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Found 7 results

  1. Yesterday was a fruitful day for me. It was a time of reflection (so reflective, I was soaked in my own thought and forgot to bring my tripod... to a night photography session). Everyone has heard of the saying "pen is mightier than sword." And throughout the history we have witness that effect: how Jane Austen redefined marriage as a function of love (rather than a function of family duty), Charles Dickens showed the uglier side of Industrial Revolution (and none of the revolution fought with weapons redefined humanity more than IR), John Locke's words take the world into the Age of Revolution, and Karl Marx advised government to take active role in welfare for its own people. (I was going to add Adam Smith and his Wealth of the Nations, but ironically, we live in a capitalistic society but not many realized Smith also talked about government's role and it's very different from what people think of capitalism today, so I leave it out.... Maybe Smith's pen is less powerful...) But moral has always been a tricky issue in contemporary literature. Ever since circa 1950's and 1960's, the literary movement derailed from the moralistic model and to the one that's more amoral and more experimental in structure. Whether that's an effect of WWII, Rock 'n Roll, or Beat Generation, or a combination of those, I don't know. All I could observe is, the society has already crossed the border from that of an amoral society to the one that's immoral. If I have the endeavor to become an intellectual (which I do, to honor a legacy of an online friend), I have to exhibit not only knowledge, but also be a role model of the society, which includes, but not exclusive to, being a moral compass (and I am doing it with the secular/non-religious/intellectual method). How do I do that in a society which morality is an unpopular subject? (certainly less popular than money *tongue in cheek*) To me..., back in the days, the consciousness of using fiction as the medium of delivering moral started when I was reflecting on my own reading of Albert Camus's The Plague. We live in a society where it is extremely unpopular to tell people what to think, because here in Western society we value freedom above everything else (i.e., give me freedom or give me death). Nobody likes preachers. In fact, as part of modern literary movement, we go as far as refrain using italicized text or any emphasis method which is offensive to reader's intelligence (though use it judiciously can be effective, though more often used in exposition/editorial rather than fiction). And using allegory/allusion/humor/satire as a way of delivery the pesky topic of moral (I refrain from doing it, but sometimes it is necessary) has been my choice since. (btw, if you have a better way that's more diplomatic, please let me know, because so far I have been failed miserably as an intellectual) Camus also wrote many essays on top of his fiction career. Though this blog is also one of such that try to advocate certain view point; however, this form of advocacy is somewhat archaic and proven to be less effective in today's highly educated society. The essay form of advocacy has the pro of being direct, but also the con of backlash from opponents, and can easily be dismissed as being subjective (because it is subjective..., given its editorial nature). I, personally, advise against using essay form of advocacy except for political campaign, but that's just my opinion. I am risking myself sounding like a preacher for the sake of efficacy, and I have very little time to embed all these ideas gracefully into a story, so here they are..., very directly argued rather than being literary and diplomatically delivered. Though I am not religious, but think about it, many founders of religions used allegories as way of delivering teaching of the way, rather than pedagogy. Native Americans also taught people the way through storytelling oral tradition. And I encourage everyone to consider that, as writers, we have duty to our society, because we are given a weapon much more powerful than a sword. Remember it wasn't the existence of WMD that started the last Iraqi war.... It's a speculation of the existence of WMD that started it. Hitler waged a war against the world by manipulating patriotism of his own people. A sword only kills one at a time, but words can kill much more, effect much more enduring and detrimental. But words can also create positive effect and enlighten people. Choose words wisely. And think about how popular media shape the society today.... I had a debate with the late online friend aforementioned, whether sit-com is based on real American way of life or not. His rebuttal was the sit-com was just BS (he was very American). But being a younger generation than he was, I saw the transformation of this society that mimics the sit-com way of life with my own eyes. And since many sit-coms are set in New York, written by mostly contemporary Jewish Americans (as oppose to traditional Jewish, as they have very different modes of life), how many of us non-New Yorkers are already assimilated with New Yorker's way through the work of invisible hands? Does life mimic fiction or does fiction mimic life? Don't you guys think media is greatly responsible for the acceptance of homosexuality through popular media? Given I already talked about the power, it's only right that I also talk about the responsibility of the writer. The effect of second coming of yellow journalism is just as detrimental as the first time around, except this time we have the Internet.... I should also forewarn the the potential danger of cultural imperialism, which is a related to ethnocentrism, which is responsible for many wars throughout history. With the advocacy of anthropologists of its destructive nature to other cultures around the world, it is usually part of the American college curriculum to include cultural awareness. I was taught to consider point of views that encourage pluralistic way of thinking (as oppose to ethnocentric way). Given our society values freedom above all else (though at times I want to say money...), it is only democratic every culture can have its voice. One would expect cultural imperialism really should be bygone history with the formation of the Common Wealth... (though the Common Wealth was formed through practicality, but one should at least thank the Queen for at least considering from the humanistic point of view) I do not expect a moral renaissance with this essay, but I'll end this tirade with a quote: "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."
  2. Note: I'm frustrated. I swear. Deal with it. I was browsing YouTube yesterday when I came across a 10 Best LGBTQ Movies video. As I always do, I clicked on it, cause I'm always up for potentially finding new movies to watch. There were some good ones on the list, such as Call Me By Your Name, Milk, and Weekend for instance, and I found a couple I hadn't seen, either. But when they got down to #3, they lost me, because according to them the third best LGBTQ film in history is Brokeback Mountain. I was 17 when Brokeback Mountain came out. I saw it in the cinema, and I cried, and I thought it was wonderful. Because I was a 17-year-old at the time girl who hadn't really been exposed to a lot of queer cinema. I bought it on DVD when it came out, and watched it again. Then a few years passed, I became more experienced, watched other LGBTQ movies, and realised that Brokeback Mountain is, quite frankly, shit. All of my IRL queer friends agree with me. Not most, all. The film tends to be conspicuously absent when queer people make lists of greatest LGBTQ films. I feel like Brokeback Mountain caters to a straight audience that wants to feel liberal and accepting by watching gay characters on screen, but who ultimately feel more comfortable if it ends in tragedy. The story it's based on was written by a straight woman (not that there's anything wrong with straight people writing LGBTQ stories, and we have many, many straight authors on the site here who write absolutely wonderful gay fiction). Brokeback Mountain has served a purpose, of course. It has made gay stories more palatable to straight audiences, which is a good thing. The acting performances are marvellous, too. But it also demonstrated that the only way for an LGBTQ movie to win an Academy Award is if literally no one involved in its making is visibly queer. I'm not of the opinion that straight people can't play gay characters (they definitely can) or even that cis people can't play trans characters (they can, though they have a responsibility to to do well that few manage to fulfil). But nobody even remotely queer has their name on that movie. Author of original short story, straight. Writers, straight. Producers, straight. Ang Lee, totally straight. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal? Ding ding ding! Straight! As of last year, the only gay man to win an Academy Award playing a gay character, is Ian McKellen. And that was twenty fucking years ago. Meanwhile, if a cis-het actor plays a queer character in an even remotely successful film, they're guaranteed a nomination, if not a win. No trans actor has ever won an Oscar. No lesbian playing a lesbian has ever won an Oscar. Another movie that straight people keep harping on about is Blue is the Warmest Colour, which is objectively shit. After the third lengthy porn inspired male gaze centred sex scene, I switched that motherfucker off. Bohemian Rhapsody is being lauded by straight critics, while LGBTQ audiences are disappointed at the misrepresentation of Freddie Mercury's sexuality and the way everything goes to shit when he tries to live out his queer identity (which is a factually incorrect assessment of Freddie's queerness), while embracing his straight friends and staying out of 'that world' makes everything better (also factually incorrect). While not in and of itself a bad film, as a queer film it falls short, and a movie about Freddy Mercury ought to be a queer film. He's one of the most famous queer people in history. We've got Elton John, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Alexander the Great, and Freddie Mercury. (Notice how there are no queer women on that list? Sigh...) There is a lot of great queer cinema. We've had long, extensive threads on the subject in The Lounge, where people have shared their top picks of literally hundreds of wonderful films, many of which actually have happy endings for once. Straight audiences can't handle a queer movie with a happy ending. It has to be sad, or it has to be heteronormative, and that's what we get. Things are improving a little, sure. Love, Simon is a notable exception in being a well loved queer teen movie with a sweet and happy ending where no one kills themselves. How lovely! Of course, Love, Simon didn't even earn an honourable mention in the video I watched. Weekend took second place, which redeemed the list somewhat. Carol came in first. Which is fine, it's a great movie, and doesn't end in tragedy. But fucking Brokeback Mountain ought to die a fiery death and be buried in an avalanche of awesome queer cinema. EDIT: Just to clarify: I'm not saying that Brokeback Mountain is objectively a bad movie, nor am I saying that the short story it's based on isn't good. What I am saying is that it's not an LGBTQ movie, it's made by straight people for straight people, and as such I don't think it belongs on lists of good queer movies. It's a bad queer film, that doesn't necessarily make it a bad film, period.
  3. Ashi

    Define "Great"

    What is on your mind when you think of the word "great?" Which story do you consider a classic? Who is your most admired person? Where do you go to get inspired? When does a moment become experience? How do you advance a civilization into the golden age? * * * This world is endowed with many great things. Some are eminent, some are waiting to be discovered; some will become a memory, some will never extinct despite of deliberate neglect and distortion. They all deserve to be cherished and preserved. * * * Can you put a price on... ...freedom? ...the feeling of falling in love for the first time? ...safety and feeling alive? ...respect and compassion? We have an unprecedented number of homelessness. Everyday I ride on a train, I can see encampments so great, that some portable toilets are placed around them, which I assume is to maintain public health for all the surrounding community. On another day, I went to a flea market. Being educated in healthcare for a couple of years, I cannot help but think we might have an outbreak of weird diseases due to the near proximity of homeless camps and squirrel population. (Please do not feed wild animals as some bacteria unique to them will crossbreed with bacteria unique to human, and these hybrid bacteria will infect both species.... We may or may not have the capability to control the mutated bacteria) All we hear on the news nowadays are bunch of big babies attacking each other over some petty issues, ignoring human conditions. * * * Why nobody ever tries to find out why more mass shootings happening nowadays? It always turns into a political drama rather than addressing the most fundamental issue. This is people's lives we're talking about, not an opportunity to further one's political career. I still remember the days when school taught students pipe bombs (though I never learned), but nobody ever seriously contemplating using it to harm others. Now no school teaches that chemistry and yet more people died from violence. What happened? I still remember the days when people can freely go into airports and museums without needing to go through security gates. Why is my personal freedom and happiness compromised because of a minor chance of threat. The security measure is not even effective guarding against people who have no regard of the laws anyways. I still remember the days the Internet was used to increase people's IQ by exposing to differences rather than reinforcing one's limited perception. It used to be an Utopia of tolerance, a haven of self-regulation, a pool of endless knowledge. Why is it used to propagate greed and misinformation nowadays? Isn't the fact-based journalism the propeller of democracy? Didn't Jefferson want to be remembered to be the Father of Virginity University because educated people are the core of democracy? Doesn't George Washington's Farewell Address warn: "[Geographic politics] agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions"? * * * Today after work I went to buy some tapioca tea. There was some misunderstanding between the cashier and the customer before me, so the order was not placed correctly. The prior customer basically suggested he had the power to recommend more corporate customers only if the store would simply replace his new order for free. The small shop owner with her limited English skill couldn't understand what daft-dressing guy was trying to suggest, so she offered 50 cents extra for the replaced drink, because cashier/server charged him only for the regular tea rather than milk tea, and served him according to the wrong order. Given I worked in food industry before (among many odd jobs I had held), I knew it's a big loss for the shop because it's not a simple adding milk to the tea issue. The store needs to throw away the original order due to health code, irregardless whether the drink was consumed or not. The shop keeper insisted on quality didn't help either, but she eventually agreed to just add milk to the order for free instead of remake the whole order to satisfy the customer. I have seen many of such disputes before. It is not limited to restaurant order, or language barrier issue. Don't know whether it's because their perceived financial standing or their education level, people are getting less humble. Most people don't realized outside of their career specialization, they actually know extremely little how the entire world functions. In this case, the customer before me did not realize it is a health code that the shop cannot serve tampered food. Everything in life is simple; even the simplest thing is difficult. What that quote (which I thought was attributed to Nietzsche, but I can't find it) means to me is one has to be humble, and be respect of people of all trades. Everyone is an expert of something, disregard of our social standing or the wage we're paid for our work. If this were the old California I knew back in the 90's, people would be more graceful and asked why 50 cents is charged, rather than immediately pull the consumer/corporate pressure card without actually asking a probing question. Because that customer might have learned something about the food industry. Instead, he sounded like a crude and tactless person dressed in sharp suit. Our California value of tolerance and acceptance is dying everyday, and it's such a sad sight to see. I wished my brain could be faster, and paid the 50 cents extra for the agitated customer and everyone would be happy. Though when the shopkeeper apologized to me profusely because she was busy making the replacement order for that customer (who was not even there when she finished the order because he just had to answer a phone...), I simply told her to take her time. I know how little gesture like this means a lot when you're working very hard for very little money. Besides, I was late for my train anyways, so time wasn't that important to me at that point, but it'll brighten up her day. I wish I have made the point clear enough. Great, despite current events might have you believed, is not based on selfish interests. We can actually make the world great again, no matter how small or insignificant the contribution might see at first. Be gracious of others, be respectful of nature, and treasure every moment we share. The world doesn't need to be shallow and petty. There can be a lot of beauty and greatness if we tried.
  4. Patreon is a service that I think a lot of people don't quite understand. Some people find it disingenuous, for instance, to ask people for money for a product that they will later be giving away for free, as many do. Others see it as akin to begging. That second one I find particularly odd... If anything, it's like busking. Some history first: Back in the olden days, it was common for talented artists to acquire patrons. A patron might provide the artist with food, a place to live, money for paints and canvases/ink and paper/instruments, and general support so that they were free to create rather than worry about surviving. Many of the great painters, authors, and composers of history had patrons to help support them, especially when they were just starting out. Mozart earned the patronage of kings. Not that I'm comparing today's online content creators with Mozart. Patreon is not Kickstarter. While some may certainly use it in a similar way, the platform is different. Some creators ask for support on a per project basis, one sum per thing, which is similar. Some of these creators later give away their project for free, others use it as a pre-order service. Most use it for monthly contributions. People use the system differently. Game developers or creators of popular mods for games, for instance, often release versions for their patrons prior to releasing it to the public for free. Creators of game mods often spend an awful lot of time on creating something for their community. Digging down into the core scripts of a game and altering them is no mean feat. And every time a game is updated, the mods have to be as well, so that they are still compatible with the new version. This is how most people who offer their content for free use Patreon. It is a voluntary donation toward creation of further content. Some then offer sneak peeks of their work, pre-releases of content, exclusive progress updates, blog posts, and so on to their patrons. Authors often offer people the option of reading a chapter before everyone else gets to. The most important part is this: When a patron chooses to support a content creator, they are not buying a product. They are contributing to future content creation by making it easier for a content creator to make and publish content. Patronage is voluntary. It's a donation. Some patrons even choose not to receive any of the rewards offered by content creators. Most importantly, no one will be upset with a reader/viewer/content user/etc. for choosing not to do so. In the end, no matter how it's used, the basic purpose of Patreon is to give people who want to contribute the option of doing so, out of their own free will. We reside in a capitalist society where this may be hard to wrap one's head around, really. We're accustomed to paying for goods and services and then receiving what we paid for. When we're used to this mindset, it may feel like you're paying for nothing when you support a content creator on Patreon. But what you are really 'paying' for is a person's ability create more and better content. Personally, I pay more money to content creators on Patreon per month than I'm getting from my grand total of two patrons (one of whom is my mother). Counter intuitive though it sounds, maybe I'll break even soon.
  5. There is something about Indian poetry and music and it's the fact that there are so, so many men writing about men. And it's always been this way. This is especially prominent in the Punjabi language, and now that Punjabi culture is so trendy in the rest of north India, it's becoming increasingly prominent in Hindi-language music. If you look back at Indian poetry, in any language, men have written about their love for men, but, for the most part, they used feminine verb conjugations to refer to themselves. So, it's a man writing about love for a man, but from the point of view of a woman. This is extremely common and completely normalized. Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Hindi music in which men sing about men... but continue to use masculine verb conjugations in reference to themselves. So no one can "no homo" it away by saying it's from a woman's POV. It's a man singing about his male beloved. In some cases, it's pretty simple. It's considered extremely disrespectful in India to change the lyrics when you're covering a song. So that leads to women singing about women and men singing about men. For original songs, you could say something was lost in translation. For example, the Punjabi language is so popular now. Perhaps the singer doesn't realize "mahi" is a masculine form of "beloved" or that "sohneya" is not gender-neutral and literally means "beautiful boy." After all, in the music videos, the men are still crooning the songs to women. He's just calling that woman his "beautiful boy" in Punjabi. ...Maybe it just rhymes better this way.
  6. Hello, hola! I am currently writing a final chapter of the story, oh, I almost gave out the spoiler.... Anyways, I need someone who can speak speak Spanish natively and knows Latino/Latina culture. The story won't use a lot of it but I am currently thinking I should write everything out, even dialogues that are "behind the scenes," so even if I cut those dialogues out, the entire flow would be authentic. MC doesn't speak Spanish much (I'll say he speaks as much as me...), but his bf/fiance does. There is this little segment where the BF is having a little family interaction, and MC doesn't know what they're talking about. Anyways, it's going to be a very San Francisco story so this has to be very authentic, so I need experts! Don't want to write something badly researched and be offensive unintentionally. Please help me. Thank you.
  7. Thanks to MikeL and Valkyrie for inspiring this thread, you guys are the best. Like the title says, find a photo that you think is awesome, funny, cool, amazing, etc To start things off... Pretty ain't it?
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