#again I am not a marketing major or anything I’m basing this off my common sense and what I’ve seen with other marketing for other shows

[idontknowijuststartedsomething]

Against most odds I’m still excited for Hazbin, but I gotta say the marketing strategy so far has been absolutely awful, including the new trailer. (Not Vivs fault, as marketing is usually a completely different entity that is mostly or entirely out of viv and the crews control)

I’m trying to look at as if I were someone who’d never heard or seen anything about the show before seeing this trailer. Never heard of vivziepop, helluva, or hazbin. Just some random guy scrolling thru Twitter. I feel like it’s doing a poor job selling or informing people who are not in the know about the show. Like someone seeing this trailer with no prior knowledge would probably not guess they’re supposed to be in hell until maybe the pentagram on the season 2 banner.

Most of the marketing up until this point feels like it’s only to sell the show more to people who are already gonna watch it. Which is fine, except there has been next to nothing trying to market it to general audiences who haven’t heard of the show. And you kind of want more people to know about and be interested in watching if you want a successful show.(again, this is not directed at viv but the people making the marketing decisions). By successful I don’t mean good quality, lots of great shows or shows I love have or had like four people watching when they aired. I mean a show that brings in views and ad revenue and ratings for the platform or network so that it doesn’t get axed for not performing well enough.

All the marketing before this trailer, in case I missed something, has been gifs on the shows Twitter account, which is likely seen primarily by people who follow the account and already know about/are excited about the show. Its probably not reaching a ton more people then those who are already gonna watch.

And the trailer. Agains someone who doesn’t know who these characters are or clues to what the shows “about”(Charlie trying to redeem people) probably still wouldn’t just from this trailer. It still just looks like random clips. It’ll probably draw some people in who see the trailer, are interested and then look it up, but I still think the trailer could do a better job of selling the show or at least letting you (the viewer who has never heard of this before) know kinda the “gist” or some of the conflict that’s gonna be in the show.

All or most of the marketing feels like it assumes you already know what the show is about and who these characters are and are familiar with the setting, and a lot of general audiences or prime video users probably don’t. A lot of it, especially the gifs, feel like they’re just to hype up the show to people already hyped for it. I don’t see a whole lot being done to market this show with general audiences, to sell the show to people who have never heard of it and have no prior knowledge of Hazbin Hotel. Which, if you wanna market just to the fans, that cool. But don’t except to get many new viewers on board.

And, going into pure speculation and red strings territory now, if and big if they are doing that with the line of thinking of “it’s not for everyone”, I don’t think that tracks. Invincible (the ANIMATED show on PRIME)probably isn’t for everyone, and is based on something where there was probably already a dedicated fan base. I’ve never read invincible or watched it(although just thru memes and pop culture osmosis I kinda know what happens in the show) but the first trailer does give me a good idea of who these characters are on a basic level and some of the gist of the show or conflicts. The main takeaways from that trailer is that Mark feels tremendous pressure trying to live up to his dad’s legacy, it’s a violent show about superheroes, and that marks dad has something else darker going on. Even if you’d never heard of invincible, it gives you enough to be like, oh I see, maybe I’ll check it out. It does enough to hook the show to someone who has never heard of it.

Maybe we’ll get a longer trailer later with actually voices that sells the show or the idea of the show more, but for now, I just feel like all of Hazbins marketing has been more for fans, not to actually market the show outside of the fandom to general audiences.

[softprincesso]

✨HOW TO BECOME A WEALTHY MIDDLE-AGED MAN✨

PT.2: Overview to understanding different saving/retirement methods, investments, and forms of income

2.1 Savings and Retirement

Welcome lovelies to (what I hope will be) a helpful series on gaining wealth and becoming financially literate and independent!

*disclaimer: while this advice can generally apply to many it will not apply to all. Everyone is in a different situation and should do their own research before they take what ANYONE says as fact or law. This is also coming from the perspective of a young, biracial, first generation female business student following a hypergamous lifestyle and who does sw so some advice may be specific to my like-minded ladies, but for the most part I just love money and want to help others find joy in their wallets as well. I am also operating in the US so things regarding accounts, stocks, and certain laws will vary by your country. Also, this is just a fun thing I wanted to do because talking about leveling up and learning and growing and money are my favorite past times. None of these pictures are mine, however I am using some links which may compensate me in some way, but I only used links which were mutually beneficial and would help you gain something as well, they are still just actual sources I use for myself.

✨THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND✨

Financial independence is different than financial confidence.

Financial Independence: “The most common sense of the term is that someone has enough wealth to live as they wish for the rest of their life without having to work.” -Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0611/declare-your-own-financial-independence-day.aspx

Financial Confidence: “We define financial confidence as having three aspects,” says Miler. “The first is awareness of how money can be a tool for helping you reach your goals and dreams. The second is financial literacy and understanding economic factors. The third is trust and knowing where to turn for financial advice.” -Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleyzalis/2018/06/16/women-money-8-steps-for-growing-your-financial-confidence/?sh=2175b65e2468

While the ultimate goal is financial independence, financial confidence should be the main focus. I’ll give an example why. Imagine there are two people: Rhonda and Jill. Both of them like nice things, love to shop, and participate in the occasional splurge. Rhonda works a regular 9-5 and has a decent salary. She doesn’t have much financial knowledge (translation: financial confidence), but she has a savings account at her local bank and puts a couple hundred into retirement each year and she thinks that's enough. Suddenly, Rhonda wins the lottery. Overnight she has become a millionaire, so she quits her job, moves to LA, and goes on to live life to the fullest. She would now be considered financially independent. However, Rhonda has no idea how to manage all that money. She puts a small amount into that bank savings account and takes the rest to do what she will. One day she tries her luck at a casino, in less than five hours she has lost all of her money and has to start back at square one with no job, only a few thousand to get her through, and no-good way to explain to employers that she just wasted the last 5 years spending money on handbags she now has to sell at a depreciated value. (BTW you would not last not working with only a million dollars in LA for that long)

Now, let’s look at Jill. Jill is an independent contractor and has a relatively steady income. She knows very little about finances, but she actively learns how to manage what she has and keeps up to date on the latest money news. The day that Rhonda won the lottery was just another Thursday for Jill, the only unique point for her was that she opened a savings accounts with a high APY (we’ll say 1%) and put in $5000.00. A little later she also opened a Roth IRA and puts in the maximum yearly allowance of $6000.00. Along the way she opened a brokerage account of her own and started trading in the stock market along with investing in real estate which has given her some extra income to play with each year. Unfortunately, another housing crash occurs, and all of the money Jill invested into real estate is gone. However, since Jill learned the skills behind her choices early on, she is knowledgeable and understands the ups and downs of the market and how to invest her money in other places in the meantime. And, that High yield savings account accrued around $50 more without her doing anything and she has that to fall back on, or worst case she can take out part of her principal Roth IRA contribution. 10 years from now Jill should start to see a steady increase in her Roth IRA that by retirement will be a little over 1 million and she should be comfortable and invested enough into stocks that she gains around $200-1000 extra each month.

I think you understand why you want to be Jill.

✨HAVING ADEQUATE SAVINGS = BEING YOUR OWN LIFEGUARD✨

As discussed in Pt.1 the first goal you should achieve is securing an emergency fund that could sustain you for a couple of months if things were to ever hit the fan, and starting a retirement fund should be in your top 5 goals to complete. The saying, “the rich get richer” is popular for a reason. Wealthy people know how to make their money work for them instead of them having to work for money. An easy way anyone can do the same is by opening the right accounts for your savings and retirement.

Savings: 

All of your savings should be in a high yield saving account or split between different high yield accounts. This is an account which will reward you some interest every period for having money in your account with them. This is incredibly easy to do. You can either research/ask your bank about their high yield accounts or do some googling to find some other bank. Then transfer your money and there you go! When looking at banks understand that the highest Annual Percent Yields (APY), or the interest they will reward you, are going to be from online banks because they have less operational costs than a brick and mortar, but they will also come with their own disadvantages, like less ATMs to access or the inability to use when outside of your country so make sure to look into that. IMPORTANT: Make sure that whatever bank you choose is FDIC-insured so if the bank were to ever collapse or lose your money you have insurance up to $250,000.This won't generate a lot of extra cash, but an extra $20 every year is better than $0.

Retirement:

These accounts usually go by your current situation and what you see for your future.

401K: Probably the most known (I believe it’s only in the States but there might be something close to it in other countries) and that’s just because this is what employers usually offer if they offer anything. It is a retirement fund that your employer will set up and you can predefine how much of your paycheck you want to automatically go into it every time. Sometimes, the employers will also have a match program, and if they do you better max out the money they will contribute because that is FREE money! Most advice that I have seen has said to really only focus on this fund if your employer has that match program, otherwise I would focus on one of the accounts below. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/08/401k-info.asp

IRA: An IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. There are three kinds…

                         Traditional: This IRA lets you put in pre-tax money and lets it grow tax-free until you make a withdrawal. Once you make the withdrawal that money is taxed at the current rate of your income at the time. Your contributions are tax deductible so you can write them off of your taxable income of that year. There are limits to how much you can contribute depending on your income, status, and whether you have another retirement fund as well.

                          Roth: With this IRA your contributions are taxed, but when you withdrawal money later on it is tax free. For those of you in a lower tax bracket than you believe you will be in the future, this IRA makes the most sense as you will pay less taxes now than you will when you are 59 ½ (The official age of retirement in the States). There are limits to how much you can contribute depending on your income, status, and whether you have another retirement fund as well.

                           SEP: Simplified Employee Pension. This is also an employer-based plan and may also work better for my self-employed gals out there. I don’t really know a lot on this one so I’ll just leave a link you can look into if it interests you: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102714/how-does-simplified-employee-pension-sep-ira-work.asp

You can have both a traditional and Roth IRA as long as you are eligible for both. Anyone with earned income (with a job or can prove a steady income) can contribute to a Traditional IRA, however with a Roth IRA, as a single you can earn up to $139,000 and contribute. Personally, if you are just getting started with all of this just set up one IRA and as you learn more you can take steps to get another or switch accounts.

https://www.investopedia.com/retirement/roth-vs-traditional-ira-which-is-right-for-you/

There are a plethora of other accounts, but they are more specialized and the top four should get you started on the right path to saving for retirement. I’m guessing that the majority of the audience reading these are women between the ages of 20-30. Trust me when I say that I love to spend money as much as the next girl, but I also would like to be completely comfortable should anything happen in my older years that screws up my marriage or job, and no one is going to secure that for you.

Also, I’m sorry this is so US-based, but once again it is all I know. I believe IRAs are more widespread than a 401K, but all that takes to find out is a Google search on your part.

Either way, make sure you have a plan going into 2021 for your savings and retirement because this economic whirlwind is far from over and there is always a chance for another recession, depression, or disaster. (Wow O, way to keep the mood light)

This was getting way too long with the investments added so look out for Pt.2.2 on the overview for investments (where the actual fun begins and I can stop being such a stick in the mud)…

VOCAB TO KNOW/RESEARCH:

Financial independence

Financial Confidence

APY

Roth IRA

brokerage account

High yield savings account

principal

401K

Traditional IRA

Once again… if in these posts I ever give bad advice, F- something up, or am just generally ignorant PLEASE call me out! Remember that just like you I am a young woman figuring everything out and while I am confident when talking about money, I am by no means a genius (only in spurts) so any chance to learn I appreciate. I hope you all learned something new today and as always…

With Love,

O

[fallingsunflower]

Can you tell me why you think this is a pr stunt please

Yeah, also I'm sure I'll forget something so @ my anons feel free to add anything. And I'll try to explain this with as little bias as I can (I am incredibly biased because I really don't like Olivia but I'll try to keep my thoughts on her to a minimum).

There's a couple different reasons I think this is a stunt. It's not a simple answer so I'll try to outline it as clearly as I can.

DWD had a rocky start from the beginning, and it only continued throughout filming. Dakota Johnson (a big name) left. Shia (the original lead) either left or was fired. Then there were all the allegations surrounding him. I don't know if he was fired for those allegations or if he quit due to creative differences with Olivia. Either or, his name tarnished the film a little bit. Then covid shut down production for 2 weeks which caused the set millions. There was the second NDA the cast and crew had to sign for unprofessionalism, which I'm sure didn't bode well with Warner Bros. DWD also went two months over schedule, which again cost WB millions. A PR stunt is a common tactic used to draw attention away from negativity.

This is Olivia's second directorial movie, following the box office failure of Booksmart. Booksmart only brought in $25 million (internationally) during it's course in theaters. For reference, Five Feet Apart (a smilier movie that came out the same month) made $99.5 million. Captain Marvel (which came out the same weekend as Booksmart) made $1.128 billion. My guess is Olivia's hoping DWD will do well in the box office because she has some unheard of director deal where she gets half of the box office earnings once the movie breaks even. She probably wants to draw in as much publicity as she can for the money, but also to boost her own image as a female director. She's in her late thirties which is a "condemned" age in Hollywood women because of the industry's sexism. It's hard to get any gigs at that age. She also probably also wants to be the next big thing. There's a lot of reasons why she'd want to bring in publicity to DWD and a stunt is part of that promotion.

Speaking of promotion, Booksmart had major issues with promotion. It wasn't marketed effectively (you can read about it here). The stunt could be another marketing strategy.

DWD also started filming during a very uncertain time due to Covid. At the time, no one had a clue when social distancing or mask wearing would come to an end, or proper movie promo. It doesn't seem impossible that they'd pull some extra strings since at the time, proper movie promo seemed unlikely.

Whether or not the stunt was originally intended for Harry's image, I don't know, but I do think he's riding it out now. It's bringing him in revenue since he's not touring (those pap pictures of him and Olivia probably have sold for an insane amount and him and Olivia get a cut of the check). He also, like Olivia, could be making his salary based off of what the movie makes (so a percentage of it). At the time he was also scheduled to tour (still is) so maybe he knew he wouldn't be at movie promo so he agreed to do the stunt to fulfill his part. Then I also have a theory that Harry got mixed up with something and the stunt is being used as a distraction (but I have absolutely no proof of this - it's just me)

There's also brand promotion. Not sure if that would be included in the original deal or as an add on but it's been shoved down our throats since the beginning and a lot of people don't pay attention to it. There's Gucci from the wedding (which conveniently was Harry's Gucci Beloved campaign). There's Eliou the jewelry brand. There's Bode. Now there's Nike, and it's not the first time Harry's been papped with Nike during this stunt

But even if you choose not to believe all the above things, there's still the very obvious consensus from Harry's fans and most of the GP that something is off with this "Relationship". The timing. The lack of chemistry. The predictable pictures and timeline. Literally every single thing points to it being a PR relationship. Even a verified journalist said she think its PR (on Twitter - I forget the username)

So here's what I think happened/and what's continuing to happen: I think the stunt was part of Harry's deal to join DWD. There have been seeds of "evidence" since the beginning (i.e. Olivia sticking her head at an uncomfortable angle out of her trailer to be seen talking to Harry). I think the wedding pap walk was planned since the beginning also but Olivia wasn't planning to go over schedule with DWD. I think the pap walk was supposed to come after production ended to keep things "professional". But due to their contracts, they probably couldn't back out and needed to go forth with the walk even though they were still filming.

I think there was a 6 month mark for the yacht pics (or PDA pics in general) because I think the movie was slated for a September 2021 release/July 2021 trailer. The timing would make sense - big stunt to draw attention to the movie. But obviously things got shifted around with the pushed back release, most likely WB's decision to give the movie a fighting chance (my guess is it will be released during the "movie dump months" of early 2022). Now I predict either the breakup or another big move right before the actual movie release.

I think Olivia and Harry's teams feed info to fan accounts, gossip blogs and magazines to keep things "organic". This can be sightings or pictures. Ever notice how many of those come from burner accounts? A lot. And I'm sure some of them are real, because after all if Harry and Olivia go out in public together they're going to be spotted.

As for the smoothie shop video, since this needs it's own explanation, the security footage can't just be "leaked". No one has access to it besides security. I don't even think the owners have access. So it wasn't organically "leaked". There's no possible way it way. It's illegal. The only way that footage could have gotten out is if the people in the video requested it, and probably for a pretty penny too. It was released during a content drought so I think it was a staged leak. (The pictures of Harry as Jack were also a staged leak. No one has access to film footage except the director, producers, and editors).

So yeah, that's my thought. I won't be convinced it's real unless they get married or have a child together

And also, just to add, PR stunts are common in the industry. It's not impossible for this to be a stunt. Celebrities will do a lot for fame and money. Harry's seemed to have fallen down that path

[arecomicsevengood]

A PANEGYRIC TO THE THINGS I DO NOT UNDERSTAND

I generally don’t talk about why I write criticism; I presume no one cares. The core of my contrarianism rests on the fact that many of the things I dislike or have an aversion to I think the market is set up to reward. This holds true both for what I write about and how I choose to write about it. I’m not writing about all these Drawn And Quarterly books that seem like novelty gag gifts for people who don’t actually like comics. I’m not writing about simplistic YA material put out by major publishing houses. I’m not reading superhero trademark maintenance. To me it feels like pre-chewed food I see and know to avoid. I’m also pretty put off by work that’s self-consciously “lowbrow,” but to that stuff’s credit, I don’t think it’s particularly popular. It just seems to fit into larger trends of what’s readily digestible, due to its own willingness to dismiss itself.

When it comes to criticism, I read a fair amount of other people’s writing, and collate a list of ways I don’t want to write that coincide with what I hate to read. I don’t want to read anything that’s “personal” in a way that takes the general premise of the existence of a book as an excuse for a narcissist to talk about themselves. Still, it seems like people love that. It is essentially the lingua franca for a whole type of websites, to have writers leverage their identity or trauma for the sake of hot takes. Even if no one gets paid particularly well, there is a reward in the economy of attention. People also really like writing that praises things that are already popular, because they want to be given permission to like the things they like, but no one needs that. People also like dismissive takes  based around incredibly shallow surface-level impressions of something that then becomes this shorthand “common knowledge.” if you say “Chris Ware’s boring” or “Rob Liefeld can’t draw feet” there will be no shortage of people chiming up in the comments to say the same thing. People love to be given permission to not have to think about things, and while I understand that impulse completely, I’m too far gone down the hole of obsessiveness to play along.

I wish I could say all that I dislike falls into one of a fixed number of categories, but in actuality, I am all too often reading writing that makes me ask “why won’t you just shut the fuck up?” or exclaim “jesus, this is so depressing!” and it seems new ways to garner these reactions are continually being manufactured, though in general, the innovations in this area are being done in the more lucrative world of music writing. Still, many of the things I wish to avoid have been done by writers I absolutely admire, partly because they’re more prolific I am, and so can’t allow themselves the luxury of overthinking what they’re doing for the sake of avoiding trends. (I also try to avoid writing stuff that’s just plain stupid and offensive, but lord knows that gets hate-clicks, and hate-clicks are as valued as any.)

I try to engage the work that’s on the page. The best work encourages a multiplicity of readings, I write a lot with the implicit assumption that the framework I’m bringing to bear might be wrong. I believe the work that has the most ideas present inside it will be conflicted enough in depicting multiple ideas simultaneously that it doesn’t encourage a straightforward and easy read. I relate it to the paradox that the most interesting people are those who don’t talk about themselves, but ask questions of others. Presumably, those who are disinterested in others don’t interrogate themselves in their moments alone.

I might be being reductive. So many of my own thoughts might be overly simplistic, a set of half-thought-through opinions designed to arrive at a place of dismissal so I can move on. I spend a lot of time thinking about the sort of creator-owned genre comics Image traffics in these days, because I have zero interest in them, and they don’t seem appealing at all. They don’t come close to my idea of good. I generally object to the way contemporary comics are colored, but I think the issues run deeper than that. The line generally used in reference to them is to call them movie-pitch comics. But is that why they’re bad? I don’t know. Maybe the issue is just the way their writing stands in relationship to economy, where a single issue is not a satisfying story. Maybe superhero comics work better than that stuff because there’s an explicit formula established doing the heavy lifting, and if you are doing something more “high-concept” you need to spend more time with exposition and can’t just defer to the visuals of a fight scene that superhero comics demand. I don’t know! Any answer to the question of why things don’t work is going to end up with some broad statements, because the act of artmaking involves an incalculable amount of choices, any number of which could balance out or redeem any of the others. It’s almost surprising that the history of comics isn’t littered with works that were concerned failures at the time of their release but seem prescient in their storytelling choices now.

I want to write about work that is interesting to think about. What’s interesting to think about is that which I don’t understand. Obviously, writing is an attempt to make sense of something, and much of what I write about then becomes something I understand, or at least, have a take on. But I still want to engage, in some sort of honest way, the work I don’t understand, that short-circuits my brain.

A good example of something I don’t really understand is Stella Murphy’s comic Hometime, which I ordered from Domino Books. It’s a collection of single-panel gag cartoons, kinda? Every page is meant to be taken as its own entity. It’s printed and red and yellow, it feels eye-searingly bright. There’s dialogue balloons, not captions. The visual language sort of seems like it comes from underground comics, of the way underground comics relate to older cartoon styles. I’m saying all of these things like they’re sentences but if I were speaking to you there would be no hint of certainty in my voice. Another paradox: I often feel like I don’t have the language to describe what images in a comic look like unless I have an idea of what the narrative is doing. Maybe these gags feel like they work because they’re incredibly economical in their subversion of the expectation one comes to gag cartoons with. That almost seems too simplistic an explanation to count. I’m sure, if you haven’t read Murphy’s cartoons and grappled with them, that sort of conclusion seems like I’m saying literally nothing.

I’ve been reading Krazy Kat again. It’s interesting that that’s a strip which is notably formulaic, but also is all about subverting that formula or having it play out differently or avoid it altogether. It seems pretty agreed upon that the key to successful comics writing is to have a degree of economy in terms of the words on the page. This allows the images to carry their weight, but images themselves have their own weight of meaning that’s accrued over time. Think about being born on this Earth, and all of the acclimation to one’s surroundings that occurs concurrently with the acquisition of language. Talking with a computer programmer friend, his stance on writing code was, the easier it is for you, the less lines you have to write, the more code has been written by other people before you that you’re relying on. So many of the best comics are consciously written with an awareness of expectations that are then subverted. I don’t know. Generally the argument I make, when talking about “experimental” work, is to contrast it with “formulaic” work. This is my way of asserting the obvious superiority of the former. But maybe this is wrong, and the best and most effective comics, including the ones I’m labeling “experimental,” nonetheless have a formula they’re playing with? Because the truth of the matter is my use of scientific language is a pose premised on my not actually understanding math.

I imagine that a normal person wouldn’t understand why anyone would feel compelled to write comics criticism in the first place. For all the shame I feel about the fact that this is what I’m doing, I’m proud to say I don’t know what my fucking deal is.

[generalasshattery]

Better Know an Asshat

I decided to put together a little fax of questions I get a lot, if you have any other questions you can reply and I’ll tag them on!

—————————

Can you read this story/headcanon/Drabble I’ve been working on and give me some advice?

Yes! I absolutely can and will when the time is available. I am not a mean critic, and I will never say anything cruel about your work! The fact you wrote it at all is something to be proud of, so I’m happy to offer kind critique if you want it.

I have this story idea I’m working on, but I was wondering if you can give me some headcanons on x character that can help me?

So yes with a but. If the work is yours, I don’t want you to feel like you need to use me as a crutch because you aren’t confident in your own headcanons on the topic. I would be happy to discuss what your thoughts and personal headcanons, so you have someone to bounce your ideas off of.

Can I write something based off of your headcanons/stories?

You bet your ass you can, just @ me or send me a link so I can read it when you’re done!

When are you going to open requests again?

Idk man, I spoke with the seers, and the prophesies are grim for the near future.

How old are you?

30. I’ve skipped the “Fandom Mom” stage and slammed straight into “Smut Hag”

Are you willing to write about x?

Yes. If you like my writing and want to see yourself reflected in my work, I am honored by that, and will always do my best to write about it with compassion, empathy and dignity.

Okay but what about x (taboo subject)?

DM me directly if you have a question about this, I promise I will never be unkind. I’m a nonjudgmental sort, and if you ask me a question in good faith, I won’t react negatively. Also- and I reiterate this quite often, please never hesitate to ask me to add a tag to something. I never want people to find something that will make them miserable on my blog.

What about x character? Will you write for them?

Yep! Any MK character is free game. Yes, including Kano.

I want to make a request, but it’s so cringy and I’m embarrassed about it!

Feed me. Feed me your cringiest, most self indulgent, Mary-sue ass prompts. I am 30 years old, I don’t give a FUCK anymore. I love writing overly dramatic, blatant fantasy fuel, fluffiest of the fluff, angstiest of the angst stories. Let us join together in our bullshit.

Do you write for other fandoms?

Not currently. If I do, it’d probably get its own side blog.

This isn’t your main blog?

Nope! This is literally just where I drop my smut and derpy Headcanons off. That’s why you don’t see a lot of reblogging on here unless it’s directly related to the blog or something I’ve been doing. Not that I interact much on my main blog, I’m just a shy sort.

You don’t write as much as you used to :( is that going to change?

Probs not. I’m finally back to working and on a good schedule, which hypothetically means more writing. However, I am going to use that to attempt to get working on a novel. We’ll see. Who knows?

Who’s your favorite you write for?

That changes day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute.

Your romance stuff is so cute, where do you get ideas for it?

Y’all ready to barf? Because this is so cheesy it’s gonna make you lactose intolerant. A lot of my romance writing is influenced by the way my father talks about my mother. Never settle for anyone that doesn’t treat you like you hang the moon, even 40 years later.

You slipped a few OCs in as reader inserts haven’t you?

You’re god damned right I have.

How do you come up with your headcanons and make them feel so in character?

I rely heavily on things like intro dialogues and cut scenes to pick up things about characters. Even if they aren’t canon they say a lot about how a person behaves. If I haven’t written for a character in a while, I’ll go rewatch all their intros just to get the vibe they send out back on my brain. This is why I don’t feel as confident writing for characters that don’t have as much content. When I’m faced with that dilemma, I just go back and read their histories and use what canon I have. Then I just kind of use my own empathy to reflect heavily about how someone that lived that way would be.

Of course, with a property like Mortal Kombat the characters are very much in flux from game to game. Some characters have the benefit of that being a storyline thing (Johnny Cage) and some are wildly inconsistent because NRS tends to think from a marketing first perspective and may change characters to fit into a concept or theme they’re packaging with the game (also Johnny Cage, but everyone else too). Johnny became a good dad because NRS wanted their big anniversary game to be all about next gen. Of course then they made everyone’s favorite characters to old/undead to carry a franchise... so retcons. I’m not bitter, you’re bitter. I’m digressing, the point is, sometimes with my headcanons I have to make a firm decision on the ever changing characterizations and just run with it.

Some characters were benefitted by this, imo, though. MK11 is by far my favorite Hanzo and Scorpion. Even though they did Kabal dirty, I really like the way they wrote his personality, and it confirmed a few headcanons I had about him already. And Erron picked up some major fucking swag along the way. I’m still digressing this literally has nothing to do with that question.

One more thing before I move on, because I’m already ranting anyway. They stole Cassie’s badassery because they put Frost in the game, and apparently there’s only room for one edgy-haircutted gay coded woman. I’m not saying this to shit on Frost, I really love writing for her. But! MKX Cassie Cage is the best Cassie Cage.

So anyway, that’s my most common questions answered with a bonus rant!

[elizabethrobertajones]

(part 1) this is random but something im curious about is do you think the next few years will see a radical shift in more lead lgbt couples in shows? i feel like when supernatural started it was all about subtext/queerbating between characters we would never see canon (maybe), the last few years have seen an update in more side lgbt characters/couples and while not a lot, more main lgbt characters then we had before. I don't know if tumblr/twitter fandom translates to general audience...

Yeah, I mean, the only way is up. I feel lucky that I managed to encounter a fair amount of queer content in my formative years, whether targeted programming on TV, or taking the route of not really differentiating the perceived cultural value of independent media like webcomics and webnovels etc from the mass media as I was young enough to naturally grow up on the internet as the internet itself was growing up and web 2.0 was pretty much taking off alongside my use of the internet. And that I had liberal parents who didn’t regulate our internet, and lived in a community where culturally I didn’t really fear being discovered casually accessing all this like in particularly this terrifying seeming evangelical christian community in America.

Which really makes me feel like A: everyone should feel that comfortable in themselves via the media as I did as a mass accessible thing or B: that the world at large should be soaked in as much representation and more that I encountered as a curious teen because at the very least it did me no harm and at best helped handhold me through an awful lot. 

And then brings us to the problem that the world isn’t actually like that and for a lot of people their media is restricted one way or another, from everything such as the era of social media weirdly making us much LESS broadly travelled on the internet as I was back in the day (SO many bookmarks - I had like 100 that I would check either daily or on their weekly update schedule, with enough habit that I had pretty much memorised it all without using an RSS feed or just following everyone’s twitter and waiting for update announcements, never mind the vast pit of things which I occasionally checked to see if their sporadic but very worth it updates had occurred somewhere in the last month/year) to the vastly overwhelming amount of media accessible to us. It seems almost to flood the market and creates this panic about watching the worthiest shows and campaigning for them and raising awareness and the FOMO and how things slip by and zomg you have to watch this that and the other, when even just making this list on Netflix now contains more hours of TV than a human lifetime and also one liable to disappear from the service at some point or another without warning. 

And then on top of that you have the absolute cultural monoliths that if you’re not going to have a cohesive culture - which now includes the entire population of the world because of our connectivity on the internet and mass-joining of services - based around smaller shows and stuff, then at the very least everyone is going to watch anything under the main Disney umbrella, other superhero flicks, animated things, and all the really big studio franchises and remakes, as well as a few TV monoliths which manage to get enough people talking to make it seem like “everyone” (again - these days it seems like that’s presumed to be the entire western world plus everywhere else these things air) are watching, like Game of Thrones or whatever… THESE properties are the inescapable ones and on that basis they’re the things we have to lean on the most for representation and then again barely get any, when it comes to gender and sexuality, due to them shooting for such worldwide markets that they can’t imply gay people exist to censors in places such as China. And it exposes the cultural awfulness inherent just in getting a white female character in the lead role of some things, or the absolute garbage fire lurking underneath that if you dare have a black stormtrooper or make one of your female ghostbusters black when you’re already ruining the childhoods of so many how dare… 

In those respects, having side characters who aren’t even major well-known superheroes or jedis or ghostbusters or whatever also be gay (because even well-known lesbian Kate McKinnon didn’t manage to get her ghostbuster to be canonically gay even if we All Knew) would be absolutely groundbreaking, even if it was, like, a role that could be snipped out for the Chinese market or something. And that’s probably exactly what would happen, and cue ensuing riot from whichever fandom, along with everyone rightly pointing out that even for us who got to watch it it was still a tiny side character… I mean Disney is still at the stage of what they did with Beauty and the Beast’s ~canonical gay character~ 

So yeah… that’s thrown back to TV and smaller movies to lead the way and because the generations showing most likely the real global percentages but actually just the young western world stats on queerness in any form (like… 25% instead of 1% or whatever and that’s STILL probably too low) are still teens to young adults. The previous gayest generation above them are still just arriving in power and settling in, and the excellent changes we already have from the generation before that is what we are seeing now... But given THEIR cultural context, even their best can still seem to younger eyes, moderate and not generally placing queer characters in lead roles except in niche or indie or otherwise “acceptable” places to take those risks. I think change is always coming and culturally each generation being more open and accepting that the last is really making changes and so on, hopefully things WILL change rapidly and what was the common state of affairs in the sort of indie media I consumed as a teen will be the mainstream soon because a lot of those creators 10 years later are kicking off… 

All that said, TV in the mainstream is still controlled by Mark Pedowitz types exercising their power over the Bobos who have their Wayward Sisters pitches with the clearly labelled main character for the main teen demographic being queer. The culture is very much that we’re now pretty open and can happily have queer characters, but the main characters are still largely held separate. A good example is Riverdale, which is on the CW, a newer show with writers such as Britta Lundin, who is young, queer, and wrote a novel blatantly based on being a Destiel shipper and fan interacting with the cast and crew in fandom spaces, and whose first solo episode of Riverdale featured a looooot of the gay stuff (yay). 

But while she’s a story editor and writer for the show and can use it as a platform for writing stories for its audience using a whole range of canonically queer characters, the show still keeps all 4 of its mains at a strict remove from this. Cheryl can come out as a lesbian in the second season after a lil ho yay in the first but no clearly marked storyline about her identity, but even though Betty and Veronica kissed in the first episode it was blatant fan service (for Cheryl in-story, lol) and mostly just set the tone that they are the sort of seemingly straight girls kissing for attention while having strong romantic or physical attraction to guys. In the second season the kiss comes up again in joking that Jughead and Archie are the only ones of the main 4 who haven’t kissed, Archie gets one planted on him by a dude as a “judas kiss” moment of betrayal in season 3 and he and Jug are teased that they were expected to get together because they were close but in the same sort of homophobic undercurrent tones as early Destiel snarking from side characters, seemingly less about their relationship and more to unsettle them with implications… I mean it was a complicated moment but in the long run it didn’t seem entirely pleasant to me, especially given the overall emotional state they were in and later plot etc etc. (My mum is 1000% invested in Riverdale now as a former Archie Comics reader as a kid so this is now my life too as I was in the room when my brother callously exposed her to it, hi :P) 

Anyway that’s just one case study but aside from SPN it’s probably the most mainstream teen demographic thing I watch… Other examples would be things like B99 which had Rosa come out as bi and that’s awesome, and made us all cry a lot, but Jake, the clear main character even in a very strong and well-treated ensemble, has a great deal of bi subtext, there’s no way given Andy Samberg’s apparent habit of ad-libbing MORE progressive jokes that he’d ever be intentionally harming people if that’s how his brain works (you know, like other people quick-fire offensive stuff from their mouth working faster than brain sense of humour :P). But at the same time for all Jake’s quipping about crushes and such and the fact the show clearly knows how to be sensitive to bisexuality with Stephanie Beatriz being a strong advocate, just because Jake’s the main character and adorably married to Amy. In NO WAY can that be threatened because they’re SO GOOD, so there’s STILL uncertainty that this will pay off in the same special episode “I love my wife but I am bi” kinda way that seems obvious that could just be said. We all carry on without it affecting anything because obviously Jake’s found his soulmate so we don’t mess with that but they should know it’s important to clarify it… Even with B99′s track record, I’m nervous solely because Jake’s the main character and main characters tend not to get self-exploratory arcs about latent queerness and ESPECIALLY not if they’re happily married. If ANY show was going to do it right and trailblaze in this exact era it would be them, but… gyah :P 

Anyway I guess the conclusion right now is that the more mainstream you are the more uncertain it feels, but we are right at that cliff edge, especially with shows putting in SOME of the work. If B99 doesn’t get us there (or the Good Place where they’ll happily confirm Eleanor is bi in interviews but I believe she hasn’t said it outright on the show despite clearly showing attraction to female characters, again, the denials we know so well in SPN fandom reflect a wider audience view of dismissing this stuff as jokes and not reflective of character feeling and identification without a Special Episode dedicated to confirming it >.>) then we’re very clearly on the cusp of SOME mainstream or massively well-known show doing it at least once in a meaningful way that has an Ellen-style cultural impact on TV writing. 

Let’s make it a goal for 2019 or 2020, and hope that a NEW show with a canonically queer main from the start is pitched and becomes a mainstream hit in the next 5… Still got a ways to go before Disney level mainstream but again there IS work going pushing the envelope, especially if we get a movie of a franchise such as idk Further Legends of Korra, or Steven Universe or something else that’s massively pushed the envelope with sexuality or gender for their main character on the small screen in the experimental petri dish they’ve had there for children’s TV. Something that would force Disney to blink about a lesbian princess or Star Wars to let Finn and Poe kiss or Marvel to let Steve and Bucky hold hands or something in order to remain relevant.

Once the Big Cultural Monoliths get in on it, I expect culture as a whole to first of all react quickly on the small screen, but honestly I’ve been waiting for them to snap pretty much my whole life since adolescence and they’re taking such wee tiny baby steps, and some factors are enormous geopolitical awfulness, that the story as a whole is unpredictable and we can only really hope that things don’t slow down. 

(Where this affects SPN is just impossible to say right now, given its almost unique position in this mess due to longevity vs fandom vs almost entirely new generation of writers’ room) 

[diamondherpanacine]

Five essential ways to support your skin this summer season.

Five essential ways to support your skin this summer season:

Use organic, high quality, chemical-free sunscreen to protect your skin. I’d like to think anyone reading this knows how important sunscreen is for healthy skin; in addition to a healthy life.But for anyone who doesn’t know, the CDC and every other reputable health organization recommends sunscreen use to prevent seriously raising your risk of developing skin cancer – depending on the strength of the sun and the length of your exposure. The CDC specifically recommends something     (SPF) 15 or higher but personally from what I’ve read I would say (SPF) 30 or higher to be safe.

This is mostly common knowledge, but what I – and I’m sure many of you – am confused about is which sunscreen brand is the healthiest for our skin? How do we find that out? So, in sitting down to write this today I hope to answer this question for you.

The first thing I did was I looked up “What are the best organic high quality chemical free sunscreens on the market in 2019?” After doing some digging, I found what in my opinion is a really great list, based on comprehensive testing and research into each sunscreen brand to find the top 40 on the market. (https://www.skincareox.com/40-best-organic-sunscreens-non-toxic-natural/) I think this is a great source for shopping for a superior sunscreen as well as reading into what makes that sunscreen so much healthier and safer for your skin and body.

Many studies commissioned by the FDA have found that widely used chemical sunscreens (oxybenzone, avobenzone, and octocrylene) are absorbed into the bloodstream at potentially toxic levels after just one day of use. Imagine if you got sunburnt and then go to put on sunblock to prevent further burns and your sunblock has toxic chemicals hurting your precious skin even further? No more! Don’t be like me and just grab any sunscreen that you see on the shelf! No more just going straight for the cheapest! You and your skin are beautiful and are worth a couple more bucks to protect, I promise you.

Don’t forget that your lips need protection. I often neglect my lip care and I’m left with seriously chapped lips, whether it’s in the winter from the  cold wind or in the summer from the dry air. Don’t be like me! We have to  do better, it’s summer people! I think it’s pretty much universally     understood that summer is kissing season and kissing someone with super chapped lips is not the move. (Unless you love them) So get your act together!

I found another great top 40 list and I really hope you can use it, just like I did, to find a perfect organic chemical free lip balm at a reasonable price point. Love your lips right or no one else will! Now, I don’t know about you but the reason I didn’t use sunscreen often in the past is because I felt it was a waste of money and only made my lips even more chapped, and apparently there is some truth to this.

In my research, I discovered that organic lip balms offer the same (if not greater) effectiveness at repairing and protecting your lips as their synthetic equivalents without any of the ingredients like petroleum or alcohol or any potentially cancer-causing agents that could be toxic to the body. You can’t forget that anything you put on your lips ends up in your mouth and eventually in your body. So, remember when it comes to your luscious lips there is no equivalent use an organic chemical free lip balm and protect your lips starting today!

If you get sunburnt be sure to find the purest organic aloe vera to heal your skin. I know I’m not the only one who didn’t listen to my parents’ summer after summer and basically had to bathe in aloe every other night in agony. It was not pleasant and as an adult I use aloe at the slightest sign of redness when I get home from being in the sun, but up until recently I like many others thought all Aloe Vera is made equally. But I was wrong. (https://www.skincareox.com/5-purest-organic-aloe-vera-gels-for-face-skin/)

According to another comprehensive well tested list, top 5 this time, it is very tough to find 100% authentic Aloe Vera that is free of any chemical additives, dyes, or fillers; none of which are good for the healing process the Aloe Vera is supposed to be providing to your skin. For example, some Aloe Vera brands contain Potassium Sorbate and a lot of research has come out to show that for certain skin types that chemical can lead to further skin irritation instead of relief and repair.

I’m going to use that list as a baseline in further research to find the perfect Aloe Vera brand for my specific skin type, I think it’s essential you do the same. Just in case you don’t listen to your parents! Or your significant other! Or anybody else looking out for the safety of your skin this summer besides myself.

Before and after going out in the sun don’t forget to apply quality organic chemical free lotion to your body and face. An article in the Huffington Post, Is Sunscreen More Effective if you Apply it Before or After Moisturizer, found that sunscreen can be more effective in protecting your skin from the sun’s harmful rays if applied after moisturizing properly. Even more so when used within a proper and regular skincare routine.

However, there is some disagreement on whether to moisturize before or after using sunscreen. I say before. Now, the question again is, we know we need to lotion up, but what lotion should we use? How do we avoid the harmful chemicals and needless dyes many brands continue to pump into their products? I personally have found that doing your online research – or letting me do it for you – and finding well recommended lists with well-reviewed products is the way to go. Don’t be afraid to spend a little for the sake of your skin but don’t let them convince you to break the bank. Organic is affordable. (https://www.skincareox.com/best-organic-body-lotions-butters-serums/)

Protect your skin internally year-round in preparation  for the summer sun. Everything I’ve talked about so far has been common     knowledge. The only issue was finding the right brand with the right     quality that our skin deserves. The last point on this list is one that I and I think the great majority of people completely overlook. That is, protecting your skin internally in addition to protecting it externally.

Like I said, I think we all know to use sunblock and lip balm. But did you know that Herpanacine dietary supplements use the finest quality, gluten-free, non-GMO vitamins, herbs, amino acids and antioxidants? They protect your skin year-round from the inside out; when taken daily. I’m happy to say as someone who’s had dry skin off and on throughout my life, after getting hired by Diamond Herpanacine and having the opportunity to read and write about their product Herpanacine Skin Support ® it is definitely something I’m going to be adding to my daily skincare routine and I think you all should as well.

You protect almost everything else in your body with daily dietary vitamins and supplements why doesn’t your beautiful skin deserve that same protection? Find a quality made longstanding chemical free organic product with

Herpanacine Skin Support ®  Order today to try it for yourself, you won’t be disappointed! (https://www.diamondformulas.com/herpanacine/    By: Austin Gromberg

[blayzez]

I'm sorry, I know I don't usually post discourse on my blog. I'm just... really hurt right now.

At the age of 24, after spending my entire childhood forcing myself to believe I was straight because that's what my family and religion said I was supposed to be, I finally acknowledged that I was bisexual. Even then, I was still second-guessing myself: What if I only think I'm bisexual because the internet/social media makes it seem like the "In" thing? What if my sexuality is just a mask and not who I really am? What if, what if, what if. It was hard.

Then I saw Voltron. Lance seemed to have a bisexuality arc laid out for him, and it was obvious that he didn't quite know he was bi and/or wasn't emotionally ready to acknowledge it.

That was just so validating. It made me happy to know that being confused about your sexuality -- not being sure if you're the sexuality you think you might be -- was common enough to include it in a kid's show and it made me feel so much better! I was so happy, and with Lance's help (and the help of my friends and therapist), I was able to finally accept my sexuality for what it was. And I'm an adult. Think about how many kids his arc could have helped! Kids who were questioning, kids who were unsure, kids that might not being surrounded by a good support system and have to hide who they are. Lance was shaping up to be someone kids could really look up, admire, and in turn accept themselves for they are because of him.

And now that's washed down the drain. It meant so much to me, perhaps meant so much to a lot of kids that needed that role model, but it clearly meant nothing to the writers and that is just so disheartening.

This isn't even about shipping. I love K/ance with all my heart, but I would be okay with any endgame ship so long as it was written well. This includes keeping the characters in-character and allowing the romance to help in their character development. Keith was the most likely candidate -- he really did make Lance a better person and vice versa -- but if someone else filled that role and filled it well, I would have been perfectly fine with that! But that's not what we got. Instead, the boy who has been insecure ALL SERIES has to spend his only romance building up his partner and have that not be reciprocated. That most-likely-candidate boosted him up more than Lance's actual romantic partner, and that is just bad writing. That's not a good relationship. Relationships are two-way streets; you can't have only one of the partners be supportive -- they have to be EQUALLY supportive. And A//urance was not that. A//urance was rushed, did not help the characters develop in the slightest, and took away TWO great role models.

I don't like Allura. I think I've made this clear before, but I really don't like her. I was neutral to her in s1, then the whole Not-All-Galra arc happened in s2 and my opinion of her started going down at that point.

But she didn't deserve the hand she was dealt. She was the only woman of color in the main cast, and they KILL HER??? WHY????? I may not have liked her, but that doesn't mean she was a bad character! On the contrary, she was a great role model and I'm sure many girls of color looked up to her. And then they just kill her? First they take away the great role model Lance could have been as a confused bisexual character, and then they take away the only woman of color on the main cast. WHAT. THE. FUCK. You can't just do that! I feel so horrible for the kids who looked up to those characters only to have it all ripped out from under their feet.

Oh, but there was a random gay wedding at the end, so that makes it alllllllll better~

Except it doesn't. Adding in a gay wedding/kiss with little-to-no build-up is more likely to cause confusion than anything else. And it doesn't erase how dirty they did Lance and Allura. Both characters deserved better.

On the topic of shipping, yes, it was queerbait. I refused to believe the showrunners were doing that -- I absolutely refused because I trusted the showrunners completely. Surely they wouldn't have ALL OF THESE ROMANTIC PARALLELS between K/L with other canon romantic couples for nothing. Surely they wouldn't have developed K/L's relationship more than any other relationship unless there was a really good reason for it. SURELY THEY WOULDN'T BE OKAY WITH VAGUING ABOUT THE SHIP MULTIPLE TIMES AND BEING OKAY WITH DW USING K/L FOR MARKETING PURPOSES IF IT WASN'T GOING TO HAPPEN.

But nope. All of the media techniques to subtly hint at a romance used specifically for K/L meant nothing. It was just bros being bros nothing gay here.

And that is BULLSHIT.

Honestly, the whole season just screams, "SHOCK VALUE," to me. They wanted to shock people, but I don't think they really considered the repercussions of how they were doing it. I get shock value, bringing up the interest and encouraging audiences to rewatch the series to understand why the shock was actually built-up from the beginning, but there's right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. Voltron took the wrong way and screwed it up royally.

To be clear, I am not against straight ships. Far from it, some of my favorite ships are heterosexual. Nor do I fetishize mlm relationships -- K/L is only the second mlm relationship I've come to really love (the first being Hau and Gladion from Pokemon Sun & Moon). It's just that K/L really struck a chord with me and with so many other people, and to take that away for the sake of a straight ship and some shitty shock value? Dirty thing to do to the show's audience. Don't build up proper LGBT+ rep UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING HAVE IT. The only rep? Shiro, and a hastily-added Zethrid/Ezor ship. Blaytz, too, but that was glossed over tbh and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the audience (not on tumblr because we analyze everything to death lol) completely forgot about Blaytz's interaction with that make Galra. That's not proper rep. That's throwing it in and thinking, "It exists so our job is done."

Media in general has being doing LGBT+ rep dirty for SO LONG. Even when we had positive LGBT+ characters in media, they were still characters based off of gay stereotypes. They were good positive characters, but were still perpetuating a certain bias against LGBT+ by displaying these stereotypes as fact. Times are supposed to be different now. We're supposed to be progressing, making it BETTER. I really thought Voltron was going to be part of that progress, that it would give us a well-written, well-developed, well-loved LGBT+ representation for kids of this generation to look up to and admire and learn acceptance -- about themselves and about others -- from. Instead, the showrunners three half-assed, tacked on LGBT+ reps and called it a day.

THAT'S NOT COOL.

This isn't about ships. This is about proper media representation for the LGBT+ community -- something that is really scarce, even now -- and how it affects the LGBT+ community when it's done badly. This also goes for racial rep. You can take two misrepresented groups and treat them horribly and then call it good rep. IT ISN'T. The poor representation of the LGBT+ community has proved to be detrimental in society's view of them. THIS DOESN'T HELP.

*sigh*

Off the topic of that, can we talk about how shit the writing was? Because it was really shit.

I'll admit that while I like s7, it wasn't written amazingly-well. Still, it wasn't bad and did have plenty of interesting episodes. Even with all of the asspulls we got in the last episode, it was still awesome because we got to see Shiro back in his element after losing almost everything in prior seasons. It was a mix of good writing and bad writing, but the good writing made up for the bad.

The seasons previous to that were well-done. Maybe not s4, but the other seasons were well-written and really enjoyable! There's a reason the show took off; the plot maybe standard, but the characters, character dynamics, and relationships were fantastic and were the true driving force behind the series and its success.

So why was s8 so all over the place? Why were plot threads that had been hinted at or outright confirmed left hanging or tied together hastily? So many things were alluded to in previous seasons only to lead to NOTHING. WHY???

Why did everyone BUT Lance get an arc?

What was the point of Lance getting a sword if it was never going to be brought up again?

Why was Keith's arc suddenly thrown to the wayside?

Why did Allura have to DIE for her arc to reach its conclusion?

WHY?

So many people complained about bad writing in Voltron, but I had always believed that the writing in Voltron was relatively good. Sure, it had its problems (like the entirety of s4, and the MFEs being boring as shit), but it was mostly a well-rounded show with well-rounded characters.

And s8... just threw all of that away.

All of that potential, all of those good arcs -- wasted.

The writing went downhill SO fast, and it's just such a shame. Something that meant so much to me has dissolved into the mess s8 was. It's disheartening.

I also want to apologize to all of my followers who followed me because my K/L optimism and metas. I'm sorry if I got your hopes up; I really thought K/L was the logical conclusion -- everything was building up to it, right from the first episode and even continuing in s7 (hell, even s8 added to it) -- and I truly thought the writers were going to follow through with all of the logical conclusions the previous seasons built up. I had faith in them, but I was wrong. For that, I apologize. I know it's just a cartoon show, but I also know how influential and meaningful media can be -- especially for marginalized groups -- so if my hype bringing you up made your fall harder when s8 was released, I am so sorry. You didn't deserve that; nobody in the fandom did.

I'm so jaded and disillusioned right now. Voltron has been a major inspiration for me; I originally decided to be a cartoonist to bring LGBT+ representation to children's media because of Steven Universe, but it was Voltron that really motivated me to reach that goal. I looked up to Voltron -- it was my muse, my main inspiration. I've learned so much about writing -- writing character arcs, relationships, etc. -- from Voltron and all of the analyzing people did. Seeing it devolve into what it did is upsetting. Something I loved so much has let me down, and I'm hurt and disappointed.

But more than ever, I want to create cartoons that don't do this; cartoons that tie up its loose ends, follow through with obvious character relationships, puts the main characters through complete arcs, and give proper development to them all. Cartoons that have proper LGBT+ and racial representation -- with LGBT+/characters of color that can be admired, that won't fall flat, that will teach the children of the generation about acceptance of others and acceptance of yourself regardless of sexuality, skin color, gender identity, etc. Voltron failed in that aspect; it was a compelling show that failed in everything it needed to succeed in. I refuse to make that same mistake.

With that, let's all look ahead to future and enjoy the fanworks that do these wonderful characters justice. Let Voltron's failure inspire you to create and make something better, something that will be much more impactful, much more meaningful.

Don't let it get you down; let it bring you up.

[anne1066-blog]

30th January 2019

This is a new idea that Jane suggested because I have various things niggling at the moment and I can’t quantify them.  So this is a very private blog diary just monitoring how I’m feeling and where I’m at.  I might share it with friends or I might not.  Why put it on a public platform?  Well pressing post makes you really feel you’ve set the feelings free and put it out there even if no one actually reads it.  It worked for me before when I was getting a load of stuff out of my system regarding a failed engagement, cheating and a pretty intense relationship with a much older man who had 3 children.

Where am I at today?  Bloody knackered.  I’ve basically called in sick all week with a recurrence of a cold that didn’t have major symptoms but made me feel crappy and subhuman.  I’ve fought through it a bit to work in extreme cold and also to go an a weekend with friends in York which of course I did enjoy but I also didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have.  It felt way too short.  I need a get away from my life at the moment.  There are a lot of hard decisions to face and I know I’m not managing them all that well.

So to recap what got me to where we are today:

In 2014 I moved to Oxfordshire to set up a cheesemaking dairy.  It was a brand new start for me and had the promise to be an exciting chapter in my life.  I learned a lot from it  - how to plan a new building specifically for a cheesemaking facility, how to find the site, plan the layout, source the milk, decide on a marketable recipe, build a brand (not the first time I’d been involved in branding to be fair) and not least but troubleshoot a recipe which ended up being the achilles heel. As it turned out the milk production standards weren’t really up to the recipe we wanted to make.  After months of cheese we didn’t want to sell, I was made redundant. I don’t want to be bitter but I feel there were some bad commercial decisions made by my business partner who was meant to be in charge of sales.  She charged ahead with full scale production when the cheese wasn’t good enough to sell at full price and she also gave away vast amounts of cheese which could have been sold for at least a price that covered costs.  All of this lead to a financial crisis and that was it - I was gone.

Before that happened, I had what had was a life changing holiday around the world which happened just as the cheesemaking dairy was opening and needing to go into production - it was 6 months over schedule. It was a revelation though.  I flew to countries I had never visited and had to negotiate them by myself.  I had a couple of days in Dubai, flew through Singapore (never left the airport to be fair so it doesn’t really count), flew on to Australia and from there to New Zealand after a very brief overnight stay in a hotel near the airport and from there after driving solo around South Island to Sydney, the Cook Islands, Santa Monica, San Francisco and then home.  It took 6 weeks and it really made me feel confident; not least because after years of being invisible to any guys out there but I got attention in every place I touched down in - some rather more meaningful than others to be fair. In Dubai, I connected with our desert tour guide who was a worker from Pakistan living in the UAE (not Dubai it’s far too expensive but the more restrictive Sharjah where women’s rights are quite seriously undermined).  He was an outsider but loved the desert and remembering the way the Namib desert had made me feel many years ago, so did I.  Our fellow travellers were good time tourists so there seemed a contrast between them enjoying the desert safari tourist activities and me just enjoying the culture of the country and the stillness of the desert.  i know that makes me sound extremely up myself but I can’t think of another way to describe it.  He asked me out on a date which never happened and in retrospect that was a good thing.  I would never have realised that things like holding hands with a potential romantic partner are forbidden in Dubai nor would I have realised that normal activities like kissing a first date can actually get you taken to prison.  After Dubai, I flew to New Zealand but happened to talk to my co passenger on the flight to Adelaide and have a very interesting conversation about colonialism and England’s position in Australia - not heavy - we joked about it - food for thought all the same which s the point of travel after all.  In New Zealand, I met up again with lovely friends I hadn’t seen for years and also met up with my sister and her boyfriend and my friend Cathi’s family who welcomed us as part of their big, lovely family too. It was an amazing time to feel so incredibly accepted and welcomed. And again I connected with someone, my friend’s older brother (also the only other single person there - I may have decided unlike me to flirt a bit with him as we were the only singletons there).  He was a lovely, funny, warm guy who as a chef was a great person to cook with and this was an area we had in common.  After the wedding ended and we moved on to normal life (him) and the rest of my holiday (me) we stayed facebook friends and he often is one of the first people to like my posts even to this day because he’s a genuinely great person. In Sydney, i went out to dinner with my uber glamorous friend Cristiana and because she’s open, chatty and lovely we ended up on a communal table in a restaurant when we went out for a meal and she got involved in conversation with a noisy group of guys sat to our left.  One of them was looking at me and when I went for a ‘comfort break’ he actually approached Cris to say I was lovely and ask who I was! From Sydney I flew to the Cook Islands where I met a lovely lady (not in thet way) who invited me to go swimming with her family after the kids got back from school and who took me down the road to my hostel to collect my swimming things on her motorbike.  My first time on a motorbike and frankly a bit terrifying.  I also get ogled which hadn’t happened in let’s say about 20 years in London.  In San Francisco, a waiter who I had quizzed about local cheeses and wines slipped me his telephone number on my bill.  I didn’t find it until I sorted my receipts back in the UK and hadn’t fancied him anyway so just as well but all helps the ego doesn’t it?  Especially when you’re over 40 at the time and have resigned yourself to no one finding you attractive anymore.

Anyway so that’s my trip and there was so much more too that I don’t have time to write about. The key thing is that I came back feeling much more empowered and confident.  I had travelled the world by myself and not only that but after years feeling invisible I had finally felt attractive again.  Boosted by this, I decided to take action, try internet dating again and this time I actually met someone.  I was a bit concerned about meeting him - he was openly into kink and sexual things I wasn’t experienced in but as well as that he was warm, made me laugh and I was interested.  I wasn’t openly attracted to him when we met.  There was certainly something there - we had been very open when messaging and honest and I fancied his personality but as usual on a first internet date, the nerves kicked in and it was difficult when we first said hello to feel anything much.  I knew that would happen though so when I couldn’t think of anything to say to him and he moved in for a reassuring hug, I decided to turn it into a chemistry test and effectively snogged his face off for about 90 minutes until our table reservation was ready.  That certainly broke the ice so conversation flowed more easily afterwards and I made moves to go back with him to his place after the meal where I could test the theory further.  I was relieved and rather pleased to find that the attraction wasn’t just based on text messages and being a gentleman he also drove me home and stayed in touch afterwards.  We met up a few times and eventually decided to get together.  I would never have had the courage to do this if I hadn’t had my empowering holiday and since we’re still together despite the odds 4 years later it was definitely a good move.  

However this was all very new when I was made redundant. He assured me he wouldn’t be going anywhere but it was too soon to move in together so I moved all my 3 bedroom house’s worth of belongings back to my parents’ house in Marple and looked for a job. I emailed anyone I could think of to explain I was looking for work and found somewhere in London that seemed a great match.  It was with a Spanish importer looking to improve their cheese maturation and whose owner I had worked with before  when setting up Borough Market in London.

Unfortunately although the interview went well, the owner wanted to work with me and my references thought it was a given, I failed their HR tests and I have to be honest it knocked my confidence extremely badly. I took another job that seemed exciting and had been a second choice due only to location - north Yorkshire, a long way away from the lovely new boyfriend.

I worked with them for 3 months before again, redundancy. This time, they great ideas they had had for expansion which I was a key part of, had to be put on hold because of a disastrous Christmas in which various storms flooded large parts of the north of England and cut into their sales. By this time, I had bought a house nearby and now had to find a new job and work out what to do with a house I had hoped to make a home.

Initially I had looked to resurrect the house which had at the time all the hallmarks of having been owned by an elderly couple who loved it and had also done nothing to it since probably the 1960s in a way i would live in.  The plans changed to make it something that could be sold or rented and without wishing to be dramatic, with that a little bit of me died at losing my home.

I didn’t wallow though, there was work to be done.  The house needed substantial work including rewiring, replastering, a new kitchen and new decorating and floors throughout.  By the time it was finished it was actually rather lovely.  I felt sad that i wasn’t going to live in the results of our work and sad that I wouldn’t be living in a beautiful part of the country. Actually I felt very sad not to be living in a house whose renovations I had initially begun with a view to making it my home. But again I had been looking around for another job although with a heavier heart this time.  Being knocked back 3 times will do that to you. This time I had a message from a friend who makes cheese in Suffolk and her cheeses are extremely well regarded so helping her albeit on a basis that wouldn’t be full-time seemed like a great idea.  We tried it out and she reckoned I could work 2-3 days a week although with some big changes to the recipe as she was currently making cheese at midnight and cat napping to accomodate the make schedule.

So I moved to Bungay in Suffolk.  It was different - flat lands where I am used to seeing hills, but it had an artistic, musical community and I  started to look at property prices again wondering about living there if the job worked out.

I had been there a month when Brexit happened.

My constituency was a big Brexit voting area.  I saw people in my local co op looking afraid when their children spoke polis to them.  I began to feel much less welcome myself.  It seemed there was a big difference between the artistic fringe in the area and the locals who resented anyone who moved in whether they were Polish or just from Marple.  I stopped feeling welcome.  I actually felt observed, scrutinised and as though I didn’t belong.  iI felt like Roystn Veasey.  ‘You’re not local are you?’

The vote itself upset me more than I realised it could.  I spent months watching the 2012 Olympics ceremony which was a celebration of multicultural Britain and crying my eyes out as racist hate crimes increased across the country and in he wake of right wing extremists killing the pro-Muslim MP Jo Cox.  During the football in the Europe that preceded the vote as violance and yobbishness hit 1908s levels among chants of ‘We’re leaving the EU and we don’t care’, I could see what the results of the vote were going to be.  An MP was murdered and my worst fears were confirmed.  And yet 52% of the country still cast their votes with a racist ideology and Nigel Fargae’s openly racist campaigning.  If I had been concerned about EU corruption and taking back control, his anti muslim poster and the rise of race crime before the referendum empowering racists to openly abuse people in public in a way they had not felt able to for over 30 years would have convinced me this vote was not going the way I hoped and I would have changed my mind.  I respect anyone who did this and I can not forgive anyone who didn’t.

[braindamageforbeginners]

Neuralgia/ADA/GOP-On-The-Run

Cycle 7, Day 19

First of all, next week’s my “week off,” which is usually just a blood-draw, however, because it also marks Dad’s birthday, which he’s intimated is supposed to be A Party of Special Magnificence, so I’ll be in the greater SoCal area during my “off week,” and, with my brother at hand in a festive mood, there’s a chance I won’t come to my senses until November. So, unless something goes spectacularly wrong at next week’s blood-draw, there’s a chance I’ll only update/write about random goings-on, or Dad’s giant, dragon-shaped firework (that isn’t a euphemism, I’ve been explicit that I want to see wizards, halflings, the whole deal).

Today, however, I’d like to draw some attention to my own physical disabilities (such as they are), why large chunks of the country aren’t ADA-compliant (I don’t even mean in a paved sense), and your very corrupt, local congressman, if you’re from a rural area (almost guaranteed).

So, even though I am automatically, federally-qualified as disabled (look it up under “compassionate allowances”). However, 80% of applicants eventually get disability coverage because - here’s a shocker - when people can’t do their jobs or survive normally, that tends to be noticeable, unless you have an extremely advanced neurodegenerative disease (in which case, you get to be president). And when I applied for disability, no one was, shall I say, directly unpleasant, but I got the very distinct impression that everyone would rather be doing something else. It wasn’t until I actually wrote my own condition down and told the social security rep to call their boss and give them that diagnosis that I got a bit of an attitude change. So, most disabled folks tend to be somewhat sensitive about it, because it is a pain in the ass (sometimes literally) and society is very much stacked against us. I actually wouldn’t even have given it much thought unless I had to fill out and file paperwork on it. Again, be kind and patient (that’s the general message), and don’t assume. I prefer to be called “crippled,” because I feel that word accurately captures both what happened to me, and and how it’s effected me.

To that, I also get passing privilege, because I can walk (though steep stairs and long sprints are out), and you’d only tell my left side is off if you were familiar with me. So, a neurologically-mangling injury usually occurs in one of two ways, externally (or externally-derived), which is usually what you associate with disabled vets, or internally (either due to clot, stroke, or cancer/tumor).. In the former type, you’d see nerve damage below the injury point. In the latter type, it’s a little harder. Everything in the brain is integrated - physically -  it’s a little harder to keep track of the higher-order, Wile E. Coyote (Super Genius) functions, especially since you develop new neural pathways throughout your life. But, just for the physical functions, damage to the brain occurs on the opposite side of the body, and it’s a half-body thing (most of my left-side is unreliable in the right circumstances, but for day-to-day use, it’s just the lower leg and lower arm). And these can be anything from noticeable motor impairments to, in my case, “diminished sensation.” Again, I’m just speaking for myself, but neuralgia - the reduced/lost sensations and/or pain of nerve damage - is a killer for folks like me. In my own case, if you’ve ever had minor oral surgery or a filling where the dentist got a little careless injecting the novocaine, you’ll be familiar with the numbness issue. Your muscles worked just fine, but without sensation, it’s hard to orient them enough to get them to work. That’s a rather extreme example, and it’s not terribly accurate for me, but it’ll give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Again, unless you know me, it’s kind of hard to spot me (I only hobble on inclines). Unless you knew I’d been trained as a pianist for a number of years when I was much younger, you’d have a tough time guessing my left hand has trouble with buttons. And, fortunately, the legal definition of disabilities isn’t limited to “patient is mostly-functional, but severely reduced by previous-standards.” (I also really do spend an hour or two in the gym every day, if only because I want a body capable of absorbing and metabolizing every last damned drop of marizomib they can pump into me)(which, come to it, is probably some sort of admission of addiction). I am, however, going to start referring to my left arm as “my Grendel arm,” because, if I’m attacked by Vikings, I intend to let that side take the damage (again, it won’t be as painful because of that “reduced sensation” problem I run into when I’m very tired)(and, hopefully, when I’m on fire and being attacked by Norsemen seeking retribution for

Speaking of legal issues, now’s a good time as any to point out that vast swathes of the country are near-impossible to live in if you’re, let’s say, medically-compromised. Now, I realize that I’m a very special, special-needs patient/citizen in that my existence is dependent on technology that’s beyond the ragged, bleeding edge of most hospitals - most states, as it turns out. But that’s going to be true of just being able to access decent care in most places, even for something relatively simple, like the heart disease currently building up in the Boomers. And I bring that up because, in most places, your elected federal officials are actually working against your best interest. Frequently with your consent. And these are, in my experience, always in rural districts. The party of your representative isn’t an issue, I’d bet; the issue is whether you live in a zip code with a population density closer to Los Angeles, or Maine. Americans (or, health-industry lobbyists) made a hullabaloo about Obamacare (or, as it’s formally known, the Affordable Care Act - the ACA). However, for people like me, it did help knock down things that will kill Grandma and Granpa, like lifetime limits (I’ve reached and exceeded those probably ten years ago), and - this is big - prior conditions. These are both weasel terms used by insurance companies to reduce patient numbers. Again that wasn’t a major issue for me until an orange-haired idiot came into office, promising to change all that. At the time - these were in the intertumor years - I was living in Utah. Here’s an important thing to understand when someone is actively working to undermine your life expectancy; they’re not going to be honest about it. And, in my experience, elected officials from rural areas tend to have more in common with Boss Hogg than they do Mr. Smith, but that could be because the first Congressman I met “representing” me was Jerry Lewis (that was his nom de guerre)(but not his real name)(also not his real hair), who was almost hilariously sleazy, and consistently plagued by corruption accusations. Which, uh, I think, describes almost all of the Congressmen who represented that district. So, you can imagine my complete lack of interest at being pushed and prodded and shoved in front of a congressional underling at the sitting Congressman’s office (this was Chris Stewart - or his local office, BTW).

We will ignore the odd decorating decision to include a large photo of a bomber with an explosion on it - I guess it’d been made by a constituent. We were met by - as expected - an office underling. The hiring and firing and promoting of office staff in small districts is usually pretty sordid. That’s not some sort of slanderous accusation; all professional politicians are legally prohibited from directly employing their companies or family members. Most, like Ron Paul, figure out a workaround until those pesky Congressional Ethics reports come out. The assistant in front of us assured us - in the wake of GOP populism that’d swung in just a few weeks earlier, that the Congressman didn’t like his job, only did it because no one else was stepping up, and was all in favor of term limits and revolving door policies - basically, the sort of pep-talk I always look for in the medical industry when looking for a well-qualified specialist (”Yeah, he’s great at his job, but he dislikes it and is only waiting for an opportunity to get out.”). The assistant was not the Congressman’s chief adviser on health care (I can only assume that was some wildly unqualified lobbyist from Pfizer, but that’s pure speculation). You know what really sends out a message of professionalism and receptiveness to constituent needs? When a constituent calls to schedule an appointment to voice concerns regarding health legislation, and the person qualified to answer such things isn’t in the office. Anyway, even though the assistant didn’t have any answers to most of my questions, he assured us that the congressman didn’t want to cut anyone’s insurance, but thought that a free market - the standard BS filler that comes from someone who has never been thrown out of a hospital (yes, this happens, folks, it made headlines in Baltimore a few years ago). Upon later checking, the assistant had actually actively lied about both issues, based on the Congressman’s actual voting record. Again, I don’t think he’s alone, I just think rural Congressman who coast on for a career based on name recognition aren’t used to an informed, angry public making proper inquiries. At least have the guts to tell me it’s more immediately profitable to kill me than to keep me alive; we’ll have to agree to disagree, but I get it. To make a long story short, because of Utah’s combination of hilariously inadequate insurance coverage for people like me, and my stubborn refusal to settle for less-than-best when seeing neurology specialists, I’m no longer a constituent. Thank you, sir, you ran me off your land, kudos. But I’m certainly not alone. Again, the Boomers are at an age where they’re going to be dropping dead of heart disease, cancer, etc. That’s not some dire, emo warning, either, it’s just that they’re all in their 60′s or above, and, until 2013, almost half of the US was either uninsured or disastrously uninsured. I think the HMO system will last two dozen cases of wheeling grandma and grandpa into the cold street before it comes to an end. But what the hell do I know? I’m just a sick person who’s had to learn insane amounts.about the health insurance industry and pharmaceutical companies to make it this far.

[itsthelinernotes]

Do I Need To Know About Music If I Want To Write About It?

Somehow everyone likes Music, but simultaneously we can’t agree on what music we like. So what is it that we’re all in agreement about liking? This makes for a strange bit of sociology in terms of how music is approached and talked about. Since music has this odd type of universality it’s seeped deep into our culture and our discussions of it manifest in some strange ways. My love of music, and later love for philosophy and sociology is what led me to studying why music is so universal but not agreed on for six years and two degrees.

All this time studying music has led me to what I now arrogantly believe may be one of the central contradictions of music which is that it is worthless. I’m not trying to say that it’s worth is = 0 nor am I trying to misdirect with a platitude that it is “priceless” meaning that it’s worth is infinite. What I mean is that it simply cannot be defined in terms of having a worth at all. In computer terms you might consider this as being null. I don’t believe this worthlessness is necessarily bad or even good. What I do mean to point out is that it prevents us from thinking clearly about the role of music. When considering we live in a capitalist hellscape this provides a problem because we can’t assign its value at “infinite” nor can we value it at “0”. This is what I think leads to the never ending arguments surrounding the worth of music, musicians, their work.

Before I go on, I should make this clear: I support every musician in their right to get paid. I wrote my Master’s thesis on the labour rights of musicians and how they are abused. However I have a utopian vision where all music is free for everyone. That vision doesn’t jive with our world and until we have some massive societal revolution, musicians gotta eat and we have to play by the rules of capital for now.

The most frustrating way that this valuelessness manifests is that knowledge about music, be it music theory, music history, sociology of music, whatever, is always valued as a secondary skill even in the industries and structures built around music (I pause here again to remind people that I’m a recovering academic writing blogs on Tumblr, what I’m about to describe is personal, I’m mad about it, maybe that’s improper or biased but it’s how I understand my own experiences). Let me give you a few examples.

After entering the hell of the job market with two music degrees I was encountered with a great deal of false hope. There were actually fairly frequent job postings in or around the “music industries”. This was great for living in a small city, albeit one with a rich musical history. What quickly hit me though is that despite all these music jobs no one was actually looking for anyone who knew anything about music. Go ahead and search “music” on a job board, most of the jobs listed will not have “requires a knowledge of music or musical background” unless you’re teaching (I’ll get to this later). Most jobs in music require marketing, business, social media, administration, event planning, etc. Whats more they require experience in those fields so they are not open to most musicians or people who have dedicated their time to the actual music. I don’t mean to downplay those skills or say they are not relevant, I do mean to say that any actual knowledge of music is rarely prioritized. Of course people with passion for music are attracted to these positions but they can also become bloated with people who enjoy music passively. I guess the issue there is that I don’t know a single person who doesn’t enjoy music.

At this point you’re probably shrugging off my frustration as an idiot who thought studying music instead of literally anything else would help me get employed in music. Well you’re right I am frustrated because even the people I know with music degrees who work in music had to get a second degree or diploma unrelated to music to get that job. You might also say “well there are people who write about music who get hired based on their knowledge of music.” But let me dig at that point.

As someone who keeps a close eye on these job postings I can say with relative confidence that most job postings at major music publications (I recently saw one for Stereogum) require experience in journalism first. Their interest is not in proving that you actually understand the content you’ll be writing about but that you’ll be able to produce content on anything. This is most clearly shown in music reviews. Take any review of a new popular album and jot down a one sentence summary of each paragraph. You don’t have to do much to see that not only do these writers bring up the same points in each review, they often do it in the same order. I don’t say this to slander journalists, I think it’s a noble profession, one I don’t have the skills to do. I do this to point out that if you take an incredibly diverse set of information and give it to people who have been trained to write in a certain way, you’ll get largely the same output. If you don’t, you’ll encounter an editor who, having raised through the same ranks will see that it is. Of course it’s not always the case that journalists get hired to write for these publications (for instance, you may just have connections) but it is very common.

I realize this comes across as arrogant and entitled but I think the question of credentials is an important one. After all, I’ve spent six years writing about music under the scrutiny of academia to be told over and over I don’t have the qualifications to write great content like “Every Radiohead Song Ranked” because I didn’t study journalism. I hosted a campus radio show on music for four years to be told the same thing at a radio station. What seems to be happening is that obviously music is important. We’ll create an infinite amount of publications dedicated to the topic. It has worth. But it’s still second to skills that have value to the institution. What I hear from people hiring in music is “Of course music is important... it’s just not valuable”. My encyclopedic knowledge of music is not welcome in the working world unless it’s tied to another skill that can be more efficiently employed. This is because we can’t actually place value on music the way we can on skills with more quantifiable outputs.

This brings me to education. All through my time studying music I got “so you going to be a teacher?” it was something I found frustrating but I do love to teach so I always said “maybe”. Well recently I figured I might as well look into teaching. Where I live, to get a teaching degree you need to have a certain amount of course hours in “teachable” subjects. There’s band class in every school here and luckily I’ve taken a number of conducting classes and have plenty of class hours in music. When looking at the list of subjects considered “teachable” one has an asterisk next to it. It turns out music can only be your “secondary” teachable meaning you have to have majored in another topic and maybe minored in music. I talk to teachers I know in the province and they say that there are barely any music teachers and they regularly have to try and recruit from outside the province. I called one of the univeristies in my area and they assured me that my masters degree was not applicable and that I can’t even apply to be a teacher with only music credits. What I love about this is that I, as arrogant as it may sound, almost certainly know more about music than anyone teaching it in my province (there is a small program at my alma matter that gives degrees in “music education” but having spent a good deal of time with those people I’m not too worried about competition). More people would have education degrees not from the music education program and instead would all have music as a “secondary”. Meanwhile I’m not even eligible to enter most of the teaching programs here at all.

While this article certainly comes off as the complaints of a dumbass, I think there’s an importance in asking these questions. If you decide to pursue the knowledge of music academically, why is that so often viewed as a bonus to a primary knowledge? Why are our priorities in the music world on non-musical skill sets and knowledge, even in careers that are concerned with music knowledge like teaching and music writing? I don’t think it’s anything to do with the well meaning people I’ve thrown under the bus here and everything to do with our way of measuring value. Or better, our deep inability to deal with things that can’t have value assigned to them. Consider also that every LP when it came out was sold for the same price, but immediately some of them became collectable and would exponentially increase in value while others you would struggle to give away. The universality of price of a new LP in the 60s, a new CD in the 90s or an iTunes single in the 00s was because we just can’t place a value on its contents so we had to concede that every song is worth $0.99. Because a good deal of my identity and work has been put into understanding music now my skill set and that of others is in a weird non-value. Afterall everyone loves music, what’s so special about me?

[spydre]

How Was Your Day?

(game date: March 25, 2021)

I spent my day arranging a meeting with, and hiring, a thief.  I'd decided to go this route because the alternative method to retrieving the Ci from Gipson would likely be messy.  As the Dragon had said, he would not willingly part with the thing.  That, however, did not mean we should draw attention to ourselves if we didn't need to.  I don't think Dragons believe in subtlety. 

I reached out to one Steff "Novaspark" Camden, who has been our main contact with the Hoods since we noticed their activities at ER's benefit concert.  She (or her comrades) did an excellent job planting the bug on General Stone, and she knows that she'll get paid when she deals with us.

Once we'd arranged our meeting, I transferred 1,000 credits to a datachip, which I handed over, first thing.  

"That," I said, "is for your silence, whether you take the job or not."

She scanned the chip and made it disappear.  "'Kay, you've got my attention."

I nodded once, then laid it out.  "Our illustrious council leader has, in his possession, an object that does not belong to him. It looks like a handle, with nothing attached. My friends and I would like it back.  He doesn't appear in public often. There are two instances coming up, that I know of.  You would have free reign as to the how. You can use your people, and/or my people.  You would have my gratitude. And at least one other rather powerful organization wants this done, too.  I have some information on some expected public appearances, if it would help."

She took a moment to reply.  "You don't aim low, do ya," she said, flatly.  

I had no rebuttal.  The girl was not wrong.  "I wish I could choose my enemies," I said.  "I comfort myself that I can choose my friends."

We bantered a bit.  I wasn't sure that she was going to take the job; the high profile of the mark seemed to spook her.  I did what I could to assure her that my team would provide backup.  In the end, the price tag for her friendship was a 20,000 credit advance, with an unspecified amount upon delivery.  I chose not to haggle, and made the transfer.

---+++---

Vamir spent his morning interviewing for an executive position at SunTek.  He hasn't said much about it, yet, but if I know my father, he handled the interview personally, and absolutely none of it consisted of the kind of empty questions that you can research on the Matrix.  Vamir's background would have been thoroughly researched, and Dad would be investigating my motives for recommending him.  The fact that Vamir was hired could mean any number of things, but I don't think for a moment that it means that we have fooled him.

---+++---

Aru was in self-imposed exile.  He blames himself for leaving his family in a vulnerable position, and by way of atonement he has been performing all the scut work at the estate for several days now.  He and I have very different responses to guilt.  I invented a "silver bullet" that should ensure that the manor is never undefended again -- and I look forward to it being used on the next intruder, even if they are only trying to "test" us.  Maybe especially then.

---+++---

I am sorry to admit that I do not know anything about Gordianus' day.  As the newest member of this team, and the least experienced, she deserves more of my time and attention.  I'll have to try to correct that.

---+++---

Varfana, while performing inventory that afternoon, found a bag of powder hidden in the shelves.  She called for the employee on duty, Heznik.

"I found this in the back room, any idea what it is or where it came from?"

Heznik looked guilty, then he sighed and fessed up.  "You know my son, Lorhig, he's been doing some of the deliveries. I found that in his things earlier today, and took it. I knew he was hanging around with the wrong crowd, but I was hoping getting him involved in the business would help to pull him away.  I don't know what sort of drug it is, but it does not look like caffeine pills. I am worried.  He is out on deliveries now. I was going to confront him about it when he got back."

The man probably thought that he was about to be fired, but Varfana isn't like that.  She sympathized completely, and offered up Vamir's chemical expertise to analyze the powder.  Heznig wasn't sure he wanted to know.  He didn't seem sure about anything; the realization that his son was involved with this at all had shaken him.  After waffling for a bit, he decided that it was best to know the truth, and Varfana called up Vamir.

It didn't take him long, even with his portable setup, to identify the stuff.  

"The common street name is 'Ash,' but some of the more honest dealers call it 'Burnout.'  It's a highly addictive, very powerful, stimulant.  Makes the user feel invulnerable, but it brings a nasty crash when the high wears off.  It's killed a few people."  He pushed the bag away with distaste.  "That's at least fifteen doses."

Varfana set her jaw.  "The boy's mixed up with the Masques.  They'd be the ones in this neighborhood with the hard drugs."

From what I heard later, Heznik didn't take the news well.  He was angry, and worried, and he needed someone to blame for this, so for a couple of minutes he swung like a pendulum between blaming his son, to blaming himself, and back again.  As Varfana was trying to calm him down, the kid returned from the delivery route.  

Lorhig looked like a frightened slugbunny that had narrowly escaped a hunt, only to blunder into a nest of antkegs.  He sported a nasty bruise on one cheek, and a wary expression in his eyes.  He scanned the room, saw his dad, his dad's boss, a stranger in a lab coat, and he very nearly turned right around again.  To his credit, he didn't, and the whole story eventually was revealed.

When Lorhig told his "friends" (that he was getting drugs from, to use) that he wasn't going to be able to hang out anymore (because of his dad getting him a job at Oakenshield's), they grilled him about the job and basically told him that he would use this new job as a delivery boy as a cover to deliver drugs for them, too. Or Else.  The bruise on his cheek was an Or Else moment, when it was discovered he had lost some product -- that being the bag which Heznik had taken from Lorhig's things.

It was at that point when Varfana called the group to let us know what was going on.  Katrya said she had a plan, and I (for one) was entirely too happy to let her (or anyone) handle planning.  Especially since this particular situation was not likely to call for a lot of subterfuge nor intricate hacking.  

---+++---

EllieRocks had an earlier curfew, so I didn't get a chance to discuss much with her - another failing on my part.  I'll have to check in with her soon - is it too late to see if she could entertain at the debutante ball?  She would certainly hold everyone's attention, giving Novaspark the best chance if she should decide to pull the job then.

---+++---

Ryatt has been learning what it's like to run a business.  We did our best to set things up so that this doesn't take up the majority of his time, but it's not a good idea for him to isolate himself from it completely, because that would just make it too easy for unscrupulous executives to steal too much from him.  I snagged a few minutes before he had to leave, and proposed that he and I design a drone for the upcoming Sunspot Games.  He could list Rintendo as an official sponsor, it would be good publicity, and give us all a good excuse to be present at the Games if needed to back up our hired thief.  

He agreed that it sounded like fun, although he seemed more interested in designing a VR game based upon drone racing - which, if I know anything about this kid, means that he will end up designing an intricate system for players to design their own drones, with race courses based upon the entire history of the Sunspot races (and a few based upon alternate laws of physics), and the resulting product will end up being used as a tutorial for future participants of Sunspot. 

Which, in turn, probably means that I'll be the one doing most of the work on the actual drone we'll be using in the real-life race, but that's okay.  His VR work will point toward the best design, if he completes it in time to be useful to us.

---+++---

Katrya spent her day as she has several days since the SunTek job - avoiding being seen in public.  She also made a point of having to stay outside of both planned events.  When I asked why, she stared at me blankly.  "Do you not read the news, Zeke?"

Apparently I don't, at least not often enough.  Shortly after we all had our faces flashed in relation to the SunTek break-in, Border Patrol issued a 500-credit reward for information leading to Katrya's arrest.  Specifically her.  And I'd missed it.  

500 credits seems a little insulting, all things considered.  I slept on the problem.  

The next day I started work on a new type of holographic projector.  Actually, I built three mini-projectors into a necklace, and programmed them to project an image of a face over the wearer's own visage, approximating the same movements and expressions.  It was finished by early afternoon, and turned out better than I expected.  

Before turning the prototype over to the foxkin, I studied and documented my work carefully, and by late evening I was able to program the machine shop drones to duplicate it - they can turn one out every six hours, so in a couple of weeks each of us should own one.  The materials are pricey, about 10K each, but if we ever get out of the saving-the-world-business, we could sell these on the black market for ten times that.  

For now, though, I'm keeping this tek a secret.  Well, I did take the first drone-assembled FakeFace to another meeting with Novaspark.  I figured, with this tool in her kit, her chances of nabbing the Ci would be much greater.  I made it clear that this bauble wasn't going on the market; it was just for her use, but she was so excited about the potential of the thing that she didn't care.  She even offered to return the cash advance, which I firmly declined for several reasons (most of them relating to goodwill, but there are also expenses involved with ripping off the upper crust, and, as I said at the time, a girl's gotta eat).

---+++---

So, that was my week so far.  It could be worse.  I could have a

boring

job.

..::Kai::..

[unqualified-advice-blog]

Cooking Tips (Especially on a time & money budget)

These are things I wish I had known when I started having to cook for myself.

1. Read the recipe completely before beginning to buy ingredients/plan to make it. Often recipes will require strange gadgets that you might not have in your kitchen that won’t be apparent in the ingredients list.

2. Don’t plan on making something unless you know you can find all the ingredients at your local store or can make reasonable substitutions. (I know this sounds like a no-brainer but I have made this mistake multiple times and it has sucked every one of them.)

3. Freeze meals and leftovers. I cannot stress enough how much food I have saved from going bad & saved myself having to order out at the last minute by doing this. Freeze any leftovers you think you might not be able to eat before they go bad. The best way to do this is to buy single serving plastic tupperware so you only need re-heat the amount you need for a meal.

4. Find recipes for one-pot meals that have a) plenty of spices, b) protein, veggies, and grains, and c) can easily be frozen. Soups, chilis, pasta sauces, curries, and casseroles all come to mind here. Having lots of spices helps the recipe be filling and just makes it better in general. Also, feel free to add more spices than the recipe calls for if it doesn’t seem like enough.

5. Find recipes that have cheap, shelf-stable ingredients. Again, soups, chilis, pasta sauces, curries, and casseroles are great for this because their ingredients heavily feature canned goods (tomatoes, beans), frozen vegetables, or dried pasta/rice etc.

6. Beware recipes that aren’t a full meal. A lot of traditionally American cooking relies on multiple dishes: eg, a protein, a grain, and a veggie that are all cooked separately. As such, many recipes are only protein, only grain, or only veggie.

7. If you are just starting out, estimate the amount of time it will take to make the recipe and then multiply it by three. Have a friend on hand or on the phone to be able to answer questions you might have during the cooking process. Try to be patient with yourself - everyone goes through a learning curve with cooking.

8. Get out all ingredients at the beginning so they are ready to hand. Chop any vegetables you need and keep them off to the side for when you need them.

9. Clean as you go - if you are done with an ingredient, put it away. If you are done with a dish, wash it. If this is too much for you, designate a “this is where the stuff I’m done with goes” area where you unceremoniously pile all used ingredients and dishes. This should never be the sink - you should always keep the sink clear when cooking.

10. Don’t force yourself to finish cleaning right after you’ve eaten if you can at all help it. Give yourself about a half an hour to digest and enjoy having finished cooking & eating.

VEGETARIAN COOKING

11. If you have any anxiety about bacteria or find it difficult to maintain a clean kitchen, COOK VEGETARIAN. It is an additional learning curve, but there are plenty of reasonably priced meat substitutes available on the market that are pretty good. As with everything, there are pluses and minuses to vegetarian vs meat cooking, but the big plus here is that you don’t have to manage what has come in contact with raw meat when cooking vegetarian. That being said...

12. When cooking vegetarian, double or triple the amount of fat the recipe calls for. Most vegetarian recipes (in the US) are written by meat eaters who classify this as a “diet” recipe and therefore don’t list enough fat and salt to make the recipe actually taste good. Vegetarian proteins don’t have the natural fat that animal proteins do, so especially if you are cooking with a ground beef substitute, you will need to add more oil as the ground beef substitute will absorb a large amount of it.

13. When searching for vegetarian recipes, it’s good to start out with recipes in Asian cuisine. These often will be one-pot recipes over rice and might not be as easy to freeze, but they often have the benefit of originating as vegetarian recipes instead of being adapted from a meat-based recipe. However, many ingredients and tools in these recipes might not be easily available to Americans, so be extra careful here.

14. Vegetarian cooking has the downside that it might not give you the same long-lasting energy that a meat-based diet does. You can address this by a) swapping vegetarian meals with meat-based ones depending on when during the day you might need the energy or b) keeping protein-rich snacks to hand like nuts or protein bars.

15. However, vegetarian proteins often have the upside of being extremely shelf-stable. They are either vacuum sealed in packages that will last months, dried, or frozen. This makes them much easier to keep stocked than animal proteins, which often expire within a week.

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE

16. Once you have explored cooking for a while, try to find/choose three recipes that you can memorize and keep a majority of the ingredients for stocked in your pantry or freezer for when you haven’t been able to plan ahead.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Financially disadvantaged millennials and gen zs often don’t have the luxury of enjoying the process of cooking and eating food. Many of our parents did not teach us how to cook, and there is a paucity of resources geared toward helping beginner adults understand how to cook. I was lucky that my mom did teach me how to chop vegetables, what things go together, etc., and it was genuinely surprising to me to watch one of my friends who did not have this advantage greatly struggle with cooking. He has been cooking actively for almost three years now and still becomes extremely anxious whenever he has to do so.

The cooking culture that has developed over the past 70(?) years is almost universally useless to us. Food has been marketed to within an inch of our lives as diet products, expensive indulgences, or status symbols. Most mainstream food culture is aggressively white and upperclass - see the cottagecore aesthetic. On the other hand, areas with majority minority population are way more likely to be food deserts (not have easily accessible grocery stores) and have attempts at community gardens bleached and destroyed by “law” enforcement. I fall sort of in the middle of these extremes: I am lucky enough to live in a nice area with an many easily accessible high quality and bargain grocery stores. Even with these advantages (and being trained from an early age), I find cooking extremely annoying, time consuming, and anxiety inducing.

I would be remiss if I didn’t address the fatphobia in many cooking spaces as well. Food is marketed as a diet product, which is ridiculous. See this post for a better take down of this than I could come up with. Food is something your body needs to survive, and it is ALWAYS BETTER TO EAT SOMETHING THAN TO EAT NOTHING, NO MATTER WHAT THAT SOMETHING IS. If your breakfast is a donut, that’s better than not eating breakfast. Try to eat a balanced diet with veggies, protein, and carbs (the one-pot meals help with this), but if you ever encounter ANYTHING in the world that is shaming you for what you put in your body, walk the other way, they are lying and trying to sell you something.

In general, the theory I agree with the most is the set point theory of weight: your body has a natural “resting weight” that fluctuates as you age and your body changes. Deviating significantly from this “resting weight” is extremely difficult and oven very very unhealthy. Your “resting weight” is largely determined by genetic factors and has nothing to do with your behavior. The “obesity epidemic” is a myth that has been perpetuated by drug companies and diet companies for profit and has done an extreme amount of harm to the livelihoods of fat people who often do not see their medical needs met properly because the doctor simply diagnoses them as “fat” and investigates no further.

All of this is a bit more big-picture and outside of the scope of your control, but I bring it up to contextualize that your struggles with cooking are in many ways not a personal failing but caused by broader social failings. Also, a lot of people are literally trained by our culture to be anxious around food, so if this is how you feel, again, it is not your fault and while it is common, it is not “normal” or “good” to feel this way. Anxiety around food is something you should work to overcome, not encourage in yourself. That said, the mental and physical practices you must undertake to get as good at cooking as you need to will take a lot of time to develop. Try to be patient with yourself and hang on to the moments of progress: you’ll get there eventually <3.

[squishysvt]

If I’m Lucky - Ch.3`Ten

Member: Ten (NCT) Word Count: 1,574 Genre: Dark, Humor A/N Back at it with the gang leader!Ten au. Feel free to tell me how you think I’m doing with this so far! -Admin Ay Warnings: profanity, mentions of drugs, drinking, child neglect and there’s also murder??? which is done in a very non-bloody way...someone gets cut but other than that

Ch.1`Ten ~ Ch.2`You ~ Ch.3`Ten ~ Ch.4`You ~ Ch.5`Ten

  The cool breeze of the night hit Ten’s face, the only sounds he could hear in the unsettingly calm streets being the sound of his own feet slapping the concrete as he ran.

   Somehow he had managed to get in a scuffle with members of a local gang while trying to order a pizza and got himself chased around town. Squalo Nero was a relatively powerful gang in the area and he was basically managing all of its individual transactions within the black market, but Ten technically wasn’t the actual leader.

   That title was still occupied by his father.

  Sure, his name meant something behind closed doors, but out on the streets he was only comparable to a shadow. All of Ten’s business was done within a small, empty, abandoned storage facility separate from Squalo Nero’s actual base. Business mainly consisting of the torture and execution of any gang member or affiliate gone rogue. Field work wasn’t exactly in his job description.

   Ten, not sensing the presence of anyone else in the quiet streets, slowed down his pace until he eventually lead to a stop in the opening of a narrow alleyway. Sweat settled in uncomfortable places of his body under his leather jacket.

   “Why did I even decide to put this shit on?” Ten growled in frustration as he aggressively threw the sweat trap to the ground.

  Back resting on the cold brick of a deserted building, Ten took in his surroundings. The moon shone beautifully on the surrounding stores and apartments. Every few minutes a car would pass, their destinations unknown. The area was void of any living presence besides that of a black cat who’s alluring eyes peered into Ten’s soul.

  Times of therapeutic solitude were rare for the gangster’s draining double life. His eyes softly fluttered shut as he sighed and took in the quiet of the night, not particularly thinking of anything.

   “Ten?” An uncertain voice called out.

  The amount of tables the man in question flipped mentally was large. The last thing he wanted at the moment was to be bothered.

   “Yeah, what?” Ten could practically feel the aggravation coming from himself in waves.

  “I would ask you what you’re doing out here in a shady-ass alley looking like a 12-year-old who’s Playstation privileges was taken away by his mom and decided to run away, but...”

  Ten’s eyes shot open to glare at the person talking. All she did was snort in response.

   “I guess you don’t really remember who I am. I’m Y/N, The one you saved earlier today.”

  The gangster hummed as he recalled the events.

  “Welp, I don’t like the fact that I’m the one carrying the conversation here so why don’t I force you to walk me home and actually talk to me?”

  “I don’t even know where you live, hun.”

  “It’s just right there.” You said matter-of-factly as you pointed to the opposite end of the street.

  “I think you’re grown enough to walk a few meters yourself.”   The girl scoffed and threw up her hands. “Fine! But I’m just saying, it’s your fault if I end up falling and dying in a manhole.” Your flamboyant and loquacious attitude oddly reminded Ten of somebody. He shivered at the thought. You huffed as you stomped in the direction of her apartments.

  Ten sighed and picked up his jacket, soon falling in step behind you. Rather than saying anything, you only smiled back smugly at him. Although the thoughts behind the look were never articulated, Ten got a good idea of what you were trying to say.

   “Don’t get any bright ideas. Like you said, it’s late and I actually live in the same complex.”

   “I didn’t say anything.”

   “You didn’t have to.”

   The way to the apartments was short. It had turned out that Ten lived directly below you. Rather than letting him peacefully retreat to his abode, however, you bothered him once more.

   “Johnny gave me your number, by the way! So don’t be creeped out if you see an unknown number in your notifs!” You yelled, head poking over the banister of the the stairs leading up to your floor. Ten hummed and slammed his front door shut as he stepped into his flat.

  Brain connecting the dots, Ten moaned as he haphazardly undressed and flopped onto his bed. Johnny, that’s who you reminded him of. You were annoyingly talkative and friendly, which were both aspects of the giant he hated. Something told him you would also be equally hard to get rid of.

   “So, you can either tell me what you did with my share, or, you can enjoy pain served by yours truly.” Ten reasoned, mask covering his face and knife tracing the inner thigh of a man tied to a chair. Only four people occupied Ten’s place of work at the moment, business not being as busy tonight.

   Squalo Nero members didn’t obviously stand in corners of shady neighborhoods asking every passerby if the wanted crack, that’s not how they did things. They were a power player in a major drug trade, producing and supplying these shady street corner drug dealers with various illegal products in mass. Essentially, they were how these dealers stayed in business. In turn, they would get about 65 percent of their weekly income.

   “...I may or may not have spent it on a new whip.” The man in the chair exhaled, hoping that his captor had barely heard him.

  “Mommy, I’m hungry.”

   She sighed as she downed another bottle of beer. “Go make something then.”

   “We only have juice and crackers.”

   “Then eat the damn crackers, kid! I spent the last amount of money your dad gave me on weed.”

   Ten could not remember the last time he ate a proper dinner for a while now. His only source of food was his school lunches. But today he was especially hungry, some kid had knocked his food off the table while he was eating, ¾ of his fish sticks and a barely opened carton of milk scattered on the floor.

   Hungry, Ten only had one other person he could go to for help. After notifying his mother Ten walked out of his ramshackle of a home all the way to his older friend. He really wasn’t sure on how long the journey was, he just knew that the sun had long set and his feet were sore once he got to friend’s doorstep.

   The door swung open after two knocks, revealing a face enveloped by worry.

   “What are you doing here alone? How did you--”

   “Taeil...I’m hungry.”

   Ten sighed at the familiar memory from his childhood as he cut the fabric of the pusher’s jeans. This guy was a dumbass, and because of his foolery, Ten’s father was constantly nagging about the shortage of money coming in the past few weeks.

   “I see,” Ten hummed passively as he slid the mask off of his head, “So you’re saying the reason why I haven’t gotten over ten thousand dollars from you is because you decided to buy a fucking car?”

   The tied man gulped.

   “Oh, don’t be nervous! I’m not mad. This mask is just really stuffy, and besides, isn’t it common courtesy to look someone in the eye while you talk to them? What’s your name, again?”

   The man sighed, naively relieved by Ten’s words. “You can call me Deuce.”

   Ten smiled, “Well Deuce, listen carefully when I tell you this. Only special people during special situations can see my face, you know?”

   The gangster grabbed the pusher’s hand and slowly carved a shark tooth into his arm.

   “Congrats on being enough of a dunce to get yourself in one.”

  With a nod, two of Ten’s henchmen were on either side of Deuce, proceeding with rapping his head in a plastic bag. A moment was spent watching the deadbeat drug dealer thrash against the chair he was strapped to, until he eventually stopped.

   “Go put him in the back with the rest of the bodies. I believe he’s the last one, so I’m leaving.”

   “Yes, boss.”

   Ten made his way out of the abandoned storage facility, throwing his hoodie over his head. For some reason there was a large amount of traitors that had to be dealt with for the past week. Maybe it was the weather. Although Ten was used to his line of work for as long as he’s been in it, hearing the tortured screams of men and constantly having to clean blood from his clothes for hours every other day was tiring.

   Ten dragged his feet back to his flat, but it seemed like he just couldn’t catch a break. He met eyes with your hunched figure in front of his door. Yeah, his schedule practically revolved around going against the law and several human morals, but he still wanted to know what the universe had against him to have you show up at the worst of times.

   Instead of asking what exactly you were doing like any other decent person, he only continued in unlocking his door to his apartment, bag of slightly old gas station donuts in hand. Perhaps if he ignored you you would leave him alone.

   One foot had managed to pass through the doorway before you finally spoke. “Uh, can I spend the night with you?”

   Ten was tired and didn’t really feel like dealing with your whining.

   “Ugh, whatever, I don’t care.”

[thebibliosphere]

Hi, mom, I have a question about allergies. I am allergic to certain types of laundry soap, the worst of which is tide. I suspect that I am allergic to the borax that's in these soaps, as it's a common ingredient in all of the ones I'm allergic to, but do you know of any way to figure out for sure what causes the reaction. As a side note, there isn't an allergist at the practice I go to anymore, but I do have a pulmonologist, if that matters at all. Thank you so much in advance!

Oh dear, I’m so sorry to hear you’re having issues with laundry detergent @colehence, but rest assured you are not alone in being allergic to things like Tide, it’s actually super common.You didn’t mention what your reactions were (and pulmonology is really only going to help if it’s triggering asthma) and while it’s possible you are reacting to the borax, it’s also entirely possible it’s the synthetic scents, the presence of sulfates (huge problem for a lot of us with chronic allergies or things like eczema) or any number of things in brands like Tide. The smell alone of regular Tide triggers respiratory distress in myself, the second worst thing after that being Downy fabric softener which we found out was triggering an allergic reaction which manifested as panic attacks and migraines for me from even just walking down the laundry aisle in the grocery store, so now I don’t. I will do a loop of the entire store to avoid the laundry aisle unless I have my vogmask with me. Cause fuck all that shit.

Even Tide’s “Free and Clear” range scores an F for failure and high levels of allergy and toxicity through EWG.org due to containing Ethanolamine, Benzisothiazolinone (also found in pesticides, fun!) as well as Sodium Borate (Borax) which are all known skin irritants and just generally non allergy friendly. So fuck Tide for pretending to actually make something “free and clear” when what they mean is “we didn’t add the neon blue or that weird chemical scent, enjoy your other major allergens though!”.

The only way to really test this on your own without an allergist, is to try alternative laundry detergent brands. Unfortunately actual free and clear detergents are more expensive, but well worth the investment if you can find a way to get them in bulk. Cause y’know not itching to death/having constant headaches and coughs as well as clean clothes should be an attainable goal for everyone, not just people without allergies.

I have three brands I know I can use without major issue. And because this is going to get long, I will put the full ingredient list of each one under a cut

Planet 2x Ultra Laundry Detergent Free & Clear*

Whole Foods Organic Liquid Laundry Detergent, Unscented**

Seventh Generation Powder Detergents: aka I will die on the hill of this brand, I just wish it was more affordable.****

Another thing worth checking for along with trying to avoid borax is methylisothiazolinone which is in virtually every commercial main brand of everything cause it’s a highly effectiveantimicrobial and preservative. 

And it’s also highly effective at making me dead cause I can’t have anything that contains it in the house, no hand soaps, no laundry, no perfumes, no candles no nothing. Even all of ETD’s things, his soaps, shampoo, lotions, sunscreen, all of it had to go because just even him using it was making my skin break out. Which is unacceptable when you smooch as much as we do. Methylisothiazolinone is also often used hand in hand with benzisothiazolinone, which you may remember from our good worst friend Tide. So that’s another thing to watch out for, even if one isn’t listed, they often go hand in hand together.

Other brands which are low allergen and don’t contain borax but I haven’t personally tried are: 

 Biokleen Free & Clear, 

Ecover (which my mother has been using for literal decades, it’s great if you can get it but I struggle to find it over here at a reasonable price so I didn’t list it up there) 

Attitude: Little Ones Laundry Detergent (Fragrance Free),

Fit Organic Laundry Detergent (Free and Clear), 

and Green Shield Organic, which even their scented ones test low on allergens, so I may need to check those out.

Brands to AVOID if you have skin issues or respiratory allergies include:  

Tide in all shapes and forms, (I’m sorry, I know it’s cheap but compare that to the cost of your allergy meds/asthma meds and oh boy is it suddenly not worth it.) 

Wallgreens “Nice!” brand. 

Ajax. (it burns)

Kirkland Signature (you can hear the Costco lovers screaming) 

Arm and Hammer (yes really, even their free and clear contains sodium alylyr aryl ether sulfate which is a medium range allergy risk for skin and respiratory issues) 

J.R. Watkins ‘Natural’ Liquid Laundry Detergent, Fragrance Free (they don’t actually list what their surfactants are but based on my reaction I think it’s wheat based) 

and lastly, the insidious Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day product range which can honeslty just jump off a cliff with their synthetic fragrances and their methylisothiazolinone and all their other crap they hide behind their “we use essential oils so we’re SAFE” marketing horseshit. I’d literally rather gargle glass than touch any of their products again. It’d have roughly the same effect on my throat and lungs.

Anyway…I hope some of this is helpful for you in trying to work out if it is your laundry cleaning that is causing you the issue. If you want to hit me up on IM (I will be opening it up again this weekend) to chat allergies and what have you, I am totally down with that :) Take care!

*Planet 2x Ultra Laundry Detergent Free & Clear (liquid): Sodium Carbonate, Stearic Acid, Water, Sodium Gluconate, Lauryl Glucoside, PPG-5-Laureth-5 (possible skin irritant) and Laureth-7 (possible skin irritant).

I want to like this brand cause it’s easy for me to get hold of and it’s fairly cheap as “eco friendly” detergents go, but it just kind of doesn’t clean all that well. The powder one cleaned great! Unfortunately it has borax in it and a thing called C-10-16 Pareth-1 which as well as being a high risk ingredient for allergy and asthma sufferers, is also apparently raising some cancer concerns, so out the window that went. Except not really cause it’s not good for the environment and I didn’t want to give the squirrels cancer or something. idk, I worry about those things.

The liquid however is low allergy, it just didn’t seem to work very well in my hard water for when it came to cleaning. Other people might have better luck with it.

**Whole Foods Organic Liquid Laundry Detergent, Unscented: Soapbark, Glycerin, Sodium Carbonate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Sea Salt, Saponofied Cocos (coconut) Oil, Water, Xanthum Gum (yay gluten free. I wish I was kidding†.) Guar Gum, Thymus Satureioides, Aloe Vera Juice Powder, Sapindus Mukurossi and Acacia Senegal Gum.This is the brand I am currently using cause I wanted to try out cause I can apparently get 200 washes for $16 a bottle, which makes it way ahead of all the others in terms of price matching, and also to see if it worked better than other organic brands I’ve tried, which generally fell short of the mark when it came to actually lifting the dirt out of clothes. And it does actually really work well, I’m enjoying using it, if you can say such a thing about laundry detergent. Ewg.org does flag up some of their ingredients as high risk for asthma and respiratory reactions (acacia senegal gum is apparently not good for the lungs) but I’ve had zero skin or respiratory reactions to it, so I’ll keep using it until the bottle runs out and I can try something else.Ewg.org actually rates their non organic 365 Everyday Value 2X Concentrated Powder Laundry Detergent, Unscented*** as better for the environment, as well as being fairly safe for skin allergies, so that’s what I might try after my giant bottle of 200 washes runs out.

***Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value 2X Concentrated Powder Laundry Detergent, Unscented:  Vegetable Soap, Sodium Chloride, Sodium Carbonate, Sodium Metasilicate (possible skin irritant) and Alcohol Ethoxylates (c12) (possible skin irritant)

****Seventh Generation Natural Laundry Detergent Powder:Sodium Carbonate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Silicate (water softeners and alkalinity builders), Zeolite (water softeners and alkalinity builders), Fatty Alcohol/Ethoxylated Fatty Ester Blend (coconut and corn-derived cleaning agents), Polyglucose (coconut and corn-derived cleaning agents), Magnesium Sulfate, Sodium Sulfate (performance enhancers), Sodium Percarbonate (non-chlorine bleach), Carboxymethyl Inulin (antiredeposition agents), Carboxymethylcellulose (antiredeposition agents), Protease (non-animal derived enzymes), Cellulase (non-animal derived enzymes), Oleic Acid (plant-derived anti-foaming agents) 

Seventh Generation is one of those rare few brands, where I am not allergic to their scents. I once switched to Trader Joe’s Organic Scented (powder) laundry, only to discover really quickly that they can’t actually verify whether their essential oils being used are cold or steam pressed. But I can tell you from my reaction to it, they’re not. They’re cheap synthetic alcohol based ones and if your allergies focus on synthetic scents, avoid TJ stuff like the plague until they get their ass in gear and actually source their scents better. Seventh generation POWDER detergents however, are the bomb, they work really well in my hard water due to added water softeners, and I can tolerate their scented versions through they are increasingly harder to find. 

Their liquid ones however, do contain methylisothiazolinone which is a high concern for allergies, respiratory issues and is really not good for the fishes if not polluting out earth is something you are concerned about.

†A lot of “healthy” brands are using wheat protein in things as a surfactant now, and for some of us that really can be an issue if we have allergies to wheat in any way or form. I found this out the hard way when I used a shampoo that contained it and broke out in body wide hives and had to drench myself in aloe vera and take all my meds to stop the itching, and even then I looked burned for several days until it calmed down. It also caused a huge chunk of my hair to fall out so if you’re celiac, gluten intolerant or have a wheat allergy in any way shape or form, avoid Avalon Organics Thickening Shampoo, it will, ironically, potentially make your hair fall out.