#Association of image consulting

[aiciglobal]

Image consultants, Image consulting, AICI Global

The Association of Image Consultants International (AICI) is the leading and largest professional association of personal and corporate image consultants worldwide. A non-profit organization, AICI is dedicated to advancing the level of professionalism and enhancing the recognition of image consultants.

Our members counsel both individual and corporate clients on appearance, behavior, communication skills, etiquette, international protocol, and soft skills. As experts in image consulting, our members guide clients to achieve their specific goals with authenticity, credibility, and confidence. Supporting the development of the Image Consulting Profession, AICI brings together individuals and companies who seek image consulting services with the appropriate expert.

AICI enhances industry standards through a rigorous, three-tiered certification program and holds the world’s premier annual image consulting conference. AICI provides continuing education classes for image consultants. AICI acts as the voice of the image consulting profession and the media’s definitive source for experts on current issues and events that may affect the image profession.

To know more visit Our website: www.aici.org

[genelvavirtualstudio-blog]

Affaire Valsero vs l'International Camerounais et Attaquant de l'OM Faris Moumbagna : La Véritable Raison du Pourquoi

Dans le monde complexe du sport et de la musique, les rencontres inattendues peuvent parfois mener à des controverses inattendues. Récemment, une polémique entre l’attaquant de l’Olympique de Marseille, Faris Moumbagna, et l’artiste engagé camerounais Valsero, a secoué les médias sociaux et suscité des débats passionnés au sein de la communauté camerounaise. Tout a commencé lorsque Valsero a…

[transmutationisms]

can u elaborate on posture being a lie

As Beth Linker explains in her book “Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America” (Princeton), a long history of anxiety about the proximity between human and bestial nature has played out in this area of social science. Linker, a historian of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that at the onset of the twentieth century the United States became gripped by what she characterizes as a poor-posture epidemic: a widespread social contagion of slumping that could, it was feared, have deleterious effects not just upon individual health but also upon the body politic. Sitting up straight would help remedy all kinds of failings, physical and moral [...] she sees the “past and present worries concerning posture as part of an enduring concern about so-called ‘diseases of civilization’ ”—grounded in a mythology of human ancestry that posits the hunter-gatherer as an ideal from which we have fallen.

[...]

In America at the turn of the twentieth century, anxieties about posture inevitably collided with anxieties not just about class but also about race. Stooping was associated with poverty and with manual, industrialized labor—the conditions of working-class immigrants from European countries who, in their physical debasement, were positioned well below the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment. Linker argues that, in this environment, “posture served as a marker of social status similar to skin color.” At the same time, populations that had been colonized and enslaved were held up as posture paradigms for the élite to emulate: the American Posture League rewarded successful students with congratulatory pins that featured an image of an extremely upright Lenape man. The head-carrying customs associated with African women were also adopted as training exercises for white girls of privilege, although Linker notes that Bancroft and her peers recommended that young ladies learn to balance not baskets and basins, which signified functionality, but piles of flat, slippery books, markers of their own access to leisure and education. For Black Americans, posture was even more fraught: despite the admiration granted to the posture of African women bearing loads atop their heads, community leaders like Dr. Algernon Jackson, who helped establish the National Negro Health Movement, criticized those Black youth who “too often slump along, stoop-shouldered and walk with a careless, lazy sort of dragging gait.” If slouching among privileged white Americans could indicate an enviable carelessness, it was seen as proof of indolence when adopted by the disadvantaged.

This being America, posture panic was swiftly commercialized, with a range of products marketed to appeal to the eighty per cent of the population whose carriage had been deemed inadequate by posture surveys. The footwear industry drafted orthopedic surgeons to consult on the design of shoes that would lessen foot and back pain without the stigma of corrective footwear: one brand, Trupedic, advertised itself as “a real anatomical shoe without the freak-show look.” The indefatigable Jessie Bancroft trained her sights on children’s clothing, endorsing a company that created a “Right-Posture” jacket, whose trim cut across the upper shoulders gave its schoolboy wearer little choice but to throw his shoulders back like Jordan Baker. Bancroft’s American Posture League endorsed girdles and corsets for women; similar garments were also adopted by men, who, by the early nineteen-fifties, were purchasing abdominal “bracers” by the millions.

It was in this era that what eventually proved to be the most contentious form of posture policing reached its height, when students entering college were required to submit to mandatory posture examinations, including the taking of nude or semi-nude photographs. For decades, incoming students had been evaluated for conditions such as scoliosis by means of a medical exam, which came to incorporate photography to create a visual record. Linker writes that for many male students, particularly those who had military training, undressing for the camera was no biggie. For female students, it was often a more disquieting undertaking. Sylvia Plath, who endured it in 1950, drew upon the experience in “The Bell Jar,” whose protagonist, Esther Greenwood, discovers that undressing for her boyfriend is as uncomfortably exposing as “knowing . . . that a picture of you stark naked, both full view and side view, is going into the college gym files.” The practice of taking posture photographs was gradually abandoned by colleges, thanks in part to the rise of the women’s movement, which gave coeds a new language with which to express their discomfort. It might have been largely forgotten were it not for a 1995 article in the Times Magazine, which raised the alarming possibility that there still existed stashes of nude photographs of famous former students of the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters, such as George H. W. Bush, Bob Woodward, Meryl Streep, and Hillary Clinton. Many of the photographs in question were taken and held not by the institutions themselves but by the mid-century psychologist William Herbert Sheldon. Sheldon was best known for his later discredited theories of somatotypes, whereby he attributed personality characteristics to individuals based on whether their build was ectomorphic, endomorphic, or mesomorphic.

[...]

Today, the descendants of Jessie Bancroft are figures like Esther Gokhale, a Bay Area acupuncturist and the creator of the Gokhale Method, who teaches “primal posture” courses to tech executives and whose recommendations are consonant with other fitness trends, such as barefoot running and “paleo” eating, that romanticize an ancestral past as a remedy for the ills of the present. The compulsory mass surveillance that ended when universities ceased the practice of posture photography has been replaced by voluntary individual surveillance, with the likes of Rafi the giraffe and the Nekoze cat monitoring a user’s vulnerability to “tech neck,” a newly named complaint brought on by excessive use of the kind of devices profitably developed by those paleo-eating, barefoot-running, yoga-practicing executives. Meanwhile, Linker reports, paleoanthropologists quietly working in places other than TikTok have begun to revise the popular idea that our ancient ancestors did not get aches and pains in their backs. Analysis of fossilized spines has revealed degenerative changes suggesting that “the first upright hominids to roam the earth likely experienced back pain, or would have been predisposed to such a condition if they had lived long enough.” Slouching, far from being a disease of civilization, then, seems to be something we’ve been prone to for as long as we have stood on our own two feet.

[botanicalsword]

Venus ✧ how you pursue love and beauty ♡⁀➷

Where Venus is located, that house is the area where we easily find satisfaction and happiness, a field where the energy of love and beauty manifests.

☽✧. ❦ • ✧• .✧ ✞

♡ Venus in the 1st House

This brings a beautiful appearance and a gentle personality to the Houser - They are skilled at dressing themselves and have good taste and temperament. They generally make a good first impression. Even if their genetics are not strong, they have great fashion and makeup skills.

♡ Venus in the 2nd House

Houser with this placement have a pursuit of a good life, and their way of earning money is related to art or luxury goods. They are willing to spend money to improve their quality of life as long as they are not severely afflicted by Saturn. Usually, they can easily earn money, and their quality of life is quite high. However, if they are heavily afflicted by Saturn, they may easily become materialistic or even take loans to consume luxury items.

♡ Venus in the 3rd House

People with this placement are interested in art or emotional intelligence. Generally, their communication style is pleasant and gives people a refreshing feeling. They have a great sense of aesthetics and tend to be specialist in the field of beauty. It is very comfortable talking with them without much pressure.

♡ Venus in the 4th House

This position indicates a strong concern for the home environment. They have high requirements for comfortable living and enjoy spending money on decoration and arranging their living environment. In childhood, they often come from families with love or artistic heritage tendencies.

♡ Venus in the 5th House

People with this placement have a strong sense of love and know how to indulge in romance and pleasure. They seek to experience and appreciate the beautiful things in life, such as art and music. They often have a good relationship with children as well. The 5th house represents children and Venus, a planet associated with femininity.

♡ Venus in the 6th House

In this position, the work atmosphere is usually good, or the work is related to art and beauty. Additionally, this is the house of health. Venus placed here can easily lead to problems due to unhealthy or indulgent habits. Venus is not a planet of discipline but rather seeks beauty, so it is natural to indulge in things like drinking milk tea occasionally - attention should be paid regarding healthcare.

♡ Venus in the 7th House

This position is quite favorable. The native understands interpersonal relationships well and has high emotional intelligence. They are particularly good at making themselves comfortable through one-on-one relationships, whether it is finding a partner or a business collaborator who can make their life better. However, they should be cautious not to develop a mindset of pleasing or appeasing others too much, nor should they become overly dependent or immersed in relationships.

♡ Venus in the 8th House

This position is beneficial for financial investments. They are adept at utilizing collective resources and have a keen sense. They often have good luck in inheritance and are interested in mysterious matters. They tend to have a deeper understanding of things.

♡ Venus in the 9th House

This is a sign of having exotic love affairs. People with Venus in 9th House are easily attracted to people from different cultural backgrounds and are likely to encounter romance and adventure during foreign or long-distance travels. They also enjoy different cultures and artistic topics. They are experts in discussing popular brands from abroad.

♡ Venus in the 10th House

They are highly concerned about their public image. They channel the energy of love and beauty into their careers and spread love and beauty to the public. They tend to work in industries, such as wedding photography, beauty salons, cosmetic procedures, makeup artistry, and image consulting, all of which are fields dedicated to spreading beauty.

♡ Venus in the 11th House

This benefits forming collaborations with like-minded people. People with Venus in the 11th house are often popular in groups, and they are skilled at finding common ground and creating a harmonious atmosphere. They tend to have many friends and acquaintances.

♡ Venus in the 12th House

This is a hidden placement, it often indicates the hidden traits of Venus. On one hand, people with this placement tend to be reserved in matters of the heart, which may lead to unrequited love or similar experiences. This can be used for understanding, but not for definitive judgments. Additionally, people with this placement have a good sense of art and often possess a unique charm.

☽✧. ❦ • ✧• .✧ ✞

>> Masterlist | explicit contents

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Reference: Colour Vitamins

11 key ‘colour vitamins’ related to a range of positive (+) and negative (–) attributes.

RED

+ up-beat, confident, assertive, exciting – aggressive, domineering, bossy, threatening

PINK

+ feminine, gentle, accessible, non-threatening – pathetic, unimportant, safe, under-confident

BLUE

+ peaceful, trustworthy, constant, orderly – ‘holier than thou’, tiresome, predictable, conservative

BROWN

+ earthy, homely, gregarious – safe, boring, unsophisticated

YELLOW

+ cheerful, hopeful, active, uninhibited – impulsive, tiresome, whirlwind, volatile

GREEN

+ self-reliant, tenacious, nurturing, dependable – boring, stubborn, riskaverse, predictable

ORANGE

+ vital, funny, enthusiastic, sociable, uninhibited – superficial, common, faddist, giddy

VIOLET

+ imaginative, sensitive, intuitive, unusual, unselfish – weird, impractical, immature, superior

GREY

+ respectable, neutral, balanced – non-committal, deceptive, uncertain, safe

BLACK

+ formal, sophisticated, mysterious, strong – mournful, aloof, negative, lifeless

WHITE

+ pure, clean, fresh, futuristic – clinical, ‘colourless’, cold, neutral

The symbolic or psychological associations of colours have a long history.

In the 12th century, a colour sequence for the liturgical year in the Roman Catholic Church was outlined by Pope Innocent III, and continues to be used today. Examples:

Red vestments are used at Pentecost or for the feasts of martyrs, the colour representing tongues of fire and the shedding of blood;

black vestments are the colour of mourning;

violet vestments represent the mitigation of black, in Advent and Lent; and

green is the ‘neutral’ colour, used ‘in ordinary time’, when there is no special period or feast-day being celebrated.

These and certain other colours (notably white, blue, gold, and rose) are also often used symbolically in many medieval religious paintings.

In modern times:

The psychological associations of colours, and thus the connotations of colour vocabulary, continue to be exploited in a wide range of contexts, such as in the description of paint shades, advertising language, and techniques of self-imaging.

The Color Me Beautiful system is a good example within the last category.

This consultancy was founded by Carole Jackson in the USA in 1974, and now has branches in many parts of the world. Its aim is to help women discover their natural beauty through colour, using the metaphor of the four seasons.

In much the same way as each season presents a distinct array of colours, a person’s colouring is said to be in harmony with one of these palettes, and advice is given about how to enhance these natural colours, and about how to choose additional colours (of make-up and clothing) (M. Spillane, 1991).

Source ⚜ More: On Colours ⚜ Colour Symbolisms ⚜ "Magical Uses" of Colours Writing Notes & References ⚜ On Symbolism

[poetessinthepit]

One thing I think that is so insidious about the Pro-Israel narrative is that they don't even want you donating to the Palestinian cause to provide things like food or medical care for children. There is a concerted hasbara campaign to associate any NGO that provides any aid to palestinians with terrorism.

For example, if you attempt to raise money for the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, a charity rated 4 stars by Charity Navigator, you may be linked to a page on a website called NGO Monitor. At first glance, this appears to be a neutral charity rating website similar to Charity Navigator. It's not.

Try searching any charity with no connection to the Israel-Palestine conflict on NGO Monitor, and you'll get no result.

Do a little digging, and you'll find out that NGO Monitor was founded by Gerald Steinberg, a Likud party member and former Israeli Security Council consultant. It is essentially a right-wing Israeli front posing as a legitimate charity watchdog while spreading misinformation.

Or consider this racist parody song from Israel's version of SNL. It depicts a hjiab donning woman crying and begging for money in front of an image of shelled out buildings presumably in Gaza. It then cuts away to reveal it is all a set, and her crying is acting, alluding to the Pallywood conspiracy theory. This is followed by caricatures of Hamas members swimming in riches in a luxurious hotel room in Qatar chanting "dollar bills, dollar bills" as donations pile up. The implication is clear; if you give money to Palestine, you are giving money to Hamas. The fact that this video is in English tells you who the intended audience is. It was posted on instagram by Noa Tishby, a former Israeli spokesperson.

This all reflects the true cruelty of the Israeli regime. They don't just want to harm the Palestinians; they don't want you to help them.

[mariacallous]

In early September, the U.S. Department of Justice unveiled a series of sweeping investigations and indictments into Russian information projects aimed at disrupting the 2024 U.S. presidential election. One of these projects, which secretly funded right-wing influencers to promote former President Donald Trump’s campaign, is an escalation from prior Russian information operations, such as their email hacks during the 2016 election.

But another Russian team, described in a planning document published by the Department of Justice, approached disrupting the election a little bit less directly.

The Russian plan describes the “Good Ol’ USA Project” as a “guerrilla media” campaign intended to target “sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.” Written by Ilya Gambashidze, a figure already facing sanctions for his disinformation work aimed at smearing Ukraine, the document suggests focusing influence efforts on the “community of American gamers, users of Reddit and image boards, such as 4Chan,” since they are the “backbone of the right-wing trends” online in the United States.

The inclusion of gamers in this campaign points at emerging dynamics in a global struggle over human rights online—one that policymakers need to pay closer attention to.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group, around 65 percent of Americans—or 212 million people—regularly play video games. Globally, video games generate more than $280 billion in revenue, far larger than traditional culture industries such as film or book publishing. While a trickle of stories about other attempts to push Russian propaganda in video games have attracted some scrutiny from journalists, the question remains: Apart from scale, what is it about gamers that Russia thinks will make them receptive to its messaging?

For starters, video game culture has already become an important venue for extremist right-wing groups to share and normalize their ideas. Far-right groups modify video games to be more explicitly racist and violent than their designers intended. Even gaming spaces designed for children, such as Roblox, which allows players to create their own game worlds and storylines, have attracted thousands of people (many of them young teenagers) to use the game’s freewheeling mechanics to play-act fascist violence.

The prevalence of hate groups has shaped video games into a place where culture and politics are debated, often contentiously, with predictable fault lines emerging along U.S. partisan boundaries. While the industry itself has made considerable progress in improving representation and reducing acts of horrific sexual violence, it has received pushback from far-right figures who are angry at the so-called “wokes” for supposedly “ruining games.”

For a decade, repeated efforts to “reclaim” gaming from an imagined enemy composed of women, Black people, and LGBT+ folks have bubbled up from the darkest corners of the internet, often in places such as Reddit (where this Russian campaign aimed its influence activity). These movements have spilled over into more mainstream political movements that can shape election outcomes. Consider how Gamergate, a 2014 campaign to terrorize women working in the industry into invisibility, metastasized into an online troll army working to get former U.S. President Donald Trump elected in 2016.

These far-right efforts are ongoing, even without Russian help. Last year, a group of gamers who were angry at inclusive representation in games launched a harassment campaign—colloquially called Gamergate 2.0—against a story consulting company.

Earlier this year, when Ubisoft began promoting the latest installment of its popular Assassin’s Creed franchise, this time set in feudal Japan, the trailer prominently featured Yasuke, an African man who served as a samurai in 16th-century Japan. Despite being based on a real historical figure, this movement (egged on by X owner and billionaire Elon Musk) raged at the decision, as if acknowledging Black people in the past was somehow bad. In their quest to sow division within the United States, Russian information operations analysts do not need to look very far to find political allies in gaming communities.

It helps that Russia enjoys greater social legitimacy in gaming than it does in, say, news journalism. You can see this legitimacy reflected in the language gamers that use as they play. Around the same time as Gamergate, a vulgar Russian phrase began popping up in the chats that players use to communicate with each other in non-Russian game streams, primarily in the multiplayer first-person shooter Counterstrike: Global Offensive. The game has around 4 million Russian players, and as it grew in popularity in the mid-2010s, the Russian obscenity cyka blyad became common invective during frustrating moments of play. Its widespread adoption among non-Russian-speaking gamers struck many as odd.

Cyka blyad rose in prominence alongside Russia’s descent into becoming an international pariah, which has limited the spaces where Russian gamers can play games online. In 2014, Russia passed a law requiring websites that store the personal information of Russian citizens to do so on servers inside the country. This was compounded in 2022, when companies ranging from Activision Blizzard to Nintendo protested the invasion of Ukraine by either suspending sales or shutting down Russia-specific services. Despite its residents representing around 10 percent of Counterstrike’s player base, there are no host servers for the game anywhere in Russia.

So, when Russian players log on to find players for a match, they use servers based in Europe or sometimes North America. These servers place them into direct contact with players on the other side of international conflicts—something that many players within the European Union found deeply frustrating after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, as their games became places where people would argue about the annexation.

But another reason why Russian slang began infiltrating non-Russian gaming spaces is that after years of censorship and exclusion from both Russian and Western governments, games are one of the only spaces direct exchanges between ordinary Russian and Western people. Russians lack access to many Western social media platforms—such as Instagram (blocked by the Russian government in 2022, though earlier this year some Russian users regained access)—and were locked out of Western game stores, even as they kept access to many online games. As a result, matches in a game such as Counterstrike or Fortnite became one of the only places where these informal cultural exchanges could take place.

This narrowing of exchange spaces highlights how video games can become useful conduits for propaganda, and it demonstrates that video games are becoming an important, if underappreciated, site for ideological disputes over politics, speech, identity, and expression.

Other countries have begun to use video games for strategic communication. The U.S. government operates semiprofessional esports teams through the Defense Department, whose remit includes convincing young people to become interested in enlistment. China launched a military-produced first-person shooter game to boost recruitment and to humanize the image of the People’s Liberation Army abroad.

The Chinese developers of the hugely popular game Black Myth: Wukong instructed gaming influencers who were given early access to avoid discussing “feminist propaganda” while reviewing the game, apparently to adhere to government censorship rules. And Russian propaganda about the country’s war with Ukraine has begun appearing in games that allow user-generated content, such as Minecraft and the aforementioned Roblox, as the Kremlin seeks to persuade Westerners to end their support for Ukrainian freedom. In response, the U.S. State Department has begun developing its own games intended to train players to resist Russian disinformation.

This isn’t an abstract challenge. Scholars have drawn linkages between Russia’s propaganda efforts and President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as both bots and human agents aggressively pushed narratives about the need to “pacify” an ostensibly violent Ukraine by invading. The invasion was further justified by the myth of Novorossiya, or a pan-Russian identity that views Ukrainians as misguided Russians who need to be forcibly reclaimed.

These efforts to spread propaganda through gaming are rarely successful. Few people wanted to, say, join Hezbollah after the Lebanese militant group launched its own game, Special Force, in 2003. The terrorist group al Qaeda has used video games for recruitment since 2006, but there is little evidence that any meaningful number of people have been recruited because of it. Scholars have fretted for years over the “militarization” of video games as the Pentagon gets more and more involved in the industry, yet U.S. military recruitment is in long-term decline, and public confidence in the nation’s military is at a two-decade low. If games-based propaganda works, we do not yet know where or how it does.

The revelations about Russian video game propaganda hint at some intriguing innovation in how strategic messages might be spread through nontraditional channels, but they also point to the areas where traditional channels for propaganda have closed down. Despite efforts by Republicans in Congress to falsely accuse agencies such as the Global Engagement Center of partisan bias when addressing foreign misinformation, the U.S. government takes the challenge seriously and, as this 2022 report on the propaganda channels , is working to thwart many of Russia’s best efforts to target Americans with propaganda, like when they sanctioned several Russian oligarchs who had been financing US-directed misinformation.

But even beyond government counterprogramming, there are plenty of obstacles to Russia’s efforts within the world of gaming. For example, Ukraine’s video games industry is respected in the United States and Europe. The developer 4A, which was based in Kyiv before the invasion, produces popular games such as the Metro franchise. That company, however, had to fly its employees abroad to keep them safe from the indiscriminate Russian barrages against the Ukrainian capital and other cities. This sent shockwaves through the industry, as it made some of the consequences of the invasion seem more viscerally real even to people who do not follow politics closely.

As a result of American and European sanctions, Russians have a more difficult experience legally purchasing software and services such as online gaming. (Some Russian game companies have since relocated abroad to more neutral countries, such as Cyprus, to continue operating globally). Wargaming, the Belarusian company that makes World of Tanks, also fled to Cyprus, which has become an informal hub of Russian game companies.

Looking forward, there are real questions about what video games are going to become in the information war between Russia and the West. Russian censors have proposed deploying neural networks to search for banned content in games, but it is unclear whether those systems might disrupt gaming for everyone else.

Long before the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow forced Activision to censor the infamous airport sequence in the rerelease of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (in which players assume the role of a Chechen terrorist and can slaughter hundreds of screaming civilians at Sheremetyevo International Airport), and it has not been shy about using government coercion to erase LGBT+ people from gaming (paralleling to its embrace of the U.S. far right). Policymakers should look at ensuring that global communication platforms—and that is what video games are—remain open to free speech and safeguard other basic human rights.

While the latest Russian effort to target games seems to have been thwarted by the U.S. Justice Department, there will undoubtedly be more programs looking to repeat and extend the success of Gamergate in empowering the far right, perhaps this time by enabling it to obstruct effective governance in the United States. The Good Ol’ USA Project also targeted its influence operations toward websites such as Reddit and 4Chan, both of which are as central to the sustainment of far-right movements as gaming. Emerging platforms—which range from popular Chinese games to channels such as the online chat service Discord, which is difficult to monitor at scale and routinely hosts leaks of sensitive military documents—present new opportunities where Russian influence could be targeted.

These strange spaces are the frontier where a global battle for speech is being fought.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

From some of the books I've read on Diana and Charles (from their married days) it's quite evident that the boys had their own RPOs from very early on. Ken Wharf, one of Diana's most well known RPOs, started out as a PPO from William and Harry (I think he started when either William or Harry was only 4 years old). That was the arrangement back then since the boys were sons of the Prince of Wales (heir) and William was actually a future king (heir to the heir). I think Harry took that arrangement for granted and assumed it's his birth right. From a very young age on, his normal was having an RPO with him at all times, even when they were at home.

So, I do understand Harry's cognitive dissonance that doesn't let him understand why his security was taken away once he stopped being a working royal.

But I also think it's entitlement. Remember when they first released their manifesto and then the court cases, they gave examples of their relatives who seemingly enjoy perks of BRF association ie , security and titles and hold jobs. They cited Eugenie, Bea, Andrew, even the Prince Michael Kent. That is the loophope they wanted to exploit, and that thinking is all Harry. It has to have been Harry to thought it was ok to go along with Meghan's schemes because the others were doing similar things (acc to him).

He is just mad that that the unwritten rules seems to have changed only for him. (Which lets be honest, they sort of have) And he thinks it's because of the Meghan hatred and their need to dim his star so that they (Charles, William) can shine brighter (Very Diana way thinking, tbh).

From everything that's been coming out about Andrew and Fergie, it seems that exploiting royal association isn't a new thing. Some like Michael Kent do it in an official capacity as "business consultants", which is legal. And some like Andrew, Fergie do it by acting as shady go-betweens and taking financial cuts like a brokerage.

It is a bit a curious that the rules did change for Harry in such an obvious way. Makes you wonder, how bad things with him and Meghan must be that they got such a definite push back, when slimy Andrew manages to still in part of the inner fold.

Was it a pre-emptive strike against Harry because BRF his potential to be such a train wreck) or did they shut doors in Meghan because they realised she is a gold digger? Or did the couple actually do something really egregious behimd close doors that caused this massive reaction? Or was it that the deciding vote, for Harry and Meghan, were William and Charles, who are image savvy, smart, circumspect and willing to listen to advisors? Whereas for Andrew the authority was mainly the queen and Phillip who preferred to put it on the back burner and not talk about it at all?

It's because the Sussexes publicly announced their intent to commercialize their titles for personal profit and subsidize their lives on taxpayer funding while not living in the UK and not working or doing anything to benefit the taxpayers for using their money.

All Harry and Meghan had to do was keep their mouths shut and they probably would've gotten most of what they asked for.

Keep your mouth shut, keep it out of the press, and everyone will look the other way. But the second it becomes public, then it's game over because once it's public, the public will demand accountability and force The Queen to impose consequences. Because that's what happened to everyone else. Andrew, Sarah, Prince Michael, Edward, Sophie, etc. kept their mouths shut and they got their half-in/half-out perks till the press found out and when the press found out, the public demanded counsequences and accountability:

The Yorks were forced to divorce after Sarah's actions were found out.

Andrew was forced to leave his trade envoy position over controversies about his expenses and the relationships he made with certain questionable people in the Middle East, but he still kept his royal position. Then seven years later, Andrew was forced to leave public service and lost all honors after his continued connections to/with Epstein were revealed.

The Queen was forced to pay real rent for Prince and Princess Michael when an inquiry revealed they were living grace-and-favor at Kensington Palace despite not being full-time working royals.

Prince Michael was forced to leave public service after his Russian connections and pay-for-access schemes were publicly revealed. (The Queen saved face by letting him retire.)

Sophie was forced to leave her PR firm after the sheik scandal when her negative comments about the BRF were published. Around the same time, Edward was forced to leave his production company after it was discovered his company stayed in St. Andrews past a hard-stop deadline when William began at the university. Then after some quiet time out/off, Sophie and Edward both rebranded as full-time working royals in support of The Queen's golden jubilee in 2002.

All this to say that if the Sussexes had kept their mouths shut this whole time and let the BRF handle their resignation, the world went through COVID (and they didn't give any interviews or make any comments or write any editorials at all), and Prince Philip died, they probably would've been back in some unofficial capacity by the end of 2021 to help with the Platinum Jubilee in some form.

Also, exploiting royal association has been a thing for as long as the monarchy has existed. It's not new to the contemporary BRF.

[metamatar]

To improve his political communication, Modi was one of the first Indian politicians to use the services of a U.S. public relations firm, APCO Worldwide, which he hired in 2007. This company—which had already worked for Nigeria’s former dictator (Sani Abacha), the president for life of Kazakhstan (Nursultan Nazarbaiev), and the Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky—was then grooming Modi’s image for a monthly fee of $25,000.82 The contract binding the government of Gujarat and APCO Worldwide (which already handled the promotion of Vibrant Gujarat, an economic fair that will be discussed in greater detail further on) was renegotiated in 2010 so as to identify journalists who could be media ambassadors for Gujarat, in connection with the Friends of Gujarat association of Gujaratis living in the United States and the United Kingdom. Modi has also surrounded himself with political communication consultants, such as Prashant Kishor, a U.S.-educated Bihari who joined his staff in 2012 at the age of thirty-five and who quickly established himself as a close advisor. Such an entourage illustrates Modi’s ability to rely on a team of communications experts who do not necessarily have affinities with Hindu nationalism.

In addition, Modi hired an army of young supporters to flood social media with messages, for as Sunil Khilnani writes, “the real masterminds of Modi’s political campaigns are not shadowy figures wearing RSS uniform under their plainclothes. They are smart, cheery IIT-ians [alumni of Indian Institutes of Technology]: men like Rajesh Jain.”87 This young man in fact represents the typical profile of these digital propaganda experts. With an engineering degree from Columbia University, Jain was not only active on social media; he also founded a company, IndiaWorld Web, soon renamed Netcore, which became a pillar of Modi’s propaganda. On social media, Modi supporters have been tasked with countering criticism against him, and they often resort to particularly aggressive methods to do so.

Modi's India (2021), Christophe Jaffrelot

[fatehbaz]

“Is it green energy if it’s impacting cultural traditional sites?”

Yakama Nation Tribal Councilman Jeremy Takala sounded weary. For five years, tribal leaders and staff have been fighting a renewable energy development that could permanently destroy tribal cultural property. “This area, it’s irreplaceable.”

The privately owned land, outside Goldendale, Washington, is called Pushpum, or “mother of roots,” a first foods seed bank. The Yakama people have treaty-protected gathering rights there. One wind turbine-studded ridge, Juniper Point, is the proposed site of a pumped hydro storage facility. But to build it, Boston-based Rye Development would have to carve up Pushpum — and the Yakama Nation lacks a realistic way to stop it.

Back in October 2008, unbeknownst to Takala, Scott Tillman, CEO of Golden Northwest Aluminum Corporation, met with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a collection of governor-appointed representatives from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana [...]. Tillman, who owned a shuttered Lockheed Martin aluminum smelter near Goldendale, told the council about the contaminated site’s redevelopment potential, specifically for pumped hydro storage [...]. Shortly thereafter, Klickitat County’s public utility department tried to implement Tillman’s plan [...].

Meanwhile, Tillman cleaned up and sold another smelting site, just across the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon, a Superfund site where Lockheed Martin had poisoned the groundwater with cyanide. He sold it to Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which operates water-guzzling data centers in The Dalles and plans to build more. For nine years, the county and Rye plotted the fate of Pushpum — without ever notifying the Yakama Nation.

The tribal government only learned of the development in December 2017, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a public notice of acceptance for Rye’s preliminary permit application. Tribal officials had just 60 days to catch up on nine years of development planning and issue their initial concerns and objections as public comments. [...]

When the tribe objected, FERC said it could file more public comments to the docket instead of consulting. [...]

When asked what Rye could offer the Yakama people as compensation for the irreversible destruction of their cultural property, Steimle suggested “employment associated with the project.” [...] Presented with the reality that Yakama people might not want Rye’s jobs, Steimle hesitated. “Yeah, I mean I, I can’t argue that — maybe it won’t be meaningful to them.” [...]

Klickitat County’s eagerness creates another barrier to the Yakama Nation. In Washington, a developer can take one of two permitting paths: through the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, or through county channels. Both lead to FERC. In this case, working with the county benefits Rye: Klickitat, a majority Republican county, has a contentious relationship with the Yakama Nation [...]. “Klickitat County refuses to work with us,” said Takala. [...]

Fighting Rye's proposal has required the efforts of tribal attorneys, archaeologists and government staffers from a number of departments. [...]

And Rye’s project is just one of dozens proposed within the Yakama Nation’s 10 million-acre treaty territory. Maps from the tribe and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife show that of the 51 wind and solar projects currently proposed statewide — not including geothermal or pumped hydro storage projects, which are also renewable energy developments — at least 34 are on or partially on the Yakama Nation’s ceded lands.

---

Headline, images, graphics, captions, and text by: B. Toastie Oaster (High Country News). “Green colonialism is flooding the Pacific Northwest.” As published at The Wenatchee World. 25 March 2023.

[sosuigeneris]

Socialite series: Manufacturing your Personality

So you want to get into high society. I can give you a guideline as to how you can do that. 

I was born in high society, in India. I know how these systems work. Even across cultures, they’re quite similar. I know some German, Asian, American high society people. Certain things are very similar across continents. 

You can permanently secure your position by two ways: marriage, or by becoming somebody. 

In Indian high society, there’s two kinds of people: those who have lineage, and those who are rich. 

Those who have lineage are those (mostly bankrupt) Maharajas, artists, singers, musicians, poets for generations - it’s an art form or royalty handed down to their children. They have ✨culture, a legacy✨ that can only be obtained by birth. They want to mingle with the business rich so that they get access to the opportunities they need for their livelihoods. 

The business rich can be new or old money. It doesn’t matter. Their businesses are family businesses. They have money, but may lack class. Don’t be mistaken that only new money can be “tacky” - I know plenty of influential, old money families who are equally classless and tacky. 

They want to mingle with the lineage crowd because they need that ✨culture✨ to be seen as someone. They want to be associated with them, to improve their reputations. By connecting to the artistic and musical world, it shows that they have class and persona. 

Both groups, as you see, need each other. You may ask - can’t there be families where there’s both?

Yes there can. But that is not common. 

Let’s say you take the route of dating someone who is of high society, and are hoping to convert that into marriage. I’ll be very honest with you - you have to seriously stand out for Asian and Middle Eastern high society families to accept you if you lack both lineage and money. 

You need to have a strong educational background - you need to go to a great college or masters, or whatever - otherwise this is really not going to happen. This is requirement number 1. If you don’t have this, don’t even bother reading the rest. 

And in Asian and ME families, remember one thing. Marriages are between families, NOT individuals. You have to impress the family, the family’s friends, their maids and barbers and god knows who else. 

And here are Cherry’s insider tips, just for you, to fit right in. If you fit in comfortably, it makes your life and everyone else’s life easier. 

Extrovert tendencies 

don’t be intimidated by people, don’t be shy or awkward 

It’s better to mix in being a combination of “social + slightly bored” like “it’s nice to meet you, but I wouldn’t die to be here.” 

Be open without jumping around like a Disney kid. Being “overexcited” or jumpy, smiling and laughing at just about everything comes across as weird in some cultures, IF that’s not how you genuinely are. That might work in the US, but not everywhere else. 

If I had to very simply define an extrovert - approach new people with ease, learn the art of small talk and be a good listener. 

Confident 

have a sense of self: career, hobbies, likes or dislikes, experiences

Be a multi faceted person. Do things that YOU like. If you like reading Japanese literature and collecting quartz, great! That’s your thing! 

Good communication skills

articulate, small talk abilities, good listener, curious, engaging

be able to tell little stories about yourself without giving everything away 

Well dressed 

do an image consultation for your colours, understand your body shape type and find a style that works for you

Create a capsule wardrobe that is timeless 

Remember - modesty is ALWAYS the best idea for any event. 

Posture - stand up straight, be able to walk in heels, sit without slouching

if you don’t know how to walk in heels, learn to. Practice it. 

Sit up straight, do some yoga or something for good posture 

Maintenance- good skin, hair, fit body, skin, nails, teeth; good hygiene; smell good 

hygiene comes first. Shower regularly, wash your hair as often as needed. 

Put on perfume. 

Find a make up style that works for you. Again, this takes practice. It took me years to figure out what kind of eyeliner works on my eyes and that bronzer doesn’t suit me at all. Crazy make up, unnatural hair colours, visible tattoos or piercings will not sit well in these societies. 

Etiquette 

dining etiquette- learn how to eat properly. This is not just for white culture but for other cultures as well. Understand broadly how popular cultures etiquettes work - Japanese eating etiquettes, European fork and knife etiquette, Korean drinking etiquette, Indian and Middle Eastern etiquette, etc. 

giving appropriate gifts to the host - bottle of wine or flowers 

Learn thank you etiquette- shoot a text message to the host thanking them for the event 

Intelligence

Show that you have some sort of a personality. 

Stay updated with current affairs

know your line of work and the relevant people (top companies, CEOs, etc), trends happening in your industry 

Be open to learning new things  

Put together

have a routine, show some form of discipline. 

This can be done by committing to something long term, such as healthy habits - exercise, reading, waking up early. 

Keep a watch on what you say 

people, especially women, who come across as bratty are seen as a big no no and can come across as exhausting and blood sucking. Zip it. 

Don’t talk about your failures, vulnerabilities, mistakes or mishaps. That’s confidential. 

Don’t complain or be snotty or a potty mouth. 

Do not put other people down in front of people who are not your absolute close friends. 

Poise (this is for your mental health and wellbeing)

Don’t be over eager. Being overly friendly can be seen as submissiveness. 

You’re overly friendly with someone because you want to be accepted by them. Acceptance only happens when you’re familiar with one another. When you become too familiar, it becomes a breeding ground for disrespect. Boundaries get crossed easily. 

Body language

practice practice and practice. 

Video yourself and have a fake conversation with someone. Or maybe FaceTime a friend and record yourself and see how you react to things. 

I used to watch those “try not to laugh/ get angry/ cry” videos to maintain a strong facial expression at all times. Not everyone deserves to see you vulnerable. 

Social media 

Take. Shit. Down. 

Go private if you don’t make money of social media. You’re perceived as more mysterious if you’re a private account. 

Remember, even if you’re private, it doesn’t mean that your pictures aren’t being shared. Someone’s taken a screenshot at some point for SURE or shown your account to someone else. Don’t give anyone anything to talk about. 

Don’t upload every second of every day. 

Don’t upload anything questionable- your break ups, your new boyfriend, girls nights, clubbing, your latest shopping spree etc etc. Keep things halal. Think of it this way - if your boss were to see those photos, how would you feel?

Overexposing yourself on social media comes across as desperate for attention. Limit that.

Cherry 🍒

[aiciglobal]

Image consultants, Image consulting, AICI Global

The Association of Image Consultants International (AICI) is the leading and largest professional association of personal and corporate image consultants worldwide. A non-profit organization, AICI is dedicated to advancing the level of professionalism and enhancing the recognition of image consultants.

Our members counsel both individual and corporate clients on appearance, behavior, communication skills, etiquette, international protocol, and soft skills. As experts in image consulting, our members guide clients to achieve their specific goals with authenticity, credibility, and confidence. Supporting the development of the Image Consulting Profession, AICI brings together individuals and companies who seek image consulting services with the appropriate expert.

AICI enhances industry standards through a rigorous, three-tiered certification program and holds the world’s premier annual image consulting conference. AICI provides continuing education classes for image consultants. AICI acts as the voice of the image consulting profession and the media’s definitive source for experts on current issues and events that may affect the image profession.To know more visit Our website: www.aici.org

[fans4wga]

[September 1] Don’t Fall For Hollywood Bosses’ New PR Spin

'Today marks the 122nd day of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike and 48th day of the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike. The dual work stoppages have brought Hollywood to a standstill, with production halted on films and television programs, and premieres and other promotional events either scaled back or canceled. Both guilds are striking over demands that are more than reasonable, particularly given studio executives’ record pay. These demands include fair compensation for streaming media (particularly better residuals, which currently pale in comparison to what they are for network and cable broadcasts), robust studio support for health and retirement funds, and safeguards around the use of artificial intelligence. (For more on why WGA and SAG-AFTRA are on strike, read the excellent reporting of Jacobin’s Alex Press). 

In a move that has shocked…pretty much no one, Hollywood bosses don’t want to share their earnings with the very storytellers responsible for generating them. At the same time, they’re happy to make workers pay the cost for their own miscalculations about streaming.

The major Tinseltown studios – organized under the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) trade association – remain stubbornly opposed to striking a fair deal with either guild. Under the leadership of AMPTP president Carol Lombardini, studios have employed brutal tactics to bust the strike, including threatening to drag things out until writers lose their homes and using management-friendly trade publications to pressure the guilds into accepting lowball offers. These tactics have backfired spectacularly: not only have they failed to end either strike, but they’ve also turned the public overwhelmingly against the AMPTP. A new Gallup poll finds that Americans back the WGA over the AMPTP by 72% to 19%, and SAG-AFTRA over AMPTP by 64% to 24%.

Aware of their reputational damage (but willfully ignorant of the anti-worker attitude that caused it), the AMPTP announced a “reset” to its approach this week – not by negotiating in good faith or meeting the guilds’ demands, but by hiring a pricey crisis-management PR firm to revamp its image! According to Deadline, the AMPTP has hired The Levinson Group – a D.C.-based PR shop best known for representing the U.S. Women’s  National Soccer Team in its campaign for pay equity – to “reframe the big picture for studio and streamer CEOs who have been characterized as greedy, imperious and out of touch.”

If you’re feeling like you’ve seen this movie before, you’re not wrong. During the last WGA strike 15 years ago, studio bosses hired former Clinton comms strategists Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane to revive the AMPTP’s flagging public image. The revolving-door duo were paid a jaw-dropping $100,000 per month by the AMPTP to strike-bust, deploying campaign-style spin attacks designed to break the WGA’s resolve. 

As I wrote for The American Prospect in May:

“Fabiani and Lehane created a website with a live tally of the millions of dollars in income that guild members and on-set crew had purportedly lost by striking. They urged studio CEOs to publicly refer to WGA representatives as “organizers” rather than “negotiators” because the former “sound[ed] more Commie.” Lehane even told the press at one point that striking writers were “making more than doctors and pilots,” cynically arguing that the strike was harming “real working-class people” like below-the-line workers who had lost income from struck late-night talk shows […] Fabiani and Lehane were [also] the brains behind a “strongly worded and downright menacing” AMPTP press release breaking off negotiations with the WGA in December 2007. This move allowed the studios, which cited a protracted strike as an “unforeseeable event,” to invoke force majeure contract clauses and cancel multiple writer-producer deals worth tens of millions of dollars, severely demoralizing the WGA’s rank-and-file members.”

The parallels between 2008 and today are striking. Like Fabiani and Lehane (who have worked for scandal-plagued clients like Gray Davis, Bill O’Reilly, Lance Armstrong, and Goldman Sachs) the Levinson Group has no qualms about representing greedy and unsavory characters. Over the years, Levinson has done PR for predatory student lender Better Future Forward, reviled monopolist Live Nation/Ticketmaster, a talc mining company linked to the Johnson & Johnson baby powder cancer scandal, and Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes. 

And just like the ex-Clinton spin doctors, the Levinson Group boasts close revolving-door ties to powerful politicians and the news media. The firm currently represents President Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer and previously represented John Podesta’s family lobbying firm. Levinson partners have previously worked for an array of influential politicians, including former President Bill Clinton, Senators Jon Tester and Amy Klobuchar, Representatives Maxine Waters and Ted Lieu, and former and current Los Angeles Mayors Eric Garcetti and Karen Bass. The firm’s founder and CEO Molly Levinson spent eight years working for CNN and CBS, while two of the Levinson Group’s top managing directors are alumni of CNBC and The Wall Street Journal. With a web of strong connections to power players in the entertainment industry’s twin capitals of LA and New York, along with the nation’s capital, Levinson could help the AMPTP tilt the regulatory and media scales back in the bosses’ favor. 

Though this may sound demoralizing, striking writers and actors shouldn’t lose hope. For one, consider a surprisingly uplifting parallel between 2008 and 2023. Fifteen years ago, after Fabiani and Lehane took the AMPTP’s contract, the SEIU and other unions that had previously worked with the duo severed ties with them for trying to bust the writers’ strike. Fast forward to this week: the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team Players Association (Levinson’s star client!) publicly rebuked the firm for doing the AMPTP’s dirty work and voiced support for the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. If history is any indication, it’s only a matter of time until other pro-union Levinson clients – like the majority SEIU-owned Amalgamated Bank – follow suit and sever ties with the firm. 

There is also one crucial way in which 2023 is thankfully not like 2008: The Levinson Group is bad at their jobs. 

Consider an August 27th New York Times article about AMPTP President Carol Lombardini*, which was almost certainly pitched or otherwise molded by Levinson flacks. The article goes to ridiculous lengths to rehabilitate Lombardini’s image:

The article passively describes Lombardini’s tenure as “marked by labor peace until now” (a peace that she has now broken) and shifts blame for her unpopular decisions to anonymous AMPTP members (how convenient!).

Article co-authors Brooks Barnes and John Koblin quote a 2014 email from then-WarnerMedia CEO Kevin Tsujihara praising Lombardini’s negotiation skills and recommending she receive a $365,000 bonus. Curiously absent from the article is any mention of Tsujihara’s high-profile 2019 resignation from WarnerMedia for pressuring actresses into non-consensual sex.

Barnes and Koblin attempt to paint a “she’s just like us” picture of Lombardini (who reportedly earns a $3 million annual salary), mentioning her upbringing in a “working-class town outside Boston” and love for Red Sox and Dodgers games.

Barnes and Koblin paint a rosy picture of the AMPTP’s “sweetened proposal” (their words) to the WGA, describing the studios’ August counteroffer as “including higher wages, a pledge to share some viewership data and additional protections around the use of artificial intelligence.” Barnes & Koblin never quote the WGA’s well-founded reasons for turning down this lowball offer, saying only that the WGA is “holding firm to demands related to staffing minimums and transparency into streaming-service viewership.”

Bizarrely, the core issue of underpaid streaming residuals (the main reason writers are demanding greater streaming transparency) is never mentioned in the article.

Barnes and Koblin frequently imply that criticism of Lombardini is unfair, describing her as an “easy target” for the “grievances of striking workers” and singling out a tweet purportedly “mocking [Lombardini] as a fuddy-duddy who hangs out at chain restaurants”.

Barnes and Koblin quote a pre-strike September 2022 Deadline interview with Teamsters organizer Lindsay Dougherty to claim that Lombardini has the “grudging respect” of union leaders who see her as a “fair individual.” They did not quote more recent statements from Dougherty, who last month tweeted that the “greedy” AMPTP had “declared war on Hollywood Labor” by refusing to negotiate in good faith with WGA and SAG-AFTRA.

In one unintentionally eyebrow-raising line, Barnes and Koblin state that Lombardini was “inspired to become a lawyer by reading articles about F. Lee Bailey.” Neither Bailey’s sordid clients (like OJ Simpson) nor his multiple disbarments are mentioned in the article.

And it’s not just me who finds the Levinson Group’s efforts laughable. Discussions of the NYT story on Reddit and Twitter are dominated by comments tying the story’s blatant reputation laundering for Lombardini to the AMPTP’s concurrent hiring of Levinson. A recent New Yorker puff piece on Warner CEO David Zaslav has been met with similar ridicule – with many commenters also pointing to Levinson’s potential influence. So too have recent stories from management-friendly trades like Deadline – all of which have failed to make a dent in strong public support for WGA and SAG-AFTRA. This is a good sign: not only is the public more inclined to side with striking workers than it was in 2008 – it’s also seemingly more attuned to the role of corporate PR flacks in shaping the media narrative. If studio bosses think they can remake the same movie and end another strike with flashy spin-doctors, they’re sorely mistaken. 

So here’s my advice to the AMPTP (and it won’t cost you six figures per month to hear it): the way to fix your reputation problem is to end the strike by giving writers and actors what they want. No strike-busting comms team can rescue you from the hole you’ve dug yourself into. 

As the LA Times’ Mary McNamara recently put it, “You’ve lost the war. The best thing to do now is negotiate the terms of surrender.”'

[littleeyesofpallas]

So I guess this is a good time to do a recap of some old Ukitake posts: [1][2][3][4][5][6]

Ukitake[浮竹] Juushirou[十四郎] actually has one of my favorite names in the series as it feels like it says a lot about his core concept beyond what we're really given in canon. The family name reads uki-[浮]: "Floating" and take-[竹]: "Bamboo." That same "floating" is part of the word fuurou[浮浪]: "vagrant/vagabond" and a few other colloquial terms, a generally circling around a homeless person or a drifter. (In fact the other half of that compound word, [浪] is the "wave" in ronin[浪人]: "wave man/person" as in a masterless samurai.) Bamboo being a staple lumber in Japan of course but also notorious for its fast and rampant growth, as it is quick to spread and choke out other plants in an environment. The idea of "floating..." or "vagrant bamboo" gives an impression of being plentiful and common, even excessive.

The personal name, Juushirou[十四郎] just reads "14(th) Son" which always implied he came from a large family. A profile in the back of vol. 18 long ago confirmed he had brothers and sisters, but curiously all younger than him. The implication seemed clear that as a sickly person from a big family, he was poor and that there were 13 prior children who died before him, which is really the only reason you'd name a child the way they did. This feels like it works in tandem with the family name to again emphasize a family of many, but also almost expendable. The big family is also why he's got an affinity for children

That said it always felt to me like the backstory should have been more grim? Like rather than just praying to a god to save his life, it seemed more like he should have been a sacrifice made to ensure the family line continued. Like first 13 kids died, they were afraid he was their last chance, but he was sickly, so they sacrificed him to basically ensure the next ones would come out alright. Hence the kids younger than him surviving in spite of the ominous past implied by his name.

(Also the "shiro" phonetics in his name as a homonym with shiro[白]:white point to his hair. Kubo makes an explicit joke about this as Toshiro, also white haired, shares a similar wordplay, his name Toshirou[冬獅郎] meaning "Winter Lion Son.")

Then there's his shikai, Sougyo-no-Kotowari[双魚理] which reads "PairFish's Reason/Logic/Natural way of things." (sougyo-kyu[双魚宮] is the Japanese name of the constellation Pisces.) It appears to be an allusion to daoism/onmyodo, and the yin-yang diagram of balance, and this theme gets built upon by other contextual information like the zanpakutou arc's designs borrowing from onmyoji, and Ukitake's presence in conjunction with fish imagery and metaphor in the Jaws of Hell arc.

The little preamble to that chapter, about the two fish in balance until one dies and then the other grows bigger, is itself synonymous with sougyo-no-kotowari: The Natural Order of Two Fish.

The release command [波悉く我が盾となれ]: "All Waves be my shield," [雷悉く我が刃となれ]: "All LightningBolts be my blade" is fairly straight forward and just evokes the image of a stormy sea, which actually seems to have surprisingly little to do with the rest of the themes in play? I mean sure, waves and fish and floating, but when the floating and fish are less than literal the waves and lightning without any additional reading feel kind of out of place?

Of note: the onymoji was a prestigious class of sort of advisor in the japanese imperial court was at its peak in the Heian period, the long standing era of peace in ancient Japan that came just before the descent into the civil war of the Sengoku period. (Subsequently the onmyoji lost most of their power and clout during the waring states period as power shifted from the imperial court to the shogunate.) They were associated with and consulted for a wide range of things from medicine, to architecture, to city planning and meteorology, and divination, and perhaps most well loved by media, as exorcists. This ties into things like his beyond bankai form in Bleach Brave Souls where they opt for a more shinto purification theme, in either case making him fit something of a paragon role as Shinigami as ""cleansing"" hollows rather than destroying them.

Actually those shinto motifs all link to the recent addition of shinto themes in Mimihagi pretty directly, but I'll get to that in a bit...

It's worth noting that with Kyoraku's emphasis on a leisurely city life in the capital(Kyoto), and the onmyo mystic themes of Sougyo-no-kotowari, Kyoraku and Ukitake appear to both represent aspects of the Heian period, and thus cultures that predate the Sengoku period, and the rise of the samurai, lending to their role as two of the most senior members of the gotei 13.

People often forget but technicaly Ukitake was the first captain we were introduced to, well before Byakuya showed up, the Captain title just wasn't present at the time. When Rukia has her flashback to a then uncertain event while Ichigo fights Grandfisher, it's Ukitake she's hearing speak and that we catch just a brief glimpse of the back of the head of. Like I said there were no captain ranks in the story a that point, so he just appears as long flowing white hair over an all black shihakusho. I think his hair was always meant to help him embody an element of balance between black and white, and thus the very series title: Bleach.

I think there was always an implicit siniste quality to the idea of "Balance" underlying the shinigami that Kubo tried to gesture towards with the general vibe of the Soul Society -v- Rukongai dynamics, the Shibas, that flicker of a twist in the Fullbringer arc that Ichigo just ignored, and even with a lot of the loose and ultimately unfulfilled themes he set up for the TYBW arc with Yhwach's plans for a new world and Juugram's Balance schrift.

Oh I forgot the whole MIMIHAGI bit, despite teh being the whole subject of this week's episode:

東流魂街七十六地区『逆骨』に伝わる単眼異形の土着神。

An indigenous God of Grotesque/Suspicious Single-eye passed down in East Rukongai 76(th) zone "Sakahone(Reverse Bone)"

太古の昔、天より瀞霊廷に落ちて来た霊王の右手を祀ったとされるもので、自らの持つ「眼」以外のすべてを捧げた者に加護をもたらすと言い伝えられている。

(In)Ancient Times, From Heaven to the Seireitei the fallen right hand of the Rei-Oh is said to have been enshrined.

浮竹の行った『神掛』は、体内に宿るミミハギ様の力を全身の臓腑へと広げる事で、全ての臓腑をミミハギ様に捧げ、その依り代になる儀式である。

Ukitake's performed "Kamikake(God debt)" was, the power of MIMIHAGI dwelling in the body spreading to the whole of the viscera/entrails, offer up all of your entrails to MIMIHAGI-sama, it is a ceremony/ritual to become a Yorishiro*

『神掛』を成功させた浮竹は、霊王の右腕そのものとなった。

Ukitake succeeded at/with "Kamikake", he had become the right hand of the Rei-Oh.

*i don't have a more concise way to translate this... the translation listed run something like "object representative of a divine spirit"/" object to which a spirit is drawn or summoned"/"object or animal occupied by a kami​" and it's specifically a shinto thing.

When you see big deified trees with the shimenawa ropes and shide paper talismans, those trees are yorishiro. or rather they're Shintai, because a Yorishiro is a thing capable of being host to a kami, the Shintai is after they've been deified. (And technically when you do that to a person it would be called Yorimashi, not Yorishiro. I don't know if that's meant to specifically dehumanize Ukitake or if its a broad enough term that it doesnt really make a difference. Although if you really wanted to stretch it you could argue that Ukitake is an object and not a person because he did die from his illness and the thing deified wasn't a "living" person it was a corpse. Which would very curiously position him as an inversion of Ichigo, who was human, "died" in that his soul was deliberately severed from his body, but continued to operate as nominally human while getting to dip a toe into the shinigami powers and the spirit world.)

These little eye catch data cards really aren't giving us anything new huh?

[love-takes-work]

Here we are in the future (merch) and it's WRONG

Hot Topic has been kinda killin' it with neat new designs on SU merch, which to me is pretty special considering how long the show has been off the air and how much I like to get new merch. :X However, the last time I was browsing their site, I decided against getting one of the designs because it's this:

Huh? "Ladies love a hero"? Where the heck did THAT come from?

It's certainly never said in the show, and it's not a sentiment that's presented by any characters, nor is it intended as a message by its creators. Not to mention that the Gems pictured technically aren't even "ladies." Who got the weird idea that "ladies love a hero" would be an appropriate thing to associate with Steven Universe?

I ended up buying a coffee mug with a bunch of SU artifacts and was dismayed to find the "ladies love a hero" phrase had somehow made it onto the otherwise canon-referential mug.

(The side I saw when I decided to get it was this:)

When it came in I showed it to my friend and asked him to find the thing on it that was "wrong." IMMEDIATELY he was like "Ladies love a hero? WHAT?"

Just kinda makes me think that instead of being designed by anyone with a passing familiarity with the show, it was thrown together by someone who thought it would look good. Who decided this?

But speaking of which, then today I saw this one:

Okay. So, seeing merch with random shit from the show splashed all over it is common with knockoffs and lazy ripoff artists, but seeing something like this in a mainstream store is puzzling. It's a somewhat confusing graphic with no message, but it's like . . .

Okay, Steven, Spinel, and Connie from the movie, versus. . . .

Amethyst with her Season 2 design, versus. . . .

Random image of Stevonnie from a single scene in a late Season 5 episode, versus. . . .

Random Greg, random Pink Diamond, versus. . . .

Garnet in what appears to be an attempt at her post-"Jailbreak"/pre-"Change Your Mind" outfit, but it's miscolored, and. . . .

Completely missing Pearl, one of the major main characters. Who puts Pink Diamond, Greg, Connie, Spinel, and Stevonnie on a shirt but forgets Pearl?

It's just kind of a mess, conceptually. A bunch of pretty pictures, several of which are stock art and a couple of which I've basically never seen on anything (so why these, why now?).

It's not uncommon for images featuring the four main characters to have character designs that couldn't have coexisted, but that doesn't bother me as much as something that just feels like it was an out-of-touch designer's google search result for Steven Universe characters.

Man, I need to be a merch consultant for this show or something. I am not much of an artist and am not a designer, but like . . . if they'd just asked ONE fan. . . .

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Thank you for answering my Origins Dragon!Marinette and Turtle!Adrien question! Please don’t worry about disagreeing with the idea; I asked for YOUR opinion and analysis on why it would OR wouldn’t work, and that’s what I got. 😌 It also made me consider meta and in-show stuff that I hadn’t before, which is cool. You mentioned wanting all of the Kwamis to be part of some sort of set of two or more, and I’d love to hear what those sets are in your head going down the full Chinese Miracle Box list and why you’d pair them together with consideration towards both the Kwami themselves and their Powers.

(Post this ask is referring to)

Oh good, I'm glad that you found it useful and not discouraging!

Talking about how to pair the Kwamis is a little tricky because of an issue that I've discussed before. That issue being that the "Chinese" miracle box seems to be about as Chinese as fortune cookies. That makes me uncomfortable because - as far as I'm aware - the Chinese zodiac is a major part of Chinese beliefs and traditions. As such, I personally feel like the box should reflect those beliefs and traditions, but I also don't know those beliefs and traditions, so I can't tell you how I'd effectively group the zodiac Kwamis in order to honor their cultural origins. I can't even be sure if my criticism is valid or just me being overly cautious!

In an ideal world where I had money to invest in this sort of thing, I'd hire a cultural consultant to work with me to design a Chinese miracle box that feels Chinese (or to tell me that I'm overthinking this and to just do whatever I want). Assuming that I'm not overreacting, this would probably mean redesigning a lot of the powers and looks so that they honor Chinese lore and not Western lore.

For example, one thing that I know for sure is that black cats are not unlucky in China. They're actually symbols of good luck (all cats are), so a Chinese box would not have the implied good luck/bad luck thing that we get with Ladybug and Chat Noir. My limited research has also raised some doubts about ladybugs being a go-to symbol of good luck or creation in China, but I'm a lot less confident about that one being a bad choice as the association may exist. I couldn't find anything definitive one way or the other. This leads me to think that, if the association exists, then it's probably a bit obscure, meaning that a Chinese box would probably go with a different animal if we were trying to be culturally accurate to what a Chinese-inspired box would really look like.

I can say with reasonable certainty that Creation is associated with the masculine yang and Destruction is associated with the feminine yin, so Tikki should possibly feel masculine to feminine Plagg. At the very least, their spots in the miracle box should probably be reversed with Plagg in the black and Tikki in the white since yin is black and yang is white?

[Image Description: center of the original miracle box showing that ladybug earrings are placed in the black part of the yin yang symbol while the black cat ring is in the white]

I also known that white rabbits being associated with time, watches, and umbrellas comes from Alice in Wonderland and not China. Are you starting to see why I'm doubting the cultural accuracy of the miracle box?

The alternate way to approach this is to remove the possible issue of Chinese culture being treated as "mystical" or nothing more than ornamentation by making the Chinese miracle box into the miracle box of no specified culture. Since that's kind of what the box already is in terms of deeper meanings and cultural ties, I think we can go that route for this discussion since we have taken a moment to acknowledge the potential issues with the box's existing design and why that's leading me to take this route as - to me - this seems to be the only way to stick to canon's lore while avoiding potential further insults to Chinese culture.

If we went to my ideal extremes with this approach, we'd actually massively cut down the number of miraculous in the box because I think that there are way too many miraculous! Who needs nineteen "unique" powers to arm and fight one villain? This is extra true since there's no real theme to the miraculous beyond the initial setup of Creation/Destruction + five random powers followed by the addition twelve more random powers with no clear ties to any culture or theme other than the look of the Kwamis that grant the powers.

But that's getting real extreme, so for this ask, we won't go there. Instead, I'll talk about some general ideas for grouping the powers that we already have and some ideas for how you could fix the randomness of our current powers to make them feel like they make sense.

To start, I love the fact that our two main heroes are supposed to be a pair power wise. That's a lovely way to approach your lore and is why I think that they should have grouped the other miraculous, too. Why are Creation and Destruction the only set? Why aren't the others in any sort of group? Why do these miraculous have the powers they do? What ties them to this box and not another box?

There are a few ways to approach pairing the other miraculous. You can come at it from a theme perspective such as the fact that both the snake and the rabbit are all about time. You can also look for opposites such as the turtle being all about defense and the dragon being more about offense. You can even go more broad and say that a given group of miraculous is all aspects of one type of power such as the peacock, the goat, and the ladybug all feeling like aspects of creation. There's really no clear way to go about this because the current powers are so freaking random!

When I approach this stuff, I don't just come up with powers. I come up with the lore and let that help guide the powers or I shape the lore around the powers I want to use until both things make sense. For example, it makes sense that Creation would have some magical being guiding it. It also makes sense that Creation would either create Destruction for balance or that they both popped into existence together so that there was always a balance. Once you have that, you say, "Okay, what other Forces would these two want in order to help guide the universe? What can't they do or what do they do consistently enough that they might want to hand it off?"

Going from there, you start to come up with ideas like maybe they wanted Time to have a physical embodiment so that they could get some guidance on the long term effects of the things that they were making, so that's Fluff coming online. But Time is a lot and they liked their balance, so maybe Sass was brought online too in order to balance Fluff with Fluff being focused on what was and what could be while Sass is focused on what is, thereby giving Fluff someone to ground her. Or maybe you even add in a third Kwami to be some sort of historian who remembers the past while Fluff is the future and Sass is the now.

Another thought path is that most things are not pure Creation or pure Destruction. You must destroy to create. When you make bread, yeast consumes sugar to create air bubbles. Creation and Destruction working together. So maybe Tikki and Plagg wanted to make "children" who could do what they couldn't do solo and that's how we got the peacock?

No matter how you go about this, I really don't think that there's a great way to explain/group all nineteen miraculous, especially if you add in the eagle and Fei's wacky prodigious with it's animal abilities. It's just too random! But I do think that there's a lot of potential in strong subsets of the ones we get in canon, especially if you're allowed to edit the powers or the Forces a bit to make them fit their supposed Force or granted power better. I've talked before about how I'd mess with Lucky Charm to remove the odd Luck association and focus on Creation and that's what I'd do with most of the miraculous because, right now, most of them don't make much sense.

For example, Ziggy - the goat - is supposed to be the Kwami of Passion and that somehow gives the power to create anything you want? I know creatives are passionate, but that still doesn't fit in my mind. It would make more sense for this to be an inspiration power like the pig or for the Force to change to Creation and Ziggy is just a lesser ladybug for some reason? And Stompp - the Ox - is Determination, but I'd actually label his shield power as an aspect of Protection, making him in some sort of pairing with the turtle. Self defense verses defense of others?

In short, the canon lore is a disaster that needs major work to feel solid which leads to lots of paths for fixing the mess. In my opinion, the best way to go about fixing it is to take the element that worked best - the Creation/Destruction pairing - and expand that out to make strong, logical lore for the other Kwamis and their associated powers. Lore that probably won't be rooted in any one culture because no culture seems to be a solid match for the lore that canon is using, which is only concerning because of the current obvious associations with China and that's not even touching on the whole Tibetan monks + Chinese culture issue. Go check out the post I linked at the start for my thoughts on that which basically sum up to, "I am not even remotely qualified to talk about this one, but it seems like a terrible idea."

(Once again, reminder that I'm not Chinese or otherwise deeply informed on Chinese culture. I'm just a person who tries her best to respect other cultures and the miracle box sets off a lot of warning bells for me. Those warning bells could always be a false positive, so you shouldn't take my thoughts as some sort of final say on this topic. Please feel free to look into this on your own and form your own opinions.

If you are Chinese or otherwise educated in these topics, then please feel free to reblog this or send an ask giving me some additional context as I really do love learning about this stuff, but it's near impossible to research! I spent a good hour talking to a local librarian trying to find books or articles in our library that talked about the Chinese zodiac from an academic perspective and we found nothing. I've got a few interlibrary loan requests out to academic libraries in our library network though and I'll follow up on this if those books end up having information that adds to the discussion.)