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bayardboy · 4 years ago

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On Spirituality, Queerness, and Complacency: Care as a Radical Act

“Today I feel that God motivates me to use my whole being to combat by nonviolent means the ever-growing racial tension in the United States; at the same time the state directs that I shall do its will; which of these dictates can I follow-- that of God or of the state? When the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God. If I cannot continue in my present vocation, I must resist... through joyfully following the will of God, I regret I must break the law of the state. I am prepared for whatever may follow.” -Bayard Rustin, 1943.

Although I take Mohammad as the final Prophet, every three months I ground myself with a new spiritual teacher: the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh have taught me well in the past year about the ethics for a new millennium. This February 2021 I have found enjoyment and excitement in the letters of Bayard Rustin. Shortly after this letter, he was arrested for refusing to enlist in World War ii. He then went on to stir up quite a bit of trouble at prisons for refusing to engage with the segregationist policies within the walls. He took it upon himself to build and teach education courses for poor imprisoned whites, and created a cross-race coalition of prisoners determined to erase the drawn lines in the cells.

Bayard Rustin would later go on to inform nonviolent theory and strategy for some of the biggest names in the Civil Rights movement of the 60′s; although I haven’t yet read about his work organizing that first March on Washington, with John Lewis and MLK Jr. I will say that his work within the prison was derailed massively when it was discovered he was a homosexual.

Bayard Rustin has been effectively erased from public narrative around nonviolent racial organizing, because he was gay. His letters to his partner, Davis Platt, convey a deep and friendly love that revolve around the deep conviction that segregation was wrong, and during this time, also that the prison systems were necessary to undermine. He also loved to play mandolin. In remembering Bayard Rustin I am holding closely that he was a socialist, pacifist, Christian, homosexual, Black, educated, man. He was easy pickings for the segregationist agenda in a time of rampant homophobia. He was even cast aside by his allies, because his identity could have harmed their agenda. But he held close the will of God in the ways he engaged with this discardation.

In a very recent conversation with a queer organizer friend, we touched on spirituality. It felt like one of the first times I had been able to speak on how deeply my spirit was impacted by this work. We are not taught to care for each other or ourselves. We are not taught to live truthfully or honestly. In this system that would rather create boxes and stuff people into them, than see what shapes their forms may take on their own, we are purposefully not taught to be ourselves. To be one’s self, to let one’s spirit live, is to resist, because the state has already curated an idea of what one should be.

My friend also gave me a quotable belief that I will share here: “If your queerness isn’t radical, you’re doing our elders a disservice.” Within the context of public acceptance for trans and non-binary peoples, we were discussing how Portland has become a sort of haven, where white trans people do not have to engage with the common violence standardly enacted against all trans people, most dramatically against Black trans women. This allows for queers to become complacent in their acceptance; but this must not be so.

When I cultivate an argument around nonviolent organizing I always root it in my spirit. Not only must we center the voices of people most harmed by the issues we face, but we must simultaneously work to cultivate the path of *least harm possible*. In this understanding, complacency becomes what we must frame our work around. You cannot stand aside as Biden opens the first facility for migrant children. You cannot just observe as our state of Oregon continues the active genocide of the indigenous peoples through ongoing water crises in Warm Springs (donate here). Can you stomach the injustices enacted against all our societies, and keep your head down, and live your unsustainable life?

If we are to be ALIVE and AWARE of the will of the state AND of God, we have no choice but to care! Caring becomes recognized as a radical act; Caring for ourselves, for each other, and for the land we share our livelihood with; Caring for our tools, our resources, our food; Caring for our neighbors, our family, our coworkers; Caring for immigrants, for indigenous peoples, for invalids.

This is why I have named this newly formed account “BayardBoy”. I have every intention to highlight and seek out members of the spiritual and civil rights communities that have been ignored. I plan to share my thoughts and learnings here, because I am wholly aware that one day I too will be forgotten. While I am not a titan, nor an elder, I hold close a similar intention, to cultivate change through positivity and militant disobedience, as God wills it to be so.

this coming week I am engaging with the Indigenous Principles of a Just Transition as relayed by the Indigenous Environmental Network. https://www.ienearth.org/justtransition/

#civildisobedience #nonviolence #bayard rustin #spirituality #queerness #complacency #essay #racial justice #radicalize #climatejustice #pacifism

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stevenmuses · 6 years ago

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An Unspoken Eulogy from a Grandson and Funeral Summary

The past five days have been a whirlwind. The afternoon of Wednesday, November 7 we received the news. Ba Ngoai had passed away earlier in the day with my mom by her side - causing a massive ripple throughout our family. Many weeks ago, we had received the notification that Ba Ngoai’s condition had turned for the worse - and in the back of all of our minds, we knew her time was nearing its end.

La Thi Tran was born in 1928 in Nam Dinh in North Vietnam. In her younger years, she moved first to Hanoi, and later, to Saigon. She fostered 5 daughters and 2 sons, caring deeply for her family of 9. Like many Vietnamese families at the time, she ran a storefront with mostly dry goods and food. During the Vietnam War, her husband lost his legs - leaving her to be the sole provider of the family. In these conditions, all of the children helped her run the store, hustling and selling what they could to help the family make ends meet. With the living conditions becoming poorer in Vietnam with the rise of communism, several of her children fled Vietnam on a small fishing boat, escaping to a refugee camp in Malaysia. After spending time in the refugee camp, eventually immigrating and settling in Edmonton, Canada. After her children had settled, she and her husband were sponsored to rejoin her children in Edmonton. Her husband passed away in 1996, more than 20 years before her eventual passing in 2018 in Calgary, Canada. In her years, she raised 5 daughters and 2 sons, 15 grandchildren, and even a great grandchild. It’s crazy to think that without her, not a single one of us would be here now.

In the later years of her life, Ba Ngoai spent her time the George Boyack assisted living facility. Rushing to the nursing home after hearing the news - I saw Di Hanh and my mom hovered around my grandma’s lifeless body, choking back tears. Nine years after enduring a severe, crippling stroke, my grandma’s struggle was finally over. La Thi Tran passed away on November 7, 2018 at the age of 90.

I never got to know Ba Ngoai as a person - not really anyways. The language barrier always kept us apart in communication, and later, the stroke made it even more difficult. Like many of us in the second generation, I grew up with Vietnamese in my brain and on the tip of my tongue - but that faded away steadily and surely as time went on.

While I was never able to get to know Ba Ngoai as a person, I definitely knew Ba Ngoai as a mother and grandmother. I was told that Ba Ngoai had always taken care of me when I was younger - that my parents used to drop me off at Ba Ngoai’s house and she would watch over us. Unfortunately, none of those memories ever stuck in my mind - I was just too young. But I know what she stood for - I think we all did. She stood for her family. She loved her children and grandchildren dearly. Even though she was growing old, she was at every family event she could make, supporting her children and grandchildren, even during the worst of times. Even when she was wracked by her stroke, I still remember her trying to give us whatever money she had in little red li xi envelopes.

One recent story that I wanted to share was just a month or so ago - when I visited her after hearing that her condition worsened. She was shaking in her bed, saying things to herself that no one could understand any longer. She hadn’t been eating very much recently - she was incredibly thin. She had a permanent look that seemed like it was already fixated on the world beyond. She had become indecipherable and clearly in a great deal of pain. When I approached her bed, my dad said to her in Vietnamese, “Do you recognize him? It’s Steven!” I held her hand - and I was surprised by how incredible ironclad her grip was. Her face lit up when she looked at my face and she gave a minuscule nod, mumbling to herself in indistinct Vietnamese. While we couldn’t understand most of what she said, there were two words that we all could decipher - the clearest two words that we had heard her speak in many months. “...map qua!” She had called me chubby! She fought through her pain, recognized who I was and compared me to how she remembered me in the past. Through all the pain and the suffering, she was still fighting to be a mother and grandmother. That’s a memory that I won’t ever forget of Ba Ngoai.

Upon her passing, family members made their way home from across the world to join each other in the mourning of the matriarch of the Hoang family - from as far away as Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. For the first time in what must have been 10 years or more, the family was back together, reunited to celebrate the life of a dear mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.

Day 0 (The Day of Passing) - Wednesday, November 7

The nursing home is an incredibly depressing place - filled with exhausted nurses, the stench of poor quality food and unchanged adult diapers, and silent, addled seniors, waiting for the inevitable next step. In that environment- it felt so surreal. I just felt unemotional - but philosophical about the whole thing. Sitting on a couch in the nursing home common area with my uncle and dad, watching the other seniors being force-fed food by the nurses, I couldn’t help but think about age, mortality, and what the point of it all even was. All of these seniors led full, eventful lives - only to be left waiting for death in that environment. That was the case for Ba Ngoai.

Or was it?

Cau Tuan returned from Vietnam just a day earlier - which she knew. She was so upset when she heard that he was going on a long trip to Vietnam - perhaps she had the sense that she was close as well? But - she held on for him until he could return.

My mom came to visit and feed her on Wednesday. After days with little eating, this day, Ba Ngoai ate some wonton soup, Ensure, and even some ice cream! My mom had a sixth sense that day - she had felt that Ba Ngoai didn’t have much longer to live. Calling my dad, she had planned to cancel the vacation that she was going to take the following week, just in case.

She returned to the room with Ba Ngoai’s favourite nurse at the home (my mom said that Ba Ngoai loved that woman so much - that she made her laugh so much during her time at the nursing home) - and I think they both knew that the time was near. A few minutes later, Ba Ngoai quietly passed away, with my mom and her favourite nurse at her bedside.

After the funeral, it was planned that each of the families would contribute money for Ba Ngoai’s funeral arrangements and burial. At one of their meetings to discuss money, it was revealed that Ba Ngoai gave money to Cau Phat to hold for her, secretly, that none of the other siblings even knew about. Even from beyond the grave, she was still taking care of her children.

I had written the first paragraph about Day 0 a couple of days ago, when I felt like reflecting on what the end of life meant for all of us. Upon talking to my mom about Ba Ngoai’s last hours, one thing became so abundantly clear - it wasn’t her that was waiting for death, death was waiting for her. She was still taking care of her family in any way that she could, even while bedridden, until her last day.

Day 1 (Casketing, Prayer Day 1) - Sunday, November 11

The funeral of Ba Ngoai took place over three days at the Mountain View Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home in east Calgary. In the days prior to Sunday, people had begun to return to Calgary. Rachel, Patricia, Albert, and Cristina had returned from their work and schooling in Toronto. Di Mai and Chu Chau flew in from Saudi Arabia and stayed with our family. Kacey, Jen, Vince and Cau Tai’s family drove down from Edmonton. Cau Phat returned from Phoenix. Everyone was trying to play their part in organizing the funeral - ordering the food for the reception, talking to the Chua Bat Nha, organizing with the funeral home, ordering flowers, putting together programs and memorial boards, writing and practicing eulogies and poems, and other innumerable but equally essential tasks.

Entering the funeral home for the first time, we were stunned by beautiful photo and story boards and breathtaking flowers. In the chapel, there were an astonishing array of flowers, a beautifully crafted wooden casket, two incense altars (one for Buddha and one for Ba Ngoai), and the body of Ba Ngoai, wrapped in a beautiful red and yellow Buddhist funeral blanket. Everyone took turns paying their respects to Ba Ngoai, with tears in their eyes. One of the most powerful images I saw that day was Cau Tuan on his knees at Ba Ngoai’s body, head down, saying words that only Ba Ngoai’s could hear.

Many people connected to our family came to the prayer - coworkers and family friends alike. Some of these people I hadn’t seen in 10-15 years - but many of them came up to me to tell me how much I’ve grown. These little interactions really made me feel a sense of warm, community and continuity - even though I may not even recognize these people.

Monks from the temple Chua Bat Nha led us in a melancholic prayer. The children (immediate descendants of Ba Ngoai along with in-laws) stood in front of the chapel seats, while the grandchildren stood behind them within the rows of the chapel’s seating. All family members were given white headbands to wear.

Somber in tone, the prayer was led by the three monks from the temple. Other Buddhist members of the temple joined in the prayers. Together, their voices felt purifying and cleansing - as if they were coaxing Ba Ngoai’s spirit through to the afterlife. We continued to stand for the prayer for an entire hour, while the adults were constantly standing and bowing down to the ground. One of the children even momentarily passed out and fell during the prayer due to exhaustion, smacking his jaw on the bench in front of him.

After the prayer, we gathered in the reception hall to eat banh mi and desserts, mingling with the friends and family that had come to pay their respects.

In the evening, we were made aware of a vote that was occurring the following night. The first generation was trying to decide between:

(a) Burying Ba Ngoai’s ashes immediately in the Edmonton cemetery next to Ong Ngoai, whom she has expressed intense longing for.

(b) Wait 49 days (7 weeks) as per Buddhist beliefs, allowing for the spirit/consciousness to transition to the afterlife. Store Ba Ngoai’s ashes in an urn, (illegally) held in the Buddhist temple for the 49 days, and then buried with Ong Ngoai after.

The vote was contentious and was split between both options.

Day 2 (Prayer Day 2) - Monday, November 12

The prayers continued again into Day 2. We arrived at 5pm, burned incense and visited again with Ba Ngoai. The hour of prayers began at 6pm. Once again, the monks from the temple Chua Bat Nha led us in prayer, with the direct descendants in the front and the grandchildren behind.

Soon after the prayers began, Jen and I went to the airport to pick up my brother, who had cut his vacation short to return home. Upon returning to the funeral home, we met with our parents, who had tears in their eyes, and together we paid tribute to Ba Ngoai with incense and prayers as a family.

Immediately after, we reconvened with everyone else in the reception hall and ate dumplings, spring rolls, banh mi, and more dessert.

Even though initially the vote for what to do with Ba Ngoai’s urn was initially split - the vote was almost unanimous after discussion - Ba Ngoai was to go into Chua for 49 days, before being buried with Ong Ngoai.

Day 3 (Funeral Ceremony, Cremation) - Tuesday, November 13

Early Tuesday morning, we returned to the funeral home for the final time. We prayed for the final time. At 9:30AM, we began the “official” funeral ceremony, with myself and my Dad as the English and Vietnamese hosts, respectively. We began with our final Buddhist prayer sessions. The vibe felt distinctly different than the two previous days - it felt like everyone was somber and tense about the day ahead, knowing that by noon, this whole funeral process would be over.

After the prayer session, we proceeded into speeches. With tears in their eyes and wavering voices, Cau Phat, Cau Tuan, and Bac Duy all provided their own speeches - all saying how much they loved and how thankful they were for Ba Ngoai.

After, Albert, Nathan and myself went up to the podium to share a few words from a grandchild perspective. Albert spoke in both English and Vietnamese, sharing about how he got to know who Ba Ngoai was as a person from the quality and tightness of his parents and our family. Nathan delivered a heartfelt poem “It’s Only Been a Few Minutes,” and I shared a recent story about Ba Ngoai in the nursing home.

And then that was it.

The funeral procession. We walked out of there, single file, into our cars. Then, we drove to the crematorium in our cars, single file. The images and videos speak for themselves.

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What an incredibly sad and moving experience. The melodic and repetitive prayers felt like they were boring their way right into my soul - and you could tell that it did that for everyone. Christian, Catholic, Buddhist, Atheist or whatever we were - I think that during that time, we all believed together it was helping Ba Ngoai’s spirit move on. There, in the funeral home and in the crematorium, it really had felt like we all had come together as a family to celebrate Ba Ngoai. I think that’s truly what family is - people tied together by common experiences and relationships that are there for each other, regardless of the last time they saw each other, or where they live. I don’t think anyone needed to say anything - but I think we all understood each other, united in our grief.

You know - it was the end of a marvelous and long life for Ba Ngoai, filled with incredible ups and downs, separations and reunions, health and sickness. Her passing is not only a cause for grief - but a cause for celebration. Without her, none of us would be here, living comfortable and wholesome lives filled with love, family, and fun.

Thank you - from all of us.

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winged-paki · 4 years ago

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It doesn’t fucking MATTER that Christmas has been commercialized, that Christmas is a Frankensteined abomination of shoplifted aspects of Pagan religions and traditions, that in other parts of the world Christmas is divorced from its previously-held religious meaning. That’s not the fucking point.

The POINT is, it started off as a Christian celebration and an attempt to squash and Christianize other religions. Especially in the US, but understandably all around the world as well, those connotations will always be there in the minds of nonChristians even if all you do for the season is put up a pine tree or string your roof with fairy lights. Myself and many other Muslims are deeply uncomfortable with the permeation of Christmas into every facet of life in the month of December because it’s straight-up governments and corporations pandering towards Christianity while leaving other (major!!) religious holidays and events unseen and unrecognized. In Islam, actions are largely defined by intention. It doesn’t MATTER that Christmas is all about reindeer cupcakes and mall Santas and Mariah Carey on the radio now, what matters is that the holiday was founded with religious INTENT. THAT’s why it sours and bothers me when I’m forced to participate in Christmas traditions, when I’m bombarded with Christmas music and messaging day in and day out, when I’m pestered about my plans for Christmas Day, etc etc.

Imagine you live in a largely-Muslim country, and for the entire month of Ramadan it’s socially unacceptable to eat or drink anything, and everywhere you look you just see Ramadan/Eid, Ramadan/Eid, Ramadan/Eid. In the media, in the music at the mall, in the advertisements on TV, in conversations with your coworkers - no matter what you do, you can’t escape this holiday of a religion you don’t even believe in. Sure, maybe some of your nonMuslim friends don’t mind and enjoy in the festivities because “it’s open to all faiths” and “I’m not doing it for the religious meaning”, but you’re personally a little bothered by it. But NO ONE takes your concerns seriously when all you want is a day without hearing about this holiday you don’t care about. That breeds snowballing resentment and annoyance, until you’re like me and want to fastforward through the entire month of December (my birthday month :( ) because it’s just too damn red and green. It’s not a bad holiday; it’s sweet to exchange gifts and get together with family. It’s just so. Pervasive. And the pervasiveness really gets to you when holidays that ARE important to you (and to 1.8 billion people across the globe) only earn a “What’s that?” from every American you talk to.

Christianity isn’t the only religion. Its holidays and traditions shouldn’t be everywhere and participation in them shouldn’t be forced. All that does is annoy and isolate religious minorities. No one is asking you not to put up a Christmas tree or stream your overplayed white people songs, we’re just saying:

1. Recognize that Christmas has undeniably Christian roots that still shine through today, especially in America, and that this is fair enough reason for nonChristians to feel uncomfortable participating.

2. Recognize that Christmas is very pervasive in Western, especially American, culture, more than what’s proportionally necessary in part due to its mass commercialization, and that nonChristians have the right to be mad about how it gets so much attention while their own faiths and traditions’ holy days do not.

3. Recognize that, this holiday season, a lot of us nonChristians just want a god. Damn. Break. Please.

eta: there is a really good discussion in the notes about “religious Christianity” vs “cultural Christianity” and how that applies to (especially non-religious) Jewish ppl - I think that many Muslim people, especially Muslim-raised atheists or Muslim immigrants, csn attest to having similar experiences with wanting to retain “culturally Muslim” identities. I thought it was super educational so go read it! It’s much better thought out and articulated than my garbage.

Reminder that Christmas is a religious holiday and all the things that come with it (the tree, the colors, the traditions, etc.) are apart of it (even if you don’t celebrate for religious reasons it still is) and if you say “Oh it’s just part of the season” you’re throwing your Jewish & other not Christian religious participants under the bus

#this is a post for Jews #that I as a nonjew derailed #im coming from a place of similar frustration I think #since I’m Muslim #but I understand if I stepped out of line #op if you want me to delete this I will! I definitely don’t want to be talking over Jewish voices #and if that’s how this is being read then I have no problem with fixing it :)

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yggdrasilbohdi · 4 years ago

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Christine Chiang Discovers Living Chinese Relatives and Treasured Ancestral Jiapu

Christine Chiang didn’t grow up knowing her extended family. Her parents, who were each single children, left all family records behind when they moved from mainland China to Taiwan before Christine was born. The only relatives she knew were her parents, sister, and brother.

After receiving a university degree in Chinese literature, she landed her first job as an editor with one of the largest publishing houses in Taiwan. She was making a name for herself, but by age 25, she wanted more.  

“I had already accomplished a lot as an editor, receiving awards from the publishing world,” she said. “But I needed to learn more. I didn’t just want to be an editor, so I started applying to graduate schools.” 

Discovering a New Life in a New Country

“In those days, my impression of the United States was either Gone with the Wind or a New Yorker,” Christine laughed. “My mother’s favorite movie was Gone with the Wind, so of course I chose the University of Georgia.”

One year later, with a master’s degree in hand, she flew directly to Silicon Valley to start a new career in instructional technology. She worked nonstop, consulting with companies from start-ups to large dotcoms. After several years, her professional reputation was well-established, and she could choose where to work.

But after getting married and having a child, she and her husband wanted to live in an area that was better suited to their family. 

“Our motivation was our son. We needed to find an environment that would help him become a well-rounded person,” Christine said.  

As she searched for a new job, she discovered that her church had available openings in her field. Out of curiosity, she applied, and after interviews and negotiations, she was offered a job that meant a move to Salt Lake City, Utah. With her husband’s support, she accepted a position in Information and Communication Systems. 

 Christine later transferred to work for FamilySearch as a Unix user experience designer and eventually was assigned to Chinese projects.   

“It is such a miracle. It’s hard to find a job you really love, but God put me in a position that I am deeply passionate about. I didn’t know I’d be working on Chinese projects. I was just a regular Unix designer; I could work on any project. But it happened. Imagine! It’s not common to find someone who knows Chinese, is a Unix designer, and is also a Church member. Everything was just put together, and it was the right thing for me,” she expressed.

Unexpected Messages lead to Discovering Family

Working for FamilySearch, Christine often heard family history stories from team members, but she couldn’t share her own. She had submitted her first 4 generations to the Family Tree on FamilySearch, but her entries were the only records with her clan (ancestral) name.

One evening Christine received a shocking call from the police in China informing her that her oldest brother had died. She was in the United States, yet she was the only Chinese family member the police could find. Christine had never met her brother; he was estranged from his family for about 30 years. Saddened that he died alone, she went to China to arrange for his burial. She said it was painful to know that if she hadn’t been contacted, it would be like her brother never existed. From that experience, she longed to make a connection with her living relatives and to discover her jiapu, the Chinese genealogy book of her clan—if it existed.

The only clue she had was that her father was considered a celebrity in his tiny, extremely poor village. As a boy he travelled to a bigger town to attend a good school and then attained an influential military position. But she couldn’t find any records to verify the story.  

Feeling discouraged, Christine confided to her co-worker and friend, Eric Leach, a Chinese experience manager, that she couldn’t find a way to expand her tree. Eric was familiar with the difficulty of finding jiapu but assured her it would be worth the search and suggested creating a specific plan.

Amazingly, before they could get started, Christine saw a message in her FamilySearch inbox from a great-niece in China. Though they were complete strangers, Christine’s great-niece found her name while using a promotional copy of FamilySearch and sent an inquiry to Christine. After several online discussions, Christine was overjoyed to be invited to go to China for a family reunion. She readily agreed.

  Encouraged by Eric, Christine continued to search online for ancestral connections that she could share with her family when she visited China. 

“I found that my father was recorded in a local gazetteer. I also found more relatives,” Christine said. “I began exchanging email and texts with one cousin. He actually told me he had our clan jiapu.” 

When Christine discovered that her clan jiapu existed, she excitedly booked a flight to China for herself and her son. 

“As a first-generation immigrant to the United States, I wanted my son to learn who and where he comes from,” she explained. 

Upon meeting their Chinese relatives, Christine and her son were warmly greeted and immediately felt like part of the family. They spent a short week translating and helping her son learn some of the homeland traditions.

“It was really something way beyond genealogy. That was the best time for my son. He was raised in the U.S., so before we went, he didn’t really care. At the end he was so proud of his Chinese blood that now he wants to change his middle name to my Clan name,” Christine recounted. 

Next, they traveled to meet her cousin who held the clan jiapu. He graciously presented Christine with a digital copy of her own.  

Discovering Jiapu Expands Desire to Help Others

Christine couldn’t wait to share her success with her FamilySearch coworkers.

“Before, I was a loner on my [FamilySearch] team with only 4 generations. There was no way I could find my genealogy. One day I surpassed everyone. I’m the winner with 134 generations!” she teased. “If it’s not a miracle, I don’t know what it is. I can’t say how much I appreciate what I have. It’s like a dream come true.” 

Her FamilySearch manager, Brian Edwards, couldn’t agree more.  

“Christine had a happy, moving experience—one that might be helpful to others,” Brian said. “I think it shows that, even if you have roadblocks, don’t give up, keep trying, and sometimes heaven opens the doors we need.”

For her profession, Christine works on the cusp of expanding Chinese genealogical research. Her job is to talk to programmers and patrons of FamilySearch to find ways to improve the researching process.  

“As Unix designers, we need to understand the patron users to create an experience they expect. I’m definitely an advocate for both sides—always trying to strike a good balance. We want users to be happy and feel right at home when they come to our site. We don’t want the process to feel awkward or hard to use. That’s the goal,” Christine explained.

Since discovering her own family and jiapu, Christine hungers to help patrons find the satisfaction she feels.

“The whole process of discovery was a miracle. The trip to my father’s hometown changed my mind about China forever. I found not only my family members and jiapu there, but also a newer and broader perspective that has been missing in my life,” she exclaimed. 

  With over 13 million digital images from mainland China, including more than 65,000 jiapu images and more to come, Christine’s work is never-ending. But she doesn’t complain.  

“I’m passionate about my work. I tell my son ‘to find a job you really love so every day when you wake up, you feel energetic, and you have so much you can contribute.’ That’s how I feel about my job,” she stated.

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moonflower-in-thailand-blog · 7 years ago

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Rainy Season

I’m sure you have all heard the phrase, “When it rains, it pours.” If you understand that statement, then... Welcome to my life. Buckle up readers, this is a long one.

It’s September in southern Thailand, which if you know much about Thailand, you will know that it is right smack dab in the middle of the rainy season. Pretty much every day for some period of time, the sky cracks open and a mass amount of water comes pouring down. If you’re smart, you’ll bring a poncho with you everywhere you go. If you’re a seasoned veteran, you’ll also have a “dry bag” that protects all of your stuff from the rain. I think I’m somewhere in between. I’m usually prepared, but for the times I am not, I like to adopt the “dancing in the rain” philosophy and just let go of all expectations.

That doesn’t sound too bad. But, actually try to imagine driving a scooter in a full-on torrential downpour. The drops pelt your skin like tiny bullets and the water stings as it seeps into your eyes. If your helmet has a visor, it may not sting your eyes, but you won’t be able to see anything through that fancy visor, so just give it up. There are times that the rain will pass and it will have almost no effect on your day. Other days, it happens on your way to work or in a way that simply “waiting it out” isn’t an option. You have to throw on that poncho and just try your best as you squint your way toward your determined destination.

Recently, I have been going through quite a few literal and metaphorical rainstorms. One pretty big thing happened that caused a ripple of other smaller things, but I don’t need to go into that right now. The real reason I started this post was to share about my visa run. Most of the people reading this may not know the importance of maintaining a valid visa or the other requirements and checks that go into obtaining and keeping it while living abroad.

To be honest, most of the people living abroad don’t really know the best way to handle the situation, because every situation is a little different. Before I came here, I applied and obtained a 3-month Non-immigrant B visa that was to be converted to a work permit upon arrival. I was told that my school would handle all the visa stuff. All I had to do was show up and provide the required documents; university degree, teaching certificate, and passport.

The 90 day period I was allotted began the day I stepped through the Thai customs. I didn’t think much about the expiration date, but in hindsight, I wish I would have! Because, on September 18, I realized my visa was going to expire on September 19. Oops! I went to the immigration office during lunch the next day to ask for an extension. I was denied. The lady from the immigration office told me my best option would be to leave the country and come back with a tourist visa for 30 days.

So, all of a sudden, I was in a rush to get out of the country! I was freaking out. I went back to school and asked for advice. They helped me figure out which border to go to and also gave me a signed letter to give to the immigration office if they gave me any trouble. My coworker called everyone he knew that had ever gone through immigration and put me in contact with some people that do “visa runs” all the time. My friend searched for plane tickets while I looked at the bus schedule. I calculated the risks and prices to the best of my ability and then made a decision. That night I went to a tourist agency and booked a round trip ticket to Ranong province, which is the small area that borders Myanmar. It was a really hectic time… but that was just the beginning.

The next day, I woke at 5:30 in the morning and headed to Telekaset 2, the bus terminal in downtown Surat. I parked my rental bike on the sidewalk next to the agency and climbed into an air conditioned van. It took about 4 hours to get to Ranong. When I got there, I had to find this place called Kiwi’s Orchid Guest House, which apparently was owned by a woman that could take me to and from Myanmar in a private long boat. She arranged the private boat because apparently waiting on the ferry would take too long and cause me to miss the only return van back to Surat that evening. No pressure.

Kiwi’s was easy to find, but when I got there the woman who owns the place wasn’t there. She was in Bangkok and it was her sister that was holding down the shop. She wasn’t the friendliest Thai I’ve met, but she did make a couple calls and a few minutes later a guy on a motorbike showed up and handed me a helmet. Without much hesitation, I got on the bike and headed toward the border.*

At this point, I had to face the Thai immigration. I was a day late and if you overstay your visa period, you have to pay a fine and you get a naughty stamp in your passport. That stamp puts you at risk of being grilled by every immigration officer you encounter for the rest of forever. So, I wasn’t super excited about this, but it was a low fine (500B or ~$15) and I they didn’t give me a hard time. I felt fine.

I proceeded to the loading dock that was completely congested with boats and crowded with people. The long boats were bumping up against each other while revving up their engines to navigate the small space. These boats are incredibly loud. Think of a diesel truck engine attached to the back of an oversized canoe.

It’s usually directed by a guy wearing a plastic poncho directing the propeller with a very large stick. People were getting on and off. Boats were coming and going, and I was directed to board the ferry. Uh oh. I was starting to panic but I stayed calm as I tried to explain my time crunch. It didn’t matter. I called Kiwi and she reassured me that I will not miss the bus back. I sat on this ferry for about 45 minutes before it took off. During this time waiting I made peace with the idea of spending the night in Ranong, paying for a new bus ticket, and missing work the next day. Just like drops of water off a duck’s back, I refused to let any setback cause me any unnecessary stress.

As soon as the ferry departed, it started to rain. Hard. I felt like I was in a bad Jurassic Park remake. The boat was rocking. The water was splashing in. There was a Thai guy yelling at all of us to give him our passports and ten dollars. I was a more than a little hesitant to hand my passport over to this guy. I asked him, “Why?” That was a mistake. I have no idea what he said to me after that, but I handed over my passport real quick. After that, a really nice Swiss lady noticed my horror and offered some support. She told me it was normal for one person to hold the passports and give to immigration all at once upon arrival.

We got to Myanmar as the rain started to slow down. Three kids were waiting at the dock to help us off the slippery boat onto the rickety dock. The process in Myanmar was super quick. The kids that helped us off the boat were waiting for their tip money when we returned less than 30 minutes later. It started to rain again. I noticed a Russian couple found a way to grab a couple beers and several people were smoking cigarettes out the window despite the rain. I’m not going to sugarcoat it; we were all feeling the stress.

We arrived back in Thailand and went through immigration. The guy that brought me to the border was waiting for me and waved me toward the bike as I walked away from the office. Perfect timing. He drove me back to Kiwi’s and then the bus station. I grabbed my ticket and had enough time to grab some snacks for the road! When I sat down in that van, I slammed a diet coke and crushed an entire pack of Ritz cheese crackers. I relaxed for the first time in what felt like a very long time.

I got back home and still had time to do yoga.. and drink a little wine. Today I went to work like nothing had happened. After all, what I did was NOT that big of a deal. People have to do it all the time. I gave all of the required documents to my new school and they are going to take care of everything to get my new visa changed into a work permit. Yippee!

So, in the end, everything worked out. Yes, I had to trudge through heavy storms and questionable situations, but it was worth it. I get to stay in Thailand and continue living as my unique path in life unfolds. I never know what the universe has in store for me, but for right now, I am so happy to be at my new school. I feel very fortunate to be where I am. My life isn’t perfect. I make mistakes. Sometimes small mistakes.. Sometimes big mistakes.. But not all mistakes are high stakes. (Sorry, I couldn’t let myself pass up the rhyme there.)

It’s easy to be hard on yourself when things don’t go as planned. It’s easy to get frustrated and anxious and focus so deeply on the little details that you lose sight of the big picture. In a sense, knowing you’re in a rainstorm doesn’t make it any easier to see through a clouded visor. Awareness doesn’t make you immune to negativity, it just opens the door for a wider perspective. As cliche as it may be, I really believe that you have to go through the storm in order to appreciate the rainbow.

What a day. Thanks for reading friends. I have so much love for you.

Love,

Moonflower

*Sorry mom and dad, I know that sounds unsafe, but I did what I had to do. I hope you understand.

#Thailand Adventure Brave Farang

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neetu-uplifts · 6 years ago

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Crazy

Mental health is something that is a part of each of our lives. We can have good mental health some days and not so good mental health other days. And sometimes, we can go a long time not quite feeling like ourselves. When this happens physically, for example if someone gets a cold or a cough that just won’t go away, we aren’t afraid to talk about it, to sleep in and rest, to see a doctor or to visit a pharmacy. We seek out remedies from family and friends, even our social media communities. We do so much through tender love and care to heal our bodies when they aren’t healthy. Just like we have a body, we also have a mind. We don’t think twice to look after, “own” or discuss our physical (body) health, but often struggle to do the same with our mental (mind) health. The fear that perhaps something is wrong with us or that people will label us as “crazy”, weak or weird, and maybe distance themselves from us, keeps us from opening up about mental health. Even worse, the self-belief that “something is wrong with me and that maybe I’m going crazy and now my life as I know it is going to fall apart forever”, holds us back from truly looking after our mental health. How is it that our bodies are unquestionably allowed to be injured or sick throughout our lives but not our minds. Think about how much we think, process, absorb, use, read, react and do with our minds. There’s a serious amount of pressure and stress on our minds. A broken leg or stomach bug rushes us to the doctor. We spend hours each month in physiotherapy and massage therapy to treat muscles and get adjusted by chiropractors. How is it fair to expect the mind to just always “auto-regulate”, heal and look after itself without any real support? That is crazy.

The lack of awareness and the thick smog of stigma surrounding mental health are making us sick. One of the biggest corrections we need to make is the distinction between mental health and mental illness. Too often, people associate “mental illness” with a straight jacket and “craziness”. Many of us have chronic physical illnesses - such as asthma, diabetes, obesity or arthritis - that we will live with for the rest of our human lives. But just because you have asthma doesn’t mean you can’t live a healthy, full and happy life. Asthmatic doesn’t become the core defining trait of you as a person. It’s just something you have to treat and manage and it doesn’t impact how you or someone else sees you. You don’t become your diagnosis. The crazy thing is that we don’t treat mental illness the same way. Just because someone has bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety or an eating disorder doesn’t make them “crazy”. It shouldn’t take over their life or their identity. Yes, it will require appropriate medical attention and social support, just as diabetes would, but the individual isn’t the disease. With mental health, we judge so hard based on the label attached to an injury or illness. I don’t look at my Mom and say “you are diabetes” or myself and say “you are asthma”. So, I should also never let someone’s mental illness or state of mental health (whether they are dealing with a mental illness or not) be the primary lens through which I see them. But, we as a society DO THAT. And we are so damn harsh about it. If someone for instance has pneumonia and it prevents them from attending a wedding, it would be completely absurd for someone else to say “I can’t believe she’s not coming to the wedding, she’s so rude and bizarre - I think she’s just looking for attention” and then socially isolate that individual. Sadly, we often act like this when someone is suffering from a mental illness or needs support for their mental health. We hear it from the mouths of young and old, educated and illiterate, white collar and blue collar, immigrant and Canadian born. Things like: “Honestly, she’s so weird, she doesn’t talk to anyone or ever make plans to hang out with anyone - I swear she’s like bipolar or something.” And unlike the person with pneumonia who has a “hall pass” and can openly share what’s happening for them physically, the person struggling through a mental illness can’t. They’re judged even before they have the chance to talk about it.

Just as physical unwellness can sometimes show its symptoms most strongly through the body e.g. broken arm, or tense muscles, mental unwellness may at times show its symptoms most strongly through behaviour, mood or emotional signs. But health is health, regardless of how it’s channeled. You would never get upset and walk away from someone who had blood gushing out of their arm. They would be screaming and you would wonder why but the minute you saw their arm you would rush to their side and get them help. So, if someone is acting in a way that doesn’t seem quite right or “normal” for them, and maybe there’s no obvious physical marker explaining why they’re behaving this way, instead of us judging that person and withdrawing from them, how might we lean in and support them? Mental health is health. Period.

The other thing we need to remember is that mental, physical and emotional health are all connected. If you’re sick with the flu and you can’t breathe properly, make it to the gym, go to work or see your friends, your mental and emotional health will definitely be affected. Similarly, if you are working through an eating disorder or are feeling depressed, your body will be impacted. And just because someone is not diagnosed with a mental illness does not mean they necessarily have good mental health. You can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and be in great mental health compared to someone who is not diagnosed with bipolar disorder and isn’t looking after their mental wellbeing. Similarly, you can have washboard abs, train for a triathlon, sleep 8 hours everyday and eat super clean, but if you neglect your mind, you’ll still have poor mental health and therefore not be healthy and happy. Health is holistic and deeply interconnected.

So, where do we go from here? First, let’s rewire the way we’ve been socialized to negatively perceive mental health and act unfairly and insensitively towards it - both in ourselves and in others. Next, let’s check-in with ourselves regularly and be honest with how our mental health is. On days where you feel your mental health isn’t at its best, do something about it - nourish your body, your soul and your mind. Talk to a loved one and if you’re really feeling bold, share it on social media to punch the taboo and hopefully help someone else who might be having a tough day as well. Exercise, sleep, nutrition and social support are vital to good holistic health. And just like when a physical illness gets aggressive and we need to call in the pros, do the same with mental health. Find and keep a therapist who you “click with”, trust and feel psychologically safe opening up to. And don’t for a second, feel ashamed about it. Feel proud of yourself for taking such good care of your health and for loving yourself so much. Keep punching the taboo in the face. And again, if you feel bold enough, share your story with friends, coworkers, family or possibly the world (social media) - because you don’t know who else is silently suffering and you might just be the impetus for them to get help and get healthy. Mad love peeps <3

#mental health #wellness #punchthetaboo

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olympiansrpg1-blog · 8 years ago

Photo

BASICS

Name: Felicia Odette Brava Age: 26 Affiliation: New Olympus Occupation: Bruiser Faceclaim: Eiza González Status: TAKEN by Misha

THE STORY

They call you Cerberus, fighting with the ferocity of a beast. For the majority of your adolescent life, you felt suffocated, crushed under the weight of certain expectations you never wanted to meet. They wanted you to be gentle and kind, everything the storm that raged inside of you was not. So you learned to fight under the midnight sky, sneaking away from the watchful eye of someone who claimed to love you as you were, rendezvous in dark alleyways and underground rings filled with people much bigger than you. This was a life worth living: packing hits and watching people fall under them as you felt every irritation and frustration leave you, inciting a passion in you that you had never felt in any of the things your parents wanted for you. It was there that you found your future calling, someone who represented death themselves with the moniker of Hades extending the hand of freedom to you. You ceased it at the first opportunity, knowing you would never have to do any of those redundant things again. You have never left their side since, even if you’ve begun to feel stifled again from their faith in you and the expectations that come with them.

CONNECTIONS

PAEAN - If there is one person that you are eternally grateful for aside from Hades, it is Paean. You cannot remember how many times you’ve come to them, with wounds that would otherwise terrify anyone else and they calmly talked you through every single one while their hands made you whole again. It is in this calm that you found a friend, someone decent enough in this world of crime to earn that title. Though your loyalties are on opposite sides, you know you can count on them far more than anyone else.

CHIMERA - It seems as though they are everywhere you go, your very own shadow with a touch of insanity in your eyes. You’re not certain what it is they have against you, going out of their way to find you and start a fight. All you know is that you’ve had it with them, especially with the way you two seem to be evenly matched, leaving the both of you in a sweaty and bloody heap when all is said and done. You’d do almost anything to wipe that smirk off of their face and knock their snarky words right out of them.

MEDUSA - It is of no surprise to you that people tend to stay away from you, with knuckles cut and bruised to the point of scarring and a grin made for violence, you don’t blame them. Medusa, however, has never shied away from you and you often times work together, almost too cohesively, to pull of a job. You know of their reputation, but you learned long ago that perception isn’t always reality and you genuinely want to get to know them better.

SUGGESTED FACECLAIMS

Eiza González, Alisha Wainwright, Lindsey Morgan, Medalion Rahimi, Max Schneider, Jade Hassouné, Luke Mitchell

BIOGRAPHY

TW: Drug use mention, violence, murder, abuse, eating disorders

Ever since she was a child, Felicia was not tender. She was bossy and feisty, a real “problem child,” as some would refer to her. Living in London, there were certain expectations of her. She had to be a good girl, she had to sit up straight with her legs crossed and wear white without getting it dirty, of course. Her grandparents immigrated from Mexico to England, making her the third generation and by god did she had mighty shoes to fill. Her mother certainly would never let her forget it, perhaps that was why she was forced to assimilate by wearing skirts that were too long, or why she went to high tea and had a nice gaudy hat for every damn occasion.

In truth, her father was planning on becoming apart of Parliament and eventually, Prime Minister. So Felicia needed to be the prim and proper, perfect little girl that everyone wanted her to be. It could not work, in year two she got sent home for twisting a boy’s arm too hard that it deeply bruised him. In year five, she beat another boy up with her little purse full of rocks. Each time her family got such phone calls, she was demonized back at home. Her mother was livid, it was a nightmare trying to get her to calm down and the bored expression on Felicia’s face only sent her over the edge. “Do you have no shame? Your father needs this family to be perfect!” Felicia sat there, her blood curdling in her veins from her rising temper because she needed to fight back. Yet instead, she clenched her fists and spoke through gritted teeth.

“Take another sedative then, mother.”

Things had been intensely uncomfortable between them ever since. In public she was forced to bite her tongue, and becoming a teenager did not make her mother take her more seriously. If anything, it meant that her arm would be twisted back tightly under the guise of a saccharine sweet smile in public, and in private you were engaged in a screaming match that was only calmed by the condescending words your father would whisper in an attempt to soothe you. “Mija, you are supposed to be my good girl. Can you be that for me?”

She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but of course she didn’t. She simply nodded every time and tried to stifle the war raging inside her. Her bones felt heavy with the fight she needed to go to, but she tired. As the years went on, Felicia pretended that she actually could be gentle and soft. She almost believed herself for a moment as well, she spoke with a proper English accent and walked with perfect posture. Her hobbies included croquet or cooking, and for awhile, she forgot who she really was. She was completely numb and hazed out for the majority of her teenage years; her mother always had a problem with something she did but Felicia could only remember taking a biting blow at the moment and screaming into her memory foam down pillows later at night. If zombies were real, Felicia was your polite and beautiful zombie. She never came home with knee scraps anymore, she looked like a doll and everyone ate her up. Both her father’s coworkers and her aunties all said that they much preferred this version of Felicia compared to when she was “an obnoxious little girl.”

She truly did try to stay “good.” At least until she was seventeen. Oh her family could’ve said that they truly did love her for who she was, and they just needed her to not be herself in public, but she knew how badly they wanted her to stay the same mindless Barbie doll. With her father’s seat secured in Parliament, Felicia knew things would only start to get worse. He was going to get more media attention, he was going to be the damn Prime Minister if it killed him and it was going to kill her for certain. The high society ladies and gentlemen weren’t so pure themselves, she’d overhear them talk of gambling rings and boxing matches. So rather than stay home at ten pm on a Friday night, she donned her leather jacket, grabbed a pack of cigarettes hidden underneath her bed, and snuck out of the suffocatingly large house for the first time in her entire life.

It was terribly cold but she was determined to find a bloody fight to make up for the years of suppression. She found the bar that she heard had an underground ring and it only made her more excited to watch the burly men beat one another to a bloody pulp. She could feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins as she watched, the scent of the blood and sweat was almost intoxicating and she felt dizzy from excitement. She couldn’t remember the last time she was excited and it was enough to make her step in between the spectator's’ and right into the ring, a wicked smile on her face and her eyes alight with a wild hurricane flashing behind them. “Let me fight.”

They tried to make her fight another woman, as if she couldn’t tackle the bigger men.

“No, I’m going to pulverize h i m.” She pointed to someone double her height with a permanent glare on his face. She should’ve been terrified but instead she released all that pent up aggression, all that numbness, all that rage. She didn’t remember what happened during the fight until she was standing up with one foot on his chest, her lip swollen and cut while he was clearly a mess beneath her. She knew she didn’t look like a proper, perfect, good girl right then. So when she smiled, baring her bloodied teeth, she sent a message: she was a vicious wolf who was not afraid.

She continued this life, always sneaking out at night for fights in alleyways and other underground rings, and she always came back with different bruises or cuts. It was getting harder for her to look so innocent, especially when she switched her pink lipsticks with dark red to hide the blood and when her lace gloves did nothing to hide the bruises on her knuckles. Her mother would ask what had happened, but Felicia would just smirk and say something cryptic. She was becoming a mystery to her family, and they just couldn’t handle not knowing what she was up to. She was right when she had thought that the publicity presence would only get worse, it certainly did. In a way, she was glad they could all see her a little roughed up. Her appearance didn’t hinder her father from becoming Prime Minister, however, and she knew it wouldn’t. It didn’t matter what she did, but god did her life become even more stifling. Suddenly she had to be even more careful when she’d sneak out, she had to wear disguises and learn how to clean up her own wounds.

It was maddening enough to make her want to leave the country altogether. Screw the rules of High Society England and the disgusting finger sandwiches, and most importantly, the stiff and dry losers who had nothing better to do but to kiss up to their parents. Felicia was going to New York City, where she had a warped sense of reality about the types of underground fighting and altercations that she would get into, mostly because of all the American movies she’d watch. When she told her father, he seemed perplexed, but also secretly glad that she will no longer be causing trouble at home. He was more than happy to pay for everything, as long as she “stayed out of trouble” or as Felicia translated, as long as she didn’t get caught. With her lips closed to hide the chipped tooth she’d have to fix later, Felicia nodded and spoke in the mock sweet voice for what she thought would be the last time. “Of course, daddy.”

She got herself a nice loft in Chelsea, even though her parents pushed for her to live in the nicer “upper east side.” She didn’t want to go where part of the city actually did go to sleep at eight pm, no, she was fine with being an obedient uni student during the day, but she was going to do whatever she wanted at night. Eventually, she grew a name in the underground fighting world and there were rumors of a gang being whispered between the crowd. Olympus, how opulent. She was no goddess, she was hardly one of those beautiful mortal women who’d get screwed over by their selfish demigod lovers. So she ignored these talks, because who cared who her new drug suppliers were? Just as long as she got something.

In school however, she found a new type of fighting. She found the adrenaline rush that was being a defense attorney, and she excelled at it. It was perhaps the only way to tame her, in a sense. She was still just as passionate and just as fiery, but she was composed and succinct, and it was in her pre-law major where she saw herself become a well rounded woman. When she told her father she was going to law school, he was joyous and immediately invited her to come back home, offering to pay for law school in England. Yet she knew she couldn’t leave the city she had fallen for now, especially with her newfound glory that would soon only grow. For the first time in several years, she was allowed to be associated with the family, but Felicia realized she was truly a mistake. He agreed to let her stay in the city and pay for law school there, and she knew their relationship was once open again, but she still was resentful since she knew it was only because he thought she was ready to be a kept woman again. So while she studied endlessly during the day, it was at night where she released the tension and anxieties that came with her career path.

She knew she wasn’t all bite and blood, she just had to figure out who she really was. Being away from her parents was good for that; she swore more, she went tried to be more punk but quickly realized she was not whiny enough for that scene. Felicia explored herself and the city as much as she could, and found herself right where she lived in Chelsea amongst the eccentric FIT students or the artwork that wasn’t polite. Nothing was clean and proper where she was, it was raw and honest. Something she hadn’t been with herself for the majority of her childhood. She even thought she could settle down with someone.

He was her professor during her undergraduate years that she affectionately referred to as Mr. Darcy and as cheeky as she was, Felicia wasn’t really interested in seriously pursuing him while she was still a student. Still, it’s not like she wasn’t going to indulge herself now that she was away from the confines of her family’s watchful eye. So the day of graduation, they had a drink, and it went on from there. It wasn’t meant to become serious, she was still a fighter at heart anyways, but it felt nice to come home to someone who wanted to wrap her up in his arms and talk about everything and nothing. They were domestic, she almost believed she could be normal, that he was her prince charming and that this was what it meant to be a regular girl. After all, women her age were settling down like this, right?

She later learned that the term for the euphoric feeling was called the “honeymoon phase” and it was quickly short lived. They settled into one another, and while things seemed fine for awhile, Felicia quickly learned again what it meant to be a kept woman and she did not like it. She had forgotten that once again, this man was making her forget who she really was inside. Yes she now knew she could be tender and loving, but she wanted to travel; she knew deep down that domesticated life wasn’t for her. Of course, Mr. Darcy certainly wasn’t pleased with this either. He thought he had finally controlled Felicia but no one really could. He forced her to classy dinner parties that put her to sleep on the way back home for boredom, he made her interact with other normal people who were usually just people like her father’s co-workers and friends or like her mother and her friends. When she responded negatively they began to fight. They never fought before, so why was it happening now, just because she didn’t like the things he liked?

That tactic, apparently, was called grooming, because her wonderful Mr. Darcy did not love her the way she was. Nobody did, it seemed. He became more controlling of her, and at first Felicia believed she could handle it. Nothing wrong with some healthy arguing, right? But the healthy arguing turned into screaming fits. She’d want to go out at night to make her earnings from the people who’d bet on her during her fights but he was watching her every move. He began to make comments about her weight, her appearance, it was like living with her mother all over again only with someone much more domineering. She was suffocating, she was pissed, and she wanted him g o n e.

She wasn’t sure how she was going to get rid of him when the thought of dumping him made her nervous as to what he’d do to her career or otherwise, and leaving the city was no option for her when she knew that this was the place that she belonged. She had friends at the ring and when she’d complain at the bar about Mr. Darcy, they’d all offer to roughen him up and scare him away on their own but Felicia knew she could do that herself and she didn’t need to pay a fee for it. One night, she finally got away from him freely, only because he was away at a conference for a week so of course she headed to the ring, determined to find a solution. Was Olympus real? Was it not just some stupid myth that everyone whispered between the ring? She supposed tonight would be the night she’d find out. She had gotten one of their dealer’s number through a friend in the ring and they promised to send Medusa to help her with her problem. There she was by the bar just as described, only much more exquisite than she could’ve imagined. It seemed impossible that she could be a hitwoman, and yet here was Felicia, looking delicate yet donned her trademark split lip all the time.

“So… you’re Medusa?”

“Yeah, and you’re the one who wants to kill your boyfriend?”

“Well, maybe just a little.”

The smile they shared made her instantly feel connected to the other person. It was so strange to her, yet she didn’t question it. They discussed the logistics, where it’d be done, what time and how. Felicia knew she wasn’t supposed to be there, but part of her wanted to be there, to see how it would happen, to help. It was so stupid of her, she should’ve felt guilt or doubt, she should’ve called Medusa off because this was terrible of her. She had never killed a man before, and even if she technically wasn’t killing him, she still ordered the hit and she still was pretending like everything was fine. She knew it was an extreme, but with how bad things had been going, she more or less felt scared for her safety until he was taken out. So for her, this was peace of mind. If anyone else asked, however, she knew she’d seem completely insane.

The night she officially became a lawyer was the night Mr. Darcy was going to be taken out. She made it seem like they were certainly going to go out celebrating, but she was really leading him to Medusa. Medusa did not like that idea but Felicia insisted, she was far too curious as to what would happen. Just as they exited the subway into the Bronx did she find Medusa with a man who was donned in an expensive suite and looked irritatingly impeccable as he stared at Felicia with a meticulous gaze. The pair walked further up ahead of Felicia and Mr. Darcy, until they were at the very far outer edge of the borough right by the Hudson River. Mr. Darcy asked where they were, but Felicia swiftly silenced him by kicking him in the back of his knees with her arm encircling his throat tightly.

“What are you doing?! You can’t handle seeing this, and you aren’t supposed to be here.”

“I’ve seen worse and maybe he should get what’s coming to him. Who’s the man?”

“That’s Hades, sometimes he monitors.”

Felicia ignored her better half struggling beneath her as her hand squeezed his throat and her fist came to brutally punch him in the jaw. “We’ve watched you fight before.”

It was Hades who spoke and shocked Felicia. She blinked as Medusa took Mr. Darcy from her yet she stopped the other woman to grab his jaw, a snarl in her voice as she spoke, “good riddance David.” She allowed Medusa to take him away, and even if she wanted to watch, she knew deep down she wasn’t strong enough to watch someone get murdered, even if she was at the height of her anger. Instead, she redirected her attention back to the calm and collected Hades, who seemed to both not approve of Medusa’s methods and yet be the one to help if something were to go wrong. “You watched me fight?”

“Of course. Cronus even got interested in you. We could use a bruiser, you know.”

Olympus truly did exist and she was no goddess or hero, no. She was just like her counterpart, Medusa, she was a monster. All bruised knuckles and bloodied lips. She was Cerberus. They appointed her bruiser and oh how she thrived. It worked well for her schedule as well. With the medic to patch her up to make her look almost good as new and her realizing just how many Olympians were rigging the systems in the court, her job became easier too. She was untouchable it seemed. But tensions were rising when Cronus died. Zeus may have been her new boss, but she didn’t answer to him. She owed this newer freedom to Hades, so when Olympus split, she didn’t hesitate to choose his side. He and Medusa broke her out of her haze forever, she knew no longer she wouldn’t let anyone control how she felt ever again.

For awhile, she didn’t really question her new life, she felt in control again and that was all that mattered to her. But maybe it was the fact she still saw Paean in secret to fix her wounds, or the fact she didn’t respond well to people having high expectations of her, but Hades did make it clear New Olympus is his family and he has faith in her. She’s not sure what he sees her as, the loyal dog who’d do anything for him or the girl who just so badly wanted to break free when in fact she had earned her own freedom, but whatever it is, it has rubbed her the wrong way. She’s not just some helpless women and god did he really need to bestow his idealism down upon her? She was only human and a perfectly flawed one at that, she wasn’t an immaculate painting like she believed he thought she was. She never voiced her opinions, however. Usually, she would’ve, but she is grateful for the new family who actually accepts her, and she is glad Hades does not want her to be anything less than who she is. Still, she wonders if all of this will be worth it down the line now that fighting has no longer become her extracurricular activity but instead a full time job.

#cerberus #lsrpg #lsrp #gang rp #greek mythology rp #new #all #taken

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dudence-blog · 7 years ago

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Dear Dudence for 5 March 2018

Before I get into my usual effluent opening and the questions, I’m going to start off with a number: 1-800-273-8255. It’s the National Suicide Prevention line. It’s operated 24/7 with folks who are there to talk with you.

Oh man, so excited. Spring Training is in full effect with games closely resembling actual baseball really happening! We’ve had some brief, but increasing in frequency, respites from the cold. You could almost think that spring will be here soon. Gotta love it. But just because things are good here doesn’t mean it’s good for everyone. Otherwise why would they be seeking advice from an internet stranger, and then being answered by someone they didn’t know would be answering them.

I am incredibly fortunate to come from a wealthy family—like 1-percent wealthy. (For what it’s worth, my first-generation parents and immigrant grandparents made all their money on their own.) I chose to work in a job that makes about 30 percent of what I otherwise could, because I feel a responsibility to give back and I really love what I do. My problem is some of my co-workers, who constantly disparage people with money and people who come from money. Even though they don’t know that I am one of those people, it’s hard for me to nod along and just let someone disparage me and my family—grouping all rich people together as evil, or mocking trust-fund recipients as lazy do-nothings, when I know it’s not true.

Dear Coworkers Don’t Know I’m a little confused because I’m not sure what you’re actually doing to “give back”. You say you’re taking a job where you’re making 70% less than you “could”, but that you’re doing it to “give back”. So are you working at some non-profit which would be “giving back”, or are you working a non-1%er “regular job”. Honestly, the only way your question makes narrative sense is if you’re doing some sort of government or non-profit work. So I’m going to assume that. If you’re actually just working at Dunder Miffin and think slumming it in some office job is “giving back” go ahead and disregard. Yes, the wealthy are not some traditionally oppressed group where it’s a hate crime to make fun of them. However, it’s still rude to do so. Now, most of us go ahead say the insults anyway because it’s not like any of us are actually filthy rich (even if we are most everyone defines “filthy rich” as “more money than I have” anyway). Normally, when you’re in an environment where you’re surrounded by people who are rudely insulting your family background, I’d recommend confronting the boors. However, you have the slight advantage of not needing to remain in this environment; you’re doing it for non-monetary reasons. Because here is what is going to happen when you confront your co-workers about this. At best they’re going to shift from making fun of the rich in general with you to making for you you, personally, behind your back. At worst it’s going to become abundantly clear that your coworkers hate you and will do everything they can to make your life miserable. It’s not like “Being Wealthy” is a protected class so they don’t even need to worry about maintaining a facade that it isn’t their intention. I don’t want to tell you to “suck it up” because you shouldn’t have to. You’re not being paid (less than you think you could) to work in a place that hates your very existence and blames you for the world’s ills. But, as a wise man said, the best revenge is living well. Use your connections and relative freedom of action to find similar work but in a non-toxic environment. Now, with all this being said, man, you touched a nerve in BadPru. You’d think that a person from a fairly well-off and privileged background herself would be a bit more empathetic. By now I figured I’d stopped being surprised by things BadPru says. But then she goes all pig-ignorant with the idea of wealth being a zero-sum game.

My partner and I are both in our 30s, have great jobs, and don’t want children. We’ve been dating for a little more than a year and will move in together in May. We’ve spent plenty of time together to make this decision, and I’m excited but … moving in with someone has, in the past, been the prelude to a downhill slide in my relationships. I’ve thought a lot about why and already made positive changes in this relationship, thanks to therapy. But I’m still nervous that my (amazing) partner and I won’t weather this transition

Dear Anxiously Anticipating honestly most romantic relationships for most people end in a downward spiral. At least until they don’t. That’s kind of how romantic relationships work. You keep cycling through them until you find the one(s) that stops the cycling. Sharing a living space is when the shit gets real. Suddenly problems which you could live with because you could retreat to your own place are going to be a problem. Co-habitating also shatters illusions. You’re going to be confronted with the reality that your partner likes extra pulpy OJ. They’re going to find your complete collection of Limp Bizkit’s music. Going into this new phase of your relationship focused on what can, and probably will, go wrong is a recipe for that cycle to continue. There are going to be problems. Part of building a mature relationship is learning that you need to work through those problems, and do so with an end-goal of maintaining the relationship. You might also need to learn to accept that some problems just aren’t resolvable; you’re going to need to agree to disagree. So, with all this being said, NuPru’s advice is a recipe for this cycle to continue for you. It’s like telling someone not to think of a red elephant or a motorcycle rider getting hyper focused on the road in front of them and not where they want to be. Your fear isn’t unfounded, as I said, most relationships end, but making this transition thinking how it’s going to go the same as the others is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, do what you can to reframe your thinking. Think of the problems you’re going to run into as opportunities to build a relationship with your partner. You have your way of doing things, they have theirs, you want to build “ours”. When you do run into trouble have as your goal that the relationship will continue; view it as something worth saving in itself. If you can keep that in your mind it can help you make the lowest point of your relationship when you move in together because it just keeps getting better and better.

Three nights ago, I got extremely intoxicated while out with a friend and texted my husband to tell him I was crashing at her house. We spend the night playing video games with her boyfriend, their roommate, and his friend “Jack.” I eventually fell asleep and I woke up to Jack asking me if I wanted him to stop. I can only piece together small bits of what happened from then on but we certainly had sex. I feel disgusting. I have spent the past few days pretending it didn’t happen but it is slowly seeping back and I don’t know what to do. I want to tell my husband but I am terrified he will never forgive me and our lives will crumble. (We have a toddler together.)

Dear How to Tell Him, I know it’s been a couple days since this was even asked to Newdie, so I hope you’ve taken advantage of a couple of the resources she mentioned. Whatever, if any, hurt the events of that night will do to the ones you love the most it will pale compared to the pain which would be caused by you killing yourself. I know how depression can make it feel like everything will go in the worst way possible; that is your mind fucking with you. Your husband isn’t going to never forgive you. There is nothing to forgive. This isn’t to say he won’t have his own complicated sense of emotions to work through, but nothing in your letter makes me think he’s not a loving and supportive man who cares deeply for you and your family. Give him the respect of being honest with him of what’s happened, how you feel, your fears, and trust that he’ll act with your best interests at heart.

I just ended my relationship with my partner of 10 years over the subject of having children. I want them; he doesn’t. He had told me he did, but now he tells me he only said that because he desperately wanted to make me happy. The breakup was devastating. We held each other and sobbed for hours, and both of us are unsure of how to move on with our lives. I’m fairly sure he will come back to me in a few weeks and tell me he’s reconsidering. If that happens, I shouldn’t believe him, right?

Dear Listening When Someone Tell You “No”, no, you should not believe him. He will be lying to you. He told you he would be lying to you. You are telling you he will be lying to you. Ortdence is telling you he will be lying to you. I am telling you he will be lying to you. Don’t listen to him. <Narrator: She listened to him>

For the past two years, I have been involved with “Noah” long-distance. We were both reluctant to define our relationship—he never told me he loved me or called me his girlfriend, but he was otherwise caring and attentive. We never talked about monogamy, but neither of us slept with anyone else. Eventually I wanted something more serious. A month ago I met someone local, Ryan, who I really like, and finally ended things with Noah. Ryan’s fun, we enjoy sleeping together, and he’s brightened up my life. But now Noah has started messaging me again, telling me he was wrong and wants to get back together.

Dear a Bird in the Hand and One in the Bush, I am childishly laughing at the implications of “one in the bush”. While I’m a big proponent of honesty in relationships, and I saw your statement about being honest, you know, I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself about anything in these two “relationships”. Noah was “caring and attentive” from a distance, but never said he loved you or identified you as his girlfriend. You were his side-piece. He’s being all attentive now because you cut it off before he was ready to end it. The only person you’re in a relationship with now is Ryan. Now, if you want to put a guy you like, who you enjoy banging, who brightens your life on hold so you can pursue acknowledgment from a guy who is infrequently banging you when he comes to town have at.

My sister lost her husband last year and our mother had a heart attack and nearly died. We all live far away. My sister has offered to move in with our mother but asked that she get the house and land when our mother passes. She will have to quit her job to move and may not be able to find work in our mother’s tiny rural town. I don’t see a problem with this. Our much younger sister does. She threw a fit about our sister trying to “steal” her inheritance.

Dear Moving, while it might be nice to take BadPru’s advice and toss your youngest sister’s opinion in the trash, having a good ol’fashioned family fight over the estate is not going to help your sister. I’m also not feeling BadPru’s assumption that your other sister is doing all of this out of the goodness of her heart and the interest in caring for your ailing mother. I’d actually be a little concerned that my recently-widowed sibling was willing to completely change their lifestyle on such short notice. I would suggest that instead of your sister being compensated by receiving the house and land she, instead, be paid. If your mother doesn’t have the liquid wealth to actually do so, come up with some sort of formula where she receives an increased share of the estate for however long her service is. This has the advantage of it not being a lump-sum payment of your mother’s greatest asset regardless of how long she needs to put her own life on hold. It also gives your sister a bit of flexibility in the event your mother recovers her independence or needs care beyond that which your sister can provide and needs to move into a formal assisted living situation. It might also help your youngest sister comprehend just how quickly elderly and end-of-life care can chew through an estate so she should be thankful someone is willing to do it for a less-than market rate. What you can’t do is disregard your youngest sister’s desire because contested wills are real things. Even if your youngest sister loses it’s expensive, time consuming, and will hold your other sister in limbo while it’s decided. So it’s worth getting her on board for the plan.

My son, an only child, was adopted at 14 months old. I traveled alone to get him from the other side of the globe. He’s now 22. Not since fifth grade, when he made cards and gifts at school, has he given me or his dad a gift or card. Is this normal, or selfish? He spends plenty on himself. He’s struggled with ADHD since preschool and stopped taking meds for it at age 18. How do I approach this with him? I don’t need gifts; I want occasional appreciation. His dad and I divorced two years after high school graduation. Son now lives with his dad 300 miles away. Dad seldom speaks with me (his choice, not mine) so we can’t present a unified front for our son.

Dear Grown Child Etiquette, I guess this week is “BadPru reads all sorts of shit into letters” week. “Seldom” isn’t “never” so if this is important to you, and important enough that you think it needs a united front, then you should make the effort to get your ex on board. Or, at least figure out if it’s something he even views as a problem. Honestly, if your 5th grader stopped getting you gifts it really means your husband stopped getting gifts back when your son was 11. Huh, no wonder you divorced. Anyway, nevermind. It’s not unusual for a pre-teen to try and exercise a bit of independence by not conforming to expected behavior. I’d say it’s a bit unusual for that attitude to persist into adulthood absent some other issue. Is the “I’d just like to hear ‘thanks’ or ‘Happy Birthday mom’ sometimes,” a conversation you’ve actually had with your son? Because your letter is sorely lacking in the active steps you’ve taken to convey your wants to your kid.

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joedunphy · 7 years ago

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Caprica

(Originally posted on another, apparently defunct, blogging host)

Miscellanious ramblings … If you’re looking for an essay that holds together, you’re going to be in the wrong place, today, because I’m in no mood to write one. I’ve just gotten done banging my head into the proverbial wall trying to set up a mirror to this blog on the not always so very well documented Tumblr system, and am frustrated, stressed, tired and hungry. But blog.com is determined to keep its servers clean of blogs that haven’t been updated often enough, because at ¼ of a cent per meg, diskspace is far too expensive to waste.

A meg, for those who don’t know, works out to be about 66 pages of printed text, meaning that if you have written 660 pages of blog posts - the equivalent of a thick, university sized tome’s worth of posting - the service will free up 2.5 cents worth of diskspace by wiping out your work. Think of it. If they did this to a mere 60 users, each of whom would lose a few hundred pages of work, before they knew it, they’d have saved up enough to buy themselves a snicker’s bar. Not just any snicker’s bar, either, but one of those large ones, the kind that can take one back to many happy hours spent in train stations across this great land of ours, waiting for connecting rides. Sure, they’d have to go to Walgreens to get it - in a movie theatre, we’d be looking at something more like 60 or 90 users who’d have to lose a decade or two of posting before the staff could reap the collective fruits of their disk clearing labors, in all of its nougaty goodness - but if you’ve ever been in a computer lab, you know how much those snack foods mean to the programmers. So I’d better get going, whether I’m up to it or not, and if the quality of my writing should suffer as a result?

Dude, we’re talking nougat and peanuts. It’s nothing to be trifled with.

If the reports I’ve heard about Caprica’s ratings are accurate, then this show probably won’t be on for much longer. Does it deserve to be? Should one catch it before it is cancelled, knowing that short running shows don’t tend to find their way into syndication? Maybe. I will say that I find it greatly superior to the vast bulk of what Syfy produces, but then that isn’t very high praise. We are talking about the same channel that brought us “Mansquito” and “Termination Shock”, that movie about the girl who shoots starship destroying fireballs out of her chest. Have they done better, this time? Something that a grown up can watch without hoping that nobody will catch him watching it?

Again … maybe. It’s deeply flawed. At times, the dialog has made no sense.

Consider Joseph Adams / Yussef Adama’s ramble about there being no flowers on Tauron - “not a one” - and how he burst into tears the first time he saw them growing on Caprica, when asked if he would bring his wife and daughter back from the grave, if he could. Is that the kind of tangent a grieving widower would go off on, leaving the listener to wonder what on earth was its relevance? Yes, yes, they’ve emigrated from the horrible place, and just as their lives are finally sweet, mother and daughter are no longer to be found living them? That’s the reason for the otherwise mystifying speech?

But then think about what he tells his son, as he confronts him about his having skipped class in “Tauron school”, explaining that showing up is about being proud of who he was, of being Tauron. Then think of the immigrants in your own family. Yes, the lives they left behind were hard, that’s why they were immigrants, but were they as bleak and gray as the one people were living on Tauron, if we accept the above explanation of Adama’s otherwise pointless speech? If so, then what was there to be proud of? In the real world, there was real beauty mixed in with the hardship that our forebearers left behind, some collective creation that the people could point to and say, this is what we did. Life was hard, but it wasn’t joyless. That joy is what we see altogether absent in the fictional Tauron culture, aside from that moment of dark humor when the grandmother says that the Tauron children play jacks with the bones of the children who lost at jacks, deadpanning the joke until she gets the desired level of terror in Joseph Adama.

What do Taurons eat? They seem to be a vaguely defined combination of every Mediterranean, Latin and Middle Eastern culture known, a fair number of these cultures having cuisines so developed that one can fill libraries with books about any given one, yet as the young William Adama shows up with lunch for an abusive friend of his uncle’s, what we see is a sandwich, something called “fritos”. Really? That’s it? They couldn’t spend a few dollars, and hire one of North America’s thousands of financially strapped and desperate chefs to do some kind of fusion thing, just to give a little color to the setting? No, they couldn’t. What music do Taurons listen to? Again, starving musicians are in plentiful supply, the real world source cultures have rich traditions - just think of the words “Latin Music” or Verdi or Vivaldi or … surely we’ll at least hear a few folk songs coming? No, we never hear a note. What stories do they tell? None are ever told. In every way, those creating this culture fail to create it, and don’t even seem to try, or even to farm out the effort to those who’d be happy to try, and do so for a pittance.

These may seem like little things, trivia not worth commenting on, but the absence of those little things are one of the reasons why science fiction doesn’t tend to really be literature. Those little things that a writer shares … the snatch of song, the scent of beignets sizzling in the oil, the reddened shadows cast by the setting sun across the columns of a synagogue - it’s those little, “unimportant” things, the things we hardly think to notice, that make a place seem real, like more than a cartoon, and that becomes doubly important when the place we’re looking at isn’t real. If one says “Sicilian” and one’s audience has grown up in New York or Chicago, life gives the writer a boost up as he reaches his listeners, because we all have associations with that word that it will conjure up - but not if one says “Tauron”, because there are no Taurons. That feeling is something that the writers and their coworkers on the set have to create from scratch, and what kind of feeling do they create?

We see the Tauron people being treated like dirt, stereotyped, robbed and scorned, and some of us will start out liking that, because in a fictional setting, in which the viewer will habitually let down his guard, it puts on display something that the population of an Anglo-Saxon dominated country has been very good at not letting itself see. As many have observed, in the America of today, it’s OK to be very, very white, and OK to be very, very not white (ie. Black), but not so OK to be anywhere in between. One can watch the same people who would fawn over a member of the Gangster Disciples, just to prove how “sensitive” they were, think nothing of talking about Mexicans, or Arabs, or Italians in a manner not at all unlike that we see Taurons being spoken of, on the show. Doesn’t look so pretty when it’s fictionalised, does it?

Or does it? Even as we watch the Tauron characters simmering in a stew of resentment and humilation all too familiar to all too many of those of Mediterranean descent in this country, we don’t see them doing anything to earn better for themselves. The “hero”, Joseph Adama, is a crooked lawyer who forgets to talk to the judge before having a bribe sent to him, and asks his brother to kill his new found friend’s wife, to “even things out”, after watching his thug brother beat up the friend, who seems to be the Bill Gates of 150,000BC - and yet never seems to think of resenting this, and maybe pulling a few strings to get the matter taken care of, using the influence his wealth would offer him, even at a politically awkward moment. The hostility to be found in racism isn’t a hellish thing for those it oppresses, merely because it is hostility, but because it in unearned hostility, something that the one to whom it attaches can do nothing to escape. It is a tragic thing for those around them, because those it drives off into the shadows have something to offer, their companionship at the very least, and often far more than that. Caprica fails to get that, and in doing so, having passed on any opportunity to make the Taurons seem like flesh and blood, declines to even make them into even slightly lovable cartoons. We don’t know them, and hope that we never do.

Which, as far as that part of plot goes, leaves us with no story to tell. Real stories are about characters, these constructs with whom something resonates in our subconsciouses, letting us connect with those who aren’t really there. Even the villains have to have a few virtues, some reason for us to feel what they are feeling, or for us, they won’t be there at all. The Taurons just aren’t, at least not at the moment. But, perhaps, if the show should linger, they will be.

The show seems to do better with its more white bread characters, especially Zoe, who is played by Alessandra Torresani, who is playing a piece of software in this world in which Italians (Taurons) can only be played by Mexicans, and a pair of light featured yuppies can have a dark featured daughter without anybody asking awkward questions about the mailman’s love life. The character has seemed to be the target of a significant amount of mockery in the blogosphere, judging from my recent skimming, much of it undeserved, I would think.

Zoe does seem to take herself with lethal seriousness, but as we are talking about a 16 year old - who seems to have slipped down to being 15, now - that would be what we would expect of her, were she real. Can we believe in a 15 year old suicide bomber (her boyfriend) being driven by religious fanaticism? Picture a chorus of voices echoing out of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem yelling “yes”. Children younger than that have done worse, in real life. The scene I’m thinking of, most of all, is the dancing scene, which I’ve seen some describe as a puppy dog flirtation between a young technician and his hardware, the authors finding this most strange, calling it a “ratings killer”. I think that they’re misreading the scene.

The robot contains the reconstructed personality of a young girl, whose consciousness lives on through the ill conceived magic of artificial intelligence. She is trapped inside, her internal self-image (which we see in the shorts in which Ms. Torresani appears) having not caught up to her external reality (that of a one ton piece of equipment). The scene she’s living and the scene the technician are living aren’t one and the same, and the disconnect between the two has the potential to drive her even crazier than she probably is about to become.

The technician has cause to suspect that somebody is present inside that robot body, not in the sense of an actual human consciousness being present, but that of there being some sort of self-awareness. Consider the scene in which the robot, having been bound in place. One doesn’t really see a steam shovel panicking because it’s been bound to a flatbed on a train; this is the behavior we’d associate with a living being who had been left bound and immobile, panicking at her own helplessness. “Her?”, one might ask, much as the technician’s soon to be defingered friend did, as he asked why the hardware was being feminised, but men have been feminising inanimate objects for centuries in real life. Consider the pronoun we use for ships. It’s an expression of affection for that which is created by its creator, and such affection seems instinctual, a part of the drive that pushes us to create, even when we know that that which is created can’t possibly return the affection. But an actually conscious entity? Those who created that would move from merely being artists to adopting a more parental role.

I’ve read comments that while Zoebot would resent the crudeness of the technician looking at her chest and praising it, Zoebot seemed to “eat it up”, but again, let us consider the circumstances: Zoebot isn’t letting the technician know that there is any literal femininity about her at all. As far as the technician knows, all that he is looking at is a metal plate, one that he is responsible for maintaining and will be needed by this machine that he is seeing pass the Turing test. We might see Ms. Torresani’s look of dismay as he utters those words, but he doesn’t. As for the dancing that follows … from Zoe’s point of view, she’s a young woman, trapped where she doesn’t wish to be, and the technician is a boy about her own age, who is giving her what she hasn’t had for a while and hasn’t had enough of, ever - attention, as they dance. To the technician, what is happening is that he is bringing the robot to life, because he has no idea just how alive it already is.

So, again, the problem is the same as before - a failure of the imagination - but the failure is on the part of the reviewers and some in the audience, not on the part of the writers. They’re succeeding admirably in exploring the natural consequences of an unnatural situation, and we need only be open to noticing that. If one if to watch this show, while it last, I think that this is what one would watch it for. But few viewers probably will, insisting on watching that sort of scene with a literalness it doesn’t call for, and so if you want to do your viewing, I’d recommend that you do so, soon. I give this one a season before it is cancelled, and look forward to being proved wrong.

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