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There Are Way More Boys Than Girls In Popular Fiction Stories

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Today, in infuriating but unsurprising stats: Pretty much every popular movie or book you can think of -- “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter,” and “Game of Thrones” included -- stars a disproportionate number of heroes, and a maddeningly low number of heroines and villainesses. Yes, even with Professor McGonagall and Hermione factored in, J.K. Rowling's series includes a 63.5 percent male cast -- and hers isn't even the biggest offender. 


This info (illustrated below) was collected by Icelandic design duo Sirrý & Smári, who've illustrated and written graphic novels and children's books. For the below graphic, they note a 14 percent female cast in "Star Wars IV" through "Star Wars VI," with a six percent improvement for episodes one through three. The only included story with more women than men is Pixar's "Inside Out."


This unofficial count is just another statistic to bear in mind when choosing what to watch or read. Add to it the recently unearthed facts that fewer women writers get reviewed or win awards, and fewer books about women win awards, and the gender disparity in the stories we consume becomes clear.  


There have been several attempts to even the scales, including the promising VIDA count, and one publisher's commitment to only publish books by women in 2018. Until then, here's to reading and watching stories peopled by both fabulous genders



 


[H/T Design Taxi


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Yes, It's Okay To Read Erotica In Public

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Sitting in seat 6A, uncomfortably close to the passenger in 6B, I pulled a book out of my carry-on and began reading before takeoff. 6B, it seemed, was not an airplane reader, opting instead to lure those around him into casual conversation. Fair enough, I thought, but I was reading. Icebreaking etiquette mandates that no book-toting individual shall be interrupted from her very personal past time, regardless of whether the activity is being performed in a public space -- didn’t 6B know that?


Apparently not. He nodded inquiringly at the novel in my lap -- Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff -- and asked what it was about. Suppressing my initial, curmudgeonly thought (“Well, it’s not really about anything”), I said that it was about a marriage, from the perspective of the husband first, and then the wife. The author constructed certain truths about the relationship, only to tear them down later. Secrets, though ultimately devastating, were integral to the success of the marriage. Secrets and sex -- but I left that second part out when describing the book to a stranger.


Once 6B and my banter fizzled, I turned back to the story, opening it again to a passage where the protagonists -- Mathilde and Lotto -- were reuniting after a long separation. She writes:



When he tried to speak, she pressed her hand hard over his mouth so he couldn’t and she led him upstairs in absolute silence and had her way with him so roughly that when he woke the next day he had plum-colored bruises on the bones of his hips and fingernail cuts on his sides, which he pressed in the bathroom, hungry for the pain.



 


As you read that excerpt, did you become hotly aware of your surroundings, of whether your colleagues or fellow commuters might’ve caught a glimpse of you reading something uncouth? Typing it had that impact on me -- even though Groff’s books aren’t erotic, they’re literary. She comes at sex scenes slantwise, revealing the characters’ underlying feelings and motivations. They move the story forward; they’re not specifically meant to arouse, even if arousal is, inevitably, part of their effect.


Still, after the above passage and others like it, I found myself glancing over at 6B, relieved to see he was snoozing, unaware of the world I’d just inhabited. Was it totally weird that I was reading -- immersing myself in -- a sex scene amid a plane full of strangers?


It’s a question I’ve asked myself a few times, mostly during the Fifty Shades frenzy. When I binge-read a couple E.L. James books in advance of the movie release, I was wary of taking the paperbacks on the subway, and when I did, I got a few bemused glances from other passengers. Were they -- and I -- being prudish? It’s not like I was watching porn in public -- an act that might be pretty unjustifiable by comparison. If it weren’t for the books’ covers, commuters wouldn’t have been clued into what I was reading. A few words on a page don’t pack the same punch as sexual imagery, which asserts itself boldly wherever it appears.


This is probably why there’s a big discrepancy between books purchased on e-readers and books that are more popular in their traditional ink-and-paper iterations. The latter’s the choice for book club picks and literary fiction; the former, unsurprisingly, is the format of choice for guilty pleasure titles -- fun thrillers, and, of course, romance novels. Whether this is due to reservedness or snobbery is unclear, but the fact remains: many people don’t want to be seen reading E.L. James and her ilk in public.


A 2012 New York Times op-ed crowdsourced answers to the prompt: “Seeing a grown woman on the subway reading Fifty Shades of Grey is like seeing a grown man on the subway reading [BLANK].” Answers ranged from Playboy and Maxim to Tom Clancy and On the Road. So, some readers found Fifty Shades cringeworthy for its erotic nature, others for the juvenility of the writing. The article concluded that NYC commuters aren’t prudes -- but they can be snobs. 


Which, of course, is a negligible concern. Etiquette-wise and otherwise, if you’re worried about the literary quality of what you’re reading in public -- well, don’t. You’re entitled to your own zone-out preferences; if you’d rather fantasize about sexual scenarios than watch sweaty men run around on a field or wannabe actors verbally spar onscreen, read on, and publicly! 




Unless you’re crossing the boundary between invisible personal fantasy and visible public engagement, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying sexy fiction in the company of others. And, luckily for romance readers, that border is nearly unbreachable when your mode of transportation is a jumble of text.

The more valid concern is whether your public reading habits are bothering people around you -- which brings us back to the pornography comparison. Although readers are opting to download romance novels on Kindles and other e-readers rather than revealing their guilty pleasures covered in tie-clad paperbacks, suggestive covers seem harmless, even to the most reserved co-commuters. Raunchy covers with steel-hued handcuffs aren’t any more offensive than most advertisements, and are more likely to turn up noses than elicit genuine discomfort.


The only potentially icky problem with getting lost in erotica in public is if your enjoyment of the story becomes, er, evident. Unless you’re crossing the boundary between invisible personal fantasy and visible public engagement, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying sexy fiction in the company of others. And, luckily for romance readers, that border is nearly unbreachable when your mode of transportation is a jumble of text.


Writing that’s meant to arouse is still writing -- codified symbols that pile up to make meaning. Glancing at a pageful of letters isn’t going to generate the same response from onlookers as a Playboy spread, even if some of those letters spell “ample bosom.” Arousal from reading takes full sentences, paragraphs, pages -- anticipation built up and released. It also necessarily requires some imagination on the readers' part: there’s less sensory input on the page, so there’s more swirling around in the brain. This arguably makes it more of an individual experience than, say, watching a video, whether you’re in public or not.


So, read on, erotica lovers, regardless of what the dude in 6B thinks.




 


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A Giant Man Bun And Beard Took Over New York Fashion Week

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"A lot of my work begins with looking inward," artist and self-described gonzo anthropologist Asher Bayne told The Huffington Post via email, "and I am a male Homo Sapien (sic) who is obsessed with man buns."


"In fact, I can't pass by someone wearing one, without yelling: man bun!"


So, naturally, Bayne took his obsession to New York Fashion Week this Saturday, man bun (with majestic pompadour) atop head, and a flowing beard -- another ubiquitous male fashion trend of 2015 -- brushing his kneecaps. 


Not to mention his retinue, which included "beard butlers" and a peacock. Why the beard butlers? "If you have a five-foot beard, it takes more than one person to keep the right sheen and texture in the summer heat," pointed out Bayne. 



A photo posted by Asher Bayne (@asherbayne) on



The absurdity of his attire might mark him as a bit of an outlier, even at fashion week, but he argued it's conformity that he's exploring with his performance: "Even when we intend to act on our own convictions, we often instinctively follow the behavior of others, and this can lead to bizarre and even disastrous consequences [...] there is no better place [than New York Fashion Week] to study and provoke a crowd’s 'groupthink' tendencies."


This isn't the first time Bayne has taken to the streets of fashion week; in 2014, he attended bedecked in a 50-foot scarf carried, like a bride's train, by two attendants. "I was surprised by how well I fit in," he said. 


This year, he planned to head back with a mission to talk with style-conscious bystanders about their own fashion choices, and new male trends to flaunt. "Imagine passing by a stranger wearing a giant manbun who has a five-foot beard and an entourage," he said. "My security guards will ensure my safety, my beard butlers will keep me well-groomed, my fans will be Instagramming from the best angles with their selfie sticks, and, of course, Dexter the peacock will be with me, too."


His hope for the piece was simple: "If I am successful, I will have picked at my own need to conform and give people a chance to consider their individual decisionsMost importantly, I will have created a spectacle worthy of the king of fashion week." 


Did he succeed? Check out the photos of his performance piece below to see for yourself.



All photos by Chantal Adair. See more from Asher Bayne on his Instagram.


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Gritty Photo Series Chronicles The Diversity Of Sex Workers In The '70s

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Warning: This piece contains nudity and may not be suitable for work.


Dixie, Trini, Ta Ta and Mac. These were some of the sex workers working the Los Angeles streets in the 1970s and '80s, whose faces and unclothed bodies are forever immortalized by grit-hungry photographer, Scot Sothern.  



Some models sprawl out seductively, flash the camera, or smile awkwardly as if for a school picture. They pose in motel rooms, on street corners, in the backseats of cars. For the viewer, these images of sex work are all too quickly seared into the brain, their convoluted mix of allure and darkness, pleasure and pain. But for the subjects, well, "I doubt most of the women and men I photographed remember me at all," Sothern told The Huffington Post in an interview. 


Sothern, the man responsible for the images, grew up in Springfield, Missouri, where he was first introduced to the shadowy world of sex work in high school, drawn to its illicitness like a horny teenage moth to an illegal flame. "I came of age thinking whorehouses were kind of romantic," Sothern explained to The Rumpus, "You know, dark and illegal forays with nasty sex, low lights, and cigarette smoke." 



"My initial reaction to discovering affordable sex as an adolescent boy was pretty much normal, I loved it," Sothern said. "I went fuck-crazy and blew what little cash I had but eventually I got over it." It wasn't long before Sothern, whose father was a portrait photographer, began photographing the women he encountered. Soon, in his words, "the pictures became more important than the other kicks."


In the 1980s, Sothern picked up and moved from Missouri to Los Angeles, where a whole new red light district was flickering. His series "Lowlife" chronicles the women he encountered there, each image capturing a quick flash of a life too complex to digest in a single meeting. Sothern says his paid relationships, photographic and otherwise, never lasted more than a few hours. "A kiss goodbye and a quick strobe-lit short-story is all I ever wanted," he said. "I’ve got my own demons to contend with."



Sothern's subjects are often fully exposed before his camera lens, and now, the eyes of much of the Internet. However, the photographer contends that the sex workers aren't the only ones baring all in the images. As he argued to Dazed Digital: "I’ve exposed myself as much as anyone in the photos." 


When asked to defend this somewhat frustrating statement, Sothern expanded on the assertion to The Huffington Post. "If I’m doing it right, every picture is a selfie," he said. "If you look at one of my pictures and you feel it in your gut then you are going to think about it as well, and you can’t do that without making some kind of judgement on the guy who snapped the shutter. I think I’m right there naked to the world in every shot."


Sothern doesn't make a concerted effort to be more likable in his photography, especially considering the triggering nature of his work. He fancies himself as having a "fuck-you attitude," and thrives off visceral reactions to his work, whether positive or negative. Yet at the core of the project, Sothern has empathy for his subjects. As he explained to The Rumpus: "I knew that most sex workers are born victims, abused and exploited and discarded by a world of assholes not much different than me."



Sothern, now in his mid-sixties, has silverish hair and walks with a cane. Although he's been collecting self-made images since the '60s, he only gained recognition for his work in his sixties. Between 2011 and 2014, he revived his project, continuing to document streetwalkers in LA. "I still like to go out late at night and cruise the shadows, it’s as much a rush now as it was nearly fifty years ago." 


Although Sothern admits that he jumped into the project without much forethought besides an adolescent interest in taboo sexuality, along the way something changed. "I’d like to think I’ve made pictures that evoke empathy," he said. "Much of it is exploitation and I can’t claim I’ve made anyone’s life better by taking their picture, but, you know, I hope people to see the wrongs they would otherwise turn their backs to. I think art is best used when it’s subversive and I’ve always had kind of a fuck-you attitude." 


Sothern's book of photographs and stories, titled STREETWALKERS, will be published powerHouse Books in January 2016. Images below via Daniel Cooney Fine Art. 



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For The Love Of Ziggy Stardust, These Photos Of David Bowie Are More Than Hunky Dory

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If anyone can pull off a ghost-like complexion and slick orange hair, paired with leopard print earrings, a blazer stitched from the craft store's reject fabric aisle and a permanent cigarette perch sprouting from his lips, it's the almighty David Bowie.


Whether he's flaunting his angular collarbone under a grandmotherly bauble, hoola-hooping glitter-clad bangles around his lanky forearms, or power-clashing like it's nobody's f**king business, you just can't help but worship at the church of Ziggy Stardust. Let us genuflect in admiration of his sweet, sweet mullet and general zest for horrendously beautiful fashion. 



This week's gathering of the Bowie-obsessed comes courtesy of Mick Rock, also known as "the man who shot the '70s." The London-born photographer made his career snapping pics of Bowie, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett, Blondie, Queen and just about every other rock star of the era you can think of, and now he's exhibiting his work at the Taschen Gallery in Los Angeles for all to see. 


The show, "Mick Rock: Shooting for Stardust, The Rise of David Bowie & Co.," on view until Oct. 11, features a candy-colored who's who of music icons. But the whole shindig basically revolves around the photos (many of which have never been seen before) that feature Mr. David Robert Jones. “Mick sees me the way I see myself," Bowie quipped of the famous artist. "I think David trusted me," Rock responded in a statement for Taschen. “I regarded myself as a guardian of his image, and that’s true to this day.”


As I live and drool, the partnership between Bowie and Rock seems to have paid off. To accompany the show, Taschen is also publishing a book titled The Rise of David Bowie: 1972-1973, which similarly documents the 20 months then 24-year-old Rock and 25-year-old Bowie spent together in the early '70s. (As a totem of their collaboration, both Bowie and Rock's signatures adorn the copies of the photos produced during that time.) However, said book will cost you $700 to purchase. To be fair, the thing purportedly weighs about 16 pounds.


If you're not able to stop by the LA gallery -- and you're unprepared to drop several hundred dollars on a coffee table book, however Bowie-tastic -- see a preview of the works below. Bask in the glow of Bowie's eternal flame.











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If You Write A Novel In GIFs, Is It Still A Novel?

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Set a copy of Pride and Prejudice next to this:




Could any two forms seem more distinctly unlike than a novel and a GIF? But in the eyes of Dennis Cooper, the prolific artist and writer behind Zac’s Haunted House, they’re not so distantly related.


Zac’s Haunted House, recently published by Kiddiepunk, is presented as a novel -- it's five chapters, plus a preface and afterward, and it's subtitled "A Novel" -- but if you're looking for prose, you'll have to keep looking. The piece is entirely constructed of curated GIFs, presented in a simple vertical column, aside from the headings denoting "Chapter One," "Chapter Two," and so on. 


Critics have, by and large, taken this subtitle at face value, despite Cooper’s work bearing no tangible resemblance to a novel. Can something be described as fiction if it has no narrative? Do five chapters, each containing around 50 GIFs, together comprise a “book-length” work? What if the medium not only isn’t prose writing, but isn’t writing at all? Seriously, there are no words in the narrative of Zac's Haunted House.


The novel may be the most abused genre in literature. For generations, we’ve been ignoring the true criteria of the novel in order to use the term as a catchall for romances, narrative nonfiction, drama and epic poems. Originally, a novel referred to a book-length narrative of prose fiction exploring the world in realistic, believable ways. In recent years, we've narrowed it down to a book-length fictional narrative in prose, though even this definition is sometimes stretched, and threatened with obsolescence.  


In 2014, Ben Yagoda took to Slate to ask, “Does novel now mean any book?” 


He wrote:



I was taken aback recently to pick up an (unnamed) magazine for which I'd written an article and see my brief bio begin with the words: "Ben Yagoda is a novelist. … " I am not a novelist, never have been [...] I came to understand that the person who wrote the bio wasn't misinformed or making stuff up, but rather took "novelist" to mean the same as "author," or, more specifically, "writer of books," and maybe even more specifically than that, "writer of more or less meritorious books."



 


Yagoda blames graphic novels, a term that continued to envelope all graphic narratives even after memoir and other nonfictional forms entered the mix. (Technically, Fun Home is a graphic memoir, not a graphic novel.) Putting blame aside, however, what’s with this rush to slap “novel” on every conceivable form of non-novel art or writing? 


In Cooper’s case, there’s a pretty solid genre already suited to his GIF sequence: video art. In fact, even GIF art, more specifically, is nothing new. 


Cooper told The New Yorker that "he sees his GIF projects as continuous with his prose fiction, composed according to 'the same principles and planning and structuring' as his work in print." Though Zac’s Haunted House superficially fits the structure of a novel, the long, mesmerizing strings of GIFs don’t comprise a story so much as an immersive yet progressive video mood manipulation. Cooper repeats images, hypnotizingly, between ingeniously threaded together GIF clips and eclectic visual takes on the same concept -- dripping, for example, or plummeting -- building up a hum of panicky horror in the viewer.


But is this a story? At the risk of getting very Literature 101, Oxford Dictionaries says a narrative is "a spoken or written account of connected events." It seems highly unlikely that two people could independently set down the same narrative after viewing (reading?) Zac’s Haunted House. The GIF strings undoubtedly feature people experiencing scary things -- but which specific scary things, and how are they connected? Who are these people? How does the story end? How does it begin



GIFs don’t really contain any of that information; they’re decent at expressing reactions, moments of emotion and action verbs, but there’s a huge amount of information words can convey that GIFs simply can’t.


Most video art doesn’t take on such a booklike sequential form, but despite this twist, Zac's Haunted House shares more, formally, with the uncanny film work of Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman or even Eadweard Muybridge, who pieced together what might be called the ancestor of the GIF by looping through film sequences like the famous horse gallop. More recent approaches have ranged from artists’ creation of original GIFs to curated projects like Cooper’s -- artist Tom Moody, for example, maintains an archive of GIFs culled from the web, intermixed with his own moving images and manipulations of existing clips.




By curating a thematically related, gradually intensifying sequence of GIFs, Cooper has crafted a highly modern, yet elementally moving, interactive exhibit. And yes, we want to call it a novel. Perhaps the most telling element of Yagoda’s take on how “novel” is used today is this: “more or less meritorious.” A book could be good or bad; a novel connotes quality. What easier way to make an art piece sound simultaneously accessible and high-quality than to call it a novel?


Given how effectively the novel vanquished its early genre rival, the romance (a long fiction work peopled by archetypes and featuring wondrous or fantastical events), perhaps someday we'll be calling movies, Twitter feeds, art exhibits and GIF listicles "novels," despite their lack of prose, narrative, and/or length -- the essential elements of what we typically categorize as a novel today. 


Until then, I will continue to take a stand against the rising novel menace, and to proclaim, again and again: Not all narratives are novels, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with calling video art by its proper name. And the cat GIF? That's the highest art form of all.




 


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Zach Braff Is Sad About Really Mean 'Garden State' Article

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 Zach Braff did not take kindly to a Vice article published Monday that pointed out the obvious: the film "Garden State" -- which Braff both directed and starred in -- is a nauseatingly terrible movie, and the general public should be ashamed it was ever popular.


“'Garden State' was released 11 years ago, and in 2005, for a nation of coddled adult babies, it was the indie snoozefest that had been done to death several times already and would be done many more times as a result of its success and would likely star Zooey Deschanel and/or Michael Cera,” wrote Dan Ozzi in the article, which was published in honor of the film’s 10-year anniversary. (Seriously, read it, -- it will change your life, we swear!)


Anyway, Braff took to Twitter to chastise Ozzi and Vice for being so darned mean.








While many folks sympathized with Braff and voiced their support for him and the movie, some weren’t so sympathetic.





 Ozzi did end up apologizing, professing his love for "Scrubs."





But Braff’s not the only one feeling a little self-conscious a decade after "Garden State" came out. Co-star Natalie Portman revealed earlier this month that she felt insecure after the movie was mocked on “Broad City.”


“So now, because the people I think are the coolest think it’s really lame I’m kind of insecure about it,” Portman told Toronto International Film Festival Artistic Director Cameron Bailey. 


Seriously everyone, please stop making these actors feel bad. We don’t want to have to face any more of this: 




H/T: Jezebel 


Contact the author of this article at Hilary.Hanson@huffingtonpost.com


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Tone-Deaf Matt Damon Ridiculed For Comment On Diversity In Hollywood

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Matt Damon, a white man, tried to school veteran producer Effie Brown in promoting diversity in film during the first episode of HBO's revamped "Project Greenlight," a reality series that lets one inexperienced filmmaker direct a $3 million feature.


"When we're talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not in the casting of the show," Damon word-vomited onto his fellow panel members during the episode on Sunday night.


"Wow, OK," Brown responded.





But let's back up a minute.


"Project Greenlight" centers around a pre-chosen script, "Not Another Pretty Woman," a romantic comedy about a man who ends up marrying a black prostitute after getting left at the altar, Flavorwire reports. After choosing a director from a pool of contestants, a panel dominated by white bros -- including Damon and Ben Affleck -- guides him or her to success. In the first episode, the panel figures out who that director should be.


Brown, the sole black panel member, was concerned how the film might treat the black prostitute character, Harmony, who is abused by her white pimp. In a script seemingly chock-full of tired old tropes, Brown wanted to ensure the character would avoid stereotypes as much as possible. She suggested the directing team of Leo Kei Angelos, a Vietnamese man, and Kristen Brancaccio, a woman, might be able to treat Harmony with the most compassion, thus making a better movie.


Damon was quick to interrupt, to Brown's apparent shock. Recent headlines, of course, have made clear that diversity in Hollywood is a problem behind the camera as much as it is in front of it. While it's important to show audiences diverse actors, the voices shaping those actors' onscreen portrayal from behind the scenes are just as vital to telling stories from different points of view.


Damon's comments especially hit a nerve on social media, where people began using the hashtag #Damonsplaining to mock the actor-director's fearless opining.  





Later in the episode, Damon Damonsplained that while "filmmaking should throw a broader net," that's not the aim of his show, which is "about giving somebody this job based entirely on merit." 


The panel eventually chose Jason Mann, another white guy, to direct -- leaving the problem of diversity in Hollywood a little less mysterious.


HBO's Project Greenlight airs Sundays at 10pm EST.


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Hang Out With Extreme Body Modifiers At Colombia's Freakiest Tattoo Festival

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In a heavily tattooed crowd, it takes a lot of effort to stand out.


Colombian body modifier Damian Carnicero managed to rise above the crowd at the Cali Tattoo Festival.


The gathering of tattoo enthusiasts took place in the southwestern Colombian city of Cali from Sept. 11 to 13, 2015, drawing 250 tattoo artists from around the world. Attendees included body modifiers who donned tattooed eyeballs, facial spikes, piercings and surgically altered tongues. 




Carnicero, whose stage name means "butcher" in Spanish, is a Colombian artist whose primary interest is pushing the limits of pain. Photos from the festival show the 29-year-old suspended from a tree by metal hooks embedded in his skin.



"I'm judicious in my work ... My passion is to modify myself, to modify other people, and travel the world," Carnicero told Colombian newspaper La Cronica del Quindio in an interview in May. "People imagine that I'm a bad person, that I'm dangerous because of the way I look. But they're mistaken ... I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't do drugs."



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In And Outside Of One Tiny 'Room,' Brie Larson And Jacob Tremblay Are A Wonder

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To prepare for "Room," Brie Larson locked herself in her apartment for weeks at a time. She met with trauma counselors and participated in a silent retreat, revisiting childhood recollections of living in a tiny studio with her single mother and eating Ramen nightly. Larson realized that period was one of the fondest of her life, despite how limited it may have appeared in actuality. And that is what informed her performance in the new adaptation of Emma Donoghue's best-seller, which revolves around a young mother who has birthed and raised her now-5-year-old son inside the shed where they are held captive. 


Larson recounted her groundwork for the role during a Monday press conference at the Toronto Film Festival, where "Room" screened for media. Talk of an Oscar nomination for the 25-year-old actress rippled through the festival, and for good reason: Larson, who broke out on the Showtime series "United States of Tara" and earned her bona fides with the moving drama "Short Term 12," does her best work to date in the movie. If she were playing someone whose confinement was fresh, Larson would require a big performance, full of panic and anguish. But because it's been several years since her character was kidnapped, by a man who asked for help with his sick dog, Larson must blend the grief that itches at her with the banality of everyday life inside of one tiny outbuilding where her captor visits only to have sex and deliver chintzy groceries. By the time we meet her, she is anesthetized to the experience. That's seen in deadened interactions with her volatile detainer and in the imagination she uses to give her son the most positive upbringing possible. 


An equal match for Larson is Jacob Tremblay, the 8-year-old "Smurfs 2" actor who portrays her long-haired son, Jack. As in the book, the story is told largely from his perspective. Here, that means sporadic voice-overs where Jack explains the world that he knows inside of what he and Ma call Room. In his eyes, everything else is outer space and the people on the television they watch are not real -- at least until Ma introduces a plan to escape. Tremblay's is as much of a lead role as Larson's, and he captures the naïveté of Jack's transition from claustrophobic chamber to a boundless and unfamiliar universe. He panics as Ma informs him of what exists beyond Room, hesitates as he later experiences it for himself and cycles through grief, rage and wonder at the circumstances that burden his young brain. No remarkable child performance should go without credit to the director -- in this case, Lenny Abrahamson ("Frank") -- and the primary co-stars, but Tremblay carries a lot of weight on his tiny shoulders.  


It is apparent that Larson and Tremblay's connection ran deep while making "Room." At Monday's press conference, they talked about constructing some of the toys featured in their characters' titular home and spending time playing together before production began. “I felt incapable of not talking about 'Star Wars' and which animal would beat what in a battle,” Larson said of the hours they weren't in each other's company throughout the movie's shoot. That kinship comes to life in the two characters' nonverbal communication -- the fury they sometimes unleash upon each other, the warmth that billows through their laughter and the gravity of each's need for the other to survive. 


There's a lot else to rave about when it comes to "Room," primarily Danny Cohen's roving cinematography. It traces the scenery in a such a way that the audience enters the mindset of being locked away and then discovering or re-entering a world rendered foreign. In faithfully adapting her own novel, Donoghue retains a sense of bewilderment about navigating life for the first time, which is why Jack is the crux of "Room." If you've spent five years whimsically thinking that dogs belong in television sets and friends are the mice that scurry across your single bedroom, imagine the heartache and awe upon learning there is an escape. Imagine the same if you actually knew there was a universe passing you by. Larson and Tremblay masterfully convey that turbulence. By the time "Room" comes to a weepy close, the audience's world seems a bit bigger and brighter than it did two hours earlier.


"Room" opens Oct. 16.


For continuous updates from the Toronto Film Festival, follow Matthew Jacobs and Erin Whitney on Twitter.


 

 


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Air Force Dad Gives Son Epic Birthday Surprise

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A little boy named Alec was in for a special birthday treat when a big present arrived on his doorstep. 


His dad, a member of the U.S. Air Force, had missed his son's birthday party by one day. But when Alec unwrapped the life-size gift box, he found a surprise that more than made up for the absence.


"Hi, Daddy!" the little boy shouted, giving his special gift/guest a big hug and jumping around for joy.


All the feels.  


H/T BuzzFeed


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Here's A Grown Man Jumping Into A Ball Pit. For Journalism.

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Life is much like jumping into a giant ball pit. It's unpredictable, uncontrollable and you'll spend most of your time looking stupid.


UK-based creative agency Pearlfisher believes in using unique ways to drive and inspire creativity in its people. In celebration of creativity, Pearlfisher constructed a ballpit using 81,000 plastic balls, then allowed friends, family and the public to play around in it.


Your humble HuffPost Comedy page editor and Senior Ball Pit Correspondent had the chance to get to the bottom of this story at Pearlfisher's New York office.



The facts were not going to simply fall into my lap. It was going to take uncompromising journalistic willpower to uncover the who, what, where and why of this story.



I was going to have to dive in head first, majestic and beautiful like the soaring eagle, the noble stallion or the broken lawn chair.



One way or another, dear readers, I would dig, dig, dig, until all proverbial stones were overturned. Mark my words, the facts of this story would see the light of day!



If I had to stay at the scene all night long, well, dammit, that's just the price I was willing to pay to uncover the truth.


There is no turning back now, for I am fully cocooned in this world and its secrets. All that remains is my transformative emergence, richer in the truth than I was pre-ball pit.



More on this critical story as it develops.


 


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What One Man Learned When He Traveled To Every Country On Earth

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In 2002, I walked into a cafe, laptop in hand, to begin a grand adventure.


My adventure did not involve swords, dragons, or golden cups; it didn’t require me to hike the Appalachian trail or steer a boat solo across the world. All I had to do was sip a cappuccino and tap away at my keyboard. After years of detour as a corporate lawyer, I was finally allowing myself to reach that mythical state of being I’d dreamed of since age four: becoming “a writer.”


Believe me when I tell you that I had no idea I would ever publish a best-selling book. My goal was simply to publish something—anything—by age seventy-five. That took the pressure off and put me in a state of near constant flow, and occasional bliss. I wrote a play, a memoir, poetry, and half a novel.


After three years, I started writing Quiet and knew instinctively that this was the one.


But the adventure began long before Quiet and its runaway success. The adventure was the simple act of trying to become a writer in the first place.


In September 2014, my friend Chris Guillebeau came out with a wonderful new book. A book about quests and adventures and about how doing that big crazy (or quiet and intimate) thing you’ve always dreamed of may be the best thing you’ll ever do.


I’ll let Chris tell you all about it…


How Pursuing a Quest Can Bring Purpose to Your Life


by Chris Guillebeau


We all like to adopt habits and make choices that improve our lives—or at least we like the idea of doing so. Small changes can lead to big results, whether it’s being mindful about what we eat or trying to get an extra hour of sleep. Improvement is good.


But what if there’s something bigger that you could do…something that would fundamentally change your life for the better? After thinking carefully about what you enjoy doing and what you find most meaningful, maybe you should think about making that thing the focus of your daily life for years to come.


Perhaps you should consider a quest.


***


For the past ten years, I’ve been pursuing a grand adventure. Even as an introvert (or perhaps because I’m an introvert), I’ve always loved travel, whether it's exploring new cities and losing myself in foreign markets or heading into a small village after an extended bus ride from a larger hub. After going to a bunch of places, I decided to create structure around those discoveries. Instead of just traveling for fun, I’d turn it into a mission: I’d attempt to visit every country in the world.


Every country, no exceptions—and in case you’re wondering, there are 193 of them, as determined by the UN.


This quest became a focal point for me. I spent more than 100 days a year either traveling or planning for a trip somewhere. I went all over the world, literally, in pursuit of the goal of going “everywhere.”


It was a lot of work, of course, with many challenges along the way, but it was also a lot of fun.


I wrote a book about my journey as I’d always planned. In the writing process, though, my editor nudged me toward a better goal. “Don’t just write about your own experience,” he said. “Write about quests. Write about other people who found a calling of their own, and see how they were changed through the experience.”


So that’s what I did. When I wasn’t jetting off to Afghanistan or hiking the national forests of the Congo, I spent my time meeting other people who were also pursuing a quest, learning from them in meetups around the world or—as they wrote in—from my website.


I heard from an incredible array of remarkable people from all walks of life.


Some of them were doing truly astounding things like the man who ran 250 marathons in a single year or the young woman who circumnavigated the globe in a small sailboat. Stories like these were incredible!


But I also heard from dozens of ordinary people who had made brave decisions to incorporate adventure into their daily lives.


In Omaha, Robyn Devine set out to knit 10,000 hats. Why 10,000? I asked her—why not just “knit a bunch of hats?” Her answer contained a clue that would guide the rest of my research: “Because having the number makes it real. When I made it tangible and specific, it gave me something specific to work toward.”


In Oklahoma City, Sasha Martin wanted to raise her young daughter with an international perspective. She wasn’t able to travel, certainly not to 193 countries, but she had an idea: why not make a meal from every country in the world?


That’s exactly what she did, week after week. She started with Albania and kept on going all the way to Zimbabwe, thoroughly researching each country’s culinary history and sharing it with her family. She also shared the journey online, with weekly recipes and commentary on her “Global Table” mission.


Stories like Robyn’s and Sasha’s were the ones I enjoyed the most. They found something they enjoyed and built some parameters around it, transforming it from a hobby to a quest. For the most part, these were solitary, individual pursuits. These were projects that required spending a lot of time alone, building or working toward something more public and shared.


I learned a number of lessons along the way, both from my journey and from the quests of others I studied.


I learned that you must believe in your quest even if no one else does. I learned that experience produces confidence, and many questers saw their vision grow in scope as they worked toward the goal.


I learned that many of these people had what I called an emotional awareness of mortality—they were focused on putting each day to good use, aware that life is all too short. Many of them enjoyed charting the incremental progress toward their final destination, making lists and celebrating milestones.


But mostly, they found that the quest improved their lives. They were better off for choosing the value of adventure. They spoke of the fear of regret as a precursor to saying yes: when they realized they’d always regret it if they didn’t try, they pushed further and embraced the value of adventure.


***


I finally ended my journey in April 2013, when I arrived in my final country, #193 of 193. I felt a lot of different emotions as the month drew near: I was excited and proud, as one might expect, but I also felt sad. The quest had given me a sense of identity and purpose for years, and now it was almost over.


I knew I’d need to find something else to work on next…but not right away. First, I had to appreciate all that had come to pass and to express gratitude to everyone who’d been a part of it from country to country.


By the way, the book I wrote isn’t merely a sociological study. It contains a clear message: a quest can bring greater purpose and meaning to your life. The value of adventure is for everyone, not just world travelers, and if you choose to embrace it, you’ll never be the same.


###


Chris Guillebeau is The New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness of Pursuit, The $100 Startup, and other books. During a lifetime of self-employment, he visited every country in the world (193 in total) before his 35th birthday. Every summer in Portland, Oregon, he hosts the World Domination Summit, a gathering of creative, remarkable people.


Connect with Chris on Twitter, on his blog, or at your choice of worldwide airline lounge.


 



2015-02-04-Joni_Blecher_150x150.jpg
This article originally appeared on QuietRev.com.

You can find more insights from Quiet Revolution on work, life, and parenting as an introvert at QuietRev.com.

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This Is How A Marvel Comics Illustrator Pops The Question

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Will Sliney is a Marvel Comics illustrator who draws Spider-Man for a living -- dream job, right? So when the Irishman popped the question to his girlfriend on September 11, he put his talents to good use and created an adorable personalized comic series that tells the story of their relationship. 


(Story continues after photo)



Will -- who lives with his fiancée Laura O' Callaghan in Cork, Ireland -- told family and friends that he was organizing a surprise party for her so he could get everyone in the same place at the same time. At the party, he projected the comics onto a big screen so everyone could see them.


"It was a lot of work and a lot of lies!" Will told The Huffington Post. "I told all Laura's friends and family that I was organizing a surprise 29th birthday party for her. Laura thought we were just going out for a Friday night drink."



At the end of the presentation, Will got down on bended knee to officially propose. 


"She was shocked and a bit overcome with emotion but she eventually said the all-important, 'Yes!'" he said. 


Check out the rest of the sweet illustrations below: 



H/T Irish Mirror


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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Will DJ Chicago Radio Show, Because Why Not

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- the Notorious RBG -- will be the guest DJ on a radio show next week in Chicago.


Ginsburg will share some of her favorite classical music on WFMT, a classical radio station. According to the station, Ginsburg, whose son runs a classical music record label in Chicago, also will participate in a performance by the Lyric Opera of Chicago called "Opera and the Law."



The performance, which will be broadcast live on the station, features these law-related scenes from operas, handpicked by Ginsburg herself:



The “Seguidilla” scene from Bizet’s "Carmen" -- Ms. Rosen and Mr. Donner as Carmen and Don José, performing a duet that is arguably opera’s most famous plea bargain.


“Abendlich” from Wagner’s "Das Rheingold" -- The character of Wotan, on the importance of contracts (a recording).


“I Accept Their Verdict” from Britten’s "Billy Budd" -- Mr. Donner as Capt. Vere, on the difference between law and justice.


Patrick De Rocher’s aria from "Dead Man Walking" by Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally -- Ms. Rosen, on the death penalty.


“A Paradox” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s "The Pirates of Penzance" -- Mr. Carlson, Ms. Rosen, and Mr. Guetti as Frederick, Ruth, and the Pirate King, on strict versus sensible construction.



Ginsburg, a noted opera fan, also will tape a segment unveiling her five favorite operas for the station's website.


"We are thrilled to welcome Justice Ginsburg to WFMT," Steve Robinson, the station's general manager, said in a statement. "To have someone of her stature who has such a passion for classical music on our air is a great honor."


Ginsburg can frequently be seen attending opera performances, often accompanied by her friend, fellow justice Antonin Scalia. Derrick Wang, a lawyer and composer, even wrote a comic opera entitled "Scalia/Ginsburg," setting their judicial disagreements to dramatic music.



Wang said he sought the justices' permission before writing the opera. When he presented excerpts of it at the Supreme Court in 2013, the justices both said that they highly enjoyed it. 


"The truth is, if God could give me any talent in the world, I would be a great diva," Ginsburg quipped.


Ginsburg's stint as DJ will air live on the station and on its website at 10 a.m. Central time on Monday, Sept. 21. The live opera performance will air at 11 a.m.


 


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Your Favorite Cartoon Characters Reimagined As Senior Citizens

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It's not easy being a cartoon. All that running around, getting chased by villains and slipping on banana peels can really take a toll. Especially if a character's been doing it for decades.



 


That's exactly what artist Andrew Tarusov had in mind when he created his collection, "Cartoon Characters That Got Old." "I just realized that characters were designed many years ago," Tarusov told The Huffington Post. Indeed, some of our all-time favorite characters, like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny, have been around for decades -- but have remained unchanged. 


Tarusov says he wanted to show what the characters would really look like today at the end of a very full life. 


Check out the illustrations below to see Bugs Bunny a little heavier around the midsection, Tom and Jerry finally appearing to be friends and Mickey Mouse as a silver fox. It just goes to show, age does catch up with us all. 



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Illustrator Richard Haines Wants To Draw All The Beautiful Men Of New York

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Warning: This post contains (illustrated) nudity and may not be suitable for work.



Ladies. Gentlemen. People with eyes. Prepare to feast them. On these very pretty boys.


Illustrator Richard Haines spent most of his career in fashion. He designed for brands like Calvin Klein and Sean Combs, in the process familiarizing himself with the particular way fabric hangs on a person's frame. But long before his life as a designer took off, Haines was obsessed with drawing. Since the age of 5, he covered notebooks with flowers, wedding dresses and elaborate gardens. 


Now, Haines is returning to his original passion, showing his style-centric illustrations as fine art. The images, flimsy yet sharp, resemble what might have arisen if Egon Schiele maintained a fashion blog, with sinuous men striking a pose in various states of stylish dress and undress.



"These guys are doing interesting things, and that all shows in their appearance," Haines explained to Out Magazine. "They also happen to be beautiful in a lot of different ways. It’s about being around artists who want to be in a community of artists. I mean, most guys I draw are very tall and very thin. They’re almost like these narrow lines. I see them on the street, and it’s almost like they're walking drawings."


In a world where nude drawing almost always references a female subject, it's refreshing to ogle the lines and curves that make up a man. The occasional beard and man bun ain't bad either. 


"Richard Haines: A Room of One's Own" runs until October 24 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York. 



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These 1980s Office Spaces Will Make You Thankful For Your Desk Job

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A woman wearing pantyhose sits uncomfortably in an uncomfortable-looking chair. She’s listening to a man behind a desk, who’s leaning in confidently as he speaks. The photo’s caption: “Head Hunting.”


The image is part of Anna Fox’s 1987 photo series “Work Stations,” a commissioned project meant to convey the aggressive nature of office culture in Britain at the time. Each photo depicts crowded, suited chaos, and is accompanied by a snarky -- and sometimes unsettling -- snippet showcasing the rally-cry word choice of salesmen.  


A tweed-suited, literally fist-pumping man is accompanied by the text, “We’re on a pirate ship at sea! We’re going to go and raid all the other ships on the ocean.”


In other photos that seem plucked straight from “The Wolf of Wall Street,” a roomful of employees rejoices a recent success by jumping, smoking, playing with telephone wires and waving around what looks to be a drumstick. 


“Strength, precision and stamina had kept him on top,” reads the caption for a photo of a man and a woman sharing a cluttered desk, sitting beneath a framed image of Margaret Thatcher. 


“I wanted to reflect the sense of aggression, competition and greed that Thatcher’s Britain had laid the foundations for,” Fox said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “Her famous phrase was: 'There is no such thing as society, just individuals,’ and then off we all went on a mad pursuit to gain money for ourselves and buy things we just couldn’t afford and forget about the communities that surrounded us and that we grew up in.”


Fox shot office life in wide format, using a strong and apparent flash, and from low angles so that her subjects towered over her, occupying most of the frame. The desired effect: to highlight the intense, masculine environment most workspaces were at the time. The women in her images are either portrayed as playing second fiddle as secretaries or as striving to match their male counterparts.


Though the series confronts serious themes, Fox manages to employ a sense of humor with many of the photos. In one, a man stuffs his face with meat and ketchup on a quick lunch break. In another, a woman stands solemnly in a doorway, a mannequin's high-socked leg hung next to her.


“Humor is a great tool for engaging a viewer,” Fox said. “It works in most mediums but in photography it has a particular power because of the reality factor that photography has; its indexical relationship to the world means that we read it more factually rather than as fiction.”


And, although she currently works wherever she’s taking photos, Fox is optimistic that workplaces have improved since the '80s, with movements against screen saturation gaining traction. 


“I mean there were conferences about the hazards of working too long in front of screens and bullying was also quite nasty in some places,” Fox said. “These things must have changed a bit.”


Still, she thinks revisiting contemporary office spaces would be a fun and worthy update on the project.



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Look Out For These 6 Up-And-Coming Women Writers

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In the wide world of literature, women often still struggle for recognition in a system that rewards privilege and connections. On Thursday, however, diversity in publishing had a moment. Not only did the National Book Awards put out a diverse, vibrant 2015 Fiction longlist, but the Rona Jaffe Foundation presented its 2015 Writers' Awards honoring six emerging women writers. 


The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Awards, now in their 21st year, were established by author Rona Jaffe to encourage and support gifted women writers, whether in fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction, who are just beginning their careers. At the ceremony Thursday night, the poet and memoirist Tracy K. Smith, a Rona Jaffe Foundation honoree in 2004, spoke passionately about the tangible and intangible benefits of receiving such support as a young woman writer of color, as she battled with feelings of not belonging as well as the external challenge of finding time to write even after having children. 


Here are six up-and-coming writers you should look out for: 


Meehan Crist (nonfiction)


Current project: A book blending memoir and science writing, The Silent Injury delves into the science of the brain, through the lens of her mother's traumatic brain injury. 


Vanessa Hua (fiction)


Current project: A novel, A River of Stars, about a Chinese factory clerk who comes to America to deliver her baby, only to find herself betrayed by her lover and on the run with her child.  


Ashley M. Jones (poetry)


Current project: A poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, drawn from her experience as a black woman poet in Alabama and the politics of race and identity, past and present. 


Britteney Black Rose Kapri (poetry)


Current project: Kapri is now promoting Winona and Winthrop, her first chapbook, and next plans to compile an anthology called Unapologetically Black, to advance her hope of honestly confronting issues of race, violence and injustice through writing.


Amanda Rea (fiction)


Current project: A novel set during World War II, which follows two friends as they grow up, while exploring the troubled relationship between whites and Native Americans in the region. 


Natalie Haney Tilghman (fiction)


Current project: A novel, Home Remedies, drawn from her Italian-American family's colorful stories of youthful experiences in their homeland.


While we're waiting for these projects to come to fruition, here are a few of the former Rona Jaffe Foundation awardees whose books you should definitely read ASAP:



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This Harry Potter Fan Theory Changes Everything About 'Avada Kedavra'

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In the Harry Potter universe, a properly vocalized "Avada Kedavra" will kill a wizard's opponent on the spot. In the actual universe, a fanciful "Abracadabra" could maybe make a rabbit appear from a hat. One, deadly. The other, harmless fun. Different results, similar morphology.


That "Abracadabra" and "Avada Kedavra" sound so alike has not gone unnoticed. What if, as Reddit users jodatoufin and divsky recently wondered, their link reveals a darker history between muggles and wizards in J.K. Rowling's magical world? What if muggles and wizards once clashed in such violent ways that remnants of the killing curse linger in muggle language even as magic faded into myth? 




It certainly seems plausible. Rowling stated at the 2004 Edinburgh Book Festival that she based the killing curse off "Abracadabra." In her series, we know that the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was enacted in 1692, when muggle-wizard relations were at an extreme low (and the Salem witch trials were beginning). Perhaps muggles' persecution of wizards at this time led some to extreme action -- using an Unforgivable curse. Word of the deadly phrase would have traveled.


Reddit user mindbleach goes a step further, positing that muggles may have bastardized the killing curse to taunt angry wizards after inventing one weapon that could outdo them: guns. Guns were already in widespread use by the 1600s, and pulling a trigger is quicker than performing a spell.


We'll give you a minute to digest that...




All of this thinking brought us to another revelation: What if "Avada Kedavra" wasn't ever supposed to be a killing curse at all? What if it was originally invented to heal people? 




As J.K. Rowling explained in Edinburgh, the word "Abracadbra" comes from a real-life, ancient Aramaic spell meaning "let the thing be destroyed." But it seems the history of "Abracadabra" cannot be so simply stated. If it really did originate from Aramaic, many believe the translation would be approximately "I create what I speak." Others believe "Abracadabra" came from the Hebrew "Ha-Brachah-dabarah," meaning approximately "name of the blessed." Both are sort of the opposite of Rowling's "Avada Kedavra" intention.


Whatever its exact origins, however, we know "Abracadabra" was once inscribed on amulets to cure disease -- Rowling also referenced that fact. And here's where things get interesting.


The word was first recorded in the third century by the Roman physician Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, who recommended wearing the inscribed amulets as a treatment for fevers. People in medieval times also relied on it to treat the Bubonic plague. Supposedly, as the letters of the word slowly disappeared from the amulet line by line, so would disease disappear from the body.



It's possible, as Reddit user Canvaverbalist states, that some wizard in Rowling's universe long ago noticed that "Avada Kedavra" -- perhaps "Abracadabra" spoken with a different intonation -- healed people. It's possible that it healed by killing tiny bacteria or viruses in a person's body, like modern antibacterial and antiviral medicine. Muggles would have caught on before the Statute of Secrecy went into effect. It's possible, too, that some other, darker wizard realized making the spell stronger made it more deadly -- able to kill human beings altogether.


A full-blown killing curse would have likely been the last nail in the coffin of civilized muggle-wizard relations. Muggles went after wizards, wizards went after muggles -- and then into hiding. 


And that was that.




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