#Unsatisfying static indeed

[masquenoire]

The sound of glass smashing can be heard in his office, a high pitched scream following suit before something heavier gets broken. The muscle standing guard outside glance at each other apprehensively before shuffling away from the solid wooden doors which could fly open at any second but they remain closed, the man inside continuing to reign destruction within the confines of his work station. Roman was beyond pissed. His chest heaves as he stands in place, looking down at the shattered remains of his desk - a pile of gleaming mahogany stares right back at him, thousands of dollars worth of furniture ending up worthless in an instant but still his rage is not sated, eyes burning like fire as he glances down at the shattered phone on the floor. Red Hood was supposed to have been his kill. Now that pleasure had been snatched away, just like so many other things he’d wanted in life but was denied, dangled tantalizingly within arm’s reach only for it to end up getting yanked away before he could actually get it. Red Hood ending up dead by another’s hand only rubbed more salt into the wound, souring his mood further that of all people who ended up taking the bastard out, it was the fucking clown. 

”Was that fucking it!?!? All this time I’ve been planning something special and I ain’t even the one who does him in??? Fuck that!!” The window shatters as the largest intact fragment of his desk flies out, probably on it’s way to hit some unlucky bastard walking down below. Roman doesn’t care. His eyes remain fixed on the broken screen where the image of a gory splatter was frozen upon the moment he’d broken the thing, heart hammering inside his ribcage like the steady beat of a war drum.

[cuttoothed]

Laughing together for Jon/Michael?

This one took a while to come together. It's not very shippy, but I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for the prompt!

*

“I have a joke for you, Archivist.”

For a moment the Archivist looks deliciously startled, then simply wary. Michael sighs, mourning the loss for just a moment; startled is how they like the Archivist best.

“A joke?” the Archivist says. His eyebrows arch and then furrow, as if they can’t decide whether to be surprised or annoyed. “What on earth does that - no, actually, never mind. No, thank you.”

“You don’t want a joke?” Michael is not offended, as such, because a sense of rejection requires a sense of self. But they are surprised; humans are known to enjoy jokes.

“I, ah, let’s say I’m a little concerned about what you might consider to be a - a joke.” The Archivist’s voice is low and harsh and gentle at once. It is a pleasant static buzzing in Michael’s consciousness. Michael laughs, echoes rippling back and forth through their being.

“I have a wonderful sense of humor, Archivist.”

“I’m sure,” says the Archivist, not sounding very sure at all. Michael’s mouth stretches. He will see.

“A person goes to the doctor,” they say. “And tells the doctor that they’ve broken their arm in two places. So the doctor tells them to stay away from those places.”

The Archivist is looking at them with a questioning expression, his hands flat on the desk as if bracing for something unpleasant. Michael spreads their hands, wide and wider.

“It’s a joke. Because the doctor and the person didn’t understand each other. It’s often funny when people don’t understand each other.”

“I see,” says the Archivist carefully. “Well, thank you, Michael. That was, ah, very funny.”

“You didn’t laugh.” The Archivist’s mouth makes a rough noise that sounds a bit like a nervous dog. It isn’t a laugh. Michael sulks, and opens a door.

“I’ll find another joke for you, Archivist.”

“That’s fine, really - ” the Archivist starts to say, but Michael is already gone. They leave an echo of their own laugh behind to keep the Archivist company.

*

The Archivist never laughs, is the problem. Michael can’t remember if they used to laugh before they were Michael, but they laugh a great deal now. Laughing makes things better.

The previous Archivist never laughed either, but she had her little jokes, didn’t she, behind those gimlet eyes? Jokes like frailty and age and reliance, like caring about her assistants. Michael doesn’t like to think about that, it makes things sharp and hot and angry, too many straight lines of pain and fear.

Michael thinks about killing the current Archivist, because the previous Archivist is gone, and because the Archivist is part of the Eye, and the Eye stares too hard. The Eye wants to see everything, to know everything, and that can’t be allowed. Michael will have to kill the Archivist, eventually.

But the Archivist also has a sharp face with a wide, soft mouth; dark, curious eyes and a voice that is low and harsh and gentle all at once. The Archivist is interested, and interesting, and looks lovely when he’s startled. Michael wants to hear how it sounds when he truly laughs.

They visit the Archivist more often, trying different jokes, different styles. Knock knocks and puns and jokes about chickens. Perhaps it’s just a matter of finding the right joke. None of them work. The Archivist only looks nervous or scared or frustrated, demands to know what Michael wants or pleads to be left alone.

Once the Archivist throws a stapler at Michael’s door, which is quite rude and uncalled for. Michael explains this, looming over his desk with their head brushing the ceiling. The Archivist trembles prettily, and apologizes quite sincerely for the transgression. 

Michael is forgiving, of course. They have a wonderful sense of humor.

*

The Archivist is being chased, by something large and meaty, with too many mouths full of teeth for the number of heads it has.

Michael watched the situation unfold, peaking through their door cracks as the Archivist’s curiosity led him from the dusty basement of the Magnus Institute to a warehouse stinking of blood and rotten meat. Anyone should have known better than to go inside, of course, but to a creature of Beholding death is preferable to an unsatisfied curiosity. Michael found the Archivist’s nervous investigation of the building rather charming, the beam of torchlight wavering ahead of his soft, hesitant footfalls.

None of that caution was enough to stop the Flesh sensing prey, rising up in a mass of sloughing muscle and rancid fat, all its mouths opening in unison. The Archivist looked so beautifully surprised when it did.

And now Michael is following as the Flesh chases the Archivist, whose breath is ragged and panicked, his footfalls growing clumsy with exhaustion from the race. It’s only a matter of time before he stumbles, or trips, or simply isn’t quick enough to outrun the flowing, oozing mass of meat.

Michael watches with interest. Startled is how they enjoy the Archivist best, but terrified is also a very good look, widening his dark eyes and stretching his wide mouth thin. If the Flesh catches him, it will be a sight to see.

But on the other hand, if something kills the Archivist, Michael never will. And they still haven’t heard him laugh.

Michael doesn’t so much make a decision, as come to the end of a spiraling corkscrew of thought and tip off the end into action.

A door opens in the rough brickwork, and Michael sees the Archivist running towards it, eyes gleaming with sudden, desperate hope. The Archivist dives through, stands there heaving for breath as the Flesh barrels towards the doorway. Michael watches it, enjoying the chaotic way it moves.

“What are you doing?” the Archivist demands, unthinkingly grabbing Michael’s arm with his thin fingers. “That thing’s coming - shut the door!”

“I have a joke for you, Archivist.”

“Not now!” the Archivist pleads, fingers tightening on Michael’s arm. “Shut the damn door!”

“What’s red, and bad for your teeth?”

“Michael, please!”

“Well, Archivist?”

The Archivist gapes, wild eyed. The Flesh is so close Michael can smell it. It will be through the door in moments. The Archivist stutters frantically.

“I - I don’t know! What is red and bad for your teeth?”

The door slams shut, and from the other side there is the distinct sound of something large and rotten colliding with a solid red brick wall, and splattering apart. Michael smiles.

“A brick.”

Several long seconds pass. Then the Archivist’s mouth twists, eyebrows curving in surprise, and he laughs. The sound is weak, breathless, and utterly sincere. It twists through Michael like music, like that buzzing static of the Archivist’s voice; it is very pleasant indeed.

The Archivist laughs, and sags to the floor, only then seeming to become aware that he is holding onto Michael’s arm. He lets go abruptly, and Michael misses the contact for a moment; the Archivist’s hand was very warm. They fold to the floor beside the Archivist, who is still laughing. He doesn’t stop laughing until he runs entirely out of breath.

“A brick,” the Archivist murmurs, shaking his head, dark eyes shining with tears. “I have to admit, that was a good one.”

Michael smiles once again. Perhaps this is a new way to enjoy the Archivist best. And now they see what kind of jokes the Archivist enjoys. 

Michael will have to think of some more practical jokes to play, next time they visit the Archives.

[dear-yandere]

Vanya Reviews — Dead Wishes (Steam, Itch.io)

In this chaotic world, you must adapt - either to forgive or survive. A thriller-romance indie visual novel/dating simulator.

STORY

Stricken with long-term depression over the death of your parents, you are on the verge of eviction and bankruptcy. Without any prospects for the future, you're desperate, so much so that you might even...... join the mafia and uncover a heated love affair gone terribly wrong.... become a criminal allied with a team of murderers.... suck it up and make an honest person of yourself.... serve as the caretaker for two dysfunctional sisters.... end up destitute on the streets.... or join the church and repent your sin. But mostly, you're either going to find love and happiness or die a terrible death.Dead Wishes features various subplots that are woven between character routes. In order to experience all of what the game has to offer, the player must read through every route and piece the stories together.

FEATURES

12 character routes: 6 men and 6 women

250,000+ words of in-game text

Partial character voicing

They/them player pronouns

350+ Choices and 35+ Endings

36 CGS

Developers can be found at @violetstudiogames​.

MINI REVIEW

I’d like to thank @ddarker-dreams​ for encouraging me to finally play the game! It’s everything I want in a dark otome and more. Anyone that enjoyed the dark aspects of BTD 1+2 and TDDUP will love this, though I’ll warn that not all routes are dark and not every character is necessarily yandere. Be sure to check out the strategy guide made by the developers; it explains route order and gives pretty in-depth analysis of each character and their line of thinking.

Overall rating: 7/10 (I honestly wish more of the routes were dark, but a certain route kind of... ahem, made up for that tenfold)

Estimated playtime: 10 hours including the backstories (unlocked after you finish all routes) and afterstories.

Personal takes on the characters: Slight spoilers below! ♡ to ♡♡♡♡♡ represent my enjoyment of each route and character.

Non yandere routes:

Clement ♡♡♡♡♡ Y’all, this guy’s route is fluff city. He loves his dog and little sister so much, and he’s honestly just an ideal guy and family man. His route made me laugh so many times since he’s such an awkward and cute flirt. I suggest saving him for some much needed therapy after Mateo’s route. If I had to make him yandere, I can see him as a protective and possessive.

Eira ♡♡ Eira isn’t my type of woman, so I didn’t enjoy her route as much as I would’ve liked. But, she is a woman of color like myself and I really appreciate seeing that come into play in her route. Still, it felt like she was fuel to further the story rather than another love interest. I could easily see her as a lucid and protective yandere.

Nanako ♡ I hate women like Nanako -- childish, indignant, and immature. She has the same problem as Eira: being fodder for the story. I rushed through her route, so I don’t have much to say, but there’s a strongly hinted relationship between her and Eira and I live for it. Although she’s a tsundere, I could easily write her as a protective and possessive (though I don’t particularly want to).

Sergio ♡♡♡♡♡ This boy isn’t yandere in the slightest, but I could easily make him yandere considering his circumstances (mafia don)  -- but... that would defeat the point of his entire route. He is a broken boy that wants to be loved, that wants to heal. Although he never hurts MC and would likely never hurt them, I can see him being protective and very reluctant.

Festus ♡♡♡♡♡ Another one I’m biased to since he’s my ideal guy. Flirty, sometimes obnoxious, and uses his trickster persona to hide his hurt, suffering, and intellect. He pulls through when he can, and his aspirations in life are wonderful because he wants to help everyone he possible can; but god did my heart feel for him in his backstory. Such a devout man...he’d easily make for a submissive and obsessive yandere.

Lucien ♡♡♡♡ The character I was most excited to play -- and he failed, until I read his backstory (so I gave him an extra heart...). His route raises more questions than it answers, and it’s only through playing interconnected routes (namely Sergio and Ophelia) that those questions are answered. I think he could be something great, especially as a yandere, but he feels like such a static character through his own route. After reading his backstory, I’m certain this was the developer’s intention, but I can’t help but feel unsatisfied with his route, even his good end. He is a man that could drop his lover at any moment, nor does he seem to feel or understand love; although his route isn’t yandere, I could write him as a reluctant, possessive, and manipulative yandere. He’s... not an easy one to categorize.

Yandere routes: in order of least to most

Allegra ♡♡♡♡♡ Yo, girl hot indeed. I’m not fond of her name, but Allegra is a nicely fleshed out character, to my genuine surprise. I didn’t have much hope for the female characterization in this game, but playing Allegra as my first really struck a chord. She’s not my ideal girl by any means, even under the slight yandere tendencies, but I can appreciate her character and desire to be a better person. A protective and reluctant yandere.

Ophelia  ♡♡♡♡♡ I love this girl and her girlfriend. She comes across as a tsundere, but she’s far more sinister than that underneath her cute looks and princess personality. In her backstory, it’s actually hinted that she may be royalty, so that explains that, but be ready for lots of verbal abuse coupled by some touching scenes. An obsessive yandere with sadistic tendencies.

Vincent ♡♡♡♡ A true delusional yandere, though he does show symptoms of other ‘types’ -- as all yanderes should. He’s one of my favorites because of his unique way of thinking, and his backstory is so terribly sad because it hints at the sometimes oppressive way Indian households are run. I feel for him deeply, and he was the first character I encountered (+ I got his good end pretty easily) so I’m not sure what that means for me. Oops?

Kazue ♡♡♡ A manipulative and deeply delusional yandere suffering from Lupus and what I can only gather as dependent personality disorder. Like Mateo, you could say that her delusion is a direct result of a certain other character, but I think Kazue is prone to delusional despite that considering her dependency and sorrow. Just let her be a good and loving housewife, no matter how wrong something seems...just be careful, though. Her delusionals are scarily real.

Mateo ♡♡♡♡ Heavy trigger warnings, not for the faint of heart at all. The most unhinged yandere I’ve ever seen, and despite it all, he’s such a sad character. His route slashes any sympathy you might initially feel for him, but his character as a whole is interesting. -1 heart because he threatens noncon on the kids to make MC compliant. This boy is devoid of morals unless it has to do with the environment, and you’ll learn why in his backstory. MC will go through a lot of inescapable mental turmoil and abuse throughout this route. I’d label him a sadistic and delusional.

Special character (unlocked after completing all other routes):

Anise ♡♡♡

Not so much a route as a philosophy lesson, but I enjoyed Anise’s interlapping role in the story. She provides some much needed backstory to the characters, world, and to life in general. I liked her mostly because of her ending lines, something along the lines of: live life to such a full point that your wishes become dead. A good message, even if it’s from a morally-void character. I’d categorize her as a yandere if she could feel love.

[jochmus]

The Three Athenian Classical Philosophers

Yes, this post is Eurocentric. Yes, it Eurocentrism is a terrible curse which should be abolished (in the sense of preaching it); yet that topic will have to wait for another day. 

I intended to write about these ideas below that can be linked to the philosophers mentioned, however that did not happen in this post. I will have to come back to this, as well as a post containing my thoughts on the Decolonization of Knowledge, and how to achieve it. That post will definitely contrast with this one: I do have diverging perspectives since I am entrenched in both camps, that is to say either liking European intellectual history and also abhorring the idea of its universality in addition to imperialism and cultural imperialism. 

Socrates represents living images, or the residue of a previous system that comes back to screw with the functionality of the current one; a ghost if you will. 

Plato represents static images as a kind of substitute for atoms, by people who are unsatisfied by both the idea of atoms and sophistical nothingness, due to a desire to spiritualize reality, which is fair. 

Aristotle represents a kind of duality between things, or more justly a dichotomy; it is the political spectrum of artists and philosophers. 

SOCRATES was a genius or at least quite intellectually stimulating. His ideas are abrasive, and he may be considered to be quite annoying, yet there is a jovial element about him. His utter control over the conversations in the Platonic Dialogues, is either fascinating, or disturbing; he is somewhat of a trickster in that he will get what he wants out of people, that is the conclusions that he desires, because he knows what he is doing. This may be considered to be kind of misogynic to a degree, that is by tricking someone to say exactly what you want them to say, and to the extent that he holds power over the people that he is talking to, in that his ideas are so aligned with the truth that any other argument will fail. 

His daemon, or something like a guardian angel that would tell him what not to do, may have been responsible for this, but then again, the conversations were fixed in a way, because Socrates’ student, Plato, inserted his own words into Socrates’ mouth, as well as several other pre-Socratic philosophers that show up in the Dialogues. Luckily for us, there was another person named Xenophon who also was a student of Socrates who wrote down what he said, giving us a different interpretation of the man. 

* * *

A rant:

Yet, the seeds of culture in Ancient Greece that the Romans and later Europe as a whole forced on the rest of the world contained an element of misogyny in that women were not included in the intellectual discussion, among many other things. And yet the current post-structural paradigm, in my opinion, does not do any good for anyone, since in getting rid of all of these structures, we have gone overboard and now lack any sort of direction. Truly, how could anyone proceed in life without any kind of direction. Participation in this direction is, in my opinion, called greatness. We are trapped by the culture industry, and we are effectively prevented from doing anything original, because of the culture industry and fandoms. Further, the “ghost of the previous system” is still present, for how could one absolutely get rid of an idea? It goes without saying that women should be included in everything, but yet I still like greatness in general, which tends to get ignored as being bad, because the idea of greatness as it is generally conceived, is for an underrepresented elite. Yet I think that any culture, gender, sexual orientation, or ability is capable of participating in greatness, through ideas which are present in the world stage or their local culture. All one has to do, is think, write, and read the great texts. I do not say “great books” because not all books are written; many are orally transmitted across generations. 

* * * 

PLATO was a student of Socrates, and although he did not join the hedonistic cult that a portion of the other student’s formed, his fame was everlasting and he had a great influence on the Abrahamic religions. This was due to his Dialogues which departed from the traditional method of transmitting philosophic information, being poetry, and wrote, err, fanfiction plays about his mentor with brilliant ideas present within them. Plato is a massive influence on the West, yet, I distinguish those wonderful dialogues with some of the other stuff that is usually associated with the West and Europe, mainly Christianity, because of the intensely philosophical content of said Dialogues and my opinion that the latter are quite charming. Despite this, Plato may just have invented Heaven and Hell, and has a great influence on spirituality as well. The guy invented Atlantis in an allegory, yet the myth of that city still continues to this day as a conspiracy theory like entity. 

He was arguably fascist in that he posited the ideal city would be run on “noble lies,” and would be in possession of some very terrible qualities that I will not name here. This was in The Republic, indeed Plato was a member of the Athenian aristocracy, so the class differences must be accounted for, but still. 

Beyond this Plato is most famous for his theory of Forms, kinds of abstract essences of most thing that were located in a different realm. It is a wonderous fantasy, but may have just been in vain, even Plato called himself out on it, from my understanding, that how does one Form integrate into another, and how do they bleed into one another, like the day progressing to night. Ultimately, though, these could be considered to be open questions in the theory, but Plato did put forth an argument criticizing his theory in that the Forms could refer to themselves, in an endless chain. 

ARISTOTLE was a scientist to the degree that was possible at the time, but it seems that a massive hatred for him began two thousand years after his death, as the man ‘attempted to explicate the universe, and failed, tricking everyone after him that he was right.’ This must be admitted to be a folly of science. 

His writings are massive, but we in the present only received his esoteric lecture notes, as opposed to his exoteric long-gone published works. There is a list of the exoteric works on Wikipedia; they sound quite fascinating and I speculate that they may have been condensed by his students into some of the works that we received in the present. 

The teachings of Aristotle are diverse, and I have only read the first two books of his Metaphysics. In that the first book of that treatise he makes mention of the pre-Socratic philosophers, and their ideas in relation to his conception of the Four Causes. In the second book he talks about God and infinity. I want to say that in the second book also makes mention of education, in that when people’s conceptions are combined, they provide a greater understanding of a text or of reality. That idea gives me a literary criticism vibe from what I’ve learned of it in high school. 

[ihaveneverbeengivenflowers]

(Not so) Random considerations on birth control methods and menstrual cycle

Although absolutely nobody fucking asked, I wanted to talk about my personal experience with birth control pills and menstrual cycle. First of all, let's catch up on how did I get here.

I started taking oral contraceptives (OC) since my mother took me to a gynecologist for the first time. The doctor made me a prescrition because I told her I suffered with cramps during my period. I was about 13 years old.

I kept taking OC every single day for the following 11 years, until I reached 24. Several doctors I passed by along these years changed the dosage and combinations of hormones I took, because each of them gave me a different bunch of adverse effects. Headache, nausea, menstrual cramps, recurrent urinary tract infections, candidiasis, vaginal bleedings... the list goes on.

During my teenage years I found out some women from my mother's family have circulatory problems, from varicose veins to venous thrombosis. There are also cases of cancer possibly induced by sexual hormones. That is: conditions that make OC, especially the combined ones, contraindicated for me. I got worried and decided to come back to the doctor and talk about another options available. The only one that was presented to me was the so called minipills, which are OC made with a single hormone instead of a combination of two. I took it for the following 5 years straight, and it seemed a good idea at the time because I've spent all my life struggling with underweight and anemia. Since the OC completelly suspended my period, I was supposed to be fine.

However, last January I had a major vaginal bleeding, even though I didn't stop taking my OC. I had terrible abdominal pains, and the bleeding continued for almost 10 days straight. Like I said, being underweight didn't improve the situation and my immune system shut down very quickly. Besides, I was having a hard time to keep up with my bills and wasn't covered by any health insurance at that time (I live in Brazil, and for those who are not familiar, things are a little bit different here. Theoretically we do have a public health system, but in real life we can't barely count on it and the access to the private system is kinda surreal for those living with minimum wage).

Well, as soon as I could, I saved enough money to go see a private doctor. I paid for the appointment and a several exams to find out that my bleeding was possibly caused by multiple ovarian cysts. Both of my ovaries were 3 times bigger than the normal size, and the doctor hypothesized that a big one of them (or a few) must have simply ruptured, and that the whole shit was probably induced by the fucking OC.

In summary, the doctor said I had polycistic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Plus, I should stop taking my actual OC and go back to the combined ones. Yeah, those same I was not supposed to take both because of my family history and the previously described adverse effects. He emphasized that was the only treatment available, and that my condition actually had no cure, so I should just take it for the next 30-40 years until I’d reach menopause, while praying for not having cancer or thrombosis or embolia and... well, to die of something else not related with OC.

So, well... I quit. I smiled and waved to the doctor and left the office. I was about to turn 25 and I decided I wasn’t going to take it that way. Now that you’re up to date in the story, let’s move on to where I was really trying to get with this post.

Please note: I ain't no gynecologist nor physician, but nowadays I’m a post-graduate health professional with a couple years of clinical practice. And I think I’m allowed to apply the little knowledge I acquired during 7 years (so far, still counting) of higher education to see through this situation with a tad of criticism. Not only regarding my own case, but regarding the doctors’ position when it comes to women’s reprodutive health - at least in my country. Therefore, let’s consider some key points:

Is there a real need to prescribe OC to young girls aged 13 years or less just because they come to the office complaining about menstrual cramps? During the period the lining of the unfertilized womb is being shed through the vagina. It involves muscular contractions, so of course it might get painful. There’s nothing abnormal about it, so why purging it like a plague instead of teaching them that’s a physiological process and how to relieve the pain in case it happens? Nutritional counseling, physical exercises, simply using a hot-water bottle or even taking an occasional painkiller can totally solve the problem.

The primary aim when taking OC is expected to be, should be, birth control. Yet, they’re frequently prescribed to girls that don’t even have an active sex life because of light acne, oily skin, menstrual cramps and/or intense menstrual flow without any further clinical complications... or just because. You might take it as some conspiracy theory, but you know what it looks like to me? Creating a very profitable market for pharmaceuticals. And nothing more. If women get sick and end up developing cancer or whatever, even better, so more drugs (way more expensive ones) will be sold.

In fact, there are another treatments available for PCOS. But it seems doctors are too lazy, or too comfortable in their position of filling a single standard prescription, that they completely ignore any alternatives. Can you wonder why? Maybe because it requires a minimum of health and sex education, and that takes time. How are they going to be able to attend people in less than 5 minutes if they’ll have to talk to their patients, right? Simply doesn’t worth it. Anyways, again, alternatives include acupunture, homeopathy, phitoteraphy, dietotherapy throught nutritional counseling and regular physical activity. Each case is different, but keep in mind: OC aren’t the only way, indeed, literally speaking they’re not even a treatment because they don’t treat it.

Opening a parenthesis: of course there probably are exceptions and good doctors no matter where. But doctors at public health system are in general unsatisfied with their working conditions and environment, while doctors at the private system usually are anything but well paid by insurance companies. In overall terms, the more academically qualified the doctors get, the less prepared for attending real life demandings in developing countries they are. Also, the less willing to work in such places they are. (If you’d wish to read more about it, I highly recommend seeing Chapter 5 - An example of a paradigm and its social conditions: scientific medicine of La construction de sciences, by Gérard Fourez.)

Still on PCOS topic: first of all, having multiple cyst on one or both ovaries doesn’t necessarily mean PCOS. PCOS, as a syndrome, means there are multiple criteria that need to be fulfilled for closing the diagnostic. In this case, criteria involve imaging exams, symptomatology, clinical and biochemical evaluation. In my case, for instance, PCOS is a diagnosis that simply doesn’t suit my medical history, but no doctor has ever bothered making an anamnesis. I’m not trying to say anybody should go to Dr. Google’s opinion (seriously, don’t), but look out for more information than it’s given to you at the office, even because often none is given.

I know suspending the menstrual cycle can make life much more easier. No worries about pads, unexpected leaks, cramps, PMS etc. But take it from a different perspective for a second. There seems to be a lot of content over the internet nowadays about body positivity, empowerment and tons of so called movements of deconstruction of established paradigms in our society about feminility and feminism. I’ve seen a lot of girls online sharing their experiences on stopping taking OC etc. I don’t know how far it’s good or not, but there’s a point that can be taken from all of it: the menstrual cycle is a natural part of every woman’s reprodutory phase in life. It’s not disgusting, embarrasing or whatever nonsense we’ve been told. And it can be a good way for us to conect with ourselves, to listen to our bodies. Observing symptoms such as pain, fatigue, cravings, emotions, sex drive; checking on cervical mucus, body temperature, hours of sleep... all of this can be part of a daily self-care routine and, moreover, be useful to birth control.

Talking about birth control: I’m genuinely surprised on how much the doctors whom I interacted during my life underrate condoms as a method against unwanted pregnancy. They say out loud that it’s not safe and, unless the conspiracy theory about selling drugs is real, I simply don’t get the reason why they do that. In first place, this is bullshit because condoms are a very effective fisical barrier that prevent even a single spermatozoid from swimming along the vaginal canal and straight up to the womb. Second, there’s no 100% safe method except for sexual abstinence; not even OC + condoms (theoretically not even tubal ligation) are 100% safe, since the human body isn’t a static machine and everything is prone to error. So, yes, opting for non-pharmacological methods of birth control instead of synthetic hormones can be valid.

Obs: condoms work as long as they’re properly stored, used and discarded. But the same can be said about OC and any other contraceptive methods. And, important: choosing a contraceptive method involves not only statistical data on the margin of error of condoms and pills, but also individual phychossocial aspects. In other words: a determined method might not be the doctors’ first option and they might not personally like it, but they can suck it up and use their fucking knowledges to find the best alternative for you.

Again, I’m not trying to encourage you anybody else to contradict their doctors. However, I think that questioning is part of a healthy and constructive process. First because doctors are human beings, therefore they’re as prone to error as anybody else (or even more due to long working hours). Second, because they’re supposed to be the primary source of information for any questions you might have about your own health. Third, because I believe with all my heart that the relationship between health professionals and their patients must include, if not be based in, trust.

[jira-chii]

Trance Nozomu

The best guy to teach you about the terrors of religion.

In the aftermath of us beating the crap out of Nozomu in the Lost Island quests, the preacher reflects that he was “wrong” this whole time: Tamashii are not static beings, they change just like humans do, and that is why they are beautiful…

"I was wrong this whole time..."

There’s always a catch to this opening pattern though, as we soon learn from Scientist. 

Nozomu ended up gathering a new following for his new doctrine. He wants to advance humanity to the “next stage” in their “evolution". That is, he wants to turn the entire human race into tamashii. 

This quest introduces a new minor character called Yoshio, a human. Or he was at least, until he met Nozomu. Yoshio was a comedian who got his big break doing weird dumb jokes. However, it looks like such jokes have now fallen out of style and the poor man is not doing so well.

Yoshio’s joke repertoire seems to primarily revolve around making weird nonsense noises.

How is an unpopular comedian going to make enough to support his family? In the midst of his despair, Nozomu lends a helping hand.

"I can make your wishes come true (by turning you into a tamashii)"

Takuya and Yuki hear about this new case soon after. A human turning into a tamashii without being involved in the Shoumetsu and without being anywhere near the ice pillar, it’s almost like what happened on the Lost Island…

They find out Nozomu is indeed the culprit. He uses Yoshio as an example of how wonderful becoming a tamashii is. The man has finally fulfilled his dream to be popular on stage. He can now do the thing he wants to do forever. 

"I guess I don't need to go home either anymore now that I'm a tamashii ahaha"

But Takuya and Yuki question if this is truly what Yoshio wants. How could a man who loved his wife and kids so much say he'd be fine never going home again? For who do you think he was working so hard for in the first place? Hasn’t Nozomu just twisted his notion of the ideal?

 Tomoko comes out from nowhere and agrees we have to stop Nozomu. The man is not kidding when he said he plans to turn all of humanity into tamashii. 

Nozomu is literally planning to extinguish humans as a race entirely.

And his plan will work if he can convince people to come to his side. Starting with the tamashii, he will amass followers, who will spread the word of Nozomu through all channels, including social media. As long as a human believes in Nozomu, they will be turned into a tamashii.

In every battle with Nozomu, he waxes on more about his new philosophy. Tamashii can change, they are full of possibility, and that is why they are sublime. Humans are incomplete beings, they should be released from their mortal coils and become tamashii. Tamashii represent the ultimate freedom, they are true happiness.

He tells Yuki that she, more than anyone else, should be able to understand because of her power. 

I feel like the way Nozomu frames his argument as a solution to happiness and escape from pain was quite similar to how Daichi almost convinced Yuki to give up in World 1. Takuya also says people unsatisfied with their current lives may find Nozomu's proposal attractive. But rather than making their dreams come true, it seems more like running away from reality by rejecting everything outside their dream.

But where a weaker World 1 Yuki may have been tempted, World 2 Yuki holds her ground and accuses Nozomu of actually destroying Yoshio's dreams instead of fulfilling them. As a result of turning into a tamashii, Yoshio lost the things that were truly important, the things he held dear as a human. There is no more meaning to him standing on that stage if he's not returning to his wife and kids. 

Nozomu says the solution is simple: just turn the wife and daughter into tamashii too. 

I mean, he's not wrong...

Nozomu also tries to sway Takuya. We all know it wouldn't have a hope of working on the real Takuya, but this is currently Souma in Takuya's body and the dramatic irony is heightened when you hear how "Takuya" responds to Nozomu:

"Even if i become a tamashii my dream won't come true. I don't want to seek happiness using that method either. Without my hands, my feet, my body, I am not me. I will fulfil my dream in this body, I will become happy in this body. If not, there would be no point being born human!"

We beat Nozomu, but Tomoko says he will eventually resurrect again (wow literally Jesus). Takuya says we’ll just beat him down again (to which Tomoko interestingly replies that was a very Takuya-like response).

But actually Tomoko knows if Nozomu revives we will not be able to defeat him alone. Which is why she has made use of his “natural enemy”: Kunito. This was actually the true reason she gave him the AF knowledge to make the diffusion device. 

Now that Kunito is aware of Nozomu’s plan, he’ll be forced to make a move too. Which is perfect, because Kunito is just itching for some revenge against Nozomu for what he did to him back on Lost Island...

The two chaotic forces Nozomu and Kunito represent the opposing notions of good and evil, and Tomoko hopes they will wipe each other out. 

But Nozomu seems to think that Kunito is the key to his doctrine. Because he was the earliest to turn into a tamashii, the most mature of his subjects, he is also the living proof of the benefits of being a tamashii. 

If Nozomu is able to win over Kunito to his way of thinking, it might really be game over.

Bonus pics

Nozomu vs Nozomu

Nozomu saying there is nothing to fear as he casually takes off 90% of my HP...

Yeahh this rank was bad.

[newstfionline]

A History of Idiocy

By Uri Avnery, Antiwar.com, November 18, 2017

I am going to write an article about a subject I have been thinking about for a long time.

The subject is idiocy. Particularly, the role of idiocy in history.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that sheer stupidity plays a major role in the history of nations.

Great Thinkers, compared to whom I am a mere intellectual dwarf, have pursued other factors to explain what has turned history into a mess. Karl Marx blamed the economy. Others blame God. Some accuse Race. Or geopolitics.

For many generations, Great Thinkers have been searching for some deep explanation for war. Great thinkers. Deep thoughts. I have read many thick volumes. But in the end, they left me unsatisfied.

In the end it hit me. There is indeed one factor common to all these historical events: foolishness.

I know that this sounds incredible. Foolishness? All these thousands of wars? All these hundreds of millions of casualties? All these emperors, kings, statesmen, strategists? All fools?

Recently I was asked for an example. “Show me how it works,” an incredulous listener demanded.

I mentioned the outbreak of World War I, an event that changed the face of Europe and the world forever, and which ended just five years before I was born, My earliest childhood was spent in the shadow of this cataclysm.

It happened like this:

An Austrian archduke was killed in the town of Sarajevo by a Serbian anarchist. It happened almost by accident: the planned attempt failed, but later the terrorist happened upon the duke and killed him.

So what? The duke was a quite unimportant person. Thousands of such acts have happened before and since. But this time the Austrian statesmen thought that this was a good opportunity to teach the Serbs a lesson. It took the form of an ultimatum.

No big deal. Such things happen all the time. But the powerful Russian empire was allied with Serbia, so the Czar issued a warning: he ordered the mobilization of his army, just to make his point.

In Germany, all the red lights went on. Germany is situated in the middle of Europe and has no impregnable natural borders, no oceans, no high mountains. It was trapped between two great military powers, Russia and France. For years the German generals had been pondering how to save the Fatherland if attacked from the two sides simultaneously.

A master-plan evolved. Russia was a huge country, and it would take several weeks to mobilize the Russian army. These weeks must be used to smash France, turn the army around and stop the Russians.

It was a brilliant plan, worked out to the finest detail by brilliant military minds. But the German army was stopped at the gates of Paris. The British intervened to help France. The result was a static war of four long years, where nothing really happened except that millions upon millions of human beings were slaughtered or maimed.

In the end a peace was made, a peace so stupid that it virtually made a Second World War inevitable. This broke out a mere 21 years later, with even larger numbers of casualties.

Many books have been written about “July 1914”, the crucial month in which World War I became inevitable.

How many people were involved in decision-making in Europe? How many emperors, kings, ministers, parliamentarians, generals; not to mention academicians, journalists, poets and what not?

Were they all stupid? Were they all blind to what was happening in their countries and throughout their continent?

Impossible, one is tempted to cry out. Many of them were highly competent, intelligent people, people versed in history. They knew everything about the earlier wars that had ravaged Europe throughout the centuries.

Yet there you are. All these people played their part in causing the most terrible war (up to then) in the annals of history. An act of sheer idiocy.

The human mind cannot accept such a truth. There must be other reasons. Profound reasons. So they wrote innumerable books explaining why this was logical, why it had to happen, what were the “underlying” causes.

Most of these theories are certainly plausible. But compared to the effects, they are puny. Millions of human beings marched out to be slaughtered, singing and almost dancing, trusting their emperor, king, president, commander-in-chief. Never to return.

Could all these leaders be idiots? They certainly could. And were.

I don’t need the examples of the thousands of foreign wars and conflicts, because I live in the middle of one right now.

Never mind how it came about, the present situation is that in the land that used to be called Palestine there live two peoples of different origin, culture, history, religion, language, standard of living and much more. They are now of more or less equal size.

Between these two peoples, a conflict has now been going on for more than a century.

In theory, there are only two reasonable solutions: either the two peoples shall live together as equal citizens in one state, or they shall live side by side in two states.

The third possibility is no solution--eternal conflict, eternal war.

This is so obvious, so simple, that denying it is sheer idiocy.

Living together in one state sounds logical, but is not. It is a recipe for constant conflict and internal war. So there remains only what is called “two states for two peoples”.

When I pointed this out, right after the 1948 war, the war in which Israel was founded, I was more or less alone. Now this is a worldwide consensus, everywhere except in Israel.

What is the alternative? There is none. Just going on with the present situation: a colonial state in which 7 million Israeli Jews oppress 7 million Palestinian Arabs. Logic says that this is a situation that cannot go on forever. Sooner or later it will break down.

So what do our leaders say? Nothing. They pretend to be oblivious to this truth.

At the top of the pyramid we have a leader who looks intelligent, who speaks well, who seems competent. In fact, Binyamin Netanyahu is a mediocre politician, without vision, without depth. He does not even pretend that he has another solution. Nor do his colleagues and possible heirs.

So what is this? I am sorry to have to say it, but there is no other definition than the rule of idiocy.

[pkmntrainergreyze]

Known By You (Tyler Joseph Imagine)

Tyler's eyes searched for her face in the white-black-apricot crowd that lit up sticks' painful as a sharpened dagger. He continued to bump into strangers just to arrive in the center of the whispers.

Where it feels safe.

He found himself stumbling into some grey haired man with a frowning wrinkly face before he muttered an apology. He slowly looked up after he gathered his belongings, including a miraculously safe phone.

From what he had known, she was there; stationary in the middle of all the moist patch of grassland. He can imagine her hair as static as it could get in this rainy day, like a newly bought broomstick.

He knows her before she even moved to Ohio, but never did once, the two engage into a length-full conversation.

She was his inspiration; the light in his way back home, back to where he can hear the music once more, where his bones grow and veins crawl back.

The crowd's whispers just form into a huge noise, especially when approaching in what seems to be near the middle row of a scene. His dark brown eyes tried to reach for a sight, but all he could see are heads of men he himself couldn't identify no matter how long he lived in the neighborhood.

He saw Josh frozen in the middle. His highlighted hair made it more obvious. He smiled a bit that can be seen at Tyler's vision before turning back to the center, where his smile dropped at the sound of whispers going louder.

Tyler couldn't be calm at the thought of her in that place. It was just so drastic. The girl who stays out of the limelight could get herself into unwanted attention, yes, and that's what sparked your career in music.

He felt a light thud on his shoulder before he turned around at the sight of white-yellow petals covered in thin plastic, a woman held it. It was quite noticeable that the woman worked downtown. She wore a small smile and an indescribable pair of greenish-blue eyes as her blonde hair falls back into her shoulder.

Tyler turned back, his spine weary as time passes by, and yet he still couldn't find her figure. Not one standing.

Not that it's supposed to, of course.

"Psst" He heard Josh snap him out of his train of thoughts, he gawked a bit at the odd and more distracting sound than the crowd could ever make in the setting they are in. Josh locked his fingers into Tylers close and tight, avoiding another lost man in the crowd.

"She's in there" His eyes perked at what seems to be Josh mentioned. The source of location was Josh all along. His friend dragged him away from the mocking paparazzi that was itching to write a newspaper headline.

She was a very talented woman indeed.

Tyler smiled at the sight of a resting body in a black case. In his entire life he has never sighted a woman so peaceful and contented, until she came around.

He always had this urging feeling of courage to hand her a cup of coffee for a talk. Now there she is; in front of him, like a live show, only this time she isn't performing for the concert.

"I wanna be known.... By you"

He uttered silently and almost inaudible. His hands clenched at her coffin, as solid as his tears can be. His fingers shook lightly and soon his whole form did.

It's a bit too late now isn't?

The female rockstar hopped on stage with a huge smile on her face. Her hands raced on her desired instrument that her band member handed out from afar. She smiled lightly.

"Now I've heard that some of you are going through the hardest time in one's life"

The crowd cheers didn't sound as cheerful as it was a private subject. Their cheers were mostly screams, crying out for help that music can provide. She sighed softly and her smile was in the same manner. She adjusted the microphone closer to her mouth. She looked back at the colorful crowd and some parts of their bare skin. It's fascinating how colorful it was until she brought up the topic.

"I don't know how to explain to you guys how much you mean to me, or how other people mean to you no matter what you did" She laughed a bit at her unsatisfying disability. Some parts of the crowd laughed, but not as loud like a stereo, it would be inappropriate.

"But, I could tell you one thing"

"Stay alive, it's worth it" Tyler whispered above the black carved box as it was patterned with golden flowers in the opening. He chuckled a bit which caused nothing but even more cuts in his already torn up heart.

"That's what you said yesterday right?" His voice grew louder, cracking lightly. He felt himself staring at what seems to be her reflection of the past; she was smiling, crinkles formed from the sides of her eyes and her hair fell back. It was her first photoshoot as a songwriter, Tyler; as a fan, knows this.

"Thank you... For everything"

He exited the graveyard with Josh being his tail. He never took notice of the flash that was made when he walked out. The photographer shook the picture 'till he saw it: his clear face.

The next few days it was concluded to be hell for Tyler. He was thought out by the rumors as the rockstars secret lover. Pictures of him and Josh in newspaper and magazines frustrates him. He shook away all misunderstandings as he was a fan, and still is. He could never shake out his respect to the dead star, especially when she was alive.

[ryokiowriter]

Sweet Dreams

His carefully cultivated darkness was swirling, the swell of nebulous tide keeping the same time as his tapping foot. It rippled and trembled, echoing its master's meticulous metronome as he waited. Patience was nothing new, a skill he'd been forced to cultivate over the years, but it was currently running thin. He’d been waiting for quite a while now. Just where on earth was his guest?

A burst of static broke the silence, a cold breeze ghosting across the back of his neck. Ah. There.

Reaching up to readjust his tie, Darkiplier chose to address his guest without looking, only turning his head once he finished speaking. 

"I’ve been waiting. You're late."

Even though the monochrome man's voice held no hints of irritation, Anti couldn't help but bristle. He'd worked hard to get here, bent his own reality and warped it to pursue his adversary all the way to this dismal little corner of space. His grin faltered slightly, flickering gaze darting between Darkiplier and the table behind him. 

"͈̱̹̩͙I̬'̞̼̣̺m ̢̤̥n̟e͎̻͓v̭̳͈eŗ̱ ͉l͉̜͎̞̮̀a̗̩̬̗̯t̘̯͟e̳̻͎͓̞͠.̷̤̲̲̼̟͙ ̦͚̙Ì͓̞̬̥ ҉̩͙g͞e̩̝̳̭̱t͖̜̕ ͇wẖ͔̱̖er҉̻̙̰̱e̷̩̤̲̙̮̹̼ I̝̫̯͙̰ͅ ̣̺̤w͈̩̻̹͖̩a͉̦̱͚̝͉n̷͉̩t̷͚ w̼̥̪͔͇̼̜h̶͎̼̦̮ẹ̖n̫̘ ̻͉͙͕I̦̬ ͍̖w̬a͕̲̣̪̹̥͈͟n̤͜t̴̪̼̤̣.”͘ 

His eyes caught the table again.

"͓͉̺̥͈̭͜W̗̘̝h̠̼͚͇at͉̙͔͔̕.̭͙͚͓̜͚.̣ͅ.̸ ̶̦i͖s҉̜̝̖͓̪ ͇̺̼̻̲t͘h̤̯͔̯̜̻a̧̮̤t҉̟̜͉?̞̫"͕͍͇

Turning slowly on his heel, the broader-shouldered man opened his arms in a welcoming gesture. That set Anti's very teeth on edge. 

"Relax."

A cold hand seemed to squeeze at his stomach. There was no chance of any relaxation happening anytime soon, especially not when his opponent asked him to in such a honeyed tone.

 "I'm not looking to fight today. Our last two encounters have been... well, 'tense' would be putting it very lightly."

T͚͉͖̳̙̝͙̤ͥ́͊ͬ͞r̬̻̤͈͌ͥͣͅã̝̖̤ͪͩ̋ͨ̑̕͜p̷͕͎̖͋̓͋͑̕t̸̠̗̹̲̓̕r͙͙̣̣̩ͮ͛̍̿̽̒͂ä̢͍̥̰̰͈̻̳̪̂ͦ̿̔̚p̡͍͚͚ͤͪ͆̉ṯ̢͔̫͖̜͍͎̪ͪ̔̈́̇̍͝ŗ̳̎̋͂ͤ̄ͦ̆a̴̼̥̘ͫͬ̎̐͝͞ͅp̮͚̳̟̗̔̋̓̾̿̑t͕̠̗̽̌́̀͞ŗ͔̲̗͎͎̟͗̄͂̿ͫ̄ͨͤ͜a̘͊ͬͬ̄̉͌̈̓͋͡p̡͔̬̒̔ͩ͂̾̆̃͞t͇͈̝͐ͦ̂̈ͤ̀ͅr̶͖̞͍̿̍͌͌̀͑͟Á̵̵͔̭͔̝̽̌ͥ̌̍͆̇P̡̳̘͓͊̇ͣ̓͒͟T̢̛͔̖͙͖̈̏ͅȐ̶̳̖̜̥̜͗ͭ͒ͨ͌̈ͭĄ̴̩ͮ̽̇ͦP̵̳̬͎̣̗͍̫ͩͮ͡͝Tͯ͌̐̋̋̍̆͋ͨ҉͍͖̟͖ͅR̢̨̻̙͆ͫͬḀ͎̮͖̳̘͋̅̇ͥ́ͧͮ̚P̝̻̟͈͎̓ͭ̄̈́͘T̵̻͚̬͍̥̫̪̭ͣ̓͢ͅR̷̟͖̳̖̻̪̯͙͗̄ͨ͂͞A̴̦̘͓̺ͥͫͥ́̚͡P̵̮̣̯͍̜͓͌ͣͧ̑͠—̶̵̯̚͢ͅ

"́T̤̥h̸͔͈ą̣̟̟̣̦̝t̴̼͎͍̼̹'̫̰̮s̲̳ ̤̮͉̻̼͜a̜͈̟͞ ̛̤̹̳f͡u̝̠̣c̡̭͓k̫̜̫i҉ng̳͝ ̘̲̤̳̙͎u̩̮̕ͅn̲̤̭̤d̴e̛͓̱̺͖r̴͍̬͇͈s̙̯͉̙͎͎̤͠t̛a̩̜̤͍̱̰̻ţ͓e̷͖͔̟͇m̧̘̱̦͚̬̦e̪̗̪̻͓ͅn͖̟̮̣̙͔t̹̥͕̬͢ͅͅͅ.̷̫̦̙"̱

A derisive snort followed his proclamation, fingers twitching as if longing to wrap around the handle of a blade. He never really did stop moving, but the way Dark was looking at him, he couldn’t help but immobilize just a tad. Noting the stilling of Anti’s glitches, Dark gave a slightly warmer version of his usual smirk.

“Anyways, back to your question. ‘That,’ as you put it, is my peace offering. A light luncheon, something to whet our appetites for conversation. Let us not compete, but conversate instead.”

Bending slightly, Anti peered around the smoky silhouette of the other man. The table was indeed set with a small feast, though not the kind he had been anticipating. Instead of a variety of foodstuffs, he was greeted with the sight of sweets. The only thing they had in common was that they were all chocolate.

“̸͍̼̳̣…̬̪I͙̼̱ ̢͈͔̲͔͎̩h̪͚̝̜̦ad ̩̗͕̬̝̺͟n̛o̭̠̪̠̹̝͡ ̛̹̹̫i͞d̗̱̼͖͎e̞̝̱͎͟a͞ ̨̫̳̭̜̠y̫͎̖̩͉̬o̤ṷ̤̩̣̩͞ ̷̩̥̖h͎̬͓̪̮̟ḁ̷d҉̲͉̜̥ ͇̲̣̱̭̀s͇͕̟̖͔͚ư͎̜̱̮ch̰̥͕͉̻̻ ͎͎̀ḁ̮̻͠ ͖̜̜͕͓s̝͕͉ẁ͎͍̰e̷̠͙̱͙̲͕e̜̗t͚͓ ̝͓t̝̦̺̪̫̹̱͝o̹̟̲̖̺o̘̖͈̬̬̳͓͞t҉͙͉̭̬̗h҉,҉̩̩̤̫̺̪”̵̫ he finally grumbled, glitching forward and into one of the unoccupied chairs. In a swirl of shadows, Darkiplier followed suit, reappearing in the chair opposite his adversary. Silence hung in the air, uneasy and full of hesitation. As he helped himself to a slice of Black Forest cake, he couldn’t help but notice that his guest was not— save for the occasional glitch— moving.

“Are you not hungry?”

Jumping slightly, Anti tried to pass off his shock at being called out as just another glitch, flickering in and out of view for a few beats. Before he could even offer up a response, Dark spoke again.

“I understand that you may not trust me… so, consider this.” Spearing part of the cake upon his fork, the shadowy figure raised it to his mouth, making an effort to show Anti that he had indeed swallowed it.

“If it was poison, why on earth would I be eating it?”

Not entirely convinced, Anti scowled at his host, reaching forward and taking an éclair. Taking a bite, he chewed thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes at the other antagonist.

“̛̮̟͔͚̣͈W͎͕̪̻͓͍h̦̤̦̫̠̯a̸̱̪̟͕̜̜̩t̛̰͓̣̪͉͙͔ ͎̠̻̗͜dó̠̖ yo̠̘͈̹̦̺̯u̯̠̭͇̗͟ ̵̤w͙͈͚͎̻̯a͚̦̤̟̻n͓̭̭̠̗ͅţ̘̘̮̝̩?̣͠”

Sighing, Darkiplier let his fork rest upon the plate with hardly a clatter.  “I already told you, my verdant villain. This is a peace offering, a chance to talk rather than trade blows.” Steepling his fingers together, he regarded Anti with a serious look. “We are not meant to exist on the same plane outside of these dreamscapes. Yet we fight and squabble here, trying to outdo one another, to be king on the outside.” As he continued to explain, Anti had already polished off the éclair, reaching next for a cupcake, laden with frosting. Dark waited until he’d taken a bite to continue.

“To be quite honest, I wanted to tell you that you’ve lost.”

Anti froze in place, all-too keenly aware of the fact that crumbs lingered on his lips. Bright blue eyes flickered to black, the sugary confection suddenly tasting bitter upon his tongue as he set the remainder down upon the plate. He didn’t want to swallow, not after hearing that. With an absolutely wicked grin, Dark continued.

“See, here’s the thing. If you want to catch a rat, you can easily set a trap. But there’s a chance the slippery little rodent will escape. Besides, even if the trap is triggered, it’s far too quick to properly enjoy the rat’s demise.” Letting his toothy smile subside to a smug smirk, he regarded Anti with half-lidded eyes. “Poison works so much better, especially if it’s in the form of too much antidote. Tell me: how are you feeling now?”

If he was going to be honest, Anti was actually feeling quite unwell. Antidote. Clever. However, before he could even voice a violent complaint, he clenched his jaw, one hand flying to cover his mouth. His stomach lurched, bile rising to the back of his throat unbidden. Standing so sharply as to knock over the chair, Anti moved to bolt, instead collapsing to his knees. Despite his efforts to keep his mouth shut, his lips pulled away from his teeth, expression locked into a painful grimace.

“̶Y̡̞͎͉-͇͓̤̝̻̘̮y͞o͘u̵͎̻̦͈͙ͅ—̨̖̣͕“̧͈̭̣̭̮͍ He couldn’t even finish his sentence, his already fragmented form twitching and heaving as his system attempted to purge the toxic substance he’d unknowingly ingested. Green dripped from his mouth as he raised his gaze, a similarly-colored pupil flaring brightly in the darkness.

“͓͕B͖̖̱͚-̴̘͉̟̰b̫a҉̩̯̥͚s̱̺̝̞͢ṱ̥̩͇̤ͅḁ̶͈̬̥͖͔ṛ͍̰̤̩d̳͖̙̞̗͍!̡̟”̫ Clicking his tongue, the sharply-dressed man stood, walking to stand over the hunched-over figure that was his adversary. “Now, now. There’s no need for such language. Your last words should be more than just an insult, they should be something meaningful.”

Anti tried to use the close proximity between them to lash out, summoning up his knife from the depths of the abyss for additional damage. The second the handle touched his fingers, however, he was immobilized. Even his glitches had stopped. The source of his frozen state was made evident, his shadow still moving slightly. Crooking his finger in a beckoning motion, Darkiplier brought the shadows upright, thusly straightening Anti upwards and bringing them uncomfortably close.

“As I said before, you’ve lost. So… any last words, Anti?” A few beats of silence passed before Dark realized he’d immobilized the other so much so that he couldn’t even speak. Sighing, he relinquished his control over Anti’s shadow, the green glitch falling to the floor with a spluttering cough. Anti took several shuddering breaths, green liquid still spilling from his lips as he tried not to choke and gasp. Unsatisfied with the other’s lack of a proper response, Dark’s expression turned to rage, grey fingers reaching down to tangle in silken strands, yanking the poisoned youth upwards.

“Any. Last. Words?!”

Unexpectedly, his words garnered a response. It started softly, a weak gurgle, rising in pitch first, then in volume. Anti was laughing.

Dark’s astonishment at the laughter didn’t last long, nor did his wonder for the cause of it. Anti had barely twitched, and yet the monochrome spectre felt a strange warmth blooming from his shoulder, accompanied by a white hot pain. As he tried to pull away, he found skinny arms wrapping around him, practically crushing their forms together. Another cough wracked Anti’s form, the action followed by the softest words Darkiplier had ever heard from his fellow villain. 

 “̸̲̦̯͔̘͕͕I̯̻̺̕f̻͈̯̱͝ ̸̦̤I̻-̮̞̦͎̫͈̜͝I̯͇͙̯’̴̦m̛̟̲̗̤̝ ̤͈̱g̸͎̟̬̰̩ò͔͍̟̯̝i̵̘̲͓̦n̬̮̞͝g̸̝͓̬̦̜ ̡̣̖d́o̳w͕̰͕ṉ̬̫͓͢…̨̩ ̟̲̗̼I̩’̪̻̳͇͚m̻̼͉̯̪ ̵̖̣t̛̬̘a͕̗k̸̜̤̹̰̳͔̦i̮̫̟͝ǹg̻̣͈̗ ̟̫̺̣̭̥̼̕y͖̟ơ̹̙̲̜ͅu̸̘ ̜wi̱̦̼t̬͈̠̫͙͙h̟̬̕ ͍̺̭̗͔m̡̘̖͕̮̙-̛̯͕̘͙͚͎m̗͔ę͕͕͙̤ͅ.͏̦̠̼̫̰̳̟”̰̜̠̭

The knife in his hand was yanked unceremoniously from Darkiplier’s back, only to be plunged into his shoulder again. The action repeated several times in an astonishingly rapid fashion, each blow going slightly lower than the last. A cough to match Anti’s left him, blackened blood spattering forth and staining his lips and chin. With one final plunge of the knife, Anti ceased his barrage of attacks, both of them collapsing to their knees, exhausted and wounded beyond saving. As Darkiplier’s vision began to blur, he heard one last fragmented sentence from his adversary. 

“̘ͅN̯̯̩o̥͚͙̹̙̬͟ͅw̹͙̹͢…̜͙̀ ̴̱̤n̶̼͚̭-̗͖͉̼̲͚̀ǹ͎̘̖̘̳͉o͓͔w̮̤͖̪ ̝̰̘̤i͍̱͖͍ͅt̯̭̱̘̯̳̼͟’̟̲͝s̩̼̤̣̩̲ ҉̲͖̫̬y̡͖̥̮o̝̱̖u̘̠͞r̪ ̧̯̟̙̼t͚̳̞ṷ̴̩ͅr̷͓͚̱n͕͜ ̴̹͖̼̦͚͓̬t̥͇ơ͎̦̣̫͔ ̴̫̤̗w̹̳̼̰͘ạ̞͎͈ķ̩̼ę̱̯̣̪ ̦͍̜̘͚͈u̸̹̮̫̮͔p̼̹͖̳.̭̺̝̜͔̖̻”̳̘

Mark jerked awake in a cold sweat. He could still feel a lingering burning sensation on his back. Subsequent contorting and frantic patting confirmed that there was no actual wound that carried over from the dream, prompting a sigh of relief. Admittedly, though, he was going to need a bit of a walk, maybe a glass of water. He had to shake off such a disturbing dream. Fumbling for his glasses, he threw his blanket back, sliding out of bed easily and speed-walking down the hall.

The water was cool on his tongue, washing away the bad taste the dream had left in his mouth. Or maybe that was mouth ick from sleep. Either way, he couldn’t help but mull the dream over in his head, inspecting his reflection in the glass. A frown curved his mouth downwards, dissatisfaction evident on his face and in his reflection. “So, Anti wants to kill Darkiplier?” he mumbled, talking to himself, musing almost. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed at his eyes again, groaning softly.

“He’s not going to get rid of me that easily.” A tiny smirk tugged at his lips, before he took another sip of water. “Clearly, we both need to try harder if one of us is to rule absolute.”

One thing was for sure. This was, by no means, over. And if he had his way, Darkiplier was going to finish the battle, once and for all.

He would be king. 

[chargenovasmash]

Six Drink Sara (Pt.2)

(Cousins AU, written collaboratively by @pathfindersemail and myself.  

Sara is -that- drunk friend.  If she could consider Puck a friend, that is.  Alcohol use and the, uh, consequences thereof.)

The water slapped like knives against her face. Sara rose from unconsciousness with a howling gasp.

“What the fuck?!”

Her eyes darted around for an explanation. She saw nothing but a familiar alley - a pile of old freighters topped in leaning towers and garbage piles that gave off an authentic slums feel. Somewhere, the faint beating of Tartarus’s music drummed into an ever expanding distance.

“SAM?”

Her plea was indeed met by a synthetic, mechanical voice, but not SAM.  Its chaotic baritone was slightly familiar, but not at all in a good way.

“Oh, goody.  You’re awake.”

Another splash of water struck her in a wave. Her cheeks were red as she shivered in drenched panic.

“What the-…”

She could hear the swing of a bucket, and the third - and hopefully final - cascade of water descended upon her like ice.

“WILL YOU STOP THAT!?

“Sure, when it stops being funny.”

“Son of a…” Her fingers wove through her soaked and knotted hair falling like slabs of sticking to her face. More than the chilly air of a Kadara evening, she could feel the sharp pang of an alcohol-soaked brain raze through her mind.

“Fuck…” Her hand quickly reached for her temple, rubbing so as to soothe the sting.

“Language,” taunted the inhuman voice once more.  Sara managed to massage enough of the pain away to see relatively straight, but she couldn’t quite recognize the fully armored figure standing over her.

“Who the hell are you?!”

Pathfinder, you are located somewhere behind Tartarus club. Identity of your assailant unknown.

“My assailant?!”

It took Sara a moment to realize that the momentary burst of static was just the stranger’s condescending huff through that hideous helmet.

“I mean, if you want me to be.”

The stranger grabbed Sara by the arm and jerked her into the air, forcing her onto her feet. The rather sudden shift caught her in a dizzying blur. It was hard enough playing a balancing act with gravity staggering her movements, but she had to deal with the harsh, constant tug of the stranger’s grip. Any longer and Sara swore her arm would pop loose from its socket.

“Hey!  Let…go of me!”

No such luck, of course.  If anything, the stranger’s armored hand seemed to squeeze her arm even harder.

“Sorry, Pathfinder, can’t risk it.”

Pathfinder, I can switch you to Soldier profile for increased strength and dexterity.

“Do it.”

“What-…”

Sara brusquely pulled back her arm and followed her momentum with a forceful shove onto the assailant. The sound of dry ground cracking against their weight echoed throughout.

“You little-!”  She tried unsuccessfully to land a blow, but Sara quickly parried with her own fists.

“NOT TODAY, ASSHOLE!”

Sara swung a staggered left that barely scraped the intended target of the stranger’s helmeted jaw, then followed with a right that somehow managed to crack into her opponent’s ear - well, the part of the helmet where an ear should’ve been.  A squeamishness seized her before she could pull another punch, giving her opponent time to shake off the impact and turn the tide in their little tug of war.

A second. A numbing irruption of a second was all it took, and Sara felt a strike sink into her stomach. Her eyes struggled to make sense of it all as her vision blackened into the grime of muddy soil.

“That won’t leave a bruise…I hope.”

“Listen, Pathfinder,” the now-victorious assailant growled into Sara’s ear as a knee dug into the middle of her spine and an arm twisted behind her back prevented any further struggle, “all I need is to get you to your ship. No fuss. No crying and-… wait, stop!”

Sara couldn’t help it. She breathed in the stench in the soil, the sweat beading down her skin, and always pervasive gases floating about in this junk heap of a city. It certainly didn’t help getting flailed off and pulled every which way. Quick bouts of dry heaving turned into a shakiness in her limbs.  The stranger’s hold on her loosened a bit in anticipation of what was to come, and then the whole world seemed to swirl - and the contents of her stomach with it.

“…Okay, that’s just gross.”

She couldn’t quite hear or see the stranger after that. The seconds that followed were drowned out by the almost deafening noise of retching.

“Hey, you gonna be-…”

More vomiting. Sara wasn’t sure which was more horrifying: the slushing sound of putrid bile or the almost sulfuric taste of it in her mouth.

“Oh god!”  She barely managed to choke out the words before the broiling knot of sick swelled in her stomach.

“Yeah…okay, let’s just…move it along, this way!”

She felt a tug at her arm, leading her the way one leads a child instead of a prisoner, and the feeling of her feet trudging through mud. Sara wasn’t sure as she could make sense of nothing save the nauseated whirr of blurred images. Was there only one stranger? Or two? Two helmeted strangers? Oh boy…

“Right there. Into that dumpster.”

A hand knotted the base of her hair into a coiled bun and pivoted her neck like a crane. Sara would complain, but she was much too busy retching.

Sara couldn’t really feel much. A burning in her throat trailed by a lingering aftertaste of oak and ash monopolized her senses. All she could focus on was breathing deep. Kadara’s air, however smoggy, seemed to cool the searing pain. It didn’t at all occur to her that the very stranger whom she fought and wrestled with now stood by her side. Although the retching cleared enough of the intoxication, she wasn’t quite ready to comprehend that it was also this same person who rubbed her back and held her hair in an improvised knot.

“Got it all out?”

“Who-” Sara paused to wipe a slither of bile from the corner of her mouth. “Who are you?”

A stretched out second seemed to fill in for a response.

“We should get some water in you.”

With a good bit of the alcohol now gone from her system, either through SAM or sick, Sara finally managed to get a good look at her far from pleasant company.

“Wait!” She reached out and struggled to grab her. “I know you!”

It didn’t make a lick of sense.  It was definitely the same person, but…how could it be?  The lone green ‘eye’ on the helmet.  That voice.  A name went with it, something ridiculous that she remembered scoffing at, wondering why anyone would ever willingly call themselves such a thing, but exactly what it was escaped her.  Flashes of deserts, and the question that introduced them in the first place.

You work for Reyes?

Something of a cackle accompanied her realization. Her speech slurred, as lopsided as her grin. “You’re that… that bitch from Elaaden! Ha ha!”

The last laugh sounded more like a piggish squeal. Perhaps not all the alcohol had left Sara’s system.  

“Congratulations, you recognized a helmet.  Want a fucking medal?”

That sounded more like the henchman she met.

“Reyes sent you?”

The faceless mask menaced her with nothing save an uncomfortable silence. “I have to get you home.”

“No!” Sara lost her footing and found herself stumbling backward. Her carelessness gently guided her to a wall, safely cradling her wobbly legs. “Don’t touch me,” she barked in a drunken snarl.

The stranger bobbed her head to the side, as if exasperated with the delay of a skirmish she had suffered just moments prior. “Just be a good girl and go home to your fucking crew.”

The Pathfinder adamantly held up her hand in a defiant last stand.

“No!” She shook her head once more to emphasize her stance on the matter. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She tried to focus her sight on the flickering light above them. It was dimming, shaking even.

Pathfinder, you are not well enough to engage in combat.

Sara would have shouted back a livid denial of the fact, but another knot of sick in her throat started to swell. Her hand felt for grooves against the wall that supported her.  

“Reyes sent you?” Sara asked again, unsatisfied with the trend of ambiguous answers.  The stranger gave a pointed, mocking shrug, throwing out her hands and tilting her head, as if the answer was so obvious the question shouldn’t have needed to be asked.

“Yeah?”

Of course he had.  She knew it the moment she recognized that stupid helmet, but that didn’t lessen the sting of that dismissive confirmation that Reyes Vidal would not be making an appearance tonight.  Her chest had only just begun to calm into embers, but reignited at the thought that he actually had the gall to send a lackey - and a particularly rude one at that - to ‘take care of her’ the way one takes care of a household pest or that embarrassing relative no one wants to admit relation to.  She may have overlooked such a slight when her mind was in a state to rationalize it, but as it were she was far from capable of such.

“Tell your boss that, until he comes here with a personal apology, he can go fuck himself.”

Seeing as neither were currently in short supply, she gathered a pool of spit and bile in her mouth and, with all the strength she could muster, spat it directly into that unblinking green ring of an eye.  

A bluish-purple flash of biotic energy erupted and formed an ominous corona around the stranger’s form.  Sara’s eyes widened, and she gasped as she struggled to flatten her back against the wall.  SAM was right; she was in no condition to fight, but the energy - and the tension - faded a moment later with the stranger’s heavy shrug.

“What the fuck ever.  I’m not here to be your goddamned couples’ counselor.  He told me to get your sloppy drunk ass back to your ship, so that’s what I’m gonna do.”

He didn’t say that, did he?  He wouldn’t have.  Then again, she also thought he’d show up to get her drunk ass back to her ship himself.  A lot of questions as to how accurate her judgment of what Reyes Vidal would or wouldn’t do really was shoved their way to the forefront in an almost frighteningly short amount of time.

“No!’ Sara swung a tightened fist. The edge of her knuckle barely scraped past the lackey’s helmet, but she quickly stepped to the side, causing Sara to stagger and lose all sense of balance. Another wave of nausea stuffed the air up in her lungs. She could vaguely recall a heaping of pink slush landing on the other’s boot.

“FUCK!”

Sara watched the stranger raise a closed fist almost in slow motion, and instinctively maneuvered to avoid the incoming blow.

“Wait? Hey-, hey!

One second she was getting ready to parry. But in the next, her voice seemed to sink even deeper in tone. Slowing and yet barely audible. The outlines of her figure seemed to blend with the background. All turning black.

[duncepatrick92]

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[networkingdefinition]

Fashion Quotes

Official Website: Fashion Quotes

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• A concert is not a live rendition of our album. It’s a theatrical event. I have fun with my clothes onstage; it’s not a concert you’re seeing, it’s a fashion show. – Freddie Mercury • A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic. – George Bernard Shaw • A good model can advance fashion by ten years. – Yves Saint Laurent • All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty, an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind. – Charles Baudelaire • An Adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties. – Pope Benedict XVI • And you know, the baby boomers are getting older, and those off the rack clothes are just not fitting right any longer, and so, tailor-made suits are coming back into fashion. – Amy Irving • Art is subject to arbitrary fashion. – Kary Mullis • Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time. – Jean Cocteau • As a fashion designer, I was always aware that I was not an artist, because I was creating something that was made to be sold, marketed, used, and ultimately discarded. – Tom Ford

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Fashion', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_fashion').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_fashion img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be sure what you want and be sure about yourself. Fashion is not just beauty, it’s about good attitude. You have to believe in yourself and be strong. – Adriana Lima • Bravery never goes out of fashion. – William Makepeace Thackeray

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich. – Nicolas Chamfort • Conformity is the only real fashion crime – Simon Doonan • Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are. – Gianni Versace • Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. – Henry David Thoreau • Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you. – Wayne Dyer • Fashion anticipates, and elegance is a state of mind … a mirror of the time in which we live, a translation of the future, and should never be static. – Oleg Cassini • Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess. – Edna Woolman Chase • Fashion changes, but style endures. – Coco Chanel • Fashion condemns us to many follies, the greatest is to make oneself its slave. – Napoleon Bonaparte • Fashion exists for women with no taste, etiquette for people with no breeding. – Marie of Romania • Fashion fades, only style remains the same. – Coco Chanel • Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches. – John Locke • Fashion goes round in circles. – Siobhan Fahey • Fashion has to reflect who you are, what you feel at the moment, and where you’re going. – Pharrell Williams • Fashion has two purposes: comfort and love. Beauty comes when fashion succeeds.- Coco Chanel • Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. – Oscar Wilde • Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality. – Karl Lagerfeld • Fashion is a MUSE, you must seduce her. – Anna Dello Russo • Fashion is a tool… to compete in life outside the home – Mary Quant • Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it. – Blaise Pascal • Fashion is about dreaming and making other people dream. – Donatella Versace • Fashion is about what you look like, which translates to what you would like to be like. – Jean Paul Gaultier • Fashion is all about eventually becoming naked – Rene Konig • Fashion is all about happiness. It’s fun. It’s important. But it’s not medicine. – Donatella Versace • Fashion is an imposition, a reign on freedom. – Golda Meir • Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is as profound and critical a part of the social life of man as sex, and is made up of the same ambivalent mixture of irresistible urges and inevitable taboos. – Rene Konig • Fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics, never by trying to make little pleats and furbelows, by trinkets, by clothes easy to copy, or by the shortening or lengthening of a skirt. – Elsa Schiaparelli • Fashion is in a terrible state. An overdose of too much flesh. – Geoffrey Beene • Fashion is in the sky, in the street. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is instant language. – Miuccia Prada • Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place. – Paul de Man • Fashion is made to become unfashionable. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is more usually a gentle progression of revisited ideas. – Bruce Oldfield • Fashion is not frivolous. It is a part of being alive today. – Mary Quant • Fashion is not necessarily about labels. It’s not about brands. It’s about something else that comes from within you. – Ralph Lauren • Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse. – Francis Bacon • Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit. – George Santayana • Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be. – Henry Fielding • Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well. – Vivienne Westwood • Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. – Oscar Wilde • Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are. – Quentin Crisp • Fashion is what you buy, style is what you do with it – Nicky Hilton • Fashion is what you’re offered four times a year by designers. And style is what you choose. – Lauren Hutton • Fashion seldom interferes with nature without diminishing her grace and efficiency. – Henry Theodore Tuckerman • Fashion should be a form of escapism, and not a form of imprisonment. – Alexander McQueen • Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey. – Ambrose Bierce • Fashion: by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal. – Oscar Wilde • Fashion–a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse. – Charles Churchill • Fashions fade, style is eternal. – Yves Saint Laurent • Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics. – George Bernard Shaw • Follow sound business trends, not fashion trends. – Janice Dickinson • He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave – Logan Pearsall Smith • How do you stand out as a fashion ad campaign? By using people off the street it does generate buzz. – Alber Elbaz • I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch. – Gilda Radner • I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions. – Lillian Hellman • I don’t do fashion, I AM fashion. – Coco Chanel • I don’t do fashion, I’m fashion – Coco Chanel • I don’t want a politician who’s thinking about fashion for even one millisecond. It’s the same as medical professionals. The idea of a person in a Comme des Garcons humpback dress giving me a colonoscopy is just not groovy. – Simon Doonan • I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men. – Marlene Dietrich • I got to the point where I was sick of fashion again, like I was at the end of high school. – Stephen Sprouse • I have always believed that fashion was not only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence. – Yves Saint Laurent • I have no interest whatsoever in being a high-fashion model, nor is it possible – Rachael Leigh Cook • I like fashion to go down to the street, but I can’t accept that it should originate there. – Coco Chanel • I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked. – David Bailey • I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man. – William Shakespeare • I think it was the right time for me to retire because nowadays tennis is too incredibly fast and you can say that my style tennis went out of fashion. – Jana Novotna • If you are not in fashion, you are nobody. – Lord Chesterfield • I’ll be at charges for a looking-glass And entertain a score or two of tailors To study fashions to adorn my body: Since I am crept in favor with myself, I will maintain it with some little cost. – William Shakespeare • In difficult times, fashion is always outrageous. – Elsa Schiaparelli • It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion. – Anatole France • It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned. – Oscar Wilde • It is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure. – Coco Chanel • It pains me physically to see a woman victimized, rendered pathetic by fashion. – Yves Saint Laurent • It was the fashion of the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors. – Gene Tierney • It’s a new era in fashion – there are no rules. – Zac Posen • It’s a new era in fashion – there are no rules. It’s all about the individual and personal style, wearing high-end, low-end, classic labels, and up-and-coming designers all together. – Alexander McQueen • Jeans represent democracy in fashion. – Giorgio Armani • Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride. – Charles Caleb Colton • Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests. – Karl Lagerfeld • Love the fun of clothes, not the status of fashion. – Ralph Lauren • My dream was always to be a composer, but fashion came very easily. – Gianni Versace • Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly. – Cecil Beaton • Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion. – Stendhal • People say it’s really the press who create those soundbites about fashion. That’s what sells magazines and clothes. – Isaac Mizrahi • People say, ‘What do you mean you want to help the world, but you’re so concerned about fashion?’ It’s illegal to be naked. It is something that is extremely important. – Kanye West • People think I’m trying to make a fashion statement because I never wear a bra. It’s really that I’m a tomboy at heart. – Cameron Diaz • Real fashion change comes from real changes in real life. Everything else is just decoration. – Tom Ford • Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together. – Thomas Carlyle • So soon as a fashion is universal, it is out of date. – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach • That is the key of this collection, being yourself. Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live. – Gianni Versace • The difference between style and fashion is quality. – Giorgio Armani • The goal I seek is to have people refine their style through my clothing without having them become victims of fashion. – Giorgio Armani • The hardest thing in fashion is not to be known for a logo, but to be known for a silhouette. -Giambattista Valli • The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last. – George Bernard Shaw • The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates. – David Mamet • The secret of fashion is to surprise and never to disappoint. – Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton • The truly fashionable are beyond fashion. – Cecil Beaton • There’s never a new fashion but it’s old. – Geoffrey Chaucer • They know they’re going to look beautiful, and I don’t think women should look like costumes. They shouldn’t look like fashion victims. – Ralph Lauren • Today, fashion is really about sensuality-how a woman feels on the inside. In the ’80s women used suits with exaggerated shoulders and waists to make a strong impression. Women are now more comfortable with themselves and their bodies-they no longer feel the need to hide behind their clothes. – Donna Karan • We don’t need fashion to survive, we just desire it so much. – Marc Jacobs • We live not according to reason, but according to fashion. – Seneca the Younger • What a deformed thief this fashion is. – William Shakespeare • What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language. – Miuccia Prada • When a person is in fashion, all they do is right. – Lord Chesterfield • When I design and wonder what the point is, I think of someone having a bad time in their life. Maybe they are sad and they wake up and put on something I have made and it makes them feel just a bit better. So, in that sense, fashion is a little help in the life of a person. But only a little. – Miuccia Prada • Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets. – Anthony Burgess • Women’s fashion is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women. – Andrea Dworkin • You don’t learn style from watching people on a runway. Fashion happens every morning when you wake up. – Shalom Harlow • You either know fashion or you don’t. – Anna Wintour • You know, one had as good be out of the world, as out of the fashion. – Colley Cibber

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[equitiesstocks]

Fashion Quotes

Official Website: Fashion Quotes

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• A concert is not a live rendition of our album. It’s a theatrical event. I have fun with my clothes onstage; it’s not a concert you’re seeing, it’s a fashion show. – Freddie Mercury • A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic. – George Bernard Shaw • A good model can advance fashion by ten years. – Yves Saint Laurent • All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty, an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind. – Charles Baudelaire • An Adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties. – Pope Benedict XVI • And you know, the baby boomers are getting older, and those off the rack clothes are just not fitting right any longer, and so, tailor-made suits are coming back into fashion. – Amy Irving • Art is subject to arbitrary fashion. – Kary Mullis • Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time. – Jean Cocteau • As a fashion designer, I was always aware that I was not an artist, because I was creating something that was made to be sold, marketed, used, and ultimately discarded. – Tom Ford

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Fashion', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_fashion').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_fashion img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be sure what you want and be sure about yourself. Fashion is not just beauty, it’s about good attitude. You have to believe in yourself and be strong. – Adriana Lima • Bravery never goes out of fashion. – William Makepeace Thackeray

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich. – Nicolas Chamfort • Conformity is the only real fashion crime – Simon Doonan • Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are. – Gianni Versace • Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. – Henry David Thoreau • Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you. – Wayne Dyer • Fashion anticipates, and elegance is a state of mind … a mirror of the time in which we live, a translation of the future, and should never be static. – Oleg Cassini • Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess. – Edna Woolman Chase • Fashion changes, but style endures. – Coco Chanel • Fashion condemns us to many follies, the greatest is to make oneself its slave. – Napoleon Bonaparte • Fashion exists for women with no taste, etiquette for people with no breeding. – Marie of Romania • Fashion fades, only style remains the same. – Coco Chanel • Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches. – John Locke • Fashion goes round in circles. – Siobhan Fahey • Fashion has to reflect who you are, what you feel at the moment, and where you’re going. – Pharrell Williams • Fashion has two purposes: comfort and love. Beauty comes when fashion succeeds.- Coco Chanel • Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. – Oscar Wilde • Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality. – Karl Lagerfeld • Fashion is a MUSE, you must seduce her. – Anna Dello Russo • Fashion is a tool… to compete in life outside the home – Mary Quant • Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it. – Blaise Pascal • Fashion is about dreaming and making other people dream. – Donatella Versace • Fashion is about what you look like, which translates to what you would like to be like. – Jean Paul Gaultier • Fashion is all about eventually becoming naked – Rene Konig • Fashion is all about happiness. It’s fun. It’s important. But it’s not medicine. – Donatella Versace • Fashion is an imposition, a reign on freedom. – Golda Meir • Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is as profound and critical a part of the social life of man as sex, and is made up of the same ambivalent mixture of irresistible urges and inevitable taboos. – Rene Konig • Fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics, never by trying to make little pleats and furbelows, by trinkets, by clothes easy to copy, or by the shortening or lengthening of a skirt. – Elsa Schiaparelli • Fashion is in a terrible state. An overdose of too much flesh. – Geoffrey Beene • Fashion is in the sky, in the street. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is instant language. – Miuccia Prada • Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place. – Paul de Man • Fashion is made to become unfashionable. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is more usually a gentle progression of revisited ideas. – Bruce Oldfield • Fashion is not frivolous. It is a part of being alive today. – Mary Quant • Fashion is not necessarily about labels. It’s not about brands. It’s about something else that comes from within you. – Ralph Lauren • Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening. – Coco Chanel • Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse. – Francis Bacon • Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit. – George Santayana • Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be. – Henry Fielding • Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well. – Vivienne Westwood • Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. – Oscar Wilde • Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are. – Quentin Crisp • Fashion is what you buy, style is what you do with it – Nicky Hilton • Fashion is what you’re offered four times a year by designers. And style is what you choose. – Lauren Hutton • Fashion seldom interferes with nature without diminishing her grace and efficiency. – Henry Theodore Tuckerman • Fashion should be a form of escapism, and not a form of imprisonment. – Alexander McQueen • Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey. – Ambrose Bierce • Fashion: by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal. – Oscar Wilde • Fashion–a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse. – Charles Churchill • Fashions fade, style is eternal. – Yves Saint Laurent • Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics. – George Bernard Shaw • Follow sound business trends, not fashion trends. – Janice Dickinson • He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave – Logan Pearsall Smith • How do you stand out as a fashion ad campaign? By using people off the street it does generate buzz. – Alber Elbaz • I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch. – Gilda Radner • I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions. – Lillian Hellman • I don’t do fashion, I AM fashion. – Coco Chanel • I don’t do fashion, I’m fashion – Coco Chanel • I don’t want a politician who’s thinking about fashion for even one millisecond. It’s the same as medical professionals. The idea of a person in a Comme des Garcons humpback dress giving me a colonoscopy is just not groovy. – Simon Doonan • I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men. – Marlene Dietrich • I got to the point where I was sick of fashion again, like I was at the end of high school. – Stephen Sprouse • I have always believed that fashion was not only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence. – Yves Saint Laurent • I have no interest whatsoever in being a high-fashion model, nor is it possible – Rachael Leigh Cook • I like fashion to go down to the street, but I can’t accept that it should originate there. – Coco Chanel • I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked. – David Bailey • I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man. – William Shakespeare • I think it was the right time for me to retire because nowadays tennis is too incredibly fast and you can say that my style tennis went out of fashion. – Jana Novotna • If you are not in fashion, you are nobody. – Lord Chesterfield • I’ll be at charges for a looking-glass And entertain a score or two of tailors To study fashions to adorn my body: Since I am crept in favor with myself, I will maintain it with some little cost. – William Shakespeare • In difficult times, fashion is always outrageous. – Elsa Schiaparelli • It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion. – Anatole France • It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned. – Oscar Wilde • It is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure. – Coco Chanel • It pains me physically to see a woman victimized, rendered pathetic by fashion. – Yves Saint Laurent • It was the fashion of the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors. – Gene Tierney • It’s a new era in fashion – there are no rules. – Zac Posen • It’s a new era in fashion – there are no rules. It’s all about the individual and personal style, wearing high-end, low-end, classic labels, and up-and-coming designers all together. – Alexander McQueen • Jeans represent democracy in fashion. – Giorgio Armani • Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride. – Charles Caleb Colton • Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests. – Karl Lagerfeld • Love the fun of clothes, not the status of fashion. – Ralph Lauren • My dream was always to be a composer, but fashion came very easily. – Gianni Versace • Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly. – Cecil Beaton • Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion. – Stendhal • People say it’s really the press who create those soundbites about fashion. That’s what sells magazines and clothes. – Isaac Mizrahi • People say, ‘What do you mean you want to help the world, but you’re so concerned about fashion?’ It’s illegal to be naked. It is something that is extremely important. – Kanye West • People think I’m trying to make a fashion statement because I never wear a bra. It’s really that I’m a tomboy at heart. – Cameron Diaz • Real fashion change comes from real changes in real life. Everything else is just decoration. – Tom Ford • Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together. – Thomas Carlyle • So soon as a fashion is universal, it is out of date. – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach • That is the key of this collection, being yourself. Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live. – Gianni Versace • The difference between style and fashion is quality. – Giorgio Armani • The goal I seek is to have people refine their style through my clothing without having them become victims of fashion. – Giorgio Armani • The hardest thing in fashion is not to be known for a logo, but to be known for a silhouette. -Giambattista Valli • The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last. – George Bernard Shaw • The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates. – David Mamet • The secret of fashion is to surprise and never to disappoint. – Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton • The truly fashionable are beyond fashion. – Cecil Beaton • There’s never a new fashion but it’s old. – Geoffrey Chaucer • They know they’re going to look beautiful, and I don’t think women should look like costumes. They shouldn’t look like fashion victims. – Ralph Lauren • Today, fashion is really about sensuality-how a woman feels on the inside. In the ’80s women used suits with exaggerated shoulders and waists to make a strong impression. Women are now more comfortable with themselves and their bodies-they no longer feel the need to hide behind their clothes. – Donna Karan • We don’t need fashion to survive, we just desire it so much. – Marc Jacobs • We live not according to reason, but according to fashion. – Seneca the Younger • What a deformed thief this fashion is. – William Shakespeare • What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language. – Miuccia Prada • When a person is in fashion, all they do is right. – Lord Chesterfield • When I design and wonder what the point is, I think of someone having a bad time in their life. Maybe they are sad and they wake up and put on something I have made and it makes them feel just a bit better. So, in that sense, fashion is a little help in the life of a person. But only a little. – Miuccia Prada • Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets. – Anthony Burgess • Women’s fashion is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women. – Andrea Dworkin • You don’t learn style from watching people on a runway. Fashion happens every morning when you wake up. – Shalom Harlow • You either know fashion or you don’t. – Anna Wintour • You know, one had as good be out of the world, as out of the fashion. – Colley Cibber

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[cliche98-blog]

Finding Self (Narrative Literacy)

Since I was born in China, I had never been through systematical writing process all the way through primary school to my high school. I always wrote some nonsense which included none logic between sentences and no relation between paragraphs. However, I was not unsatisfied with the content of my writings; I was bored with the mechanical writing techniques—five paragraph essays. We students always came up with similar opinions and write the same structures to earn credits for exams. There is nothing critical and innovative. Therefore, I regarded myself as a duplicator rather than an indeed writer until I participated in the University Writing Program at UC Davis. From UWP 21 to UWP 23, I only followed one professor Kate Caslin, who is an especially kind and easygoing teacher. After taking her courses for almost a whole year, I started to know how different writings can be.

In the beginning of UWP 21, when I first attending writing courses at UC Davis, I thought I clearly knew how to introduce, develop and conclude an essay since I had practiced tons of patterns in high school. Therefore, I was so confident with myself that I wrote down the most familiar pattern in my first assignment: “In contemporary society, ….” However, during the course after the first assignment, Kate Caslin told us a joke: “As an American, I did not there were so many horrible things in contemporary society!” “Oh guys, you really expanded my horizon!” We all laughed and understood what Caslin was talking about. She continued: “So today, we are going to how different types of hooks can help you guys in your introduction.”

“A hook can be an axiom from a famous person, an anecdote you experienced or a relevant statics that happened recently….” After several UWP lessons and practices, I knew that I need to introduce the essay with backgrounds and reasons to my point myself. Therefore, in the third assignment, my introduction changed: “Diversity may produce bias. A place with people from divergent cultures and backgrounds may have discrimination, which is unlikely to be prevented.” I indeed understand how to start an essay with a hook. Gradually, I found there are so many possible ways we can try in our introductions instead of overusing those boring patterns.

With the company of words Caslin repeated in her courses, I successfully passed UWP 21. But to my surprise, I got the chance to take her courses again in UWP 22. In UWP 22, I found it’s far not enough to write an introduction well since I had access to the various formats to make our statistics and examples more persuasive and convincing. Specifically, learning how to use APA and MLA format propels me to a more mature writer because using appropriate format helps me build more well-organized essay structures. A proper writing format points out where my sources are from and more comprehensively helps explain my opinions. As a result, it not only makes the structures of my paper more clear, but also let my articles more reliable. Since my high school, I had heard of APA and MLA format even though I did not know how to use them in my writings. What I could do was to write fully developed essays. Despite the fact that I could write an engaging essay with advanced vocabulary, sometimes readers were confused about what I want to talk about because I did not cite my quotes correctly. However, I use the proper APA format in my fourth paper, which is research on discrimination among languages, and I can obviously feel the consistence between my explanations and examples. As a result, my paper 4 seems to be more logical and comprehensive than my other articles.

Last spring quarter, when I took UWP 23 and gradually became a more mature writer. Besides knowing how to use the correct APA and MLA formats, I made great improvement on writing different genres of papers, from advertising analysis to research on college tuition. After writing tons of argumentative essays, sometimes I may find argumentative writings are no longer persuasive enough because most people always show the similar or the totally same opinions. To be honest, coming up with new ideas in an essay is significant and your essay may seem more appealing to the audience. However, thinking out such innovative ideas really takes us a lot of time. To solve this problem, I gradually improved our writing techniques and changed my genres of writing from time to time. With favors from Kate Caslin, I figured out the best solution is to construct research papers, showing the background, causes and influences of your specific topic. Caslin let us do research and write an essay on college tuition in that spring quarter. However, the topic is so large that we certainly cannot cover every single perspective in our argumentative writings. Thus, the research we had done may lead us to decide what specific topics they can be. Finally, the topic I planned was “If college is still a wise investment”, which was one of the most controversial social issues. However, with the information I collected on the Internet, I talked about this thesis from a novel perspective—the pay gap between high school graduates and college graduates, and the pay gap between the past and the present. After practicing various genres of writings, my essays have been more well-organized and persuasive than they were.

After taking Caslin’s courses for continuous three quarters, I totally discard what I was. I found I am no more sticking to the patterns I used to remember. The genre and topics of my essays subtly became distinctive. From time to time, I may also include critical and groundbreaking ideas in my writings.

Now, I am a free writer, but not a duplicator.