#disclaimer i know covid is still here but you know what I mean by post-covid as in the after 2020 era

[meanieloserman]

The post-Covid experience is cleaning your room and finding masks in every single nook and cranny and in EVERY single pocket of old bags you havent touched in years

[spookyboywhump]

How would you recommend someone who's been here awhile as a whump blogger get more... engagement? I will post ask games and get virtually no ask or such. :( when I first started I had crazy engagement but now it's just gone. Makes me feel a little bad like I did something wrong? Aaa I'm sorry xx

Ahahaa anon this is an interesting ask to get at an interesting time. I’m going to do my best to help and give advice with what I’ve been wanting to try out as this is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately as well. I’m going to put this below a cut as I often feel. Weird talking about things regarding engagement and I understand some people don’t like those conversations but y know it is what it is

Let me start off with, I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong friend! I have noticed engagement has gone down a lot lately, not just in myself but in blogs that I follow that were VERY active and got lots of engagement back when they first started posting, and while they’re still very active and absolutely fantastic and talented writers, they still aren’t getting the attention they used to. I want to add a quick disclaimer that I understand engagement and attention is not everything, that we are supposed to create for ourselves, we are not simply content machines here to please an audience but also. When you go from having constant engagement with your work to what feels like none, it does feel a little discouraging, if not a lot discouraging and leave you wondering what changed. I think that’s normal. While we should create with ourselves in mind, it’s also just human nature to want to connect and interact with others who also enjoy our creations!

Onto the next thing, I have a few theories as to why engagement in general may have gone down. Obviously, I don’t know who you are or what your specific situation is so these may not apply! But they are things I think about when I think about this

Personally, I joined as a whump blog in 2019 and gained a bit of a following RIGHT before Covid lockdowns. Around this time a lot of people were home, a lot of people had way more time to write, to read, to interact with each other, I recall this time as being very active for everybody, between the Whump community online and whump discord servers, nobody had anywhere to go or anything else to do so we were all online indulging in what may have been a new hobby and new and exciting space for some people.

Following that, Covid lockdowns ended. People went back to work, back to school, and suddenly a lot of us just. Can’t be as active as we used to. This community seems to be full of neurodivergent people, I imagine a lot of us are struggling to balance school/work, household responsibilities, and our hobbies and things like writing or keeping up with our favorite series may fall to the side unfortunately. People graduated high school, started college, started jobs, these will take up a lot of time so I’m not really surprised to see a decrease in general activity.

So just like those things mean a lot less people are likely to be active as much as they used to, it may also mean you aren’t as active as you used to be. Again, I don’t know your situation personally, but I went back to work in February of 2021 and since then I have written. Less and less. It’s actually kind of depressing when I see time stamps on things and realize how little I wrote at all in 2022 because work was such a drain on me and even now, I struggle to have the time, energy, and inspiration all at the same time to write when I have other things that need to be done as well. My own engagement has gone down significantly since when I first started, so I understand exactly what your talking about, I post about my oc’s constantly but I struggle to really write and it’s very rare to get asks about them the way that I used to (that’s not to say it never happens and I love seeing the ones I do get in my inbox but I have noticed a change that I don’t think is exactly significant to just myself)

(Split this up cuz it was too long for one lmao) I mostly assume it’s due to less people being active as per the reasons mentioned above, there are names I used to see often that have since disappeared and I think about often, but also I know it’s partly on me because I just. Don’t write as much as I used to. People engaged when I had writing for them to engage with. I don’t have that very often any more so they don’t have anything to work with. That’s understandable. I often find myself getting in a mood where I’ve convinced myself everyone has lost interest and if I’m being completely honest that poll I posted was to see if something I was wondering about was correct because I have always noticed a slight uptick in asks or requests regarding one OC but unfortunately I still write primarily for myself and that one OC just. Isn’t the one I want to focus on all the time and I worried I was failing a lot of people by focusing on what I liked.

Anyways that’s all to say. I understand what you mean and this has also been on my mind a lot lately. But I’ve also been thinking about what to do about it.

For one thing, for the same reasons I don’t write as much as I used to, I also don’t read as much as I used to, I miss connecting with other people over THEIR work as well. That doesn’t always mean they’ll be into my stuff, they don’t have to be! I love that they’re creating at all and I want to enjoy it and engage with them over their creations as well! Of course I understand we shouldn’t be interacting just in the hopes it’ll draw attention to ourselves, but it’s also the natural outcome of things. If we aren’t able to reach out to others, they likely won’t reach out to us or look into what we’re doing. There’s quite a few of us, it’s easy to miss some really awesome blogs and really awesome work just because we end up in our own little circles.

Posting your writing or art or whatever it may be regularly, especially being sure to put it in the Whump community tags allows for more people to keep up with it or new people to find and support you and potentially garner new interest if you feel like people have lost interest in what you make. Personally, my goal with doing whumptober is to start writing and posting somewhat regularly again, in a way that more and new people may see it. This is also something I need to fix up but having a good master list is great for people who are new and want to catch up!

And not to sound like hopelessly optimistic but like. Don’t give up. And focus on creating with yourself in mind. You didn’t do something wrong, things have just changed, I forgot to mention this above as it just came to me but I remembered tumblr started doing that thing where you need an account to send anon asks which will have axed a lot of people who were lurking without an account and didn’t want to make one. I know it feels disheartening and discouraging because we want people to enjoy our work but the only way to get that is to keep working. Your work still has value even if people aren’t engaging the way they used to and I’m sure that it’s great! The people who love it the same as you do will find it I’m sure, and I’m wishing you the best of luck!

[evolvingbeautyandmess]

USUAL DISCLAIMER: if it's blog post like pretty much all posts in this blog are via speech to text on my phone and there's typically minimal editing and that's partially due to spoons but that's just the vibe of his of his blog. Also I still don't know why Google censors curse words.

So today I finished the first protest art piece / collage since the Nassau mask ban went through or was passed. To be clear I've been making several pieces, the one that was posted today was the 7th but this was the first one that was created and posted after the Nassau mask ban was passed in a near dystopian fashion. As I mentioned and I forget if I mentioned it here or other places on social media but it was it kind of felt like the hearing was almost performative and the outcome had already been decided. Those in favor of the ban we're given priority to talk first and they were allowed to talk much longer over the allotted testimony time. And when they were harassing the people who were against the mask ban they were allowed to do so with no consequence. And now in Nassau county and for those who don't know that is an area in Long Island which is kind of like a server a suburb off of New York City if you go out in a mask in public you can be arrested and be fine with up to $1,000 and up to when you're in jail because that's where we are f****** at in this world right now.

And so working on the latest art piece in protest felt different. It's not that I ever thought oh it's in the bag will definitely fight this and we will win. I knew that they might win and this would really f****** my life and Riley screw over no royally screw over marginalized people and the majority of New Yorkers. On a variety of levels on a multitude of levels. But I also felt like we can fight this. And we can fight this and we will fight this because there's no other option. And winning at least the statewide bill is possible. Also I believe there might be lawsuits happening and not Nassau county in Nassau county because these mask band apparently no b a n apparently violate at least one law if not more. But seeing the mask ban passed as it was makes it that much scarier. I really like my heart goes out to people in Nassau county right now who have to wear a mask or I'll just realize that a mask ban it's f****** absurd and dangerous especially that since we are seeing a surge in covid cases I mean just what the f*** you know. And now part of me is pretty terrified that the statewide bill will pass. Now it might not but it might. And that was always a reality but now that reality is feeling a bit more real.

Sometimes living in America these days and really the last probably I know maybe definitely the last 8 years has felt like you're watching one of those disaster films on a screen and you in the audience can see that they're headed for disaster and why the disaster is happening and what went wrong and what unraveled and led to them that place but the people in the movie at least most of them can't seem to see it. That's what it feels like and it's just it's a lot

I think one thing I'm really concerned about is the fact that a lot of people while perhaps they wouldn't be in favor of a mask ban, they might not get too concerned about it because a lot of people do not wear masks, a lot of people are pretending that covid is no longer a thing, a lot of people don't even f****** say the word oh I just have a weird flu they don't even say like the c word, and so to take action against a proposed mask ban is to acknowledge that covid is very much still a thing that it never went away and that these leaders who told them oh you're fine now it's all over you don't have to wear a mask lied and f***** up and then in the name of their own careers never admitted that they were wrong. And that's pretty f****** scary for a lot of people I really think that's why a lot of people tune out like that because it's like well wait a minute if you mean it is still a thing that we're not safe and there's no one keeping us safe and that's pretty scary so people kind of two now and go oh you know I just have this weird flu or you know people don't want to mask because it reminds them of the height of the pandemic where they had to mask. And so between this proposed Mass band no mask fan b a n you know being written in policy speak which is not the most accessible way to to what's the word to present something it's not easy to understand and people's feelings about masks and covid I am concerned that people might look away. They look away until they can't look away because covid will have gotten so bad that now they have no choice.

And I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong so f****** badly. But if this mask ban goes through that is looking very well happen. We are already in a surge in covid cases and they want to create further stigma and ban masks.

God it's so f****** stressful

So that's where things are at right now. I think it's really important to stop and hold space for your feelings and really what's with the way of saying it I think it's really important to State your anxiety. This is my anxiety right now and it doesn't make it all go away but it's like holding space for it and just kind of sitting with the feelings and so that's where things are at right now

[mim526]

Disclaimer: It's been awhile since I was a straight accountant and it was US accounting (not UK), and I don't have the actual Buckingham Palace journal entries, but...

Here are some things I noticed skimming the financial reports linked in your post, @the-empress-7. The second bullet under accounting observations describes the main issue IMO and is probably the short answer :-).

General Observations

Income from crown properties was way down (due to no visitors because of Covid) while property still had to be maintained (expenditures). Frogmore refurbishments were a large chunk -- approximately 32% -- of total 2020-21 royal facilities management charges (£7.5 million).

BP knew Frogmore expenditures/income were of great interest to the public (and, I suspect also knew the accounting treatment of them a challenge): “Matters considered by the Audit and Risk Committee to be significant to the 2020-21 financial statements included...the disclosure of the accounting treatment of the lump sum received from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to reimburse the Sovereign Grant for expenditure incurred on the refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage” [p. 37].  Yet the auditor gave a low-risk assessment in the audit opinion on p. 59 of the 2020-2021 report which means the accounting records were not as closely reviewed.

The Frogmore information contained in this report does not serve the British taxpayer well IMHO.  It has language and just enough information to make the treatment of Frogmore transactions sound financially correct, but insufficient detail for someone with basic bookkeeping knowledge to be able to verify important details mentioned in the report.  I could understand if Britons wanted an outside auditor to thoroughly review 2020-2022 Frogmore accounting records using a higher audit risk assessment and issue another professional audit opinion.

NOTE: The Wales Royal Foundation recent annual report is an example of much more transparent financial reporting with its specific dollar amounts tied to more specific line items on the financial statements. You know how much money came in and generally where it went. William has chosen some very highly qualified professionals to be on the foundation's board and in charge of fiscal operations.

Accounting Observations

Except where noted, these comments are based primarily on the 2020-2021 report because that’s when the £2.4m was reportedly received from Sussexes (audit opinion p. 59 states receipt of funds was verified on bank statements). 

The first mention of Frogmore on p. 9 says “...the receipt of £2.4 million from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to reimburse the Sovereign Grant for expenditure incurred on the refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage, most of which is recognised as income in 2020-21 (see Note 1b).” 

Note 1b (p. 73) states in the Facilities management charge paragraph (which is how Frogmore refurbishments presumably would be generally classified in the reports), “As noted in the Performance Report on page 9, facilities management charges have been waived for 2020-21 and there is therefore no income to recognise in these accounts.”  Seems an odd statement to make when the report says £2.4m Frogmore refurbishments were repaid by Sussexes in that fiscal year. See sidenote at bottom of this post for further discussion.

Some background: General rule on financial statements is that income must be recognized in the period in which it is received/earned. One problem I see with the report excerpts on Frogmore is that they seem to be conflating income statement and balance sheet accounts. It's not clear what is being done with refurbishment vs. rent. You don't take in repayment of refurbishment/facilities management costs then turn around and count it as prepaid (aka deferred) rent revenue. You’re either paying rent or repaying refurbishment costs, not both at the same time with the same funds.

Which means this from the 2021-2022 report is a problem that needs more transparent explanation:

“a lump sum of £2.4m was received from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in September 2020 to re-imburse the Sovereign Grant for expenditure incurred on the refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage. However, not all of the payment received in 2020-21 was recognised as income within that accounting year, as it has been offset against the rental payments due for 2021-22.”

What should happen: To properly account for the refurbishment on an income statement you would increase some cash-type account to show you received money and credit the expense account(s) that was used to pay for refurbishment costs. Prepaid rent would show as unearned revenue on the BP (landlord) balance sheet then get reduced each month as rent was due and paid.  The 2020-21 report says this basically is what would be done on p. 74 under Frogmore Cottage.

There is a straightforward way to combine refurbishment & rent. When a tenant pays for leased property improvements, you can do journal entries to take in the prepaid/deferred cash payment and record a lease liability/deferred revenue on BP books which is reduced monthly as a rent expense over the life of the lease.  I see no clear indication that something like this was done. 

In fact, it gets worse. The 2021-2022 report excerpt below says they even stopped using the system they used at the beginning because there were no “enforceable obligations” beyond 3/31/21.  Excuse me???  There was a lease through March 2022 so there were enforceable obligations through March 2022. Putting cash payments received in “other income” instead of rental income buries it by not specifically tying it to some type of Frogmore account.

“The balance of the cash payments received during 2020-21 was recognised as income in 2020- 21, on the basis that a licence to occupy did not at that time extend beyond 31 March 2022 and therefore there were no enforceable obligations at 31 March 2021. This sum was included within Recharges for functions and other income in 2020-21.”

Finally, from the below statement in the 2021-22 (p. 87) report regarding Frogmore, you could make a case that no further rental income was forthcoming past March 31, 2022, and we know Sussexes stayed at Frogmore after that date and are reportedly only now removing whatever personal possessions are left on the property (which means the crown lost rental income when no one else was able to live on the property):

“There is no deferred income at 31 March 2022.”

Sidenote: There appears to be a discrepancy regarding repayment of the £2.4m Frogmore refurbishment. These Buckingham Palace annual reports state the £2.4m to repay Frogmore refurbishment was received lump sum from the Sussexes while 2020 news reports, also via palace officials, state they would be paying "a 'rental-plus' agreement in which they pay more than what the commercial rate would be" to repay the refurbishment and pay rent to keep Frogmore as their UK residence while living in the USA.

One answer which could somewhat square the discrepancy on the news reports narrative side is that the Sussexes did pay a lump sum which the auditor verified as received on BP bank statements and are repaying Daddy Charles (aka the Crown) for the £2.4m he gave them.

Paging all accountants

Can anyone who paid attention in Accounting classes help me out here. Please translate this into English for me.

Here is the 20-21 report, and here is 21-22 report

In the 20-21 report it is stated that:

Then in the 21-22 report it is stated that:

[accio-victuuri]

fandom stories that have been on my mind recently…. 📑

as what the title says, cpn things that have been living in my head rent-free for the past days/ weeks. i just need a place to write them down and let them shine on their own ✨

same disclaimer applies. for cpn-loving turtles only. please don’t ask me to elaborate cause as i said, i have very minimal information on hand.

☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆

• The one thing that inspired me to make this post, a bit about WYB’s side account. It’s not a secret that he has one, probably even multiples but for some reason this one got leaked. especially back in 2019 when his phone number got leaked and some people allegedly verified that this same number was used to register the account. they noticed it followed a couple of motorcycle related accounts, bobo’s true love at the time lol and well the most juicy thing here is that he was visiting the bjyx supertopic.

Then by the end of 2019, it gained followers. WYB might have noticed that he was somehow discovered so the account cleared all it’s watch list and never moved again. Everything is gone. That freakin moon profile picture does not help at all cause we all know his fondness for it and how it’s one of the fandom’s symbolism. The way it was created on 3/14 is also very sus.

We have all CPN’d that he visited the ST and why not tbh. Even if you don’t believe in BJYX, i think you can say that he has visited it and at the very least knows of it’s existence. I wonder what he saw tho. LOL. I would love to get more information on this account’s watch list and it’s just so funny to have some confirmation about one of his side accounts.

no i’m lying, there is another alleged side account from 2018. A weifen gave the tip ( allegedly lol i’m gonna use this word a lot ). It is also cleared but people did capture that he kept an eye out on XZ and XZS, and also liked a motorcycle video that was not really popular. So maybe someone who knows about the moto world would recognize. I just noticed the times both accounts were created. I don’t think WYB has the time to maintain his side accounts anymore with how busy he is but i imagine this gremlin having all the accounts and just looking at everything out there.

maybe i can make a post about all his alleged side accounts one day. 😂😂😂😂

• I have always loved personal stories from turtles and while I am wary of some, there are ones that particularly make me soft. this one for example:

My uncle is the kind of staff who works with the crew, he is ten years into the circle. I usually ask him about gossip in the circle. This year (2019 ) I carefully asked Bojun Yixiao if it was real. Uncle said he didn't know them that well, but he knew that the relationship between the two is very good. It is said that WYB & XZ are modest and polite. They have no personality problem and have always been real and not fancy.

He also said (emphasis!) he will help me get Xiao Zhan’s autographed photo in October. The time was right to take advantage of the work appointment, and after the end of XZ’s work, he signed one, my uncle said that “my niece likes you two very much”. Xiao Zhan raised his head in a daze, and said, “huh” My Uncle was about to explain, Xiao Zhan laughed a bit and said, "Is it Wang Yibo?" Uncle also laughed.

What gets me in this is how XZ is confused then it immediately clicks for him — is it WYB? ☺️ I mean, granted that 2019 was such a big year for them as a pair and who could someone be referring to when talking about “you two..” This exchange ( true or not ) lives in my head rent free. and the fact that people in the industry have nothing to say but good things about them really says a lot.

• The COVID test schedules that were leaked actually showed it was the same date and time. down to the second 02:23:38. I know this is bad, people shouldn’t actively seek out things like this but my brain won’t let this piece of information go. 💀💀💀

• WYB’s “Changsha” residence when he was still actively working in TTXS was provided by Hunan TV network. It’s not his, it is located very close to the station to make it easier for him. Other staff also stayed in that same area. The candy is, XZ allegedly sends things to that address.

• This video and fake rumor that is going around recently. People are speculating that WYB’s reaction in this routine was because of something that happened and that the dancers are actually teasing him. The rumor is XZ visited the set of SDC and he was just lounging, WYB was there and was about to kiss him but some dancers saw them, and our boys ended up being embarrassed.

you can definitely give a more plausible explanation of why he reacted like this but that’s not the point of this whole post. it’s the cpn that could be connected to it. and i mean if had someone like XZ, the love of my life just lounging, looking all gorgeous — how can you blame WYB for wanting to kiss him 🥺

• I’m not really a kadian enthusiast like all the other BXGs but the recent 232323 timing is making me 👀. Yes we know you Love Zhan.

Time is 14:30, but it can be 2:30 so it keeps up with the 23. I think the reason why i’m drawn to this CPN is it was posted a day after the whole yibo relationship rumor. If you look at YBO’s page, after the post saying the rumor is fake, the next one is this. So it’s like saying, those rumors are false and I only love XZ. 23. 🤍

• the emoji similarities between xzs and ybo used in their douyin posts. not only that, it’s a match for ones during OOL ( Gu Wei ) and BAH ( Chen Wei ). I mean, do they ship them too?

• I don’t really believe in 🍉 unless they are about upcoming product endorsements cause I think those can be leaked by the brands themselves. but during HB’s initial run, there was one with 2m followers who shared that XZ bought multiple screening slots for the movie.

The melon didn’t say he bought it because of WYB, it only mentioned WYB because let’s face it— his name is associated with it and he is actively promoting. What’s so entertaining to me and makes me grin when i think of it are the people’s comments. HAHAHAHAHA! They know what is being implied. You all know deep down there is some truth it but you refuse and say all kinds of things.

- END.

[phoneybeatlemania]

Do you think john had an eating disorder? I never know what to think but I trust your opinions

Hiya anon! Sorry I took all day answering this, I was just out with friends yesterday [NOT celebrating the queens jubilee, but by all means celebrating Prince Andrews POSITIVE covid test even if its probably a straight up lie cause convenient timing, huh. I hope he's unwell though.]

My opinion on this is that John clearly struggled with disordered eating habits throughout his lifetime—at times they were pretty bad (i.e during touring), and at other times they seemed virtually non-existent (i.e apparently he was pretty relaxed about food when he was with May Pang [disclaimer: have not read her book yet though, so Im going off of what Ive heard])—and I think both his disordered eating behaviours and mentalities were prevalent enough to constitute an eating disorder. Disordered eating and Eating Disorders are not the same thing, although I find the distinctions between the two to be somewhat trivial at times, since there is so much overlap between them; to me, the key difference between being a disordered eater and having an eating disorder is all about the mentality—i.e a person may under-eat in their day-to-day life, but they might not be struggling with anorexia as a mental illness if the ED mentality is not there. Both are still issues of their own, but different—although to reiterate, very susceptible to overlap.

I made a post on this topic awhile ago, and although I don’t think I outright disagree with anything I said in that post, I have been wanting to remake it for sometime now, because Im constantly coming across new tidbits of information that corroborate this. 

As I said in the post, I think John probably had EDNOS [or Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified], sometimes called OSFED [Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorders].

More below the cut!

Here’s the definition of EDNOS: 

EDNOS refers to eating disorders that display some of the characteristics of other disorders, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa, but the behaviours of which do not fit the full criteria of these conditions.

Ednos consists of cycles of restricting food, then bingeing, followed by purging after feelings of shame and guilt. An obsessive nature and over awareness is common surrounding food, weight, and calorie control, where restricting and avoiding meals is another of the many symptoms.

Someone living with Ednos may have certain rules about the types of food they can or can't eat and at what times they believe they are allowed to eat. Behaviours such as using laxatives, vomiting, or over exercising are often expressed as a way of compensating for eating. Bingeing on large quantities of food is common, followed by a period of restrictive or purging behaviours. Ednos is massively under reported in the media but makes up for a large percentage of eating disorders worldwide. (x)

First off, I just want to take a second to address the rumour that John had bulimia. Im discounting this argument from my post, simply because it lacks any evidence to corroborate it, and overall seems to me like its the product of exploitative journalists more then anything else. For example, it was alleged in the book Backstagepass VIP by Debra Sharon Davis:

‘John and I were having a heart-to-heart,’ recalled Nilsson, who died back in 1994. ‘Then all of a sudden John went off about how powerful men had ravenous appetites and wanted to swallow the world whole. And he thought that was why he had this horrible problem – being hungry all the time and overeating. 'He said he often fantasised about large quantities of “forbidden” foods. He said food was “sacred” to him and it frightened him. He saw it as “a great weakness” and he referred to it as "a lack of discipline.”’ —Harry Nilsson, The Daily Mail 2012 (x)

If there is evidence to suggest that he struggled with bulimia I would of course consider it, but reading through articles like this one, even assuming the author is being truthful, theres still nothing to suggest he had a purging disorder specifically. 

So onto the specifics of John’s eating disorder. It seems to me that John found himself in a restrict/binge cycle throughout the touring months of 1965/66, and possibly before and beyond both these years, although theres less documented evidence to suggest as such. 

Here’s some documented behaviours John had surrounding food, that are all suggestive of an eating disorder:

This article:

“John has a tendency to gain a little weight between bookings, and he goes above his natural weight of 159 pounds. Right before a tour, he’ll start doing everything he can to lose weight.”

“…while the tour is on is the best time to reduce [food intake]”

“He sticks to one meal a day—steak and a huge salad.”

“Because of his diet, John won’t look at bread. On the evening of our first night i’ll find myself ordering the sandwiches for the others and a salad for John, plus a couple a couple of meat sandwiches because I know what’s coming.”

“After about an hours drive, John begins to look at me apprehensively. He has hunger pains in his eyes! Finally when he is about to ‘break down,’ I reach into my valise and pull out the meat sandwiches. […] John takes the meat out of the sandwiches and eats every tiny sliver he can find. Then he stuffs the leftover slices of bread into a bag, which I take from him (so that he wont break down again and eat those).” 

“[Johns] main complaint is ‘How come Paul never gains an ounce—and he eats twice as much as I do?’ […] John is sure some kind of curse is set on his head—or his stomach as it were!”

“[John] has two sets of suits. One is for when he is normal weight, and the other is for when he trims down on tour. The worst part is I have to take a set of each on tour—just incase he gains or loses.”

— The Beatles and Me! by Neil Aspinall, 1965

[My Note: To me, this article seems the most crucial piece of evidence suggesting John was struggling with an ED that Ive come across so far. We have a document, written in real time, reporting on John showing very clear ED behaviours. The article literally states, “he sticks to one meal a day”, and then goes on to elaborate on John’s “break downs”, or what I would say are clearly binges (some might define a binge as being food-indulgence to an excess, although in my opinion when it comes to ED’s binges are more about feeling a loss of control around food rather then the actual quantity). 

Restrict/binge cycles I think generally get under-recognised by people, because the common perception of anorexics is that they never eat, and when they do eat, they eat very little. But I think the reality is, is that very few anorexics will tell you they never experience binge episodes; when you’re under-nourished, its the bodies immediate natural response, and inavoidable in the long run.

I think it’s just such a sad read to be honest, especially the line “he has hunger pains in his eyes!”, because he was literally inflicting torture onto himself, putting himself through all this pain when he didn’t need to.]

“When 'Help' came out in '65, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realise it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. It was my fat Elvis period. You see the movie: He—I—is very fat, very insecure, and he's completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was. Now I may be very positive...yes, yes...but I also go through deep depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know. It becomes easier to deal with as I get older; I don't know whether you learn control or, when you grow up, you calm down a little. Anyway, I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help.”

— John Lennon interview w/ David Sheff, Playboy, 1980 (x)

[My Note: What I find most interesting here is the element of introspect John has within this interview, recognising in retrospect his own insecurity and hollowness during that period of his life. Also it touches on a point I will move onto later, in that his ED was probably might have been a manifestation of his own self-hate.

Also gives us insight into how much his own insecurities were really just in his own head, because very few people would have seen him as "very fat". Im aware our perceptions of fat/thin have changed a lot since the sixties, but even at the time, most people wouldn't have considered him overweight. I am also aware of the alleged "fat beatle" article that came out in 1965, but Ive been unable to locate an exact source for that, or a source in which John makes reference to it, so Im not sure how to feel about that. ]

“Poor old Orson [Welles], though, he was troubled. He goes on [The] Dick Cavett Show and he’s sort of ‘Please love me, I’m a big fat man now and I’ve eaten all this food and I did do well when I was younger and I can act, I can direct, and you’re all very kind to me but at the moment I don’t do anything.’”

— John Lennon interview w/ Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers, Rolling Stone Magazine, 1970

[My Note: Anyone else getting a little sense of projection from this comment?]

“He was tired of being the fat Beatle. He was really in shape. We used to call John Skinny Head when he pulled his hair back in a ponytail and make his face look narrow. He did it that day for the video and he shouldn’t have. When he saw the results, he went crazy. He just hated it.”

— Jack Douglas, RecordCollectorMag (x)

[Jack] Douglas and Lennon would eat egg-whites. “He used to be the fat Beatle” that’s why there were egg-whites only Douglas explains

— Jack Douglas to NBC (x)

[My Note: Though not immediately suggestive that John was struggling with an ED, we aren’t looking at these things in isolation, were looking at the whole picture, and within that picture behaviours like this—minimising caloric intake, food “rules” that one must abide by—this does suggest an eating disorder.]

“January 15 1966. Wearing their swimming suits they paraded down the largely empty strip of sand and then sat on sun loungers while journalists posed rapid-fire questions. John hated the resulting photographs, because they revealed him to be flabby and overweight. As a result, he would lose fourteen pounds by the time of the summer tour.)”

— Beatles ’66 by Steve Turner (pg. 59)

[My Note: Turner is a questionable source here, in that Im unsure where he drew the information that John hated his appearance in the photographs from the holiday (not that I find this unlikely, but I haven’t found an external source stating that he did). But again, this aligns with his touring behaviours in Aspinalls writings in the previous extract, and as well with Johns 1980 comments.]

“After 28 straight days of shouting, screaming, sketching, and eating28 different colours of ice cream, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Primal Scream therapy sessions with Arthur Janov at this London offices are concluded. He recommends that the Lennons fly out to Los Angeles and resume their treatment at his Primal Institute Clinic in California.”

[…]

“[John] is now 28 lbs heavier than when he left England last April. When asked about this, John put this down to “eating 28 different colours of ice-cream” during his course of treatment with Janov.” 

— The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After the breakup 1970-2002 by Keith Badman & Barry Miles

“It was all very well for the mind but for the body it was terrible. I wore the same clothes for two years. I had two things: a jump suit, one you do the plumbing in. I had two of them. That’s all I wore for almost two years. Janov was an idiot but he was not bad. His therapy was good. He was a pain in the neck.” 

— John Lennon interview w/ Frances Schoenberger, A Day With John Lennon (c. 1975) (x)

[My Note: As aforementioned, I think at times John went through periods where his eating was disordered, though the eating disorder mentality wasn’t necessarily present, and this is what I would consider symptomatic of that. John evidently wasn’t eating well during this period of his life, but it seems an unhealthy habit rather then a period of binge eating.]

There's also the argument that Johns weight loss was in large part due to his drug usage, and I agree with that, especially when it comes to heroin since we closely associate the physical symptoms of that addiction with noticeable weight loss. But a theory that I also have on this is that John might have also been using drugs like LSD in order to lose weight during the mid-60s. Purely speculative, I know, but just a theory I have that I don’t think is inconceivable since LSD can cause a loss of appetite, disrupt eating patterns, and trigger binge eating episodes following a trip. Ive also heard of anorexics using it in order to suppress their appetites (in a similar vein to cigarettes being used as an appetite suppressant). 

Something I didn’t discuss in my original post is the argument for John having had orthorexia, which is characterised by an excessive preoccupation with eating healthy food. Ive been discussing this very recently with @damapajaro, and they’ve sent me some interesting sources that would corroborate this. Here are some extracts they’ve sent me, and some Ive found on my own:

November, 1980. John & Yoko are putting the finishing touches on 'Double Fantasy.’ […] One thing troubled me during the all-night recording sessions: the way John would slip from time to time into an adjoining lounge. The first thing that came to mind was drugs, because I was so used to seeing musicians pass around bowls of cocaine with the casualness of M&Ms. John had had drug problems earlier in his life, and I feared he had relapsed—despite all his talk about feeling healthier than ever. Maybe the pressure of being back in the studio was greater than he was letting on. At one point, I happened into the lounge and saw John at the far end of the narrow room. He was reaching for something on a cabinet shelf, and my first instinct was to go back into the studio so I wouldn't violate his privacy. But he spotted me and called me over, putting his finger up to his lips in a signal to be quiet. When I was next to him, he reached into the cabinet again and pulled out something wrapped in a towel.

"Want some?" he asked. "Just don't tell Mother" he said with a conspiratorial look. "She doesn't want me doing this anymore." As he opened the towel, I had to laugh. John Lennon's private stash turned out to be a giant-size Hershey bar. He broke off a chunk for me and one for himself. Holding his piece in a toast, John smiled and said, "Good to see you again.”

— Cornflakes with John Lennon by Robert Hilburn

“And while I wasn’t able to resist the temptation of sweets, John stuffed himself with nuts. That’s how he kept that figure slim and healthy: fighting his appetite with sunflower seeds, peanuts, pistachios or figs. He always said that the seeds were the best for health.”

— At John Lennons House by Rosaura Lopez

January 12, 1976, Sloppy Louie’s, New York City

We all got into John and Yoko’s limo. “What would you like to eat?” I asked them.

“We’re only eating fish,” John replied.

I asked the driver to take us to the nearby Fulton Fish Market area on the East River. After a short drive, he stopped in front of Sloppy Louie's, an area landmark.

— Lennon, The Mobster & The Lawyer by Jay Bergen

As Nanny's son Mike Cadwallader remembers, they confined themselves to expressive looks when Yoko commandeered their kitchens to prepare John's macrobiotic meals, and to surreptitious tut-tutting to each other about his drastically changed appearance. I overheard a lot of “He can't just eat beans…needs a proper meal…he's fading away…he's all skin and bones. The comments weren't necessarily anti-Yoko or pro-Cynthia, but just anti-anyone who got their hands on one of “their” children. When Mike's girlfriend, Linda, produced a bag of jelly beans…John's dietary principles wavered.He grabbed them and scoffed quite a few before being told off, his cousin recalls.

— John Lennon: The Life by Phillip Norman (pg. 610)

“After both John and Yoko suffered a severe bout of gastric flu, [they] went on a liquids-only diet for 40 days. ‘John’s way of keeping on the diet was reading cook-books and fantasising about the recipes,’ Bon Gruen remembers.‘He channeled all his craving for food into these amazing fantasies of dishes he’d never heard of, learning how to prepare them and what’s good for you and what’s not. Up till then he’d always thought getting a bowl of corn flakes was cooking’…Tormented by scents of warm bread during his diet, he even tried his hand at baking.”

— John Lennon: The Life by Phillip Norman (pg. 768)

If you look at the ways in which Yoko also speaks about dieting, it seems she’s got some odd food mentalities as well, also suggestive of orthorexia: 

John did not have an eating disorder. Sometimes he slipped and ate a bar of chocolate. His diets included vegetarian diet, macrobiotic diet and, very rarely a juice-only diet. All of the above are internationally approved health diets. — Yoko Ono to The Mirror, 2012 (x)

Its just a very strange outlook on food to have—to think that merely eating a chocolate bar, or “junk food”, is a mistake one has to recover from. All the different diets are also alarming; they might be internationally approved as being “health diets”, but as we understand from orthorexia, healthy doesn’t always mean healthy. Again, in my opinion when it comes to eating disorders it’s always more about the mentality than anything else. 

There also seemed to have been an element of enabling one-another’s bad habits here, especially in that Yoko was often controlling what John ate: “She doesn't want me doing this anymore.”…John Lennon's private stash turned out to be a giant-size Hershey bar; John's dietary principles wavered. He grabbed them and scoffed quite a few before being told off, his cousin recalls. Through Yoko, John found someone to encourage this issue, and this probably worsened the food-problems in that they were now being validated as "healthy"—or on the other hand, when he broke "food-rules" he was being "told off" for being unhealthy—ultimately perpetuating the pre-existent issue.

Her own relationship with food might also help us to understand why she-herself can’t recognise Johns ED. If Yoko can’t understand that her own intense dieting might be disordered in some ways, then it’s unlikely she’d be able to recognise that for another individual.  

So what prompted John to begin developing an eating disorder?

The obvious response to this is the ubiquitous: eating disorders are about control. When the eating disorder behaviours first started to take over (circa 1965), John had experienced an almost incomparable amount of fame. No ones surprised when a female celebrity reveals she’s struggled with an eating disorder, because being under public scrutiny for such an amount of time would unsurprisingly make you vulnerable to that—and the same seems applicable to John.

But I think as well it was probably a subconscious way in which a lot of his own self-hate manifested. Paul stated in an interview:

McCartney is quoted as telling Billboard: “[John] didn’t say, ‘I’m now fat and I’m feeling miserable.’ He said, ‘When I was younger, so much younger than today.’ In other words, he blustered his way through. We all felt the same way.”

“Looking back on it, John was always looking for help. He had [a paranoia] that people died when he was around. His father left home when John was three, the uncle he lived with died in later, then his mother died. I think John’s whole life was a cry for help.” — Paul McCartney in interview with Billboard (x)

It’ll come as a surprise to no one for me to say that John struggled with intense insecurities for the majority of his life, and so for him to use his physical appearance as a vessel to channel all his self-hate would make sense. As Jack Douglas said, ‘he was tired of being the fat Beatle’: tired of being judged, disliked, scrutinised. Or, thats my speculation at least. 

Conclusion:

I don’t know the extent to which John struggled with an eating disorder/disordered eating, although it was a pretty well-documented issue of his. 

To me it seems the initial problem was binging, which then turned into restriction/anorexia as a response to “fix” his weight gain, and then a restrict/binge cycle. 

In later years, I think he probably still struggled with this to some degree, although I think the issue became less about how much the food intake was, and more about what the intake was—effectively meaning, I think his anorexia unravelled into orthorexia. There was likely an element of enabling one another’s behaviours between John and Yoko here, and Yoko's own relationship with food likely encouraged John's pre-existing unhealthy patterns and mentalities.

I don’t think his eating disorder was prevalent at all times, since theres plenty of examples of John eating pretty normally with others, but that his eating disorder didn’t exist all of the time doesn’t really negate the argument that it did exist, because eating disorders aren’t necessarily linear. A person can go through countless phases of relapses and recovery throughout their life.

Anyway, as I say, Im constantly coming across new little pieces of evidence on this subject, so this post is far from comprehensive. But these are all some of the key things that immediately came to mind for me! If anyone has any further thoughts they’d like to share lmk :)

[aoitrinity]

Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it. 

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in. 

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length. 

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages. 

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money. 

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments. 

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve. 

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

[sanchoyo]

ok, disclaimers:

1. I am Poor and have always thrifted even before it was 'cool' (used to get made fun of for wearing secondhand in middle school, in fact!)

2. I am plus sized.

3. the only time I sell things I am selling things I've worn and owned for years, I'm not someone who goes into stores with the intention of finding things to resell (which I think is way way less common than people think…a lot of people who do that are doing it as a full time job, which is hard to make a living at.)

so most of the arguments I see are like, 'ppl hang out at thrift stores JUST to grab cool and or plus sized clothes to resell for outrageous prices to make a quick buck!!' let me explain why I Just Simply Disagree. to me it feels like most ppl saying that or being mad about it have never sold things online and don't understand how it works. theyre just ppl who are going on depop and seeing 20$ shirts and being Mad About It. So.

Heres the Thing about selling things online: every online store, or at least the Big Ones (depop, ebay, poshmark, mercari, etc) charge seller fees and take taxes (sometimes, not always depending on a few factors) these fees range from 10-20% of the sell price usually.

and you have to consider the person selling usually covers shipping (there is /always/ a shipping cost. consider they ALSO have buy whatever they're shipping in, usually a mailing bag or box!)

shipping for me is usually $6-$12 at the post office, and thats using the lightest possible weight small mailing bags. and I WANT to support the USPS, its one of the Good Cherished services! fedex and other shipping companies would probably cost MORE than this!

Plus whatever the person is paying in gas presumably if they don't live in walking distance or have public transport to the post office..it starts to add up, right?

I just sold a skirt. I charged $5 for the skirt, and $10 for the shipping. (if it goes over, which it does sometimes, I'll cover the extra) thats $15! But I paid 10.92 for shipping, and depop took a fee of about $3…I made a $2 profit. Which is about what the gas there and back probably cost. people who print their own shipping labels might have it a slight bit cheaper, maybe, but they also have to pay for printer ink every now and then if they do this a lot.

…Do you understand what I mean? that person is charging $25 for a shirt because they're paying a chunk of that to ship AND for the fee depop takes. (and, if you're using paypal instead of direct depositing into your bank account, guess what? PAYPAL TAKES A FEE TOO!)

Having a purely 'depop business' isn't going to give you THAT much spending money unless you're doing it on a very large scale. taking pictures (several pictures, front, back, close ups of patterns, tags, etc) EDITING pictures if that's something they do (I do, and it takes a minute, but makes the listings look Nicer) tagging everything, taking and listing measurements, sorting into correct categories…all of that takes time and energy! If people are working on top of that a lot of the time its just a Lot of Hassle! (which, again, doing this for a living would NOT be sustainable unless you're doing it on a massive, massive scale. you can do the math for how many things you'd have to sell to make a livable profit and its So Much. a lot of depop stores with a lot of listings are people who own thrift stores irl and the depop page is their online store so they don't have to buy a domain! I see that SO often!)

And you know what? I think that in some cases selling clothes directly is BETTER than sending them to thrift stores. Hear me out. I know they tend to be cheaper in person, but not everyone can go in person. (people who have no stores around them, ppl who are disabled and might not be able to make the trip, immunocompromised ppl who are still reasonably, understandably worried about covid! etc!) and some sellers offer hand picked surprise packages and will go shop FOR you and find stuff in your size which is just! very cool!

depop has size filters and using a lot of ~aesthetic buzzwords~ I, as a plus sized person, can be GUARANTEED to find a lot more than I could in person that suits my very specific, eccentric tastes!

Local thrift stores near me are NO LONGER ACCEPTING DONATIONS FOR A WHILE BECAUSE THEIR STORAGE IS SO, SO FULL because a lot more people are tuning into the fact that donating is Good and wanna be more environmentally conscious (which, is good!) but the lady at a local thrift store told me they end up throwing OUT a LOT of clothes because No One Will Buy them and they just dont have room with the sheer volume of donations. They have a $5 fill a bag day every week because of the ungodly amount of shit they have.

Did yall know textiles make up a HUGE percentage of landfills? Yeah. the thing about selling them online is, if youre willing to pay for them and find a statement piece you really Love on there, I feel like…idk, putting it directly in the hands of someone via selling it online feels better than sending it to a thrift store and Hoping it Doesnt End Up In A Landfill. Like, at least I KNOW where it's going? to someone who really wanted it!

Also it just kind of gets on my nerves when ppl call it price gouging. that's not what price gouging is!!! price gouging is: "Price gouging is a term that refers to the practice of charging a price that is higher than normal or fair, often during a state of emergency or crisis, for goods, services, or commodities that are in high demand and short supply" PPL RESELLING CLOTHES FOR PRICES YOU DONT LIKE IS NOT PRICE GOUGING. ITS JUST PRICES YOU DON'T LIKE!!!

+++saying these ppl are taking all the good pieces? no. theyre not. thrift stores get new shipments/stock p regularly of weird things. you just need to learn to dig/thrift better ngl. hit several stores in one go. ask the ppl working there what day they get restock. make a list of the specific type of stuff/vibes youre after and go in with an open mind. U Can Find Things. thrifting/shopping well IS a skill and you too can learn it I Promise. thrifting has good and bad days, sometimes you'll find very cool things and some days you'll strike out. it Happens. It's Fine!

depop is not evil, it's just an app. ppl selling on there are likely only making fucking pocket change, and for ppl like me who aren't able to have full time jobs, its just enough to maybe get my dogs food covered instead of putting it on my credit card and further push me into debt! it's not an outrageous profit! it's! pocket change in most ppls cases they just wanna get rid of clothes they don't wear! I'm not saying it has NO problems, but christ the way some ppl talk abt it on here you'd think depop killed their mother and kicked their dog, lmfao

I think. Most ppl on here and Wrong abt depop ‘price gougers’ but I feel like my full opinion on that subject would get me crucified on here 😶

[oh-for-fic-sake]

It’s A Match Chapter One

Masterlist

Disclaimer

Summary: Filming is over and Henry returns home to and empty house. And he doesn't like it, things are getting to him and he doesn't want to be alone anymore. Then his brother suggests online dating, it sounds mad but henry decides to give it a shot. If worst comes to worst he just deletes the profile. He has nothing to loose right?

Warnings: Angst, Swearing, Cheese, Self Indulgent Fic, Rpf, Plus sized reader.

A/N: so I wrote this before the whole 'girlfriend' shock and everything that has followed. I was of two minds whether to ever post it but honestly, this is my blog and I've clearly stated that i am going to continue writing Rpf. I want to do a little ficlet/mini fic and well here we go. It wont be smutty just  somewhat angsty then fluffy. Enjoy~

Taglist: In Reblogs.

Henry slumped back on the seat in his conservatory and sighed, from here he could see his brothers and their wives outside, each snuggled up on the out door wicker sectional he had got to have the family over. It was the first family get together for over a year. He was happy, god it was amazing to see them but... He couldn't help being a tad envious.

They all had a family, wife and kids to go through this shitstorm in. He had no one, well he ha Kal. But that was it he sighed and looked away sipping from his cup slowly takeing a moment for himself. He needed to just chill, but it was getting hard... This year had really knocked him back he was at an all time low he hadn't felt like this for a long time. He knew he was depressed, he felt stupid there was no reason to be but there we go.

Henry had been getting himself all twisted for a while now, filming the Witcher helped but now that was over and he was home alone. Left with his thoughts in a big empty house.

"Sooo little brother want to tell me what's going on or am I gonna have to get mum in here?" Henry jumped at the voice and spun around to face his brother who was keeping a safe distance at the door. Wiping his hands down clearly just having washed them again.

"I ah its nothing, you know me I'm a worry wart" he said waving off his older brother he didn't want to bring down the mood of the small gathering, it was why he had come in here to take a breather.

"You called us all here for a visit hen, out of the blue when lockdown is still being eased out. Its clear you don't want to be alone, yet your sitting in here alone." His older brother said leaning on the door frame folding his arms trying to figure out what was really going on. He could see his little brother was hurting he wanted to help.

"I've got Kal" Henry said with a chuckle and looked about for the bear only to frown and sigh seeing the room was empty apart fro  him and his brother.

"Kal's outside with the kids hen, what's up? You can tell me you know" henry sided as his sibling  moved sitting in the small seat across from him. He knew that his family would listen but he felt so... spoilt like he was asking too much and was being selfish. It wasn't like him.

He grunted leaning back choosing not to look at his brother instead focusing on the cup in his hand. He spun it slightly then heaved a sigh. He wasn't getting away with not speaking about it, he was going to air out his worries one way or another. With his brother or his mother, and he loved his mother but this was? He wanted to keep this issues close to his chest. So far only Kal knew about his problems.

"I... I've had enough... just had enough of fucking covid and being alone... i felt isolated before all this shit kicked off and now?" He vented releasing all the fears he had. It was tough, he was a family man without his own little family, he hadn't managed to find anyone to share his life with and it got to him. He tried being sincere and polite, he took care of himself and tried staying true to himself but... something was missing it had to be! On paper he was a safe bet a good man! Yet his relationships never worked. There were different opinions or his other half couldn't handle the life style or they tried changing him or they couldn't put up with the way he loved so furiously- so openly wanting to always hold and kiss them. It just never quite worked.

"Its- fuck everything has just caught up with me...worries I've had for a few years now I could ignore them you know? I had other stuff going on, was always out and about meetings and press tours I was busy! But now?" He tried putting his feeling into words but he was conscious, he didn't want to whine or bitch about his life. He loved his work and the life he had made for himself he just? Wanted someone to share it with.

"Now after covid you've got all the time in the world to think?" Henry nodded agreeing with his brother. Covid had made him face these fears head on. He has been alone for the best part of a year with the uncertainty of his work and filming quarantines and isolations.

"Yeah, it hurts I'm... I'm in deep and I? I don't know how I'm getting out of this slump" henry finally said outloud, his brother dipped his head listening to him as he ranted. Started letting out all the frustration and anxiety out but stopped short with another growl closeing his hand around the cup tightly hissing in frustration then looked away.

"And what's caused it? I know you hate being alone but?" Henry sighed shaking his head as his brother tried coaxing more out of him. He drew in a shaky breath wanting to cry, he was just so lost and upset over being upset and alone.

"Two lock downs... Two alone- I? If this carries on for the next few years I don't... I don't want to be alone anymore! I want to settle down, I want an actual personal life! A relationship a family and? How? How am I gonna find all that? They want fame or money or something! Women never seem to want me for me, they say the do then judge me for my hobbies- I'm a geek I like tech and games and fantasy! And women don't like that" he spewed the words like they were venom, half ashamed of being so dramatic but the fear was real. Henry was scared, he wanted love. He wanted a family of his own, and it seemed impossible, now more then ever.

"I want to meet someone who will take me as I am, for me and I just I'm giving up. I'm giving up on it I can feel it, almost forty and look, alone unmarried no kids-I have no one to share my life with, it hurts am I not good enough for that?"  He hung his head as he spoke the final words put loud. He felt so vain and full of himself when he said them out loud, his skin crawled.

But it was how he felt, being the muscular decent looking man he was didn't go with his personality. He was a geek and the woman who were drawn to him didn't want that. And the woman that shared his hobbies normally weren't confident enough to even speak to him. Society's views on acceptable couples had put Henry in no mans land.

"What about online dating?" His brother spoke up but Henry just grunted rolling his eyes frustrated.

"What? No I cant do that I'd be fucking swamped" he hissed in irritation frustrated at the mere suggestion of him trying to date online.

"Whoa hold your horses let me finish I mean come on Hen there's bound to be hundreds of shy sweet women on there, I mean girls that are into your hobbies and stuff aren't usually the ones out and about partying and stuff, so its more likely they will be online" his brother quickly explained before Henry could pop off on one and shut him down.

Henry opened his mouth and stopped himself. That was a good point. Many of the women he would click with weren't going to be in bars or fancy parties. They were normally shy and at home most of the time reading or playing games.

"I... You really think i could meet someone? Meet the one online?" He asked in a small voice warming to the idea. His sibling smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

"Yes little brother, your a down to earth guy, just make a profile and have a look, if you don't like what you see you can delete the profile" henry nodded slowly thinking it over. There'd be no harm if he failed well he'd be no worse off, a little disheartened but that's about it.

"Look write down a few things you want in your dream girl, have a pseudo name like fucking I don't know Hank! Or something and say your a runner on set or something" his brother spoke up quickly as Henry sat back and actually thought about it seriously. He was right, henry could tweak things and be careful about what he shared and if he did meet the one then she'd understand... He could explain the predicament he was in. That he just wanted someone who liked him for him. And he would only reveal himself to her if she was the one and he was sure she would understand. As long as he was himself and honest about everything else in his life then there was no harm... and if he used proper photos of himself just... half cropped out then? It wasn't catfishing? Because he was being himself just using the nickname his mother used to call him.

"O-okay so be myself but... Just tweak a few things? So they don't know its me?" He reiterated to his brother still trying to figure out the morality of this whole idea.

"Yes! No full on pictures, no photos of Kal either new photos henry not old, maybe of your eyes up or something? Girls love blue eyed boy- not your right that brown will give you away... you could even fuck em up with a behind the scenes character photo? I mean come on how many men use a superman photo for their profile these days?" He encouraged wanting more then anything to cheer up his little brother.

"I yeah... That could work ,thank you- I'm sorry I got so worked up it... Its just getting to me now" henry apologised but his brother shook his head and chuckled standing up to go back outside to the others that were all happily chatting in the garden.

"I know Hen, look just give it a go, you might be surprized... come on lets get back out there, after all you are the host~ you cant just run off and hide" henry grinned standing and following his brother. It was decided, he'd give online dating a go!

A week later Henry sat at the computer everything was ready, he'd taken some precise photos and had spent the last half hour writing a profile up. He had felt a little guilty about this... Was he lying? Technically it was him, he was going by Hank which was a nickname his parents gave him as a child, luckily this site didn't require a surname because honestly? He had no clue! To fend off some guilt he had thrown in a behind the scenes photo of himself as superman it wasn't much but it helped take the edge off. The other photos were cropped and there were a good few just so that the women knew he wasn't technically a catfish; he even did one with him covering half of his face with a piece of paper with Hank scrawled across it. At the time he felt silly but it helped with his anxiety over the whole thing.

He paused for a second eyeing the screen rereading the profile over and over trying to make sure it was alright and honest. And it was, he had explained a little about himself, his hobbies and interests and his job... Only brushing over he worked for the film and tv industry recently working for Netflix he hadn't exactly explained what he did but there was enough information.

With a deep breath he clicked the button his mouse hovered over going live with the profile. Now all he had to do was wait and hope he caught a good womans eye. Within moments a few profiles popped up, matches. He scanned them flicking through some of the profiles and felt his heart crack. They were all full of badly filtered photos and used slang that to be honest he didn't even understand. What was so hard about using plain English?

He growled growing frustrated clicking through what were clearly a bunch of wannabe sugar babies. Each profile had a main photo a little bit of info then a few more pictures added to them. He scanned each one quickly going through the motions judging each one. 'Too far away... Your clearly not even eighteen?... Oh you like dc? Really hate to break it to you but thor is not a dc character' Henry grunted as he bypassed what felt like hundreds of women each with their own 'duck face' selfie most advertising their Instagram pages some even ballsy enough to add their only fans pages.

'Wait a second who was that?' He paused and scrolled back up and eyed the image on screen. It was a face on photo a cute woman smiling uncomfortably. Unlike everyone else's there was no distorting blur or heavy editing, the only make up was in the form of eyeliner in a set of black slightly uneven cat eyes. A slightly skewed black flicks making a point of no editing on the photo.

She was a full figured woman with proper kissable round cheeks and a sweet nervous grin. Her eyes were what got him, they were kind and genuine he could see she was uneasy about the photo but she was beautiful. She lived about half hour away which wasn't to bad.

Henry clicked the profile and scrolled down she didn't smoke, drunk occasionally and had no children. She did however have a college education in animal care and ran a small business. Centred on dogs by the looks of it. He moved further down reading the profile.

Y/n, 30, business owner, e/c, 5'4, curvy

I'm shy so will take a while to warm up to you. A honest woman, sometimes to honest I don't seem to have a filter 🤗 I'm laid back and tend to be sarcastic and I love animals I'm a kc certified dog breeder as well as run a small successful business that caters to dogs. So if you are allergic or don't like dogs then leave now but thank you for clicking🙃

I spend most of my free time gaming or reading. I enjoy the fantasy genre and love dc and marvel (though I love dc just a tad more🤫)

I have one fur baby in the form of my lovely girl Amii who is a three year old malamute. Yes malamute not a husky or Akita so again if you don't like dogs or big dogs I'm not the girl for you.

I'm looking for someone to have fun and maybe build a life with. Covid has been tough being single and decided that it was about time I tried this whole online dating thing. If you want to chat pop me a message 🥰

I do not have a personal Instagram, snapchat or only fans! Stop asking for pictures!😠😠

Henry's face split into a huge grin. She seemed to good to be true. She was wholesome, successful in her own right and looked fun. She didn't seem to be full of kale and bullshit. Just genuine and? Henry couldn't put his finger on it but there was something drawing him to this woman.

True to her word there was no Instagram link, no only fans or snap chat or anything. He scrolled further seeing photos of her and the biggest fluffiest dog he had ever seen in his life. She was sitting down next to who he assumed was Amii her dog and he melted. Y/n looked happy and content, living her best life.

There was nothing that sent alarm bells ringing, no racey photos or 'Netflix and chill' innuendos. The profile was clean and genuine.  He was right the woman was a little chunky but extraordinarily beautiful. The curves suited her and made her look more... cheerful and he could tell she was strong aswell, you had to be to have a huge dog like that about you.

There were photos of her walking a large pack of dogs in the wood; that he recognised! They were the very same he took Kal to only ten minuets down the road, he even recognised the small logo of her company on the jacket she wore. He had seen dog walkers wearing the same jacket so he knew of her brand. I he remembered correctly the company offered dog walking, grooming and kennel facilities as well as offering Breeding services helping stud dogs and stuff. They also helped advertise registered breeders and took in rescues for rehoming. It was a brilliant little company that he had even used for Kal once or twice to get his teeth cleaned and nails clipped, because Kal was a bugger for his pedicures!

He moved further down seeing more photos of the woman a small section with the games and tv she liked. Witcher was in both the tv and games category aswell as peaky blinders, Vikings and a few other shows.

Henry paused as he saw the chat button. Should he? He but his lip twisting on the spot in he chair rocking from side to side. What harm is there? He could just send a message she looked like a fun loving woman, he shared the same interests and stuff... so why not?

His fingers hovered over the keys ready to type out the words. But he choked. His mind ran blank what does he say? Hi? I saw your profile? Does he ask for a date? What does he do?

He let his hands fall and growled. Then scanned over the side of the message bar seeing a few pre-typed responses.

'It's a match!' 'You look fun, lets chat' 'I like your profile picture'

He winced they all seemed... wrong? Somehow they were polite and all but it- they wasn't personal or anything just... not quite right. He looked down as Kal came padding over and slumped next to him resting his chin on his foot with a loud sigh. With that Henry had an idea typing away a little message and hitting send before he could really think.

You sighed typing away the latest wage slips and added up all the various overtime, you really needed some more staff on now that lockdown was coming to an end. Thankfully animal care was essential so you hadn't been hit too hard a few staff were on furlough as they were extreme high risk and shielding but you were going out of your way to make the premises covid safe. Luckily it wasn't too hard as much of the business was just a few staff and lots of dogs.

You frowned when a chat icon popped up in to corner of your screen. 'Hank?' You though trying to remember if you knew a Hank? Maybe a client or some old friend... but you honestly couldn't recall. You l saved your document and clicked the small icon bringing up a chat and frowned a you read the little message.

'I call my dog bear but he has nothing on Amii, Shes the fluffiest dog I've ever seen in my life she looks perfect for bear hugs😅'

'what the hell?' You cursed scrunching your nose up at the screen rereading the words. That's a bit random... you clicked his icon a small photo of half of his face then froze as a dating profile opened up. 'Oh... shit' you said seeing that your own profile you'd set up a few days ago out of curiosity had garnered the attention of the handsome blue eyed stranger. You swallowed biting you lip thoughts of finishing updating your records now gone as you scanned Hanks profile and a small smile crossed your face.

Hank, 37, works in the film industry. Blue eyes, 6ft, muscular.

Decided to finally try this online dating, unsure what to say other then I'm looking for a life partner. I like to think I'm funny and laid back. I'm fit and active but that doesn't mean you have to be, but maybe my lady could come for walks with me and my four legged son? I promise he's my best freind and a good boy.

My job is tough and I'm away for long periods of time, but when I'm home I like to play games and am into warcraft. I paint miniatures when I can. Fantasy and superheroes are a big part of my hobbies so if you don't like all things geek then I'm probably not for you.

But if they are? Then feel free to message me, I will reply when I can.

You read and re-read the profile And your hands hovered over your chicklet keyboard. Biting your lip, do you respond? He seemed sweet and real... if that made sense. You took a deep breath. What was the worst that could happen? Asking for a plane ticket? You decided to take a chance and typed back a reply hitting send whilst you had your nerve and then flushed.

"And they say fluffy dogs only lure in women~" You giggled to yourself  moving a hand over the huge fluffy girl beside you giving her pets whislt thinking of a reply.

[waifu-napoleon]

The mausoleum of king Frederick William III. and queen Luise at castle Charlottenburg

Finally, after what felt like ages, the last resting place of king Friedrich Wilhelm III. (Frederick William III.) and queen Luise (aka Louise) has been opened to the public again. Covid has kept it closed for a long time now and I have wanted to go there for over a year. It was an intense experience. In order not to clog up anyone’s dashboard I will continue this post under the cut. (I will also focus on Frederick and Luise, might put some more photos I took of Wilhelm I. and Augusta in a different post)

Disclaimer: I try to be as neutral as I can be when describing my trip there, or any trips to any place where these two have left some sort of impact, but there might be some undertones due to my personal believes (I was raised in a spiritual household) and also the fact that I can relate to them, especially Frederick, on a personal level. Of course that doesn’t mean that you have to agree with me on anything, you can just enjoy the photos I took if you want! :)

The mausoleum is located in the back of the garden. It is quite a sight to see, well hidden in between trees, but various rocks with arrows will guide you through the green. As you can tell, the architecture was inspired by greek temples, a hint towards Luise’s interest in wearing clothes inspired by greek culture.

Standing in front of that building was already impressive in and of itself but the inside. The inside is absolutely beautiful.

Now when you walk into the mausoleum you are first greeted by some stairs, pillars, an information sign on the left and this beautiful bust of Luise on the right and a ticket machine (yes you have to buy a ticket, but it’s 3€ for adults and 2€ for teens and kids and the money is used to keep the mausoleum the way it is and do repairs whenever they are necessary. Little fun fact, the security guy there thought I was a 16 year old boy so he got me the cheaper ticket. But don’t worry, I donated some money in the donation box next to it, so it’s all good). When I first entered the area with the coffins it felt like my knees where giving in a little. The atmosphere is absolutely incredible in there. It’s hard to point at what exactly the emotion was that I felt but it was similar to the feeling of finally meeting someone you haven’t seen in literal ages but immediately learning that something bad happened to them. Anyways-

I can still feel that emotion in my stomach when looking at the photos I took. So in the mausoleum you can visit the graves of Friedrich Wilhelm III., queen Luise, their son Wilhelm I. and his wife Augusta. Frederick’s second wife is also buried there, but she is not on display, her coffin located underneath the floor of the mausoleum.

I don’t think I need to say anything about the craftsmanship. These coffins are amazing to look at. Looking at them is almost hypnotizing. Her face is pure beauty and I was so emotional standing there in front of her. She looks like she is peacefully sleeping... and yes, I did hold her hand after asking her for permission but forgot to take a picture of it. 😅 At this point I had a tear in my eye, no joke. I know I said I wouldn’t cry but shush, I’m weak lol.

I love that they put him in his coat. Frederick might not have been the best king but he was human, humble and always trying to do what’s best and putting him in his “civillian coat” really reflects on that. As soon as I saw his face I could tell how exhausted he must have been, he looks so tired. I was taught as a kid to respect the dead so I hesitated for a bit but eventually asked if it was okay to hold his hand and so I did. I was amazed by how quickly the hard surface warmed up in my hands. At that point I was already crying haha.

The interior of the mausoleum is stunning. It’s simple and yet beautiful, it kind of reminded me of a church. I won’t go into detail about everything I saw but I will put some pictures here for you to look at.

I certainly want to come back to that place. I’m not sure about company rules in that place but I want to ask the staff if one is allowed to bring flowers to put down. It’s the least I can do. These people deserve to be remembered. They have gone through hell and back and while they weren’t perfect in any way, shape or form, they were real and true. People who were pushed into a position they didn’t want to be in and yet tried their best to do what’s right, even if we nowadays can only shake our heads at their decisions sometimes. If they knew what kind of impact they had on this world, I’m sure they would cry.

I know I am.

[appalachiananarchist]

Vaccine associated deaths

A continuation/response to a reply to this post. @winterphile

Death is a complication of any of the adverse events (though realistically probably usually TTP) which I did discuss in the first post. You don’t just drop dead for no reason. But I can certainly go over deaths after the vaccine and talk about those numbers and how to interpret them.

I live in the USA so have mostly been looking at VAERS to track incidence of adverse events after the vaccination. This is because it is going to be among the largest sets of data we have and can give us a better snapshot of what is really being seen and reported on a large scale.

According to VAERS there have been ~7.5K reported deaths after getting a COVID-19 vaccination as of September 2021. Please note what I said, though: a death reported after getting a COVID-19 vaccine. This does not mean a death caused by a COVID vaccine. Those are two separate things. A person could get immunized, the next week develop sepsis from a diabetic wound and die, and a report could still get made to count them toward that total death number. This is because health workers are, per VAERS, encouraged to report “any adverse event that occurs after the administration of a vaccine licensed in the United States, whether it is or is not clear that a vaccine caused the adverse event.” The general population can also make reports to VAERS any time, which further muddies the picture. 

In short, I am saying that the VAERS data are simply that: reports that anyone can make. It is really useful data to have, but is ultimately unverified in its raw form. Furthermore, none of it proves causality. All the data says is that person X is now dead, and person X had received a COVID vaccine. Like I said above, the thing that killed person X may or may not have been related to the COVID vaccine. We can't know that just by looking at these numbers, because causality isn't what they are tracking. You can look at raw data and also read their disclaimer on this topic here.

The takeaway message here is that the number of deaths reported after vaccination is a bit lower, based on the data I am using, than you suggested, at about 7.5K at the most recent. But of course this is not insignificant. While some of these deaths are likely related to an adverse event related to vaccination, many of them are inevitably unrelated and would have happened regardless. So the real number of vaccine-associated deaths is going to be lower than that. However, even if I was unrealistically generous and assumed that ALL 7.5K of those people actually died from the COVID-19 vaccine (which I promise you is not the case), when you look at the total number of US vaccine doses given during the time frame that number was drawn from (~380 million vaccines) then that math works out to...~0.002% (rounding up).

That is a really, really small number, and that is probably a hugely falsely inflated number too, because it is based on the unverified raw VAERS data, not follow up with causal links established! So based on the current VAERS data, the true risk of death after COVID-19 vaccine is going to be some number significantly less than 0.002%. A lot of the surgeries we perform or other interventions, including even medications, in medicine have a much higher risk than that, but we still do them when the potential benefit outweighs that very small risk. 

The trade off for taking this very small risk is a decreased chance of catching (and thereby spreading) COVID-19 as well as (and more importantly, in my opinion) a decreased chance of getting sick enough to require hospitalization, intubation, or die due to COVID-19 as discussed more extensively in the original post. The other part of the trade off is easing the healthcare system’s burden right now which will help ALL patients, regardless of why they are sick, get the care they need when they come to the hospital. Like I said in the other post, it is a risk-benefit analysis like all things in medicine, and here the vaccine really does seem like the obvious choice. Risk of harm is very low, and risk of benefit for both the individual and the community is pretty high.

I hope that addresses what you were getting at in your question. If not let me know. I will hold off on responding to the latter part of your question until I hear from you again because I've re-read your reply a few times and I am still a little confused by the wording and what exactly you are asking.

[natigail]

Dan's projects - tour and pride | 13.04.2021

Dan: I said I was going to spill some tea on what I am working on at the moment. And I did this completely forgetting what I had already told people and I feel like I'm going to get myself in trouble, but this is kind of fun. And I feel like eight weeks in to these stereo show, as you know we're these box boys, you deserve it, you're the dedicated people.

Phil: Yeah!

Dan: And you're spending this time to hang out with us and let's be honest, I keep vague posting about what I've been doing.

*Phil hums in agreement*

Dan: Some of that, it is contractually secret. *giggling* But guess what? Some, some of it isn't. And genuinely-

Phil: You need to make sure you say the right things so they don't throw you off a bridge or something.

Dan: Yeah, Phil you just need to start screaming or, I don't know, yank my headphones out or something. This is on you. I'm putting it on you. It's not on me.

Phil *high-pitched*: Don't put it on me! What are you doing?

Dan: Disclaimer to anyone listening, this is all on Phil now.

Phil: Oh, I'm stressed now.

Dan: There's the disclaimer though. Phil clicked the terms and agreements. Anyway. Eh...

Phil *sternly*: Daniel Howell.

Dan: I don't- I *giggling* Ehmm, right. Just jumping off. A couple of the things I said were ruined by COVID, which is, you know, life and everyone's plans and everything.

Phil *hushed*: Everything is ruined.

Dan: One of these things, hey, one of these things was... a tour. That's right, everybody. I was going to do a new stage show. 'Cause I had a period of reflection and I was like, after all the things I've done in my entire life, what did I like the most? One of those was going on tour because not only for me - I like creating in long things, right?

Phil: Yeah.

Dan: I'm not a Viner or a TikToker, I- it really pains me to even tweet. I don't do short little things, which was maybe why I was the worst YouTuber of all time *chuckling* at making regular content.

Phil: Yeah?

Dan: I love doing really thick things, like one 45 minute long video after a year. Or a book! That's just how my mind works so I really love like "hey Dan and Phil, interactive introverts, this is two hours long, juicy," and I liked that. Then everyone got sneezing if you know what I mean? It's still... it's something that's on the cards. I think that if people were wondering what it was, it would be 2020, 2021 Dan energy, think Basically I'm Gay on stage but with a different theme. Production values and exciting theatricality of the Dan and Phil Shows.

Phil: Yes.

Dan: 'Cause you know, giant microwave. That's a thing that we did. That was your idea. Thank you, Phil. Giant microwave we had to have built.

Phil: You wouldn't have an actual giant microwave for the Dan show, though? Don't get people's hopes up.

Dan: Ehmm... *laughing*

*Joint gleeful laughter.

Phil: We might still have it in storage, that would save you some money.

Dan: My touring agent called me the other day, and they were like "Dan, Australia is opening up, loads of people they are coming to Australia, they are doing the thing. Just do a tour in Australia." And I was like: What about the rest of the world? And they were like "Screw the rest of the world. That's their problem. Just come to Australia." *giggling* And I was a bit like eh... I don't, I mean I feel like I don't want to leave people out. But, um, yeah. I mean that's one thing.

Phil: Yeah.

Dan: Uh, that I could do maybe.

Phil: That's something. Yeah. COVID is still here but things are in some countries starting to open up. We're hoping like-

Dan: It's a cheeky tease of the future.

Phil: Yeah.

Dan: It's like a little bit of naughty ankle flesh being exposed from a Victorian maiden, you know what I mean?

Phil: You're saying that once people can breathe in the same room it's a maybe.

Dan: Yeah, that's it. It's still on the table. Another thing! Okay, this is interesting. Something that popped up super recently out of nowhere

Phil: Yeah?

Dan: it's somewhat COVID pending again, so you know, let's not get too excited.

Phil: Well, everything is.

Dan: We never know what will happen. There is something that I could make shortly after the book comes out and it is potentially a YouTube thing. Uhh...

Phil: Uh!

Dan: And it is, I would have the opportunity and the budget to make something quite cool and it is to do with pride in June. And I can't talk about it too much but what I wanted to ask you guys today, which is something that I don't usually do, is that I am curious what you guys would want me to tackle in a next big Dan Thing. So I'm going to ask the question now.

[evolvingbeautyandmess]

POST #2 USUAL DISCLAIMER: so these blog posts are big dictated are being dictated to my phone via speech to text and I typically as if it's able person do not have a spoons to properly edit them so that this going to remain as is. So heads up. Also I don't know why Google sensors curse words.

Okay so it's towards the end of the day and I'm about to start my night time routine.

And I am still adjusting to looking access to Twitter lacking access to Twitter and thus lacking access to the disability community that is on Twitter and that I was a part of.

I'm telling myself that it makes sense that it still bothers me because not only is it further social isolation in a time where there is a surge in covid cases at least here in New York City and so I have to be very careful and not really hang out with people in person and now I'm even more socially isolated

although I will say I have been adapting Instagram and blue sky so that there's more community on there and what I really need to do is start finding more community on Tumblr. It's not like I'm totally isolated from community it's just that I'm a bit more isolated from from what I knew. So I am working on that I am working on getting more involved in the communities that I do have access to because that's something within my power and ability.

So there's that but at the same time though you feel more empowered the situation and makes me feel less isolated but I think just the fact that it happened that because apparently as I was mentioning the first post a lot of accounts on Twitter or suspended who were or are rather pro Palestine so that's incredibly eerie. you know you always hear about how you know posts about Palestine are being suppressed and the algorithm is not sharing them perhaps as equally as they would other topics but I've never really seen proof of that either way.

And this is not to say it's not happening because I wouldn't be surprised if it was happening but it is to say I haven't personally seen proof or I could say this is definitely happening. But to find out that I'm not the only account on Twitter that was suspended and that one common thread of all these accounts apparently is that we are pro Palestine and quite openly so is really eerie.

I think also just the and why I need to hold space for and remember to hold space for is that we are living in very f****** weird times and not yay weird bad weird. You know right now I am part of the collective effort to fight a f****** genocide and get a sides should not be f****** happening no genocides should not be f****** happening. They should not be normal. They should have never ever happened ever and yet there are several of them that are occurring at this point in time. and to see what's happening because now via social media you're saying it you know sometimes if not in real time it's the updated everyday and it breaks your heart on a core level.

And the other thing that I'm focusing a lot on my energy towards as it activist and artist is fighting these proposed mask bans, which holy f*** I mean what the f*** is going on? Because we're literally seeing a very real proven surge in covid cases and yet and this is happening in you know including in New York and New York City and yet our governor wants to f****** ban Masks including covid masks and she's trying to say oh it's being done in the name of Jewish safety f*** off just f*** off. Many Jewish leaders in the community are not buying it and also like what the f*** does she think that Jewish people cannot get covid? Does she think that you cannot be disabled and Jewish? I can attest that you can be these things.

So it's really just two major things that are happening as - it's not the only issues obviously there's many many issues yet another black person was murdered by the police. So there's obviously there are many many issues but for me as an activist & artist this is what I've been making a lot of of my protest art about has been to fight the genocide and to fight these bans on masks and these are two things that should not exist.

And yet they do. Like we should have no need as people to have to protest these things and yet we do and yet our protests are met with oppression and sometimes violence and that being really more towards the genocide.

So the fact that towards the end of the day sometimes not all the time but sometimes I feel sad and overwhelmed and like things are just like f***** up makes sense. You know in your house is on fire and you feel like holy s*** this house is on fire but you see someone else maybe up here or neighbor who doesn't seem to realize or has not processed or is it ignoring at the house is on fire it's not act like the houses on a fire it's not like you who's Big to extra or dramatic or whatever is that you are aware that the house is on fire and what the f***? How do we put the fire out?

So there's that and then of course for myself as a disabled person who has to isolate themselves from people you know I waited 7 years I was stuck in my home for seven f****** years because I lack the proper wheelchair and then in December I finally got one enough that I knew exactly what my life would be like but one thing I wanted to do was to go to protests and see my friends in person. And those are two things that I really wasn't able to do because I mean why I had to adjust to just speak out in the world again that was a big adjustment but then also with this search and covid cases and people just f****** pretending that covid is not even a f****** thing that in itself makes your head cave in. People get sick and they go oh yeah I have this weird flu some people don't even f****** say the word covid which is just like what the f*** is going on. But a lot of these people who are pretending that covid is no longer a thing as if this was a matter of f****** belief fun fact it's not those are the people who are not fully aware or are not openly behaving like they know that the house is on fire. Those are the people who in a search of covid cases no a surge of covid cases still do not wear masks.

Anyway so the point being is that this is not how I thought my life would be and that breaks my heart.

So if at the end of the day I feel a bit sad because of that that makes sense too.

I will say that I am adapting in that instead of focusing on what I can't do what I don't have access to, I'm really starting to embrace video chat with friends and when I'm finding out chats plural and when I'm finding out is that a lot of people that I know are absolutely down to have a video chat they're just not going to be the ones to bring it up first. And I think this is common because a lot of people right now we're overwhelmed and so maybe you want to reach out to people but you're just trying to get through your life you know because and I say this because almost every person that I asked about doing a video chat I said yes and there it's and they're very much into it. And when I've realized about myself is that I need to not to say hey we should have a video chat sometime I didn't say hey great you want to do that awesome what date are you free I'm free on the 15th at 1:00 p.m. does that work for you and f****** set a time and date and put it in the calendar or it does not happen and a lot of people that I know that I'm chatting with are the same f****** way. And I realizing is about ourselves let's not say hey let's just get in 2 weeks let's say so let's do this on the 30th at 2:00 p.m. or it won't f****** happen.

So on one hand it's a very very weird and challenging time. I've been through worse times but at least personally don't even get me started about voting holy f***. I mean yes Kamala is a slight improvement from genocide Joe but just because Kamala does not have a genocide related nickname doesn't mean she's not complicit but the same time though have you seen project 2025? Holy f*** it's bad. And the orange fascist is really really bad and it sucks that basically it's like okay choose between you know a smaller house fire or a blazing much larger house fire but either way the house is going to be on fire it's just a what size and degree.

And also you know as an anti zionist Jew and in general who's a person who is against genocide do I vote for Kamala? It's a thing it's a thing and all these things way on your heart

And I'm saying this because sometimes at the end of the day I feel sad and drained even if it's a better day and I wonder why do I feel so sad and drained I feel sad and drained because the f****** house is on fire but the fact of the house is on fire has been so normalized that I sometimes forget oh right I'm reacting to the fact that the house is on fire and my reaction is totally f****** valid.

Anyway there are other things to say but I'll leave it for another time. Today here's some things that I did that were enjoyable. One in the morning after making the deposit to the bank I explored Washington Street in Manhattan in the West village and that had a lot of fun neat things to photograph. I didn't go the whole length of the street because I wanted to get home before it got too hot and my battery on my motorized wheelchair was starting to get a little low. Not dangerously low but enough for it's okay why don't we go home I do not live anywhere near Washington Street. So that was enjoyable and I took some photos and I shared them online. And as I mentioned I also have been really creating a better sense of community on the social media sites that I do have access to and that being blue sky and Instagram and Facebook. Also and this meant a lot to me is that I had asked this person from the digital community disability community on Twitter to make it tweet and share what's happening to me that I was suspected permanently and it was most likely due to the fact that I'm pro Palestine and that I tweeted about that and share some things and that I can't get my account back and I want to share that just people know what happened to me but also the warning to others. Not to say that you should not talk about what's happening in Palestine on Twitter you most definitely should but if you do this might happen heads up. And it really sold my heart that people in the community are sharing it and they're trying to help me get my account back because you know I'm not a big influencer type person but now people who have a bit more clout are sharing it and I appreciate that more than I can say. You know the other night I was having these kind of negative thoughts and I let them go because I really had to approve that they were true that's why I react to them but you know sometimes I was like well will people even notice that I'm gone and people even care and the answer is yes and that was nice. So the other thing that happened that was quite nice today was that I started to declutter be living room area of my apartment. And that felt good because I really feel like when our room is cluttered the energy is cluttered and I think you feel that more when things are more stressful so it does feel sort of cleansing and clearing to declutter so me and my home health aide who was quite enthusiastic about it which was quite nice I can do a little bit each day.

And so that's that I'm going to add some paragraph breaks but that's what's going on.

[vkelleyart]

For well-meaning white American friends/followers struggling to understand black anger.

Disclaimer: I’d like to begin by saying that this message should not in any way be interpreted as implying that all looting/violence has been committed by protesters, especially since criminal gangs, anarchists, and white power groups have been caught coopting violent protest with the intent to undermine the struggle for racial justice. Nor is it meant to diminish the tragic effect that looting/violent protest has had on the very marginalized communities that need the most help. It is simply a window into a perspective you might not have considered or explored, which I offer in hopes of cultivating empathy.

It may make you uncomfortable to read this. Please bear with me.

Systemic racism is a term you want to get familiar with. It's larger and more insidious than black people being killed and brutalized by law enforcement, which should give you an idea of just how big a beast we're dealing with. Now, this is important: We ALL are immersed in systemic racism every day of our lives and, especially if you are white, you will not be able to see the ways in which you benefit from the oppression of black people.

I can feel your tension from here––the voice within saying “not me.” This is not what you wanted to hear. You're not a racist, you think to yourself. You have friends of color. Maybe family, too. You'd never intentionally harm a black or brown individual on the basis of their skin color. 

You're a good person. I'm not here to argue that particular point.

That said, please integrate this concept. If you are white, you are benefiting from systemic racism, which hurts black and brown people. It is sewn into the fabric of our culture. It's entrenched in everything you take for granted, from your property to your education to your access to healthcare and food. Moreover, systemic racism is specifically constructed to protect you from being able to see its effect on your life and the lives of people of color. 

In other words, you have a blind spot, by default. It's not your fault you have it. You were born into this culture made to shelter you from its evils. 

It also doesn’t invalidate any trials or injustices you have experienced as a result of any other marginalized facets of your identity, since discrimination can also happen due to class, ability, gender, orientation, etc. But it does mean that your skin color doesn’t compound your risk of being killed/brutalized/imprisoned within a definitively racialized justice system.  

Now that you know this, it's imperative that you realize you are not an authority on the experiences of people of color. You have not lived it. You do not know. To pass judgment on the despair of black people is to reinstate and protect white dominance. Which is a definitively racist thing to do, even if you’re not aware of it.

Follow me here.

One way systemic racism oppresses people of color is by codifying the law in such a way that literally prevents people of color from overcoming their own oppression. By extension, law enforcement historically has functioned as the arm of white supremacy, enforcing laws that by and large serve to protect white dominance and insulate white culture from its own racial self-awareness. 

Consider the ways police once functioned to enforce Jim Crow laws and segregation. These patterns didn't just erase with legislation. After the Civil Rights movement, bigoted lawmakers buried inequality deeper into the law, coated it in sanitized legalese, and assigned punishments designed to disproportionately imprison black bodies compared to whites.

This is the legal system that police enforce regardless of whether the officers themselves are white or black. That alone would be enough to indict law enforcement for their hand in perpetuating systemic racism, but it's clearly worse than that. "Bad apples" abound, with FBI investigations revealing the infiltration of KKK and other white supremacist organizations into police forces across the United States. There is very little leadership when it comes to finding these bad apples, prosecuting them, and preventing their existence in the first place. 

Now try to understand that the problem is bigger than bad apples who will brutalize black individuals and execute them without a trial. You need only compare how meek entire swaths of police officers were in the presence of armed white men spitting in their faces demanding the end of the COVID lockdowns to the ferocious way they tear gassed and pelted with rubber bullets the black lives protesters who were on their knees.

When you lack ancestral wealth, when you are born into a world that resists your right to agency, independence, access and dignity in every single possible way, and then makes it impossible for you to stand up for your right to all those things, these are the conditions that spawn violence. 

Looters who say this is about more than George Floyd are correct. It's not just about George Floyd. It's about forced subjugation in all ways, shapes and forms, being denied the right to exist in public, being denied access to wealth, prosperity, healthcare, etc.

It's about knowing, hundreds of years post-slavery, that your body still does not belong to you. To walk with a target on your back. Every. Single. Day. To struggle to protect your children from a world that does not value their promise. 

In the comfort of your home, try now to imagine the despair. The hopelessness. The abject terror. The anger over trauma that began in your childhood but keeps happening over and over and over again and therefore can never heal. 

White people can never fully understand because it is not our lived experience––it's theirs.

When you are white, you are safe, seen, protected, and included in a legal system built to insulate you at the *direct expense* of black individuals. That's why all this sounds so radical. Only people of color have insight into this reality, but instead of listening, we keep telling them to stop interrupting our lives with their desperation to be seen.

How many of you have either said or heard someone say these things? Each one reinstates white dominance:

"How could he kneel during the national anthem? That's so disrespectful!"

"How dare they stop traffic and make me late for work!"

"Listen to that thuggish language! If they want equality so badly, they should rethink the way they talk to us!"

Now is the time to silence your judgment. You have no right. You have no clue. People of color do not owe you their patience, their kindness, their time, or their obedience. You've taken from them your whole life and yes, you were unaware, but you were complicit.

What you can do (which will have the long term effect of mitigating violence) is amplify their voices. Support their businesses. Post their bail. Vote them into office. Use your protection, your privilege, your voice to demand change like YOU are the one in the crosshairs. Nothing will change without good white people owning the struggle for equality, and in a racialized world, we cannot expect the courtesy of being asked nicely.

ETA: This barely scratches the surface, I know. There is so much more to say regarding how racism overlaps with homophobia, ablism, sexism, transphobia, to oppress and endanger black lives. Wherever you reside on the spectrum of privilege, I just hope this provides an inroad to further introspection before you share a critical meme or pass a sweeping judgment on the anger of your POC neighbors. <3  

[hatari-translations]

can you maybe tell us a bit more about the parties in icelandic politics? that is super interesting for me after reading your last post

Well, sure! Please bear in mind that as you may have gathered I am not unbiased, and I'm by no means the most knowledgeable person about this.

Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn (The Independence Party)

Originally founded in 1929, this party's name originally referred to independence from Denmark (achieved in 1944), but today it's just Iceland's dominant right-wing party. On other countries' scales they're fairly center-right in terms of policies; they want a strong welfare system, they're pro-immigration, they're not against LGBT rights, etc. However, they are very much the party of Iceland's rich elite establishment, and in particular have close ties to Iceland's largest corporations, and every other political scandal involves them being varying degrees of terrible, from "Independence Party minister breaking COVID restrictions" to "Independence Party minister in the Panama Papers" to "Independence Party minister's father signs a letter to 'restore the honor' of a convicted pedophile" (these three were all the same minister, who by the way still leads the party and is still finance minister) to "terrible corrupt fishing company Samherji introduced the Independence Party's health minister as 'our guy in the government' at meetings with the Namibian officials they were bribing".

The Independence Party opposes the new constitution, ostensibly because blah blah stability distractions about how changes to the constitution need to be approved through the appropriate process (yes, we know, we want that process to happen), but we all know it's really because the new constitution would have the fishing companies pay a fair price for their access to Iceland's natural resources, and that would be bad for their bottom line. They are also opposed to joining the EU.

The Independence Party has been the largest party in every single Icelandic election since it was founded except the 2009 one (which was right on the heels of another scandal - believe me, I barely scratched the surface above - as well as the 2008 financial crisis), where they managed to dip below the Social-Democratic Alliance with 23.7% of the vote, their lowest parliamentary election result ever. Historically they'd get upwards of 40% or even more of the vote; these days it's more like 25%, and this election's result of 24.4% is their second lowest ever. Even in polls days right after a huge scandal, the lowest I've ever seen the Independence Party poll at was something like 19%; that's why I've said here that 20% of the country will just vote for them no matter what. This means the Independence Party is always the most powerful party, and them not being in the government coalition is very much the exception.

Framsóknarflokkurinn (The Progressive Party)

Iceland's oldest political party, founded in 1916. Originally it was the farmers' party, and they've historically been most popular in rural areas, where they have longstanding loyalty. They're more or less center to center-right. Historically, they've formed coalitions with both the right and the left, but particularly in the past few decades they have been glued to the Independence Party in particular. They have occasional particular pet issues that they latch onto, but overall it doesn't really feel like they stand for much of anything in particular, other than wanting to maintain the status quo and be in government with (preferably) the Independence Party. They are also against the new constitution and the EU.

Vinstrihreyfingin - grænt framboð (The Left-Green Movement)

Founded in a 1999 split on the left, the Left-Greens are a left-wing party with a focus on equality and the environment, but with enough of a semi-conservative bent to have some common ground with Independence and Progressives on matters like opposing EU membership and being hesitant about the Constitutional Committee's draft constitution. A lot of their voters were very unhappy with them entering into the current coalition with the Independence Party and the Progressive Party (the former in particular); two of their MPs actually left the party after that decision, reducing but not destroying the government's majority.

Samfylkingin (The Social-Democratic Alliance)

Founded in 2000 as a fusion of two parties (hence the 'alliance'), the Social-Democratic Alliance is a center-left social democratic party. They were very popular in the early 2000s, almost rivaling the Independence Party for votes, and formed a coalition government with Independence in 2007, which oversaw the 2008 financial crisis; initially people mostly blamed the Independence Party, allowing the Alliance to become the biggest party in the 2009 election with 29.8% of the vote, but as the following coalition with the Left-Greens had to deal with the fallout of the recession, a lot of anger was directed at the Alliance too, and the party has never managed to recover since, instead hovering between 5-15% of the vote (but still stands strong in some municipal elections and currently leads the Reykjavík city council). They want to join the EU and ratify the new constitution.

Píratar (The Pirate Party of Iceland)

You may have heard of Pirate Parties before, originating with the Pirate Party of Sweden. Iceland is the only country where the Pirate Party has actually managed to get elected to the national parliament, and is an entirely serious political movement. At one point after the revelation of the Panama Papers, the Pirate Party was miraculously polling at 43%; sadly, by the time there was an actual election they'd gone down to 15%. Their primary concerns are transparency, democracy, privacy, human rights and freedoms, and "no bullshit", and among other things they want to establish a universal basic income. A lot of its founders were computer scientists and geeks of various stripes.

They refuse to be classified on the left-right scale, but in practice, their policies are strongly aligned with the leftier parties (one popular website comparing the parties on concrete policy questions for this election classed them as having 90% agreement with the Social-Democratic Alliance, 87% with the Socialists, and 83% with the Left-Greens). They are strongly in favor of ratifying the new constitution.

Miðflokkurinn (The Center Party)

After the 2008 financial crisis, the Progressive Party gained a more populist bent, led by Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, who was prime minister from 2013 until 2016 when he was implicated in the Panama Papers. He was reluctant to resign as prime minister and fully intended to stay as the leader of the party, until the party chose to boot him and replace him with current Progressive leader Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson; Sigmundur Davíð went off to form his own party instead, the Center Party, and took the populist arm of the Progressive Party with him. They're where most of the anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ vote goes, and along with the People's Party, some of their MPs were implicated in "Klausturgate", a scandal where a disabled woman at a bar overheard and discreetly recorded several MPs (including Sigmundur Davíð) who were drinking together while making a variety of sexist, homophobic and ableist comments about named people including members of their own parties. The Center Party was perfectly happy to keep them on board, which really says all you need to know.

I am unendingly disappointed that the Center Party managed to scrape past the 5% threshold to get parliamentary seats this election; for a glorious moment the early numbers looked like they wouldn't. Last election they managed to get seven MPs, and then the two guys from the People's Party involved in Klausturgate joined up with the Center Party too, giving them nine, so seeing them reduced to almost nothing was still deeply pleasing.

Viðreisn (The Reform Party)

A center-right party that split off from the Independence Party in 2016, largely over the latter's opposition to the EU, while the Reform Party supports EU membership, but also because of the endless scandals, cronyism, etc. The Reform Party instead claim to be proponents of "ethical capitalism" and have so far avoided the major scandals and general douchebaggery of their parent party.

Flokkur fólksins (The People's Party)

A populist party with a primary emphasis on eradicating poverty, especially for the elderly and disabled, letting the nation reap the benefits of our fish instead of the few large fishing companies, funding health care to reduce wait times, and so on. All this is lovely in theory, but unfortunately their rhetoric then goes off into pitting the poor/elderly/disabled against immigrants, Muslims, etc. Chairperson Inga Sæland seems totally well-meaning to me off what I've seen of her (disclaimer: have not actually seen that much), but it also contains less savoury people and sentiments, as seen by two of their MPs being part of the aforementioned Klausturgate. To the party's credit, they did expel those guys, but it's not the only example of the party attracting questionable people.

Sósíalistaflokkur Íslands (The Icelandic Socialist Party)

A hardline democratic socialist party founded in 2017, with this as their first parliamentary election. It looked like they would get MPs in polls, but in the end they didn't. They're led by Gunnar Smári Egilsson, one of the original founders of free newspaper Fréttablaðið, and have a much more radical left rhetoric going on than the other lefty parties, focusing on economic equality, housing, free health care, and a shorter work week. They made some pretty controversial remarks campaigning for this election, such as suggesting replacing all the judges of the Supreme Court if they won't agree to changing the fishing quota system (the argument being that the Independence Party appointed all the judges in an organized bid to maintain the current system), but who knows if that dampened their following or something else. They also want to ratify the new constitution.

[marcemello]

Anne’s Grief

tImerry christmas and happy frogidays! I was going to disappear for the rest of winter break but then I realized that I have NOTHING to do other than work, so I figured I’d do something that I enjoy at least.

 disclaimer, 1. I’m going to be talking about death and covid-19 in this, but not in depth (this isnt a vent, I’m just mentioning these things to support my point here) 2. amphibia’s helped me out a lot, so I AM going to be biased here. might as well just say it. 3. don’t expect me to add anything new to this conversation, this is just my perspective on things. 

I don’t see the argument that anne’s grief should be betrayed better a lot, but I have seen it. based on my own experiences, anne’s reaction to all the stuff that went down in true colors is pretty realistic and isn’t out of character for her at all. after reunion, we just saw a little about how anne wasn’t taking the events of toad tower well at all, but she clearly wasn’t going to talk about it. at the end of hopping mall anne let her guard down (about missing her mom, not about reunion) but didn’t even let herself cry for long. she’s been hiding her feelings for the whole show! it makes perfect sense to me that she’d continue to do so in season 3. the more canon-supported reason is that anne already feels like she’s a burden on the plantars during the road trip and her time in newtopia, so she wouldn’t want to bother her with her own feelings. it’s probably also just that those feelings are a lot to deal with, I mean your best friend betraying you and falling to her possible death after a tense swordfight is a lot for a kid to process, and so is being stuck in a whole nother DIMENSION from your family. jeez. 

so yeah. anne compartmentalizing is already canon and confirmed by an interview from matt as well. so her doing that with marcy isn’t that much of a stretch at all. everyone grieves differently! when I lost my grandfather, i didn’t see it for myself, but when I got the news I started laughing and asked my mom if she was joking. I didn’t cry until about a month later, and it wasn’t sobs, just tears. it was during quarantine so I wasn’t with my support system like anne was, but I think the connection is still there for me. sometime death/traumatic events don’t really settle in until some time’s passed. despite what people think of SU future, it’s still a good example in my opinion. it’s been a while since I’ve watched it, but I think at least 3 years passed since the events of change your mind? anyway, steven’s trauma didn’t kick in right after everything had happened, it took him some time to realize that what happened to him wasn’t okay. I just think it’s the same with anne. 

and yknow maybe anne won’t even get to go through the whole usual stages cause MARCY ISN’T EVEN DEAD. you could think of the whole marcy tank thing as marcy dying and being revived because of what andrias said about conquering death in yunan and olivia, or you could just go with marcy being on the brink of death and then getting healed (I’m going with the first one) either way marcy’s alive because of supernatural causes and anne should have no reason other than amphibia being a whole other dimension to think marcy’s just cool and alive. but I guess you could also think of it as anne just being connected with marcy (and sasha) cause of the gems, but I don’t know about that one because marcy and sasha don’t have their gem powers anymore. it’d be pretty funny if anne accepted marcy as dead and then BOOM she’s back actually and possessed by an ancient amphibian hivemind!

point is, anne’s reaction (or lack of one) to marcy’s death isn’t very out of place. her avoiding all mention of her until recently might be intentional, but who knows. 

this ended up longer than I wanted to be but it was fun writing this, also I might post again before new years but if I dont, happy 2022! the passage of time is imminent