ATOMIC RAKSHASI
the Art of Rhea Daniel

Liberal feminism can’t seem to shake off the disproportionate value it places on desirability.  When we ought to be telling girls that it’s okay to be conventionally and biologically undesirable, and that one’s worth is inherent, we’ve been bending over backwards to convince all women and girls that all women and girls are beautiful and desirable, and in addition to that, all desirable traits are marketable.

While I’ve examined women’s roles in movies (because I felt there was such a dearth of complex ones), it jumped out at me how many men in Guillermo del Toro’s movies fit into archetypal fatherhood roles, their characters too being complex, sometimes contradictory.

Should you come across a female narcissist, your safest option is to get away quickly; that is, if you even have the discernment to spot her. Not all of them are perched comfortably at the top and can’t always be identified by rank.

Why Choose the Bear?   The ‘Choose the Bear’ social experiment on social media, where specifically women were asked whether they would rather come across a bear in the woods or a man, caused such a reaction on the internet that it reached the news .   The question, farcical to begin with, places the hypothetical victim between two potential predators, one from the animal world and the other from one’s own world, that is, human civilisation, with its unwritten and legal rules

This one took a month and a half to complete because there were so many steps. Narration from my blog post "Somnophilia: More a Crime Than a Kink" https://youtu.be/VjxN1J1pHVc?si=vCXkQJC8yXSHB1Gj Comment Policy This space is for thoughtful, on-topic discussion. Comments that include links, sound like spam, or are intended to provoke rather than contribute will be deleted.

You can watch my fan art process video of You and Baby Reindeer here . You the series has been one of my favs, but I delayed watching it because I thought it glorified stalkers. I was right, but without the nuance. After a four year delay I finally watched the series, then read the book and wrote an essay, with a little research on what makes a stalker a stalker. I hope that's good enough for a blog post 😉 It helped me distance myself from any personal experiences with st

Everyone knows that the traditional Indian family raises its sons to be providers and daughters to be mothers, but the script of The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) goes one further, insisting that even if The Husband is incompetent, lazy, egotistical and insecure, he still expects to be treated like a king in his house. He has an inalienable right to his wife’s body and her servitude. We needed this premise because his value in both his own and society’s eyes, regardless of whe

Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) The Nightmare 1781 Oil on canvas When I heard about Cee-Lo Green’s fall from grace , long after the incident that caused it, I began to wonder about rapists who prefer the corpse-like lack of resistance from their victims. Bill Cosby was another with a long list of roofied victims. It made me think, how socially inept do you have to be to incapacitate someone to the point where they can’t refuse your advances? I’m wrong of course. These are powerful m

The generic stalker has a relationship with his prey, and the relationship only goes so far as the prey gives. Anything is encouragement...

While we were yearning for the perfect American life, we didn’t think about the reality of child care, because we were kids ourselves.

Pygmalion and Galatea, Laurent Pécheux (1729–1821) Wikimedia There’s a story that repeats itself through myth and history, that woman is...