Amanda Justice

The Tempest • September 15th, 2021

How the glorification of war always comes at a human price

Editor’s note: The content below may be disturbing for some readers.

May fifth, 2021 marked the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, and when French President Emmanuel Macron made a landmark speech claiming, “Napoleon is a part of us,” it sparked a national debate over Napoleon’s legacy.

Napolean is lionized by some as a national hero and a military genius while others regard him as an imperialist, a warmonger, and an enslaver who reversed the abolition of slavery in the Frenc

The Tempest • August 1st, 2021

Japan's first empress feigned convention to wield her power

Japan’s current political landscape is a conservative and patriarchal one, which excludes women from taking the throne. While Japan’s monarchy is no more than a symbolic power figure, this situation reflects its values as it has one of the largest gender inequalities among middle-income countries. Just one in every ten politicians is a woman, despite the fact that women account for 51% of the Japanese population, according to World Bank data, and there are no gender quotas for female lawmakers.

The Tempest • July 26th, 2021

Meet the badass Irish warrior queen Medb

If you’ve ever read about the relationship between mythology and history, you’ll notice some trends. Many of heterosexual relationships feature men in dominant positions over women. There is a double standard in the acceptance and portrayal of hypersexuality in men versus women. Take Greek mythology, for example. One of the most famous couples was Zeus the philandering rapist and Hera, his supposedly vengeful, jealous wife. There’s the hero Agamemnon, who despite expressing entitlement to Achill

The Tempest • July 25th, 2021

Adaptations reveal the truth about toxic video game culture

The recently concluded Castlevania and the still-in-production series The Witcher have a few things in common; they’re both violent, gory, dark fantasy series taking place in a Medieval Fantasy Eastern European (or European like) setting, they both follow the exploits of jaded, cynical monster hunters, and they’re both successful Netflix adaptations of stories that were previously video games.

In the case of The Witcher, the show doesn’t adapt the games but rather is based on a series of books

The Tempest • July 11th, 2021

Your history class never told you about this French bisexual badass

When we think of French history, our minds usually go to the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte or King Louis XVI. When we think of famous sword fighters we think of men such as the samurai Miyamoto Musashi, or maybe Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges: The Gentleman Fencer. But contrary to what some ignoramuses say, women can fight with swords. One of the most badass examples of that is Julie D’Aubigny, or “La Maupin,” a bisexual, sword-fighting, opera singer.

Perhaps because of her scandalous

The Tempest • June 19th, 2021

Unintentional queer subtext is just as bad as queer-baiting

When Supernatural ended back in November of 2020, much fuss was made about the character Castiel’s confession of love to Dean Winchester. A lot of the controversy revolved around the fact that the series was apparently making a long shipped pairing officially canon after about 11 years of queer-baiting. But did the writers intentionally queer-bait the audience with these characters, or was the homoerotic subtext between the two born unintentionally? If the answer is the latter, should the writer

The Tempest • May 28th, 2021

Marvel shows on Netflix portrayed mental health in a dark, gritty light

With Marvel announcing a slew of new series and the release of shows like WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it seems appropriate to end mental health awareness month with an evaluation of how Marvel handled mental health issues. Back when Marvel was still releasing its series through Netflix, the streaming platform gave its shows the freedom to go to darker places.

The Netflix Marvel shows did just that, they took their characters on serious, difficult journeys that explored issues

The Tempest • May 20th, 2021

Demi Lovato has come out as non-binary and we should talk about it

On Wednesday, May 19, 2021, Demi Lovato revealed that they identify as non-binary. The singer announced this on the first episode of their new podcast, 4D with Demi Lovato, before their conversation with Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender non-conforming writer and performer Lovato met after having a discussion about being non-binary with singer Sam Smith.

“Over the past year and a half, I’ve been doing some healing and self-reflective work,” the singer says in their video. “And through this work, I’ve h

The Tempest • April 15th, 2021

This is the reason why Hollywood's 'palatable feminism' is a huge problem

When Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was accused last month of abusive behavior by numerous actresses he worked with, it prompted something of a reevaluation of how truly feminist his works were.

Natasha Simons’ essay Reconsidering the Feminism of Joss Whedon explores this, noting that the character Buffy Summers, “as a Slayer, descends from a line that was literally created by men – a formation that stems directly from the male anxiety over an inability to create life the way

Medium • March 16th, 2023

Why The Wire Resonates More Today than When it Aired

With the news that the two deputies seen at the scene of Tyre Nichols’s beating will not be facing any charges nor losing their jobs despite violating a total of seven policies, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on how issues of police corruption and racial inequality has been portrayed in the media, and no other series has depicted these subjects quite as authentically as the HBO series The Wire.

Created by former BPD cop Ed Burns and former Sun journalist David Simon, The Wire acted as