Angry Black Woman.
I am a black woman, and I am angry.
I wave my neck and I snap my fingers and I roll my eyes because I was born into a world that didn’t want me, doesn’t like me, and won’t respect me.
I am abrasive, strong, and direct because too many times have my words been twisted and used against me.
I am loud because this world and the people in it have done their best to silence me.
I am cocky because I’ve been told I was ugly my whole life.
I am slutty because I posses my body and only I can dictate what to do with it and when.
I am sensitive because my armor has been chipped at for too long by those seeking to do me harm.
I pound my fist into my palm when I talk because I’m beating against both the glass and concrete ceilings that prevent me from progressing.
I am everything you say I am because I cannot function in this world any other way.
But I am also tender, soft, and forgiving. I also know how to love, and nurture and support. I know when a hard back needs a soft hand and I have rolled belly up and been vulnerable just to make it okay for the men in my life to cry. I am not one thing. I am all things. I am an individual and I am good. I have learned to love myself even if the world doesn’t and calling me angry is only recognizing a tenth of my divinity. I am a Black woman, and I am angry. Go ahead and judge me, freely, there’s not much you can say or do that hasn’t already been said and done.
Like the late, great, Tupac said:
I may be an Angry Black Woman, but I ain’t mad at’cha.
“Women are bitches,” says a young man as he sits down. Apparently a woman at the bar wouldn’t give him her number. He’s talking to the man sitting on his left in spite of the fact that I am sitting two feet to his right and at the same table.
I’ve spent the last couple months in the company of writers, mostly poets, mostly men. I am growing weary. The group I hang with is large and fluid—I’m not naming names, not pointing fingers, I like these people—and yet an issue I cannot ignore has begun to emerge: when it comes to many of the men in the company, mid-thirties and younger, making conversation, even with women present (older, younger, students, professionals, I’m a grandmother for Christ’s sake), the topics frequently revolve around who is sleeping with whom, which female is more fuckable, which poop or dog-cum reference is the funniest, and what is the latest text from “the Korean girlfriend.”
KMA Sullivan’s Women are Bitches, up today on The Rumpus.
I think I figured out the plot of Gargantia...
And boy, it just might be the BIGGEST tragedy Urobuchi has ever written.
We have no idea how the war between Avalon and the Hideauze was initially ignited, right? All we know from the first episode is that they “block” humanity’s… future.
In other words, there is no confirmation that they attacked first because they’re “the enemies of humanity” as the propaganda Ledo has gone through said.
Heck, look the reason they give: “hold back humanity’s race to the future”. It sounds very obscure and abstract; there is nothing specific there. They mention no hostile actions from the Hideauze, no invasion from the creatures’ part… heck, if you look at the sequence, you’ll see that big “flower” type Hideauze opening, but the humans are the ones that attack. It just… existed there.
Now, let’s add these facts:
- The data Avalon has on Earth are ancient knowledge. As in, they’re OLD.
- The language of the people of Gargantia was characterized as “ancient” from Chamber, too.
- Avalon is insanely more technologically advanced than Gargantia, even though the latter has natural resources.
- The “people who traveled in stars” in Gargantia used the technology WE use TODAY.
- Even though Earth is their home planet, the humans of Avalon have little knowledge of it.
- Black Holes make you travel through space AND time.
Guys, I think we have just found out how the war between Avalon begun.
Ledo started it.
Gargantia is in the past, not in the present with Avalon. They’re not parallels, they’re in different time points.
Shocked?
Consider the following:
In Avalon, there are humans and Hideauze. They fight.
In Gargantia, there are humans and Hideauze. They co-exist peacefully.
IF the Avalon’s propaganda has any amount of truth in it, by all means, the Hideauze of the Earth SHOULD attack the humans of Gargantia mercilessly.
They don’t.
They became aggressive only in this episode, because Ledo attacked FIRST.
Just like the Hideauze in Avalon: you see them sitting at their place and it’s humanity that attacks.
My conclusion: Ledo traveled thousands of years in the past through the black hole and started the war humanity is fighting in his own timeline.
It makes NO sense how can Gargantia be so primitive, while Avalon is so advanced, IF they’re in the same time. Gargantia has resources. Avalon has NOTHING, just space and an enemy on the top of that.
It would make sense if just SOME people from Earth left by using technology equal to Avalon’s in Gargantia’s past, while others left. The series mentions that people left in their past for the stars. But, that would mean that the technology those people used was FAR superior to what Gargantia has.
And yet?
Look at the images:
This technology is OURS, of the 21st century. We CANNOT build anything like Avalon, not even close. Yet, if Gargantia and Avalon are parallels, how can Avalon be beyond, if it DID start from Earth? What, did the Earthlings’ brains become mush and only the people on Avalon are smart enough?
The answer is simple: Avalon was built by using Chamber’s technology. Step by step, using him as a kickstarter by tearing him apart, they managed to develop things from there. Thousands of years later, they have Avalon.
Hideauze had their own evolution. We know it from this episode:
Just like there wasn’t any difference in the genetic makeup of Gargantians and Ledo; they’re both humans, the same species.
I think you can guess now WHY everyone on Avalon look so damn alike, while on Gargantia there is so much diversity.
Ledo is their ancestor.
Ledo started a war in this episode. My guess is that it will get worse and worse from there. Bad enough for the squids/Hideauze to want to devour humanity. Bad enough for the planet to go to waste.
Humanity, stripped from their power source (remember, the sea creatures/nanomachines give them electricity), turn to exploit whatever technology is left from the bottom of the sea (these nanomachines’ colour is the same as Chamber’s lazers…) and Chamber’s technology and go for the stars. Hideauze develop on their own, becoming capable to live in space (mutation is a wonderful thing).
Thousands of years later, first episode.
And Ledo will be the one to cause all this. Not because he’s evil, not because he’s stupid…
Because he couldn’t exercise his critical thinking after 17 years of propaganda being brainwashed in his skull.
A propaganda he started.
Because he suffered it since his birth.
Because some weeks of human life couldn’t beat a lifetime of human programming.
And the tragedy?
He thinks he’s doing the right thing, attacking the squids. He thinks he can help humanity by starting a war with a species the Gargantians were peaceful with… until he came.
Here’s a chart to make myself clear:
I might be completely wrong. All this might be something much simpler. Don’t freak out.
I might be wrong.
I HOPE I’m wrong!
Urobuchi, PLEASE prove me wrong!!!!
HOW TO WRITE AN ESSAY
For all of you facing end-of-semester essays…
…let me explain you a thing.
Everything you’ve been taught- thesis and citations and whatnot- still apply. But here’s what I do when I approach a paper, which I find it very helpful, and I hope you do too.
{ THERE’S LITERALLY ONLY FOUR THINGS UNDER THE CUT SO DON’T YOU USE THAT READ MORE AS AN EXCUSE TO SCROLL }
Spring Cleaning, Summer Jobs
When I turned sixteen the first thing I did after getting my driver’s license was load up my mom’s taupe 2000 Toyota Camry with all my old notebooks full of stories, ramblings, and errata dating as far back as fifth grade, and I drove them fifteen miles away to the dumpster at the back of a meat and cheese store in Columbia Station and threw them all away.
Then I tried to go to the mall but got lost. I ended up calling my mom to ask her for directions. When I arrived at the mall, I put in job applications for Delias, Bath & Body, Electronics Boutique, the Gap, and the pet store. The Gap hired me, then moved me to the Old Navy on the other side of the state route when they realized I wasn’t eighteen.
When I turned eighteen, the first thing I did was drive down to the Cuyahoga County courthouse in downtown Cleveland to find a magistrate and file for a legal name change. I got lost on the way. When I got there, I ponyed up $110 of my semi-hard-earned retail money to file for a name change and place an announcement in a legal registry. After six weeks of public vetting and no documented complaints from any parties, my name went from Erika Dawn Bohannon to Erika Dawn Price.
I worked at an Old Navy for a little over a year until I was fired for not signing people up for their bullshit exploitative credit card. Also maybe for hiding in the men’s department folding shirts and not talking to anyone and for staging sword fights with the long tubes of wrapping paper after hours. I told my friends I’d quit because the managers made us follow black customers around (they did) and because a senior sales associate kept answering the phone like, “Welcome to Old Navajo, how may I scalp you?” (she didn’t, but she talked about it).
When I was fired from Old Navy I went on another madcap self-loathing fueled search for employment and, after about a month, ended up at a Hallmark in the bad mall with the good Santa. I worked there for a year and a half, stealing jelly beans, box cutters, plastic jewelry, ceramic tchockes, and Gold Crown stickers (all with the junior manager’s encouragement), chatting with the mall’s resident wackjobs, and masturbating in the stock room when I was supposed to be unpacking Precious Moments figurines.
I quit to become a lifeguard at a small neighborhood pool shaped like a kidney bean. I swam, I told kids stories from atop my perch, I played Spank Rock and NPR despite everyone’s protestations, and I masturbated in the pump room.
I went to college and became a secretary. Then a computer lab manager. You can infer what I did during my down time there. I took a job running psychological experiments and entering data, and stayed there until graduation. Now, in graduate school I conduct experiments and teach statistics to nursing majors, for some reason. I also make personal copies on the copy machine and eat the Political Science Department’s popcorn and hot cocoa surreptitiously in the middle of the night.
From age sixteen to twenty-five I have never been unemployed for more than a month. I’ve always saved money off my paychecks. I’ve been effortlessly mediocre at basically everything. I’ve taken some kind of license to be disgusting at every place I’ve ever worked.
————
At some point, at the pool where I worked, I took up writing again. I sat by the glassy-still water with my back turned to the neighborhood, and god only knows what I wrote, because I threw it all away too, in the trash where the dead mice that got caught in the water filters went. I wrote in the backrooms and closets and work stations of all my other jobs, too, but always as surreptitiously as if I had been masturbating. I always crunched the papers up and stuffed them in my apron pocket or down into the trash.
But really, if I really want to get down to the bottom of the practice, it all started before I was legal to work a job. At thirteen I got paid under the table to stand beside the Funhouse’s spinning barrel and hit an emergency stop button if anyone attempted a handstand, broke their neck, started fucking, or got hurt (they all did). It was a sixteen-hour day in the stifling heat, in the dirt across from the stand where you could have your picture taken with a chained-up mentally-impaired white tiger.
This was before the days of ipods. I just stood there, back to the rustbucket semi-truck-loaded spinning barrel contraption, stuffing out the screams and peals of delight and stared into the dusty morass of barely-clad Midwestern bodies slogging from one fried food stand to another. Two tickets to ride, or two dollars, keep moving forward, hands down, stop that right now I swear or I’ll hit this button, I’ll blow this whole thing to ribbons, I’ll unleash the tiger and the horses and I’ll let the kids who do chainsaw tricks everyday at 1 and 3pm run free, I swear to god if you don’t. Stop. Doing a make-out handstand in that godforsaken barrel. You bastards.
There was nothing to do but write in my head. Which doesn’t count, of course. Imagined drafts are always perfect.
I took the money ($300 in all for a week’s work) and started a bank account. Little Erika Bohannon, junior savings, and I accrued that shit until one day I dipped into it, $7000 at eighteen, to buy myself a new name, new checks, new state ID, new social security card, and all the other trappings. I threw all kinds of things out before I left for school, more than I actually kept, and never spoke a word about them to anyone, so it almost seemed like nothing was gone at all.
Fullbringer Analysis: Bonds
Warning: This is an analysis of The Fullbringer arc. My analysis. This essay will contain IchiRuki, Anti-IchiHime and Anti-IchiRuki. If you don’t like then don’t read. You have been warned.
This is a Question that Ichigo was asking himself.
He was wondering if he could keep up with life while he’s unable to communicate with Rukia in any way.
Thoughts on Literature Turned Film
Alternative Title: A Rant Triggered By Watching the Trailer for The Great Gatsby which is set to music by the XX and Jay-Z [REALLY? REALLY? ARE YOU SURE THAT IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO USE MUSIC FROM JAY-Z AND FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE IN A MOVIE THAT IS SET IN LONG ISLAND IN THE 20’S?]
But I digress, (because the soundtrack is literally inexcusable and I will leave it at that.)
Where do I start? So many, many things.
I have always been hesitant of films [I will make a distinction here -
‘Hollywood’ films] based on literature. There is something intangible about reading a novel, it doesn’t really do anything to you, you are actively engaging with the text. But a movie? A movie is in your face, you cannot escape it. And you do nothing to absorb it but sit there and stare.
It is remarkable then, that Hollywood has adapted novels into films consistently, and, as it often seems,more frequently then creating films from original screenplays [well, these and remakes are Hollywood’s favorites]. Because when you think about it, writing a novel and making a movie - they are two UNDENIABLY different mediums. Like completely. Even the process of writing a screenplay is an entirely different one than that of writing a novel.
So I will make a few points on what deters me from encouraging Hollywood to make movies out of books whose authors are no longer living or have no say in the production of the film. [because when the authors are involved, the chances of the film being in accordance to the literature are unfathomably higher than those where the author is absent (the one exception that comes to mind? Lord of The Rings).
[[SIDEBAR: Can we talk about Disney movies for a hot second? Because they COMPLETELY BUTCHERED THE ORIGINAL STORIES. You are all tumblrs, and so I assume you have seen that post about what actually happens in those stories (no happy endings, that’s for sure.) And what about comic books? Well, that’s the thing - they aren’t novels, they already have art that can serve as story boards for a film. It’s a more natural transition from comic book [ahem - graphic novel] to silver screen than it is for a novel. ]]
But I digress. So, here’s my say on classics turned film:
1. It kills the imagination. And this goes for all ‘books gone rogue,’ not just the bad ones. [as much as I love Harry Potter, his eyes are the wrong color]. Part of the joy of reading is that you can create your own image of the character. Your friend can read the book and have a completely different mental image of the character - that’s what makes books so personal. That you can never sit down and really compare the impression that a book made on you with a friend - it’s all in your head. [this is obviously why most people who are super book nerds are extremely introverted, they live inside their heads (but if you are still reading this than you definitely already knew that)].
2. It turns carefully planned LITERATURE into an hour and a half of nice visuals. My concern here pertains to the main problem with America: no onewants to think for themselves. [See #1]
3. Using books like The Great Gatsby are huge moneymakers for production companies. Fitzgerald isn’t around to collect the earnings from the film, so it is in the best interest of production companies to make movies like this and to modernize them in a way that will attract the largest audience possible, so as to profit the most from it. Thank you capitalism, degrading the quality of films everywhere. And as if the uber-hype created around such movies was not enough, the original author and creator of the novel is not even around to collect a check.
4. You ever see any movies being made into books? Nope. You wanna know why? (Think about reading a novel version of The Transporter, or any of the Fast and Furiouses for that matter.) My point being, books, being the written word, possess a significant advantage over a movie: you can convey an image to the reader without actually showing them anything. The problem with books being made into movies is that the reader loses the potential to IMAGINE what the character looks like, talks like, what the scenery is like etc. We are just being fed images that we are supposed to accept as that reality [For example, I am not sure I will ever be able to see Jay Gatsby as anyone other than Leo.]
But ultimately, it all boils down to this simple fact:
Movies don’t last: books do. Hollywood movies especially are trends - sure some of them achieve ‘classic’ status and stick around throughout the decades- but most of them fade with the changing of the seasons. We’ll remember them all during Award season, then forget about them when the new batch of films roll out in the spring. So how much harm can they actually do? [I suppose I’ve spoken too soon - A Clockwork Orange as a film caused more damage than the novel, presumably because the violence in the book is extremely disturbing to actually watch, and those that could not understand Nadsat probably did not comprehend the monstrosities taking place in the book]
HOWEVER,
as we all know, there are some instances where literature is enhanced by the films made of it, meaning, the films were done well and with the authors original intent in mind. [here we can even use the example of Game of Thrones, which George RR Martin actually produces and therefore remains very close to the novels.]
I suppose it is not the fact that literature, and the written word, are being turned into films - it’s the fact that people seem unwilling to engage with literature unless it is to supplement the film they thoroughly enjoyed.
The danger here is that people will stop reading - only see the movies. Of course, it could go the other way as well, that people want to read the book because they saw the movie.
So ultimately, does it hurt anyone? I’m still not sure myself. But one thing is for sure:
The movie will fade in popularity, but the novel?
The novel is not a trend, it will not disappear into the recesses of societal disinterest any time soon.
That is it will remain a cornerstone of culture as long as we keep writing them, reading them, and hey- maybe even turning some of them into movies.
Solidarity Vs. Co-optation/Appropriation
i just posted a tumblr article on my facebook that informs people about the fbi adding Assata Shakur back on the fbi list as one the most wanted terrorist. within some minutes some folks shared it on their page and i clicked on the notifications link that showed some of the comments from other peoples pages. there i saw a comment from a white man saying “We are all Assata.”
stop. white people especially stop. no we are not all Assata, because we are not a Black woman who has been prosecuted and persecuted by the FBI, been exiled and then stigmatized by the mainstream media. we are not her and saying that we are is not an act of solidarity, it sounds more like the defeatist and feel good bullshittery of white guilt and ignorant white savior politics. it is cooptation of a struggle that you don’t understand and will never understand no matter how many books you read, how many Black or Brown friends you have, it is appropriating struggle. the internet is not some even playing field where you can lay down your privilege and experience the stigmatization of oppression by stating a comment like that. and its just plain offensive.
i would extend this to all “We are _____”. these are statements of misguided solidarity. saying that sends the message that we all somehow face the same violence from the state which is not true, do some quick research on the number of incarcerated people of color, especially immigrants, folks with disabilities especially Black men and Black trans women.
look i understand the sentiment but the struggle is different for every target oppression out there. comparing oppressions is dismissive and its insulting to hear from people with the most privilege that they too are like Assata or any Black or Brown person. instead of saying “We are all _______” how about you state the reality, that you are a person with privilege who doesn’t and will not ever understand the gravity and heaviness of living in Black woman’s body. solidarity is not about erasing the reality of oppression it is about owning it and owning your part as in your privilege(s).
fabian romero- indigenous immigrant queer boi writer
