#goddamn tag limit I just want to put 80% of the post in the tags

[spicyicymeloncat]

Wait when is dragons rising??? Damn I haven’t even finished crystalised yet

[princeanxious]

What art are you most proud of? And please show us a pic if you can! <3

Not gonna lie, this was actually p hard to answer. I’m honestly proud of any piece I get done, especially any full body, full color, full background pieces, and I refuse to let myself out-right hate anything that I draw in general now-a-days, unfinished or no. I draw for fun, always have, so I try not to put too much worry on how good something looks so long as it gets my idea across in a way that I like, or that I tried?? (And ik being proud of a piece doesnt have to tie into what the end result looks like, im just covering that base) I looked through all of my recent digital art on my ipad(that i’ve had what, 3-4 years at this point?) and found myself about just as happy with each finished piece-

-Except one. There is one piece that I forget about constantly but I’m honestly super proud of the amount of effort it had put in to reach the end result. It probably sees a number of glances infrequently(due to my sporatic activity on said blog) but isnt posted to this blog’s art tag.

It’s the blog banner I drew for my @thelostguardianau fic, of the(at the time) whole cast in the au. You can find the post to reblog it from here but i’m also adding it below for reference. (* and honestly I’ll mention every other art piece in this au posted to it’s blog stands at having this same proudness, as each individual characters complicated design fed into this big banner, each one having a giant set of uniquely drawn wings, complex body markings, and unique clothing and features. And I would not have been able to complete this banner without having those singular character chart pieces finished first, except for Thomas’s design, who has yet to be posted for ✨reasons✨)

This fricking Banner was and still is(for now, *wink*) the most ambitious piece I’ve managed to finish. It took me so long, my wrist hated me, my ipad hated me, my ipencil hated me, medibang hated me, this piece pushed the limits of the poor app. Every time I try and open this piece up on the app it takes a solid couple seconds to open, save, and close.

From sketching to lining every single character, to having to uniquely match up Their Wing Sizes and Heights, because Guardians are fucking Tall, so Wing size and Height size was hell to calculate and portray. Why, you might ask?

Because I was limited to the proportions that would actually fit into a tumblr mobile banner. Which, funfact, is much smaller than you’d think!

I had to make sure they’d all fit, wings and all. And they didnt fcking want to. But I made it fit, because I wanted a full body + wings cast banner and goddamn it that was going to happen. And I did. And I lost a fuck-off amount of detail-space for it.

Coloring it wasn’t exactly difficult, but I will once again point back to this app hating this piece and it draining my battery because of it. I work in layers. My lineart will have 5-6 different layers in color before I combine them and set the hue to black, but I still keep my lineart seperate in that each character has their own lineart, and the background lineart is seperate.

I had their lineart, and probably still do, seperated into Seven different layers, one per character, each one w/ an extra masking layer for their wing glow. Each character got their own folder for colors, and had multiple layers for each colored section: clothing, skin, skin blush + eye whites, hair, wings, body markings, marking glow. And then there was the background layers, and the glowing affects, ect. The whole piece stands at having about 80 total layers having been used over the course of making it.

So yeah, Medibang does not like this piece when I try to open it. xD

But really, setting aside fighting and babying technology thats being pushed close to its limit, the real pride comes from the fact that this piece has Seven fully colored, near-full body characters drawn, all touching and interacting and accurate to the scale that I made. It is the most amount of characters in one piece that I’ve ever drawn, colored, and finished, and I’m pretty fricken proud of it.

Which makes it all the more daunting that said banner is going to get an upgrade, because it’s a Character Cast Banner after all, and its going to have four more fully designed and full winged characters added into it.

And by upgrade, I mean I get to redraw the whole dang thing. Because I gotta rearrange ✨everyone’s✨ positions. And at this point, the only way thats possible is by starting over.

wish me luck on that. o_o;

[floralgothpersephone]

Countdown

Sooooo.... several.... um months ago, I was tagged by @jaygirl987  and this has just been sitting in my drafts... forever??? oops. Oh well, I am feeling in an over-sharing mood. So I am going to do it now. Felt confident in sharing, might delete later. Response is below the cut, because we are writing essays tonight. 

Rules: List 1 Insecurity, 2 Fears, 3 Turn-ons, 4 Life Goals, 5 Things I like, 6 Weaknesses, 7 Things I Love, 8 Tags  I am going to tag: @akai-vampire, @claudeng80, @bookloverfio, @bigprincess-energy, @peachdoxie, @ruleofexception, @infinitelystrangemachinex, @anais-mitchell

ONE Insecurity:

---People who meet me for the first time always say I am remarkable. But I don’t really agree with that at all, I still don’t understand where people get that from. I feel very desperately flawed and a moderately dysfunctional human doing my damned best with what I’ve got, and isn’t that just a normal state of being for everyone making their way in this life. And if people say I am remarkable, and it turns out to be true, then does that mean I am not normal??? How is everyone else living their life then? What am I doing wrong??? or right?? or differently??? How do I bottle up this whole remarkable thing and share it with everyone else?? Being called remarkable makes me fear for everyone else. Because if i am struggling this much, and people still seem to think I am amazing then does that mean everyone else who is struggling is failing in some reguard?  I have met so many other people in the world who are just as special as me, and if i am raised above that then what about all those other people? Aren’t they remarkable too? Kinda takes away the meaning of remarkable then, if everyone else is also remarkable. I don’t know. Every time I meet someone new and they call me remarkable it makes my skin crawl. What sort of face are they seeing me wear that makes it happen so often? I just try and be myself, and stay true to who I am in any given moment but then that makes their statement have more power? I hate it. Nothing makes me more insecure. I can go from full blown confidence down to nothing the moment someone says that about me. I know I am odd and don’t quite function right in society, and have a very different perspective on it because of my dysfunction, but that shouldn’t make me remarkable. There are too many other people in this world for me to be remarkable. 

TWO Fears:

---I may never get to see Amber Gray perform Persephone in Hadestown

---Cockroaches. Turns out I have an actual phobia of cockroaches. 

THREE “turn-ons”: 

---Silly Antics, like sheer outrageous, ridiculous things that make you laugh until you cry. Like, I fall in love a little bit with everyone who has ever made me laugh. So like, the more you make me the laugh the more I look at that and go, “mhm tasty”. Also, if we are not laughing at some point during sex then what even is the point??? 

--- Loyalty, Reliability and just being supportive and a good friend. Like, I am very much very very demisexual and while I can look at people and love their look and their aesthetics and be attracted to that, I need a very firm established relationship for like... years, before I am ever actually interested in letting them into my bed. I need some definite proof that they are in this for the long run before I can let my sexuality come into play.  

---Being crafty and creative. Seeing someone make a very nice craft gets me all worked up in ways I can’t quite describe. But every time a partner of mine starts a project and is making things I want to jump their  b o n e s. 

FOUR Life Goals:

---Get my ass to fucking Greece and like. Stay there. For months. And just travel??? And like, take my time, no rushing around to do every single thing. I want to go to these places and be there for so long that I can just sit and be. 

---B a b i e s. Dear lordy if you look at every major decision i have ever made in my life, it has all lead up to the fact that I want to have kids, and I want to have a family in a very specific supportive and stable way and I need to complete these things before i can have my kids. BUT BOY THE HORMONES ARE STRONG AND I WANT THEM NOW. 

---Can I put travel twice? Travel is so important to me. I have to see the world, I need to map it. I need to see all the different types of humans and cultures there are in the world and I need to experience what there is in this life before its all over. 

---I have this home I like to dream about, its constantly changing, but its small, while having enough space to breathe, covered in plants, an entire wall that is just a bookcase to store the entirety of Alex and I’s mug collection (we are looking at least 80 mugs between the two of us currently). A claw foot bathtub in a room full of windows that is just a glorified greenhouse really. comfy reading nooks and places for play, covered in nothing but soft blankets and cushioned seats. A cat or two lounging around among all the soft places in the sun light. Walls covered in cork boards so that I can pin up hundreds of pictures of the family I have built for myself. Little foot steps running around from kids playing, and having my partners home with me to cook and raise the little ones together in a family and a community. I just. I just want that little domestic haven of something calm and secure that I never got to have growing up in my life. 

FIVE Things I Like:

---Pottery!  (my craft of choice, I’ve been making pots for 17 years now and it never gets old) 

---Plants! (I live in a small jungle! I’m a plant witch! I love my plants! They are my only friends some days! But thats okay, I take care of them and in return they take care of me.) 

---Places! (I’m a map maker, I love learning about the identity of a location both on a map and within the human mind. How amazing that a collection of humans create an identity for a geographical space separate from other all the other geographical spaces. That’s wild! I want to learn what makes them all different forever!) 

---Purple! (My hair is purple, its been purple since I started grad school! I flirted with pink hair and orange hair last year to try on different types of variety and see how that fit but I am back to purple and I am back to my normal skin! My purple hair is the source of my internal confidence and a major point of my identity) 

---Music! (I am not sure I  would ever be able to navigate my own mental landscape without the aid of music guiding me through all my different emotions and feelings so that I could have a safe place to experience them without fear of repercussion) 

SIX Weaknesses:

---I over think everything (case and point, this post, whoops) 

---An open opportunity. Like, if I am given an opportunity suddenly that wasn’t previously available and wouldn’t be available in the future, I will move mountains to make it happen. If I see a window to be able to do something with a time limit I am jumpin as fast as I can to get through that window before it closes. I think its because I grew up with zero opportunities in my life when I was little so somewhere in my bones I believe that every opportunity I get is rare and special thing and if I don’t take it now then I won’t ever get another one. Sometimes its exhausting but I can’t honestly say there is a list of things that I could have done that I didn’t? I have very little regrets in that regard. 

---I am willing to see and recognized my flawed personality traits, but rarely ever actually do anything to fix them. I am a big of a believer in accepting yourself with all the flaws (part of the side effects of recovering from perfectionism) but that mentality has a different problem... in which you are so comfortable with the problems that you don’t have any desire to fix them? Yeah.  

---Um, I have a major weakness for brown eyed, brunette girls and have fallen waaaay too hard for too many of them in my life for it to not be a thing (that Alex teases me relentlessly about). Honestly the list is long, but good news. Fiona is on that list. <3

---Potential. I have a weakness for potential, sometimes that manifests in craft materials. (Oh I could make this into this other thing!) So I have quite the collection of crafting hoards. I rarely buy plants when they are big because I am far more interested in getting a small plant because of it its potential to grow into something. I love love love love working in clay because there is just SO MUCH potential for it to become really ANYTHING???? Its amazing!!! Like, if you imagine in there is a way to make it real. And I am obsessed with that feeling. 

--- I have a weakness for cream. I like half and half in my tea. I like whipped cream on my waffles. I like straight up cream on my strawberries. I like clotted cream on scones. I like creamy milkshakes. The creamiest of cheeses. If its a cream based sauce I’m in. Just. Cream. 

SEVEN Things I Love:

I just now realized that there is a difference in the lists for “like” and “love” LOL there is no difference to me. I have no moderation, I either love something with my whole heart or not at all. So lets wax some poetry on things I have already listed, because the things I like I also love. 

--- Okay, pottery, so like, Pottery is amazing??? Because you take dirt!!! like muddy gross squishy dirt!!!! and you mold it into something you like???? And then you FIRE IT!!! Like how metal is that???? You are creating something from DIRT. And on top of that, it lasts FOREVER. like, people hundreds of years from now are gonna be digging up our civilization and our computers are going to be dead, our papers and paintings: dead, our books? Hopefully not dead. But whats going to be left is our city foundations, our places, our trash and our shitty broken pots. And goddamn, I am obsessed with looking around our world and just IMAGINING what these people in the far off future are gonna think. And there isn’t a single piece of pottery that I make in which I am not thinking those exact thoughts and trying to imagine what that person in the future is going to be like when they find this.

--- And on that note, places are just so fricking cool. Because I grew up in a mono-culture where the majority of the population belonged to the same culture and the identity of the place was a direct reflection of the people. But other places have SO MUCH DIVERSITY and I am just amazed and inspired about how you can take SO MANY PEOPLE from SO MANY DIFFERENT CULTURES and pack them all into a city, and then that city becomes its own culture??? and has its own Identity??? Like, New Yorkers, those people come from fucking everywhere on the entire planet, and YET everyone knows there is a New York culture that is just agreed upon? And New York has an cohesive identity to how it functions, and how it works. Just. How amazing is that. And Minneapolis, jeez, bless Minneapolis. Because it has the midwestern identity but its developing one all on its own. And it doesn’t have a National presence yet, so in a lot of ways its just developing its identity for the world and its just so amazing to see all the different ways that people provide input on how they want their city to develop, and with each step it comes closer and closer to a face it wants to display to the world??? Its like, seeing a teenage, trying out who they want to be and developing them self to become a real adult. And goddamnit I want to see Minneapolis into a fully mature Nationally known city. I can’t wait. 

---So plants, are like. The best therapy. Because plants don’t really talk, well okay I think they do, BUT PHYSICALLY, they don’t talk. And so in order to figure out what they need to you have to listen to them in a very different way then humans are used to?? You have to observe, and check-in and interact and just learn about a plant so that you can care for it. And I think thats exactly how humans are too, except we have this obnoxious thing called talking that sometimes make it difficult to actually figure out what is going on down below. Its easy for someone to say they are fine when they really are not. But plants don’t get to say that they are fine. When they suffer they do so silently and while they may want to scream for more water they have to let you know in other ways, drooping, changing color, dropping all its leaves in protest. And thats the other thing about plants too, is that every type of plant asks for help differently? How amazing is that. You have to get to know the plant on an individual level, there is no “one way fits all” fix-it for plant care. You have to know your plant. You don’t have to know all the plants in the world, just the ones you take into your care. And thats just so symbolic for me. And when I am taking care of my plants, I am taking care of myself too. Water for the plants, water for the Becca. Sunlight for the plants, sunlight for the Becca. Extra boost of fertilizer for the plants, extra boost of vitamins for the Becca. And I love my plants, even with their imperfections and wild ways of growing. Sometimes they get a whole lotta attitude in how they grow, and it isn’t picture perfect, but that doesn’t matter. Cause thats my plant! And its growing and thriving and I am so happy that its doing well! It doesn’t need to be the prettiest plant that ever existed. It just needs to live. And damn thats all I need. 

---Purple is just an amazing color. Like everyone has heard the poetry talking about the richness and royalty and the history that the color purple has. But for me? Purple was a color I was immediately drawn to as a kid for no apparent reason but that I liked it. And I was not allowed, because the color purple was Barney colors and my parents were so very concerned that the other kids would torment me (spoilers, the kids found other reasons to torment me, and I was just denied being allowed to wear my favorite color). And then there was the instance of my grandmother, who, lets be honest, doesn’t win any “good grandparent” awards. And she LOATHS the color purple. Just thinks its really ugly. And took every chance to tell me that whenever I went shopping with her or if she wanted to get me a gift and was looking for input. So i went through all these stages when I was little, only being allowed to like pink, but then internalized misogyny said that was dumb so then I chose blue to be my favorite color while completely denying that what I wanted was purple. So yeah. By the time college came around and I was an “adult” (lol) I was just like. Fuck this shit no one can tell me what I am allowed to like and claimed purple for everything in my life. and I mean. e v e r y t h i n g. Backpack? Purple. Every piece of clothing I owned? Purple. Jackets? Purple. ipod? Purple. Does the object come in purple? Yes. Well then that is the correct answer. When I broke down and finally dyed my hair purple (like I have wanted to do since I was little, but again, I was not allowed and can you imagine being a non-mormon kid in the little valley with purple hair in high school??? Fuck I would have been the anti-christ of all sinners.) But in Minneapolis it seemed like it would be far more acceptable and wouldn’t result in immediate social disgrace. So I did it. I graduated my undergrad and dyed my hair purple because I could. And it changed my entire life. No more wall-flowering. No more hiding in the shadows praying no one notices that you don’t quite belong. No more pretending that you don’t exist so that people can walk all over you as they pass by. When you have a wildly different color hair, you have to own it. There is no “oh haha, whoops” about it. You made that decision, you put the color in your hair with that intention. And now its there to stay until you cut it all off. And that was the kick in the butt for me. That was the thing I need to own my own self and to lay claim to my voice. And for a while, it wasn’t easy. It was learning a whole new skillset. And there was definitely a major time span that was just “fake it until you make it”. But I kept faking it for the sake of my purple hair, because every time I looked into the mirror it made me so happy I could cry. I wasn’t looking a the mirror nitpicking my reflection any more. I was just joyful, because my hair was purple and I loved it. So every time someone made a comment whether it was good or bad, I would be dying on the inside from having the attention on me. But I would pull out the big ole grin of joy that I wasn’t really feeling and be like “Yeah isn’t it great! Its my favorite color!” And the good comments would be happy for me, and the bad comments would be thrown off by my enthusiasm and usually go away. And at one point that big joyful grin wasn’t just a farce, and now, 9 years later, working for the federal government and people try and make a jab at my hair, I can just laugh and tell them how much fun having colorful hair is. And that they should give it a try too. 

[o-blivia]

... Five Years Later

I never set out to start an aesthetic blog, for as much as I’ve been curating one for the past half decade and counting. This whole thing started with the idea to start collecting images from around tumblr that sparked ideas for various writing projects without cluttering up my hard drives. It shouldn’t have been so surprising that not long after starting this habit, a cohesive, if eccentric, aesthetic began to emerge. There are a few well worn grooves in my mind when it comes to my artistic vision, I guess.

That vision has expanded and refined over the years, and curating o-blivia has become a project in its own right — independent of anything I’m writing even if it’s still a well for inspiration. And in this respect, o-blivia is meant to be more than an aesthetic, though it is that. Through imagery alone, I’ve been carving out something of a cyberpunk future. With that ever in the back of my mind when I sit down to tackle my queue for the day, a loose set of internal guidelines has developed for what does and doesn’t get posted. Figured it was time I expanded on them a bit, maybe involve you all in the process.

Firstly, the world is a complex, multifaceted place and I’ve always wanted o-blivia to reflect that in ways most cyberpunk works can’t while telling a specific narrative. That’s why it probably seems like I jump around a lot. Eclectic is a word for it, but it’s more the idea of presenting a rounded vision. In someways, this is my answer to where or how ordinary people are supposed to exist in the Cyberpunk Future(tm). Mainly, right mixed in with the mercs, cyborgs and basement hackers. Everybody’s gotta live somewhere.

Secondly, representation. Representation is achingly important. I’d hardly be the first to accuse the visual media in this genre of being whitewashed (blade runner, I’m looking at you,) nor to point out the absurdity of a globalized future lacking in diversity, and I’m not going to claim to be the first to refuse to perpetuate the tendency, either. It certainly wouldn’t reflect the world I live it. They call my country a cultural mosaic and my city a melting pot, so I’ve set myself the task of creating an equally rich fictional world — because we are the better for all our differing perspectives.

The thing about representation is it doesn’t mean shit if it isn’t done respectfully. It isn’t as though marginalized groups have been completely absent from media for the last century. The context in which they’ve been represented has been racist, demeaning and beyond disrespectful in much the same ways they’ve been treated in real life. Society is changing, and — albeit at a glacial pace — coming around to the idea that white people and their stories are not the universal default. For the longest time, there was next to no diversity in the cyberpunk tags on Tumblr. It’s gotten better, but I still feel that I have to put that extra bit of effort into finding and including images representing diverse groups in respectful, empowering and humanizing ways.

On the subject of representation and respect, I have to talk about my biggest peeve when it comes to cyberpunk Tumblr: the way women are portrayed, or the goddamned tactical bikini. Cyberpunk has a litany BAMF women characters, yet the art has remained firmly entrenched in trends that originated in the 80’s. The tendency is to have these big hulking male power fantasies decked head to toe in body armour and leather, while their female counterparts take up literally half the space, showing up to combat in daisy dukes and a bikini top wielding a big fuck-off gun like that’s how any sane person would show up to a gunfight.

There is nothing inherently shameful about the female body, I want to make that painfully and abundantly clear. My issue is not with how much skin is showing. No, my issue is that these images are meant to specifically portray women as sex object. The only conclusion you can come to is that these women have put appealing to the male gaze above bodily safety, which is beyond insane. So my rule when it comes to women with guns is that if she’s dressed in a way that is realistic, or that I could easily find a man similarly dressed, I will post it. If she’s dressed for a day at the beach instead of heavy combat, that shit is not getting anywhere near my blog.

That said, context is very important. So yes, I will post images of more provocatively dressed women if the context is right. Mainly, if she isn’t about to go into combat and the image is empowered. There is the odd exception, namely Tank Girl, who wields her sexuality like a weapon and pushes limit of provocative into the realm of raunchy with the intent to offend and scandalize. (She’s my hero.)

And above all else, on this blog, women are the default and not the other way around. So you will see at least as many, if not more women than men here. No, I don’t feel bad about it.

Lastly, it’s important that I address the depictions of violence and militarization that appear on o-blivia. It might seem incongruous with opinions I’ve expressed in the past, and with my own experience with gun violence, to have these depictions feature on my blog. I’m not a pacifist, even if violence is not something that I feel lives inside of me in anyway. Neither do I believe it realistic to expect a species as divisive and opinionated as we are to be capable of abandoning conflict and bloodshed any time soon. Someone is always going to find some way to be crueler, to inflict more suffering and pain, which means there needs to be someone to stop them.

I never set out in my mind to create some kind of utopian future — that’s not what cyberpunk is about by anyone’s definition. So to omit the presence of militarized forces, the threat of violence, or the realities of omnipresent surveillance would be disingenuous and would, I think, undermine what I am trying to create.  That said, I don’t seek to glorify violence, either. I don’t post images of firearms on their own, even if the image would fit the aesthetic, and I don’t post images where proper trigger discipline is not being respected. Guns exist, theres no way around that, but they should be treated with the trepidation and caution due to a device capable of ending a life between one heartbeat and the next.

Other than that, it’s pretty much anything goes. I’m an open minded person with varied interests — technology, fashion, abstract art, architecture, videogames, cats, sea creatures, space, design, weird creepy things and street art, are just a few regularly occurring themes. Who knows what will spark my interest tomorrow.

[shiningliive]

Hi friend! Just saw the tags about your asks. Personally, I love to hear from blogs I follow and the more content, the better. Especially if it's interacting with the community. I'd say go for it. Also, you have very clear tags on your posts and many users have XKIT or other ways to minimize your appearance on their dash if it's a little too much for them. You could also queue the asks? Just my two cents, but at the end of the day it's your blog and you should post what you like!

Heyo! Using a queue when I have heaps of asks is something I’m going to test out for today. It might take me a while ot get used to the settings, but I’ll try it. I love interacting with yall, but I get worried about spamming dashes, so dont mind me while I test using a queue for a little bit. 

It can be a bit hard for me to find a balance, because if I answer a lot of asks at once, people see that I’m active and I just get more asks that replace them instantly, but if I put them off and answer them slowly then people have to wait for a long time to get answers. I have also turned off anon temporarily before to give me a chance to catch up, so I guess thats an option too. I do absolutely love the interaction, but I also want to keep this blog at least 80% Shining Live centric, so as fun as some tangents are I have to cut them off at some point. 

I try to use very clear tags whenever I can, so thank you for noticing! xkit really is a lifesavor for this goddamn website, so I recommend everyone downloads it if they havent already. I always tag asks as ‘ask’ so if you only want to see official content feel free to block the tag or use xkits “Limit People” function which will still allow you to see my posts but won’t clog up your dash.

Thanks for the suggestions! I’m going to test the queue a bit more today for some asks while I try to clear out my inbox.

[janiedean]

But why do you hate Cersei that much? Is it because you are hardcore JamiexBrienne shipper? (Classic)

… this question was fairly fine until the classic, which denotes a certain passive-aggressiveness typical of the usual cersei stan so excuse me if instead of getting a nice answer I might have toned down a bit you’re getting all the ugly truth - next time consider not implying that I’d hate a character just because it’s in the way of my ship, thank you, since I tend to actually multiship and I don’t hate jeynew for being technically an obstacle to my main ship and so on. but okay. you wanna know? let’s go in order,

spoilers: this is gonna be ugly, I am not going to hold back any venom and so if you like cersei you’re welcome to not read this. I warned you.

one: classic. my dear anon, I’ll tell you a secret: 80% of the jb fandom actually likes cerse. I’m in the minority. most people I know who ship jb either also ship jc or like cersei as a villain/as the horrid person she is because they enjoy a well-written villain. i don’t, but most *hardcore jb shippers* actually LIKE cersei. if then you take ‘she’s horrible but I love her character’ as people hating her then it’s your goddamned problem.

two: I actually loathed her abusive, controlling, manipulative and murdering ass way��before brienne even showed up in the book let alone reading asos.

NO, REALLY.

three: I find cersei a technically very well-built and written character. no, really.

four: too bad that if there’s one thing I hate in fiction is incompetent villains, and if there’s three kinds of people I hate irl it’s a) people who think they’re so much better than the others, b) people who use person X who loves them as an emotional punching bag/their own servant without realizing what’s wrong with it, c) people who don’t accept responsibilities of their actions. rings a bell?

ah, right.

five: I find cersei’s povs utterly, terribly and fucking boring. okay, she’s insane, okay, she’s completely out of this world, okay, she’s great in her being completely insane and wanting to rule, okay, she’s a great villain, I found it amusing for one chapter and then I fell asleep. I can’t care less to be in the head of a narcissist asshole who thinks the world is an extension of herself and digs her own grave while blaming everyone else for her shortcomings and not even getting it when she’s directly confronted with it.

six: cersei is a fucking disgusting human being. and before y’all go like BUT ROBERT, I’m just gonna say that I am in no way, shape or form required to be interested in someone who threw a 12 year old into a well because said person dared say she had a crush on her brother when she also was twelve herself. like. okay, maybe for some people she’s interesting, to me that’s child psychiatrist material.

seven: I have also absolutely no fucking interest in an abusive fuck who spent her entire life actively or not actively trying to prevent jaime from actually having an identity separated from hers or who sexually molested her other brother while he was in the crib and justifies it with WELL HE’S A MONSTER. no, fuck you.

eight: an abusive fuck who also thinks she’s her father and couldn’t do politics if they hit her in the face. I mean, I actually like roose as a character and I don’t hate him even if he actively put a knife inside my actual favorite character’s heart because a) he’s not an incompetent fuck, b) he knows when you should not do horrid stuff because it’s not politically convenient, c) just wanted to rule his damned land and isn’t going out of his way to mess shit up jUST BECAUSE HE HAS THE POWER. cersei is just that, all along, and I can’t give a fuck about it.

nine: I have absolutely zero sympathy for 99% of her plights - at most I can give her that marrying robert was miserable, but OMG I AM A WOMAN IT PREVENTS ME FROM BEING MY FATHER SO NOW I WILL HAVE TO BE HORRID TO EVERYONE ELSE WHILE EXCUSING MYSELF ALL ALONG is not my cup of tea.

ten: OMG SHE’S A WONDERFUL MOTHER!!!! yeah a wonderful mother who sends tommen to whip someone when he’s not tough enough, totally great. and fandom even buys that. blergh.

eleven: I can’t stand her treatment of jaime and tyrion but jaime especially and I find it absolutely revolting and excuse me but I might find it such especially since if you look at it she basically dragged him into doing sexual stuff when they were younger than eight and from then on she did everything to make sure he wouldn’t have a life apart from her when she was ready to drop him if rhaegar accepted to marry her? like, why the fuck am I obliged to like this kind of person if it’s not my kind of character? ah, and it’s not about the incest because if that was the problem I wouldn’t be here shipping thor and loki and the other three sibling incests I occasionally shipped throughout my life, I just hated it since book one. am I allowed?

twelve: I’m gonna tell you a secret now (not so much but whatever). I read books 1-5 in a month marathoning and I didn’t exactly have time to form opinions until after I was done, and I started shipping jb during asos but I mean it sailed at the end and I was mild shipping, not hardcore. you know when was the moment where I thought, re cersei, omg fuck you I hope you die in a fire we’re Done I’m never giving you second chances I don’t care you can choke didn’t even have anything to do with jaime, it was when they were discussing the red wedding post-thing and someone said that catelyn went insane when she watched robb die in front of him and she started laughing about it. and excuse me anyone who finds the red wedding funny ESPECIALLY someone who professes that they’re a wonderful mother who loves her children is completely banned from my list of people who deserve me giving them a second chance to get back in my ‘I like you’ list. okay? my favorite character is robb, cat is in my top ten and I actually love cat to bits even if I don’t agree with her on half of what she says/we are fundamentally different in a lot of fundamental aspects, except that cat’s not an asshole and I can like her because she has things I like about her other than being very well-written, cersei’s just well-written but for the rest she’s the sum of everything I hate in a) fictional villains, b) people irl.

thirteen: also, the fandom tends to justify basically everything this asshole does with the excuse that she’s a woman so SHE’S AN EMPOWERED PROTO-FEMINIST when no she’s fucking not and cersei stans regularly show up bashing on my jb shipping that I try to keep actively away from them for example not tagging anything I say about cersei because I know they don’t wanna read it, while the brienne tag is riddled with crap like OMG YOU SAY SHE HAS TO BE CISHET JUST BECAUSE YOU SHIP HER WITH JAIME BOOO, or gems like ‘omg jb fans are all ugly women who want to bang jaime and project on brienne how pathetic muahahaha cersei had it so much worse’ plus coming on anon at regular intervals to send shit to people in the jb tag (I even have a tagged/jb-wank tag for it, TRY IT), so her fans definitely made sure that I went to general dislike to full-on hatred and that’s not even counting d&d trying to make cersei more sympathetic. blergh. as if there’s the need.

fourteen: I also don’t need to like someone who has no problem condemning people to death, ordering TWENTY children dead without losing a moment of sleep on it (I mean theon did the same with two and has nightmares about it, jon swapped two didn’t even kill them and he has nightmares about it, this asshole hasn’t even thought about it once), ordering people tortured or unethically experimented on and ordering rape on other women (in the show at least) all along while thinking she’s the best thing that ever happened to this planet. I have a few limits and people who only think about themselves and see other people in terms of HOW USEFUL THEY ARE TO ME are one of them, thanks.

fifteen: and for that matter, my favorite fictional villain ever is randall flagg ie a dude who killed an entire planet once or almost and who’s an unrepentant asshole and unapologetically evil, except that he actually doesn’t think he’s this great person because of it. he’s just evil incarnated, but what the hell. I like competent villains who don’t try to tell themselves they aren’t villains and who don’t frame their actions as anything but horrid shit. I’m fine if they enjoy it and I’m fine if they have a skewed set of morals according to which they see it as perfectly acceptable, but cersei doesn’t have a skewed set of morals, cersei’s just fucking out of it and has the worst narcissistic disorder in recent literary history. and she’s an incompetent fuck who thinks she’s better than everyone else who abuses everyfuckingone she runs into, and I just said jaime and tyrion but if I got into sansa, lancel, tommen, myrcella and just about everyone she interacts with I’d end up the day after tomorrow.

sixteen: my dislike was thoroughly cemented by how much I didn’t enjoy her pov chapters in affc/adwd but that was way before I hardcore shipped jb because at that point the only things I HARDCORE shipped were jon/sam and sandor/sansa, I wasn’t even shipping t/rhobb at that point. and my hardcore j/b shipping happened by the end of affc/by the time I was finished, and even then it took me one year to actually get into that side of fandom for real. so, no, actually the fact that I ship j/b has absolutely nothing to do with my dislike of cersei ie a character I disliked in got, hated in acok, was disgusted by all of the damned time in asos and throroughly detested in affc for reasons that guess what had everything to do with her and nothing to do with me shipping jaime with someone else.

because really, as long as he got away from that abusive fuck that’s his sister, he could have done it with arthur dayne, catelyn, the blackfish, fucking jon connington, oberyn or tv!bronn for what I care. I absolutely hate her also because I want jaime far away from her, but as long as he is, the fact that brienne is there and she’s his canon love interest (deal - with - it) is just a good convenient thing. otherwise I still would want him a planet away from that asshole that’s his sister. clear? shipping jb has nothing to do with that. fuck’s sake, the two most popular jon ships are jon/sansa and jon/dany and I ship him with EVERYONE BUT THOSE TWO and robb, and guess what I don’t hate sansa or robb (they’re both in my top ten/fifteen) and I don’t care about dany either way. I’m not so fucking not objective that I loathe a character so much just because they’re canonically in the middle of my ship, I’d be an immature or it’d be an immature reason and I’m enough of an adult to actually admit it. she happens to be in the middle of my ship more or less, but believe me I don’t hate elia or lyanna for being in the middle of r/jonc, sure as fuck I don’t hate cersei because she’s in the middle of jb.

I hate cersei because all of us has limits when it comes to irl and fictional characters and she’s wildly beyond all of mine and guess what, that was clear since the moment I read book one, after which jaime was my second-fave overall and she was at the damned bottom of the list. ah, except that if you dare liking jaime but not her you’re suddenly a Bad Feminist because liking the man out of the two of them but not her means you’re somehow having internalized misogyny. when instead it could be that jaime’s actually not an asshole and she is, but since, oh, wait, this fandom villanizes jaime a lot because in order to justify the crap cersei does they have to go along with that fucking THEY’RE THE SAME PERSON spiel which the narrative had denied from page five of the first tyrion pov chapter or so, I also have to get told that if I like the lannister guys (who are grey and fucked up but not inherently bad people and ah wait, both abuse victims since the damned cradle while she’s not) but not her I’m a Bad Feminist TM and excuse me but that attitude should have died years ago and it also helped making sure I would never budge when it came to c.

seventeen: the fact that the more time passes the less I can’t stand her means I can’t stand her in the show either. wow, too bad. I also couldn’t stand the th/ramsay scenes and watched them muted. but did I go ask t/hramsay ppl how they found them watchable? no. because I mind my own fucking business. and I wasn’t gonna even say it until people basically had to tear it out of me keeping on telling me I should like cersei/lena’s portrayal better than kit/jon because she’s a better actress than he is. most likely, but I don’t wanna punch jon in the face. and I wanna punch cersei in the face. for all the above reasons.

that have nothing to do with jb and all to do with the fact that cersei is an abusive/manipulative/incompetent fuck. okay?

there. that’s why I hate cersei. satisfied?

ps: and that’s why I don’t talk about cersei outside of jb meta, because I know that 50% of this is most probably my flawed subjective opinion and that she irks me also because of personal reasons that don’t have to be rational (there’s a reason why I hate incompetent idiots irl and why I hate people who think your life revolves around theirs irl btw) and that people will like her for a lot of the reasons why I dislike her. it’s fair. and that’s why I usually don’t share. 

but if you really had to ask, that’s your damned answer.

classic, my ass. 80% of jb fans around actually don’t agree with me on 80% of what I wrote. some of us just don’t fucking like cersei. deal. with. it.

thanks for coming to my fucking ted talk.

[seenashwrite]

Dearest Nash, I've touched on this before in (I believe) in a discussion re: why some mainstream fics get oodles of notes while more original ones do not, *but* I wanted to get a bit more specific here. There are certain writers here whose writing has a definite vibe to it (if you will) that separates their work from others, and your name is one of the first that comes to mind. Bear with me, because trying to detail what makes your writing stand out is difficult while trying to articulate a Q

^ this is a gif with parts 2 - 4, just FYI

Hmmm… this is a bit of a brain buster. But I can answer it, and I think succinctly, maybe with a touch of that Spidey sense you mention:

Thank you for your inquiry, hope that helps! 

I kid. But this is a brain-turner. And a characteristic which, like you say, ain’t limited to me. I’d honestly throw comedians under this umbrella, too, not because I’m necessarily gunning for a laugh every time, but because it’s pretty much their job to take a “basic” (a tenet or fact of life or present reality or whatever) and present the observation with a twist. I think of storyteller comedians specifically, your Patton Oswalt-s, Maria Bamford-s, Kathy Griffin-s, and John Mulaney-s.

So if I can sum up, assuming I’m tracking with you, what you’re more or less driving at with the “how” is this –> Is there anything beyond simply personality, or an auto-pilot thought cascade (for lack of better terminology) that contributes? Are there things someone could do/be proactive about, to perhaps cause this same sort of reaction to happen in their brain?

I think there just might be.

Folks reading this, let me ask you a question, and you cannot look it up:

What was the name of the Sherpa guide who led Sir Edmund Hillary up Mount Everest?

.

.

.

His name was Tenzing Norgay.

Nash, what in the name of the frozen corpse of George Mallory does this have to do with Lion’s question?

I shall tell you.

My father told me that fact when I was quite young, so young I legit couldn’t even ballpark my age for you. The context was that having little facts tucked away in your brain may come in handy. Not in a Jeopardy kind of way, more in a conversational way. I’ve no idea why the man thought the Sherpa guide who led Hillary up Mt. Everest would ever come up during a conversation with enough regularity to justify my knowing that fact (aside from him randomly quizzing me throughout my life) but hey, I guess it just did.

But speaking of Lil’ Nash, the situation for her was that she was the eldest of all the Nash litter by miles… like seven or eight years, I’m not bothering to check. So I had a lot of alone time, and my grandmother was my chief babysitter, so prior to kindergarten and then til I was in about second grade (so: all day long during the week, then every weekday after she picked me up from school), I was pretty much always at her house. Yeah, there were toys, but not a lot to do. And I’d read. I’d been reading on my own for a decent while, not because I was some prodigy but because my dad read to me *constantly* when Lil’ Nash was Itty-Bitty Nash, and it “took”. My mom also, every time she went to the grocery store always - and I mean always - brought back a book for me. It might’ve been an Archie comic—-

Mandatory #fuck the CW’s Riverdale tag

—-or a Babysitter’s Club, or Sweet Valley High, Judy Blume, Madeleine L’Engle, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, you get my point. Some small paperback. It would piss Dad off because he’s a cheap bastard and two buck books once or twice a month were really gonna cut into the savings [eyeroll] but also, in a way, because I’d kill it in a half day/a day. Wouldn’t put it down. After awhile, I started writing my own silly little kid stories, then - and this is where the creative writing love came about -  I started writing soap operas for my Barbies. (When I was older - like, 5th grade? 6th grade, maybe? - none of my peers were still playing with Barbies, and I got made fun of when, at a sleepover, they saw my stash. And I was like - No, no, no. Those aren’t for playing. That’s my cast.)

Time went on, and when I was bored at post-church lunch/dinners, I would also read the old encyclopedias at my grandmother’s, the ones from the late ‘60s/early ‘70s that she had for my mom and my aunt. As I got even older and became fascinated with rooting through the boxes in gran’s basement, looking at all the cool old clothes, I stumbled upon my aunt’s collection of Whoa-Hooooo Shit There’s No Way My Grandparents Knew You Read These books. Those kinda Harlequin-esque ones, except my aunt’s tastes run close to mine, none were the same shtick with different covers, shmultzy-sappy romance, there was always some sort of intrigue along with the sexy times, and she also had, like, every legit V. C. Andrews (meaning: not the ones from the ghostwriter, this was way before her death) book.

What is my point? I read a LOT. Now-a-days, other than fanfic (which… straight up: I don’t read a lot of that, either. I peace out on probs 80% of it before the third-to-fifth paragraph. It’s gotta sell me fast, yo) I haven’t read fiction in probably, oh…. 12 years? I think the last ones were the first couple Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Wait, no! I lie! I read the 50 Shades books when I was traveling 2x/wk for a job about 4 years ago, and I needed the laughs. It worked. Oh my days, that woman can’t write. The screenplay might’ve been worse, it goes her, then Buckleming, then everyone else. It’s bad. In any event, past decade or so, it’s more historical stuff and true crime and science stuff and all that old fart jazz.

Okay, so that’s #1: Read. And not just anything, be well-read, and that doesn’t mean developing some level of expertise, by “well” I’m saying to cover the spread. You’re building your tool kit, is all. You won’t use most of it, but it’s nice to have options. You also don’t always have to get this stuff from reading now-a-days, because podcasts. Cover the spread there, too. Lemme look at my bookmarks…. 

[Spongebob narrator voice: A few moments later]

I’m back. Science - Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe; General current stuff without being news - CGP Grey’s Hello Internet; current events with shittons of pop culture, past and present - Greg Proops’ Smartest Man in the World; fun history stuff - The Dollop; entertainment stuff - How Did This Get Made.

#2: Keep a notebook with you and jot down turns-of-phrase that spark something in your brain - things you read on websites, on twitter, in articles, things you hear people say (real life, TV, movies, podcasts), and write it. Don’t snap a pic with your phone or make a note in your phone. There are studies behind this, I’m not hunting them down, you’ll just have to trust me, but there are, and it goes to being reflexive, a brain “muscle memory” thing, if you will. You’re not doing it to plagiarize, you’re doing it to dissect it, kind’ve like you did with the example you gave on me —> went from punch action to punch spiked with booze to a punch with a spiked gauntlet.

Which leads to #3: Mental dictionary. I have a large vocab repository, and it stems from the tons of reading - I stop and look up stuff if I either don’t know it, or it’s used in such a way that I think they’ve got it wrong and want to double-check that maybe there’s another usage I don’t know - and also stems from a drive to combat the (still fairly thick) deep South drawl I can’t kick, and not for lack of trying. But see, I couldn’t have whipped out that progression if I weren’t aware that one definition of “spike” is “to add alcohol to”, or of the common shtick in stories of spiked punch like at high school proms typically, or knew about the existence of spiked gauntlets / old school armor. 

And I guarantee you that a good chunk of people didn’t really “get it”, and just thought “Nash Be Nashin’, that nutty gal”. So they “get it” on that level, but don’t Get. It., if you see what I’m saying. And that’s fine. Maybe it got something cranking in the back of their mind and it’ll hit ‘em in the middle of the night, or they’ll be watching Game of Thrones or something, see a gauntlet and be like “Oh goddamnit, I just got a throw-a-way one-liner from three years ago” and have a chuckle.

Related, re: looking stuff up and things that people “get”? I didn’t know fuck-all about Twilight, but it seemed of import to the folks around 5 years younger than me, the Nashlings wouldn’t shut up about it, so I got a good working knowledge of it. Same with Harry Potter, and through it I got to “know” J.K. Rowling, who I find to be an exceptional writer, so that was great, and I’ve watched the movies for the most part over the years at Christmastime, and I don’t give the first shit about what “house” I’m in, nor do I care about what Patronus I’d fart, but I have a working knowledge of what those are, and horcruxes and who Snape and Voldie are, you get my point. I can keep up. But to do it, I had to take the time to look it up. One thing I would not trade for gold is Michael Sheen chewing the goddamn scenery in that battle segment from the last Twilight movie. Have I watched the movie? No. But that scene is the shit. And that baby CGI is horrific on several subtle levels. And not-so-subtle. I’ve digressed.

Back to those notes: So if you’ve got these notes jotted, you might see something else and think “I feel like that could’ve been snappier…. why do I think that….” And you’ve got a resource at your disposal, that little notebook. Hell, jot that thing down - things you think could be done better. I have in many documents a highlight around chunks of scenes for my big dog story where it says in bold above or below “DO BETTER”. Meaning: there’s a better way to get from A to B, but I’m just not quite there yet. I’m pretty quick on the uptake and can crank out something snappy on the fly (like say, in CASPN chat or when banging out a short reply or thank you note) but there’s definitely times I gotta slap a DO BETTER on it and walk away til that snappy something-or-other light bulb goes off. 

Here’s a recent one where I backtracked, matter of fact - that noir spoof thing I wrote? Along with my co-writer, Moscato? There was a line that I couldn’t hit with a good zinger, so I just said moments were going by like a fat hamster on a wheel, which is cute, but not really grooving with the setting/the vibe. Less tipsy, when I was correcting some inelegant formatting and a misspelling [sigh], I went “Oh! Why didn’t this occur to me last night? Right. Wine.” So the line is now about moments dragging like a rolling donut with a copper on its tail. Get it? The cop’s a fat ass. The donut-cop stereotype.

…….Fine, it ain’t my best, but it fits better. Moving on.

And this leads nicely into #4, and a specific tip I can impart - assuming you’ve got a passable-to-high level of vocabulary in your tool belt, practice messing around with making nouns into verbs, and twisting random stuff into descriptors and using bizarre words/things in metaphors/analogies. Like, I say “adulting” quite a bit. Ali - @littlegreenplasticsoldier - I thiiiink was writing recently about Sam being drunk, and he’s a tall wobbly Jenga tower on his last Jenga. Going back to the noir, pulpy detective style, try messing with the whole “S/he was like a ___ that ____”. Add on to stuff that’s well known - He was like a dog with a bone, if the bone was a ____ and he was a ____ and we were in a ____. (I have *nothing* in mind to fill those blanks, by the way, feel free to twist it into sumpin’)

What else…. okay, here’s a #5: In drafts, let yourself wander, and see what kicks out. It can be fueled by silliness or anger, but I don’t reckon you’re gonna get the “snappy” you’re aiming for if you’re down in the dumps and going full-court-press angst. The best stuff, IMO, comes from the space in between goofy and pissed, and that is The Land Of Snark. You can always re-style it to bend more dry or wistful should you need to, certainly, depending on the situation.

Have a sample of a primo Nash Digression that was fueled by ire in a recap from Season 12 (episode 19). I had said - RE: the random inclusion of the character Joshua, which still pisses me off because they burned a character that held massive potential for future stuff as he’d been shown to be the only angel with direct access to Chuck, so, y’know, that could never come in handy, like ever again in the series, right? - the following.

Mandatory pre-emptive #fuck Dabb

[Spongebob narrator voice] A few moments later —> 

On god, I have no idea where that came from, and here’s where we go back to ol’ Spidey up there, because end of the day?

All that other stuff’s the foundation, sure, but there’s always gonna be the weird iggy, the thing that can’t be learned or taught, whatever the quirky synapse is that fires off in my/our brains. In my experience, it’s an ADD-ish sort of jam mixed with the Nostradamus effect. Meaning, (A) we’re at Level 10, rapid fire thought processing >50% of the time, and (B) throw out enough stuff for long enough, some of it’s going to stick. And I whiff it plenty. Multiple times in CASPN chat I’ve been like “Whoo, tough room” when something falls flat.

A specific example: @mrswhozeewhatsis - and I think you saw this, but anyone else seeing this may not have - gave probably the most fantastic analogy I’ve seen regarding the whole “getting it” thing, and while it was on the topic of meaty plots that get too far into the weeds (my specialty) and how it can lessen appeal to a broader audience, it still applies here. 

She said “Sometimes, when I’m reading something of yours, I feel like there’s a joke I’m missing. It’s like watching Spaceballs without having seen Star Wars.” I say that to say - nobody’s gonna land references that cover the spread 100% of the time. And, y’know, fine. I figure maybe it’ll prompt someone to do a quick google for - well, let’s use Spaceballs. Most folks will no doubt get the Star Wars part, but maybe not Spaceballs. Maybe they’ll check it out, find something they enjoy. Or learn a new word. Or get a brainstorm for a story. Who knows?

Last tip: Don’t actively mimic anyone’s style. Much fail. And I don’t only mean because if they’re on a social Venn diagram with you, would likely recognize themselves in your stuff——

Takes a moment to wave to the peeps still trying with me! #bless your hearts

—–but because it’s fucking hard. I did it broadly on the noir thing, that’s not a hard thing, to homage generalities, but the way I’m messing with doing this on that silly Princess Bride series? Purposefully styling it like Goldman? It’s good  challenging and all, and it is making it feel more in the groove with the book/movie, but I have to be in the right frame of mind or it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, and when I have pushed it, then gone back, it’s sloggy, soggy garbage.

I say all that to say: it’s an amalgam of brain-wiring/personality, and world/life perspective(s), and knowledge acquired over time. The first just is; the second will evolve in myriad ways, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse; the last is the one where you/we have control, we can fill bucket after bucket of information, and the well won’t ever run dry.

Sorry this took so long. I kept adding and subtracting. This is the edited version, if you can believe it. Welcome to Nash Brain. 😉

[rottenbrainstuff]

I noticed in the tags for one of your posts that you said Canada is heading down the same kind of path the US is. Would you mind explaining that to me? I haven't heard about that kind of thing going on but as someone who's major life goal is to move to Canada to be with her lover this sounds pretty terrifying. No pressure if you don't want to discuss that kind of thing though, I generally use Tumblr as an escape for this kind of shit so I totally understand.

Sure I can explain what I mean.This is long, guys, and I'm on mobile, so I apologize.I mean. First of all. I think I might be exaggerating a bit, our politics are always less extreme than the USA and I think they always will be. Our government is organized differently. But a lot of people, Canadians included, have this idea that Canada is this magic land of polite people and free healthcare and we're so much better than the US, and that's just really honestly not true.And I am getting worried about our political situation.First of all, Canada is not and never has been a magic perfect land where there is no racism and everyone is lovely. Our government has a shameful history dealing with indigenous people. We took entire generations of children away from their families and put them in residential schools and beat their culture out of them. We stuck them onto reserves where the conditions were terrible. There's been a huge problem with native women going missing and the police don't care, they don't devote the resources to investigating. And google starlight tours. That's a fun little thing where cops would grab a drunk native, drive them way the hell out on the highway, and just dump them off in the middle of nowhere, at night, in the winter, to let them find their way back to town in the cold. People have died from that. They deal with a ton of social issues now and there's a lot of racist sentiment against natives and it makes me want to scream, like, do you not understand, we did this to them? We broke their culture and all this shit you're complaining about is the fallout from that.We had Japanese internment camps during WW2 just like the US. After 9/11 we had a sharp increase in anti-Muslim bullshit too. There's rural areas in southern Alberta with "a proudly pro life community" signs stuck along the highway. Our government does stupid shit too. Our education didn't get gutted as bad as in the US, but my province made deep cuts to education funding in the 80s and 90s and TO THIS DAY we're still recovering from that. I just want everyone to forget this notion that we're just so much better here and all this crap can't happen here, and honestly I think it's Canadians ourselves who are the worst for this, because i think it makes us stop examining ourselves and asking questions.Which brings me to...I don't like where I see things headed. Living right next to the US, it's inevitable that we are influenced by what goes on there. I think some Canadians are really shocked by what's happening down there and it's really solidified this sense of "well I don't want THAT to happen HERE!"....But there's other things going on as well. I definitely notice a lot more racist buzz. Familiar members of mine who were just annoyingly conservative before are now blatantly and offensively islamophobic. In my province we recently had someone set fire to a mosque during evening prayer. There's graffiti and hate crimes. I do notice it getting worse.Recently we had a bit of a political shakeup, in that we got rid of Stephen Harper, a conservative premier who had been in office for a while, and elected Trudeau, who is liberal, and... despite what you might think of him, is a charismatic leader. In my province, we've had a conservative provincial government for decades, and we got so sick of it that we voted NDP in the last election, which is a worker's party, essentially, and they raised our goddamned minimum wage.And just like in the US, when you elected Obama after all the grumbling there was about Bush and there was push-back against Obama, there seems to be a conservative push-back to all of this.In Ontario they recently elected an absolute buffoon as premier, Doug Ford, and to be honest he strikes me as Trump Lite. He is related to an absolute fuckhead who used to be a mayor, Rob Ford, and whose "antics" were so ridiculous it got us international attention. Anyway this asshole Doug, he wants to do fun stuff like limit access to abortion, and roll back the minimum wage, and other bullshit like that. I thought he was too ridiculous and extreme to get elected premier, and I was wrong.A year or two ago we had a municipal election in my city, and there was concern that there was a mysterious lobby group that no one knew anything about trying to influence the election. Municipal elections are municipal! There was a gross smear campaign and people even stooped to literally sweeping the city and removing all the signage placed out by one of the candidates. Luckily it turned out the campaign didn't work and the candidates that had been targeted mostly all still won, but like. It was just so chilling to me, in the context of everything else that's been happening lately. I'd never seen anything like that happen in my city before.I hear nothing but articles about what a shitty job Trudeau is doing, first it was he was fucking us over by not pushing through this stupid goddamned pipeline, then it was that he was a liar and a traitor by eventually signing the pipeline, he's corrupt, he's a liar, all this shit. My *liberal* friends are telling me all this stuff. I'm not saying he's perfect. He's not. But here's the thing.There's been reports of concerns of Russian and Chinese involvement with our elections. I take consumer response surveys to earn money. Sometimes the surveys ask about local politics or concerns. Suddenly in the last year, the political surveys are unprofessionally biased and asking me questions about conservative politics. A fun local paper we had was recently bought by someone else and now instead of fun local stories, it's all this urgent scaremongering. FLOOD SEASON! AIRLINE STRIKE DISASTER! CITY HOUSING CRISIS!And I think about how we had the facebook data mining, I think about the Russian Tumblr accounts spreading discord to demoralize left leaning voters, and I'm worried that I'm watching the start of that. It makes me feel extremely uneasy. I think there's something going on.The Conservative party is kind of fumbling around at the moment, and I'm worried there's going to be a massive reorganization, and come next election, we're going to be looking at a racist, religious conservative candidate who wants to privatize our healthcare, limit immigration, reduce abortion access, freeze minimum wages, let oil and gas do whatever the fuck they want, etc etc etc. I'm worried it'll be a scary candidate like we've never seen before.And I'm worried that our next election will be Trudeau VS Trump 2.0, and the left-leaning voters will be split between parties, because these shadowy groups have spent a few years making everyone disagree with each other, and it will be the same thing, the exact same goddamned thing that happened in the US. "But Trudeau is so corrupt...." they'll say, and they'll split the vote, and we'll have some awful, awful shit who wants to ruin everything.Now, that's a pretty alarmist attitude, perhaps. There's certain values and certain rights we have in Canada that we're pretty passionate about, and I don't think politicians would be able to get away with as much bullshit up here as they do down there. But I don't know what's happening any more. I'm not sure of anything. Every time I think "it would never get that bad" or "people would never let that happen" something happens that proves me wrong, so. I honestly don't know. I have a really bad feeling in my gut from the weird things I see happening, I've put two and two together, and I don't like what I see.So I mean. At the end of the day, I don't think things up here will ever be as crazy as things in the US. Our government is organized a little differently, we deal with issues a little differently. But I'm still concerned. I don't like what I see, and these last two years have taught me that human beings are fucking disappointing and we don't fucking learn, from anything.I think Canada is a good place to live, and I think it will probably continue to be a good place to live. (Maybe stay away from Ontario and the prairie provinces though)There's my extremely pessimistic point of view. Probably other Canadians wouldn't tell you this, so maybe take it with a grain of salt. Message me if you have any other questions, I would love to answer them.