#empathy challenge hard mode for some reason

[notafashionstatementitsasideblog]

Y’know, I think the saddest part about hearing of Bobs passing was the fact that the last time he was seen alive was 3 weeks ago and that his body was so badly decomposed, like really no one came to check up on him?? I don’t know much about his family but seriously no one thought it was odd for him to drop off the face of the earth for almost a month???

Obviously I am aware of his actions in the past and his current political views and in no way condone any of them, however he was still a human, a very influential human no less, with a phenomenal talent for drumming, and to hear that it took that long for people to find him is truly devastating.

I’ve only seen two videos of people celebrating his death but the fact that people are celebrating in the first place is disgusting, hate him all you want but celebrating is sick.

[ahappybeginning]

Hi 😊

I know I’ve been terrible at keeping up with this blog. In all honesty, my post-surgery requirements have been a bit of a full time job in making sure I’m keeping up with everything and working to find a routine that works for me with everything else in my life (which admittedly isn’t all that much, but I get overwhelmed easily and on occasion I do like going out and doing things lol). So I’ve kind of let this blog take a backseat while I set myself up for what is going to be the rest of my life.

But I felt I needed to post something here today, because this is the 1 year anniversary of when I first met my bariatric surgeon, and I officially began my weight loss journey that has been not only life-changing, but lifesaving.

In the past year, I’ve managed to find a peace and determination in myself that I didn’t know I had, at least not for myself. I can be very driven by external forces, but I’ve never been able to view myself as worthy enough to harness that drive for my own health and happiness. I don’t even know how I got to the point that I am now, except that I think I was faced with the real alternative as being death, and that jumpstarted something inside me that I now know was there all along, it was just very deeply buried under a lifetime’s worth of being told I didn’t deserve to be happy because of my weight. That my mere existence was offensive to people, that I took up too much space. I spent my entire life making myself as small as I could on the inside to make up for how big I was on the outside.

But I’m done with that now. I’ve found my power, I know my worth, and I’m no longer willing to compromise them for those who haven’t found theirs. I lead with compassion and empathy as I always have, but now I’m ready to fight for my life and my right to not only exist, but to thrive.

Which is exactly what I’m doing. In 12 months, I’ve lost 182 lbs, I’m down 5 sizes in clothing, and I’m physically and mentally in the best shape of my adult life. I’m crushing every goal I set, and embracing the challenges that come along the way with as much patience and grace as I can.

It’s not easy, this is actually the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve fought HARD this past year and had to navigate several setbacks and some unexpected (along with a few expected) complications to my overall health and physical appearance. But giving up is no longer my first instinct like it once was. In fact, it’s not even an option at all. I can’t reverse what I’ve done, nor do I have any desire to. And yes, regain is always a real possibility and fear in the long term, but I’m not letting that keep me from pushing forward and trying to reach my true goals. I’ve now lost more weight than I ultimately hope to end up being when I get to “maintenance mode”, which is a huge mindfuck but in the most unbelievably amazing way. I’ve lost an entire human, and an overweight one at that! The amount of pride I feel for my accomplishments is still a little foreign and a LOT overwhelming, but I am looking forward to when it’ll just feel natural, as I very much believe it will.

I know I probably sound like a cheesy motivational speaker or something, lol. But it’s honestly how I feel. I still have days when everything is hard and feels impossible or I just want to sleep and not worry about exercise or taking vitamins or getting enough fluid or eating a ton of protein. But I fight through it, and it’s giving me so many more reasons to be grateful than to complain. This journey is NOT for the weak, and I’m incredibly proud to have come so far already, and I’m excited to see what the next year, 5 years, 10 years…the rest of my life, will look like. ✨❤️✨

[mariacallous]

Most in Brussels were not keen to follow the speech of EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell on Monday (10 October) to EU ambassadors. It is very much an internal EU event.

When people started pouring over the speech on Tuesday, it turned out Borrell not only scolded his own diplomats seated around the world, he told them to be bolder, faster and communicate the EU's narrative more assertively.

The former Spanish foreign minister laid out plainly some uncomfortable statements about where Europe stands and where it is headed in a multipolar world, stuck between a competing US and China.

"This is not a moment when we are going to send flowers to all of you saying that you are beautiful," he warned EU ambassadors early in his speech, which was refreshingly honest in the barren land of EU-speak.

Borrell said Europe's prosperity for decades was decoupled from its security. Prosperity was based on China and Russia in terms of market and energy. Security was based on the US, but what happens if Trump comes back, Borrell asks.

That comfortable world is gone, Borrell said, noting what even former German chancellor Angela Merkel — now often dismissed for maintaining solid relationship with Russia — said before: Europe must do more on its own.

"Clearly, today, we have to find new ways for energy from inside the European Union, as much as we can, because we should not change one dependency for another," he said.

"The adjustment will be tough, and this will create political problems," he warned, adding that the "radical right is increasing in our democracies".

Borrell said Europe should listen more, because not every country who is on the fence about which camp to belong to — nations such as Turkey, India, Brazil — will follow Europe.

Borrell confessed that Europe did not believe the Americans when they said Russia will attack Ukraine, and did not believe Ukraine could fight back so fiercely. The escalation of tensions in Taiwan came as a surprise, the severity of food crisis was not fully understood, and the degree of influence of Russia in Africa unexpected.

He said that the "messy multipolarity" is structured by the the US-China competition, which is complemented by a democracy vs. authoritarian divide as well.

Borrell said there are "a lot of authoritarian regimes" on "our side". "There is an authoritarian trend. Sometimes, they are still wearing the democracy suit, but they are no longer democracies," he added.

The 75-year-old politician called it a "perfect storm" that everyone is following the US's Federal Reserve's interest rate hike, spiralling towards a recession.

He warned that "old recipes do not work anymore", and "we have mounting security challenges and our internal cohesion is under threat".

However, for now, his statements remain little more than a curiousity.

"It is hard to tell at this point, if it is a very old stand up artist or if this means a sea-change in the EEAS policy going forward," one EU diplomat told EUobserver about Borrell's speech, referring to the European External Action Service (EEAS), the union's diplomatic service.

'Best-informed guy'

In perhaps the most suprising bit of the speech, Borrell scolded his diplomats for having to find out developments from newspapers and not from their reports, saying "I should be the best-informed guy in the world".

"I want you to be more reactive, 24 hours a day. We are living in a crisis, you have to be in the crisis mode," Borrell said.

The EU diplomat told us he was "baffled" by this remark, as diplomats are rarely able to compete with news outlets, and their work is more based on analysis and drawing up policy options.

Borrell also told diplomats to engage in the battle of narratives, and to also deploy empathy and emotions, not only reason as part of their arguments.

"This is a battle that we are not winning because we are not fighting enough. We do not understand that it is a fight. Apart from conquering a space, you have to conquer the minds," he said, adding: "It is a big battle: who is going to win the spirits and the souls of people?"

This is easier said than done, as Borrell and his diplomatic corps face obstacles.

"It is very hard to be assertive if you have 27 countries to coordinate with [for a statement]," commented the EU diplomat.

[the-pale-goddess]

Hii 😍

If your MC / OC could be any song or any movie what would it be and why?

You have no idea how excited I was when I saw your notification! Real life is stealing all my time and energy, so I’m rarely here these days, but I couldn’t resist taking a moment to answer this ask 🫶🏻

Tiffany is Mariners Apartment Complex by Lana Del Rey & Misunderstood by BANKS ✨

Here’s some explanation! I can’t shut up, sorry ksbksbsksb

The entire song just screams Tiffany! Almost every line describes her power and complexity. She’s both exceptionally strong and incredibly gentle, understanding yet challenging, sweet and caring yet stubborn and wild. Also, that 1970s-style rock ballad vibe is perfect for my girl.

Let me quote some of the most fitting lyrics:

Pretty much self-explanatory. She’s that girl ✨ The power that she has, the influence that she has!

Your die-hard, your weakness

Maybe I could save you from your sins

My Virgo queen is completely devoted to her loved ones, always ready to fix stuff for them, to sacrifice herself in order to save them. I also see the first line as a nod to Ethan since she’s his biggest weakness 🥰

Kindness is her default mode—some people see it as a flaw, but it’s quite the opposite.

Then we have Book 1 flashbacks…👀 Little Miss Self-Reliant is also human and (much to her frustration kbsksbksb) cannot avoid making mistakes just like everyone else. Sometimes those impossibly high standards she sets for herself are a bit too overwhelming, sometimes life and people can be cruel and there’s not much she can do to improve the situation or make a good choice. And that’s normal, and completely fine to fuck up sometimes—the conclusion she’s learned to embrace quite recently. But after all these years of chasing perfection, the word ‚failure’ still doesn’t have a place in her dictionary and she’ll always strive to accomplish her mission anyway. She always means well and gives her all no matter what she does.

Her energy brings comfort and peace, it’s powerful and soothing. She’s always free of judgement and full of empathy and wisdom. The most supportive and protective partner for life. Safe haven. The lighthouse guiding through the toughest storms. Home.

T’s focused on being unashamedly herself, thriving against all odds and minding her business while doing what (and who) she loves 💅🏻 Many people assume that she’s just a brainless beauty, but as soon as she opens her mouth they’re proven wrong. She outsmarts everyone in a flash and works harder than anyone, that’s why she may come off as intimidating at first. Damaging stereotypes and unsolicited opinions can never shake her spirit though. Yet just another Virgo thing ksbksbskbs

I may or may not have a playlist filled with songs that relate to Tiffany and her life 👀 But these two capture her personality and aura best, I think!

Now…Choosing a movie is a much harder task, thinking of the one that fits Tiff best is keeping me up at night kdbkdbdkb 😅 But I’ll find it!

Thank you for sending the most thoughtful and creative asks, inspiring the fandom and giving us a reason to smile, loveliest P, you’re such a sweetheart ❤️❤️❤️ I promise to get back to your previous asks as soon as my schedule allows me to spend more time on catching up with everything I miss here on tumbroke. Hope that you’re doing amazing! I’m sending you lots of love 🥰

[armillary-spheres-lover]

Heart fixes in enneatypes 5

Introduction

Hey guys! This is a general masterpost for cores 5 about their heart fixes! Sadly, online descriptions regarding your fixes are always very very poor, so here I'm trying to imagine how core's and 2nd fix' fears and strategies interact with each other. Basically, here are 3 subtypes of 5, classified based on the way they deal with the Feeling/Self-Image Triad.

I think that classifying types based on their 2nd fix makes sense, more so than classifying them by their 3rd fix, since it has mostly such a weak component in your general personality/in your daily priorities. Plus, 5s, being withdrawn types, are most likely to be gut lasts: so their 2nd fix is most likely to be from the Heart Center. Hence this post.

To be honest with you all, this can turn out to be more theoretical than practical (and I mean, as enneatype descriptions tend to be) since I don't actually have many in real life examples and I'm not entirely sure about my own heart fix, so yeah, take all of this with a grain of salt and feel free to criticize my descriptions (honestly it'd be helpful). I just wanted to try to give a more in depth analysis since fixes are a really interesting concept but there's so little information online...

Disclaimer: in order to make this work better one should compare themselves with other ennea5 in their life, possibly with a different heart fix than you. Comparing oneself to 5s online or in fiction can be more,,, eh (you don't see them acting in ther day-to-day life, and fictional characters are meant to be seen by the public in a certain way). I don’t know about comparing yourself to other types who seem to have a different fix than you... (like, say, comparing yourself to who is probably a 6 with a 4fix to understand how a 4fix would look like) it may work or it may not, I guess

5-2:

Uncertainty about the future and the world's dangers is faced by withdrawing. Fear of being worthless is faced by trying to earn validation and attention.

Double Rejection Triad

Obviously, the problems that come from the rejection triad are very present here - they have different strategies to deal with this feeling of rejection, and that is by ignoring their own needs, be that by retreating entirely or by attending to others' needs (they shift according to the circumstances).

Exposing their needs to someone not only feels embarassing and threatening, but it may also cause guilt

Hypersensitivity

According to Naranjo, 5s are hypersensitive, specifically when it comes to other people's demands. "In other words, a great sensitivity to interference goes hand-in hand with an over-docility, in virtue of which the individual interferes all too easily with her own spontaneity, with her preferences, and with acting in a way coherent with her needs in the presence of others. Also, in light of this over-docility (understandable as a by-product of a strong repressed love need) we can understand the particular emphasis in aloneness in ennea-type V. To the extent that the relationship entails alienation from one’s own preferences and authentic expression there arises an implicit stress and the need to recover from it: a need to find oneself again in aloneness.". It seems obvious to me that all of this would be heavily present in the 5-2 individual. He most likely feels highly obliged to attend to other people's or authorities' demands. Let's say, easily guilt-tripped (they won't necessarily act immediately on that guilt though).

This means they have an extreme need to withdraw after a social meeting: they will try to meet other people's needs but they can soon get too tired and retreat again.

It's more difficult for them not to care (as other 5s may do) not only or really about other people's opinions, but about other people's needs and emotions. and maybe they also don't relate that much to 5 descriptions where their need to have a stoic and hyper-rational attitude is emphasized, but of course this is not necessarily the case. (Naranjo does say in his description that 5s oscillate between insensitivity and hypersensitivity, and it seems to me that a 5-2 would easily tend more towards the hypersensitive side. Still, insensitivity is the way 5s deal with hypersensitivity itself, so they may switch to insensitive mode sometimes, otherwise they would burn out or something)

Depeding on their wing/iv, they may help others even when they don't really feel like it - usually, if they feel acting on their 2 strategies would require too much energy/that it's not worth it they'll just let it go. Core needs and strategies are a priority of course. (something similiar may happen to 3-fixers, although their goals are different).

Knowledge in the service of others

Uses their knowledge to help people.

Probably more comfortable helping in a practical/informative way rather than emotionally

They may be very self-conscious about their comforting abilities though (feeling they're never doing enough to show that they care): they may have consciouly learned how to improve in this area and how to improve their Emotional Intelligence in general

Still, surely has excellent cognitive empathy

Simply put, their desire to be competent can traslate into a desire to be competent from an emotional/helper point of view.

"Fear of being useless", as you see in some 5 descriptions - oh boy.

Vibes, wings and mistypings

At a party they would keep in the background but probably try to show somehow to the host that they're grateful for being invited, even in non-verbal ways (depends on their energy levels)

The one emotion they're more comfortable expressing (not necessarily feeling: in fact, they may not even feel it) is contentment ("I don't need anything, don't worry") or care ("what can I do to help you?")

5w4 emphasizes empathy but 5w6 emphasizes sociability

They probably mistyped as a 9 at some point, especially if they're female/afab.

Def can look like soc 5

To sum up

How 2 strategies are used to cope with 5-ish fears:

Hiding own needs = also means avoiding exposing oneself and feeeling vulnerable

Knowing what to do for others = feeling competent, capable but especially in control (again, rejection triad types need to feel in control). Taking care of others creates the illusion of taking care of one's own most vulnerable side, in a way controlling it.

2 strategies are used to face and placate one's own super-ego. According to Naranjo, 5s have a very strong super-ego (again, hypersensitivity + probably because to the super-ego the 5 individual still has "too many needs") so doing good may be a way to satisfy it.

2 strategies are used as a way to feel close to others/satisfy a deep and repressed love need without needing to show their vulnerable side directly, but rather from a position of power

How 5 strategies are used to cope with 2-ish fears:

Helping in a practical and informed way

Repressing own needs and emotions

5 pushes to control oneself, especially one's own needs

5 hypersensitivity probably helps at better recognizing other people's needs

Qualities that 2 brings to 5 (that is, in which ways 2 can help overcoming 5-like challenges):

Availability; does not ignore external expectations and demands as much

Is able to show their warmer and tender side (many 5s feel exposed by doing this), even though this still isn't the same as being vulnerable

Have less of a fear of intimacy, even though it depends on one's health levels (an unhealthy 2 is not really that open to intimacy as it may seem)

Higher Emotional Intelligence

Greater Social and Empathy Skills

More inclined to be more out there than other 5s, and especially is more open when it comes to relationships; less disillusioned, less skeptical, less cynic. more likely to believe that human relationships are indeed worth it. or at least, that's what they may tell themselves.

Challenges that 2 brings to 5:

Again, hiding own needs, vulnerability and failures

Fears disappointing people

May need to feel in control all the time, to the point of exhaustion: 5 already wants to be in control of their own mental states and emotions all the time, 2 adds up other people's ones. Need to unwind, especially mentally

They often feel deeply rejected, may try to deny it

May not be easy to express anger (they may have an 8fix, but its strategies are left last, so 5-2 are more likely to prevail), and for this very reason when they blow up, they blow up hard. Not only do 2-like frustrations make them explode, but 5 also represses their emotions a lot so they may be overwhelming when they finally get to the surface.

[glitteryfacemagazine]

It’s all fun and games until you’re lying in bed and suddenly have a flash of what it FELT like to be depressed. I remember when all I could manage to do was lie in bed and daydream about all the things I wanted to accomplish but didn't have the energy to do any of it. I had mostly healed from it, but I think caffeine is a trigger and heavy emotions dont help either.

I am being triggered by my mother’s long forwards on the pandemic because she doesn't often care to fact check and is becoming the exact creature I fight outside the house. It feels like a personal defeat each time she does it because if my own family falls prey to fake news, then what hope do I have with other people? My politics unfortunately doesn’t let me be two-faced about this and I behave reactively in a way that I’m not proud of and only know how to help when I apply my head to it. Conflict resolution or healthy conflict resolution is not something I have any examples of at home, so taught myself it yet dont implement it at home. Maybe as punishment? To point out exactly how they make me feel when they attack me and send my whole body into panic? This morning my mother saw a bottle of coke in the fridge and yelled at me. She said she would throw it out if another bottle came home. I’m done cutting her slack and masking this as a mode of caring. Yes, I have thyroid and she reacted from a space of panic. But at 53, she’s an adult who should have learned how to regulate her emotions instead of taking her raw panic out on me even if it was induced by care and fear. I’m no one’s punching bag just because they’re having a chemical reaction in their own brain because then I dont see it as a form of care, but of aggression. It’s also a shit message to send out to your child? That someone operating from a space of care is ALLOWED to be verbally violent and threaten to take away something that’s brought you joy?

I was disgusted in that moment, but my nervous system was thrown into deregulation for the whole morning. It fucks with the work I have to do, and takes away from my ability to calmly focus on something. Most importantly, this behaviour brings out rebellion in me where I start to OD on the behaviour that brought out that reaction as a challenge against her. It’s self harm, but it comes from a space of raw anger that I’m still learning how to channel.

To be honest, I’m angry about a lot of things.

I’m angry that I’m being controlled and have no way out except for the way they decide is the way out. The problem with being furious with but also caring about the people who hurt you is that you learn to turn your anger and rage inward and when they react to you with rage and you react to yourself with rage, it’s easy to place yourself in the position of doormat. I let myself be taken for granted because they forced me to. If I’m being hateful, it’s only because I’m done being asked to hate myself for not following the path they think is best.

No, I shouldn't have to work extra hard to prove to my parents that I deserve freedom or a good education. They have crippled me, so now I have to do the work of picking myself up and walking. But this is so unfair, because I have next to no support while most people learning to walk in their early adult years had family rooting for them and a peer group learning to walk at the same time.

My journey is solitary because by virtue of being either uneducated (not his fault at all and I hate my grandfather for this) or disinterested in education (her fault because my maternal grandfather was completely supportive of her studying further) my parents think I’m supposed to fit into the mould of a traditional woman and push me to do things they think I’m not doing because THEY are afraid. My failure is the result of fear that wasn't even my own but was forced on me to carry along with the burden of shame.

I will not apologise for yelling at her today, no. She was thoughtless, and then turned my specific problem into a statement of me always having issues with her, which is untrue. I dont need to engage with her gaslighting or emotional blackmail any longer.

I’m literally getting married to escape being controlled and it’s sad how she knows this but still won't apologise to me because her ego gets in the way. My father might be the reason she’s doing all this, but I specially feel rage towards her because she’s the one enacting things that he left unsaid. She’s got agency of her own, but she chooses to squander it where required, but use it in full force to hurt me and my dreams of where I want to be and who I want to become. My life unfortunately has been confined within their ideas of what structures should resemble and I s2g I will not come back to live with them on their terms if I can help it.

But this is so bitter a realisation that I cant help but cry. Gautam doesn't love me and yet I feel the gutting loss of what could have been had my family been... not this way. We could have had a real future. We still can, but he doesn't love me, and this shouldn't hurt like this but it does?

Am I too old for heartbreak? I am, am I not?

He must think I’m absolutely obsessive and codependent, but I’m really just a person dealing with emotional abuse that’s lasted all my life (along with some good old physical beating with belts, hands, cutlery, brushes, whips, lol I’ve had a mirror broken on my leg a day before we were supposed to leave for a holiday when I was 10) and all I really want is to be able to look at him and securely call him mine because I’ve been carved out from the inside by complete lack of emotional support. I look at him and recognise someone who’s a little like me with a history of different kinds of abuse and each time he rejects me, I feel like I deserve to reject myself. Which is a very problematic approach to self love. I cant expect someone like me to love me because I’m lazy to do the work. Actually, I’m not lazy. I just feel so defeated that I keep lying down dreaming of the future and hoping he will love me enough for me to fill my insides with it and that will resurrect me. And each time I get knocked down I take it as my cue that things for me are destined to be hard and self loathing is the only relationship I can have with myself. But it’s not. I shouldn't be. This body has seen a literal whole lifetime of violence because it was brought into this world through violence. I wasn't wanted. So when I was born I was 97% dead and stories of how my own blood relatives are trash were told to me when I was very young and I didn't need to be told stories of such violence at 4 and 5.

I didn't need to be told that my grandmother wanted to burn my mother alive or that my mother didn't care enough about me and had run away when she’d left the house for a bit. She was tortured by them, so she took it out on me even if she claimed to love me. I know this because she still does it every time my father screams at her. I cant keep rationalising these things and understanding. I only have this empathy because I was used as her crutch for as long as I can remember. I cant do this anymore because despite emotionally depleting me she’s also violated my space and privacy multiple times and used violence against me to score brownie points with my father. 

I’m just disgusted with her and women like her who show women down for approval from men. She bit me because she couldn't bite her oppressor, even though I was literally just a child. And now I bite myself when I cant bite my oppressors and really need to unlearn it.

G made the right decision by not picking me. I’m a literal mess and his family is most definitely more stable than mine. He will never be able to hold me and witness me without pity/horror. Is it too much to want a stable life at home?

[thestrangerpoet]

Sorry if this is too personal of a question. You don't have to answer this if you don't want to. What's it like being Autistic?

This isn’t too personal at all! I love being asked questions:) (this might be a long one...)

So Autism is portrayed in many different ways through tv and stereotypes and society. Autism has a spectrum, so like it has different levels of it basically. High functioning Autism, in my personal opinion, is what confuses people the most because they don’t understand that you can be autistic and still be able to live your life and function on a daily basis. I was only recently officially diagnosed, but i was diagnosed with ADHD years ago (they are often confused with each other because they have similar spectrums/the same spectrum).

I’ve had it my entire life, it’s not a new thing just a new diagnoses. I didn’t start talking till I was about 5, I was in and out of many different therapists, I couldn’t really keep or make any friends. Nobody knew what was wrong with me, they just assumed it was results of past abuse and emotional scarring.

It is hard at times, I often wish that I could function normally. I have to wear my airpods everywhere I go because of sensory issues, if I forget them I get severe anxiety and I’ll just freeze and tense and stop talking entirely (idk how to really explain it, but basically without them I can hear everything like chewing, swallowing, clothes moving, fabric rubbing together, dead silence, etc.)

My family gets very annoyed with me, or at least they use to when they didn’t really understand it, because I struggle with making eye contact and I have to have everything a certain way (I have to know the schedules and plans and my room has to be a certain way or I legit want to crawl inside my skin). I also pick at my lips and bite my nails, also known as one of my ‘quirks’ or ‘stress habits’. I often don’t understand social cues or emotions, and I don’t feel empathy. I constantly ask ‘why’ questions because I genuinely don’t understand but I want to make sure I don’t keep offending people so Iask questions to avoid it happening again. I also haven’t ever really had friends because it’s very difficult maintaining them or keeping them, either because of other personal reasons or because it’s hard relating to normies. (another quirk is I will correct people’s grammar at any given chance, but I’m learning to stop doing it so much because sometimes people get annoyed).

Thing is, I don’t tell people that I’m autistic because they don’t want to deal with it. To them it changes everything once they know you’re autistic (just from my experience).

Smell (and texture, texture is a really big thing) is also a big thing, like one time my mom changed detergent and I took all my clothes to my grandmas to wash because I didn’t like the smell and I couldn’t wear them. If I go to someone’s house I have to shower right away and wash the clothes because I’ll smell like them or their house. Same thing if someone comes to my house, I have to spray everything in that room down and wait for it all to air out so it smells like ‘me’ again.

School is a challenge, I have to do night classes at my campus because the lights are dimmer and there are less people/less noise. I tried taking day classes but the lights were too loud and bright, people were too close to me, we weren’t allowed to wear earbuds, etc. I can’t take online classes either because when I’m home I’m not in ‘school’ mode so I get distracted very easily and can’t focus. I have a one track mind, so my mind will get stuck on something and play it on repeat till it gets bored or finds something else. Multitasking is almost impossible because I hyper focus.

Speaking of hyperfixation, I will become obsessed over something and then drop it out of nowhere. You could call it a phase on steroids because it gets intense. A while ago it was Harry Potter and I had to memorize every single spell or I legit felt like a fake fan. I also made butterbeer frappes at work. It was all I would watch for months. After that, it was European culture. I would cook traditional Irish/Scottish/and some British meals every night. I would only listen to Irish music (celtic traditional and mordern).

However...there are many perks to it, just like there is to anything. I notice very small details that other people might not notice, like recently my coworker got a trim and I was the first to say anything about it bc I noticed it was slightly shorter. I hear and smell things that others might not due to hightened sensitivities (that doesn’t sound like a plus but it is depending on the context). Hyperfixation can be a plus too because i have lots of random knowledge (I have also memorized almost every vine) and facts that no one asked for. Telling people that I’m autistic is definitely the best part because they get confused and say something like “Oh, you don’t look/act autistic.” (like I said, people don’t think ‘high functioning’ is a real thing).

If you have any other questions about it, please don’t hesitate to dm me:)

[nctinfo]

[TRANS] NYLON: WayV here to report, the secret to becoming the new generation of male idol groups revealed here!

WayV: The dream launch plan of the new generation of male idol groups. People who have wanted to “launch [their] dreams faraway, straight to space” have never been the minority. The idols that are appearing in our sights usually have been through rounds and rounds of strict training. You don’t need to be curious about where the screaming and shouting surrounding “The Chosen Ones” came from, what you should be curious about is what challenges the likes of WayV, the unstoppable boygroup, have been through before appearing in front of us. Despite only debuting early this year, they have shown much potential. When you inquire the reason behind their success, the members’ statement of “all the one can do is work harder” is enough to explain. When you’re still “[waiting] for [your] dream to launch and gain speed”, they’ve already moved on from waiting at the same place, and “never look for excuses to dampen the blow” instead. 

Wherever male idol groups go, camera lenses, shining lighted sights, and the heartfelt shouts of young girls follow. Youth is valued because it is limited, dreams are valued for the road to it. In today’s idol ecosystem, the new replaces the old quicker than ever before, while competition is tougher as well. Defeating the cruel rules of a boygroup’s survival, WayV officially debuted in China in January this year, with members LUCAS (Huang Xuxi) becoming “Keep Running’s” new fixed cast member. WINWIN (Dong Sicheng) participated in a Hunan Television celebrity variety show, and the episode of Happy Together, which all 7 members participated filming in, also aired recently...this new boygroup power just started gearing up for their “Dream Launch Plan”. 

The 7 members are from different cities. Carrying the same dream of standing on stage, they chose to leave their hometowns, becoming trainees overseas, they must attain many skills to walk the flower road.

Member TEN (Li Yongqin), 23 years old this year, is overseas Chinese and has the longest training period in the group. In his six years of training, he had to learn Mandarin on top of singing and dancing. TEN says that he would practice alone in the practice rooms even if it wasn’t a training day. To TEN, dance is his comfort zone, and is also a way for him to calm down and destress. As for his Mandarin standards, he can now accurately and specifically explain the difference between Malatang and hotpot. 

(t/n: context is that hotpot means you cook the meat and vegetable and everything else yourself, the soup base is served, then the raw ingredients; malatang is something where you order and it comes all cooked in a big pot)

Leader KUN (Qian Kun) is from Fujian province. He was culturally knowledgeable as a child, and is a classic example of “someone else’s child”. He never regretted traveling overseas along to become a trainee - for a bigger, better stage, 3 years of hard work is all worth it. Even though there are tiring times, but many interesting things are bound to happen between boys. To him, the greatest allure of the stage is if he was able to show the results of his practice. That moment on stage sparks the biggest sense of accomplishment in him.

(t/n: “someone else’s child” is a phrase in China/Chinese society representing the children one’s parents compared them to, eg. “someone else’s child” always scores higher in the same exam, and is such a filial child, why can’t you be more like them?)

XIAOJUN (Xiaojun) was already confirmed for debut when he was recruited into the company, so he had to catch up with his teammates’ progress quickly. “Entering the company, I felt a difference in skill, so I had to work harder.” But when he looks back on this memory, Xiaojun thinks that his improvement and newfound ability to confidently stand on stage was nothing on the tough times. 

Perhaps the charm of male idol groups is the knowledge that the opportunity to stand on stage was earned by the people on stage putting all their effort in. And what refracts out of the moment one steps on stage is not just the success of 7 youths, but also the well wishes of fans in the audience. Like member WINWIN said, “[he] most wants to thank the [him] that worked hard before”.

LUCAS’ childhood dream was to be a firefighter, and because of his striking height and looks, he was meant to debut as a model, but debuted with his excellent singing and dancing skills after all. This boy (directly it’s big boy though verbvuidw) from Hong Kong usually employs his own humour to set the mood and make everyone laugh. At the same time, he switches to serious mode when discussing the significance of “idols”. “An idol is only an idol if they invoke pride in the public, and influence the people who like them via positive acts.” 

HENDERY (Huang Guanheng), on the other hand, is more fortunate. Having been scouted in the streets, he simply wanted to try things out, but unexpectedly sparked his interest in music in the training process. Unlike the members who have some professional background, HENDERY started out as a fresh sheet, and is very grateful for the members’ help, “Without exaggeration, I might not have debuted without the members.” 

To the youngest member YANGYANG (Liu Yangyang), the 7 members’ function like a family, and having bonded fo an extent, they all take care of one another whether in work or life. “Usually when we want to eat something, KUN would make it for us, and it’s delicious too.” “Once, my microphone fell off on stage. LUCAS swiftly picked it up at the back and passed it to me, only then could the performance have been unaffected.” 

That day, the shoot was filled with laughter. As long as they are together, they will never run out of things to say. WINWIN says that the 7 of them sometimes gather in a circle to talk about their thoughts and feelings, in order to lessen one another’s stress. Before stepping on stage to perform, they would also encourage one another, and help with any nervousness. To him, empathy and tolerance are the most important dynamics in a boygroup, teamwork is the force that supports them in their journey forward. “Just like how a single chopstick is easily broken, but a handful is much stronger”. 

Through the interview, the seven’s desire for the stage shone through. They anticipate the opportunity to show themselves to more people, let more people listen to their musical works. Whether singing or dancing, each one has a unique charm. Because of their want to be seen, they cherish every opportunity. 

They believe that hard work will not go to waste, that all the times spent in the practice room is all part of their confidence. The days the seven of them stood shoulder to shoulder and pushed forth won’t be wasted either. Thank you, you who is beside me, for being a part of my youth. The flower path forward is a crowded one, and the moment you receive the entrance ticket, you are destined for more challenges. No one is forever young, but there is always someone young. WayV is now orchestrating the story of their very own youth. 

👇Quick-fire question time👇 1. When filming for a show, how do you quickly become familiar with others? LUCAS: I would open up myself, and take the initiative to talk to others and get to know them better. 2. Are there any skills you’ve wanted to learn lately? WINWIN: I want to learn how to cook, I think men who can cook are really cool. 3. What do you think of bodybuilding? KUN: Men do have to build their strength when they reach a certain age, but I wouldn’t train excessively. 4. If you had a week off, where do you want to go the most? YANGYANG: To Europe, and visit where I went to school when I was younger. 5. If you had to choose one member to go to Mars with, who would you choose? XIAOJUN: YANGYANG, because we probably could talk all the time, and never have to worry about having nothing to say. 6. Have you ever thought about at what age you’d stop dancing? TEN: I’ll dance till I can’t anymore. 7. Do members send memes to one another? HENDERY: Two-thirds of my phone is occupied by memes of the members, of which feature LUCAS and KUN the most. 

Translation: Jess @ FY! NCT (NCTINFO) | Source: NYLON CHINA — Do not repost or take out without our permission!

[gaiatheorist]

A little knowledge...

I keep starting this, and then deleting it, that’s either an indication that I’m trying to process as fully as i can, or that I’m being avoidant, and slipping into another depressive episode, I’ll keep an eye on it.

I have an untidy heap of paperwork at the side of my desk, it’s not ‘on’ the desk yet, because I’m not quite ready to fill it in. There’s no deadline on it, so it’s ‘floating’, rather than ‘fixed’, and the formatting of it is doing my head in. It’s the end-of-course review and coping plan for the Trauma Stabilisation Group I finished last week. I told my son a few days ago that the ‘mentals’ write their own coping plans, and he was incredulous, I’m relatively good at planning, and taking all factors into consideration, but the new medication, and the appeal against the denial of my disability benefit, and, well, 2020 are taking a toll on me, I’m slipping.

‘Introduction to Trauma Stabilisation Class’, three 90-minute sessions, delivered via Microsoft ‘Teams’, on account of the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re too unwell to be left to our own devices, so the online group was the least-bad option. It’s free, I know a fair few people who have had to pay for their own therapy, because they can’t access NHS treatment, and I know I’m part of a very small, but fortunate number, to still be on NHS lists. Groups of people with mental health issues are always a bit of a gamble, there’s the waiting-room-contagion factor, where some people will exchange symptoms and ‘unhelpful coping mechanisms’, and the weird mix of characters that are inevitable. This was either my third or fourth ‘Introduction to...’ group, and the online format was differently stressful to the in-the-flesh ones. I know ‘most’ of my group-dynamic bad habits, and there’s always a little bit of my cognitive functioning occupied with telling myself *don’t* do this, or that. In a nutshell, I’m a watchful show-off, the ‘feeling small and vulnerable’ part of my C-PTSD would, historically, lead me to muck about, or attempt to dominate groups, throw in my autistic ‘organising’, my professional desire to help, and the fatigue and over-stimulus from the brain injuries, and I *could* be a nightmare in groups. 

I was honest with the triage staff right from the beginning, it’ll be in my notes that I acknowledge my tendencies to ‘take charge’, as a means of coping with so much in my life that’s been beyond my control, it’s not all deliberate, and it’s sometimes really useful. I’m a sheep-dog, which is productive when I’m rounding up stragglers, and pointing them in the right direction, less-so when I’m distracted by a squirrel outside the window. 

Being what I am, and knowing what I know from my previous career is a double-edged sword. I know the fancy words for the theories and processes, so can be mildly irritated when the language has to be dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator. It does have to be, though, on the previous course, we had a couple of participants who couldn’t read the text on the worksheets (formatting issue, too much text crammed onto each page, to save on photocopying costs, they strained my eyes a bit) I can’t do my (TM) Autistic thing of assuming that, if I ‘know’ a thing, everyone else in the room does too. I can do my helpful thing of re-explaining something the facilitator has said if the group don’t seem to ‘get’ it, or clarifying something a participant has said if the facilitators misconstrue it. (One of the staff on the previous course was an absolute horror for that, she wasn’t listening actively, just barrelling on with what she thought had been said, people stop volunteering information when that happens.) I’m not there to ‘help’, or to ‘lead’, though. One of the participants in this last group threw a bit of a tantrum, she’d dominated most of the speaking in the previous session, and flipped when I was given air-time to explain something. That was hard to deal with, because I automatically switched to Mentor-mode, and very nearly lost track of the content trying to think of a way to alert one of the facilitators to check in on her, and try to bring her down from her agitated state before she hurt herself. 

I’m dabbling with the slightly paranoid theory that some participants, or even facilitators might think I’m a Mystery Shopper sort of thing. My ‘old’ practices and processes made a lot of people ask “How do you DO that?”, the ‘Matilda’-thing, I just do, I’m exceptional at a lot of very difficult things sometimes, but I can’t use oven-gloves, and, especially recently, I’ve been forgetting a lot of words. Other participants might think I’m a smart-arse, I am, it doesn’t matter, I imagine I frustrate the facilitators because I can give theoretically correct answers, but can’t consistently apply the theories in my own life. I’m not there to make friends, we all have to sign contracts of expectations saying we won’t form relationships, I understand that, an elective empathy with other high-end mental health cases is never going to be a good thing. My curious combination of conditions makes me a bit of a distance-er anyway, I stick as firmly as I can to the procedural pathways, it’s a process-with-purpose, not a popularity contest.

I’m struggling with the ‘be kind to yourself’ angle again. It’s not in my nature, I don’t know how. That bumps heads with the ‘normalising nice things’, even at this level of mental health intervention, we’re encouraged to ‘savour the taste of your favourite food’- food is just fuel, I don’t have a favourite, and, when people start banging on about chocolate, or cake, or whatever, I don’t get it. Visit a favourite place, phone/meet up with a friend, listen to uplifting music, go for a walk, buy yourself flowers, have a haircut, all of the ‘normal’ nice-things leave me cold, I don’t really have hobbies or interests, very few things spark my oxytocin or dopamine responses, I’m not a joyful type, that’s my baseline-normal, not a press-the-panic-button indicator that I’m depressed. 

“You’re just not trying!” Luckily, nobody ‘medical’ has trotted that one out, but it’s been the backing track to my life pretty much forever. I am trying, I’m trying very hard, especially since the brain injuries. There’s been a slow realisation that I have to pick my battles wisely, though. I’ve long maintained that anyone who’s ‘always’ happy must have a flap in their back where the batteries go, I’m not advocating living in a constant state of ‘Eeyore’ gloom, but constant joy must be bloody exhausting. I’m not always moody or maudlin, I’m just sort of ‘flat’, not particularly animated or enthusiastic about much, but I can engage for short periods when I need to. “Smile, love, it might never happen!” can get right in the bin, and, as the internet pointed out the other day, telling someone to ‘just think positive’ as a cure-all is ridiculous. Well-meaning, but oblivious people will chip in with their intrusive-insensitive opinions of how a bit of yoga, or more vegetables are all we need to be all-better, and it’s a challenge to not point out that some of us are a bit beyond ‘just snapping out of it’. 

That’s not defeatist. I’m autistic, my brain runs on a non-standard Operating System, the updates don’t always load, and I have to make a hell of a lot of work-around adaptations. Sometimes life’s like walking everywhere with my shoes on the wrong feet, and sometimes it’s like my appliances have come with the wrong plug, and I have to stick a spoon-handle in the Earth socket to make them work. On top of the autism, I had a succession of adverse experiences through the course of my life, which have left me with C-PTSD. I have a telephone-directory of medical conditions, and the icing on the cake was the brain haemorrhage  five years ago, I have brain injuries, bits of metal plugging up aneurysms, and one area of ‘risky’ defects on my brain-stem. Those are facts, I have a file of medical paperwork about two inches thick, but the UK disability benefit departments have decided to latch onto the fact that I’m not on any medication for mental health issues. (I’ve tried lots, none of them worked long-term, and now we know we’re dealing with a neurodevelopmental disorder, and physical brain damage, I don’t think a bit of Prozac is going to help.)

Knowing that my brain is physically and chemically different to ‘most’ people’s is not a get-out-of-jail-free-card. These are reasons, not excuses, and I’m doing what I can to work within and around my limitations. I’m not unique, or a special unicorn, I’m disabled, and damaged, and trying to work with the fragmented NHS. One of the issues with the trauma course was the assumptions. I absolutely don’t blame the facilitators, they’re working with pre-prepared material, and a ‘difficult’ cohort. I did gently correct the course-leader, when she started listing ‘normal’ coping mechanisms, the walk-in-the-park, cup-of-tea-with-friends type ones. Some of those ‘simple’ activities are incredibly difficult for some of us, that’s why we’re at this level of intervention, if we could have ‘just’ joined a knitting circle, or taken up photography, we’d already have done it. I explained the need for pacing, the other two participants had limited impulse control, so giving the ‘shopping list’ of strategies was a bit risky, I know I have a tendency to over-reach, so need to be careful with myself. None of us had mentioned nightmares or flashbacks, but they’re on the standard list of indicators for PTSD. There was an assumption that we all had them, in the same way as one of the other triage practitioners, ages ago, told me “It’s not PTSD, because you don’t have nightmares.” I have auditory and olfactory flashbacks and hallucinations. 

The doctors that didn’t make further investigations for the mutated migraines before the aneurysm ruptured. The gyneacologist that told my HUSBAND “There’s nothing physically wrong with her.”, the Occupational Health doctor who told me “It’s not vertigo, because that’s spinning.” and “It wasn’t a stroke, because you don’t have one-sided weakness.” I know they have to have lists of diagnostic criteria to start from, but Little-Miss-Autistic here spent far too long just-trying-to-cope because I didn’t fit neatly into their matrices. (Don’t get me started on DWP/PIP ignoring reams of evidence, and just picking out that I turned up to the assessment with my trousers on the right way around...) 

I know too much about some things, and not enough about others. My ‘flat’ presentation gives the impression that I’m calm when I’m not, and coping more than I am. The review for the trauma class isn’t until September, and I genuinely don’t know what the next step will be. I’m already on the waiting list for the ‘Compassion’ course, and the very long waiting list for the Specialist Neurodevelopmental Service in the city, to see if there’s anything ‘else’ I haven’t already tried to work within and around the autism. I’ve slipped through a million holes in a million nets, because I know enough to give the answers I ‘should’, the biggest irony is that when I answer “I don’t know.”, the assumption is that I’m being defensive or difficult. A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing.   

[toxic-lucky]

Did someone ask all for teli yet

1. If your oc was to host a TV show, what would it be about? Would your oc be good at it? What sorts of guests would appear?

It be something similar to wipe-out, and they’d both be good at hosting and participating.

2. Can your oc play any instruments? Have they ever wanted to learn how to play any? Why?

They can’t!

3. If you were to choose another name for your oc, what do you think it would be? Did you choose it for how it sounds or for its meaning?

Aries, since it also means sheep. I wanted a wolf in sheeps clothing joke (Lycan means wolf, obviously).

4. How does your oc fare in the dark? Are they scared? Do they trip over things really easily or navigate like they have night vision? (Or do they have night vision?)

They fare pretty poorly, just due to the fact that they grew up in Diurn where it was rarely dark. They can’t see, they’re clumsy, and they’re freaking out slightly.

5. How well would your oc fare as a teacher? What subject would they be best at teaching? What about the worst?

They’d fare relatively well as both a history and biology teacher, but fail horribly as any kind of language teacher.

6. What was your oc’s relationship with their parents like? If they didn’t have any parents/didn’t know them, who in their life was the closest to a parent to them?

Non-existent, which is pretty normal for dragon upbringing. No one really ever ends up fitting the role of “parent” to them either.

7. Does your oc have any allergies, intolerances, or other sensitivities? How dangerous is it? Does this affect their daily life in any way?

They don’t!

8. Does your oc prefer being in a crowd or being completely alone? How many people can be around them before they get uncomfortable?

They prefer being alone, but can manage being in a crowd without getting uncomfortable. There really is no cap.

9. How easily does your oc make friends? Do they have difficulty talking to new people? Why?

Not that easily. They have a cold and harsh demeanor, and don’t really know how to interact with others by their standards of “nice.”

10. How open is your oc to trying new things? Are they the adventurous sort, or would they rather stay in their comfort zone? Why?

They’re not all that open, but if you challenge them they’ll do it no questions asked.

11. What is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to your oc? Do they still feel ashamed for it? Were there any witnesses?

Nothing, surprisingly!

12. Does your oc have any best friends? Who was/is their closest friend? What about their worst enemy?

None to all!

13. How dangerous is your oc? Are they completely innocent, or someone to be feared? Do others know?

Pretty dangerous by mortal standards, and others do know of their reputation.

14. What is your oc’s vision like? Do they require glasses, are they completely blind, or do they have 20/20 vision? Does this have an effect on their life?

They have really good vision and can find people quickly, except if someone is standing still. It has caused them to run into poles and posts a lot.

15. What is your oc’s favourite time of day? Why is this? Do they have a daily practice during this time?

Afternoon! It’s warm and bright like Diurn mornings.

16. How often does your oc lie? Why is that? What was the biggest lie they’ve ever told?

They lie a lot, but over really dumb things. “I didn’t break it” or “I don’t know where [object] went” are common ones.

17. How well can your oc keep secrets? Is there a difference between how they handle their own vs someone else’s? To what lengths would they go to keep something hidden?

They can keep secrets rather well, by just not bringing it up or acting as if they know something.

18. How does your oc fare in an emergency situation? Do they panic, do they freeze, do they take charge?

They freeze. Literally. The ground is now frozen solid, everyone is frozen in place, any weapons are now frozen over.

19. If your oc were to be arrested for something, what would it be for? For being too kind, for a legitimate crime?

Interfering with an investigation.

20. What is your oc’s personal hygiene like? Is it important to them? What is their daily routine for this like?

It’s okay for the most part. They hate water so they need to hype themselves up to take a shower.

21. Are there any public events your oc would love to go to? Concerts, plays, movies, parties, etc? What about ones that they would hate? Why?

They’re okay with not going to any.

22. How quiet or loud is your oc? Are they easily capable of sneaking around without being heard, or do they feel it’s impossible to stop talking?

They have a really loud voice.

23. How difficult is it for your oc to get to sleep? Do they fall asleep the moment they hit the pillow, or do they have insomnia? Any reason why?

They can actually fall asleep really easily, and they sleep really heavily.

24. How dramatic is your oc? Do they make a big deal over every little thing, or do they fail to react to even the most crazy of events?

They react typically.

25. How does your oc handle being sick? Do they pretend not to be? Do they complain a lot? How susceptible to getting sick are they?

They don’t get sick often, so when they do they’re dramatic about it and probably think they’re dying.

26. How stylistically fancy is your oc? Or would they rather go for comfort and plainness instead?

They try to be fancy, they like dressing up, but also when you wake up late and have to get to work in 15 minutes you don’t have time to find some button up to iron and instead just slap on an appropriate shirt and go in pj pants.

27. What’s your oc’s preferred mode of transportation? Walking, vehicle, (or in a sci-fi/magic setting) teleportation?

Flying!

28. Is your oc always late, always early, or always right on time? Is there any reason for this?

Typically early except when it’s first thing in the morning or whenever they wake up because then they can be anywhere from on time to an hour late.

29. How empathetic is your oc? Or are they closer to being a sociopath? Any reason why?

They don’t feel empathy, but they got cognitive empathy down pat.

30. How much does your oc swear? Or do they keep completely clean? Why is this? Is there any situation where they would be the opposite?

They don’t swear in typical Iusto languages, but do use draconic and Diurn based swears when they start swearing, and they do tend to swear a lot under their breath.

31. What is your oc’s sense of humour like? What do they find funny? Do they try to be funny? Are they actually?

They find those bird meme videos funny. They aren’t funny though, and they don’t try to be.

32. Is your oc a pacifist, or someone who picks fights? Why? In what situations would they be the opposite?

They pick fights, not expecting people to actually try to fight them. It’s actually kinda funny.

33. How does your oc’s own perception of themselves compare to how other people see them? Is your oc aware that other people see them differently (if it’s different)?

They have a high self-image. They are not aware people view them differently.

34. How easily does your oc throw something away? As soon as something is through with its usefulness, or are they more like a hoarder? Is there a reason?

They don’t throw out things easily, blame dragon genes.

35. Is your oc a workaholic, or do they find it hard to be busy at all? Do they find it easy to relax, or must they have something to do at all times? Why?

They’re a workaholic.

36. What is your oc’s ideal night out like? Or would they rather spend it at home?

Probably sleeping.

37. How picky is your oc? Will they not accept something because of the smallest details being off, or do they not care in the slightest? Why?

They’re not that picky.

38. How energetic is your oc? Do they have trouble sitting still or do they feel low on juice all the time? Any reason why?

They are pretty average.

39. Is it difficult for your oc to focus, or do they have no trouble being in the moment? Do they daydream or zone out?

They find it difficult to focus due to their vision, so if anything moves their attention is on that.

40. How humble is your oc? Or are they closer to royal in their self-perception? Why? Is this obvious to others?

They aren’t all that humble honestly. It’s obvious.

[samstiels-deactivated20201212]

The Entire Article Under The Cut

Game of Thrones, in its eighth and final season, is as big as television gets these days. More than 17 million people watched the season’s opening. Judging by the fan and critic reaction though, it seems that a substantial portion of those millions are loathing the season. Indeed, most of the reviews and fan discussions seem to be pondering where the acclaimed series went wrong, with many theories on exactly why it went downhill.

The show did indeed take a turn for the worse, but the reasons for that downturn go way deeper than the usual suspects that have been identified (new and inferior writers, shortened season, too many plot holes). It’s not that these are incorrect, but they’re just superficial shifts. In fact, the souring of Game of Thrones exposes a fundamental shortcoming of our storytelling culture in general: we don’t really know how to tell sociological stories.

At its best, GOT was a beast as rare as a friendly dragon in King’s Landing: it was sociological and institutional storytelling in a medium dominated by the psychological and the individual. This structural storytelling era of the show lasted through the seasons when it was based on the novels by George R. R. Martin, who seemed to specialize in having characters evolve in response to the broader institutional settings, incentives and norms that surround them.

After the show ran ahead of the novels, however, it was taken over by powerful Hollywood showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Some fans and critics have been assuming that the duo changed the narrative to fit Hollywood tropes or to speed things up, but that’s unlikely. In fact, they probably stuck to the narrative points that were given to them, if only in outline form, by the original author. What they did is something different, but in many ways more fundamental: Benioff and Weiss steer the narrative lane away from the sociological and shifted to the psychological. That’s the main, and often only, way Hollywood and most television writers tell stories.

This is an important shift to dissect because whether we tell our stories primarily from a sociological or psychological point of view has great consequences for how we deal with our world and the problems we encounter.

I encounter this shortcoming a lot in my own area of writing—technology and society. Our inability to understand and tell sociological stories is one of the key reasons we’re struggling with how to respond to the historic technological transition we’re currently experiencing with digital technology and machine intelligence—but more on all that later. Let’s first go over what happened to Game of Thrones.

WHAT STORYTELLING IT WAS AND WHAT IT BECAME IN GOT

It’s easy to miss this fundamental narrative lane change and blame the series’ downturn on plain old bad writing by Benioff and Weiss—partly because they are genuinely bad at it. They didn’t just switch the explanatory dynamics of the story, they did a terrible job in the new lane as well.

One could, for example, easily focus on the abundance of plot holes. The dragons, for example seem to switch between comic-book indestructible to vulnerable from one episode to another. And it was hard to keep a straight face when Jaime Lannister ended up on a tiny cove along a vast, vast shoreline at the exact moment the villain Euron Greyjoy swam to that very point from his sinking ship to confront him. How convenient!

Similarly, character arcs meticulously drawn over many seasons seem to have been abandoned on a whim, turning the players into caricatures instead of personalities. Brienne of Tarth seems to exist for no reason, for example; Tyrion Lannister is all of a sudden turned into a murderous snitch while also losing all his intellectual gifts (he hasn’t made a single correct decision the entire season). And who knows what on earth is up with Bran Stark, except that he seems to be kept on as some sort of extra Stark?

But all that is surface stuff. Even if the new season had managed to minimize plot holes and avoid clunky coincidences and a clumsy Arya ex machina as a storytelling device, they couldn’t persist in the narrative lane of the past seasons. For Benioff and Weiss, trying to continue what Game of Thrones had set out to do, tell a compelling sociological story, would be like trying to eat melting ice cream with a fork. Hollywood mostly knows how to tell psychological, individualized stories. They do not have the right tools for sociological stories, nor do they even seem to understand the job.

To understand the narrative lane shift, let’s go back to a key question: Why did so many love Game of Thrones in the first place? What makes it stand out from so many other shows during an era critics call the Second Golden Age of Television because there are so many high-quality productions out there?

The initial fan interest and ensuing loyalty wasn’t just about the brilliant acting and superb cinematography, sound, editing and directing. None of those are that unique to GOT, and all of them remain excellent through this otherwise terrible last season.

One clue is clearly the show’s willingness to kill off major characters, early and often, without losing the thread of the story. TV shows that travel in the psychological lane rarely do that because they depend on viewers identifying with the characters and becoming invested in them to carry the story, rather than looking at the bigger picture of the society, institutions and norms that we interact with and which shape us. They can’t just kill major characters because those are the key tools with which they’re building the story and using as hooks to hold viewers.

In contrast, Game of Thrones killed Ned Stark abruptly at the end of the first season, after building the whole season and, by implication, the entire series around him. The second season developed a replacement Stark heir, which appeared like a more traditional continuation of the narrative. The third season, however, had him and his pregnant wife murdered in a particularly bloody way. And so it went. The story moved on; many characters did not.

The appeal of a show that routinely kills major characters signals a different kind of storytelling, where a single charismatic and/or powerful individual, along with his or her internal dynamics, doesn’t carry the whole narrative and explanatory burden. Given the dearth of such narratives in fiction and in TV, this approach clearly resonated with a large fan base that latched on to the show.

In sociological storytelling, the characters have personal stories and agency, of course, but those are also greatly shaped by institutions and events around them. The incentives for characters’ behavior come noticeably from these external forces, too, and even strongly influence their inner life.

People then fit their internal narrative to align with their incentives, justifying and rationalizing their behavior along the way. (Thus the famous Upton Sinclair quip: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”)

The overly personal mode of storytelling or analysis leaves us bereft of deeper comprehension of events and history. Understanding Hitler’s personality alone will not tell us much about rise of fascism, for example. Not that it didn’t matter, but a different demagogue would probably have appeared to take his place in Germany in between the two bloody world wars in the 20th century. Hence, the answer to “would you kill baby Hitler?,” sometimes presented as an ethical time-travel challenge, should be “no,” because it would very likely not matter much. It is not a true dilemma.

We also have a bias for the individual as the locus of agency in interpreting our own everyday life and the behavior of others. We tend to seek internal, psychological explanations for the behavior of those around us while making situational excuses for our own. This is such a common way of looking at the world that social psychologists have a word for it: the fundamental attribution error.

When someone wrongs us, we tend to think they are evil, misguided or selfish: a personalized explanation. But when we misbehave, we are better at recognizing the external pressures on us that shape our actions: a situational understanding. If you snap at a coworker, for example, you may rationalize your behavior by remembering that you had difficulty sleeping last night and had financial struggles this month. You’re not evil, just stressed! The coworker who snaps at you, however, is more likely to be interpreted as a jerk, without going through the same kind of rationalization. This is convenient for our peace of mind, and fits with our domain of knowledge, too. We know what pressures us, but not necessarily others.

That tension between internal stories and desires, psychology and external pressures, institutions, norms and events was exactly what Game of Thrones showed us for many of its characters, creating rich tapestries of psychology but also behavior that was neither saintly nor fully evil at any one point. It was something more than that: you could understand why even the characters undertaking evil acts were doing what they did, how their good intentions got subverted, and how incentives structured behavior. The complexity made it much richer than a simplistic morality tale, where unadulterated good fights with evil.

The hallmark of sociological storytelling is if it can encourage us to put ourselves in the place of any character, not just the main hero/heroine, and imagine ourselves making similar choices. “Yeah, I can see myself doing that under such circumstances” is a way into a broader, deeper understanding. It’s not just empathy: we of course empathize with victims and good people, not with evildoers.

But if we can better understand how and why characters make their choices, we can also think about how to structure our world that encourages better choices for everyone. The alternative is an often futile appeal to the better angels of our nature. It’s not that they don’t exist, but they exist along with baser and lesser motives. The question isn’t to identify the few angels but to make it easier for everyone to make the choices that, collectively, would lead us all to a better place.

Another example of sociological TV drama with a similarly enthusiastic fan following is David Simon’s The Wire, which followed the trajectory of a variety of actors in Baltimore, ranging from African-Americans in the impoverished and neglected inner city trying to survive, to police officers to journalists to unionized dock workers to city officials and teachers. That show, too, killed off its main characters regularly, without losing its audience. Interestingly, the star of each season was an institution more than a person. The second season, for example, focused on the demise of the unionized working class in the U.S.; the fourth highlighted schools; and the final season focused on the role of journalism and mass media.

Luckily for The Wire, creative control never shifted to the standard Hollywood narrative writers who would have given us individuals to root for or hate without being able to fully understand the circumstances that shape them. One thing that’s striking about The Wire is how one could understand all the characters, not just the good ones (and in fact, none of them were just good or bad). When that’s the case, you know you’re watching a sociological story.

WHY GOT PAUSED KILLING MAJOR CHARACTERS

Tellingly, season eight shocked many viewers by … not initially killing off the main characters. It was the first big indicator of their shift—that they were putting the weight of the story on the individual and abandoning the sociological. In that vein, they had fan-favorite characters pull off stunts we could root and cheer for, like Arya Stark killing the Night King in a somewhat improbable fashion.

For seven seasons, the show had focused on the sociology of what an external, otherized threat—such as the Night King, the Army of the Undead and the Winter to Come—would do to competing rivalries within the opposing camp. Having killed one of the main sociological tensions that had animated the whole series with one well-placed knife-stab, Benioff and Weiss then turned to ruining the other sociological tension: the story of the corruption of power.

This corruption of power was crucially illustrated in Cersei Lannister’s rise and evolution from victim (if a selfish one) to evil actor, and this was clearly meant also to be the story of her main challenger, Daenerys Targaryen. Dany had started out wanting to be the breaker of chains, with moral choices weighing heavily on her, and season by season, we have witnessed her, however reluctantly, being shaped by the tools that were available to her and that she embraced: war, dragons, fire.

Done right, it would have been a fascinating and dynamic story: rivals transforming into each other as they seek absolute power with murderous tools, one starting from a selfish perspective (her desire to have her children rule) and the other from an altruistic one (her desire to free slaves and captive people, of which she was once one).

The corruption of power is one of the most important psychosocial dynamics behind many important turning points in history, and in how the ills of society arise. In response, we have created elections, checks and balances, and laws and mechanisms that constrain the executive.

Destructive historical figures often believe that they must stay in power because it is they, and only they, who can lead the people—and that any alternative would be calamitous. Leaders tend to get isolated, become surrounded by sycophants and succumb easily to the human tendency to self-rationalize. There are several examples in history of a leader who starts in opposition with the best of intentions, like Dany, and ends up acting brutally and turning into a tyrant if they take power.

Told sociologically, Dany’s descent into a cruel mass-murderer would have been a strong and riveting story. Yet in the hands of two writers who do not understand how to advance the narrative in that lane, it became ridiculous. She attacks King’s Landing with Drogon, her dragon, and wins, with the bells of the city ringing in surrender. Then, suddenly, she goes on a rampage because, somehow, her tyrannical genes turn on.

Varys, the advisor who will die for trying to stop Dany, says to Tyrion that “every time a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.” That is straight-up and simplistic genetic determinism, rather than what we had been witnessing for the past seven seasons. Again, sociological stories don’t discount the personal, psychological and even the genetic, but the key point is that they are more than “coin tosses”—they are complex interactions with emergent consequences: the way the world actually works.

In interviews after that episode, Benioff and Weiss confess that they turned it into a spontaneous moment. Weiss says, “ I don’t think she decided ahead of time that she was going to do what she did. And then she sees the Red Keep, which is, to her, the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago. It’s in that moment, on the walls of King’s Landing, when she’s looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, when she makes the decision to make this personal.”

Benioff and Weiss were almost certainly given the “Mad Queen” ending to Game of Thrones by the original writer, George R. R. Martin. For them, however, this was the eating-ice-cream-with-a-fork problem I mentioned above. They could keep the story, but not the storytelling method. They could only make it into a momentary turn that is part spontaneous psychology and part deterministic genetics.

WHY SOCIOLOGICAL STORYTELLING MATTERS

Whether done well or badly, the psychological/internal genre leaves us unable to understand and react to social change. Arguably, the dominance of the psychological and hero/antihero narrative is also the reason we are having such a difficult time dealing with the current historic technology transition. So this essay is more than about one TV show with dragons.

In my own area of research and writing, the impact of digital technology and machine intelligence on society, I encounter this obstacle all the time. There are a significant number of stories, books, narratives and journalistic accounts that focus on the personalities of key players such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey and Jeff Bezos. Of course, their personalities matter, but only in the context of business models, technological advances, the political environment, (lack of) meaningful regulation, the existing economic and political forces that fuel wealth inequality and lack of accountability for powerful actors, geopolitical dynamics, societal characteristics and more.

It’s reasonable, for example, for a corporation to ponder who would be the best CEO or COO, but it’s not reasonable for us to expect that we could take any one of those actors and replace them with another person and get dramatically different results without changing the structures, incentives and forces that shape how they and their companies act in this world.

The preference for the individual and psychological narrative is understandable: the story is easier to tell as we gravitate toward identifying with the hero or hating the antihero, at the personal level. We are, after all, also persons!

In German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s classic play, Life of Galileo, Andrea, a former pupil of Galileo, visits him after he recants his seminal findings under pressure from the Catholic Church. Galileo gives Andrea his notebooks, asking him to spread the knowledge they contain. Andrea celebrates this, saying “unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo corrects him: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”

Well-run societies don’t need heroes, and the way to keep terrible impulses in check isn’t to dethrone antiheros and replace them with good people. Unfortunately, most of our storytelling—in fiction and also in mass media nonfiction—remains stuck in the hero/antihero narrative. It’s a pity Game of Thrones did not manage to conclude its last season in its original vein. In a historic moment that requires a lot of institution building and incentive changing (technological challenges, climate change, inequality and accountability) we need all the sociological imagination we can get, and fantasy dragons or not, it was nice to have a show that encouraged just that while it lasted.

[amazingsutherland]

The Art of Redirecting Negative Thoughts

Buddha described the human mind as being full of monkeys, turning from branch to branch, screeching and babbling nonstop. That's why the mind is often referred to as your "ape mind." With so much going on in your life, it's reasonable how you can get shed in your ideas. This is particularly real when one monkey, worry, is especially loud with warnings of potential risks, both actual and visualized. The more you try to disregard it, the louder it appears to become. Fear offers a specific purpose-- to shield. This is such a primitive impulse that it can conveniently control your thoughts and, when left unchecked, causes unfavorable thought loopholes that play over and also over like an old record player that gets captured on repeat. Some instances of negative thoughts loops are:

I am not good enough.

I am afraid to fail.

I never have enough money.  

Without intervention, duplicated adverse idea loops gradually become strengthened as well as at some point a circuit is created in the brain, forming a behavior. This self-defeating cycle can bring about differing degrees of:

Depression

Anxiety

Anger

Guilt

In any one of these states, it's hard to envision the possibility of not really feeling in this way, or worse, you may assume it's a regular state of being, which assuredly is not true. The bright side is, there is something you can do concerning it. The human brain is an incredible creation and understanding what it's qualified of brings hope that modification is feasible. Research in neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to create as well as reorganize synaptic connections in response to learning or experiences, reveals that this ability expands right into late adulthood. That indicates it's time to start training (focus on training) that ape mind of yours to be favorable. As new habits are created, you are essentially re-wiring the brain and also producing brand-new circuits. Keep in mind at all times as well as power it considered the adverse thought loopholes to develop? That same power and also dedication requires to be used to rerouting unfavorable thoughts patterns toward ideas that are a lot more life-expanding rather than life-limiting. Today is an excellent day to obtain started.

Take Positive Action

Those that garden know that you need to keep on top of pulling weeds, or else, they proliferate promptly and also can crowd out the greenery you wish to grow. In this instance, you want positive ideas to be like weeds as well as group out the unfavorable ideas. To get going, ask on your own, "What are some things I directly enjoy doing? Who makes me rejoice when I'm around them?" Then, make it an indicate make plans that integrate that positivity right into your life. Here are some various other actions you can take that influence positive behaviors:

Gratitude journaling: The process of creating down what you are happy for every day can have a favorable influence on your life and your overview on the future. Hang around each night writing down 3-5 points for which you are happy. It can be as simple as, "I am happy for my heart that beats."

Seek stillness: Make an initiative to seek serenity in whatever type charms to you. The more you access stillness, the extra you can touch into your internal tranquility, truth, as well as stamina. It exists, just awaiting you to see. Try looking for tranquility with meditation, hiking in nature, paying attention to calming music, and exercising breathing exercises.

Surround yourself with favorable vibes: Seek out scenarios as well as people that are positive by checking out inspiring books, attending talks by individuals you appreciate, and also paying attention to favorable songs. (Music musician Michael Franti always causes the excellent feelings.)

Perform Seva: The word "Seva" in Sanskrit suggests "generous service." This sort of solution uplifts the cumulative via togetherness as well as empathy. Concentrate on just how you can be of solution by aiding people, pets, or the earth. Attempt choosing up trash, volunteering at organizations that fascinate you, or something as basic as acquiring coffee for a person else.

Use innovation for your benefit: If you are a technology individual, there are applications available that support boosting positivity, like Happify. Try it out and see the distinction it can make in your life.

Get to the Root

Keep in mind there was a reason that you got captured up in the negative idea loop( s) in the initial location. You can't overlook this fact. Obtaining to the source can take a while and also you may select to work with a professional. However, now, you have the power to alter HOW you respond to make sure that your capacity to get rid of challenges as well as settle issues ends up being reliable. Instead of wallowing around in the muck, decide and make a decision to make far better choices that result in an empowered life where you are the writer of your very own story.

Maintain a Sense of Humor

Humor is the best type of medication, so don't neglect to have a funny bone regarding on your own. You are doing the very best you can obviously, but your ape mind can get so carried away that if you catch yourself shed in a crazy idea loop, it can almost be amusing. This clip from the Bob Newhart Program reveals some wit around adverse self-talk. Although lots of concerns are too difficult to be taken this casually, it's always handy to maintain a feeling of lightness when considering your ape mind. And if all else falls short, take Bob's recommendations and also try informing yourself to just "quit it."

Redirecting Exercise

Replacing your negative idea loops with positive ones requires time and also energy. While the change will more than likely not happen overnight, it is possible with devotion and commitment to alter. Right here is a workout to assist the procedure: Observe Your Thought Patterns You can't repair what you don't recognize, which is why a good area to start is to passively observe your thought patterns. It is very important to not evaluate, however instead, visualize you are a reporter bearing in mind on your very own habits. At various moments throughout the day, ask on your own the following inquiries and also compose your answers down in a journal:

Where are you?

What are you doing?

Who are you with?

What are you thinking?

Was there something that triggered any unfavorable thoughts?

Initially, you may want to set an alarm as a pointer to sign in with on your own. Notice the themes that keep popping up. This exercise will certainly help bring awareness around negative thought loopholes or stories you are stuck on, even if it's just a general suggestion of what that may be. Once you have this recognition, you can start selecting to see things in a different way. Understand the Lesson The greatest lessons you discover sometimes comes with wonderful rivalry. List out your negative thought patterns that you either confirmed or discovered in the previous exercise. Following to each pattern, compose down what you gained from it. : Negative thought: I am not good enough. Lesson I learned: I found out exactly how to be a more caring person. This is where you begin to utilize your ideas instead that allowing your ideas to utilize you. You may begin to feel a change in viewpoint-- an opening in the heart as well as mind to the possibilities of what this suggests for you. Replace with Positive Statements Finally, draw up positive declarations starting with "I am ..." For instance: Negative thought: I am not good enough. Lesson I learned: I learned how to be an extra compassionate person. Positive Statement: I am utilizing my presents and also talents to aid others see the great in themselves. Choose a time in the early morning and also night to check out or state aloud your positive statements. You can put this in your calendar or set an alarm system as a reminder if you need some aid keeping self-control. If you discover it difficult to believe the declarations in the beginning, that's fine. Remember, you remain in training mode. By doing this exercise, you are proactively working with re-wiring the brain and creating a brand-new behavior. At some point what your heart desires and what your mind believes will align. Training your mind is like functioning a brand-new muscle. With normal engagement, there are durable effects. Pity for yourself while you do this job. Although you will never ever do away with your old patterns completely, it will be more challenging to slide back right into them as you create a much more positive expectation on life. It will resemble placing on clothing you have outgrown as well as no more require. At the time, they offered a function, today you have larger as well as far better options to pursue. As composed in the Structure for Inner Peace's A Course in Miracles, If you were to recall upon your life as well as reduce it to moment-by-moment frames, it would certainly come to be apparent every decision made was an option between a "complaint and a wonder." You've paid lots of tribute to your complaints, it's time to consider the miracles rather as well as see what life you can unfold for yourself. If you are really feeling called to grow your technique as well as aid others gain the rewards of a healthy, favorable way of living, obtaining licensed to show with Chopra Center Certifications may be the next step for you. Learn More.

[xoruffitup]

The Thing About Adam Driver

So I’ve fallen deeper and deeper into the Adam fangirl camp since TLJ came out, and in June I was crazy fortunate to get to see him at the Nantucket Film Festival. Since seeing him and hearing him speak there, my admiration went to a whole new level. Yes, he’s crazy beautiful and an insanely talented actor, but there’s something about who he is as a person that really strikes a chord. (Or at least what we get to see of him in public since obviously I don’t “know” him in any true sense) After seeing a recent post with old photos from his time in the Marines, I think I may finally have an idea of what it is I find so compelling about him.

Let’s consider what we know about Adam’s pre-acting life that he’s shared. He didn’t have much direction as a teenager - knowing he enjoyed acting but not knowing how to leverage that into a career. He’s made several comments to the effect of “I was weird looking as a teenager” or “I know I have a strange face”, hinting there was almost certainly some degree of insecurity or bullying regarding his appearance. We know he joined the Marines young and found meaningful camaraderie and confidence there. 

Now, let’s stop there for a second and pretend we don’t know what happens after. Let’s look at the kind of assumptions we might make about a person with this kind of early life experiences. Centrally, think about the notions of militant masculinity and bullish patriotism that are bound up in a military identity. The entire institution of the US military is a reinforcement of societal and gender norms that have been embedded in American society since its inception. Serving in the armed forces is not only a stamp of your patriotic dedication and sacrifice, but also of your masculine credibility as a “true man”.

I think what I admire most about Adam as a person is that he’s been steeped in the deepest pit of intense militant masculinity, and yet none of its toxic gendered attitudes stuck to him. Even knowing how deeply his experience in the Marines must have impacted him, what did he do afterwards? Went to acting school. He turned to the arts to support his transition back to civilian life and followed his calling there; He embraced something that at its most essential form is the complete opposite of the traditional military persona. In its essence, theatre is about engendering empathy for others who are different from you and finding a connection or commonality with them through shared emotional experience. When faced with that difficult military -> civilian transition, the easiest militant/masculine response would NOT be to take up a more emotional and potentially vulnerable avenue, but to act out in close-mindedness or maybe even violence instead. But Adam’s attitude towards acting and the arts more generally was to embrace modes of expression and behavior that militant masculinity might discount as “weak” or “feminine” - And he turned these into a force for good for himself personally, and later for his nonprofit as well. 

In the Vice documentary about Arts In The Armed Forces, Adam speaks about how hard it was to initially gain credibility and convince military audiences why theatre is valuable. A big part of that resistance is definitely due to gendered attitudes of disregarding the arts as frivolous or useless. Yet, Adam remains so respectful of both sides of those traditional attitudes and in himself combines them in such a humble and unassuming way. He navigates the military space and feels at home there, and uses the confidence he gained there to carry theatre and the arts into this space where it hasn’t often been welcome. He doesn’t do it to prove a point, but to share what he knows to be the transformative and empowering effect of engagement with the arts. As he calls it in his Ted Talk - the “weapon of self-expression.”

When you look back at the little we know of his early life (a kid with big ears who likely didn’t have it easy) and then his military experience, he looks on paper like someone who might have every reason to slide into the traditional close-minded, tough-guy identity exemplified in the military. But instead, for him the masculinity pushed by the military experience became a force for positive progressiveness. He’s said in interviews that after the Marines, he thought that any challenge in civilian life would be negligible in comparison, and he felt empowered to do anything he wanted. He channeled that empowerment into artistic engagement and expression - Emboldened to take the route less traveled, especially by ex-Marines. THIS is what he chose to do with the influence of his military experience. And in AITAF, he went on to become an advocate for challenging and redefining the narrowness of the military identity that usually impedes its members from the heightened self-understanding and expression offered by the arts.

Then add to all of that how he seems totally unconscious of being a trailblazer, and can’t get out of a room fast enough when people start praising him for anything. Add that he openly acknowledges his privilege as a straight white man. Add that he never wants to make his characters or performances about himself, and always ranks his own opinions or sensitivities so far below the needs of a production and the quality of the audience’s experience. Add that this man was a US Marine and was trained for firefights, and I felt nervous to say something to him when I briefly found myself standing next to him in a parking lot in Nantucket because he seems shy and I was afraid of making him uncomfortable. 

And... of course there’s the fact that he looks like this :’)

*Ahem* So IN CONCLUSION: Adam Driver is a wonder, we are not worthy, but I will nonetheless soldier on fangirling out here like it’s my PhD topic. :’) I apologize this got weirdly intense?! It all kind of came to me in an epiphany moment and I had to write through the feels. He gives them in abundance!

PS: In case anyone’s interested in my straight up shameless fangirl recap of seeing him at the Nantucket Film Festival!

[theamazingsallyhogan]

Game of Thrones, in its eighth and final season, is as big as television gets these days. More than 17 million people watched the season’s opening. Judging by the fan and critic reaction though, it seems that a substantial portion of those millions are loathing the season. Indeed, most of the reviews and fan discussions seem to be pondering where the acclaimed series went wrong, with many theories on exactly why it went downhill.

The show did indeed take a turn for the worse, but the reasons for that downturn goes way deeper than the usual suspects that have been identified (new and inferior writers, shortened season, too many plot holes). It’s not that these are incorrect, but they’re just superficial shifts. In fact, the souring of Game of Thrones exposes a fundamental shortcoming of our storytelling culture in general: we don’t really know how to tell sociological stories.

At its best, GOT was a beast as rare as a friendly dragon in King’s Landing: it was sociological and institutional storytelling in a medium dominated by the psychological and the individual. This structural storytelling era of the show lasted through the seasons when it was based on the novels by George R. R. Martin, who seemed to specialize in having characters evolve in response to the broader institutional settings, incentives and norms that surround them.

After the show ran ahead of the novels, however, it was taken over by powerful Hollywood showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Some fans and critics have been assuming that the duo changed the narrative to fit Hollywood tropes or to speed things up, but that’s unlikely. In fact, they probably stuck to the narrative points that were given to them, if only in outline form, by the original author. What they did is something different, but in many ways more fundamental: Benioff and Weiss steer the narrative lane away from the sociological and shifted to the psychological. That’s the main, and often only, way Hollywood and most television writers tell stories.

This is an important shift to dissect because whether we tell our stories primarily from a sociological or psychological point of view has great consequences for how we deal with our world and the problems we encounter.

I encounter this shortcoming a lot in my own area of writing—technology and society. Our inability to understand and tell sociological stories is one of the key reasons we’re struggling with how to respond to the historic technological transition we’re currently experiencing with digital technology and machine intelligence—but more on all that later. Let’s first go over what happened to Game of Thrones.

WHAT STORYTELLING IT WAS AND WHAT IT BECAME IN GOT

It’s easy to miss this fundamental narrative lane change and blame the series’ downturn on plain old bad writing by Benioff and Weiss—partly because they are genuinely bad at it. They didn’t just switch the explanatory dynamics of the story, they did a terrible job in the new lane as well.

One could, for example, easily focus on the abundance of plot holes. The dragons, for example seem to switch between comic-book indestructible to vulnerable from one episode to another. And it was hard to keep a straight face when Jaime Lannister ended up on a tiny cove along a vast, vast shoreline at the exact moment the villain Euron Greyjoy swam to that very point from his sinking ship to confront him. How convenient!

Similarly, character arcs meticulously drawn over many seasons seem to have been abandoned on a whim, turning the players into caricatures instead of personalities. Brienne of Tarth seems to exist for no reason, for example; Tyrion Lannister is all of a sudden turned into a murderous snitch while also losing all his intellectual gifts (he hasn’t made a single correct decision the entire season). And who knows what on earth is up with Bran Stark, except that he seems to be kept on as some sort of extra Stark?

But all that is surface stuff. Even if the new season had managed to minimize plot holes and avoid clunky coincidences and a clumsy Arya ex machina as a storytelling device, they couldn’t persist in the narrative lane of the past seasons. For Benioff and Weiss, trying to continue what Game of Thrones had set out to do, tell a compelling sociological story, would be like trying to eat melting ice cream with a fork. Hollywood mostly knows how to tell psychological, individualized stories. They do not have the right tools for sociological stories, nor do they even seem to understand the job.

To understand the narrative lane shift, let’s go back to a key question: Why did so many love Game of Thrones in the first place? What makes it stand out from so many other shows during an era critics call the Second Golden Age of Television because there are so many high-quality productions out there?

The initial fan interest and ensuing loyalty wasn’t just about the brilliant acting and superb cinematography, sound, editing and directing. None of those are that unique to GOT, and all of them remain excellent through this otherwise terrible last season.

One clue is clearly the show’s willingness to kill off major characters, early and often, without losing the thread of the story. TV shows that travel in the psychological lane rarely do that because they depend on viewers identifying with the characters and becoming invested in them to carry the story, rather than looking at the bigger picture of the society, institutions and norms that we interact with and which shape us. They can’t just kill major characters because those are the key tools with which they’re building the story and using as hooks to hold viewers.

In contrast, Game of Thrones killed Ned Stark abruptly at the end of the first season, after building the whole season and, by implication, the entire series around him. The second season developed a replacement Stark heir, which appeared like a more traditional continuation of the narrative. The third season, however, had him and his pregnant wife murdered in a particularly bloody way. And so it went. The story moved on; many characters did not.

The appeal of a show that routinely kills major characters signals a different kind of storytelling, where a single charismatic and/or powerful individual, along with his or her internal dynamics, doesn’t carry the whole narrative and explanatory burden. Given the dearth of such narratives in fiction and in TV, this approach clearly resonated with a large fan base that latched on to the show.

In sociological storytelling, the characters have personal stories and agency, of course, but those are also greatly shaped by institutions and events around them. The incentives for characters’ behavior come noticeably from these external forces, too, and even strongly influence their inner life.

People then fit their internal narrative to align with their incentives, justifying and rationalizing their behavior along the way. (Thus the famous Upton Sinclair quip: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”)

The overly personal mode of storytelling or analysis leaves us bereft of deeper comprehension of events and history. Understanding Hitler’s personality alone will not tell us much about rise of fascism, for example. Not that it didn’t matter, but a different demagogue would probably have appeared to take his place in Germany in between the two bloody world wars in the 20th century. Hence, the answer to “would you kill baby Hitler?,” sometimes presented as an ethical time-travel challenge, should be “no,” because it would very likely not matter much. It is not a true dilemma.

We also have a bias for the individual as the locus of agency in interpreting our own everyday life and the behavior of others. We tend to seek internal, psychological explanations for the behavior of those around us while making situational excuses for our own. This is such a common way of looking at the world that social psychologists have a word for it: the fundamental attribution error.

When someone wrongs us, we tend to think they are evil, misguided or selfish: a personalized explanation. But when we misbehave, we are better at recognizing the external pressures on us that shape our actions: a situational understanding. If you snap at a coworker, for example, you may rationalize your behavior by remembering that you had difficulty sleeping last night and had financial struggles this month. You’re not evil, just stressed! The coworker who snaps at you, however, is more likely to be interpreted as a jerk, without going through the same kind of rationalization. This is convenient for our peace of mind, and fits with our domain of knowledge, too. We know what pressures us, but not necessarily others.

That tension between internal stories and desires, psychology and external pressures, institutions, norms and events was exactly what Game of Thrones showed us for many of its characters, creating rich tapestries of psychology but also behavior that was neither saintly nor fully evil at any one point. It was something more than that: you could understand why even the characters undertaking evil acts were doing what they did, how their good intentions got subverted, and how incentives structured behavior. The complexity made it much richer than a simplistic morality tale, where unadulterated good fights with evil.

The hallmark of sociological storytelling is if it can encourage us to put ourselves in the place of any character, not just the main hero/heroine, and imagine ourselves making similar choices. “Yeah, I can see myself doing that under such circumstances” is a way into a broader, deeper understanding. It’s not just empathy: we of course empathize with victims and good people, not with evildoers.

But if we can better understand how and why characters make their choices, we can also think about how to structure our world that encourages better choices for everyone. The alternative is an often futile appeal to the better angels of our nature. It’s not that they don’t exist, but they exist along with baser and lesser motives. The question isn’t to identify the few angels but to make it easier for everyone to make the choices that, collectively, would lead us all to a better place.

Another example of sociological TV drama with a similarly enthusiastic fan following is David Simon’s The Wire, which followed the trajectory of a variety of actors in Baltimore, ranging from African-Americans in the impoverished and neglected inner city trying to survive, to police officers to journalists to unionized dock workers to city officials and teachers. That show, too, killed off its main characters regularly, without losing its audience. Interestingly, the star of each season was an institution more than a person. The second season, for example, focused on the demise of the unionized working class in the U.S.; the fourth highlighted schools; and the final season focused on the role of journalism and mass media.

Luckily for The Wire, creative control never shifted to the standard Hollywood narrative writers who would have given us individuals to root for or hate without being able to fully understand the circumstances that shape them. One thing that’s striking about The Wire is how one could understand all the characters, not just the good ones (and in fact, none of them were just good or bad). When that’s the case, you know you’re watching a sociological story.

WHY GOT PAUSED KILLING MAJOR CHARACTERS

Tellingly, season eight shocked many viewers by … not initially killing off the main characters. It was the first big indicator of their shift—that they were putting the weight of the story on the individual and abandoning the sociological. In that vein, they had fan-favorite characters pull off stunts we could root and cheer for, like Arya Stark killing the Night King in a somewhat improbable fashion.

For seven seasons, the show had focused on the sociology of what an external, otherized threat—such as the Night King, the Army of the Undead and the Winter to Come—would do to competing rivalries within the opposing camp. Having killed one of the main sociological tensions that had animated the whole series with one well-placed knife-stab, Benioff and Weiss then turned to ruining the other sociological tension: the story of the corruption of power.

This corruption of power was crucially illustrated in Cersei Lannister’s rise and evolution from victim (if a selfish one) to evil actor, and this was clearly meant also to be the story of her main challenger, Daenerys Targaryen. Dany had started out wanting to be the breaker of chains, with moral choices weighing heavily on her, and season by season, we have witnessed her, however reluctantly, being shaped by the tools that were available to her and that she embraced: war, dragons, fire.

Done right, it would have been a fascinating and dynamic story: rivals transforming into each other as they seek absolute power with murderous tools, one starting from a selfish perspective (her desire to have her children rule) and the other from an altruistic one (her desire to free slaves and captive people, of which she was once one).

The corruption of power is one of the most important psychosocial dynamics behind many important turning points in history, and in how the ills of society arise. In response, we have created elections, checks and balances, and laws and mechanisms that constrain the executive.

Destructive historical figures often believe that they must stay in power because it is they, and only they, who can lead the people—and that any alternative would be calamitous. Leaders tend to get isolated, become surrounded by sycophants and succumb easily to the human tendency to self-rationalize. There are several examples in history of a leader who starts in opposition with the best of intentions, like Dany, and ends up acting brutally and turning into a tyrant if they take power.

Told sociologically, Dany’s descent into a cruel mass-murderer would have been a strong and riveting story. Yet in the hands of two writers who do not understand how to advance the narrative in that lane, it became ridiculous. She attacks King’s Landing with Drogon, her dragon, and wins, with the bells of the city ringing in surrender. Then, suddenly, she goes on a rampage because, somehow, her tyrannical genes turn on.

Varys, the advisor who will die for trying to stop Dany, says to Tyrion that “every time a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.” That is straight-up and simplistic genetic determinism, rather than what we had been witnessing for the past seven seasons. Again, sociological stories don’t discount the personal, psychological and even the genetic, but the key point is that they are more than “coin tosses”—they are complex interactions with emergent consequences: the way the world actually works.

In interviews after that episode, Benioff and Weiss confess that they turned it into a spontaneous moment. Weiss says, “ I don’t think she decided ahead of time that she was going to do what she did. And then she sees the Red Keep, which is, to her, the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago. It’s in that moment, on the walls of King’s Landing, when she’s looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, when she makes the decision to make this personal.”

Benioff and Weiss were almost certainly given the “Mad Queen” ending to Game of Thrones by the original writer, George R. R. Martin. For them, however, this was the eating-ice-cream-with-a-fork problem I mentioned above. They could keep the story, but not the storytelling method. They could only make it into a momentary turn that is part spontaneous psychology and part deterministic genetics.

WHY SOCIOLOGICAL STORYTELLING MATTERS

Whether done well or badly, the psychological/internal genre leaves us unable to understand and react to social change. Arguably, the dominance of the psychological and hero/antihero narrative is also the reason we are having such a difficult time dealing with the current historic technology transition. So this essay is more than about one TV show with dragons.

In my own area of research and writing, the impact of digital technology and machine intelligence on society, I encounter this obstacle all the time. There are a significant number of stories, books, narratives and journalistic accounts that focus on the personalities of key players such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey and Jeff Bezos. Of course, their personalities matter, but only in the context of business models, technological advances, the political environment, (lack of) meaningful regulation, the existing economic and political forces that fuel wealth inequality and lack of accountability for powerful actors, geopolitical dynamics, societal characteristics and more.

It’s reasonable, for example, for a corporation to ponder who would be the best CEO or COO, but it’s not reasonable for us to expect that we could take any one of those actors and replace them with another person and get dramatically different results without changing the structures, incentives and forces that shape how they and their companies act in this world.

The preference for the individual and psychological narrative is understandable: the story is easier to tell as we gravitate toward identifying with the hero or hating the antihero, at the personal level. We are, after all, also persons!

In German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s classic play, Life of Galileo,Andrea, a former pupil of Galileo, visits him after he recants his seminal findings under pressure from the Catholic Church. Galileo gives Andrea his notebooks, asking him to spread the knowledge they contain. Andrea celebrates this, saying “unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo corrects him: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”

Well-run societies don’t need heroes, and the way to keep terrible impulses in check isn’t to dethrone antiheros and replace them with good people. Unfortunately, most of our storytelling—in fiction and also in mass media nonfiction—remains stuck in the hero/antihero narrative. It’s a pity Game of Thrones did not manage to conclude its last season in its original vein. In a historic moment that requires a lot of institution building and incentive changing (technological challenges, climate change, inequality and accountability) we need all the sociological imagination we can get, and fantasy dragons or not, it was nice to have a show that encouraged just that while it lasted.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

[centerforhci]

Why I’m A Hypocrite And My Challenge With Mental Energy

I’m a hypocrite. There, I said it.

Leadership, both personal and professional, is an energy game. But it takes more than physical energy for peak performance. Leaders need abundant physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy to manage their stress and perform their best. And just like professional athletes, leaders need to train properly, regularly and on purpose to achieve the results they’re after. I help leaders do just that in Lunch & Learns, half-day workshops and even 8-week online courses.

So here I was—teaching leaders how to balance their energy—yet grinding my teeth at night. Waking up in the middle of the night with my heart racing, thinking about work and then getting up at 3am to answer emails. Snapping at my team for no reason, putting undue pressure on them.

I’m Good at Talking the Talk, But I Haven’t Been Walking the Walk

I was not walking the walk and practicing my own teachings. It was time to step back and assess what was going on. I was totally out of whack! So I did an energy assessment of myself, just like I would for a client.

My Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual Energy Level Assessment

• Physical: I eat well and exercise regularly. My recent check-up showed that I had the physical energy of someone a decade younger.

• Emotional: My EQ is fairly high. When I’m not stressed, I can manage difficult situations and people with empathy and patience.

• Spiritual: I know my values and refer to them regularly.

• Mental: I have the attention span of a flea; I can’t focus on anything for more than a few minutes, and my brain is on constant overdrive. No surprise that this is my weakest area. In fact, my husband calls me a shark, because I literally can’t sit down for more than an hour without jumping up to do something.

I Have the Attention Span of a Flea

Hmmm.. this is going to be a challenge. Ask me to run a marathon and I’ll train daily for it. Tell me to go gluten-free and I’m on a baking frenzy. Offer me the chance to work with emotional teams and I can’t wait. Tell me something ‘can’t be done’ and I will find a solution or at least a work-around. Yet, invite me to sit and read a book? I read the first chapter and then the last chapter (no joke) to save time. Buy me a cuppa? I’ll start getting antsy after 30 minutes. So working on my mental energy to improve my focus is going to be hard.

Very hard.

My Shark-Like Behavior Was Impacting My Family and Team

Yet I had to do it. Not only was my shark-like behavior impacting my sleep, it was also impacting my team and family. In addition, I felt like a total hypocrite. It’s like Ellen Page saying she had to come out while filming Freeheld; I can’t teach energy management and not practice it myself.

So where to begin on this journey?

I Started With My Limiting Beliefs

First, I had to look at my limiting beliefs, or the things I thought were true that held me back from changing my behaviors. In general, our society is addicted to activity, and rewards constant busyness. We applaud the person who pulled the all-nighter; we recognize the person who stayed late to get the job done. Yet there is no such fanfare for the person who leaves at 5pm; in fact, those people are ridiculed in certain organizational cultures as weak or not team players. In addition, it’s frowned upon to take all your vacation time or take any downtime at all.

This perception is problematic for many reasons but one of those reasons is factual. The University of California put out some interesting research on the upsides of downtime. The research says:

“You can’t think without space. If you’re always doing something, there’s no way to get anything new into your mind; there’s no way to reach new conclusions.”

Why? Because unstructured time stimulates the ‘default mode network’ part of the brain, where creativity and problem solving happen. When we perform any task at all, no matter how small, our brain switches to the ‘executive network control’, which is related to deductive reasoning. So it’s when we sit back and let our minds wander, that the creative ‘default mode’ kicks in.

Even Though I Fully Knew the Benefits of Downtime, I Was at Super-Shark Speed

My limiting belief was that ‘downtime is for wimps’. The research proved me wrong. My mind was buying into the idea but my body was resisting. Even though I fully knew the benefits of downtime, I was at super-shark speed, racing around the house to get things done.

What would I tell a client in my position? I’d tell them they needed to practice downtime.

I’m a kinesthetic learner, which means I need to touch something to learn it well. So I had to find a role model to physically, literally show me what down time looks like. I had no idea how to ‘do’ downtime.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to look too far: my husband. He cherishes his downtime; I don’t mean just an hour here or there. He is fully committed to detox Sundays, where he just kicks back and reads the newspaper…the old fashioned thing made from trees. He totally unplugs and sometimes won’t even get in a car.

I Started My Practice Small, Slowly Building Mental Muscle

So I started small. I sat down for 15 minutes to read a magazine. Then I got up to plan my work for the week. Then I sat down for 20 minutes to close my eyes on the couch. Then I jumped up, feeling guilty that I hadn’t wrapped the holiday gifts. Then I allowed myself to watch a TV show, once all the ‘work had been done’. Little by little, week after week, I taught myself to chill. Stare out a window. Pet our cats. Listen to music. Snuggle in bed with our daughter. Sit on a plane without compulsively checking email. It was torture. I wanted to jump out of my skin. I wanted to do something, anything, please give me a task! Yet, I knew that I was slowly building a muscle, just like going to the gym.

I Taught Myself to Chill

And the impact was clear, both at home and work. At home, I was more patient and easier to be around. I stopped grinding my teeth and actually slept through the whole night. At work, I started enjoying writing again. It was no longer a chore. The ideas flowed out of me and actually became my most popular leadership posts, such as this one on surfing and this one on EQ. And my best product ideas and client ideas came from daydreaming out the window.

The best part? I no longer feel like a hypocrite. I’m a leader who inspires other leaders to manage their energy, all of it, for peak performance.

Do you think you need more practice managing your physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual energy? I’d love to hear what challenges you have and how you face those challenges.

Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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[dailyskillslearning-blog]

Why people Skill Is Inevitable For Any Professional Today?

In an increasingly technological world, people first think of building technical skills when trying to make themselves employable. However, people skills — how you communicate with others, behave in a team environment and accept personal responsibility — top lists of employment skills. 

While these skills aren't usually taught in schools, a flourishing industry of books and online classes can help you develop these abilities. In the meantime, here are some simple things you can do to learn five of the most important interpersonal skills for the workplace.

1. Listen attentively

The most important thing you can do to be a better listener is look directly at the person speaking. The advice your mom gave you is the same that management consultants like Babbitt give their clients.

"Too often, rather than being fully engaged in the conversation we're in right now, our brains are set on multitasking mode," he said. "Our eyes are on a device or laptop. Our minds are onto the next project. To set yourself apart, attentively and enthusiastically listen to the human conversation happening right in front of you."  

You should also focus on the speaker's intent, said Brit Poulson, psychologist, leadership development expert and author of "Clarity Compass" (Vision Creation, Inc., 2017). He recommended paraphrasing what the person said to make sure you're getting his or her meaning.

"What you want to focus on is the reason for their speaking. Paraphrase in a way that reflects the primary reason for their talking," Poulson said.

2) The Ability to Relate to Others. 

“Having the ability to relate to others and their position or viewpoint is crucial in business,” Hockett says. “By having a well-rounded personality and set of experiences, it’s usually possible to relate to almost anyone.” Sometimes being able to relate to others simply means that you’re willing to agree to disagree with mutual respect; letting them know you understand their position.

3) Strong communication skills. 

This is the most fundamental people skill because it encompasses your persona and ability to get along with other colleagues, persuade others to listen to your ideas, and much more, Taylor says. “If you have a gift for the spoken and written word, you will always put your best foot forward. Being articulate is highly prized in today’s workplace, when time is at a premium and technology requires constant communication.”

4) The Value of Patience

Patience is an exceptional people skill that is valuable in every profession. Patience involves being able to maintain an even temper, to repeat and explain information as necessary and to control anger in even the most trying situations. Those in customer service, complaint departments and human resources roles should work particularly hard at developing this skill.

5) The Ability to Have Empathy

Empathy is the ability to have a visceral understanding of what another person is going through. This skill allows you to put yourself in another person’s place and recognize the thoughts, emotions and experiences that person is having. The ability to have empathy allows a person to give more personal levels of attention and care and to provide a sympathetic listening platform. Developing this skill is particularly advantageous for those working in healthcare, childcare or educational roles.

6) Conflict Resolution Skills

Having the ability to mediate disputes and resolve conflict among customers and colleagues is an important professional skill. Conflict resolution involves the ability to clarify a specific dispute, listen in a non-judgmental manner to both perspectives and offer suggestions for reaching an equitable compromise. This ability can help keep peace in a workplace, stem inner-office issues and maintain high customer satisfaction levels. This trait is especially helpful for those working in managerial or oversight capacities.

7) Project a positive attitude

A positive attitude does not mean being a "yes man or woman" or a Pollyanna, but rather being up to the challenge, Babbitt said.

Being positive in a "glass-half-full" way "does nothing to show me how someone will respond to an opportunity, challenge or potential crisis," said Babbitt. "Instead, I look for someone with the confidence to say, 'Hey, we got this. Let's go to work.'"

Projecting optimism in the workplace isn't always easy, said Babbitt, and it's simple to tell when someone's faking it. When you're feeling less than positive, find ways to refocus your energy, he said.

"Take a walk around the building. Breathe. Think. Deliberately bring yourself back to why you're here, your specific role and the mission of your team," Babbitt told Business News Daily. "Once you're fully and sincerely able to help produce a positive outcome and are ready to lead by example, walk up to your team at a determined pace — and get to work."

Having an attitude of gratitude can also boost your positive at work: "Using 'please' and 'thank you' goes a long way in the realm of people skills," national workplace expert Lynn Taylor wrote in a Forbes magazine article.

Politeness can make a difficult task easier, and sincere gratitude makes people feel good about themselves and the work they did, Taylor said.

When workers know how to conduct themselves with people sensitivity, their career outlook is much more enhanced,” Taylor says. “Employees who are aware of the ‘human factor’ in the workplace understand how to get things done.” Assuming the work is satisfying, it’s how people feel at work that will determine their loyalty and contributions.

Hockett concludes: “Nowadays many of us live in two worlds, the real and digital one. Make sure that your people skills are consistent across both.”