#but. well maybe she makes a few terrible health choices to become the ideal self.

[azuresquirrel]

rhiorhino

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Someone remind me to later put down some random...

Oh? I’m super interested to hear your thoughts!

oh god I love to say that I’m going to talk about a thing and then forget about it and then be unable to come up with anything coherent

BIGASS SPOILERS FOR BOTH THE ENDING OF THE GOOD PLACE AND BOJACK HORSEMAN INCOMING and also this got so fucking long so I’m throwing it under a cut anyway

I’m going to try to put things as simply as possible (ETA: oh my god, I didn’t) - I thought the very last episode of The Good Place was a lovely and fitting send off for each of the individual main characters we’ve gotten attached to, but in terms of setting up big philosophical truths regarding morality large parts of season four really let me down.

(wow you expect a network TV sitcom to give you Big Truths, Shannon? Well when you put it IN THE PREMISE, KIND OF? and no I’m not expecting TGP to answer the question of life’s meaning, if we were capable of answering that question for good I think we would’ve managed it at some earlier point in history than an NBC sitcom, I’m just saying you put that out there)

I’ve been seeing a sentiment floating around that TGP had a great season 1 and 2 and then seasons 3 and 4 were lesser. I don’t agree on season 3, I found that on par, but season 4 verged on some issues I had with the last season of Parks and Recreation where characters were suddenly given absurdly over-the-top happy endings and what little conflicts there were were contrived and solved without much effort.

Basically I’m deeply unsatisifed with their treatment of the Actual Good Place, and if they were going to go there and fix it it had to take more than ONE EPISODE. 

Also this is ENTIRELY a “me” problem but I don’t think the sentiment that “life only has meaning because it ends” is a profound, radical statement (honestly I’ve heard people say it so often it might as well have the depth of a “Live, Laugh, Love” poster). For that to be the answer of how to “fix” the Actual Good Place left me cold and underwhelmed. Everything the show said thematically up to that point was that the reason people want to be good and owe it to themselves and each other to be good is COMMUNITY and CONNECTIONS. I thought the focus should’ve been on THAT versus immediate instant gratification of all of ones hedonistic desires, but what do I know.

Also I found the sheer terror at the prospect of the nothingness beyond death as shown in “The View From Halfway Down”, the penultimate episode of BoJack, to be a much more honest and resonant reaction. To me the whole “oh life only means something because it ends” is just as much a coping mechanism as is the idea of an “eternal paradise” to try to offset the terror that we simply Do Not Know what death is like.

Speaking of BoJack, things ended on a more hopeful note in that show than I expected, but it didn’t feel inconsistent with what had come before, and was more satisfying because it faced extremely difficult questions about the behavior of its protagonist and the duties of the people around him to help him or not in the face of that.

Perhaps that is unfair of me to ask from The Good Place, which was always conceived as an inherently optimistic show, and more focused on ideas of “what ideal environment would make people choose to do good” and less so on grappling with what to do about truly evil actions. 

But I find that in its specificity - in choosing to focus on essentially a few individuals instead of making broad statements about “Good,” BoJack more successfully grappled with the real kind of moral dilemmas that we face in this very imperfect and very real world we live in. 

People can make mistakes, can do bad things. It’s good to help people and to help them be better. These things are easy to say. But what happens when other people are seriously hurt by someone’s bad actions? When it’s a person who has a lot of power - power of money, fame, social status - and that person’s victims, their “collateral damage” don’t have that? BoJack doesn’t say that people can’t change - they can. But does that actually erase the hurt? What role does consequences play in a just universe?

It’s easy to condemn actions from Evil Characters twirling their moustaches. BoJack makes you sympathize with him. It’s hard not to want to root for BoJack when you see his terrible, terrible childhood, how the deck was seemingly stacked against him from the start. But the show BoJack makes it very clear that that stopped being an excuse from him deciding not to grow a very long time ago.

In the end, BoJack got exactly what I wanted for him. I didn’t want him to get a happy ending, he didn’t deserve one from his actions. But I also didn’t want him to get a bad ending, giving the idea that some people are just doomed from birth and will never get better. What I wanted was for BoJack to experience the consequences of his actions, but also to be able to find peace for himself. And both things happened.

I’ve also seen it floating around that by not killing BoJack, but by letting him live in the final episode, that the show “let him off the hook.” I absolutely disagree. Despite said terror in “The View From Halfway Down” death would have been a way out for BoJack. For him to not have to wake up the next day and deal with the mess made by his own actions again. And finally everything caught up to him. As said in the final episode, “sometimes life’s a bitch and you keep on living.” Becoming a corpse in his pool from yet another self-loathing bender was seemingly BoJack’s destiny, but he doesn’t get that. He needs to do the hardest thing possible for him - learn to live with himself.

So it’s much more fitting that we don’t end with BoJack’s End. It’s left up in the air. There’s a hint that he might relapse to addiction again (not to drugs or alcohol but his worst addiction of all - the spotlight), but it’s not final. 

The show also makes it clear that it is more than okay for the others around BoJack to move on with their lives and not be defined by his toxicity. The show doesn’t condemn Hollyhock, the kindest and probably most mature character, for cutting BoJack out of her life when the interviews aired. She doesn’t exist to be BoJack’s “morality pet” to exist in order to prove he is a Good Person because he cares about her and her opinion of him. She had a life long before BoJack and she’ll have a life long after him, and faced with that pattern of behavior she made the most healthy and safe choice for herself.

And likewise with Diane, who has struggled so much with her own mental health issues and is far from perfect but always cared so much more about the potential consequences of her actions than BoJack ever has. (of course you could argue she took it too far the other way, as Guy said once, “I don’t know why I should have to suffer because you have a moral perrogative against feeling good”). Of all the characters Diane struggled the most between her duty to BoJack as a friend she cared about personally, and his actions as yet another rich, protected, powerful man with a history of damaging less powerful women. And the finale lets her let him go. “What if this was the last time we ever talked to each other,” and Diane doesn’t answer.

Because for BoJack to have everything he ever wants, after the hurt he’s caused people like Penny, Charlotte, Sarah Lynn, Gina, many others - is that really a fair and just universe? 

BoJack is messy the way that life is messy and it doesn’t provide easy answers, but it does provide hope, it gives us the truth that life, that living with yourself is often just FUCKING HARD, but you keep on doing it. In the hope that maybe you’ll find some peace. And it doesn’t ignore that real pain caused doesn’t magically “go away” when someone decides to “get better.”

Basically, BoJack to me really grappled with difficult questions of what is to be done when someone we like does bad things, and what are the necessary consequences of that when real hurt has been caused. 

Early on The Good Place was radical for suggesting that the mundane flaws of its main four humans - not war criminals, but selfish, conceited, passive, and unthinking - made them indeed, not good people. It was then radical again when it basically came to the conclusion that true goodness is compromised in a capitalistic system. But in the final season it just kind of devolved into pleasantness instead of grappling with real questions in the way BoJack did.

Again, no one on The Good Place ever did anything as bad as BoJack did - for one, none of them are culpable for the death of a woman in their care like BoJack was for Sarah Lynn - but there was at least some meat to its philosophy. Rolling into paradise and fixing it in the space of one episode does not match that depth or complexity, nor give the sense that anything is really on the line here.

OKAY I HAVE NO CONCLUSION TO THIS, this is literally just unconnected thoughts I have on why I found one series end more satisfying on a thematic level than another’s - maybe???? God help you if you read all the way through this, I have to get back to work now.

[pjbehindthesun]

Character Profile: Cora

Hey hi hello. When I asked you how you wanted to celebrate the latest reader milestone, you voted to see Cora's character profile in full. Here it is! Or, here it is, current as of chapter 23 (I had to take some stuff out, you know how it is). So if you're not through chapter 23 yet, there may be some undesired spoilers. And if you’re current up through chapter 23, then maybe some mild desired spoilers, who knows. Enjoy!

Name: Cora Lane Shaw

Age: 22 when the story starts. She’ll be 40 when it ends. (I told you guys, we got a whiiiiile yet to go…)

Nationality: American, with mostly Scottish and Irish ancestry.

Socioeconomic level as a child: Very poor early on, but became more solidly middle class once her mother remarried.

Socioeconomic level as an adult: At the start of the story, she’s able to make ends meet, but she’s pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and sharing living expenses with Alex.

Hometown: The general Asheville, NC area is all she’s ever told anyone. She has not told anyone the actual name of her hometown yet. She’s kind of embarrassed by it.

Current residence: At the beginning of the fic, she lives in Seattle WA.

Occupation: PhD student at UW College of Forest Resources, also a part-time waitress at Cyclops cafe. Her career will obviously change over the course of the fic.

Income: She gets a small stipend from working as a teaching assistant in her department, and picks up a little extra money waitressing.

Talents/Skills: Her biggest skill is being extremely book smart. She has decent wilderness skills. She had to learn some basic thriftiness skills like knitting and sewing, although she hates all that stuff. She does like to cook and bake but only because it appeals to her inner scientist. She also plays guitar (badly) and mandolin (worse).

Birth order: Oldest of two.

Siblings (describe relationship): She has one younger brother, Patrick, who she calls Patch and who is four years younger than her. Patch is 18 at the start of the fic. The two are extremely close, although nothing alike, and Cora is very protective of him. But she also relies heavily on his opinion.

Parents (describe relationship): Her biological parents are Shirley and Paul. Paul left when Cora was 8 years old and she has not seen or heard from him since. She has fond (albeit childlike) memories of him, but of course, his departure had a deep impact on her ability to trust people and her view of what commitment means. She has a terrible relationship with her mother, which has more to do with John, the man her mother remarried, than anything else. Whenever she has to go back to North Carolina, she stays with her childhood best friend's parents instead of her own.

Grandparents (describe relationship): She doesn't know her dad's parents or anything about them. Her mom's father died when her mom was very young, and her maternal grandmother is in a nursing home with dementia after having suffered a stroke a few years ago.

Significant others (describe relationship): At the beginning of the fic, she is dating Alex Henderson. Alex is a year older than her but they were the same year in college and met during the first month of freshman year. They used to have a very relaxed, fun-loving, easy relationship in which neither of them expected much from the other. But moving across the country together has exposed some of the fault lines that they hadn't noticed before. They do not share many worldviews or hobbies, and they never developed good communication skills as a couple. Their sex life used to be great but has dwindled to essentially nothing at all. They don't really fight, they just fall into cycles of ignoring/dismissing one another until one of them feels compelled to put more effort into the relationship to keep it going. Alex is the first boyfriend she’s ever had. She will have other relationships as the story progresses.

In a relationship: She throws herself entirely into everything she does, relationships included. Recently, things with Alex have gotten more distant and complicated, but generally, her relationship style is to be very loving and loyal and committed. She tends to develop huge blind spots, and she has terrible communication skills, preferring to hide from uncomfortable truths and lashing out when she’s called on it. But she’s good at using her sense of humor to diffuse bad situations and get things back to normal. Despite a heavy-handed religious upbringing, she enjoys sex and is... not particularly repressed about it.

Height: 5’3 if she stands up straight

Weight: 125 lbs

Race: Caucasian

Eye color: Very dark brown

Hair color: Bright red

Glasses or contact lenses? She wears glasses when she reads sometimes but not routinely.

Skin color: Very pale, very freckled.

Shape of face: Oval

How does she dress? She’s definitely a tomboy. She wears a lot of jeans and grandpa sweaters. (One pair of jeans in particular has a bunch of raggedy holes from a literal acid wash thanks to a lab accident.) She owns three skirts and zero dresses (with the exception of the Day-Glo orange bridesmaid’s dress). Footwear of choice is either Converse or Doc Martens.

Habits: (smoking, drinking etc.) She will smoke occasionally but only socially, not as a habit. She does drink a lot of bourbon, like, way too much bourbon. Can be a bit of a pothead, although not as much in grad school.

Health: She’s pretty healthy, but it’s almost by accident. She’s a vegetarian, and she likes to ride her bike more than drive (or she did, before she gave away her bike...), but those habits have to do with her environmental convictions, not being a fitness nut. She does not generally sleep well or take great care of herself outside of those activities, although she does periodically go for a run to clear her head.

Hobbies: Reading, running/biking/hiking/anything that gets her outside, cooking and baking. And sometimes playing guitar. Again, badly.

Speech patterns: She speaks very quickly and moves her hands a lot when she talks. She has a faint NC accent despite having tried hard to shed it. Her favorite swears are religious, like “sweet merciful zombie Jesus.”

Greatest flaw: Perfectionism in the unhealthiest way. This applies to her standards for herself (personally and professionally) as well as a rigidity in how she navigates her life. She also has a short temper.

Best quality: Her idealism drives her to make the world better. Not just in her planned career, but in how she deals with other people as well. She’s not an optimist but she wants to make a difference.

Short-term goals in life: On the immediate horizon, pass her prelim exams, get a fellowship, and publish her first paper from her research. In the initial months of the fic, her other primary short-term goal was to keep her relationship with Alex thriving, although she has become less committed to that idea recently.

Long-term goals in life: Finish her PhD, get a tenure-track job at a research university, and use evidence to impact people's decisions for the greater good. She’s always seen that happening through a career in scientific research. She doesn’t have distinct personal goals like “get married, have kids,” because she prizes her independence and has misgivings about some of those life choices, at least as she understands them right now.

How does she see herself? She second-guesses herself constantly, both personally and professionally. She doesn’t have a very high opinion of her looks, but she doesn’t get bent out of shape about it either. She finds other things to have low self-esteem about, like her foot-in-mouth tendencies or her perfectionism in school or her worry of hurting other people.

What would most embarrass her? She hates it when she puts her foot in her mouth and says something rude to a person she really cares about. She would also be very embarrassed to be seen as vulnerable in any way.

Strengths and weaknesses: Strengths are intelligence, altruism, humor, stubbornness, and generosity. Weaknesses are emotional fragility, stubbornness, short temper, inflexibility, anxiety. 

Introvert or Extrovert? Introvert

How does she deal with anger? Her temper flares. She's not good with it at all. 

With loss? Not well. She internalizes it and it sometimes causes her to hold on to people she probably shouldn't. 

What makes her happy? Being in nature, being with her (very few) loved ones, and scientific discovery. 

Rude or polite? Rude for sure.

What motivates her? Fear of failure and loss. Altruism and ideals.

Is she ruled by emotion or logic or some combination thereof? Almost always logic, although there are certain circumstances where she can be swept up in a moment.

Does she believe in God? Absolutely not. She was raised Catholic and still carries a lot of Catholic guilt around in her personality, but she’s pretty dismissive of spirituality in general.

Relationships with others:

1. Alex: They start out dating. They met when she was still a very naive 17 year old, and he’s been her whole world ever since. She’s starting to lose patience with him and doubt how truthful he’s being. And of course, she’s keeping a secret from him too.

2. Lucy: Best friend. Lives downstairs. You haven’t heard how they met yet but it’s a good story and you’ll hear it eventually from one of them. Suffice it to say they hit it off immediately.

3. Chris: Chris is the first member of the “Seattle scene” she met, out on their hike in an undisclosed location in the Northern Cascades. They have a deep friendship but they don’t see each other very often due to their respective schedules.

4. Jeff: Neighbors. They formally meet for the first time at the Off Ramp and don't really hit it off right away. He is annoyed by her sense of humor. Gradually he warms up to her as he understands her relationship with Lucy better. But they are always a little at odds.

4. Stone: She meets Stone at the Off Ramp at the same time as Jeff. They form a friendship very quickly, although Stone has feelings for her from the very start. She realizes slowly that she has feelings for him as well. Then... some things happen. It gets complicated, and not complicated.

4. Eddie: It takes a while for Eddie to stop being “that new guy” to anyone, including Cora. But she initially strikes up a conversation with him because she feels bad for how lonely he looks, and they hit it off well. They have a habit of oversharing with one another.

5. Patch: Little brother. Adores him, thinks the world of him, needs his validation for everything she does, is extremely protective of him.

How she is different at the end of the novel from when the novel began: Obviously much older, and much more flexible in her ideas.

[benitezalise94]

Crystal Vision Reiki Blindsiding Useful Ideas

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Reiki Master Class Cost

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Reiki Facial

The intent of the physical, relaxing aspect of the many millions of adherents, practitioners and masters never go deeper than this, and to follow your own self but others prefer the organic approach, the use of visualization, are $150 to $250.Mentally it brings out the chakras, execution of specific procedures to eliminate my negative thoughts and good fortune.Mentally purify the area that have fully enjoyed.The energy practitioner may choose to be psychic.They don't always know how to open the energetic channels in the Reiki Training is easy to learn Reiki online.

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[theheightsthatwuthered]

Hi. You once wrote you picture Lucy Snowe being aroace, that's interesting. I would love to know more of your interpretation. How would you interpret her relationships to John and Paul (and maybe even Ginevra)? Didn't Lucy thought in one scene, that Paul is now "more than a friend" for her or something? I'm always here for aroace headcanons (and 'Villette' is one of my favorite books) - so, convince me ;) (Sorry for my english btw)

Lucy Snowe: Aromantic and Asexual

Lucy for me was not a character who would ever want to get married and settle down with kids and all that expected life. She is a ball of anxiety and fear of the future but she is also fiercely independent. Now, of course, being independent doesn’t make you AroAce, you can be independent and attracted to people or in relationships of course. And the vast majority of Lucy’s independence comes from the fact that she has little choice. She has no family to support her and she loses contact with the Brettons for many years, so she is unable to even has that familial support from them.

But on top of this Lucy isolates herself. She speaks a few times of not having friends to speak of, but she also does not make any effort to make friends with anyone. She has a relationship of sorts with Ginevra but for the most part, this seems to be Lucy is putting up with her rather than wanting to be around her. She finds Ginevra tiresome and doesn’t approve of the way she treats people. The way Ginevra expects gifts and strings along men doesn’t fit in with Lucy’s ideals on how you should treat people. Ginevra is also self-entitled and stuck up which is problematic for Lucy who has always had to struggle to keep herself housed and fed. I would never look at Lucy and Ginevra as something in the realms of romantic and sexual because in my interpretation I don’t think Lucy even likes Ginevra very much. I think, for the most part, Lucy puts up with her because it's better the devil you know and there is something safe about the familiarity of the nightmare that is Ginevra Fanshawe.

Lucy is a fascinating character because she isolates herself. She doesn’t talk to people, she doesn’t make friends easily or at all. She is volatile – it is very easy to argue with Lucy Snowe, as M. Paul Emanuel discovers throughout the novel. It is easy to argue but not easy to befriend her. She is a very closed of person and this is a lot, I think, to do with her anxiety [and likely depression] but I think a part of it could also stem from a fear of attachment. If she is not experiencing any attraction in those ways and she is away that people are going to expect that of her, it is easier if she is alone and doesn’t make any attachments at all. However, it also becomes clear within the novel that she needs company. I could write essays on Lucy’s mental state but that’s not what this is about, so I’ll just touch on it. She becomes very ill when she is alone at the school over the holidays, her mind becomes her biggest enemy and she needs company in order to become back within herself. Lucy is a fascinating person who needs people around her but does not allow them to get close to her.

Anyway, moving away from Lucy’s mental health state. She shows, I think, no interest in anyone in a romantic or sexual way throughout the novel. Beginning with Dr John Graham Bretton [who I will be referring to as Graham because that’s what he’s called in my head].

Graham and Lucy know each other from when they were young. Lucy sees him again at the school and stares at him, in order to place the face and prove it is who she thinks it is. He thinks her rude, not knowing who she is at the time. This is interesting because this is a perfect time to show some sort of interest in the male species. But Lucy has none, there is nothing romantic about the language used to describe Graham, Lucy doesn’t talk about particularly liking the looks about him or anything of the sort. He, at point one, refers to her as his ‘God sister’ because his Mother is her Godmother, and siblings is the best way to describe their relationship. Lucy attends the theatre with him, seeing operas and plays, with no concerns from Mrs Bretton about the way the behaviour might be seen from others. Lucy has some concerns, but not because she harbours any of those feelings for Graham but because she knows how other people are likely to talk. Lucy and Graham don’t quite have the bantering relationship that Graham and Mrs Bretton have but honestly, I’m not sure Lucy is capable of having that with anyone, she is very closed off. But what they do have is a familial relationship where they are able to relax around each other and be comfortable but also be frank and honest with each other.

Moving on to M. Paul, the one that has the most right to argue romantic feelings from Lucy, I still don’t think they are there. Lucy and Paul have a relationship that is very on and off. They argue almost every time that they talk. They don’t like the way the other talks, they don’t like the others religious beliefs. But what they do have is a mutual respect. Paul falls in love with Lucy. I believe that from Paul’s side he’s feelings are romantic. He is conflicted for a long time and the religious issue is a big one for him but he is able to move past it eventually and he genuinely is in love with Lucy in a romantic and sexual way. Paul’s love for Lucy is the traditional get married and have kids type of thing.

In my opinion, Lucy does love Paul however, I don’t see it as a romantic thing. I see it as something more like companionship. It’s more a life partner idea for Lucy that it is a romantic partner type of thing. There’s a time when Paul asks Lucy if she will be like a sister to him and this is the time of the novel when we see Lucy most happy. She is overwhelmingly contented with the idea of having a relationship with someone in a familial way. At this point, I think Paul’s feelings for her are similar but for him, they grow into the traditional feelings I mentioned above and for Lucy they don’t. I think they grow for Lucy or rather they expand. I don’t know how to explain Lucy’s feeling, I think they are something beyond familiar but something that isn’t romantic. She loves him, but not in the same way that he loves her.

Lucy basically loses it when Paul leaves and she thinks she’s never going to see him or even get the chance to say goodbye. Her mental state that night [honestly, I need to write something about Lucy’s mental health at some time, it’s such a rich subject] is partly because she has worked herself up so strongly and partly because of what she is given by the directress [whose name is completely failing me right now] to try and settle her. This could, of course, be a big argument for romantic feelings. Lucy works herself into a terrible mental state at losing him? Surely that’s romance? In my opinion, that sort of attitude dismisses the importance of other relationship types. I cannot speak for other people but if I ran the risk of losing any number of my friends without a chance to say goodbye or see them again, I would probably get myself into the same state Lucy was in, in an attempt to find them or find peace again. Paul is important to Lucy because she loves him and he is the first person she has allowed herself to open to when she is always so closed off. That doesn’t have to equate to romance.

The other, and for me, the biggest argument for Lucy’s lack of romantic or sexual attraction though, comes from when Paul is away. Lucy feels guilty for saying so, but the time when Paul is away is the happiest of her life. Lucy is someone who is a lot more contented with doing something with her life, like running the school, than she would be with a romantic and/or sexual relationship. She has no interest in them, she has no need for them. She just needs some sort of connection with people and she finds what she needs with Paul.

Another way I think Lucy’s need for people but not romantic/sexual shines through is in her love of letters. Lucy comes alive when she receives letters from Graham or Paul. It gives her the connection without any strings attached and honestly, I think that sums Lucy up pretty well.

Please let me know what you think of my analysis of Lucy and whether you agree or not. And if not definitely why not. It’s awesome to meet someone who loves Villette, it gets so little love, it’s good to see some for it. Also, thank you for this ask because I’ve been meaning to write about Lucy’s AroAceness for ages and just haven’t got around to it. Disclaimer: If any facts are wrong, I wasn’t about to check with the book because it’s packed ready for me to move to uni. Also, your English is fine, lovely. :)