Taylor Swift's commercial success and business acumen are now undeniable, yet I see more attempts to downplay her "cultural influence" just to spread negativity.
To this I ask -- what is the definition of your "cultural" influence anyway? 30 years from now, when someone would look back at this time in music, would they not see her rise as a songwriter affect the rest of the industry as a whole? The fact that so many artists today have to prove their mettle when it comes to songwriting, and Taylor is one of the biggest reasons why? That she is one of the only ones to reach this level of fame almost 20 years into her career, a feat that was never heard of before?
Her album 1989 was THE pop bible. Folklore and Evermore changed the way mainstream artists were expected to make music and convey stories through their songs. How her music became a way for the audience to connect with her, her personality, her life. It is no coincidence that this sub has millions of members who love her music and feel like they've known her for some time, just through it. She has become the biggest phenomenon for someone who crossed over from country music to pop and that is because she WORKED for it.
I cannot think of anything bigger in the 2000s than the cultural zeitgeist that is the Eras tour. Country after country, presidents and prime ministers vying for and inviting a popstar to visit their country and perform for sold out stadiums, thereby boosting their own economies.
But more than the economic aspect, I think of the number of women who stand in these stadiums, listen to the songs, sing their hearts out and tear up when they relate to her music. The number of people standing outside these arenas, singing along. The celebration, the FESTIVAL that these concerts have become. Is that not a cultural phenomenon in itself?
Her mind-blowing success, especially as a woman running her own music empire, proves she's an icon. Isn’t that the very definition of cultural influence?

Many moons ago I fell deeply in love with Twin Peaks, David Lynch, and everything surrounding it. Presented today on the 7^th anniversary of the premiere date of Twin Peaks: The Return, is an interview with the actress and homeowner of the Palmer house who graciously gave her time to answer some fan questions that have been haunting us for years.
Journey with me to find out some answers you wanted, some you didn’t know you wanted, and some you can’t believe you lived without knowing including how to tour the Palmer home yourself!
Questions by Luke Sweeting
Luke: How were you approached to be an actress in The Return?
Mary: I was standing in the kitchen making sure there were enough donuts and coffee for the few key people DL (David Lynch) brought with him on 2nd of 3 visits before filming, which was the 4th visit. DL came into the kitchen by himself and said, Mary, are you an actress, and I said No. He then said, “Have you ever acted?” I said I hadn't. He then asked, would you like to have a small part in the movie? I said, “Sure”, but was nervous and excited at the thought. He said that it wasn't for sure but that if it did move forward, I would be in my own home and to act naturally, in other words, just be me. He has been watching me interact with some of the people he had brought. I heard he does like to observe people and get a feel for how they interact, look and sound. It is key to him that the person fit the character he is trying to create. He said if it did happen, I would get my script and go to hair and make up with the other actors. He was already trying to make me feel comfortable right there on the spot which I found very empathetic of him.


Luke: Had you ever acted before?
Mary: I really had not acted before other than a few commercials for the local TV station I worked for back in the day, but never a speaking part. I looked at it as definitely out of my comfort zone but who would turn down this opportunity? It was also therapeutic as I was going through a very trying time in life, so it was good to channel those feelings into doing something fun.

Luke: Has anyone recognized you in public yet? If so, do they call you Mrs. Tremond or Chalfont?
Mary: I have been recognized a few times which is funny but kind of cool at the same time. I was called Mrs. Tremond, which made me laugh. That is also on my license plate; I had to take advantage of that:)

Luke: (I know this answer, but I feel people would love to know the answer too) Was being a David Lynch fan the reason you bought the house, or was this just a happy accident?
Mary: I knew about Twin Peaks and about DL before buying the house. It is not why my ex, and I purchased the house in September 2014. It needed a lot of work at the time. The previous owner we purchased it from was the woman who lived here the first time around when Twin Peaks was filmed here. That is quite a story in itself, and I really wanted to sit with her afterward and chat with her about it, but she passed a few months after purchase.

Luke: Was there ever a culture shock moment of realizing you bought THE Palmer house, or did that happen after The Return finished airing?
Mary: This house was our first home purchase and we moved to Everett because of the history, great old historic homes and how much more house we could get up here. This area of Rucker Hill has some great history and amazing houses. The man who built this house was one of the first pitchers for Seattle baseball. We heard rumblings of Twin Peaks returning but it was around 2 months after moving in that we were away for a bit and came home to a notice at the door from the location scout asking us to call him right away as they wanted to do a film here. It was a mystery as to what it would be, but we felt it was going to be Twin Peaks. The whole filming process, when our parts were going to be aired and everything about the Return was a mystery. They actually filmed the Finale at the very beginning, so I had no clue where it was going to fit into the whole Film. Filming was an amazing experience. They were here for approximately 2 weeks preparing the home for both the Hawk/Sarah scene and the Finale. It wasn't until the Finale was aired that I realized how cool this experience was in the whole scheme of things and the impact in the Return itself. I wish I could relax a bit more and soak it in again, just to relive the experience and really study the process. Each person here was so professional and fun to watch do their work with such expertise. I couldn't have asked for friendlier people.

Luke: How has the fandom treated you?
Mary: The fans are incredible. They have been extremely kind to me. They are great gift givers and just very authentic and genuine folks in love with Twin Peaks. I didn't realize how intense these fans were, but I truly get it. There is nothing like this ever made before and it set the stage for a lot of other great TV and film. The fans have been awesome and I have many great friends from this experience.

Luke: Is there anything you wish fans wouldn’t do?
Mary: The only thing I wish for fans is that they don't just walk up to the door at various hours of the day and night. It is private property and not a public place for people to peek in windows and walk the grounds. There have only been a few that have done this; the majority is very respectful to me and my home.

Luke: Is it ever scary to sleep in the proverbial Palmer house? Are there ever guests who stay over and become a little nervous?
Mary: I am not afraid in the least to stay here. I was a tad apprehensive when we first bought it, but like the lady who lived here before would say, "this is just my house." Now a few of the guests who have stayed, they were a bit nervous to sleep in Laura's room, but that may be because I have a life-sized Bob mannequin in the closet:)

Luke: I know that you’re gracious enough to let guests visit this mecca of ours, could you tell me and anyone interested about how and when to properly ask to visit? (You could also mention your favorite flowers or favorite wine? I know I’d feel bad showing up empty handed)

Mary: I prefer people get a hold of me on Messenger or IG or Twitter and ask to see the house, so I can make an appointment for them, especially since Everett is not that close to North Bend and Snoqualmie. I do now charge $25 for a 30-45 minute tour as I have done quite a few. I do love flowers and red wine. I have received some very incredible gifts from some fans which I am forever grateful for. The fans are so very thoughtful, and I have a little spot in my Palmer dining room where I proudly display some of the gifts and artwork.

Luke: I understand if you don’t want to answer this one. What does your role in Twin Peaks mean to you? To us fans I feel like it was the perfect subversion of expectations while also being incredibly meta.
Mary: There are 2 questions I can't answer and one of them is expanding on my character. I do, however, think it is cool to be an infamous Tremond!

Luke: How does it feel to be appreciated as a part of a now 30-year-old piece of media that will last forever and has influenced kids like me to make careers in film?
Mary: It is very humbling to be part of the TP mystique and genre. I am blessed and love being able to share a piece of it with fans who have never been able to see the Palmer House. The responses of people who visit is my gift. I love seeing their excitement and joy at walking through my door and each and every person is a joy for me. I have made great friends, learned wonderful theories and have listed to some reveal trauma in their own lives, which invites me into some very private parts of their lives. It has been a life changing experience for me, and I hope it has been for them as well.

Luke: Finally, what was it like working with David? Are there any fun tidbits or stories of how he directed you / that wonderfully haunting scene burned into our memories forever?


Mary: Working with DL was an incredible experience to say the least and very humbling and rewarding. He is a master filmmaker and director. The gift he gives is what we as individual viewers choose to take away from his art.

He is a wonderful director in that he ceases to tell you how to act, rather use your raw and organic natural emotions to drive the performance. I believe he knew I was going to be a bit anxious and guarded and most of all a bit nervous, which worked well for answering the door at night to 2 strangers. He tweaked a bit but left us to the scene and frankly Kyle and Sheryl would make most people look good. We only had 2 takes which was great. We practiced a bit outside before the scene which helped. Also meeting Kyle and Sheryl in hair and makeup was an introduction to them both that was organic and for me very helpful. I felt like I was acting already with 2 friends. DL and Kyle and Sheryl were very encouraging. DL knows what he wants and how to transfer his ideas out in the scene with great kindness and finesse and humor.

Luke: I’m sorry but I have to ask. Any hints to what was being spoken to you behind that menacing white door?
Mary: There were no hints of who was behind door other than me calling him Honey. He was supposedly answering my questions and then I was relaying answers to Kyle and Sheryl.

Thanks to Patron Member u/Entharo_entho - Here is the wiped out Tweet retrieved
Context - Wiped out from Internet
In March, I got a chance to work with filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali right after he made Gangubai Kathiawadi, and Alia Bhatt, playing the titular character in the film, retweeted me.
The headline (in my head) was going to be, ‘The Boy From Kamathipura Goes To Bhansali Mandi.’
Then reality struck in April.
One of my closest friends Sweta called me from the Shivapuri National Park near Kathmandu and put me on speaker. Two other friends Mona and Ayush were listening to the WhatsApp call.
‘How’s it going with Bhansu?’ Sweta asked.
‘We are not working together anymore,’ I said.
‘Whaaaaaaaat?’ the three people shrieked, creating a wavy disturbance in audio frequency.
‘Whyyyyy?’ they cried, collectively anguished.
‘He said he is not feeling the vibes.’
‘What?’
‘Vibes,’ I said aloud, causing a seismic tremor in the audio frequency.
‘What vibes?’ Sweta jibed, ‘Maybe he can’t feel the vibrator.’
Laughter upped the vibes.
First, a little context on how I got that far. Check this, this, this & this.
So my tweets were going viral in February-March.
In the second week of March, a woman DM’d me saying she loves the tweets. I said thank you. She said she works at Bhansali Productions.
Whoopsie Daisy!
I asked if I could be a part of the production. She checked with SLB and team. He said he wants to meet now.
NOW!
How?
I was in Calcutta.
I called an actor friend in Bombay and told him about it.
“They will book your tickets and put you up in 5-star,” he said, “Like Hollywood.”
“This is Bhansaliwood,” I said, “Yahan dhanda hamesha manda hai.”
I flew (on my own expense) and met him.
I was ‘prepared’ by his team for the meeting with His High and Mightiness.
I was told:

Arre, then what do I say?
I sashayed in a brown kurta and white linen trousers. Please see Madhuri Dixit-Nene’s brown ghagra for aesthetic reference I used from my very limited wardrobe of the only kurta I had at the time. By the way, the chorus sings ‘Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje,’ aesthetically referencing you know what, right?
He was lunching with his minions (strictly calling them minions from his pov) when I arrived in his pristine white dining hall in a building called Magnum Opus. Where else should he reside, no? Both his house, and his office (where I was ‘prepared’ earlier) were tastefully done in creamy white.
It was, as I said to my friend later, like walking into a cumulus cloud, or like sitting on his favourite singer Lata Mangeshkar’s lap. Calm, serene and quite surreal. I was inside his snow globe. Violins from a Bach concerto (in my head) were replaced with say Madan Mohan’s doleful rendition of ‘Mai ri main ka se kahoon peedh apne jiya ki.’ (Side effect of writing this on Mother’s Day.)
I look for books when I enter a house for signs of intelligent life. There were lots of lamps and candelabras but where were the stacks of books they were perched on? The aesthetic was high on film set disposable kitsch. I stared into a cumulative void.
The minions were intensely debating Darjeeling momos. What’s that? I spent my childhood there. Never heard of this GI tag!
SLB relished his meal and said, “I want puranpoli today.”
Puranpoli appeared not out of thin air, but a house-help flipping wishes instantly on a griddle on the fifth floor. We were on the first floor. Although the puranpoli is shaped like a flying saucer, it doesn’t fly, perhaps burdened by the weight of excess ghee and crowd-pleasing expectation. It does, however, reach SLB’s plate at the speed of light.
‘Give him some,’ he asked a minion to serve me while I waited on the sofa.
‘I’ve had lunch, thank you,’ I said, trying to behave. The plate arrived. I took a mousy bite to exhibit my failing attempt to transform into a champion minion.
When he came to chat, he noticed the unfinished food and gently reminded me how there were days he went hungry. I should have rolled my eyes for my own lean days.
‘One should not waste food,’ he said.
‘I don’t,’ I said, ‘I was going to parcel it home in a doggy bag.’
Hearing the word doggy, his well-behaved dog came over to inspect me.
He observed me. I petted her perfunctorily. Am a cat person. Stereotypical writer stuff — allergic to undesired petting and attention.
‘So, what have you done?’ he asked, sitting on a sort of empire-style bergere chair. Full marks for faux-ornate.
‘A novel, some writing for a series,’ I said nervously, dismissively.
‘Anything I might have seen?’ he asked.
‘No, not worthwhile.’
‘Are you interested in direction also?’
‘No, am not delusional.’
A moment passed. I might have displayed an errant repartee.
‘I mean, I can only write, or am trying to,’ I said. L’esprit de l’escalier.
He gave me a spiel on writing, how screenplay is an art not many understand, etc, et cetera.
I nodded to make his voice disappear.
‘What are you writing now?’
I showed him the cover of my new book, The Last Courtesan, featuring my mother, on my phone.
‘Oh, this is so fascinating,’ he said.
He spoke rapturously about Calcutta’s great food and colonial architecture when I mentioned growing up in Bowbazar kothas. If you watch any of his interviews now on YouTube you will realise he only speaks in raptures. He’s always explaining things like an impassioned conductor at a dime-store opera. It can exhaust the boorish audience immediately. He spoke about living in the Kamathipura area as a child when I said I had lived there. The mythmaker was interested in exoticising his own legend as an ‘outsider’.
‘But how will you work here if your mother is in Calcutta?’ he said, ‘I am a maa-ka-bhakt.’
Everything is about him or his mother. I have reached that stage too, though only by circumstances unavoidable.
‘Actually it was my mother who asked me to come here. I told her it would only work out if you understand that I will have to vacillate between the two cities initially. Jaise Sanjay ki Leela hai, waise meri Rekha.’
Corny dialogue, but worked. No one calls him by his first name, except perhaps his own mother. He is sir for everyone.
‘If I am speaking to you for so long means I like you,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, I would have asked you to leave long ago.’
Barely five minutes into the conversation, he asked me to return to his office and inform his team that I was going to be a part of his writer’s room.
I went back to his office and read a script. This is the part I cannot mention. His legal team sits in the adjacent room.
I flew to Calcutta and was to return after a week. I had to make arrangements for my mother’s tri-weekly dialysis sessions at a nearby hospital, figure out a tiffin-delivery service for her, find a house help (she sent four nurses scurrying in the past), all of which is a bit of a task in this retrograde city.
Remember the woman who had DM’d me about my tweets? She messaged. She had met SLB after my meeting. He said this about me: ‘What a wonderful find. That boy has so much potential and is talented. Most importantly, he is sensitive.’
I told her I’d get this engraved on my tombstone.
Like how he wants to take Alia Bhatt’s golchakkar in Dholida to his grave.
“It’s a shot that I will take to my grave. If there’s any shot that I want to be played when I breathe my last, it would be Alia doing that shot. It is the best thing I have seen an actor do in a very long, long time.”
I was only emulating the high priest of hyperbole in my tombstone comment. Perhaps I was regressing into a minion.
I had only managed a few tasks for mother when I was back in Bombay. It worried me that the old, frail woman with shaky limbs and slurred speech was trying to be brave to send me to work. I hadn’t worked since the pandemic; she was in and out of hospitals so frequently that I had surrendered the thought of getting another job ever again. Taking care of her was my full-time job.
The first day in his office was to chill in my new, aesthetically pleasing kurta I had shopped for in Gariahat. There was a security camera in every corner that was apparently accessible on his phone. My skin tingled with this information. Chilled. He was at home. Probably watching. That’s a great way to create a myth.
The next day, there were more minions on the lunch table in his first floor apartment. The magically appearing steamy and fragrant sheera was delicious. A minion deemed it the best sheera in the city. I nodded to make that statement evaporate.
A courier boy interrupted for a document signature. SLB flared at a spelling mistake in the document papers.
‘Go wash your face and come back,’ he yelled at the young man.
The minions at the table laughed nervously. I so wished I was wearing a mask to cover my surprise emoji face.
The minions on the table were writers and assistant directors.
‘Dastavez,’ SLB said, ‘would that be correct to use?’
‘Kaaghzaat,’ the minion replied.
‘Kaaghzaat is paper, dastavez is document,’ said the second minion.
‘You always mislead me,’ SLB sternly reprimanded the first minion. ‘Don’t ever do that again.’
Only that minion tried to laugh, offering an apology. He shut the minion down.
My mask, my mask emoji face.
A third minion was sulking in a corner before I arrived for the writing session. This minion had reportedly offered a script suggestion, which he disliked and barked down. I liked this minion the most. Relatable.
A faint noise of a person running or perhaps just a rumbling sound from somewhere outside interrupted the room. He looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘No one lives there. Am certain it is a ghost. I hear running sounds all the time. I have heard sounds of furniture being dragged.’
I wondered if he actually believed in half the things he uttered, or was he just saying it to create enigma about himself. Mythical thoughts certainly kept him preoccupied.
Reality bored him. SLB had nothing good to say about the ‘current plague’ of South Indian films upsetting the Bollywood cartel. He compared them to a circus. He wasn’t kind to the actors he had worked with in his last film. He cracked lame jokes about everyone and everything. The minions laughed and kept him busy. I chuckled a few times to blend in. The mythmaker revelled in his prophesies about the impending doom of charlatans with no aesthetics: just crass, commercial peddlers pimping art. It was all said to amuse and bemuse while he fussed over the yellow shade of fabric from several swatches.
When he left for his music session, the minions bitched him out, and how! All the horror stories I had heard over the years about his moods, behaviour, language and violent temper were true. How else will he create myth about himself as a maestro? The Glomar response. Let the plebs indulge in hearsay. I will neither confirm nor deny. The minions sang effigy songs in happy tunes, if I may stretch this part a bit like his penchant for high camp.
That night, when I went to my actor friend’s house, where I was temporarily staying, I said to him, ‘I don’t think I will last a week there.’
I was rattled by how he spoke to the courier boy and the minions, with no filter. Well, at least it was clear he had no tact, endearing as that might be of a ‘genius’ if one compromises with his erratic behaviour. The CEO of his company does it beautifully and advises to develop a ‘thick hide’ around him. Cows, essentially.
Verve
The words genius, great, master, maverick, were so loosely bandied by his office staff even in his absence that I was tempted to add auteur, if they could spell or pronounce it. They worked in perpetual fear of him turning up at any hour and checking on their tidiness. A minion whined she wasn’t dressed appropriately for his surprise visit. Once, he even cut pay for unscheduled leave, said another minion. A minion narrated a shot he copied from a photographer in Gangubai Kathiawadi. Another minion recounted how he made her cry on shoot by screaming at her for a silly mistake. Minions couldn’t leave the office till his evenings were scheduled. It was a well-paying job so long as they did not have to see ‘chacha’s’ face and only applaud his cinematic sorcery.
His office team would assign me desk-work and warn me not to inform him about it.
‘What am I supposed to say if he asks?’
‘Make up something,’ I was told.
‘Why should I?’
‘You will slowly understand,’ I was told.
His team of assistants would sneak around me. I didn’t know who was reporting what back to him. He would interrogate the management team. They would lash out at me for informing the assistants. The management wanted to control me a certain way because ‘sir’ does not need to know everything. It was quite a guessing game. He had created an ecosystem of complete chaos and loved the hubbub. New people were hired for him to use the ‘new energy’ to rekindle the ‘old energy’ that needed to be reminded it could be snuffed out and replaced. He thrived on confusion because it all boiled down to him to sort out the mess. He was the provider so long as the minions ingratiated and served their grand master.
One time he called me upstairs, what his CEO called the god’s chamber aka the Shahenshah’s durbar: his office on the seventh floor. Walls were lined with giant posters of his films. We minions sat on the fifth floor. I was of course by now a week old in the toady mill. On the seventh floor, production team members, set designer, director assistant, young people sat on the floor, armed with notebooks and laptops, alert and sugar-tongued. He sat on a throne and dictated each one about their duty. A masseur massaged his leg. He asked me what I thought of a script. I said it was lovely. He asked me to elaborate. I said I liked a character’s resolve. He denied it was written. I said that’s my interpretation. A minion promptly backed me.
‘What changes do you suggest?’ he asked.
‘We should sit on it collectively and decide,’ I said.
He mumbled something. My suggestion was dismissed. I was dismissed. I bowed out. A minion whispered to me, ‘We all walk on eggshells around him.’ I had to be a chicken in a coop I suppose.
Another time he dismissed my suggestion for a scene saying, ‘That’s not how art is made.’ I had referenced a scene from Bandit Queen to illustrate my point. Just like his entire oeuvre is homage to a classic. How else does he make his art?
Allow me to illustrate with a frame from his first film Khamoshi: The Musical. The second image is from Pakeezah.
Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam references Red Beard, Woh 7 Din.
Devdas references Pakeezah more than once.
Black references The Miracle Worker.
Saawariya references Pyaasa, Awaara.
Guzaarish references Whose Life Is It Anyway?
Goliyon Ki Raasleela: Ram-Leela references Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story.
Bajirao Mastani references Mughal-E-Azam.
Padmaavat references Mirch Masala.
Gangubai Kathiawadi, let’s give him the benefit of doubt is all his own, original artistry.
The American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch once meta quoted the French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard when he said:
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery — celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.”
SLB believes he takes art and betters it, removing the grubby coat of slime from the sublime, often not concerned with acknowledging the source. He is a master’s master, elevating it to an otherworldly experience, the creator of a mythoverse.
He asked me to rewrite a scene I didn’t agree with. He banged the script folders on the table like a petulant, little child. I watched his posture change into a frump. Tiger Shroff’s ‘Bacchi ho kya,’ dialogue comes to mind.
‘You are talking like those critics who find fault but don’t know how to write. They should write the film,’ he said.
That argument will never make sense to me but since I write movies now and not just about them, I rewrote the scene in half an hour and showed it to him. He found it rubbish.
I was not called to the writer’s room for a week.
His CEO said I should go to his house; hang around him, like the other assistants whose only purpose in life is to feed his ego. We are slaves to his vision, she said. She thought I was a better writer than the team he had assembled. ‘From whatever I read, only three lines of your work on social media, I could sense it,’ she said.
Either she was encouraging, or bluffing with a perfectly Zen face. From the hundreds of Ganesh idols stacked in her room, it was clear she wasn’t a reader. She was good at reading numbers, data, and stats. She would sense a sign if one of the metal idols sucked milk from a spoon on the day she enquired about box –office figures.
There was more than one right-wing hardliner in his office. Secular staff was invisible. A pretty minion in baby pink t-shirt, whose main grouse was that another minion called him a Barbie doll, said he was happy with the Modi government building roads in his home state Bihar. Another minion countered him by asking: What about the persecution of minorities by the same government? The pretty minion said he didn’t care for that. He was assisting ‘sir’ because he wanted to be an actor. Which lead me to wonder how many Muslim actors has this production worked with? Silly of me to think, right? Given that I myself don’t use my Muslim surname. I’ve now successfully planted a myth in your head. That’s how it works.
In the time that I was in Versova during my brief stint at Bhansali Productions, I met several people with their own SLB horror story. A producer said, ‘He is a difficult man but life changes for good after you work with him. Some people want to go through hell first. Life bann jaati hai.’ I didn’t understand why purgatory was necessary. Another former assistant said, ‘When you work with the worst (SLB) and the best (KJO), you are ready for the rest.’
A young woman gave him a thesis she wrote on his films. He asked her to write a book on her. She said she wanted to assist as a director. She never heard from him. A filmmaker said SLB was too friendly with another assistant, suggesting intimacy. A writer wasn’t given credit in a film.
Another writer was promised his script will be turned into a film but it never took off and now he feels his life has been ruined. A young filmmaker’s debut movie SLB produced was delayed, not promoted, and called ‘kachra’ to his face.
The young man said SLB is sexist, homophobe, classist, fat shamer, emotional abuser, and a body shamer. “He is a joyless pit of darkness where happiness goes to die. And those are the nicest words I can think of to describe him,” he said. Another filmmaker said a choreographer was in a relationship with SLB and wanted to marry him but he wouldn’t even touch her, a hotly discussed conversation amongst his minions.
Everything sounds hokum. A successful man is likely to upset a few. The few will talk. Their words may ring true through a gossamer veil of implausibility. Myths magnifying his persona.
There are too many myths about his personal life, aroused by his silence on the subject but all too obvious in his work. When people want to confirm with me, I am equally appalled at their lack of aesthetics. Like the great reader of curtains, Edgar Allan Poe, you only have to look at SLB’s use of billowy curtains in films to guess.

Above stanza, courtesy Poe, poem: The Raven.
Hope you get the drift, or draft, hawa ka jhonka! By the way, am digressing now, is the weirdly named character Sameer Rosselline in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam the first mainstream Hindi film hero to pass wind? The ruffled curtains are first to be cautioned though.
Unlike most people willing to swallow their pride to work with SLB, few like the eponymous Gangubai character choose izzat. The house-help employed in my actor friend’s house was asked to work as a cook in his house. When she heard the whimsy, dessert-craving demands, she declined the offer. I identify with her no-nonsense style.
In November 2021, a filmmaker read a film script I wrote and said, ‘This is SLB territory. Only he can make it. It is the modern love-story he has been wanting to make for a long time.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked, somewhat flattered but also bewildered.
‘Yes, we just have to change the setting from Calcutta-Bombay to Calcutta-New York. It is what he has been trying to crack. I’ll get him to read it.’
I never spoke to SLB about my script. I did not want to look like a schemer. I had only got a chance because of my mother’s story. I had come to write courtesan songs. Hindi films are recognised by their songs. His films have show tunes that live on long after the sequins and mirrors reflect a decadent style. He employs the old-fashioned method of making Hindi films, which is to stitch scenes around a song, not the other way round. And when you glean your references from the best of classical melodies, how can you falter?
My own SLB story is that after watching Saawariya in 2007, I wrote a few songs, moved to Bombay, lived in Versova, close to Magnum Opus, and hoped to meet him, but made no effort even though I came in close contact with people who worked directly with him. I never requested for a meeting. Over the years, I too had heard a few horror stories about him. I only believe in what I see. I waited when he would call for me, my work would have to speak for itself.
A day before Good Friday, his CEO sat me down and said it’s not working out.
There’s a mythical story of how Lata Mangeshkar was on her way to record a song for SLB but the heavens poured and she had to turn her car back. A typical SLB frame of hope and hopelessness.
Never work with your idols. You’ll have a better story to imagine and create myths.
I was so relieved to leave. I hadn’t got a moment to read, or write, let alone think since I got here. Why I wanted to work with SLB was to not believe in hearsay. I will either confirm or deny.
‘Great,’ I said, ‘everyone deserves an off on Good Friday.’
The office was unsure about public holidays. SLB’s mood dictated the calendar.
Before returning to Calcutta, I met a friend entrenched in the film business.
When she heard of the fiasco, she said, ‘I’ve heard he is very anal, is he?’
The vibrator jokes never stop.

I’m processing a lot of stuff that happened, and I can’t believe I didn’t act upon anything. This sub saved me and I wanted to return the favor. If you find yourself aligning with any of these, PLEASE question your happiness in this relationship.
-he controlled who I spoke to: he tried to convince me that my friends of 20+ years were jealous of me and wanted him, and he also hated my family. he would get into my phone late at night and block people without telling me. he also threatened to leave me if I unblocked them.
-he controlled what I ate: I wasn’t allowed to eat out, as he said that eating at restaurants was unhealthy for me and I could only eat at home with groceries from stores he approved of. If someone invited me out to eat (family members, friends, etc), he told me not to eat anything.
-he controlled how I looked: he told me I couldn’t wear tight clothes because it was bad for my health, and he also told me I couldn’t wear makeup because I didn’t need it and it would damage my skin. he wouldn’t allow me to buy certain products for my curly hair because it could give me cancer. even though it was proven he couldn’t. same with lotions and perfumes.
-he controlled what I said: I wasn’t allowed to say “yeah” to him, as it was too masculine. I could only say yes. I also couldn’t cuss even though I’m a 27 year old woman. But he could do those things. he also tried to “fix” the way I said thank you, as he said it was too nice.
-he controlled my activities: I couldn’t go anywhere without him, even to family events or work events. I got invited to an Astros game by my company and he was upset they didn’t offer him a ticket. And he said I couldn’t go without him. He also told me I couldn’t watch television or commercials because they would brainwash me to be a sheep. He didn’t allow me to listen to my favorite artists because he said I would be influenced to join the Illuminati.
-he controlled my movements: he constantly said I would do the most mundane actions wrong. I peeled shrimp wrong, so he had to “teach” me how to do it right so I didn’t look stupid. I didn’t open or close doors right, so he would make me open and close doors until I got it right. I would slouch when I got tired and he would physically move me to stand up, even in public.
Please don’t mute yourself for someone else.

First Chapter. Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road
They made for the hillock that Rene had seen earlier that day. It was the closest bit of high ground they had seen, and it had hatched the beginnings of a cruel idea in his mind, one that he wished to turn into reality.
“Stay close to me,” he told Zildiz as they strode, “We stand a better chance of living through this if we act as a unit.”
“A unit of what?” she inquired, puzzled by his use of the word, “Weight, length or time?”
“No, it means that we should work together,” he tried to explain, quickening his pace to a light jog. The hunting parties had gone silent—they hadn’t the talk of their drums in ages. The quiet was somehow more unnerving than the screams.
“We watch each other’s backs,” he continued, running along a fallen log, “It’s a sort of code we Pathfinders have. No man or woman dies alone.”
Try telling that to Lethway, said a snide voice in his head.
“I have no wish to die alongside you, Fleet-man.”
“That’s not what I…ah, never mind. Here,” Rene handed her back her severed blades, “As promised.”
How had these people ever managed to survive this long? Zildiz wondered as she held her weapons again, manually sheathing them in her arms. It was like taking sugarcane from a baby.
The fog was thinning noticeably. They had forded the river and reached the base of the hillock when they heard another shout from the southwest, sounding much closer this time. The drums began to speak again, the music almost keeping time with Rene’s triphammering heartbeat. Rene led them round the flank of the rise into a deep gully, trying to use the terrain to hide their movements.
“How’s their sense of smell, Zildiz?” he asked her as they picked their way up a pebbly, bone-dry creek. Rene hopped across the boulders and offered her his arm for assistance.
“Depends on the Leaper and their grafted organs,” she told him, leaping past him and pointedly ignoring his efforts at playing the gentleman, “But they are all excellent trackers. They will find us. It is inevitable.”
“Aye, but we’ll be ready for em by then. Hopefully,” Rene added with certain lack of conviction, “To be frank, I don’t know a power on this earth that can stop that horde we saw earlier.”
“They will not use the creatures of the jungle against us. The warband that is hunting us now cannot be larger than thirty to fifty braves.”
“And you know this how?”
Zildiz said nothing. She was under no obligation to tell a child of the Betrayers of the Vitalus’ capabilities. The more creatures the Leapers involved in this secret hunt, the greater the chances that the Vitalus would discover their violation of the truce. It would be a small and private war, and that suited her down to the ground.
She felt stronger now and surer of her footing, as if the chase had breathed new life into her muscles and lungs. Why, she felt as if she could fight a dozen Leapers. Either her innards had adjusted to the workload or her exomorph was regaining some of its functions. She dashed ahead, rejoicing in the steel-spring action of her sinews. The weak-spined Rene, on the other hand, was dawdling below her in the creek, up to some foolishness as usual.
He had stopped to gather fistfuls of gravel which he stuffed into his socks and pockets until they bulged. He even opened his kit and crammed pebbles in the loose corners of the case.
“Hurry up,” she called to him, speaking softly now that danger was close.
“I’d have to agree with Zildiz here, tovarisch,” Exar chimed in, “Now’s not the best time to be gathering mineral samples.”
Rene shook his head and refused to explain. After some minutes of the uphill marching, he spoke to Exar, saying:
“This high enough for you?”
“Ten more meters above sea level should do it.”
They were almost at the summit of the landmass, in a grove of benguet pines and thin pygmy dipterocarps growing amid a hardscrabble sand. On the right shoulder of the hill were the clusters of fire gourd trees whose seeds he had mistaken for cannon fire, the ground plastered with dried-up foam. Beyond this stretched a scorched and blasted hellscape of blackened, dead trees.
“We don’t have ten more meters,” Rene said, “That is, unless…”
He craned his neck to see the tops of the pines, which had straight smooth trunks and sported no lower limbs to grab onto. Most were stunted and malnourished by the poor soil, but at least one of the adults looked like a good candidate. It would be hard climbing.
“It’s times like these that I wish these commercial kits still came with thruster packs,” Exar said regretfully, “But all those models got phased out. Budget cuts, whatcha gonna do, eh?”
“What’s a thruster pack?”
“Never heard of one? That’s funny,” Exar paused as if he had come to a sudden realization, “That’s real funny, you sayin that…”
Rene unsheathed the monomachete and emptied his kit of all gear except for the panel and the allcomm antenna. He cut out some footholds with the monomachete and began his ascent. Rene nearly made it to the top without making the mistake of looking down. As it was, he risked a peek at Zildiz gawping up at him all the way down there and nearly swooned, his scrotum tightening round his pearls like the jaws of death. He clamped the sword of the ancients between his teeth and bit down hard to steady himself.
“Join the Pathfinders, they said,” he growled around the bare metal, “See the sights and look pretty for the girls, they said. What was I flipping thinking?”
He swung up to the slender upper boughs and carefully wedged the solar panel amid the branches, angling it so that it caught the weakening gaze of the suns. Then he balanced the allcomm antenna and its tripod on the uppermost twigs and hooked up the cabling.
“Good work, bhaisap,” Exar said when it began to rotate, “I’ll start transmitting our coordinates to any and all stations while getting a fix on our position.”
“Splendid. Say, you’ve got some nice sight lines up here, Exar.”
From where he stood Rene could see for leagues around in all directions, and he kept his eyes peeled for movement.
There! Specters gliding above the murk, twenty or so klicks out and moving fast. A hoarse scream from the east confirmed his worst suspicions: the Leapers knew exactly where they were. The cannibals were hemming them in, herding Rene and Zildiz they had done with the army of beasts. He could imagine them spreading out in a wide crescent whose horns would envelop the hill from both sides.
Rene estimated that he had little more than an hour to prepare.
“Exar, could I ask you to be our lookout from up here?”
“Thy wish is my command. A la mi presente, al vostra signori, as they used to say.”
As who used to say? Rene thought. Much of what the sphere said tended to be incomprehensible. Rene unfastened the sphere and Exar extended his spike legs to fix himself in place.
“But wouldn’t it be safer for you to stay up top with me?” Exar pointed out.
“Yes, it would. For them,” Rene replied with as much false bravado as he could dredge up. Scattering pines and bark shavings, he slid back down and ran over to the stand of fire gourds. To his relief some of the fruit on the outlying trees furthest from the blaze had not gone off. Rene reached up and picked as many of the gourds as he could fit in his arms. He carried them back to the pines, making several trips to amass a sizable collection.
Zildiz had her swords out and was cooly sharpening them one against the other.
“So they’ve finally run us down,” she said in a flat tone, “Are you ready?”
“Not quite,” Rene said shortly.
He began the project by arranging his other components. Spool of webbing, check. Socks full of pebbles, check. Gauntlet, check.
“Exar, how much longer till our rescue gets here?” he hollered up at the sphere.
“I’ve hailed a shuttle from one of the toroidal stations. ETA 128 minutes.”
“You’ll have those minutes,” Rene promised him, then spoke to Zildiz, “Heads up, Gallivant. From this moment on, our sole objective is to hold off the enemy for at least two hours. We live or die on this hill. Get me?”
“Brave words. And how do you intend to back them up?”
“With the help of a little friend I call firepower,” Rene said, getting right to work. He wound the silk around one of the sloshing gourds until it was sticky all over, then took fistfuls of gravel from his socks, densely studding the fruit with them. Rene held up the finished prototype and grinned evilly. All in all, it had taken him less than five minutes to put it together.
Defensive tactics required careful selection and preparation of the ground. Half the battle was won if one could dictate where the fighting took place.
Pathfinders were scouts above all else and did not specialize in fighting sieges. Rene tried his best anyway, choosing a spot among the pygmy pines and with a deep ravine on his right and a spread of open ground some twenty meters wide and sixty long on his left where nothing grew but itchy buffalo grasses. At his back was a sheer bluff, only four meters tall or so, but still a solid feature upon which to anchor his defense. He placed the prototype in the center of the field and ran back, going prone behind a shallow bank of earth and taking up his gauntlet.
“Come on,” he pleaded with it, training the beam on the gourd’s hard shell, “Sing for daddy…”
Nothing happened for a long moment. Rene blinked; the gourd had abruptly disappeared. In the next instant, shards of shell and rock and specks of foam lacerated the air above his position, ricocheting off the hard cliff face. Rene clapped his hands to his ringing ears and got up. Inspecting his position, he found the bank of earth studded with his improvised shrapnel and arrowhead-shaped seeds.
“Pop! Goes the weasel!” he shouted, overjoyed by the result, “That ought to ruin someone’s day.”
Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road

I live in Australia, and I've noticed more and more that corporate advertising has frequently uses interracial couples where it's a white man and Asian woman. Just this evening I must have seen almost ten commercials where this type of couple was used and it made me wonder why this was such a valuable marketing strategy to use.
Are there any marketers here that could shed some light?
When I say corporate ads, I mean for banks, insurance companies, home appliances, telecommunications services etc.

There are 10 matches on this card but some go by quick, or could happen on tv, I’m assuming this is gonna be the biggest or one of the biggest PLE’s ever so here we go.
Randy Orton vs Solo Sikoa
This match doesn’t even start because Randy is attacked before walking out Solo is sending a message to everyone. This is a reason to have Randy on the card, you’ll see.
Jey Uso, Sami Zayn, and Kevin Owens/Sheamus vs New Imperium, King Gunther, Ludwig Kaiser, and Ilja Dragunov
New Imperium starts a feud with Sami and Kevin, they need a third and get Jey Uso. They dominate setting Gunther up for a world title shot.
AOP(c) vs The Creeds - WWE World Heavyweight Tag Team Championship
Big meaty men bumping meat. I do not think Awesome Truth will make it to summerslam.
Liv Morgan(c) vs Becky Lynch vs Asuka vs Kairi Sane
Liv Morgan beats Becky about a month after KOTR. Their feud officially ends here but damage control get involved to spice it up. Miss MITB Dakota Kai tries cashing in but fails to with involvement from Becky.
Chad Gable(c) w/ the creeds vs Otis/Pete Dunne intercontinental Championship
Either stretch out the Otis Gable storyline til august or wrap it up quickly and give Pete Dunne a singles title opportunity, opportunity comes short against the odds though. Alpha/Creed Academy stands tall with their titles (I’d even get Shelton Benjamin or Kurt angle or both to join them eventually)
Drew McIntyre vs CM Punk
This would be the second PLE match between the two, Drew winning the first. Punk Wins to probably seal this feud down..but Drew will still get the last laugh down the line.
Logan Paul(c) vs LA Knight United States Championship - Falls Count Anywhere
I’m not the biggest LA Knight fan but I think it’s about time they give him a title run. This feud has already been set up and it’s gonna be entertaining. Falls count anywhere to enhance their performance and maybe have Logan do something crazy because they’re in Cleveland.
Yeah!
Damien Preist(c) w/ R-Truth ;) vs Finn Balor w/ JD World Heavyweight Championship
Judgment Day implodes throughout summer and we finally get this title match. Finn Balor and JD leave the Judgment Day and become a duo. Balor Finally after 8 years becomes world champion again…
Damien Preist or Aj attacks Finn balor after the match and takes out JD. Aj Styles is cashing in his MITB!
Finn Balor(c) vs AJ Styles
AJ is champ again! Finn Balor is once again taken from a world title run.
Bayley(c) vs Bianca BelaiTiffany Stratton Woman’s Championship
Bayley wins. For now.
Cody Rhodes(c) vs The Rock w/ The Bloodline (and Roman) WWE Undisputed World Universal Heavyweight Championship
Let’s just assume the rock does this match, the way I would have it play out is there’s a moment where Cody is being beat up by either all of the bloodline or Rock and Solo, Randy Orton comes to Cody’s aid. We get a Randy vs rock moment (which sets up a match later for them) and Cody and Randy stand tall
but then Roman returns. Randy is taken out, it’s now 2v1 Rock and Roman vs Cody. But in a shocking turn of events Roman turns on the rock with a Superman punch. Everyone is shocked turning Roman face (or roles could be reversed and Rock turns face.)
Cody Capitalizes on it hits rock with a crossroads and wins. The Bloodline is all over the place.
Summerslam is closed out by a Slim Jim Commercial

Christians are to love The Lord their God with all their Heart and Soul and Strength and Mind. This is the basis of Christianity. What does it mean to love God with your soul? What is the soul? Soul has a lot to do with identity. I would like to talk about identity politics; however, there is a learning curve. Someone may need to understand The Soul.
Discovering The Soul
When someone is talking about The Soul, which Soul are they referencing? Plato and The Soul? Abstract Philosophy God and the Soul? The Bible, and how The Bible references The Soul? Working to explain The Soul and The Bible, I have worked to do so in a way that your average person may be able to understand, and find or feel their soul. He are starting with a perception, we postulate that the Soul is a person, and has to do with decision making and identity, and given scripture, and various media or cultural references of The Soul, we may be able to see if we are right, and a bigger picture.
Given you understand what The Soul is in the Bible, someone may begin to understand exorcism. They may understand Identity Politics, and what it actually is in spiritual warfare. They may come out with greater understanding of creation and God.
The Basis of Christianity

• 5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.. (Deuteronomy 6:5)
• He answered, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Luke 10:27)

Song to Preface this: Heuy Lewis "Heart and Soul."
What is a Soul? A soul is a person. Given a The King of Salem had 50 Souls, he had fifty persons or servants. How did they identify themselves? Possibly as a servant of The King of Salem in some way. Loving The Lord with all your SOUL, may have to do with identity. Who was someone serving? Was someone a Servant of "Something Else" or a Servant of God? A child of God? A son of God? These may be good things to be as a Christian looking to love God with your Soul or identity.
A couple years ago I lived in walking distance from Duke University. Given someone was a Duke fan, or Duke Alumni, or had a lot of Duke Paraphernalia, they may have loved Duke University. How did they love Duke University? They loved Duke with their Soul or Identity. Someone with a Duke T-Shirt may be saying something about who he is, or was, or would like to be. When Duke wins or has done well in basketball, someone who loved Duke with their Soul or identity, they may have rejoiced? They felt good? In their soul, they rejoice, and feel a sense of happiness. That is where the soul is. Given anyone has been a sports fan at some point, and has identified as a fan of ___________ their soul rejoices when their team does well. Given I was to look up Soul in a Bible concordance, there are many of these feeling or sensing type verses where the soul is a place inside someone where there is passion. Someone loving God with Their Soul in a world of materialism and commercialism may have given up their Nike and Adidas, to be more as "Plain as John the Baptist?"
Given a musician signed a record contract, and said record contract was very strict, did said musician "Sell their Soul?" Given a musician has to sing all the songs said record company tells them to, and be at A or B place at a certain time, as said record company tells them to, and said musician has very little free will, would that be "Selling The Soul?" Given the record company was a servant of "The Purple Gang," or Kabbalists, or some other group not serving God, that may have been someone selling their soul to the devil? When we get the basics of what the Bible describes the Soul to be, there are a lot of interesting topics that come up. The Truth hurts. Knowledge brings sorrow. Ignorance is bliss? Their is freedom in The Lord.
The Soul and Identity.
True Statements:

• The Song of Songs is in the Bible as a representation of God's Love for Israel or The Church.
• In the New Testament, The Church is a Bride for Christ.
• Christ is to man as a man is to woman or Christ is the head of man as man is the head of woman. (1 Corinthians 11:3)

Marriage has been an important part of The Bible and Faith and growing in understanding.

Woman is meek before her husband. Man is meek before God. A woman loving her husband with her heart and soul may have taken his name. She is forging a new identity as Mrs. _____________. A married woman with a hyphenated last name is one foot in, one foot out? Who or what does she love more? Her husband or Feminism? Maybe she didn't quite want to leave her family and her old identity behind as a single female or "Daughter of?" Feminists tend towards socialism. Is a woman really married to her husband or more married to The State? Woman is meek before her husband. A man is meek before God.
Looking at the Soul like this, someone may be able to see God. (And Satan.) The Truth hurts. Knowledge brings sorrow. Ignorance is bliss?
Spirits
Given we are coming into an understanding of The Soul, what are Spirits? Spirits effect motivations. Here is a short list of some spirits mentioned.

• Deaf and dumb spirit (Mark 9:17-29)
• Lying spirit (II Chronicles 18:20-22)
• Perverse spirit (Isaiah 19:14; Romans 1:17-32)
• Seducing spirit (I Timothy 4:1)
• More at: https://www.christcenteredmall.com/teachings/evil-spirits.htm

What are these Spirits doing? They are influencing. They are effecting motivations. Someone with a seducing spirit or spirit of prostitution may have been on tinder in the wrong way? Someone with a lying tongue may have been a habitual liar? Someone with one of these spirits, their character may have been molded a certain way. Their soul, who they are, may have been molded to something. Part of their identity, even if it was subconscious, may have been molded to something. Some Spirits are generational. They may have been passed down from Generation to Generation. There may have been generational curses on some families. (Deuteronomy 5:9) Some spirits someone may have picked up by being in sin, and being unrepentant. Someone's Soul or character may have been molded around something.
Given someone has God's Holy Spirit, they say "Jesus is Lord." They may tend to think about God, and talk about God a lot, and be prone to God-centric activities. Their Soul, and God's Holy Spirit, overtime, may have entwined. They are "One with God" leading towards an understanding of Theosis.

About ten years ago (more or less) I saw a commercial of three older women with totally white bodies wearing glasses. The three of them were bathing in what looked like a jacuzzi with coffee instead of water. In the end it is revealed that the women were sugar cubes and one of them falls into the coffee of an old woman who was using a coffee machine.
PS: I don't speak much English and I don't use reddit much either, but I wanted to know if someone can answer this question for me.

Okay, just bear with me for a minute...
There are now 11 movies in the Fast & Furious franchise. They're always very popular and they make a lot of money. Young people love them. They're big, dumb, commercial crowd-pleasers, and that's fine.
However, imagine the following hypothetical scenario: What if every time a new Fast & Furious movie came out, the press gushed over it as if it were The Godfather or Citizen Kane or The Shawshank Redemption? What if every new film in the franchise was immediately put on the short list for Best Picture? What if everyone claimed that Vin Diesel was an artistic genius? What if teenagers posted TikTok videos of themselves sobbing hysterically while watching Vin spout more vapid dialogue about family? What if fans felt genuine hatred for Jason Statham (to the point of making death threats) for daring to get into a fake fight with Vin in one of the films?
I hereby refer to this as the The Swift-Diesel Theorem.
You see, this is how I feel about Taylor Swift. I just... I don't get it. Her music is the equivalent of the Fast & Furious movies – just big, dumb, flashy, commercial, synth-pop crowd-pleasers that young people eat up. Which, again, is totally fine. No problem. But I don't understand why everyone acts like it's somehow this brilliant genius art that deserves to be considered for Album of the Year simply for existing. The woman could literally fart into a microphone and it would go triple platinum and make ten billion dollars.
Bubblegum pop music that's entirely about middle-school drama and shitting on your exes should win Album of the Year when the Fast & Furious movies start winning Oscars.
EDIT: As a side note, I have no idea who "Joe" or "Matty" or "Tree" are, although they're all referenced frequently. I don't care who they are, and I don't know why anyone else cares either.

( I am a trans mtf but still in the closet to most of everyone )
When a commercial came on tv when me and my mother were watching a show, there was a trans woman. She said she didn’t get how someone could be so handsome as a man and then CHOOSE to be trans and be an ugly woman. I was extremely offended by this comment and didn’t know what to say but she kept going on and on. I finally said ITS NOT THEIR CHOICE TO BE TRANS and she looked at me confused
I added by saying how it’s not a choice to be trans just as it’s not a choice to be gay. She said “yes it is!” Then talked about how being born that way would mean it’s Gods mistake so it would be impossible. I had a mini panic attack and shut off. I think she now suspects I might be trans or gay because of the way I responded. I mean I am but based on the way she defended her point, I don’t rlly want her to know. I guess she is just misinformed but it still hurts. TRANS PPL DONT CHOOSE TO BE TRANS

I have just started watching the 3rd episode of the season. Two minutes in and I think I'm done with the entire season already. Dr. Who has been my one "geek" thing. Something to look forward to. A campy laugh, crazy adventures, friendships, family... It just seems that everything has gotten progressively worse after 11/Matt Smith.
Peter Capaldi was just boring in my opinion. Too cerebral in a way. Too serious. They tried to lighten it up with switching out the sonic with sunglasses!!! Ibcould not roll my eye hard enough. Peter trying to "lighten up" his character was like Watching a guy go through a midlife crisis. Clara had some good qualities but again the story line was just ugh for me.
I was apprehensive about the Dr being a woman but was open for. I think Joqdie Whitaker did a good job in her first season. She should have stopped there. Although they did go back to some of the monsters and adventure that 12 had none of, the longer it went on the more tedious it got. First there were way too many companions. Hearing her say "fam" all the time made my eyes roll just as much as sonic sunglasses. Diving into the Dr's past with the Master was a good twist. A nice background dive into the Dr's origin. I felt that was well played.
David Tenant's return was soooo fantastic!!!! Seeing him again was absolutely delightful. The chemistry he has with Catherine Tate is gold!! Her sarcasm plays perfectly off of his optimism. However, Rose 2.0 was a bit of a disappointment and a foreshadowing of the current season. I am a bit conflicted as to David's ending. Seeing him as human and part of a family is an adventure he's never had. It was sweet but also a bit of a let down.
I will fully admit, 10 is "my Dr". Just a hint of his last words has me all emotional. "I don't want to go." Oh my heart!! Yes, I have the 10th Dr bear from Build-A-Bear. Yes, he did travel internationally with me. Yes, that is him on the beach in Bali and Australia.
Now we come to this season. The 15th Dr. Ncuti Gatwa. I think he's fun and very energetic. It's the storylines. As I said previously, the foreshadowing from Rose 2.0 has become reality. Dr. Who has touched on a few social issues before. Like mental health in the Van Gough episode. One of my favorites. However, this season is all out WOKE. First was the big deal about Rose 2.0's gender identity. Which had nothing to do with the storyline. To me, it's like when writers through in a heavily descriptive 3 page sex scene in the middle of a book or as a "commercial break" in a movie. So here we have episode 3 of the 15th Dr with a feminine character climbing out of a piano. The child proclaiming it's his "dad" and the Character emphasizing on it's pronoun "them". I just can't. If I wanted to watch woke political fiction I'd watch the news.
Goodbye Dr. May your next regeneration be campy and fun. Until then, this girl will wait for a mad man in a big blue box to hold my hand and eat fish sticks with custard. ALLON-SY

This trend is so fucking lame.
Has anyone seen the new T-Mobile commercial with those dorks from Scrubs teaching actor and fucking supermodel Jason Momoa how affordable T-Mobile home internet is?
That’s Khal Drogo. That’s fucking Aquaman. Some house servant probably set up his internet for him.
And Momoa breaks into a song where he sings “I have wifi now!”
Like he was some broke ass nobody living in a studio apartment who couldn’t afford a $40 a month wifi bill.
He’s so rich and beautiful and famous why not play on that instead of presenting him as a regular joe (who’s like 6’8” and ripped)
And there’s another one, with Rashida Leah Jones from Parks and Rec. She lives in LA. She’s been cast in countless TV shows and movies and has producer credits. She’s wealthy.
Citi put her in a commercial where she plays a modern peasant woman. She says with Citi cash back you get cash back automatically, so now everything is happening automatically for her!
She walks up to an automatic door at a grocery store and it opens and she looks at the camera all shocked.
Like I get it’s supposed to be a joke but it’s not funny when you know it’s a wealthy celebrity pretending to be poor and dumb. Why not get a slightly overweight woman with dry hair to do that? It’d be so much better.

High Context
Expression takes many forms. In this book I have interpreted the word media in a broad sense and treated each form of expression that I have discussed as an independent medium. What, then, is the reason for the existence of multiple media like manga, anime, and film? Are these simply multiple forms for mediating the same reality? Not at all. Multiple media exist in order to support multiple fictions. We clearly perceive the form of a particular expression at the same time as we take in its content. The various media function as a kind of context, or a transparent and continuous totality that attaches meaning to content. In this instance the media themselves attain their own unique contextuality. For example, we are not in the least confused if a heroine who breaks down in tears in a television drama suddenly appears smiling in a commercial during the break. This is because it is very easy for us to shift instantaneously between the context of the drama and the commercial.
In an earlier work I referred to this idea of the unique contextuality of each medium as the “representation context,” in order to use it in a more limited sense. This is because it is possible to use the media form itself as a form of representation. As I explained in chapter 1, my use of the term context is based chiefly on a combination of the ideas of G. Bateson and E. T. Hall, which I Have also explained in greater detail elsewhere. For our purposes here, it is possible to understand the contexts contributing to expression as existing in hierarchical strata. In the case of manga, the first context level is that of the narrative that gives meaning to the characters’ actions. Above that is the genre of the narrative - the expressive context that determines whether it is to be taken seriously or as a gag. The representational context is one level above this. Or, if we order them from top down, the process by which we understand the content of a manga can be understood as a hierarchical series of stages beginning with the work’s representational context (manga), proceeding to its expressive context (genre), on to the narrative context, and finally to the comprehension of the content. Of course, in actual fact we have to admit that this sort of hierarchy is ultimately not valid. It goes without saying that content and context exist in a relationship based on simultaneous and mutual corroboration. Therefore I should emphasize that the notion of representation context serves only for convenience of description and is not in any sense an isolatable object.
It is possible, for example, to think of visual media in the order of their dependence on representational contextuality. Contextuality in this case refers to the degree to which the form of expression itself determines the context expressed. In order of descending contextuality, then, we have anime, manga, television, film, and photographs. The statement “I saw a photograph,” for example, conveys no meaning on its own. But the statement “I saw an anime” evokes a relatively concrete image in the listener’s mind. This is because the anime form restricts the range of content much more than does the photograph. In other words, anime has the highest level of contextuality and photography the lowest. Here I follow Hall in calling this the “high context” nature of anime. In general, we can say that more popular forms of expression tend to be higher context (as in the difference between classical and popular music). In visual media, the less information conveyed on the screen, the higher the context (this being the difference between television and film). Thus “cool” media (with low levels of detail) tend toward higher context.
Let us think more concretely about the high-context nature of anime and manga. We have already established that form and content are intricately connected in both. In the case of these expressive forms, we can easily makes guesses about the content and authorship even of works that we know nothing about. Even a single frame of the work will be enough to tell us the genre, the orientation of the content, and sometimes even the identity of the author. Moreover, the instantaneous switching between the “gag” and “serious” modes that would be unthinkable in film but forms part of the grammar of anime (its so-called yakusoku [conventions]) can be explained only on the basis of this high-context nature.
I think of high context as the sensibility that emerges when there is no sense of distance between the producer and the consumer of a given media form . Once we immerse ourselves in this high-context space, the meaning of all stimuli is grasped instantaneously. Inevitably, emotional codes are more easily transmitted here than verbal ones. This high-density transmissibility enables extremely high levels of concentration and absorption.
Intersubjective Mediation, or Media Theory
Based on what I have said above, we can identify the difference between film and anime or manga first in terms of contextuality.
Is this the place for us to move to a discussion of media theory? Is the desire for the beautiful fighting girls a sign of an internal transformation, an “implosion” and extension brought on by our contemporary media environment? In some senses this may be true, but in others it is certainly not.
The development of the media environment has in fact partly transformed the structure of our society. The development of the mass media industry itself is one manifestation of this transformation. Its influence on the economy and on education has, of course, been enormous. But to what extent does this transformation penetrate our inner worlds?
In clinical terms there has not been the slightest structural transformation. The structure of our neurotic subjectivity remains intact, just as Freud discovered it a century ago. If asked to prove this, most analysts would say that it is not their role to offer general proofs of anything. This, too, has not changed in a hundred years. Analysts can speak about the truth. But, or perhaps therefore, they cannot prove what is true. But, or perhaps therefore, they cannot prove what is true. To say that the structure of the subject is intact is to say that the structure of desire has been maintained. What needs to be emphasized here is that, in order for the structure of desire to be maintained, the object of desire must constantly change. If the object of our desire looks different than it did a hundred years ago, this is only a change in appearance that results from the continual maintenance that we as subjects have performed on the structure of that desire. Yes, the development of media has brought about an outward change, a superficial change in the objects of our desire.
From this we can derive at least two psychoanalytic hypotheses. If we use Lacan’s divisions, the stability of the subject denotes primarily the stability of the relationality between the Symbolic and the Real. Moreover, the internal transformation that Marshall McLuhan referred to as “implosion” can be considered mainly as having emerged as a change on the level of form in the Imaginary. Herein lies one of the thorniest difficulties of media theory. If voice and writing are themselves already forms of media, what exactly have modern media been able to add to the equation? The transformation of the subject in the Imaginary can always make it seem as if nothing has happened. As long as this is the case, the appearance of media theory will remain in the always-awaited future, and its conclusions will only continue to be deferred.
But perhaps there is something to be gained nonetheless by taking a detour here and considering the mutual operations of the media environment and the Imaginary. The development of media is clearly most striking in the visual realm. Already we are able in principle to see any sort of image whatsoever. If we so desire, we can also keep large numbers of images in our possession on a computer hard drive. There is no little significance in the fact that, as is so apparent in the case of the ever-increasing functionality of the personal computer, it has become very easy for us not just to preserve but to reproduce, manipulate, and transmit visual information about all sorts of experiences. Our imaginary has been dramatically expanded and accelerated by the media, or extended through “implosion.”
The diversification of methods of mediation has had a number of effects. One of these is the potential impoverishment of content and form. As was clear in the case of the beautiful fighting girls, the narratives in a diversified media environment are surprisingly similar to each other. As I pointed out in chapter 5, there are hundreds of examples of the beautiful fighting girl genre, but only thirteen story lines. From the 1990s on, no new story lines emerged, and new works were simply rearrangements of old ones. In this case at least, we can say that, while the diversification of media may contribute to the outward diversification of the works, we need to be aware of the possibility that it encourages the involution of the genre as a whole.
The more information is exchanged, the more redundancies there are and the more monotonous it becomes . For example, now that communication by personal computer has become the norm, people read and perhaps write enormous amounts of text every day . As a result, we see developing a common “computer style” of writing that is excellent for transmitting information but extremely limited in its capacity for description and definition. The impoverishment of visual information is most evident in the spread of anime-style images.
So what is this about? Increasing the level of detail or rendering movement more subtly in anime would take exponentially more money and time. But of course these luxuries are not always possible. On the other hand, too much abbreviation reduces the images to mere signs and makes for a very dreary representation (like the Saturday morning cartoons in the United States, where the only facial movements are blinking eyes and opening and closing mouths). The solution to the problem in Japan was, I believe, the introduction of the “big eyes and small mouth” that has become the tradition in Japanese anime.
The only parts of a manga that cannot be drawn by assistants are the face, and particularly the eyes, of the main characters. The author’s style appears in its most concentrated form in the facial expression and the eyes. The shortcut technique that resulted from this was to divide up the drawing of the background among assistants and make the characters like simple signs. This made possible the division of labor. Then, to avoid making the characters too much like mere signs, the facial expression, particularly the eyes, and the hands are drawn with great care. Among all the human organs, these occupy the position closest to the grammatical subject. Drawing the eyes and hands with special care has the same value as inserting text. Or, to put it the other way around, as long as the eyes and hands are carefully drawn, the rest can be abbreviated. Then one can add more facial expressions and make them more complex with manpu. This procedure enables the streamlining of the production process while also effectively communicating a wide variety of subtle emotional codes, making it easy for the viewer to identify emotionally. This is likely the origin of the too-large eyes and tiny mouth that Westerners so often point out in Japanese manga and anime. The anime image is the result of a sophisticated technique that enables a maximum of communication with a minimum of lines.
One noticeable trend in recent years, which may have to do mostly with keeping costs down, is that even as the images are drawn with greater and greater sophistication of design and coloration, they tend to move much less. The appearance of movement is skillfully produced by blurring the image, using flashes of lights, and bank sequences [19*. Bank sequences, or Bankukatto, are sequences of animation that can be used repeatedly, such as when a heroine is transforming or assuming a decisive pose.], but on closer inspection there is actually very little movement. The impact of “anime images” results from drawings so refined that this sort of thing no longer appears unnatural. Moreover, because there is no need for the drawings to be particularly intricate, they can be easily digitized, which makes it possible to transfer them into a computer game without altering them. This style of drawing, which is devoid of texture and consists only of fine lines and surfaces, helps smooth the flow of the so-called media mix as the images are transplanted from comics to anime to film, games, figurines, and toys.
The space of manga and anime has introduced easily shareable code systems into our Imaginary. This shareability, in turn, introduces elements of polymorphous perversion into that space. As a result, in the 1980s we first became aware of a very important fact, namely, that even the objects of our sexuality were shareable through the mediation of manga and anime. This realization led to the explosive growth of sexualized images in this space. Of course, the wholesome notion that manga and anime are basically for children exists even now. But even this constraint was converted into a useful technique. Depicting sex in a context that is for children almost inevitably produces undifferentiated, which to say polymorphously perverse, effects. <also, and a much darker scene between the protagonist Utena and the antagonist Akio in the episode The Prince Who Runs Through the Night, a friend pointed this out to me, in terms of what it’s depicting and how True it is. The disassociation and ambivalence that suffuses a traumatic event…>.
To create an autonomous object of desire within the fictional space of manga and anime: was this not the ultimate dream of the otaku? They sought to create fiction not as a stand-in for the “real” sexual object, but fiction that had no need to be secured by reality. For this to work, not even the most elaborately constructed fictional worlds would suffice. In order for fiction to attain its own autonomous reality, it would have to be desired for its own sake. Only then would reality bow down to fiction.
“Fiction” versus “Reality”
Earlier I referred rather casually to the contrast between “fiction” and “reality.” Of course, I do not accept this contrast naively. In fact, it is my belief that everyday reality is itself nothing more than a fiction (or fantasy) and that it is fundamentally impossible to draw a strict distinction between them. One reason that I raise the distinction nonetheless is in order to think once more about “Japan.” The art critic Sawaragi Noi has argued that Japan functions as what he calls a “bad place” and that any act of expression that attempts to escape from that place can only end up by making it worse and getting caught in a vicious circle. If such a place can be hypothesized, it is entirely possible that it could also subsume the place of manga and anime that I have been discussing here. For now I call that space “Japanese space” and contrast it with another unique representational space, which I call “Western space.”
As I pointed out earlier, in Japanese space the distinction between fiction and reality is not completely in effect. The distinction itself is in fact based on a Western idea . **In his theory of ideals Plato begins with a three-part distinction between the ideal, reality, and art, and places art at the bottom of the hierarchy because it is only an imitation of reality. In Plato’s system there is only a series of copies, with the copy of the ideal being reality and the copy of reality being art. Art must content itself with the lowly position of being a copy of a copy, an imitation of an imitation. Added to this is the influence of Judeo-Christian culture, which rejects idolatry. In “Western space,” even today “reality” is made to conform strictly to this ranking. In this context the notion of the “Reality of fiction” is already attenuated by being subjected to all sorts of constraints.
<"But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" Matthew 5:28.>
For example, in American popular culture the most privileged fiction form is film. To be made into a film is the ultimate proof of the success of any narrative, whether it originates as a novel or a play. Of course, there are any number of reasons for this, but one is surely the belief that live-action film is the most accurate imitation or reproduction of reality. The impact of live-action film is supported by the belief that what it portrays is a faithful reproduction of reality. In my opinion there is absolutely no difference between the fictionality of live-action film and animated ones; it is just that anime is considered more fictional because it is under the constraint of having to be drawn by someone. For this reason animated films have almost no chance of winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and will always remain a genre inferior to film.
Thinking about censorship practices makes this even clearer. Censors in Japanese space seem for the most part uninterested in the symbolic value of what they are censoring. As long as the genitals are not portrayed explicitly, they will allow even the most depraved images to be shown. In Western space, however, images are censored according to their symbolic value. The censors are not interested in the trivial question of whether or not the genitals are visible, but reserve their strictest scrutiny for obscenity and perverse content. A recent example is the cover for Marilyn Manson’s CD Mechanical Animals. In the composite photograph, Manson appears nude as he glares at the viewer, but with the smooth groin and small breasts of a young girl. This level of perversion does not cause the least problem in Japan. But in the United States it create quite a scandal, with several large music stores refusing the carry the album. One could list any number of similar examples of this difference in the way Japanese and Americans judge an image obscene. Of course, even in Japan this sort of taboo on images still lingers when it comes to the Imperial family, but even that is losing the force it once had. In fact, that taboo has become so weak that it would shock even Okuzaki Kenzo. We are now living in an age when it is possible to publish a manga depicting a bomb thrown at Princess Masako during a parade, and the romance between Princess Kiko and Prince Akishino has been made into an anime. In other words, we still do not have the slightest idea what it is that defines depravity.
One conclusion that we can draw from this comparison is that visual expression in Western space is symbolically castrated, while Japanese space there is only imaginary castration, at most. For example, in Western space any image that symbolizes the penis is censored, while in Japanese space as long as you do not portray the penis itself anything goes. In this ironic sense I would suggest that Japanese media enjoy the great freedom of expression. The problem arises with this freedom itself.
In Japanese space, fiction itself is recognized as having its own autonomous reality. As I mentioned earlier, in Western space reality is always in the superior position, and the fictional space is not allowed to encroach on it. Various prohibitions are introduced to establish and maintain this superiority. It is not permitted for example, to produce images depicting sexual perversion. This is because fiction must not be more real (riaru) than reality. Fiction must be carefully castrated so that it does not become too appealing. This is what I mean by symbolic castration.
It is often remarked that the heroines of Western comics and anime are for the most part not very cute. They often include beautiful women and naked bodies, but rarely do they directly represent characters as sexually attractive. This cannot be explained simply as a result of a discrepancy in technical skill or differing notions of beauty. In the case of an actual Hollywood actress, Japanese and American fans are likely to speak in similar ways about her sexual attractiveness. But the situation is very different when it comes to heroines who appear as drawn images. Betty Boop, for example, may be drawn in a sexy outfit (with a garter belt!), but she is more like a parody of a sexy actress. Her fans are not immediately captivated by Betty’s sexual charms.
To continue with our discussion of Western space, we might remember that 1957 saw the creation of the so-called Comics Code Authority that formulated self-regulatory codes for comics in the United States and effectively spelled the end of the golden age of American comics. At the time juvenile delinquency had become a hot-button issue, and comics were singled out as a contributing factor. Among comic fans the formation of the CCA is referred to as the “Total Disaster.” The list of restrictions is as absurdly detailed as the rules at a Japanese high school. A few items that stand out on the list are

• “Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor represented as desirable.”
• “If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.”
• “In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished [sic] for his misdeeds.”
• “Policemen, judges, government officials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.”

Under the category of “Marriage and Sex” the code states that “Nudity in any form is prohibited,” “Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities,” “Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed,” “Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested,” and “Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.” Japanese manga as harmless as Sazae-san and Doraemon might run afoul of these rules. If regulations this strict were in force in Japan, virtually every manga magazine in print would have to be shut down.
It is thus quite possible to analyze the differences between Japan and the United States from the perspective of regulations. But what I want to stress here is that these rules show all the symptoms of an excessive defense reaction. No matter how popular comics had become by the 1950s, they could hardly compete with film. Nevertheless, they were much more severely regulated, to the point of destroying an entire genre of expression. Would it be too much to see in this an echo of what we might call the West’s iconographic taboo? The highly detailed and concrete restrictions on the depictions of sexuality are particularly remarkable. In these restrictions we can clearly see operating the obsessive idea that images themselves must not be sexually attractive.
Pornography must be considered as part of this discussion of the visual expression of sexuality. Pornography, needless to say, prizes images that are realistic and highly practical. In the decline of roman poruno and the rise of adult video, for example, one can see the pursuit of convenience and practicality. Pornographic images trend toward being more suitable for private consumption, reproduction and distribution gets easier, and pornographic expression gets more and more explicit. But in the Japanese space this leads to another contradiction: namely, the existence of “porno comics.” I want to stress once again that I am speaking of pornography in general here, not of “erotic expression.” It is perhaps only in Japan that pornography has taken the form of comic books and attained a certain popularity in doing so. Of course, there are porno comics that are meant to be used as masturbation aids in the West as well, but on a scale that does not even being to compare with that of Japan.
It seems absurd that such an enormous market would emerge for pornographic comics in a country where “hair nudes” are everywhere and people are somewhat bored even of adult videos. As I pointed out earlier, anime-style drawing has been hugely influential in this genre as well. In terms of their correspondence to everyday reality, there is no less realistic style of drawing. Despite this, however, these kinds of representation have been widely preferred as a medium for pornography. This would be entirely unimaginable in Europe or the United States, and the contrast points to a significant cultural difference.
Of course, there is a historical background to this as well. According to Timon Screech of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, the so-called shunga that were produced in such huge quantities in the Edo period were used by the masses as masturbation aids.
If that is in fact the case, we should also be able to find the roots of manga and anime in the Edo period, in a culture in which sexual desire was both stimulated and satisfied by drawn images. The issue here, needless to say, has something to do with anything like the symbolic expression of eros. The problem that we have arrived at instead is that of the immediacy of the drawn image.
As I have already pointed out, there are many fans of anime and manga in the West. But they are virtually unanimous in their hatred for so-called tentacle porn. They believe that sexuality does not belong in animation. What do Japanese otaku think about this? If they were shown this sort of pornographic work they would either give a wry smile or launch into a lengthy discussion of the history of adult anime using works like Cream Lemon (Kuriimu remon) and Legend of the Overfiend (Urotsukidoji) as examples. I cannot help but see in this difference another huge contrast between Japanese and Western otaku.
Leaving aside the question of whether it is possible to read in this the traces of taboos and repression, for now let us reiterate the minimal facts of which we can be certain. In the Western space of popular culture, it is exceedingly rare to find drawn iconic images of cute little girls and erotic nudes. In that space there is an unconscious censorship of drawn images, and their reality is kept within certain limits. The type of caricatures so conspicuous in Disney’s animations can even be considered as a technique of exaggeration for the purpose of repression. Constant and meticulous efforts are made in this space to prevent drawn images from attaining their own autonomous reality. In other words, drawn images are always kept in the position of being substitutes for objects that exist in reality.
In Japanese space, on the other hand, it is permissible for all sorts of sites to have their own autonomous reality (riariti). In other words, real (riaru ) fictions do not necessarily require the security of reality (genjitsu). There is absolutely no need in this space for fiction to imitate reality. Fiction is able to clear a space around itself for its own reality (riariti ku kan). The appeal of drawn images of little girls, for example, is a crucial element in the production of this reality (riariti). Here, fiction must establish a logic of sexuality all its own. This is because, in Japanese space, sexuality is the most important factor upholding reality (riariti). Of course, this is not true only of anime. Why else, for example, did the artistic traditions of the past put so much emphasis on the depiction of women? Why do rakugo raconteurs spend so much time extolling the pleasures of womanizing? And why do manga instruction courses always begin with how to draw a boy-girl couple? All of these things, which are particular to Japan, suggest that in this space it is sexuality that upholds the reality of fiction (kyoko no riariti).
So let us accept the autonomy of fiction and put forward the thesis that this autonomy is a necessary precondition for the beautiful fighting girl to emerge. If this is the case, we cannot in any sense see in them the reflection of “everyday reality.” It would not be permissible, for example, to infer from the popularity of beautiful fighting girls that girls are being empowered in the real world. It is the stubborn habit of seeing fiction as an imitation of reality, which is hard even for the Japanese to resist, that is at the root of this misunderstanding. The misunderstanding may be logically consistent, but that same logical consistency is also precisely what renders it invalid.
Getting back to our discussion of the image in Japanese space, I repeat that representations in this space do not undergo symbolic castration. There are some gestures toward imaginary castration with regard to sexual codes, but these are barely functional, and in the end they actually come closer to initiating a drive toward the disavowal of castration. The disavowal of castration is of course the initial condition for sexual perversion, which is why this space exhibits such an affinity for perverted objects. All sorts of images come to occupy various positions within this ecosystem of autonomous reality, and the space begins to overflow with meanings rendered through sexual and other codes. In this place, so highly charged with meaning because of this sheer verbosity of codes, context is privileged over any single disarticulated code. Meaning is transmitted instantaneously here, but its provenance can never be traced back to a single code.
This sort of high-context representational space can sometimes lose some of its reality effect if it is circulated too widely and understood too easily. How might it resist this attenuation of reality? One way is, of course, through sexuality. As I have argued several times already, sex is a necessary component for a narrative to seem real. The various struggles and manipulations surrounding sexuality (i.e., “romance”) are what introduce a core of reality into a narrative.
The widespread transgression of sexual limits in Japanese representational culture can also be interpreted in light of the high-context nature of Japanese space. High-context expressive space is, by nature, incapable of making full use of the effects of structural and formal reality. Instead it is the intensities that emerge at moments of shifting and switching from one context to another that are used to create reality effects. In the highest context spaces of anime and manga, most important are those gestures capable of transcending the context of heterosexual desire. The various characteristics of the beautiful fighting girls, which include hermaphorditism, transformation (i.e., accelerated maturation), and the strange mixture of proactivity (i.e., fighting ability) and passivity (i.e., cuteness), all help facilitate the emergence of this transcendental reality. That all manner of perversions should be evoked in their presence is only natural.
[To be continued... The Phallic Girl as a Form of Hysteria]

Hello, I need help finding a commercial. For context, I have lived in a city called Sierra Vista, located in Arizona, for most of my life, and me and my family would frequent the local Cinemark a lot. Before the theater would show major trailers, they would show local commercials for businesses, and one of these commercials I remember quite distinctly. The commercial would start out with a handsome guy walking into a diner where he is then noticed by two women, but before the women can say anything to him, he opens his mouth, presumably to smile, where we then see his disheveled, almost vampire-like teeth. The women are disgusted before they then look at each other and say the phrase, “He needs Doctor Drew.” The commercial then cuts to a photo montage of presumably the doctor's office with a voice-over by a woman with a very monotone voice. Also in this photo montage is a freeze frame of the guy with the disheveled teeth I mentioned earlier. This commercial used to scare me which is why I have wanted to find it since then. I saw this commercial sometime in the early 2010's, 2009-2015 seems like a good estimate. I also saw this commercial a handful of times for different showings when I went to the theater during that timeframe, not just once. Due to the commercial’s emphasis on teeth, it is likely a commercial for a dentist office, though it could also be for something like plastic surgery. Also I don’t remember specifically what the two women called the doctor, my mind just went to Doctor Drew since that seemed right to me, but I could be wrong, and I don’t think the ad has anything to do with the famous Doctor Drew. When doing research, I found three commercials that are similar to what I am looking for but aren’t it, I will link them with this post so you have an idea of what I am looking for. Let me know if you have any suggestions on what this commercial could be or if you have suggestions on how I can find it, thanks.
https://youtu.be/7Ih6E4Sf2Lk?si=KRsbsdW2LT8kjESY
https://youtu.be/Ub1KKm2jDkc?si=6eLcV_qq7af_5EDn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0W1EeMoeRE

There was a really cool book I heard about a year ago about and Indian woman meeting a man and having conversations with her mother. My wife who overheard it (and I) were pulled in and heard it all the way through!
Off subject but there's a funny commercial series called "Long long man" which starts out funny then gets weird then gets deep then the story arc has a crazy twist!
Looking for free books that like.

Hi!
Bit of a sticky situation here. My GF’s grandmother has been living in Kuwait illegally for 6+ years, having been brought in by other relatives (from Syria, through Lebanon, during the war etc, it’s complicated).
Since being there, she developed dementia, which is now at the stage where she cannot sit upright or use the toilet, and doesn’t recognise anyone. She went to hospital recently where she was found to be there illegally, and the relatives were fined (rightly so). However, she now has to leave the country by the 16th of June or everyone involved will be deported (so they’ve been told).
Given all this, my question is twofold;

1. Is there anything that can be done, or any way to get an exception, given she’s likely months (if not weeks) from death and completely immobile?
2. If not, how are they supposed to transport this woman out of the country, given she can’t speak, move, sit upright, and screams 24/7? My GF’s mother is planning to put her on a commercial flight to Italy, which is a ridiculous option given she’s in the state she is.

Sorry for my ignorance, we live in England, and I’m British (so I’m doubly ignorant). Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.