#i dont believe in a better future for us here on like a country level when it's a long perpetual cycle of foreign meddling and corruption

[anyab]

I hate this country and there is no future to be had here but like. Immigration to where? A shit country just with a better reputation and a train maybe?

[urmomification]

WOOO POG DREAM SMP AU

theres 1.8k words and 9,393 characters of a schlatt au below the cut LMAO

[i was rambling to my friend and this is what came out of it! send me an abt it if u have questions i would love to talk abt it more pls]

(slight body horror/gore tw!!)

slams fists on table rattling any dishes on the table au where schlatt doesnt die of a heartattack and tubbo locks him up to rot basically and his horns grow into his eyes effectively blinding him and chained his hands together and basically a leash on him to keep him from moving around in his cell so he cant do anything to break the horns off before they get too long and one day when technos breaking into lmanberg he gets chased into the prison and loses them in the halls before coming across schlatts cell and schlatts calling out like 'whos there i can hear ur foot steps whos there please someone whos there' etc yk and technos speechless they thought they executed him to keep him from causing any more problems in the country but this is this is just much worse than anything he even thought theyd do and hes standing in front of schlatts cell just looking at him as if hes imagining it he knew lmanberg was bad but holy fuck they just let this man rot in a cell to the point of his own horns blinding him and giving him no aid or way to ease the pain so he makes himself known and schlatt 'ive never been so happy to see, well, hear an anarchist in my life, its good to see- hear you technoblade' and chuckles and blood runs down his face like tears would, few drops landing on his clothes before techno starts trying to get into the cell to take him out of there he cant leave him here sure he was an anarchist terrorist w a murder record but he had standards and now that schlatt wasnt in power he had nothing against him really considering he isnt a citizen of lmanberg so he manages to pick the locks enough to get him out of there, schlatts arm slung over technos shoulder they stumble out of the prison building and as they slowly make their way to the nether portal to get back to technos base, they run into tubbo and quackity, schlatts old right hand men and they try to stop techno bc hes well an anarchist terrorist w a murder record but the glare techno gives them levels them and theyre left staring at each other for a moment when schlatt 'whyre we stopped whos there tech' and techno mumbles 'tubbo and quackity schlatt' and schlatt just furrows his brows as far as he can without sending excruciating pain into his eye sockets before he purses his lips and asks 'are they going to try and stop us?' techno looks back at the other two 'no they wont, isnt that right boys?' tubbo and quackity slink away allowing techno and schlatt to the portal and them going thru, schlatt still silent as he tries not to trip over technos cape or off the ledge of the bridge passing over the lava lakes, they make it to the portal and begin the walk across the arctic tundra to technos house, philza isnt there right now so its just the two of them and techno leads him up the ladder to his room (its not really a room i think its just a bed, a bell and an enchantment table) and sits him down on his bed mumbling something abt being right back and he is with some medical supplies and a change of clothes to clean everything up, they dont talk techno works in silence and when schlatt winces he mumbles a small apology before continuing eventually techno got schlatt as cleaned up as you can get someone w horns in their eyes and a sweater to keep him warm and finally starts asking questions 'how long had u been in there' 'lost count' 'did they bring you food' 'a chests worth at the beginning of the month' techno sighs 'i thought they executed you' 'tubbo chickened out despite me being 'an active threat to our peace in lmanberg' and locked me up a few days after u set the withers loose and dropped off a chest of food once a month and most of them refused to talk to me others couldnt even make eye contact with me, other than the few instances where they said things like 'heres ur food' or 'u deserve this' or 'i cant believe tubbo let u live' i talked to no one other than myself for however long i was in there' techno stands and walks around for a moment before flipping some pages and schlatt can hear him gasp quietly in mild surprise 'what is it tech' looking in the direction he heard techno from and techno says, turning to face schlatt on his bed 'schlatt that was almost 3 months ago' a single beat of silence rings for what feels like forever 'oh. i, i didnt think itd been that long. though it would explain my current predicament' loosely gesturing towards his face 'oh right abt that i have a few questions if ur ready to answer some' schlatt hums and techno grabs a pen and paper and sits next to him in case he needs to take any notes for future reference 'how fast do ur horns normally grow' 'idk just a steady amount my whole life pretty much' 'will they ever stop growing' 'they generally stop growing around 30 and continue to grow more in width than length' 'did anyone who brought u food notice' 'they grow quickly and by the time the person w the third chest came around they were getting close to my eyes but they didnt listen to me, no one did' he sighs looking down at would be his hands 'the odds of both of my horns growing into my eyes and blinding me like this are so low but of course it would happen to me' a chuckle void of any amusement 'because losing my country and my people and my power wasnt enough already' techno stands up 'you had that coming' schlatt actually laughs this time, short and curt 'ok fair, u were the one that took me down afterall' and from then on schlatt lives w techno and phil and eventually tommy and then without tommy (tommy was Not happy when he found out that schlatt was living with techno but he needed somewhere to stay too and techno happens to live in an arctic tundra where only a handful of people know how to get to so he didnt complain too much) and eventually techno saws off schlatts horns at the bend adn removes them from his eyes bc if they kept growing into his head theyd hit his brain and kill him on top of blinding  him and techno gags and almost throws up despite not being sensitive to gore  and gives schlatt a bandanna to cover the holes in his head for everyones sake and once they heal somewhat he can find something else out and thats how they live, schlatt helps with what he can like farming w phil but mostly spends his time learning braille or something so he can read and techno gets him books in braille so he isnt bored or alone like he was in the prison and he feeds him and takes care of him and schlatt is funny and entertaining despite being blinded by something from his own body and the torture it was like to rot in a cell alone for almost a 1/4 of a year and nights when techno gets home late and hes shaken and the voices are bad schlatt will sit behind him and play with his hair and talk abt his own day and rub technos back and in return when schlatt relapses and gets violent and angry techno will wash his hair and read him stories until he calms down and hopefully asleep and no one told him the news that wilbur died so when ghostbur shows up and starts talking to him he treats him the same as he would wilbur bc he cant see that hes a ghost all thats different is his speech pattern and overall personality and one day he says 'ur different wilbur what happened to that, i dunno spark u used to have' and wilbur simply 'im not sure if im being honest a lot abt me has changed since i died, or so im told i dont remember much from when i was alive' and schlatt just 0_0 and then hes scrambling down the ladder and stumbling around the house looking for techno, finding him in the basement working on something and when he gets there hes out of breath and his hands are shaking bc holy shit wilburs not only dead but a ghost and he was just talking to me and he doesnt remember what i did and and and and techno is shocked to see schlatt in the basement and asks whats up and schlatt just 'wilbur died wilbur fucking died tech why didnt anyone tell him and now hes a ghost hes a fucking ghost who lives in ur house and doesnt remember anything he doesnt remember that he blew up lmanberg does he he remembers my name but not anything that i did what hes a fucking ghost techno hes a ghost holy fuck' and technos just standing there like ??? no one no one told him 'yea philza had to kill him after he blew up lmanberg i thought u knew thats why i didnt say anything' oh. 'phil, phil had to kill him?' 'yea its a touchy subject, dont bring it up' and simply goes back to what he was working on so schlatt sits on the ground by the ladder and listens to him work his brain going a mile a minute trying to comprehend whats going on 'would i have become a ghost if theyd chosen to execute me?' 'its hard to say im unsure if theres specific circumstances that contribuite to someone becoming a ghost but theres really no telling' and goes back to working yet again and from then on they fall into an easy schedule of techno going out and doing whatever an anarchist terrorist w a murder record does on ur average wednesday and schlatt stays home reading and organizing whatever he can based on size and feeling and sleeping in windowsills and schlatt greeting techno comes home beaten up and full of new resources and a side of bruises and cuts so he tends to them, getting better at maneuvering and functioning without needing to see then techno making dinner and then curling up by the fire for the night enjoying each others company as they talk abt their days :]

[confessionsofaloudmouth]

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard; a blog post by Chelbey Trump

Happy Sunday, everyone! I’m generally going to be posting on Sundays because it gives me all of the weekend to write them. Also, you’ll catch on to the structures of these posts as we go.

This week, I am going to be discussing the novel Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. Published in 2015v by Simon and Schuster, the novel was on the New York Time’s Bestsellers list. (In the future, I would like to write a blog post about that particular achievement because, let’s face it, almost every book has been on it.)

Characters:

Mare Barrow; A 17 year-old pitpocketer, living in the slummiest part of a country, with a younger sibling who has potential for their life, parents who are loyal to-said country even though they’re given the short end of the stick, and a male best friend who is, undoubtedly, in love with her. Come on down, Katniss Everdeen! Oh, sorry, I meant Beatrice Prior. America Singer? Oh, right this novel is uniquely science-fiction, even though it follows all of the rules of a dystopian-fiction series. Ehem: I hate this character. Her arch, though not necessary to the forward motion of the story, was lost completely by a million different subplots and, even, the main plot. I like the idea that, in the midst of becoming the face of the rebellion, she became less of an individual person and more of a loyal person to her people. That being said, she was incredibly selfish, with her pity-part-for-one attitude simply because she was born into the Stilts. She took for granted her sister’s opportunity to provide for their family by dragging into a scheme which destroyed her life. Did she save her by acting the part of princess? Yes, but, c’mon: It was either marry Maven or be killed. I hope that she loses this attitude within the next couple books because;

Cal Tiberias; What a hunk! Charming, self-less, sensible, and a future-king? Cal was a strong character, although it could be said that he was weak due to his loyalty to his father which was conditioned inside his brain from a young age. He turned his back on the lower part of his people to stay true to the upper, wealthy, ‘better’ half. He deserved better than this, after showing traits that he was, well, better than this! I understand it worked for the plot line, but how juicy would it have been to see Cal stand up to his father? I loved how passionate he was, though. Mare thought he didn’t care about the divide, but he was noble in saying he didn’t want violence to be what closed said-divide. He was willing to put his men on the same level as the Red soldiers, including himself, to fight the war. That’s hot. In the end, when he defended Mare even though she had offended him, I fell more in love with his character. He had stayed true to himself- or who he was meant to be- instead of a stupid girl, but when they turned their backs on him, he was ready to die with honor alongside that dumb female (synonyms!) If Cal was still the general, then I’d say:

Maven Tiberias; If Cal is a hunk, Maven is that nerdy, attractive guy. He was charming from start to finish even though he was, ya know, the ‘bad�� guy. It was hard to believe him even as the bad guy, however, because he only 17 and played Mare like a game of Chess. It’s understandable that he had, like Cal, been conditioned to love his mother and her cause for all of his life, that the king and Cal were enemies, that Mare could never possibly love him. But, Aveyard literally threw us twenty pages from the end of the novel. It felt rushed, uncomfortable and, well, forced. Overall, I still love his character and I’m excited to see him as a king in the next three books.

Queen Elara and King Tiberias; The. Best. Female. Character. What a literal queen! She didn’t care about anyone’s feeling, had powers which made her stronger than pretty much everyone, and waited so long to let her husband’s head roll so she and her son could rule. That’s amazing! I loved her smug attitude which was revolutionary because she was still a lady. She chided Mare for not acting like a said-lady and did so herself while still manipulating everyone and anyone. We dont see enough strong female characters who are still very much feminine, and we deserve to. Now, for the king: Off with his head! I’m so glad he’s dead because I dont think I could have stood another second of his toxic masculinity. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Ruth, Gisa, and Daniel Marrow; I wish we could have a family which is matriarchal. Too many books rely on normal societorial standards fo household and I’m slightly over it. I understand that in a normal kingdom, men, like Daniel, were the war hero’s, honorably discharged, wise, older, and the most-looked up to in the family. But, c’mon, Mare could literally manipulate electricity and her father couldn’t have made dinner? Her mother was too sweet and quiet and her father too quiet and judgmental. It was too basic and boring. However, I feel awful for Gisa: She absolutely deserved so much more than what she was given by Mare’s horrible decisions.

Honorable Mentions; Kilorn was just so annoying, trying to be masculine yet show his affection to Mare. Get over her, bud, she’s fighting a revolution! Evangeline was annoying, yet so, so satisfying to read about. She was exactly like Queen Elara with all the overwhelming traits of King Tiberias. Lucas, I felt, could have been used a lot more sufficiently than he was. Julian, too, was lost in the fast-paced motion of the novel. Overall, the relationships everyone formed with one another were not illustrated well through the novel. I refuse to believe Mare was falling for Maven, or Cal for Mare, or that Julian truly cared about Mare as much as he said he did because I saw no build up of that love.

Settings:

What Aveyard lacks in characters, she makes up for in description. Although sometimes it felt like she was going overboard with her language usage, fo rate majority of the time, I could see exactly what she was discussing. Her most creative ideas for setting were the forest which was able to prevent pollution from Gray Town, the usage of The Capital River running through the entire kingdom, and the bridge separating Archean and the Silver residencies.

Plot Lines:

Reds vs. Silvers; I hate and love the idea of the high-class citizens having silver-flushed skin and literally silver blood. It took the first half of the book for my mind to comprehend the distinction because I was too focused on hating Mare Barrow (just kidding!) I loved the moment when Evangeline dug her nails into Mare’s arm in order to draw red blood so that her identity would be revealed. But, I hated that there was no explanation as to why there was separation between the two classes.

The Love Triangle (Quartet?); How grossed out would you be if your brother was engaged to the girl you just kissed and made-out with her on a regular basis? Well, put yourself into Cal’s shoes and see you feel. I knew from the moment Cal pretended to be a Red citizen that he was the love interest for Mare- not that she didn’t end up having two others. The personification of his body heat connected to the feelings Mare would have for him, and that was interesting to read about. However, Maven had to be thrown into the mix because he was engaged to her for literal marketing reasons. I shipped Maven and Mare so hard, but Maven apparently did not. I wouldn’t call it a love quartet because we all know Evangeline didn’t actually love Cal.

Brother vs. Brother; The idea of Cal and his father vs. Maven and his mother reminded me of Reign and the relationship between Francis, Queen Elizabeth, Henry and Sebastian. As a fan of that show, I loved this power struggle. The idea of Cal being the OG son and Maven his half-brother showed that his blood did run deep with the Tiberias’. It allowed for him to feel disconnected and to want to follow his mother’s lead to power.

Symbolism and Themes; Let’s be honest here: There were none. Besides the fact that the division between the Reds and Silvers could stand for racism in any and all societies, the novel itself lacked depth. You shouldn’t look to this novel for guidance or meaning. Rather, it is a quick, cute read. Mare’s earrings stood fo her brothers, and eventually Kiloran, but that was literally given to us within the first five chapters. Most of the themes lied along the man vs. nature due to the issue of biological desterminism, and man vs. man for the revolution.

Dream Cast:

Jaz Sinclair as Mare Barrow

Charles Melton as Cal Tiberias

Tati Gabrielle as Evangeline

Jaeden Martell as Maven Calore

Melora Hardin as Queen Elara

I know, I know, this is not everyone. But, these are the only characters I truly felt needed to be played by specific people. And, yes, some are highly debatable, such as Melora because of her comedic timing, but I think these actors could play these characters well.

Quote Corner:

“The truth is what I make it. I could set this world on fire and call it rain.”

“Flame and shadow. One cannot exist without the other.”

“Words can lie. See beyond them.”

(Victoria Aveyard is a wordsmith. What she lacks in character and book depth she makes up for in language and description.)

Overall Rating: 3.75/5

I know I bashed the book a lot, but it was a pretty easy and cute read. I am going to read the sequel because I am very invested in Maven as character and would like to see what else Aveyard has in store. She took ideas from dystopian novels which were all familiar with and put her own unique twist on them, and I admire that.

Thank you for reading this week’s blog post. Next Sunday I will be discussing, “The Half of It.” Please like, follow, and reblog my posts to help get me out there. Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

[witchygalaxys]

The Arcana Alternate Universe.

I have this alternate Universe idea for the Arcana where Asra is actually a powerful evil wizard and Lucio is the true hero. Alright So here is sorta every ones new roles in this universe. In this world Vesuvia is the new capital of a cruel vicious kingdom ruled under the most vile king there has ever been. But there is a rebellion trying to fight for their freedom and the safety of their people. Two clans who were once enemies came together as one in order to fight the king and the kings love. (I do not know a gender neutral way to say king or queen soooooo spouse will have to do.)

Asra is a powerful wizard who used his power to take control of not just Vesuvia but an entire country. He is known as the blood covered King. He is ruthless and loves to torture. He rules the country with his spouse (The MC) The MC and Asra are known for their undying sick love that they have for eachother. (Its like a Joker Harley Quinn kind of relationship.) He isn't afraid to beat his spouse. But some one is wiggling into his good graces. It was true that Asra and the MC were once madly and insanely in love. Some one is whispering behind the scenes convincing Asra that he doesn't need his spouse and that his spouse is an eye sore.

Nadia is the one whispering behind the scenes. Trying to become queen by discarding MC. She is also known as a seer who can peak into the future. She gives Asra advice in battles. She is also Asra's mistress. She is sneaky and cunning. She knows how to twist words and tell lies as if they were the truth. She wants power more than anything. Being the youngest princess she sees no other way to get power unless she married into it. She slipped her way in between Asra and the MC and whispered sweet lies to Asra to get him to betray the MC.

Portia is a general in Asra's army. She is as ruthless of a killer as her king. She hates everything and every one except for the King and the MC. She has a special friendship with the MC. They like to torture people together. She is especially cautious of Nadia. She wants to rip Nadia apart but doesn't because of her King. She hates a lot of things but nothing more than her brother. After Julian left Portia was taken into slavery and taught to kill and fight for entertainment. She blames Julian for her cruel hard life. It was the MC who bought Portia off of her former master and made her into a general.

MC (You) MC is just as messed up as their husband. MC is although much more frail and can not do magic unlike their husband. MC takes out their frustration on innocent people that they capture off the streets. Like I said before MC and Asra have a very much joker like relationship. While they seem like the perfect insaine couple on the outside Asra is known to beat the MC. And the MC will always come crawling back to him. Not knowing Asra is having an affair with their advisor/seer Nadia.

Lucio is actually not called Lucio. In this Universe he stayed with his clan and became the leader keeping his name Montag and wearing it like a badge of honor. He is also one of the leaders of the rebelion against Asra. Lucio is much more serious and very smart. He is even a better fighter than his mother. He did kill his father but it was in an honorable fight where Lucio became the leader of his people. He even defeated his mother in battle but did not kill her. Instead he asked her to stay and help teach him how to be a good leader. He doesn't care for gold or fancy things. He is also much more caring of others. He tries to hide it and come off as tough but it sneaks out every now and then. Under Lucio's leadership the clan prospered and made peace with Muriels People. Him and Muriel are actually really good friends. They have also made their clans become one in order go fight a common enemy. Asra.

Muriel is also the leader of his people now. And is another leader of the rebellion. He is much more confident and brave. He actually enjoys fighting and can use his peoples magic. He can transform himself into a bear when need be. Because Lucio's and Muriels people never battled and destroyed eachother Muriels Parents ended up having another child. A son. Who is married and has two kids of their own. A daughter named Maya and a son (I dont have a name for him yet.) Muriels niece and nephew. Unfortunately Muriels father and brother and sister in law died to the cruelty of the king. He helps take care of his niece and nephew with the help of his mother Who is a shaman. His niece even calls him Big brother Muri. Muriel is as tall and strong looking as ever but he looks up to Lucio very much and admires him. He thinks of Lucio like a big brother.

Julian is a doctor for the rebellion. He believes that Portia is under an evil spell to make her the way she is. He has been dabbling in magic trying to find a way the break the "curse" he thinks she is under. Not realizing that is just the person she is now. He has a deep hatred for the king and his spouse. He practices magic on people who the rebellion has captured. He only uses it on people who are loyal to the king. His personality is pretty much the same except he blames others more so than he blames himself. He never relaxes and is constantly working on something.

THE STORY!

Alright so the story starts sorta isekei style and you suddenly find your self in the MC's body. It can be that, you are from the original arcana story or, are from this universe and you know all these characters from the game but they are completely different from the game. Eaither way...

You wake up in a holding cell in beautiful fancy clothing but in chains. You are being guarded by 2 armed soldiers that wear fur and leather. You are sitting on a dirt floor and have no idea what is going on. You know your past life (or not and you just have amnesia) but you don't know who you are now. Afraid to say anything you just don't. Every day you are dragged out of the cell and interrogated. They are asking questions that you don't know the answer to. So you just stay silent. Afraid if they know that you don't know anything that they will kill you. You don't want to give any indication that something is wrong with you for fear that you will lose your usefulness.

You learn various things from whispers you hear in your cell. And from the interrogation. You notice that every one just wants you dead. That you are a (King or Queen) and that your husband is a King of the kingdom you are in. You notice your body is weaker than most and you bruise easily. When you get hurt the pain is almost unbearable. A cut feels like a gun shot. A lot of people want to torture you to get the answers out but the leaders refuse. Saying they do not want to lower them selves to the level of the king. You learn from an interrogation that apparently your husband has one of their people and are trying to drill you for information on where they are. You hear whispers how the king will be coming for you any day now. But as time goes on they question if the king just abandoned you.

As days go on you don't say a single word. Afraid to give your self away. They try to make you comfortable to get you to talk but you can some how see peoples true intent as an aura around them. Some one is acting very kind towards you but you can see they just want you dead. Eventually a little girl starts talking to you through a small bard window on the floor. She gives you watermellon slices and talks to you. She just talks about her day and about the mean kid who bullies her. Eventually you speak with her and learn her name is Maya. The person the king has in custody is her grandmother a powerful shaman. You ask her why she talks to you when you are a criminal in the eyes of her people. She simply says "You don't feel like a bad person." Maya is an empath and can sence peoples true nature.

She brings you a slice of watermellon everyday and talks to you every day. About 2 months later Maya is caught talking to you. You are pulled out of your cell and tied to a post. Maya tries to explain that you are not a bad person but no one knows of Maya's empathic ability. So they just believe she has been tricked. Muriel and Lucio are their standing infront of you with their arms crossed. This is the first time you have seen them in this world. Muriel punches the post just above your head and is snaps like a twig. Demanding you tell them where the Shaman is. Lucio puts his hand on Muriels arm to calm him down. Lucio tells you that this is your final chance to make up for what you have done.

You finally scream that you do not know. Maya tells every one that you have no memory. People mumble and actually believe you. They have noticed that you have been acting very different from the person they know you to be. They bring up how you even said thank you to the person who brought you food and ate all of the food given to you. APPARENTLY The food is very disgusting stuff that they wouldn't want to eat. But it tasted delicious to you.

They shake their heads and tell you that you are being traded back to the king for the Shaman tomorrow. You have no idea who the king is but he is suppose to come to the meeting spot himself to pick you up.

The next day comes and you are taken in chains to a spot in the forest. So deep into the forest you would get easily lost if you just walked willy nilly. You are taken by Lucio and Lucio alone because that was the rules of the switch. He looks straight into your eyes and asks you firmly if you truly don't remember a thing about what you have done. You nod and he just turns away and pushes you forward.

Eventually you see Asra standing with his foot pressing the Shamans head to the ground. The older woman looks so beaten up and weak she can barely move. Asra appears to be alone as well. Lucio is biting his lip trying to hold back from trying to beat the crap out of Asra.

You are in shock at the sight you see before you. From eaither of your memories of the Asra that you know or just to see who the man is that you are married to.

Asra lifts the woman up by her chains and pushes her forward. Lucio pushes you forward at the same time. You can see the woman limping across to Lucio. As you look at her you notice a glint of light coming from the trees and can see the aura of some one who is ready to kill. You immediately turn towards the woman and charge at her. Asra just smirks watching you and Lucio charges at you to try and stop you from hurting the woman. You then shove the woman out of the way just in time for you to be shot in the chest by a magical arrow. Asra looks shocked and so does Lucio.

Asra just says calmly "Kill them all." And people hidden in the trees come out from their hiding spots. The shaman wobbles over to you and presses firmly on your wound. As many assasins drop from the trees. You see Asra's intent to kill and all of them. Lucio is quickly surrounded but then his own people come charging out from their hiding places and block their attacks.

It turns into an all out battle field. In the chaos Asra walks right up to you smacking the shaman to the ground and calmly smiles and holds up what looks like a very old pistol up to your head and says. "You just had to make this messy didn't you. You arnt even worth the magic to kill you."

You feel rage inside you just boiling up. Everything starts to slow down and rocks begin to levitate. Soon even the people begin to levitate. Except for Asra who looks shocked. You grab his gun and stand up. And just knee him in the balls. Every one just stops and looks at you in shock from the air.

You then scream and every on incuding Asra is thrown away from you. The trees all fall away from you like a great force pushed them away. You then get dizzy and pass out.

(I'm trying to think of a better way for that scene to play out. I want their to be shown that you now have extremely powerful magic and for Asra to be shocked by your change.)

You wake up in a medical tent. You feel intense pain in your chest and see Julian is taking care of you. You then fade back out of contiousnes. You wake up again to hear arguing between Julian and Muriel. Julian is asking why he needs to save your life. That they should just let you die. Muriel explains its because you saved his mother's life. And that you may be useful against Asra. You then fade back out of contiousness. 2 weeks go by and you wake up to find the Shaman and Maya by your bed. Maya hugs you but tries to be gentle because of your wound. The Shaman thanks you for what you had done. You notice her wounds are looking so much better as well.

(Thats all I got..... I was working off the idea of if you were reborn as a villian who has done terrible awful things and how you would work with that. As well as seeing people you know act completely different from how you know them and how you would react. Also I should explain Asra's plan. He was planning on killing both you and the Shaman to show that they cant use anything against him because he truly loves no one. To show the rebelion he has no weaknesses. It was actually all Nadia's idea. As a way to get rid of the MC once and for all. It was also meant to be a punishment for the MC for allowing themselves to get captured in the first place. But now Asra is very interested by the MC's sudden change and sudden power. He finds it entertaining and it sparked some admiration towards the MC. Nadia is not happy about it. Asra did not have Portia involved in the plan due to Portia's protective nature over MC. Although he knows Portia would obey him no matter what, but he did not want Portia to question him at all and he knew if Portia and the people knew of this plan to kill his spouse.... many questions would be asked)

[strongsassysexysloane]

some very random questions

I know this isn’t the way it’s “done” but Im in an almost writing mood and no one ever asks the ones I want to answer. 

1. how many pillows do you sleep with? I currently have seven pillows on my bed but I can have up to ten at a time. Minimum requirement is two but i won’t be happy about it, I’ll usually grab a hoodie for extra comfort. - EIGHT. I forgot Eeyore

2. do you believe in soulmates? Maybe? Do I think it’s all about romance.. no. 

3. would you ever kiss a stranger? I think I have... But define stranger. Walk up to a random in the street? Probs not. Someone I’ve known for a week but hardly know anything about and we got drunk and we kissed.. yes. 

4. describe your dream house - I have man a dream house, cabin in the woods on a lake, tiny house, massive yacht, treehouse... mansion with like seven levels and one level is just a pool. Take your pick. Oh, shack on the beach. 

5. do you usually use cash or card? Card. Cash is disgusting! Think about how many hands it’s passed through. Bleh

6. do you enjoy driving in general? Yes! Until some idiot does something stupid. Driving the back roads through the mountains or bush. Yes please with the tunes pumping! Mooing at the cows as I drive past. Tmi lol

7. do you like your name? if not, what would you change your name to? Yes? Sometimes I wish is was spelt differently but I’ve never really wanted to fully change it. I do prefer my shortened name though. 

8. what’s your favorite cuisine? FOOD! Italian. Pizza, Pasta and Pastries. 

9. how often do you get massages? Not enough. I need a partner so I can have massages again. 

10. do you play video games? if so, what games? I use to be obsessed with Guitar Heroes III but on the controller (DONT @ me!!) but since getting a switch I’ve played Legends of Zelda Breath of the Wild over and over and over. It has cut into many a writing time. Soz. 

11. do you prefer to color with colored pencils, crayons, or markers? Markers, so satisfying. 

12. what other fandoms are you in? Unsure if im in ANY fandom at this point. But ill contribute to TV Shows such as NCIS, NCISLA, The Bold Type, Arrow and Doctor Who.. 

13. do you have a signature in your style/everyday outfits? No? I do like hats, beanies, short brimmed fedoras, snapbacks... I’m most comfy in jeans and tees/hoodies. 

14. do you have any pets? if not, do you want some in the future? A small doggo and two fishies. Numerous friends and family dogs/ pets that I love. I’m known for going over peoples houses and interacting with the dog before the human. 

15. do you give objects you own a name? (car, house, plants, etc) If you dont. Byeee. 

16. do you like the weather where you live? As I prefer to live in a cooler climate but also swim. It makes life hard. Australia has a good winter down south which I would love to live there one day. 

17. if you could wear one color for the rest of your life, what would it be? No. 

18. do you like making small talk? Depends on the person and my mood. 

19. what’s your favorite social media platform? Instagram.

20. have you ever been to hawaii? Yes. Twice. 

21. name a fashion trend that you absolutely hate - I have many and all of which I can’t think of right now. 

22. name a fashion trend that you absolutely love - Again my mind is blank. If you really want to know suggest some and I’ll answer yes or no.  

23. what was the last text you sent? To my friend “You need to get Netflix and watch Shine on Me w/ Reece, episode 3 P!nk”

24. when making plans, do you like to organize or go with the flow when the time comes? More towards the organise.

25. what do you want to name your future kids? NOPE

26. do you have a type? I use to think no. But i definitely lean more towards brunettes (Jack Sloane is ONE BIG FUCKING EXCEPTION TO THIS), glasses <3 and they need to have similar interests and opinions etc. tmi? ahaha 

27. when was the last time you kissed someone? I’m assuming we are meaning on the lips, as in a person I was dating? So in that case last year? Time is a fucking blur right now. 

28. how often do you cook? As often as I can/want. 

29. do you think __x__ is overrated or underrated?

30. do you always remember your dreams? Depends. Ill remember most immediately after I wake up but then some disappear. Nightmares are more likely to remain. 

31. do you believe in ghosts? Yes, the good kind? 

32. would you ever want to move outside of your country? Yes, did and done it. I recommend it. 

33. describe your first love - childish, complicated and friendship. 

34. more peanut butter or more jelly? Equal!

35. do your irls know about your tumblr account? They know about it but they dont KNOW KNOW about it. >.< 

36. do you prefer hot or cold beverages? I swing both ways.

37. when was the last time you finished a book? Earlier this year. 

38. what would you want your wedding colors to be? Pizza and Donuts. My partner can pick the rest. 

39. how long do you let your nails grow? I don’t. Barely a nail really... but i’ve heard that’s a good thing in some areas

40. if you could stay at a certain age, what age would you pick? 25?

41. who do you think has it easiest: older siblings or younger siblings? Younger i think.

42. how often do you post on social media? Too often. 

43. do you enjoy big groups? Eh. Take it or leave it. Of dogs? Yes. 

44. do you like it when you’re awaken by the sounds of birds chirping? No. I’ve had pidgeons living in the roof above my room for too long. GO AWAY BIRDS! There are much better ways to be woken up tbh. 

45. which hand is your favorite? Left?

46. how many people do you follow? Stalking is illegal..

47. how many followers do you have? Enough :)

48. how many drafts do you have? None on here.. in my stories, too much. 

49. do you hang or fold your sweaters? both. 

50. even numbers or odd? Both, even for volume on tv, odd for favourite numbers... I’m weird. I know. 

[dancing-with-dichotomies]

“Lone Pearl Cowgirl” Ch5 update/Important mentions

I've been feeling... Pretty super horribly awful down lately, like bottom of the bottom... Been fighting several things at once. A persistant seasonal depression, probably. My massive damn writing block that's haunted every single thing I've tried to write all this damn year, and part of the last too. My damned body that just Won't. Stop. Hurting. EVER...

And my abusive family, my family that is literally in a damn cult, my family that "lowkey" supported the second-coming of the worst kinds of evil, even though not a small portion of our family once escaped that... Them holding me down, manipulating me knowing I am disabled, isolating me all my life and using me...And I can only hope that being able to live away from them won't just be a dream when I'm disabled but can't get disability, live in one of the priciest damned states in the country, and my parents keep sabotaging me and using me and manipulating me. I've tried to claw myself away from them. It hurts to keep seeing them selfishly sabotage me and having others judge me. So much of my life hurts, but especially lately, around winter, around my birthday... And they always actively dunk on me harder around my birthday...

That, plus my pain increasing, and... and, and, and... Well, you probably already get it if yer one of the ones who even really cared, so I won't go on if yer not, but...

Anyways I feel like it so I wanna tell the people who REALLY helped me to survive what was one of the worst bouts of depression I've had in years, even knowing I generally get depressed periodically... You guys are really the ones who made a difference this time and you should know it.

crappy-crapolice  -- Change yer nickname already, Crappy. Yer the awesomest. XP XD Really dude, most of the time we just BS and have fun with various fandom shit, but you've seen me at my lowest points not just once but a few times, seen me get paranoid and doubt you a few times, but you've always been so patient and amazing about reminding me that it's my mental illness making me think/believe those things. And you've always been so great at reminding me when I need those reminders, but without judging me or shaming me. You've been so nice about really listening to my issues and realizing how many struggles I face that the average person doesn't, how I get way less help, way more demands, and way more obstruction than the average person, and you've showed me real sympathy instead of the usual "get over it already, nobody cares about what happened in your past only that you can contribute in the present" or "I'm sorry that happened to you, but also this bores me, can't we just talk about nice things 24-7..." type 'sympathy' most people settle for all too quickly... You've been the one to remind me of my own limitations when most people don't even want to hear about it, won't even let me finish before they judge me. Most just settle for assuming that someone in a bad position must deserve it. That they're not working hard enough or something. You're one of the few that really understood... Because you're one of the few who really listened long enough and didn't just blow me off or dismiss me. You treated me like I'm still a normal human being even when I've been in the midst of going kinda crazy from the stress, and that's what's managed to bring me back sometimes... Also, I hardly ever even TALK about the fandom we started out in anymore, I actually kinda dislike that fandom more than not after it all was over with, and you've still treated me like a friend. A lot of people would just drift away if you weren't interested in their fandom anymore. But you care about not just my other fandom interests too, but my original work. That really means a lot to me, NOT-Crappy. Thanks, dude. <3

Iris - People like you give me hope for the future. You work so incredibly hard for such a selfless cause. People even really mistreat doctors where you're from, and you're still determined to make it your life mission to heal and save and educate as many people as you can. Of course like I've told you to, you need to remember to make time for yourself! But I'm so incredibly grateful you've made time for me too... Again, we fandom BS a lot, but we also talk about the heavy stuff too, and I wanna let you know I appreciate it, that it helps make it feel lighter about it overall and I hope you do too. You always really listen and talk with me, have answered questions I've had, and are concerned about how I'm really feeling, instead of just rushing to cover up my troubles. It's doubly impressive that you manage to be so patient when you work so long and so hard. I have some pretty bad issues with feelings of being abandoned and "disappeared", so I really especially appreciate you talking me through that. It's also super impressive to me that despite us having a couple times where we both kinda unintentionally offended the other saying things that didnt quite come out right over the keyboard, that we managed to talk to each other about how we felt about it and clarify that no harm was meant. I know you're really busy and sometimes a while goes by where we don't talk, and even still it's easy to trust that you wouldn't just disappear on me, and that you'd really care if I truly disappeared too... I just want you to know. You're not just a My Hero-fan, you're a legit real life hero to me and I know to a lot of other people too. <3 <3

closet-cryptid/Michelle - We sometimes go a while without talking nowadays, I know we both know how hard it is with a little one, and that yer net sometimes goes in and out. But again, yer one of those friends I trust enough that it doesn't  matter. It actually amazes me even more because there was a time where we had a pretty big disagreement to say the least, and both said some pretty harsh things. I was fully prepared to burn our bridge of friendship, but to my deep surprise, you actually apologized some time later, and I did too, and I feel like we're better friends for it now. And again, yer one of those people who don't just  try to cover up troubles with fandom. We have our fun fandom discussions, but you've always been really willing to listen and really be sympathetic when I need to be sad too, you care about the real me and not just the me that made content for the fandom, and that's why we're still around to still putz about the fandom junk too. IZ FOREVER! XD (and I hope you and your sisters feel better too <3)

csp124 - Yer a newer friend, but yanno, you've proven to be a good one. Again, we can putz about fandom junk or other fun stuff, but you've been truly understanding about allowing me to talk about the bad junk that's been worrying my mind so much lately. You've been really helpful especially lately because you didn't just give up on me because my illness wouldn't let me stop "being negative" for a while, as some people reduce it to. Even though I didn't want to look on the bright side for a while, you kept bringing it up to me. It took a while, others gave up on me and got frustrated or angry with me, but you're one of the ones who kept being positive when you knew I -couldn't-, not that I just -wouldn't-, and understanding of my darkness too...

unified-multiversal-theory - Everybody here has helped me along a lot in various ways this year, but you've shown a special interest in my original work especially that really helped give me the inspiration I needed to get this latest chapter done. I feel so proud and relieved to have gotten chapter five finally done, and have more hope than I have in a while that the rest might be possible too. It's really deeply disheartening, a whole new level of isolation and depression, when so many people time and again, even other creators you'd hope would get it or at LEAST encourage you a LITTLE instead of being overly critical, especially those that get heaped with praise themselves, either ignore you completely/never give you a chance or even tear your creations down, claiming that they're trying to be "helpful/constructive". It's not that I can't handle constructive criticism, but I can recognize my characters being torn down by someone who is being overly critical because they dont really care one whiff about my work and REAL, ACTUAL -constructive- criticism like the kind you gave me, where you actually found a few errors that, while it depressed me for a moment to realize I had forgotten something so silly and needed to rewrite almost a while page because of it lol, IT ACTUALLY HELPED ME FINALLY FINISH THE DANG CHAPTER INSTEAD OF PARALYZING ME WITH DEPRESSION AND FEAR ABOUT MY ENTIRE WORK. You actually discussed my ideas and plot in detail and that's been so incredibly helpful. I know like Iris yer busy, so I wanted to say thank you for taking the time to help me with this especially. This work means more than a lot to me, a lot of people just blow it off like a silly story but it's SO much more than that. Helping me with this has really improved my outlook on life lately. I know everyone knows I love and live for my daughter, that she's the reason I keep existing... But she's not the reason I was made to exist in the first place. I feel like this story and her sister-stories are. Sometimes I confuse it because everything is confusing in this world, and because there's a sea of people who think the crazy shit Christians and Muslims and men in general do makes sense but somehow I'M the really crazy one, but... Just, thanks. I just feel a lot saner now that I made progress on something that means so much to me, and to know there's at least a few people out there who also really take interest in and appreciate it. <3

itsmorethanjustafantasy - We actually don't talk too much at all lol, here and there we talk a bit about fandom, but yanno... I just wanted to mention again how nice I think you are for sending people holiday well-wishes. Growing up with 90+% of my family in the Jehovah's Witnesses cult, and because of how sick I was growing up, my birthday and other holidays were especially hard times for me. Always on the outside looking in. Trained to tell other people it didn't matter and reject any holiday wishes or gifts given to my face when they were around, but deep down always feeling so lonely and isolated and excluded. You're one of those people who just out of the blue wishes people well on the holidays. For most people it's probably just nice. I just wanted you to know it did a little more for me though. It was nice to do for me, but it also made me feel included, and like someone remembered me. Thank u for that. Belated Happy Halloween, and upcoming Merry Christmas!

In general, there were a few other people that popped in when I was temporarily mad with grief and pain and helped talk to me about the rough stuff, bookrebelwordwarrior, kendallandherstuff, and a handful of others, sorry if it's been a while and I forgot anyone specific, but yeah. To everyone who really helped me and and didn't just give up on me, who not just remembered the good in me, but helped me to eventually see it again too, and help that goodness actually -grow-... Help bring out what -I- feel is really the best of me, not what others want me to be... Thank you. I can't say I'll never be depressed again, I've seen too much and there's so much stacked against me, but I'll try my best to keep trying, to keep believing progress is possible even when it feels like your life is currently stagnant and there's an ocean of people who don't care if you die or that you even ever existed. It's sad that there's so few, but life is just barely bearable when people really show they care. <3

So, consider this latest chapter of Lone Pearl,  "Faithful Phil and the Martyred Mother", dedicated to you guys. <3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20041537/chapters/51013765

[sturlsons]

french in 1.5 years anon

Kinda random but I just found out that I’ll be required to be intermediate/advanced in French by the next 1.5 years; ALL I KNOW IS THAT MEIRDE IS A BAD BAD WORD! Idk if you’re a native speaker but I was wondering if you could provide me of any good French language resources (or language in general since I’ll be needing to learn Arabic soon as well), and like tips for language learning and how to go about it? Sorry to bother you haha this is MY stress but I appreciate any help! Have a great day!

HEY. so i really fucking dropped the ball on this one, i’m sorry. 2019 has been one health fiasco after another (or more like the same fiasco again and again) and i kept telling myself i want to sit down and make a proper post for this, until i realised that that’s just never going to happen given the way things are rn. and i’d rather give you a quickly-written post which is actually helpful than never write that perfect bullet-pointed one. 

first of all, i’ve been in your EXACT position (so no, i’m not a native speaker) except i had about...six months to go from je m’appelle teesta to voyez-vous, le problème qui se cache derrière tout ça n’est pas le manque de respect mais la personne dont il s’agit or whatever. i was like, i can so do this. (spoiler: i didn’t, because i was 18 and overconfident and stupid and didn’t actually know how to learn a language.) GOOD NEWS: having learned 3 more foreign languages since then, i am now REALLY GOOD at learning languages REALLY FAST. 1.5 years is a good amount of time, so don’t stress.

i’m going to go generic on this, with some extra tips about french since i speak it, unlike arabic. 

first thing, that typical thing everyone hates to hear but knows is coming from the mouth of an accomplished person (pat on my back) in any field whatsoever: you’re going to have to work really hard and practice like fuck. 

there’s just nothing else that can replace it. i’ve filled up notebooks and notebooks with japanese verb conjugations, once i did like 1800 of them in one sitting. but you better believe that a bitch will never forget those now. resign yourself to putting in at least three hours of your day to this until you get to the level you need. (and three hours is...kind. at my peak i was literally reading through french dictionaries at the library, 10 AM - 8 PM. i treated it like a workday.)

now, what you need to establish is: are you a hands-on learner or a digital one. 

i don’t really care for all the auditory learner and visual learner stuff, i don’t know about anyone else but i personally used those as excuses to avoid certain exercises. unless you have actual disabilities preventing you from accessing certain methods of learning, you can train yourself into anything. it’s a matter of practice. i could barely understand a new song without reading its lyrics first, now i eat up podcasts. 

SO. the question here is different. a hands-on learner, like i used to be more or less throughout my bachelor’s, is someone who absolutely cannot retain information unless they’ve written it down BY HAND at least once. pen and paper. (i’m still like this but i’ve learned to combine it with digital methods to go faster.) if this isn’t a hurdle for you, congratulations. your process is going to go that much faster, at least for french. (you’ll have to spend hours practicing your written arabic however, if you’re not familiar with the script.) 

now, if you’re a hands-on learner, you need to add an extra hour to your daily time. no matter how fast you write, you will take that time. and you cannot shorthand your way into languages. you need to understand how french is spelt, what accents it uses, that they put a space before exclamation points, question marks, and semicolons. (side tip: learn the IPA. it will be useful to you forever in language learning, at least for the romance languages.) i’m not gonna teach you how to make notes since i’ve never benefitted from copying someone else’s style, so if you don’t have a set method start establishing that. you need regularity and rhythm when you learn a language. my grammar notes look the same regardless of the language. i don’t have my french ones since it’s been years and i didn’t take good ones then anyway, but here’s my japanese and russian stuff. 

JAPANESE NOTES // RUSSIAN NOTES

now, it bears mentioning that these notes are NOT the notes i take when i don’t know shit. these are final level notes. they’re brief, idiosyncratic, and only reminders. something to refer to when i’m revising and suddenly forget a rule. the first notes i make are much more elaborate, whether they’re pretty or not. i’ve gradually lost the fucks i had about really going ham on academics so my russian notes are very messy, but my japanese ones from back in the day are magnificent. here’s a look. during lesson one i realised that japanese and my mother tongue, gujarati, are syntaxically similar as shit, and i started taking notes with references in gujarati. it sped up my learning process 2x while my french classmates were still going “BUT WHY IS IT LIKE THAT”. 

PRACTICAL GRAMMAR // THEORETICAL GRAMMAR

if you plan to learn more languages in the future, this will be so valuable. sometimes a phrase i learn in russian doesn’t make sense in its french explanation, but a phrase in english might use the same logic. bam, put down the translation in english then. you get what i’m saying? the more languages you learn, the easier it gets to learn languages. 

now if you’re a digital learner, i’ve got great news for you. duolingo and anki are your best friends. duolingo’s memed to hell and has a system that might not work for everyone, but they’ll do the brunt work of compiling grammar notes for you in the beginnings/ends of their lessons. note those down and transform them into anki flashcards, and you can learn grammar concepts without doing 20 exercises. (do those exercises if you can, though, nothing beats mindless practice.) now anki is an intimidating-looking but actually super intuitive app that basically builds digital flashcards for you and shows them to you in a rhythm based on your own learning speed. it’ll show you the front of a card, let’s say merde. you say the english translation out loud, shit, and hit enter. correct! was that easy? anki’ll show it to you in 10 minutes. hard? it’ll show you in 1 minute. super easy? merde won’t come up again until tomorrow. eventually you get so good at it that you can bury a card for 2 months. anki will also show you the same cards reversed, which is harder but trains you better. you’ll see shit and have to remember what it’s called in french, which is more difficult than you’d think it is. 

you can use anki for more than just vocab, like i mentioned. it’s a little tricky learning to convert grammar concepts into front/back flashcards, but you can do it. for example, here’s a sample of one of my russian grammar cards: 

front ^^

back once i hit enter^^

see? not that difficult. now don’t be an idiot like me who manually entered every single flashcard into anki. you can find pre-made packages online (but you can’t guarantee they’ll be correct) or you can make your own without killing your fingers. what you wanna do is open up a spreadsheet and make two columns, A for front of the card and B for back. it’ll look like this:

then you’re gonna save that spreadsheet as a .CVS (comma separated values) and import that into anki. bam, your flashcards are made for you with half the effort. there’s also a script floating around somewhere to make excel translate words automatically for you, but i don’t recommend that unless they’re really easy words. google translate can fuck up. reverso is your friend. 

you need to review your anki cards every day. it’ll take less and less time as you go along. i can review 300 russian cards in 15 minutes now. but you need to keep the rhythm going. download ankiapp and sync your cards, review them on commutes or in the hallway or whatever. trust me, it’s magic. 

apart from this, if a traditional textbook helps, go for that. i’ve always used textbooks and workbooks, more as supports than as principal methods, but it does help. it’s structured and organised and these people know how to train you. bescherelle is a good go-to for french. 

media is always a great way of immersion too, until you get to the country itself. it’ll show you how french people speak french. when i first came to france i didn’t have that experience and even though i spoke an arguably decent amount of french when i got here, it was like, if this is french then what the fuck was i learning in high school. if you like watching movies this is your chance. watch the classics first so that you can get an idea of french pop culture. amélie (though the pop culture aspect here is about shitting on it) and les intouchables, for starters. watch your favourite films, first subbed, then subbed and dubbed, then just dubbed. i watched all ten seasons of friends with french subs, it was wild. with music you want to start off with some indie-ish singers since they will universally sing softer and slower, making things easier to understand than idk, la tribu de dana. (if you’re into bts there’s a hilarious video of their baepsae choreo set to la tribu de dana.) anyway - angèle, cœur de pirate, céline dion, fréro delavega, uhhh that fucking french sufjan stevens. what’s his name. VIANNEY. don’t fucking listen to biglo and oli or like, fatal bazooka right away. you will not understand shit. i barely understand it. white people are wild. ooh listen to stromae. orelsan too, he’s a rapper but he has a relatively clean diction imo. he also sang the french opening for OPM. they call him orelsan-san in japan.

last but not the least: if you have the opportunity to interact in french with people, DO IT. native speakers will do their best to help you and be kind about it. people who learned french might sometimes be assholes from experience. it’s a whole superiority complex thing, and very hypocritical. anyway - online or IRL, wherever you can practice your french, do it. it’ll be immensely helpful. there’s nothing like the frustration of not being able to express simple things to get you motivated to get better. do your best to immerse yourself - changing the language on your devices can make a difference too. 

i think that’s all i have and again, i’m sorry for taking this long to finally deliver, thanks for your patience! if you have any specific questions don’t hesitate to hit me up, on anon or not. 

good luck - it’s not going to be the easiest but nothing is as gratifying as beginning to understand the workings of a language. you’re gonna love it!

[fairycosmos]

I left my country for a few months to do a nanny job, now I’m back home and the anxiety, depression, no sense of purpose, no sense of self-worth are coming back. Same things on my shoulders before I left home, now they’re back and I feel like a huge burden. I don’t have a job right now, and even the nanny job isn’t really that considered a real job so I’ve been jobless for like a couple years now and I’m on the verge of not caring anymore. I have nothing, so I’m nothing. Nothing anymore to lose

hey my love. i’m really sorry to hear that. it must be so difficult for you at the moment. like i cant imagine the emotional turmoil you must be in. i know it’s hard to take words seriously when you’re feeling so utterly hopeless, i get it. but i also genuinely believe that where you’re at right now, isn’t where you’ll always be. not having a job, and struggling a little, doesn’t mean that you’re nothing. when you’re depressed, your mind will force you to believe intense, overgeneralized statements like that because it wants you to blame yourself for things that are out of your control. in reality, you have an inherent worth and it hasn’t suddenly vanished just because you feel lost at the moment. i know that’s pretty much impossible to believe right now, but it’s the truth. you’re not just here on this earth to get an awesome job or to make a shit ton of money. you’re here to experience all faucets of existence, and you’re doing that, therefore you’re doing a lot better than you think you are. look, it’s really fucking common to go through periods of feeling directionless, of not knowing where to turn or what to do. i dont know anyone who hasn’t felt that way at one point or another. you’re honestly not alone. no matter how much it seems like you are, no matter how easy it is to believe that you having nothing to lose, i swear that that’s not the case. 

i think your perception is being twisted by those things you listed - anxiety, depression, having no sense of purpose. it’s hard to let any light in, or to see any way forward, when you’re trapped in a cycle of being cruel to yourself, you know? your mindset is being manipulated and skewed by all of these underlying mental issues, and i seriously think you need to confront them first and foremost before you worry about a job or anything like that. because even if you got a job, you’d still be feeling shitty and keeping it all bottled up inside. if you don’t at least try to seek some form of help, then the way you see things isn’t going to change. it’s not that you’re stuck, it’s just that you’re convinced you are. and you need to look at the situation, look at yourself, and try to figure out how to actively begin to manage your anxiety/depression. make your mental health the most important priority. i know it’s not what you want to hear. i know it’s overwhelming. and i’m not saying you have to like, immediately go and seek intensive treatment. i’m just saying that maybe talking to your doctor about what’s going on is a good place to start, if you haven’t done so already and if that’s an option. there may also be support groups in your area, or hotlines you can call to gather additional info. please dont just write the idea off. your mental health is just as important as your physical health, and sometimes it needs genuine treatment, just like any physical ailment. talking to a professional about what’s going on, facing up to your deeply rooted issues, examining why you feel the way you feel, learning about positive coping mechanisms, creating a care plan for yourself in order to work out how to self soothe so that you’re able to manage easier in the future - all of those are good, solid options and they’re available to you. they will spur you onward, they will prove that you’re not as trapped as you think you are. it all just starts with talking about what’s happening in your head, just like you told me. even beginning with your parents or a friend or a family member is something to be proud of. again, i’m not saying you have to want to do it. i’m just asking you to consider it despite your apprehension. 

i get that trying is the last thing on earth you want to do right now. i get that you’re tired. and it all feels pointless. but i’m of the opinion that basically everything is, and life only matters because it matters to us. initially that sounds depressing, but it also means that our existence is essentially an open ended sandbox. we can create what we want out of it. we don’t have to just be ‘one thing’, we don’t have to have all of the answers and we certainly don’t have to have the future all figured out. take a breath. it’s inevitable to be overwhelmed by your own emotions sometimes. but when you can, try to look at your circumstances from an objective perspective. life ebbs and flows naturally. things progress, they change, and in the midst of that change there is a great deal of confusion and even pain. that’s alright. you have to stumble around in the dark a bit before you find your footing. because where you’re at right now is just a stepping stone between two positive places, that’s all. you will find your rhythm again. it’s a matter of time, and choosing to help yourself out of a hole. even when it’s difficult. and you won’t be successful at it every day. some days you’ll be depressed, anxious, and pissed off at yourself/the world. but those negative thoughts/feelings are fleeting instances that you can learn how to coerce and control, to an extent. they won’t always feel as intense as they do at the moment. but you have to give yourself a fair shot at opening up in order to make that happen. at the end of the day, you’re so much more than you think you are. maybe you don’t have a clear view of yourself due to the anxiety and the depression and stuff, but just the fact that you’re here and that you’re trying and that you want to strive for more, speaks volumes about the strength of your character. you are worth the world, you deserve a happy and fulfilled life and one is waiting for you. i really think that. maybe it sounds like bullshit, but yeah. it’s true. you can’t see it, but it’s there. and i really hope you can find it in your heart to start believing me, or to at least consider what i’ve said on a serious level, because i’m rooting for you a lot. and i know you’re capable of doing the right thing for yourself. let me know if you need a friend or if you want to discuss this properly, okay? i’ll be here. 

[queensweasley]

i was tagged by the lovely @letthebookbegin, thank you for that ♥

rules: answer the questions and then tag people you want to get to know better

Nickname: A friend of mine once called me Bane because A) it’s short for Aubane and B) whenever I have a hoarse/broken voice I sound like Tom Hardy in Dark Knight Rises. She used to be the only one calling me this, then some common friends started using it and now my brother uses it too.

Zodiac sign: libra

Height: 1m62 (I believe that is 5′3)

Last movie I saw: Not exactly a movie but whatever : the professional recording of french musical Mozart l’Opéra Rock that I found on Youtube

Last thing I googled: "How does american height work” to understand how to write my height properly just moments ago lol Not counting researches done for this post, it was “Can I run Project Zomboid” because I just got my new computeur and wanted to try it since I had bought it but my old computer couldn’t support it

Song stuck in my head: Nothing right now, but lately it’s been that one song from Bolt, Barking at the Moon. Except it’s the really shitty french version that goes “A dog, a cat and a rodent, here’s the recipe for happiness”.

Other blogs: I dont really use them but I have @scamanderdragonneau is the blog I used to post every hp post at, @forwearethedefenders is inactive and was supposed to be were I posted a fanfic about Marvel comics, @queencleastrange was for mcu posts and OC rp but is now where I test my future main blog themes and @darthdramaqueen was a blog a friend and I did about Star Wars but said friend has now left Tumblr so it’s dead too. So yeah, basically, welcome to my cemetery lol

Do I get asks: From time to time but not often. Don’t hesitate guys !

Following: 254, i really need to find more blogs lol

Amount of sleep: Between 6 and 8 hours, sometimes less.

Lucky number: I was born in a 4th so I usually answer that

What I’m wearing: I’m still in my pajamas tbh 

Dream job: I don’t exactly have one? That’s my big trouble, there isn’t one thing I really really want to do, so I’m stuck in studying forever right now. Maybe I’d like to make youtube videos, but not necesarily as my job. Or Twitch streams. That’d be nice. Also novelist is what I’ve wanted to do since I’m six.

Dream trip: There isn’t one specific, every country in the world is interesting. USA might be the only one I’m not interested to see at all, I tend to think it’s overrated.

Favourite food: Roasted chicken and hamburger (especially with bacon)

Instruments: I mean I can play “Fais dodo” and a tiny bit of “Au clair de la lune” with the flute and the piano but that’s absolutely all.

Languages: french (first language), english (C1 level), spanish (B1 level), chinese (A1/A2 level) and i’m starting to learn a tiny bit of italian since I’m going there for three months

Random fact: I have a scar at the bottom of my back from a particularly big blister I had when I got chickenpox as a child.

Describe your aesthetic: staying in bed late, going to the cinema with friends, playing video game, listening to the rain crashing to the window, melting snow, the smell of a recently bought book

I’m not tagging anyone because I’m just back here and don’t know who’s left lol But feel free to consider yourself tagged !

[killerqueenjoy]

99 Question Tag

okay okay I know i got tagged to do this like a month ago on my main blog by @santonicababy iM SORRY LIN ILY BUT THIS WAS SO DAMN LONG

1) DO YOU SLEEP WITH YOUR CLOSET DOORS OPEN OR CLOSED

I sleep in the room where everybodies closets are and they all gotta be closed goddamn do you know how spooky it is to even have one open during the night

2) DO YOU TAKE THE SHAMPOOS AND CONDITIONER BOTTLES FROM HOTELS

my parents do, but alas I don't use them in case they have silicones or sulphates in them because I got a whole lotta curls to protect

3)DO YOU SLEEP WITH YOUR SHEETS TUCKED IN OR OUT?

if this refers to the sheet protecting the mattress, then my answer is in because how the fuck would you be able to sleep with that moving around???

4) HAVE YOU STOLEN A STREET SIGN BEFORE

NO SORRY IM BORING

5)DO YOU LIKE TO USE POST IT NOTES

heck yeah, but for random shit

6) DO YOU EVER CUT OUT COUPONS BUT THEN NEVER USE THEM

nee my parents are fancy fuckers who use the coupons on their phone (our local supermarket has a damn app skskksksk)

7) WOULD YOU RATHER BE ATTACKED BY A BIG BEAR OR A SWARM OF BEES

a bear because its one giant son of a bitch and not millions of tiny motherfuckers and also I've never been stung by a bee and intend to keep it that way because majority of my family seem to be allergic

8) DO YOU HAVE FRECKLES

nope! I have a couple beauty spots on my hands and face but thats kinda it

9) DO YOU ALWAYS SMILE FOR PICTURES

not really but if I've been told to smile then its 200% dead inside

10) WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST PET PEEVE

i find many things annoying

11)DO YOU EVER COUNT YOUR STEPS WHEN YOU WALK

only when i go up and down stairs, but i also try to make sure i step with each foot equally (if that makes sense) and i step on only certain colour tiles when im bored

12) HAVE YOU EVER PEED IN THE WOODS

the real question is have i ever been in the woods? both answers are no

13) HAVE YOU EVER POOPED IN THE WOODS

refer to question 12

14)ummmm idk what this question is meant to be curse you Lin

15)DO YOU CHEW YOUR PENS AND PENCILS

nope, the idea weirds me out

16) HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE YOU SLEPT WITH THIS WEEK

none, this week and in general

17) WHAT SIZE IS YOUR BED

one person and a long yet smol doggo size

18) WHAT IS YOUR SONG OF THE WEEK

Eddie from the Rocky Horror Picture Show has been stuck in my head for the whole week so yeah i guess that

19)IS IT OKAY FOR GUYS TO WEAR PINK

HeLL YEAH DUDE HAVE YOU SEEN RAMI MALEK IN PINK

SKSKSKSKS END MY LIFE

but yeah, anyone can wear anything they want to wear (although a suit made out of meat might not be wise)

20) DO YOU STILL WATCH CARTOONS

dudeeeee scooby doo and tom and jerry are my jam I watch them on the regular (among other things)

21)WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVOURITE MOVIE

uhhm idkkkkk I tend to repress bad movies sksksk

22)WHERE WOULD YOU BURY HIDDEN TREASURE IF YOU HAD SOME

idk shove it in the closet ig at least it will be hidden behind my sexuality

23)WHAT DO YOU DRINK WITH DINNER

I usually only drink before or after but ig water??? cooldrink if I'm in a restaurant

24)WHAT DO YOU DIP A CHICKEN NUGGET IN

depends on the nug

25)WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FOOD

How dare you assume i only have one favourite

tbh it depends cos i love pizza and pasta and stuff but then i cannot live with my granny's curries ksksmks

26) WHAT MOVIES COULD YOU WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND STILL LOVE

borhap, sing street, rhps, the natm movies, the harry potter movies, any mcu movies

27)LAST PERSON YOU KISSED/KISSED YOU

ahhahahahahahha bold of you to assume anyone wants to do that

28) WERE YOU EVER A BOY/GIRL SCOUT

nope but I was a catrobat which is basically my preschools acrobatics team that was actually really terrible

29)WOULD YOU EVER STRIP OR POSE NUDE IN A MAGAZINE

nahh m8

30) WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WROTE A LETTER TO SOMEONE ON PAPER

this week for a transactional task at school (It was in Afrikaans and I got a C skskskks)

31)CAN YOU CHANGE THE OIL IN A CAR

omg no

32)EVER GOTTEN A SPEEDING TICKET

not old enough to drive!

33)EVER RAN OUT OF GAS

my parents never have for as long as i can remember

34)WHATS YOUR FAVOURITE KINDA SANDWHICH

cheese because I am actually John Deacon

35)BEST THING TO EAT FOR BREAKFAST

MUFFINS!!!!

36)WHAT IS YOUR USUAL BEDTIME

school nights its 11pm otherwise i dont have one lol

37)ARE YOU LAZY

YES BUT MY LAZINESS MAKES ME ANXIOUS OOF

38)WHEN YOU WERE A KID WHAT DID YOU DRESS UP AS FOR HALLOWEEN

we dont celebrate that here but i rly want to it seems fun!

39)WHAT IS YOUR CHINESE ASTROLOGICAL SIGN

Ram, which is really cool because im an Aries, so I'm sheep squared

40)HOW MANY LANGUAGES CAN YOU SPEAK

English, Afrikaans (at a basic highschool level), I could speak very vERY basic isiZulu when I was younger but I'm not sure about now, I know a bit of French and Telugu, and I'm gonna start learning Hindi soon!!

41) DO YOU HAVE ANY MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS

nee

42) WHICH ARE BETTER, LEGOS OR LINCOLN LOGS

i didn't play much with legos and i have no idea what the second one is rip

43)ARE YOU STUBBORN

to an extent

44)WHO IS BETTER, LENO OR LETTERMAN

I kept reading Leno as Lenin ffs

45)EVER WATCH SOAP OPERAS

I watch them occasionally with my granny, but I don't keep up with them very well (Kasamh Se is my shit tho)

46)ARE YOU AFRAID OF HEIGHTS

no, im afraid of falling in general tho

47) DO YOU SING IN THE CAR

My dad and I bop frequently to Never Gonna Give You Up in the car, and also classic bollywood songs (we have even learnt the choreography for some)

48)DO YOU SING IN THE SHOWER

i perform

49) DO YOU DANCE IN THE CAR

well theres not exactly much space

50)EVER USED A GUN

nope

51)LAST TIME YOU GOT A PORTRAIT TAKEN BY A PHOTOGRAPHER

not sure

52)DO YOU THINK MUSICALS ARE CHEESY

most are but thats why i like them

53) IS CHRISTMAS STRESSFUL

we don't celebrate because we're not Christian (we still eat a lot and exchange presents tho), but it can get stressful if we have to visit extended family, mostly because my extended family loves to insult everything about me so thats great!

54)EVER EAT A PIEROGI

not i good sir

55) FAVOURITE TYPE OF FRUIT PIE

never had one, it doesnt appeal to me

56) OCCUPATIONS YOU WANTED TO BE WHEN YOU WERE A KID

a vet

57)DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS

i am a ghost

58)EVER HAD A DEJA-VU FEELING

not that i remember

59)DO YOU TAKE A VITAMIN DAILY

yes, I take a multi vitamin, a vitamin D pill because I'm vitamin D deficient, and im not sure if this is a vitamin or not but i take evening primrose oil so that im not outwardly a bitch due to pms

60)DO YOU WEAR SLIPPERS

i wear slipper socks, because my doggo got jealous of my doggie slippers and murdered them in cold blood

61)DO YOU WEAR A BATH ROBE

i have one and rarely use it because i forget it exists

62)WHAT DO YOU WEAR TO BED

a random shirt and pants, though ive been known to kick pants off (ive been doing that since birth), occasionally i manage to get the matching pj set

63)WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CONCERT

ive unfortunately never been to a concert before

64)WALMART TARGET OR KMART

ive never seen any of these stores in my country

65)NIKE OR ADIDAS

i own neither

66) CHEETOS OR FRITOS

neither

67)PEANUTS OR SUNFLOWER SEEDS

Peanuts because thats my doggos name!

68) EVER HEARD OF THE GROUP TRES BIEN

no sorry

69)EVER TAKE DANCE LESSONS

i went to a bhangra class for about a year, and we performed for our parents at the end of that year (i was in one of the few groups that didnt have to dance in lehengas thank goodness)

70)IS THERE A PROFESSION YOU PICTURE

YOUR FUTURE SPOUSE DOING

probably something creative, but I don't mind as long as they're happy with what they're doing and its not harming others!

71)CAN YOU CURL YOUR TONGUE

yep

72)EVER WON A SPELLING BEE

never entered one, having to spell out loud makes me anxious

73)HAVE YOU EVER CRIED BECAUSE YOU WERE SO HAPPY

i think so

74)OWN ANY RECORD ALBUMS

nope

75)OWN A RECORD PLAYER

i wish

76)DO YOU REGULARLY BURN INCENSE

my granny burns incense while I'm at school because my mom and i both get really sick when its just been lit and the smell is strong. Going to the temple is a damn nightmare because of it

77)EVER BEEN IN LOVE

no, too busy fangirling

78)WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IN CONCERT

oof a long list

Queen, Twenty One Pilots, Waterparks, Frank Iero and the Future Violents (ffs fronk stop changin the name), Panic! at the Disco...to name a few

79)WHAT WAS THE LAST CONCERT YOU SAW

refer to question 63

80)HOT TEA OR COLD TEA

both

81)TEA OR COFFEE

coffee

82)SUGAR COOKIES OR SNICKERDOODLES

sugar cookies

83)CAN YOU SWIM WELL

i wouldn't drown, but im no professional either

84)CAN YOU HOLD YOUR BREATH WITHOUT HOLDING YOUR NOSE

im doing it right now

85)ARE YOU PATIENT

eh

86)DJ OR BAND AT A WEDDING

I've only ever been to Hindi,Tamil and Telugu weddings and lemme tell you 90% of the time bands flop at those weddings because they can't sing the classics without failing miserably, so DJs are generally better. However, in that case, if a band can perform those songs, then I'd prefer a band ig

87)EVER WON A CONTEST

yep, a couple of reading contests

88)HAVE YOU EVER HAD PLASTIC SURGERY

nope, not planning on it

89)WHICH ARE BETTER, BLACK OR GREEN OLIVES

dont like olives rip

90)CAN YOU KNIT OR CROCHET

i can knit!

in fact, my friends and i are so cool that we're in our schools knitting club (which besides myself, @grandfunnyemopainter and @imjustabruh , only has 2 other members)

91)BEST ROOM FOR A FIREPLACE

lounge or study/library

92)DO YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED

i guess, its not on my goal list tho

93)IF MARRIED, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN MARRIED

no

94)WHO WAS YOUR HIGHSCHOOL CRUSH

currently in highschool, and in love with the borhap cast, sebastian stan, stephanie beatriz and band members (theres more but yeah)

95)DO YOU CRY AND THROW A FIT UNTIL YOU GET YOUR OWN WAY

nope, i have only two ways to deal, be a total pushover or a total bitch

96)DO YOU HAVE KIDS

nope

97)DO YOU WANT KIDS

kind of undecided, but i do want more pets

98)WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE COLOUR

Dark Blue

99)DO YOU MISS ANYONE RIGHT NOW

my dog, shes been ignoring me for about four hours now because I stayed at school for an extra hour (for knitting club!)

@softspaceboibrian @roger-taylor-owns-my-wigg @im-inlovewithmycar do it cowards

[kenmaiii]

stop being jealous and bitter!

Now i know you cant outright just throw away your jealousy in the art community. You see a really cool popular artist or just someone with absolutely amzing art and you think “wow holy shit their art is so good i wish that was me and that i could do that....” I understand that spite can be a good thing sometimes; it can be what motivates you to improve and do well, especially if the artist is well... not the best person in terms of personality. Great, that’s even more motivation to do well right!? 

But when does all the comparing go too far?

----------------------------------------long post incoming------------------------------------------

Now i’ve had people very close to me do this. I’ve been told that im ‘popular’ which im honestly not seriously. They could probably be reading this right now, but this has been bothering me for awhile so i must get this out there. Let’s step into a certain mindset for a moment:-

You hate your artwork. You hate your current skills. Sure there are artists you like. But then there are ‘THOSE’ ones. You have very specific artists you follow just because theyre so good and popular they make you feel bitter and you still check up on them regularly to fuel that bitterness. You know good and well that they make you bitter and angry and peeved but you just keep going back.

Step back for a moment and think.... why on earth am i fucking doing this???? Comparing and feeling bitter about another persons skill or popularity and letting yourself stay sad and bitter isn’t good for ANYTHING, art aside. It’s good to want to feel validated at the work you spent time on but it WILL get tiring if you keep complaining that ‘your art is bad’, ‘your art isnt good’, ‘its shit’ or ‘garbage’. Your brain is just internalizing that and hindering your work and future improvement. It’s most importantly WASTING YOUR own time, YOU the creator. And not to sound snobby here, i really truly dont intend for that, but some of you know good and well that you keep belitting you work because you only just want people to compliment your art when youre only doing the bare minimum to improve! I can only tell you as a friend or an on-looker that i love your art so many times (as much i really do love it and hope for your improvement) if you continuously decide to still turn around and say you hate your work and tell me im wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why reach for compliments then! Why continuously turn them down?

And i’m not saying you cant ever not like your art (cause it happens) or decline a compliment, but to do it every single time....it leaves a bad image for your work. You either start to believe it, or the person complimenting you will get put off from your negativity!  

It makes people feel bad, especially if theyre also artist AND also your friends. You can’t keep saying you prefer their work and still put down your own. It makes your artist friend uncomfortable. They might not know how to respond when you keep doing it. And im sure they wouldnt want you to keep making yourself feel bad. Personally, i wish all my art friends success and improvement, and i want them to love and feel proud of their work more than the times they hate it. We really need to uplift each other as artists.

Thanks.

What you think and say is what you become and if youre always negative and comparing youre gonna tear down both the person you admire and yourself. Ie, if youre constantly thinking ‘ill never be as good as this person’,’no ones ever gonna like my work’, ‘i cant color as well as they do’ or saying that your work is only ever garbage... newsflash asshole! your mind absorbs that negativity and makes you believe it! u fool!!!!! Because brains are stupid and can be your worst enemy at times! 

Sometimes you just need to stOP looking at certain peoples work completely if it gets you that bitter or angry or sad. Unfollow them! Block them! Delete their name from your search history if you have to! Stop hurting yourself and forget about them, it’s like trying to think about an ex thats moved on. Pointless.

Negative emotions such as sadness and anger are our brains direct ways at trying to reach out to ourselves.

You: seeing cool art Your mind: remembering you dont have some of those skills or popularity + comparing = sadness/ anger/ bitterness at not being able to be at that lvl withtin the same timeframe or less

Your brain is trying to tell you to fix this! But you know you might not have the tools to gain that much popularity or become so good at anatomy, coloring , compositions or backgrounds overnight, so the only solution for your brain is to self-sabotage.

It’s just the same as suddenly feeling sad for no reason. It’s your mind trying to work out a problem you never resolved. Maybe your friends haven’t replied in awhile and you feel ignored. Or you subconsciously remembered a bad experience without really realizing. You’ll get sad. Your mind is is saying ‘Hey asshole im sad. I know it might be out of your control but I’ll stay sad about this one thing until you resolve it somehow. ’ (whether it be blindly distracting yourself on purpose or fully wallowing in the feelings)

So we realized youre feeling intensely about this persons work vs your own...then what exactly happened there? The answer is pretty simple. Some kind of information processing happened in your brain. The result of this processing made the your mind conclude that one of your existing problems (art in this case) can never be solved; whether conscious or unconscious, and this explains why your mood might change all of a sudden without any kind of warning signs (in relation to what you saw). 

Inspired VS Jealousy When youre inspired youre working against yourself in a GOOD way. You’re feeling motivated to make something great! Youre feeling motivated to make something better than the last piece!! And honestly thats wonderful!!!  That is a lot nicer than being in art-block, comparison negativity hell.

YOU are the only one responsible for where you are as an artist. That goes towards every artist of every skill level! There’s always someone better than you and there’s always someone worse than you. People get better at art in different intervals depending on how much they take in or put into practicing. Some people just get some concepts and fundamentals a lot easier and quicker than others but that doesn’t mean they naturally had that ability from birth. They put in the work just as you should be doing instead of feeling so intensely negative! But when you’re jealous and negative all the time, that’s when it starts to go downhill. :/

Jealously is a very human emotion at its core. And im not saying its super easy to deal with and just suddenly get over, but there are things you can do to slowly help yourself do it at least a little less.

Here’s the best things you CAN do instead:- - Write down some of the things you find yourself feeling bitter over about, especially when you look at another artists work? Ask yourself why these specific things? If it’s something you yourself can work on in your own pieces then maybe uh do that?  - Find the time to practice your work. - Practice even more. - If it’s your style that you arent happy with think of the artstyles you like and set aside time to mimic the way that artist might draw something (hence adding that to YOUR style). Take a sketchbook page or two and just draw entirely in those styles. - Practice. I can’t stress this enough. I know artists say this a lot and it can kind of just be thrown around carelessly, but if you keep putting this off and saying you don’t want to practice or talking about how time is going by when you should be practicing things.... and STILL refuse to practice then???? I cant help you sorry. Time waits for no one, so sometimes you need to grab time by the horns and kick its ass for awhile. Put in that effort! - Please use references. Even better if you use it nearly EVERYTIME you draw something, especially yknow...if its a pose, body part or background that you know you have no idea how to properly express! Find a stock image or a variety of websites to use! Save poses that you like from online magazines, other artists and photographs you see anywhere online. I like to look at online magazines from other countries or photographers, and there are tons of places like pinterest or instagram and whatnot. - Stop comparing and being bitter. Ii cant say this enough it gets me so ticked off, but my stubborn taurus self refuses to fully go off until it all piles up and this post is the result lol. If you know you can’t let go hating on a certain artist (for no good reason) then dont hate-follow them! Don’t check up on their work constantly! Don’t even talk about them!!!!!!! Try to get them out of your head for goodness sakes. Majority of the time they dont even know who YOU are so why are you worried about what they’re up to. - STOP SHITTING ON YOUR OWN WORK. - STOP IT RIGHT NOW. - AS THE ARTIST SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO FORCE YOURSELF TO SAY ‘’hey, my work isn’t exactly where i want it to be at this point in time and it may never be but i can appreciate that i’ve gotten better at a lot of things and im better than where i was a few years/ a year/ a month ago/ even weeks ago.” - ”I’m proud of this piece and can’t wait to get even better.” - Art is a struggle that takes time, effort and a lot of work. There’s always going to be someone better than you and there’s always going to be someone worse than you. You can only strive to get to the level that would make you happiest, otherwise you will get irritated with it and feel absolutely miserable about everything you produce. - PUT IN THE WORK TO GET YOUR ART OUT THERE. Social media has been both a curse and a blessing to artists all around. It’s made it easier for us to share our work around and opened paths for making money online and at home and connecting with other artists, but competition grows everyday as more people post their work in the same market. (ie another reason why it can be hard to get your commissions out there) Also as artists we want that dopamine rush you get from people liking your stuff, i get that its gucci. -But if you aren’t tagging your works well, posting somewhat consistently, not really bothering to talk to people in certain art communities (even people in your fandom because hey potential friends and even partners on future projects), not adding your works to groups (a big problem i see with people on places like deviantart mostly), joining and sharing them in art group chats/aminos/discords, joining events to get yourself out there (such as zines/big bangs/gift exchanges etc), giving tips and advice or even little helpful tutorials to people then how do you expect to be noticed? How.  If youre not doing at least TWO of these things then hoW can you complain about not getting attention. :(

 Of course you dont have to do ALL of this. Im just saying ...if you arent out there advertising how will more people know about you? This leads to you thinking no one likes your art (skill level excluded because even my cringiest old art would have a few comments or encouragements to see my future improvement, and i still want to hide when people like/comment/reblog said old art to this very day). 

I understand mainly OC artists feel this way that no ones gonna like their characters, or it just doesnt get reblogged enough in general but thats understandable too. No one is ‘selling out’ if they only do fanart. No one is ‘snobby or scared to get themselves out there’ if theyre really enthusiastic about their stories and worlds. Otherwise we wouldnt have fandoms int he first place, theyre all someones work. And hell, good for you if you draw both. It really is just a matter of how you put yourself out there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’ll take some time but there IS always someone out there that likes your stuff. And sometimes you just have to be content with making work for yourself, work that makes you happy. The online art world is tough especially when youre small but once you fall into the depths of bitterness its hard to rewire your mind...

This is how yall should be looking at your/others work majority of the time: You: seeing cool art  Your mind: omg thats beautiful! i wish i could draw and paint like that. i should practice more , try out some poses and anatomy or implement what they do into my work. i wanna make a cool ass piece like this too i feel so pumped to draw and work!! 

And that’s that! Do yourself a favor and be happier you bastards! Its tiring being negative and sad all the time and i want tf out of it. Its so very tiring and annoying to be sad and bitter as shit!!!!! My goD

I can’t really think of anything else to add to this and the text may appear angry sometimes as i was very heated when i wrote this but tried to tone it down a lot hfkds. Im not some ‘art guru goddess with supreme skill uwuw’ but advice is advice! It’s always up to the person listening to take it or not.

I’m gonna end this with one of my favorite art quotes of all time from t h e Arin Hanson himself. Because it really is true. 

Get yourself out there, practice towards a level that makes you content and try to have more fun with loving your work.

It’s taken me a long while to post this, as i’ve been feeling this way for...at least a couple months??? but i finally put it all out there i just needed to do this lol.  Sorry if i mightve repeated info sometimes here and there?

This post is just as much of a call out to my own actions but more so @ those of you that specifically do this! 

[botanyshitposts]

hi- what is your opinion on GMOs? i have friends in bioengineering who seem to pretty much agree on the consensus that they are all around better than non-GMO strains, except maybe when it comes to soy. basically what I'm wondering is are GMOs: - healthier? - better for the environment? - more agriculturally efficient? sorry this question is so long, thanks a million for answering it! (if you do)

from a scientific aspect: 

the facts are, GMOs are the future and the key to increasing crop production for our increasing population if your goal is to keep up food production for more people. remember, the goal right now in agriculture- the key goal that we’re throwing everything into because big yikes fam- is to produce more food off less. so like, vertical farming? good, saves space. smaller plants with bigger yield? great, saves space, can plant more and get more food. plants that are resistant to drought? to high temps? to low fertilizer? amazing, it means you have hardier plants that you can put in places that regular plants wouldn’t be able to stand.

so are they agriculturally efficient? hell yeah, because remember, it takes about 10 years for a crop in testing- GMO or not- to reach a point in development where it can be submitted for approval by the USDA for the market (something I’ve learned in my current job). imagine doing all breeding without GMOs. you would literally be able to do one cross a year, maybe two if you’re in a warmer area (this is why a lot of soybean breeding has been moved to South America, where they can do twice as much breeding). with GMOs, you can develop and test stuff faster, so by a monetary standpoint it’s awesome. 

lets not forget that GMO crops can withstand more because of the pure amount of precision put into them. like, lets say your corn breaks a lot. you can spend 3-4 years meticulously cross breeding your developing strain with a break-resistant variety to get that trait in, or you can just cut and paste in the gene. and get this: it doesn’t even have to be from the break resistant variety. you can pull it from another plant that might be better at not breaking, and get an even better resulting variety. 

another thing that we can’t forget about is that new GMO tech helps us keep up with pests and diseases. at work, i’ve seen experiments involving root pests; plants infected had root systems destroyed down to a single tap root. imagine that happening to a farmer’s field. like, all of it. that’s the kind of thing we’re up against here; to stop infestations and to solve new challenges quickly by developing technology quickly, while still improving the plant to commercial level. 

when talking to the breeders at work, they told me that the industry as a whole recently upped its goal from creating a crop that would give each farmer a 200 bushel harvest (200 bushels has been the goal for the past 30 years; they’ve recently reached it and exceeded it) to 300 bushels per harvest. they have to do this just by modifying the plants. they have no control over how much the farmer plants and/or how many fields they have.

to give some perspective here, one bushel is 60 pounds of grain. they’re aiming to have each farmer that buys their products be able to reliably harvest and sell 18,000 pounds of grain per year. 

the moral of the story is that the breeding and agri industries are under a lot of pressure here, and they have to work fast, because the population is rising. 

knock knock

whos there?

dwindling nitrogen supplies in farmland and unsustainable farming practices but im gonna save that for another time

are they healthier? it depends on what you believe. like, what we’ve found so far is that GMOs don’t hurt you. some of them have added vitamins that can help you (lets not forget the famous GMO golden rice, which uses a daffodil gene coupled with a soil bacterium gene to make a rice variety produce a huuuuuge amount of vitamin A. this has been so effective in solving vitamin deficiencies and health problems in 3rd world countries since it was introduced in 2005 that its won awards and been used as a universal case study for the whole “GMO plants” thing) but most are just like. idk. kind of there? they help the health of the plant and help the farmer bring in income, so???? idk???

are they better for the environment? i have no idea. i suppose indirectly, because like. if you have a heartier plant you have to clear less land for agriculture?? (can anyone weigh in here?). But if these got out into the wild, the effects could be DEVASTATING, which is why the USDA and related government organizations (depending on where you live) make it so you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that what you’re putting out into production won’t be crazy damaging if it magically gets out somehow.

ethically: i have no idea man. like im still super split on it. my scientist self says “you can literally buy everything to do it and modify plants to produce heat right in your own home right now” but then im like……………..idk man we just dont know. i dont want to hurt my plant friends. if this hurts our plant friends. idk

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-like-donald-trump/

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

We Need Somebody Who’ll Finally Get Tough On Foreign Policy

Why Do So Many Republicans Like Donald Trump?

Well, there’s no doubt that Trump talks a tough game when it comes to other countries â he sort of makes it sound like the world will just roll over in front of him, exposing its collective belly for him to scratch. You may remember when he insisted that he’d bring oil prices down by swearing at OPEC leaders back in 2011, when he was teasing a possible 2012 run. Here’s what he told a Las Vegas audience, as detailed by Mother Jones.

We have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you’re not going to raise that f***ing price.

He also had a simple message for China, saying “listen you motherf****rs, we’re going to tax you 25 percent!” This is in keeping with the general level of seriousness he seems to apply to his prognostications â he also insists that if he’s elected, he’ll force the Mexican government to finance a border wall, and that’s still nowhere near the most antagonistic component of his far-right immigration plan.

If you’re the kind of person who wants some more strident red lines in international negotiations, say â to try to secure those ever-elusive “better deals” that some conservatives have been harping on lately â that’s fine, even if we might disagree. But be forewarned: what Trump’s putting out there is little more than presumptuous bombast, so don’t be shocked if that ridiculous wall idea never comes to fruition.

Why Do Trump Voters Believe His Lies It’s Not Because They’re Stupid

The cornerstones of President Trumps campaign were promises to appeal Obamacare and ban Muslims from the US. It took Trump less than 70 days to fail on both promises.

And yet, despite his epic fails, lies and incompetence, Trumps base supports him like theyre spanx and hes Marie Osmond. What explains this loyalty? Science has the answer.

Have a look at this puzzle.

Which drawing best illustrates the correct mechanics and structure of a bicycle?

How you answer will help explain the loyalty of Trump voters. Ill explain in just a bit. But first

What I wanted to know is WTF!?

How can two people look at President Trump and have such polar opposite observations? To find out, I conducted an experiment. I set up a fake account and joined more than 50 pro-Trump Facebook groups. I created a meme that said: What do you like about President Trump, then I shared it.

I got more than a thousand responses in 24 hours and the things people wrote most is that they like Trump because hes not a politician hes a real American not corrupted by Washington, and beholden to no one.

The next most common response was that Trump believes in God.

This was followed in near equal measure by Trump Loves America, he keeps his promises, that hes a good businessman, that he cant be bought, and that he tells the truth.

OK. So, one of them is true! Trump is not a politician. One could go either wayhis love for America.

I got nearly 700 responses.

WATCH NOW:

Opinionthe Gop Needs Women And Centrist Voters Ousting Cheney Only Nets Them Trump Loyalists

More important, experts say, are the shifting demographics of those neighborhoods. “Suburbs are simply far more diverse than they used to be,” a FiveThirtyEight analysis explains. “Suburbs have also become increasingly well-educated, and that may actually better explain why so many suburbs and exurbs are turning blue.” Both communities of color and Americans with higher education tend to vote Democratic combine those factors and you have a recipe for major electoral shifts.

And there’s no indication that shift is reversing. Recent polling from Harvard’s Kennedy School shows Biden dominating the suburbs, where 6 in 10 voters view the president favorably. Biden and Democrats’ lead in suburbs is such an existential threat to the GOP that Georgia Republicans have collapsed into infighting over how suburbs once represented by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich are now reliably Democratic bulwarks.

The Call for American Renewal is also hoping to recapture the support of women who have been fleeing the GOP since Trump’s first campaign. That may be harder than they think, too. Though it’s possible the group could restore some of the ground Trump lost to women, who went nearly 6-in-10 for Biden, Republicans have been losing women voters for years.

Mild dissatisfaction with Trump isnt the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes.

Poll Results Are Fake Unless Theyre Good Trump Says

During his speech at the Dallas convention Sunday night, Trump said he only would have believed the results of CPACs straw poll if they were his favor, Business Insider reported.

Now, if its bad, I just say its fake, the former president told the crowd, reported Insider. If its good, I say thats the most accurate poll, perhaps ever.

In the past, Trump has decried similar things he doesnt like as false, like referring to unfavorable media coverage as fake news.

A Large Share Of Republicans Want Trump To Remain Head Of The Party Cnbc Survey Shows

A CNBC survey conducted in the days before former President Donald Trump‘s impeachment trial finds a large share of Republicans want him to remain head of their party, but a majority of Americans want him out of politics.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey shows 54% of Americans want Trump “to remove himself from politics entirely.” That was the sentiment of 81% of Democrats and 47% of Independents, but only 26% of Republicans.

When it comes to Republicans, 74% want him to stay active in some way, including 48% who want him to remain head of the Republican Party, 11% who want him to start a third party, and 12% who say he should remain active in politics but not as head of any party.

“If we’re talking about Donald Trump’s future, at the moment, the survey shows he still has this strong core support within his own party who really want him to continue to be their leader,” said Jay Campbell, a partner with Hart Research and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

But Micah Roberts, the survey’s Republican pollster, and a partner with Public Opinion Strategies, emphasized the change from when Trump was president. Polls before the election regularly showed Trump with GOP approval ratings around 90%, meaning at least some Republicans have defected from Trump.

Republicans Cant Understand Democrats

Only one in four Republican voters felt that most or almost all Democratic voters sincerely believed they were voting in the best interests of the country.  Rather, many Republicans told us that Democratic voters were brainwashed by the propaganda of the mainstream media, or voting solely in their self-interest to preserve undeserved welfare and food stamp benefits.

We asked every Republican in the sample to do their best to imagine that they were a Democrat and sincerely believed that the Democratic Party was best for the country.  We asked them to explain their support for the Democratic Party as an actual Democratic voter might.  For example, a 64-year-old strong Republican man from Illinois surmised that Democrats want to help the poor, save Social Security, and tax the rich.   

But most had trouble looking at the world through Democratic eyes. Typical was a a 59-year-old Floridian who wrote I dont want to work and I want cradle to grave assistance. In other words, Mommy! Indeed, roughly one in six Republican voters answered in the persona of a Democratic voter who is motivated free college, free health care, free welfare, and so on.  They see Democrats as voting in order to get free stuff without having to work for it was extremely common roughly one in six Republican voters used the word free in the their answers, whereas no real Democratic voters in our sample answered this way. 

Trumps Role As Republican Party Leader Is Becoming Stronger

This weekends CPAC straw poll results showed that Trumps popularity along with DeSantis in the Republican Party has grown in the last six months, according to Forbes.

In February, only 55% of attendees of a similar CPAC event in Orlando, Florida, said they wanted Trump to lead the ticket in 2024, Forbes reported.

If Trump stayed in political retirement, or at least stayed off the presidential primary ballot in 2024, DeSantis lead the poll with 43% attending Republicans choosing him in Februarys hypothetical presidential primary.

Related

Inside the newsroom: Words matter, including the hateful Murder the media

He Appeals To Rural Voters

More than any other group, Americas rural people have been disempowered and abandoned due to the policies pushed by urban elites. Theyve seen their jobs evaporate and their local culture obliterated, only to be replaced by a Walmart and McDonalds in every town. They also realize that most of the media and academia see them as ignorant and backwards and laughable. instead, Trump treats them with respect. If you look at an electoral map of 2016, Clinton won all the urban areas and Trump won all of the rural ones. Thats because he was the first politician in memory who didnt sneer at them.

Hes Nationalist Rather Than Globalist

Why Do People Act Like Black Conservatives Don’t Exist? | NBC News

He realizes that the ex-factory worker in Ohio lost his job because it was sent to Malaysia. He knows that some banker in Brussels is more interested in increasing his stock portfolio than whether doing so will render huge swaths of the American heartland jobless and pill-addicted. He cares more about what a homeowner in Iowa thinks about him than what some sneering cosmopolite at a Parisian cocktail party thinks.

Emboldened ‘unchanged’ Trump Looks To Re

Across the party as a whole, an NBC News poll released late last month found, a majority of Republicans considered themselves supporters of the GOP, compared to just 44 percent who supported Trump above all, the first time that has been the case since July 2019.

But mild dissatisfaction with Trump isn’t the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes, and they’re buckled in for the long haul. That creates the opening for more traditional Republicans to toy with forming a new party but it’s a slim one.

Why Does Donald Trump Still Seem To Hold Sway Over The Republican Party

Why after leading the Republican Party during a period when it lost its majority in the US House of Representatives and the Senate and its power in the White House does former president Donald Trump still seem to hold the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Reagan in his thrall?

For US politics watchers, who on the weekend watched on as 43 Republican senators voted to acquit Trump of an act of reckless incitement played out in front of the cameras, that is the $64,000 question.

Or rather, it’s the 74,222,593-vote question.

That is the record number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump last November more than has been cast for any previous president. Unfortunately for them, an even greater number 81,281,502 voted for his rival, now-President Joe Biden.

As much as anything else, those numbers sum up the quandary Republicans find themselves in.

They have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and only remain competitive because older white voters, who tend to be more likely to support conservative candidates, also tend to vote in greater numbers in a non-compulsory electoral system.

Those same voters are also the most likely to cast a ballot in next year’s house and senate primaries, and the next midterm elections in November 2022 which will again determine who holds power in congress. They are the voters who initially flocked to Donald Trump.

All The Republicans Who Wont Support Trump

Numerous top G.O.P. officials have said publicly or privately that they will not be backing the presidents re-election. Some have even endorsed Joe Biden. Heres a look at where they all stand.

Follow our latest coverage of the Biden vs. Trump 2020 election here.

As November draws nearer, some current and former Republican officials have begun to break ranks with the rest of their party, saying in public and private conversations that they will not support President Trump in his re-election. A number have even said that they will be voting for his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

As Mr. Trumps political standing has slipped, fueled by his failures in handling the coronavirus pandemic and by the economic recession, some Republicans have found it easier to publicly renounce their backing.

Here is a running list of those who have said they will support Mr. Biden in the fall, those who simply wont support Mr. Trump, and those who have hinted they may not back the president.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who announced their opposition to the election of Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican Party nominee and eventual winner of the election, as the President of the United States. It also includes former Republicans who left the party due to their opposition to Trump and as well as Republicans who endorsed a different candidate. It includes Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the nominee. Some of the Republicans on this list threw their support to Trump after he won the presidential election, while many of them continue to oppose Trump. Offices listed are those held at the time of the 2016 election.

Why Do Evangelical Christians Love Trump

To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault.

White evangelical support for Donald Trump has long puzzled observers. To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault. Scholars have commented on his crassness, defined by historian Walter G. Moss as a lack refinement, tact, sensitivity, taste or delicacy. Others have observed how he has broken rules of civil political engagement.

But in my research on evangelical masculinity, I have found that Trumps leadership style aligns closely with a rugged ideal of Christian manhood championed by evangelicals for more than half a century.

As I show in my book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, conservative evangelicals embraced the ideal of a masculine protector in the 1960s and 1970s in order to confront the perceived threats of communism and feminism.

Believing that the feminist rejection of macho masculinity left the nation in peril, conservative white evangelicals promoted a testosterone-fueled vision of Christian manhood. In their view, America needed strong men to defend Christian America on the battlefields of Vietnam and to reassert order on the home front.

Why it Matters

How I Do My Work

The Baffling Continued Support For Donald Trump Explained

Donald Trump has, by almost any measure, been the worst president in U.S. history, or at least within the memory of people living in 2020. But for some reason, he has remained popular with a sizable segment of Americans. While Joe Biden defeated him in the presidential election, 74 million Americans voted for Trump, and a large percentage of Republicans, like Trump himself, are denying that he actually lost the election. So why do Trumps diehard fans stay that way?

Yes, hes made some people happy with his tax cuts and appointments of right-wing judges, and he is beloved by white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, but he has downplayed a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 276,000 Americans and caused an economic crash. One would think his personal style, bullying, and insults would alienate many people. Yet his approval ratings have remained stable at around 40 percent for most of his presidency, and the 40 percent cant all be fringe elements. What could possibly account for the continued unwavering support of Trump loyalists?

I think that there are a number of things at play, crosscurrents, if you will, said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.

Winterhof likewise said she observed a decline in enthusiasm among voters who were counting on Trump for positive change and agreed that Biden was better positioned than Clinton among voters overall.

Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

The history of American third parties doesn’t offer much hope. Last year, Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen garnered just 1.2 percent of the vote in a typical third-party showing. In fact, no third-party candidate has achieved a double-digit popular vote total since Ross Perot in 1992, and data trends indicate that popular support for third parties has been in steady decline since then.

And even if the GOP 2.0 secures a marquee name like former Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah to champion its message, the role would likely be as a political spoiler rather than a serious candidate: Even former President Theodore Roosevelt, at the time one of the most popular figures in American culture, barely surpassed a quarter of the popular vote and garnered just 88 electoral votes in an iconic third-party campaign in 1912. No one on the Call for American Renewal bench commands anything near Roosevelt’s profile and platform.

That hasn’t stopped disaffected Republicans from setting their sights on fence-sitting “Biden Republicans” mostly suburban moderates who broke with Trump but remain aligned with GOP ideas like small government that have gone extinct in the post-Trump GOP. Those voters were largely responsible for Trump’s upset victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016, while Biden returned formerly right-leaning suburbs to the Democratic column to help power his 2020 win.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

Why LGBTQ Republicans Hate The Party’s Platform But Like Donald Trump

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.  

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

He Says He Wants To Make America Great Again

Aided by global finance and a compliant press, Americas middle and working classes have been sold down the river. Nearly all of the manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, and what jobs remain here have seen their wages pushed down due to unrestrained immigration. America, once the shining light of the world, became a country ashamed of itself and that felt obligated to apologize to the rest of the world for being more successful than other countries. Something is deeply wrong when someone feels obligated to apologize for winningafter all, you never see that in sports. Trump wants to return us to a better time when people bragged about being American instead of apologizing for it

What Americans Really Think

Social scientists and psychologists believe that people subscribe to conspiracy theories for the simple reason that these theories often tend to validate their views of the world. Republicans believe all kinds of things about President Obama, and many liberals believe similar theories about President George W. Bush.

“For both liberals and conservatives, for everybody, there’s just this tendency to want to believe things that fit our worldview as we believe it,” said Joanne Miller, a political scientist the University of Minnesota and one of the authors of the new study. “Both liberals and conservatives are subject to that. It’s a human tendency to want to believe what we believe.”

In particular, conspiracy theories offer a simple explanation, with an identifiable villain, for the complicated reality of modern politics. That simplicity is appealing.

Miller and her collaborators — Christina Farhart and Colorado State University’s Kyle Saunders — used data from surveys of Americans who were asked whether they thought statements about politicians and public figures were true.

A few conspiracy theories were on the list. Four were designed to suss out conservative respondents:

that Obama was born outside the United States;

that his health-care reform established “death panels;”

that global warming was a hoax

and that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

There were four more theories for the other side:

Why Do Republicans Continue To Support Trump Despite Years Of Scandal

It was late September last year when a whistleblower complaint revealed that President Trump had tried to force the Ukrainian government to investigate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Within moments the scandal captured headlines. What followed was months of back and forth as Republicans supported the president while the Democrats used their political capital to get him impeached.

But this was not the first time   or the last time  the president was caught in the middle of a scandal. Since the impeachment trial that followed the Ukraine incident, episodes from The New York Times uncovering unsavory details from President Trumps tax returns, to his questionable dismissal of multiple Inspectors General, to his refusal to clearly condemn white supremacists have all sparked widespread media attention and partisan fighting in 2020. 

Although with his polls dropping, some Republicans may finally be distancing themselves from the President, the question has been regularly asked the past four years: why do the Republicans continue to support the President despite these troubling charges being leveled at him? And, what is it that the Democrats stand to gain from repeated allegations?

 In addition to demonstrating how polarization accelerates scandals, the paper also found that: 

Republicans Think Democrats Always Cheat

The Republican strategy has several sources of motivation, but the most important is a widely shared belief that Democrats in large cities i.e., racial minorities engage in systematic vote fraud, election after election. We win because of our ideas, we lose elections because they cheat us, insisted Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News last night. The Bush administration pursued phantasmal vote fraud allegations, firing prosecutors for failing to uncover evidence of the schemes Republicans insisted were happening under their noses. In 2008, even a Republican as civic-minded as John McCain accused ACORN, a voter-registration group, of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

The persistent failure to produce evidence of mass-scale vote fraud has not discouraged Republicans from believing in its existence. The failure to expose it merely proves how well-hidden the conspiracy is. Republicans may despair of their chances of proving Trumps vote-fraud charges in open court, but many of them believe his wild lies reflect a deeper truth.

[stoweboyd]

Work Futures Weekender - Postnational in the Postnormal?

The top 1% will hold 64% of the world’s wealth by 2030?

2018-04-08 Beacon NY - Rana Dasgupta, the award winning novelist and journalist draws a deeply unsettling portrait of our time in The demise of the nation state, where he lays out the collapsing ideal of a world of nation states giving way to a post-national mess defined by broken power systems, kleptocracies, and tens of millions of refugees who are effectively stateless, and outlawed by the developed world. Other research projects that the wealthiest 1% will own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030.

After cataloging the chaotic dumpster fire the world has become, he says we can fix things, but it won't be easy:

This is not a small endeavour: it will take the better part of this century. We do not know yet where it will lead. All we can lay out now is a set of directions. From the standpoint of our present, they will seem impossible, because we have not known any other way. But that is how radical novelty always begins.

The first is clear: global financial regulation. Today’s great engines of wealth creation are distributed in such a way as to elude national taxation systems […], which is diminishing all nation states, materially and symbolically.

[…]

Second: global flexible democracy. As new local and transnational political currents become more powerful, the nation state’s rigid monopoly on political life is becoming increasingly unviable. Nations must be nested in a stack of other stable, democratic structures – some smaller, some larger than they – so that turmoil at the national level does not lead to total breakdown.

[…]

**Third, and finally: we need to find new conceptions of citizenship. **Citizenship is itself the primordial kind of injustice in the world. It functions as an extreme form of inherited property and, like other systems in which inherited privilege is overwhelmingly determinant, it arouses little allegiance in those who inherit nothing.

Dasgupta is preaching a new global system, a vision of a postnational world.

On the eve of its centenary, our nation-state system is already in a crisis from which it does not currently possess the capacity to extricate itself. It is time to think how that capacity might be built. We do not yet know what it will look like. But we have learned a lot from the economic and technological phases of globalisation, and we now possess the basic concepts for the next phase: building the politics of our integrated world system.

Where do I sign up?

And more cogently to my focus here: what does this mean to the way we think about work, and our place in the world?

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On Performance Reviews

Jinseok Chun, Joel Brockner and David De Cremer wrote the aptly named People Don’t Want to Be Compared with Others in Performance Reviews. They Want to Be Compared with Themselves. People hate performance reviews. Hate. I am using the word hate, here.

According to a survey of Fortune 1,000 companies done by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), 66% of the employees were strongly dissatisfied with the performance evaluations they received in their organizations. More strikingly, 65% of the employees believed that performance evaluations were not even relevant to their jobs.

This is unfortunate considering the amount of resources that organizations devote to conducting performance evaluations. CEB research says that when we take into account how much money organizations are investing in their performance appraisal technology and how much time managers are spending to evaluate their employees, on average U.S. organizations spend $3,000 per year, per employee. This implies that billions of dollars are spent across the country because more than 90% of American companies provide performance evaluations at least once a year.

Why are employees so frustrated about the way they are evaluated, despite all the time and money being spent on these evaluations? What are organizations missing? We believe that one clue lies in the fact that 71% of the American employees thought that their evaluations had problems in the domain of fairness.

The authors ask the right question: what are the specific things that organizations can do to increase perceptions of fairness during the process of performance evaluations?

People are much more likely to find reviews fair is they are based on the employee's own past performance, showing progress over time, as opposed to comparing the worker's performance compared with others in the same period.

On Futurology

David Evans, the former chief futurist of Cisco, lays out his thoughts on being a futurist:

I often get asked how I predict the future. Let’s be clear: Predicting the future is impossible. In fact, being a futurist is less about predicting the future and more about understanding where the world is now and where it will be tomorrow. (Feel free to ditch those crystal balls.) It’s impossible to exactly predict how technology will impact our lives 10, 20, and even 30 years from now. However, there are several proven techniques that narrow down the countless possibilities to prognosticate a probable future.

His techniques (which are mine, too):

Read. A lot.

Apply proven principles like Metcalfe's Law, Moore's Law, Cooper's Law: Avoid linear extrapolation, expect exponential change.

Backcasting, or looking backward to look forward. Evans lays out a situation, like the idea of flying cars:

Consider a future world in which flying cars are everywhere. “What steps are needed for the vision to become reality in the future?” Now come back to the present and think about all the things that would be required for flying cars to be developed and used effectively. Such a list could include vehicle costs, air traffic control considerations, energy sources, acceptable flying ranges, take off and landing requirements, safety of “drivers” and the public, collision avoidance technology, networking and computing systems, and alternative solutions.

Next, determine the viability and timeframe of each consideration. The information created from this analysis form a picture of whether or not flying cars are possible–and if so, when.

I like this Marshall McLuhan quote, that sort of lines up with Evans' technique:

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

We can’t know the future, especially today in the postnormal era: the new normal is there is no normal. But next year is unlikely to be like the last one.

Remember that when we look into McLuhan’s rear-view mirror we are seeing ourselves just as much as the road behind. And walking backwards into the future means we have to sense our way, cautiously stepping backwards and listening for the echoes.

Quote of the Day

The fact that a question is unsettling is not a justification for avoiding it.

| Jeff Sebo, Should Chimpanzees Be Considered ‘Persons’?

On Automation of Policing

This could be spinned as some chilling tale of surveillance, but I prefer to think of it as augmenting inadequate police resources in increasing public safety. Daniel Oberhaus reports on China Is Using Facial Recognition Technology to Send Jaywalkers Fines Through Text Messages:

Emblematic of this unprecedented surveillance apparatus are the facial recognition devices deployed in Shenzhen last April that are meant to deter jaywalkers. These devices take photos of offenders and display them on large LED screens above the intersection, along with their name and part of their government ID number. (There is also a website showing photos and information for jaywalkers in Shenzhen.)

Now Intellifusion, the Chinese artificial intelligence company behind these devices, is taking them a step further by partnering with mobile carriers and social media platforms such as WeChat and Sina Weibo to send text messages directly to offenders as soon as they are caught jaywalking by the cameras.

Since implementing the devices, Chinese traffic police have identified nearly 14,000 jaywalkers at a single Shenzhen intersection alone, according to the South China Morning Post. Moreover, Chinese officials claim that the devices have lowered the number of jaywalkers in the city.

I'm still waiting for the headgear that tells me the names of people that I have been introduced to, and can't recall their names. Of course, this week we can't talk about how Facebook could provide that service for us.

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[weareinstrangetimes]

This Day In History - Jan 20, 2021 |  a work in progress...

Immediately after the inauguration of Joseph R Biden as the 46th President of The United States of America, the Republican Party, along with the right wing disinformation network and their allies abroad and whatever nook and cranny they can be found in will attempt to re-write history. They will point the finger of blame for everything they are responsible for including their complicity in the corruption, deceit, atrocities, breaking of all norms, denigrating the Constitution, insurrection and attempted sedition based on the lies and conspiracy theories by their nice leader and traitor-in-chief.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A post from October with a lot of research, graphs, and links, topped with a video from Meidas Touch

The Trump Depression: The Economy Does Better Under the Democrats

One of the rare occasions when DJT has told the truth.

https://weareinstrangetimes.tumblr.com/post/633392690647711746/the-trump-depression-the-economy-does-better

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The National Debt.

Trump’s most enduring legacy could be the historic rise in the national debt

COVID-19

One Year, 400,000 Coronavirus Deaths: How the U.S. Guaranteed Its Own Failure

Cremation Limits Lifted In LA Due To 'Backlog' As COVID-19 Deaths Skyrocket

~~~~~~~~~~~~     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I continuously see posts in FB, and shared from one person to another, in many edited forms, that are to be their “reminder” of where we are currently, for posterity. Most of them will have some personal points of fact in them such as the current price of gasoline in their area. Most of them contain the usual false or misleading talking points used by the GOP and the right wing disinformation circles. They aren’t outrageously nonsensical enough to have come from the duck pond people, so they mostly are just the usual disinformation from the Republicans. Case in point: Facebook post I am making this post so it will show back up as a future memory on my timeline:Today is Biden's Inauguration ...Gasoline is currently $2.17 per gallon in Checotah OK. Interest rates are 2.25% for a 30 year mortgage. The stock market closed at 31,188.38 +257.86 (0.83%) today even though we have been fighting COVID for 11 months. Our GDP growth for the 3rd Qtr was 33.1 percent. We had the best economy ever until COVID and it is recovering well. We have not had any new wars or conflicts in the last 4 years. North Korea has been under control and has not been testing any missiles. ISIS has not been heard from for over 3 years. The housing market is the strongest it has been in years. Homes have appreciated at an unbelievable rate and sell well. Wood prices are high with 2x2x8' going around $5.66/stud at Home Depot... And let’s not forget that peace deals in the Middle East were signed by 4 countries—unprecedented! Unemployment sits at 6.7% in spite of COVID.

Point - Counter Point

My reply: The 33% gain in GDP is true. That is still 10% below the Q1 level after the 31.4% drop in Q2. And even farther below the Q4 2019 level. The reason for the 33% gain from a 31.4% loss is due to the stimulus pumped into the economy from the Cares Act that Nancy Pelosi worked so hard on getting. https://www.brookings.edu/.../dont-let-flashy-3rd.../ 

Below is a running tracking of the GDP from 1947 to the latest data. There are two major drops in the GDP. One starting in Q3 2008, and another dramatic one beginning Q1 2020.

   Reply to me: plus adding manufacturing that was outsourced to offshore manufacturing, lowering tax rates on business, and a multitude of other things. If you think this new stimulus bill they passed will benefit us we'll see since they seem more interested in sending money to other countries including enemies.

My Response:

Which manufacturing jobs were those? I know there has always been a lot of "talk" about it. Many corporations took advantage of their tax windfall to buy back their own stocks. Some who did upgrades added automation which resulted in loss of jobs for human workers, that robots could do. Some of those high profile corporations that were on display at the White House who gave out $1000 bonuses (to high ranking employees) laid workers off and scaled back which more than made up for it. Many CEOs and upper management received raises and very little went to the working class employees. There were a few companies that actually did increase wages and benefits to their employees, and Kudos to them. But I think they were in the minority.

The money going to foreign countries is not anything new and it was also included in the previous years budgets. It was part of the annual budget, in the defense portion, and was not part of the stimulus bill. They combined voting on them to try to get them both passed. The House voted on them separately and the Senate was to vote on the combined bill. The talking points are merely political, knowing full well that the majority of the population were not going to do any research.

N Korea? While exchanging love letters they were continuing their nuclear war head development under the cloud of a love affair. They had already perfected and tested their long range missiles within the last 4 years. Missiles that could reach the Western United States.

Peace treaties between non-warring countries? A nice political ploy. Bebe was returning the favor for the previous administration's help with his re-election. The two peoples still at odds are Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians were left out. The Palestinians want the same thing that Israel has always wanted and rightly so. Their own homeland/country and recognition on the world stage. The conflicts in that region, aside from with Iran, were with Qatar, (where we have a strategically shared air base and thousands of troops, and the other strategic partners in the region. Why? Because Jared Kushner got turned down when he was asking Qatar to bail out his failing 666 5th Ave property. It was revenge. So, that's like throwing gas on a pile of wood, lighting it, and then offering water to put the fire out. Those "peace treaties" were nothing more than normalization and cooperation agreements with some promised "deals" thrown in.

Point - Counter Point Another post being passed around in FB.

I've heard everyone else's hatred, rhetoric and blatant lies for the past four years, so now I'm expressing my opinion. If you don't like it, you know where the delete button is. Let me be clear, I'm not a Biden fan. I think he's corrupt, a liar, a racist fanatic, he's in bed with China and probably suffers dementia. He has done nothing to improve anything in his 47 year political career. But what has Trump done in the past 4 years?The ′′ arrogant ′′ in the White House negotiated four Middle East Peace Accords, something that 71 years of endless political intervention and war failed to produce.The White House ′′ buffoon ′′ is the first president to not involve us in an outside war since Eisenhower.The ′′ racist ′′ in the White House has had the biggest impact on the economy, bringing jobs and reducing unemployment among the black and Latina population of ANY other president. Never. Ever.The ′′ liar ′′ in the White House has exposed profound, widespread and long-standing corruption in the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Republican and Democratic parties.The White House ′′ White Supremacist ′′ turned NATO around and made them start paying their debts.The White House's ′′ dumb ′′ neutralized North Koreans and prevented them from sending missiles to Japan and threatening the Western US.The ′′ xenophobic ′′ in the White House changed our relationship with the Chinese, brought hundreds of businesses back to the US and revived the economy.This same ′′ clown ′′ reduced taxes, increased the standard deduction in his IRS statement from $ 12,500 to $ 24,400 for married couples and prompted the stock market to rise to record levels, positively impacting retirement accounts of tens of millions of citizens.The ′′ idiot ′′ in the White House accelerated the development of multiple COVID vaccines that are now available or will be soon. And yet we still don't have a vaccine for SARS, bird flu, ebola, or a number of diseases that emerged during previous administrations.The ′′ orange man ′′ in the White House rebuilt our military, which the Obama administration paralyzed and fired 214 key generals and admirals in their first year of term.Got it you don't like it. Many of you hate and despise him completely. How special of you. He is serving you and the WHOLE American people. What are you doing besides insulting him and laughing that he got the China virus Some of you even expected COVID to be the cause of her disappearance. (Ah, the left. The party of ′′ tolerance ′′Please re-educate me on what Biden has accomplished for America in his 47 years in office, as well as enriching the entire Biden family. BTW where's Hunter?I'll take the ′′ clown ′′ any day versus a corrupt, hypocritical, racist, fork-tongue liar. I want a strong leader who isn't afraid to kick butts when necessary. I don't need a father figure. I don't need a liar. That's what Hollywood, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS and The New York Times are for.Call me dumb, racist, super diffuser or part of the basket of deplorables. I don't care!God bless Donald Trump, the best and least appreciated president in US history.

Reply:

Counterpoint part 1: I realize you are not the author of that post. I have seen this post re-posted many times in various forms here in FB including by friends and I didn't respond. But since this is my post I will. I have also seen it at a site where gamers, musicians, music enthusiasts and creative folks hang out. It did not originate from there. The origin I believe is in part anyway from the same conspiracy theorist group that also makes up wild and crazy claims of former heads of state and officials being arrested, that never are. And people dying, who are still alive. And a dead person secretly being alive and running a crusade, who is still dead. And pizza joints having basements with trafficking rings, that have no basements. And miracle cures for COVID that are not proven and can cause more damage if not used for what they were intended for, even if you have a really cool pillow and a clean aquarium. And, and, and ... 5G, windmills, George Soros, Bill Gates, Forest Gump, Mr. Magoo, and voodoo doctors doing it with little green men in their dreams. 

Do they ever question why everything they believe is bunk? Do they ever get angry for being deceived? Do they ever feel foolish for looking foolish for posting such foolish nonsense? No. They just pass it off and wait for the next wild tale to spread and swear by. 

There are those who praise so-called Peace Treaties between nations that are not at war, leaving out the 1 culture that is affected and wants their own sovereignty and homeland, in every one of those so called "peace treaties". They suggest he should get a Nobel Peace Prize, and some even think he has been awarded it because he puts a fake facsimile of the medal in some of his posts. Those "peace treaties" I don't think were any more than cooperation and normalization agreements, and in some cases containing agreements to make financial transactions. 

The guy they tout as not having involved us in any wars has brought us very close to nuclear conflicts with his loud mouth and nasty tweets. The one guy who was the most imminent danger learned quickly that he could dupe the the mad Tweeter by giving him praise. In turn, he received what his father and grand father, also dictators before him, could never get from a U.S. President. What they got, with very little in return, was their most coveted prize, an audience with the Tweeter which gave them credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of their own subservient population. And they got an end to our annual readiness maneuvers with their Southern neighbor and our other strategic allies which was their second most coveted prize. Then while exchanging love letters with the mad Tweeter, they were able to secretly continue with their nuclear warhead development. And since they already have long range missile capability to reach the United States (tested during the mad Tweeter's reign) they are not only a major threat to our allies in the South Pacific, they are an imminent threat to the mainland U.S. 

The "buffoon" (referenced in the list of fables) in question also abandoned our allies that were instrumental in fighting ISIL (who is not completely eliminated) leaving them to be threatened with genocide (our betrayed allies) by another despot whose country hosts real estate developments the mad Tweeter has his name on (Trump Towers), and another crazed dictator who has been guilty of genocide and using chemical weapons in his own country on his own citizens. Those allies were also guarding the prisons that the ISIL prisoners were housed in, and they were allowed to escape. In fact his claims of completely eliminating ISIL himself 100% can be debunked by his own State Department. https://www.factcheck.org/.../trumps-isis-claim-goes-to.../ That was in 2017 and 2018. So, if ISIL (ISIS) was 100% defeated by 2018, why were we still fighting them in late 2019? Trump walks back claim of defeating ‘100% of the ISIS caliphate’ https://www.rollcall.com/.../trump-walks-back-claim-of.../ The claims by the right wing propagandists and Trump regarding unemployment for Blacks, and Latinos can be corrected by simply doing some research. AP FACT CHECK: Trump on unemployment for blacks, Latinos https://apnews.com/article/e1afa3f19a054540a7c34ca193bdd9ae Quote from the fable: "The White House ′′ White Supremacist ′′ turned NATO around and made them start paying their debts." What he did was weaken our alliances, playing right in the hands of one of our most dangerous adversaries, the guy who helped him to get into office. Something he has done throughout his term. And, his alt-facts and those of the right wing deceivers are easily fact checked. FactChecking Trump’s NATO Remarks https://www.factcheck.org/.../factchecking-trumps-nato.../ Trump made many claims about bringing jobs back to the U.S. and creating new jobs. Many of those things he was taking credit for early on were things that were already in the works long before he was helped into the White House. 2017: https://www.factcheck.org/.../trump-jobs-returning.../ 2020: We can reshore manufacturing jobs, but Trump hasn’t done it https://www.epi.org/publica.../reshoring-manufacturing-jobs/

There are a lot of claims around the GOP tax cuts. Sure, the standard deduction was increased. So has the cost of living due to illegal trade wars and prices sky rocketing. And many deductions for those who itemized were eliminated. Many are still waiting for their "post cards" so they can file their taxes. Those who really benefitted were those who are not in a month to month struggle to make ends meet. The corporate tax cuts that the Trump and GOP promoters said would trickle down and benefit the working class family wage earners was not realized. Corporations used their GOP granted socialism to buy back their own stocks. And many of those who touted handing big bonuses out in turn laid other workers off or eliminated jobs which more than made up for it. 

The stock market has been used by Trump and his mouthpieces as an economic indicator. While some people do benefit with returns on their retirement plans and stock portfolios, it is not a barometer of how working families are getting along, many who have to work multiple jobs just to pay rent and eat. And not everybody dabbles in the stock market. There have been ups and downs in the market. There was one period in March of 2020, where all gains in the market were wiped out back to February 2017. What happens in that type of situation? Those companies that can wrangle it buy back their own shares at lower prices which artificially gives the market another instant boost.

Counterpoint part 2:>>> Let's talk about infrastructure week. Still waiting on that one since February or March of 2017. We'll have to wait until real President-elect Joe Biden takes office. 

How about Operation Warp Speed and vaccine development. Accelerated vaccine development is a good thing, and because there were decades of research behind it and technological advances it was possible to accomplish. Joe Biden even acknowledged Trump, or at least Operation Warp Speed as a positive move. We can at least give him credit for that, since he botched the response with delays, denial, disinformation, and creating a herd mentality to push back on safety and mitigation in order to recklessly reach herd immunity through infection and death.> It should be noted that the first vaccine that was approved was from Pfizer, and they did not participate in Operation Warp Speed where the others received funding. They funded themselves although Trump deceitfully takes credit. And those 20,000,000 vaccine doses that Trump, Pence and the Trump administration were promising by the end of December 2020? As of January 8th, 6.6 million initial doses have been administered according to NBC News MAP Covid-19 vaccination tracker across the U.S. https://www.nbcnews.com/.../map-covid-19-vaccination...

After Trump "wanted to play it down" the U.S. as of Friday, January 8 2021, has surpassed 22 million COVID-19 cases, with a record 269,420 new cases, and over 372,000 deaths (Jan 9). https://www.nbcnews.com/.../u-s-covid-19-cases-hit-22...

Trump and his enablers and apologists often talk about how he rebuilt the "depleted military" that he inherited from President Obama. As with most Trump claims, it is Mostly False. Quote from the fable: "The ′′ orange man ′′ in the White House rebuilt our military, which the Obama administration paralyzed and fired 214 key generals and admirals in their first year of term. "Regarding the firing of the Generals, I saw another figure, 197, that was posted in a publication for retired folks in The Villages in Florida. Others have said it first appeared in the alt-right fake news Breitbart site. As with most things that roll around like a marble in an empty box in the right wing disinformation arena things are just made up, or facts spun and twisted like a taffy pretzel. In 2010, President Obama did replace his top Afghanistan war commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal due to in-bickering in his national security team. He replaced McChrystal with his boss and mentor, Gen. David H. Petraeus. https://www.nytimes.com/.../24/us/politics/24mcchrystal.html There have been other firings, replacements, and retirements. Most absences are for good reason and there is no wholesale purging as the right wing conspiracy theorists would lead you to believe. https://skeptoid.com/.../24/president-obama-purge-military/ Quoted from Snopes: "The U.S. national defense budget was slightly reduced during Obama's second term, in large part due to efforts by Congress to limit government spending and the withdrawal of troops from the Middle East. "Who controlled both the House and Senate? The Republican Party. https://www.snopes.com/.../trump-inherit-depleted-military/ AP FACT CHECK: Trump's Overblown Boasts About Military, Vets https://www.usnews.com/.../ap-fact-check-trumps-overblown... General Michael Flynn was also fired in 2014 from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama. Too many connections with RU it seems. And something I didn't previously know, was after he was fired he became a contributor to RT (government funded, Russia Today). https://themoscowproject.org/collusion/flynn-fired-dia/ I had always thought he was fired due to his overt Islamophobia which didn't sit well with some of our allies. He was advising Trump in 2016 on foreign policy and national security and subsequently during his campaign transition. Then he was appointed National Security Adviser in the administration (despite warnings not to), and he brought much of his baggage with him. It was discovered that he had previous contacts with the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. and was accused of trying to undermine U.S. policy. He was also accused of being a lobbyist for the same country where Trump's name is licensed on the Trump Towers Istanbul (that's 2 of them). All this while receiving classified briefings. He was fired or asked to resign just 3 weeks into Trump's term. https://apnews.com/article/ce90066b4e20483da79adf21910da0c7

Another quote from the fable list: "The buffoon in the White House has exposed the deep, widespread, and long-standing corruption in the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Republican and Democratic parties." While there have been some procedural errors and some ethical issues, most of them are small compared with the real issues at hand. Now, the "buffoon" has not exposed anything. All the noise is to cover up and deflect from the corruption and high crimes and misdemeanors of said buffoon and his accomplices, enablers and apologists. That is the way the GOP does things.

"47 years" seems to be one of the fall backs when they run out of any other fables, or simply can't think of anything else to say. That would bring us back to 1973 making him 31 years old at that time. Joe Biden was a U.S. Senator representing Delaware from 1973 to 2009, re-elected several times. He was Vice President in the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2017, two full terms. He ran for president in 1988 and 2008.He has been on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In his early years he worked on consumer protection, environmental issues, and greater government accountability, arms control. He has worked as a public servant most of his adult life. He has probably done a lot more in his 47 years since being elected U.S. Senator than most people asking what he has done. While some of his views and policies in the past were controversial at the time, like most people, he has evolved and adapted to the changes in culture and public opinion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden...

The person who wrote the fable list states he will take the ′′ clown ′′ any day versus a corrupt, hypocritical, racist, fork-tongue liar. The Impeached "clown" in fact is all of the above and has been identified as a pathological liar and probably the most documented liar in history. The "clown" is also labeled as racist, corrupt, a con-artist, a xenophobe and a bigot among other things too numerous to list. Many people have said that. Also, unindicted co-conspirator, Individual 1, in crimes another person is serving prison time for. Individual 1 was only ‘not indicted’ due to Justice Department policies on not indicting a sitting president for crimes committed.

to be continued....

[disabilitymissunderstood]

welp you guys been requesting me to do one, so here i did! enjoy!

1: Full name

Amy)I prefer alex) Kathrine 

2: Age/20

3: 3 Fears

men(i am working on it), small spaces and being forgotten

4: 3 things I love

animals, music, baking/cooking

5: 4 turns on

being held, kissing, hugging, and smiling

6: 4 turns off

yelling, being lied too, betrayal, being mean

7: My best friend

my dog

8: Sexual orientation

 g-a-y (remember i am both genders)

9: My best first date

never been on  a date D:

10: How tall am I

5′4 i am short :c

11: What do I miss

the old me, and my brother Micheal.

12: What time were I born

in the morning (dont know the time)

13: Favourite color

 red, black, grey, and white

14: Do I have a crush

yesss

15: Favorite quote

“people don’t die from suicide, they die from sadness”

16: Favourite place 

library, hot topic, humane society, pet-co/pet smart, cuddling with Gracie, in bed.

17: Favourite food

 pastaa and rice

18: Do I use sarcasm

A L W A Y S

19: What am I listening to right now

 never to late by three days grace

20: First thing I notice in new person

 there attitude 

21: Shoe size/ 8

22: Eye color/  B R O W N

23: Hair color/ B R O W N

24: Favourite style of clothing

anything from Hot topic/spencers

25: Ever done a prank call?

maybe when i was younger??

27: Meaning behind my URL/

i am disabled and just wanna let others that are aswell its okay to be different, you’re not alone<3

28: Favourite movie/ dogs purpose

29: Favourite song/ to many

30: Favourite band/ lots

31: How I feel right now

my neck is killing me >:(

32: Someone I love/ my dog

33: My current relationship status/ S I N G L E

34: My relationship with my parents/ good?

35: Favorite holiday

Christmas, thanksgiving, and Halloween

36: Tattoos and piercing i have

 piercings- my boobs, my septum and my ears (i plan on getting more) and tattoos i haven’t gotten around yet

37: Tattoos and piercing i want/ check my blog

38: The reason I joined Tumblr

just to have a place to express my feelings and likes

39: Do I and my last ex hate each other?

Y E S 

40: Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts?

Sometimes

41: Have I ever kissed the last person you texted?

yesss

42: When did I last hold hands?

yesterday!

43: How long does it take me to get ready in the morning?

like 10 mins

44: Have You shaved your legs in the past three days?

yus

45: Where am I right now?

in bed

46: If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me?

my brothers

47: Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level?

loud

48: Do I live with my Mom and Dad?

currently living w my mom but i am going to be moving into my apartment soon!

49: Am I excited for anything?

moving into my apartment soon! also applying for college soon!

50: Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to?

yes!

51: How often do I wear a fake smile?

L O T S 

52: When was the last time I hugged someone?

today

53: What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me?

i would be balling rn

54: Is there anyone I trust even though I should not?

yes

55: What is something I disliked about today?

nothing

56: If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

mmm good question, probably ronnie radke

57: What do I think about most?

my future and sometimes my past...

58: What’s my strangest talent?

breathing

59: Do I have any strange phobias?

small places

60: Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?

some days behind it, others in front of it

61: What was the last lie I told?

mmmmm im not sure

62: Do I perfer talking on the phone or video chatting online?

texting

63: Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

yes yes

64: Do I believe in magic?

yes

65: Do I believe in luck?

for other people? yes, but for me? no

66: What’s the weather like right now?

its storming (rain and thunder)

67: What was the last book I’ve read?

fifty shades of grey ^_^

68: Do I like the smell of gasoline?

yes ;,,,,;

69: Do I have any nicknames?

little one, poobear, princess

70: What was the worst injury I’ve ever had?

cut on my neck, deep scar on my arm, and my head

71: Do I spend money or save it?

save it 

72: Can I touch my nose with a tounge?

no

73: Is there anything pink in 10 feets from me?

no

74: Favourite animal?

slothes are so cute! (i generally don’t have a favorite animal i love all)

75: What was I doing last night at 12 AM?

watching netflix

76: What do I think is Satan’s last name is?

mmm don’t know

77: What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it?

sunflower by post malone

78: How can you win my heart?

by me food and show me u actually love me

79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone?

“she was a hero”

80: What is my favorite word?

F U C K

81: My top 5 blogs on tumblr

@foodie4ever @tropiclyy @sadviolences @traaumaa @beyondbrokenvixi

82: If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say?

fuck you T R U  M P

83: Do I have any relatives in jail?

don’t know

84: I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power?

let me fly xD

85: What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on?

good question, i am not sure.

86: What is my current desktop picture?

my dog

87: Had sex?

Y E S

88: Bought condoms?

mhm

89: Gotten pregnant?

almost

90: Failed a class?

yes :)

91: Kissed a boy?

yes 

92: Kissed a girl?

yus

93: Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain?

yes

94: Had job?

yes

95: Left the house without my wallet?

many times lmao

96: Bullied someone on the internet?

never

97: Had sex in public?

god no

98: Played on a sports team?

yes

99: Smoked weed?

yes 

100: Did drugs?

yes

101: Smoked cigarettes?

yes

102: Drank alcohol?

yes

103: Am I a vegetarian/vegan?

V E G A N

104: Been overweight?

yes but currently trying to lose it!

105: Been underweight?

i used to be skinny...(used to be anorexic)

106: Been to a wedding?

yes

107: Been on the computer for 5 hours straight?

yes

108: Watched TV for 5 hours straight?

yes

109: Been outside my home country?

yes

110: Gotten my heart broken?

many times

111: Been to a professional sports game?

yes

112: Broken a bone?

yes

113: Cut myself?

i still struggle with it..

114: Been to prom?

no

115: Been in airplane?

yes

116: Fly by helicopter?

yes

117: What concerts have I been to?

marianatrench, post malone, nickleback, miley cyrus, and justin bieber-

118: Had a crush on someone of the same sex?

yes

119: Learned another language?

yes

120: Wore make up?

still do

121: Lost my virginity before I was 18?

yes

122: Had oral sex?

yes

123: Dyed my hair?

many times

124: Voted in a presidential election?

yes

125: Rode in an ambulance?

yes

126: Had a surgery?

yes

127: Met someone famous?

yes

128: Stalked someone on a social network?

god no

129: Peed outside?

camping...

130: Been fishing?

love it

131: Helped with charity?

always

132: Been rejected by a crush?

yes

133: Broken a mirror?

yes

134: What do I want for birthday?

happinesss

135: How many kids do I want and what will be their names?

i want atleast 4 or 6..

136: Was I named after anyone?

my grandfather(my dads dad) mother

137: Do I like my handwriting?

sure

138: What was my favourite toy as a child?

barbie

139: Favourite Tv Show?

IZombie and big mouth

140: Where do I want to live when older?

in the country.

141: Play any musical instrument?

piano and drums

142: One of my scars, how did I get it?

self-harm

143: Favourite pizza toping?

everything that isn’t meat

144: Am I afraid of the dark?

nah

145: Am I afraid of heights?

yes

146: Have I ever got caught sneaking out or doing anything bad?

when i was 12

147: Have I ever tried my hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end?

yes

148: What I’m really bad at

not yelling

149: What my greatest achievments are

graduating treatment 

150: The meanest thing somebody has ever said to me

“hey, i fucked your dead brother last night” ( a bully said that to me )

151: What I’d do if I won in a lottery

buy so many cane corsos

152: What do I like about myself

my personality 

153: My closest Tumblr friend

don’t have one

154: Something I fantasise about

a better life

155: Any question you’d like?

anything!