#guess who's failing the last lear of school because of that

[mocking-the-bird]

I love Robin Jason so much he is such a little gremlin. All of them are actually

[sankdvl]

A little secret

Remember that i told you how i have always been very pationate and ambitious about what i do and how much i want to succeed in life, yeah, that may not be completely accurate.

Since i was a little kid to probably the first semester of tenth grade i had only dreamt about being successful, rich, independent, living in my own luxurious apartment somewhere in new york and working in a fast moving job

and then suddenly i don't know what happened from the second semester of 10th grade. i guess that reality hit me. i wasn't sure what i was doing and why i was doing, i was infact overwhelmed with assignments, exams, tests, pending work etc. i experienced a whole wave of uncertainty and anxiety whether i would be able to score good in my board examinations or not. I, my school, a few friends that i have, my parents, my relatives etc had so much expectations from me. i feared failing to live upto their and most importantly my expectations. suddenly i was being too harsh on myself. i was experiencing emotions that i had never felt before, i was very sad, i forgot eating my meals, sometimes i would go two days without eating anything, waking up seemed so hard suddenly, i felt disappointed, i would wake up crying and go to sleep crying. i don't know what happened, from a happy ambitious kid who knew what she was doing i was transformed into someone who just did not want to live anymore, i did not want to die because i had many responsibilities and many people who lovde me and i did not want to hurt them, but i wished i had never been born or somehow i could disappear from this world. nothing seemed real at that time. my depression lasted from october 2022 to march 2023. those were the most painful six months i had ever gone through

then my board exams were over and i was filled with relief. In the first week after my boards i was trying to adjust back to normal, i was trying to get out of depression, trying to sleep stress free. it was difficult to get out of the phase because i would have nightmares about me failing my exams, i felt guilty for not studying anymore even though my exams were over, i would wake up in the middle of the night thinking that my exams are not over yet and i was hallucinating about my exams getting over, i would suddenly wake up in the morning, panicking that i had to this or that chapter of mathematics etc. it took me around a week to accept the fact that my exams are over and that i can return to the normal lifestyle i had before 10th grade

Then came the honeymoon period. i was happy, i finally started getting back on my normal life, i was sleeping comfortably, eating, watching tv, cooking my favourite dishes, motivated to have a fresh start from grade 11, i felt that i could do anything. and as you would have guessed, thats when i wrote my first blog 'a little context'

But the again i from week three i realised that i was feeling the same emotions that i was feeling in oct 2022, all my friends had taken PCM or PCB and had already started coaching, they were all so busy while i was lying in my bed not understanding commerce, i tried studying commerce but everything seemed so new, foreign and difficult, i started questioning if commerce is right for me. then i started thinking about the things i had thought about doing after boards that i hadn't done, like learning French, learing how to code, and the we cancelled on our plan of getting a dog which really made me very upset, i felt that i had wasted my time. again i started losing interest in things. i was constantly thinking whether i could again become the happy ambitious person that i was before, i was scared about my result. i was going through the same process that led me to get into depression, i started sleeping till noon, lost faith in me, stopped eating because i wasn't getting hungry, i started crying, losing hope etc. But this time luckily i knew where my habits and feelings were headed so i am trying my best to not fall into the trap of depression again, i am making little progress day by day like instead of waking up at noon i am waking up at 10am, i appeciate myself even if i eat one meal a day because it is better than not eating anything at all etc, although i know i am going through a very scary and vulnerable time, i am trying to be easy on myself and assuring myself that there is still hope and at the end everything will be alright and its just a little dark phase that's going to pass soon and that i am not a failure and that can still achieve what little me wanted to achieve

[pyrrhiccomedy]

Let's get back to it.

I can't even hate on Eric Bana's Hector too much, because it just feels mean. Eric Bana is an awful casting decision. Like, he has the right look, I guess, but - Americans might not be aware that Eric Bana was a douchey Australian comedian. Imagine Carrot Top getting cast as King Lear. That was the vibe. A real effort was made in the aughts to Make Eric Bana Happen, and it failed, because Eric Bana isn't good at anything. But that's not his fault. It's not his fault he can't act, and it's not his fault he was cast as Hector in Troy. It was a mean joke on the part of the casting director, like nominating the ugliest girl in school to be homecoming queen. Sure it's high profile, but not in the way you want to be.

Hector has the best part in Troy, at least (and arguably in the Illiad as well). It's hard to fuck up "noble prince is made by his own love to defend his unscrupulous brother despite his deep misgivings, leads his armies bravely, and then knowingly goes to his death following a terrible accident, knowing his beloved wife and child will be bereft and his city will burn without him," and Troy manages to stagger through the necessary beats without tripping on itself too often. Nearly any other living man could probably have imbued Hector with more power and pathos, but you can see Eric Bana straining to live up to the part in every scene, and to his credit, he seems to be one of the only actors in the movie who understands his own character's motivations.

The weirdest thing about Hector in Troy, to me, is that - like, the Illiad doesn't have a lot of human moments? It's not that kind of story, you don't see many intimate moments between the characters. One of the only ones, in fact, is when Hector goes out to die: he's getting dressed for battle in the family rooms, and his infant son doesn't recognize him in his helmet, and starts to cry. So Hector takes off his helmet to soothe him and kisses him goodbye. It's a small, painful, precious moment, a symbolic laying aside of his duty to grasp one last second as a man who loves his family and doesn't want to leave them, and they just

don't put it in the movie

Instead they have Andromache bring the baby out to meet him (so, not in an intimate setting anymore), Hector doesn't even have his helmet, he kisses his son, and the baby starts to cry out of nowhere, like the fucking baby knows he's going to die. Instead of Hector soothing him, he walks off, and Andromache takes the crying infant away.

Like...come on. You get why that's less effective in every possible way, right?

Hector also knows that Achilles is going to desecrate his body because he had a ~prophetic dream~ about it, but it feels totally bizarre in Troy because up to that point literally not a single portent or premonition is taken seriously or even experienced by a named character. So when he walks out like "hey Achilles, apropos of nothing, you're not gonna desecrate my body, right?" It just comes off like he read ahead in the script.

Whatever, at least he tried

[silenthillmutual]

Danganronpa 1 & 2 characters as High School “recommended reading” books I actually read

Makoto Naegi

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee when i read it: 5th grade for fun, 10th grade for English class did i like it? well enough yeah content warnings: thematic & period-typical racism, ableism, and sexism about: Recounts a summer in which Scout and her brother, Jem, watch their lawyer father defend a black man accused of raping a white woman in the south while balancing raising them alone. Other stuff happens, but that’s the most important plot thread.

Sayaka Maizono

Medea by Euripides when i read it: i don’t remember, maybe 9th for drama, 12th for English? did i like it? yep! content warnings: child murder, infidelity, some pretty brutal other character deaths, sexism about: Medea, who has sacrificed everything to be with her husband - even committed treason - has been left by the man so he can move on to woo and wed a princess. And she loses her shit.

Leon Kuwata

The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn by Mark Twain when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? yeah! content warnings: thematic & period-typical racism (use of the n-word), domestic abuse, classism iirc? about: After his abusive dad comes back and demands money under the threat of death, Huck Finn runs away with a fugitive slave down the Mississippi River. Being Mark Twain, it’s a comedy, although Huck’s father is genuinely kind of frightening and his friendship with Jim is kind of heartwarming.

Chihiro Fujisaki

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley when i read it: 10th grade for fun, 12th grade & freshman year of college for class did i like it? I’ve got mixed feelings; i love the book, hate most peoples’ interpretations of it. content warnings: character death, incest (depending on the version of the novel you read), unethical doctors, neglectful parents about: Thinking he knows better than literally anyone else he’s ever met, Victor Frankenstein decides it’s his birthright to play god. He robs graves to build the perfect body, and then, once he’s successful, flips his shit and refuses to acknowledge any part he played in the creation, wrecking the lives of like everyone he knows.

Mondo Oowada

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton when i read it: like 6th or 7th grade, for fun did i like it? i loved it! content warnings: abuse, thematic classism, character death about: Honestly the most obvious choice to make for Mondo. Ponyboy Curits, a greaser, recounts the last few months of his life in which, after being repeatedly harassed and then nearly killed by gang of rich kids, his friend Johnny stabs one to death. In order to keep Johnny out of prison and Ponyboy out of a boys’ home, the two run away. Considering Ponyboy is also being raised by an older brother, this totally fits Mondo.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru

King Lear by William Shakespeare when i read it: twice in college (discliamer: as an english major i had to taken an entire course on shakespeare, so he shows up a lot here between that and having done theatre) did i like it? no content warnings: a surprising amount of gore for a stage play, including a guy getting his eyes gouged out and someone getting beheaded iirc about: The king’s getting up in years, so he’s hoping he can drop the workload off onto his three daughters while remaining the figurehead. His youngest, Cordelia, who he loves best, refuses to kiss his ass by saying that he’ll still have power over her once she’s married, and this pisses him off so he disinherits her. Then her sisters, annoyed with their father and his favoritism, decide that with Cordelia out of the way they can now do basically whatever they want and determine to make his life hell. Since he named them Goneril and Regan, I don’t blame them.

Hifumi Yamada

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer when i read it: college, but i wanna say i read some of the stories in it for English classes in high school? did i like it? some of the stories i did yeah content warnings: varies from story to story, but i remember unsanitary, drunkenness, and infidelity about: The overarching “plot” as such is that a group of people are making a pilgrimage to Canterbury, and decide that to pass the time they will tell two stories each. Each story is told in-character, and whoever tells the best story has to...buy everybody dinner, or something? I don’t really recall. It’s a comedy, but it’s also unfinished because Chaucer bit off way more than he could chew.

Celes Ludenberg

“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? probably, i’m a fan of Poe content warnings: drunkenness, murder about: This one got memetic on tumblr for a while, but essentially this guy decides to get revenge on an old friend of his for some kind of sleight by getting him drunk during Carnival, leading him into the basement, and burying him alive. Poe isn’t one to go soft.

Sakura Oogami

“A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? no content warnings: objectification, something akin to torture about: A family finds an old man with wings lying face-down on the ground and decide to keep him like a pet. People see him and assume he is an animal, and the family decides to start charging admission like their own private sideshow, while onlookers abuse him. One of those extra depressing stories that makes you wonder why the hell you had to read it for class.

Mukuro Ikusaba

The Crucible by Arthur Miller when i read it: the first time, probably in 6th or 7th grade, and then several more times after that for a variety of other classes. it’s a theatre and English class staple.  did i like it? when taken in context, yes. but i’m also fucking sick of reading it. content warnings: infidelity, paranoia bait, period-typical racism & sexism (takes place during the Salem Witch Trials) about: The plot is a witch hunt, in which a girl who had an affair with a married man claims to have been taken over by the spirit of the devil and that all her friends and a variety of other townsfolk have too. It follows the trials as they try to determine who is and is not guilty, who will repent for their sins, and thematically is about puritanical hysteria. It’s about the Red Scare of the 50s, surveillance, the Hollywood Blacklist, propaganda, and tyrannical government. Naturally, teachers fail to provide any context for the play that actually makes it relevant or interesting. Compare to modern day callout/cancel culture. 

Kyouko Kirigiri

12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose when i read it: 10th grade (although i’d already seen the movie) did i like it? yes content warnings: thematic classism & xenophobia about: The jury of a case in which a teenager is accused of murder convene to determine their verdict. All but one man believe him to be guilty. The rest of the play covers his attempts to sway his other jurors into at least casting aside their prejudices to view the case impartially.

Byakuya Togami

The Federalist Papers when i read it: summer before 12th grade for AP Gov. yikes. did i like it? oh god no. i had to have my lawyer dad explain it to me. content warnings: legalese and it’s boring as fuck about: i mean it’s just a bunch of essays to promote ratifying the the constitution. I don’t even remember if we read all of them. that’s how bad my retention of the subject is.

Toko Fukawa

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? kind of? content warnings: bugs, emotional abuse, depression about: A man awakens one day to find he has transformed into a giant cockroach. It’s a metaphor for his depression and what a burden he feels like to his family. If you read anything about Kafka’s life, you’ll understand why he was depressed.

Aoi Asahina

Hamlet by William Shakespeare when i read it: i’ve forgotten when my first time was because i’ve had to read it so constantly. if i had to wager a guess, i’d say middle school, though i’ve read it for fun, for drama class, and for English class. did i like it? yes content warnings: character death, suicidal ideation, incest vibes (depending on your interpretation) about: Hamlet, not over the early death of his father, is enraged that his mother has married his uncle. He’s really bringing everyone else down about it, and then he starts to see his father’s ghost on top of it all. No one’s sure if he’s just mad with grief or if the ghost is for real, but he starts making life for everyone else difficult when he decides to try and expose his uncle as his father’s murderer.

Yasuhiro Hagakure

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller when i read it: 10th grade i think? did i like it? if i believed in book-burning, this would’ve been the first turned to ash in my trashcan content warnings: infidelity, mediocre white men with narcissism, suicide, not sure what else about: An aging father who thinks he was robbed of success by circumstances refuses to face facts that he is a loser by projecting his failures onto a son that now hates him and thinking real big of himself for a wash-out.

Junko Enoshima

Othello by William Shakespeare when i read it: college did i like it? it’s my favorite Shakepseare play, actually! content warnings: thematic racism/xenophobia/Islamophobia, domestic abuse, character death about: A tragedy centering around the planned downfall of Othello, Moor of Venice. He’s relatively well-respected for his heroics and generally being a pretty cool guy, but for whatever reason, Iago wants to see him suffer. And when I say “for whatever reason” - it’s because Iago never gives a consistent one, but at the end he admits the entire thing has been his orchestration and he’s had no issue exploiting peoples’ bigotry as a means to an end. One popular and pretty text-evident theory is that Iago is in love with Othello. But - causing a ruckus, bringing society to its knees, and torturing a man just for shits n giggles? Getting it all done by sheer power of charisma? That’s all Junko ever does.

Monokuma

1984 by George Orwell when i read it: 10th grade for fun, 12th grade for class did i like it? yes but i don’t recommend it. i like tedious shit. content warnings: paranoia bait, sexual themes, torture, probably other stuff i’m forgetting about: Classic dystopia lit in which the government controls the flow of information to the degree of creating its own language (”newspeak”) to explain the technology used to survey its citizens and distill history-changing propaganda. Especially relevant in an era of “fake news.” Where Big Brother Is Watching comes from. Extremely difficult to get into.

Hajime Hinata

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck  when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? yeah content warnings: ableism, implied domestic abuse, character death, animal death, era-typical sexism (1930s) about: Very desolate and depressing novella about the futility of the American Dream to “make something of yourself”. Two farmhands, Lennie and George, arrive at a California farm seeking employment. They just want to earn enough money to open up a farm of their own - a rabbit farm - and things are all downhill from there. Well-written and one of Steinbeck’s shorter works.

Twogami

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? yes! i loved it. but in the way that you love sleazy tabloid rag stories. content warnings: infidelity, car accidents, character death about: Stupidly rich people in New York in the 1920s being fake as hell. It’s about excess and decadence and the idea of having a rags-to-riches story, and it’s very homoerotic.

Teruteru Hanamura

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? one of my top faves tbh content warnings: alcoholism & drug usage, thematic classism & racism (ie that’s the point), sexual themes, violence, non-graphic suicide (like literally the last sentence), character deaths about: You know how 1984 is a very pessimistic dystopia about government surveillance? Brave New World is like “what if everything was a utopia because of government interference?” It’s easier to get into than 1984. It’s about a man from the upper echelon of society discovering the dirty secret of how society is able to able to function the way it does, an outsider into his world to shake things up.

Mahiru Koizumi

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen when i read it: i dunno, summer between 9th and 10th grade maybe? did i like it? yes! i loved it. content warnings: there are a couple of guys who are sort of gross but there’s nothing that bad in it about: An upper-middle class family - more the mother than the father - trying to marry off the eldest of their five daughters. It’s largely character-driven and most of the plot focuses on Jane’s relationship with Bingley, Elizabeth’s relationship with Darcy, and the problems witch judging people based on first impressions.

Peko Pekoyama

Call of the Wild by Jack London when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? fuck no content warnings: graphic animal violence. if there’s other stuff i forgot because i fucking hated this book. about: I think it’s something like a dog getting lost in Alaska and has to learn to be a wolf in order to survive? It’s incredibly brutal and is one of those media where just reading it makes you feel cold. 

Hiyoko Saionji

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? not really content warnings: man i don’t know, but it’s by Tennessee Williams so there’s probably alcoholism, daddy issues, and homophobia about: An overbearing mother embarrasses her son and disabled daughter when an old school friend comes to visit...I’m not sure if there’s more of a plot to it than that. Like most Williams works, it’s largely character-driven.

Ibuki Mioda

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino when i read it: college did i like it? this is one of those rare exceptions in books where i read it, because i remember having a visceral reaction to it, but i can not for the life of me remember a single damn thing about it other than how stupidly difficult it was to read.  content warnings: it’s metaficiton. about: You are the protagonist. I genuinely can’t explain anymore than that.

Mikan Tsumiki

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? not really, but i’d be willing to reread it content warnings: domestic abuse, rape about: Unstable Blanche DuBois goes to visit her sister, Stella, and meets her appalling husband Stanley. All Tennessee Williams plays seem to have a theme of family tragedy in them, with this being probably the most bleak example. 

Nekomaru Nidai

The Odyssey by Homer when i read it: 9th grade, then again in college for a classics class did i like it? yeah content warnings: your usual classical Greek-variety nonsense, including character death, infidelity, and partying. about: Odysseus attempts to make his way back home after the Trojan War, and has a time of it. Having pissed off Poseidon he’s gotten off-course and gotten lost another ten years, and had a whole slew of other adventures trying to make it back home and save his wife from the harassment she’s been getting since his disappearance.

Gundham Tanaka

The Tempest by William Shakespeare when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? not especially content warnings: thematic colonialism & racism...not sure what else but it’s hard as fuck to read. try reading it out loud & acting along to it. about: I didn’t totally get it but there’s something about a wizard having been banished and now people are coming back to find him for some reason? the people who exiled him & his brother & daughter have crash-landed on his island and now he might get his revenge. Thanks, TVTropes! All I remember is discussing in one class about how The Tempest managed to predict the “finding” of America and how the English would treat the native peoples. It’s a “romance”, which in that day and age meant it was about magic. Influenced some science fiction works like Brave New World (the title of which comes from a line spoken by Miranda). I should probably reread it.

Nagito Komaeda

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger when i read it: 8th grade for fun did i like it? yeah content warnings: implied pedophilia. i’m sure there’s other stuff but i don’t remember it well enough. about: Perennial troublemaker Holden Caulfield is kicked out of boarding school, and takes a hell of a long time getting home from the place as he complains about his declining mental state, hypocrisy, and loss of innocence. It’s one of those books you either really love or really hate, and has been repeatedly challenged because Holden swears too much and might be bisexual.

Chiaki Nanami

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw when i read it: 12th grade, i think did i like it? yes content warnings: classism about: A linguistics professor makes a bet with a friend that he can take any lower-class citizen and teach them to speak formal English, well enough to pass them off as aristocracy to other rich people. It’s the plot upon which the musical My Fair Lady is based, although it was intended as a deconstruction of the kind of plot whose trope it now codifies.

Sonia Nevermind

“Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? yeah! content warnings: infidelity, character death about: A guy comes home and tells his heavily pregnant wife that he’s been having an affair, and he’s leaving her. She doesn’t take it well. I won’t spoil the rest of it, as it’s a short story, but it’s fun to keep in mind that it’s be the same guy who wrote classics such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Kazuichi Souda

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare when i read it: 8th grade for a book report and then again in....i don’t know. i’ve had to read it a lot. did i like it? sure, it’s got some pretty great insults content warnings: men being douchebags including stalker-y behavior, and a woman falls in love with a man who has a donkey’s head (it doesn’t last) about: Hermia & Lysander are planning to run away to get married because Hermia’s father doesn’t approve of Lysander, and she’s trying to dodge the affections of Demetrius - the man to whom she has been betrothed, because he’s an ass who, among other things, slept with her friend Helena and then ditched her. Which Helena is still hung up on, even though he’s a gross creep. At the same time, a group of actors are trying to get together a play for an upcoming royal wedding, and the King of the Faeries is trying to win back his wife. This all connects because a faerie decides to fuck around.

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier when i read it: college, for an independent study did i like it? yeah content warnings: graphic violence, i think some homophobia? about: Kids and staff at a private school take a candy sale way too damn seriously. There’s basically a mafia at the school and some sort of weird popularity contest and hazing going on. 

Akane Owari

“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? i guess so content warnings: human hunting about: A man finds himself shipwrecked on an island, and is then hunted for sport. No, really.

Monomi

East of Eden by John Steinbeck when i read it: technically i’m in the middle of it right now, but that counts, right? did i like it? so far, i guess i do, but it’s mainly i care character who comes up later. couldn’t give less of a shit about adam trask, full offense content warnings: period-typical sexism & racism (set around the turn of the 20th century and published in 1952), implied pedophilia (that gets incredibly glossed over), ableism about: A combination of heavy-handed religious allegory (Steinbeck really just can’t cool it with the Cain and Abel theme naming) and family tree history. Follows the Trask family through Adam’s childhood, tumultuous relationship with his brother, even worse relationship with his wife, and horrible parenting of his children. The end (which is what the film adaptation covers) is more centered on his son Cal Trask grappling with the idea that he might be evil because of his genetics, or something. I think that’s an argument you could make of Monomi, being related to Monokuma (or at least, how i’m sure she’d feel).

[buzzdixonwriter]

You Don’t Say

For me, one of the unforeseen benefits of Facebook and other social media is that it gives me a chance to do rough drafts of ideas, assembling my thoughts and getting feedback before committing to more permanent form.

And sometimes, like asteroids colliding in space, two separate ideas / posts slam into one another and either create something new and unexpected, or else shatter themselves and reveal interesting aspects of their nature heretofore hidden from view.

That happened recently with a pair of Facebook posts I made on Dennis Prager and Harlan Ellison.

Let’s get the turd out of our mouth first.

. . .

Dennis Prager is a purveyor of herpetology lubricants admired by many on the right-leaning-nazi side of the spectrum, primarily because he keeps his mouth closed when chewing.  Half of what he says is repackaged self-evident truths of the “Don’t eat the yellow snow” variety, a quarter is opinions that if not startling original are at least not genuinely harmful, and the remain quarter is egregious bullshit for which he deserves a public pants down spanking.

Hmm, what?  Oh, yes; purely metaphorically, of course.

I long since wrote off Prager as a. utterer of inanities, but recently his turdmongering was forced on my attention by someone who posted a link to Prager’s argument that the “left” (i.e., basically anybody who thinks Auschwitz was a Bad Idea) is inflicting harm on both the American body politic and the universe at large by denying people like Prager the right to drop the N-bomb whenever they feel like it.

As some of you no doubt already knew, Prager is a member of what polite bigots used to refer to as “those of the Hebrew persuasion”.

That a person from an ethnicity that historically suffered hatred so vicious and specifically targeted that a special word had to be created for it (“anti-Semitism” because the original word -- “Jew-hatred” -- was too damned ugly even for bigots to use) now has his knickers in a twist because he’s “not allowed” to use the only other word of equal or greater impact -- also coined specifically by oppressors for expressing unrestrained hate and contempt against those oppressed -- is so rich in irony that all I can do is swipe a phrase from Jim Wright over at Stonekettle Station and say Dennis Prager has “all the self-awareness of a dog licking its own asshole in the middle of the street”.

First off, he’s lying: Neither the “left” nor American law prevents him from dropping the N-bomb whenever he feels like it and I invite him to go down to the intersection of Normandie and Florence in South Central and drop it at the top of his lungs for as long as he is able and please make sure to take plenty of video recorders along because I really wanna see what happens next.

Second, why the fuck would you want to say that? Seriously, other than in an evidentiary context (a cop giving testimony in court, a journalist reporting what some bigoted politician says, etc.), who today gains anything from repeating the word other than inflicting unjustified distress on people who have done nothing to deserve it?

(This is the point where a bunch of alt-right trolls are gonna jump up and say “but whatabout all the times when black people say it?” and to those trolls I’m gonna say STFU & STFD; if you can’t grasp the difference in context then you’re too damned stupid to be allowed out in public except at the end of a leash and with a ball gag in your mouth.)

It’s a word specifically created and designed to be used to brutally oppress people who did nothing to deserve that brutal oppression.  Why would anybody outside that group use it except to participate in that brutal oppression?

. . .

Least there sit any in the cheap seats who presume the above rant was targeted at Dennis Prager simply because he was Jewish, guess again, ya yutzes.

Few writers enjoyed as brilliant and as incendiary a career as Harlan Ellison, and I count myself privileged to have been one of his friends.

Ellison, as many of you know, also was Jewish, a damned tough little bastard, singled out for hatred and abuse as the only Jewish child in his backwater Ohio school, growing up with nerves & balls of chromium, a bona fide Army Ranger, and a writer so honest and fearless that when he wrote about juvenile delinquency in the 1950s he did so by infiltrating and joining a street gang to get first hand experience and insight on the kids who ran in that crowd (and as icing on the cake, James Caan played him in the TV version!).

Top that, Dennis.

Harlan’s electric eclectic career features many highpoints, but the one I want to focus on is his brief 4-year run as TV critic for the legendary Los Angeles Free Press (a.k.a. The Freep) from 1968 to 1972.  

What’s interesting is that Harlan did this while at the same time at the height of his demand as a TV writer.

You got any idea how hard it is to make a living while you’re gnawing on the hand that feeds you?

Harlan may have been crazy, but damn it, he was honest.

Back to the issue at hand.

Recently I’ve been re-reading his TV criticism columns, collected in two volumes, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat.

The depressing thing is that all the evil we see today was in place back in those days, and the same smug pious frauds and their dimbulb marks kept congratulating themselves how wonderful they were as things continued to spiral out of control.

Oh, we've had good moments when we made changes that improved the lot of people who'd previously been marginalized, but the core cancer is still there. Harlan was no cock-eyed sentimentalist -- he was often filled with anger and could vent it spectacularly at deserving targets -- but he did have hope that somehow we could keep nudging the ball further towards the goal lines.

The columns make fascinating reading; they are nowhere near as dated as one might suspect. Sometimes they offer diamond-like brilliant dissections of a particular instant in the cultural gestalt, other times they examine the unseen (well, to most audiences, that is) tides of Hollywood that shape our media, sometimes he turns his attention to bear on seemingly insignificant and forgotten local programming only to show with McLuhan-esque clarity how that tiny piece of seemingly insignificant fluff is symptomatic of a much wider, much vaster, and far more serious problem.

One entry caught my eye in particular, the March 7, 1969 column on a failed ABC pilot called Those Were The Days.

Harlan sat in the studio audience watching the taping of that pilot, and his column praised the courage and insight of producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin, the brilliant performances of Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton, and the raw honesty of the pilot’s sharp comedy and writing.

Those of you not in the cheap seats have already realized this was the second failed pilot for what would eventually become All In The Family over at CBS (there was an even earlier original pilot called Justice For All back when Archie and Edith’s last name was Justice, not Bunker.)

I remember the hoopla when All In The Family finally aired in January of 1971 as a mid-season replacement.

You might count Archie Bunker as the white Dolemite insofar as the comedy sprang from the shock of all the crude and vulgar things he said.

Lear and Yorkin were mocking that mindset, belittling bigotry, exposing the Babbittry of millions of “good” Americans who lacked either the self-awareness or the courage to take a long introspective look at themselves and realize how badly they were failing as citizens of this country.

Audiences weren’t supposed to like Archie Bunker.

And that’s where Lear and Yorkin made their fatal mistake.

No, audiences didn’t like Archie.

They loved him.

. . .

Asteroids collide, and sometimes they form new planets, and sometimes they shatter and expose what lies beneath.

Prager’s modern day Babbittry crashed into Harlan’s half-century old anti-Babbittry, and from the explosion a stark truth revealed itself.

It’s almost impossible to make an outlaw a villain in popular media.

No matter how many banks they rob, stages they hold up, sheriffs they shoot, the mere fact that somebody wrote a song / dime novel / movie about ‘em makes them into heroes.

Demi-gods.

People to be admired.

Emulated.

Professional wrestling knows this.

You can never be so big a heel that you won’t have a legion of followers.

And you can turn a heel into a baby face in the blink of an eye and none of the fans will remember the despicable acts the wrassler did just last week.

You put an Archie Bunker on TV, you do not get millions of people to recognize themselves in his hateful / hurtful behavior and change their ways.

Oh, hell no; you get millions of people to applaud him for saying and doing what they say and do in private.

And now that it’s all big and bold and brassy on TV, why it becomes even easier to say it in the privacy of your own home, then over the fence with the neighbors, then in the bar down the street, then on the street itself, and then against people who have done you no harm, who have committed no sin other than the heinous crime of not being exactly like you.

I remember watching and liking All In The Family when it first came on because I, like millions of other Americans, got the joke:  Archie was no hero.

But it wasn’t long before the voices cheering Archie began to drown out the voices laughing at him.

Lear and Yorkin tried undoing their damage with Maude and The Jeffersons and Good Times and other spinoff shows, but the bigot was out of the bottle.

Archie Bunker, even though written in a way to ridicule his use of bigotry and stereotypes, became a champion and defender of those who clung to said bigotry and stereotypes.

So tell me again why you want to drop that N-bomb, Dennis.

Explain to me -- even while you talk out of both sides of your mouth and claim even if everybody can use they word maybe they shouldn’t use the word -- how that does anything to help anybody…

…other than bigots and hate mongers.

Your argument is as circular as the thumb and forefinger gesture white supremacists use to signal one another, a gesture deliberately chosen because it lets them transgress openly by lying about the truth meaning of their gesture.

And Harlan, you were right about Those Were The Days as it began evolving into All In The Family.  Absolutely brilliant -- but absolutely deadly.

Not airing All In The Family wouldn’t have eliminated racial / ethnic / sexual prejudice in the United States…

…but it would have denied those ideas a voice.

The narcissist always proclaims, “I don’t care what they say about me so long as they spell my name right.”

Well, that’s what we got with Archie Bunker.

None of the bigots cared if we made fun of their ideas…

…just so long as they got their ideas out there.

Because ideas are made legitimate by their presence.

Now clearly, this is a bade that cuts both ways.

Ideas once unthinkable -- liberty and justice for all in the form of racial and gender equality, f’r instance -- need to be championed in public.

But we need to shout down and stamp out the bad ideas.

The United States took their foot off the neck of the defeated white racists after the end of the Civil War, and as a result jim crow came roaring back, and things did not change for millions of Americans for another entire century.

We allowed bigots and hate mongers and slavers to be whitewashed and glorified and forgiven for their crimes against humanity…

…and in the process we allowed them to continue victimizing African-Americans more and more.

Every song about the Ol’ South, every novel glorifying plantation life, every movie showing happy field hands, every statue commemorating murderous traitors as men of honor and principle, every single iteration of that idea made millions of people’s suffering not just possible but inevitable.

. . .

Now this is the point where the alt-right trolls are gonna jump up and ask “did you ever drop the N-word?”

Not in casual conversation, no.

I was born and raised in the South (Appalachia, mostly); my father’s side of the family were almost all Southerners.

Almost all.

My paternal grandmother was born and raised in New Jersey and met my grandfather when both served in the U.S. Army medical corps in WWI.  When my grandfather died in his 40s, my grandmother originally moved back to New Jersey, but her three children (dad and two aunts) felt heartbroken at having to leave their Southern cousins and friends behind so even though she carried no particular love for the South, my grandmother moved her family back and stayed there for the most of her life (she and one of my aunts moved out to California to be near us, but that’s another story for another post).

One thing my grandmother absolutely refused to tolerate was use of the N-bomb anywhere near her, especially under her roof or in the homes of her children.

This included both the -er and -ra variants, because Southern racists who didn’t want to appear as uncultured and as boorish and as bigoted as their backwoods cousins preferred the second pronunciation because they could claim they were actually speaking respectfully about “colored people”.

So I grew up in the rare white Southern home where the N-bomb merely wasn’t used, it was actually denounced as wrong.

Now, don’t go thinking my grandmother was some great paragon of virtue; she wasn’t (she was hell on wheels, in fact, but that’s another story for another post).

But she did recognize there was something wrong with the use of the N-bomb, and whether she demanded her children never use it in any form to keep them from appearing to be boorish, bigoted louts, or whether she just thought it was simple good manners of the golden rule variety not to use it, I dunno.

But I do know we never used it, and when my parents heard our neighbors or schoolmates use it, we were reminded in no uncertain terms that we were never to use it.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t used it.

A couple of decades ago I wrote a screenplay based on the life of Robert Smalls, in particular his incredible escape from Civil War Charleston by hijacking a Confederate gunboat and sailing it right past Ft. Sumter to join the Union fleet, bringing his wife and several other escaping African-Americans with him.

As a skilled harbor pilot, Smalls enjoyed certain privileges other enslaved African-Americans didn’t.

For example, he was allowed to go about the streets of Charleston unescorted…

…provided he wore a big diamond shaped brass tag around his neck.

Like a dog.

The tag indicated to slave catcher patrols that he was one of the “good” ones, that he could be trusted because he was helping his masters in their struggle against the Union by guiding blockade runners into the safety of Charleston harbor.

But knowing Southerners the way I do, and knowing the kind of low class good ol’ boy types they recruited for such jobs, I couldn’t imagine the slave catcher patrols being particularly courteous to him, even when they knew they had to let him pass because clearly he had the protection of some high positioned muckamuck.  

And I could easily imagine them flinging the N-bomb at him with great glee, taunting him, daring him to act “uppity” so they could beat the crap out of him and teach him some manners and remind him of his place.

So I used the word in their dialog in my script.

Would I use that word today?

Probably not.

It’s not that crucial to the story, and if the viewer doesn’t grasp the concept that these are bigoted bully scum from their actions and attitude, then I’ve failed my job as a writer.

Have I ever quoted people who dropped the N-bomb?

Yeah, I have, in the past.

I’ve quoted Richard Pryor and Blazing Saddles and Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

I would excuse it then as the aforementioned evidentiary context but ya know what?  I don’t quote those lines anymore.

I still think Pryor is hilarious and will recommend his routines to anyone I think might be interested, but he as a member of the African-American community at large (because like any other ethnic group, African-Americans have numerous sub-cultures and sub-communities among them), he could say things in a way neither I nor any other white person could say them.

(And, yeah, there’s a big debate going on to this very day among African-Americans about the appropriateness of that word and you know what?  Whatever decision African-Americans reach for themselves is their business and should not involve any input whatsoever from we white folk; we not only can’t use the word, we can’t even comment on how they choose to use it.  Period.  Full stop.)

Blazing Saddles when it came out used the N-bomb to be deliberately transgressive, to make a sympathetic point re how unfairly African-Americans were treated.

All well and good.

But nine years earlier there had been a movie called A Patch Of Blue and while it wasn’t a raucous comedy like Blazing Saddles it tried making a point about race relations in America and it was a really. Really good movie and it made some important points but today is virtually unwatchable not because of any flaws in it but because the times have changed.

Ditto Blazing Saddles.

We don’t need to approach the problem that way any more.

Quentin Tarantino?  I really like what he does as a director and a screenwriter but his use of the N-bomb to show us how transgressive his characters are is really shallow.  I have a strong feeling his movies are going to be considered embarrassingly passé’ in a generation or two, much the same way as benign-yet-stereotypical characters in 1940s movies render many of them passé’ today.  

Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction lose nothing by changing the N-word to something else.  

Maybe an argument could be made for its use in Django Unchained or The Hateful 8 but even there I think substituting another word wouldn’t significantly change the tenor or tone of either movie.

So I stop quoting those lines from Tarantino’s films, at least not fully.

I can admire his skill / talent / craft without signing off on his problematic elements.

Let me offer an analogy: If a creator can get the same dramatic effect by pretending to shoot somebody but not actually blasting them with a gun, then they can get the same dramatic effect by using something evocative of the N-bomb without actually dropping it.

(By the way, for those who may be curious, my mother was from Naples and a bona fide card carrying member of Mussolini’s Fascist Youth Brigade, but that’s another story for another post.)

. . .

We are plunging into a new cultural conflict -- and while I think there will be violence, I don’t see it being violence on the scale or level of political organization as the Civil War -- and we can only win by refusing to let the bigots and the hate mongers spew their bullshit in the marketplace of ideas.

There is no compromise with an oppressor.

Stand up to it every time you encounter it.

Make it unthinkable, never acceptable. 

  © Buzz Dixon

[claritywords]

Don’t You Want Me pt. 2

A/N: I’m sorry this one isn’t very good but I promise the next one will be better

(Written by claritywords)

It had been a week since I’d snapped at Peter and I had been actively avoiding everyone except for the rehearsals for the school carnival. Everything was going fine until the next saturday rolled around and I knew I couldn’t avoid Ned for seven hours straight.

“Y/n!” I took a deep breath as I crammed my instrument case into my locker.

“Hold this.” I handed him my mellophone while I slid my book out of my backpack.

“Woah,” he almost dropped it, “That’s a big book.”

“Yep.” I raised my eyebrows and took the brass instrument back.

“Is it any good?”

“Nope.” I walked away as he called my name.

Ned tried to talk to me a few more times after that but eventually stopped after being yelled at for improper rehearsal etiquette and had to run laps around the field. Practice went by pretty quickly after that.

I was walking home on my usual route, paying more attention to my book rather than where I was actually going. It was a rather large book due to the fact that it contained all of shakespeare's plays. I had just finished rereading King Lear for the umpteenth time when I stepped off the curb and was flying through the air. I knew I screamed but didn’t remember doing so as I held tightly onto whatever had ahold of me.

I was swung around a building and toppled onto the sidewalk, taking whatever had grabbed me down with me. I quickly stood up and looked around before spotting a red and blue clad figure in front of me.

“What the hell was that?” I snapped as I helped up who I recognised as the Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman.

“What?” his confused voice was muffled by the ridiculous mask.

“You just threw me to the sidewalk! A little heads up would’ve been nice!” I fumed.

“I, I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.” he stuttered.

“Well stop.” I glowered, “And save the chivalry act for Peter, I’m not as gullible as him.”

“Peter?” he questioned as people began to stop and look at us.

“Parker, Peter Parker. You guys are buddies, right? Well, at least according to him.”

“Well, yeah, we are, but,” he began but I cut him off.

“Okay, then I don’t want your help. I’ve had enough of it.”

I missed what he said as I spotted a group of familiar figures headed our way.

“Are you okay?” he pulled me out of my thoughts.

“How fast can you get me out of here?”

I took him by surprise, “What?”

“How fast?” I repeated.

“Uh, pretty fast I guess-”

“Good,” I had a bad habit of interrupting.

***

We landed in a park a few blocks away a bit more gracefully than the last time which wasn’t really saying much.

“Okay,” he awkwardly rubbed his arm, “I guess I’ll just-”

“Wait,” I looped my thumbs in the straps of my backpack and rocked up on my toes, “I’m sorry.”

“You are?” he seemed surprised.

I sighed and looked anywhere but him, “I shouldn’t have judged you like I did.”

“It’s, it’s okay.”

I sat down and covered my face with my hands before running them through my hair.

“Tough day?” I was surprised when he sat down next to me.

“Tough week. Is it that obvious?” I put my hands between my knees.

“No! No, it’s just my friend does the hand thing too when she’s stressed.”

he gestured to my previous movements.

“Sounds like a cool kid.” I gave a quick smile.

“She really is. Can I ask what’s wrong…” he looked for my name.

“Y/n.” I fidgeted  with my fingers, “It’s just your average teenage drama. You probably have more important hero stuff to get to.”

“Hey!” he put his hands on his legs, “There’s heroism in the small stuff too.”

I glanced at him as a smile instantly came to my face, “Is that so?”

“It is.” he joked back.

“Okay, fine.” I turned on the bench to face him, “I used to be friends with Peter Parker and his friend Ned. I thought we were best friends and I told them everything. Only, I found out after two years that, I, was in fact, a third wheel. We drifted apart, not to my own fault. And now, because he’s friends with, has the Stark Internship, and is not only the best in the class but the whole school, I’m constantly reminded by the most irritating classmates you could think of that I am not only no longer of any importance of him whatsoever, but that I’m ‘unworthy’ and the dumbest in my class.”

“You don’t seem dumb to me.” his voice portrayed what I couldn’t see on his face.

“That’s because I’m not. People fail to realize that there’s more than one kind of smart and I don’t exactly fit their single definition of the word.”

We sat there in silence and I began to think he’d left when he spoke again, “Have you told Peter any of this.”

I rolled my eyes, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” I stood up, “He wouldn’t get it. He would say he would, but he wouldn’t to the full extent. Not really.”

“How do you know?” he pushed and almost sounded offended.

I threw my hands up in the air, “He just wouldn’t! He’s been surrounded by his ‘people’ for too long.”

“What do you mean his people?” he looked up at me.

“I don’t, I don’t know. Top of the class, smart, somewhat nerdy but still cool, all gorgeous, and all good looking.”

I pointed a finger at him, “Everyone likes them too so I have no one to complain to which makes me hate them even more. They’re who I was trying to avoid when I asked you to bring me here.”

He suddenly perked up “Oh no.”

“What?” I furrowed my eyebrows.

Spiderman quickly stood up and began to excuse himself, “I’m sorry, I’m interested, I am,” he glanced over his shoulder, “It’s just, I really have to go, I’m sorry.”

I gave a slight wave before he took off, me eventually following suit half an hour later.

[argumentativeessay401]

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About me

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Write My Essay 24 My college didn’t mind, but my sense of self-price really suffered! I’m probably not motivated to hand in some last-minute crap anymore when I know that in theory I could do so much better. I do attempt to sit down early, I like to study, I love all the educational surroundings and so forth. The ironic factor was that it was the first time I began an essay early, I chipped at it slowly and obtained over my fear. I was 1 minute late to submit and all the trouble I made dealing with my ‘concern’ was in useless. Identify unoriginal content with the world’s best plagiarism detection answer. Manage potential academic misconduct by highlighting similarities to the world’s largest collection of web, educational, and student paper content. Rosanne Cash was most likely not trying to stress anybody into writing King Lear. But I was in no place to think about her tweet that means. But I needed desperately to produce one thing for that entire month. If you employ your imagination, you find find different methods than an impending deadline to create challenge or excessive arousal when writing. Please write again when you find another that works for you. The our bodies of the essay seems to be the principle half for me. I discovered if I break this up in chunks, matters are a lot higher, ideally. Physically a calming therapeutic massage may set off more thoughts. Empower students to suppose critically and take possession of their work. Easy-to-use feedback and grading options facilitate tutorial intervention and save time both in and out of doors of the classroom. Turnitin companions with global educators to share smart, artistic tutorial practices. Explore our blog, teaching tools, guides, white papers, and extra. I simply place an order and so they handle all of the work by themselves. I don’t have to worry about something like deadlines, high quality, formatting and so forth. I am happy with my analysis paper which was written within every week’s deadline, and was quite professional. As a pupil who intertwines teachers with extracurricular involvement, I am impressed by the Ex-Co’s capability to supply studying opportunities outside of sophistication. Additionally, I am drawn to extracurriculars that can also increase my information of the world, such because the Debate Team. The very few times that I actually have handed in my essay, they have been late and I have acquired penalties. I even have fail of failure and don’t want to hand in a crappy essay but in addition am plagued with this phobia I guess. Wow, I’m feeling anxious simply studying these feedback. I’m trying to find help for my college-age son, who is extraordinarily shiny however can barely write a word with out intense self-loathing . During my undergrads I sort of managed to both hand in on time and get okay grades or hand in late and get good grades. But even those of us who aren't rich and who usually are not men spend most of our time working. I tried to write down an essay about productivity in quarantine. I employed a proofreader from here, and there work was commendable. My paper received accepted after they proofread it for me and picked out the errors. They are doing their job actually and professionally. I actually have by no means been fond of writing that’s why I have always scored much less on my English subject. But when I found WritersThrone I was so relieved. It’s really discouraging to want to start something early again. i hope the lecturer nonetheless settle for my essay task though i know there isn't a chance coz he's so strict sort of person. Hi CQ. You are not alone in struggling penalties of essay-writing phobia. It appears that you simply need challenge or excessive arousal to write down your finest. While Haverford’ present team is out of commission, I hope to get it up and working, and give students another place to talk their opinions confidently. The two women’s facilities also handle these two necessary wants, one a need for activism, the opposite a necessity for a safe space, together with that for male feminists. Write a different essay for EACH of the faculties you’re applying to. It reveals each school you’re applying to that you just cared sufficient to spend the time researching and have actually, really thought this through. I additionally assume it provides you a better chance at WOW-ing the college and demonstrating why you’re a great match.

[the-last-airbadger]

My 2017

The end of the year is in sight, and so it is time to, once again, write a long post in which I look back on the past year and get all sentimental and stuff. It’s fun! And since I’ve kinda made an annual tradition out of it, why the fuck not?

I’m gonna be using the same questions/categories as I did last year for maximum comparison (and so I know what to write about), so if you want to read last year’s post, I’ll link it here: (x)

The Beginning of 2017 vs. Now I definately think that there’s a huge difference between the beginning of the year and the end. When this year started, I was sooooo busy with school. I had multiple test weeks coming up and I was behind on almost all my subjects. The stress of all that stuff caused me to feel really unhappy, and apart from that my transition also wasn’t really moving forward. And now? Now I’m five months on T, finished with school, and even though work is still stressfull at the moment and I’m still not really happy, I can say that I’m a lot happier than I was at the beginning of the year. I also feel like at the beginning of the year I was kinda stuck in a negative mindset. I felt lonely all the time, and I had just started to realise that I was a very insecure person and I felt really lonely and busy and isolated and I just wasn’t in a good place, ya know? And I feel like in the past year I’ve become better at dealing with my insecurities and with jealousy, which has increased the value I have of myself, which has definately improved my quality of life. 

So, to summarise it: Since the beginning of the year I’ve reached multiple of my goals, reached some milestones and, most importantly, I’ve grown as a person.

Best things about 2017 So many good things happened this year! I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll try to start with things that happened at the beginning of the year and just see where it leads me. I hope I won’t forget anything lmao.

Okay, so first of all, Voltron season 2, 3 and 4 were all released this year! Three seasons! That’s crazy! I didn’t really enjoy the last two that much, but damn, season 2 was really fun! Other tv shows that got new seasons this year were Stranger Things, Doctor Who (I can’t believe I’ve only finished the tenth doctors seasons this year! I can’t believe I’ve not been into Doctor Who for more than a year! It’s so much funn!!!!), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (which reminds me, I started watching “the good place” this year! Amazing show!), and Sense8! Speaking of sense8, I only started watching it in the beginning of this year, and it has easily become one of my favourite shows ever! I’m so glad I got to watch this show this year! 

Then in february, I discovered the band One Ok Rock, which is one of my favourite bands at the moment. It’s crazy to think I haven’t even known them for a year, because they’ve become such an integral part of my music library. And so have Lindsey Stirling and Ed Sheeran by the way! I went to a Lindsey Stirling concert in March and have become a huge fan of her latest album “brave enough” ever since then. And Ed Sheeran’s album “Devide” had some amazing songs on it that I connected with instantly and have helped me through some hard times. I really can’t believe I’ve only been listening to these songs for like nine months or something. It feels like it’s been forever. The same goes for a certain musical genre by the way, but we’ll get into that later!!

Then in may, two amazing things happened, first of all I got to perform on a huge stage with my choir, and met some famous dutch people there! Roel van Velzen for example! That was crazy! We were on TV!!! 

The second thing is, I finished my exams and was done with school! This made me feel sooooo much happier. I instantly just felt a lot better and suddenly had time to do stuff I liked, like read and write and play the piano. Honestly, those months (end of may - end of august) were some of the best months I’ve had in a loooong time. I wish I could go back sometimes lmao.

So yeah, I graduated, turned eightteen, went to Ireland for the first time. All of that stuff was amazing. Then, on the 28th of june, I went to the hospital and got one of the best surprises I’ve ever gotten. I COULD FINALLY, FINALLY, GO ON T! If I had to pick my best day of the year, I’d probably choose this day. Testosterone has already improved my life so much and I’ve only been on it for five months. I can’t imagine how much it will change me in the next year and I also can’t wait to find out!!

Oh, and after that, I GOT INTO KPOP! I started really listening to Day6 during my vacation to ireland, but around the end of august/beginning of september, I started to get really really into SHINee, and in extention, to kpop. Honestly, this might sound dramatic, but Day6 and SHINee have added so much to my life. Their music and just their personalities never fail to make me smile, and they bring me comfort when I feel down. Since a few weeks, BTS has also been added to that list. Their music and the members just really mean a lot to me, so I’d say kpop is definately one of the best things that happened to me this year. 

Then I got a job in september, and I can’t really remember if anything big has happened since then. The only thing I can really think of is I SAW JACKSEPTICEYE LIVE! That evening was such a fun evening and it was awesome to finally get to see one of my heroes in person and to be in the same room with him and see that he’s actually real, haha. I don’t think I’ve screamed that much anywhere else this year. 

Oh, and I also went to my first pride this year! Sadly, I couldn’t stay there very long because of work, but it was amazing and I can’t wait to go again!

I also started my youtube channel this year, which is cool. I really love making content for it, but unfortunately it takes a lot of time that I usually don’t have. I hope I’ll be able to keep it up for another year!

So, I think that’s it for this year. If you look at it like this it’s actually quite a lot of positive stuff! That’s always good.

OH AND HOW COULD I FORGET I went to london with my mom this year! It was only two nights but it was amazing and I had loads of fun there! 

And another thing I wanted to add is I feel like I’ve become a lot closer with my friends this past year. I guess that’s just what happens when you know them for a year longer, but idk. We see eachother a lot less than last year and despite that we’ve only become closer and I think that’s a really amazing thing.

OH, and I started to watch the You’re So Brave podcast by Chase Ross & Aaron Ansuini and oh my god have these dudes helped me a lot in the past year. Thank you guys so so much!!!

My resolutions for 2017? I haven’t looked at my resolutions for this year since I posted them last year... oops. But I remember quite a few of them and I believe I’ve achieved some of them so I’m just going to copy-paste them here and adress them all individually

Go on Testosterone, for real this time - Did that!! I went on T on the 28th of July 2017 and am now Five months and Three days on T!

Write more! - .... well I guess I failed that one. I wrote exactly four pages in the past year

Save money and buy new jeans, flannels and hoodies - I did save money, and bought my favourite flannel, hoodie and jeans this year, so I guess that counts

Finish School! - DID THAT

Read a lot of books! - Sadly, I didn’t manage to achieve my reading goal on goodreads. I only read 22 books this year when I wanted to read 35. Last year, I read about the same amount, so I’d count this as a fail.

Stay Hydrated! - Idek if I did this lmao. I did become more aware of what I’m eating and what I should eat more and less to stay healthy, so I’m going to count this as a win

Try to make my tumblr blog a safe and positive place for everyone - I’ll let you guys be the judge of that

Stay positive - I’ve definately tried this, so that’s good enough

Try to be the best person I can be - I’ve become a lot more self aware the past year, and I did find out what my flaws were and how to work on them, so I think I did this.

Fight my insecurities - As I’ve stated in the beginning of this post, I think I’ve become better at dealing with them, so I’d say yeah, I did that!

Reach 200 followers on tumblr!! - Did that! I’ve got about 280 followers now!!

So yeah, overall I think I did pretty good in the past year! Better than I expected at least haha

Expectations for 2018 Okay, let’s see. I’m expecting I’ll keep my job until around june/july. I’ll turn nineteen in june, and I’m going to see Paramore, Markiplier, Ed Sheeran and Dan and Phil live this year! Really looking forward to that!! Then in september I’m going to start university, and I think that I’m going to have Top-Surgery somewhere between september and december of this year. Apart from that I don’t really know what to expect. I think university will be quite easy for me education-wise, and hard social-wise, since I’m not good around strangers and might have some slight social anxiety. But apart from that I don’t really have a clear vision for the future. I am probably going to start learing how to drive so I might get my driver’s liscence this year. Who knows? It’ll be a mystery until I’ve lived it guys.

2018 Resolutions? I am feeling ambitious rn so I’m probably gonna set the bar too high but oh well who cares let’s do this

Finally decide what to study

Get Top-Surgery

Write at least 100 pages of a story

Accomplish my reading challenge on goodreads (I’m gonna try 35 books again)

Start University

Make new friends

Stop with my acting classes

Learn how to drive

Improve my drawing skills (maybe make a comic?)

Reach 300 followers on Tumblr

Get more than 20 subs on Youtube and consistently create content for my channel

Learn Divenire on the Piano

Dye my hair

Continue to shower every day (Hygene is important!)

Start working out/exercising regularely

Get new glasses

And yeah, that’s it! I hope you’ve all enjoyed going along on this journey through my past year with me. Looking back on the past year is always one of my favourite parts of new year’s eve. It’s so good to look back and see all that you’ve accomplished in a year and it just makes me really sentimental and stuff and I like that. 

Anyways, I hope you all have a great evening, and I’ll see you guys next year!

[mytaggss]

7.21.16 (first)

4.11.17 (second)

1. Are you good at apologizing? i guess yeah- sure

2. Do you prefer your looks or personality? both- both tbh

3. Are you confident? not really- eh, sometimes i can be, but lets be honest here

4. What are you most confident about yourself? idk- my body size, i like that i look kind of small but not too skinny

5. Name a few songs that reminds you of someone, and who it remind you of. idk haha- haha i have some but 

6. What is your favourite colour combination? i like a lot of them, i can’t pick a favorite off the top of my head.- maybe pink and white? idkkk

7. Define your “aesthetic”. basically someone who takes care of themselves all around.- casual and athletic probably

8. What is sex to you? something that two people who are really into/love each other and it is something both want to do.- two people who are comfortable with each other and have some sort of sexual tension and are both into it. there can be love involved or just lust

9. Do you have any kinks? What are they? not really- nah

10. What are some of your biggest pet peeves? people who scream randomly- when i can hear people eating weirdly oh god

11. What’s something that automatically turns you off of other people? bad odor/breath, dirty clothes/hair (all the time, not like after sports or a workout lol)- same and boring people

12. What song always makes you sad/emotional? idk- without a word- birdy and fallingforyou- the 1975 and juke jam- chance the rapper (sometimes lol)

13. How many people have you dated? How many of them do you still have feelings for? none- none technically

14. How are you with moving on? idk- eh get hurt but i move on to the next one pretty easily because i haven’t had a true bf so

15. What’s a philosophy you agree with, but fail to live by? idk- live life to the fullest everyday

16. What’s something you don’t like about yourself? myself in general kind of lol.- lol my height, i wish i was shorter

17. What’s something positive happening in your life right now? i am going to start college soon.- i am actually doing good in school other then math but i am withdrawing from that class so

18. Are you truly able to admit your faults in relationships to yourself? idk?- sure

19. Is it important to you to be a good person? yes- yes

20. Are you a good person? i think so- yes i think so

21. How could you become a better person? i could compliment people more, and be happier for others.- same 

22. Would/have you ever pierced your genitalia? no- no

23. Have you ever been in love? If so, with how many people? no- nah

24. Do you believe in love at first sight? nah- same

25. Which social science interests you more; psychology (how the mind effects a person), sociology (how society affects a people) or anthropology (learning about culture)? Why? psychology, idk.-- psychology 

26. Have you ever orgasmed? no- nope

27. Have you ever made someone else orgasm? no- yes

28. During sexual interaction, what is the most important thing to you? that they really want to do this me, and that there is emotion connected between us and we are really into it and each other.- that they are into it to, i love someone who initiates it first because then i know they want it. also comfort and trust, those are extremely important, it may be something you hear over and over again, but it seriously so important, i didn’t realize until after i did it. 

29. Are you comfortable being sexual with lots of people? nah, just one is good enough for me.- well i mean i would like to have different experiences with other people, but not a lot all at the same time. 

30. How do you usually get people to be interested in terms of romantic relationships? And sexual relationships? And platonic relationships? uh, i never have had one.- they have always come to me, i don’t really do anything tbh, i just reciprocate if i want to

31. What’s your favourite song to sing a long to? idk, i have lots.- not about angles- birdy

32. What’s some “embarrassing” music you listen to? uh, none that i think is embarrassing. sometimes i’ll listen to old love songs cause i think they’re cute. idk if thats embarrassing, but yeah.- lol sometimes i listen to kpop if its good.

33. What are you most snobby/pretentious about? haha, nothing really.- lol nothing really

34. How do you express sad emotions? And happy emotions? uh, not really. i like being happy of course.- i express my sad emotions usually through free write poetry and my happiness just through my everyday life. 

35. Do you use Skype? FaceTime? none of them really. rarely FaceTime. no Skype.- nah

36. How do you feel about phone calls? i only like them with close friends, if not i get really nervous about them and i will like get all worked up.- only if i absolutely have to

37. How do you feel about texting? i like it- its nice

38. What are your thoughts on LDRs? um, idk think they work out well. i think they should take a break and if they are both still up for it when they get back, then they can continue.- i think it can sometimes work and sometimes it can, depends on the people. 

39. Have you ever cried over a piece of visual art? What was it of? Why do you think it made you cry? no- nah

40. When and why was the last time you cried? when i got lost across town and my phone just turned off lol.- i don’t remember 

41. What’s something you love that you never do anymore? Why don’t you do it? read, because it takes up too much time and i don’t really have any.- write my fictional stories/books, i used to love it, but i just stopped because i didn’t have time and i was getting burned out. but i wan’t to start again soon. 

42. Are you afraid to die? only if I’m young- i think i am too young to die right now, so yes i am

43. If there were no limits; who and what would you be? idk really…- an astronomer

44. Are you more likely to be sub or dom during sex? sub- sub

45. Describe your fashion sense. brandy melville sort of, but a little bit more casual then that. i like short clothes and crop shirts. I like cause lear to be honest. stuff that i won’t stand out too much, but people will still think I’m cute.- casual and athletic or beachy

46. Do you have stage fright? only when i am alone speaking yes.- in public speaking yes 

47. Did/do you ever put your hand up in class? sometimes… not really though- eh not really

48. Are you more of an open or closed person? both- open definitely 

49. What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you? And the best? the worst thing, idk really… and the best probably when i got dancer of the year.- same

50. Are you a theist? (Not necessarily in the way of “guy in the sky”, maybe just believing in any higher power) maybe yeah.- same

51. What are your top three places you’d like to travel and why? china/korea, paris, and brazil. they are pretty.- scotland, spain, costa rica

52. What’s something you thought would be really scary/bad, but was actually fine when it happened/you did it? putting a tampon in lol, sorry.- lol same haha and sex

53. When you sleep at friends houses, how often do you sleep in their bed? overtime basically, unless there are a lot of people over.- almost ever time unless there are more people there and we can’t, i always get the worst sleeping accomidations i swear lol.

54. Can you sleep facing someone? idk yeah. as long as they aren’t like looking at me.- lol samme

55. Do you ever get in slumps? If so; how often, and how long do they usually last for? yeah, not for very long.- yeah i do a lot haha and usually not more then a couple days

56. Do you like being alone? yes, sometimes.- not really

57. Are you social? yes

58. How do you feel about parties? i like them, i’ve just never really gone to them, cause I don’t know many people that go to them.- i like them actually, i really like parting with my friends and being a little crazy, like its really enjoyable for me haha. even though my best friend isn’t always super into them haha.

59. Have you ever hosted a party? How did it go? no- nah

60. What question(s) do you love to ask people? idk- questions about love and sex and just deep stuff about them, it’s really interesting. some people are really open and cool about it.

61. What question(s) do you love being asked? personal stuff like this- personal questions, im such an open book

62. Are you confrontational? Does it make you uncomfortable when others are? not really, and yes haha.- nah and it can be lol, i just like to keep the peace

[queerprincessfromhell-blog]

Do all of the emoji asks!!

omg that are so many /o\

🐰 what is one secret that you’ve never told anyone?

Idk I don’t think there is anything and even if there was Im pretty sure I wouldn’t want to post in on the internet?

💗 if you could hug anyone, who would it be?

This is probably about someone I wouldn’t normally hug but it’d just be someone I adore like a good friend or my boyfriend. Maybe someone I haven’t seen/hugged in a while like Resa or Isi or Bekki? Idrk I actually do hug almost anyone when I get the chance.

🐹 what are some of your favourite Pokémon and why?

My only Pokémon experience has been playing Pokémon GO for a few weeks tbh but I thought Evoli were pretty cute and I liked Glumanda and Bisasam I think? Oh and Shiggy!

🌠 if you were in charge of the world, what would the world look like?

A mess. I shouldn’t be in charge of anything, I’d just make it worse :’D

👀 what was the most recent vivid dream that you had?

Uhm…idk I thik I had one a couple months back but I don’t remeber what it was but when I was a kid I dreamt there wuld be a huge police car in our flat and it took me like three years to be sure it was just a dream.

☀️ what do you like the most about your best friend?

That she always just wants good and that she always cares for other people

😘 talk about your crush or partner

He’s super adorable and he gives the best kisses. He is very consistent in his opinions, he can draw, he actually manages to make me feel good enough for him, he is kinda obsessed with some things including fob and Harvest Moon. When he talks about drawing or colours or pecils or something like that his whole face lights up and he gets really happy and excited, that’s super cute. He makes fun of me for everything but never in a way I would feel bad about. He’s super emo but also a literal sunshine, you just have to be happy when you’re around him. Also he radiates so much energy I don’t even know why. He has the best hair ever and super warm eyes (like…they look warm. Colour-wise. Not the temperature, you know? :’D) and he has freckles which looks ridiculously good. And he has the best smile ever.

💁 if someone was rude to you, would you be rude back?

yes

🌟 what do you like about yourself? (must choose at least 3 things!)

I think I like my voice, like when I hear it in voice notes or something? Also my eyebrows and that I hug people a lot.

🐾 what are you scared of most? how will you overcome it?

That it doesn’t matter whether i’m there or not, whenever I feel like people don’t care when or even if I’m there it is the worst to me. But tbh I don’t know how to overcome it, I mostly just cry a lot and try to convince myself it’s not true.

🎁 what never fails to make you happy?

Baking or dying my hair. Both stress me out a lot sometimes, especially when it doesn’t turn out the way I want it to but in the end the process makes me happy even if the outcome doesn’t. Also being in the sunshine.

💙 what annoys you about some people?

That they think they can get away with anything.

😤 do you get angry easily?

Depends on the topic. On some things I’ll explode immediately, with others it will take a lot.

🐇 what do you always daydream about?

I don’t actually daydream that much but i think about my boyfriend so much it’s kinda ridiculous, so if that counts as well…

And when I daydream it’s mostly about sunshine or something atm because it’s winter and I really want it to be light and warm again

🌻 if you could change 3 things about the world what would you change?

I would make people care more. About other people, animals, the environment etc

I would also make it easier for people to be open about the things they want to but are too afraid to.

And I would make everyone have basic human rights and necessities

🍓 send me 4 names: kiss, befriend, kill or marry?

I can’t really do tha bc you didn’t send any names

✈️ what is your dream city and why?

I don’t know, I really like big cities in general, for the atmosphere and the vibe they give off, I’d like to visit as many as possible in my life, as well in Germany as in the rest of the world. But I can’t imagine to go away from cologne forever, I’d always come back here I think.

☕️ talk about your ideal day

I don’t really have one ideal version of a day, I love days I spend with my friends walking around cologne or sitting in a park, I love days I spend with my best friend in her bed, watching something or being on Tumblr, I love days I spend with my boyfriend, sitting in a cafe and have breakfast or drink coffee or sitting at home cuddling and watching something, sometimes I like days I spend baking a cake that is way to complicated for my baking skills…tbh there’s a ton of things that make a day ‘ideal’

🌸 are you an introvert, ambivert or extrovert?

Ambivert I guess

💧 when was the last time you cried?

two hours ago

🎵 name 5 songs you love at the moment

Sparks Fly - Taylor Swift

Summertime - My Chemical Romance

In Between - Linkin Park

In Pieces - Linkin Park

The Only Hope For Me Is You - My Chemical Romance

⚡️ if you had any superpower, what would it be and why?

Making people see how it really is, because on the one hand it’s so sad when people beat themselves up about something they misinterpreted and stuff like that and on the other hand I hate it when people act so careless because they don’t see what they’re doing

💛 if you could talk to your younger self, what would you say?

Stand up for yourself and what you care about! You don’t always have to hide. Also who cares about ‘friends’ who only make you feel bad? You don’t need them.

💚 who are you jealous of and why?

People who are able to propely interact with other people without always feeling weird or wrong

💎 which one would you rather have more of: intelligence, beauty, kindness, wealth or bravery? why?

I’m not sure whether this is about what I would want to have more of, compared to the amount I have now or comapared to each other so I’m going to answer it compared to how it is now.

I’d really like to be more brave, I’m such a chicken for literally anything even though I’m trying to work on that. Also I don’t really want wealth in like, being wealthy but if neither of my parents would have to be worried about money ever again that’d be great.

🙊 what are you ashamed of?

I don’t really have one thing that I could name, sometimes there’ll be a thing I’m ashamed of and then I’ll try to forget about it :’D

🌺 which languages do you know? which do you want to learn?

I speak German and English and I’m learing Latin in school. I’d like to be fluent in English and I also want to learn Dutch someday.

🍀 if you could be any fictional character’s best friend/lover, which fictional character would you be?

I think I’d like to be Luna Lovegood’s friend. Or Tonks‘.

☁️ talk about your dream universe.

I do’t think I understand the question :o I like stars and planets and stuff a lot and I love to read (nonfiction) about space if that’s what you mean :D

💜 which acts of kindness are you going to do today?

I always try to randomly compliment people, hoping it will brighten up their day. Also I’ll buy some flowers for a friend of mine later.

🐬 if you could transform into any animal/magical creature, what would you be and why?

Maybe a angel because they have wings? idk, I like to be human actually

🍄 talk about someone/something you really dislike

I don’t wana talk bad about people like that

😣 talk about some things that have been making you depressed/angry/anxious lately

I’d rather not actually because more people could read that than I’d be comfortable with

🍪 what did you want to be as a kid, and what do you want to be now?

I wanted to be a teacher and an interior designer and a princess and a doctor and a lawyer….it changed a lot :’‘D right now I’m not really sure but I’d like to study social pedagogy or psychology or something  and work with children

🍰 what are some of your favourite sugary foods?

Cotton Candy and every kind of cake

🍑 what are you obsessed with?

Nothing at the moment, which is quite weird because I haven’t been obsessed with nothing for years. Maybe baking but not really

💘 what happens to you when you’re stressed?

I get easily annoyed and I cry a lot

😪 what are you sick of?

idk nothing in particular I think. It happens that I can’t stand something atm tho

🙀 are you an adrenaline seeker?

Ususally not, even though I like it a lot.

💥 what are some unpopular opinions that you have?

I don’t even know which opinions are popular, I just see/read something and either agree or not

☔️ would you consider yourself a good person?

Well I wouldn’t consider myself a bad person but I’m rying to become a better person

😊 what do you like to do as hobbies?

Reading, sometimes I try to draw but it’s never good, I like singing a lot…

🎤 what’s the last song you hummed or sang by yourself?

Puhh I don’t remember, I do that pretty much all the time.Mabe Mr Brightside by The Killers?

🐝 what’s your worst trait? how are you planning to improve it?

I forget sometimes that other people are a person each on their own as well, I tend to generalize them (especially when I don’t know them that well/don’t talk to them that often) by accident and I try to consciously think about them as indivuals with feelings and stuff

🎨 what do you always doodle when you’re bored?

hearts, stars, boxes, people…pretty much anything

🐻 what’s stopping you from chasing your dreams?

nothing

🌷 what’s your mbti personality and why do you think it suits you?

I had to google what this is and I just made a test and tbh, I don’t know :’D Apparentliy I’m ISFP-T, whatever that means

🐶 send me 3 fictional people and I’ll choose my favourite!

you didn’t send any people :(

👑 who are your favourite celebrities and why?

Gerard Way, Carrie Fisher and Gronkh because they have all created/been part of things I love a lot and have loved for a long time and all of them are actually good people

🐴 opinion on __?

again you didn’t send anything, sorry xD

🍋 do you consider yourself an emotional person?

I can be quite emotional but I am not necessarily. That really depends on the situation.

📚 share 3 books that you love and your favourite quote from them.

Loveletters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

The Bookthief by Markus Zusak

Ein kalter Strom by Val McDermid

but I don’t know any quotes, I’m sorry :’D

😔 what do you always do when you feel sad? does it help?

I mostly cry, that helps sometimes and if that doesn’t help I try to distract myself. That helps most of the time.

😌 what thoughts keep you going when you’re sad?

That it is never as bad as it seems or at least it will be over soon

🌍 which country do you live in?

Germany

🐧 describe yourself in 3 words

kind, affectionate, stubborn

🐵 which quotes changed you?

I don’t think there’s any quote that changed me as a person

💭 do you keep a diary?

I treid a few times but it never worked

💫 who inspires you?

Valerie inspires me to work on becoming the best version of myself

👻 do you believe in ghosts and why?

Yes, why not?

🎀 what’s your fashion sense like?

Pretty much everything black plus a lot of oastel things/things with lace/squares

🎬 what are some of your favourite films?

I don’t really like films but Deadpool was nice, I like Star Wars, Pirates of the Carribean, Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the chocolate factory and I recently started watching xmen with my boyfriend, they were good as well

🍦 what is one treasured childhood memory?

being at my grandma’s and going outside with my sister to play that game we always played when we were there and going to the funfair with my grandma…tbh pretty much anything related to my grandma, she was the person who was most important to me as a child

🐱 what’s your dream pet like?

Either a cat or a dog but definetly very cuddely :D

🐼 if you could meet anyone, who would it be?

I’d love to meet The Doctor tbh, not to be his companion or anything, just meet him :D