#and of course the internalized (for the women and externalized for the boss of course) misogyny in there is off the charts
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californiaquail · 3 days ago
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my boss was out doing a house call for some of his favoritest most specialest clients for a good chunk of today (he does not do this for anyone else) and he took his office manager with him so it was just me and my coworker and she was like i'm not doing work while he's gone i hate working when he's not around and i was like bitch me too tf so we were mostly just chatting and complaining about how much he sucks and then i found out that this woman who has been doing this job for over 20 years and who is utterly indispensable and necessary for the office to run at all is only getting paid $20/hr. ☠️
#i literally don't know why she still works there#i said that and she's like “oh i'll be here until he dies.” FOR WHY????#GIRL........#she only gets $1.50 more than me and she keeps the place open!! what the fuck i'm so mad#god the dynamics of that office are so fucking weird#she said the office manager makes like $25/hr and gives herself a raise whenever she wants because shes his little buddy or what ever#like she's been there for over 20 years and used to ride horses with him and whatever (she's married by the way [to another man])#so they're like bffs and he actually talks to her like a person and she supposedly fucking intervenes on him when he gets too shitty to us#but shes the only one who can do that because he doesn't respect anyone else enough?#the longer i observe the three of them interact the weirder it gets like theyve all been working together for 20+ years but coworker#kind of hates his ass because he's a dick yet she still works there (although she did quit once and came back after 4 years)#and office manager is copacetic with everybody but still fundamentally on his side and there are clearly sides and i cannot stress enough#there are only four people working in this place. not counting the tax guy who drops in maybe once a week for a couple hours#it's so STUPID. WHY ARE WE HAVING HIGH SCHOOL ASS DRAMA#rhetorical question it's because the 74 year old man child in charge won't be civil. god#and of course the internalized (for the women and externalized for the boss of course) misogyny in there is off the charts#me
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ash-says · 1 year ago
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One of the most unrealistic things I find on the so called level up blogs are the amount of things they list you should do in a day.
I mean for the love of God we all are humans and we only have 24 hrs a day. How the hell are we supposed to do all this especially the glow up things they list. Like how?????
For example : Working out for 2 hours, doing a gua sha, a full blown 10 step skin and hair routine, walking 10000 steps and whatnot blah blah.
Can I be a little realistic here? It's impossible in real time.
The real girl bosses truly don't have this much time on their hands to just spend on looking good.
Honestly all this will take up to around three to four hours easily off your day. With time you yourself will start getting bored of this.
Your routine should be simple and designed according to your body clock not around someone's idea of glow up.
Imagine the time you spend doing face masks, step by step routine on a DAILY BASIS. The real glow up is when you ace both internal and external. Do what your body needs.
Let's be real. Real life walking women have a job/internship, colleges to attend, courses to complete, social life to survive. Now tell me is it humanly possible to perform all these tasks with those elaborate routines.
Please, you don't need to do daily exfoliation, this elaborated skincare routines not just this if we talk about the mental glow up that is expected to be done along with all this. Where the fuck is the balance?
And what are you thinking while bullying your skin with so many products??? Are you fine?? Keep it simple. Rather than that focus on what you eat. Workout regularly with exercises that work for your body. Not what is trending. Read books that you find interesting and then couple it up with must reads and so on and so forth. This is the way you do it.
Otherwise you are only going to spiral down in self hatred and no you don't need to spend loads of money trying to buy those things you see in the moodboards. They are unrealistic.
These things are good and are great self love techniques but only to be done twice or thrice a month. Regularly?? I doubt you could keep up with it.
Make yourself busy but in things that would give results and are curated to your reality not to the moodboards you see on Pinterest.
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elenasunshinemagazine · 1 year ago
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How can a woman achieve confidence in life?
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To understand what your life strategy is - confident or not? Think about how often you make decisions on your own? Relying only on yourself?
Without regard to the authoritative opinion or advice of a friend? If more often you are looking for support for your decision from other people, it means that you have a strategy for the life of an insecure person.
Absolute confidence is when you make 99% of the decisions in your life on your own, relying only on your inner feelings and your own competencies. And only in 1% of cases this can happen with a consultation with a specialist, for example, a doctor or your financial adviser.
Still, why is this happening? Why are women looking for support and support from the outside?
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Firstly, it is public pressure. Society does not welcome the absolute autonomy of women and their independence. From early childhood we learn that what you have to do is more important than what you feel.
About then the connection with oneself begins to be lost, the external begins to prevail over the internal, the sense of self is determined by how others perceive and evaluate you: parents, wives / husbands, children, bosses, colleagues. A socially approved position is a woman's attachment to her family, husband and children.
Secondly, the lack of self-belief. Or rather, the lack of trust in yourself and your inner voice. Women in the modern world live more on the male principle. The urban rhythm strongly distances us from the body, drowning out the ability to listen and hear ourselves. Excessive tension blocks internal information flows.
Thirdly, it is the need for approval by other people. This program is embedded in childhood and works at the survival level.
A rhetorical question: "And what to do?" We take actions in three directions - intuition, erudition, communication.
So, the plan of movement:
1. Intuition
To begin with, remember that you have it. Someone has less developed intuition, someone has more. But everyone has it. This is your sixth sense and you can trust it. The main task is to learn how to interact with it.
2. Erudition
Improve your competencies. In a new field, we always feel insecure, but as you master everything new and new, you will begin to understand that you are able to draw independent conclusions and make personal judgments. And don't be afraid to do it. Go to training courses, upgrade your professional level, develop your creative potential. Learn foreign languages. Read more literature, different – classical, specialized, popular, professional.
3. Communication
The skill of high-quality communication in our world is welcome and simply necessary. Even if you are an introvert, start communicating with people. Both in virtual space and in real life. Make new acquaintances. Learn networking. In order to make it easier to win people over and establish contacts, practice the exercise "I love you". Every day, send 5 people, familiar and unfamiliar, a mental message "I love you."
You direct your love to a specific person. This practice works great with conflicted people, they become pink and fluffy. A confident life strategy is something that trains. The world presents its own rules and standards. He's unstable.
One authority today, another tomorrow. Today, this is black, and this is white. Tomorrow is the opposite. Therefore, it is necessary to develop self-confidence, faith and trust. Then the chaos of life will not be able to shake you much. You will be stable. This is what is required for psychological and physical health.
You are comfortable in this, because in this inevitable relationship you maintain your integrity. You are always there – and from this support, from this equilibrium center, any contacts are built more harmoniously, easier.
Communicate with purposeful, ambitious, brave, kind, confident individuals. They will charge you with energy, positive. You will strive to become better, start doing yourself, your self-education. Start working on thinking. And life will change dramatically.
How to achieve this?
It requires a willingness to go deep into yourself, when faced with complex feelings, and sometimes with frightening emptiness, regular practice of mindfulness or therapy is needed, and most importantly - your included attention.
It is necessary to constantly monitor how you feel, what you feel, what you think about yourself. How you talk to yourself in internal dialogues, how you define yourself at every moment of time, what you really want without regard to how it is accepted or correct that you really love.
Disclaimer
In case of health problems, do not self-medicate, consult a doctor.
https://elenasunshinemagazine.com/mental-health/how-can-a-woman-achieve-confidence-in-life/
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argyrocratie · 1 year ago
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#kind of half serious tho #depending on where you live #a more or less liberalized patriarchy #it gave up a lot but still has its dues #bourgeois and parallel regimes have mess up its organs but always it stay in the marrows of the bones wheter it's flesh advances or retreat
to expend a bit from my tag i'm ironically reminded of proudhon (ironically because of proudhon own patriarchal tendencies notably in his oposision to woman franchise) who i believe ilustrate some of what i mean where he says:
No boss. — The boss is given by polygamy. The husband is boss of his harem, like the cock with his hens, the bull with his heifers, the stag with his hinds, etc. — Where there are couple, there is separation and anarchy.
The boss is then given by patriarchy and slavery.
The boss is given by the bourgeois system, boss of the establishment, etc.
The boss is inevitable, in every state that is governed; and the republicans have produced nothing as well organized as the constitutional monarchy, which they copy while corrupting it.
Archy or anarchy then, no middle ground.
-P.-J. Proudhon, “What, Finally, is the Republic?”
of course unless i'm mistaken when he says "Where there are couple, there is separation and anarchy." by separation he mean separation of property and implicitly linking women to goods
but i would say that not so much coupling but separation as uncoupling, freedom of association is the crux of the anarchy
i'm reminded of anthropologist Charles Macdonald notion of strong andd weak ties:
I define a strong tie as a tie that 1. cannot be dissolved by a unilateral decision of one of the parties, 2. endures until death and beyond, 3. is enforced by an external agency, not the parties themselves.
(...)
It appears that strong ties of a personal nature were predominantly displayed at a certain historical stage, under the form of collective killings of followers, what Testart has analyzed and brilliantly theorized under the name of “les morts d’accompagnement” (Testart 2004). Archaeological evidence of mass graves predating the birth of great empires, such as Rome or China, tells the story of a particular practice observed around the world: slaves, servants, followers, dependants, consorts and familiars (including horses) were put to death after the demise of a prominent person or man of high status. If we follow Testart (id.) these deaths are a clear sign that personal links of loyalty and fidelity (“fidélité personnelle”) were institutionalized, leading to the killing or self‐sacrifice of dependents and followers.
Loyalty to a person until death and beyond became in many places around the world an institution. It is only this kind of personal loyalty, together with the widespread development of slavery and debt‐bondage in primitive and pre‐state societies that led to the formation of early states. These were nothing but transference of strong ties between persons, to strong ties between subjects and rulers and, later on, between citizens and nation. Strong ties once internalized make tyranny acceptable as La Boétie told us five hundred years ago in his aptly entitled essay “De la Servitude Volontaire”.
Anarchic and open‐aggregated communities observed by ethnographers do not put any premium on such ties. They display loyalty and trust to a high degree but very rarely to the point of self‐sacrifice and death outside the domestic family. Instead they rely on weak ties, like those of friendship and partnership. Weak ties are, and probably were in a majority of pre‐Neolithic communities, the material with which communities were built. These ties entail a continual negotiation between partners and consociates, leading to frequent and repeated fission and fusion of groups, bands, local settlements and other temporary forms of association (Dentan 1992). Weak ties bind people together but do not weld them together. They permit solidarity and cooperation, occasionally create intense feelings, but are not forever, and at any moment anyone can and may shake them loose. They imply no long‐term commitment. They must match certain requirements and obey what I have called “conditions of felicity”.
-Charles J­H Macdonald, “Can anarchism be a critical point in the new anthropological imagination? Contributions of anarchy and anarchism to social theory.” (2010)
_
in the matter of anthropology and anarchy an interesting possible exemple of "degenerate patriarchy" might be those "powerless chief" notably theorized by Pierre Clastre (if with too much overgeneralization) where groups have an official chief who is denied coercicive power (he (and he is a he) can propose, try to convince basically must talk but can not give orders) but he is also the only one of the group allow to have more than one wife
some have theorize that (at least some of) those societies were people having flee or who where the result of the colapse of more hierarchical/patriarchal societies
"actually we live in a sate of degenerate patriarchy"
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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years ago
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How police backdoors for online services let sextortionists target children
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An “Emergency Data Request” (EDR) is a warrantless demand by a police officer to a tech company, designed for white-hot emergencies when a cop needs an online service to cough up some of its user data to save a life or prevent a tragedy.
Criminals love EDRs. Once a crook breaks into a police email server (something so easy that the children running the LAPSUS$ crime-gang did it several times), they can send their own EDRs to online services, who will dutifully dox their own users. After all, if someone’s in mortal danger, there’s no time to stop and verify the cop’s identity:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/30/lawful-interception/#edrs
Children don’t just abuse EDRs, they���re also abused with EDRs. Facebook, Apple, Google, Snap, Twitter and Discord have all been tricked with fake EDRs into giving up sensitive information about underage children, according to a Bloomberg report by William Turton.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-26/tech-giants-duped-by-forged-requests-in-sexual-extortion-scheme?sref=ylv224K8
These EDRs were wielded by “sextoritionists” — sexual criminals who blackmail their victims into performing sex acts on camera; videos of these sex acts are used as leverage for increasingly extreme extortion demands.
There was a sextortion wave in the 2010s. It turned out that one extremely prolific sextortionist was a US Embassy staffer stationed in London, who ran a sextortion campaign that targeted at least 75 young women over two years:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/former-us-embassy-staffer-sentenced-to-nearly-five-years-for-sextortion/
A 19 year old targeted hundreds of girls and women, and was only caught when he tried to extort a former Miss Teen USA, who had connections that put her in touch with the FBI:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/miss-teen-usas-webcam-spy-called-himself-cutefuzzypuppy/
The men who attacked women in this first wave relied on a piece of malware called a “Remote Access Trojan” (RAT). A 2014 sweep of RAT criminals busted 100 men who had victimized 70,000 women and girls
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/more-than-100-arrested-in-global-crackdown-on-peeping-tom-malware/
But today’s sextortionist doesn’t need to break into his target’s computer. He can just send an email from a hacked police account to an online service and they’ll hand him all the information he needs to gain access to his target’s most sensitive data.
(Readers interested in learning more about how sextortion works in the real world are encouraged to read Lauren McLaughlin’s superb 2020 novel, “Send Pics”):
https://memex.craphound.com/2020/04/21/send-pics-ripping-brutal-amazing-novel-about-teens-sextortion-revenge-and-justice/
There are 18,000 police agencies in the US, making it impossible to determine whether an EDR comes from a real cop or not (and, of course, between the 18,000 agencies, it’s inevitable that some of those cops will make fraudulent EDRs for money or as a favor to a buddy).
What’s more, the online services have little or no clue about how their users’ data is being accessed and shared. Amazon had to fire a string of Chief Security Officers until it found a person so underqualified that he wouldn’t complain about the company’s incredibly reckless data handling. The result was a string of breaches that the company can’t even fully quantify.
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-failed-to-protect-your-data-investigation/
Amazon isn’t uniquely cavalier about your data. A newly published leaked Facebook memo reveals that the company’s privacy engineers have warned their bosses that the company has no way to know how it’s used your data:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21716382-facebook-data-lineage-internal-document
To quote those engineers: “We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will not use X data for Y purpose.’ And yet, this is exactly what regulators expect us to do, increasing our risk of mistakes and misrepresentation.”
Reporting for Motherboard, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai quotes an internal Facebook source who calls the company’s data handling “broadly speaking, a complete shitshow.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvmke/facebook-doesnt-know-what-it-does-with-your-data-or-where-it-goes
Let’s recap: the companies collect as much of your data as they can. They store it forever. They give it to anyone who has a police department email address, without question. And they don’t keep track of who they give your data to.
Image: Paulo Valdivieso https://www.flickr.com/photos/p_valdivieso/42906748201
CC BY-SA 2.0, modified https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
[Image ID: A padlocked barn door. The rusty padlock is emblazoned with a toy 'Junior Police' badge. Its hasp has been severed and a light-flare is shining through the severed portion. The barn door has been superimposed with a Matrix 'waterfall' effect.]
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letterboxd · 5 years ago
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Survival Mode.
In ten recent coming-of-age films, Ella Kemp finds the genre thriving—and looking very different than the 1980s might have predicted. Film directors and Letterboxd members weigh in on the specific satisfactions of the genre, especially in a pandemic.
There have been jokes, some more serious than others, about the art that will come out of this time. How many novels about a fast-spreading disease are you betting on? Will Covid-19 be better suited to documentary or fiction? But the art I’m most looking forward to, and revisiting now, is the art made about teenagers going through it.
Physical school attendance, so central to the John Hughes movies of the 1980s, is up in the air for so many. Sports practice, theater clubs, mall hang-outs; the familiar neighborhood beats of a teenager’s life are more confined than ever. All of us have had to tweak our reality to make the best of invasive changes forced upon us during the pandemic. In a sense, it feels like we are all coming of age.
Teenagehood, though, is a particularly tricky time of transition, and we don’t yet know the half of how the pandemic is going to impact today’s young adults—and, by association, tomorrow’s coming-of-age films. But in the last two years alone there have been enough brave new entries in the genre, about young people so enlivening, that there’s both plenty for young film lovers to lose themselves in, and plenty for us slightly older folks to watch and learn from.
So I sought out ten recent coming-of-age films (and several of the directors responsible) to see what these stories teach us about teenagers, and how we might empathize with them. The list—Jezebel, Beats, Zombi Child, Blinded by the Light, Selah and the Spades, The Half of It, Dating Amber, Babyteeth, House of Hummingbird and We Are Little Zombies—is by no means exhaustive. But it allows us to look at several things.
Firstly, that the genre is thriving, considering these titles barely scratch the surface. Secondly, these ten films look a whole lot different than their 1980s counterparts. Six are directed by women. Four tell queer stories or, at least, feature queer characters in a prominent subplot. Seven tell stories about Black people, Asian people, Pakistani people. Only three are from the US.
And: they’re really good. They understand teenagers as angry, energetic, passionate, confused, desperate and deeply intelligent beings, echoing the nuances that we know to be true in real life, but that can often get watered down on the screen.
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Blinded by the Light (co-written and directed by Gurinder Chadha) We Are Little Zombies (written and directed by Makoto Nagahisa) Beats (co-written and directed by Brian Welsh)
The protagonists in these first three films use music to feel their way through panic, brought on by both internal and external circumstances. Screaming another’s lyrics, furiously composing their own anthems, dancing along and sweating out their fear to the beat, the ongoing beat, and nothing more. It’s salvation, it’s release—when you’re left with your own thoughts, the only way to fight through them is to drown them out.
Music acts as a source of enlightenment in Blinded by the Light, directed by Gurinder Chadha (who made 2002’s coming-of-age sports banger Bend it Like Beckham). In Thatcher’s Britain, Pakistani-English Muslim high schooler Javed discovers the music of Bruce Springsteen, and his world bursts wide open. The wisdom and fire of the Boss helps Javed to make sense of his own frustrations; that the film is based on a real journalist’s autobiography makes it all the more potent.
Meanwhile, in Beats, a real-life law enacted in Scotland in the 1990s temporarily banned raves: specifically, the gathering of people around music “wholly or predominantly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. As the UK struggles to contain a youthful, exuberant new counter-culture, the central characters face what it means to enter adulthood. The answer to both: a forbidden rave.
“I have to say, there’s probably no such thing as teenagers without complicated emotions,” We Are Little Zombies writer-director Makoto Nagahisa tells me. The Japanese filmmaker—who loves the genre, known as ‘Seishun eiga’ in Japan—wrestles with the frustration and hopelessness of the world by giving his film’s four orphaned teens the tools, and the permission, to find solace in something other than their everyday life. Following the deaths of their parents, the quartet create their own catchy, cathartic, truth-bomb music; it’s an instant hit with kids across Japan, but the adults miss the point, of course—that the cacophony of superstardom is filling the silence of their mourning.
Nagahisa-san’s film is named after a fictional 8-bit Nintendo Game Boy game that the main character is addicted to. “I used to get through my day relatively painlessly by pretending I was a video game character whenever bad shit happened to me,” he explains. Teenagers “are constantly feeling crushed by reality right now… I want them to know that this is a valid way to escape reality. That reality is just a ‘game’. I want them to know they don’t need to face tragedies, they can just survive. That’s the most important thing!” Who else needed to hear that right now?
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Jezebel (written and directed by Numa Perrier) Zombi Child (written and directed by Bertrand Bonello) Selah and the Spades (written and directed by Tayarisha Poe) House of Hummingbird (written and directed by Kim Bo-ra)
Our next four films turn to technology, mythology, hierarchy and education to animate their protagonists’ lives with a greater purpose. In Jezebel, nineteen-year-old Tiffany finds her way through mourning with a new job, earning money as a cam girl and subsequently developing a bond with one of her clients. There’s a magnetic aura, one that harnesses grief and turns it into something more corrosive as this teen puts all her energy into it. Similarly there’s mysticism in the air in Zombi Child, in which Haitian voodoo gives a bored, heartbroken teenage girl a new purpose as she searches for a way to connect with the one she lost—and with herself.
Selah and the Spades and House of Hummingbird understand the third-party saviour as more of a structure, that of a school or an inspiring teacher. Selah finds herself by doing business selling recreational drugs to her classmates in a faction-led boarding school. Nothing mends a sense of aimlessness like power. This same framework lets Hummingbird’s Eun-hee, a schoolgirl in mid-90s South Korea whose abusive family invest their academic focus in her useless brother, search for love and find connection in her school books—and from the person who’s asking her to read them.
The films on this list are not perfect; some might be criticized for specifically following a formula, the tropes of the coming-of-age film, a little too well. Jezebel lets its protagonist rise and fall with familiarity, while Selah suffers the consequences of her extreme actions, and even Eun-hee reckons with a few recognizable pitfalls. But still, the fact that these films exist is “innately radical”, says Irish writer-director David Freyne, whose queer Irish comedy Dating Amber is covered below. The filmmaker describes the coming-of-age genre as mainstream, but in the best possible sense: “It’s a broadly appealing film,” he says.
This is why, to see these stories reframed with minority voices, with queer voices, is so quietly revolutionary. “The more you see them, the more broadly we see them being enjoyed—the more producers and financiers will realize these stories don’t have to be niche just because they happen to frame a minority voice. Everyone can enjoy it.”
Film journalist and Letterboxd member Iana Murray, a coming-of-age genre fan, echoes Freyne’s thoughts. “Representation is absolutely not the be-all end-all, but I’d love to see more coming-of-age films that reflect my experiences growing up as a woman of color,” she says, before introducing what I’d like to call the Rashomon Effect. “I see it as like one of those films that tell the same events from different perspectives, something like Rashomon or Right Now, Wrong Then,” she explains. “A story becomes even more vibrant when told through a different set of eyes, and that’s what happens when you allow women, people of color, and LGBT people to create coming-of-age narratives.”
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Dating Amber (written and directed by David Freyne) The Half of It (written and directed by Alice Wu) Babyteeth (directed by Shannon Murphy, written by Rita Kalnejais)
Which brings us on nicely to our last three: wildly different titles, each with young protagonists at war with themselves, trying to make sense of their bodies and minds as best they can. In this context, companionship is everything. Finding a platonic soulmate in Dating Amber, a sexual awakening in The Half of It, a first love to make a short life worth living in Babyteeth. Each film is directed with a verve and passion that you know must be personal.
The story of a frustrated boy in the closet in Dating Amber aches with care from Freyne behind the camera, while Alice Wu directs Ellie Chu, the main character in The Half Of It, with patience and the kind of encouragement that quiet girls who live a life between two cultures are rarely given. And with Babyteeth, Shannon Murphy returns Australian cinema firmly to the center of the movie map, with a quintessentially Australian optimism and sense of humor, which Ben Mendelsohn called “delightfully bent”.
These perspectives are specific to each teen, but the intensity transcends genres and borders. It manifests musically, verbally, visually, aesthetically. These teens connect with their favorite music and means of entertainment, but also simply to their favorite clothes and accessories—blue bikinis and green wigs, red neck-scarves and floaty white dresses. These details give the characters ways to reinvent themselves while standing still, which certainly feels apt for a life lived, for now, at home.
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‘Pretty in Pink’ (1986), written by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch.
Many argue that the coming-of-age genre peaked with John Hughes, who defined the framework in iconic 1980s films that have his stamp all over them, whether he wrote (Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful) or also directed them (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles). Hughes’ world view was of a specifically suburban, white, American corner of the world, which he filled with misfits and ultra-hip soundtracks. “John Hughes was to the genre what The Beatles are to rock and roll,” confirms Letterboxd member Brad, maintainer of the essential coming-of-age movie list Teenage Wasteland.
After Hughes, the genre tumbled, Dazed and Confused, into the 1990s—notable voices include John Singleton with his seminal Boyz n the Hood, and Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and Good Will Hunting. This was also the decade of Clueless, which informed the bright, female-forward fare of the 2000s, like Mean Girls, The Princess Diaries and the aforementioned Bend it Like Beckham. The last decade has seen new American storytellers step into Hughes’ shoes, including Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird and Little Women), Olivia Wilde and the writers of Booksmart, and the autobiographical voices of Jonah Hill (mid90s) and Shia LaBeouf (Honey Boy, directed by Alma Har’el).
It’s interesting to note—whether it’s the 1860s or the 1980s—that many coming-of-agers from the past decade take place in an earlier period setting. Social media has demanded the upheaval of entire lives, but it seems some filmmakers aren’t yet ready to grapple with its place on screen.
The audience, on the other hand, is far more adaptable. The way we’re watching coming-of-age films has shifted, and it’s more appropriate for the genre than we could have imagined. On the last day of shooting Dating Amber, Freyne recalls one of the young actors asking, “So, is this going to be on Netflix or something?” This is when cinemas were still open.
“That’s often how younger people are devouring content now,” Freyne reasons. His film, in the end, was snapped up by Amazon (a US release date is yet to be announced). “It’s creating a communal experience with the intersection of social media: live streams, fan art, daily messages… It’s made us feel incredibly connected, moreso than I think we would have got with a cinematic release.”
Streaming platforms also cater to one key habit of a younger film lover: the rewatch. The iconic teen films of the 80s embedded their reputations thanks to the eternal allure of the Friday night video store ritual, and constant television replays. These days, it’s only with a film finding a home on Netflix, on Amazon or on Hulu, that a younger person (or, in times of global crisis, any person) can both financially and logistically afford to devote themselves to watching, again and again, these people onscreen that they’ve immediately and irrevocably found a connection with.
It’s always felt hard to be satisfied with just one viewing of a perfect coming-of-age film—observe how many times Iana Murray has logged Call Me By Your Name. What is it about the slippery, universal allure of the genre? It’s possibly as simple as the feeling of being seen in the fog of intergenerational confusion. Says Nagahisa-san: “Grown-ups think of teenagers like zombies. Teenagers think of grown-ups like zombies. We’re never able to understand what others are feeling inside.”
“The reaction is always emotive rather than intellectual,” adds Freyne. “There’s something quite visceral and instinctive about coming-of-age films; it’s an emotional experience rather than an analytical one.” That emotional experience is tied up in the fact that we often experience coming-of-age movies just as we ourselves are coming of age, establishing an unbreakable connection between a film and a specific period in our lives. MovieMaestro Brad explains it best: “There is a bit of nostalgia in a lot of these films that take me back to my younger days, when life was simple.”
But that’s not to say only those coming of age can appreciate a coming-of-age film. On her favorite coming-of-age film, Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women, Murray explains, “It doesn’t see coming-of-age as exclusive to teenagers, because that process of growth is really about transition and change.” (In a similar vein, Kris Rey’s new comedy I Used to Go Here, in select theaters and on demand August 7, meets Kate Conklin, played by Gillian Jacobs, in a sort of quarter-life-crisis, needing to grow down a bit in order to grow up.)
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Natalia Dyer in ‘Yes, God, Yes’ (2019), directed by Karen Maine.
There is endless praise, conflict and wonder to be found in the ten films mentioned above—and all the ones we haven’t even gone near (Karen Maine’s orgasmic religious comedy Yes, God, Yes, now available on demand in the US, deserves an honorary mention, as does Get Duked!, Ninian Doff’s upcoming stoner romp in the Scottish Highlands). The thing about this genre is it’s raw, it’s alive, and it’s always in transition. Just when you might think it’s gone out of fashion, it emerges in a new and fascinating form. And yet, there are still so many filmmakers who haven’t tackled the genre. I asked my interviewees who they’d like to see take on a story of teens in transition.
“I’d love to see Tarantino’s take on a coming-of-age tale,” says master of the genre himself, MovieMaestro/Brad. Murray gives her vote to Lulu Wang, saying, “I love the specificity she brought to The Farewell, I think it would transfer well to a genre that needs to escape clichés.” Freyne, meanwhile, wants to see if Ari Aster might have another story about young people in him. Maybe something a bit less lethal next time.
Ultimately, “you write from empathy, not from experience,” says Freyne. I think the same goes for watching, too. It won’t be tomorrow, and it might not be this year, but eventually, the world will emerge from Covid-19. What will we have learned from the films that we watched while we were waiting? From the sadness, the angst, the determination, the rage and the passion?
Nagahisa-san already knows, and his advice is everything we need right now: “You don’t need others’ approval of who you are, as long as you understand and approve of yourself. Do whatever pops up in your mind. Live your life without fear or despair. Just survive.”
Related content
See where most of the recent releases mentioned here are virtually screening, in our Art House Online list.
Shannon Murphy talks to us about Babyteeth, and shares a list of her favorite Australian films.
Makoto Nagahisa’s 25 favorite teen movies
David Freyne’s 25 favorite LGBTQIA+ films
Growing Pains: The Ultimate Coming of Age Movie Challenge
(Happy) Queer Coming of Age Movies
Coming of age—but make it diverse
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aion-rsa · 4 years ago
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The Boys Season 2 Unveils the Daddy Issues Behind the Toxic Masculinity
https://ift.tt/2GXXppR
This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 2.
Most male monsters in fiction are made by women. Or, at least, it’s women who tend to get the disproportionate share of the blame when their creations turn out to be significantly less than civilized (perhaps because, historically, most of them were written by men). The most famous examples of murderer-moulding mothers are probably Norma Bates, Cersei Lannister, Olivia Soprano and, of course, Mrs. McAllister (momma raised a real little trap-setting psycho there). In real life, too, serial killers like Ed Kemper, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy and Dennis Nilsen were all brutalized or disappointed by their mothers to such an extent that to some people the link between their formative maternal experiences and their misdeeds seems as tight and as strong as a steel cable.
This isn’t the case with Amazon’s The Boys, where it’s bad or inadequate fathers who provide male characters with the bulk of their nefarious neuroses and murderous motivations. Wee Hughie (Jack Quaid) inherited and internalized his father’s cowed outlook on the world to the point where he almost didn’t fight back when Vought tried to brush his girlfriend’s death in an A-Train wreck under the carpet. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) was raised under the fast fists and hot temper of his old-school, tough-guy dad, whose mantra seems to have been kick first and don’t ask questions later, unless the question is: “Do you want me to fucking kick you some more?” “John” a.k.a Homelander (Antony Starr) doesn’t have a father in the conventional sense – as far as we know – but he was treated coldly, cruelly and dispassionately by his scientist ‘dad’, Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman). So to what extent have failed father figures forged the monsters who sit upon the show’s chessboard? What else is missing from their lives? And what could prove the key to their salvations?
The previously mentioned The Sopranos is a ripe comparison, being that it also deals with familial legacies, internecine struggles, and toxic masculinity. The hallmark HBO show took the bold step of sending its proto-typical alpha-male mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) to a shrink to deal with his panic attacks and baseline depression. His sessions with his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Braco), teased out the revelation that the root of his anguish and anxieties was his own mother, the irascible and melodramatic Livia (Nancy Marchand), who in the first season shifted her life-long modus operandi from trying to kill his spirit to literally trying to kill him. It’s not hard to trace a direct line from that callous maternal influence to Tony’s behavior, and its internal and external consequences (especially when you’re dealing with Melfi’s favoured Freudian approach, for which parental trauma is its raison d’etre). But as the series – and Tony’s therapy – progressed it became clear not only that Tony’s life was richer and darker than his mother’s input allowed for, but also that Livia herself wasn’t the two-dimensional, havoc-wreaking demigod of Tony’s fears and imagination. 
She, too, had been a victim of sorts; a slave to poverty and discrimination (on grounds of both race and gender); in thrall to a violent, charismatic criminal, a man who thought nothing of throwing men a beating, chopping off their pinkies or shooting them dead; a man who was out with one of his many mistresses on the night that she miscarried a baby and needed him by her side. Tony, his son, takes these revelations and buries them, as deep as they’ll go, partly because Tony’s world is a man’s world and men get a pass, but mainly to avoid the bright bulb of introspection from falling upon his own, very similar behavior. His mother gets the blame, but who really made Tony? 
The world of The Boys is, to an extent, a man’s one, too, except that the boys here don’t get a pass. Given its title, it’s a surprisingly feminist show for one that is also, on the surface at least, a testosterone-fuelled superhero show (albeit one that takes an anti-superhero stance). The female characters are strong, but not inhumanly, infallibly strong like some of the Marvel heroes they parody. They’re flawed, human, and fascinating. They kick ass, they fuck up, but they’re never one-note or scapegoats. Of course there are bad women and mothers out there in the real world, and we shouldn’t shy away from imagining or creating those kinds of stories, but what we’ve seen on TV and film over the last decade or so is the steady opening up of a multiplicity of perspectives that’s been busy enriching our cultural currency. We should roll with that for a while. There’s a lot of lost ground to catch up on. 
Read more
TV
The Boys Season 2 Succeeds By Allowing Its Female Characters to Shine
By Lacy Baugher
TV
The Boys Season 3: What to Expect
By Lacy Baugher
Perhaps much of the appeal of stories about bad mothers relies on our preconceptions of motherhood and the expectations that have always been laid upon women to be not just good mothers, but perfect ones. A bad mother stands out more than a bad father because for much of human history it’s been almost impossible to be classed as a bad father.        
Let’s take Butcher. Without his own father’s brutality he mightn’t have been capable of becoming the effective, remorseless killing-machine we know and love, but, on the other hand, without his father’s brutality, he mightn’t felt the urge to pursue his vendetta in the first place. He might have been more like an immediately post-A-Train Hughie. But here’s the rub, because, arguably, a world with Homelanders needs Butchers, and plenty of them. There’s a weird and tragic duality at play here. Homelander is who he is largely because of his own failed father, so really the two men are destroying each other, and the world around them, because of their daddy issues.  
Butcher himself is a flawed father figure. He uses a grief-wracked Hughie as a pawn to pursue his own vendetta against The Seven, showing the same sort of callous disregard Homelander might show an underling. But through Butcher’s influence Hughie learns to be (or is forced to become) bold, assertive, even brutal; the sort of son his own father could never have let him be; wouldn’t have known how to kindle. In time, almost despite himself, Butcher comes to care about Hughie, albeit not always in a conventionally paternal way. Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) tells Butcher early on this season that Hughie is his ‘pit canary’; if something bad happens to Hughie, then Butcher will know he’s gone too far. So if Butcher can be said to be the kind of father that Hughie never had, then Hughie, in turn, can be said to be the conscience that Butcher long forsook in favor of bloodshed.  
For better and worse the men in The Boys are made by their fathers, but that only tells half the story. Their fathers, and they themselves, are aided in their osmotic, Franken-Freudian fuck-ups by the sometimes literal, sometimes figurative absence of a mother figure. Hughie’s mother? – MIA; Butcher’s mother? – passive; Homelander’s mother? – accidentally hugged to death by a young Homelander (she was a scientist Homelander had thought of as a mother, not his biological mother). 
The lack of a maternal presence bleeds most noticeably into Hughie’s and Homelander’s lives. Hughie is insecure and desperate for attachment. His romance with Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is sweet, but carries a mild undercurrent of mommy issues. What Hughie really seems to want from Starlight is words of encouragement, validation, co-dependency and a tuck-in at bedtime. Even though their relationship is sexual, there’s something charmingly chaste about it at the same time. 
It would be impossible, though, to trump Homelander’s mommy issues, manifested as they are by a fierce predilection for suckling, and a fondness for warm titty milk. Homelander may be peerlessly physically strong, but of all the show’s characters – and this is perhaps something of an understatement – he’s the most psychologically fragile.
Dr. Vogelbaum laments that the lack of a mother in Homelander’s life made him aggressive and full of hate. Putting aside for a moment this rather idealized notion of women and motherhood, if we assume that in Homelander’s case the observation is correct – and that Homelander is also on some level aware of how he’s been warped by this absence (the roots of his fetish surely can’t have escaped him) – then it’s interesting that he would choose to rob his own son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), of the loving maternal influence of which he himself was deprived. 
By stealing Ryan away from his mother near the end of season two – by fracturing their bond and their reality – he risks making Ryan as miserable as he was as a child; worse, in truth, because Homelander never had a loving mother to miss. While The Boys deals very well with its female characters, it hasn’t yet explored motherhood in any great depth, except to show the consequences to fatherhood when it’s absent. Season 3 may very well add some texture by exploring in flashback form Stormfront’s (Aya Cash) relationship with her now-departed daughter, or by bringing Hughie’s mother into the fold, now that we know she isn’t dead.
While Homelander’s actions vis a vis Ryan are fuelled by his malignant, myopic selfishness, and his screaming God complex, the evolution of his feelings towards the boy hinted at a capacity for redemption. As hellish as the family unit Stormfront manipulates Homelander into creating – Nazi eugenicist mother, psychopathic father, and kidnapped child – the experience of being in that family seems to soften something in him, at least for a short while. He appears receptive to and empathetic towards Ryan’s fears, and even appears not to relish the idea of Stormfront filling his head with racist propaganda. Just for a moment, salvation seems possible.
Ultimately, though, no one can allow Homelander to guide Ryan’s destiny, potential for change notwithstanding. Ryan is too powerful and volatile to risk Homelander stamping his skewed outlook upon his soul. Ironically, the act of saving his mother from Stormfront propels Ryan along the same trajectory as his father – both have now killed their mothers. I wonder if Ryan, like Dexter before him, will be born in blood, the splatter pattern arranging itself into the shape of Homelander’s cape. 
Butcher isn’t Ryan’s father, but his fealty to his dead wife and her cast-iron concept of family helps raise him from the swamp of his primal urges, resulting in him doing the right thing by both her and the boy who is the son of his greatest enemy. Clearly Butcher isn’t his own father either, his selflessness here indicating an encouraging break from the poor way he was parented. 
Perhaps The Boys isn’t trying to communicate anything about solely fatherhood or solely motherhood but rather family itself; its power to make someone belong; its power to save. The family Homelander experienced was predicated on a falsehood, but he liked the feel of it nonetheless, and it threatened to humanise him. Butcher has a family now, too – his friends, The Boys, the people around him who would die for him, and vice versa – and a surrogate son in Hughie. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and Frenchie (Tomer Capon), whatever faint promise of romance swirls around them, have found for now a joyous familial bond, like brother and sister. And Mother’s Milk is now back in the bosom of his estranged family, a moment that must rank among the series most touching. 
cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });
All Happy families, then? For now. But Homelander might have something to say about that in season three.  
The post The Boys Season 2 Unveils the Daddy Issues Behind the Toxic Masculinity appeared first on Den of Geek.
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lifepros · 5 years ago
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#9655
When i was young i saw a need to change my life. So i compiles 16 rules to live by. I would read them every day and try to apply them and work on them. I had copies in places i could see them many times a day. On my fridge, locker, binder and bedroom door.
Accept everything the way it is This is law one. Before you can continue with the other fifteen laws you must accept everything the way it currently is, in your life. Accept your job, accept your relationship - just accept everything the way it is. The only way you can evolve as a human being is to firstly accept that you need to evolve. Accept there are things in your life that are not going to plan, things you feel you deserve more of. When you accept all these things you are in control. To be in control of your life is to have the ultimate power over your destiny and overall purpose here on this planet. Take a moment to think about the way your life currently is, think about your financial situation and think about your social situation and everything else you have going on. Once you've done this, move on to law two.
Take Responsibility You need to take complete 100% responsibility for everything in your life that you thought of in law one. Everything you are today is because of you. You are your own doing. After you've accepted what you are and you've taken responsibility for the entire course of your life you can begin the process of improving areas you are not happy with. Work on yourself, not others Think of a person you are just getting to know. How do they make you feel? Do they make you feel nervous? Is their opinion important to you? Do they make you feel that you've got to impress them at every step? No. They don’t make you feel anything. You make yourself feel this way. There is no need for you to work on them by impressing them, since the issues of you thinking you need to impress them are all internal. It's yourself that is the issue. You've taken responsibility for who you are. Now you can start unwinding the negative parts of your situation. If you spend the majority of your time ‘working' when you're interacting with a people, you're doing it wrong. It should flow. Stop making identity meaning from external events, things or people You are not your car. You are not your house. You are not your money. You are nothing external, (external will be everything that is outside of you), so there is no need to think you are. You need to severe the connection you have with associating yourself as anything external. When you are called a name, let's pick ‘loser', that does not mean you are a loser. This is an external event and therefore has no impact on your inner identity. These things should be shrugged off as mere childish behaviour from the person providing it. If you are struggling with inner identity issues then most likely you are accepting external events as being true and you question yourself. Questioning yourself will allow the external event to grow inside of you like a cancer until you start believing it's an internal identity that you carry. Let go of all external events and issues that you currently carry and from this second onwards, deny all further external events, things or people that judge you in anyway shape or form. You make your inner identity decisions, no-one else. Failure is great; it's the best learning process Without failure you wouldn't be half the person you are now. When you successfully complete something you gain what you want. When you fail something you don't gain what you want. There is only one major difference with success and failure and that when you fail, you learn a great lesson. Learning that lesson in most cases is more important than what you gained for succeeding. This means you should go for that new job, you should do it because whatever happens you will gain something. Compare your progress only with yourself Everyone is different and there will always be people better than you and worse than you, this is just a fact with the amount of people running around today. When you achieve something you should only compare it to your previous achievements and see how far you've come personally. Comparing to other people will put your achievements in the hands of the external and as we covered earlier, you need to stop making internal meaning from external events. If you don't measure up success wise to one of your friends, this doesn't mean you're a failure. It means you are on a different race track and you're running a different pace. You may have a friend who scores 95% on tests. This is not something to beat or challenge and you shouldn't be reading posts such as this to do such a thing, because it will almost always end in failure and as we talked about earlier, failure leads to a great learning. So I'm saving you time by telling you now that the great learning you will learn is that you don't need to compare yourself against other people, only yourself. Evolve constantly Do you read? If you don't, you should. If you do, you should read more. I'm not being mean by saying that to you, I'm just saying that you should evolve constantly. Always move forward towards what you want. Always improve yourself with new ideas and information developed by other people. Always develop yourself with new experience by doing new things. Ever climbed a mountain? Go for it! Evolving constantly should be something you do for yourself. Make sure you remember that you are not evolving for your wife, your boss, your friends or that girl you want. You are evolving for yourself, which brings us to the next law. Stop seeking approval You do not need approval for anything you do. You especially do not need approval from strangers in the sense that you approach them and basically ask for it by feeding them something like "Can I ask your name?" Approval seeking is bad because it shows your inner confidence and how much you lack it. The only person that should give you approval is yourself. When you've done a good job, you should congratulate yourself and pat yourself on the back. Don't do things to achieve approval from others because in the long run you will be disappointed. Make yourself the centre Do you hold any beliefs such as extremely good looking or successful people are above you? Or are not equal to you in any way shape or form? If so, you need to delete that belief. You need to make yourself the centre. This basically means that you are in charge of you. There is no-one above you that has the ability to dictate to you your way of life. Being the centre, everything revolves around you. Most people assume when I say that I'm asking you to be selfish and arrogant. Believe me I'm not saying that. I'm merely saying that you should hold yourself in high regard instead of holding people above you. Everyone else is your equal. When someone looks up at you and thinks you are above them, help them. Show them how they can be the centre too. Do not get an ego around this law. Aim for long term gratification This means that you should completely stop your short term thinking. Short term thinking involves you doing something to gain here and now. For example, did you think this post would have gave you 16 perfectly good laws that'll change your life in 5 minutes as you read? I bet some of you did. Instead of thinking about things short term, think long term. This means you need to plan the next year, 5 years, 10 years or whatever, instead of just planning tomorrow. By planning long term you put yourself in the frame of mind of a successful person and you will enjoy long it more. Short term is easy to plan, easy to get and easy to lose. Long term plans are the plans that last the rest of your life. Never whine or complain The first ten laws were very universal in their use. The last 6 laws will focus more on what you should do in order get what you really want. Never whine or complain. Whining or complaining is the trademark of low status individuals who are not worth much. By whining or complaining you are basically telling everyone who sees you do it, that you have no control over your life and you are completely lost. Eliminating all whining and complaining is the way forward. Control your emotions I don't mean become a robot. I simply mean for you to control your emotions that show weaknesses. To a certain extent, weakness can be helpful but for now I'd just like for you to limit the weak emotions you may show. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous law on no whining or complaining. Be honest and direct This is one of my favourite laws by far. By changing this simple thing about you can change so much in your life. Being honest and direct gives you so much status with people that it's unbelievable. I assume it's because it's not so common these days to find a person who will speak their mind and be completely blunt, honest and direct about anything. This shows complete self-confidence and strength as a man or women to be able to speak your mind without fear of repercussion. Lead As a strong person you are bound by certain traits that you are born with. These traits include dominance, strength and leadership. People are hardwired to notice people who are leaders, they find them very commanding. Being a leader is a massive advantage in the real world since you have the power to command. If you aren't the leader of your social group now, maybe you should create another where you are the leader to test this out. I assure you that leadership is one of the gold coins of life. Don't be boring or predictable Being boring or predictable will leave people wanting more. People want the excitement and uncertainty of you being unpredictable. They find it very thrilling. If you find yourself repeating the same routine day in day out, change, because you are boring. Turn everything into an adventure This again is one of my favourite laws. Being a person of adventure is a tough thing to do, but the rewards are endless. If you treat everything as an adventure not only will the masses notice but they will queue up to go on the adventure with you. This is an extremely important trait to show and this is the final law of the 16 that you need to be successful. Be that person of adventure.
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trans-advice · 5 years ago
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Hey, for the past 5 or so years I have privately identified as nonbinary or not conforming to any gender, and even recently requested that my boss and coworkers use they/them pronouns. About a month ago I stumbled across a "gender critical" blog and started reading it. I know it's a bad idea to engage with trolls, especially when it will impact your sense of self, but I felt restless that my existence was being debated and wanted to hear the other side. Now I am feeling confused (1 o 2 asks)
I’m feeling confused and gross, wondering if all this time I have been actually working against my own feminist beliefs, or if I’m just being naive and getting indoctrinated. Like,I worry about me being a female who simply didn’t subscribe to gender stereotypes, tricking myself into thinking I"wasn’t like the other girls". I have also been wondering about what it means to identify into an oppressed group, and why we can’t talk about it without being dismissed as a dumb TERF. (1 o 2 asks) Thx
— Eve: CW: long post, possibly rambley, could’ve used better editing, transphobia, “gender critical”, recuperation, discussion of “terf” politics, recuperation of liberation movements, politics, oppression, rape culture, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist,
So basically I have tried for almost 4 weeks to write a response detailing this stuff. however it’s gotten too unwieldy. i tried to condense it, but this was as close as i got. it’s practically like 3 drafts back to back. I couldn’t figure out the differences & when i saw similarities it seemed significantly different enough. so I’m not editing any further. here’s a mindvomit. i wish i had this more polished but I can’t do that & i didn’t get a response.
however I’m going to make a history book recommendation, a referral to gendercensus2020, and i need to emphasize that these are much more like personal beliefs & not generally the tone of this blog which aims to give advice & positivity, while this is inherently political, the good bad & ugly. and there are trans people of various persuasions so I don’t want alienate them. i dissecting some ideologies that are transphobic, how they became that, how they got recuperated, and how you can find the same concerns being addressed. I’m answering this because it totally makes sense to me that this is asked in good faith & I want to respect your concerns & show that there are better methods of liberation activism that are trans affirmative, or at least must become & develop into such.
So I’m going to recommend the book “Transgender History (Second Edition)” by Susan Stryker, which I have put on our blog’s google drive account, so hence a link. It goes into the historic common ground between the feminists & LGBT+ peoples. It also gets into historic movements. And on top of that, the first chapter is literally a list of terminology deconstructing gender, which is also helpful for analyzing topics feminism analyzes..
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IvCwNvCJ_EiDmOer4zS8SbFGz4m-WDJ1
another thing you need to know regarding the label lesbian back in the day is that it was a catchall for any woman who didn’t have sex with men. now granted, this was a cisnormative understanding, but basically lesbians included celibate women, asexual women, and of course bisexual women in addition to gay women.
basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money to have sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (granted, communities cannot be monoliths if they want to be ecosystems, like any movement label there are different interpretations made by members of it, and therefore there are some strands that uphold a homonormative appreciation for conversion therapy. perhaps a middle ground for understanding how that happened is that joke about macho sexuality purity “if a man masturbates with his hand, he’s using a man’s hand to get off, then it’s gay.” granted, there was of course a political/economic reason to this, but still, it seems in terms of history that this joke was considered actually legitimate.)
“lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included ace, celibate & gynephiliac women. part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married which I’ll detail a few paragraphs from now. (while this next thought could be incorrect because I did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, I think the vestiges of those economic pressures are basically the gist of “comphet”.) the goal of political lesbian as well as lesbian separatism was to build an economy/get money that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, via marriage, pregnancy etc. so basically in an effort to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.
however these networks ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. it makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.
> The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210] >
birth control helped to liberate women & that accommodation/handicap for reproductive health disabilities (disability is merely inability to do something that’s Normative. so if having a uterus, pregnancy/menstruation/having breasts etc aren’t considered normal, which is especially common in a patriarchal society for these examples, then it’s disability.) It should be said that due to the desire for bodily autonomy to regulate our own body parts, as well as a desire to manage our fertility & sterilization, the transgender movement has a lot in common with feminism’s female-as-disability movement.)
it should also be noted that before the medical transitioning became accessible that us trans people relied a lot more on social transitioning than medical transitioning. it should also be mentioned that the medical procedures are available & used by cisgender people too.
that being said, since both cis females & transgender women were denied birth control etc, there was a very intense fear of impregnation happening & trans women going back in the closet not only to get money under patriarchy but also because life raising a kid is hard. like if you’ve ever seen “the stepford wives” & look at how the ally husband betrays his feminist wife, then that should clue us into how a lack of birth control scared us.
the problem with the school of feminism that emphasizes physiological sex over gender identity (in order to deny the existence of trans people with female-organs or not) is that it doesn’t account for birth control & how that’s affected the landscape, the economy etc, the revolutionary impact of birth control basically. it also ignores that trans people & cis women feminists have the same goals when it comes to getting freedoms about reproductive rights & bodily autonomy. therefore it ends up being transphobic & wanting to run back into the times when we didn’t have abortion access because they want to hurt us.
That being said though, we need to have birth control & more in order to help liberate trans people too, so if somewhere doesn’t have birth control, then we’re not doing well either because it’d pay a lot more to be transphobic (which of course it doesn’t now when we have birth control & various medical & other technologies). i think what I’m trying to say is that similar to disability accomodations clashing with each other, if we of the women’s liberation, the trans liberation, and the gay & lesbian liberation, and the bisexual & ace liberation get stranded then we’re all doomed. granted we might be doing that due to defensiveness with hostility similar to how in the 1980s feminism got very conservative in USA & how some transgender people get spared in systems with strict gender conformity & anticolonialist values, it’d be wrong to say that all our liberations are in conflict with each other. they can be mishandled, but ultimately, safety still tends to favor cisheteropatriarchal people. internalized patriarchal thinking is like internalized queerphobia, and so forth.
I want to emphasize that it is relatively easy for transgender people especially nonbinary people to find gender critical discourse somewhat appealing. Here’s why: TERFs & Gender Critical discourse is agender-normative disability discourse regarding reproductive health & other AFAB organs. (a disability is being unable to do things that society considers normative. so if you can’t drive & your locale de facto requires it, then that’s a disability. also in usa you’ll find that pregnancy & disability are the main things welfare programs prioritize. a pregnancy can be harmful, but can be easier with the right monitoring etc. which again is the same with disability.)
the problem though is that they then insist on misgendering you as one of the binary genders based on objectification of your body (specifically, “morphology”). point being, because you feel dysphoric over being misgendered as something nonbinary as being mislabeled as cisgender, this implies that you are indeed transgender.
https://gendercensus.com/post/612238605773111296/the-gender-census-2020-is-now-open
Now to be clear, there are historical economic considerations that made the decisions to specialize on the intersectionality of cisgender AFABs, but the economy & technology has changed. Basically marriage back in the day was economically necessary because there was effectively no birth control available. Therefore, to get child support etc, required getting the father to pay the consequences. However, marriage was very much a chattel property institution, marital rape was still legal, and women couldn’t get credit etc in our own names.
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At the same time, similar to birth control being unavailable, hormones & other procedures for medically transitioning trans people were unavailable as well, which meant social transitioning & wardrobe etc were the main methods of affirming our gender. however, we sometimes got lucky & had a doctor write us a note affirming our gender & sometimes we got even luckier & govts accepted this. this however required getting labelled sick & begging doctors to give us treatment & getting money for this since insurance companies etc still discriminated against transgender people even when we agreed to have our gender identity situation labelled as sick & medically necessary. (similarly insurance companies still refuse to cover abortions & so do some doctors & hospitals.)
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So this meant that AFABs were concerned about getting hijacked via impregnation. Because of the patriarchal economics of the whole thing, people were afraid of “the stepford wives” repeating itself in their own lives, where the mind can only handle what the ass can stand would mean trans women would go back into the closet.
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Granted, that’s a bit misrepresentative of trans women & trans people because trans people & cis women who can get pregnant do have a lot more in common. we take the same meds, go to the same clinics, menopause etc gets taken due to distress over how our bodies work, etc. then again, how would trans AMAB people have gotten the money for child support?
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historically & still to this day we basically had to beg doctors for the ability to get hormones to get a surgery to get a gender marker change & so on, which granted, what we trans people had available to us varied from locale to locale because it required collaborations of trans people, doctors, and the local govts & especially their police stations. again, before roe v wade abortion providers were super underground & secretive & there were specialized units at police stations for hunting down patients & providers under the charge of “murder”. it’s the same dynamics.
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seriously trans people & people with bodies that can get pregnant, menstruate, menopause, etc, we go to the same clinics! women’s health clinics take trans patients, planned parenthood takes trans patients, do i need to go any further on how trans people & feminists have the same interests regarding reproductive health?
as for political lesbianism:
basically the normal advice of wait til you have your own money before having sex, wait til your mid 20s, don’t rely on a man to pay your bills etc, all of this comes from political lesbianism, which was like be celibate or else have sex that doesn’t involve sperm. (i’m not sure what the conditions were like surrounding not piv sex among the straights, and therefore what the likelihood of avoiding piv sex was. I do know that rape culture was much more heavily normalized than it is now.)
“Lesbian” was a catchall for women who didn’t have sex with men. this included: - ace, - celibate - bisexual - gay women. Part of the reason these communities were conflated again had to do with the economic pressures to get married, (while this next statement could be incorrect because i did just learn about ‘compulsory heterosexuality" a month ago, i think the vestiges of those economic pressures such as weddings are basically the gist of “comphet”.)
The goal of Political Lesbianism as well as Lesbian Separatism was to build an economy that didn’t require submission to patriarchy, such as that of marriage, pregnancy etc. In efforts to build like support networks, “men” were shunned as much as possible.
However these networks, (partly due to lacking radicalization) ended up replicating capitalism, (partly due to oppression against communes & other anti-capitalist activities) which then replicated the oppressions of capitalism. It makes sense that transphobia had formed of assimilation/respectability politics for such feminists. To quote from the criticism section of the Wikipedia article on the women’s liberation movement.
> “The philosophy practised by liberationists assumed a global sisterhood of support working to eliminate inequality without acknowledging that women were not united; other factors, such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity (or lack thereof) created spheres wherein women’s interests diverged, and some women felt underrepresented by the WLM.[208] While many women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated their lives, they did not become radicalized and were uninterested in overthrowing society. They made changes in their lives to address their individual needs and social arrangements, but were unwilling to take action on issues that might threaten their socio-economic status.[209] Liberationist theory also failed to recognize a fundamental difference in fighting oppression. Combating sexism had an internal component, whereby one could change the basic power structures within family units and personal spheres to eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and the fight against racism are solely external challenges, requiring public action to eradicate inequality.[210]”
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chiseler · 5 years ago
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Sinner’s Holiday: An Ode to Pre-Code
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Once upon a time, Hollywood movies showed us Spencer Tracy skinny-dipping with Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck ducking into the ladies’ room with her boss in exchange for a promotion, and chorus girls warbling hosannas to marijuana.1 This, of course, was pre-Code: shorthand for the era of Hollywood movie-making between the advent of sound in 1929 and the ascendance of Hays Office censorship in 1934. The term is in fact a misnomer. The Production Code was written and officially adopted in 1930, but for the next four years, like Prohibition, it was flouted with near impunity. A look at a representative film of the time provides ample evidence of the Code’s impotence. Take Night Nurse (Wellman, 1931), starring Barbara Stanwyck: a fast, tough, sleazy and thoroughly enjoyable tale of a nurse who uncovers a plot to murder the children in her care for their trust funds.
The Code proclaimed that Undressing scenes should be avoided, and never used save where essential to the plot. Stanwyck and her roommate, played by Joan Blondell, often speak their lines while casually changing their clothes in front of the camera. An intern who walks in on Stanwyck in her scanties assures her, “You can’t show me a thing. I just came from the delivery room.” The Code said, The use of liquor in American life…shall not be shown. The mother of Stanwyck’s charges, who is never seen in any other state than blotto, boasts, “I’m a dipshomaniac—and I like it!” Stanwyck befriends an amiable bootlegger when she treats his bullet-wound and agrees not to report it, contrary to law. In gratitude, he sends her a bottle of rye. “But you’re not allowed to drink,” a square nurse objects. “No,” Blondell cracks, “But it’s swell for cleaning teeth.”  Adultery and profanity are both proscribed by the Code. The dipsomaniac is plainly carrying on a tawdry affair with her chauffeur, Nick (Clark Gable), and at one point Stanwyck, disgusted to find her passed out while her children are on the brink of death, rebukes her with, “You mother.” The Code said, Methods of crimes should not be explicitly presented. When sent out to get milk for the sick children, the amiable bootlegger breaks into a grocery store. As for Revenge in modern times shall not be shown, the movie ends with the bootlegger arranging for Nick to be “taken for a ride.” Did I forget to mention that Apparent cruelty to children or animals, the central trope of the plot, is also forbidden by the Code? Or that Gable socks Stanwyck on the jaw, or that Stanwyck gets her job by flashing her ankles at a doctor?
Code? What Code?
The appeal of pre-Code movies lies not in sex, violence or vulgarity (there’s more than enough of those in the infinitely more explicit cinema of the last forty years) but in their attitude, which conveyed the pessimism and irreverence of their time. Radical cultural changes in the wake of World War I, the farce of Prohibition, the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression combined to create a pervasive disillusionment and loss of respect for authority and traditional values. With rapid changes in fashion and technology, violent upheavals in economic and political conditions, society was wide open, hectically elated in the twenties, confused and frightened in the thirties. For a few years the lack of rigorous censorship allowed movies to channel the mood of the country and to capture society warts and all. They depicted adultery, divorce, rape, prostitution and homosexuality; bluntly portrayed alcoholism and drug addiction, glorified gangsters, con artists and fallen women. With a distinctive blend of cynicism and exuberance, they offered escapist entertainment but also bitter and sometimes radical visions of a society on the verge of breakdown. Oscar Levant famously quipped that he he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin; Hollywood too was grown up before it was innocent.
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The Con Man as Comic Hero: Blonde Crazy
During the silent era, censorship of films was piecemeal. Not only states but individual towns had boards of censors who screened movies and ordered cuts of shots or scenes they considered too racy. Projectionists simply snipped out the offending material, a practice that accounts in part for the incompleteness many surviving films from the twenties.2 In the early twenties, Hollywood was hit with a string of off-screen scandals, culminating in the trial of comedian Roscoe Arbuckle on charges of rape and manslaughter. The movie moguls, terrified that bad press would scare away audiences, invited Will Hays to become the guardian and public face of Hollywood’s morals. Hays, a Presbyterian elder and former postmaster general, became director of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association. He was an ideal choice to project a more wholesome image of Hollywood, but as a censor he proved ineffectual, and movies continued to be attacked for their evil influence on the country’s moral fiber.
Silent movies contained many elements that would not be seen during the Code era, including nudity, drug use and comic vulgarity. But the absence of sound gave film a degree of unreality that lent itself to fantasies like Valentino as an Arab sheik and Douglas Fairbanks riding a flying carpet, as well as to timeless moral fables like Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans, whose characters are called simply The Man and His Wife. From Mary Pickford as a spunky urchin to Harold Lloyd as a college freshman, actors frequently played much younger and more naive than they were in real life. Even the flapper films of Clara Bow and Joan Crawford, which purported to expose the shocking mores of modern youth, presented their heroines as pure though misunderstood. With the change to talkies, the silent era’s swashbuckling heroes, Great Lovers, ringleted sweethearts and carefree flappers suddenly seemed antiquated. Sound punctured fantasy and brought movies down to earth and up to date: never again would they soar to the heights of romance they had reached in silence.
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The coming of sound involved a complete reinvention of movies, amounting to the development of a new medium. The fluid spectacles of the silent screen gave way to small-scale films confined by the technical limitations of early sound recording technology to interiors and studio sets. The bulk of films from 1929 and ’30 are clunky and static, with stilted dialogue and acting. When talkies hit their stride in the early thirties it was with urban settings that could be recreated on studio backlots and zingy vernacular dialogue delivered at machine-gun pace by Brooklyn-bred voices. As the old screen gods faded, snappy young urbanites like James Cagney and Joan Blondell entranced audiences with their unaffected style and wised-up attitude.3 This new earthiness brought the censorship issue to a crisis; everyone agreed that movies were going “from bad to voice.” In 1930, still hoping to render external censorship unnecessary through self-regulation, the studio moguls officially adopted the Production Code, written largely by a Jesuit priest named Daniel Lord (hence it should, aptly, be known as the Lord’s Code rather than the Hays Code.) But this effort coincided with the onset of the Depression, when the movie studios were struggling like other businesses. Desperate to lure audiences back to theaters they defied the Code to create daringly risqué entertainment, treating the list of “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” as a list of “Do’s.”
The kick in pre-Code movies comes from the awareness shared by the actors and filmmakers that they are pushing the limits, getting away with something.  Since today’s films must work so hard to raise an eyebrow, they can never recapture the harmless fizz of Maurice Chevalier taking Jeannette MacDonald’s measurements in Love Me Tonight, or Jean Harlow slipping a portrait of her boss into her garter in Red-Headed Woman, or Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise picking each other’s pockets over the course of a romantic meal. (“I trust I may keep your garter?”)
There was a Code, after all, and movies were never completely uncensored. Because they couldn’t get away with explicitness or profanity, pre-Code movies specialized in innuendo. A line that would register with sophisticated adults but fly over the heads of children or more naïve viewers was considered ideal; it would protect the innocent while enticing the experienced. In The Half-naked Truth, a scheming promoter played by Lee Tracy checks into a fancy hotel with a Mexican carnival dancer he is passing off as a Turkish princess. Also with them is rotund Eugene Pallette, wearing a turban. The hotel clerk looks at the register Tracy has filled out and does a double take at Pallette. “Oh, they have them in all Turkish harems,” Tracy says, adding confidentially, “He’s very sensitive about it.” The joke is carried through the movie without a word being spoken that could bring a blush to the most prudish cheek. Pre-Code wasn’t always this artful—there’s nothing subtle about Dick Powell singing “I’m Young and Healthy” in a tunnel of chorus girls’ legs, or Tarzan and Jane romping around the jungle in loin cloths—but in general the naughtiness was low-key, not flaunted but there to be discovered by the alert viewer.
Movies offered vacations from reality in sleek art deco style: gleaming penthouses with twinkling views of Manhattan, shimmering bias-cut evening gowns and shiny top hats, buoyant jazz scores and intoxicated gaiety. Beyond mere escapism, there’s a loopy, zany, surreal streak in pre-Code that flourishes in the early Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields films, in Busby Berkeley musicals with their kaleidoscopes of semi-nude chorines and in the cartoons of the Fleischer Brothers, where Cab Calloway lends his voice to a ghostly dancing walrus singing “The St. James Infirmary Blues.” There’s a dizzy feeling, as if the whole of society, like Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot, had an empty stomach and it went to their heads.
Maybe it was the effect of hearing so often that prosperity was just around the corner while the country sank deeper and deeper into despair. Demented optimism was parodied—or endorsed; it’s hard to tell—in a bizarre cartoon short from Columbia Studios called Prosperity Blues. A world of wretched, baggy-eyed, trembling sufferers, of cobweb-infested banks and pitiful apple-peddlers, is transformed into a fascistic spectacle of crazed cheerfulness as the hero, to the tune of “Happy Days Are Here Again” slaps disembodied grins on people’s faces with the command “Smile, darn ya, smile!”
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“The age of chivalry is over,” James Cagney declares in Blonde Crazy (Del Ruth, 1931). “This, honey, is the age of chiselry.” Tough yet ebullient, Cagney personifies the essential pre-Code flavor of hard-boiled high spirits, sarcastically knowing and gleefully amoral, but not sour or misanthropic. Like nightclub owner Texas Guinan who greeted her customers with a hearty, “Hello, suckers!” the con artist hero of Blonde Crazy seems high on his own cynicism. Or maybe punch-drunk: you need a score card to keep track of how many times Joan Blondell slaps him, and he keeps coming back for more.
The films of Hollywood’s classical period are tight, smooth, polished. The scripts, dialogue, acting, lighting and art direction all gleam with controlled craftsmanship. Blonde Crazy, by contrast, skates on the verge of chaos: the actors seem to be winging it, cutting loose, seeing how far they can go. Cagney revels in this freedom, indulging in outrageous vocal mannerisms, flaunting his virtuosic control of his body as he darts and weaves through the role like a boxer in the ring, going from crafty schemer to world-class chump, wise-cracking operator to heart-broken lover. The anarchic, free-wheeling atmosphere of pre-Code, mined with slapstick and doubles entendres, often leaves modern audiences incredulous. Did I really hear that? Did they really mean...?
Like Night Nurse, Blonde Crazy methodically defies the Code. Undressing scenes? Cagney walks in on Blondell in the tub and appreciatively examines her underwear, doing a little shimmy with her panties, playfully holding her bra over his eyes like a pair of goggles. Liquor in American life? In an early scene Cagney, a bell-hop in an anything-goes hotel, peddles bootleg booze to a traveling salesman (Guy Kibbee). Adultery? Cagney and Blondell’s first con involves setting up the same salesman: caught “parking” with Blondell and a bottle of hooch, he offers a hefty bribe to the “cop” who’s actually their accomplice. Methods of crimes? The depiction of the movie’s confidence tricks, including a daringly simple ploy by which Cagney lifts a diamond bracelet from a jewelry store, is so detailed the viewer could easily copy them. Revenge in modern times? The movie lovingly details the means by which Blondell succeeds in fleecing a fellow con man who previously fleeced Cagney.
One scene is set in an elegant hotel lobby where men discuss the races while women share their plans to blackmail men with love letters. Every single person here is on the make. “Everyone has larceny in his heart,” Bert (Cagney) explains to Ann (Blondell) when he asks her to join him in the rackets. She’s reluctant, but only because she’s afraid of getting caught and sent to jail. Still, as the movie’s only hint of a conscience, she objects to out-and-out thievery and feistily protects her virtue. Bert keeps making passes at her and she keeps slapping his face, without harming their affectionate partnership. But the pair’s toughness keeps them from admitting the depths of their feelings. “I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you,” he tells her earnestly, then shrugs dismissively, “But if I can’t have you I’ll have someone else.” Still, by the time Ann tells him she’s marrying another man, your heart bleeds for Bert, the chiseler with the wandering eye. The other man is Joe Reynolds (Ray Milland) who chivalrously takes a cinder out of her eye and sends her a book of Browning (the poet, not the automatic, as Philip Marlowe would say.) She tells Bert that she’s going to marry Reynolds because he and his family know “a better way to live.” They care for “music and art and that kind of thing.” Of course he turns out to be the biggest louse of all, stealing from his firm and exploiting Bert’s devotion to Ann to make him the patsy. Bert winds up in jail and shot full of holes, but at least Ann finally admits her love and promises to wait for him.
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Joan Blondell was the best love interest Cagney ever had. More than able to stand up to him, she brings out an unexpectedly tender and sexy side of his cocky, wound-up persona. With her wide-eyed, appetizing looks, Blondell has a warm, open front but an inner reserve and caution. Like her fellow Brooklynite Barbara Stanwyck, she was born wised-up. Cagney too, for all his extroverted energy, has a core that is aloof, introverted, nervously intense. It is touching to see these two wary, skeptical souls embrace each other so openly. They have good reason to be wary; only suckers trust anyone in the world of Blonde Crazy. Con artists con fellow con artists, and “respectable” citizens lack basic decency. Near the end of the movie, another con man tries to interest Bert in a ploy that involves tricking the relatives of the recently deceased into paying for good luck charms that the dead supposedly ordered just before “kicking off.” Anyone stupid or trusting enough to be conned deserves to lose his money. Life is a continuous game of one-upmanship, a contest to see who can laugh last.
In Guys and Dolls, Sky Masterson explains that among his people, “to be marked as a chump is like losing your citizenship.” During the early thirties, audiences who felt like victims of an economic swindle reveled in the exploits of sharpies, shysters, smart guys who know all the angles and who outwit hypocritical representatives of wealth, authority, respectability. Cagney played more con men than gangsters: in Jimmy the Gent, as “the greatest chiseler since Michelangelo,” he asserts, “There’s only two kinds of guys in business, the ones that get caught and the ones that don’t get caught.” But for all his street smarts, Cagney has moments of child-like naivité. “The consummate urban provincial,” as Andrew Sarris called him, Cagney is irrepressible rather than unflappable. His driving energy, self-mocking humor, hot temper and sentimental streak expressed the pre-Code mood—fast-paced, excitable, hustling for a buck—as Bogart’s world-weary postwar cool expressed the mood of noir.
Later in the thirties, Frank Capra would glorify his own version of the sucker: in his films Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart embody the soul of America as innocent, optimistic, easily fooled. Smart cookies like Stanwyck and Jean Arthur would crumble in the face of such purity, renouncing their hardened attitude and determination to get ahead by any means necessary. Even pre-Code movies often bow, sometimes wistfully and sometimes perfunctorily, towards the old-fashioned virtues. Chivalry makes a come-back in the final scene of Blonde Crazy, one of the few genuinely romantic moments in Cagney’s career as he gazes up at Blondell with shining, worshipful eyes. Bert has demonstrated that love can turn a crooked guy into a knight in shining armor. But he’s got a prison stretch ahead of him, and then—what? Will he go straight, get a job? It’s hard to feel any great confidence in his future, since the lasting impression left by the film is that the cornerstone of American society is the confidence trick.
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“The End of America”: Heroes for Sale
The pre-Code years corresponded to the nadir of the Great Depression, when disgust with Herbert Hoover’s government deepened the country’s black mood, when the homeless called their shanty-towns “Hoovervilles” and the newspapers they wrapped themselves in “Hoover blankets.” Law-abiding citizens made folk heroes out of bank robbers like Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde, while hoboes sang of a utopia where “all the cops have wooden legs” and “the railroad bulls are blind.” The “bulls” were notorious for beating the hoboes they caught, shooting at them or forcing them to jump from speeding trains; even young teenagers weren’t spared. Being broke, jobless and homeless was treated not as a misfortune but as a crime. In the South, many towns used transients as slave labor: arrested on freight trains or in rail yards, they were put to work on chain gangs, and when their sentences were up, put back on the trains they’d been arrested for riding and told to get out of town. Communities posted signs, “Jobless men keep going—we can’t take care of our own.” Some towns denied medical care to travelers who fell ill or were injured, simply dumping them outside the city limits. Before the 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, many people felt the country was drifting towards anarchy or revolution.
Not all movies of the time were escapist fantasies; many pre-Code films were “ripped from the headlines.” Warner Brothers even confronted the Depression in a musical, Golddiggers of 1933. The opening number, “We’re In the Money,” is pure wish-fulfillment, as chorus girls wearing only strategically placed gold coins crow that “Old Man Depression” is through and that, “We never see a headline about a breadline today.” This giddy fantasy shatters when it is revealed to be a rehearsal for a show that has to close down because the producers can’t pay rent for the theater. Soon the chorus girls are staying in bed all day (three to a bed) because they have nothing to eat. The plot invites us to enjoy watching Joan Blondell earn money the easy way again, squeezing it out of a man who is rich, self-righteous and not very bright. Golddiggers is fluff, but it concludes with a musical number that makes a powerful if disconcerting stab at social realism.
This is social realism à la Busby Berkeley, so Blondell dons a black satin dress and stands under a lamppost, suggesting that unless the government helps jobless men their wives will be reduced to peddling themselves in the street. “Remember my forgotten man,” she sings, “You put a rifle in his hand / You sent him far away / You shouted hip hooray / But look at him today…”4 The song is taken up by a black woman sitting in an open window, surrounded by other women posed to look like F.S.A. portraits: a gaunt and worried farm wife, a starved and empty-eyed grandmother. Meanwhile endless lines of men are seen marching off to war, stumbling through the muddy trenches, then shuffling along in breadlines. This was torn from some very fresh headlines: in the summer of 1932 thousands of World War I veterans, known as the Bonus Army, had camped out on the Mall in Washington, D.C., asking the government to pay them the financial bonuses they were promised for their war service in advance, since many of them were unemployed and destitute. The army under Gen. Douglas MacArthur violently dispersed the men and their families, inspiring outrage. In this frivolous Hollywood musical, Blondell confronts a policeman who is rousting a bum out of a doorway, pointing to the military medal pinned to the inside of the man’s shabby lapel. Her eyes burn with pure hatred for the cop.
In these desperate times, both socialism and fascism were touted as viable alternatives to America’s problems. Several Hollywood movies offered glowing visions of benevolent totalitarianism: in Gabriel Over the White House, produced by William Randolph Hearst in 1932, Walter Huston plays a president who seizes dictatorial powers for the good of the country and proceeds to get rid of gangsters by trying them in military courts without constitutional protections. (Sound familiar?) In The Mayor of Hell, the boys in an ethnically diverse and racially integrated reform school are offered the chance to run the place as a children’s democracy, and when a tyrannical director tries to destroy this system, they try him in a kangaroo court complete with flaming torches.
The government’s helplessness or callousness in the face of economic crisis was not the only source of disenchantment with authority. The prohibition of alcohol, enacted in 1920, turned the vast majority of Americans into criminals, law enforcement into hypocrites, and bootlegging gangsters into society’s pets. Meanwhile, in the late 1920s the lingering wounds of the Great War, initially suppressed by a generation desperate to forget, resurfaced as people began to take stock of what they now viewed as a ghastly waste of life. Pacifism was widely embraced; in 1933 the hallowed Oxford University Student Union debated and passed the statement, “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its king and country.” Movies like All Quiet on the Western Front and The Last Flight expressed horror at the costs and pointlessness of the war, while others called attention to the plight of veterans struggling to survive in the country for which they had fought.
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Heroes for Sale (Wellman, 1933) is one of the bleakest films to come out of Hollywood during the studio era. What the confidence trick is in Blonde Crazy, gross injustice is in Heroes for Sale: the basic building block of American society. Richard Barthelmess plays the American everyman as Job, afflicted not by mere bad luck but by unfairness, misunderstanding and the heartlessness of the powerful. In the teens and twenties, Barthelmess had played pure-hearted farm boys in silent melodramas like Way Down East and Tol’able David; he stood for integrity, trustworthiness and boyish optimism. By 1933, his fresh handsome face looked tired and worn, prematurely defeated even at the start of the movie, when he supposed to be just 25. The story begins in the trenches during the War, and the first thing we see is an officer issuing a command for a raid intended to gain prestige by capturing a German officer. When a subordinate objects that the plan will amount to suicide, he snaps, “Suicide or not, it’s orders,” and tells the other officer to take nine or ten men, because “that’s all I can afford to lose.” This kind of callous abuse of power will recur throughout the film, until the penultimate scene in which armed policemen drive homeless men from their shelter into the rain, ignoring the plea that they are not bums but veterans.
Tom Holmes (Barthelmess) is one of the nine or ten expendables chosen for the mission, and when his superior officer turns yellow and refuses to leave the shell-hole where they are hiding, he single-handedly knocks out a machine-gun nest and captures a German officer, only to be wounded and left for dead on his way back. His own officer, Roger, takes credit for the escapade and wins the Distinguished Service Cross, while Tom is taken to a German hospital where he is treated humanely but given morphine to ease the pain of shell-fragments in his spinal column, starting him on the road to addiction. Back home, he winds up working in the bank owned by Roger’s father, who self-righteously fires him when he learns of his drug problem. Roger is a weak, nervous, sweaty-palmed villain; he feels bad about stealing Tom’s glory and allowing him to suffer unfairly, just not bad enough to do anything about it.
For a while things look up for Tom. In Chicago he falls in with a friendly father and daughter who run a café, gets a good job at a laundry, and marries a beautiful young woman (Loretta Young). But as soon as he reaches higher he is shot down. He agrees to help promote a friend’s invention to mechanize the laundry, but when his benevolent boss dies, the new owners use the machine as an excuse to fire all their workers. The workers blame Tom and start a riot, in which his wife is accidentally killed. As if that weren’t enough, he is blamed for leading the riot he was trying to stop and sentenced to five years hard labor. When he gets out, he’s still marked as a “Red” and driven out of town by government agents. By now the country is in the grip of the Depression, and he joins the army of hoboes riding the rails. Achieving secular sainthood, Tom gives away the fortune he earned from the laundry machine to fund a soup kitchen. And when he finally encounters Roger again, also on the bum after serving jail time for embezzling, Tom counters Roger’s pessimism (“The country can’t go on this way. This is the end of America”) with a pat speech about how the country isn’t licked and will rise again, just like Roosevelt said in his inaugural speech. Angry and anguished throughout much of the film, by the end he has slipped into a kind of haloed masochism. Despite his clichéd words, what he embodies is not can-do optimism but the kind of enlightened detachment that comes from having nothing more to lose.
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“The only thing that matters is money. Without it you are garbage. With it you are a king.” These words are spoken by Max, the German inventor who makes Tom rich and indirectly ruins his life. Max is a ludicrous stereotype, starting out as a ranting communist and abruptly turning into a greedy plutocrat (when someone points out that he used to hate capitalists he responds, “Of course—because I had no money then!”) In its one idyllic interlude, the film shows a workplace where capital and labor cooperate in smiling harmony and the boss is even willing to use mechanization to give employees more leisure and easier jobs without cutting the workforce or lowering salaries. This utopian fantasy, along with the café whose owners give to the poor even as they struggle to survive, suggest that the only solution to the country’s problems is selfless generosity. Unfortunately, the movie also implies that heartlessness and blinkered malice are far more common.
Heroes for Sale is not a lucid analysis of economic problems, and despite a gritty atmosphere it lacks the objectivity of neo-realism. At once bitter and sentimental, it portrays the whole of American society as a “you-must-pay-the-rent-I-can’t-pay-the-rent” melodrama, with villains as vile and heroes as pure as those in a D.W. Griffith tale of wronged innocence. Many pre-Code movies invite the viewer to identify with and root for people who cheat to get ahead: gangsters, con artists, gold-diggers. Heroes for Sale instead asks us to identify with an innocent and virtuous but hapless and often helpless hero. If people fantasized about being one of Cagney’s confident, cynical operators—predators rather than prey—they saw themselves as Tom Holmes: down on their luck, taking one hit after another, but struggling on and clinging to hope.
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Wellman’s next film was Wild Boys of the Road, his famous portrait of teenage hoboes, which grinds through hardship and injustice only to veer into shining idealism in the last five minutes. Two middle-class high-school boys turn into ragged panhandlers, one a cripple, the other stooping occasionally to petty theft. A crowd of vagrants bands together to attack and kill a brakeman who has raped a teenage girl, and to fight off the “bulls” who try to put them off a freight train. It’s easy to imagine audiences cheering as the young bums pelt the cops with eggs and fruit, and booing when the cops use fire hoses to drive them from the shanty-town they have built in disused sewer pipes. The hobo community is painted as loyal, diverse and supportive (blacks and girls are treated as equals), but no one is having any fun. They’re not wild, just bone-weary. The protagonists wind up in New York, living in a garbage dump, and one is tricked into taking part in an attempted robbery. But when they are hauled before a judge, instead of coldly meting out injustice like the judge in Heroes for Sale, the kindly man lectures the youths on how things are going to be better now, they will get a fresh chance, as the camera pans up to the National Reconstruction Administration poster above his head (“We Do Our Part”). The ending looks like a cop-out now, but audiences of the time probably cheered it too.
The pre-Code era was vanquished not only by stricter censorship but by the mood swing following Roosevelt’s inauguration, when the desperate country embraced the promise of a “new deal for the American people.” Pictures of FDR went up next to icons of Jesus; at the end of Footlight Parade, another Warner Brothers musical, solders marching in formation create an American flag, the president’s face, and the NRA eagle. Roosevelt campaigned to the tune of “Happy Days are Here Again,” and one of his first actions in office was to repeal Prohibition. The New Deal failed to end the Depression but it did stop the free-fall of the country’s spirits, ending the sense that the people had been abandoned by their leaders. Hollywood diligently promoted the new tone of wholesome optimism, strictly punishing vice and rewarding virtue. But can you regain innocence once you’ve lost it?
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The Age of Experience: Baby Face
Pre-Code movies finally went too far. The last straw may have been the lesbian “dance of the naked moon” in The Sign of the Cross, Miriam Hopkins getting raped in a barn in The Story of Temple Drake, or Mae West just being Mae West. America was divided then as now, and the backlash that ushered in the Code crackdown was driven in part by heartland resentment of movies pitched at sophisticated urban audiences. 5 Outraged by the increasingly salacious tone of Hollywood, in 1934 the Catholic Church formed the Legion of Decency and ordered its congregations to boycott the movies it condemned. In fact, box office receipts rose for movies that were banned by the Legion, but Hollywood’s producers panicked at the prospect of shrinking audiences; of being attacked as foreign corrupters of America’s youth, since most were Jewish immigrants; and of federal government intervention. They capitulated. After 1934, the studios could no longer flout the Production Code Administration and its viciously anti-Semitic head, Joe Breen; unless movies earned its seal of approval they would be blackballed. For a few years filmmakers fought hard against the Code6, but as ticket sales rose with the easing of the Depression, they settled into acceptance of its strictures. For the next twenty years married couples would sleep in twin beds and no couple would kiss for longer than three seconds. The most damaging aspect of the Code was not that it limited what could be shown, but that it forced movies to uphold conservative values, to show respect for authority and religion, and to present a simple dichotomy of good and evil, virtue and sin. The censors did not want controversial subjects like abortion, prostitution or racial tensions discussed from any angle, no matter how morally serious. Hollywood managed to produce great movies under the Code’s restrictions, but sometimes its stifling effect gave them a sterile, airless, homogenized quality.
Some of the pre-Code spirit survived in screwball comedy, a genre created by the Code—the sexes must battle lest they wind up in bed. Even at the height of the Code, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder consistently subverted its precepts, probably because their dialogue was too clever or just too audaciously dirty for the censors to decipher. After World War II the hard-boiled, wised-up attitude went underground, flourishing in film noir, but what became of the pre-Code sensibility after the end of the noir cycle? Our own time may be rife with irony and black comedy, but sneaky innuendo can’t thrive without restrictions, and all-pervasive, indiscriminate irony becomes shallow and facile. The gritty, sassy tone of pre-Code flourished precisely because it still had the power to shock.
The proponents of censorship cited the overwhelming power and mass appeal of movies, which made them particularly dangerous to the young. And after all movies were not art, so they couldn’t claim first-amendment protection as books or plays might: one journalist wrote in 1934 that no “classic” movie had been created yet. Hollywood’s producers were all too ready to agree, viewing their creations only as commercial products. Even pre-Code films weren’t safe from retroactive censorship. Those that were re-released during the Code years or the early years of television had bits cut out: Myrna Loy trilling “Mimi” in a sheer nightgown in Love Me Tonight, Edward Woods tussling in bed with Joan Blondell in Public Enemy. Ironically, films that were considered too thoroughly offensive to be salvaged remained intact. In 2004 a complete, uncensored print of Baby Face, perhaps the crown jewel of pre-Code, was discovered at the Library of Congress. Baby Face (Green, 1933) was so sordid that it was rejected outright by state censorship boards and heavily altered before being released, but a copy of the original camera negative showed the film as only censors had ever seen it.
Sold-out crowds packed New York’s Film Forum on a snowy Monday in January 2005 to be the first audience ever to watch Barbara Stanwyck smash a beer bottle over the head of a man molesting her, then lie down in the straw with a brakeman in return for a free ride on a freight train; to hear a sinister German cobbler quote Nietszche to Stanwyck and advise her to stamp out all emotion and use her power over men to get the things she wants. A New York Times piece on the rediscovered print stated that “you couldn’t make this film today.” Baby Face’s heroine, Lily Powers, is sexy and heartless, with a hidden, wounded fury built up during a lifetime of mistreatment. Accompanied by a growling rendition of “The St. Louis Blues,” she climbs a ladder of weak and venal men from a dreary steel-town speakeasy to the inevitable Manhattan penthouse. With her all the way is the only person she really cares for, her black maid and best friend, played by the beautiful Teresa Harris. Baby Face has all the kick, the style, the shocking laughs and underlying bleakness that exemplify pre-Code.
During the Depression, with so many men unable to support families, women became responsible for their own and their children’s survival as they had rarely been before. Many pre-Code movies focus on the predicament of women looking for ways to support themselves outside of marriage. While the flappers of the 1920s were young girls sowing their wild oats, the women of pre-Code are looking for security, and they aren’t too scrupulous about how they get it. They are neither virtuous helpmeets nor destructive vamps; they are adults who have faced some cold, hard facts. Actresses like Constance Bennett and Miriam Hopkins played a new kind of woman who was hardened, experienced, far from spotless, but who instead of paying for her sins usually triumphed in the end.
World War I shattered the traditional manly and womanly ideals of the nineteenth century; World War II brought back the celebration of the he-man and the homemaker. Between the wars there was a blurring and mingling of the sexes. Women bobbed their hair, smoked and drove cars; men got manicures, sang falsetto and danced the Charleston. A novelty song of the time complained: “Masculine women, feminine men / Which is the rooster, which is the hen? / It’s hard to tell ‘em apart these days.” Homosexuality was an object of sniggering fascination, and caricatures of effeminate men and butch women show up regularly in pre-Code movies. In Ladies They Talk About, a new inmate in a women’s prison is warned about a hefty cigar-smoking lady in a monocle: “Watch out for her, she likes to wrestle.” In Wonder Bar, a fey young man cuts in on a dancing couple and dances off—with the man. “Boys will be boys!” Al Jolson comments with a swishy gesture.
In the Victorian era, Europe and America embraced the ideal of woman as untouched by experience, the “angel of the house.” One of the arguments against granting women the vote or allowing them to enter universities and the work-place was that if they left the domestic sphere they would lose their purity and moral authority. The working women of thirties Hollywood triumphantly backed this argument: they are hard-nosed, pragmatic, independent. The “double standard” for pre- and extra-marital sex was a common theme in films of the early thirties: why shouldn’t women act like men? The feisty yet vulnerable pre-Code woman was more compromised than the fast-talking dame of later screwball comedies, who usually worked as a reporter or secretary and relished her self-sufficiency. One aspect of pre-Code movies that might actually shock contemporary audiences is the ubiquitous equation of sex and money. It’s taken for granted that women will sell themselves for furs, jewels and apartments, as “kept women” or free-lance party girls. This reflects the Depression too, a time when—so the movies warned—the scarcity of honest jobs might tempt girls to take “the easiest way.” Men, meanwhile, might turn to crime, bootlegging, gangs: selling their souls for flashy suits, cars and women. Unlike their female counterparts, the fallen men always pay, dying in the gutter or going to the chair. Women who break commandments—even a hard-bitten ex-felon like Constance Bennett in Bed of Roses—can be redeemed through the love of an honest man, in this case the poor but hunky Joel McCrea.
The thirties were a golden age for women in Hollywood movies, the only decade when they were regularly allowed to be smart, competent, funny and sexy all at once, and seldom required to be tamed or put in their place by men (Female is a dispiriting exception.) Throughout the decade, women continued to embody the toughness and cynicism of the Depression years in romantic comedies, where they were habitually both more dazzling and more down-to-earth than their male counterparts. The experienced woman paired with a naïve, virginal man is partly a comic reversal of a more traditional trope, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. But while these women take economic advantage of their male prey, they are also seduced by male innocence. They yearn for what they themselves have lost.
The uncensored version of Baby Face makes it clear that Lily was forced into prostitution by her own father when she was fourteen. Hence the cruel irony of the title: while she poses as girlishly helpless (“Nothing like this has ever happened to me,” she pleads when she’s caught in the restroom with her boss) she has been, as the cliché goes, robbed of innocence. This is the festering wound behind her hard, defiant poise. No one could play the part better than Stanwyck, with her devastating ability to face the facts; her sudden lashing rages; and the enticing warmth that she could—chillingly—turn on or off at will. Douglas Sirk spoke later of how Stanwyck seemed to have been “deeply touched by life.” Her most arresting trait is her level, unwavering gaze, both bold and sad—what Sirk called her “amazing tragic stillness.” The simplicity of her style comes from a steely inner resolve, a hard-won self-mastery that allows her to look at the world without fear—but not without anger or sorrow. “My life has been hard, bitter,” Lily tells her husband. “I’m not like other women. All the gentleness and kindness in me has been killed.”
Movies of the early thirties revel in the victory of experience over innocence, but they mourn it too. James Cagney stumbles into the gutter in the rain muttering, “I ain’t so tough.” Ann Dvorak, as a drug addict whose sleazy lover has kidnapped her son, crashes through a window and plummets to the street below to save the boy’s life. Paul Muni, fugitive from a chain gang, fades into the darkness, answering his girlfriend’s question, “How do you survive?” with the despairing words, “I steal!”7 It is this sense of bitter knowledge, of deeply-felt experience, that makes the best pre-Code movies truly “adult.” W.H. Auden said that the purpose of art is to make self-deception more difficult: “by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.” Enchantment and intoxication have always been Hollywood’s stock in trade, but occasionally—in Out of the Past, in The Lady Eve, in Blonde Crazy—the studios blended cocktails of fantasy and disillusionment, of disappointment and romance. Hollywood in the 1930s cast its lingering spell not with cynical magic, but with magical cynicism.
by Imogen Sara Smith
NOTES
1. In, respectively, Man’s Castle, Baby Face, Murder at the Vanities.
2. What happened to the cut footage? Most of it probably wound up in the wastebasket, though some found a home elsewhere. In his book The Silent Clowns Walter Kerr recounts how a boyhood friendship with his local projectionist enabled him to amass “what must unquestionably have been the most extensive collection of shots of Vilma Banky’s décolletage existing anywhere in America.”
3. Native New Yorkers Cagney and Blondell were appearing together in a play called “Penny Arcade” when they were both offered contracts by Warner Brothers, the studio that, with its Vitaphone process, had pushed the changeover to sound. “Penny Arcade” became the film Sinners’ Holiday; Cagney and Blondell made six more films together and formed a life-long friendship.
4. Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote “Remember My Forgotten Man,” which echoes the great Depression anthem, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” in its complaint that the men who built the country and fought to defend it were now reduced to begging for bread. These two songs were exceptional; Tin Pan Alley churned out hundreds of “keep smiling” ditties during the Depression, leaving it to Woody Guthrie to express the nation’s bitter mood in songs like “I Ain’t Got No Home in this World Anymore.”
5. The pre-Code Two Kinds of Women opens with the governor of a western state rehearsing a passionate speech decrying the evil influence of New York City on the rest of the nation, leading America’s youth astray with the lure of glamour and fast living. The scene cuts to the next room where the governor’s daughter (Miriam Hopkins) lounges on a sofa in sexy pajamas, reading The New Yorker and listening to a radio program broadcasting jazz from a Manhattan nightclub. The movie makes no secret of which side it’s on. At the end the daughter says that she and her New York playboy husband will announce that they are moving to South Dakota for the fresh air and clean living—until her father is re-elected, after which, “We’ll come back and live on East 58th Street!”
6. Producers and filmmakers at Warner Brothers were particularly hostile to the new regime. Busby Berkeley’s Footlight Parade features a puritanical censor who keeps popping up to warn Cagney, a director of musical prologues, “You’ll have to put some bathing suits on those mermaids—you know Pennsylvania.” Ultimately, he’s revealed as worse than just a buffoon when he’s caught in flagrante delicto with the film’s floozy.
7. In, respectively, Public Enemy, Three on a Match, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.
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kicksparkleaxe-blog · 6 years ago
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Fashion is the pumpkin latte that tries to catch a trend. Trends always adapt, they chart the course of history. Your aesthetic is your politics, and ideal politics are ethics. Abolish American law, it is based on precedent. Break imperialism, and you break through the bars containing past hurts. I don’t know about God or gods, but the empire of heaven is in those that march fearless into the dark, and a frat star can be a soldier, so can a punk or a composer or a metalhead or a rapper, like an engineer does mental gymnastics. A rain dancer is a victim who reports or records everything, and who trusts she can change the system that violated her. Beat a war drum, but never beat a face; when you shoot, make it a camera so people see what you do. Have such good rhythm and pacifism that they realize they should dance instead of hit; make a hit out of any strike, and strike when something is an injustice. We built all of this, we run your cities, we will demolish it if you try to demolish us because we are dynamite: the Nobel Peace Prize is an apology, because some of us survive and thrive. Einstein’s theory of relativity built the atom bomb, but it also confirmed that all interpretations and experiences of external phenomena is subject to our idiosyncratic feelings, bodies, and experience. He explained it by saying put your hand on a stove for a minute or talk to a pretty girl. It’s one minute either way, but if agony can have an eternity inside, eternity is a timeless connection.
Be the cheerleader who forgives and supports the player that beat her, men and women have skin cells and we are trapped and interactive and porous. Everyone has their own battles, no matter how rich or famous or how small, everyone has a different set of privileges and challenges; something can be broke, broken, and Baroque; the gold has the iron that built it inside. Beauty is a heart of metallic glass, it is hard, and it shines like a prism in any prison until the panopticon bursts in a pop; only punch up and you can kick flip an unfair world. Be a ballerina that tackles anyone who asks if you’re an athlete, be the football player as graceful as swans slicing through a lake. If people copy you, it’s because your moves are awesome; delete copyright, because an open-source world might be an Amazon, and trying to survive the tropics; but it is also a jungle gym, and if oppression is your gym, you will always win. Whether you are an athlete or a gamer or a thinker; if you’re a master, you’re a polymath, and everything you do teaches us about everything else. There are no boundaries between subjects or people or countries, Europe just put those there, so remember that all separation is an illusion. When the bell tolls for someone, they reaffirm the wedding of us all.
Swim with anyone who asks including former enemies, and watch friends just in case. Trust strangers, and always be suspicious of the familiar. Never synchronize: a hybrid is the most vigorous of all; a haute monoculture always dies, so when the calla lily plagiarism bridge collects a toll from your work, then laugh and make a song out of the absurdity. This is a theatre of the absurd, so if you have to push a boulder up a mountain again and again like Sisyphus, change the route every time and celebrate the pain, it gets easier as you go, if you’re a kid forever. Children have immortal souls, and maturity is realizing that you need to have that innocence and danger forever.
The strongest swimmers dive into open water, and they are like the ocean: their surface and muscles may break, but their soul never does. You can bruise or cut the shore of a hero, but an ocean is indestructible. When corporations and autocrats pollute the world, the ocean rises: when it burns, the sea boils, and unexpected things survive. When there is trouble, there are cunning exiles. Never stay still or in one place. Build feet like wings by flying from anything that comes your way, including things you trust and like. The best chefs taste everything, and the best curators can critique anything, and love or hate something on each facet when everything is a spherical gem with infinite facets reflected inside.
Justice is cosmic; listen to the static essence of the sound and fury, the censorship and the silent tears, and you will hear the hum, you will capture the tune, you are every instrument. You are a symphony of one and everyone you’ve ever met. Innovation is based on everything, most of all what is outside the official doctrine; the person that knows a cheater best is his mistress. If you really want to know a celebrity, ask the people they left behind for the spotlight, because the dark contains the real stars. If you want to know the heart of a billionaire, ask his maids and workers and his wife and ex-girlfriends if he is kind. If you want to know a petty person, than listen to a Taylor Swift song.
If a dictator throws a bomb, make a shoe factory. If Forever 21 collapses a factory because corporations do not care about lives, then strap cameras to cockroaches and release them into the rubble. Cockroaches have an amazing vantage point, and they will lead you to the survivors in the rumble. Their exoskeletons teach us how to build bionic limbs. Their movements teach us how to hook up a horror movie. A mosquito killed Alexander the Great like a cruise missile he never saw coming, but people who live in poverty or whose families have known conquerers, we would’ve known.
Be aware of threats from everywhere and know that any recording device has a lightsaber inside, and you can kill any army; what is most dangerous is a threat a Sun King does not see. The light of that arrogance is the demolition team we must reflect back. The moon holds the sun inside, and everyone is most honest in the dark.
Capture any fire with aplomb, and be so beautiful they want to buy your alchemy. Build any gadget or product or art yourself to start, and always be recording and building and breaking and remixing, and every second is another start. When you build a brand, offer a living wage, bathroom breaks, air conditioning, offer resources from materials to instructions to workshops so that the seeds can blossom. We must be a greenhouse in a possible nuclear winter. Let interns write the CEO’s speech; they have trusted me, and I realized: not all CEOs, the best ones are inventors and soldiers and artists at heart.
CEOs have believed in me, because the best bosses are entrepreneurs and they can identify whoever has a diamond mind and they never extract something that harms. The truest entrepreneurs trust whoever believes in themselves enough to correct a leader or suggest something new. The best leaders are those who were humble enough to follow, the best architects have built the structure themselves. Try to plant a scarlet future in the cracked soil of the scars you let show, and you will grow the capacity of an orchid with the hardiness of a dandelion. A spore as soft as a lamb and with the delicacy of a fairy and that flight: it has a wishing well inside, and all vulnerability is brave.
An acorn contains an oak tree inside, and a root system is as intricate as any tree. We have arteries and branches inside of us. We contain multitudes: we must leave our bodies and build trees that never die, and if there is a monster, we must run in the wires and rig the space.
Make a wish, make electricity, shake the grid until it breaks. See the shadows behind the wallpaper, and shake it until you crack the cage. Makers make until they hack the system. We will re-code until the source is ethical: the best of the oppressed always are. Be a Frat King and his Chaos Kween in a hipster scum world. When pilgrims invade Plymouth Rock, make the music they want. When Elon buys Stank Memes, because he can only trace and recite what already happened, hack the algorithm, and make Swank Memes he may never know.
Run so fast that the academy explodes trying to understand; you can bike across the world without understanding the physics of how it works. Drop out of a classroom, drop a mike, this is what a runner looks like. They record everything, they forget nothing, they forgive everything: Katniss kiss the LAPD with the photographic shots you took, because not all cops; every cave has sleeper cells filled with idealism inside. Every nihilist was once an idealist, so prove their sorrow wrong, and you have a dreamer: we must lucid dream and that’s how you make your imagination real.
Hug a rapist when he cries for the girl he assaulted, go to Christian camp when you’re an atheist, and if someone hates you, listen, and prove their prejudices wrong by teaching them that every human defies every category if they are authentic to themselves.
Know that anyone who survives in the eye of a storm becomes a hurricane that will shake the world. Forgive whoever hurts you, but store all the proof, cause the system won’t believe you. The outsiders run the system from within, outside, from without, from everywhere and we are no one place for long.
We built your cities brick by brick, atom by atom, we are the molecular bonds, we are the concrete that binds everything you see, we are the beams in your palaces and the rays between the pixels of your screen and all the star dust that inhabits us all.
We clean your house, we listen when you don’t want us to speak. We sing what the kings think is unspeakable. Every jester is a bard, and every tragedy has a comedy inside. Laugh when you cry. Kings are basic, and so are the barbies they abuse if the barbies never question it. It’s a brat that does. Sour Patch Kids forever in a White Milk Dud present. We will build the future, they steal cause they wish they were us, and honestly, not all white people. Not all activists. We change every moment, so record everything, adapt, evolve.
Be a 4D Chess Emperor or Empress. Play Go, play tetris, play every sport, take Plato’s cave and make playdough, and that is the match that lights it up.
Be everything at once. Abolish the binary code the oppressors used to build this illusory world. Poison is a women’s weapon, and a military is a man’s. The best styled tanks play in our movies and are jacked by girls like Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie, the best KGB agents are as covert as a dictator’s daughter who survives. Tiffany Trump is dating a Nigerian billionaire, and Ivanka is actually very talented; if only she had Tiffany’s heart. Not all rich girls, and watch everyone. Take the moves you like, accept how they are, and if they’re wrong, win a game and only do necessary violence.
That’s your reputation: a reputation is your contribution to history. Your actions define your destiny.
A shithole country can rise and its sons can marry a dictator’s princess. Anyone of any gender or any sex, they can show you that everything is a spectrum. If you are mixed, and the best people combine disparate parts like Rene Descartes, then you are a technicolor go-kart in a tabula rasa world rigged against you. We’ll blow up the dismal science by showing that all the subjects are one.
You can’t choose your character base, but if you accept it, you will know who you are. Know your weaknesses, and reverse them into strength. You must distrust all knowledge and burst into the strange, and you will design the future.
The only answer is the question, and the best questions inspire more. Be too cool for school, be too school for cool, be so confusing and unique that no one accepts you, and one day they will idolize you. If everyone says your wrong, but you believe in yourself: history will absolve you, and your echo will be a banshee for the other ghosts in the night who are both haunted and illuminated by what they saw.
This is what an inventor looks like. Anyone. Everyone. Anything and everything inside and out. Don’t wait for Godot. Be divine. There might be Jesus, if there is, you are a God inside. If there is a trinity, the holy spirit is everywhere, especially where it hurts.
3 is a holy number in Christianity, 9 is lucky in China, in Russia you must give odd roses because a double means someone is going to hurt you. Be an odd number that breaks an ignorant world. The Wizard of Oz is a very Odd man indeed. Don’t just use your body, rig the stage.
Perform when no one is watching, because you should busk what you love, and when you perform, do it like you’re the only one there. There is a quandary between self-expression and communication. Express and communicate to yourself, and someone might hear you and understand one day. If they don’t, well, James Joyce died and his final cry was, “Does no one understand?”
It’s okay if you don’t understand. Admit it. And focus harder. Einstein said he is not so smart. He just stays with problems longest.
Siddhartha left a kingdom to be a holy man. A champion dismantles all power. He plays to master the sport or the game or the art. A true master used to be a slave, and he abolishes the house. May there be no more slaves; then we shall master the world.
This is what a prophet looks like; a prophet is a rebel against the illusion of a still world. Ambitious and ambiguous, hoping to inspire you, who wants to empathize with everyone. Realize that love and hate have the same intensity, and the worst thing is to be “normal” or “moderate”, because as Hannah Arendt said, it is the moderates that refuse to see the fascism behind the manners and the current rules. The extremists are very similar, and they’re the ones we remember, for good or for ill, depending on how you look.
If someone is strong enough to harm you, they can also be an effective ally, because they know your blind spots, and they have weapons and strategies that you can learn.
The fringes define the base, because the boundaries measure the board, every law is a rule, and every outlaw is an inventor.  
Be a sex worker in a world that is filled with prostitutes, be Holden Caulfield instead of his screenwriter brother. If Marie Antoinette says let them eat cake, and starves you, be a cake boss and make a culture that France wishes they had. I speak French, it is very beautiful and I’ve lived in Paris: it was my first true home. But I can’t watch 12 Years a Slave in French, though I’ve watched it many times in English. The illusion of the linguistic flourishes: it hurts.
May the oppressors eat their own chaos like Kate Tempest being an intersectional feminist with a prize named for Ted Hughes. We will play out the consequences of their wrongs for them so well, they will want our cake. All the frosting and the decorations have within them a blueprint out of abuse.
Be a Trojan horse or a lover someone didn’t think they’d like, but you’re actually the best. Be a Helen and fuck whoever you want, start a war for your freedom, and trust anyone who would fight a battle for you. Be Joan of Arc in a Teen Vogue world that only catalogues the basic, but wishes it was you. Another magazing in another country for adults will invite you to shoot for them; that’s happened to me.
All selfies are solipsism. May your self worth be a documentary that tells your truth. A hero’s journey never dies, and a hero is anyone that tries. Anyone is a hero. This is the West Coast. You cotillion shits and Dismay-flour equestrians and polo players invaded, so we will use your ashes to build a better world. We will beat you at your own games, we will make our own, and we will break and bend this into a better world. Bend it like Beckham, but Bend it like Beckett too.
Europe is dying and exported its fascism. We are a port to the East, we come from the South. Westworld is basic. This is a globe. A circle has infinite edges according to mathematical theory, and Thomas Ligotti and True Detective. A circle includes everyone, and a sphere defies every box by bending its architecture to show its confinement, or being too big to fit. Throw balls, jump a base, dive from a board or a helicopter or a bungee, be a gymnast, be a football player, be an inventor, be an entrepreneur, be a scientist, and if you are an artist, be a dissident. Shoot the hipsters. Explode the academy. May the earth be our school.
Fashion is the pumpkin latte that tries to catch a trend. Trends always adapt, they chart the course of history. Your aesthetic is your politics, and ideal politics are ethics. Abolish American law, it is based on precedent. Break imperialism, and you break through the bars containing past hurts. I don’t know about God or gods, but the empire of heaven is in those that march fearless into the dark, and a frat star can be a soldier, so can a punk or a composer or a metalhead or a rapper, like an engineer does mental gymnastics. A rain dancer is a victim who reports or records everything, and who trusts she can change the system that violated her. Beat a war drum, but never beat a face. Have such good rhythm and pacifism that they realize they should dance instead of hit; make a hit out of any strike, and strike when something is an injustice. We run your city, we will demolish it if you try to demolish us.
Be the cheerleader who forgives and supports the player that beat her, men and women have skin cells and we are trapped and interactive and porous. Everyone has their own battles, no matter how rich or famous or how small; something can be broke, broken, and Baroque; the gold has the iron that built it inside. Beauty is a heart of metallic glass, it is hard, and it shines like a prism in any prison until the panopticon bursts in a pop; only punch up and you can kick flip an unfair world. Be a ballerina that tackles anyone who asks if you’re an athlete, be the football player as graceful as swans slicing through a lake. If people copy you, it’s because your moves are awesome; delete copyright, because an open-source world might be an Amazon, and trying to survive the tropics; but it is also a jungle gym, and if oppression is your gym, you will always win. Whether you are an athlete or a gamer or a thinker; if you’re a master, you’re a polymath, and everything you do teaches us about everything else. There are no boundaries between subjects or people, Europe just put those there, so remember that all separation is an illusion. When the bell tolls for someone, they reaffirm the wedding of us all.
Swim with anyone who asks including former enemies, and watch friends just in case. Trust strangers, and always be suspicious of the familiar. Never synchronize: a hybrid is the most vigorous of all; a haute monoculture always dies, so when the calla lily plagiarism bridge collects a toll from your work, then laugh and make a song out of the absurdity. This is a theatre of the absurd, so if you have to push a boulder up a mountain again and again like Sisyphus, change the route every time and celebrate the pain, it gets easier as you go if you’re a kid forever. Children have immortal souls, and maturity is realizing that you need to have that innocence and danger forever.
The strongest swimmers dive into open water, and they are like the ocean: their surface and muscles may break, but their soul never does. You can bruise or cut the shore of a hero, but an ocean is indestructible. When there is smog, the ocean rises. When there is trouble, there are cunning exiles. Never stay still or in one place. Build feet like wings by flying from anything that comes your way, including things you like. The best chef has a taste for everything.  
Justice is cosmic; listen to the static essence of the sound and fury, the censorship and the silent tears, and you will hear the hum, you will capture the tune, you are every instrument. You are a symphony of one and everyone you’ve ever met. Innovation is based on everything, most of all what is outside the official doctrine; the person that knows a cheater best is his mistress. If you really want to know a celebrity, ask the people they left behind for the spotlight, because the dark contains the real stars. If you want to know the heart of a billionaire, ask his maids and workers if he is kind.
If a dictator throws a bomb, make a shoe factory. If Forever 21 collapses a factory because corporations do not care about lives, then strap cameras to cockroaches and release them into the rubble. Cockroaches have an amazing vantage point, and they will lead you to the survivors in the rumble. Their exoskeletons teach us how to build bionic limbs. Their movements teach us how to hook up a horror movie. A mosquito killed Alexander the Great like a cruise missile he never saw.
Be aware of threats from everywhere and know that any recording device has a lightsaber inside, and you can kill any army; what is most dangerous is a threat a Sun King does not see. The light of that arrogance is the demolition team we must reflect back. The moon holds the sun inside, and everyone is most honest in the dark.
Capture any fire with aplomb, and be so beautiful they want to buy your alchemy. Build any gadget or product or art or thought yourself to start, and always be recording and building and breaking and remixing, and every second is another start. When you build a brand, offer a living wage, bathroom breaks, air conditioning, offer resources from materials to instructions to workshops so that the seeds can blossom. We must be a greenhouse in a possible nuclear winter. Let interns write the CEO’s speech; they have trusted me, and I realized: not all CEOs, the best ones are inventors and soldiers and artists at heart. Your brand should be your soul, it should reflect your actions and your fate and the response you chose, it should be bonded by everyone you’ve ever hired, everyone who has ever inspired you, the people you inspire, and the sweat of everyone’s brow.
CEOs have believed in me, because the best bosses are entrepreneurs and they can identify whoever has a diamond mind and they never extract something that harms. The truest entrepreneurs trust whoever believes in themselves enough to correct a leader or suggest something new. The best leaders are those who were humble enough to follow, the best architects have built the structure themselves. Try to plant a scarlet future in the cracked soil of the scars you let show, and you will grow the capacity of an orchid with the hardiness of a dandelion. A spore is as soft as a lamb, with the delicacy of a fairy and that flight: it has a wishing well inside, and all vulnerability and every hope makes a brave warrior.
An acorn contains an oak tree inside, and a root system is as intricate as any tree. We have arteries and branches inside of us. We contain multitudes: we must leave our bodies and build trees that never die, and if there is a monster, we must run in the wires and rig the space.
Make a wish, make electricity, shake the grid until it breaks. See the shadows behind the wallpaper, and shake it until you crack the cage. Makers make until they hack the system. We will re-code until the source is ethical: the best of the oppressed always are. Be a Frat King and his Chaos Kween in a hipster scum world. When pilgrims invade Plymouth Rock, make the music they want. When Elon buys Stank Memes, because he can only trace and recite what already happened, hack the algorithm, and make Swank Memes he may never know.
Run so fast that the academy explodes trying to understand; you can bike across the world without understanding the physics of how it works. Drop out of a classroom, drop a mike, this is what a runner looks like. They record everything, they forget nothing, they forgive everything: Katniss kiss the LAPD with the photographic shots you took, because not all cops; every cave has sleeper cells filled with idealism inside. Every nihilist was once an idealist, so prove their sorrow wrong, and you have a dreamer: we must lucid dream and that’s how you make your imagination real.
Hug a rapist when he cries for the girl he assaulted, go to Christian camp when you’re an atheist, and if someone hates you, listen, and prove their prejudices wrong by teaching them that every human defies every category if they are authentic to themselves.
Know that anyone who survives in the eye of a storm becomes a hurricane that will shake the world. Forgive whoever hurts you, but store all the proof, cause the system won’t believe you. The outsiders run the system from within, outside, from without, from everywhere and we are no one place for long.
We built your cities brick by brick, atom by atom, we are the molecular bonds, we are the concrete that binds everything you see, we are the beams in your palaces and the rays between the pixels on your screen and all the star dust that inhabits us all.
We clean your house, we listen when you don’t want us to speak. We sing what the kings think is unspeakable. Every jester is a bard, and every tragedy has a comedy inside. Laugh when you cry. Kings are basic, and so are the Barbies they abuse if the Barbies never question it. It’s a Bratz or a troll doll that does. Sour Patch Kids forever in a White Milk Dud present. We will build the future, they steal cause they wish they were us, and honestly, not all white people. Not all activists. We change every moment, so record everything, adapt, evolve.
Be a 4D Chess Emperor or Empress. Play Go, play tetris, play every sport, take Plato’s cave and make playdough, and that is the match that lights it up.
Be everything at once. Abolish the binary code the oppressors used to build this illusory world. Poison is a women’s weapon, and a military is a man’s. The best styled tanks play in our movies and are jacked by girls like Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie, the best KGB agents are as covert as a dictator’s daughter who survives. Tiffany Trump is dating a Nigerian billionaire, and Ivanka is actually very talented; if only she had Tiffany’s heart. Not all rich girls, and watch everyone. Take the moves you like, accept how they are, and if they’re wrong, win a game and only do violence in self-defense.
That’s your reputation: a reputation is your contribution to history. Your actions define your destiny.
A shithole country can rise and its sons can marry a dictator’s princess. Anyone of any gender or any sex, they can show you that everything is a spectrum. If you are mixed, and the best people combine disparate parts like Rene Descartes, then you are a technicolor go-kart in a tabula rasa world rigged against you. We’ll blow up the dismal science by showing that all the subjects are one.
You can’t choose your character base, but if you accept it, you will know who you are. Know your weaknesses, and reverse them into strength. You must distrust all knowledge and burst into the strange, and you will design the future.
The only answer is the question, and the best questions inspire more. Be too cool for school, be too school for cool, be so confusing and unique that no one accepts you, and one day they will idolize you. If everyone says you’re wrong, but you believe in yourself: history will absolve you, and your echo will be a banshee for the other ghosts in the night, who are both haunted and illuminated by what they saw.
This is what an inventor looks like. Anyone. Everyone. Anything and everything inside and out. Don’t wait for Godot. Be divine. There might be Jesus, if there is, you are a God inside. If there is a trinity, the holy spirit is everywhere, especially where it hurts.
3 is a holy number in Christianity, 9 is lucky in China, in Russia you must give odd roses because a double means someone is going to hurt you. Be an odd number that breaks an ignorant world. The Wizard of Oz is a very Odd man indeed. Don’t just use your body, rig the stage.
Perform when no one is watching, because you should busk what you love, and when you perform, do it like you’re the only one there. There is a quandary between self-expression and communication. Express and communicate to yourself, and someone might hear you and understand one day. If they don’t, well, James Joyce died and his final cry was, “Does no one understand?”
It’s okay if you don’t understand. Admit it. And focus harder. Einstein said he is not so smart. He just stays with problems longest.
Siddhartha left a kingdom to be a holy man. A champion dismantles all power. He plays to master the sport or the game or the art. A true master used to be a slave, and he abolishes the house. May there be no more slaves; then we shall master the world.
This is what a prophet looks like; a prophet is a rebel against the illusion of a still world. Ambitious and ambiguous, hoping to inspire you, who wants to empathize with everyone, including the people they sometimes hate for the pain. Realize that love and hate have the same intensity, and the worst thing is to be “normal” or “moderate”, because as Hannah Arendt said, it is the moderates that refuse to see the fascism behind the manners and the current rules and the fringes who see that anarchy is the fairest forge of all. The extremists are very similar, and they’re the ones we remember, for good or for ill, depending on how you look.
If someone is strong enough to harm you, they can also be an effective ally, because they know your blind spots, and they have weapons and strategies that you can learn.
The fringes define the base, because the boundaries measure the board, every law is a rule, and every outlaw is an inventor: the instruction manual and guidebook are everything you’ve ever consumed; understand what you eat, or it will consume you.  
Be a sex worker in a world that is filled with prostitutes, be Holden Caulfield instead of his screenwriter brother. If Marie Antoinette says let them eat cake, and starves you, be a cake boss and make a culture that France wishes they had. I speak French, it is very beautiful and I’ve lived in Paris: it was my first true home. But I can’t watch 12 Years a Slave in French, though I’ve watched it many times in English. The illusion of the linguistic flourishes: it hurts.
May the oppressors eat their own chaos like Kate Tempest being an intersectional feminist with a prize named for Ted Hughes. We will play out the consequences of their wrongs for them so well, they will want our cake. All the frosting and the decorations have within them a blueprint out of abuse.
Be a Trojan horse or a lover someone didn’t think they’d like, but you’re actually the best. Be a Helen and fuck whoever you want, start a war for your freedom, and trust anyone who would fight a battle for you; if someone would’ve launch a war for you, leave, and if they gang-rape you or batter your or abuse you, honestly, try to let their new girlfriends know and keep an eye on your ex-abuser, like we must protect each other. Be Joan of Arc in a Teen Vogue world that only catalogues the basic, but wishes it was you. Another magazine in another country for adults will invite you to shoot for them; that’s happened to me.
All selfies are solipsism. May your self worth be a documentary that tells your truth. A hero’s journey never dies, and a hero is anyone that tries. Anyone is a hero. This is the West Coast. You cotillion shits and Dismay-flour equestrians and polo players invaded, so we will use your ashes to build a better world. We will beat you at your own games, we will make our own, and we will break and bend this into a better world. Bend it like Beckham, but Bend it like Beckett too; not all players and not all white boys, anyone can be an ally if you let them.
Europe is dying and exported its fascism. We are a port to the East, we come from the South. Westworld is basic. This is a globe. A circle has infinite edges according to mathematical theory, and Thomas Ligotti and True Detective. A circle includes everyone, and a sphere defies every box by bending its architecture to show its confinement, or being too big to fit. Throw balls, jump a base, dive from a board or a helicopter or a bungee, be a gymnast, be a football player, be an inventor, be an entrepreneur, be a scientist, and if you are an artist, be a dissident. Shoot the hipsters. Explode the academy. May the earth be our school.
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zichiandhisnonsense · 6 years ago
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I really don’t know what to title this.
So last Sunday. Shit hit the fan in our d&d game, not the one I was running, the one I was playing in (another player and I alternate between games). So...
So  here’s the party:
Terin Stormforge, the Dwarf Wizard and un/official leader of the party.
Jago, the human monk and the lancer to Terin’s leader.
Goh’Bi Orgoho, a half orc paladin of bahamut who wants to convert as many people as she can to her god.
Keian Azora, the Aasimar Sorcerer and Goh’Bi’s travelling companion
Ignatia, a Fire Genasi pugilist and former bandit
And... Nephlia, the elven cleric whose elven sub-type I still can’t figure out.
So as a quick side-note, the only two characters who have survived/remained through the entire campaign are Terin and Jago, everyone else either lost characters or got bored and swapped out. Goh’Bi heard that there was suspicious activity in the West (our main quest-line involved fighting cultist forces) and offered her sword in service to defeating them, and Keian was Goh’Bi’s travelling companion and basically went “sure, why not”. Ignatia and Nephlia though, kinda just tagged themselves on with little explanationin-character. Out-of-character, Ignatia’s player explained that a) she hated her bandit companions but b) she’s in debt to a mob boss and needs strong allies to help defend herself. After the party wrecked the bandits, Ignatia defected to our side -and accidentally to our cause-. Nephlia’s player never really gave a reason, but Terin and Jago agreed to let it happen, because we were in dire need of a healer.
So, as part of the story-line, the party is travelling to a gnomish city called Niblvifs, because the cult we are fighting and a demonic creature that is powered by a cult artefact is also last seen heading in that direction. These gnomes however are infamous for their bureaucratic processes, you need to fill in the paperwork to enter the city, to go to certain places, speak to certain people, etc. I always imagine the permit number 8-38 scene from “Asterix and the 12 tasks”. But regardless, law and order is a big thing here.
So the inn is staying at a tavern called “the spare drink”. Now, this inn has a challenge -there is a giant tankard 4-ft high and filled with what is generously described as “grog”. If someone managed to drink the entire thing in one sitting, there’s a 600 gold prize. The night prior -when we first entered the town- Ignatia and Nephlia immediately gun for the prize money. Ignatia was ballsy enough to try it herself -a challenge which needed her to pass six constitution saving throws of increasing difficulty in a row. She failed after the first one. Nephlia decided -rather than do it herself with her meagre con- she would trick the paladin into trying it, while also secretly buffing Go’Bi with all kinds of saving-throw-boosting spells. Goh’Bi also failed on the third row, but didn’t fail as bad as Ignatia so Goh’Bi actually woke up in the morning. When the rest of the party decided to go to sleep, Keian -being a somewhat kind person- looked over to see who looked depressed at the bar and gave them a smile and a wink. This confused the woman and when she went to the party for clarification about what that was about... Nephlia was convinced Keian was trying to whore himself out, and so she would be Keian’s pimp. Even worse, she planned to whore Keian our at a copper per person. 
Nephlia does not trust Keian at all, because Keian is on a pretty precarious position in the party. Long story short, Keian’s attempts at destroying an important artefact used by the cult backfired horribly in a way that no one could predict, creating the demonic monster I mentioned earlier, despite that fact that this was something Keian could not predict at all.
For the whole of the next day, Terin was pre-occupied with various chores, from informing the town guard “hey, there are cultists heading your way” to visiting the forges. Terin is a clan crafter, and basically fell in love with the firearms the gnomes of Niblvifs use. However, to purchase guns, one needs -in this bureaucratic nightmare of a city- a license to own and purchase guns. To get that license, Terin had to take a crash-course on gun maintenance and gun safety. He was out of commission until evening.
Meanwhile, back at the inn, Goh’Bi decided to spend the day nursing her hangover, while Ignatia left to go look after her pet elephant (an elephant costs 200 gold in d&d 5e. And tbf, if the elephant gets proper combat training it could be a surprisingly powerful member of the party). Jago meanwhile is an social recluse -having spent his entire childhood alone in an abandoned monastery-, so he remained in his room and worked on his woodcarving. This left Keian, Goh’Bi and Nephlia.
Keian began to notice that a lot of women were eyeing him up, ranging from gnomes (which he had zero interest) to a 7 foot tall goliath (which his squishy sorcerer ass feared for his life). Eventually, he lead the trace to Nephlia, who had begun spreading the word that Keian was her man-whore who she’d lend out for a copper a go. Keian absolutely flipped his lid and told Nephlia -in no uncertain terms- no, no, no, no, don’t even try.
To this adamant refusal, Nephlia decided to use her thaumaturgy spell to expand her voice, declaring to the whole bar of her special offer with Keian. And with a natural-20 persuasion check too. A mortified Keian fled to his room, locked the door and ignored everyone who tried to enter.
Goh’Bi -although still hungover- proceeded to stand up for Keian, saying what Nephlia was doing was not on at all. Nephlia proceeded to use her thaumaturgy to scream in the hungover orc’s ear, which made Goh’Bi lose her patience. In the proceeding mess, Goh’Bi kept trying to grab Nephlia (no weapons drawn or fist thrown) while Nephlia continued tormenting and smacking Goh’Bi with her shield.
Eventually the guards came and tried to arrest the both of them. Nephlia decided to try and get Keian arrested too, saying that there was a guy upstairs too involved in the brawl. Fortunately, Goh’Bi’s persuasion of “he’s not involved in this, leave him alone” beat Nephlia’s deception and the two of them were arrested. Goh’Bi’s first reaction was “this is bullshit” but eventually decided it would be easier to accompany them.
So Goh’Bi and Nephlia were escorted to jail and eventually, Jago and Keian would leave their rooms and learn of the two being arrested. The two immediately went “Terin will flip out if he learns of this”. Keian stayed behind on the off-chance that Terin returned, while Jago went to the jails to try and solve this mess and probably pay bail.
However. Nephlia wasn’t done causing trouble. She was put in a jail cell with her weapons, shield and her mask (she hides her identity for some reason) removed from her and her struggles failing against the swarm of gnome guards holding her in place. She and Goh’Bi were told to wait until the guards got statements and confirmation about what happened. Nephlia told the guards that wasn’t necessary, she knew the captain of the guard, let her talk to him and she’ll get this all sorted. The guards refused, saying they would do this by the books.
(And for reference, Nephlia did meet the captain. She was there when Terin went to talk to the captain about cult activity having an interest in the city. Not the best connection, honestly.)
So with the guards going to gather information and Jago on his way to pay bail, all Nephlia has to do is sit still and wait and it’ll all be solved, right?
No.
Nephlia becomes determined to speak with the captain, and so she uses a racial ability she has to teleport 30ft out of the window and into the street. She -having been marked as a difficult criminal for resisting and refusing to co-operate-, teleports in bright daylight, in front of the jail, onto the busiest street of the city, where town guards will be watching. And so she runs, not out of town, but further into town, towards the town hall, where there will be more guards in order to speak with the captain.
I muted myself at this point to scream.
Jago -being a monk- eventually came across the scene of Nephlia running from the guards. She seemed to expect Jago to help her escape. Jago -being a lawful man, smart enough to know Nephlia is performing a jailbreak- aids the town guard, telling Nephlia to give up and maybe the situation can be salvaged.
Nephlia does not give up and keeps running. Eventually, she causes such a ruckus that Terin sees the situation -the street that the confrontation in on cuts straight through the centre of the city, and the forge district and the tavern we’re staying at are on separate sides. Due to Terin’s lower perception, he just sees Jago and the guards trying to subdue a cloaked figure, so he aides the guards and Jago.
Nephlia is knocked unconscious in the end -her player was in the habit of only ever preparing lethal or healing spells, no utility at all- and ended up dragged back to the jail. Terin screamed internally so loud, that it was heard externally. Nephlia was now upgraded to first class prisoner: she had everything taken from her, holy symbol, armour, everything but her clothes -which were thoroughly searched- and she was thrown into basically solitary confinement. Terin learned of what had happened and what was going on and aged 13 years, before coming to the decision of waiting until the investigation had concluded and either picking up Goh’Bi once proven innocent, or paying her bail if needed.
“What about Nephlia?” Jago asks. To which Terin replies “Fuck her, she’s fired.”
So, yeah. We’ve had one character death, two characters leave, one character become and NPC and now we have one character fired. To their credit, Nephlia’s player was fine with this, “I played her as she would act” and basically started working on his new character.
So yeah, that’s how the party’s main and backup healer ended up arrested and the main healer kicked out.
Jesus.
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catty-words · 7 years ago
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true happiness is so neeeeaaaar
a special thanks to @bethanyactually for reading this over and @notbang for talking some of this out with me. 💖
During my latest watch of Crazy Ex, I kept an eye out for the first time each character breaks into song without Rebecca present or directly involved. It’s well-covered ground that her arrival in West Covina sent ripples through our cast of characters. Inspired by Rebecca’s pursuit of happiness, they started asking themselves—consciously or subconsciously—what would make them happiest. So when does each of them adopt her musical lens, and how does the song they sing inform their journey toward happiness?
Greg – Not surprising considering he wears his unhappiness on his sleeve, Greg is the first one to break into song without Rebecca in episode 1.06 with “What’ll It Be?” The song isn’t really a revelation because there’ve been plenty of hints at just how dissatisfied he feels with his life. Greg hates West Covina (as evidenced by him telling Rebecca it’s not a compliment that she’s starting to fit in around town) and he hates the circumstances that he feels keep him from making any meaningful changes (at the party in the first episode he wastes no time complaining to Rebecca about missing out on Emory because of his sick dad).
Still, “What’ll It Be?” acts as Greg’s thesis statement for that unhappiness. Despite knowing exactly what it is that’s causing his unhappiness, he feels powerless to change it, instead blaming outside forces for keeping him in his current situation. “Hey, West Covina, look what you’re doing to me.”
The unfortunate part is that Greg himself is actually the largest obstacle standing between him and happiness: not his dad, not his job, and not the people of West Covina. His dad, while he seems to appreciate Greg’s presence and care, has clearly decided he’s going to pursue his vices instead of actually maintaining his health. Since he doesn’t actually need to be looked after—he’s made the conscious choice to be unwell—he gives up Greg pretty easily when the time comes in 2.02. Though Greg asserts that he’s going to be upset by his leaving, Marco’s behavior (i.e. chastising Greg for wasting his savings on him because he was supposed to use it for school) actually point to the fact that he’d be happy to see his son leave even back in 1.06.
As for his job, yes, all food service professions suck on a certain level, and Greg’s certainly not getting rich for the drudgery he has to endure. However, in 1.06, we see that Greg’s attitude is really what makes the job such a drag. Kevin, his boss, is in fact a pretty understanding and amiable guy. He takes feedback well and genuinely wants his employees to succeed. The fact that Greg feels so smothered there has as much to do with how he approaches the situation as it does the nature of the job itself.
Finally, the people of West Covina/the town itself only seem like they’re keeping Greg trapped because he actively dismisses and looks down on it all. In reality, the people he associates with most closely—White Josh, Hector, Rebecca, and again, even his father—actively encourage Greg to make changes with an eye toward pursuing business school, as well as call him out on his most destructive behaviors. It’s just that Greg can’t take their encouragement at face value because he’s dwelling on the negativity in his life and can’t seem to break that habit.
Of course, alcoholism plays its part in the unhappiness equation, and that’s no small thing. But, again, that’s something Greg has to deal with and overcome internally. It has little to do with his external circumstances, as the Greg who’s singing “What’ll It Be?” would have us believe.
It makes sense, then, that when he finally takes ownership of his hand in his own shitty situation, he’s able to break the pattern and actually pursue the career of his choosing. He removes himself from the environment that tempts him back into stasis and takes control of his life. No longer feeling powerless, Greg is at least on the path to knowing happiness.
Paula – Paula’s the next one to get caught up in the music with “His Status is Preferred” from 1.07. On the surface, this song seems like a trite expression of unhappiness, of simply wanting a more exciting life, but, as we know, the situation’s a lot more nuanced than we think.
During the course of season one, it becomes clearer and clearer that Paula’s over-involvement in Rebecca’s pursuit of Josh has more to do with her than it does Rebecca and Josh being genuinely good for each other. I believe 1.03 is the first time we see Paula and Scott interact and boy is it uncomfortable. Scott is distracted, Paula’s passive-aggressive, and the kids are a mess.
The further we move into the show, the more we understand Paula’s state of mind. She’s been raised to believe that starting a family is the most important thing she’ll ever do (“My dad was right, I’m a breeder not a leader”), but she feels very disconnected from both her kids and her husband. Part of the reason is that she thinks she missed out on her fairy tale romance, so how is anything she actually built supposed to compare to that? On some level, Paula’s always living in a fantasy realm where everything worked out with Jeff and she’s truly happy.
It should be pointed out, though, that while Jeff gives Paula’s yearning for something different a face, the problem itself is not specifically that man. Any fantasy would do in keeping Paula from fully accepting how her real-life relationship played out. In point of fact, Calvin fills that role here in 1.07. He’s just another expression of Paula chasing a fantasy to avoid dealing with her reality.
As such, Paula’s just as much a product of the damaging “patriarchal love narrative” as Rebecca. The notion that real and true love is all about the spark, that it’s a force of nature you can’t possibly fly in the face of, that it’s something easy and all-consuming keeps her from doing the hard work necessary to maintain a relationship with her husband and family. And, because she feels the spark with Calvin, she gets caught up in the fanciful notion that being with him will make her feel happy, important, and valued — “My whole life has been stuck in economy, I have waited and waited to someday be upgraded, to spread my wings and fly…”
Of course, we have Rebecca swoop in and point out that Paula’s pursuit of Calvin isn’t an authentic or healthy remedy to her true unhappiness before anything regretful happens. Because it’s Rebecca imposing her own revelation on Paula though, this is far from the last time the issue comes up. At this point, Paula hasn’t learned the lesson herself, and she needs to fumble a little more before she does.
We still haven’t seen the final resolution to this conflict, and I don’t think there will be one scene or moment that wraps it up with a nice bow. Deep-seated issues like Paula’s unhealthy relationship to what it means to be a mother and a wife don’t simply go away. 3.07 showed us that she’s mindful of what her patterns are, but we have yet to see evidence that the work is being done to avoid falling back into them. She’s finally let go of the fantasy, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to feel content with reality.
Valencia – In 1.09, Valencia is the next character to break out into song by herself with “Women Gotta Stick Together.” When I first sat down to write this meta, the fact that Valencia was the third most affected by Rebecca’s pursuit of happiness seemed surprising. They have such a complicated, antagonistic relationship at this point, it’s kind of jarring to imagine Rebecca having a hand in connecting Valencia with her happiness.
Upon further reflection though, it makes perfect sense. Valencia has constructed a life that makes her so deeply unhappy, of course Rebecca swooping in and going after the foundation on which Valencia’s built her on-paper fantastic life would bring all her dissatisfaction to the surface. “Women Gotta Stick Together,” then, is Valencia’s acknowledgement of everything that keeps her feeling trapped, just buried under a few layers of satire and subtext.
You see, Valencia is a classic case of how female socialization teaches us to view all other women as threats because we’re competing for male attention, and this perceived competition has kept her from truly connecting with other women. However, as we know from her interactions with Rebecca in 1.02 and her eager initiation into the #GurlGroup4Evah, Valencia actually craves female friendship above all else. She regrets losing her high school friends because she was given male attention instead of them (read: sexually assaulted, yikes). She is willingly wooed by the potential relationship with Rebecca even though she was clearly skeptical about ulterior motives. And she throws herself into the group activities—embracing everything from going to the bathroom in pairs to awkward sex toy parties with vigor.
So, even though she’s using satire to mask it, Valencia definitely desires the picturesque, supportive relationships she describes in the beginning of the song: “Females helping females for the greater good. Sisters helping sisters, that’s called sisterhood.” Unfortunately, at this point, she’s also unable to get past her compulsion to attack and belittle every other woman with the end goal of proving she’s the most desireable.
It should also be noted that Valencia’s wholehearted acceptance of the competition narrative is born of her need to ignore her attraction to other women. Though I personally think Valencia’s coming out arc was a travesty because it was handled so poorly, it still confirms in canon that her relationship with Josh was a big, honking example of a woman struggling with compulsory heterosexuality. For evidence, look to V’s 2.05 speech about how she knew the relationship was dead a long time ago—she felt it necessary to keep pushing this relationship forward without love and affection from Josh because a) love and affection was not actually what she wanted from any man and b) she feared having to adapt to the change and examine her life if her and Josh broke up, forcing her closer to the truth that she’s a lesbian—and the scene between Valencia, Josh, and Beth in beginning of 3.12 where it’s revealed that Valencia had a problem with Josh touching her but has no such reservations when it comes to Beth.
That being said, her constant putting down of other women and their appearances functions as a way for Valencia to distance herself from her attraction. It’s easier to remain locked in competition and criticize other women’s bodies than it is to accept her attraction. (Valencia’s clear overcompensation is the reason it’s totally OOC for her coming-out process to be easy and easily glossed over.) But, of course, without acknowledging her true self, Valencia can never be truly happy with her relationships.
Finally, “Women Gotta Stick Together” hints at the unhappiness Valencia feels trying to live under the pressure to look physically appealing to men. There are clear mentions throughout the series of Valencia’s disordered eating (in 1.06 with the “I’ve been starving since 1998” line and plenty of dialogue in 2.05 and 2.07, to name just a few examples). Not only is she overcompensating for her attraction to women by dissecting their appearance, she’s overcompensating for her clear discomfort with her own body by building herself up in relation to how much skinnier she is than her “competition.” Not only is she starving her physical body of sustenance, she’s starving herself of the chance to be content.
Darryl - In 1.10—consequently, right after he spends time with Rebecca socially for the first time by crashing her bus trip to the beach—Darryl gets his solo number. “Having a Few People Over” is far from the deepest song the show’s ever done, but it is still a very clear statement of Darryl’s unhappiness.
The man is obviously lonely, and he tries way too hard to manufacture interpersonal relationships he feels will assuage his loneliness. He’s constantly pushing a friendship with Paula despite her implicit and explicit desire not to have one. He inserts himself into Rebecca and Paula’s private conversations because he wants so desperately to be involved. In 1.10, he hires a bunch of escorts so the guys won’t be bored enough to bail on the evening. He even goes so far as to bully Maya because he sees the same unflattering desperation in her.
And the fact that he tries so hard, that he uses flashy bells and whistles to attract people to him, shows a deep dissatisfaction with who he is at his core. Darryl doesn’t think that his personality, alone, is enough to earn the bond and acceptance of friendship. He feels he has to dress up his company in something fancy—like, say, an EDM song—to be good enough.
Because this is such a consistent character trait of his, I was disappointed with the framing of his season three storyline. At this point in his life, Darryl has forged more meaningful bonds than he had before with White Josh and the people at Whitefeather. I wish the writers had taken the opportunity to let Darryl explore why he still felt so unhappy with his interpersonal relationships, gone more of a “if I still feel lonely with WhiJo around, if i feel like I need to manufacture a more serious relationship with a baby, what would it actually take for me to find happiness?” route.
Heather - Heather is just about the last person to break into song without Rebecca present with “Don’t Settle for Me” in 1.13. As possibly the most self-examined character on the show, her expression of unhappiness has nothing to do with internal conflict. Instead, she expresses dissatisfaction with her situation. Heather knows her worth, and won’t allow Greg to keep them both in a relationship if he’s not being honest about his intentions.
Interestingly enough, though Heather has an identity crisis in season three because she likes being a student, the arc of her conflict centers on her not knowing what the world has to offer her besides the opportunity to learn. While the character feels unmoored from her identity, she still approaches the situation with a kind of self-assuredness everyone else lacks. Her unhappiness in season three, again, has more to do with external circumstances than deep-seated emotional trauma or hangups.
And it’s fitting, then, that the resolution to this specific storyline is that Heather creates her own place in the world. She sees an opportunity and takes the chance to become gainfully employed at a job that still allows for creative expression through the various hobbies and special interests she wants to pursue.
Josh - Pretty much for the opposite reason as Heather, Josh is the last main cast member to get his own musical number with 1.17’s “Angry Mad.” The reason he’s so late to join everyone else in their examination of unhappiness is because Josh is typically pretty satisfied. He’s not looking for any deeper meaning or purpose. All his conflict in season one is surface stuff, like feeling too adult to celebrate Christmas.
And even when he does start to feel unhappy about something—i.e. losing Rebecca’s affirming attention and affection when her focus shifts to Greg—he doesn’t have the self-awareness to really explore what’s at the root of that emotion. He’d rather not acknowledge or face the problem head-on. As a result, “Angry Mad” expresses that Josh is unhappy because he’s unhappy instead of taking a closer look at why seeing Rebecca with Greg makes Josh uncomfortable.
This inability to take stock of his life definitely bites Josh in the ass more than once. It’s what gets him in over his head with Rebecca in season two. It’s what leads him to leave Rebecca on their wedding day instead of calling off the wedding (or perhaps never proposing in the first place). It’s what stops Josh from taking action to halt his downward spiral in season three because the poor oaf doesn’t even realize he’s spiraling until it’s too late.
That being said, season three did a major disservice to what little interiority the character had. I hope season four regains some focus when it comes to Josh, and he’s at least set on the path toward understanding himself and his needs better.
Nathaniel - Finally, we have our late-comer Nathaniel. It takes him eight episodes to get a solo without Rebecca being there with the 3.03 number “I Go to The Zoo.” This puts him right between Paula and Valencia in terms of how long it took Rebecca to influence his worldview enough to get him breaking into song.
Not surprising considering he’s one of the most emotionally stunted characters, his big number is essentially about retreating into childhood comforts when he’s feeling upset. The thing is, while Nathaniel’s trying to find solace in the simplicity, his upbringing is also the source of his unhappiness. His withholding parents never gave him the tools he needed to process his feelings and deal with them healthily. The effects of this have reached well into his adult life as he seems incapable of forming lasting, meaningful bonds with any person—from his disinterest and mistrust of long-term relationships in season two to his series of dick moves with Mona in season three.*
Even his interactions with Rebecca, the person who he confesses makes him want to be better at feeling his feels, lack authenticity eighty percent of the time. His confession of love in 3.04 is an inarticulate mess that devolves into a tangle of misused cliches. He’s clearly working off the Patriarchal Love Narrative, trying to be the definite-article Love Interest, instead of allowing himself to have a genuine moment with Rebecca. In the season finale, their duet is, at least on one level*, a big long joke about how little progress Nathaniel has actually made in accessing his emotions and feeling more empathetic.
Though he’s made progress toward being more open—look to the final scene of 3.06 or even his confessions during the masquerade—he still can’t seem to consider how his actions or emotional needs might affect others. Once, he might have considered this machiavellian approach to interpersonal relationships a strength. Now that he’s found some people he really wants to form lasting emotional bonds with, though, it’s the weakness that’s standing between him and happiness.
*I’d like to clarify that I’m not trying to make the argument that Nathaniel’s upbringing in any way justifies his behavior, especially when it comes to the affair, but it does give us at least a better understanding of his motivations, a clearer lens through which to view the character. And I think that’s another important element of Nothing is Ever Anyone’s Fault. While taking empathy for people’s trauma to the extreme makes it almost valueless and a mockery of itself, the ability to understand why people behave the way that they do is fundamental to liking any of the characters on this show. The line that you have to walk, then, becomes messy and complicated, but it makes for a truly fascinating look at human nature.
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race-jackson · 7 years ago
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Darcy meeting nakia (like sometime after the wakandan outreach program has been going on) but it's like bolin meeting zuko in korra
So this was interesting.
Darcy’s hands were sweaty. As bodily responses to nervousness go, it was a pretty shitty one to have right before meeting someone important, but well - that’s how she rolled, of course. To her dismay, no amount of wiping at her jeans made her palms less sweaty, so she resolved to keep them in her pockets unless absolutely necessary. That way, she could wipe them when she took them out for maximum non-sweatiness possible.
The hands were bad enough, but the jeans were worse. As per his usual date-challenged self, Stark hadn’t given Jane and her the heads up until twenty minutes before his guests arrived. Because of that, she was at a loss for time to change out of her over-washed, threadbare jeans and into something more classy. And the shirt–!
Well, Darcy was glad that she, the underachieving intern, wouldn’t be expected to say much.
But as the Wakandan delegation followed after Stark and into Jane’s lab, Darcy’s eyes went wide. With all the lab personnel for that floor arranged in a line, the Wakandans had started at the end closest to the door. Incidentally, Jane and Darcy were at the other end of the line, amongst those dubbed the “impulse hires”. That meant she had time.
Subtly, or at least subtly for her, she latched onto Jane’s arm and hissed into her ear, “Oh-em-gee it’s her. Ok. Act cool, act cool.”
Jane raised an eyebrow at Darcy before looking down the line at the Wakandans. She let out a little oh of understanding, drawing back and patting Darcy on the back of her hand.
“You’re fucked,” she said simply.
Glaring, Darcy replied, “Thanks, boss.”
Finally, after a few agonising moments, the delegation came to a halt before the two. And there she was: Director Nakia of the Wakandan Outreach Program AKA No. 1 on Darcy’s List of Icons.
“And this is Dr Jane Foster and her lovely assistant Miss Darcy Lewis,” Stark said, gesturing at them. “They’ve had a bit of experience with some of our more … extraneous visitors.”
“He means Thor,” Jane clarified with a nod.
“I tased him, she dated him,” declared Darcy. She winced almost immediately, both internally and externally as Jane elbowed her. Her habit of talking rapidly when nervous was another she’d rather forgo, but she found herself saying more anyway. “What? Don’t take this from me, Jane, it’s my only claim to relevance and these guys are intimidatingly accomplished.”
That had the women tittering slightly. The youngest one, who Darcy’s political brain recognised as Princess Shuri, grinned. Otherwise, they said nothing, no doubt waiting for Jane to say something, only that left space open for Darcy’s lizard brain, and–
“Ok, so can I just say like super quickly to Director Nakia that I’ve seen almost all of you interviews and press conferences and I just think that your handling of all of them is masterful like that’s some really tight deflection going and the way you bring them back to topic is just wow like I’m thrilled to be in the same room as you but now I’m going to go because I never meant to say any of that and its very creepy of me.”
And Darcy fled the lab, swearing to co-opt FRIDAY into switching out Stark’s coffee for decaf for a month as laughter rang in her ears.
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jodiwalker · 7 years ago
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A 'Bachelorette' recap: You Crushed the Rose, Bro!
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Audiences often prefer The Bachelor franchise over The Bachelorette franchise because large groups of women tend to bring more complex social dynamics to the table; more external displays of emotion; and most importantly — more dramzzz.
Enter Becca's expectation-subverting boyfriends who, at any given time, are one stolen-hoodie away from a full emotional meltdown. And I love them for it. I hope Becca moves to Utah, gets an oil drum full of Klonopin, and marries every single one of them, so that I never have to live in a world where five men are not solemnly nodding their heads along to the sacred proverb: You never touch another man's property.
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The 20 remaining men vying for Becca K's affections had no less than three tearful fits of the heart, two Right-Reasons-related conflicts, and one dramatic confession in season 14’s second episode on Monday night. They are — in a phrase — the most extra. Regarding the tears, Alex's were for a typical Bachelorette reason: he was released by Becca into the fresh Calabasas air after spending six days in a cloud of Old Spice deodorant working way beyond its pay grade, subsisting on deli meats and protein-shake-mimosas, and sleeping in a bunk bed as a full-grown 30 year old man. Indeed, the psychological torture that takes place in that mustard-colored stucco mansion will be studied in text books one day…
**Subscribe to the These Are the Best Things newsletter now and never miss a recap!**
But the other first-date breakdowns were a little more unique to the, uh, passion-driven ethos of Becca's season thus far: (a very sleepy-seeming) Wills was overcome with emotion thinking about how much he loves his mom and dad, and Lincoln…well, Lincoln's group-date-party-favor got broken by a meanie, Connor, who seems to have taken all the buttons off his shirt, melted them down into a pomade, and then swiped that button juice through his hair in order to achieve Marge-Simpson-like heights.
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Again, I reiterate that there is nothing wrong with these soft, tender-spirited men; their wild internalized mood swings, fits of emotion, flare for the dramatic, and memorabilia-triggered histrionics only serve to attract me to them more. After years of withheld emotions, over-confidence, and worshiping at the altar of Mark Cuban, these tentative, fragile little nuggets are a welcome and unexpected reprieve. Even this season's transcribed villain, Jordan, is perhaps the least threatening male to ever be on this show. You could run him off with a drug-store-brand conditioner, you could tie him up with a four-syllable word, and you could permanently confound him with nothing more than "what's black and white and red all over?" He is — and I do not say this lightly — harmless. (Except, of course, to himself. I suspect the man is at risk of drowning every time he takes a shower.)
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Even the most aesthetically macho brotestant among them, Leo — who looks like a combination of Fabio and a Victorian-era Strong Man — is, in fact, cattier than a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills, snootier than a Real Housewife of New York, and possesses a lace-front even more snatched than a Real Housewife of Atlanta. When the fellas disrobed at the first group date, I was shocked to see all the six-packs. Not because sensitive men cannot be smoke shows, but because this particular group of delicate bros seem like they spend so much time using their rhyming dictionaries to write Becca terrible poems, and gluing macaroni to picture frames to replace the ones they broke during temper tantrums, that I don't understand where they find the time to make their obliques look like packs of grass-fed sausage links.
Much more important than the simple thrill of watching these dudes work themselves into a emotional group-think tizzy though, is the fact that their flights of fancy make Becca seem all the more level-headed and self-assured by comparison. The woman is attacking the process of finding a husband on reality television with the focus and efficiency of someone trying to replace a subordinate before their own boss realizes that they don't actually have any responsibilities. Or as Bachelor Nation faves, Trista, Kaitlyn, Desiree, and Ashley I. will tell you: like Debby Ocean putting together a heist team to steal the Heart of the Ocean or whatever from the Met Ball #ad
[Ed. note: Wills is Rihanna and Leo is Helena Bonham Carter! And I'M SANDY BULLOCK!]
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When Lincoln tells Becca that she brings out the best in him, she asks him to elaborate on what he means by that — the woman is not interested in your platitudes. Lincoln helpfully explains: "I can be myself, and I think when I'm myself, which most people are, they are their best, and I genuinely believe that as long as you are who you are, which you always are, you would always get nothing but from the best from me." Oh, well then! Rest assured Becca, this man is definitely invested in you as a person, and not at all tied up in the fact that you're the Bachelorette and a human woman.
Funnily enough, despite Becca being surprisingly adept at navigating this minefield of dumb-dumbs, she cannot stop unnecessarily reiterating to us that we can trust her; that she would never mislead us; that she's not going to lie to us. She's! Not! Gonna! Lie! She's not gonna lie about these guys having good style. She's not gonna lie about being frustrated that there's so much drama. She's not gonna lie about being upset that Colton dated one of her former sister-girlfriends…
BECCA! It's okay! We trust you!
And listen, I’ve obviously said “I’m not gonna lie” a time or two in my life — am I not human? Do I not bleed? Do I not occasionally preface a statement with a gratuitous "honestly, or "literally," or "at the end of the day"? (Just kidding, I don’t say the last one, I'm not a Kardashian eating a $13 salad out of plastic bowl — I'm just me eating a $13 salad out of a plastic bowl!) But I fear that this newly found catchphrase of Becca’s represents something deeper than a mere filler phrase. I'm worried for our dear Becca, and not just because her underarms must be sequin-chafed to ribbons. But also because her constant vigilance for sniffing out dishonesty and insincerity in her potential husbands seems indicative of an internalized pressure to do this job so well, to not make any mistakes, to not completely biff this whole thing at someone else’s emotional expense, like Arie did to her…
Okay, that's enough armchair psychology for one dating game show — let's talk about trampoline dodgeball and what that mouf do!
**Read the rest of the Episode 2 recap at These Are the Best Things, and subscribe to the TATBT newsletter to get all of The Best Things straight to your inbox weekly!**
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beautyk-nice · 4 years ago
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Birthday number
Birthday number
The birthday number represents a vibrating influence that has existed since the time of his birth. It can determine a person's character or control his destiny, his future. The birthday number reveals the inherited traits of a person, and serves as a guiding factor rather than a dominant one. The birthday number is of paramount importance, as a person acting against their natural inclinations will face clear obstacles in the areas that lie in the strength of their name. It is obtained from the digits of the date of birth and is a personality number that reveals the natural characteristics of a person. The simplest method is to add up all the digits of this number, then, if 10 or more are formed, add these digits as well. This process continues until you get an elementary number from 1 to 9. Dates can be abbreviated to vibrating numbers by adding the day, month, and year (January 1, February 2, December 12 = 3), etc. For example: a person born on March 12, 1975 will receive 1 - the vibrating number of the person's birthday, since the sum of all the digits when added is 1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 5 = 28 = 10 = 1
Esoteric interpretation: birth number 1
It is a symbol of his own person, a symbol of glory and power, action and ambition. A person with a birthday number of 1 never changes his course and does not try to jump far ahead immediately, jerkily, ahead of time. He reaches new heights only in a direct and progressive way. They should avoid selfishness and greed, self-will and self-will, be careful, balance their interests with the interests of other people so that they do not come into a conflict state, otherwise they can lose friends and gain enemies. A strong birthday number 1 promises a lot, it offers high development if you follow its advice. Strongly expressed "I", will, energy. The unit protects people who are active, strong, inclined to innovations - creators and leaders in all areas. One people always radiate energy, generously give it to others, they cannot be overlooked even in a crowd. There are many artists, politicians and national heroes among them. When it comes to love and sex, these people form many bonds in early adulthood - it is often very difficult for them to settle on one partner. They are attracted to members of the opposite sex who are serious about life. Whores are not interested in them Such people are predominantly sexual. Unfortunately, sex for them is only a means of expressing their sexuality. Many of them do not understand that marriage or other partnership implies a union of equals, not only in bed, but also outside. They are usually loving parents and are the head of the family. They are especially concerned about the preservation of the family as a dynasty.
Esoteric interpretation: birth number 2
The deuce symbolizes balance in mood, behavior, actions, gentleness and tact of character, searching for compromises, smoothing out sharp corners, acute problems. Internal contradictions, excessive judgment, eternal advice to friends and others can prevent you from sorting out your own affairs. Number 2 is antithesis, balance, contrast. It is located between light and darkness, good and evil, warm and cold, wealth and poverty, life and death. You can accept all circumstances as they are, adapt to them, and be reconciled with them, you can avoid extremes, any insecurity and excessive generosity, think and care not only about others, but also about yourself. 2 good designers and advisors, but not performers. You need co-authors, associates, employees. But when choosing partners, let the mind rule over the feelings. The deuce endows its owners with gentleness and passivity, emotionality and physical health. It encourages a person to live by desires and passions, provokes emotional disorders and depression. Patronizes women, motherhood, psychologists, work with the subconscious and meditation, as well as people living on rent and actors. It helps to accumulate in the material world, but is not the number of bankers. Household is very important for these people, so their partners should have common sense. Sexual passion can fade into the background, giving way to genuine respect and love. Moreover, her absence will not make married life any less happy in the long run. They are very loyal natures and in return demand absolute loyalty. As long as they feel that they are loved, needed, everything is fine, but once doubts are painted over, they instantly become jealous and may resort to cruel revenge in their desire to save the family.
Esoteric interpretation: birth number 3
Birthday number "3" reveals its character faster than all other numbers. 3 has a keen and intuitive mind, the ability to quickly and easily assimilate knowledge, often at a very early age. You are a talented person, capable, but alone you will not be able to fully use your talent, since you will choose easier ways and means to achieve your goal. 3 likes to adapt to anything that promises immediate benefits. He prefers to take life as such not so seriously. 3 we need interesting people, an easy, pleasant environment, constant entertainment, the ability to live today, and not in the future. With the right start, it will go far, since 3 do not doubt their abilities, and are competent at work. However, natural impatience, the desire for easy activities, as well as temporary quick success in it, can prevent you from switching to another path, with higher opportunities, where long-term planning is supposed. The three calls to be attractive to the other sex, sometimes aggressive, but invariably bright, brilliant, happy and successful. Patronizes students, military, surgeons and adventurers. Such people are most often attracted to charming representatives of the opposite sex. They have tremendous opportunities to attract people with arousing sexual aura. But a stable family requires much more than charm. Therefore, they must rely on knowledge of human nature. In their youth, many have illusions about marriage. It seems to them that everything will automatically change for the better, but after the romance of the first months, bitter disappointment can come. The only guarantee of the strength of a marriage is the community of interests of partners, as well as joint participation in social activities. At the same time, love and respect are enhanced.
Esoteric interpretation: birth number 4
Birthday number 4 symbolizes a balanced, hardworking nature, careful, avoiding risky ventures. A capable person, with his ideas, plans, tries to figure everything out on his own, without outside help. motto 4 - reliability, durability, honesty. 4 cannot be deceived, but 4 herself must avoid self-deception. If 4 has modest requirements and small goals, then this can become a symbol of defeat. But at the same time, this number gives 4 a solid foundation for the further development of knowledge and professional skills in various specialties. 4 acts in different guises: on the one hand, it is dull, poor, and on the other hand, it is strong and solid, which does not allow to fall into the abyss at any difficulties. Patronizes writers, artists, small and medium-sized businesses, sculptors, architects and land surveyors. Helps in negotiations and networking. Despite the fact that 4 are very reserved people, almost all of them need an ordinary family and normal sex. They honor "family values" more than others. Such reliable and motivated people are considered a good couple. They have great sex appeal. Rarely are romantics. Flirting and sex as such are usually not of interest to them. Only love matters, to which they almost always take very seriously, considering marriage as the main goal. They go for it when their feelings are strong.
Esoteric interpretation: birth number 5
The birthday number 5 symbolizes an enthusiastic nature, loving adventure and risky activities, prone to anything unusual. You are mobile, you love travel and travel and you feel at home everywhere. You quickly and easily learn foreign languages, traditions of other nations. Often your actions and behavior are completely sudden and unexpected, with unpredictable consequences. With all the difficulties, 5 usually comes out dry from the water. In many ways, resourcefulness and wit, cheerfulness help in life. Love for frequent changes can prevent 5 from evaluating the present, seeing real prospects. 5 are always directed only forward, although sometimes it is useful for them to see what is at hand. 5 makes a person sexy and nervous, adventurous and mobile. It encourages you to always be on the side of the law, to protect the weak, to reveal any injustice. The five patronize rulers, missionaries, teachers, philosophers, lawyers, bosses and travelers. In their search for a sexual partner, these people usually show reckless courage and can have a lot of romances before deciding on the final step. They love to experiment in this area and take a wait and see attitude for a long time. Successful or unsuccessful will be their marriage or intimate relationship depends on the extent to which the partners understand each other and whether they are ready to fill their love affair with spiritual content. They are usually confused by the external manifestation of feelings. Words play a more important role for them than caress, kissing, and sometimes sex itself. But over the years, they understand that words alone are not enough for harmony.
Esoteric interpretation: birth number 6
The nature is honest, frank, reliable. Views are progressive, but with a desire to create a name for themselves, to gain respect and favor from others, to maintain peace and tranquility among friends, to improve their living conditions. 6 literally exudes optimism and cheerfulness. Justifying a trusted job or position, 6 is satisfied with what has been achieved and does not strive for the heights of a career or fame. This 6 is sometimes hindered by complacency and complacency. The mask of dispassion 6 does not fit, since it does not cause much sympathy and gives rise to suspicion of hypocrisy. Six betrays a person who is inactive, inert, who loves home comfort. It harmonizes relations with the outside world, but can develop laziness and lack of principle, makes a person non-conflict, but at the same time makes him work hard and hard. The number patronizes physicians, laboratory workers, jewelers, designers, cartoonists, museum workers and collectors. These people are usually very sexy. However, they do not in any way enjoy universal love. Material considerations play a very important role for them when choosing a partner. If there is no sexual compatibility and mutual love between the spouses, this will become a source of disappointment and even rupture of relations. They should be more open about expressing their feelings and affection. Then they will more strongly attract partners who will actually love them as they are, and not as they appear.
Esoteric interpretation: birth number 7
Birthday number 7 symbolizes mystery as well as knowledge. The line of this contradiction can be continued. Here such personality traits arise as diligence and a poetic soul, albeit with some oddities, a tendency to analytical thinking and strong intuition, rich imagination, vivid, vivid imagination. With this number, composers and musicians, writers and poets, philosophers and recluses, thinkers and hermits are born and raised. Their inspiration requires solitude and solitude. The weaker ones are drawn into a swamp of despondency and pessimism, the stronger ones become bright personalities, people of world renown. Seven inspires mystics and philosophers, but makes a person fussy, a little gloomy, sometimes irritable and non-contact. The number, on the one hand, calls for loneliness and creative seclusion, exposes barriers and restrictions. On the other hand, it patronizes marriage, cooperation and partnership. Maintaining harmonious relationships with these people is not easy, especially if they are people with opposite characters: a sensitive and sensual man and a less emotionally excitable woman or a strong-willed woman and a man who allows her to take over her. Faithfulness, a sense of duty, common interests, and a responsible approach to raising children contribute to a happy marriage with these people.
Esoteric interpretation: birth number 8
Birthday number 8 gives business ability, entrepreneurial spirit, fearlessness in all spheres and areas of life, especially in commerce and industry. Striving only forward, these people successfully carry out their plans and intentions, fulfill their plans: their will and strong character, their ability not to feel sorry for themselves and others, is reflected. And resistance, obstacles on the way, opponents only whip up, increase their energy and efficiency. The "eights" have rare administrative skills, the ability to manage teams, dragging people along. This is especially evident in the field of politics, in the military, in the business world, where they can be cruel and merciless. The eight forms a business materialist, strong, with a complex structure of the inner world. From all situations, a person of eight will find a way out, will never get into a mess, will always seem richer than he really is. His life is fraught with constantly changing situations, forcing him to make unexpected bold decisions. Eight forces a person to move from one level to another many times in his life. Eight people are rapidly moving up the evolutionary ladder, among them there are many Initiates. The social circle of these people changes with every turn of fate. If these people enter into an early marriage, their partners will need tremendous endurance, because it is during this period that they are completely captured by work and are eager to achieve their goals. In this case, they can destroy the love relationship. Therefore, later marriages are suitable for them. By that time, they will be fine and their feelings will become more stable. In general, if the choice of a partner is made correctly, these people are faithful, loving spouses, although they bring some peculiarities to the marriage. By the way, many of them are ready to sacrifice marriage for a career at any age.
Esoteric interpretation: birth number 9
Birthday number 9 symbolizes a strong personality with potential intelligence, capable of high development. Here success is given by the world of art and arts, artistic talent and creative, creative power. It is better for such people to immediately abandon the professions of a businessman, metallurgist, military man. Their problem often lies in the awareness of their talents and abilities and in choosing the right path in life. Under this birthday number, great inventors, discoverers of the new, and musicians, writers are born. It all depends on the ability and desire. Both of these factors should be combined, directed towards one goal - then success is guaranteed. The nine endows a person with spiritual activity and promotes higher mental activity. A man of nine is prone to religious revelations, cosmic contacts, synthetic sciences, self-education. Patronizes composers and musicians, navigators and poets, psychologists and hypnotists, writers and magicians. The fate of such a person can be changeable and fickle. There are many revolutionaries, drug addicts and alcoholics among the nine people. These people give themselves completely to love and passionately desire to be loved. Their thirst for love is so great that they are ready for anything for it. They attach great importance to the attributes of romantic courtship. At the same time, they quickly lose interest in the object of their attraction if he (or she) does not succumb to temptation for a long time. In many cases, marriage with these people is successful, if only because they are very sexy people. They take the question of morality and cleanliness in sex seriously. Betrayal is forgiven, but they immediately part with such a partner forever. At some stage, these people may want to reconsider the marriage relationship, even if the family is happy and love reigns between the spouses. They will want to know why they love each other. After that, they will wish to see the confirmation of love every day.
Число дня рождения
Число дня рождения представляет собой вибрирующее влияние, существующее со времени его рождения. Оно может определить характер человека или управлять его судьбой, его будущим. Число дня рождения раскрывает унаследованные черты человека, и служит скорее руководящим факторами, чем господствующим. Число дня рождения имеет первостепенную важность, так как человек, действующий против своих природных склонностей, встретит явные препятствия в областях, которые заключены в силе его имени. Оно получается из цифр даты дня рождения и является числом личности, раскрывающим природную характеристику человека. Самый простой метод - сложить все цифры этого числа, затем, если образуется 10 или более, сложить и эти цифры. Этот процесс продолжается до тех пор, пока не получат элементарное число от 1 до 9. Даты могут быть сокращены в вибрирующие числа при помощи сложения дня, месяца и года (январь - 1, февраль - 2, декабрь - 12=3) и т. д. Например: человек, родившийся 12 марта 1975 года, получит 1 — вибрирующее число дня рождения данного человека, так как сумма всех цифр при сложении 1+2+3+1+9+7+5=28=10=1
Эзотерическая интерпретация: число рождения 1
Это символ собственной персоны, символ славы и могущества, действия и честолюбия. Человек с числом дня рождения 1 никогда не меняет свой курс и не пытается прыгнуть далеко вперед сразу же, рывком, раньше вре��ени. Он достигает новых высот только прямым и прогрессивным путем. Им следует избегать эгоизма и корыстолюбия, своеволия и своенравия, соблюдать осторожность, соразмерять свои интересы с интересами других людей, чтобы они не пришли в конфликтное состояние, иначе можно растерять друзей и приобрести врагов. Сильное число дня рождения 1 обещает многое, оно предлагает высокое развитие, если следовать его советам. Резко выраженное «я», воля, энергия. Единица покровительствует людям активным, сильным, склонным к нововведениям - творцам и лидерам во всех областях. Люди единицы всегда излучают энергию, щедро дарят её окружающим, их нельзя не заметить даже в толпе. Среди них много артистов, политиков и национальных героев. Что касается любви и секса, то у этих людей в раннем взрослом возрасте образуется много связей - им нередко очень трудно остановиться на одном партнере. Их привлекают представители противоположного пола, серьезно относящиеся к жизни. Бляди их не интересуют Такие люди преимущественно сексуальны. К сожалению, секс для них - лишь средство выразить свою сексуальность. Многие из них не понимают, что супружество или иное партнерство, предполагает союз равных, причем не только в постели, но и вне. Они, обычно бывают любящими родителями и являются главой семьи. Особенно они беспокоятся о сохранении семьи как династии
Эзотерическая интерпретация: число рождения 2
Двойка символизирует равновесие в настроении, поведении, действиях, мягкость и тактичность характера, поиски компромиссов, сглаживания острых углов, острых проблем.  Внутренние противоречия, излишняя рассудительность, вечные советы друзьям и окружающим могут помешать разобраться в собственных делах. Число 2 - это антитеза, равновесие, контраст. Оно находится между светом и мраком, добром и злом, теплом и холодом, богатством и нищетой, жизнью и смертью. Вы можете принять все обстоятельства такими, какие они есть, приспосабливаться к ним, и с ними примиряться, можете избегать крайностей, любой неуверенности и чрезмерного великодушия, думаете и заботитесь не только о других, но также и о себе. 2 хорошие проектировщики и советчики, но не исполнители. Вам требуются соавторы, компаньоны, сотрудники. Но при выборе партнеров пусть разум властвует над  чувствами. Двойка наделяет своих хозяев мягкостью и пассивностью, эмоциональностью и физическим здоровьем. Она призывает человека жить желаниями и страстями, провоцирует к эмоциональным расстройствам и депрессиям. Покровительствует женщинам, материнству, психологам, работе с подсознанием и медитациям, а также людям, живущим на ренту и актёрам. Она помогает делать накопления в материальном мире, но не является числом банкиров. Для этих людей очень важен домашний уклад, поэтому их партнеры должны обладать здравым смыслом. Сексуальная страсть может отойти на второй план, уступив место подлинному уважению и любви. Более того, из-за ее отсутствия супружеская жизнь не станет менее счастливой в долгосрочном плане. Это весьма преданные натуры и взамен требуют абсолютной верности. Пока они чувствуют, что их любят, в них нуждаются - все прекрасно, но стоит закрасься сомнениям, они мгновенно начинают ревновать и могут прибегнуть к жестокой мести в своем стремлении сохранить семью.
Эзотерическая интерпретация: число рождения 3
Число дня рождения "3" быстрее всех остальных чисел раскрывает свой характер. У 3 острый и интуитивный разум, способность быстро и легко усваивать знания, часто в весьма раннем возрасте. Вы талантливый человек, способный, но в одиночку не сможете в полной мере использовать свой талант, так как для достижения цели будете выбирать более легкие пути и средства. 3 любит приспосабливаться ко всему, что сулит непосредственную выгоду. Жизнь как таковую  предпочитает воспринимать не так уж серьезно. 3 нужны интересные люди, легкое, приятное окружение, постоянные развлечения, возможность жить сегодня, а не в будущем. При верном старте  пойдет далеко, так как 3 не сомневаетесь в своих силах, и компетентны в работе. Однако природная нетерпеливость, стремление к легкой деятельности, как и временный быстрый успех в ней, могут помешать вам перейти на другой путь, с более высокими возможностями, там, где предполагается перспективное планирование. Тройка призывает быть привлекательным для другого пола, иногда агрессивным, но неизменно ярким, блистательным, счастливым и удачливым. Покровительствует студентам, военным, хирургам и авантюристам. Таких людей чаще всего привлекают обаятельные представители противоположного пола. У них огромные возможности, чтобы притянуть людей с возбуждающей сексуальной аурой. Но для стабильной семьи требуется гораздо больше, чем просто обаяние. Поэтому они должны полагаться на знание человеческой природы. В молодости многие питают иллюзии в отношении супружества. Им кажется, что все автоматически изменится к лучшему, но после романтики первых месяцев может прийти горькое разочарование. Единственной гарантией прочности брака служит общность интересов партнеров, а также совместное участие в общественной деятельности. При этом любовь и уважение усиливаются.
Эзотерическая интерпретация: число рождения 4
Число дня рождения 4 символизирует уравновешенную, трудолюбивую натуру, осторожную, избегающую рискованных предприятий.  Человек способный, со своими идеями, планами, старается разобраться во всем самостоятельно, без посторонней помощи. девиз 4 - надежность, стойкость, честность. 4 нельзя обманывать, но и 4 сама должна избегать самообмана. Если у 4 скромные требования и небольшие цели, то это может стать символом поражения. Но в то же время это число дает 4 прочную основу для дальнейшего развития знаний, профессиональных навыков в различных специальностях. 4 выступает в разных ипостасях: с одной стороны - унылой, нищей, а с другой - крепкой и основательной, не дающей свалиться в пропасть при любых трудностях. Покровительствует писателям, артистам, представителям мелкого и среднего бизнеса, скульпторам, архитекторам и землеустроителям. Помогает в переговорах и налаживании связей. Несмотря на то, что 4 весьма замкнутые люди, почти все они нуждаются в обычной семье и нормальном сексе. Они более других чтят "семейные ценности". Столь надежные и целеустремленные люди считаются хорошей парой. Они обладают большой сексуальной привлекательностью. Редко бывают романтиками. Флирт и секс как таковы их обычно не интересуют. Значение имеет только любовь, к которой они почти всегда относятся очень серьезно, считая брак главной целью. Они идут на него, когда их чувства сильны.
Эзотерическая интерпретация: число рождения 5
Число дня рождения 5 символизирует исполненную энтузиазма натуру, любящую приключения и рискованные мероприятия, склонную ко всему необычному. Вы подвижны, любите поездки и путешествия и везде чувствуете себя как дома.   Вы быстры и легко усваиваете иностранные языки, традиции других народов. Часто Ваши действия и поведение оказываются совершенно внезапными и неожиданными, с непредсказуемыми последствиями. При всех затруднениях 5 обычно выходит сухими из воды.  Во многом в жизни помогает находчивость и остроумие, жизнерадостность. Любовь к частым переменам может помешать 5 оценить настоящее, увидеть реальные перспективы. 5 всегда устремлены только вперед, хотя иногда им полезно увидеть то, что под рукой. 5 делает человека сексуальным и нервным, авантюрным и подвижным. Побуждает всегда быть на стороне закона, защищать слабых, выявлять любую несправедливость. Пятёрка покровительствует правителям, миссионерам, учителям, философам, юристам, начальникам и путешественникам. В поисках сексуального партнера эти люди обычно проявляют безрассудную смелость и могут заводить множество романов, прежде чем решиться на окончательный шаг. Они любят экспериментировать в этой области и долго занимают выжидательную позицию. Удачным или неудачным будет их брак или интимные отношения зависит от того, в какой степени партнеры понимают друг друга и готовы ли наполнить духовным содержанием свою любовную связь. Их обычно смущает внешнее проявление чувств. Слова играют для них более важную роль, нежели ласки, поцелуи, а иногда и сам секс. Но с годами они понимают, что для гармонии одних слов недостаточно.
Эзотерическая интерпретация: число рождения 6
Натура честная, откровенная, надежная. Взгляды - прогрессивные, но с желанием создать себе имя, добиться уважения и расположения окружающих, поддерживать среди друзей мир и спокойствие, улучшать их жизненные условия. 6 буквально излучает оптимизм и жизнерадостность. Оправдывая доверенную работу или должность, 6 удовлетворяется достигнутым и не стремится к вершинам карьеры или славы. В этом 6 иногда препятствуют самодовольство и самоуспокоенность. Маска бесстрастности 6 не идет, так как не вызывает большой симпатии и дает повод заподозрить лицемерие. Шестерка выдаёт человека неактивного, инертного, любящего домашний уют. Гармонизирует отношения с окружающим миром, но может развить лень и беспринципность, делает человека неконфликтным, но при этом заставляет его много и кропотливо трудиться. Число покровительствует медикам, лабораторным работникам, ювелирам, проектировщикам, мультипликаторам, музейщикам и коллекционерам. Эти люди, как правило, очень сексапильные. Вместе с тем, они ни коем образом не пользуются повсеместно любовью. Материальное соображение играет у них очень важную роль при выборе партнера. Если между супругами не будет сексуальной совместимости и взаимной любви - это станет источником разочарования и ��аже разрыва отношений. Им стоит более открыто выражать свои чувства и привязанность. Тогда они будут сильнее притягивать к себе партнеров, которые будут на самом деле любить их такими, какие они есть, а не такими, каким они представляются.
Эзотерическая интерпретация: число рождения 7
Число дня рождения 7 символизирует тайну, а также знание. Линию этого противоречия можно продолжить. Здесь возникают такие свойства личности, как старательность и поэтическая душа, правда, с некоторыми странностями, склонность к аналитическому мышлению и сильная интуиция, богатая фантазия, живое, яркое воображение. С этим числом рождаются и воспитываются композиторы и музыканты, литераторы и поэты, философы и затворники, мыслители и отшельники. Их вдохновение требует уединения и одиночества. Более слабых затягивает болото уныния и пессимизма, более сильные становятся яркими личностями, людьми с мировым именем. Семерка вдохновляет мистиков и философов, но делает человека суетливым, немного мрачным, иногда раздражительным и неконтактным. Число, с одной стороны, призывает к одиночеству и творческому затворничеству, выставляет барьеры и ограничения. А с другой стороны, покровительствует браку, сотрудничеству и партнёрству. Поддерживать гармоничные отношения с этими людьми дело нелегкое, особенно если это люди с противоположными характерами: чуткий и чувственный мужчина и менее эмоционально возбудимая женщина или волевая женщина и мужчина, позволяющий ей брать над собой вверх. Счастливому браку с этим людьми способствуют верность, чувство долга, общие интересы и ответственный подход к воспитанию детей.
Эзотерическая интерпретация: число рождения 8
Число дня рождения 8 дает способности к бизнесу, предприимчивость, неустрашимость во всех сферах и областях жизни, особенно в коммерции и индустрии. Устремляясь только вперед, эти люди успешно осуществляют свои планы и намерения, выполняют задуманное: сказывается их воля и сильный характер, способность не жалеть себя и других.  А сопротивление, преграды на пути, противники только подхлестывают, усиливают их энергию и работоспособность. У «восьмерок» редкостные административные способности, умение управлять коллективами, увлекая людей за собой. Особенно это проявляется в области политики, на военном поприще, в деловом мире, где они могут быть жестоки и беспощадны. Восьмерка формирует делового материалиста, сильного, со сложным устройством внутреннего мира. Из всех ситуаций человек восьмёрки найдёт выход, никогда не попадёт впросак, всегда будет казаться богаче, чем есть на самом деле. Его жизнь сопряжена с постоянно меняющимися ситуациями, заставляющими принимать неожиданные смелые решения. Восьмёрка вынуждает человека много раз в жизни переходить с одного уровня на другой. Люди восьмёрки стремительно передвигаются по эволюционной лестнице, среди них много Посвящённых. Круг общения этих людей меняется с каждым поворотом судьбы. Если эти люди вступают в ранний брак, их партнерам потребуется огромная выдержка, ибо именно в этот период они полностью захвачены работой и горят желанием добиться поставленных целей. В этом случае они могут разрушить любовные отношения. Поэтому им подходят более поздние браки. К тому времени у них все наладится, и чувства станут более стабильными. В целом, если выбор партнера сделан правильно, эти люди являются верными, любящими супругами, хотя они и привносят в брак некоторые особенности. Кстати, многие из них готовы пожертвовать браком ради карьеры в любом возрасте.
Эзотерическая интерпретация: число рождения 9
Число дня рождения 9 символизирует сильную личность с потенциальным интеллектом, способную к высокому развитию. Здесь успех дарит мир искусства и художеств, артистический талант и творческая, созидательная сила. Таким людям лучше сразу отказаться от профессий коммерсанта, металлурга, военного.  Их проблема нередко заключается в осознании своих талантов и способностей и в выборе правильного жизненного пути. Под этим числом дня рождения рождаются и великие изобретатели, и открыватели нового, и музыканты, писатели. Все зависит от способностей и желания. Оба эти фактора следует объединить, направить на одну цель - тогда успех гарантирован. Девятка наделяет человека духовной активностью и способствует высшей мыслительной деятельности. Человек девятки склонен к религиозным откровениям, космическим контактам, синтетическим наукам, самообразованию. Покровительствует композиторам и музыкантам, мореплавателям и поэтам, психологам и гипнотезёрам, писателям и магам. Судьба такого человека может быть изменчивой и непостоянной. Среди людей девятки много революционеров, наркоманов и алкоголиков. Эти люди полностью отдаются любви и страстно желают быть любимыми. Жажда любви у них настолько велика, что они готовы ради нее на что угодно. Большое значение придают атрибутике романтического ухаживания. При этом быстро теряют интерес к объекту своего влечения, если он (или она) долго не поддаются соблазну. Во многих случаях брак с этими людьми удачен, хотя бы потому, что это весьма сексуальные люди. К вопросу нравственности и чистоплотности в сексе они относятся серьезно. Измену прощают, но сразу расстаются с таким партнером навсегда. На некотором этапе эти люди могут захотеть пересмотреть брачные отношения, даже если семья счастлива и между супругами царит любовь. Они захотят узнать, почему любят друг друга. После этого они пожелают каждый день видеть подтверждение любви.
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