#bullying education self-help humour

[northopalshore]

🌺Union Persona Chart observations II

‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋ ‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋ ‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋ ‧₊ ˚

╔══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╗

Union asteriod (1585)

╚══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╝

Signifies circumstances in which you'll meet your future spouse. It also tells you events or changes that will happen within your life when meeting them. This post only applies to the union persona chart.

Check out part 1 here! Masterlist

🌺 Stellium in 9th house

You could meet them while pursuing higher education like highschool or university, you could also meet them when you move to another state or country, at church or through any means of expanding your knowledge i.e learning a course, a language.

🌺 Chiron (21° sagittarius ) retrograde in 1st house

Both of you could have a very healing effect on eachother's self esteem or body image. Perhaps you will relate over being bullied for your looks or being insecure about it and overcoming that past trauma. You both will add a new perspective into eachother's idea of beauty

🌺 Capricorn 2nd house

You'll meet them when you are financially stable. Could also be when you get a job.

🌺 Neptune (aries/aries°) retrograde in 2nd house

You could meet them while you are working/earning money in a foreign land. You might not be able to see them often because of work. You'll be quite occupied with your own career/making more money i.e prioritising money over seeing eachother as often as you'd like.

🌺 Sun (28° cancer) in leo 9th house

When you first see each other, it could be at a party or event at a nearby town/city.

🌺 Sun conjunct mercury

You could talk a lot with this person the first time you meet. You feel like they get everything that you're saying and you can't help but keep talking to eachother!

Note: if union is in the same house as your sun, it means that the first time you are introduced/heard of your future spouse is the first time you see each other face to face.

🌺 Moon in 11th house

You will feel instantly comfortable with this person. You could feel like you've met this person before, a sense of familiarity or you are familiar with their type of energy i.e having friends with similar vibes.

🌺 Juno retrograde in 1st house

You might not recognise them as your future spouse or even a potential romantic partner at first i.e not after getting to know them on a deeper level. They might not seem like your type at first.

🌺 Pluto retrograde in 12 th house

You might be in a long distance relationship for some time i.e someone is living/ working in another country. You could also move to their place/country after a while.

🌺 Saturn (22° Capricorn ) in cancer 7th house

You could have been single for a long time before you met. Your relationship will be very stable. Both of you will be very responsible towards eachother. It may take a while for your relationship to form however, or there might be an issue because of contracts/work. You might have to act professional around eachother often i.e work with eachother.

🌺 Boda (1°, 13°, 25° aries) in Taurus

They will be the one to propose/ initiate the relationship. However, they may take their time. Often opting to feel out the pros and cons, could feel like forever for them to make a move because of hesitation. You could feel impatient about it too. But, once they do, they will stick by you through everything.

🌺 Venus in 7th house

They will bring a lot of love, balance and beauty into your relationships i.e by being your partner or by handling/closing arguments in your love life/family life/relationships. Maybe resolving the issue of " when are you going to get a partner already?" thrown by family members lol.

🌺 Moon sextile mercury

You will feel very comfortable talking to eachother. You feel like they understand exactly what you mean and where you're coming from.

🌺 Part of fortune (26° taurus) in 3rd house

Your interests, intellect and humour will be highlighted in your connection. You may find that talking to eachother brings a lot of joy into your life. You could also learn a lot from eachother i.e broadening your horizons. They could have siblings that you'll be friends with or they're going to be great friends with your siblings. You/they could feel like an extension of your/their family/ siblings!

🌺 Uranus (5° leo) retrograde in 3rd house

They will change the way you think about what you consider as fun. They will change the way you interact with your siblings. Maybe you'll find yourself hanging out with them more when you're with your partner.

🌺 Groom in 11th house/aquarius°

You'll find yourself talking more with this person online or through the phone. Calling them often, texting more than talking face to face. If you're a woman, this describes your husband.

🌺 Briede (28° cancer) in Taurus 6th house

You may work at home a lot/your home town/country when you meet . You may consider being a stay at home wife when with this person. If you are a man, this describes your wife.

🌺 Neptune sextile pluto

You may share the same fantasies or kinks with this person. You may feel like they are always out of reach from you and you want to bring them closer to you. You'll be comfortable sharing secrets with eachother.

🌺 Neptune sextile groom

You may have fantasies about this person i.e who they are, what they're like. They may live/be at a distance from you.

🌺 Sun conjunct mars

You may have similar goals/drives. Perhaps you share a common interest you wish to pursue. There may be a lot of sexual tension between you at times.

🌺 Jupiter trine Saturn

You'll likely be with this person for a very long time. Your careers may benefit from being together. You are both very loyal to each other.

🌺 Sun trine boda

You'll see each other as marriage material!

🌺 Juno opposite venus

You may not be eachother's usually type of love interest but the more you get to know eachother the more you are attracted/intrigued!

‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋ ‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋ ‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋ ‧₊ ˚

*** disclaimer: entertainment purposes only, reader discretion is advised***

Thank you for reading ⁠♡

@northopalshore

[thesecretheadteacher]

Bullying

I make no apology for the length of this entry as the topic of bullying is a very emotive one. Where it occurs, it can be such a damaging and destructive set of actions, leaving the victims upset, hurt or, in a few cases, contemplating or going through with attempts at suicide. It is probably one of the biggest fears parents have for their child whilst at school and also something they feel unable to help with.

The scale of bullying: Once again, for those of us who were raised in the 70s and 80s, we are likely to have witnessed or experienced bullying on an industrial scale. These were the days before there was any awareness or acceptance of difference: the closest anyone got to neurodiversity back then would be if it was the name of a new wave pop group. Anyone with autism, ADHD or any other, fairly common, condition, was just seen as a ‘weirdo’, anyone who was slightly effeminate, or merely kind was ‘gay’ and anyone whose skin colour was darker than you would expect from a 2 week holiday in Skegness, was a N word or the Asian P word. These were just the verbal bullying, of course there was also the physical bullying, I think I was lucky to get through these years with both testicles intact, as they were treated like mosquitos – someone always looking to swat, flick, kick, stamp, punch or knee them, and the resulting excruciating pain provided the watching group with the highest form of hilarity. I guess it was probably different for girls. Fortunately, such sustained and ongoing bullying is very rare and, though parents should be vigilant, in the vast majority of cases, it is something that can be dealt with very easily and effectively by the school.

What is Bullying?: The key starting point for tackling bullying is knowing what bullying is. Most parents will be using their own experiences, possibly from school, but more likely form the media: whether that was watching Gripper Stebson with his 1950s teddy boy style, grabbing various Grange Hill characters by the throat as part of his dinner money pyramid scheme, through to Nelson Muntz giving Bart a wedgie on the Simpsons. Or maybe from stories or videos, some truly horrific, of young people being set upon and beaten up by groups of kids. None of these, however, help to clarify what bullying is.

There is no legal definition of bullying in the UK but, in a school context most would view it as ‘repeated behaviour which is intended to hurt someone either emotionally or physically, and is often aimed at certain people because of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation or any other aspect such as appearance or disability.’

As well as knowing what it is, it is important to know what it isn’t, because there are many things that rather than having a negative impact upon our children, are actually valuable and important learning episodes (I can hear myself morphing into Oprah here):

-        Falling out with each other – this happens and is an important part of their development into adulthood to deal with conflict with others. Unfortunately, far too many parents see this as bullying because their child might be upset as a result of it.

-        Day to day rough and tumble – this particularly applies to boys as they grow up. There is some good science around the importance of ‘horseplay’ (Fry, D. P. (2005). Rough and tumble social play in humans / Pellis, S. M., & Pellis, V. C. (2012). Rough-and-tumble play: Training and using the social brain). Think of it like young animals that jump and climb and wrestle and fight. Having done thousands of break and lunch duties, I am very familiar with what is horse play and what is a bit more serious – the basic guide being are they all having fun, it is very easy to see if someone isn’t or if one individual is being targeted – that is where we step in.

-        A one-off omission: for example not being invited to something outside of school.

-        Not liking someone: we cannot make pupils like each other. This is another important learning point to help in growing up. I am sure we all have people in our own lives that we don’t like, but through our adolescent development, we have learned how to deal with that.

-        Arguments: these happen all the time, as anyone who has been married will testify.

-        A single act of telling a joke about someone. We have all been the butt of a joke at some point - usually funny for others, less so for us.

Of course if any of these things become repeated or several of them happen towards the same child, then yes this would then constitute bullying.

How to deal with bullying: this is what most parents want to know and is the point at which some parents go horribly wrong. So here is my step by step guide:

1.      The most important thing is that the child tells someone. Staff in school are usually excellent at spotting things going on – I have lost count of the number of times I have been on duty and, amidst the mass of humanity that makes up lunch time, spotted a child looking a bit down, on their own or upset.

2.      Watch out for changes in your child: mood swings, sudden aggression, withdrawal from family life (though take care as these are also the default setting for most teenagers.)

3.      If your child can’t talk about it, get them to write it down.

4.      If it involves social media, which increasingly it does, switch it off – delete the apps and don’t engage.

5.      NOW CONTACT THE SCHOOL. I have put this in caps because this is the most important thing. Having discovered you think your child is being bullied, you will be feeling angry, shocked, protective, aggressive and maybe even feel you have failed your child. This heady concoction of feelings is not a good place from which to start to address the issue.

6.      Work with the school: the vast majority of schools deal with these things on an almost daily basis. They know the other children, they see the interactions, they know the parents of the other child or children. They care deeply about your child and the other children and they will do what they feel is best.

7.      If things don’t get any better, then escalate the matter within the school – schools are hierarchical and above a form tutor is a head of year, above them a member of the Senior Leadership Team and above them the headteacher.

How not to deal with bullying: the steps above should lead to the matter being resolved and your child returning to their usual happy, or at least apathetic, experience of school. However, I have had plenty of first-hand experience of parents who decide to handle the matter differently – none of these led to a better outcome than following my advice, and some led to far more serious outcomes for them.

-        Don’t start the discussion off by being abusive or threatening the school for ‘failing your child’. Venting your anger on a poor receptionist won’t make the wheels move faster.

-        Don’t start at the top. I have had many examples of parents contacting me directly, as headteacher, to deal with a falling out between two pupils. Though I have decades of pastoral experience, there are far more appropriate people to look into the matter. It isn’t that I don’t care, but the school and education system wouldn’t really be getting its money’s worth out of me if I spend 6 hours a day in ‘circle time’ with Year 7 girls who have fallen out.

-        Don’t go above the top. On a number of occasions I have had parents decide that, rather than inform the school, they think the matter would be resolved quicker by going above the school to the Local Authority, Ofsted, The Diocese, local MP, Parish Priest, the press, the Pope or anyone else they could think of. Needless to say, none of these people are really in a good position to unravel the reasoning behind why Sally didn’t invite your Bethany to Cineworld last week.

-        Don’t encourage your child to take matters into their own hands. “I’m sorry Sir but I have told him, if anyone says anything to you, you just punch them” or “You can’t tell me that you wouldn’t tell your son to hit them if they say anything.” Well-meaning as this advice from some parents is, it isn’t really great preparation for the world of work. For that day when little Billy grows up, gets his job in middle management and has a falling out with Steve from accounts and decides a good right hook might progress things. So unless you have grand plans for your child to move into the gangland underworld, it really isn’t good advice.

-        Don’t take matters into your own hands with the parents. Often when parents raise a concern about another child bullying their own child, they will want to meet with the other parents. Nearly all schools will avoid doing this, not because we are being obstructive, but because a) the parents (usually) aren’t the people who have fallen out and b) both sets of parents will have only heard their own child’s version of events and will be overly protective. It doesn’t work. Likewise contacting the other parents by text, social media or be going round to the house – all of these are like trying to put a fire out armed with aerosols and petrol. I have witnessed parents going for each other outside the school gate, or picked up the pieces afterwards when one or more parents have been charged with assault.

-        Don’t take matters into your own hands with the child. No matter what you have been told about the other child, they are still that, a child. I have known many occasions where a parent has approached a child directly to ‘warn them off’ like some sort of mafia enforcer. Now I don’t know how they have thought it would play out in real life, but the reality is usually that the child is with some friends, feels like they can’t lose face and so rather than say “Yes of course Mrs T, it was wring of me to behave like that towards your little Mickey, it won’t happen again, take care.” It ends up more “Who are you talking to? Get away you Pedo. I didn’t do anything. F*&k Off, I am going to get my dad on to you.” To be fair this approach does often end the initial bullying and is replaced by family warfare, police action and lawyer involvement.

Don’t arrange a ‘settler’. This is where both sets of parents arrange for the children to meet up and have a settler (a fight to resolve things). For many of you reading this, the very thought would be horrific, but for some of the communities I have worked in, this is the ‘honourable’ way to do things. I have known parents set up times / places for the fight, have rules around not jumping in and even drive their children to the event, like an evening at a Justin Bieber concert. This is not just for boys, I have known it happen with girls too and heard a child describe how her dad had watched her get knocked all over the place then afterwards suggest that the matter was no closed.

[goldeneyedgirl]

Part 2 of MCU/Twilight verse

“That MCU crossover I’m writing that actually hasn’t mentioned the MCU at all yet.”

Alt 7: Found Family 

Rating: T for swearing

Words: 2,551

Summary: Twilight X MCU crossover. The Snap doesn’t just kill humans. What happens next?

Notes: Is this even Whump-y enough to count to Whumptober? I don’t know, everyone’s grieving. I made myself watch Endgame again and I found something useful. I know it probably feels like I wiped out a lot of characters, but there’s method to my madness. I’m desperately resisting the urge to make some obvious corrections to the MCU, and I’m pretty sure the last two chapters are going to be needlessly self-indulgent. And yes, I need a title. 

Part One here

two. survivors

What happens next?

It’s a good question, and one Alice used to be able to answer. Her predictions have… well, they haven’t stopped, but there are less. Maybe she’s not saying everything but he doesn’t press.

They stay in Forks. It’s the easiest option, really. They have resources at the Forks house - all of Jasper’s computers, Rose’s cars, Carlisle’s medication stash. And for, now, it makes sense to keep up the masquerade - the orphaned Cullen kids, in that big old house.

And Seth Clearwater. Neither of them have made more than polite inquiries about the Quileute reservation, because what can they do, really? They weren’t allowed on the land, and nothing they offer will be accepted. Seth doesn’t want to talk about it either, so they just… don’t. Not yet.

The first announcements and news reports are hard to listen to - half of all living creatures. Humans, animals, plants, sea-life… just gone. Then there are the people who survived, but died in the aftermath; the patients in surgery with the dust of their surgeons sinking into their chest cavity, the passengers on an airplane, the school bus with no driver. The news plays on, listing losses and catastrophes until he loudly asks if Seth wants to play Xbox instead.

Alice goes with them, and sits crosslegged on a recliner, watching them.

“Carlisle would have liked that,” she says suddenly, when Emmett realises the error in picking a war game - should have opted for a racing game instead.

“Liked what?” he asks, as he gets up to change the disc. Seth doesn’t say anything, playing with the recliner buttons instead.

“‘Half of all living creatures’,” she quotes. She’s been wearing one of Jasper’s t-shirts under her cardigan, and the scent of his brother is fading the longer she wears it. “Carlisle would have appreciated that. That the universe thought we were living creatures. Might have convinced Edward that we weren’t total monsters, either.”

Seth looks up at her, confused. “Why wouldn’t you be living creatures?” he asks, concentrating at the recliner tips him right back.

“We don’t breathe or age or change,” Alice says, a smirk playing around her face as Seth yelps when the entire chair begins to tip, but luckily it doesn’t fall.

“But you eat,” Seth accepts the controller Emmett passes him. “And you’ve got families. That means you still count.”

“I wish we didn’t.” Emmett doesn’t realise he’s said those words aloud until he realises Seth and Alice are both staring at him. He wants to explain that if they didn’t count, then there wouldn’t be five vases lined up on the mantel (three empty) full of dust. That he wouldn’t be sitting here playing Xbox with Seth Clearwater, and Alice wouldn’t be wearing leggings and her husband’s t-shirt, looking brittle and tired. That he wouldn’t go into their room every night, and bury his face in Rose’s clothes to keep himself from going insane.

But he doesn’t need to. They both understand - Alice sits with Seth when the boy sniffles and tries to hide it; Emmett hears Alice padding around Jasper’s office, having a conversation with thin air, questions asked to silence. If there was some loophole they could grab with both hands and exploit, he knows he and Alice and Seth would take it, humanity and life and all those upright and moral things be damned.

“Just what everyone needs,” Alice muses, leaning back and stretching like a cat. “A world where humans and animals were cut in half but the vampires weren’t.”

And she’s right. That would be a mess. The fucking end of times.

“That would be a cool movie,” Seth says absently, focused on the screen and forcing Emmett’s car off the road and into a ravine.

Alice watches them play for awhile before getting up. A few minutes later, there’s a knock at the door and low voices. Charlie Swan, with Carlisle’s phone.  Emmett lets Seth win a second race, focused on the conversation Alice is having - why it took Charlie so damn long to bring the phone, how they’re holding up; his irritation at the delay it took to get Carlisle’s phone is tempered when he hears the genuine concern Charlie has for Alice. He doesn’t know much about Bella’s father, but he seems like a good guy.

Not that Alice needs to act the part - she looks broken. Most of the time he feels like he’s seeing a part of her that he shouldn’t be seeing, that the loss and grief that becomes her is somehow shameful to witness; it’d be less awkward to see her naked than to see her twisting Jasper’s t-shirt in her hands with that glassy look of hopelessness she tries to hide.

Alice feels the same about him; that Emmett without Rose is devoid of that joie de vivre, that endless good humour, the extra joke. He feels tired in his bones, deflated, and distracted with the space in his chest that Rose used to fill. He feels like an old man, when he was never finished being a young man, never made it to middle-age.

But they are trying. Especially with Seth in the house - he’s taken over the bedroom that Esme planned to give to Bella, mostly because it didn’t stink of vampires as much as any other room; and neither of them wanted to dismantle Esme’s studio or Carlisle’s office. It wasn’t really much - a mattress and boxspring, a dresser and desk. Alice had given him a laptop to use, and found some new bedding for him, and occasionally even remembered that a fourteen year old boy shouldn’t be eating pizza six nights a week, and probably needed more boundaries than they were giving him. But Alice isn’t maternal, and her attempts at forcing vegetables and a bedtime on Seth usually get forgotten within a day or two.

Charlie Swan leaves, and he listens as Alice puts Carlisle’s phone into his vase, and then he focuses on the game so that Seth doesn’t think he’s letting him win because of pity or anything.

—

It’s not until late summer than people start bothering them. Parents of classmates who suddenly don’t have any children of their own to worry over. Colleagues and acquaintances who feel some kind of lingering responsibility. Busy-bodies, usually a part of some self-aggrandising self-appointed community group butting into everyone’s grief.

Alice ignores the early attempts to interfere, to crack open both the metaphorical and literal door for anyone who isn’t Charlie Swan. She’s taken to doing the oddest tasks, but Emmett doesn’t ask. At the moment, she’s painting every single door in the house with a swirling pattern of flowers that is tiny and detailed and fills up the day. Esme would have a conniption if she saw her lovely doors like this (he remembers when Alice and Jasper first arrived, and her art projects ran afoul of Esme - she had apologised and channeled that manic energy into embroidery instead; there’s a pair of unspeakably ugly curtains hanging in the Vermont house from one panicked week when Jasper went off with Peter and Charlotte).

Then the harassment starts - both her and him, since he’s apparently considered her ‘guardian’. Alice hangs up the phone numerous times wordlessly before being so outstandingly rude to Mrs Newton that both he and Seth stare at her before Emmett remembers he’s actually supposed to be in charge - as far as the rest of the town knows, at least - and calls to deter any more visits or phone calls or casseroles because Alice isn’t well and the disruptions are upsetting her.

If Carlisle or Esme were here, they’d think to send Mrs Newton flowers or something as an apology, but they aren’t, and no one can get Alice to apologise when she doesn’t want to, and Seth confided in him that she’s crying when he’s hiding in the garage and Seth is totally at a loss over what to do about a crying girl that isn’t Leah, so maybe they’ll just leave it at that. Give the town something new to gossip about.

But it does spark sudden realisation in both Cullens about a topic that has been long forgotten - school. Alice and Emmett have both graduated, but Seth had not. Seth had another four glorious years in high school, even if the Res school is down to double digits of enrolments, and probably won’t even run every weekday.

Seth whines and begs and negotiates until Alice stamps her foot and demands to know what Sue Clearwater would say and that makes Seth all small and miserable, and Alice hates herself and Emmett solves the problem by making a large donation through one of their anonymous charities to the Res school so that Seth can at least do online learning, and apparently that’s a huge deal that is on the local news, and that makes Alice and Seth laugh because only Emmett would stop a teenage boy’s whining by revolutionising a tribe’s educational provisions with a cheque large enough to sustain a small city for a year.

But it’s good help - it means the children who suddenly have no parents and have to raise siblings can still study; it means that half-empty classrooms don’t necessarily mean half-empty classes; it also means that other tribes with larger losses and no way of schooling are invited to join them.

That’s one good thing they’ve managed.

He also fixed the backdoor as good as new, so it should be two, but he’s pretty sure that doesn’t count now that Alice has painted flowers blooming and dying all over it.

At some point they both bully Seth into going home again, to get his own stuff - clothes and bedding and photos and all those things you look for when you’re in a house that isn’t yours. He yells at them, they yell at him, and he storms off. But now there’s a photo of him with his parents and sister on his dresser, and a bunch of books crowding his desk, and the world’s most beat-up DS under his pillow. There are more photos, somewhere - Emmett knows that because Alice knows where they are and then one day there are two framed photos joining the vases on the mantle - one of Sue and Harry Clearwater on their wedding day, and one of Leah laughing. Neither of them knows what happened to Sue or Leah precisely on that day, but Seth doesn’t bring the ashes with him, so they don’t ask.

Summer folds into fall, and what’s left of Esme’s gardens wither up. Charlie Swan checks on them every few weeks, sounding tired. There’s a lot of work for him right now - mostly community and social issues, like scared and orphaned children hiding, people struggling with money, grief, religion. There’s been some shortages of food, since there’s less being grown, less people to process and package and ship it, and a little town hours outside of Seattle is not a priority to whomever is deciding where to send a milk delivery.

They order Seth’s food from high-end places online that deliver them quickly and quietly; Alice starts choosing long-life and bulk items, and no one needs to ask because it’s obvious things will get worse before they get better. Seth holds a pretty intense grudge against the powdered strawberry milk, though.

But food shortages are the least of their worries, as Alice uses the dining room wall to start taking nonsensical notes, and Emmett’s heard enough stories to know that losing a mate can be… well, he’s not having much fun, but the very last thing he needs is to wrangle Alice if she’s lost her mind. Dead or not, he knows he could never lay a hand on her even if she did go nuts out of love for his family, out of respect for Jasper, and out of this funny bond they’ve somehow formed, being the last ones left.

The notes turn into lists, lists of everyone they’ve ever known, in her swirling handwriting. Even people they know are gone, like Bella, goes on the list.

Then she starts striking out names, like she’s slashing with a knife - Carlisle, Esme, Jasper, Rosalie, Edward, Bella, Charlie, Sue, Leah, Sam, Jacob, Paul… Slash, slash, slash.

Then it starts getting interesting. Peter and Charlotte are gone, but so are half the goddamned Volturi (Alice smirks as she crosses out Caius, Jane, Alec, Dimitri because imagining Aro on his throne with grief-mad Marcus and only the minions is a pretty picture indeed). Carmen and Tanya have survived, but Kate, Irina, and Eleazer are gone. Garrett is alive, but Randall and Mary aren’t. J Jenks didn’t make it either, which makes things… difficult.

Alice scowls darkly as she scratches out Maria’s name, and Emmett wonders if it’s because she didn’t get to do the honours of destroying the Mexican harpy herself. Or because wherever Jasper is now, so is Maria, and Alice is left behind.

Finally, she is done, and the list is nearly balanced in living and dead. Alice’s left eye twitches, and whatever she’s thinking she doesn’t say as she stands up.

“Alaska and then Mexico, then,” she says to him, and he gives her the Look that he gives her and Edward and Jasper every time one of them forgets that not everyone has a gift and some of them have to use their words.

“We need to check on Carmen and Tanya; I think they need us,” Alice explains, still examining the list. “I saw that we need to go. And then we’re going down to Mexico.”

“Maria’s dead,” he gestures at her list, and Seth wanders in stuffing his face with Pringles, and turns white at the sight of Esme’s freshly defaced walls; evidently Motherly Wrath is something universal across all of the species.

“Maria’s dead, and left behind a bunch of fresh newborns,” Alice sounds tired. “There’s no one left for clean up, Em, no one who knows. And it will be bad if we don’t step in soon.”

There might be something cathartic in that for Alice, undoing Maria’s life’s work. Maria’s lands weren’t exactly in the wealthiest or most populated lands these days - Jasper kept a secret map that wasn’t at all a secret - and if going down there and taking off a few heads saves a mother or father or child, then maybe it’s worth the hassle.

“Fine. Alaska and Mexico,” he agrees, and Seth cheers.

“Road-trip!” he declares around a mouthful of chips. Alice rolls her eyes.

“I’ll make you up a passport,” she says, not even bothering to argue with the younger boy that he’ll be joining them. “We’ll take the Jeep, Em - Rose just finished it.”

The words hang in the air for a second, and he nods in agreement. There might be something in that, taking the last gift-gesture-offering Rose ever did for him on their End-of-the-World Road Trip. Alice can rip the heads off newborns, he can drive around in the SUV his wife carefully and lovingly put together just to please him, and maybe he’ll buy Seth a beer in Tijuana.

Closest thing they’ll ever get to therapy, he supposes.

[hatari-translations]

Hákon interview on ‘Vloggað um ekki neitt’ - translation/summary

This video is a 25-minute interview of Matthías by Hákon from Iceland Music News, about a play that Matthías was commissioned to write for the National Theater (Þjóðleikhúsið). In the process, they talk about how they met, the beginning of Matthías’s interest in theater, and the experience of being a teenager being constantly lectured at.

As it's quite long, I'm not going to translate word for word; this will be mostly summarizing, with choice quotes.

The play in question is called Vloggað um ekki neitt (Vlogging about nothing), and it's written with a specific age group in mind - the theater commissioned him to write a play for two actors aimed at ~13-15-year-olds. The theater's educational department does this, selecting demographics and commissioning educational shows meant to appeal to those groups.

Matthías thinks it's a challenge to write for this particular group; it's not obvious that a play for teenagers should be such and such. "I think teenagers just want to be treated like sapient beings, people with taste, and then it's pretty hard to be deciding, 'Yeah, this is like this, because you're teenagers.'" What's annoying about being a teenager, he posits, is that society as a whole is always trying to patronize you.

Hákon says that he remembers, from being a teenager, that there's also a pretty huge maturity gap between thirteen- and fifteen-year-olds. Matthías agrees, and adds that when you're a teenager you're developing your tastes and your self-image, feeling yourself reflected in the things that you like that somebody else might not, and that makes it difficult to categorize you as an age group. The last thing you want is being told, "This is for you, because you're fifteen" - either you like the thing or you don't.

"I also think that teenagers are generally... you aren't going to be telling them anything they don't know. I can imagine that if I were fifteen and I were invited to see a play that some random Matthías Tryggvi dude has written with your age group in mind, I'd just be like 'Okay, this is going to be some drug prevention bullshit, I've heard it all before, I know exactly what it's going to be like, I've been to the theater, I know what this is.'"

Hákon says teenagers as an audience vary a lot. He brings up Skrekkur, a popular youth talent competition for the 13-15-year-old stage of Reykjavík schools, where groups of teens will put together a short theatrical performance, each school will pick one to represent them, and then the schools compete. Matthías notes Hákon has hosted Skrekkur and participated in it, but Hákon corrects him, saying he never participated; at the time, as a young teen, he didn't think theater was very cool at all. Matthías says, "Those upbeat, positive types were just a bit intolerable. That's where I was at, too, at that age." They agree that they were basically the 'difficult' teenagers that might be in the audience.

Matthías says that he saw Leg (Uterus), a black comedy musical about teenage pregnancy by Hugleikur Dagsson, at this theater, and thought it was awesome. (This was in 2007! I saw it too, and it was pretty great. I was 17 at the time; Matthías would've been thirteen.) He loved Hugleikur's books and their grotesque humour, which he still jives with. Leg really opened up the world of theater to him, surprised him with what theater could be. And he hopes Vloggað um ekki neitt could be that for at least one teenager.

They move on to talking about the play itself. Matthías notes it's still in progress, and he's been working on writing it on and off for more than a year (I'm going to guess he was contacted by the theater about doing this during or after Hatari's participation in Söngvakeppnin; Hatari's huge popularity with youth probably made the directors of the theater immediately pin him as likely to write something teens could get excited about). He expects it to go into rehearsals this fall.

The play is about two people trying to become successful vloggers on YouTube. Matthías says really it's kind of like what they're doing right now, "just projecting yourself, and what you have to say, no matter how ill-advised it may be, out into the world." Hákon will be playing one of the two characters, Konráð.

Matthías notes that one thing about writing teenagers, and characters on social media or YouTube or the like, is that you're entering their domain. His main source on YouTubers is his fifteen-year-old sister. "It's their home field, they know how this works, they know what's cool. So very early in the process, I just admitted defeat. I'm not about to write cool social media content for these characters, or write it to be cool. They're always going to fail. It'll be some kind of attempt the characters are making to make good content on YouTube, but it's doomed to fail, because it's the audience that knows what good content is."

Hákon does think the characters are making honest attempts, having read the script so far, and they're honest characters, critical of themselves, perhaps too critical at times. "Yeah, they're scared to take the leap, scared to publish the material they're recording." Hákon says that's probably a common issue for vloggers, whether to publish something or ditch it or start over. Matthías says he's pretty sure PewDiePie, who his sister introduced him to, records a deluge of material and has somebody else editing it for him. It's become a bit of a production, even though it's just him at his computer playing video games (or other things). The characters in the play have that dilemma, as they're making content but are unsure how to present it and edit it.

Hákon talks about how as an artist you have to have a degree of self-reflection and be able to recognize when an idea isn't going anywhere. Matthías says when you're recording or writing or creating something, you enter a bit of a manic state, start to have delusions about how awesome it is, which the characters do, only to hit a wall and realize actually that sucked. Hákon: "And then they might also get delusions about how terrible it is, because it might be neither amazing nor completely awful." Matthías: "Maybe just a little tacky."

Hákon goes over how this isn't the first time the two of them work together, having attended the Academy of the Arts together. He notes Matthías wrote Þvottur when they were in their first year, as a side project, and that was how they met. He says Matthías has a recognizable style; Matthías says "That's fun." Hákon asks if Þvottur was Matthías's first play; he says no, but it was a kind of first effort anyway, as it was the first one he directed. He also notes that Hákon helped him with that, having more experience, and others - at which Hákon brings up that Klemens helped as well, as he built the set. "Which was 'simple but clever' according to a critic," Matthías adds.

Matthías's actual first foray into playwriting was when he and a friend took part in translating-slash-adapting Gertrude Stein's "Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights". "It's a really interesting piece, very experimental, in some sense not very conventional in its textual structure. And it was really - again, a whole new world opened. Whoa, is this a play? Okay, wow." Working on this adaptation/translation with director Brynhildur Guðjónsdóttir was hugely inspiring for him. "After that process, I've really gotten into it, seeing students at the school acting out lines that Ingólfur and I had been polishing."

From there, he moved on to Ungleikur, where young people work together to write, direct and act in their own plays. He wrote three pieces for it all in all, and then Þvottur independently. He says it was really good to be able to make that connection and try this out at the Academy of the Arts.

Returning to Vloggað um ekki neitt, Hákon asks what besides his sister sparked the idea for this piece. Matthías talks about how he attended his sister's civil confirmation ceremony (the non-religious version of a Christian confirmation; confirmations are so commonplace and important in Iceland that any thirteen-year-old that simply doesn't have one would be considered weird, so there's a non-religious version done by the Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association). At the ceremony, there were a bunch of speeches by various speakers, and he thought it was really clear there how much everyone was trying to lecture them. One of the speeches was a parable about frogs. The frogs were all hopping, but then some people came and yelled insults at them. All of them immediately floundered somehow and fell out of line, except one of the frogs, and the punchline of the story was that that frog was deaf. He could just see in the faces of the thirteen-year-olds that nobody could make heads or tails of this story; it was completely irrelevant to them. He thinks this desperation to push you to succeed and not do this and that and think about your health and your mental health all just becomes noise at a certain point. He can relate to that, remembering when he was a teenager himself.

Hákon agrees that that tends to be how you experience this stuff as a teenager, and that this is also visible in the play, which includes that parable about the frogs. The play also shows a sort of exaggerated version of preventative education. Konráð and the other character, Sirrý, are trying to educate teenagers watching their vlogs ("a hopeless project when everyone's just watching PewDiePie," Matthías quips). So the characters are including a lot of hard facts about drugs, cigarettes, sleep, exercise, screen time, bullying, etc., which they're kind of aggressively trying to convey to the audience. The idea, for Matthías, was to create a character who's just spewing all that stuff and all that noise at a camera, not knowing who's even watching.

They talk about how Matthías has been appointed as one of the City Theater's two playwrights for next winter, after Vloggað um ekki neitt is done, though he expects to still attend the rehearsals ("You're not chained to the City Theater" - the National Theater and the City Theater are the two big competing theaters in Reykjavík). He also might become one of three people working on "Þjóðleikur", a project where playwrights write short plays with many characters, to be produced and performed by groups of teens around the country.

"And then Hatari gets mixed up with all this." "Yes. Hatari will be - maybe there's a performance of Vloggað um ekki neitt, and I'm there in costume, and Klemens and Einar are there, and we do a song or two and then introduce the play." (He's joking.)

As they sign off they sanitize their hands and remind everyone to keep two meters apart (Matthías is unsure if they've quite been placed two meters apart here; Hákon thinks it is two meters, but I'm with Matthías in thinking it seems like a bit less).

[lonemiqote]

FFXIV Character sheet!

Link to blank template! (Thanks @bluespiritfire!)

Name: T’khot Soulblaze (people who have trouble with Miqo’te pronunciation usually call him Tiko, pronounced Teeko) Age: 25 at the start of ARR Pronouns: He/Him Birthdate:  22nd Sun of the 4th Umbral Moon

~~PLACE OF ORIGIN~~ Race: Miqo'te, Seeker of the Sun from the T tribe (only technically)

Hometown/city: Hyrstmill Current residence/popular haunt: Popular haunt is Ishgard. Also has a workshop in The Goblet.

~~APPEARANCE~~ Eyes: brown | blue | green | gold | red | purple | multicoloured | other (…) Hair: brunette | black | blonde | crimson red (slightly grizzled) | grey/white (aged or natural?) | multicoloured | none | other (…) Hair type: straight | curly | ringlets | wavy | wiry | frizzy | voluminous | thin | other (…) Hair style: Long and wavy (it’s one of the basic hair styles, don’t think it has a name) Body type: beefy | curvaceous | fat | lean | muscular | petite | skinny | stocky | other (…) Height: short | tall | 169 cm Skin: ashen | caucasian | dark | fair | freckled | olive | tanned | other Facial features: birthmark | beard | face paint | fur | scales | scars | tattoos | other (…) Body features: birthmark | beard | ears (pointy, furry and on top of the head, like all Miqo’te!) | face paint | fur | missing limb/s | scales | scars | tail | tattoos | other (…)

Favourite/commonly used clothes Duelist’s attire, minus the hat (he hates having his ears squished!)

~~SKILLS~~ DoL/DoH Botanist | Fisher | Miner | Alchemist | Armourer | Blacksmith | Carpenter | Culinarian | Goldsmith | Leatherworker | Weaver fun | profit | self-sustainability

~~COMBAT~~ Main discipline Gladiator/Paladin | Marauder/Warrior | Dark Knight | Gunbreaker | Astrologian | Conjurer/White Mage | Arcanist/Scholar/Summoner | Thaumaturge/Black Mage | Blue Mage | Red Mage | Pugilist/Monk | Lancer/Dragoon | Rogue/Ninja | Samurai | Archer/Bard | Machinist | Dancer

Secondary/Tertiary/Extra Classes Gladiator/Paladin | Marauder/Warrior | Dark Knight | Gunbreaker | Astrologian | Conjurer/White Mage | Arcanist/Scholar/Summoner | Thaumaturge/Black Mage | Blue Mage | Red Mage | Pugilist/Monk | Lancer/Dragoon | Rogue/Ninja | Samurai | Archer/Bard | Machinist | Dancer

Fighting style aggressive | cautious | hard-and-fast | tactical | defensive | protective | all out | wait-and-see | charge in headlong | reckless | self-sacrificing | party-oriented | loner |

Any difficulties with magical/physical disciplines? He doesn’t like getting up close and personal with opponents, so he isn’t developing any melee skills (apart from the melee half of his Red Mage abilities)

~~PERSONALITY TRAITS~~ abrasive | abusive | accepting | aggressive | analytical | anxious | arrogant | assertive | brave | bossy | calm | caring | cautious | cheerful | chronic liar | confident | controlling | cowardly | creative/inventive | cunning | curious | determined | disinterested | envious | fearless | frosty | frugal | generous | greedy | gullible | honest | humourous | impatient | impulsive | indifferent | insecure | intelligent | irresponsible | jealous | just | kind | loyal | lustful | manipulative | materialistic | meek | modest | money-driven | naïve | narcissistic | oblivious | overbearing | patient | passive | perceptive | possessive | prickly | quiet | relaxed | religious | sarcastic | secretive | self-assured | self-conscious | self-deprecating | selfish | selfless | spiritual | strict | stubborn | tired | thoughtful | unpredictable | virtuous | vocal | wary | wise | other

~~LIKES~~ Environment: forest | city streets | markets | the beach | open sea/on the water | mountains | jungle | battlefield | being at home | surrounded by books | other (…) Weather: wind | snow | rain | sunshine | storms | cloudy days Flavours: sweet | salty | sour | bitter | spicy | tart | gamey | spiced | fruity | nutty | leafy greens | other Textures: silk | velvet | cotton | metal | leather | water | spongy | dry granules (sand, sugar, etc) | other (…) Favourite Dish: Ishgardian Muffin or Kaiser Roll, toasted and with Smooth Butter on top Favourite Colour: Red and purple Favourite Sound: Water lapping Favourite Smell: Grass Favourite Place: The Firmament Favourite Holiday: N/D Other: Cheerfulness, honesty

~~DISLIKES~~ Environment: forest | city streets | markets | the beach | open sea/on the water | mountains | jungle | battlefield | being at home | surrounded by books | other (…) Weather: wind | snow | rain | sunshine | storms | cloudy days Flavours: sweet | salty | sour | bitter | spicy | tart | gamey | spiced | fruity | nutty | leafy greens | other Textures: silk | velvet | cotton | metal | leather | water | spongy | dry granules (sand, sugar, etc) | other (…) Least Favourite Dish: Anything with mushrooms Least Favourite Colour: None. He likes yellow a bit less, maybe Least Favourite Sound: People yelling Least Favourite Smell: Gunpowder Least Favourite Place: Ul’dah Least Favourite Holiday: N/D Other: Lying, greed

~~HOBBIES~~ art (what medium/s?) | adventuring | cooking | fighting/sparring | finance | gardening | golden saucer attractions (Lord of Verminion, chocobo racing, Doman mahjong, triple triad) | hiking | hunting (game or hunt marks) | lacks hobbies | music | physical sports | reading (history books, essays and any kind of educative content) | running | scrapbooking | sewing/knitting/other needlework | sightseeing | socialising | swimming | training | writing | other (…)

~~RELATIONSHIPS~~ Parents/Legal Guardian/Parental Figure: mother | father | aunt and/or uncle | grandparents | adoptive | foster | mentor | family friend/godparents | other (Edmont de Fortemps, whom he considers sort of a father figure) Siblings: None Children: None Romantic: single | unrequited | crushing | dating | engaged | married (technically?) | divorced/separated | widow/widower | recently split | it’s complicated | other (grieving his lover, but has also recently forged a bond with someone else and is experiencing complex and conflicting feelings about it)

Friends: The number of people he his really close to can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. One notable example is his childhood friend Khelben Soulblaze. Rivals/Enemies: No one he considers a true enemy or rival, because he usually gets (a bit too much) into others’ shoes. To him, opponents are just people who put themselves between him and the safety of those he cares about for one reason or the other. The only ones who managed to actually anger him are Teledji Adeledji and Thordan VII.

Any special gestures of affection they have with people in their life? Even simply looking for a particular someone’s company is a big show of affection coming from him. Holding hands without gloves and/or in public is a sign of deep trust and love.

~~HAVE DEALT WITH/IS DEALING WITH~~ abuse (ongoing or recovering, verbal or physical) | acceptance | a new relationship (a close friendship turned deep bond) | a new romance | betrayal | broken heart | budgeting | bullying | caution | confidence | crisis of faith | depression | grief | health issues | how to trust | learning from a mistake | loss | love | new people | new place | opening up to someone/others | parenthood | physical changes (loss of a limb or other sense, inability to do things previously able to) | politics | PTSD | poverty | racism | reconciling previously held beliefs | responsibility | sacrifice (of himself and of others) | self-acceptance | self-esteem | to value myself | to value others | trauma (medical, mental AND emotional) | war | wealth | other (…)

How are they dealing with the most prominent of the above? How does it affect their in day-to-day life, if at all? For the negative ones, mostly avoidance and denial and bottling up his feelings, but he’s striving to open up about his troubles  at least with his best friend.

~~ODDS AND ENDS~~ Notable Weapons He views weapons as mere tools and has no attachment whatsoever to any one in particular.

Notable Mounts A Black Chocobo. Or rather, THE Black Chocobo.

Notable Minion/s A Coeurl Kitten he keeps at home, and the wind-up Haurchefant Stephanivien made for him that he brings about everywhere, to show it all the places he visits.

Keepsakes/Mementos A Fortemps signet ring that Haurchefant secretly slipped to him as a promise ring. He wears it on a necklace.

Chronic Illnesses or Disabilities Hyper-sensitivity (especially in the hands, probably has psychosomatic roots) and over-empathy, if these can be counted among “disabilities”. They sure are impairments in some situations. How do they deal with these? By wearing gloves most of the time except when he bathes, fundamentally. Also being introverted and not showing much in the way of feelings is sort of a self-defence mechanism at times.

Education Level Mostly self-taught (apart from the very basic reading and writing education imparted to him by a village conjurer as a child), but pretty high since he likes to read and study any scrap of paper with information on it that he comes across.

Habits When available, he climbs on trees to read. Wherever he is, he never fails to take a cup of the local tea variety in the morning, it matters not whether with food or not. He loathes getting dirty and has to clean himself as soon as he can in that case.

Other Despite being completely disconnected from his Miqo’te heritage, he cannot help but show the mannerisms and instincts of his kind. He has a tendency to climb to higher ground, loves high places and gets anxious in crowded zones. His tail gets all puffed up when he’s nervous or gets scared by something sudden, he sometimes gets the zoomies, and his gaze is unvoluntarily attracted by quick movements.

[completeotometrash]

Matchup

@i-sleep-like-napoleon

I'm a female on the libra-scorpio cusp and a Slytherin, I'm kind of a mix of ENFP and INFP. Appearance-wise, I'm 5'2, i've brown eyes and caramel brown hair. I also wear glasses and I'm also quite tanned from being out in the sun all the time. Personality-wise: - I can be really enthusiastic about stuff I'm really interested in, such as history (especially world war history), sciences (but physics is trash to me) and anime (I'm a closet nerd hehe) . - I can be really ambitious and competitive, and I would sometimes place unrealistic expectations on myself, leaving me mentally exhausted and stressed, but like i place these unrealistic measures on myself to strive to be the best - I do try to chill and take it slow, but you know, sometimes i just can't 😅 - I'm quite an open book to all my close friends - I also tend to be really possessive, like I dont like people purposely trying to steal my friends (it happened a lot of times before) and i hate it when someone randomly butts into a conversation i'm having with anyone, especially if it's a deep conversation - I can be really awkward around people i don't click with, but around people i click with, i can be pretty wild and will be able to hold conversations with. - I tend to procrastinate a lot, and people say i look intimidating but i don't feel like I'm intimidating. - I can be really sensitive to other's emotions and i tend to put others before me, so like my close friend always told me that i'm too much of a giver, like I try to please everyone else and ignore myself - My love languages are physical touch and quality time - I can't stand people who are attention seekers or just aim to be public nuisances as i feel that they're just really irritating and it gets on my nerves, especially those people who are just doing stupid things to be popular (which is lowkey why i think tiktoks dances are dumb, like seriously i dont get the hype, but i do like tiktok meme videos tho) - I listen to a lot of different genres of music, but i especially love classics (mozart and chopin are my favourites) and pop. - I can really insecure at times, because i always feel that every other girl out there is better than me and i'm just a plain and ugly, and partially because i got bullied when i was younger about my appearance - I like dressing up and putting on makeup occassionally, but i do act like a tomboy most of the time (ie. I hate skirts, like i really dont like them and i have no idea why, but jeans are supreme). - I also love playing the piano and singing as well, even though i'm not that good at it :D - People tell me that I'm very curious and persistent, constantly pushing until i get answers, but i do know my limits. - I'm also very passionate about things I love, and i would do anything to protect people that i care and love. - I'm also very affectionate and supportive towards my close friends and people i love. - I do have trust issues and I often feel like i do not deserve love and that I hate people who betray my trust. - I'm ok with pda, but not anything overly affectionate, like hand-holding and kissing is ok, but not making out 😳😖 - I also tend to be pretty forgettful, and i'll not eat for hours to get my work on hand done (whoop pretty unhealthy but :0) - I'm also really sarcastic when i want to be, and i can't hold a poker face to save my life (i swear i always start laughing like 2 seconds in) and I tend to sass people a lot, especially if I've had a bad day - I'm also pretty fiesty and I hate people stereotyping me for my gender (i.e like when someone says that "oh you're pretty good for a girl") like what does my gender have to do with my ability? Like there is zero correlation - My sense of humour is kind of twisted at times but i really love memes and i tend to crack inappropriate jokes sometimes - I've been told that i come across as really flirty to some guys but it's because i can be really touchy feely to my friends - I'm also quick to anger, especially if i have a bad day, i hate people who nag and i hate people who put down others- I'm kind of touch-starved, so i really like hugs and cuddles, but I'm also ticklish so my friends tend to tickle me when hugging me - I can be a daydreamer at times, like I would get stuck in my own fantasy world when i shouldn't 😂😂 - I'm also a drama queen around my friends, I dont have a lot of them in real life because of some rumours that others spread, so i only have a close circle of friends i really treasure and would do anything for them - I also tend to bottle up all my anger and negative thoughts, and would sometimes like explode on others even though I don't mean to - Sometimes I don't really think before I say or act, which is why sometimes I can come off as a bit rude or unfeeling but it's just me and my impulsiveness 🤪 Fun Facts: - i really love food, especially sweets (dark chocolate and dango is my life) - i really hate horror movies (I'm usually pretty brave, but horror movies just get to me so much ergh) but i love chick flicks and adventure flims - I'm also a hopeless romantic, which is why even little romantic gestures can make my heart flutter - My hobbies are reading, writing and shooting (only air-rifle though) - I used to be pretty athletic, I still am, but to a lesser extend now, because i injured my left knee playing volleyball in the past. It's on it's road to recovery, but it still hurts quite badly when i overexert myself. - I love artic foxes and cats, dogs are too energetic for me 😅 - I'm also a sneaker hoarder and I love collecting and wearing sneakers hehe, heels are like torture devices for the feet i dont care even if they make me taller - Coffee over tea anyday, no offense to peoples who like tea, but a fresh cup of brewed coffee is one of the best things in the world 😚 - I'm really terrible at drawing, I'm not gonna kid you. When i was younger, my art teacher threatened to fail me because im really terrible at drawing. 😂 - I'm also very injury-prone and a bit clumsy, which caused me to have bruises occasionally - I'm kinda bad and math and physics, but like if you take your time to explain to me then I'll understand a bit more lol, my best subject is like chemistry

...........

Thank you so much for the request! Hope you enjoy.

Although I was deeply torn between another character, I believe the suitor you’d be best with is: Sasuke Sarutobi!

I honestly feel like a relationship between you two would be like an, “opposites attract,” type of deal. But despite this, you two still would share a lot of common interests! Unlike all of the other guys, he understands you. He was born and raised in the same time period as you! He knows everything a normal person would from the 2000′s, he’s watched movies, listened to similar music, enjoyed memes, and understands references! Sasuke has made it very clear that he too, is quite the history guru. His former job in modern times was being a scientist. (Although it was never mentioned, I strongly feel like he enjoyed anime before he was sent back in time.) And he loves to not only learn, but teach what he knows! You two have a relationship unlike any other, which is a truly special thing. If there would ever be a time where you want to rant or discuss anything about the future, he would gladly listen!

Sasuke is not very good with his emotions, and is very stoic and self-kept. Seeing you and your expressions and how different you two are is pretty refreshing to him. He doesn’t find you intimidating whatsoever! (More adorable than anything). If you were ever frustrated at him or the world, he knows how to take it without making things worse, (most of the time). Always stays calm and has no problem being the first to apologize. He listens to how you feel and gives his best advice. Rare of you to ever get mad at him, he’s a pretty chill person that doesn’t seek attention or act like they’re better than anyone. He’s not too sure how to help you with your insecurities. Shows his love through actions rather than words, but still gives the nice occasional compliment on how you look or on your personality. (He truly does love you, thinks of you as being better than perfect.) He doesn’t mind that you’re the same way. Also isn’t bothered by you being possessive at all. (Doesn’t really talk to girls other than you unless he has to.)

Loves going and doing things with you. Whether if it’s walking around town or playing games in the castle! (Thinks you being competitive is adorable!) Understands if you just want to stay home and relax. He’s very introverted and doesn’t really understand social ques, so just being alone with you is something he would take any day.

Although he doesn’t show it, he loves pampering you! Enjoys cuddles as well. (Everyone seems to discuss on how he and his s/o would recreate the upside-down Spiderman kiss.) Will just randomly pull up romantic movie or TV show lines, and vines. A secret softy! (But only for you).

Overall, I think this would be a really healthy relationship! Only problem being how bad he is at expressing himself. (Which can be fixed over time.)

Other Possible matches: Masamune Date (almost picked this one tbh), Mitsunari Ishida, and Kennyo.. (Fuck I can’t remember his last name. Someone please educate me.)

[samuraiko]

The Price of the Past - More thoughts on THE ROYAL TUTOR

(THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING - I’M GONNA TALK ABOUT STUFF ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE END OF THE SERIES, SO IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE ANIME, STOP READING RIGHT NOW. LIKE, NOW. AS IN, WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS?)

A lot of folks seemed to like my Pleading Their Case essay, so I’m going back and doing another one, this time on what’s probably my favorite scene in the entire show, from episode 9 (”The Price of the Past”).

The wine cellar scene.

Now, I adore this scene, as you may know from my Top 10 Moments in THE ROYAL TUTOR post. But I want to kind of expand on that here, rather than just gushing about how awesome it is.

THE BACKGROUND:

From the minute our heroes (Kai, Heine, and Maximilian) end up in the cellar, we get a real sense of the danger that they’re in. All three are handcuffed to the wine racks, and Fuchs is openly taunting them that he is quite willing to hurt them (or possibly kill them) to get what he wants. 

Up until now, almost every single challenge the princes have faced have been mental (and to some degree, emotional) - Licht being ratted out for working in the cafe, Bruno being tempted with an offer to pursue another career, Leonhard having to overcome his learning problems, and even Kai overcoming his natural shyness and reticence. This is a much, much bigger problem.

Sure, the palace will figure out something’s wrong, and sure enough, this is immediately confirmed when Fuchs outright admits that this is for ransom. Why is this important? It means that Fuchs and his cohorts have pretty much gone “all in” on this one. As Fuchs admits to Heine, “High risks yield high returns,” which means they’re looking at prison for possibly the rest of their lives at the least, and possible execution at the worst. And if your captors are willing to risk prison and/or death, this will generally not end well.

THE PLAYERS: 

Maximilian might be awestruck by the estate, but his instincts as a guard are still reasonably solid (he is after all the one to wonder TWICE where Ludwig is, even if no one follows up on that, including himself). And he’s probably kicking himself pretty hard that he wasn’t quite taking this as seriously as he should have. (More on him a bit later, though.) Sure, he might be the best fencer among the guards, but this is real life. And it’s something that I *REALLY* wish the manga would have him learn... like, dude, people’s LIVES are your responsibility here.

For Kai, this is its own sort of nightmarish replay of the incident at the Academy - while Fuchs hasn’t laid a hand on him (yet), Kai already knows that Fuchs has no qualms against fighting dirty, either. (On the flip side, Kai has no qualms about taking care of himself, and he gave Fuchs as good as he got.) And while Kai might not have the same emotional attachment to Maximilian that he does to Bruno, he sure as hell cares a lot about Heine. Not to mention that this is more than a little out of Kai’s league, and he is VERY aware of that fact. So Kai is obviously pissed, and more than a little self-reproaching.

Heine is doing his best to keep things calm (whether defusing it through obstinate humour or trying to rationalize with Fuchs), while providing an anchor for Kai. You also get the feeling that he’s genuinely trying to reach Fuchs in those moments, appealing to things that the princes (Fuchs’ peers) are smart enough to value - solid morals, familial approval, open communication. It also is probably more than a little frustrating for Heine that he knows Viktor is counting on him to protect his sons (”I leave my sons in your capable hands”), and then THIS happens. As we’ll learn later in the series, Heine is more than capable of taking care of himself (yeah, a 16-year-old (ish) kid going up against four of the Royal Guard and WINNING), but now he has Kai (and to a lesser degree, Maximilian) to worry about.

And as for Fuchs, he is clearly a case of someone who claims he suffers at the hands of those of greater privilege, while completely failing to notice how much of his own he actually has. For those not in the know - the traditional ‘von’ you see in most German and Austrian surnames? It’s an indication of nobility. Ralf von Fuchs is actually a NOBLE. The academy he and Kai and Bruno attend? It’s a NOBLES ONLY academy. But over and over, we see how everything is always everyone else’s fault. He doesn’t get top marks? It’s because of Bruno, and not even because Bruno is SMART, but because it’s FAVORITISM. His family disowns him because of what happened? He still “suffers under the pressures and influence of the Royal Court.” And Fuchs’ natural jealousy and not-so-hidden sadism have once again led him to lash out at the princes, to do it where and when he thinks no one else will find out (or be able to stop him), and with others who are willing to back him up (or at least not stop him). Let’s be honest - he could have KILLED Bruno during those ‘training’ sessions.

THE SETUP:

Things come to a head when Fuchs pulls a knife on Kai. Now look at their reactions:

Kai might be afraid, but that stoic facade of his serves him well in this instance because he knows that bullies want to see your fear, and he is not about to oblige.

Maximilian goes from cheerful fanboying over the idea of being famous to being terrified that something will happen to Kai before he can stop it.

And Heine says nothing. Not a single word.

Fuchs’ frustrations lead him to grab Heine by the collar and threatening to cut his throat. And not surprisingly, Kai does not take this well. He takes it even less well when Fuchs tries to make it sound like it’s KAI’S fault that Heine’s about to get hurt (back to that again). And Kai is literally a single breath away from beating Fuchs within an inch of his life (if he doesn’t outright kill him in a blind rage).

RIGHT THERE - that’s when you realize who’s really in control of this situation. And it isn’t Fuchs.

Yes, the focus of the moment is all on Kai as he remembers Helene smiling at him, a remorseful Bruno apologizing to him... but a single glance and two words from Heine freezes him in place.

“Prince Kai.”

(By the way - this is one of the ONLY times in the series we ever hear Heine raise his voice.)

You want proof how intelligent Heine is? Never mind that he’s figured out Leonhard and Kai in the space of a single conversation. Never mind that he beats Bruno at every task the prince could come up with. Never mind that he figures out Licht’s secret in moments.

Watch the scene again.

Here they are in the cellar - Kai is trying to break free, Maximilian is lamenting about the estate, Fuchs is openly taunting them. 

What is Heine doing?

He gets Fuchs talking, and he’s steering the conversation every step of the way. He’s keeping Kai from being afraid by letting Fuchs make him angry. He’s giving Maximilian all the information he needs that this is too well-thought-out, too planned for it to be a spur-of-the-moment thing, and clarifies the scope of the danger to the prince. He knows he’s in no real danger, so he LETS Fuchs manhandle him.

And most importantly, HE’S BUYING TIME. Fuchs can’t help but be focused on Kai, he’s almost obsessed with him... which means he’s NOT watching Heine.

And even when Fuchs has a knife to his throat, Heine is utterly disdainful of Fuchs. The expression on his face alone says volumes. “You arrogant child...”

And then Fuchs goes after Kai.

The first domino falls.

THE ACTION:

Watch the moment when Fuchs turns on Kai... and watch Heine in the background. He’s stopped watching Kai, and is now watching Fuchs... and the second Fuchs turns his back on Heine, boom - Heine’s out of the cuffs and in front of Kai.

“With the requisite amount of time and knowledge, Herr Fuchs, a little toy like this is unlocked quite easily.”

One swing of the chain, and Fuchs is cuffed to the wine rack. But it doesn’t stop there - Heine promptly tears down the young man’s arguments by admitting that yes, maybe his family expectations were too high of him, but had he bothered asking for help, he might have gotten it.

And look at Kai’s face - sure, he’s probably wondering what the hell just happened, but at the same time, I get the sense that he’s suddenly seeing what he could have become, had he not had the supportive mentor that he does. He would have kept withdrawing, kept hiding, kept blaming himself (and maybe others) for what happened.

And then... comes the awesome.

Fuchs’ cohorts come down the stairs (after watching the scene multiple times, Heine is outnumbered six to one, I think). Heine issues his declaration to ‘educate’ them, and after ordering Maximilian to protect Kai (a scene better handled in the anime than the manga, I think, because during the fight itself, Maximilian is all business, and he does the smart thing here - the second the kdinappers are past, he and Kai are heading toward the stairs), Heine proceeds to lay a smackdown that is poetry to behold.

THE FIGHT:

Heine has had the last several minutes to study his surroundings, and he uses that information well. He knows where everything is, and where everyone is.

The first thing Heine does is plant his feet and balance himself. Good plan, since the first one to come after him has a knife. He dodges three times to get the measure of his opponent’s skill (and a sense of his reach), lets himself be backed up toward a second opponent behind him, then neatly pivots, grabs his would-be backstabber and throws him right into his assailant. Two down.

The guns come out after that, but Heine’s as lithe as an acrobat, and draws their fire down the room... AWAY from Fuchs, by the way, who’s still chained up at the other end of the row. It takes a certain measure of confidence to nab his cap as he dodges the gunfire, then he picks up a cask lid just as the kidnappers shoot some of the provisions (namely a flour sack), causing flour to go everywhere. While they’re choking, the lid comes flying out of the dust and bam, third attacker is sent reeling.

Unfortunately, he crashes into Fuchs, dislodging the support beams of the casks and causing two of them to fall toward Fuchs, who can’t dodge because of his handcuffs. No problem, Heine has snatched up the fallen beam and shunts the casks away from Fuchs and the guy he just hit.

And now Heine has a weapon that can attack at greater reach (not much good against guns, but as the martial arts adage goes, “If you can’t stand, you can’t fight”). And when all the kidnappers try and rush him at once (since by now they’re out of ammo, and Heine’s not about to give them the time to reload, so it’s back to knives and/or fists), he swings the beam and takes them down. Even better - he’s swinging clockwise, which means he’s more likely to take out the right arms of each of his opponents (all his opponents have come at him right-handed). Heine’s also not shy about aiming for the head or ribcage, either (”if you can’t see, you can’t fight, if you can’t breathe, you can’t fight”).

Once they’re all down, he goes after the leader, who tries to attack him with the riding crop/teacher’s pointer. Heine’s not having that, and two quick dodges and one wrist lock later, that’s the end of that. The leader is cowering on the floor, while Heine nonchalantly kicks the revolver up into his hand, cocks it, and takes a shot between the leader’s legs. (I can only imagine that concrete shrapnel ‘down there’ must HURT, and lucky for him, the ricochet doesn’t kill him, either.)

(By the way - Heine’s ambidextrous - he fires the revolver first with his left hand, then with his right.) And while he’s spinning the barrel to see how many shots he has left, he manages to load the ammo that ends the scene the way it does.

“Who ARE you?! Tell me!”

“The Royal Tutor... my name is Heine Wittgenstein. Let this be a lesson to you, sir.”

Title first, name second. Says quite a bit about which he considers more important, doesn’t it? And said with utter, chilling calm.

THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS:

Hands down, visually, this is my favorite scene in the anime. The lighting and colouring are fantastic, although I admit that the animation itself is a bit more spare than I’d have liked. Still, it works gorgeously well, and for a street fighter like Heine, a lengthy drawn-out fight might not have worked as well (street fights are more visceral and less elegant). Angles and perspectives are handled beautifully, emphasizing the almost claustrophobic confines of the wine cellar, and constantly showcasing who’s dominant in the scene.

The whole fight scene, by the way, is practically storyboarded from the manga, and made even more impressive by being able to use a moving camera and shifting perspective to give it motion and flow.

(I have to make a side note here - there is ONE notable difference that I caught after first watching the series, then reading the manga. There’s a still frame where Kai is frozen after throwing the punch, and Fuchs is holding up Heine by the collar. In the manga, Heine is pretty much on his knees. In the anime, he has one foot out in front of him. And of the two versions, I prefer the anime one because it captures Heine’s intent more clearly. Heine is ready to make his move as soon as Fuchs turns his back.)

The music is also my favorite track in the series (roughly translated to “Teaching Weapons,” a marvelous dual meaning), to where it almost seems like a dance. The time keeps shifting, keeping things just off-balance enough to convey that sense of chaotic movement. And unlike virtually every other cue in the show, this scene is the ONLY place it appears.

For the dub, you’ve got Micah Solusod as Heine, Daman Mills as Kai, Dallas Reid as Maximilian, Justin Briner as Fuchs (by the way, Justin REALLY needs to play more villains, as he’s fantastic at it), with Chris Sabat cameoing as the ringleader. Everyone’s on their A game here, to the point where it’s hard to point out which one is best. Kai’s emotional reaction to everything going on means that Daman has more of a chance to move past Kai’s usual softspoken voice, Justin manages to give Fuchs an almost delusional, unhinged arrogance, but Micah’s absolute stoicism with its underlying anger and disdain just sells this scene as Heine’s crowning moment of awesome.

So yeah, I love this episode, and I love this scene. Hope you do, too. :)

[thithuhatran]

Bullying on Social Media

The openness of social media can be described as a coin with two sides. As staying behind the screen makes people more confident to express their thoughts and freedom of speech is being emphasized on social media nowadays, the downside is bullying, harassment and hating, especially from the anonymous accounts. Besides, the regulation has not been strict enough to govern the misconduct.

A research involving conversations with 14,000 girls from 31 countries shows that more than half of them have been harassed and abused online and consequently, one in four girls was abused online feels physically unsafe (Plan International 2020). Furthermore, body shaming on social media has been an extreme misbehavior. Camilla Cabello has posted recently that her mental health and self-esteem were impacted after she saw her photo taken by paparazzies and the online comments. The singer was just wearing small bikinis and did not care about how she looked as it was supposed to be a relaxing time the same as anyone else being on vacation. She spoke out the fact: "We see pictures of women and praise them for looking good, for looking fit or “healthy”, but what is health if you are so fixated on what your body looks like that your mental health suffers and you can’t enjoy your life?" (Burcham 2022).

Some other phenomena related to online sexual harassment are revenge pornography, non-consensual sexting, cyberstalking, sending unsolicited nude images, sexually violent threats (Vitis & Gilmour 2017). It is apparent that the victims are mostly women. However, LGBTQ+ are also the victims of gender-based hate speech.

There are 2 approaches to solve the problems. First is education. It is not simply informing to everyone that cyberbullying is unaccepted, but the victims also need to know they should raise their voice because support is always available to help them. Regarding support, the second approach is the protection from the government. There should be stringent law for justice, particularly gender equality.

References:

Burcham, C 2022, 'Camila Cabello shares a must-read post on body shaming and paparazzi photos', Women's Health, viewed 24 April 2022, <https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/health/a39634743/camila-cabello-body-shaming-paparazzi-photos/>.

Plan International 2020, 'The state of the world's girls report', viewed 24 April 2022, <https://www.plan.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/SOTWG-Free-to-Be-Online-2020.pdf>.

Vitis, L & Gilmour, F 2017, 'Dick pics on blast: A woman’s resistance to online sexual harassment using humour, art and Instagram', SAGE Publications, The UK.

[superemeralds]

my sonic characters: a masterpost

I’ll add more whenever i get new info on characters and so on sakjsak

I used to have more but i gave some of them away so i dont feel like i should mention them here (even if those designs are not in use anymore)

[edit 4/20/2019 (haha) added nexus and links to character tags]

1) Saph the hedgehog

This is Saph. He’s a 18/19 year old disaster gay trans boy.

I change his shoe design literally every single time i draw him. :)

I’ll go in depth about his past later.

Saph is pretty much all over the place and forgets to be considerate of other peoples feelings sometimes. He might come off as very egoistic of self centered, but he does actually care in his own kind of way (even when its. kinda bad bc he gives off wrong signals sometimes and ends up hurting people hes close to)

He’s looked up to Sonic ever since he was small and he collects all of the Sonic comics and video games. His dream is to meet Sonic and win against him in a fight.

Shadow is his big idol in many things so he tries to be edgy sometimes or act tough but he fails miserably most of the time and makes a fool of himself; which he doesn’t really mind because he can take a lot of things with humour (sometimes too much). He also uses white eye liner to imitate shadows marks, and he dyes some parts of his fur white to make the marks he already has extend to look more like shadows.

Shadow was the person that taught him how to control his chaos powers, because he’d always just weakened himself in the past, because he is super unstable. (If it wasnt for Shadow he probably would have died by now.) Shadow also was the one that told Saph to go to Tails for help with the buckles on his wrists and the rings on his ankles. They are made of a material similar to shadows rings (tails tried his best to replicate them) so they would help keep the energy in Saph balanced. Due to his strong affiliation to Chaos Energy, he could technically even turn super; but his body would be unable to hold the immense amount of energy and begin to literally burn down to ash within a few minutes.

He is very gay and in a relationship with Ezra.

He’s on T and has not yet had top op. (his bobbies smol its all muscle >:3€ )

Old pic of him and his bf as humans uwu

2) Red the hedgehog

Red is 25/26 years old and works at GUN as special agent. Sometimes he and Rouge get drunk in her club at night and joke about tearing that organization down (or maybe they are not joking)

he’s pansexual and horny 24/7. He has a girlfriend and is in an open relationship. hes polyam if you didnt guess it askdsajh

he’s blind in the right eye and has a tattoo of a star on his chest

(here’s his gijinka because i just. hes hot. he used to be the one character that had like 30 fangirls on deviantart and each of them would comment “nosebleed” every time i uploaded)

ANYWAYS

Saph and Red. They are brothers.

*WARNING: abusive parents, transphobia, homophobia, violence

When red was a young lad and Saph was still a baby their father snapped and beat Red up with an iron bar, making him blind on his right eye. Red took Saph and ran away from home.(Their mother died at saphs birth)

They lived and still live in a city a litte farther off Empire City.

Red decided to go to an orphanage because he could not possibly take care of an infant. (granted his dad couldnt either but it seemed the best possible solution)

They lived in the orphanage for a few years, but saph very soon showed sighns of being trans and got bullied by the other kids. they would call him gay and tr*nny and kick him until he fell silent to endure his “punishment”.

Red couldn’t take it and decided to run away with Saph again. They lived on the street for a while, but Red was caught by GUN for stealing. Once they found out he had a form of chaos powers (even if weak) they decided to let him slide and hire him as Special Agent.

Red accepted this and uses the money he ears to make sure Saph has a good life. This kinda spoiled Saph a little, but he also deserved it lets be real here.

Red made sure to enable saph to get education (which he totally refuses to acknowledge and take seriously) and physical transition.

*WARNING END*

3) Ellectra “Ellie” the tenrec

[ pardon me being inconsequent with the design omg ]

Ellie is a 20 year old functional asexual demiromantic lesbian who is not interested in dumb boys and would rather talk about science with a pretty girl.

She can manipulate electricity and is called “Daughter of Zeus” by the townsfolk in her home island called Coral Island, which is located near the windsmil isles in Apotos.

She studies archeology and gaia mythology/ancient history, which makes it very convenient that she lives nearby an actual gaia temple. (She wants to be like lara croft one day)

At the 2005 black arms invasion her mother got heavily wounded when she tried to protect the town from the aliens and died from the aftermath.

Ever since then Ellie hates Shadow with a burning passion and holds him responsible, because she believed the government propaganda (provided by GUN ofc) that Shadow is One Of The Aliens. If she was ever to meet him she would be FURIOUS and ready to murder (she knows he cant die though).

She tried not to focus too much on that and just. do her cool ancient stuff.

Here are her parents Chion and... the mother i had still not found a good name for.

5) Chion the tenrec

This gentleman is 40+ years old and proud father of Ellie.

Hes also a het ace.

Chion is greek for snow (as far as google translate goes) and he was named that bc of his white nose lmao. its like a snowflake on his black body.

He doesn’t have any elemental powers, but he is naturally very strong and will punch anyone who comes close to his family. He can also use swords and is a skilled swordsman.

He inherited an olive farm from his family and he does keep it going. He makes his money selling olive products he does make himself.

6) Athena the hedgehog

Athena was the daughter of the “major” of the island that the family lived on (coral island), so she was expected to become the new major once he had to retire.

Due to the location of the island and the geographical landmarks on it, many raiders (and also eggman) have great interest in the ruins and mythological places. Athena is not one to give in easily and defended her people and the island from many intruders.

She possessed a less particular (than Ellie), but still fierce power of lightning manipulation. Having used her powers excessively, she sustained severe damage to her arms which showed as lighting shaped scars. She showed them with pride, because they meant she had fought hard to get where she was now.

She was bisexual and married to a tenrec called Chion. She was a year older than him.

The rings Ellie wears on her wrists were her mom’s.

7) Frost the snow leopard

Frost is a 15 year old demiboy who really just wants to have a good time. He hasnt really given his sexuality much thought.

He lives in a small village in Holoska; hes actually even met the werehog. Well he saw him. but he was too afraid to talk to him because holy shit its Sonic The Hedgehog!!!!!!!

He has ice powers!!!!

His insides are like -18°C and he cant eat anything that is hot. He has to eat cooked meals when they are room temperature, or even cooled down to fridge temperatures ( about 6°C).

He basically lives off ice cream and dry meat (if they get fancy food from the city he gets frozen pizza) He thinks of going to the UF for college, but he doesnt really know what he wants to do with his life yet so hes just having fun snowboarding.

8) Mitzu the Cheetah

Mitzu is 22 years old and owns a flower shop/chao garden combo where she takes care of chao, while taking care of flowers and breeding them. Her hydrokinesis powers are very helpful in that!

She loves nature and the outdoors and feeling the grass under her feet, so she doesn’t wear shoes/socks. Ever.

She generally is very free spirited and optimistic!

Shes a big sapphic but shes also okay w being single atm.

Her chao are like children to her and she loves the chao that get left in the garden as much as her own. (ppl leave their chao there when they cant watch over them anymore or if they go for a vacation and cant take them with them or smth)

9) Dan the red panda*

Dan is 17 years old and a big homo.

He has no special powers, except being able to eat and sleep more than the average person.

He’s from a very rich family, but his parents insisted in him finding a wife to like. pass down the heritage but he aint having none of that so his punk ass ran away from home to be his gay self and study art. 

He lives in a tree house a little off a small village in a more rural area in east UF, near station square. let the depression boy be happy...

10) Yoshi the siamese cat

Yoshi is a 20 year old enby kitty who wants to make the world a gayer place!

They are studying fashion design in hope to one day open their own fashion store for queer people! The clothes are made with body differences in mind and they also want to offer a free customization service to fit clothes to every single body type.

They don’t have any special powers as of now but i kinda want to give them a power that could be helpful with their goal Im still thinking about it ...

11) Joel “Spirit” the Husky

Spirit is fresh ripe 14 years old and Sonic the hedgehog is his big big idol. He wants to be JUST like him when he grows up.

It has come to my attention that he is basically the sonic universe Deku and I may or may not be planning to write a fanfiction for that...........

He doesn’t have any special offensive powers, but he has orange blood and he has the ability to read the Chaos Signature of anything he encounters. (called: Chaos Vision)

This means he will immediately know if a person he meets has super powers and he will also know what that power is. He can also guess the emotions of people because they are tied to the kind of chaos energy that surrounds a person.

12) Aurora the Husky

Spirit’s Sister!

Her name is Aurora and she also has Chaos Vision!

She was born blind, but she’s been able to see with her power, so that’s just what the world looks like to her: Darkness with many many colorful lights.

Over time through hard training she was able to perfect her vision and be able to distinguish between a lot of things and even see things that only have very little chaos energy in them!

13) Axel the Axolotl*

I don’t really have much info on them I made them pretty random one day bc i thought. hey. .... what if... axolotl sonic character.

14) Azul the cat

Azul is my sonicsona kinda. He was pmuch my persona b4 i was kin w shadow. 

He’s an edgelord and i guess he’s still technically me; or rather what i want to be. 

He’s already on T and has has top op and he does not crumble away under social anxiety like i do askjdsakjd.

15) ( UNKNWOWN) the Pangolin*

Similar to Axel I didn’t think much about him yet......  

he’s aroace and kinda goofy but he cares for his friends. He can roll up and do spin dashes and homing attacks like sonic, but he obviously doesnt have his super sonic speed.

16) Coal the hedgehog

Coal is one of the newest of my characters; but he’s also one of my oldest. 

You see, Coal is a revamp of a very old crappy fanchild i had back in like 2012.

for reference thats him

New Coal is 27 years old and a gay mess. He can turn into a cloud of smoke and control it at will. He is completely immune to physical attacks. try to stab/shoot him and u ded. hes coming for u.

he steals, but only from rich ppl. hes chaotic neutral tho bc he keeps that shit for himself safhsaljfha he generally just wants to chill and have his peace. 

he loves being an edge lord though he just wants that image for himself, even though he is kinda a softie... hes good at keeping up an act in dangerous situations though and that sometimes scares attackers off (also his powers)

Some gijinka doodles that make his age more justice than sonic style aksjfhaskj

17, 18, 19) The Crew On ARK

old bad art but i never really drew them, i did write about them in my fic about shadows past! (im excluding the black guy from the list because i didnt write him yet and i guess hes not really established yet since i got literally nothing on him)

from left to right

Nia, (that dude), Hikari, (gerald), Theodor

Nia is the daughter of a shamaran professor and a woman who owns a boulongerie in spagonia. She joined the ARK program in hope to make the world a more accepting place.

Hikari is is from an island near chun-nan (japan) and she also joined the program in hope to be able to help make a change for the better. she also enjoys biology and genetics a lot.

Theodor joined purely because of his joy in working on genetics and robotics that immitate life. He’s innitially from the GUN team but was assigned to work with Gerald.

20) Commander Jonathan Williams

old art again sorry sakjfhsakj. He is the father of the current GUN commander! He’s 52 and a total douchebag. He’s kinda mad with power and genuinely believes that putting shadow under pressure to become the ultimate and strongest weapon (stronger than an atomic bomb) was necessary to end the war that was going on at that time.

I cannot spoil too much on what happened to each of these people as it’s spoilers for my fanfic. 

If you want to know more, read here -> http://archiveofourown.org/works/10992156/chapters/24482199

21) Sidus “Nova” the black panther (and 22 Badass the Chao)

You see. The thing with nova is that i recycled him as human/demon character for a story sjkhfkafhsakj but he has shadow powers where he can use all shadows as portals into a shadow dimension that is entirely his own. he can travel through that but it makes him very tired. he likes to store capri suns in there and just take em out whenever he wants. He has a Chao called Badass (pictured below)

his new human/demon design is below

23) Blossom the horned Frog

She is new and I don’t have much info other than that she’s from a jungle area; perhaps in adabat.

She secrets a poisonous slime from her body; yet her spit has healing accelerating properties.

A gene defect lets her never lose her tail.

24) Nexus the demonic sheep hound

nexus is a demonic sheep hound mix?? idk i just didnt want to draw hooves aksfsakhfa

they can manipulate metal and bend it in any shape they want

however they cant make it float n shit like youd think of metal powers like magneto jsfhsakjf they can literally just. shape it like play-doh but with their mind

they wear those gold rings so when theyre in a pinch they can just make a bunch of cool knifes of a sword n be like SURPRISE BITCH IM NOT JUST PRETTY. IM PRETTY DEADLY!

[barpurplewrites]

Accidents - Chapter 3

I know it’s late for Halloween, but I got distracted. Still here’s the final chapter of Accidents (Ch 1) (Ch 2)

-x-x-x-

Belle locked the door behind her and finally took a deep breath. She didn’t know where to start trying to process today. She kicked her shoes off and stumbled into the kitchen. She found a bottle of wine in the fridge that she could have sworn she hadn’t bought, but she wasn’t going to argue with the best thing to happen to her today. She got the corkscrew out of the drawer before she second-guessed herself; she hadn’t bought wine in weeks, and her fridge was empty enough that she would have noticed it sitting there. She squinted at the bottle looking for a shimmer of gold, and then groaned to herself.

“Going crazy Belle. No shimmer of gold is going to hurt people and then put wine in your fridge.”

She opened the bottle and poured herself a sensible amount, before remembering that Regina had seen fit to have closure notices posted on the library doors while Belle was in her office this morning; she filled the glass to the brim. She could get as drunk tonight and worry about being out of work and homeless tomorrow.

 Unseen by Belle, the Imp known as Gold sat cross-legged on the breakfast bar. He twisted his fingers together in worry as he watched her through the Veil that separated her world from his. He hadn’t meant for the witch of a Mayor to die, how was he to know that she had a faulty heart? Humans were such strange fragile things. He’d only wanted Belle to save her, so the Mayor would owe her a favour, and maybe start being nicer to her; it just hadn’t worked out like that. Now Belle was in more trouble and so very sad. He really wasn’t good at this whole guardian protector thing.

Gold tapped his claws against his chin as he mused on how he’d ended up here. He’d never intended to become Belle’s guardian, he was an Imp, a cousin to Puck, a trickster. He was the cause of mishaps and annoyances, was it any wonder that his attempts to protect his self-appointed charge so often went awry? He smiled fondly at her, she’d put a funny film on and was laughing, the joy didn’t quite reach her eyes, but she was trying to cheer herself up. Belle wasn’t one for feeling sorry for herself, she always had a smile and a kind word for people, even people who treated her poorly.

He grinned to himself; that was how she had come into his life and turned his worldview on its head. In was in the nature of an Imp to be attracted to cruel jokes and pranks, so high schools were a natural haunt. He’d first seen Belle as the typical victim of the jokers in her high school, she was bookish, quiet, and tiny for her age. He’d seen a thousand students like her, just trying to keep their heads down and survive the hellish years that they would one day think fondly of once the rose-tinted glasses of memory slipped into place; but Belle, oh she was so much more than his first impression suggested. She took pranks pulled on her with an eye-roll and good humour, but she wouldn’t stand by and let anyone by bullied.

Belle paused the film and cocked her head to one-side. She was certain that she’d heard something from downstairs in the library. She’d locked the doors before she came up to her apartment, so there should be any one inside to make any noise. There had been a problem with rats not long after she took over, but Leroy had filled all the holes and put down traps. Another thump echoed from below, if that was a rat Leroy was going to need a bigger trap. Belle slid off the couch and tip-toed across to her closet. She’d kicked off her heels when she got home, but she reached past them and pulled on a battered pair of sneakers. If there was someone in the library, she didn’t want to risk a broken ankle should the need to run arise. With her cell phone in her hand she crept down the stairs, hoping that she was just going to find a stray cat, or a raccoon had found a way inside.

Gold watched carefully to see what Belle was up to, and followed her as she crept down into the library. He had a very bad feeling about this, but could do nothing to stop her. He slipped by her and took a fast look around the library for the source of the noise. At the sight of the man in a leather jacket prying at the locks that secured the old elevator his eyes went wide.

“What do you think you are doing?”

Gold swore under his breath; why couldn’t Belle have hung back and called for help? Now he’d have to be careful about how much he interfered, couldn’t have this thief seeing too much magic. He took up position in between Belle and the thief, ready to do anything to protect his charge. The thief turned slowly on his heel, a smug grin played at his lips as his eyes roved over Belle’s body.

“Well, aren’t you a pretty little thing,” – he whipped his hand from behind his back and aimed a gun at Belle’s chest, - “But totally useless to me right now.”

The gun fired, and Gold screamed. On Belle’s side of the Veil time slowed, Gold called his magic into his hands ready to tear his way through to her world.

“Are you certain you want to do that, Gold?”

His hair flicked about his face as he threw a pained look at the owner of the voice. Lounging against one of the tall bookcases was his cousin, Puck.

“I have to save her. She is going to die!”

Puck gave an easy shrug; “It is what mortals do, cousin.”

“Not her, not like this!”

Puck’s eyes narrowed, and he glanced up towards the ceiling, but his gaze was on something far beyond; “The worlds are not aligned, if you cross now there will be no coming back.”

Gold’s hands faltered. He looked at Belle, frozen so quickly that shock had not yet marred her features. He balled his hands into fists.

“I am doing this, she has to live.”

Puck gave a deep sigh; “Very well cousin, go with my blessing.”

Slashes of shimmering magic shot from Gold’s hands and tore a gap in the Veil. As he leapt through the tear a confusing jumble of images swirled in his mind, a past, family, friends, an education, a whole life that he had not lived, but he knew were his.

 BANG!

 The gun shot echoed around the room, and pain bloomed in Robin Gold’s shoulder. Somebody screamed, Gold thought it might have been him, and then there was a shout of “Hands up!”

Gold tried to comply, but gentle hands held him still and a soft voice said; “Easy now. Sheriff Swan doesn’t mean you, the ambulance will be here soon.”

He looked up into blue eyes, bright with tears, “Miss Belle? Are you hurt?”

“No, you saved me.”

“Oh, good.”

He must have passed out at that point because the next thing he was aware of was the sharp scratch of a needle.

“Ow!”

The stern looking nurse tutted at him; “Oh hush now, a little injection is nothing compared to what you’ve been through today. I’ll tell the Sheriff you are awake.”

He tried to make himself look presentable, which is an exercise in futility when wearing a hospital gown, and looked up when the door to his room opened. Sheriff Swan stalked in and stared at him as she pulled up a chair to his bedside; “How you feeling, Mr…”

It stung his pride a little that the Sheriff didn’t remember his name, she had arrested him for vagrancy twice this year, “Robin Gold.”

A look of recognition flicker over her face and she gave a tight nod.

“Okay Mr Gold, care to tell me what you were doing in the library this afternoon?”

He winced as he tried to take a deep breath.

“Go easy there, you got shot in the shoulder.”

“Oh, yeah, erm I was asleep in the alley, behind the library and I woke up to find a tall man with dark hair picking the lock to the back door. So, I followed him inside.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have a phone, so I was thinking I could call from inside…”

It wasn’t the best thought out plan now he considered it, but he didn’t want to tell the Sheriff that he was too worried about Miss Belle to run across the road to the diner for help.

“Okay, so you went inside, what happened next?”

“The man was trying to get into the old elevator, and then Miss Belle came downstairs,” – his eyes went wide, - “Miss Belle, is she ok? He tried to shoot her!”

“Stay calm, please. Belle is just fine, you knocked her out of the way, she’d a bit shaken up and Doctor Whale is checking her over now, okay?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The Sheriff’s eyes went hard, and she suddenly asked; “Do you know Killian Jones?”

Gold shook his head; “No who is he?”

She stared at him for a beat longer and was apparently satisfied with whatever she found in his face, “He’s the man who shot you. He was convinced that there is gold in the basement of the library, something to do with one of the patients in the secure wing, to be honest I could make a lot of sense of what he was saying, kept going on about you appearing out of thin air in a flash of gold sparks.”

Something stirred in Gold’s memory, but it was elusive and quickly disappeared, leaving a wry smile on his face; “If I could conjure gold I’d have an address to give you to put on my statement wouldn’t I Sheriff?”

She chuckled at him, and flipped her notebook closed; “Don’t think that is going to be a problem for you for a while Gold.”

With that strangely cryptic comment, she left the room. The door didn’t have chance to close before somebody else came in. Gold’s face lit up at the sight of this visitor.

“Miss Belle!”

She perched on the edge of his bed and gently covered his hand with hers.

“How are you feeling Mr Gold?”

 Behind the Veil that separated the human world from that of the Fae, Puck watched his cousin and the human he had fallen in love with tentatively take the first steps on their courtship. He shook his head with a smile, “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”

Puck rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles, he had a certain thief to go and torment. The echo of Puck’s merry laughter didn’t sound in the human world, but something made Gold shiver, it wasn’t a bad feeling, in fact with Miss Belle sat talking quietly to him nothing could feel bad.

[visualssometimesetc]

Film Analysis & Review: Joker 🃏

⚠️ N O T E : If you have not watched, please skip this post!

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Can we give ten minutes’ of applause to Joaquin Phoenix for his EXCEPTIONAL performance? 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Ok let’s begin.

I was kept at the edge of my seat every minute of the film. He had me at the first scene. I remembered thinking, “I felt that.” How many times have we (pretty sure I’m not the only one) done the same?

As females we slap on our lipsticks, as men we slap ourselves on the cheeks; telling ourselves to sober up. Wiping tears away, we smile at the mirror, our reflections betraying the very emotions we feel deep in our hearts, bury them deep down and walk off, facing the world once again.

The movie doesn’t specifically say which time period this takes place in, but an educated guess would be take us between the 70’s to 80’s. If we were to work backwards from the recent Batman movies set in current times, plus heavy mentioning of Thomas Wayne in this film and how young little Bruce was before tragedy struck, the above is not hard to arrive at. And if we were to work with this timeline, it would give insight on the movie’s context and the people of Gotham set in that era.

The 70’s and early 80’s were a difficult period for the general public due to recession. Stagflation (high unemployment and inflation) was rampant and economic disparity only grew more apparent: the rich only seemed to accumulate more wealth while the middle-classes and poor became poorer. Naturally, people on the streets are on edge, they are generally not empathetic or understanding, especially to those deemed ‘different’ from them. It was a “every man for himself” world. Things like mental illness and depression were definitely not spoken of, for fear of continued unemployment.

While us viewers were able to sympathise with Arthur Fleck (Phoenix’s movie character), the above could possibly highlight the reasons for their behaviour towards him. They were otherwise cold, took advantage of Arthur, bullying and beating him not because they couldn’t understand, but they didn’t care. They could only afford to care for themselves. I couldn’t possibly count the number of times my little heart broke whenever he got mistreated for pseudobulbar (inappropriate bouts of crying or laughing).

My childhood friend, whom I watched the movie with, pointed out that all along, Arthur’s mother Penny Fleck could support herself. She was a perfectly fine human being, but due to her narcissistic personality disorder, she relied on Arthur to care for her, from bathing to feeding, and even carrying her around the house. Arthur may not have known about this, yet due to his delusional disorder, he could possibly have imagined his mother sustaining something serious that she could not perform daily activities on her own.

A huge theme was also the blatant representation of depression. I strongly believe the only reason keeping Arthur alive until he learnt the truth, was Penny. We see from the film later on that his relationship with Zazie Beetz’ character Sophie Dumond was all in his head. It was also told to us that his stand-up stint at the pub was a horror show. Apart from his co-workers whom he didn’t see after getting fired and his mother, Fleck did not have any companion at all.

It was obvious he contemplated suicide, from the scene in the lift where he formed a gun with his fingers and ‘shoots’ the side of his head to him actually firing a gun in his house. His mother also said some really awful stuff to him with regards to Arthur wanting to be a comedian. “You don’t have enough funny in you.” Words seriously hurt, especially if it comes from a loved one. He did not have the support of his mother, even though she always told him he was her ‘happy’. Yet he may also have imagined her saying the above, no thanks to his condition.

His almost-complete lapse in social cues, no thanks to his traumatic childhood, also made it really hard to have friends. The scene of Fleck taking notes during a stand-up was blatant enough. He was laughing at all the wrong timings.

I read this before and I thought it really true: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” - C.S. Lewis. Arthur’s world crashed, literally, when he found out the truth about his mother and his birth.

The amount of cruelty and ridicule Arthur received from the public also made him the ‘Joker’ we now know him by. You may not agree with me, but I felt that he was the by-product of society. By killing and causing chaos, he relieves some of the pain caused to him throughout his entire life. He also “hits back” at society for all the times he was abused by its very system and people.

Something to note is that while Arthur has not met all of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs before moving up to self-actualisation. He could not meet his needs, many thanks to society, yet he manages to achieve transcendance, also through society. It basically hands it to him; from unconsciously becoming the face of the clown face movement that sparked riots in the movie, to being hailed as an icon of rampaging chaos throughout Gotham. This derives in him ‘purpose’ in life, to simply create chaos, and that his self-identity is void due to his unmet areas of Maslow’s hierarchy.

Comic book fans would not like this portrayal of Joker due to the difference in storytelling. Comicverse’s Joker fell into a tank of chemical waste and thus became who he is; his sense of humour was also described as sadistic, not depressing as portrayed in Todd Phillip’s take on Joker.

I also get why Joaquin’s character did not obtain a lot of fan conversions from its cinematic lovers as well. The Joker (RIP Heath Ledger 😭) of The Dark Knight (2008)/The Dark Knight Rises (2012) was a scheming, though equally ruthless jokester and this film is a complete deviation from Phillip’s treatment of the same character.

I highly respect Todd’s take however, from its storyline to the really great visuals; I loved every second of footage. Something I learnt and always enjoy exploring in film theory is the message behind the film. “Why was the film released in this specific time period? What is the director trying to portray by releasing this?” This movie came out only this year, a time where mental health awareness is heavily talked about, and also a time where economic recession is speculated to set in.

I think this movie is a great 101 for those who do not know much about mental illness and depression. It helps one to empathise with sufferers and hopefully ignites something in sufferers to not give up but seek help. It sends a message to the masses about mental health and in my opinion, this makes it a good movie. Releasing a film in our current times also makes it all the more relevant to who people can become in light of trying periods ahead.

A food for thought would be the metaphorical meaning of the film visuals. Another question I was taught to ask was, “Is there a reason why this film is shot this way, with bright colours/black and white?” I don’t know about you, but despite the film’s heavyness, its vibrant visuals and even Joker’s outfit bears a stark contrast. It led me to consider how in society, we put on a ‘happy’ front, to mask the fact that on the inside, we are a depressed, sad bunch. To distract from what’s actually real here.

All in all, I respect that every actor is also an artist, and everyone has their own interpretation of Joker. I liked all three cinematic portrayals, yes even Jared Leto’s, all for different reasons.

I really like this movie; it’s an 8/10 for me, except I just felt that IMDA’s (Singapore) classification of this film should have been M18 instead. It kinda is too heavy for a sixteen year-old.

But these are just my thoughts. Thank you for reading, if you even made it this far! 🤗

[krischates]

Raising a Woman

I haven't been a mother for very long; my daughter is still a toddler, but, that doesn't mean I haven't thought about her future...what kind of girl, then woman, she would become. When I say "what kind of..." I mean her morals, her manners, her respect, her independence, her integrity, her self-love, her grit. That is all on me. I am responsible for these important things. The accent of her personality such as her charisma, her humour, her sarcasm or her flare will grow with her and her experiences, but the foundation is all on me, Mama Bear.

Recently, I've been thinking back to what it was like to be in high school. I had a different experience than many girls; I loved high school. I was an athlete, I had no enemies (that I was aware of), I wasn't bullied nor did I bully, I was a responsible student, and what I think is most important, I wasn't boy crazy. The reason for my reminiscing, is from the promiscuous and demeaning behaviour from many high school age male and female. Working at a gym, I see teenage girls working out in bras and ‘barely-there’ shorts. Their goals are to have a small waist and a Kardashian butt. Pardon me, those are your goals? My thoughts begin to run rapid as I’m a mother of a female. I immediately think, “you need to reconnect 🙏🏼 That's what you're spending your parents' money on?” I’d like to ask why? Is it because that's what guys like, or because the girl who posts booty pictures on Instagram gets 15K Likes per photo, or those are the girls who get cat called in the school hallways? Raising a little girl has never been scarier.

At this point I began to think, “how can you make sure that your daughter doesn't grow to be misunderstood, self-conscious, a follower?” A wise friend once said "kids learn more from what's caught, than taught" and he couldn't have been more right. It starts with the parents and that relationship. If my daughter is going to learn more things she observes, than what I actually teach her, I have to be the woman I want her to become when I think she's not watching. Strong, independent, respected and respectful. To sometimes work against the grain and be comfortable with it, and embrace being different; are just ways to demonstrate to a teenage girl on how to be a leader? I want her to be proud to say “No” and walk away from peers who exhibit questionable dignity, with no reason or regret. I want her to know, without a doubt, that self-worth, education, independence, and integrity is superior to having the approval of people, including boys and social media. I want her to be comfortable standing alone if it comes down to it, because her life goals are much bigger than her butt.

Why I feel there is a struggle to create kind and genuine humans:

1. Music has changed dramatically. The messages are either promoting one night stands, side chicks, drugs, and sheer disrespect to one or another social group. Whereas the message use to be about love, respect, forgiveness, overcoming adversities, and lifting people up.

2. Television is graphic and sends mixed messages. It creates a world where youth need to grow up faster than they should. I grew up on Fresh Prince and Space Jam. Humorous, but still solid life lessons behind it. Now, you've got documentaries about suicide and rape.

3. Social media is destroying people's self esteem, distorting what self-worth actually is, and advertising the wrong messages for our youth. I know there are innovative reasons to use social media, but we all know that negativity tends to be more attractive than positivity, or perhaps it’s more abundant.

What can we do about these challenges, as parents? Not much really. Kids are going to be exposed to these things in some way, shape, or form; it's inevitable. Except, there is one thing. Be an involved parent! Don’t let society parent your child. Maybe you can't control what your child is being exposed to all the time, but can you control how they will interpret what they see. How do you do this? Be a role model, so when you say something your child believes you, trusts you, and respects what you're telling them. Be real with your kids, don't shun them away from potential confusion or avoid a conversation because it uncomfortable for you. Educate them, be there for them! But this can't start when they're in high school, it has to start immediately, out of the womb, otherwise it may be too late. If your son or daughter wants to watch a racy documentary, watch it with them, talk about what they saw and how they felt. Get thoughts and feelings out in the open. Don't leave them to ponder unquestionable things by themselves or ask their unknowing and confused friends. Do you want your kids to learn everything from their friends?

Personally, I want my daughter to come across difficult scenarios, because really and truly you don’t learn anything being comfortable. I'd be confident that she'd say, "No thank you, I don't need any of that..." I want her to experience peer/social pressure, because I trust she'd say, "Girl, think this through, let me help you instead..." I dare a boy come to her, because I know she'd come back harder with, "I have more important things on my mind..." The key is to speak with conviction! We all know people out there who can lie through their teeth but we don't tend to question their validity because they say things with conviction, so we buy it. The same goes for our children (except speak the truth for real). Teach them with conviction so they speak with conviction and they are powerful to stand on their own with their words when faced with difficult situations. Not only that, but they can be role models for friends or surrounding children who maybe don't have a mentor. 

You have to be the woman or man you hope your son or daughter will become one day. If you are of influence to anyone else, you have to love yourself, be your own idol and show up for your growing kids. It’s scary out there. 

[toadallytickles]

Once you get this you have to say five things you like about yourself, publicly. Then, you have to send this to your favorite followers. (how many that is, is up to you!) ( this is non-negotiable, positivity is cool~) 💕🌸☀ if you haven't done it already of course

Oooh, Abbie! Thank you very very much for sending me this! And thank you very much to @ticklemeidareyou and @horriblyticklishstar for sending me this ask as well! (*´∀`*ʃƪ)♡

And I know you’re only supposed to list 5 things only, but since I got it 3 times, I’m gonna say 15 Things I Like About Myself, because I’m Narcissistic™.HAAAHAHAHAHA- YOU GUYS ASKED THE WRONG HO.     - not gonna lie I thought it said ‘five things you love about yourself’ and I wrote all mine out beforehand as ‘love’ I am so sorry omg. 

*cracks knuckles, they disintegrate* This is gonna be hella easy~ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

1. I love my eyes! They’re a beautiful chocolate brown, and they’re big and my eyelashes are so black, they just pop on their own! They’re the only part of me I liked too when I had horrible self esteem when I was younger..2. I love my short hair! My short hair is everything to me! Once I got it cut, my self esteem just sky-rocketed, and I was able to love myself and become more confident! I still look in the mirror to this day and can’t believe I cut my hair!

3. I love my kindness! I always go by the quote, “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” and I know how it feels to be bullied and treated like I’m not human, so I’m always willing to be kind and helpful and respectful to others! Not just to people, animals and nature too!

4. I love that I’m a fantastic friend! I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, and they either were horrible friends, or they ended up abusive. And I know it was never my fault. But from that and some TV shows and video games, I know what it means to be a good friend, a really good friend, and I can say I’m amazing. 

5. I love that I love myself! And I love that I can say that!

6. I love my sense of humour! I am really happy that I can make people and myself laugh!

7. I love that people are comfortable with me! I love that people see me as trustable and comforting that they can open themselves up to me with anything, and I wouldn’t judge them!

8. I love my playfulness! I am an adult somehow, things can get boring, and this world can be so cruel, though that doesn’t stop me from having fun and enjoying the small and big things in life!

9. I love my optimism! Sometimes things don’t always go as planned, or we have our bad days, or weeks, or it feels like you’re never going to get better, or something devastating happens, and that’s unfortunate. But it’s never the end of the world, its never the end of your journey. There’s many different paths to take! It’s okay to be sad and down, but life still goes on and there’s always new days ahead! 

10. I love my androgyny! I LOVE IT. I’m really happy that I can freely dress androgynously, and that its valid.

11. I love my intelligence! I’m no genius, and I’m terrible at math, but I know a lot about animals and nature, especially reptiles and amphibians because they’re my favourite! Though I can also make computer programs, and I know a lot of things about Pokemon and The Legend of Zelda!

12. I love that I love animals and nature! YES.

13. I love being so open about myself and issues! I love that I am really open about my self-love and my body and my sexuality and periods and masturbation and sex because I believe they are things that should be openly discussed so others don’t feel alone and can be educated on them!

14. I like my body hair, I guess- Okay.. it’s my biggest insecurity and I hate it on me, and I say I would do anything to get rid of it, but I would never get rid of it. That’d be impossible and painful and expensive as hell. So it’d be easier to just accept it, and I have at this point. But I used to wear jeans and long-sleeves/sweaters all year round when I was 10 all the way up to 17. And I like to think being able to accept it and being able to show it off was a test of true self confidence for me.

15. I love that no matter how many times I fall and beat myself up, I always get back up and forgive myself.

This wasn’t easy actually, but I’m glad I still did it because I needed this, thank you.

[a-broader-sensibility-blog]

neoliberalism and radical feminism: you can’t have both

Dear liberal feminists,

I know there’s a lot of bad blood between radfems and you guys right now. I know you see as us being exclusive, cruel and metaphorically violent. You think we are judgmental of your sex lives and look down up anyone who practises traditional femininity. I obviously disagree with all of those arguments because I am a radical feminist, but that’s not the point here. The point is that liberal feminism, i.e. “fun feminism,” “choice feminism,” “sex positive feminism” etc. is a weird emulsion between two ideologies that fundamentally contradict each other and can never dissolve into one coherent, logically consistent belief system. Those ideologies are second wave/original/radical feminism (however you choose to call it) and neoliberalism. Let’s put it this way: neoliberalism is oil and radical feminism is water.

Radical feminism posits that the personal—that is to say, individual relationships and personal choices and lifestyles—are political. That doesn’t mean every single person is an activist, it means every choice you make takes place not within a cultural vacuum, but within a system that consistently rewards certain behaviours, severely punishes others, and educates you as to which choices are acceptable via constant bombardment with advertising, religious doctrine, entertainment, “infotainment” news, corporate rules and regulations, the education system and other forms of media. Acceptable and unacceptable behaviours—such as wearing make up or not wearing make up, dieting or not dieting, performing sex acts you don’t enjoy or refusing to do so— are policed by everyone around you, including leftists/liberals/feminists, your family and friends, because all of you (100%) have internalized the ideology you were taught. (This applies to more than just misogyny, by the way, but that’s a topic for another discussion.) Nobody can escape this indoctrinating and policing, or opt out, and no one is immune to it. If you think advertisements don’t convince or affect you, you are actually more indoctrinated than those of us who are able to at least identify the ways that ideology has shaped our thought patterns. Neoliberalism is the direct opposite. According to neoliberal ideology, every person is an individual who privately makes rational and informed choices without any coercion or undue influence by another person. Any personal choice made without a gun to your head is completely independent of the society you live in, and the norms and customs of your culture have not influenced you, pressured you or policed your behaviour when you broke cultural norms. Neoliberals would have you believe that every woman who is beaten up by her male partner was individually unlucky and what a shame, but it was simply unfortunate coincidence that intimate partner violence happens disproprotionately to women and is enacted by men. Every man who beats his partner does so because he individually is an asshole, or maybe his parents raised him wrong, but his misogynistic behaviour was never rewarded by society, or swept under the rug by male figures of authority, and he was never shown how successful violent men (like Dominique Strauss-Khan) can repeatedly evade any kind of negative consequences for their abuse of women. Under neoliberalism, no group of people who suffer the same type of oppression for the same reasons (such as having the same reproductive system) can ever come together to fight collectively for their rights, because actually those people are all unique individuals who live unique lives, and their concerns are personal, and any attempt to categorize certain systems of oppression is dehumanizing because it denies your personal individuality. Neoliberalism would have you believe that the most important thing about is not your kindness or intelligence or artistic ability or sense of humour, it’s that you’re unlike anyone else in the world. You are alone, everyone is alone, and therefore, there is no such thing as society. Radical feminism does not ask that you hate yourself for having shaved your legs, or sucked a dick, or any made any other choice that is approved of and encouraged by the patriarchy. Radical feminism does ask that you acknowledge that the society you live in tries to coerce every woman into making these same choices, and that it takes tremendous strength to face up to the social sanctions applied when you refuse to be coerced. I am a woman who shaves her legs, and I do so not because I naturally enjoy having shaved legs but because when I went through puberty and my leg hair became more visible, I was policed by other children, literally children, who bullied me and criticized me until I did not have the strength to go another day without showing off my smooth, unnaturally hairless legs. To this day, I shave my legs because emotionally, I simply cannot cope with the ridicule and mockery I would face if I didn’t. I am a feminist and I shave my legs, but shaving my legs is not a feminist act. It is the evidence that I have crumbled, that they broke me. They broke my self-confidence and my will to groom myself as I choose. I don’t hate myself for shaving my legs, and neither should you, but you should hate the patriarchy for leaving you and me with a Hobson’s Choice. Yes, you made a choice to shave your legs, or wear make-up, or send your boyfriend nude pictures, or wear stiletto heels that hurt you and being ridiculed and smeared, deemed disgusting, unfuckable (meaning worthless, under patriarchy) and sometimes, being told you are actually a man. Liberal feminism is an attempt to marry the personal empowerment that does occur when radical feminism reforms societal attitudes towards women with the neoliberal attitude that triple underlines the word “personal.” There are a few areas where neoliberal attitudes and radical feminism intersect, but those are blown way out of proportion. Yes, neoliberalism says abortion is perfectly fine, but only because neoliberals say literally anything a person chooses to do should be allowed because someone chose to do it, and they paid for it. Radical feminism supports abortion rights for entirely separate reasons. And we are deeply suspicious of the word “choice,” because a decision made under coercion, made with the promise of social reward for one choice and social sanction for the other, is not any kind of free choice. In fact, as a pro-abortion feminist, I loathe the term “pro-choice,” for a number of reasons, but mainly because taking down the patriarchy means undermining the idea that everything women choose is value neutral and made without coercion. Remember the shaving your legs example? It’s not just about your appearance. It’s about the “free choice” to say “I’m totally okay with my boyfriend watching porn!” and “I choose to be the submissive one in this relationship” and “Breast implants are feminist, because I chose to buy them!” Yes, in a society 100% free of patriarchy, there might be some women who still want breast implants. There might be some women who have some masochistic desire to spread extremely hot wax on their vulva and rip the hair out. Maybe. But don’t go tell me you’re sure you would be one of those women, because you don’t know. You don’t live in the world with no patriarchy and no internalized misogyny and yes, your “choice” does affect me, and hurt me, just my as “choice” to shave my legs hurts every other girl who sees my hairless legs and is reminded one more time that she will be seen as abnormal if she doesn’t shave hers. I am not trying to make you feel guilty, liberal feminists. I am trying to help you understand why your ideology only serves to naturalize female submission by implying that females submit by free choice. I am trying to help you understand who the real enemy is, and it’s not libfems or radfems, it’s systems of oppression that are internalized and constantly policed, monitored and reinforced by threat of shaming, exclusion from social groups and the job market, and by physical violence. That’s what patriarchy does. It wasn’t your choice to be born into this society, but please, do your great-grandmothers the respect of acknowledging that their suffering was not of their own choice, and neither is yours.

[funtubeweb]

Back-to-School: Summer’s done and it’s time to face the music

We have done the back-to-school thing on this blog so many times it’s become a challenge to come up with new films to share. So, this year I decided to go a different route. Rather than selecting films about the institution itself, I’ve chosen five films that deal with our emotions around, and our relationship to, school.

You’ll notice I go from funny to dead serious in this post, and I apologize for the literary whiplash, but the truth is school brings out different feelings in each of us. For some of us, it’s a place to learn and thrive, for others, it’s a place to escape whatever’s going on at home. Still for others, it can be a hostile place that induces fear and anxiety. We all experience life differently, and the same goes for school.

So, as summer wraps up, it’s a good time to contemplate what school means to you. Maybe these five films will help.

Getting Started

Richard Condie is one of the wackiest filmmakers I’ve come across during my time at the NFB. Each of his films are different, but they’re all instantly recognizable as one of his creations. They’ve all got this frantic, absurdist energy to them that’s almost impossible to resist.

This film is about a man who knows it’s time to get down to work and get serious but is completely unable to. This guy is a master procrastinator. He even gives me a run for my money. But it seems like there is nothing on earth that’s going to get him to commit his rear to that bench and practice the piano.

I don’t know about you, but nothing captures the mood of late August/early September in our house better than this film. There’s even a temper tantrum thrown in for good measure! Getting my kids out of summer mode and into school gear is one of the more challenging aspects of parenthood, especially as they grow older. The novelty and excitement of back-to-school has worn off, and they’re recognizing it as the 20-year sentence it really is.

oehttps://https://ift.tt/2nVTbly

The Girl Who Hated Books

I have a soft spot in my heart for this film, possibly because it was one of my daughter’s favourites when she was younger; probably because the wonderful Joe Meunis took the time to meet her and give her a signed copy.

I’m including the film in this post because it perfectly captures what transpired with my own kid over the past year. We are a family of readers, all except my daughter. While the rest of us would have our noses in a book, she’d be running around, looking for action. But last winter, something happened. She discovered a series she enjoyed. From that moment on, she never looked back. Gone was her distaste for books, replaced with an unquenchable thirst for stories.

School is great for exposing us to books we might never have otherwise picked up. How many of us would have read Animal Farm, Paradise Lost, or even Of Mice and Men on our own? My own love of Shakespeare comes directly from a teacher who’d stand on her desk reciting soliloquys with enormous passion. Isn’t that what education is all about? Opening our minds to new stories, and new ideas?

oehttps://https://ift.tt/2Ld24jY

Tragic Story with Happy Ending

This haunting animated film from Regina Pessoa is about a young girl who feels like she was born into the wrong body. Equipped with a heart that beats too loudly, she’s convinced she was meant to be a bird. She is at first shunned by her community, but as she grows to accept herself, so do the others around her.

I realize this might seem like a bizarre choice to include in a back-to-school post, but in fact it makes total sense. While most kids find the prospect of heading back at least tolerable, there are some kids who dread the return more than anything. Kids who are unhappy, who are bullied, or who feel different. Any kid who’s not feeling comfortable in their own skin is not going to be happy in a crowd full of others.

I recognize this feeling well. Grades three to five were a special kind of torture for me. I was bullied endlessly, and as I watched the little girl in this film curl into a ball on her bed, I could feel the knots forming in my own stomach. Feeling different is never fun, and this film is a great reminder of how a little compassion can go a long way.

oehttps://https://ift.tt/2nTj0CP

The Invention of the Adolescent

By taking us back to the 16th century, this film shows us how much we take the expression “back-to-school” for granted.

Back then, there was no formal education system. You basically picked up what you picked up being around adults. If you were lucky, you would apprentice with a craftsman, tradesman, or artist. You’d learn all you needed to know to get by in life. But there was certainly no back-to-school shopping and overpriced textbooks.

This short documentary was filmed in the late 1960s and it shows us the changing meaning of youth through the ages, dating back to the 16th century. Then, children were just smaller adults waiting to happen. They started work at the tender age of 7 and never looked back. There was little separation between young and old. It was like one big party.

Obviously, that’s changed. It was sometime around the 19th century when educators and reformers came together to shape a different future for our youth. I’ll tell you one thing – that future sure came with a lot of angst and drama.

oehttps://https://ift.tt/2LejlsW

Get a Job

If ever your kid needs motivation to get into the spirit of back-to-school, show them this film.

This classic from 1985 features a down-on-his-luck pooch searching for employment. Utterly unqualified, and seriously under-educated, he bounces from interview to interview with nothing but the guidance of a motley crew of doo-wop singers.

It’s a fun film, and the music is great and catchy – I especially loved their take on Glenn Miller’s In the Mood. But it deals with some major stuff – self-motivation, confidence, entering the job market, and putting yourself out there. You know what prepares you really well for all of these things? A good education.

So, beneath the humour of the film, there’s a serious message: stay in school.

oehttps://https://ift.tt/2nRnEBg

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[goodnewsjamaica]

Dedicated to service for the deaf

New Post has been published on https://goodnewsjamaica.com/health/dedicated-to-service-for-the-deaf/

Dedicated to service for the deaf

DR Dania Loy Jones is committed to making the lives of people in the deaf and special needs communities much easier.

The 25-year-old dentist told All Woman that as a child she knew she wanted a career in medicine and dreamt of becoming either a paediatrician or veterinarian, before settling with dentistry.

“I have always been fascinated with the teeth, to the point where I could recognise people by just their smiles, not having to see pictures of their faces. But I never liked my own teeth. I wasn’t comfortable with my own smile growing up, and I knew that it hindered me from doing a lot of things. It held me back if I was supposed to participate in something like singing at church,” she said.

“It wasn’t until after getting braces that I realised that this really affected me and my whole persona changed. From there I said if I went into medicine I wanted to be able to provide people with that confident smile to improve their self-esteem.”

And so, after leaving St Andrew High School for Girls, Dr Jones enrolled at The University of the West Indies, Mona, where she pursued a doctor of dental surgery degree. It was while in her final year that she began interacting with deaf patients, as part of the curriculum involved learning sign language, the deaf culture, and providing the deaf with dental services at The UWI Dental Polyclinic.

“It was a different experience but sign language wasn’t new to me as I was exposed to it growing up. However, this had a greater cause, and I realised that though I became competent in sign language it really was about being able to help the deaf with ease. They were happier realising we understood what they were saying without them having to write everything and that joy was unexplainable,” she said.

Today, Dr Jones is one of seven dentists serving Dental Associates in St Andrew, and is one of three that is able to communicate through sign language. Through this skill, she has seen great improvements in dental care among the hearing impaired.

“What I realised is that when we are unable to communicate freely with them they shy away as they sometimes feel we can’t tolerate them. The result of that is no longer, for example, just a small cavity, but a problem that gets worse because they stay away. Once sign language becomes the norm for not only dentists, but every health care provider, we will see improved care. The good thing is that all students who graduate from the dentistry programme at Mona have to be competent in sign language as it forms a huge part of the curriculum,” she said.

She added: “When I see deaf patients now it makes a world of difference. They are able to communicate their emotions, needs and wants comfortably. I remember one patient who was so excited when I treated her, she videotaped it and told everyone. Communication is key.”

Apart from being able to communicate with the deaf, Dr Jones is a stickler for equality for that community and in general, those with special needs.

“It is very important to me that everyone is treated the same way and it is something we need to improve on. There is a space for them and I hope that in the near future things will be put in place to ensure everyone is treated on the same level. When we lack in this area, what happens is that people don’t seek care. We have to ensure we are not indirectly discriminating,” she said.

Dr Jones is also an advocate for outreach, a love she developed in high school and has carried through to her adult life.

“Back in high school I did hours at the Jamaica Cancer Society and the Jamaica Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. At UWI we had to do dental outreach and that opened my eyes to the reality locally. We went into many places and saw needs in communities all over the country. There are places without access; places where people have to travel elsewhere because the one clinic has no appointment dates left. So dental care takes the back burner as these are usually poor areas. I want to be part of that solution, so I ensure that I go out to community health fairs and through my social media pages @drdanialoyjones, I educate the masses with a little fun and humour so dental health will become a priority among all, as some see it alongside optical on their health cards and choose optical all the time,” she said.

She also dedicates her Wednesdays to The UWI Dental Polyclinic where she helps students preparing for final exams to make their workload a little easier.

In her spare time, Dr Jones, also a trained dancer, can be found hanging with her family and friends, worshipping at the Grace Missionary Church, or trying new adventures — skydiving being an example.

She is also heavily dependent on her Christian faith and subscribes to the scriptural text that she can do all things through Christ and she is ready for anything and equal to anything.

“That scripture is saying anything that comes my way I am going to go at it full force because I am capable of doing it; I have the potential. The greatest things are on the other side of fear. When I was younger I was very fearful as I was bullied at prep school, timid, and didn’t speak much, but greatness is inside. And while at St Andrew High I got that push to tap into the potential I had within,” she said.

The dental surgeon also hopes to one day create a dental hub with all dental related services under one roof, but presently, she hopes to continue inspiring others

Her advice: “Approach each day with a new pair of eyes, as an opportunity to learn and always be humble, hungry and the hardest worker in the room.”

By Kimberley Hibbert

Original Article Found Here