JDNight

Songs My Brothers Taught Me was first introduced at last year's Sundance Film Festival in Utah, then traveled to the Cannes Film Festival in France.  The film, in which [Irene] Bedard is Co-executive producer and portrays the role of Lis Winters [a single mother] is, according to Bedard, the story of a young boy and girl from the Pine Ridge Reservation and the struggles that they face.

''The entirety of the film is meant to help people understand why someone wouldn't leave the Rez.  A lot of people have asked me, 'Well, if it's so hard to find jobs, why don't you just leave?' The film answers that question.''

Conceived by Chloé Zhao, the film was four years in the making, during which time the Chinese-born writer and director lived on the Rez. ''As I became friends with some of the Lakota people living there, I became increasingly intrigued and almost envious of the deep connection they have to their homes, families, communities and their land,'' said Zhao.

''This bone-deep attachment also has its consequences, and over time I also became aware of the various struggles and isolation they face because of it.  In many ways I made Songs to explore this question – How do you leave the only place you've ever known?''

I didn't ever plan on making this public (only a few close confidants have been aware of this), but I feel now is the time I must say something, however small and ineffective it may be.



In the last several weeks or so, I've been receiving numerous comments, notes, etc. from people asking me to do stuff, whatever the reason is, for them (JazzBerryTigerCandy, I definitely don't mean you; I promise to get back to you within the week). Being too selfless and empathetic towards people is definitely one of my biggest character downfalls. Plenty of the time, I don't know how to say no, extremely similar in ways to the character of Wilt from Craig McCraken/CMcC's Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. However, this time around, I need to put my foot down and speak up. For over a year, my obsessive-compulsive anxiety disorder, something I've had since I was about 11 or 12, has gone through the roof (indeed, OCD is a very real disorder that affects my way of living on a daily basis in the worst of ways and is not synonymous with being a perfectionist as social media has incorrectly been abusing it in recent years). In turn, it has brought on clinical depression (my previous therapist, Sabrina was more than concrete certain with her diagnosis) - the third time I've dealt with depressive symptoms in my 22 years from the first time when I was 11 1/2 and had attempted suicide, the second time when I was 14 1/2 whilst I was dealing with a string of issues, including an unexpected diagnosis of mononucleosis and Asperger's syndrome. The difference is: this time around, I'm not suicidal. I'm grateful for that at least. Though I'm on meds and am receiving therapy. The meds had worked for about three months - from July to mid October. In late October, the effects started wearing off.

Since then, shit has hit the ceiling real hard and fast and life in general has become increasingly overwhelming. Things of note: My baby cousin, Athena Rose who was born seven weeks premature on 22 May 2014 was unfortunately brought into this world with some of the worse physical disabilities that could afflict a child; she's a strong kid for having battled through two heart surgeries since her birth. This past Thursday, 14 Jan. she was meant to go in for a cleft palate surgery and had been at the hospital from 4 am to that afternoon with her single father and my favourite maternal uncle; however due to an infuriating mix-up with her doctors, her surgery date has been rescheduled. Perhaps, it was a blessing in disguise in many ways since on that same morning, one of the most brilliant actors and badass human beings known to man, Alan Rickman unexpectedly passed away from a short battle with pancreatic cancer, aged so young at just 69 leaving behind his wonderful family, an expansive group of friends and co-workers, and a strongly devoted audience from his approximately 43 or so years of a fantastic stage and screen career. Yes, he may have been ''merely an actor.'' True, I didn't know him personally, but as an artist and the type of compassionate person he was known to be, he meant a lot to me and I can't say I didn't idolize him, even just a little bit. Many people feel the same way, so I'm precisely not alone.



In the last three days since his untimely death from shock to denial to it finally sinking in, it has only conflicted with my depression in worse ways than it was before, yet this isn't to say my mental state is directly related to it. His death has created a lot of unnecessary anxiety as I strongly relate it to my Papa, or ''Nonno'' technically in Italian (my maternal grandfather), who is about the same age and has been fighting leukemia for the last several years. As the news surfaced, I immediately thought, ''That could be him... That could be us.'' Leukemia may not be quite as much as a sneaky, merciless fucker as pancreatic cancer (as with pancreatic cancer, most people don't know they have it until its well into its advanced stages as the symptoms are utterly undetectable, at most appearing as minor stomach problems or flu-like, and even post-diagnosis, the survival rate is incredibly low; rapid decline from then on is persistent and plenty succumb to it within just 3.5 months whereas Rickman was lucky he made it to nearly 5), though like all cancers, the survival rate isn't exactly high either.

In other words, due to all of this bullshit, my mental stability is gradually deteriorating little by little. Crying spells are far more common these days and to simply put it, I need to worry less about other people and take care of myself. I hope that's understandable.

So, my copy of Jody Revenson's Harry Potter: The Character Vault just shipped in yesterday. I thought I lost interest in Harry Potter, and perhaps I did for awhile there, but this book has really brought me back to this universe. The content is, naturally amazing, even though a lot of it is reprinted information from previously published interviews with behind-the-scenes folks and cast members, and the photos are, understandably, gorgeous and will make any Potterhead as high as a kite. While I'm aware that SnitchSeeker shared one of these images already from The Prince's Tale, I was able to take a better quality photo with my Nikon D3100 (my scanner has been meddled with Gremlins, apparently). No matter. The photos are sharp and in mega high resolution as posted to my alternate Flickr. So enjoy.



As a side note, if anyone wants any particular image from the book (since, at the moment, I didn't get around to scanning, er snapping photos of all the new images, obviously), don't hesitate to let me know. I'll take special requests.

Peace out, homies.

True, we can all agree that Joe Wright’s new addition to the Peter Pan verse is an utter, miserable, joyless flop—a movie that’s so chaotically confused that it doesn’t quite know what the honest hell it wants to be. Rotten Tomatoes may not always be the golden way to go, but a rating as low as this speaks volumes on its own:



The only somewhat ‘’redeemable’’ aspect (well, not really since it lasts for merely two minutes out of the entire two hour film)? The badass rendition of Nirvana’s ‘’Smells Like Teen Spirit’’ (1991)  that feels so incredibly out of place, over the top, high as fuck, extremely ridiculous and is so obviously an attempt to pull off a Baz Luhrman, I kid you not, though in the end, one can’t really balk as its inclusion. Why? Because the cast is actually fairly good.


© 2015 WaterTower Music

Everything before or after this sequence goes womp womp real hard and fast. Once Hook shows up as a poor Indiana Jones rendition, I swear, I thought, ‘’Fuck this movie; I’m done.’’ Although, this film’s quality, or lack thereof, is beside the point of this blog.

Within an industry that’s severely exclusive of people of colour, notably fantasy films where the currently in-production Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) is hardly exempt from the criticisms, it’s refreshing if and when an aspiring actor of colour, male or female, can secure a well-written part at all that doesn’t restrict them in traditional servant roles, as side-kicks, comic relief or as background characters that are lucky if they even get lines. ‘’The [Harry Potter] film series,’’ writes The Mary Sue blog, ‘’as a whole only features 0.47% of lines spoken by people of color, according to Every Single Word video series.’’

While this up-and-coming British actress—who is admittedly not very well known but has been building up her résumé with such titles as Absolutely Fabulous (2004), a lead part in Tati’s Hotel (2011), Cloud Atlas (2012), is currently co-starring in Millie Inbetween (2014) and is a member of the kid music band Angels N’ Bandits—didn’t win a part in Pan, she did audition. For none other than the title role of Peter (the video can be seen here since, due to privacy settings it won’t play in the embed).



Her name is Mya-Lecia Naylor who simply goes by Mya plenty of the time, aged 13 though was just 11 at the time of her audition. As a film major at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, since I pitched a script for Professor David Schmoeller’s Production I course, Fall 2013 in my sophomore year, titled Oasis’ Requiem, and have just completed the first rough draft this past Thursday, 5 Nov. for Laurene DeBord-Foulk’s Screenwriting I class, Fall 2015 of my senior year, I’ve been using Mya as a sort of ‘’reference’’ or visual aid for one of the main characters. (Well, I have a lot of visual aids, both girls and boys, but Mya is amongst them.) She is a 10 to 11-year-old trans girl of colour named (can you guess it?) Oasis, recently orphaned along with her older brother after having murdered their father following years of severe verbal, physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse, which can be seen here in the original script treatment.

By visual aid, I don’t mean dream casting. Since the character is a trans girl, if and when the script is potentially produced (not saying that it definitely will be), I would ideally prefer that an actual (unknown) trans actress of colour can play her (good lord if anyone makes the same mistake of casting a cis woman as a trans woman like Transamerica, 2005 illogically did which not only erases their invisibility and struggles entirely but reinforces the transphobic attitudes of cis people that trans women aren’t ‘’valid enough’’ as women—and here I speak in third person since I identify as a non-binary boy/man, not as a trans girl/woman).  Not only considering that Mya is cisgender, she would also be too old to play a 10 to 11-year-old girl regardless by the time it may go into production, although she was visually perfect around the time that I discovered her (and in many ways, still is). Visual aids merely add to the ‘’look book’’ of the script and in my case, guide me in creating personal artwork of the characters later on after the writing process. Frankly, I see a lot of the character in Mya and vice versa and clearly, I’ve been following her since around 2013, silently supporting her along the way, and just by chance, happened to find her audition video when I was searching for more updated photos of her.



To the best of my knowledge, the audition requirements specifically requested boys, of all ethnicities, aged between 11 and 13 from the UK, Ireland and Common Wealth regions so there was a slim chance that the casting directors and Wright would have even chosen her for a call back, however I have to strongly congratulate Mya here; it takes a lot of guts for a girl of colour to put herself out there in this competitive industry (it’s much harder for girls with darker skin, for instance that are similar in appearance to Quvenzhané  Wallis or Lupita Nyong’o to name a couple—and people really should known how to say Wallis’ name by now, but just in case you don’t, it’s KWUH-VEN-JA-NAY—so Mya is somewhat luckier in this respect), especially for a role that will undoubtedly be given to a white boy in the end despite the fact that other ethnicities were welcomed in the audition process.



The casting of Pan is so sickeningly white as it is (do I even need to mention the whole infamous Tiger Lily casting controversy?) that it’s no surprise in the tradition of Hollywood that potential white actors would have been narrowed down for the final choice of Peter no matter what. Don’t get me wrong; Levi Miller is adorable and charming and I’m digging the Aussie influx in the industry lately, but I have to wonder what a Peter Pan film or any other medium of the culturally-ingrained fantasy with Peter cast as a kid of colour would be like, if not as a girl of colour like Mya (who would of had to cut her hair for the part if she won it, of course, and would have pulled it off beautifully) than at least a boy of colour.



There’s probably only one other blog post I’ve come across that proposes the same idea of Peter being anything other than white, specifically in response to the announcement of NBC’s Peter Pan Live in 2014. ‘’I never saw a single suggestion of a performer [for Peter] who was not white,’’ writes Howard Sherman of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

It’s interesting that no one felt bound by gender in their musings, even though the slightly pre-adolescent Peter is typically played by an adult woman. That sense of traditionalism went right out the window (though hardly for the first time, since men have played the role before, mostly in the non-musical version). But if the Mary Martin-Sandy Duncan-Cathy Rigby dynasty was certainly up for reinvention... why didn’t racial diversity come to anyone’s mind? [...] Perhaps the Darling family and Captain Hook need not be staunchly Victorian white.  I have no doubt that the corps of Lost Boys and pirates will be cast multiculturally (the Spielberg film Hook helped set that standard more than 20 years ago), since that’s the ‘’easy’’ route, but it’s the leads that must show the wider world. Yet the reflex of those around me, one of which I quickly endorsed, were all monochromatic suggestions, and that’s where my concerns lie... we revert to the dominant race in England from the era when the play was first written, rather than flying towards a spectrum of color on our way towards the third star to the right and straight on ‘til morning.

About that:



Apparently, this is the number one excuse producers make in their lack of a diverse cast in period pieces, or worse, fantasy period pieces: the time frame, not unlike David Heyman’s ‘’justification’’ in regards to the lack of diversity present in Fantastic Beasts. Naturally, Wright’s film falls into the same pitfalls. Despite claiming that he aimed at creating an internationally appealing, multi-cultural, multi-racial world, all of the leads are none other than white. So why not extend that multi-culturalism from the background to the leads? Representation matters, markedly in 2015 where more and more audiences who aren’t default white like the majority of actors that grace the screens want to see themselves in these characters. We’re heading straight on ‘til morning into 2016, folks. Hollywood needs to let tradition go and shape up their shit. Sadly, progressive attitudes take years to raise appropriate awareness on and continually reinforce and cynically, such traditions may never change. At this point in time, I guess all we can do is bitch about it and sign petitions.



In any case, my mother hates you, my father hates you, my sister hates you, and I hate you.

[Note: I was forced to shorten the title from my original LiveJournal post, but only just. Thanks, DeviantArt for allowing such little room for subjects.]



Lately, I've been experiencing some intense emotional and mental stress related problems that could partially explain my prolonged ''absence'' from here that found me seeking therapy for the first time in a long while (I quote 'absence' because while I have been logging in every once in awhile to clear away notifications and read through entries, neither have I been speaking much to anyone these days due to personal affairs nor have I been posting publicly so my lurking has been quite invisible; it's nothing personal, honestly but who knows how long this will last at this point?). While I don't want to get into extreme details, I spent the large part of my afternoon today/yesterday (4 March) in one of these ''therapy retreats.'' While filling out the dreadful paperwork that comes along with medical baggage, one of the check boxes didn't sit right with me. It was the first time I've ever encountered doctors asking for information in regards to sexual orientation and in many ways, I'm not even certain why this information is needed. Nevertheless, the options were:

- Gay
- Lesbian
- Bi-Sexual
- Transsexual
- Other
- Info not available

Now, what's immediately wrong with one of these options?

If it wasn't already clear by the subject title, transgender/transsexual identity is NOT the same thing as sexuality, holy fuck! The doctors that conjured up this file need to get their facts straight, bless my holy shit.



While I've said this before and I'll say it again for the umpteenth time: The sex we are assigned at birth by doctors in this kind of gender constructed society we live by based on whether we have what looks to be a penis, a vagina or ambiguous genitalia (which is often times wrongly corrected without receiving consent from the child) is separate from our gender, the way we identify ourselves that exists within our minds, not our genitals and both are separate from our sexual orientations. All of these things, we are born with; they are not choices contrary to some certain myths floating around. Meaning, anyone can be any combination of sex, gender and sexuality. They are too numerous to have them all listed here, obviously. And yet, these dumb fucks place transsexual, a gender identity under the category sexual orientation.

For the longest time about from 50's psychiatry to the 90's, transsexualism was confused as being an equivalent of cross-dressing or ''transvestitism'' (look it up; they're not remotely the same), mostly among ''males who dress in women's clothing'' as a ''desire to be the opposite sex'' or ''receive sexual gratification'' through ''fetishistic intentions,'' therefore transsexualism and cross-dressing were considered to be a ''sexual paraphilia'' or a ''sexual deviation'' of some sort. In this sense, doctors once upon a time could have incorrectly considered a person who identifies as transsexual or a person who cross dresses as ''suffering'' from a ''disordered'' sexual orientation or behaviour similar to how homosexuality was viewed. Well, all of this is terribly wrong from a modern viewpoint. Unfortunately, there are many times where both transsexualism and cross-dressing is still considered, from an outdated perspective, as a ''sexual and/or gender disorder.''

Moving on, there is also a marginal difference between someone who is transgender and someone who is transsexual.

As quoted from Diffen since I can't word it better myself:

Transgender is:

An umbrella term that refers to those with identities that cross over, move between, or otherwise challenge the socially constructed border between the genders. While this can include medical or social transition, it may not.

While transsexual is:

A term referring to a person who does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth and wishes, whether successful or not, to realign their gender and their sex through use of medical intervention.

Like anyone with half a brain could determine, being transgender and/or transsexual is completely related to gender, not sexuality. Like cis people, non-binary, non-gender conforming people can be any sort of sexual orientation under the sun because it is completely irrelevant to their assigned sex and gender identity.

Therefore transgender/transsexual people can be straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, etc.

Meaning, for whatever transgender and/or transsexual person that comes across this idiotic doctor's office document I had to fill out will be at a complete loss. I, for one, was sure as hell stumped.  

Most of those who I have been writing to for six years or less now are aware that I identify as both asexual (a sexual identity where I find myself emotionally attracted to girls yet not desiring sex with them) and gender non-conforming. (Speaking of my sexuality, this is not to say all asexual people are like me since I only speak for my own experiences. I recommend a great myth-busting article that was originally shared by logospilgrim/logospilgrim who is also asexual. Thanks, love.)

From the time I was about 18 or 19 or so, I finally discovered that my inner feelings towards both my sexuality and gender identity that I had started to become more aware of by the time I was 10 (where I went through what others around me called my ''tomboy phase,'' need I not pull out those awkward, ugly photographs to prove it, yet it wasn't a phase at all since it never truly went away) were not products of a ''disorder'' but that they were natural, they had names and that I was not alone in my self-discovery and confusion.



Up until last spring, I openly identified as genderqueer, meaning I identified as neither male nor female or alternatively as both and preferred the gender neutral pronoun of ''they'' given I still wasn't quite sure about my gender identity even as I was hitting my 20's. Of course, this wasn't a phase and now at 21, how could it be? Adults don't experience phases like teenagers do. Lately however, I've been feeling even more conflicted towards identifying as genderqueer and (while I was waiting to ''reveal'' this through a much more concise, clearly composed journal entry to post here on LiveJournal and to DeviantArt which I have been drafting since last summer, that old draft is just too damn all over the place so, in the time being, here goes) I have since been slowly realising that I may actually be FTM transgender, which I have been casually mentioning to people whenever the topic of gender is brought up.

Without getting into explicit details, I went through some drastic changes this past year during the spring and summer of 2014: preferring the gender pronouns of only ''he'' or ''they'' if remembering ''he'' is too difficult for others (and it usually is; two acquaintances who have known me for two to three years still incorrectly call me ''she'' no matter how many times I've told them not to); cutting my hair for the first time since I was 10 (which was super relieving; I'm definitely keeping it!); ordering my first ''safe'' breast binder (which I love!) opposed to the ace bandage I had been using up until I realised how dangerous this method is (for other non-binary people, please don't be stupid like me; if you find that a breast binder is not readily available to you, wearing two sports bras is a much better option to the bandage which can ruin your health like a Victorian corset); and above anything else, I have been extensively researching options for hormone replacement therapy, something I am considering doing by the time I'm at least 30 if not later. Not in the least, I plan to legally change my first name from Katherine or ''Kat'' (which I don't feel entitled to; Kat J./valkyrie-kat/ValkyrieKat is the only real Kat around here) to Ezra once I graduate from university.



While genderqueer people are very diverse in their individual identities and can sometimes receive physical modification through hormones and surgery, being FTM transgender is merely something I've realised for myself. By the time I'm at least 35 or 50, I can clearly see myself living as a man with a vagina on hormones and for health reasons, with a double mastectomy, chest contouring and a hysterectomy done (I say ''for health reasons'' because HRT can put one at risk for developing breast and uterine cancer, unfortunately). The possibility of sex reassignment surgery through a metoidioplasty or a phalloplasty is not something I really want to think about right now and may skip this procedure altogether for personal and financial reasons. (Sometimes, this is incorrectly referred to as gender reassignment surgery which makes absolutely no sense; people who go through SRS are reassigning their sex, those pretty parts in-between one's legs, not gender, the internal sense of identity of being a boy/man, girl/woman, both, neither or other.)

While I told only two people about this so far, Kat/valkyrie-kat/ValkyrieKat and Asante/queen-asante/Queen-Asante (you guys know who you are), this past summer of 2014, I had to undergo disability resource testing in the education centre for my university after failing one of my prereq courses (despite testing at a high IQ being an Aspie and whatnot which I won't boast about because it means nothing to me—as long as I live on this planet, I eat, sleep, piss and shit just like everyone else—this is not to say I don't have cognitive disabilities pertaining to other things, a lot of which includes just basic social and life skills; ah, the perks having autism). And while I was only there to diagnose my learning disability in a certain subject I will not name, I nevertheless had to go through a general psychology undertaking as part of the department's psychology and psychiatry research programme. Over the course of several weeks, briefly, I discussed gender with this psychologist and confidentially (meaning this information didn't leave the evaluation room and was not related to my mother), she diagnosed me with ''gender dysphoria'' or ''gender identity disorder,'' a psychiatric label which I never agreed with since how can an identity be a disorder? Now, I do have an anxiety disorder that does mess up with my ability to function, but I do not see my gender problems as being related to having a mental illness.

I do get depressed and anxious sometimes, yes (and these feelings aren't always related to my gender since, like I said, I do have a mental health problem to deal with) but I do not feel this way because of my gender identity. I feel this way sometimes because of society, how being openly transgender is a daily struggle. I do not feel disordered in any way when it comes to my identity; rather I feel society is disordered. One only has to look at the cases of Brandon Teena, Liz Eden and most recently the suicides of Leelah Alcorn and Zander Mahaffey to understand the kind of severe lack of understanding and hatred we may face once we ''come out.'' GID is commonly diagnosed in people when they report or express feelings of emotional stress or discontent with their sex and gender, which heavily implies there is something wrong with the person and not society that socially constructs gender binaries to begin with.

As quoted from Wikipedia as cited from Newman 352-9, 2002 and Fraser et. al. 80-5, 2010:

Many transgender people and researchers support declassification of GID because they say the diagnosis pathologizes gender variance, reinforces the binary model of gender, and can result in stigmatization of transgender individuals. The official classification of gender dysphoria as a disorder in the DSM-5 may help resolve some of these issues, because the term gender dysphoria applies only to the discontent experienced by some persons resulting from gender identity issues.

By that same logic then, my sexual orientation of asexuality would be considered ''hypoactive sexual desire disorder'' in the psychiatric field, a diagnosis that should be removed altogether along with GID given it too has come under similar criticisms.

Now, going back to that doctor paperwork...

As obvious as this may be, I needed therapy for an unrelated problem that has no significance to my gender. I have a certain anxiety disorder that has been present for some time but has gotten intensely out of control in the last two weeks. At this point in time, I have not yet ''come out'' to my mother, who accompanied me today, about my gender even though I have tried, and failed, in the past. Neither have I told her about my asexuality, although when the time does come for that, I am significantly less worried. I told her about my cousin, her niece ''coming out'' to me as being pansexual and she was totally accepting of it (previously, she had thought she was bisexual, and being 17, she has all the time in the world to discover her identity; others shouldn't take this to mean that she changed her sexuality but merely, she came to a different realisation like I have with my gender).

Edit (10 March 2015):


For whatever reason, gender is much more difficult to ''come out'' about given the lack of understanding of what gender actually is in society and the fact that it's far more visible than sexuality. By contrast, sexuality is usually very invisible. Unlike gender, you can't determine someone's sexuality just by looking at them. Though this isn't to say that people who are a sexual orientation other than straight don't experience discrimination and hate crimes. We all know this isn't true. Because sexuality isn't completely invisible; it's usually just less visible than gender.

Given that not only was my mother with me who has no knowledge of my identity but because the inclusion of transsexual as a sexual orientation and not a gender identity made absolutely no fucking sense to me whatsoever, what was I forced to check off? Only the next best option to all of this bull: ''Info not available.''