has been dealing with perhaps even more than the gay rights community. It is very hard for us, embedded as we are in our culture, to step back and see how many of our assumptions aren’t “natural” or “obvious” — two words that often denote biological explanations.

Historian and disability rights activist Paul K. Longmore argued that “for the vast majority of people with disabilities, prejudice is a far greater problem than any impairment: discrimination is a bigger obstacle for them to ‘overcome’ than any disability.” This perspective on the border between “difference” and “disease” is similar to arguments against sexual orientation discrimination. Eve Sedgwick notes, for example, that there is almost no strong or explicit defense of being gay or lesbian as a positive good; at best it is often accepted only as a tolerable reality. Most efforts to “understand” or find the “cause” of homosexuality are often based in a desire to “fix” it. Neither sexuality nor disability is a “natural state of corporeal inferiority, inadequacy, excess, or a stroke of misfortune.” The tendency to link such characteristics to particular embodiments is the result of a set of cultural processes with a long history.

Most positions depend on trying to explain, justify, or excuse a characteristic that should be value-neutral. Sexual orientation, along with race, gender, (dis)ability, and countless other identity categories, is a difference that ought to be celebrated not explained. I have faith that we can do it. Historically speaking, we’ve come quite a long way, but we still have a long way to go.

I like this. We often conflate being different as being wrong. I’ve been liking “GSM” (gender and/or sexuality minority) more and more these days because it’s more inclusive, it doesn’t specify an identity, and it emphasizes that being in the minority is absolutely okay.

Been reading a lot lately – feeling like I should find a better balance between learning and creating.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman
Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a ‘structureless’ group.

This means that to strive for a ‘structureless’ group is as useful and as deceptive, as to aim at an ‘objective’ news story, ‘value-free’ social science or a ‘free’ economy. A ‘laissez-faire’ group is about as realistic as a ‘laissez-faire’ society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can easily be established because the idea of ‘structurelessness’ does not prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones. Similarly, ‘laissez-faire’ philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus ‘structurelessness’ becomes a way of masking power, and within the women’s movement it is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). The rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is curtailed by those who know the rules, as long as the structure of the group is informal. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.

‘Structurelessness’ is organisationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group; only whether or not to have a formally structured one. Therefore, the word will not be used any longer except to refer to the idea which it represents. Unstructured will refer to those groups which have not been deliberately structured in a particular manner. Structured will refer to those which have. A structured group always has a formal structure, and may also have an informal one. An unstructured group always has an informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites.

This was really cool to read. I like Jo’s insight that the elite are informal and unconspiratorial at the heart – “a group of friends who also happen to participate in the same political activities” – and aren’t inevitably bad. However, they pose a problem in unstructured groups where their power is unlimited. The seven principles she outlines that are politically effective and essential to democratic structuring are particularly important.

This critique of structurelessness reminds me of the supposed lack of management structure at Valve. In the article Former Valve Employee: ‘It Felt a Lot Like High School’, Jeri Ellsworth said, “It is a pseudo-flat structure where, at least in small groups, you’re all peers and make decisions together. But the one thing I found out the hard way is that there is actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company and it felt a lot like high school. There are popular kids that have acquired power in the company, then there’s the trouble makers, and everyone in between.” Maybe this is why Half-Life 3 is never coming out? Heh.

Does Veganism Make a Difference? by Brian Tomasik and
Expected Utility, Contributory Causation, and Vegetarianism by Gaverick Matheny
One common charge against veganism is that abjuring the consumption of factory-farmed animal products will not actually have a real-world impact. Indeed, this is the argument of last resort for those who come to accept the utilitarian position on factory farming yet refuse to change their diets accordingly.

Buying meat is one case of contributory causation where the probability of any single individual’s affecting meat production is slight, but the expected disutility of affecting that production is substantial. Thus, in its expected utility form, act-utilitarianism defeats the ‘causal inefficacy’ defence of buying meat.

When we make a decision about how to act, we never know for certain the actual utilities that will result from all our possible actions. We may, after making a decision to act in a particular way, come to know the actual utilities that resulted from the one action we decided upon. However, this knowledge is not helpful in making the original decision, since it is not only reached after the fact, but also limited to only one of the many possible actions we may have had to choose from. Consequently, act-utilitarians have typically argued that we should make decisions, not on the basis of actual utility, but on the basis of expected utility – the product of the utility resulting from an action and the probability of that utility resulting – that one might reasonably predict given the available evidence. Since expected utility, nota actual utility, can be known when making a decision, only expected utility can help an act-utilitarian to decide what course of action to take.

Jonathan Glover provides on example of contributory causation called The 100 Bandits. 100 bandits descend on a village and find 100 villagers, each villager with one bowl, each bowl containing 100 baked beans. Each bandit takes one bean from each bowl, so that each bandit ends up with a bowl of 100 beans. Now, no villager can perceive the difference made by one bean being stolen from his bowl (either at the moment or later, due to malnutrition). Thus none of the bandits would seem to have individually harmed any of the villagers and so none of the villagers should have been harmed. Yet 100 villagers are without lunch and hungry. So something went wrong here.

Gaverick’s paper goes into the details of disproving the “causal inefficacy” defense of buying dead animals using Glover’s “divisibility principle” (which relies on moral responsibility) as well as using expected utility through “threshold units” (which relies on maths!). Brian’s article goes on to explain why it may be harmful to eat animal flesh even in situations where you did not buy the bodies yourself. You can read more invalidations of common arguments against veganism at Your Vegan Fallacy Is.

Note: I’m deliberately avoiding using the word “meat” in order to restore the absent referent. “Behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes.”

Long day today. Did you know that Google has a new logo?

Klatt’s Last Tapes: A History of Speech Synthesisers by Lucy Hawking
Lucy Hawking, daughter of esteemed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, documents the history of speech synthesis for Radio 4.

Lucy explores the less-covered history of the technological phenomenon that is synthesised speech; computer generated voice aids that are used by millions across the globe, who not only have disabilities, but also use everyday software such as Siri.

Lucy Hawking covers all aspects of the history of synthesised speech - from the mechanical “speaking machine” created by inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen, to the “text-to-speech” research and audio clips curated by Dennis Klatt in the first half of the twentieth century.

It’s amazing to look at how far speech synthesis has come, and how much can be improved still. Regarding voice personalization, there’s a company called VocaliD that is working on creating custom voices that blend a person’s distinct vocal characteristics with a donor voice.

Sex Work Should Be Decriminalized in America by Eric Sasson
The Rentboy raid exposes the government’s misplaced priorities on prostitution

In many places around the world, sex trafficking and exploitation are grave concerns, and as Amnesty made clear in their explanation of their decision, so are the problems this marginalized community faces because of the criminalization of their labor. The Rentboy raid only distracts from these real concerns. It would have been far more productive for the government to have focused on a more vulnerable group—say, the numerous transgender women of color who resort to prostitution and who are repeatedly subjected to violence.

It’s unwise to lump all of these categories of sex workers together: We should be able to vehemently protest and decry the plight of poor women forced into the sex trade as a means of survival, while still defending the rights of the men—and women—in the United States who advertise their services on escort sites as a means of supplementing their income. Claiming that all women who engage in sex work are victims is at best, patronizing, and worse, anti-feminist, in that it assumes women don’t know how to choose what to do with their bodies.

This is a bit of a departure from the Men who buy sex: Who they buy and what they know study that I read a couple days ago. That study found an association between the attitudes of men who buy sex and violence against women. Now here’s an article defending people’s rights to their bodies. I believe both, but how do we reconcile sex positivity in a coercive society? There’s the argument that all work is coercive, which I don’t think is incorrect. Something doesn’t sit right with me when I compare sex work with other exploitive forms of work, though, and I think it’s because the basis of most sex work comes from the patriarchal, heterosexual ruling class. To me, while an individual can feel sexually liberated by taking control over their own body, I don’t think that sexual liberation can exist under patriarchy as a whole. Most of the time, it’s men like those in the study who are buying sex.

TW: descriptions of disordered eating.

On Growing Up as an Unskinny Asian, And How the Pressure to be Thin Almost Took Over My Life by Juliana Chang
I was defective, and any measures I took to try and disguise this fact had to be kept secret.

I’m lucky in that my westernized parents never forced any sort of “girls should be docile and fragile” ideal on me, but that didn’t protect me from family and friends who still thought I ought to look the part. Aunts who clucked their tongues at my round thighs. Family friends who would take my mother aside and mutter in low concerned tones about how wide I was getting. And I’m sure almost all of you can relate, it is a terrible, terrible thing to have people openly dissect the changes in your body that you feel powerless to stop. I lived with two standards of beauty, neither of which told me any part of my body was worth loving.

I continued to struggle with my weight all throughout middle school and high school, oscillating between hating how I looked and hating how I felt about how I looked. […] Some methods, like exercise classes and eliminating soda, certainly made me healthier, but I never got my weight down to the number I wanted. Other methods, like starving myself, only added to the colossally fucked-up web of low self-esteem, perfectionism, model minority mayhem, impostor syndrome, and distorted body image that was my mind.

Slenderness is part of the beauty standard for most cultures. But part of the reason the pressure to be thin in East Asian culture is so suffocating is because it’s assumed to be a natural given. Terms like “Asian-metabolism” and “Asian skinny genes” point toward the expectation that being slender comes effortlessly (and biologically) for people of Chinese, Taiwan, Japanese, Korean descent.

There was actually a similar article to this a few years ago, also on xoJane, “Fat for an Asian:” The Pressure to be Naturally Perfect (TW: height/weight numbers, descriptions of disordered eating). It can be really conflicting to straddle multiple cultures as a 1.5 or second-generation immigrant, especially as a teenager. Common themes: not feeling beautiful by western or eastern standards, struggling with the openness in which Asians talk about weight while having been raised in American culture, feeling defective because all Asians are supposed to be skinny, being oppressed by the model minority stereotype, not matching the image of what Asian women are portrayed as in popular culture.

Taylor Swift Is Dreaming Of A Very White Africa by Viviane Rutabingwa and James Kassaga Arinaitwe
We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was okay to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa.

Here are some facts for Swift and her team: Colonialism was neither romantic nor beautiful. It was exploitative and brutal. The legacy of colonialism still lives quite loudly to this day. Scholars have argued that poor economic performance, weak property rights and tribal tensions across the continent can be traced to colonial strategies. So can other woes. In a place full of devastation and lawlessness, diseases spreads like wildfire, conflict breaks out and dictators grab power.

Swift’s music is entertaining for many. She should absolutely be able to use any location as a backdrop. But she packages our continent as the backdrop for her romantic songs devoid of any African person or storyline, and she sets the video in a time when the people depicted by Swift and her co-stars killed, dehumanized and traumatized millions of Africans. That is beyond problematic.

And then she decided to donate the proceeds from advertisements linked to her video to the charity African Parks Foundation of America. If you travel to some of Africa’s parks, you’ll see the rangers and guides are black Africans.

So why not show them in the video?

Even though this is “just” entertainment, or “just” a music video, I think it’s important to criticize seemingly frivolous popular culture like this because it’s so visible. I absolutely abhor when prominent musicians and their production teams are so lazy as to default to using exoticization, cultural appropriation, animals as props, or sexuality to sell their music every single time. Taylor’s music video is offensive in terms of completely erasing blackness from her depiction of Africa – it’s also offensive because it exploited free-roaming animals and promotes normative ideals of male beauty and behavior (”He’s so tall and handsome as hell / He’s so bad, but he does it so well”). Children and teenagers watch this, for goodness’ sake. Honestly, most popular culture gets me flustered and angry.

Btw, there’s a new Tropes vs Women in Video Games: Women as Reward.

“But What Will Your Husband Think?” Sexist Expectations about Women’s Hairstyles by Bailey Poland
Women’s hair remains an indicator of patriarchal expectations of women’s beauty in the U.S. 

The shorter the hair, the less likely many viewers are to see a woman as feminine – and, as a result, many people see the act of a woman cutting her hair short as a rebellious statement. For many white women, cutting their hair short feels like a radical act, and it can be a freeing break with beauty standards. However, for black women and other women of color, there are issues of race that affect how a similar decision will be approached and received. Any woman who decides to change her hair can expect some form of sexist response.

The belief that, by virtue of being in public, a woman has invited commentary on her appearance is a key feature of patriarchy. Women are regularly held up against an arbitrary and unattainable scale of beauty, and receive unasked-for feedback on how far we deviate from that scale. Even when mentioned as a compliment, this behavior reinforces gender and racial power structures, by reminding women that our presence is always subject to surveillance and judgment, and that we are expected to passively accept that judgment as accurate, especially when it comes from a man.

The belief that a woman’s hair should be assessed first and foremost by how much her husband, boyfriend, or father likes it positions women as subordinate decision-makers for our own bodies, and frames our own opinions as less significant, interesting, or important in comparison. It also reinforces the idea that women should be expected to attempt to meet a narrow set of beauty ideals, which are often limited in a number of ways and focused explicitly on white, straight women.

This was an interesting article to read because I’ve been conflicted on what to do with my hair for a while. I usually cut my hair every two years and donate it; it’s been almost three years now and I’ve been putting it off because, as I’ve told many people, “I look like a 12 year old boy when my hair is short.” I didn’t come up with that image – a friend said it to me, and I internalized it. I haven’t wanted to cut my hair because I started a new job with more responsibilities earlier this year and I’m afraid that I’ll have less authority if I look younger. Before that, I didn’t cut my hair because my ex said that he liked short hair better, and fuck that noise.

There are other stories I have about my hair (how interesting that I never realized this before). Comments on my “Asian hair”, that time my dad cut my hair too short, that time I cut my hair too short, people telling me that I shouldn’t want to shave my head, when I dyed the tips of my hair in an effort to love myself more, when an acquaintance told me that I would look prettier if I had another hairstyle, …

Pretty Unnecessary: Taking Beauty Out of Body Positivity by Lindsay King-Miller
While I’m in favor of encouraging women to feel confident and happy, I worry that today’s body positivity focuses too much on affirming beauty and not enough on deconstructing its necessity. Spreading a message that everyone is beautiful reinforces the underlying assumption that beauty matters.

Last year, an ad from the Dove Real Beauty campaign took social media by storm. The viral video showed a police sketch artist who drew two pictures each for a group of women—one sketch based on the woman’s description of herself, the other based on a stranger’s description of her. In its final scene, the women were shown the two sketches side by side; they marveled at how much more beautiful they looked to a stranger than to themselves. The ad’s statement was ostensibly heartwarming, but it didn’t sit right with me. Everyone in it was thin and able-bodied, and almost everyone was white—hardly a dramatic reversal of conventional beauty standards. And the viral advertisement reminded women that being found beautiful by other people was more important than what they thought of themselves. At the end of the clip, one of the women reflected after seeing the portraits and said, “I should be more grateful of my natural beauty. It impacts everything. It couldn’t be more critical to our happiness.”

I’m troubled with using “beauty” as a synonym for feeling valuable and powerful and magnificent. It’s not far removed from nominally inspiring, but ultimately shallow, slogans like “Confidence is sexy” and “Nothing is more attractive than happiness” that treat emotional well-being as an accessory.

Instead of insisting that beauty is necessary for everyone, more body-positive activists are working toward making beauty optional—something we can pursue if it matters to us, but also something we can have full and satisfying lives without. We should affirm our bodies for what they can do, how they can feel, the tribulations they’ve survived, and the amazing minds they carry around, without having to first justify their existence by looking pretty.

I love this. I appreciate how Lindsay recognized that reclaiming beauty can be empowering for marginalized people, even though her point is that individuals shouldn’t have to feel pressured to be beautiful (reclaimed or not). It circles back to the same theme – liberals want to reform the system while radicals want to dismantle it. The body positivity movement is trying to work within the confines of beauty whereas we should be dismantling its necessity.

Due to my experiences with an eating disorder, I try very hard to view my body in terms of its capabilities rather than its looks. I don’t want to be beautiful, I want to be capable. I admire my legs for propelling me 545 miles. I love my arms for hoisting me up the cables at Half Dome. It’s really important for me to reject the notion of beauty as the key to confidence, happiness, and self-worth.

Screen Reader User Survey #6 Results by WebAIM
In July 2015, WebAIM conducted a survey of preferences of screen reader users. We received 2515 valid responses to this survey, our highest thus far.

If you don’t consider versions of Internet Explorer, the most common combinations are:

1. JAWS with IE - 23.9%
   
2. Window-Eyes with IE - 14.9%
   
3. NVDA with Firefox - 11.4%
   
4. ZoomText with IE - 9.8%
   
5. ZoomText with Firefox - 6.9%
   
6. VoiceOver with Safari - 6.8%
   

There are many combinations that are used. This highlights the need for increased screen reader and browser support for web standards because of the great difficulty for web authors to test in all common screen reader / browser combinations.

JAWS usage is down from 63.9% in January 2014 to 43.7% (from a high of 74% in January 2009). Window-Eyes usage doubled and ZoomText usage increased over 5 times in the last 18 months! System Access (26.2% to 6.9%), NVDA (from 51.2% to 41.4%), VoiceOver (from 36.8% to 30.9%), and ChromeVox (4.8% to 2.8%) all saw notable decreases in usage in that time.

It is both exciting and challenging that there are 5 different screen readers that are nearing parity of common usage by over 25% of respondents. If these trends continue, it’s quite possible that JAWS will no longer be the most commonly used screen reader in the near future.

This is really curious. Microsoft has started offering Window-Eyes to Office users for free, which most likely caused the surge in users. Also, this highlights how difficult web accessibility can be. Along with browser fragmentation, there’s screen reader fragmentation!

bodyache by Purity Ring has been my jam for the past week or so.

Self-ish:Part 1,Part 2,Part 3
Ana Cecilia Alvarez, Victoria Campbell, Durga Chew-Bose, Fiona Duncan, Jazmine Hughes, Josephine Livingstone, Fariha Roísín, and Charlotte Shane discuss selfishness.

Victoria: But in the context of feminism, selfishness-as-individualism is very problematic. The struggle against patriarchy can’t be compared to the conflict between individual liberty and traditional authority because both are patriarchal.

What’s the difference between being self-qualified, self-actualized, self-sufficient, self-fulfilled, self-taught, self-serviced, self-made, self-governed, self-organized, self-assured or self-realized and being selfish? Maybe it’s just having a dick.

We’re taught to think that the world owes us something in return for our suffering because the world was built on sacrifice. Which is just a prettier word for exploitation. If selfishness is a refusal it should be the refusal to suffer for “the greater good,” the refusal to sacrifice the self for other, the refusal of the commerce model of life that replaces the Pavlovian bell with a whip and trains us to think every little pleasure should be deserved before it’s given.

This was a lovely and insightful discussion to read. Besides thinking about selfishness, compromise, and love, it left me wondering how I can have thoughtful conversations like these with my own friends more often!

The Subtle Linguistics of Polite White Supremacy by Yawo Brown
Polite White Supremacy is the notion that whites should remain the ruling class while denying that they are the ruling class, politely.

Polite White Supremacy is very real. So why is it that we must specifically say ‘Polite White Supremacy’ rather than Racism? We must say Polite White Supremacy for three reasons. First, saying #PWS puts the responsibility solely on the creators of a systemic problem. Second, this phrase addresses the subtlety and casualness with which oppression is administered. Thirdly, it eradicates the all-too-common confusion between racismandprejudice. It’s important to eradicate this confusion so it can be clear that racism is tied to a power structure and access to resources.

In detail, Polite White Supremacy relies on three key components to ensure its success: comfort,control, and confidentiality.

Whites who participate in #PWS desire to be comfortable in all settings while maintaining some influential level of control over all situations without acknowledging this power. Omitting acknowledgment of white privilege gives off the psychological effect that whites have somehow worked harder than non-whites and blacks must be lazy since statistically blacks are suffering a great deal in America. They pretended this was all natural.

The silence of confidentiality is the glue holding this whole charade in place because #PWS can’t exist out in the open as overt white supremacy, not because it’s wrong, but because it’s unfashionable to be an open white supremacist in today’s society.

I like the emphasis on using “Polite White Supremacy” because the term implies that people fool themselves into thinking that they have good intentions. It’s important for us to realize the power of language and the words we use, whether it’s saying “revelers” instead of “white rioters”, “meat” instead of “dead body”, or not using someone’s preferred pronouns.

Men who buy sex: Who they buy and what they know by Melissa Farley, Julie Bindel, and Jacqueline M. Golding
A sample of 103 men in London, England, who used trafficked and non-trafficked women in prostitution were asked about their experiences and awareness of the sex industry.

Men’s acceptance of prostitution is one of a cluster of attitudes that encourages and justifies violence against women. Violent behaviours against women have been associated with attitudes that promote men’s beliefs that they are entitled to sexual access to women, are superior to women and are licensed as sexual aggressors. The purpose of the research was to assess men’s attitudes toward women in prostitution and their awareness of and use of trafficking victims, with the goal of ultimately developing prostitution and trafficking prevention programmes.

Selected comments about prostitution by London men who buy sex:

• “I feel sorry for these girls but this is what I want.”
  
• “I have sex as a means to an end to meet my sexual needs… It’s a financial transaction.”
  
• “It should be legalised over here. This is the way God created us. It is being human. If you don’t have a partner then you have to go to a prostitute.”
  

The association between these men’s acceptance of myths about prostitution and their acceptance of myths about rape was statistically reliable (r = 0.23, p = .024). The more accepting they were of prostitution, the more likely they were to also accept cultural myths about rape such as “Women say no but they really mean yes” or “A woman who dresses provocatively is asking to be raped.” The notion that prostitutes are “un-rape-able” was a common belief among the men in this sample. Twenty-five per cent told us that the very concept of raping a prostitute or call girl was “ridiculous.” Nearly one-half of the buyers stated that rape happens because men get sexually carried away (47%) or their sex drive gets “out of control” (48%). […] The men expressed a number of misogynist attitudes, some of which frankly endorsed rape. Those with the highest scores on the hostile masculinity scale tended to be those who most strongly endorsed rape myths (r = 0.71, p < 0.0001).

Men who buy sex are aware that their relationship with a woman in prostitution is not a genuine attachment, and that the sex, race and social inequality in the relationship make real reciprocity impossible. Nonetheless they are disappointed and often feel “tricked” by what they know is the woman’s simulation of emotional and sexual response.

Legalisation and prostitution tolerance zones encouraged men to buy sex. Several men explained that once having visited areas where prostitution is legal or promoted, they returned to UK with a renewed dedication to buying sex even if that practice is illegal. The new UK legislation needs to be enforced extra-territorially. Almost half of the men had paid for sex in other countries, mostly in legalised regimes such as the Netherlands.

Men’s attitudes play a central role in perpetrating violence against women. Efforts to prevent violence against women must address not only those attitudes which are overtly condoning of violence against women, but also the wider clusters of attitudes related to sex, including prostitution, which normalise and justify this violence (Flood and Pease, 2009).

I think it’s really important to recognize that our society promotes the notion that men need sex as part of being “masculine”. This isn’t just in the context of prostitution, but in romantic relationships as well – sex is something that’s necessary. A relationship without sex won’t last. People in a relationship are entitled to sex; sex is owed.

There was an interesting discussion about masculinityin/r/anarchism today. /u/danharaj wrote, “Traditional masculinity is characterized by insecurity, anxiety, and a constant need to affirm itself and differentiate itself from femininity, which it constantly degrades and attempts to control. […] ‘Emasculate’ is a verb with no feminine counterpart. Everything terrible about men comes down to such a toxic, barren, highly controlled conception of masculinity.” /u/pukescabies then remarked, “It is kind of surreal when you realize the typical ‘masculine’ role in male-female relationships revolves around being hyper-jealous and possessive. Too much acceptance of your partner’s autonomy is viewed as weak.” There’s a huge need to stop this type of thinking – not just because these attitudes perpetrate violence against women, but also because they are harmful to the men who believe they must do these things in order to be “men”.

I don’t know whether I support the legalization of prostitution or not. In the wake of Rachel Moran’s article, Buying Sex Should Not Be Legal, and the discussions around it, I’ve come to the conclusion that most people are at a loss for what to do. The decriminalization of prostitution in Germany hasn’t reduced exploitation. The Nordic model is controversial. The current state of regulation in America is broken. Regardless of the law, however, I think that dismantling our notions of masculinity, opposing compulsory sexuality, teaching better sex education (including concepts of consent and coercion), and establishing a universal basic income are some necessary steps on the path to eliminating exploitation and sex trafficking.

Catching up on sleep this weekend, zzz…

The Sexual Politics of Meat: 25 Years Later by Mickey Z.
Mickey Z. Interviews Carol J. Adams

One of the problems is that the burden is on those of us who recognize the oppression of animals to educate human justice activists on the interconnections and we meet up against something I call “Retrograde Humanism,” the belief that we must help humans first then we can think about animals. An example of retrograde humanism is when animal activists are asked (usually angrily), “What are you doing about the homeless?” […] It’s almost as though cultural discussions gravitate to dualisms (i.e., we’re either for people or animals) when dualisms are the problem and not the solution…

Another thing to consider is what activists several decades ago referred to as the “primary emergency.” What is the primary emergency that a group is addressing? As animal activists, we need to be sensitive to the primary emergency of any group that we seek to work with intersectionally and not overwhelm that focus. For instance, #BlackLivesMatter is saying: this is our primary emergency…. And who could argue with that, given the statistics on the deaths of African-Americans by police?

It helps for us to ask ourselves, “What is the privilege I am bringing to this situation? What do I need to be aware of that may not be visible to me? What are my presumptions?” In seeking alliances, these are important questions that I hope will keep us from reifying or co-opting someone else’s oppression in our work.

Intersectional activism isn’t about equivalencies, but about interrelationships. Misogyny is not racism is not speciesism is not homophobia. They are interconnected, not analogical. I believe these oppressions arise from a white patriarchal system of domination. Various forms of oppression will be mobilized in keeping groups down: so attitudes about species can be used to mark race, sex, and disability. And attitudes about the other species are inflected with gender, race, and ableism. Part of the issue for each oppressed group of human beings is how species prejudices are used to describe, oppress, or delimit who they are.

Carol J. Adams is someone I respect a lot – even more so now due to this interview. I think empathy and compassion are key to intersectional activism. Especially in the case of retrograde humanism, Oppression Olympics™ abounds. I love the idea of identifying the primary emergency of other movements and supporting them along with our own.

Love, Identity, and Genderqueer Family Making by Maggie Nelson
An excerpt from Maggie Nelson’s ‘The Argonauts’.

A day or two after my love pronouncement, now feral with vulnerability, I sent you the passage from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes in which Barthes describes how the subject who utters the phrase “I love you” is like “the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.” Just as the Argo‘s parts may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase “I love you,” its meaning must be renewed by each use, as “the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.”

I thought the passage was romantic. You read it as a possible retraction. In retrospect, I guess it was both.

You’ve punctured my solitude, I told you. It had been a useful solitude, constructed, as it was, around a recent sobriety, long walks to and from the Y through the sordid, bougainvillea-strewn back streets of Hollywood, evening drives up and down Mulholland to kill the long nights, and, of course, maniacal bouts of writing, learning to address no one. But the time for its puncturing had come. I feel I can give you everything without giving myself away, I whispered in your basement bed. If one does one’s solitude right, this is the prize.

I really enjoyed reading this excerpt, for the lyrical quality of the words as well as the content. Now The Argonauts is on my (very long) list of books to read, along with Bluets.

Unfinished Letters From the Most Popular Kid in the Psych Ward by Casey Rocheteau
To all my QTPOC who struggle with mental health issues, which is to say most of us, because the multitude of oppressive systems we face would rather that we disappear than thrive:

I love you. Take care of yourself. Let yourself be taken care of. You deserve love. You deserve care. These words are not enough, can never be enough. You are not invisible. You are not a problem. You are not your illness.

May you find your kin. May they hold it down and keep you safe. May we find new roads to healing.

We gon’ be alright.

One of my most unfavorite things is “colorblindness” with respect to race, along with the erasure of other aspects of identity (e.g. queerness, class, education), especially when talking about mental health. My experiences with depression and disordered eating are – yes – colored by my race, ethnicity, and culture. I like how Casey addresses this head on.