#aa currents prequel

[letapollojusticesayfuck]

@contritecactite elle you've activated my Faraskye Infodump Mode. will this potentially just end up fully as the outline for the multichap? maybe. who knows

anyway. so. I love the idea of Kay and Ema together but MAINLY I think that neither of them would be in a place for a relationship when they first meet in Investigations. I also don't really see them keeping in touch after the events of those games, at least not long-term? We know Ema goes and studies in Europe for a bit, and we literally never see Kay again (genuinely what the fuck. come on now. throw us a bone, capcom. what's she up to) so that whole side of the relationship is up to interpretation. Personally, I think Kay and Ema tried to keep in touch for a while, but as happens much more frequently than not, they mutually started taking longer and longer to respond to each others' letters and/or emails until finally they hadn't talked in years.

(the rest under a cut because as ever, I got rambley)

We know that Ema flunks a forensics course and winds up working for the police by the time AA4 rolls around. She's changed a lot--she's bitter and jaded and only happy when she's doing under-the-table forensics research to the best of her ability. Honestly, I find this Ema the most interesting out of all the iterations of her we see--on one hand yes that's because I'm a disaster AA4 enjoyer but on the other hand, she's a character who's failed at something she loves, and who's stuck in a job she doesn't like much, and really she's just...very relatable.

Like I said before, though, Kay doesn't ever show up again--so my absolute monolith headcanon for her is that she goes to university on Edgeworth's insistence/with his financial support (which he's mostly doing because 1) yes he cares about her post-aai, and 2) he feels a sense of responsibility towards Not Letting This Teenager Keep Running Around And Causing Chaos. I don't think he's super involved with her schooling or anything or even very involved in her personal life, but if she starts getting too close to failing a class she gets a long-distance phone call from Europe and even though she could drop out and blatantly ignore Edgeworth's meddling, she sticks it out because she does really admire him, despite all she sets out to make his life difficult). anyway she graduates with a degree in something "useless" like english lit or history or film studies---something she finds difficult to get a job in post-college--and winds up hopping between shitty retail jobs for a few years.

The catalyst for Ema and Kay meeting again is actually Gumshoe, who entirely coincidentally runs into Kay at the Target (or whatever) where she works. they get to catching up, Gumshoe reveals that he's just recently been promoted to Police Chief, he mentions that he's been dealing with some difficulties retaining detectives and that he's looking for new staff, and Kay half-jokingly asks if her experience running around after him and Edgeworth qualifies her for the position.

Of course, she ends up with a job offer and has to report to the police station, where she finds that she's being paired with another detective to show her the ropes, and it must be "blast from the past" week or something because staring back at Kay from across the room is Ema Skye, several years older and much, much grumpier than she remembers her. At first, Kay's optimistic about reconnecting with her old friend--but she's shut down almost immediately and spends most of their shared shifts wondering: what happened?

(of course, what happened was the general disillusionment of having your dreams crushed--but Kay'll learn this later, after she's managed to win back a bit of Ema's trust/interest with some actually decent detective work and useful deployment of Little Thief)

anyway they're pretty tentative around each other for a while, they keep striking nerves and saying the wrong thing and generally being kind of awkward--until they get assigned a case that lets them both use their skills, and the ice breaks just the tiniest bit.

and of course, then they get thrown off the deep end with a serial killer who's going after prominent legal figures and anyone connected with the landmark trials of the past decade--and they've got to work together to work out how to take them down. And along the way they face tragedy, hardship, weird takeout food orders, and--just maybe--fall a little bit in love with each other.

(most of the oneshots I've written fall tenuously into this universe? they've got the kay and ema buddy-cop dynamic but exist usually somewhere after the serial killer plot, which itself exists in this weird side-tangent to AA4 where bits of it happen before, during, and after (Kay and Ema definitely don't get together until after the events of aa4 have happened. but otherwise i'm handwaving the timeline. it doesn't matter that much). the only thing that so far exists within this timeline of events is keeping all your hopes alive, which is kind of the Climactic Moment in this serial killer plot. I'm working on the multicapter fic that will actually do all this plot I've just explained...but it'll probably take a While. so this is here for now. also technically that fic is going to be a prequel to currents because Why Not (aka: that was the fic where i came up with kay and ema dating/having been both on the police force and i think it's fun)

ahhh so. if you got this far i am placing a tiny crown on your head. you did it! you survived my rambling! im going to sleep now but if this has brought up more questions...lmk

actually y'know what i haven't done here in a while? gone on a good ramble about character dynamics. idk if anyone's interested but hey y'know my various faraskye fics? and how they're all vaguely set in the same future scenario? yeah one day i'm going to write a fic about how that happens but until then. does anyone want to know any of the backstory there?

[penumbraphantasm]

big old wordy post for anyone wanting to get into the layton series and support it in a slightly more legal manner loool

first off, the Original Trilogy. probably the easiest option is purchasing the first 3 games on mobile. yes, these are the full games that debuted on the DS but in HD with BONUS content.

oh hey katrielle and alfendi. i guess mystery journey and mystery room are there too but i'll get back to those.

anyways, the layton series comes in different parts with some spinoffs. the first three as seen are Curious Village, Diabolical Box and Unwound Future. these are first in order of Release. so you can't go wrong starting here.

the next three that came after are the Prequel trilogy: Last Specter, Miracle Mask and Azran Legacy. this means even though they were released later, they take place before Curious Village chronologically. so maybe you want to make LS a starting point if you like that sort of order? LS was the last layton game for the DS while MM and AL were for the 3DS. this is where it gets difficult.

currently, Last Specter has no other port. if you search on something like ebay, you will see a clear price difference compared to listings for the original DS trilogy. and with renewed interest in the series, the amount of ppl looking for copies has probably grown too. so i don't recommend joining the fight unless you really love layton and physical media lol. i still probably RecOMmend finding another way to play it.

also my fav part of Last Specter is London Life!! a game within a game where you can create an avatar, dress up, decorate your room, get a job, fish, meet characters from the past 3 games (and a couple from Eternal Diva!) HOWEVER, London Life is only available in versions for Japan, US and Australia. if you have a European copy, you won't see it... so keep this in mind...

but before you get to the 3DS titles, you should watch the movie i mentioned earlier. what, a movie? YES! Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva! released in 2009 and takes place between Last Specter and Miracle Mask. it's animated in the game's style and comes with subs and dubs. you can easily look it up on youtube.

okay now you can move on to 3DS. Miracle Mask and Azran Legacy are available digitally in 3DS eshop but that is CLOSING MARCH 27 2023. physical copies are also expensive to acquire. they currently do not have mobile ports either.

there's another 3DS title available as well and it's a wild one. Professor Layton Vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney! a crossover spinoff where you get to enjoy the gameplay of both series and the work done here would later influence some stuff they did in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles so you can check that out too. but i rec this title if you are already a fan of PL and AA so you can get the most out of the experience. if you hope to get this physically, be aware it's an extremely expensive hassle. otherwise, just grab it from the 3DS eshop for $29.99 before it closes or brew up another method at home.

okay okay but what about Mystery Journey? well, the protagonist this time is Prof Layton's daughter Katrielle! her game's available on 3DS and mobile (with free demo) and there are extra purchases if you want more goodies. but you may want to consider the switch version instead. it comes with all DLC unlocked, extra outfits and nicer graphics. it also has some new and improved puzzles. why is that? well, some of the puzzles in the original release weren't popular. if you try out the mobile demo, you may notice a totally different vibe with the puzzles. well, why is That? sadly, the original puzzle master for the layton games passed away in 2016. Mystery Journey is a more divisive title so maybe don't make this your first layton adventure.

BUT WAIT! there's also a Mystery Journey anime you can watch! Layton Mystery Tanteisha: Katori no Nazotoki File! it goes through the events from Mystery Journey and MORE! yes, the story goes BEYOND the game!! it's only available in japanese though (but there are subs lol)

HOLD IT! there's one more mobile game to talk about. Layton Brothers: Mystery Room! this time, you follow Lucy Baker, a fresh detective constable assigned to assist Inspector Alfendi Layton, son of Prof Layton. this game is less about puzzles and more about investigation and interrogation. it's a freemium game, which means the prologue and first 2 cases are free. the rest of the cases are in-app purchases.

if you've already played all these games, well congrats! now we just sit here and wait for New World of Steam

(and keep praying for Mansion of the Deathly Mirror lol)

[lol-jackles]

Maybe I’m becoming cynical, but I feel like Jensen’s podcast with Mike was done to advertise that Jensen is available for open roles, and it was done to elevate his profile, to remind people that he’s out there. For many people Jensen has been off their radar since Supernatural ended. The Boys has wrapped and he’s finished Rust, so he essentially doesn’t have a job, and now has to network to find his next role.

To me it’s odd that he would choose now to talk about the Jessica Alba rumors when they are 20 years old, and past their sell by date. It seems like something he threw out there to drum up publicity and awareness on the gossip sites. I mean all of it feels premeditated. The Jessica Alba drops, the mentions of Michelle Williams on his time with Dawson’s Creek - which was a blink and you miss it role, and then him also highlighting The Boys (prematurely, since season 3 doesn’t drop until another 4 months), and him advertising the Prequel to me feels like he’s trying to net his next role, and basically put in a classifies notice that he’s open to work.

It struck me, that he basically has to search for his next role, every time he wraps something.

You're not wrong, but that’s what most actors do when they do anything - advertise that they're available for roles, and even if they're currently already in a role they still have to put themselves out there in order to maintain their status of relevancy - just like high school.  I wonder if you've fallen for the AAs' decades old narrative that Jensen doesn't have to self-promote because producers were breaking down his doors. The truth is all actors have to hustle.

If one is going to name-drop (which is considered poor form by most people) because there’s certain stories that you have to present in glorious detail and it warrants that name-drop, but it needs to be a yarn with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Then, you don’t look like some putz trying to name drop for clout.   But in Jensen’s case he’s not a natural storyteller, as seen by twitter reaction to his ~comeback to Jessica’s “pretty boy” diss.  Jensen is a natural teacher and director, but not a natural story teller.

With that said, if you got a sweater from Taylor Swift and someone compliments your sweater, then you are required by law to say, “Oh this? Taylor Swift gave it to me.”    This is where name-drop is completely free of judgment..

Lastly, Jensen's profile risen a lot due to the Rust tragedy and CNN picking up Jensen's weapon training story on the Rust set from the Denver con. The Boy's PR team is partially capitalizing on it. And of course IOY dropped Jensen interview and it's name-drop contents soon after that. Normally IOY podcast doesn't get MSM attention, and I honestly thought it wouldn't. But thanks to Alec Baldwin's inability to stay quiet and The Boys announcing their season 3 schedule, Rosenbaun took advantage of the timing.

ETA, @finnwalker yes I mean that Rosenbaun held onto the podcast for months until it was advantageous for his company.

[inazuma-fulgur]

Going to hit all of you over the head because you're criticizing AI models in the worst way possible and don't even understand what you're reblogging

Since tumblr is the piracy is cool actually platform I'm going to give all of you the shadow of the doubt and elaborate, with sources of course and then some explanations.

Though I can't believe I need to do this, stop sharing stuff without checking and rethinking just because it confirms your current biases, that's how irrational believes are built and harmful ideologies profit off of your naivety

Let's start with a quote

""When prompted, ChatGPT accurately generated summaries of several of the Martin infringed works, including summaries for Martin's novels 'A Game of Thrones,' 'A Clash of Kings,' and 'A Storm of Swords,' the first three books in the series A Song of Ice and Fire," the suit notes, adding that ChatGPT has also created prequels and alternate versions of his books.

"ChatGPT could not have generated the results described above if OpenAI's LLMs had not ingested and been 'trained' on the Martin infringed works," the complaint alleges."

So what does that mean? Essentially nothing, plot summaries and explanations of stories or themes have always been an issue to greedy people but it's largely been impossible to target them because they don't equal the creative work or its emotional impact. The thing a piece of art is, emotionally and intuitively impactful. It speaks to you and your experience.

Now we've seen companies try for a long time to limit the amount of their copyrighted material that gets shown in reviews and anything that tries to intellectually work with it, or try to create something beyond the original work. I've seen people in the notes argue that it's relevant that fanfiction is not for profit for example, which is irrelevant. You are stealing property, even if you don't do it for any gain, that's what copyright means and should tell you how nonsensical it is aa a concept. You've taken nothing, just an idea, something you literally can't avoid unless you know nothing anyone has ever done, said, created. And even if you do it for a gain, you're still investing work and time and effort.

Regardless of how you feel about AI companies and their models you have to understand that this idea, these concepts will be used against YOU and against artists whos labor and work gets bought/licensed.

Now idk maybe you think just don't sell your work then to not lose access, to always be able to stay in control and be able to release it how you please. But it isn't worth licensing if you could then decide to release it to the public through another published or, gasp, for free???

All y'all's criticism of this here is focussed on the symptom that is AI models and people not getting adequate compensation for their work, if at all, instead of focussing on the larger problems of our economic and social system. You're working to distract from the problem, from the ghouls letting us starve for their infinitely growing profit, their lead on the global money leaderboard.

This lawsuit is not like a strike, like a boycott, it does not affect you in any positive way.

None of you reblogging and celebrating this paused for even a second to think why we even have a system that requires you to work in this way, that let's people who won't/can't work die. (Unless we as individuals work extra hard because our sense of community has been erroded and no one feels responsible for people not immediately close to themselves)

I hope you understand that none of our work can adequately and fairly be compensated for in money, artistic work even less so, that it is something we made up and we shouldn't let ourselves be controlled by. Artists aren't poor despite of copyright, copyright is part of the reason why and how they can be disenfranchised and robbed, have their labor exploited and takem from them.

Governments are not your friends, just like police aren't. Please learn what neoliberalism is, because no matter how much you say you dislike it you're currently enacting its policies.

And I know that this isn't a kind criticism by mean, but it necessary and comes from a place of love no matter how hurt you are feeling. Because sometimes the truth does that, and your emotions can lie to you and validate and reinforce bad preheld believes.

More links

Like I hope no one gets me wrong, I also think that AI models are bad and that they're not comparable to human labor and creativity, but they aren't antithetical to it either. At least not necessarily, the way companies use them and try to replace laborers definitely is.

And the way people think this enables them to become artists is sad, not because I think it doesn't, but because of them feeling the need for such a tool to be artists. That they feel a pressure to be "good" in an arbitrary sense, that they feel like they have no time and energy to invest into developing a skill. When they should just be able to pick up a pencil and decide that today they wanna be creative instead of having to toil day in day out.

It also saddens me that despite all the "progress" we've made, or should have made at least if you listen to how many people think of themselves and how conservative reactionaries scaremonger about "the left", we still dehumanize and jsutify the disenfranchisement of, among others, disabled people. And if you're disabled and wanna tell me shit like "but I do work, what do you mean?! This is normal and fair and just" as a gotcha please shut the fuck up right now.

Some of us listen to far right figures being scared of a parody of a skeleton of leftism and socialism/community and really started to believe that that is the pinnacle of progressivism and kindness.

Or that empathy is an innate quality one needs to possess to be a good person, and that this "natural" feeling is pure and innocent and can't be wrong. That if your feelings are hurt, your intuition is contradicted, it must be because the contradiction/contradictor is bad and wrong.

Good morning everybody

[moonlight-rebel]

Get to Know the Blogger

Tagged by the lovely @perhapsrampancy Thanks for the tag! (I’m glad tumblr actually decided it would tell me about too, cursed website loves to leave me in the dark)

RULES: Answer 17 questions and tag 17 people you’d like to get to know better.

************************************************

1) Name: I don’t have a tumblr nickname (I don’t talk to many people on here), but you can call me Red (I was an angsty teen when I came up with the blog name and tbh I regret it).

2) Height: 5′9, and the shortest one in my family.

3) Wearing: college hoodie and yoga pants.

4) Introvert or Extrovert: Introvert, did I mention I don’t talk to many people?

5) Siblings: two younger sisters and an older brother.

6) Following: 209 wonderful people

7) Followers: 78 equally wonderful people.

8) Degrees: I am currently wasting time (and money) getting my AA.

9) Instruments: The recorder (nothing special there), guitar (kinda), and the flute.

10)  Favorite author: Does fanfic authors count?

11)  Favorite Star Wars: The prequels I guess.

12) Last Google Search: “How to take good screenshots in Skyrim”  and directly after that “How to take good screenshots in Fallout” (I am still clueless on how this is done)

13)  Recommend a video game: Elder Scrolls Online, I’ve been playing it a lot recently in between assignments and it’s honestly my current favorite game.

14) Recommend a music album: The album Six, it’s a musical that I’ve been obsessed with for a couple months now. It’s about King Henry VIII’s six wives.

15) Recommend a book: I don’t really read much anymore, sooo.

16) Recommend a recipe: I am incapable of cooking anything that doesn’t resemble (in both looks and taste) tar, so you probably wouldn’t want to take any of my recommendations on cooking.

17) Share a creative thought that you had today: I daydreamed an entire rewrite of the chess scene between the Inquisitor and Cullen. It was one of my Wardens, Arabella Amell, and Cullen catching up after being away from each other for 10 years and kinda revisiting how they left things. Arabella had just showed up to Skyhold, at Leliana’s request, to assist Inquisitor Jasper Lavellan with Corypheus and his Venatori. (spoiler alert it ends the same way as a romanced Cullen’s chess scene.)

Here's an old ass picture of me since of no recent ones.

tagging @ivisite @sassybrynjolf @pumpkin-spine @mrscullensrutherford @daidz-art @vaultgirl2077 @obvidalous @vorchagirl (with no obligation oc)

[jarpadswalker]

Going by Jensen replies on MH and behavior at con, even if we consider those YaNa videos, I can come to only one conclusion, and that is Jensen don't give two shits about mental health. I feel he genuinely believes that depression can be avoidable and it is not that serious.

Seeing Jensen current behavior, I won't be surprised if tomorrow it is revealed that Jensen used to make fun of Jared's depression or anxieties.

For him, mental health only seemed important when he thought he could easily make money of it and garner some praise and fame while doing so. When he failed to put his name on AKF, and AkF remained as Jared's brand, he thought of outbidding Jared with YANA. Just like SPN prequel l, he thought putting his face and pandering to AAs/hellers would be enough. But YANA failed, and he once again went back to AKF, trying to weasel his way in the brand, hoping that somehow he would get the co-ownership. It was all about the money. He never really worked for the brand. In fact, he distanced himself from the first AKF campaign because, until then, MH was since as taboo, and he didn't have the courage to support something like MH. He came on board only when he saw that fans and media reacted positively to the news. Infact you could see things with Jensen immediately changed when Jared got a spread in Vogue.

Even in the Vogue spread and through MH campaigns, Jared credited Jensen only for one thing, which is that Jensen talked Jared out of quitting Spn after S3. It was the time when he was diagnosed. He credited Gen for encouraging him to talk out about his MH struggle and thanked Stephen Amell for giving him the idea and brainstorming the name AKF.

He started thanking Jensen much later after the campaigns were done and dusted that too as an afterthought. He would generally say I would say something like Jensen has been a great help or has been their in my journey...only when he saw that the fans are questioning him About AKF and Jensen is been left out. He would act like a good friend and share the credit with Jensen as a courtesy. Sadly, Jensen never returned the honor. He would always diss Jared about it. Remember the amount of shit Jensen would give to Jared for his beanies until Jared said that those are his security blanket. After that, when Jensen dissed Jared beanie, he received a dull response, and he soon realized that shit won't fly anymore.

If you really want to see what the impact of continues diss and comments under the pretense of joke can have on person, then just follow Jared and Jensen panel from start to end (SpN finale). Not to mention the constant scruting from AAs and Hellers. You will see vast difference in Jared.

Never keep fighting.

Three words that tell me all I need to know about Jensen Ackles, thanks.

Terrible joke or low blow, it was still an awful thing to say.

[fth2018offerings]

Glowbug - FTH Contributor Page

See Glowbug’s works here!

To contact the seller before bidding, please email arielsplash07@gmail.com

If you have a very specific prompt and are not flexible, it’s best to contact the seller before bidding, even if it fits within their listed parameters. If you are asking for a specific kink, always ask first.

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(See full list)

Glowbug’s offerings:

Glowbug Auction #1

Type of fanwork: fanfiction Subtype(s): N/A Fandom(s): Cabin Pressure, Professor Layton (originals, prequels, PL vs AA and LMJ are all fine), Ace Attorney Highest rating creator will work with: T (teen) Length: Less than 5K words Especially interested in: Fluffy found-family bonding is my specialty! :) Unwilling to address: I'd prefer not to write anything about Descole (PL fandom). Notes: I'm open to discussion if you really want some shipping, but I don't write it too often so I'm kind of cautious about it.

Minimum Bid: $5

Auctions run from 8 January 2018 (Midnight, EST) to 14 January 2018 (Midnight, EST). Bids before or after this period are invalid and will not be counted.If you would like to bid on this auction:

Step 1: Check the bidding spreadsheet to find out what the current high bid is. (Note: It may take up to five minutes for a bid to appear.)

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Thanks for participating in Fandom Trumps Hate!

[laf-outloud]

nah, the hellers and other assorted spn groups actually don't hate it. I just had a look at the post with the highest note count about the prequel going around on tumblr currently (about 200 atm) and it's about 95% positive/excited comments in the tags and notes.

I'm going to guess that's from AA's who think Jensen can do no wrong. Even then, Tumblr is never a good measure of how popular something is because we know hellers are less than 1% of the fandom, but they're destiel posts gets thousands of counts. Tumblr is the heller and aa's paradise since it's the only site where they can feel taken seriously by other's like them. If you look at the twitter responses on the prequel article, you'll see that there are people from all sides of fandom who do not like this.

[dangermousie]

I got an amazon gift card and went on a book buying binge, plus got some stuff on kindle unlimited. Here’s what I will be reading and blabbing about:

Ashok K. Banker, Ashoka: Lyon of Maurya (read his take on Ramayana years ago and it was fun. Plus I am a sucker for the subject matter.)

Rachel E. Carter, Candidate (third book of YA fantasy. I liked the first two parts a lot.)

Jennifer Anne Davies, The Key (first part of YA fantasy trilogy. I am all for angsty princesses.)

Steven Ericson, Gardens of the Moon (first book in the ten novel Malazan empire series, high fantasy. Have been meaning to read it forever)

Elise Kova, the Crown’s Dog (fantasy. Prequel to Air Awakens. I’d rather have a sequel about Jax but I’d settle for a prequel.)

Elise Kova, the Prince’s Rogue (fantasy, also prequel to AA. Baldair and his OTP. Fuck it! Why do I do this to myself!) 

Bec McMaster, My Lady Quicksilver (steampunk romance)

Judith McNaught, a bunch of novels that are finally on kindle (currently reading Once and Always. Am sucker for really old school romance sometimes)

Kelly St Clare, The Retreat (fantasy. I loved her Tainted Accords series.)

Amish Tripathi, Scion of Ikshvaku (am apparently on Ramayana related kick)

Rachel Van Dyken, Capture (NA romance. She fills in that trashy but addictive Abby Glines niche.)

Valerian & Laureline, Vol 1 (Graphic Novel. Leave me and my new obsession alooooone!)

[kristeristerin]

WIP!

I was tagged by the very talented and ridiculously sweet @nauticalparamour to talk about my current WIPs…Thanks for tagging me, Dear!

Bound to the Light [Hermione Granger x Remus Lupin]

My first successful multichapter! This is a story about what you will do for someone your love, and each character shows it in a different way. One is willing to leave the only way of life she’s ever known. One is willing to put aside his reservations and help a society that wants nothing more than to see him dead. One is willing to learn to accept himself for what he does, not what he is. At the end of the day are they willing to give up enough to change the outcome of the war?

> Werewolf!Hermione,  Parent!Fenrir AU

Ferocity [Hermione Granger x Antonin Dolohov]

This one is still heavily in the planning stages. I feel like this story is going to be aa lot more complex than I originally thought. When Hermione ends up carrying the child of the Dark Lord she finds herself in the center of a new prophecy and on the run from the dark and light sides. Escaping, she is taken in by the underground resistance and finds that the people who make up the resistance aren't who she’d imagined. When it’s found that there is a mole in the ranks, Hermione is sent off to a remote part of Russia with just her two protectors for company. She immediately finds a friend in Reuben Yaxley, but can she ever get on with the stoic Russian man that has previously tried to kill her not once, but twice? And what happens when Hermione decides the only way to provide a life for her baby is to end the war herself?

> Post-Hogwarts AU, Enemies to Lovers, Hermione is a bad ass, Order/Dumbledore/Weasley bashing, This fic will be full of rare pairs <3

Bound to You [Fenrir Greyback x Calia Malfoy (OC)]

I am unsure if this is going to be a one-shot or a short multi-chapter yet. What I do know is this fic is going to show how Fenrir and Calia came to be. It’ll cover her relationship with her family and her betrothed and their reactions to her leaving them behind for Fenrir.  If it’s a one shot it’ll end at their bonding, but a multi-chapter will end with Calia finding tiny Hermione in the woods.

> Prequel to Bound to the Light, Romance with some drama

Kiss is all better [Hermione Granger x Draco Malfoy]

I actually have this one shot completely written, it just needs more editing. This is a tragic story about a man’s reaction to losing the love of his life.

> Super sad tearjerker

Her Gilded Cage (Name pending)  [Hermione Granger x Fenrir Greyback]

This is an idea that has been in the back of my mind for a while, but I haven’t done much with. It’s going to be an AU where Albus Dumbledore is the king of the great Kingdom of Hogsmeade. When the Dark Kind Voldemort, from the Kingdom of Knockturn, begins attacking them King Dumbledore seeks the help of a pack of werewolves from the nearby woods. In order to secure the help, he gives his only daughter’s hand in marriage to the leader of the wolves. Hermione is not impressed by being used as a bargaining tool and makes it known to both her father and new husband. What she doesn’t expect is her new husband to open her eyes to the world she didn’t know existed.

> Kingdom AU?, Werewolves, Drama with a whole lot of Romance.

Lightning Round:

Unnamed: Dudley/Hermione - When traveling after the final battle, Hermione meets who she thinks is the perfect guy for her. They have a wonderful month long relationship but he breaks it off when his family finds out she's a witch. Heartbroken, Hermione returns to the wizarding world, only to find out she’s pregnant. Imagine her surprise when 3 years later she shows up to Harry’s home for Christmas, only to find herself face to face with the father of her child, Harry’s cousin Dudley.  

Unnamed: Dramione/Hansy- Draco and Harry are sent Into the future to live for a week. Nothing is as they'd expect.

Unnamed: Harry x Hermione - After becoming very close during their time alone while hunting Horcruxes Hermione expects after the final battle she and Harry will be together. She finds herself heartbroken when he declares his feelings for Ginny. Taking the first job she can in an attempt to escape her heartbreak, Hermione soon relocates to France. Through the years she remains very close with Ron, and is ecstatic when he asks her to stand as one of his “Best Men”, that is until she finds out who she’ll have to be standing beside. Can she put aside old feelings for her best friend’s big day, or will Harry show her that he’s realized the mistake he’s made? And where does Draco Malfoy fit into all of this?

 Please, please, please let me know which ideas are your favorites! <3 :D

Not tagging anyone, but feel free to do this yourself! :D If you do tag me! I want to see what everyone has coming up <3

[yourlocallosernamedgreenookie]

tagged by: @jyuushimachuu​ (thank ;v; )

list 10 songs you’re currently vibin to and tag 10 people!! (aa okayo? but fun fact most of them will probably sad or something yaaaaay i am sorry ;;v;; )

1-  “Healthy End” by PowapowaP ft. Hatsune Miku (I’ve been listening to it on repeat for the past 30 minutes or so, fun fact... I really relate to it right now, to be honest...)

2-  “Bad-Mouthing” by SEDO Sounder ft. MAYU

3- “Cat Food” by Doriko ft. Hatsune Mike (Live version)

4- “HYPERDONTIA” by GHOST and Creep-P (Eyeris) ft. Flower (Thanks to the next song, the prequel to this one)

5- “NOVOCAINE” by GHOST and Creep-P (Eyeris) ft. Flower

6- “Mind Brand” by MARETU ft. Hatsune Miku (Cover by akem, though)

7- “CUPID.EXE” by strovi ft. Hatsune Miku

8- “Liar Dance” by DECO*27 ft. Hatsune Miku ((Short ;v; ) Jazz Cover, though)

9- “CiRCuS MoNSTeR” by Circus-P ft. Luka (And GUMI kinda?) (Cinematic Remix, cover by Nishin with Ruby)

10- “Misfit Love” by Queens of the Stone Age And I’ll tag... aaa... well, first, you guys don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, of course. second, I am sorry for tagging you and bothering you @sushi-at-midnight @yourlocalcanadian121 @rosecowboy and well... anyone else that wants to do this, i guess? again, im sorry for bothering you and generally being a nuisance to everyone haha aaaaaa

[unabashedlyinlove]

God, they still dont get it, do they? Jensen is not perfect, neither any other human that walked/walks on Earth. They cannot stand that people do not bend and kiss his ring. They cannot deal with people, in their own corner of the internet, giving a different opinion. I've been following you for a while - and SPN since S1 first aired - and I can totally say you're not when you praise/give notes to Jensen's early acting and his current "style".

@hologramcowboy never said that Jensen sucked. If they're reading your tumblr properly, they would understand that you know Jensen has the raw potential to be on his A game and become the A lister he wants to be so bad, however , for situations in his personal life beyond our knowledge, he lost himself in the way(I wrote a bit here , in a reply to an anon ask why I think it happened). Its clear to you to me and everybody who is paying attention.

Their problem is that if you're not screaming at the rooftops your undying devotion to Jensen, you're a hater. Everybody noticed how AAs escalated their attacks to Jared/ Jared fans/Jensen "haters" after prequel and they're doing it again and I have my own theories as to why its happening again.

I also think that they really are vying for your attention and opinion because youre articulate, knowledgeable and interesting. Most of AAs' opinions that are too short to fill a 280 character tweet cause theyre fans just for his looks. They want people who can give their approval and sound intellectual because the most well known AAs accounts sound like lunatics on expired cocaine, so theyre embarrassed to point anybody their direction.

Are you an idiot? Or just a massive Jared stan? Do you even have any proof about anything you say? or are you just delusional? If you hate Jensen this much that you hate his acting, hate his singing, just unstan him. That'd be better. Nobody fucking cares about your craziness. Only Jared stans that hate Jensen do.

Awwww, same anon different hate ask. So cute.

Obsessed much?

I have nothing, I repeat, absolutely nothing to prove to anyone. I am secure in my own self, my emotions and especially my background.

You live to hate and attack others in Jensen's name, he would be ashamed of you.

Also, people are free to like dislike critique anything they want and you get to police nothing. You are no one to me or my followers, this blog is not your target audience so go find one of your cults and stick to it while your goals and dreams fade as you become more and more consumed with Jensen.

My "crazyness" is backed up by casting directors, acting coaches and so on so I don't need confirmation or approval from you, ever.

Have a nice life!

[translationandbetrayals]

Ace attorney in other media: trial and judgment

Court is now in session for the trial of Ace Attorney on the charge of greedy adaptation worthlessness.

Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban) is an interactive visual novel Capcom. It's what some may call a courtroom drama, like Law and Order. The main protagonist is Phoenix Wright a Japanese Perry Mason, who goes from rookie to ace attorney through the course of the series. Currently the franchise has got 10 published games, and also anime, manga and live-action versions. In this post I'll emphasize on these other media giving information on them, and my opinion as well.

 Ace Attorney is a romanticized version of law practice, where each trial is one plot twist after the other. In each case the protagonist has to prove his client's innocence in court, for which he must appeal to the judge. The way of doing this is by rebutting the prosecution's guilty claim, contradicting their arguments. Characters, format and scenarios change, however the investigation/trial structure remains the main basis of series. Every case has its own share of silliness, of course. In fact, I believe humor and funny characters are a kay aspect, since most Japanese games emphasize on merchandisable content.

Ace Attorney counts with six instalments in the main series, all released first on Nintendo portables. Some of the first games games have been released on phone and console formats. There are two spin-offs about prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, Wright's friend-nemesis, but only the first had a western release. A spin-of with the Professor Layton franchise. And an untranslated prequel, set on Sherlock Holmes' Victorian London and staring an ancestor of Wright's.

 Manga

This adaptation began publishing by Kodanshka in 2007. It was written by Kenji Kuroda and illustrated by Kazuo Maekawa.

 There are five volumes with seven cases (turnabouts) distributed among them. Each turnabout introduces an original standalone story and features new characters. Some recurring characters appear as well. All cases are unrelated to each other and the story, so unlike the games, the manga version hasn't got an ongoing conflict that climaxes in the last cases.

 As to my opinion, I got to say I enjoyed the manga, although some chapters are a bit cheesy in comparison to the games'. I like the drawings, although there's no way to compare them to the original concepts, since the constant arrival of new console generations has made too many changes already. But I think it manages to expand on the Ace Attorney universe appropriately, unlike most fan art.

There are two Miles Egdeworth spin-off volumes too. Just like the other ones, these chapters have new standalone stories but this time with the prosecutor and detective Gumshoe as protagonists. I found them to be just as good as the other volumes, so they are recommendable as well.

 The court declares the defendant Not Guilty on the charge of worthlessness.

 Anime

2016. Produced by A-1 Pictures, directed by Ayumu Watanabe and written by Atsuhiro Tomioka. The anime adapts most of the first two games in 24 chapters, while also expanding on themes such as Wright's childhood friendship with Edgeworth.

 Honestly I disliked some things. For instance, the music is just plain generic, while Ace Attorney has a great OST -that's my opinion though, be advised this is 16-bit stereo music-. Some of the animations look outdated and I’m not talking about classic-looking here, I’m talking about cheap.

 I like the way most of the characters are portrayed, in fact the only one that I seem to have problems with is Phoenix Wright. He seems to be less-serious in the anime, almost stupid. I believe the transition from first player POV to Anime narrative is to blame there. Screenplay writing had to supply for all of the original in-game interactions and it's hard to please everyone on those terms.

 I declare the defendant guilty on all charges.

  Live-action film

I'm not used to live-action versions but, I watched this one for the sake of this post. Released in Japan during 2012, the 135 minutes long movie is a bit long, but manages to sum up most of the first game's main storyline (for more information on cast and production, the IMDb link is just at the end of this post).

 The movie delivers great amounts of information at very quick pace. Problematic as it may seem, this allows the film to be rich in detail staying mostly true to the original story and stays away from an obvious lame acted debate. It has a lot of futuresque visual effects, specially in court where trials are held almost like a duel. The characters make a use of make-up to look like the original ones, with spiky haircuts and baroque suits included. The film score is great because it uses the original songs as the basis for new orchestrated versions.

 All in all, a good film if you already like Ace Attorney, but the accelerated pace may prove to be a bad introduction to the series.

 Not Guilty.

 Conclusion

 There's always talk about how bad adaptations are in the case of videogames and most of the time I agree with the criticism they receive. In this case I disliked the anime, that's obvious, but there's always a reason for these things to go well or not. I disagree with the argument that adaptations are always bad, especially in the case of visual novels where some examples like Steins Gate and Danganronpa -which in as a matter of fact draws inspiration from AA- deny this claim.

 My opinion is that sometimes greed wins over quality, when merchandising money gets the best of franchises. At least I know things are not always like that and AA can corroborate that with the manga and the live action film.

 Court is adjourned.

  Film info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1891974/.

 Pablo Noguera Cordaro

[pitz182]

Is AA Too Religious for Generation Z?

Are today’s mutual-aid recovery groups ready to satisfy Generation-next?“More than any other generation before them, Gen Z does not assert a religious identity. They might be drawn to things spiritual, but with a vastly different starting point from previous generations, many of whom received a basic education on the Bible and Christianity. And it shows: The percentage of Gen Z that identifies as atheist is double that of the U.S. adult population.”Released early this year, Barna Group’s Generation-Z Report (Americans born between 1999 and 2015) surveyed over 2,000 13 to 18-year-olds. The oldest of this generation turn 20 in 2019.According to AA’s most recent triennial membership survey, 1% of AA is under 21—that’s about 20,000 sober teenagers in AA rooms right now. What’s my personal affinity with this demographic? It’s two-fold: I have two millennial children and one 18-year-old stepson; secondly, while I am a grey-haired Baby Boomer, I was a teen at my first 12-step meeting. My 20th birthday was 1980, three months shy of my fourth anniversary clean and sober.I was a second-generation AA member and—like Barna’s youth focus group—my worldview seemed incompatible with the old fogies of 12-step rooms. My mother mused about finding god’s will for her from meditation or her daily horoscope. She was such a Virgo, you know. Horoscopes, higher powers, legends of Sasquatch, these were all fictional symbols as far as I was concerned. Reasonable people didn’t take such constructs literally, did they?Bob K, like me, is a second-generation AA. He’s currently between historical book projects; Key Players in AA History will soon have a prequel. Bob’s follow-up research will produce a book about pre-AA addiction and treatment. At age 40, Bob made it into AA as a result of his dad 12-stepping him. He also was uncomfortable with the emphasis on "God." “When I was a month sober, it was ‘God-this, God saved me’ and I was going to put my resignation in. I didn’t think I could stand it in AA any longer. I went to the internet of the day—which back then was the library—and I looked for non-religious alternatives to AA. They had them in California but nothing in Ontario Canada. So it was AA or nothing. If I tried to brave it alone, I’d be drunk; I knew it.”Today, Bob enjoys the likeminded company at his Secular AA home group, Whitby Freethinkers, which meets in the local suburban library just East of Toronto. If I were confronting addiction/recovery as a teen today, I wonder if I would go to AA or NA? If AA was once “the last house on the block,” today it’s one house in a subdivision of mutual-aid choices. Today, newcomers have access to Refuge Recovery, SMART Recovery, Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), or Medically Assisted Treatment, none of which existed in the 1970s.On Practically Sane, therapist Jeffrey Munn states: “I like to take a practical approach … I’m not a fan of the ‘fluff’ and flowery language that is often associated with the world of psychology and self-help.” Jeffrey came into the rooms at 20, stayed sober for 2 ½ years, relapsed, came back and is now 13 years clean and sober.“I was mandated to three 12-step meetings per week to stay in the program I was in. Since I was young I have been agnostic. I wanted to find a higher power that was common sense-based, but in the rooms I felt pulled towards a more dogmatic spiritual idea of higher power. Back then, I needed to come up with my own conception of what was happening on a psychological level." Recently, Jeffrey wrote and published Staying Sober Without God: the Practical 12 Steps to Long Term Recovery from Alcoholism and Addiction.“I looked at SMART Recovery,” Jeffrey tells The Fix. “I looked at Moderation Management, too—that one struck me as being an organized resentment against AA—I wasn’t feeling it. When it comes down to social support and a practical plan of action, it’s hard to beat 12-step programs. What I try to teach is: if you don’t buy into any kind of a supernatural higher power, navigate the 12-step world, filtering the god-stuff out, working the program in your own way; there is lots that really works.”Barna reports, “Nearly half of teens, on par with Millennials, say, ‘I need factual evidence to support my beliefs.’” Jeffrey hopes Staying Sober Without God—which joins a growing secular 12-step recovery offering—offers the rational narrative today’s youth crave. Barna calls today’s youth “the first truly post-Christian generation [in America].”Certified Master Addiction Counselor David B. Bohl of Milwaukee understands the value of other-oriented care. David tells The Fix: “As head of a 20-bed coed dual-diagnosis treatment center, emerging adults, 18 to 25 years old, came into our care. I wouldn’t say that they universally shrugged off the 12-step approach but almost universally, in reaction to our volunteers, alumni, and traditional AA community, younger clients didn’t want what the volunteers and alumni had. And I wouldn’t say it was the religiosity always. Sometimes it was an age-thing or life approach. So, our recovery management function became that much more important in terms of building individualized treatment that suits everyone.“In the USA, 75% of all residential treatment centers identify as 12-step facilitators,” David tells us. “In the simplest form, our job is to introduce people to the language and the concept of the 12 steps and then to introduce the clients to support groups or people in support groups when they are discharged from acute care.Where trauma is involved—religious trauma in particular—traditional AA language and rituals trigger that shame they feel from negative formal religion experiences.”Let’s put this overbearing religion caution to a real-life test: Suwaida F was the second oldest of 11 children to Somalian refugee parents who fled to Canada in the 1980s.“In Kindergarten I didn’t have to wear a hijab; my parents weren’t super religious. I went to an Islamic school in grade one. It was normal for teachers to have belts with them, they would hit you; child abuse was normalized. They didn’t really teach us that much math, science, history. The Islamic teachers weren’t that educated. My parents took me out and put me in public school. Then, some of my mom’s Somalian-Canadian friends started moving their kids to Egypt. My friends would stay in Egypt two years, finish the Qur’an and the girls came back wearing burqas and head-scarves. Some Muslim friends would come to school in their hijab, take them off and put them back on when they went home. We called them The Transformers.My parents really wanted us to learn the Qur’an; I don’t speak Arabic, so it was difficult. And I never believed it. I asked my mom and dad, ‘How do you know that this stuff is real?’ They got frustrated and mad and said, ‘Don’t ever ask that question again.’ I knew it wasn’t real. Mom got more and more religious. Pictures of her at age 19 -- she wore no head-scarf when she was my age. My mom expected me to be religious and I rebelled. I had to leave home.”Suwaida misses her sisters. She feels unwelcome in the family home unless she is dressed in the Islamic custom and that wouldn’t be true to herself. Away from home, Suwaida found the welcoming community she craved in the booze and cocaine culture.“It wasn’t a matter of having no money; I had no sense of hope. People at work didn’t know I was hopped from shelter to shelter at night. One winter I was told, ‘Suwaida, you’ve been restricted from every youth shelter in the city of Toronto.’” As addiction progressed, Suwaida recalls an ever-descending patterns of compromises, bad relationships and regrets.“Today, it’s like I still never unpack my suitcase; I’m always ready to go.” During a stay at St. Joe’s detox, Suwaida went to her first NA meeting.“At 7 PM, a woman spoke. I made it clear that I thought it was stupid; I wouldn’t share. At the end, everyone was holding hands to pray and I said, ‘I’m not holding any of your hands.’ I didn’t go back. When I was discharged, I went drinking at the bar with my suitcase, not knowing where I was going to stay that night.My second meeting I consider my first, because I chose it. I thought I should go to AA. I googled atheist or freethinker AA to avoid a repeat of my NA experience. I found Beyond Belief Agnostics and Freethinkers Group on the University of Toronto campus. I went there last February. For a while, I had wine in my travel-mug, and I didn’t say anything. In August I felt like the woman beside me knew I was drinking, and I ask myself, ‘What am I doing?’ So, my next meeting, I went sober. I’ve been clean and sober ever since.”Despite the child-violence of Islamic school and rejection from her family, Suwaida isn’t anti-theist. “I do believe in God or in something. I feel like I’m always looking for signs. I don’t believe in a god in the sky but to say there’s nothing beyond all this doesn’t make any sense to me. Sometimes the freakiest things happen. Maybe it’s because I’m a storyteller, I try to make a story out of everything; you think of someone, then they phone you, is that random?I feel a part-of in secular or mainstream AA meetings. My self-talk still sounds like, ‘Don’t share Suwaida, you have nothing to add.’ Maybe it comes from not being able to express myself when I was growing up. I have no sense of self. I guess I have something special to offer but I don’t know how to articulate it. It’s hard; I have limited self-confidence.”“Give them their voice; listen to them,” is Kevin Schaefer’s approach. He co-hosts the podcast Don’t Die Wisconsin. He’s also a recovery coach.“I’ve been in Recovery 29+ years. I’m a substance abuse counselor and I got into addiction treatment through sober living. When I started working in a Suboxone clinic, I came to realize that AA can’t solve everything. I always come from a harm reduction standpoint: meth, cocaine, benzos; I ask, ‘Can you just smoke pot?’ and we start building the trust there.Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT) is geared towards this generation. Most kids coming through my door know a lot about MAT, more so than people in AA with the biases and stigma that they bring. Kids sometimes know more than the front-line social workers. Their friends are on MAT, that’s how they gather their information (not to say their information is all correct). But a lot of therapists don’t understand medication. Medication can be a ticket to survival out on the streets.”The Fix asked Kevin his opinion on the best suited mutual-aid group for this generation.“Most of the generation you’re talking about walks in with anxiety and defiantly won’t do groups.” We talked about the role of online video/voice or text meetings for a tech-native generation. “Yes—where appropriate. Women especially, because from what I’ve seen, most females have suffered from trauma. I have heard women who prefer online recovery; that make sense to me. I’ve been to InTheRooms.com; as professionals we have a duty to know what’s out there. And there are some crazies online.If someone has an Eastern philosophy bent, I’ll send them to Refuge Recovery; I’ve been there. If I can, I’ll set them up with somebody that I know can help them. And let’s not forget that some youth, if Christianity is your thing, Celebrate Recovery is amazing — talk about a community that wraps themselves around the substance user. There are movie nights, food, all kinds of extracurricular activities. The SMART Recovery Movement? Excellent. SMART momentum is building in Milwaukee. They are goal-oriented and the person gets supported whether they’re on Suboxone or, in one case I know, micro-dosing with LSD for depression; they’ll be supported either way. My goal with youth is: ‘Try to get to one meeting this month; start slow.’ Don’t set the bar too high and if they enjoy it, then great.The 12-step meeting I go to, it’s a men’s meeting. There are people there on medication and they don’t get blow-back. I wish more of AA was like this. When I came in, almost 30 years ago now, I saw all the God-stuff on the walls and I thought, ‘Nah, this isn’t going to work’ but thank G… (laughs), thank the Group of Drunks who said, ‘You don’t have to believe in that.’ The range in my meeting is broad—Eastern philosophy, Native American practices, Yoga, I was invited to Transcendental Meditation meetings at members’ houses. I was fortunate to fall into this group. You know, the first book my sponsor gave me was The Tao of Physics—not The Big Book—it was this 70’s book with Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, correlated to physics and contemporary science.”So, as to the question that kicked this off, some mutual aid meetings are ready to meet the taste of a new generation; results may vary. Who’s heard: “If you haven’t met anyone you don’t like in AA, you haven’t gone to enough meetings”?The reverse is true, also. If the peer-to-peer meetings I’ve sampled seem too narrow or dogmatic, maybe my search for just the right fit isn’t over. And if I don’t want a face-to-face meeting, there’s always Kevin’s podcast, virtual communities like The Fix, or I can order one of Bob or David or Jeffrey’s books if that’s more to my taste.

[alexdmorgan30]

Is AA Too Religious for Generation Z?

Are today’s mutual-aid recovery groups ready to satisfy Generation-next?“More than any other generation before them, Gen Z does not assert a religious identity. They might be drawn to things spiritual, but with a vastly different starting point from previous generations, many of whom received a basic education on the Bible and Christianity. And it shows: The percentage of Gen Z that identifies as atheist is double that of the U.S. adult population.”Released early this year, Barna Group’s Generation-Z Report (Americans born between 1999 and 2015) surveyed over 2,000 13 to 18-year-olds. The oldest of this generation turn 20 in 2019.According to AA’s most recent triennial membership survey, 1% of AA is under 21—that’s about 20,000 sober teenagers in AA rooms right now. What’s my personal affinity with this demographic? It’s two-fold: I have two millennial children and one 18-year-old stepson; secondly, while I am a grey-haired Baby Boomer, I was a teen at my first 12-step meeting. My 20th birthday was 1980, three months shy of my fourth anniversary clean and sober.I was a second-generation AA member and—like Barna’s youth focus group—my worldview seemed incompatible with the old fogies of 12-step rooms. My mother mused about finding god’s will for her from meditation or her daily horoscope. She was such a Virgo, you know. Horoscopes, higher powers, legends of Sasquatch, these were all fictional symbols as far as I was concerned. Reasonable people didn’t take such constructs literally, did they?Bob K, like me, is a second-generation AA. He’s currently between historical book projects; Key Players in AA History will soon have a prequel. Bob’s follow-up research will produce a book about pre-AA addiction and treatment. At age 40, Bob made it into AA as a result of his dad 12-stepping him. He also was uncomfortable with the emphasis on "God." “When I was a month sober, it was ‘God-this, God saved me’ and I was going to put my resignation in. I didn’t think I could stand it in AA any longer. I went to the internet of the day—which back then was the library—and I looked for non-religious alternatives to AA. They had them in California but nothing in Ontario Canada. So it was AA or nothing. If I tried to brave it alone, I’d be drunk; I knew it.”Today, Bob enjoys the likeminded company at his Secular AA home group, Whitby Freethinkers, which meets in the local suburban library just East of Toronto. If I were confronting addiction/recovery as a teen today, I wonder if I would go to AA or NA? If AA was once “the last house on the block,” today it’s one house in a subdivision of mutual-aid choices. Today, newcomers have access to Refuge Recovery, SMART Recovery, Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), or Medically Assisted Treatment, none of which existed in the 1970s.On Practically Sane, therapist Jeffrey Munn states: “I like to take a practical approach … I’m not a fan of the ‘fluff’ and flowery language that is often associated with the world of psychology and self-help.” Jeffrey came into the rooms at 20, stayed sober for 2 ½ years, relapsed, came back and is now 13 years clean and sober.“I was mandated to three 12-step meetings per week to stay in the program I was in. Since I was young I have been agnostic. I wanted to find a higher power that was common sense-based, but in the rooms I felt pulled towards a more dogmatic spiritual idea of higher power. Back then, I needed to come up with my own conception of what was happening on a psychological level." Recently, Jeffrey wrote and published Staying Sober Without God: the Practical 12 Steps to Long Term Recovery from Alcoholism and Addiction.“I looked at SMART Recovery,” Jeffrey tells The Fix. “I looked at Moderation Management, too—that one struck me as being an organized resentment against AA—I wasn’t feeling it. When it comes down to social support and a practical plan of action, it’s hard to beat 12-step programs. What I try to teach is: if you don’t buy into any kind of a supernatural higher power, navigate the 12-step world, filtering the god-stuff out, working the program in your own way; there is lots that really works.”Barna reports, “Nearly half of teens, on par with Millennials, say, ‘I need factual evidence to support my beliefs.’” Jeffrey hopes Staying Sober Without God—which joins a growing secular 12-step recovery offering—offers the rational narrative today’s youth crave. Barna calls today’s youth “the first truly post-Christian generation [in America].”Certified Master Addiction Counselor David B. Bohl of Milwaukee understands the value of other-oriented care. David tells The Fix: “As head of a 20-bed coed dual-diagnosis treatment center, emerging adults, 18 to 25 years old, came into our care. I wouldn’t say that they universally shrugged off the 12-step approach but almost universally, in reaction to our volunteers, alumni, and traditional AA community, younger clients didn’t want what the volunteers and alumni had. And I wouldn’t say it was the religiosity always. Sometimes it was an age-thing or life approach. So, our recovery management function became that much more important in terms of building individualized treatment that suits everyone.“In the USA, 75% of all residential treatment centers identify as 12-step facilitators,” David tells us. “In the simplest form, our job is to introduce people to the language and the concept of the 12 steps and then to introduce the clients to support groups or people in support groups when they are discharged from acute care.Where trauma is involved—religious trauma in particular—traditional AA language and rituals trigger that shame they feel from negative formal religion experiences.”Let’s put this overbearing religion caution to a real-life test: Suwaida F was the second oldest of 11 children to Somalian refugee parents who fled to Canada in the 1980s.“In Kindergarten I didn’t have to wear a hijab; my parents weren’t super religious. I went to an Islamic school in grade one. It was normal for teachers to have belts with them, they would hit you; child abuse was normalized. They didn’t really teach us that much math, science, history. The Islamic teachers weren’t that educated. My parents took me out and put me in public school. Then, some of my mom’s Somalian-Canadian friends started moving their kids to Egypt. My friends would stay in Egypt two years, finish the Qur’an and the girls came back wearing burqas and head-scarves. Some Muslim friends would come to school in their hijab, take them off and put them back on when they went home. We called them The Transformers.My parents really wanted us to learn the Qur’an; I don’t speak Arabic, so it was difficult. And I never believed it. I asked my mom and dad, ‘How do you know that this stuff is real?’ They got frustrated and mad and said, ‘Don’t ever ask that question again.’ I knew it wasn’t real. Mom got more and more religious. Pictures of her at age 19 -- she wore no head-scarf when she was my age. My mom expected me to be religious and I rebelled. I had to leave home.”Suwaida misses her sisters. She feels unwelcome in the family home unless she is dressed in the Islamic custom and that wouldn’t be true to herself. Away from home, Suwaida found the welcoming community she craved in the booze and cocaine culture.“It wasn’t a matter of having no money; I had no sense of hope. People at work didn’t know I was hopped from shelter to shelter at night. One winter I was told, ‘Suwaida, you’ve been restricted from every youth shelter in the city of Toronto.’” As addiction progressed, Suwaida recalls an ever-descending patterns of compromises, bad relationships and regrets.“Today, it’s like I still never unpack my suitcase; I’m always ready to go.” During a stay at St. Joe’s detox, Suwaida went to her first NA meeting.“At 7 PM, a woman spoke. I made it clear that I thought it was stupid; I wouldn’t share. At the end, everyone was holding hands to pray and I said, ‘I’m not holding any of your hands.’ I didn’t go back. When I was discharged, I went drinking at the bar with my suitcase, not knowing where I was going to stay that night.My second meeting I consider my first, because I chose it. I thought I should go to AA. I googled atheist or freethinker AA to avoid a repeat of my NA experience. I found Beyond Belief Agnostics and Freethinkers Group on the University of Toronto campus. I went there last February. For a while, I had wine in my travel-mug, and I didn’t say anything. In August I felt like the woman beside me knew I was drinking, and I ask myself, ‘What am I doing?’ So, my next meeting, I went sober. I’ve been clean and sober ever since.”Despite the child-violence of Islamic school and rejection from her family, Suwaida isn’t anti-theist. “I do believe in God or in something. I feel like I’m always looking for signs. I don’t believe in a god in the sky but to say there’s nothing beyond all this doesn’t make any sense to me. Sometimes the freakiest things happen. Maybe it’s because I’m a storyteller, I try to make a story out of everything; you think of someone, then they phone you, is that random?I feel a part-of in secular or mainstream AA meetings. My self-talk still sounds like, ‘Don’t share Suwaida, you have nothing to add.’ Maybe it comes from not being able to express myself when I was growing up. I have no sense of self. I guess I have something special to offer but I don’t know how to articulate it. It’s hard; I have limited self-confidence.”“Give them their voice; listen to them,” is Kevin Schaefer’s approach. He co-hosts the podcast Don’t Die Wisconsin. He’s also a recovery coach.“I’ve been in Recovery 29+ years. I’m a substance abuse counselor and I got into addiction treatment through sober living. When I started working in a Suboxone clinic, I came to realize that AA can’t solve everything. I always come from a harm reduction standpoint: meth, cocaine, benzos; I ask, ‘Can you just smoke pot?’ and we start building the trust there.Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT) is geared towards this generation. Most kids coming through my door know a lot about MAT, more so than people in AA with the biases and stigma that they bring. Kids sometimes know more than the front-line social workers. Their friends are on MAT, that’s how they gather their information (not to say their information is all correct). But a lot of therapists don’t understand medication. Medication can be a ticket to survival out on the streets.”The Fix asked Kevin his opinion on the best suited mutual-aid group for this generation.“Most of the generation you’re talking about walks in with anxiety and defiantly won’t do groups.” We talked about the role of online video/voice or text meetings for a tech-native generation. “Yes—where appropriate. Women especially, because from what I’ve seen, most females have suffered from trauma. I have heard women who prefer online recovery; that make sense to me. I’ve been to InTheRooms.com; as professionals we have a duty to know what’s out there. And there are some crazies online.If someone has an Eastern philosophy bent, I’ll send them to Refuge Recovery; I’ve been there. If I can, I’ll set them up with somebody that I know can help them. And let’s not forget that some youth, if Christianity is your thing, Celebrate Recovery is amazing — talk about a community that wraps themselves around the substance user. There are movie nights, food, all kinds of extracurricular activities. The SMART Recovery Movement? Excellent. SMART momentum is building in Milwaukee. They are goal-oriented and the person gets supported whether they’re on Suboxone or, in one case I know, micro-dosing with LSD for depression; they’ll be supported either way. My goal with youth is: ‘Try to get to one meeting this month; start slow.’ Don’t set the bar too high and if they enjoy it, then great.The 12-step meeting I go to, it’s a men’s meeting. There are people there on medication and they don’t get blow-back. I wish more of AA was like this. When I came in, almost 30 years ago now, I saw all the God-stuff on the walls and I thought, ‘Nah, this isn’t going to work’ but thank G… (laughs), thank the Group of Drunks who said, ‘You don’t have to believe in that.’ The range in my meeting is broad—Eastern philosophy, Native American practices, Yoga, I was invited to Transcendental Meditation meetings at members’ houses. I was fortunate to fall into this group. You know, the first book my sponsor gave me was The Tao of Physics—not The Big Book—it was this 70’s book with Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, correlated to physics and contemporary science.”So, as to the question that kicked this off, some mutual aid meetings are ready to meet the taste of a new generation; results may vary. Who’s heard: “If you haven’t met anyone you don’t like in AA, you haven’t gone to enough meetings”?The reverse is true, also. If the peer-to-peer meetings I’ve sampled seem too narrow or dogmatic, maybe my search for just the right fit isn’t over. And if I don’t want a face-to-face meeting, there’s always Kevin’s podcast, virtual communities like The Fix, or I can order one of Bob or David or Jeffrey’s books if that’s more to my taste.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 http://bit.ly/2B5JhVm

[emlydunstan]

Is AA Too Religious for Generation Z?

Are today’s mutual-aid recovery groups ready to satisfy Generation-next?“More than any other generation before them, Gen Z does not assert a religious identity. They might be drawn to things spiritual, but with a vastly different starting point from previous generations, many of whom received a basic education on the Bible and Christianity. And it shows: The percentage of Gen Z that identifies as atheist is double that of the U.S. adult population.”Released early this year, Barna Group’s Generation-Z Report (Americans born between 1999 and 2015) surveyed over 2,000 13 to 18-year-olds. The oldest of this generation turn 20 in 2019.According to AA’s most recent triennial membership survey, 1% of AA is under 21—that’s about 20,000 sober teenagers in AA rooms right now. What’s my personal affinity with this demographic? It’s two-fold: I have two millennial children and one 18-year-old stepson; secondly, while I am a grey-haired Baby Boomer, I was a teen at my first 12-step meeting. My 20th birthday was 1980, three months shy of my fourth anniversary clean and sober.I was a second-generation AA member and—like Barna’s youth focus group—my worldview seemed incompatible with the old fogies of 12-step rooms. My mother mused about finding god’s will for her from meditation or her daily horoscope. She was such a Virgo, you know. Horoscopes, higher powers, legends of Sasquatch, these were all fictional symbols as far as I was concerned. Reasonable people didn’t take such constructs literally, did they?Bob K, like me, is a second-generation AA. He’s currently between historical book projects; Key Players in AA History will soon have a prequel. Bob’s follow-up research will produce a book about pre-AA addiction and treatment. At age 40, Bob made it into AA as a result of his dad 12-stepping him. He also was uncomfortable with the emphasis on "God." “When I was a month sober, it was ‘God-this, God saved me’ and I was going to put my resignation in. I didn’t think I could stand it in AA any longer. I went to the internet of the day—which back then was the library—and I looked for non-religious alternatives to AA. They had them in California but nothing in Ontario Canada. So it was AA or nothing. If I tried to brave it alone, I’d be drunk; I knew it.”Today, Bob enjoys the likeminded company at his Secular AA home group, Whitby Freethinkers, which meets in the local suburban library just East of Toronto. If I were confronting addiction/recovery as a teen today, I wonder if I would go to AA or NA? If AA was once “the last house on the block,” today it’s one house in a subdivision of mutual-aid choices. Today, newcomers have access to Refuge Recovery, SMART Recovery, Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), or Medically Assisted Treatment, none of which existed in the 1970s.On Practically Sane, therapist Jeffrey Munn states: “I like to take a practical approach … I’m not a fan of the ‘fluff’ and flowery language that is often associated with the world of psychology and self-help.” Jeffrey came into the rooms at 20, stayed sober for 2 ½ years, relapsed, came back and is now 13 years clean and sober.“I was mandated to three 12-step meetings per week to stay in the program I was in. Since I was young I have been agnostic. I wanted to find a higher power that was common sense-based, but in the rooms I felt pulled towards a more dogmatic spiritual idea of higher power. Back then, I needed to come up with my own conception of what was happening on a psychological level." Recently, Jeffrey wrote and published Staying Sober Without God: the Practical 12 Steps to Long Term Recovery from Alcoholism and Addiction.“I looked at SMART Recovery,” Jeffrey tells The Fix. “I looked at Moderation Management, too—that one struck me as being an organized resentment against AA—I wasn’t feeling it. When it comes down to social support and a practical plan of action, it’s hard to beat 12-step programs. What I try to teach is: if you don’t buy into any kind of a supernatural higher power, navigate the 12-step world, filtering the god-stuff out, working the program in your own way; there is lots that really works.”Barna reports, “Nearly half of teens, on par with Millennials, say, ‘I need factual evidence to support my beliefs.’” Jeffrey hopes Staying Sober Without God—which joins a growing secular 12-step recovery offering—offers the rational narrative today’s youth crave. Barna calls today’s youth “the first truly post-Christian generation [in America].”Certified Master Addiction Counselor David B. Bohl of Milwaukee understands the value of other-oriented care. David tells The Fix: “As head of a 20-bed coed dual-diagnosis treatment center, emerging adults, 18 to 25 years old, came into our care. I wouldn’t say that they universally shrugged off the 12-step approach but almost universally, in reaction to our volunteers, alumni, and traditional AA community, younger clients didn’t want what the volunteers and alumni had. And I wouldn’t say it was the religiosity always. Sometimes it was an age-thing or life approach. So, our recovery management function became that much more important in terms of building individualized treatment that suits everyone.“In the USA, 75% of all residential treatment centers identify as 12-step facilitators,” David tells us. “In the simplest form, our job is to introduce people to the language and the concept of the 12 steps and then to introduce the clients to support groups or people in support groups when they are discharged from acute care.Where trauma is involved—religious trauma in particular—traditional AA language and rituals trigger that shame they feel from negative formal religion experiences.”Let’s put this overbearing religion caution to a real-life test: Suwaida F was the second oldest of 11 children to Somalian refugee parents who fled to Canada in the 1980s.“In Kindergarten I didn’t have to wear a hijab; my parents weren’t super religious. I went to an Islamic school in grade one. It was normal for teachers to have belts with them, they would hit you; child abuse was normalized. They didn’t really teach us that much math, science, history. The Islamic teachers weren’t that educated. My parents took me out and put me in public school. Then, some of my mom’s Somalian-Canadian friends started moving their kids to Egypt. My friends would stay in Egypt two years, finish the Qur’an and the girls came back wearing burqas and head-scarves. Some Muslim friends would come to school in their hijab, take them off and put them back on when they went home. We called them The Transformers.My parents really wanted us to learn the Qur’an; I don’t speak Arabic, so it was difficult. And I never believed it. I asked my mom and dad, ‘How do you know that this stuff is real?’ They got frustrated and mad and said, ‘Don’t ever ask that question again.’ I knew it wasn’t real. Mom got more and more religious. Pictures of her at age 19 -- she wore no head-scarf when she was my age. My mom expected me to be religious and I rebelled. I had to leave home.”Suwaida misses her sisters. She feels unwelcome in the family home unless she is dressed in the Islamic custom and that wouldn’t be true to herself. Away from home, Suwaida found the welcoming community she craved in the booze and cocaine culture.“It wasn’t a matter of having no money; I had no sense of hope. People at work didn’t know I was hopped from shelter to shelter at night. One winter I was told, ‘Suwaida, you’ve been restricted from every youth shelter in the city of Toronto.’” As addiction progressed, Suwaida recalls an ever-descending patterns of compromises, bad relationships and regrets.“Today, it’s like I still never unpack my suitcase; I’m always ready to go.” During a stay at St. Joe’s detox, Suwaida went to her first NA meeting.“At 7 PM, a woman spoke. I made it clear that I thought it was stupid; I wouldn’t share. At the end, everyone was holding hands to pray and I said, ‘I’m not holding any of your hands.’ I didn’t go back. When I was discharged, I went drinking at the bar with my suitcase, not knowing where I was going to stay that night.My second meeting I consider my first, because I chose it. I thought I should go to AA. I googled atheist or freethinker AA to avoid a repeat of my NA experience. I found Beyond Belief Agnostics and Freethinkers Group on the University of Toronto campus. I went there last February. For a while, I had wine in my travel-mug, and I didn’t say anything. In August I felt like the woman beside me knew I was drinking, and I ask myself, ‘What am I doing?’ So, my next meeting, I went sober. I’ve been clean and sober ever since.”Despite the child-violence of Islamic school and rejection from her family, Suwaida isn’t anti-theist. “I do believe in God or in something. I feel like I’m always looking for signs. I don’t believe in a god in the sky but to say there’s nothing beyond all this doesn’t make any sense to me. Sometimes the freakiest things happen. Maybe it’s because I’m a storyteller, I try to make a story out of everything; you think of someone, then they phone you, is that random?I feel a part-of in secular or mainstream AA meetings. My self-talk still sounds like, ‘Don’t share Suwaida, you have nothing to add.’ Maybe it comes from not being able to express myself when I was growing up. I have no sense of self. I guess I have something special to offer but I don’t know how to articulate it. It’s hard; I have limited self-confidence.”“Give them their voice; listen to them,” is Kevin Schaefer’s approach. He co-hosts the podcast Don’t Die Wisconsin. He’s also a recovery coach.“I’ve been in Recovery 29+ years. I’m a substance abuse counselor and I got into addiction treatment through sober living. When I started working in a Suboxone clinic, I came to realize that AA can’t solve everything. I always come from a harm reduction standpoint: meth, cocaine, benzos; I ask, ‘Can you just smoke pot?’ and we start building the trust there.Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT) is geared towards this generation. Most kids coming through my door know a lot about MAT, more so than people in AA with the biases and stigma that they bring. Kids sometimes know more than the front-line social workers. Their friends are on MAT, that’s how they gather their information (not to say their information is all correct). But a lot of therapists don’t understand medication. Medication can be a ticket to survival out on the streets.”The Fix asked Kevin his opinion on the best suited mutual-aid group for this generation.“Most of the generation you’re talking about walks in with anxiety and defiantly won’t do groups.” We talked about the role of online video/voice or text meetings for a tech-native generation. “Yes—where appropriate. Women especially, because from what I’ve seen, most females have suffered from trauma. I have heard women who prefer online recovery; that make sense to me. I’ve been to InTheRooms.com; as professionals we have a duty to know what’s out there. And there are some crazies online.If someone has an Eastern philosophy bent, I’ll send them to Refuge Recovery; I’ve been there. If I can, I’ll set them up with somebody that I know can help them. And let’s not forget that some youth, if Christianity is your thing, Celebrate Recovery is amazing — talk about a community that wraps themselves around the substance user. There are movie nights, food, all kinds of extracurricular activities. The SMART Recovery Movement? Excellent. SMART momentum is building in Milwaukee. They are goal-oriented and the person gets supported whether they’re on Suboxone or, in one case I know, micro-dosing with LSD for depression; they’ll be supported either way. My goal with youth is: ‘Try to get to one meeting this month; start slow.’ Don’t set the bar too high and if they enjoy it, then great.The 12-step meeting I go to, it’s a men’s meeting. There are people there on medication and they don’t get blow-back. I wish more of AA was like this. When I came in, almost 30 years ago now, I saw all the God-stuff on the walls and I thought, ‘Nah, this isn’t going to work’ but thank G… (laughs), thank the Group of Drunks who said, ‘You don’t have to believe in that.’ The range in my meeting is broad—Eastern philosophy, Native American practices, Yoga, I was invited to Transcendental Meditation meetings at members’ houses. I was fortunate to fall into this group. You know, the first book my sponsor gave me was The Tao of Physics—not The Big Book—it was this 70’s book with Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, correlated to physics and contemporary science.”So, as to the question that kicked this off, some mutual aid meetings are ready to meet the taste of a new generation; results may vary. Who’s heard: “If you haven’t met anyone you don’t like in AA, you haven’t gone to enough meetings”?The reverse is true, also. If the peer-to-peer meetings I’ve sampled seem too narrow or dogmatic, maybe my search for just the right fit isn’t over. And if I don’t want a face-to-face meeting, there’s always Kevin’s podcast, virtual communities like The Fix, or I can order one of Bob or David or Jeffrey’s books if that’s more to my taste.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 https://www.thefix.com/aa-too-religious-generation-z