#[ ordinary deviation from external reality ]

[neitherfleshnorfleshless]

*  SHAKESPEARE  AESTHETICS.

MACBETH.

the howl of wolves. moonless nights. dirt under fingernails. stained silk. chattering teeth. voices hoarse and cracked. rotting fruit. echoing drums. dry heaving. hanging cobwebs. stifling humidity. bloodshot eyes. the roughness of rusted steel. wild rosebushes. muscle cramps. the sound of splintering wood.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.

crackling fires. ivy crawling on stone. the faint music of running water. petrichor. dirty, bare feet. tattered clothing. thistledown. wilted wildflower crowns. late evening birdsong. curling leaves. a symphony of croaking frogs. drifting feathers. the eerie sound of windchimes at night. humming bees. beds of clover.

ROMEO AND JULIET.

warm golden lamplight. worn shoes. crumbling brick walls. whispered poetry. embroidered satin. cool, hazy mornings. tousled hair. rosewater. flushed cheeks. distant orchestras. unfinished marble statues. cobblestone streets. loose threads. ink smudged on parchment. tapping fingers. dust illuminated by sunlight. poison vials.

HAMLET.

shattered glass. a cluster of fraying ribbons. unanswered knocks on doors. lingering dampness. white noise. inexplicable drafts. migraines. bleeding ears. the taste of metal. reflected mirrors. dry, cracked lips. the sound of tearing paper. fogged windows. memories of dreams. tarnished silver. protruding veins.

tagged by: @drdumaurier tagging: @fionagoode, @namcdesire, @starliingisms & @paintsspatter (both of your blogs yo), @godblooded, @streetxcat, @shcsallrightnow

[thecreaminhiscoffee]

One would assume, after everything, that Jessica would be more afraid of men than she is of women, but this is not the case. Even though most of her clients were men, kinks were not an indication of potential problems. She was okay with kinks (for the most part - Dip notwithstanding). Her main problems came less from negative sexual practices and more to out and out abuse, such as she received particularly at the hands of the DeGreasy Brothers and Haruko - and although the DeGreasy Brothers facilitated her abuse and attempted to murder her, Haruko had the worst effect of all. As a result, Jessica is, by nature, both more afraid of women and more trusting of them. Despite knowing what she does about Haruko, she knows that - from an owner perspective - Eleanor was the best of all her owners. After her marriage, after she stopped her work in Toon porn and prostitution, it was women who were more of an issue - not a threat, necessarily, but jealousy (such as Dolores’s in relation to Eddie). Jessica can read men more easily - in most circumstances. Most of the influences on her early life were men. Women are confusing to her - despite being very much woman herself and very much able to use that to her advantage, that relies on a very sexual reaction. Sex she understands. Emotions are harder. Which is not to say that men don’t have them or use them to propel action, but that where they stereotypically react more on a physical level, women react more on an emotional level, and because she does not understand emotions, she has a harder time with women, who intuitively use those more than men. This sounds super sexist - but to be honest? Jessica would have just as hard a time understanding a man who reacted more on an emotional level than a physical one (which is why she is with Roger, who is more emotional than physical - out of jealousy, he writes a love letter to her - the movie itself comments on how odd that is, how unlikely). It’s less a gender thing and more an emotion/physical thing.

[expositionhastogosomewhere]

jessica rabbit is a salazzle and bandit is a salandit.

[aeipathix-blog]

Both Rin and, to a lesser extent, Jess have an extremely open and active sexual lifestyle during the band years - to the point of practicing exhibitionism during their shows and eventually inviting show-goers on stage with them to join in (which typically extends an open invitation to join them afterwards as well).  They are also both extremely heavy drug users - primarily marijuana, cocaine, and heroin (as opposed to, say LSD).  However, there are major differences between the two of them and how they go about these activities. Rin does not exercise caution.  At all.  In the slightest.  (With the exception of condoms sometimes as that is typical practice.  Even then, this is a rare occurrence - if someone does not want to use them, she will not force them to do so.)  She assumes that her partner is clean in the same way that she assumes that her needles are clean - which is to say, they might not be but she will often believe they are regardless.  This is less naivete and more simple recklessness. Jess, on the other hand, after her first STD due to Rin’s assuming influence, is much more cautious.  She will always ask to make sure their on stage partners are healthy, and when they aren’t, will refuse to participate in anything after the show (on stage is primarily for hand stuff - which is not to say you cannot contract things that way, but that unless she has a cut on her hand, it is much less likely).  Even though Rin will not make sure of a condom or a clean needle, Jess will.  As a result, even though she still gets STDs, they are significantly less common, and with two exceptions, she doesn’t get pregnant. Rin has probably gotten pregnant multiple times, but she views this like a disease and treats it accordingly with pills and abortions.  The first time Jess was pregnant, she did have an abortion but she told no one (primarily because it was Kyle’s child).  She is less likely to view pregnancy as a disease, even though she has an extreme fear of it (due to pregnancy being a major influence in her mother’s death).  The second time Jess planned on following through with the pregnancy - abortion being a traumatizing experience for her - but lost the child (it was stillborn). That said, when Jess became pregnant, she cut everything out of her lifestyle.  No drugs, no sex, no nothing that would harm the child (with the exception of a glass of wine every now and again). She stopped everything cold turkey, and although she still drinks afterwards and may indulge in cigarettes or marijuana, she primarily remains clean. On the other hand, while Jess was pregnant and Rin was preparing to be the child’s other mother, she did not quit her lifestyle and, in fact, contracted HIV from one of her sexual partners at the time.  Rin did not find out about this until much later, after her return to America - three years at the least, although it is potentially longer.  Rin’s recklessness led to a refusal to have herself tested until she had another STD for which she needed medication, which means she is just as likely to have spread the disease to other people as well under the belief - the assumption - that she did not have it. The only reason Jess did not contract it from Rin is that during the time period Rin had it 1) Jess was not sexually active and 2) Rin was in Japan away from Jess.  By the time Rin returned to the states, Jess had moved on and was not interested in pursuing a relationship with her again.  However, if Rin had contracted HIV earlier, Jess likely would have gotten it from her - because regardless how many times Jess told Rin to get herself tested, and regardless how many times Rin told Jess she got tested, she never did unless she needed medication for something that already showed up. I expect that Rin dies by the time she is 35 due to her recklessness.

[ofmonstersandlollipops-blog]

3,7

Backstory Ask Meme

3. Is your muse’s backstory relatable to you?

Mmm...yes and no.  It depends.  Aspects of it definitely.  The idea of getting a college degree in an area that she loves and is passionate about and then getting stuck in a dead-end job, most definitely.  And I definitely think that the relationships she has with her family - with her dad - is.  For me, anyway.

But not all of it?  And I think that’s kind of important because, like, there are decisions she made that I understand and that follow through from her personality and everything she’s involved in that...I understand them, but I don’t relate to them.  If that makes sense?

7. What part of your muse’s backstory makes you smile?

Her relationship with her dad.  Like, honestly, I love Dana’s relationship with her dad.  I love that they’re family and he’s cool with who she is and takes care to use nicknames that fit her identity and tries to understand and still loves her regardless of everything.  That so much of who she is now comes from who he was and how she chooses to honor him....also her relationship with ghosts and bogeymen.  I love that she was freaked out and then became besties with her house ghost because the ghost was like no, don’t freak out, you’re super cool and then just, everywhere she lives, intentionally continues that.  Just.  Besties with ghosts.  Hangs out.  I love that flowing from that first interaction.

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 308

THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE: Part 1

Ancient people, considering it very important to determine Earth'shape, derived two important clues from the night skies. According to Aristotle (384-322 bce), these were lunar eclipses and the North Star. Lunar eclipses occur when the sun, Earth, and the moon line up in such a way that Earth temporarily blocks the sun's light from reaching the moon while its circular shadow gradually crosses the moon's face. The North Star appears lower in the sky the further south we go: at the Equator it lies directly on the horizon, at a latitude of 45 it is 45 above the horizon; and at the North Pole it is directly overhead. However, it is not visible south of the Equator.(1) As both of these indicate a spherical Earth, the scholars of that time discarded the idea of a flat Earth.

The more challenging question was how to determine Earth's size. Eratosthenes of Alexandria (third century bce) had a simple yet brilliant idea: insert a gnomon (a vertical stick) into a level piece of ground. This enabled him to determine noon's exact time (when the shadow was the shortest). It was also used as a compass, for in the Northern Hemisphere the gnomon's shadow points north.

But can such a simple device determine Earth's size? Aswan, located about 500 miles south of Alexandria, sits on the Tropic of Cancer. So, at noon of June 21 (the summer solstice), a gnomon inserted there has no shadow. By doing just that in Alexandria, Eratosthenes found that the angle was 1/50 of a circle's circumference (i.e., 2p/50). In other words, the angle at Earth's center corresponding to the arc between Aswan and Alexandria on Earth's surface is 1/50 of a circle's circumference. Since the distance between Alexandria and Aswan is 500 miles, Earth's circumference should be 25,000 miles, which is its actual circumference.(2) Thus, Earth's size and shape was pretty well established over 2,000 years ago.

This knowledge was lost to Europe when the ancient civilizations crumbled. But Islamic civilization and culture, which was rising at roughly the same time as the West was declining, produced scholars and scientists who translated and refined quite a bit of this ancient knowledge. For example, in 1424 al-Kashi used Archimedes' method of computing to determine its values to 16 decimal places. Ulug Beg compiled the greatest star catalog known at that time. During al-Ma'mun reign (813-833), al-Khwarizmi measured one degree of latitude on Earth's surface and obtained the result of 57 miles. This means that Earth's circumference is 360x57 = 20,520 miles.(3) Thus, in the ninth century, Muslim scientists knew that Earth was spherical and had a good idea of its size. Most Europeans at that time, believed that Earth was flat and the universe impenetrable.

The Qur'an describes Earth's geographical shape and change in that shape: Do they not see how We gradually shrink the land from its outlying borders? Is it then they who will be victors? (21:44).(4) The reference to shrinking could relate to the now-known fact that Earth is compressed at the poles.

At a time when people generally believed that Earth was flat and stationary, the Qur'an explicitly and implicitly revealed that it is round. More unexpectedly still, it also says that its precise shape is more like an ostrich egg than a sphere: After than He shaped Earth like an egg, whence He caused to spring forth the water thereof, and the pasture thereof (79: 30-32).

The verb daha' means "to shape like an egg," and its derived noun da'hia is still used to mean "an egg." As this may have appeared incorrect to pre-modern scientists, some interpreters misunderstood the word's meaning as "stretched out," perhaps fearing that its literal meaning would only confuse people. Modern scientific instruments recently established that Earth is shaped more like an egg than a perfect sphere, and that there is a slight flattening around the poles and a slight curving around the Equator.

THE WEST RECEIVES "LOST" KNOWLEDGE

An enduring Western myth is that Columbus had to overcome a pervasive belief that he would sail off the edge of a flat Earth by sailing west to Asia. This myth stems in part from compressing the past and conflating the early Middle Ages, when Europe's belief in a flat Earth was widespread, with the late Middle Ages, when Europe's knowledge had caught up with and partially surpassed that of ancient Greece and medieval Islam.

During the Renaissance, Europe came into contact with "lost" knowledge by translating Greek and Arabic works. One important book was Ptolemy's Geography, which accepts Earth's spherical shape. Geography once more became available in the original Greek, which was not widely known in the thirteenth century. This book was translated into Latin in the late fifteenth century and became widely known. Columbus owned a copy printed in 1479.

By the time of Columbus, the idea of a spherical Earth was widely accepted in theory. Columbus believed this and wanted to sail west to the eastern shores of Asia. Earth's size was the real issue. Ptolemy's estimate was as much as 20% too low. Also, he vastly overestimated Asia's size. The resulting map depicted an Earth with oceans between Europe's western tip and Asia's eastern tip, which was well within range of the provisions that ships of that time could carry. Columbus' estimate of the distance to Asia was wrong, as was his assumption that there was no land between Europe and Asia. Fortunately for him, these two "wrongs" made a "right," with all of its attendant fame and glory.

THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE

So far, we have given external information (i.e., lunar eclipses and the North Star) about Earth's spherical shape based upon its position in the universe. If we use this method to determine the universe's shape, we must observe it in an external manner. As this is not possible, let's reconsider the question of Earth's shape with a slight change: Can we determine Earth's shape by using measurements and observations done only on its surface, and thereby acquire intrinsic information that can inform us of the universe's shape?

Karl Gauss (1777-1855) answered this question positively by inventing "curvature," which measures a given surface's "bumpiness" at a specific point. A flat piece of paper has no bumps and so its curvature is zero. But if we look at a sphere at each point, we see some bumpiness. Gauss called such bumpiness "positive curvature." Another kind of bumpiness is "saddle-shaped." We can think of positive curvature at a point as follows: If we put a piece of flat paper on a surface at that point, the surface lies totally on one side of the paper. But in negatively curved space, this cannot happen.

To describe this concept formally (minus some technicalities), assume constant curvatures on the shapes in question. In other words, the shape is totally symmetric and every point has the same amount of bumpiness. There are several ways to describe curvature. Gauss's formulation for curvature is brilliant. But before that, let's look at his intrinsic proof for a spherical Earth. Imagine an orchard so large that any deviation from flatness is perceptible. First plant trees on the Equator every 100 kms (the approximate distance between two meridians on the Equator). Then plant another tree 100 kms (the approximate distance between two parallels) north of each tree, and do this several times. If Earth is flat, the distance between them would be same. But since the distance between the two consecutive trees (on the same parallel) decreases, Earth is spherical.

Having seen that an intuitively positive curvature implies a spherical shape, we want to follow this method to get an idea about the universe's shape. Georg Riemann (1826-66), trying to do just that, invented "curved space" and explained how to compute its curvature. We could launch six probes at equally spaced points along the Equator, and have each of them continually monitor the distance to the two adjacent probes. If space is flat, the distances at any point in its journey would equal the distance from the probe to Earth's center (an equilateral triangle). For negative curvature, the distance between probes would grow faster than the distance the probe had traveled from Earth; in positively curved space, the distance between probes would grow slower than the distance covered by the probes since leaving Earth.

There are two common misconceptions about the curvature of space. The first one is that curvature is a rather vague or qualitative concept. In reality, it is quite precise and assigns to each point in space and each direction at that point an exact number determined by the shape of the space near the specific location. The second one is that to describe curved space, one must think of it as "curving" into a fourth dimension. This can be useful in visualizing curved space for people familiar with four-dimensional Euclidean space (four-dimensional coordinate space). Unfortunately, science popularizers and science fiction writers often lace this concept with mystical overtones. This is more likely to confuse average people. In other words, measurements made in ordinary three-dimensional space may disagree with the results embodied in Euclidean geometry, for curvature measures the degree and kind of deviation from the Euclidean model.

Riemann also proposed a radically different (non-Euclidian) model for the universe: "spherical space." This would be the case if space had a constant positive curvature. Based on this, he said that the universe should be a hypersphere (a three-dimensional sphere). The usual sphere is two-dimensional and lives in three-dimensional Euclidean space. In general, n-dimensional sphere is described as in the (n+1)-dimensional Euclidean space, and the set of points whose distance from origin (the point 0) is 1.

The more intuitive way to describe hypersphere comes from the usual sphere. Starting from a point in the sphere called the South Pole, and as we go in a direction in the sphere, we see concentric circles becoming larger until we reach the Equator, after which they become smaller and we finally reach North Pole. The situation is similar in hypersphere. Start from a point in the sphere called the South Pole, and as we go in a direction in the sphere, the concentric "spheres" become larger until we reach the Equator, after which they become smaller until we reach the North Pole. We can generalize this concept for any sphere of any dimension.

Earlier philosophers speculated that the universe was infinite in extent; others (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Newton, and Leibniz) rejected this as implausible. But the alternative seemed equally dubious: If it did not go on forever, then "like the flat Earth" it had to end somewhere. And, what was beyond that? This model solved the Euclidean paradox of the universe's "edge," for if the universe is positively curved, it can be finite in extent and still not have any "edge." In Riemann's model, every part of the universe looks just like every other part, as far as shapes and measurements go.

Qur'an 51:47-48 mentions the universe's spreading out or expansion in space: And the firmament: We constructed it with power and skill, and We are spreading it. This verse reveals that the distance between celestial bodies is increasing, which means that the universe is expanding.

[witchen-kitch-lanvi]

𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔸𝕊𝕋ℝ𝕆ℕ𝔸𝕌𝕋  |

Space

Very few individuals can appreciate the beauty that space has to offer whilst holding the reality that it could annihilate their person within mere seconds with an unlimited, unknowable quantity of circumstances.

Very few individuals can safely hold the reality that the world is full of an inconceivable infinitum of possible catastrophes whilst living in a mental reality where they are safe within that world of possible catastrophes.

And only a select group of those individuals compose the makeup of astronauts that possess the skill necessary to go beyond the known world.

An even smaller quantity of people take that step to explore the unknown within themselves. So, it is no wonder that only a handful of individuals are ever inclined to externally make such a step.

No individual can deny that a fear of the external world is a fear well founded. What separates these perceptions of the same vacuum is context.

The unknown has inspired awe and fear in humans for as long as the peculiar and unorthodox have existed. It is the human condition to denigrate and reject what we do not wish to conceive about the world, especially if it threatens the internalised values we use to perceive it. Anything outside our understanding threatens to make us depart from this sense of self we possess. Our perceptions can feel as though the external world are attacking those inner values that are born of the latent fears entrenched within the folds of our inner worlds.

It is unsurprising then, that it is an agoraphobic approaching this discussion.

I

I identified strongly with the belief that I was under a perceived attack from the demands of the external world. Demands that you can imagine, deviated little from the demands placed on the ordinary individual who has surpassed the educational requirements to be considered an adult.

I was convinced my terror of being exposed as the failure I felt I was within would be unveiled if I ever decided to participate in reality. I spent months machinating upon delusions of an eldritch entity that existed and had selected me out of all possible candidates to expose and unveil as the failure of an adult that I felt I was becoming. A voice of fear biased divination would often whisper in my ear prophecies of ‘death inducing failure’ and ‘annihilation’ if I ever chose to participate in the world. With this fear’s immense stranglehold, choice became an illusion that fear presented me and yet had already chosen on my behalf.

Avoidance is the natural consecutive step to fear, the rational person concludes.

The individual retreats from the space beyond their habitation and crosses no further than the threshold between the pavement and the doorway.

Self isolation offers them no relief from fear of the external world and only serves to fulfill a prophecy of failure and isolation predicted by the hyper-terrorised inner monologue that exists only to serve itself. Lack of exposure only continues to exemplify the fear that is already there.

“The world is not safe and it has no place for people like me. It will harm and annihilate me for the coward that I am, and in doing so I will experience social and mental death.”

It is not often the individual considers returning to the pivotal moments, where they remained in the threshold between the door and the space beyond.

“I would tell that person they were creating the very reality that terrified them into those doors and their bedroom.”

The Astronaut

The agoraphobic wants to believe they can only go through life with adequate or partial participation. Enough to satisfy the illusion of normality and abate concerns that would bring about a confrontation. Consequently, they live their internal crucifixion as an external crucifixion between staying within and going beyond what they understand and know.

The individual yearns for the isolated liberties offered by the identity of The Astronaut. The Astronaut doesn't have to participate in the hardships of the external world if they live within the abyss of fear induced crucifixion. The individual does not have to leave their spacecraft and space of habitation that they associate with safety. Adulthood is often a threat to agoraphobic individuals because it requires them to participate in their environment. They find themself subject to unlimited unknowns in regards to their environment, their place within that environment and the multiple factors that predate their existence such as income, and education. The individual does not want to be identified as the failure within a world where they are supposed to possess the ‘go-getter’ attitude that juxtaposes their fear of the external world and life.

The mind is often discontent when it cannot work in probabilities and binary. The world offers neither. The brain is terrified of every possible thing that could harm the individual, or expose them for the terrible person they feel they are within. The individual’s mind is often swallowed by self flagellation and reminders that they possess the energy ‘to act’ within the world and yet are either too fearful or appear to refuse to do it.

As one begins to reclaim that vacuum they inadvertently confront its most fear inducing facets.

“If the world does intend for me to suffer externally in some horrible sporadic misfortune, then no amount of suffering I can do within can prevent it from enacting my awful fate. If I am to vomit, to die, or to suffer, there is nothing the piddling little voice in my head can do about it, no matter how much it whispers. It can only try and protect me from potential threats.

However, I recognise that if I live my life trying to protect myself from potential threats then I am no longer living at all. I would be living by the reality of the voice that sees a possibility for disaster in everything and in living by that voice, I would find joy and relief in nothing.”

Upon this revelation, a subverted understanding of The Astronaut symbol was nascent.

As I cultivated my innerworld, I embodied The Astronaut that explored willingly.

I was the individual who dared to plunder the eldritch depths of my person and psyche to observe the exploded stars and the nascent planets birthed from my growing understanding of myself.

I was one identity and then the other and I hold that The Astronaut and space possess the ability to exist within two lenses. Space and the unknown are either explored willingly within the enclosed safety of the self or they are retreated into by those in immense fear of what is within them as well as beyond them. I was and am still The Astronaut on occasion, as we all are.

I stress only the importance of looking within to understand the without.

‘What is without within is within without.’

👩‍🚀🐝Witchen Kitch Lanvi 🐝👩‍🚀

[anancientfate-blog]

Mireille suffers from extreme nightmares.  They started when she was young, shortly after the fairly traumatizing experience with Silvana.  Her mind would replay the scene in her dreams or bring the other girl back in a much more bloodthirsty manner, and she would wake up screaming.  Sometimes her mother would calm her down, but more often than not her father would be the one to send her back to sleep with the melodie from his pocket watch. After her parents’ deaths and the massacre in Corsica, her nightmares returned, this time much worse.  Sometimes it was Silvana killing her parents, sometimes it was some unnamed presence.  She still woke up screaming, but Uncle Claude was less...comforting in those situations.  As she grew and he trained her, the nightmares became no less frequent but took on different forms (failed jobs, being killed by other assassins, etc.) as well as occasionally bringing back the memories of her parents’ deaths and Silvana.  She stopped screaming, but she snapped awake just the same. This continued into her adulthood, even living alone, and even with her fiance.  This is something Kirika would note (since it is implied they slept in the same bed - not necessarily from a sexual standpoint, but hey, if you’ve got two assassins living together, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?) and, I would assume, help with them.  This helps explain why they were so close during the Silvana episodes, particularly while Mireille was preparing to meet her again (when she knew she’d been seen) - in particularly unconscious and vulnerable moments, she would reach out instinctively for that comfort.

[katchwreck]

“It is worth while to devote some attention to the prospects of the international situation as seen by Comrade Trotsky in face of all the facts of the present moment, of all the proofs to the contrary, he still speaks of a continued democratic pacifist “era.” This proves the strength of his trend towards the Right.

But this is not the whole truth. No one can understand Trotsky who sees in him nothing more than an ordinary opportunist. Comrade Trotsky is not a one-handed man. He has a right hand and a left hand. We already had the opportunity of seeing him in two roles in his interpretation of the “German October.”

And with Comrade Trotsky this does not happen by accident: it is a general rule. In actual practice he always represents two different “types” so to speak. One type deviates to the right, the other to the left. A superficial observer might conclude that Comrade Trotsky vacillates constantly between the two types. But this only appears to be the case. Comrade Trotsky is not a vacillating man. He generally adopts a definite—but wrong—course.

In reality the case is this: In his actions he deviates towards the Right, but he describes these actions in Left, very Left, terms. The Right type is the type of the man of action who speaks little, who does his work and says nothing about it. The Left type, is a man, anxious to play a prominent public role, a man who talks a great deal and does very little, and knows little about work except to describe it. But the descriptions given by the Left type differ entirely from the work actually done by the Right type.

Comrade Trotsky is not simply an ordinary opportunist. He possesses a finely developed sense of the æsthetic. He feels the æsthetic defects of the external form of opportunist policy. The external forms of politics please him more and more in proportion to their deviation to the Left. In art this may be very good, even excellent, and the Bible praises those whose right hand knoweth not what their left hand doeth; but in politics every inconsistency between form and contents, between description and actuality, between theory and practice, is invariably detrimental.”

— O.W Kuusinen

[cruximpetus]

Monica would get along with Flowey

honestly?  i don’t think she would.  asriel, yes, maybe.  but not flowey.

massive spoilers for both doki doki literature club and undertale under the cut.

the other thing is that the undertale world continues to exist even when the player isn’t actively a part of it.  flowey wants the player there because he’s done everything he can and is bored with the world - because he’s saved and reloaded so many times - but the world still exists.  it’s still real within the context of the world - and if the player doesn’t come back, it still continues.this is a stark contrast to the doki doki literature club world, where as soon as the player begins playing, the world unravels.  as soon as monika becomes aware, the world no longer exists - it’s RGB and pixels and sine/cosine/tangent - the player leaves the game, and monika is basically stuck in a living hell.  there’s such a stark difference between their circumstances.and she would look at flowey and think that he is extremely selfish.  she, at least, loves the player, whereas flowey just wants them so that he won’t be bored.  (and, yes, you can make the argument re: asriel that he loves the player, but that’s why i’m saying monika would be cool with asriel but not with flowey.)  monika’s not about being bored, monika’s about hey, i’m stuck in hell here and you are literally the only light in my life.  to the point that she does learn from her mistakes when she gets deleted, she does bring back the game as it is just without herself in it, and in the bad ending when sayori starts to screw up shit, she says no and deletes everything because either she is president and gets screwed or someone else is president and gets screwed and no one can be happy, not even the player, so it’s better that they just not exist.monika is self-sacrificial - eventually - in a way that flowey is not - and monika still cares about the girls in the club regardless of the fact that she knows they’re not real.  she’s not playing a game, she’s not trying to win, she just wants to not be in hell - heck, she doesn’t even delete the characters (other than natsuki) until she gives up on trying to find a way that they can still be in the club and still exist with her and the player - she’s not trying to drive them to suicide, she’s----I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS ON MONIKA OBVIOUSLY, AND YES, I UNDERSTAND THE FOURTH WALL BREAKING COMPARISON BUT FLOWEY’S MOTIVATIONS AND CHARACTER AND WORLD ARE SO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FROM MONIKA’S that there really isn’t a good comparison.  Asriel works better.  (Because despite Asriel and Flowey being the same, they aren’t the same, if that makes sense?  They play differently, they act differently, they are differently, which is why Asriel himself will tell you that when he becomes Flowey again to not think of him as him.  Because they aren’t the same.  Not really.)

[neitherfleshnorfleshless]

How does your muse score on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised?

On each criterion, the subject is ranked on a 3-point scale: (0 = item does not apply, 1 = item applies somewhat, 2 = item definitely applies). The scores are summed to create a rank of 0 to 40. Most people score around a 5. Anyone who scores 30 and above is probably a psychopath.

- Do you exhibit glib and superficial charm? 1 - Do you have a grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self? 2 - Do you have an excess need for stimulation or proneness to boredom? 2 - Are you a pathological liar? 1 - Are you cunning and manipulative? 2 - Do you have lack of remorse or guilt? 0 - Do you have shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)? 0 - Are you callous or do you lack empathy? 0 - Do you have a parasitic lifestyle? 0 - Do you have poor behavioral controls? 0 - Do you have a history of sexual promiscuity? 0 - Did you display early behavior problems? 0 - Do you lack realistic long-term goals? 1 - Are you overly impulsive? 0 - Are you irresponsible? 0 - Do you fail to accept responsibility for own actions? 0 - Have you had many short-term romantic relationships? 0 - Do you have a history of juvenile delinquency? 0 - Have you experienced a revocation of conditional release (broken probation)? 0 - Do you display criminal versatility? 1

MY MUSE’S SCORE: 10 / 40

tagged by: @sickassjigsaw tagging: @monstricidal, @godblooded (mostly i want the comp between alana and kitty), @streetxcat, @afraidofchange (FOR JOAN), @superintcndent

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

War Against the Information Age A Future of Mass Social Control

As capitalist imperialism consolidates its economic borders through an ongoing paramilitarisation process and harmonised internal policing structure to cope with increased external war and social-ecological collapse, there is an amplification of repression in response to the manufactured ‘crisis’ of the bankers. Enough decentralisation in the hegemony is maintained to allow internal security services to retain sufficient self-rule to operate according to the local situations, but generally speaking , the areas of amplification — ‘terrorism’ and immigration (specifically mass incarceration and deportation) — correspond with a rise in an encouraged nationalism and the prison-society.

The legislature of the new authoritarianism is in fact not a new set of laws, but rather the amplification and conjunction of existing laws that carry themselves forward to meet “new threats”. The prison-society is firstly an information-age authoritarian social model, as information technology and the new sciences are the key to its infrastructural progress and evolution. The prison-society is not just the regime of ‘intelligent’ surveillance cameras, databases, police-stations and prisons, it is urban planning, biometrics, contactless smart chips, electronic tagging and pattern recognition. It is satellite mapping, private security armies, automated drones and unmanned border planes. It is universalisation of social welfare systems, banking and corporate services. It is telephone voice analysis, high-definition CCTV, facial-recognition systems, “X-Ray” microwave scanners, covert units of police for breaking and entry, bugging and tailing, and the global surveillance network, Echelon. It is blacklists of ‘subversives’, ‘criminals’, ‘immigrants’ and ‘terrorists’. It is concepts and viral messages from the powerful, beamed directly into your head 24 hours a day, reprogramming your reality through television, newspapers, advertising, radio and internet.

It is the strength of the marketing poll, the consumer survey and the pressure group. It is the tax office, the exchange rate, the currencies and their manipulation. It is the details of countless numbers of individuals being processed by machines. It is statistics and their virtualisation.

It is in the minutiae; it controls your existence without you even seeing a prison-guard, it controls your routine, sets the clock, sets the debt and spends the wage. It fits the lock and fills the cell. It is an industry, a society, a way of living. It is the future you were born for, and the life of regulatory servility it forms people to fulfil.

Embryonic, it is distributed and skeletal in form at present, but already controls all important state structures in the post-industrial centres of power. To a lesser extent in the peripheries, such as South East Asia and Latin America, the prison-society is reconciling and overcoming the contradictions inherent in the classical fascist and dictatorial social control model through consumerism. The control society being constructed gathers enough information to assess individual activity and potential for deviation from top-down generated norms. This includes monitoring physical features (eg: maintaining a national computerised biometric and DNA database etc.) and location (eg: GPS, mobile-phone location, financial services tracking, internet tracking etc.), combined with behavioural patterns such as what is consumed and accessed (eg: library books, food shopping , transport, leisure etc.). The outcome is the dream of the cyberneticians of social control – the perfectly ordered utopia where each polices the other and the machine runs all.

Geotime, a security programme used by the US military, and now being used by the London Metropolitan Police creates a graph of an individual’s movements and communications with other people on a three-dimensional graphic. It can be used to collate information gathered from social networking sites, satellite navigation equipment, mobile phones, financial transactions and IP network logs. Links between entities can represent communications, relationships, transactions, message logs, etc. and are visualised over time to reveal temporal patterns and behaviours, and to highlight previously undetected links. Once millions and millions of pieces of microdata are aggregated, you end up with a very high-resolution picture of a targeted individual or group of individuals. Curtis Garton, product management director for Oculus, the company that markets the programme, is quoted as saying “... in terms of commercial sales pretty much anybody can buy,”. Professor Anthony Glees, director of the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said he was aware of tracking software such as Geotime, the use of which he described as “absolutely right”. He is quoted as saying: “My feeling is: if it can be done, and if its purpose is the protection of the ordinary citizen that wants to go about their lawful business ... then it’s absolutely fine.”

These product developers and academics of social control are the architects of structural hierarchy and injustice.

New technology is introduced in the following sequence: military hardware/personnel (eg: internet; cybernetics, satellite technology, microwaves etc.); prison & policing (eg: electronic tagging, ‘non-lethal’ weapons, ‘area of denial’ systems, ‘public disorder’ situations etc.); civil population (eg: home CCTV systems, personal computers, new products, leisure time etc.). This sequence returns military advances to entertainment, and conditions the population to be dependent on the pieces imposed on it by the system of militarism.

Technology seeks to disappear, in an ongoing process of miniaturisation, nanotechnology being the present expression of this tendency. This is to become the invisible background and context of what we do and how we live. Machines and the bureaucratic processes they initiate have come to dominate human behaviour and damage the Earth. It has created a situation where ordinary people are excluded from the processes of the system around them and lack the ability to make any real decisions over their lives. In the creation of ‘useful’ tools, human skills have migrated to machines. Modern social control is now defined by growing militarisation of the internal police force and transport infrastructure, with development in the use of cutting-edge technologies in the gathering and profiling of information that can be used and acted on in a model of population management. All this requires networks, servers, routers, transmission and conduit systems, admins, back-ups, contingency exercises. Cybernetic modelling by multinational corporations and information-age nation states already altered warfare and civil planning decades ago. The management of a city is the management of only so much information. The political and capitalist functionaries understand this, that is why it is logical to them to allow machines to become the city.

Technological convergence in fields such as artificial intelligence, biotech, robotics, nanotech and information technology is the current expression of hierarchical relationships that are based on a newly defined poverty gap of understanding , knowledge and language.

Control of information is the defining factor in the control of modern wars. As our lives take place in a social war for survival against the techno-system, information warfare and information control/distribution are two key factors in the new urban war which is taking place between the system and the people of the world it wants to conquer. The social clash is defined by access to information like any other resource or commodity. Huge gulfs in access are simply a form of the division facing excluded people, who have been cut from the means to secure their survival.

Information technology has its basis in a purely productive, quantitative sense: mass society requires it. Information technology is what enabled the Third Reich to execute its final solution: the well known machines of IBM completed a feat that would have taken civil servants too long to do before the end of the war, and filed 6 million people to their deaths. Efficiency and utilitarianism combine to form the present.

In the capitalist economy, the flow of information is encountered as an item to be processed with as much scrutiny as any other controlled item. Information is as precious as, sometimes more than, the realities it refers to. Accordingly truth has a value (economic), secrecy being quantifiable.

The ‘intelligence agencies’ and units of secret police decreasingly rely on so-called ‘human intelligence’: less people on the street, less physical surveillance but more agents behind desks analysing ‘signal intelligence’ instead. Presently machines can scan for keywords and patterns, but it takes transcription and analysis by humans, which still takes time. This means that often digital methods of monitoring can be defeated by face-to-face informal meetings and being aware of the operating environment. Despite the buggings, tailings and psy-war, direct action and sabotage continues to spread, along with the internationalist anarchic virus.

Information control is a state of war: internal borders, check points, so-called ‘green zones’ and ‘total security’ environments. The important questions are still: who knows what, where, when, how and why! Information war is “impervious branding”, “negative briefings”, it is the “spinning of facts”, black and grey propaganda, the fabrication of “narratives” etc. It is a list of names, a list of materials or a list of instructions.

Internet and social media are transforming the way people interact, and what they demand. Information which was not widely spread 30, even 20 years ago now circulates freely, and there are more possibilities to access previously ‘forbidden’ knowledge than ever before. From trade secrets on methods of production, to government files on wartime atrocities, it is easier to find out about several different shades of truth than ever before, but it is absolutely meaningless without the will to use this information to act. Through consumerism, a comfortable liberalism has evolved in the post-industrial core. In the long term, the failure of traditional supplies of resources (the situation of peak oil production) will lead to shortages and conflict. The nation-states cannot fulfil the demands of the people any more, and their only future is to sell out to corporatism if they wish to hold their ranking positions and maintain order. They are entering a period of unprecedented ‘crisis’, with little hope of recovery unless the development of new technologies for energy supply and production can prevent an overwhelming collapse in industry due to the depletion of resources and the fact of scarcity. Despite this, capitalism can and will adapt to any phase of deprivation, as the plan of the banks is to capture as much social wealth as is possible and eviscerate the ability of the nation-state to resist their manipulation of the economy and government.

Reconfigurement of power appears immanent, accompanied by a totalising interlinked corporatist future. Corporations are networked entities that have monolithic agendas, but because they are subject to the whims of Capital and State, they constantly break apart and reconfigure. The actually immutable nation-states cannot adapt to the new cybernetic, networked, corporative future unless the ‘democratic’ relationship it manages itself on is rejected for the adoption of the prison-society as the social model. It already moves in this direction knowingly. The nation-states will be superseded by the corporations and will come to rely on them more, whilst the corporations rely on them less. If the nation-states seek to dominate or subvert them, they’ll most likely fail.

Now a point is reached where the strategic narratives which kept back the unleashing of revolutionary libertarian violence are crumbling as populations in revolt confront the plans of the rich. The post-industrial nation-states are at risk, and are increasingly revealing their own developed and connected prison-society projects; the ascendant form of power relations backed by the multinational corporations.

Some of these corporations have greater gross domestic product and paramilitary capabilities than many countries and are responsible for more injustice and exploitation than many small dictatorial states. In the globalist modern society, attacks should be properly understood as information. Rapidly moving image-narratives and violent models of urban rebellion against the system have spread, moving amongst the disaffected of the world. In the age of instantaneous data-exchange, the actual technical rupture created by sabotage is often minor compared to the impact it imparts as a signifier of collapse and refusal. The capitalist system and civilisation itself can absorb the vast majority of sabotages and attacks, but the new media which is based on self-production and self-replication is creating international ‘communities’ of rebellion with shared intersecting global histories. Highly symbolic content exchange, theme-repetition, maximum-distribution and propulsive coherence are the aim. The destructive violent attack or anarchist sabotage, added to its method of communication — the powerful image or communique — is the blood of the new anarchist direct action, communicating a radicalised awareness based on methods of participatory organisation and the proliferation of destructive and iconoclastic ideas.

Anarchistic and nihilist ideas are anathema to the information-age, they are the glitch in the database society which escapes classification and control. The imagination walking; dangerous and capable of unforeseen actions and moments of interconnection.

The future of civilisation is an increasing merger of state and corporate power, with the new sciences as an essential ally. With war and crisis always as a pretext, the elite have declared dominion over every free individual, animal, plant and wilderness.

Emerging as the omnipresent machine intelligence that forms human beings to its whims, it damages and manipulates entire continents of beings. Reflecting our emptiness and our loss, the prison-society must be fought, because the logic which it operates on is a system of closure of parameters that work by exclusion of vast amounts of alternative possibilities and potentials. It is self-referential and non-creative; it pursues a model of progress that is the abolition of personal individuality and freedom.

Our struggle pushes forward into the future, let’s strike against the concepts and mechanisms of their control.

[aeipathix-blog]

As an addendum, no, Rin will not tell her partners she has HIV unless they ask.  Because she’s selfish as well as reckless.

[ofmonstersandlollipops-blog]

Canon 005: Dana is an ESFP. Now - when I look into my character’s Myers Briggs type, I do this in two ways.  Normally I start with the Jungian processes - perception vs. judgement - how we take in information, how we make decisions.  I use these links (1, 2) to figure out 1) what processes the character identifies most with, and 2) which types that correlates with.  Functions tend to go on a ranking scale - you have a main function, a secondary function, so on (the second link is best for this), so I often try to see if there is more than one function a character clicks with (although this can cause more problems than it solves, given that a main function only has two options for a secondary function - and sometimes a character’s second pull is not one that works within the realm of a potential secondary function - I will explain this further down). For instance, my main function is Introverted Thinking (Ti).  I read the description (here), and that describes what I do to a T from the very first sentence (because if you have heard me dialogue about using the right words once, you’ve probably heard me do it a thousand times - and in that same vein consistency is very important to me and I will notice if there is inconsistency in your argument and in your character).  Hands down, I’m a Ti.  Looking through the rest of the functions, the next one I personally identify with is Extraverted Intuiting (Ne) - this is the brainstorming function (read here) - and this is, primarily, the function I use when writing.  Sort of.  It’s a combination of the two - Ti focuses on facts, data, pulling those out, analyzing and find consistencies and inconsistencies, and Ne focuses on taking all of that data, all of that information, and looking at all the potential ways that could work together. For those of you who know me from Jessica Rabbit, the best example of this is Haruko Haruhara (although it applies to a lot of the headcanon I have about her).  Jessica mentioned Haruko as a throwaway line in a starter early in her blog, something to do with how often Haruko had made use of her services.  This stuck with me.  This was something Jessica was saying about herself, about her character, and about Haruko, and despite not meaning for it to be important, it stuck out in the rest of the dialogue as something that was important.  For a character who had so many customers who used her so frequently, it made no sense for Jessica to remember this one unless it had some other meaning attached to it.  So - I brainstormed it.  There hundreds of different possible reasons Jessica could possibly have that connection to Haruko, and I could think of them but none of them felt right until I realized that it was - that their past hadn’t been a good one, that it had been abusive, because that would have had the most impact for Jess. This is consistently how I headcanon characters, how I write them.  I take what I write, what they have told me, the little intricacies that do not show up until in the moment of writing and channeling the character and I make it make sense.  Because that is how I write a consistent character. In view of the Myers Briggs, going to the second link (here), you can scroll down to two grids that take the functions and show which MB types have which functions, starting with the main and going from there.  My main function is, again, Introverted Thinking - Ti - which means I’m either an ISTP or an INTP.  This is where the potential secondary comes into play.  Because I strongly identify also with the Extroverted Intuiting - Ne - but not as strongly as the Ti - I can look at the secondary functions to see if that fits.  Ne is the secondary function for INTP, so I’m an INTP.  Where characters are concerned, I will often find an online test (I prefer truity’s test because it has been far more accurate for me and for characters where I know their MB ahead of time, but I have used others as well) just to double-check and see if what makes sense from a process standpoint also works from each of the four (E vs. I, S vs. N, T vs. F, and J vs. P). As this applies to Dana, I went into this not being very sure but fairly certain she was not an intuiter and was an extrovert.  Those two I debated on - the extrovert in particular - because Dana is an extremely private character, she does keep a lot of herself to herself, but in most social functions, she goes to the other person first.  This is particularly noticeable to me in relation to what she does when she rides buses.  Because Dana is a frequent user of public transportation (in fact, if she’s going from one end of the country to the other, it is probably by bus), she takes this opportunity to information gather - and the best way to do this is by talking to people.  So she jumps.  Maybe she’ll sit next to one person for a while, then at one of the stops she’ll get off and change her appearance, then when she gets back on, she’ll sit next to someone else and she talks to all of them.  To me, that screams extrovert, even though the reasoning is less of recharge and more information gathering. So, I went into this with those sorts of general ideas for her.  Going through the functions, I got a very strong sense that she was an Extraverted Senser (Se) - first from the grid page (which has little descriptions) and then even more so from the other page, which goes much more in-depth with the processes - but as I was going through, I also got the idea that she was much more a Feeler than a Thinker.  With the smaller descriptions, I tended towards Extraverted Feeling (Fe) because Dana is much more focused on the group than on herself where feeling makes judgments, but reading the longer descriptions, I didn’t get that strong vibe.  In fact, the only process that gave me a strong vibe at all was Extraverted Sensing (Se), which meant that that had to be her main function (and it fit well with what I already knew of her character). Because Dana’s main function was Extraverted Sensing (Se), that meant she was either an ESTP or an ESFP - which meant her secondary function was either Ti or Fi.  Now, this is where my own experience comes into play.  I, personally, have a lot of experience with Ti because that is my main function, and so I know without a shadow of a doubt that it is not Dana’s.  Dana’s way of processing information is nothing like mine.  She does focus more on feelings, on empathy, on value sets than I do - that is more her strength - which meant, for me, that Dana sat in the ESFP arena. But, because I wasn’t as certain for her as I normally am for other characters (or for myself, at this point), I wanted to go ahead and take the test just to double-check, to make sure I wasn’t missing anything important (although by this point, on the four, I was fairly certain on the ESF portion of things).  Truity - which I like better - said that she was split down the middle on everything except the F, but when I went to another site, they were firm on the ESFP, which confirmed what I was slowly agreeing with. That said, Dana is an ESFP, which...given my history with Myers Briggs (and the history I’ve had on tumblr with it) is frankly nothing short of hilarious.

[mathematicpoetry-blog]

just want to comment on how much bodhi probably made galen think of has obitt, the pilot who flew him and lyra out of vallt, who took lyra and jyn on their expedition, who hired saw gerrera to help the three of them escape from coruscant.

galen is just...especially fond of pilots, maybe.

[thenervespore]

COMMERCIAL LAW WRAP UP

Hello World! 

It is August 16, 2021!

My last bar-related post here was May 11, 2021 - more than three months!!!

Well, time flied soooo fast. Again, it has been three months. Technically, May 12 was my FIRST DAY OF OFFICIAL BAR REVIEW. It means that I should have been GAME MODE ON from that day forth.

But what can I say. Things don’t cease to be fluid. I mean even if you plan things out, even if you are motivated and determined to stick to your plan - there would be deviations. The plan presupposes that you are steady in everything. It presupposes that you are predisposed everyday to study and you accomplish what you planned to accomplish for everyday. However, like every idea translated to reality - there has some distortions which took place. There were bad days, sad days, paralytic days and days were you cannot do anything because you cannot...just....figure...out...why....you....can’t. 

However, looking back, things which are important despite the unexpected and unforeseeable things and the deviations to the plan:

1. Just keep moving forward whatever happens.

2. Despite the pressure, have a calm and composed mind.

3. Be more realistic in your actions - the end goal is that you absorb and understand concepts. So if you think you NEED to read 300 pages per day to end in the right schedule, rethink if you really UNDERSTOOD what those pages contain. Otherwise, ALL IS A WASTE.

These three things has always been my compass despite all of the challenges in the external world. I dissociate myself with everything else which is not essential as of the moment - in order for me to maximize my learning capacity and to be able to think things through properly. 

I cannot, out of my good conscience, omit this personally mandatory process of journaling in between. 

I actually said in my last posts that I am going to post random passages or stuff here. But apparently, I cannot do so because life is just so HECTIC. Like you cannot breath out of the impossible readings that you need to read. There would be times where I would literally just read from waking up to sleeping down. Everything else is just inserted in between. More over, I have friends to assure me that I have emotional support and I can unload all these emotional baggage attached to being a barista. So letting things out through the ink seemed less indispensable that months. 

However, the thing that I am missing is I cannot really discuss or let out my bar substance related feelings and reactions to them. Apparently, if you are a barista, you have the privilege of having a clue of the overview of law as a whole. Well, when we where in fourth year, this was also the case because that was a review year. My point is, for someone to relate to the things you want to share, they must also be at least fourth year law school students. Haru actually is someone who could really relate and discuss with me on anything I wanted to discuss. However, he is also busy with his life. Also, we cannot really discuss also with our fellow baristas because everyone else are busy with their readings. Chances are, you are not reading the same subject at a certain point of time. 

So in order for me to synthesize and understand my downfalls and my strengths as to a bar subject better, I am establishing a hobby of evaluating my 2nd reading and reading them first for the preweek before I really dwell into the substance of the subject.

I just finished my SECOND READING OF COMMERCIAL LAW. It means I do not have the opportunity to really gulp in new concepts, I just have to review the things I already read in the preweek.

More or less, I already read the pertinent laws with few exceptions: take note that I haven’t read yet Investor’s Lease Act, The Special Economic Zone Act of 1995 and Use of Duly-Stamped and Marked Containers. OK, I am going to include them during my printing of Criminal Laws later. But the thing is these are obscure subjects which are least likely to be sources of Bar Exam questions. But it better to FEEL LIKE YOU LEFT NO STONE UNTURNED.

Well my general feeling as I finished Commercial Law is I feel confident already with this very obscure and technical subject when it comes to the general rules and concepts and also to some nitty gritty in between. 

During law school, Commercial Law is not something I excelled in. Personally also, I feel like it is one of the subjects where I literally feel like reading it in the first time every time. That was my general feeling when I first read Commercial Law subjects in the review. I mean, the first subject in Commercial Law is Insurance. When I read Insurance for the first time, I had a panic attack because I realized that I did not really understand the concepts when I was in lawschool.

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT THING TO UNDERSTAND.

There are two ways of studying things: either (1) you just memorize OR (2) you memorialize. You memorize when you just put into mind the key words or key phrases. People even memorize entire codal provisions or entire definitions in lawschool. Personally, memorizing is my strength. That is why I also survived my undergrad course BSBiology which is in need of a lot of memorization skills. However, we should always understand that MOST OF THE THINGS WE MEMORIZE ARE ONLY STORED IN OUR SHORT-TERM MEMORY. However, when you MEMORIALIZE, you try to cast your mind away from the construction of the phrases, from the choice of words but you try to get through THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW. What it really means. Why does it matter. Why is this written here. Remember, law always has a reason d’etre. THERE IS A STORY BEHIND THEM. They are not written there just for the sake of it. They are written there because they are supposed to have PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS. They are supposed to govern human conduct, maintain peace and order and ensure that justice and fairness will always be the general rule for the conduct of things. When I was studying Insurance, these are the things I realized: 1. I did not really try to understand the importance or context of this law.

2. I just memorized the codal provisions or definitions in order for me to answer in the exams.

That is why I was really frightened because everything seemed to be foreign to me when I read the reviewer. Hell, this should literally be the third time I encountered this subject because I took this during third year, fourth year and then now. 

As I was cruising through the reviewer, my mind was just acknowledging I MEMORIZED THIS PREVIOUSLY. But I did not really try to understand it. I am saying that I did not try to understand it because if asked to explain in MY OWN WORDS, I could not do it. Which is another point that I want to emphasize, the true test would be that you can EXPLAIN THINGS IN YOUR OWN WORDS. 

Sometimes, we get anxious to deviate from the wordings of the law because the law is very technical. We say it is very technical because the certain words would have a very technical meaning under the law or jurisprudence even if we use them differently or arbitrarily in ordinary usage. Therefore, we are afraid that we will fail the scrutiny of the professor because we do not follow what was written in the law. The usual tendency is that we skip actual comprehension and go straight with memorization of the text of the law. However, this should not be the case. 

I tried to go over my past examinations and I try to evaluate my downfalls in answering in the exam. As I said, I have an upper hand in memory skills that is why if you could see my exam notebooks, you can see that I can give you entire provisions of law in almost a photocopy finish. However, I realize that because I memorized the provisions, I also wrote PARTS OF THE PROVISION which are not really pertinent to the question. I know one of the training in Ateneo is how to spot the issue and that there will always be a specific provision of law which would apply to a certain scenario. I do not disprove this. I concur. However, there would be instances when instead of one long provision which is applicable, there would be two intertwined parts of different provisions which are applicable. If we look at jurisprudence, we would really appreciate the intricacy of the law because of this. The reason is that provisions are not cast out of isolation from each other, they are supposedly a part of a bigger body of thoughts which could be correlated with each other. They could actually be applied with one another.

So I realized that I was making an unnecessary show-off. I just proved to people that I can memorize stuff but I did not really convey the deeper passion I have for law which I know I have in me. 

So my point going back is that READ BETWEEN THE LINES BEFORE READING THE LINES. Do not skip this process. Or else you are lost in the long run. So do not memorize right away. Read through the annotations, discussions and try to understand what message they want to convey first and then the next step is try to correlate how different legal luminaries explain these concepts in their own words and justifications and be guided with what certain terminologies are acceptable and commonly used. Again, the learning process is characterized by repetition by repetition by repetition. But it should not be repeating MEMORIZING THINGS again. This is important in moving forward. If you really are passionate in going forward in studying the law, you should at least have an understanding of the general rule. If YOU ARE STUCK ON MEMORIZING THE WORDINGS OF THE GENERAL RULE, then you would not have the time and energy to appreciate the slight deviations, intricacies and applications of the rule. The legal vocation is just like other vocations. We make an analogy to a painter. To a common mind, we only know the color green. But a painter would know the different hues, shades and other intricate details about the color. The hair could be split for as many times if you are passionate in your vocation. It is the same with the law. There will always be new stuff that you will learn no matter how many times you read things through. There will never be a time where you completely know everything about the law and never miss out a detail. It is humanly impossible! However, the desire to follow this longingness would be a good indicator that you have the passion to follow this vocation.

I remember my Labor Law professor Father Gus who keeps on telling us that he has read the case of LVN Pictures vs Philippine Musician’s Guild and he learns something new everytime he reads it. 

KNOWLEDGE IS CUMULATIVE. We might have read a material and not fully comprehend all parts of them in one instance. However, in the interim, we learn new things, we expand our knowledge. And then we read the same material again. We now understand it better, even differently on various occasions.  A common example is when we read cases when we were in first year vs in fourth year law school. When we read again the case in fourth year, we understand the case better in its entirety. This is true even in cases where you thought you understood the case very well. This has always been a source of excitement for me. That is why I prefer reading cases in the full text because I am appalled by how interconnected things are. However, in bar preparations, we should also be practical and realize that 

1. reading full text takes a lot of time and time is very precious

2. it is more on a luxury than a necessity.

More over, the bar exam has already split the law into eight (8). So the interconnectedness that you could have in your answer would be limited by what certain bar subject you are taking.

For example, there are a lot of obligations and contracts (OBLICON) concepts in Corporation. Actually this is because in some jurisdictions, corporate contract law is a subject of its own. However, in the bar exams, it would be unfair if the examiner would focus on oblicon concepts albeit intricately related to corporations. What I remember here is the case of rescission of subscription agreements. The concept of rescission is actually governed by Civil Law. However, this case is intricately connected with the Trust Fund Doctrine. So, I think even if “rescission” is under Civil Law, it could be used as a term or situation in Commercial Law but the discussion would be those falling under commercial law concepts. So here, instead of discussing the concept of rescission, we discuss the trust fund doctrine and how this doctrine would be superior to the right to rescission. We have two concurring rights here, the right of the creditors of the corporation to have the equity held in trust for the satisfaction of their claims and the right of the subscriber to rescind a contract based on the grounds provided under the Civil Code. However, the Supreme Court has already ruled that the greater good will be subsumed if we put a premium to the trust fund doctrine rather than to grant the right of rescission. This is not founded on the law. This is based on the wisdom of the highest Court of the land. That is why another thing which is important is keeping abreast with the decisions of the Supreme Court.

Which takes me to my BIGGEST ANXIETY. I am not entirely confident that I am updated with the latest doctrinal decisions of the Supreme Court. 

In my second reading, I focused entirely in memorializing the codal provisions. My reason here is that I should atleast have a complete central basis for everything which could probably be asked in the exam. This has always been my primary way of synthesis since then. I always identify the central idea and branch out everything from there. This method of branching guided me to do what I did in the second reading which is to read the codals first. However, Commercial Law is very hectic in a way that it is the ONLY BAR SUBJECT WHICH HAS A CODAL WHICH HAS THREE VOLUMES. Therefore, reading the codals themselves would consume most of your time. All this time, I am also just having faith in the fact that our law school professors has already honed us and gave us most of the doctrinal cases that we need to know.

However, there are two propensities regarding the Bar Exams:

1. Questions which came from the cases decided by the Bar Examiner AND

2. Questions which came from the LATEST doctrinal cases.

I already had an idea of the cases of Leonen. However, I realized that I really do not have an overview yet of the doctrinal cases of other Ponentes especially the latest en banc cases. That is why I need to identify newest case lists in Commercial Law and read them or insert them in my time. Okay, so I would make this a habit AFTER I FINISH THE REQUISITE NUMBER OF HOURS I HAVE TO STUDY IN MY PRIMARY REVIEW SUBJECT.  

That would be the last furnishes I have to put in my constructed building.

PROBLEMATIC AREAS:

Now, I am going to identify problematic areas I have:

1. In insurance, obscure subjects such as microinsurance, compulsory insurance coverage for agency-hired workers, non-default options in life insurance. Always remember the name of the case of Vicente Henson II. vs. UCPB General Insurance which set out the new guidelines as to the prescriptive period for actions by the subrogee-insurer against the person who caused the loss, damage or liability. This is the most recent doctrinal case with respect to insurance. Also the case of Insular vs. Alvarez which is a Leonen case could probably go out also. Lastly with respect to judicial bonds, the leonen case of Milagros Enriquez vs. Mercantile Insurance (2018) guides us that the effectivity of the judicial bonds is during the pendency of the action irrespective of the agreement between the bond company and the applicant. 

2. THE ENTIRE PRENEED CODE is a problematic area in a way that this is not actually discussed anywhere. However, I just take note here that certain regulations for Securities and certain features of a Life Insurance are relevant here. Like SRC, there is a need for a registration statement for the plan and actually EVERY ADVERTISEMENT you have for the plan should be approved by the Insurance Commission. As to the features of grace period, instead of 30 days , we have here 60 days and instead of  3 year period of reinstatement we have 2+2 (nondefault options + reinstatement)

3. As to Transportation, the Public Service Act and the Warsaw Convention are kind of shaky. I have to remember the concept of ruinous competition etc.

4. I haven’t read Partnerships for the second time hahaha, I think I can answer here.

5. Corporations. Of course Corpo is the most complicated subject here with six pages in the Syllabus out of 16!!!! Imagine! But I have to believe that I put extra attention here. I know the backstory why. In lawschool, my grade here is 74 but my professor rounded it up to 75. In otherwords, I was somehow reconsidered (this was my second reconsidered grade other than Persons in first year). So I graduated knowing to myself that passing corpo was PRIMARY BY VIRTUE OF A SAVING GRACE. It is a constant reminder for me to be extra attentive and put extra effort in this subject. In my first and second readings, I have to be faithful that I did justice to my law professor’s decision and I did not forgo it. I WILL NOT LET HIM DOWN.

6. Securities. THIS IS THE MOST OBSCURE SUBJECT IN THE COMMERCIAL LAW. I honestly still have alot of gray areas here. Maybe in the preweek I have to give extra attention here.

7. Banking. Obscure topics like Selective regulation and rates of exchange haunts me still. I literally know nothing in them and understood poorly here. I just moved forward because time is running out but I could also not see anything being asked here. PDIC charter should be prioritized because this is something I do not know in lawschool. hahaha like literally.

8. Intellectual property I could say is a strong subject back then. However, I should always remember that I struggle in Copyright and Other Related Rights just because it has a lot of codal provisions which are obscure and not really subjected to jurisprudence but we could still say that they could still be subject of controversy and be applied in the future.

9. Special Laws - AMLC, FRIA and Data Privacy. No other explanations. I found these laws very obscure, especially the latter two. So I also have to prioritize them in the preweek.

EVERYTHING IS OFFERED TO ALLAH.