#haa this feels actually timely after having posted that new piece last night

[yuseirra]

Yeah THIS!!!! I GOT THIS TOO AND IT REALLY GETS ON MY NERVES!!!

Before... Before you talk about these things, what would you do if the same thing that's happened to Hikaru happened to you? How would you feel about that child? Are you really sure you'll be 100% loving and think oh they're mine and all that. If that's possible for you good for you then, but don't you see??? He was 11, 11!!! 11! I hate how cruel this manga gets sometimes(I've been reading a few articles about subjects like this though, and the victim's ages were alarmingly low on average so it's ACTUALLY accurate to how things are in real life despite how horrifying it is)

They don't have to interact!!!! Why do people insist they have to??? I got a couple asks like this and it just really upset me, so I wasn't the only one!! Just sit down and think about it for a second. Please. They can live a life apart from each other, I'm honestly RELIEVED and GLAD they never had this responsibility pushed in that character till the very end and had an interaction forced, thinking about it literally is so painful. I have to say this, I HATE this trend too!! Never been in the tags but I've been feeling it too because I draw hikaai prompts. Can't you guys just sit down and think about it a little??? Of what kind of situation that is?

Imagine if things never went wrong between Ai and Hikaru, and they ended up getting married and raising Taiki together alongside Aqua and Ruby?

i feel so sorry for all the anons who send me cute prompts and then get responses like this lol

SO!!! To be very clear anon, this is not me being Mad At You and while I do 100% sound heated and mad in this response this is because this is something I feel pretty strongly about but haven't really had an outlet to explain lol. But I actually personally really hate the trend in fandom of portraying Taiki as being raised by Ai and Hikaru in hypothetical happy end AUs and I don't think people are REALLY actually thinking about what they're presenting here.

Like... Hikaru is a rape victim! Taiki is a child produced by Hikaru being raped, as a child himself no less! He did not consent to that pregnancy! Hikaru is not Taiki's father in any sense but the purely biological and he clearly does not have any positive or fatherly feelings for him - his absolute meltdown at Airi and Uehara's funeral is implicitly triggered by the sight of Taiki and his continued existence being a symbol of Airi's violation of him. And if 15 Year Lie is anything to go by, we have every reason to believe that Airi was not above weaponising the fact of her pregnancy to make Hikaru feel complicit in and eternally soiled by what had happened to him.

I hate resorting to this kind of rhetoric but imagine for a second that we were talking about a female character here - you immediately, instinctively recognise how utterly insane it would be to present "raising the baby she was forced to conceive with her rapist at age 11" as a happy end for her so why is Hikaru not given this same grace? What happened to Hikaru is not any less traumatic or less of a violation just because his rapist was the one who got pregnant.

To be clear, it's not like I don't understand where this comes from - this setup tends to exist in scenarios where the characters are uncomplicatedly healed and happy and this also applies to Taiki. His life is so goddamn miserable that I understand the instinct to want to put him in what we know is a happy family and to imagine him, too, as happy and loved there.

But what happened to Hikaru and how Taiki was conceived are topics that cannot and should not be made uncomplicated. I can understand a discomfort or reluctance to engage with the topic of CSA even in a purely canon typical context but the solution to that is not to just handwave it away and refuse to think about its implications when directly engaging with the character who is a CSA victim. I think it's shockingly irresponsible even in just a fandom context to portray "raising his rape baby" as a happy end for Hikaru or to present even implicitly the idea that he has some kind of obligation or fatherly duty to Taiki, a child who was conceived without his consent.

[db-best]

45 Training, Fueling, and Mind Hacks to Get You Through Your First Marathon - runnersworld.com

Hero ImagesGetty Images Running your first marathon can be intimidating. Between learning how many miles to log, what to eat, and what training routine works for you, there’s a lot to get down. On top of all that preparation that goes into it, the uncertainty of race day itself can be nerve-wracking, too. Don’t worry: All marathoners have been there. And as they’ve continued crossing races off their lists, they’ve developed a solid arsenal of tips that get them through each one. To help all first-timers out this marathon season, we asked readers in a Facebook post to share what they learned after running their first marathon—and what they wish they would’ve known leading up to the race. Here are 45 things to help you feel better prepared to toe the line for the first time and to finish strong. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Focus on Fuel “That three egg McMuffins aren’t a good prerace meal.”—James Howe “Nutrition! I wish I had realized how important race nutrition is during the run. I bonked at mile 19 because I ran out of calories. Now I take a Hammer gel every 40 minutes.”—Ben Dilla “Refuse the chocolate candy along the way. BIG mistake eating it.”—Maiya Maiya I wish I had known to eat a light breakfast the morning of the marathon. I also wished I knew to began hydrating early during the marathon instead of waiting until I was thirsty at mile 19.”— Frankie Ybarbo “This is new territory (for most) and it’s going to hurt...like really bad. If the course you’re running offers pickle juice and your legs are cramping...DRINK THE PICKLE JUICE.”—Megan Shilling Cross-Train “I wish that I had prioritized weight resistance training a little higher as a cross-training activity.”—Patrick Williams “How much a difference cross-training can make !! Adding a swim and bike or two.”—Richard Adrian “Strength work is even more important than the runs. It’s going to be hard. Really hard. And you will want to quit. That is normal. Running 26.1 miles is not normal. It will be super hard on your body.” —Dee Swartz Put in the Distance “My race performance went up when I started focusing on the quality of the 16 and 18 mile runs.”—Stephanie Petersen “I wish I knew that I was supposed to run at least one 22-26 mile training run. The most I ever ran in my training was 13 miles. I still managed to finish my first and only marathon in 4:58. First half was 2:15, second half was nearly 2:43. What powered me through the last four miles were the sugar wafer cookies that the Marines handed out in the Pentagon parking lot. I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in 2001 one month after 9/11.”—Barbara Henderson Parks “Training involves more than the runs—it’s stretching, icing, strength-training, yoga, fueling and rest!!”—Stephanie Zeka Mallory “Lay a foundation of miles, core and strength training down. Then begin training for the marathon. Hit the gels before you feel fatigued, everything after mile 20 is mind over matter. Be ready for the pain. Beer tastes even more amazing at the finish line.” Jay Mooney Know Your Gear “Footwear! Invest in a great shoe and replace at an appropriate time.”—Gina Bolanos Saunders LPC “Don’t try or wear ANYTHING new on race day—my biggest injury was a huge blister from a fancy new belt!”—Fiona Leigh “Never, ever, under no circumstances wear shoes that are not at least a half-size bigger than ‘snug fit.’”—Anders Thelemyr “The importance of the right socks. I might have not lost three toenails.” —Rebecca Bentley Poire Trust Yourself “I was so nervous about not finishing and hitting the dreaded wall. When it never came, I realized how much mental energy I wasted worrying about it throughout the race. I spent too much time not trusting the process and not truly believing in myself after training and preparing for the miles. Big mistake. Next time I am going all in mentally and physically and plan to enjoy the hell out of it! 2020 NYC!” —Anna Diolosa “I was well prepared for my first marathon. I knew what to expect pretty much at every point in the race. And despite all that, I was still surprised at every step right until the finish. A marathon is like parenting, no amount of preparation truly prepares you.” —Sam Reynolds “Focus more on your body and how your runs feel during training rather than sticking so strictly to a plan. I trained way harder for my first marathon than I did for my second and I PR’ed my second by almost 20 minutes. Listen to your body and ENJOY the race.”—Andy Decker Recovery Is Key “Take recovery after the marathon seriously. I struggled with postmarathon blues and probably started back up with training too soon. I ended up with IT band pain,”—Jennifer Stephens “Not to commit to my wife that I would help lay 10 pallets of sod when I got home.”—Jim Peterman “I should have eaten more in the few days after. I felt great muscle and joint health wise, but struggled with some major fatigue.”—Holly Bergum “I wish I hadn’t taken such a long recovery and maintained a type of ‘marathon maintenance’ running routine. I was in the best running shape of my life training for 26. After, I slipped back into half/10K level.” —Jennifer Spark You Might Feel Down After “I wish I would have known how depressed I would feel after an amazing marathon. It was weird, I was completely happy after my first marathon and then got depressed in the weeks after. Maybe because I wasn’t running as much as I recovered.” —Jabber Jawz “That postrace depression is real. Google ‘posthike depression’ for info.” —Mel Wittmaack “When I was preparing for my first marathon, I was pretty psyched/stressed out and thought I’d so happy once this whole thing was over. I remember reading in Higdon’s book about postmarathon blues. I thought NO WAY. After an awesome experience running the race I was surprised by how ‘blah’ I felt for weeks afterwards. It wasn’t exactly depression, but it was kind of an emptiness. It was like a void, or a blank place where there was once all this focus, energy, thought, etc. And now it’s done. It’s not devastating, but I was definitely surprised.” —Geoff Haas Run With Friends “Take advantage of running groups if they’re available near you! I’ve been running solo for years out of intimidation and finally joined one this year in time for my second marathon. It’s only been a month or less since I joined, and the motivation and support have given me huge boost in my training and overall attitude about it. There are a lot of different groups for what runners might be looking for, so you don’t always have to be a certain pace or experience level to join.” —Kayla Giacin “I wish I would have done it with a friend. Some of the marathon miles got pretty lonely that first race. Now I always race (not always train) with a buddy or join a pace group.”— Hollie Reina Find Your Pace “The importance of pacing, especially the first half, so you won’t spend the last three miles walking and asking yourself, ‘Why did I do this?’”—Craig Sheppert “Ditch the pace device on race day, go by feel, and trust it! I start with a pace that feels slower than I want to run.”—Kim Ehrlich Geisler “Be fast at the end, not the beginning.”—Per Hel “It’s okay to walk.”—Catherine Hiles “Good pacers are angels on earth.” —Jenny Schweinert “Pace, pace, pace...pay attention to your pace.”—Kelly Bloom Barbieri Give Yourself a Break “I wish I knew how to be easier on myself for a missed workout or a bad training run. It’s what I tell everyone training for their first that the schedule is simply a ‘guide.’ That guide doesn’t know what’s happening in your life or at work that particular day. It’s such a long commitment, there’s no reason to fight yourself along the way.”—Will Wilson “It’s okay to focus on YOU. It’s okay to be, dare I say, selfish. There are going to be many times where you have to put your training first, whether it be passing on a night out with your friends because you have an early morning long run or missing brunch because you’re out running. If your friends and family support you like I’m sure they do, it’s all going to be okay.”—Lisa Christine “I wish I had a coping strategy for when things got tough. I hit the wall big time at 35K in the Edinburgh marathon and just fell to pieces physically, but totally lost it mentally. Last 7K took an hour, and because I’d missed my target time, I forgot about what I’d actually achieved in getting to the starting line and then finishing a marathon.”—Paul Stewart Mind Over Matter “Bad runs are the best mental training. Remember how it feels and how you pushed through it. It will give you so much confidence when you hit mile 24 and you already have experienced gritting your teeth and getting the job done. I am always weirdly pleased when a run doesn’t go to plan, as I think it prepares me much better for races which will always throw a curveball at you.” —Debs Thorne “Marathons start at mile 20. And the mindset and mental toughness required to complete one is equally or more important than the physical preparation is.”—Nick Malfitano “Enjoy the whole distance. The starting line is exploding with excitement, anticipation, and nerves. The finish is thrilling and exhilarating. Unless you’re in it to win it, say ‘hi’ to people along the way. Cheer each other on. Say something nice to a volunteer. It’s an amazing experience; help make it one.”—Maranatha Poirier You’ll Love It “I wish I had known just how awesome it is, before I was 37.”—Dwayne Steele “I ran my first marathon 2.5 weeks ago and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I wish I had known how amazing the whole experience (training all the way to race day) would be. Also, how addicting it is! Already want to run another.”—Niki Neumann “I wish I’d have known how much joy comes with running with a bunch of strangers of all shapes and sizes who set their fears and doubts aside and who encourage one another like only family and close friends normally do. If I could have known that I’d be brought to tears seeing grandfathers running hand-in-hand with their grandchildren, runners fearlessly and selflessly pushing for 26.2 miles the wheelchairs of their mobility-challenged friends, and family and rows-deep bystanders cheering the field on to the final runner, I would have started running marathons way sooner in my life.” —Casey Jones “I wish that I would have known how amazing it was to cross the finish line. Life-changing feeling that can never be taken away.” —Debbie Armstrong “The finish line feels even more amazing than you imagined. Enjoy it, because every marathon finish is awesome, but the first 26.2 feels the best.”—Michael Mahan Lawlor Jordan Smith Digital Editor Her love of all things outdoors came from growing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and her passion for running was sparked by local elementary school cross-country meets. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Read the full article

[pauldownunder]

Centre Stage

As a child, I had an unusual obsession with comedy on TV. I wouldn't just watch it, I'd record whatever was on offer onto a series of grainy VHS tapes, whenever it was available, and spend most evenings after school re-watching everything multiple times until I could quote every single line before the performers would say it themselves. Despite this passion, which would later expand into a rounded love of sketch, stand-up, improv and everything in-between, an apathy and inability for high-school drama (the subject, not the extra-curricular stuff in the cafeteria) had always led me to believe it wasn't really a viable option to give it a go myself. It took until I was twenty-eight and living in Melbourne before I took my first foray into performance, by learning improv. Five festival seasons and dozens of weekly shows with The Big Hoo-Haa later, I had finally convinced myself that I should take some tentative steps towards giving stand-up comedy a try. Instead of following the established route, and testing the water with some five-minute open mic spots to tiny audiences somewhere above a pub, I booked myself an eleven-night run at Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2017, the third-biggest comedy festival in the world. When describing this to Stuart Goldsmith, a British full-time stand-up and creator of heavily-influential podcast, "The Comedian's Comedian", he described it as a 'truly ludicrous endeavour'. Sounds promising.

The show I had created was a passion project born out of sheer disillusionment with two things. Firstly, the frankly depressing political landscape we found ourselves in, in a post-Trump, post-Brexit, post-Turnbull, post-truth world, and secondly, the lack of nuance and awareness shown by a huge amount of people when trying to push their points within their own little social media 'bubble'. The concept and format of "The Echo Chamber" was swiftly devised in late 2016 and the material was hammered out over the next eight months. In hindsight, I wrote far too much (nearly half of the jokes and research were jettisoned for time reasons in the week leading up to the show, with further edits being made on the fly), but it was a hell of a worthwhile experience. I only had a single haunting, sleep-deprived crisis of confidence during the creative process, so I'm chalking that up as a win.

The first time I would ever step onto a stage to perform solo stand-up was 10:00pm on Monday 3rd April 2017. At 8:30pm, while sitting in a local Starbucks fine-tuning the 475-page PowerPoint presentation which would be a constant and crucial accompaniment to the show, it decided to malfunction. Inexplicably, around half of the pictures simply disappeared, and a few of the links from one slide to the next (an important part of the fluid and audience-directed narrative I'd put together) were now pointing at the wrong place. I did have a backup, but since the editing process had been a regular, ongoing thing to make improvements after each rehearsal and keep the show as topical as possible, it would not have been any quicker to go back to the old version. So instead of spending the hour leading up to my debut casually going over my material or doing breathing exercises to get in the zone, I burst into the office at The Butterfly Club and frantically tried to patch the file together as best as I could, all while Jak and Craig (my tech and venue manager, respectively) rushed around generously setting up the stage for me, and Liam, another tech, affectionately patted me on the back. The show must go on, and in front of a sizeable audience - including many of my Big Hoo-Haa colleagues and several friends and acquaintances who had supportively shown up on opening night - I stammered through an absolute disaster. Visual jokes were in the wrong place, I missed several cues and callbacks, and I nervously expanded on some talking points for far too long, meaning I not only ran over my allotted time, but had to skip the crucial final routine that tied the whole purpose of the show together. Stuff of legendary folklore, this was not.

After an extended post-mortem (with several people patiently waiting around afterwards to 'celebrate' my achievement with me, even though interacting with people whose opinion I respect was not something I wanted to do, at that time), I spent the following day meticulously putting the show back together. The Tuesday night performance was delivered to a grand total of three people, and so even though I felt delighted and fulfilled that everything had now been performed as intended, I still went to sleep with a slight sense of missed opportunity, since now I felt sure the show was actually really good, but most people had seen an inferior mess. This malaise lasted only until Wednesday lunchtime, when I discovered that one of said three attendees had been a critic for the official MICF web site, and had swiftly stuck up a gushing, complimentary five-star review. In one fell swoop, the years of devouring comedy and learning to perform, and the months of painstakingly putting together a tenuous piece of art suddenly all felt vindicated. I'd not felt so proud since I got my GCSE results.

The following nine performances breezed past in a nearly identical manner; poorly-attended but confidently-performed and really well-received, with another great review appearing later on. Highlights included the night when my front row was made up of elderly Dutch women who spoke to me at length afterwards about how much they hated Geert Wilders, the night a vocal UKIP-supporting Scot started heckling during and after the show only to be restrained by his friend, grinning from ear-to-ear, and the night when nine of my good mates from 'outside' of the comedy scene came to watch and sat in appreciative, stunned near-silence afterwards, repeatedly exclaiming, "but, man, I mean, seriously, that was genuinely really good, wasn't it?". By the fifth show, I'd already got so comfortable that I was adding in new slides and jokes most nights, depending on what relevant stuff had been in the news that day, and even though I was enjoying the hour of performing each night I remarked to Jak that I'd quickly realised how spoiled I'd been by the vitality and urgency of improv, because it just wasn't quite as interesting saying much the same stuff every day. I think that has to mark the quickest trajectory from 'lifelong dream' to 'jaded by the constant monotony' of all time.

The atmosphere of the festival was by far the most enjoyable I'd ever experienced. It was surely helped by the fact I'd also taken some time off work to concentrate on my run, but there was also a exciting, albeit pathetically uncool, feeling of being legitimately part of the crowd at the nightly 'Festival Club', and catching up with the same faces most nights to share stories. As always, I tried to squeeze in watching as many shows as possible, and despite being far too busy to reach the heights of the seventy-three I saw in 2016, I still managed a highly-respectable forty-seven. I was particularly impressed with the quality of the improv and sketch on offer this year, and the avant-garde shows from Tom Walker, Cam Venn, Richard Gadd and Sammy J were all very memorable. There was also the annual chance for me to become starstruck by joining in the soccer game with many of the pros from overseas, and joining Steen Raskopoulos, Guy Montgomery and David O'Doherty from last year were the likes of James Acaster and Loyiso Gola. Who knows, maybe in a few years somebody else will be blogging about the pleasure of being able to play a match alongside festival veteran Paul Richards?

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: From Flash Tattoos to a Fotomat Shack, Looking Beyond Books at the LA Art Book Fair 2017

Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair 2017 (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

LOS ANGELES — Printed Matter’s fifth annual LA Art Book Fair (LAABF) descended on the MOCA Geffen last weekend, bringing a staggering 300 publishers, galleries, artists, and booksellers to a consistently packed house of bibliophiles (15,000 people attended on Saturday alone). Among the photocopied zines, limited-edition monographs, and antiquarian offerings, some of the highlights weren’t books at all, but objects that expanded upon the idea of what books can provide: an affordable means to experience and collect art, democratizing it in the same way that the printing press democratized information almost 600 years ago.

Kembra Pfahler’s opening night performance for LAABF 2017

Opening night festivities were capped off by a riotous performance by artist, musician, filmmaker, and actress Kembra Pfahler. Clad in little more than red body paint, with blacked-out teeth and a tangled, oversized wig, Pfahler ripped through a rough, fierce, and often funny set of punk tunes, backed by musicians Gyda Gash and Neon Music and two lookalike backup dancer/singers. She held back nothing back, hurling into the audience with gleeful abandon a tambourine, “future feminist” shirts, her underwear, and finally a crucifix that had been inserted into her vagina by a band member. If you missed her set, her London gallery, Emalin, had some of her photo books for sale and had decorated its booth wall with her butt prints.

Emalin gallery’s booth, with works by Kembra Pfahler

Outside the fair building, Slow Culture gallery set up an actual Fotomat shack, sponsored by Kodak and Vans, which not only sold 35mm film but offered 24-hour developing as well. They assembled a rotating cast of photographers to man the booth, including Cheryl Dunn, Jim Goldberg, and Ed Templeton, who each had a $100 print for sale in editions of 20 during their shifts. On opening night, there was a steady stream of visitors dropping off rolls of film.

Slow Culture’s Fotomat shack

Inside the fair, one of the most impressive installations was a room showcasing Teen Angels, a magazine dedicated to Chicano/Cholo/lowrider culture that ran from 1981 to 2000. At the time, the artist behind the publication was unknown, but many assumed him to be Latino — until a fan, David de Baca, found and befriended him: a white San Bernardino man named David Holland. He died in 2015, but de Baca manages Holland’s archive and has put together a book of the magazine’s hand-drawn cover art. The LAABF installation featured a wide selection of covers as well as a re-creation of Holland’s studio. The display wasn’t just about selling copies, but about highlighting the power of publications to connect individuals and communities by reproducing and spreading images of a shared culture.

Covers of David Holland’s Teen Angels

Teen Angels studio

Teen Angels display

The aptly named poster press The Posters launched a collaborative edition at the fair, featuring an image by John Baldessari with all the color stripped out. Visitors could purchase the black-and white-poster as it was or make their own edition at a station filled with art supplies in the MOCA bookstore. Several well-known artists had completed their own versions, including Lucien Smith, Mickalene Thomas, and Henry Taylor. Each version is being photographed for a planned publication.

Cassi Gibson and Henry Taylor with Taylor’s enhanced Baldessari poster

The Thing Quarterly, a Bay Area–based publisher of art objects, was celebrating its 10th anniversary with a booth showcasing a decade of editions. The team works with artists and manufacturers to create objects that are accessible and affordable but still distinctive, often locally produced and handcrafted. The latest edition is a trap-and-release spider set featuring hand-blown glass by LA artist Amanda Ross-Ho.

The Thing Quarterly table

Another vendor offering handmade, thoughtfully designed objects was Bob Dornberger, the “objects workshop leader” at wHY Architecture. Dornberger’s micro-booth was filled with his idiosyncratic but impressively constructed items, like a brick brush with bristles or a diamond-cut stone that appears to have a bite taken out of it.

Bob Dornberger with his mini-booth

Artist Edgar Bryan was back selling his object-like books, complementing his pizza book from 2015 with a silkscreened beer book that features actual pop-up six-pack holders. He said he promptly sold out after Hyperallergic posted a video of the piece on social media on opening night.

Edgar Bryan showcasing one of his object-like books

Gagosian Gallery, the international powerhouse usually associated with multimillion-dollar blue-chip artists like Damien Hirst, tried to fit in with its surroundings by focusing on intangible works of art. As at Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair last fall, the gallery had commissioned flash tattoo designs from 12 contemporary artists, including Sterling Ruby, Kenneth Anger, and Henry Taylor. Unlike traditional flash designs, which come in unlimited editions, these came each in editions of six, “since museums need to be able to authenticate their acquisitions,” said Gagosian archivist and librarian Ben Lee Ritchie Handler as he showed off his fresh Analia Saban ink. By Saturday, all the appointments had been booked except for a few slots for Haas Brothers’ designs.

Gagosian Gallery’s

If you found the volume of publications, objects, and other offerings at the LAABF a bit daunting, the students at Dutch Design School Werkplaats Typografie understood — and had put together a project dealing directly with this dilemma. As part of a six-week residency at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, 18 students had set up a publishing house at the fair, where each hour they would print, bind, and release a new 20-page publication, complete with a champagne-drenched launch party. Inspired by the pressure of trying to keep up with the latest and hippest publications, “we wanted to push this feeling by going to the extreme,” said student Melina Wilson. “No one can catch us. We’re the newest, regardless of what the quality is.”

Werkplaats Typografie’s booth

Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair 2017 took place at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (152 N Central Avenue, Los Angeles) on February 24–26.

The post From Flash Tattoos to a Fotomat Shack, Looking Beyond Books at the LA Art Book Fair 2017 appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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