Red flashing lights lit up the room. The annoying humming and buzzing felt like sheets of metal against my ear. The ruffling sounds fill the stiff, steep morning air as the other ninety-nine members of my neighborhood awake. With the little energy I had, I managed to get myself out of bed and stand in line as I waited for the food to be served. I grab a serving of coffee from the mechanical tray that lays across the line. The bitter taste seems to get worse every day. After getting ready for the day I head to the new office job that was appointed to me the day before, by my overseer. The jobs that my neighborhood was appointed to are very simple, boring, and painstakingly time-consuming. Our designated jobs consist of doing what any computer or machine can do, just at a much slower, less accurate rate. Last night our supervisors went over what we had to do. My job consisted of taking the English alphabet and changing words or phrases into weird symbols and characters that change every few minutes. I don’t understand why we do this, I just know we are one of the lucky neighborhoods. Most in this area do manual labor, while more skilled members that work with computers are taken in by the government. My neighborhood works from 10 am to 10 pm every day. After work, I went back to the living quarters. I haven’t spoken to anyone in my neighborhood since yesterday when we woke up here. Every time I try to speak it feels like my voice cuts out, my breath getting shorter after each thing I try to say. Not to mention the small head pain I feel after I attempt to talk. The pain grows the more I try to communicate with others.

It’s been about three months since I was here. The ninety-nine people that were originally here dwindled slowly over time. People stopped working, people tried retaliating and even attacking other members. These people were taken away by armed guards who put them down on the spot. Every day I try to look back on my first day and remember. I don’t understand why, but it felt like my first couple of months here just made sense. As if I was supposed to be here. I don’t remember why I am here, how I even got here, or even what life was like before this. Things that are as simple as seeing how someone’s face looks and remembering it, feel extremely difficult. These are the same people I have seen every day for the past ninety days, yet I still can’t recall how any of them look. Even the people who have power and can speak, I can’t seem to remember the face of. I’m only able to differentiate them by what they wear.

Today felt no different than others. Days blended into weeks, and weeks into months. However, today felt a bit off. I woke up about 2 hours earlier than the time we were supposed to wake up. I felt extremely sleep deprived, drowsy, and had very little energy to move. I heard my overseer talking, words faded in and out. Everything he said had no meaning, he was normally talking and I should’ve understood him, but I didn’t. I started to hear more people talking, slowly adding up on each other, hundreds of different voices clouded my mind. Suddenly laughter faded in from the voices and it caught on and slowly the incomprehensible noise turned into solid laughter from hundreds of voices. They suddenly just stopped for a brief moment, the lights started to flicker slowly at random. Everyone in my neighborhood was gone, the voices came back louder than before, this time scattered and more panicked. A dark figure emerged from the back of the room. I still felt drowsy and couldn’t move as the creature crept closer the lights flickered faster than before and the noise got louder and louder, some laughter turning into screams while others remained, speech began to form only to break off again into a wall of noise that felt inescapable. As the creature got closer my body began to shake uncontrollably while my vision blurred and faded. My shaky vision soon collided with another, as the morning alarm went off, I became less drowsy soon realizing the pullback into reality is a lot harder than being pushed into haziness.

Later that day I sat in my station and got to work. A few hours later, about 10 people entered the facility in uniforms that were unfamiliar to me. We were instructed to wait in our work station for these new people to meet with us individually. A man with dark messy, hair approached and inspected me. He pulled out a bright yellow syringe filled with blue liquid and plunged it into my arm. I felt an instant, sharp pain in my upper back. I heard bones crack as if they started to deteriorate against it. I don’t even recall falling to the floor. I felt my life, my own being, being taken away from me. My vision transition from complete darkness, back into a new world. I laid against a concrete wall in a park. What I was wearing had completely changed. I was now wearing a black shirt and jeans. The shirt read, The Awoken, with the picture of a man yelling into a microphone. My surroundings seem oddly familiar yet extremely alien to me. The picture of the man who injected me fell into my mind. I was able to remember how he looked. His bruised nose, green eyes, messy hair, and his entire facial structure seemed incredibly vivid in my mind, much more vivid than how I would ever remember anyone else. Seeing the trees, sidewalk, road, and grass for what it feels like the first time was incredible. Everything felt so new but extremely normal. I was able to speak, my voice felt even more familiar than anything else that was around me. Creepily and eerily familiar. It was the voice of the man, the man that I could so vividly remember that took my life.

I rushed to the nearest pond to view my reflection and there it was. That same face. I suddenly heard an extremely loud bang and felt a harsh spike in the back of my head. It was only a brief second but the pain I felt was immeasurable. I fell to the floor covered in blood, my last sight was the same man holding a gun, me. My body clenched, it was a different time of day. It was dark out. I held a rifle laid out on the ground in a remote area. In the distance there was a march, those in the march were heavily armored soldiers. The man that took my life was right there. He was in the center of it all, he was speaking into the microphone aggressively and passionately, I didn’t understand what he was saying, it was in some kind of foreign language. I felt an uncontrollable urge, I moved my rifle ever so slightly until lined up and I took the shot. I shot the man who took my life, in another life, me.

To start, the further the music industry advances over time, so will the eventual equality that will arise from itself. Viewing Spotify and Apple music data from 2017 to 2019 according to chartmetric indicates that men have an incredibly constant rate at which they perform well. Meanwhile, women artists perform consistently better or worse than men at short bursts at a time. The reason for this is due to the insane market share men holdup in amounts of popularity. Even among female listeners, male artists listen to a higher percentage of male artists, according to Everynoise.com. Regardless, these statistics have been expected to even out in the future on their own.

Furthermore, when it comes to the performing arts, gender and race bias becomes more present. Evaluation of one's musical ability can be hindered or perceived by the analyst before the musician even plays a single note. The predicted perceived musical ability even changes when the analyst's background changes, when the style changes, and even when the instrumentation the performer uses changes. According to Journalist Storage (JSTOR), "There is also evidence that teacher expectation can influence student achievement, especially among minority students." Despite this fact, I still believe that the government should have no work here deliberately affecting these musical performances. There are too many variables at play that affect the perceived performance of an evaluator.
Additionally, there is a social stigma behind songs that cover subjects of sexual fantasy among women, despite this kind of material being common among male rap and hip-hop artists. According to Vox Media, "In its success and its backlash, the song exposes America’s scathing double standard." in reference to Cardi B's hit song, WAP. The assessment provided by Vox has been reinforced and supported by the immense popularity gained by WAP, as it was number 1 on Spotify charts in the U.S. and even globally at one point. A government administrating rules that restrict or censor these kinds of songs is not something we want. However, the stigma of these kinds of songs persisting can lead to less acceptance of this female view when it is, in essence, the same as it is for males.

Giving the power to handle and manage music to governments is never a good idea because it is incredibly personal. In other words, creating legal guidelines to mandate the creation and evaluation of music for a fair and accurate representation of race and gender in music is incredibly complex and is better left alone than tampered with. Music is something that is incredibly ingrained in our cultures and embodies who we are in some cases. Ultimately It shouldn't be controlled by a governing body, because of the inherent value that is associated with and given to music.

Throughout the anime, the author focuses on the clear division of Light’s and L’s perspectives on what justice is and how it should be applied. The anime is constantly bending our perceptions of good and evil and rightful justice as depending on how your view is shaped, you will view Light as an anti-hero or the rightful hero of the story. Death Note heavily focuses on this idea, and because of this the viewer chooses who and what they’re rooting for; the cruel justice of Light Yagami or the flawed law system presented by the police force and shadow hero L. Light Yagami himself even deals with moral dilemmas brought upon as his nickname given to him by the media, “Kira” becomes more separated from himself and his original beliefs on justice. Death Note is constantly playing with how the viewer sees justice and the morality that is applicable behind it.

When Light finds the dropped death note from the Shinigami realm it starts the call to adventure; he gets home and tests out the book’s capabilities. After using it once he faces a moral dilemma with himself; to keep the book and use it to become a “god” or to refuse the use brought to him by the Shinigami realm. This marks the refusal of the call. Supernatural aid is given to Light when Ryuk, the Shinigami who dropped the book then visits Light as he gives him aid and assistance with his use of the Death Note and even offers Light more powers at the expense of half of his lifespan. Light crosses the threshold when he expresses that he will be willing to sacrifice his own life and devote it to bringing down justice across the world by using the book to kill off criminals and prisoners. However, after extensive use of the book, the government begins to attempt to intervene and try to understand what is happening by using one of the best agents they had who was simply known as “L” to keep his name hidden from the public. The anime continues like this and follows the hero’s Journey pretty neatly to the last episode.

We can identify some archetypes throughout the anime. For example, Ryuk represents the trickster and the mentor archetype as he helps Light understand how the book is used, however only for his benefit. Misa can be identified as the companion as she falls in love with Light’s ideology of justice and sacrifices half of her remaining lifespan for him. L and Mello represent Light’s shadow as they are the only two people that remained able to also understand the death note’s weaknesses and compete with Light. These two characters are incredibly important to the plot and relate to the theme of Death Note as they directly oppose Light’s ideology of Justice and believe in the system put in place by the government. Death Note uses the concepts and opposing ideologies of justice to provoke conversation and make the viewer think about what truly constitutes fair justice. Light’s Ideology of justice is very preventive and is used to create a perfect world while L and Mello’s Ideology focuses on reactionary

justice to create a realistically working justice system that doesn’t intend to become a utopia. Death Note follows the hero’s journey tightly as Light evolves and changes as a character sacrificing his being to devolve into his persona “Kira.” The anime also has many identifiable character archetypes found throughout the anime that interact with the overarching theme of justice and good and evil. Ultimately, Death Note is a complex anime that touches on topics that get the audience to think and fall into the categories brought by the Light and his shadow counterparts.

The bystander effect is what causes people to avoid helping someone who is actively in danger. The bystander effect has never been more relevant than now. According to brandongaille.com “When there are four or more people who are bystanders to an emergency situation, the likelihood that at least one of them will help is just 31%.” This shows how unless someone is willing to take action and help during an emergency that there is a 69% chance that no one helps the person in danger. As the group of people surrounding the incident, the chances of the group trying to help or report it, decrease as the expectation for someone to help rises. An example of this is presented by canadasafetycouncil.org, in which they reported a 1964 incident of a woman being murdered outside of her apartment with 84 people that were within audible distance of the murder. This happened for about half an hour before someone called the police in which they arrived within two minutes. This shows, exemplifies, and reinforces the fact that heroes are needed within our society.

Heroes are not only good for combating the prevalence of the bystander effect. They can also largely serve as an ideal, moral compass, and role model. A hero can give insight on real life issues and problems in which they’re way of thinking can be applied. The website Psychology Today touches on how heroes inspire listeners themselves to become heroes by transforming their psychological reasoning. The heroes we follow, largely define who we are as people because of how they are able to communicate their way of thinking which is usually preferred by society.

Heroes are largely needed and are beneficial for society. They give people a chance to see the ideal societal role model and use it to help others in need. They are people we are able to look up to and admire, despite their flaws. The bystander effect also massively limits the amount of everyday heroes we are able to find, so we should make our best use out of them. Ultimately heroes are useful to us as a society and we should be acknowledging that and actively trying to all become a little more heroic.