#Anti-August

[andthatisnotfake]

August made such a big deal about that letter from his past self, hiding it, putting it in Sara's locker because he thought she'd understand him better or forgive him, idk, then reading it to her when she said she didn't want to read it herself, and I thought it would be something like "I want to help people" or "I wanna make the world a better place" or something else that could possibly redeem him a little bit, but it was just "I want to be stronger so I'm not bullied anymore (and so I can bully others instead)" and "I have no friends". Well, maybe there's a fucking reason why you had no friends! Mind you, I don't think the ones he has now are good friends, but I don't think he's a very good friend to them either, so not much has changed. And the bullying thing... 😒 I get why Sara would relate to him and feel sorry for him, but I hate this narrative of "I'm a bad person because I was bullied". Most of the time what I see is good kids being bullied for no reason at all and still staying good kids, while bullies grow up to be adult bullies, tbh.

So yeah, still not sorry for him. Like I said in another post, I do understand he has issues, like his eating disorder and probably unprocessed grief for his dad, but he's still a dick.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

24th August 1991: Ukrainians celebrate their declaration of independence. X

The majority of people in every region of Ukraine voted to break free from the Soviet Union.

[tateshifts]

MY SHIFTING METHOD ⋆｡˚ ੈ✩‧₊˚

♯ this is the method that i found works well for me! it took me around 4 months to shift and i first shifted on October 30th 2020.

the method

╰┈➤ the void state & 5 senses method.

AWAKE METHOD!

✮ . . . i lay down, flat on my back in bed & under the covers. i put on my headphones and play some white noise, i don’t close my eyes i just stare at a point in my ceiling.

✮ . . . the more i stare at my ceiling, the less i see. my vision starts to blur and then i see stars and then after 5 minutes my mind doesn’t focus on it anymore so i don’t see anything kind of? it looks black to me with a few stars when i direct my attention back to it. but just don’t focus on it- this is now the void state!!

✮ . . . i quickly count to 5 over and over in my head, as fast as i can count. once i feel myself become lighter, relaxed and less tense i start to imagine what i can feel, smell and touch in my dr.

✮ . . . i think about the feel of bedsheets i’m lying on, the smell of mattheo’s aftershave, the light sound of the waves crashing against the large floor to ceiling window coming from the black lake.

✮ . . . at this point i start to feel like im spinning or im floating and i try to ignore the feeling as much as possible so i don’t ground myself back to this reality.

✮ . . . i know i’m in my dr because my surroundings change drastically, the temperature, the bed, the air, the smell, EVERYTHING! so when i’m in my dr i just KNOW.

✮ . . . the method used to take me around 1 hour, but the more you practise the easier and quicker it gets. meditating also helps you practise the void state.

[when i discovered the void state it was very accidental. i just zoned out and stared at patterns on my wall until i chose a certain spot and concentrated on it for 15 minutes and then my vision went black and i felt nothing! so cool lmao]

let me know if you try it & if it works for you!! thanks for reading ❦｡･:*:･ﾟ follows, likes & reblogs are appreciated x

[daily-castiel]

Day 22

[bananaman-mp3]

"why are you watching boruto" im cherry picking for the divorce headcanon and i want to get an accurate idea of what the father child dynamics between naruto and sarada sasuke and boruto are.

[acloudofsparklingdust]

I'm so tired of people who don't understand/care about the true effects of religion on people (especially young people, especially vulnerable people) speaking for religion. Like stop normalizing that shit.

If you're such an agnostic/atheist why are you not only okay with religious propaganda, but spreading it yourself? Your being neutral about religion always ends up benefitting religious people/institutions. Why are y'all not questioning this bias?

It's like y'all didn't grow up with it so it didn't fuck you up for life, and it didn't fuck up your siblings for life, and it didn't traumatize and ruin you on any level... And bc of that you're only willing to speak for religious freedom in the context of people being religious?

Why are you okay with religious freedom but not with freedom to not have religion?

Every time I hear ex-religious people discuss how horrible their experiences were, there's always some happy camper never-even-been-to-a-sermon/mass who wants to come and say everyone should have the right to believe whatever they believe.

Like sure, believe whatever you want, but the second your beliefs infringe on other people's human rights maybe it's time that we stop pretending that's acceptable and neutral in society.

People who grow up mostly culturally free of religion should see their privilege for what it is and ensure that others get the same luck in the future.

Not pretend that it's not dystopian to see churches post "demure" memes on TikTok, or that the Vatican's mascot is an anime character. Thess religious groups are trying to recruit children. They want to appeal to younger audiences. They want to brainwash more people so that they get to stay rich and powerful.

And while you chill and enjoy your secular Christmas/non-denominational Holiday party, there will be little kids being told that being gay is a sin, that women should be submissive to men and hide their bodies and not speak unless spoken to, and that serving god is more important than getting an education.

[swiftieinbrazil]

There are some songs that the majority of swifties like. However, other swifties think that some of these songs are overrated. So, this a poll to give your opinion about it. PS: I chose the songs that the most of the fandom like.

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

Taylor Swift Can't Write- She is not a serious or important writer. She is blatantly normalizing cheating in her music.

Let’s talk about Taylor Swift’s honest attempt at coherent narrative -  

Just to be clear, the songs in question: Betty (2020), August (2020), and Cardigan (2020). 

In these songs, Swift, of her own insistence, makes a clear attempt at drafting together a coherent storyline. I, however, found her work lacking while considering it against the many thousands of other short stories I have read. It lacks any sincerity in giving the moment in which the characters experience self-reflection, or "Epiphany" moment, and growth.

An Epiphany is defined as a sudden spiritual manifestation- and it is this I would posit as something that Swift clearly lacks in her writing. She lacks the spiritual, or emotional, depth to accurately tell a so-called "coming-of-age" type story in which the main requirement is that the character has an "Epiphany" about the nature of life to signify them growing up.

I will explain:  

A short story- which I am analogizing to the multi-song arch from Swift- is typically meant to have an epiphany moment in which the main character finally calcifies the main point or the moral of the story. Without the impact of this moment within a short narrative- there is no arc, no moral, and therefore no real story.

Afterall, what is a story, but a coherent subsistence of writing aimed at identifying some universality of human existence (eg.) a moral, a point, or the main message? If I want to get philosophical about it (and I always do), narrative is the act of creation through which the particulars become implicit to a universal experience. Thus, it is a necessity of storytelling- to include the thematic message- or moral backbone of the work.  

Swift’s three song arc is intrinsically incoherent, so it becomes difficult to pinpoint exactly what each character is thinking or feeling. I would, however, suggest that through lines like “slept next to her, but / I dreamt of you all summer long” (“Betty” 2020), and lines like “I never needed anything more/ whispers of ‘Are you sure?’ / ‘Never have I ever before’” (“August” 2020). Therein builds an internal tension between the three characters, James seems to be lamenting his choices to sleep with August and ditch Betty for the summer; whereas August is honestly expressing the fact that this is her first time, so it becomes obvious this means a lot to her. First, we see James's apologizing to Betty saying that the other girl, essentially means nothing by saying he was dreaming of Betty all summer even while with August. We also get the other perspective of the other girl losing her virginity to James during the same summer in which he is thinking about Betty every night.

Already, all the characters are set up to be dislikable- which is not always to the detriment of storytelling. However, it is to the detriment of her storytelling that at no point Swift makes use of external POV, or internal POV, to show any form of personal growth or condemnation of the intuitively morally corrupt actions of James here. Thus, there is no real story- according to the theory of “short-story” telling I laid out above.  

It is her lack of condemnation towards cheating- and the immature irreverence James treats August with- that solidifies this arc as being a rather poor attempt at coherent narrative. Simply, Swift is either an inept storyteller- or she is blatantly normalizing cheating while also treating “the other woman” like a placeholder. (Clearly, Anti-Feminist rhetoric, btw). It’s especially bad that this storyline reaches no “moral of the story” since it is so obviously August’s first time. 

The closest we get to any kind of meta-narrative commentary on thematic point, from Swift as the external 3rd person POV, is with this line “A friend to all is a friend to none/ Chase two girls, lose the one/ When you are young, they assume you know nothing” (“Cardigan” 2020). Again, her use of POV is rather amateurish- because she returns to internal 1st person POV with use of the word “you” in the latter half of the line- which leads me to believe she really doesn’t know how to inculcate the different POV’s into her writing. She’s an amateur- and there's is nothing inherently wrong with that, however, if we could all stop lauding her as literary genius when she is so clearly not that would be “awesome.” Thanks.  

She continues the rest of the song back into Betty’s 1st person POV. The poignant nature of this line about "losing one girl" doesn’t land because the rest of the song is about how James is returning to Betty. Swift writes, “I knew you’d miss me once the thrill expired/ and you’d be standing in my front porch light/ And I knew you’d come back to me” (“Cardigan” 2020). Beside the fact that this line is internally incoherent held up against the setting of “Betty” which is broad daylight, so James would not actually be in the porch light if the sunlight suffices, it is also quite obviously the culmination in which Betty is taking James's back. If there is any thematic message here- and I can only loosely believe this is an actual message here- Swift is saying that cheating is Okay as long as the girl, you actually respect and want, is willing to forgive you.  

And I’m supposed to enjoy this arc? People are supposed to be impressed with Swift because she came up with this garbage?  

She clearly has no grasp on Narrative coherence, no grasp of utilizing POV switching to make narrative more emotionally impactful, and no grasp on how to embed a good moral of the story into her work. So, she has none of the markings of actual great writer.  

The effect of all this is a subterfuge of lackluster emotional appeals- and a toxic love triangle that never resolves into personal self-reflection or growth. The story devolves into blameless banality with no personality or literary value whatsoever- just a reiteration of self-centered egoism that enables James to act without thought to the feelings of others. This is what Swift propagates as good storytelling? Is this morally sound story telling?  

Let me further drive my point home by dichotomizing this pitiful attempt at narrative coherence with the work of a literary genius, James Joyce.  

Has anyone here ever read “Araby” (1914) by James Joyce? (Sidenote: If you love when Hozier talks about issues of British colonialism in Ireland- you will most likely enjoy James Joyce as well- if you love critique of both organize religion and its sociohistorical ties to colonialism- you'll love Joyce).  

My critique too- ties into Joyce, where he showcases the blissful ignorance, or naivety, of youth in pursuit of love, Swift showcases no such thing. She is often praised for her juvenile writing schema- yet in her most overt attempt at writing a youthful romance she fails to interject the most important aspect of youth- Naivety versus painful realizations. In adulthood, when we all reprise the past, and trace back into our memories, we often speak fondly of the naivety of youth- with a little knowing twinkle in our eyes as young people around us make the same mistakes we did. It’s so beautifully human to reflect like this- and Swift manages to add nothing of this universal human experience into her work, even though it is often said that her only saving grace is the ability to capture “teenage petulance” and the proclivities of youth. In other words, I’m saying she’s not even doing the thing she’s known for well enough. She writes this love story like they’re all a bunch of bitter adults, not kids stepping into thoughts of love for the first time. There’s no simple wonder at love- instead, she writes about cheating and feeling jaded. Ditching people for the summer only to come back to the first girl with an "I'm sorry" and "she meant nothing."  Where is the personal growth in a story like that? In which James gets away with saying "she meant nothing," and August is not shown having any agency or reclamation of self after James essentially uses her. Then, to top it all off, Betty most likely gets back together with James. There is no growth to speak of in any of this- it does not qualify as a "coming of age" story- nor does it particularly qualify as a story at all.

This is like English Creative Writing 101 class- btw. It's strange that Swift does not grasp concepts I've taught to college freshmen before. If the freshmen can handle learning it- surely Swift could also be able to learn and improve the thing she does as a job? Right? No?

 “Araby” is a story of a similar predicate to Swift attempt at narrative. So, I thought it most apt to include here as an example which also employs use of Epiphany in short story telling.  

In quick summation, “Araby” is the story of a young boy who has a rather intense crush on a neighbor girl. He promises this girl that he will go buy her something at the market, and in doing so sets off a sequence of events which leads to his ultimate disillusionment with the ideals of youth and love.

Early on in his character development, we see a boy who has an overly romantic view on life, with lines like “All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: ‘O love! O love!’ many times” (“Araby” Joyce). He is so clearly caught up in the longing for this girl- that he truly forgets reality for a moment. His senses slip from him, and he is fully immersed into the lost revery of his little crush on the neighbor girl. Then, like magic, she speaks to him for the first time the next day. She asks him if he will go to the market, and he responds eagerly- Yes. He promises to buy her something.  

The conflict of the story happens at this point- the young boy meets every obstacle in life preventing him from getting to the market on time. He struggles to find money and then he struggles to find the time in the midst of his other obligations to his family. Joyce is clearly showcasing how our romantic visions of life, of everything going perfectly and romance being easy, can so easily be disrupted by the realities of poverty and the responsibility we all bear for family or others.  

The end of the short story outlines the “moral of the story” in which the young man, now nearly too late for the market and without enough money to actually buy anything, with the last refrain that “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (“Araby” Joyce). Thus, Joyce drives home the "epiphany" moment, or the self-reflective moment of character growth, as it pertains to the fruitless endeavors of youthful vanity in romance. Stating, essentially, that people only dream of overly romantic scenes to bolster their own perception of reality as something that should go perfect for them. Life is not perfect, nor is it ever fair, and nothing happens as fantasy suggests it should- this is the hardest, and often the first, life lesson young people ever face. Anguish and Anger. What a beautiful phrase to remark upon- as this poor young man realizes life is comprised mostly of being “a day late and a buck short.”

This intensity- this moral backbone is what brings the story to life. The way this story enumerates the youthful hope- to the burgeoning adult reality- as something full of anguish -allows readers to bridge empathy towards others as WE all grow up in a difficult world. This is the "Epiphany." This appeal universal human experience, through particular circumstances like that of a young man in early 1900’s Dublin, is what is missing in Swift’s work. She gives us nothing but her own selfish refraction of immoral behavior without any appeal to greater human impulse or discovery.  Her work rings hollow in the face of actually talented writers like Joyce. She lacks the same depth, sophistication, and ability to actually make the story into a narrative arc.

She claims to write about teenage, coming of age-esque, discovery yet lacks any ability to actually showcase, with empathy, the ways in which anguish at their own naïveté presupposes teenage petulance.  

She writes out the most shallow- surface level depiction of some b-plot from a bad fanfiction and wants to pretend that she is a literary genius. Yawn. 

Addendum- I am aware that “Araby” is also a story predicated on ideas of Freedom vs Colonialism. To those of you who know the story well, I hope you don’t mind I choose to focus in on the “coming-of-age" part of the story in order to more clearly connect it to Swift’s work. I am not, however, ignoring the real sociohistorical implications of poverty, colonialist attitudes, and human rights thematic points in the story. I know.  

“Araby” by James Joyce is free at The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dubliners, by James Joyce  

[allwomenjointhe4bmovement]

While men are killing women & girls, misogynists are still saying "gender war is so boring both sides should cut it out". The thing is that they never want to talk about the fact that there is no war, there is massive femicide. Gender war doesn't exist in real life! Misandry doesn't exist in real life! Femicide exists!!!

This is why I say people who hate Taylor Swift are a huge fvcking red flag!

The boy who did it gets privacy but the victims and the families of the victims don't!

I'm tired of seeing videos of the victims' families crying, for once I would like to see the k!ller getting what he deserves!

[sbrown82]

Happy August 5th, Black People!!!✊🏿

[beatrixshifts]

One year ago today I discovered reality shifting. Maybe it gets easier after the first year?

[augentrust]

for all the jokes around yasha's inability to succeed on a wisdom saving throw, i feel like fjord really slid under the radar with his fucking 7 wisdom for the entire campaign

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

The ruins of the medieval Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv, Ukraine after it was blown up with dynamite by the Soviets on the 14th of August, 1937.

Before the demolition Ukrainian scholars were imprisoned so they wouldn't protest, and the 12th-century Byzantine mosaics were stolen for museums in russia.

[autismguy55]

controversial, but: jack being irish is a very common headcanon and i honestly just can’t see it. in chapter 2, jack says “we’re english, and the english are best at everything.” if lotf takes place in the 40s-50s like many assume, the irish war of independence had only happened about 20 years prior and ireland was freshly liberated. i’m sure we all know the atrocities the english committed against the irish, and i just don’t think an irish kid would say “the english are best at everything,” especially so soon after ireland gained independence. i don’t mean to bash anyone by the way, this is only my opinion

[grhmwtts]

“Better” b/w “Satiated • July 9th, 2024

Photos by Jen Talesman

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

By the way

Red, White & Royal Blue is Lover

One Last Stop is 1989

I Kissed Shara Wheeler is Midnights