#i love humanity and i love this methodology that allows us to get to know us all better when it's done right/properly

[exoexid]

i love archaeology so much

[1427]

dirge

Boyd Crowder X OFC (Beatle)

Setting: in the WoOoOods (Justified Season 1, with Boyd’s militia)

Summary: Boyd is sick of being full of shit. When one of the recruits for his new flock seems to see him for who he really is, he decides it might not be so bad to let her.

Word count: 5.5k

Warnings: CHARACTER DEATH, Boyd Crowder is Boyd Crowder, mentions of white nationalism, mentions of methamphetamine, religious imagery and references, mentions of militias, cults, and Boyd comparing himself to Christ (see above). NSFW WARNINGS; poooooooorly written smut, somno, rough fucking, unprotected piv, references to oral, jerking off, mentions of religion being used in sexual roleplay. mentions of other truly questionable roleplay scenarios, free-use dynamics

A/n: I started watching Justified a few days ago and Boyd Crowder really is one of the characters of all time, isn't he? Beatle is my OC who likes speed and sometimes sells it and sometimes strips but I obviously couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if Beatle had been in one of those trailers he’d held looking for people to follow his cause. Especially since she's just absolutely fucking dazzled by charm and confidence and she'd love him in a way he'd probably never been loved before. Couldn't not write it & I broke my own heart.

Inb4 I disappear for 3 months again

18+ mdni 

✞

Boyd didn't think his daddy would hang her up there with the rest of them. 

She was special, didn't he know that? Couldn't he tell? 

Her hair’s never smelled like gunpowder before. It's more a feeling than a smell, and it stings but he's grateful that it hurts. He deserves it. 

Boyd didn't think his daddy would do any of this. But he wasn't thinking, was he? He should have seen it coming, should have known. Not ‘should have’ in the way that hindsight is 20/20 and you can make wanton wishes about the past; no Boyd should have because he does know better. He's smarter than to let something like this happen.

✞

When he got out of prison he knew he was full of shit. Same shit he'd always been full of. He figures it ain't really like lyin’ so much if everyone knows you're never showing your real face. Talking is more like a game. Trying to spit the words out around the secret biting between his teeth. Secrets? He figures he's allowed to have those. Like what his intentions might have really been when he'd started recruiting junkies to be saved. Be his flock. 

Different vocabulary, same game, same moves, same outcome. 

Boyd did think that there would be a different outcome this time. Everyone always ends up dead, but how could that happen this time? He knows that putting a gun to someone's head and mocking them into sobriety ain't exactly safe and its definitely not legal but it's what works. Who could rightly question his methodologies if he was getting such socially acceptable results? 

The point (as the point of things usually is for Boyd) is that there are enough qualifiers for him to feign confusion and innocence at any question of his motivations. Like he was so damn good at. Boyd had a reply for anything. A defense for everything he'd ever done. Everything he'd ever do. Else he wouldn't be caught doing it. 

This time was easier. This time actually felt like it could be something more. That even though he was using his knowledge of the human condition, and its drive to follow a strong and confident leader, that this time he was doing it for something good at least.

How could getting rid of meth in Harlan county be bad? Boyd asks himself that a lot these days. Whenever he starts wondering how full of shit he is again. And he tells himself it doesn't matter if he's lying about every damn thing, even to himself, if he's getting people clean and following the Lord. 

He doesn't feel that guilty, though. Not enough to really do anything different. His flock is his flock, and when he talks about God he makes sure to word it just right. So they hear it and they think of him. Boyd’s teachings are their gospels, and sometimes Boyd quotes scripture so he can call on God like he's name-dropping a celebrity. It's what works. It's what always worked.

If you’re good at saying the right thing to the right person you can get just about anything you want. If you're good at finding the perfect time to say it, you can keep it. Gettin’ stuff is no good if you can't keep it. That's what all these Dixie boys always got wrong about business. Hell, what everyone got wrong about everything - getting people to just give you what you want always feels so much better than taking it. Usually ends better to.

Before prison, for most of his life, it was skin-heads. He'd already known the slurs and the on-the-surface racial epithets from growing up but it only took a few weekends at the library and a couple eavesdropped Klan meetings to understand what these men were searching for. Only took a few well timed bible verses and an encouraging nod or two to get them to listen. The hardest thing of the whole operation was keeping them from being stupid when he wasn't around.

“Can't plan for everything.” “Sometimes shit just happens.” and “It is what it is.” Are just some bullshit excuses people tell themselves. Because Boyd knows that anything can be planned for. It's just a matter of looking. It's just a matter of knowing. He knows that you don't enter a room without knowing there's an exit and that you don't open your mouth unless you know exactly what could be said back to you. 

Boyd knows how to get what he wants.

But since he's been out of prison he doesn't know what the fuck he wants. So he does what he always does but this time it's with words like shepherd, divine calling, and manifesting righteous love. It feels nice to be leading through positive affirmations instead of bigotry. If only because Boyd really resented how objectively moronic white supremacy was - anything ‘supremacy’ was a fucking joke. And those boys in the brotherhood thinking they were God's gift to the genepool? Hard not to see it when you're lookin’, how ridiculous the whole damn thing is.

That's why it didn't feel all that bad talking down to them. Manipulating them into whatever the fuck he felt like. Boyd wonders about it when he feels this tugging in his gut sometimes when he talks to his flock. It doesn't bother him enough to stop, but just enough to wonder why he hadn’t felt it before.

Maybe it's because she's watching and she knows he's full of shit. 

That doesn't usually make any difference to Boyd and his ability to believably speak lies but every time he meets her eyes he feels like she can see his soul, the things behind what he's saying, and it makes him want to stop. Like he's embarrassed. Just a little. Just barely. It's so foreign to Boyd that if he didn't know just about every physical tell a person's body could have, he wouldn't have been able to place it. 

If Boyd had to find the words to explain it he might have said it felt like he wanted her to see him. That his body and his mind have, as most humans have, the desire to be vulnerable with another human being. That he was meeting something in her that his inner self craved. These were words he'd use. But actually feeling them was harder. His list of wants in life is small and it's been the same things for as long as he's been playing snake in the grass. She's not on it. She never was before. 

✞

She isn't anymore. 

For a few weeks, Boyd let himself have something he didn't think he was allowed. Something he'd told himself he didn't deserve. 

He wonders now if he was full of shit that whole time too. If letting her hold him and kiss him and fall in love with who he really was - if he wasn't just doing it to see if he could.

Her hair never burned his nostrils before.

It's not meant to do that. 

Kissing her forehead never tasted like blood either.  Maybe it should have. Maybe if he'd tasted blood the first time he'd kissed her none of this would have happened. 

Boyd doesn't understand how his daddy couldn't tell she was special. Not when he’d seen it the second she opened her mouth down the barrel of his own gun. Boyd knows she didn't go quiet and he knows if she could open her mouth and talk right now her throat would be sore and raw and ruined. 

He tries not think about how he couldn't hear her. He’s not sure if he wishes he had. 

✞

Beatle didn't get it at first but it didn't take her long. Faster than he'd expected. And maybe if he'd met her on a college campus he wouldn't have been so impressed with her. But what was Boyd ever gonna be doing on a college campus? No, as far as he was concerned it was like lookin’ at himself. 

Almost.

She didn't want the same things, and that didn't lead her to be the same type of person Boyd was. But it didn't stop him from seeing himself in her. All her big words and sweet banter. Even with a damn gun to her head she knew how to be cool. He thought he might be in love with her. 

She'd told him later that it was because she'd seen the way he'd looked at her and knew he wasn't going to shoot her. He told her he still would have shot her if she didn't agree to quit using. She tells him she loves him for the first time. 

It had only been a few days since that had happened, them meeting, and after she’d said it she tried to explain it away. It's the first time he sees her not being so cool. It’s the first time he sees the potential for something more.

Not because she'd slipped up and been vulnerable or given him something to use against her. No, it was the feeling in his chest when she'd professed such genuine admiration for what would generally be considered something he should have kept to himself.

The quiet part he's gotten so good at not saying out loud. The secret between his teeth. She can see it.

✞

Days go by and he's certain she can see it. The way Raylan can see some of it. She starts calling him ‘the prince' around camp and she thinks he doesn't understand why. No one else does, and he supposes that's probably why he's letting her get away with it. He's amused by it. By her. Always saying something that ends up surprising him. 

Just some gaunt addict he found in a shitty trailer in children's pajamas, but she's making observations about him in comparison to Italian philosophy. She can't keep herself from pointing out when he ‘mistakenly’ attributes some quote from a book or movie to himself instead. She uses words he doesn't know.

Those aren't the things that impress Boyd. What catches his attention is that she never uses the words like manipulate or Machiavelli or cult. If she ever does call him out on some misattributed quote she won't call him a liar, and she won't do it in earshot of anyone else. And when she uses her big girl words she looks at him like she's teasing him instead of trying to impress him. She knows when he's wrong about the obscure ass Bible stories too and he has no idea how she knows this shit. 

Going out of her way to call him on being full of shit - without ever actually saying it at all.

She's good. She keeps being better at it than he'd thought someone could be. Someone like her. Someone who wasn't really anyone.

Maybe that's why Boyd felt like he could let her in on it. Just a little bit. Because she could see it and he knew she could and she never called him a liar or a bastard or a psycho or anything like that. She didn't even try to leave. If anything, she seemed charmed by it. 

He didn't think too much about how it might feel to let someone in like that. What it could be like to show your real face and still be wanted. 

✞

Their first kiss doesn't taste anything like blood. 

It tasted like tobacco and dirt and her.

She'd been trying to figure a way to sleep closer to him during the nights. Boyd figures this out after she finally ‘confesses’ that she hasn't been sleeping well,  she's ‘scared of the dark’.

He asks her how long it took her to come up with that bullshit.

She says two days.

He asks why she didn't come up with something better and can't argue when she says there really wasn't anything that didn't sound obvious.

It takes about an hour for her to be pressed up against him. They'd started with their sleeping bags a few feet away from each other, but as they talk the distance gets smaller. Boyd isn't sure if it's her or him that's moving in. Isn't he supposed to pay attention to stuff like that? Shouldn't he be at least a little aware of what she says and what she doesn't say and how she's moving and speaking and staring? 

He's in the middle of a story about one of the banks, talking at her about some really ‘cool’ shit he'd said and never gotten to tell anyone (he never thought he'd wanted to) - and without a word she unzips her sleeping bag, unzips his sleeping bag, and rearranges. Making enough room for her to fit right up against him.

And she does.

Boyd keeps talking the whole time. Finishing his story. She listens, and replies, and neither one of them comment on what she's doing. Neither one of them say anything when she's nestled up against him.

He thinks it through… what to do in this situation. What outcome did he want? His dick is hard but it's not aching. He could sleep. He figures making her wait won't hurt his chances if he decides he wants them. 

So he tells her politely goodnight and he's surprised when she doesn't protest. 

Beatle rolls over and he pulls her close. No harm in being close. Really there was no harm in fucking her either, but it didn't feel like the right moment. Everything has its right moment.

He keeps thinking about fucking her and once again he isn't sure who started moving first but he's pulling her over his cock like her body was his to move how he wanted. It was definitely her who started it, he reasons, arching her back into him and wiggling around - but he could've dealt with it. Could've told her to stop, told her no, told her anything that he knew would shut her down.  But just as he was about to say something she turned her head to look back at him. 

She didn't twist her neck and meet his gaze romantically - pressing her hips delicately into his. No, she folded her body at her hips, completely arching herself against him, looking back and up at him like he was already fucking inside of her.

Boyd knows that when he grabs her hips hard enough to bruise her that she likes it that way. Even if she didn't say all the obvious shit that made him know. 

He's not gonna fuck her. Not tonight. But he uses her body to cum and he doesn't feel bad because he's never felt bad about something human like that. And anyway, she liked it. He knows because he can smell how wet her cunt is. He knows because she was a shaking mess, moaning at just the feeling of dull pressure. He knows because she begged him to cum. 

She begged him to cum instead of begging him to fuck her and Boyd thinks he might be in love again.

She turns around and kisses him and her face has dirt on it from where he'd pressed her head into the ground but he likes the way it tastes on her. 

She kisses like an apology. A real one. One that comes from your whole fucking soul because you never felt anything more. Trying to connect. Fully. Deeply. 

Tuggin’ on heart strings is a saying he's always heard and it always made sense until now when he actually feels it for the first time. Boyd, who's so keen on behavior and mannerisms and what was gonna happen next, feels everything she has.

He's been here before with women. Some of them were different but if he was honest most of them were the same. A sigh here, a disgusted look there. Knowing how a woman feels about you might be the easiest observation a man could make.

So Boyd was expecting what he'd gotten from her when he was grinding into her. All shaking and whimpering and he'd probably either have to take the lead or stop it - either was okay by him depending on what he felt like.

But she's someone else. Again. With one leg hooked around him and her hands around the back of his neck and in his hair - she takes his mouth with hers like she's evangelizing. Pushing everything she has into him and he can feel it. More than a physical something. More than her fingers pressing into the pulse at his neck. More than his cock getting hard again and this time it settles right between them.

He finally breaks the kiss only to ask her if she knows he can feel her clit every time it quivers against him. He only asks because he wants to feel it again.

Boyd’s good at talking. Beatle loves it. 

He asks her so many filthy things. Things he'd never got away with asking someone else. Boyd knows there's not much you can't get away with saying with a whisper and a southern accent, but this… this was new even for him.

He wasn't sure what came over him. Why he needed her to know that he's been pretty sure he can tell when she's thinking about giving him head. About the glazed over look in her eye and how her mouth hangs open a little wider than she probably thinks it does when she's staring.

Or why he has to tell her that his cock was hard the whole time he had his gun on her the first night they met.

And he's not going to fuck her but he sucks on her tits like they've been eucharized. He can't stop talking because he can't get enough of every little fucking reaction.

Boyd figures out what it is when he's in the middle of telling her about how he knows her pussy is pretty and pink and the same color as her lips and how, he knows it's bad, but sometimes when she's talking to him all he can think about is what his cock would look like pressed up against her teeth -  Beatle's body seizes on him a little bit different than it had been seizing before; and it all just clicks.

Getting a reaction from her was like breathing. Nothing in his life had ever come so easy. Or so fun. 

She was letting him play with her. 

All his silly little mind games everyone else hated so much. She liked it. Not in the way he’d meant for her to like it. 

She liked him. Actually. 

He's really not sure why he told her about cumming on her pajama pants before he threw them out. He was sure he'd take that one to the grave. But he tells her about it while jerking  off onto her stomach because he wasn't going to fuck her but he needed to cum again. 

And she eats the mess from her fingers from her belly and Boyd is certain he's allowed to be in love. 

✞

Boyd had reasoned himself through a lot of things. Justifying almost anything. This? This he was having a hard time with. All he had going for him is that she'd liked it.

That she asked for it again afterwards.

Because when Boyd wakes up and the sun is peaking through the trees he can finally really see what her tits look like. Half falling out of her top. And when he reaches down to touch her there, her lips part. He thinks about how her pussy is the same color as her mouth and he thinks about how he told her that and how she reacted and he can't stop his hands even if he wanted to.

That's what he tells himself. He's reading her blind like a set of runes, it's not his fault her body is calling him this way. And she's reacting. So how could he stop? He can't. 

He's not sure if she's sleeping or pretending to sleep and he'd be lying if he said he thought that hard about it. Hard enough to care. His fingers dip between her legs and even through her underwear he can feel it. Sticky and warm and hers. 

Boyds hands seem to know what to do the same way his mouth does. Working the fabric of her panties down just slowly enough to not move her. He didn't want to fuck her he just wanted to feel it. 

She spreads her legs for him a little, laying on her belly; another miracle. Another sign he shouldn't stop himself. The Lord was working through him. 

This time he knows he's full of shit but he's rubbing his cock along her soaked lips and he can feel her clit tremble again and he doesn't feel bad when he pushes into her.

Her eyes jolt open like he'd been waiting for and the look on her face is an expression he doesn't think he's ever seen before. Something like fear and trust. Something someone like Boyd could get addicted to. 

He fucks her into the ground. He wants to look at her face again so he pulls her head back by her chin. She meets his gaze like she'd been waiting for it. This. To look at him like this while he fucked her.

She bows her head and takes his fingers into her mouth. She tries to move her head and Boyd knows exactly what the fuck she wants so he gives it to her. Fishhooking his fingers into her cheek while he backs up and off her a little. Sitting her up on her knees before pushing her shoulders back down again. 

Boyd knows how to get what he wants. He wants to go watch himself disappear inside of her. 

He'd almost forgotten where they'd started this, but when he remembers he has to stop himself from finishing then…. Just barely pushing into her again and it reminds him of that first time. 5 minutes ago when she was asleep.

Boyd can't stop thinking about how she'd woken up wanting him. This desperate. This wet.

That he could make her want it even when she couldn't know anything.

She opens her fucking mouth one fucking time and it's to tell him to fuck her pussy like he fucking owns it. And it was kind of corny and it didn't quite hit as well as he thought something she could say during sex would and he's not mad or anything but she adds “because you do.” and Boyd buckles. 

Falling on top of her body like her words hit him he holds her still as he ruts up into her. It's desperate and vulnerable and yet still completely overpowering. He tells her to say it again and she says the whole thing. He tells her no just the last part and she

Starts professing just how much he fucking owns her pussy. How it's never been for anybody else, from the second she saw him she wanted him. She felt him there, she always wanted to feel him there. Deep in her fucking cunt because it fucking belonged to him. 

He asks her whenever he wants it?

She repeats him in breathless moans as he slows his pace

He asks her even if she's sleeping.

She tells him that she’s never been more turned on in her whole life.

He asks her why

Because he took it without asking.

Because he knew it was his.

Boyd cums so fucking hard he's vaguely aware that he's hurting her. Pressing her into the ground and she can't breathe but he knows she'll be okay in a second and he knows she doesn't care. He knows she prefers it this way. Even if she hadn't said it.

✞

For the next two weeks Boyd fucks her in just about every way he can think to fuck her. All the things he's ever wanted to try. Like waking her up by stretching her out. He can't believe he's never been able to wake someone up like that before.

He can't believe how much he likes it.

Responding to her body and giving it what it wants when she can't even speak. He's sure it's is favorite thing that they do.

He does things with her that he’d never actually considered before, too.

He plays pretend with her. Not in front of the others but they'll go out to the creek and he'll baptize her and they fuck in the water or on the edge or against a tree. 

Or Beatle gets down on her knees like she's really praying and pretends to be confused when his cock head pokes at her mouth asking what he's doing and he gets to play along and say it's what the good Lord itends for her.

One time he laid her down and they pretended that as her pastor it was his holy duty to impregnate her with Christ.

Boyd didn't know he would get off on this shit. He's certain he wouldn't be if it wasn't with her. Who's mouth was so believable and reactions so pure - he doesn't have to wonder anything. 

She likes it or she doesn't and she always fucking likes it. 

✞

The sky is hazy and it looks like it might rain. Beatle asks him if he has any family and Boyd doesn't really know what to say. He doesn't want to lie but he doesn't want to talk about it.

He tells her no.

She asks if he's lying because he doesn't want them to meet her.

Boyd’s heart pangs again like it did when she'd kissed him that first time. All desperate and real and alive. He shakes his head and tells her no. She was too good for them.

He can tell she doesn't believe him. But saying nothing is better than saying more. And he knows she'll let him get away with not answering this one.

He tells her it doesn't matter anyway because he's pretty sure he loves her. And it's the first time he says it but it's not the first time he's felt it. Beatle believes him. 

Boyd is pretty sure she's never believed those words in her whole life before now. 

His heart pangs again.

✞

Bo Crowder was a scary sonofabitch. That's what Beatle said under her breath as he was walking up to their camp. Boyd’s glad she said it quiet because she didn't know how right she was.

She didn't know that was his daddy.

She knew about the meth shipment he was yelling about. Something he normally wouldn't have told her, even though it wasn't a secret necessarily. Something about wanting to protect a woman from the dangers of this world. 

But Boyd needed Beatle. He trusted her. She was part of this with him. He didn't want her the way he wanted all of the rest and he wanted all of the rest to know it too. Something about making her feel like she was someone. 

He knew he was saying and doing things at just the right times to make her feel special. But it's not like he didn't mean them. She treated each one like a fucking gift. Each public display, every private whisper. Every touch of their fingers and especially every time he buried himself inside her.

✞

It occurs to him on his walk through exile, while his people were no doubt being strung up and taken away by lawmen, that he doesn't think he can live without her. Well, at least that he doesn't want to. He reasons he shouldn't have to. 

She didn't break any laws anyway and Raylan will probably hand her over personally when her record comes back clean. He'd asked her and she said she had no charges she'd known of. She'd know. 

So, be patient. Wait it out. He runs through it again, in his head, all the stuff his daddy said. That they were gonna have them dig up the guns then tie em to a tree and call the feds.

He said a lot of other stuff too. About not being a son not being a leader not being nothing. Boyd was always sure he was nothing so none of that shit felt like anything. The first few blows his daddy makes his cousin give him don't feel like much of anything either.

Seeing Beatle’s face is what does it. He's sure he's rocked a few more times but he doesn't remember anything after seeing her look at him like that. 

✞

Boyd tries not to remember Beatle for the way she looked at him then. He tries really hard to remember the few seconds he'd gotten to touch her hand before his daddy shot that gun one last time at him to get out of there. 

He wishes he remembered it better but it's so fuzzy and barely there. He wishes his cousin would have just fucking beat him to death. He wishes that one prick ass degenerate addict piece of shit good for nothing follower who snitched out where the guns were would come back to life so he could rip apart every bit of him.

Because she'd probably still be alive. Boyd’s sure of it. If he'd died instead she'd be alive and the world wouldn't fucking feel like this. 

✞

For a while he has delusions that it’s the Real Deal out and out End O’ Times. That with her went all the light and all the good because he just couldn't seem to reason why.

Couldn't his daddy see she was special?

Couldn't he see that she was divinely made for him? 

That their love could have changed the world. 

It could have changed him.

Boyd can't reason with his daddy because he's dead too.

✞

After even longer Boyd convinces himself he was full of shit the whole time. That Beatle was just some girl he stuffed his cock into to feel good about himself while he was reintegrating back into society. 

Just some junkie, and if she was still alive she'd be back to using again. They wouldn’t have been anything because Beatle wasn't anyone.

She thought she was special, but don't they all? 

Boyd doesn't think about it much anymore. When he does he only lets himself think one thing.

She couldn't have been real. Not the way he thought she was. He must have been wrong about her and he would have figured it out eventually. 

He can't let himself think about her the way she really was.

The memories of her then are remembered by no one. Not a soul on this earth. Not even the ground they fucked on or the pond he made her piss in so he could watch. Not even in the stump that she'd carved their initials into because Boyd went back and he cut it all apart so sure that wasn't real either. 

He keeps being so sure it wasn't real.

He convinces himself that some initials carved in a tree is just something childish and stupid and that's why he destroyed it. He convinces himself that it wouldn't have broken her heart.

He’ll convince himself of just about anything to keep from thinking about what it felt like to be loved. Because that's what it was, right? Love? 

So he doesn't think about her. Or then. Or what happened and what didn't. 

✞

It's the gunpowder. Every time it starts to sting up his sinuses he can feel her hair soft against his lips. And every time he closes his eyes and he remembers her. What it felt like to realize she was up there with the rest of them.

Maybe someday Boyd will let himself remember what it felt like to love her. He worries that by the time he’ll be ready he won't remember what she looked like anymore.

What she felt like.

He already forgets most of the stuff they'd talked about. He just knows she was special. He knows no one else would get it anyway. Why he wanted to let himself be stuck there forever. In those words. Dying. How three weeks could feel so much bigger.

Boyd keeps going out there despite how much he convinces himself he's not thinking about her. Everything time he smells the gunpowder. 

He keeps finding reasons to use his gun. 

Because even though in that memory she's dead it's the realest one he's got. 

He doesn't think about her dead.

If he absolutely has to, laying down in the dirt where the camp used to be, he thinks about the way she looked when he'd told her he was pretty sure he loved her.

Sometimes he thinks about her mouth or her body or the way she always seemed to know what to do with them - but mostly he just thinks about the way she looked at him. Praying to be a better man for the next time around this life because she deserved more than God would allow him to give. The choices he had made previous to loving her had tainted his soul. Turned it rotten and poisoned her before he'd barely even gotten the chance. She'd paid for his sins. So he prays next time he meets her without any. 

Boyd wishes just one time he would lay down out here and not get up. 

He leaves the woods, convincing himself he was full of shit with her the same way he was full of shit with everyone, the memories of her die again, and he forgets about her until his subconscious finds some reason for him to fire a gun.

Any reason.

Boyd remembers enough about her to know she'd have liked that.

✞

A/n; it wasn't really proofread? (Well it was but I'm not very good at it) ALSO idk about this writing style either, i know it's kind of different? And in my opinion probably more juvenile but I had fun writing it this way. 🤷🏻‍♀️

(I'll make a different post about where I'm at with my wips~)

[withoutatrace-pkmn]

ok, so I’ve heard that some people are having issues with their ‘ultra domesticated’ Pokemon from Team Calm due to their incredibly passive dispositions. I’m not going to make a statement here on Team Calm’s unethical (to put it lightly) methodology, if only because if I start that rant I will be unable to stop, and I can’t promise this post will be helpful to all of you (or indeed any of you)-

Basically, what I’m getting at is that my starter pokemon was a golett I raised from an egg. If you know anything about human-hatched goletts you will know that they are loyal to a fault - it’s a part of how they were made to follow orders. Thankfully, since I trained it in assertiveness, I now have a Golurk who will not hesitate At All to let me know when it doesn’t like or doesn’t want to do something. And that’s great! Because Pokemon have a right to, you know, agency!

Obviously all Pokémon are different, and what worked for my Little Man may not work for you, but here are some general tips that I used to help my Golett assert itself:

Perhaps most important is to show them how to assert themselves through example. This can be through setting your own boundaries in front of them, however it can also be done with your other pokemon. For example, I caught Frazzle not long after Little Man hatched, and whenever Frazzle would reasonably assert herself I would reward her in front of Little Man to let it know what it should be doing.

Give them choices - easy choices, preferably between no more than two options at first. Like, if they want a cherri or a pecha berry as a snack. Be patient with them, as it’s likely going to take quite a while for them to chose. If they really struggle, make it choice between two virtually identical objects - like two differently sized berries.

Reward them whenever they do set boundaries! Even if it’s inconvenient for you - obedience training can come after you have thoroughly deprogrammed them from their obedience.

Be very liberal with praise and affirmations. Even when they mess up. Especially when they mess up. Allow them to become comfortable with failure. Let them know that you love them without them having to heed your every command.

For the majority of you this last point won’t apply, but for the (hopefully) very few of you it does apply to - do not Ever take advantage of your Pokémon’s nature. Not even as a joke. You’ll never deprogramme them if you reinforce the idea that they need to obey you to be loved.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but if anyone needs further tips on deprogramming overly obedient Pokemon, drop me an ask and I’ll see if I can help!

[notalostcausejustyet]

Text wall incoming.

Happy New Years fan fam. We made it another trip around the sun. And some of those days were made of light and laughter, and some of them were gritted teeth and grief. But we made it. So it’s time to talk about what happens in a year.

What happens when the fundamental understanding of who you are and what you need as a person undergoes a seismic shift? When the edifice of all your understanding has been shaken to rubble around you, and you’re forced to finally reckon with the cracked foundations of who you are?

This was that year for me. To be clear, the buildup had been coming for a long, long time. The methodology I had used to construct my life was unsustainable at best, and deliberate self martyrdom at worst. And of course, this is where learning through the lens of fandom comes in. I have waxed (less than) poetic here before about how fictional media is the gestalt through which so many of us begin to process our trauma. The fulcrum that allows us to lift the weight of what we carry and look deeper into it. That fulcrum this year, for me, was Good Omens. More specifically, it was this glorious and beautiful fandom’s unflinching and enthusiastic willingness to take the narratives offered there and parse the deeper meanings within them. And what are those meanings? What lens has been provided that finally allowed me to see things within myself that desperately needed to be brought into the light of day?

It begins here. Self denial. The act of burying oneself and one’s deepest desires and fundamental needs beneath the asceticism of “I should have/be”. The heart of this for many of us, myself included, lies in religious upbringing that is further complicated by neurodivergence and queerness. What does that mean? It means that you start out at a remove from the rest of humanity. You do not speak the same language, you do not know the steps of this dance. You are a stranger in a strange land. When you compound that with the church informing you that you are a fundamentally broken and unworthy creature during all of your developmental years…well.

All of us need human connection. It is a fact of our biology and evolution to crave community and acceptance. So you begin to whittle yourself away. You nip and tuck and shave and hide everything that may stand in the way of communion. You accept that who you are fundamentally is unworthy of love. You take it into yourself and it becomes a core tenet of who you are. So the foundation is laid and you begin to build a life upon it. Which leads us to our protagonists.

Crowley has stepped away from the idea that you must be “perfect”. He accepts who he is, even as he still holds onto his anger for the rejection that this has caused. “Unforgivable, that’s what I am!” He says. He is hurt and he is furious, but he knows himself. He places the blame squarely where it belongs. With the institution that rejected him, not with his inability to fit into their narrow ideas of who he should be. He doesn’t play the self denial game or go in for martyrdom. He does what he has to do to get by and remains true to himself and his core beliefs. He continues to ask his questions without apology and he continues to seek truth and attempt to share that understanding with others. He decided the rules were shite, so he stopped playing by them.

Aziraphale. Oh Angel. Az as a character exemplifies self denial. He doesn’t fit in within the parameters of the institution, so he tries to make himself less so that he can belong. He ties his concept of self worth to that institution and his acceptance within it, all while knowing it is impossible for him to be accepted as he is. So he denies his own nature. His fundamental needs. He doesn’t sit comfortably within his own skin AT ALL. He is angry, but doesn’t allow himself to embrace it. He has the questions, but won’t ask them. He feels (and is) rejected, but doesn’t allow himself to acknowledge it. (As an aside here, we see this difference in how Crowley refers to himself as a former demon, but Az still refers to himself as an angel). So he doesn’t allow himself to feel, or to have the things that he wants and needs. He keeps thinking that if he sacrifices enough of himself, he will get the community and acceptance he longs for. In the end it leads him to lose the things and people he cares about most. And he hurts himself and them in the process. He is still trying to play by the shite rules.

What did I learn from this? Self denial and martyrdom ends in tragedy. In the end you hurt, not only yourself, but the people you care about. You cannot move through life paring yourself down to pieces for other people. Every time you remove a block from the foundation of who you are, in order to try and gain acceptance and community, you create a wound that doesn’t close. You are slowly bleeding out. When you don’t acknowledge the anger and the questions and your need to BE, those wounds fester. You wind up rejecting the people who want to care for you, even as you reject yourself in service of those who don’t deserve the care you’ve given them.

So. This was the year of realizing that I needed to stop playing by the shite rules. This was the year of realizing that my foundations needed rebuilt. This was the year of realizing that it’s ok for me to be angry and ask questions and realize that I am enough as I am. I don’t need to be less. I don’t need acceptance from people who want me to be less. All of the years I spent denying myself and prostrating myself on the altar of other’s expectations have gained me nothing. And strange as it may seem, I have one angel, one demon and an entire fandom to thank for that insight. Here’s to the next year friends. As @neil-gaiman says. Bravery. And joy.

[aridara]

Let's add a third source, then. Remember the Swedish Study that anti-trans activists love to use? Here's the relevant quote: "Transsexual individuals were at increased risk of being convicted for any crime or violent crime after sex reassignment (Table 2); this was, however, only significant in the group who underwent sex reassignment before 1989." The study used data from 1973 to 2003, dividing it into two parts: '73-'88 and '89-'03. In the latter part, trans women were convicted at significantly lower rates compared to cis men.

But you are wrong on one thing: this isn't three sources versus centuries of recorded human history. It's three sources versus nothing.

If we assume that biological sex is the primary cause of criminality like you're trying to imply, then those three phenomena (pro-trans bathroom laws didn't increase assault rates, allowing trans women in women's hospital wards didn't cause issues, and trans women are convicted at much lower rates than cis men) are utterly unexplainable. You can't say "the methodology was bad" because you have no evidence to support such a claim. You can't say "it's because trans women have a different biology than cis men", because it's not true. You can't say "it was a random fluctuation" because the sheer difference between these sources and the average behavior of cis men is WAY too extreme. And there is NOTHING in your "centuries of recorded human history" that can either explain why these phenomena happened, or disprove their existence.

The only way we can explain these phenomena is if we assume that criminality is primarily a social issue, not a biological one. Trans women socially behave differently than cis men, and that explains why their criminality is also different.

Now let's talk about your other argument. Let me get this straight: because of their biology, trans women should be kept away out women's spaces. This includes kicking that trans woman out of that videogame tournament mentioned in the tweet - the one where the organizers were fine with trans women participating. Even if trans women aren't a safety issue right now, the fact that they could potentially be a threat in the future is enough to justify their expulsion.

Okay, so why we shouldn't keep all cis men separated from cis women at ALL times? I don't mean just in women's spaces like women's bathrooms or sports - I mean EVERYWHERE. I mean, you think that one single trans woman in a videogame tournament was automatically an unacceptable threat, JUST for her biology. So, following that same logic, a whole bunch of cis men walking in the same streets as cis women would ALSO be an unacceptable threat. Maybe women should stay at home - you know, to keep them safe.

But I have a feeling that you won't be okay with my suggestion.

[laciere]

All jokes aside, this type of reading was probably a sound methodology at some point - we needed to know what the boundaries of sentimental friendship really were before we could argue for some form of queer existence in the past. It's clear what happens when we queers overstep, when we become all too visible - but there has to be a point at which we acknowledge the double standard: a man writing passionately about his physical ache for a woman is assumed to be exhibiting sexual desire, yet when it's two men... well, you guessed it. Though the conditions might be different for same-sex relationships throughout history, there is no reason we cannot apply a similar lens that explores the possibilities of sexual longing under a different rubric. Plenty of excellent scholars have done this work, to be sure, but outside of academia, the conversation usually goes something like, "OK, yeah, well, I'm not sure we can ever know for sure." Just as I can never know for sure whether a Jane Austen novel has any straight people in it or whether the conventions of marriage and manners at the time make it impossible to exactly map twenty-first-century straight lived experience. My frustration with Godbeer's hedging, despite my admiration for his skill as a thorough researcher and pioneer for queer academics, pales in comparison with what Larry Kramer expressed in 2009 for The Gay & Lesbian Review. It's a gloriously messy rant that I hope wouldn't have met anyone's editorial standards had he not been famous playwright and activist Larry Kramer. Referencing Godbeer, Kramer writes, "Gay people are victims of an enormous con job," and by that point, you already know the rest. Kramer wants us to understand that Abraham Lincoln is a fag; he even goes so far as to reach for George Washington. And let me tell you in all earnestness: you will get lost if you choose to go down this route. If you choose to pin our identities onto specific historical figures in an attempt to justify our existence, you'll never be satisfied until you find Abraham Lincoln's dildo, and even then, you'll have some historian arguing that the presence of the dildo in that private bedroom could have meant anything, and the historian won't be wrong. So why do any of this work at all? Why search for ourselves in the past, armed only with the police reports, court documents, and, at best, private letters? If we have no 18th century terms exactly matching contemporary LGBTQ identities, is the whole endeavor foolish? And think it's bad for the gays? Try searching for scholarship on anything but the G. Following this logic, queer people were never so much erased but rather born fully formed in the last century as a pathology to be dealt with. These were the animating questions I asked myself when I first sat down to write an early draft of All The World Beside. I'm not sure I ever found the answers. I have my own hunches, sure, but what I've come to understand about the work of queer history is that the goal is not in finding answers but in expanding the way we think about the past, the way we make assumptions, in opening up imaginative possibilities that allow us to paint the whole human canvas with the bright, bold colors we see today. We don't have to pin all of our evidence on sex acts or sentimental declarations of love, tossing facts back and forth until the matter is no longer interesting. We can see the past as part of a larger mystery, the same mystery we see staring back at us when we look at the face of love. In my admittedly religious definition of mystery, revelation becomes possible, but the revelation will be different for each person who chooses to take the journey.

Afterword to All The World Beside by Garrard Conely (2024, Riverhead Books)

[randomrainman]

why jiu-jitsu will never be mainstream

I will preface this by saying that I absolutely love jiu-jitsu. Aside from debilitating and potentially permanent injuries from zigging instead of zagging, a perpetually bruised ego, and constant gasps for life from training partners using you as a sentient, pyjama-clad Bosu ball, it can be a beneficial fixture in one's life: it can allow for a (relatively) healthy form of stress relief, foster a cult environment in which people can learn from each other, and pressure-test difficult scenarios to achieve optimal results. Jiu-jitsu will also let you know, often in the most miserable ways possible, just how much you don't know.

In a sense, it is its very own Petri dish, complete with its own set of infections.

My Beginnings

The last-known picture of myself (with my 1SG) while I was still in the Army. Notice how perfectly our uniforms blend with the grass.

My jiu-jitsu journey could be classified as an accident, much like me. After I returned from Iraq in 2009, I was scheduled to attend Level 1 of the Modern Army Combatives Program, or MACP. Mandated by Army for NCO development, the week-long course purports to familiarise participants with the bare essentials of hand-to-hand combat, to include strikes and grappling. Though I had a few conflicts in earlier times in my life, I could hardly consider myself a "fighter", and, despite having an above-average PT score, my thorough unfamiliarity with combat techniques sapped my energy like a hungry mosquito in the middle of a blistering Philippine summer.

During live training on one of the final days of the course, I was partnered with someone who was much smaller than my 225-pound self; he could not have been much heavier than 170. This shouldn't be so bad, I thought nervously. What's the worst that could happen? The timer rang.

From the go, I deferred to the tried-and-true, time-tested, culture-spanning methodology utilised by many an untrained individual: the classic hnnngh. I huffed, heaved, and hnnnghed around this dude's short legs for 30 desperate seconds trying to get past them, and just as soon as I thought I was getting somewhere, the last thing I saw was a crotch fly toward my face.

My left arm and my head were suddenly incapacitated and trapped in a vise made entirely of human limbs. I saw every constellation in the known universe in those three long seconds, and it was then that I pulled out my trusty ace in the hole, a technique I had learned earlier to escape any position, no matter how dangerous -- furious and repeated taps. I stared at him with incredulity as he released me from the impending throes of unconsciousness. "What in the hell was that?" I asked laboriously, still struggling to regain my faculties. "A triangle," he responded. "I do jiu-jitsu." Neat.

A few months before my ETS in 2010, a friend and fellow Soldier I originally met in Korea, Larry, told me about a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym near our home base of Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos), and proposed that we both go. Why not, I thought, reflecting on my dismal MACP experience. I clearly have a lot to learn.

So I made my choice.

Myself (as a purple belt) and some new friends I had the privilege of training while in Afghanistan.

American Fight Company. Hardcore, I thought. But makes sense. A large, hand-painted mural of Royce Gracie's logo loomed over the gym's white mats, which teemed with students in equally white robes conducting warm-ups. I would apparently require one of those silly garments to train; to that end, I purchased my first "gi", as I learned they were called, and an accompanying crispy white belt. Ripping the plastic packaging open, I examined my new training apparel: the pants' stitching appeared to be quite tough, especially in the crotch area, and the collar on the jacket was extremely thick, especially when compared to my ACUs, which were made of one-ply toilet paper. Flowery embroidery enveloped the upper left of the gi top, whose black threads elegantly trailed down to a bold monochromatic patch on the lower lapel. "BREAKPOINT", it read. Gnarly.

Jarrod, a rugged Texan and veteran with a grizzled, grey-speckled beard, demonstrated a technique on a student. The tattered brown sash which encircled his waist danced through the air like ribbons in the wind as he floated from position to position, methodically settling into an armlock submission at the sequence's conclusion. Now it was our turns to try, and it went about as well as expected for me: I flopped all over my training partner, a much more experienced white belt, with all the grace and finesse of a disoriented three-legged deer, narrowly avoiding clobbering him in the dome with errant knees or heels as I practiced getting to the submission.

Then we had to go live.

To say that I learnt valuable lessons that day was an understatement: while I proved tough and indubitably capable of sustaining a lot of pain, it also made clear that I knew absolutely nothing about grappling, even if I was already pretty sure of that fact before. The trifecta of sheer top pressure, staving off innumerable submission attempts, and overall physical exertion filled my muscles with lactic acid and caused my lungs to burn with the intensity of a thousand thermonuclear explosions.

Despite my exhaustion and ineptitude, I was lauded for my perseverance, and that alone was enough to keep me returning to American Fight Company for more knowledge (and, of course, punishment). I received my first stripe on my white belt from Jarrod before accepting a contract in Korea, where I continued on the pathway of martial arts development in the realms of muaythai, jiu-jitsu, and eventually, mixed martial arts. Jarrod earned his black belt shortly after I departed.

Before my fight in Korea, during which I expertly tore nearly every ligament in my left knee (photographer unknown).

As of this post, I am a three-stripe brown belt, and by all measurable metrics, the world's most awful: I have two herniated cervical discs, including one fusion; my knees are shredded beef, and, in addition to being deconditioned, I experience a myriad of inexplicable, and often sharp, pains throughout my body. Nevertheless, my time around jiu-jitsu, both as a participant and a photographer, has afforded me the opportunity to make a variety of observations and criticisms about my beloved sport, which brings me to my point:

Jiu-jitsu will never be a mainstream spectator sport.

I can hear it already. "Hold your horses, buddy! It's more popular than ever!" Well, actually, you would be 100% correct. It is more popular and practiced than it ever was at any point in history, if only due to the fact that, as a standalone martial art, it is only a century old. An ever-growing list of celebrities, including Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and actors Tom Hardy and Mario Lopez, have embraced the grappling art and have even competed in it.

If your martial art can make it into a popular show that is definitely not about your martial art, then something is working, even if no one has a clue what's happening. And yes, even if you're black, I will not call you "master".

The appeal to training it is in its relative ease of access: there is no real bar for entry for anyone regardless of sex, age, or previous martial arts experience, and it is possible for a practitioner to train indefinitely and (mostly) without injury so long as you are doing so safely and intelligently (which I did not, hence my injuries). While competition is encouraged as a test of skill and willpower, it is not a requirement, and a practitioner can advance up the ranks if deemed appropriate by a "professor", as we call sometimes call black belt instructors in BJJ. That said, there is an obvious distinction between popularity as an activity and ubiquity and appeal as a spectator sport, hence this article.

Jiu-jitsu is cursed. No, as far as I know, there aren't any warlocks hidden deep in the forest conjuring hexes specifically to sabotage the community, but it suffers from the same inherently self-limiting handicap as its ancient, much more established, and slightly more naked and action-packed grappling counterpart, wrestling. For all the cartwheels, blast doubles, and the plethora of exciting techniques at a grappler's disposal, its appeal to an audience pales in comparison to striking arts, whose concussive forces produce emphatic impacts and easily discernible and *ahem* striking results. When a precisely placed punch slips through an opponent's guard and leaves them splayed lifelessly on the canvas, relieved of consciousness, there is very little doubt as to what happened and how: somebody just got knocked the fuck out.

The aftermath of Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston II, as captured by Neil Leifer, a sport photojournalist, in 1965. It is likely the most famous shot in all of sporting.

Rulesets such as those of the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) and UFC Fight Pass Invitational, itself a derivative of ADCC rules, encourage excitement by penalising grapplers for inaction, but, while these parameters effectively force activity, it must be noted that such constant movement is not necessarily endemic to and can even run contrary to the essence of jiu-jitsu, which emphasises control. Scrambles and chaos do indeed ensue when neither player has control over the other, but what happens when a person has passed their opponent's guard and is working toward a submission? I recall a particular scenario during the 99kg finals 2022 ADCC Worlds in Las Vegas.

With no lack of effort, Kaynan Duarte, the 2019 ADCC's +99kg champion, had just passed fan favourite and 2019 ADCC silver medallist Craig Jones' nearly impenetrable guard, securing the mounted position as the exhausted Mexican Ground Karate grandmaster attempted one of his infamous bottom-side Ezekiel chokes on the powerful Brazilian. The ten-thousand-strong crowd in attendance at the Thomas & Mack Arena erupted in what sounded like a peculiar mix of awe and disappointment. Craig spammed his usual array of unorthodox submission attempts from bottom as Kaynan sought to secure a finish of his own without undoing any of his previous endeavours.

Only one person I can think of will attempt to submit you while you have double unders in mount. Also, if you flip this image, Craig is mercilessly strangling Kaynan from inside his guard, and also in thin air. Photo by Clayton Jones Images (me).

Then something strange happened.

Unsurprisingly, there were warnings for inactivity, but as more time passed without a submission from Kaynan, the penalty points started racking up -- and very quickly. At one time, the negatives were so high that they were equal to the positive points Duarte accumulated from successful passes, which would mean that, had the match ended at that time, the score would have been tied, and it would go into overtime; had he not relented and maintained the position, Craig would have actually gone on to win the match by negatives. Kaynan did go on to score additional points to win and cement himself as the 2022 99kg ADCC champion, but it was nonetheless one of the most bizarre things I have ever witnessed in combat sports.

While absolutely no one wants to see two heavily perspiring people lying motionlessly atop each other for 15 entire minutes like the world's worst attempt at coitus, it is patently absurd that someone who is being controlled can become the victor in a contest primarily dictated by superior control -- that is, unless the dominant player is deliberately stalling and making zero attempts at finishing. The onus should ostensibly lie on the controlled player to facilitate their own escapes and counterattacks.

Furthermore, while strength and conditioning are quintessential elements of any combat athlete's regimen, gratuitous stalling calls put the "art" in "artificial"; they distill the essence of what makes jiu-jitsu formidable in self-defence by overly emphasising physicality and athleticism over technical prowess and forcing competitors to take unnecessary risks, often costing them matches (and however many pennies are being offered) in the process. Of course, competitors are free to go absolutely bananas at their own discretion (and spectators' delight), but that should not be mandatory.

Even after many years of training, I simply cannot fathom how Floyd can so deftly dodge a flurry of lightning-fast punches and fire off perfect counters all in one motion.

Let's take an example from boxing's Floyd Mayweather. Widely regarded as one of the greatest boxers of all time and known largely for his finely tuned defensive acumen, his style has been decried for being "boring" and too conservative. He was derided for "running" during fights due to what people perceived as fear or an attempt to avoid action, when, in actuality, neither were true: he had incredible ability to avoid punishment in the pocket and proved to be a very effective counter-puncher. More importantly, he embodied what it means to be a boxer: to hit and not be hit. He understood that being consistently clobbered in the noggin for brownie points is stupid, and developed a method which allowed him to remain both relatively unscathed and undefeated as a professional. And winners get paid.

You know who usually doesn't get paid? Losers, and especially jiu-jitsu people who lose. There are certainly outliers in that regard, to be sure, but ultimately, if you are not running a major YouTube platform and/or creating entertaining monetised content, doing seminars, selling loads of instructionals, heading an association or major gym, or competing and winning a lot (or a combination of some or all of these), you really aren't making much, which, when considering that top competitors are professional-level athletes who, more often than not, dedicate their livelihoods to jiu-jitsu, is rather pathetic.

One of the very few people who have managed to make it using only jiu-jitsu, which says a lot. Photo by CJI (me).

The sport is plagued by a glass ceiling and is largely a closed circuit in which, generally, the only people who generate income for jiu-jitsu people are other jiu-jitsu people or combat sports entities and enthusiasts. Almost no one, perhaps aside from ultra-hardcore BJJ enthusiasts, would care to purchase a pay-per-view of IBJJF Pans or Who's Number One like they would a UFC event, and the attendees of the most prestigious events, such as the ADCC World Championships, are almost entirely composed of jiu-jitsu people, many of whom possess only a rudimentary understanding of the rules of the contests they watch.

...and the rules are always changing. Is back control worth three points? Four points? Will I get an advantage for this near-takedown? Is this EBI overtime or sudden death? Nearly every organisation has its own individual ruleset, typically geared toward action, some sort of decisive conclusion, or an amalgam of the two. For example, some submission-only rulesets will call a draw if no finishes occur, and other sub-only entities such as the Eddie Bravo Invitational have three overtime shootout rounds in which competitors start in common finishing positions. The International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, or IBJJF, utilises a position-based point system, and the ADCC ruleset emphasises wrestling and rewards action by strongly penalising inactivity or deliberate stalling, and features overtime rounds in the event of an even score or no submission.

Emma Reusing executes a head-and-arm throw at the 2021 IBJJF Worlds. Photo by CJI (me).

While there are certainly merits to facets of these rules, such as the need to keep score and to encourage finishes, the fact remains that, for as much as grappling has grown, there is no real cohesion, regulation, or sanctioning entity in jiu-jitsu. The oft-criticised IBJJF long sat atop the heap as the governing body of all matters jiu-jitsu, but as the sport evolved and outgrew its competitive and regulatory confines, its influence has weakened, although it maintains an iron grip on yes-gi matters. While uncertainty regarding rules can be a recurring theme throughout sports, the lack of parity between the various jiu-jitsu rulesets in addition to the relative absence of a central administrative entity for athlete matters sows confusion amongst viewers and even causes doubts about its legitimacy as a sport to be taken seriously.

The Silver Lining

A select few individuals' attempts at pouring money into grappling may have bolstered the sport's profile, yet few entities have provided a decent payout for participants or winners, even if backed by nearly unlimited resources, and, in some cases, the vast majority of the resources spent have largely gone to every aspect of the grappling event except the athletes, which are the entire reason your event exists.

We don't have the broad appeal of team sports like basketball and soccer or the visceral impact of striking arts, and dorks who wear profanity-laden, dubiously labelled, or flamboyantly coloured clothing articles (or lack thereof) and hug each other aggressively for up to hours at a time in a niche sport that no one understands can hardly afford to take themselves seriously, so it stands to reason that someone has to get top-level competitors a decent chunk of change in lieu of spectatorship.

Some second thoughts, if you will.

Enter Craig Jones, the knight in silver armour, wielding duffle bags full of duckets and plans to upend the status quo via an eponymously named invitational, commonly referred to as CJI (like me, but with more value), and frequently mispronounced "CGI". The Craig Jones Invitational, which occurs concurrently with ADCC 2024, boasts a $3 million budget, most of which goes to athletes, and promises $1 million for winners of each division. Hosted in the Thomas & Mack Arena, CJI competitors will battle it out in a Karate Combat-inspired depression dubbed "The Alley", and will debut MMA-influenced rounds and an open scoring system. High-profile legends are also rumoured to be participating.

Marcelo Garcia explains a technique at the ADCC "Super Seminar" prior to the 2022 ADCC world championships. Photo by CJI (me).

And it's all streaming on YouTube.

Craig makes several valid points, namely, regarding venues and production. Ultimately, while marketing is certainly paramount in terms of fostering interest, if the sport as a whole is to grow, it must be organic in nature. Grandiloquent displays of pomp and circumstance alone don't bolster the profile of a sport -- people must also be curious about the sport itself. Being "the best" of a thing is useless if no one cares about the thing, and you cannot artificially fill shoes you are not currently capable of wearing.

However, an increased payout will inevitably attract more competition and competitors, which has a net benefit for the sport.

Except by some miracle, jiu-jitsu will indefinitely drift along down the river of obscurity, discovered and embraced by a select few, but never truly understood or even recognised by the general public, who still think judo people kick and that we do some form of weird extraterrestrial taekwondo. I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong regarding the future of this art we have come to hold dear, but at the very least, the professionals who have become the face of this game through years of steroids hard work and sacrifice should be able to afford to make a decent living from their passions.

|the kid|

[nainatyagiii]

Benefits of social media

Social media has changed the way we communicate today. It’s in our best interest to be informed about all of the new possibilities to manage our online reputation. The lines between professional and personal are blurring online and many times, we refer to our online presence as our “Personal Brand.” Your Personal Brand can be both the personal and professional “YOU.”

there are 5 main key point arise here :

Build relationships.

Social media is not just about brands connecting with their customers. In fact, at its root, social media is about connecting people to people. If you’ve attended a Social Shift training session I’ve led, chances are you’ve heard that almost every single friend I have in San Francisco, I met through social media.

From a professional perspective, you can grow your professional network online tremendously by connecting with colleagues, mentors, role models and other professionals. If you nurture those relationships, you have a whole new network to tap when you’re looking for opportunities or professional guidance.

2. Share your expertise.

Social media gives you an opportunity to talk about what you know and what you want to be known for. Sharing your expertise will attract potential professional and personal connections. Learn how to present your professional experience, achievements and results and you will get more and more opportunities to connect with like-minded people.

If you share content on topics that you know much about, you can begin to build credibility. This doesn’t only go for your online presence. If you live your personal brand and your actions reflect your online presence, it validates that you can be trusted and those relationships you are building will be that much more authentic and valuable.

3. Increase your visibility.

If you spend time honing in on your expertise, consistently managing your social channels, then you have the potential to greatly increase your visibility and even become a thought-leader in your space. Good content gets shared, so if you are consistently posting quality content, the more people who share it, the more people see it.

It’s not just about pushing content, however. You also need to be engaging with other people’s content. Following people and interacting with them on social media will work to build relationships (we keep coming back to this one!) and will help to get your name out there for people to turn to.

4. Educate yourself.

There is a lot of noise on the Internet. Social media allows you to hone in on what you really care about and what you really want to read. You can create lists that curate content from your favorite people, thought leaders in the space, or media outlets. You can easily learn about current events and things taking place near you.

5. Connect anytime

I know to some of you this may sound like a disadvantage. But, the advantage of being able to communicate and connect with anyone instantly outweighs the potential negative.

Social media can help you connect before, during and after networking events, a conference or a meeting. People can get to know you prior to meeting you and be better equipped to talk in person. I know I’ve met people in person for the first time after following them online for a while and we felt like long lost friends!

Social media is a land of new opportunity. There are countless personal and professional benefits of using social media. With a little love and care, we can start to build and shape our personal brands into an epicenter of opportunity.

conclusion

Social networking clearly portrays both positive and negative effects on us. It is the decision of an individual to decide what to take from them. Hence, it can be said that social media is a blessing to humanity if used appropriately and also a weapon of destruction if misrepresented. Social media is the latest technology that helps all students in gaining information and knowledge by adopting different methodologies. The utilization and involvement of social media in education helps students, teachers, professors, and parents to get specific information.......

[alexaloraetheris]

@headspace-hotel @impulsivelycontentious

Hi, I'll do my best to answer your questions!

I'm a real life biologist, and I've worked on a couple projects involving horizontal gene transfer in both yeast (which is also an Ascomycota fungus) and bacteria (for GFP protein and insulin, respectively) at my university. My job was to make plates, test for sucess and transfer the sucessful strains. And while it's not my area of expertise, I listened to several classes on wine production, which relies heavily on growing specific strains of yeast and bacteria and fermenting them in large tanks (which is why I mentioned you'd need a brewery and an alchemist) and how to prevent unwanted contaminants. There probably ARE microbiologists on this site who are more qualified for this than me (and have probably already spotted the two mistakes I made on the original recipe, I'l correct them in the update) but I think they will agree my methodology is largely sound.

Regarding specific strains: funnily enough, the most potent penicilin strain found was just a random one growing on a cantaloupe that one of the research assistant brought to the lab one day. They were testing all kinds of strains to find the most potent ones back then, so onto the plate it went and they got lucky. That's unfortunately what a lot of this experiment comes down to: luck. It's why I said you need to up your chances by having as many plates and strains as you can, and pick the one with the widest ZOI. The ones with the most potent production are the ones that tend to prevail, luckily, but you need to gamble a lot. This stuff WAS hard to figure out initially, but we're not figuring it out from scratch, we are trying to recreate the already perfect method, so we're skipping a lot of steps the original team had to figure out. Every scientist stands on the shoulders of giants after all.

Regarding fermentation: humans have been fermenting stuff for a long-ass time, and we have gotten very, very good at it surprisingly quickly. The deep tank fermentation method used in the begining of commercial production of penicilin was, in essence, a modified wine fermentation tank. That's why I said you need to find a microbrewery and preferably someone who is already well-practiced in growing yeast in large quantities. Stainless steel tanks might not be available, but as long as you get a tank that's not made of metal with an oligodynamic effect (destroys cell membranes of single-celled organisms) the fermentation step is relatively simple. Or at least researched well enough that your biggest hurdle will be the tank-borrowing part.

The hard part is the filtration, which I'm still working on.

Regarding materials for plates: they don't need to be glass! The ones we use in the lab are actually mostly plastic. I'm aware that's a material that definitely wouldn't have been available, but they really can be made of any material you can pour hot water into! Glass and plastic are used because they're transparent, so you can check the growth of your colonies without opening them and exposing them to potential contaminats, but the mold itself doesn't care. You need two plates to close it to minimize contamination but still allow airflow in, but that's it.

But you've also given me an idea I'd have to research further. The mold you want grows on the agar, and doesn't touch the plates themselves, so you could potentially have them made of copper, brass or silver, all of which kill bacteria and other microorganisms that touch them. In a non-sterile enviroment that would be ideal, but I don't know if the agar itself would absorb any of the metal ions and kill the mold we want too. Again, further research is required, but if anyone has the answer to that please tell me!

EDIT: I just saw the question by @otteroflore and I could have smacked myself.

Milk is the old-timey source of high concentrations of lactose, which Penicillium loves, and seemed like a relatively easy thing to get, but if you're involving a cheesemaker you could get sweet whey (the liquid left when milk is curdled with rennet) which has most of lactose and vitamins from milk and much much fewer phosphoproteins. I said corn steep liquor would be best, but looking at the molecular composition sweet whey would be a close second. Thank you!♥♥♥♥

I can understand how "modern person thrown into the past gets by pretending to be a healer/doctor" is as surprisingly common of a trope as it is. I mean I'm fluent enough at bullshitting to be pretty sure I could pull it off to impersonate a doctor in any time pre-1800s. If I have no idea what something is or how to treat it, I could just get the opinion of the other whatever-passes-as-medical-professionals around, but if their suggestions sound like bullshit I'm not doing it. And I'll beat the shit out of anyone suggesting bloodletting or mercury. With my healing stick. I've tied little bells on it, that jingle comically with every smack.

The awesome curative powers of my healing stick come from two separate sources: Placebo, and me using it to beat anyone trying to give my patients mercury.

[chemicalpink]

・❥・ Idea of a Perfect Date ・❥・ | Tarot | Jeon Jungkook

Disclaimer: This reading is based on my experience and knowledge of astrology, it is not meant to be the absolute truth, as BTS are real people, and astrology can only capture so much about multidimensional humans that have had past experiences and cultural approaches amongst other things, it does not have to resonate with you since this is in no way related to anyone reading it (unless you are a member of BTS in which case, get out of here lol ) This is just for entertainment purposes. Remember that tarot as a form of divination only allows us to read current energy and as time advances it becomes less accurate, so it basically reads up to a 6 months period of time

A/N: HELLO THERE I've brought gifts, this is the first post on my ongoing Namkook Birthday Project, don't forget to check it out, I'll be updating almost daily until the end of September. We shall begin by wishing our Jeon Jungkook a happy and cozy birthday

masterlist. tarot masterlist. astrology masterlist.

So we know how Jungkook is always so selfless? well this trait perfectly extends towards his love life, a perfect date for him is 100% finding compromise on what exactly him and his partner would be doing, and although he has in mind it could be troublesome to do so, he’s set on the idea of finding common ground (5oS rx) there’s definitely a wish for him to do something that could be considered childish or not as serious as going out for dinner, a movie or whatever cliche date template most men his age go for, he wants to do something different, something rather unique and memorable (the star) Creativity would be a major part of whatever date is decided, I can totally see him having in mind an activity date, somewhere where he and his date can bond and make it never stale or boring, no chances for awkward silences (the magician), it’s also gotta be an activity he’s good at (are we even surprised) he just wants to excel and show off a bit, his date gotta be teasing and playful, his inner self feels the need to come through if he feels comfortable enough (which is what he is ideally aiming for) also, you have to really expect a certain methodology to the date, after the fun is over and done with, he would like to just keep hanging out, let the fun down in and chill together.

Decks Used: Tarot del Fuego, Romance Angels, Harmonious Tarot

[bonesandthebees]

Then we have the call and Hannah! I love this part. It’s so clear how Hannah just doesn’t care. They made an arrangement for blaziphane. As long as you don’t touch that, they don’t care who rules the planet. Everything they do is for their own gain. All they care about is their own people. The sirens (woman even more that men).

And Wilbur and Tommy don’t fall under that. They are male. They are half Sirens. They are too far removed from the crown to be important for inheritance. And Hannah has never met them so she can’t form any personal attachment.

I like how she clearly cares a lot about her own rules and etiquette, but not about those of other planets. Phil is not allowed to call her Hannah. That is her personal name. He needs permission to do so. Phil clearly doesn’t know that. I thought he had been told, though maybe that was just Ranboo. Maybe he knows but didn’t realise how big of a deal it was since he never tried to call Wilbur by his personal name and Wilbur decided to give what he gets for the title thing.

She doesn’t care for Eldignvger ettiquete either. Wilbur is older so Wilbur needs to introduce himself first. Which makes sense. To her he’s not a bastard because their system is maternal and his mother is her aunt. She could care less about who his father is if he wasn’t a human. She’s also slightly offended by the extra name. But like we saw in the flashback. They don’ care enough to make a fuss about it because Wilbur is male.

Also, I love how Wilbur can tell her Voice is strong even through a call. She’s next in line to be queen. She should nave the strongest Voice of them all. So she probably practiced. Also the methodology was really interesting and her outfit is really cool!

-🌲

lmao yup Hannah doesn't give a shit about anything but the blaziphane agreement. Themis is also a very snobbish planet, often thinking of themselves as better than most of the other planets in the galaxy. They don't have a lot of respect for outside customs and etiquette, which they know they can get away with because everyone is afraid of them!

the Myrina comment really pissed Hannah off for two main reasons. One, Phil didn't realize how much emphasis was put on the distinction between personal and formal names. Like he knows there's a distinction, but he figured that since Hannah shares the same name as her mother it would be easier to just avoid confusion and call her Hannah, not realizing what a misstep that was. Two, Hannah is the heir. She's not the Queen yet. she's literally the same age as Wilbur (maybe a year older?) so she's also used to being undermined for her age, especially by foreign politicians, so Phil trying to use her personal name instead of her formal, regnal name also hit a little too close to home with her desire to be seen as a full blown leader in her own right and not just a young princess. hence why she snapped at him so forcefully about it

yeah the Themisians don't give a shit about Eldingvegr etiquette. they don't care what the Eldingvegr royal bloodline is. Tommy and Wilbur are both royal through their Themisian side as well, so the Themisians are always going to default to that when it comes to etiquette. Themis also doesn't really care about the concept of bastards in general, considering most of their rulers are women so it doesn't matter so much who someone's father is. in Themis' eyes, Tommy's only leg up over Wilbur is the fact that he's the heir to Eldingvegr's throne, but ignoring that the two are on equal footing so things default to Wilbur considering he's older

yupppp her Voice is extremely strong. sometimes a siren with an extremely powerful Voice has a subtle hum under all their words even when they're not using it. it just bleeds through, and while it's not the same as them actually using the Voice to command people, it definitely adds an intimidation factor and gives whoever the siren is speaking to the sense that you do not wanna fuck with this person (also ty for the compliment on her outfit, it looks so cool in my head I was so excited to describe it)

[ms-trickster]

✨ Missy’s Fanfiction Extravaganza✨

A shout out to some fics that I've read, fallen in love with, and believe deserve more recognition. Stories not restricted by fandom or website, though I will stick to either AO3 or Fanfiction.net. Please pay attention to the tags for triggers/squicks!

DC

Killing the Joke by  LtSaladmander (5/?)

If you were to make a list of the entire population of Gotham, in order of most to least likely to finally kill the Joker, a random exhausted college student wouldn’t even be on it.

Paz didn’t really think much of killing Gotham’s resident psychotic clown (he was just right there and what else was she supposed to do? She couldn’t afford to be any later to her class) but now every villain and their aunt seem to want to prove themselves better than the late Clown Prince of Crime. She just would love for everyone to stop breaking down her door because she really, really can’t afford to keep replacing it.

Love Song by orphan_account (1/1)

Part 16 of Tidbits

“You cannot be serious.” protests Damian.

It had been Tim’s initial reaction to his counterpart’s declaration, too. Even after seeing the lie, realizing the deception, he’d wondered why. Why go with Drake. Why something so obvious.

Then he’d seen the genius behind the plan.

or, Tim , Damian, and nicknames

all these stars are silent by distracted_dragon (1/1)

If there is one singular truth in the universe, it is this: Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne will never allow any harm to be inflicted on Conner Kent ever again.

Arachnophobia by damthosefandoms (1/1)

The entire family is packed into a minivan. It’s 2am, they’re going 80 miles an hour, and Damian has the audacity to point out that there’s a spider on the inside of the car window.

Boku no Hero Academia

your rule of thumb by dinomight (1/1) (+ the unofficial sequel)

“This year’s Top Sexiest Female Hero rankings are out!” the reporter chirps, a wide, pleasant smile on her face, and not for the first time Nemuri wonders how this woman can so happily read something that is so thoroughly disgusting. Then again, she’s managed to hold entire conversations with Endeavor without showing that she desperately wants to punch him in the throat, so. “Looks like the new number one is recently debuted Mount Lady, bumping last year’s number one Midnight to number two—”

She changes the channel with a roll of her eyes, but the next news report is covering the same thing. And the next.

(Or: Midnight gets fed up.)

electricity and you: a handbook by sunflowersandillusions (1/1)

Control, Ojiro had said. God, that word. That perpetual stain on his primary school report card under the “classroom behavior” section: Denki needs to work on exhibiting better self control in class. The verbal weapon of choice of a gruff Aizawa-sensei against a short-circuiting Denki, just returning to a functioning state after his second ill-advised Indiscriminate Shock in a week (dammit, he’d been getting better with not overdoing it lately, too): “I know you know this by now, Kaminari. Your voltage levels are plenty high; strength isn’t the issue for you. What you need to work on is control.”

Maybe that whole meditation thing is the way to go, then, Denki figures. If it gives him an in to fixing all... this *gestures widely*.

—

Denki takes up meditation in a bid to gain some greater degree of control over his Quirk. It's not very "him", he knows, but anything for people to finally see him as the help he wants to be.

my god, i'm so lonely by Kaleid369 (1/1)

Tōru is four years old when her Quirk first manifests. It happens slowly, gradually, and she doesn’t notice until it’s too late.

It starts with her hands.

Hagakure Tōru grows up far too fast.

with hands like ghosts by rhymae (1/1)

Anger, Izuku is learning, is a fickle thing.

Because despite everything, he still wants to make it right. He wants to keep Todoroki's idea of what makes a hero alive, wants to forget the burning of childhood across his fingertips. He wants to keep everyone safe.

Izuku wants them both to be anything but the embodiment of what has happened to them.

He meets Todoroki’s eyes, “We're here because we earned it, Todoroki-kun. Us, and no one else."

Or, Izuku, the methodology of trauma, a series of conversations, & the price of being named one side of a same coin.

Danny Phantom

Missing Persons by DP_Marvel94 (2/2)

Part 5 of Phic Phight 2020

For the Phic Phight: A halfa is half human and half ghost. Danny learns the dark truth of how Vlad created all of those fully grown clones.

Out of Body Experience by avearia (1/1)

Part 14 of Phic Phight 2019

Dash is having the weirdest dream. …It is a dream, right?

Gravity Falls

Mabelgram by scribefindegil (1/1)

Part 1 of Mabel Pines vs. The Multiverse

Mabel gives herself a pep talk. Actually, she gives it to all her selves.

Unidentical Twins by Yevynaea (1/1)

When they’re eleven, Mabel cheerfully coins the term ‘unidentical twins’ and Dipper can’t deny it fits.

[hoidn]

my big reference post of tritype 145 - The Researcher Archetype. everything copy/pasted as-is. some deletion; none correction.

145 Overview [source]

If you are a 145, you are diligent, intuitive, and knowledgeable. You want to be ethical, original and wise. Highly intellectual, you are focused on what you perceive is correct and above reproach. Research oriented, you seek and quote the opinions of experts to avoid being seen as ignorant. Your life mission is to study and learn as much as you can and then teach the wisdom of what you have learned to others. A true researcher, you are happiest using your investigative skills. You can be so identified with the information that you have gathered and the correct way of doing things that you feel exhausted and can appear to be a persnickety know it all. 478 and 451 are very different types of 4. The 478 is intensely individualistic and more assertive whereas the 451 is individualistic but much more introspective and reserved. The 478 is somewhat optimistic and focuses more on the need for inspiration than the 451. The 451 is more particular and is more motivated by gathering meaningful information that is useful. (4)-5-1 - The Competent 4 4-(5)-1 - The Idealistic 5 4-5-(1) - The Withdrawn 1 Intellectual. May be involved in philosophy. They enjoy coming to understand themselves and their world. Calling all 145s... You have reported a strong need to be above criticism and to avoid the glare of judgment and scrutiny. You have also reported how difficult it is for you to express yourself especially if you feel emotional. As a 415, you would need to carve a distinct image of being unique, appropriate and wise. The 3 together create a defense strategy that focuses on getting the information needed 'to be correct' to feel safe... No one wants to be wrong, but this Tritype tends to easily feel self-conscious and can be shy. So, the 145 researches to have something interesting to say and to be above criticism. The 415's I know are most capable of intellectual circumspection with a twist of the romantic and mysterious. They seem to balance out the emotional realm with the intellectual, but sometimes my 415 friends can be overly critical and defiant of any thing that is stereotypical or oppressive that could impact their search for an ideal mate...Another thing about the 415s I know is they are very perfectionist, overly sensitive to any perceived stereotyping, and an academically-minded four, but they never quite feel self-satisfied or finished, sometimes falling into long states of procrastination...They have an amazing ability to dissect their own emotions rationally... Think Frustration (1-4) meets Competence (1-5) meets Withdrawing (4-5)and you get a rather persnickety perfectionist who needs plenty of downtime. On the high side what they produce can be of unparalleled depth and beauty. out of 458/459/451 I'd guess that both 459 and 451 would seem more 5-like (or, more accurately, be more likely to be mis-typed as 5) than 458. 451 is the most 5ish 4. Rational and scientific. 451 - knowledgeable and discerning 4. Most intellectual 4, especially if social subtyle of with a 5 wing. Likes to teach.

-----

Comparing 1 + 4 Archetypes (145, 146 and 147) [source]

The 3 tritypes concerned with having ONE and FOUR fixes (145, 146 and 147) display those behavioral and psychological patterns :

Anger and Envy combine into a peculiar, reflective personality whose goals entail being able to comprehend and coerce their emotional life into a suitable structure in which they can further refine it into something greater;

Double frustration stance ; the need to feel that life isn't going to fulfill and satisfy its own wishes and wants is enhanced;

Sullen, complex and refined energy;

The structure-building, conscience-driven ONE is at odds with the self-expressing, moody FOUR;

There is a real conflict between the ONE's need to be removed from it instinctive nature and the FOUR need to keep in touch with its original nature;

Most likely combination to be seen as original, critical and seeking refinement;

Differences Between Archetypes

Expressing Creativity

• 145s aren't known for being truly creative tritypes, but they can show it by exploring new areas of knowledge that haven't been discovered or touched upon. They are excellent at finding the missing link between two theories or simply by researching enough on something;

Intellectual Curiosity

• 145s in often considered to be one of the most intellectual and cerebral archetypes. This is because they tend to dive deep into a subject and look for what's missing in order to make the exploration throrough and complete. Because of their capacity to amass large quantity of data, they can be known as a know-it-all;

Dealing with External Structure • 145s prefer to work within their own boundaries and strucutural approaches as they color and personalize external ones in order to work with them (most of the time);

Potential Problems • 145s can be so identified in pursuing additional knowledge and getting accurate information that this dauting task can become exhausting and leave you irritating and intolerant of outside advices. This tritype is also very critical and prone to correct others in their observations, making it frequently unliked and annoying if this attitude is persistent in time. Given that this archetype also tend to be very withdrawn and value their alone time, they should try giving others the benefit of the doubt and allow themselves to be educated freely and not only by verifiable sources;

Patterns & Structure • 145s are triple analytical and studying. This means that this archetype has all the three enneatypes in each center of intelligence that need to search a subject in depth, both intellectually and emotionally in order to come to an accurate and detailled conclusion. They can't be satisfied with normal or readily-found data, as they want to be as precise as possible in order to develop their compency and find new info that might have been overlooked. [...] Sexual subtypes are very intense and passionate and often feel compelled to research about taboo or bizarre subjects that make them feel connected to the human body in some way. They have a combination of prickly and passionate attitude that make them quite magnetic even though they want privacy too like the self-preservation subtype. They love to have deep and detailed conversations with their loved ones. 

• 145s' most common MBTI types are : INFJ (451) [#GPOY], INTJ (514), INTP (541) and sometimes INFP (451). This tritype is most commonly found within introverted intuitives and are more rarely found elsewhere. 

• 146s are more doubtful of what they know to be true than 145s, who in turn are more confident in their capacity to understand and accumulate information;

• 145s are prickly and hard to know personally

-----

Comparing 4 + 5 Archetypes (458, 459 and 145) [source]

The 3 tritypes concerned with having FOUR and FIVE fixes (458, 459 and 145) display those behavioral and psychological patterns :

Envy and Avarice merge into a very private, introspective and sensitive personality. People with this combination prefer to live through their imagination and have a hard time getting through action in the real world;

Double Withdrawn stance : the need for saving up personal energy and straying away from overwhelming stimulation is increased;

Quiet, meditative, emotional and cerebral energy;

Sensitivity and attachment to emotional states of FOUR is at odds with the detached, aloof stance of FIVE;

There is a conflict between the FOUR’s need to explore their emotional self and the FIVE’s need to maintain a neutral, unbiased stance;

Most likely combination to be seen as introverted, solitary and removed from its environment;

Differences between Archetypes

Relation to Anger

• 145s don’t like it when people don’t follow the same rigorous steps of information gathering and analyzing as they do. They can become frustrated and nitpicky with unmotivated and sloppy people;

Personal Strengths

• 145s are the best at further refining concepts and theories in their respective framework and mapping out uncharted territories thanks to their razor-sharp intellect;

Control from the Environment • 145s are more likely to quietly exert control over their own beliefs and what they perceive as adequate and may try to coerce people into using the same methodology as them;

Possible Mistypes • Sexual FOURS with a 145 tritype may mistype as a 458 because of their passionate nature and their easier access to anger than the other subtypes; [can confirm; cf this post!]

-----

Comparing 1 + 5 Archetypes (125, 135 and 145) [source]

The 3 tritypes concerned with having ONE and FIVE fixes (125, 135 and 145) display those behavioral and psychological patterns :

Anger and Avarice combine into a meticulous, stern and cerebral character. People with this combination are true intellectual who often chose to sacrifice efficiency by focusing more on establishing accurate standards and methods in order to ponder and look at things in a detach manner;

Double competency stance ; the need to detach from emotions and keep an objective eye to solve a problem is enhanced;

Very precise, laser-focused and deep thinker energy;

The conscience-driven, moralisitic ONE is at odds with the detached, system-building FIVE;

There is a conflict between the ONE's need to be right according to internal standards and the FIVE's need to be competend according to objective metrics and pure data;

Most likely combination to be considered intellectual, rational and detached;

Differences Between Archetypes :

Communications skills

• 145s are not prone to be quite social, but are more sensitive to their internal life, making their conversation a bit more heartfelt at times;

Fields of Interests • 145s love to learn about less practical subjects like science, philosophy, the occult, etc;

Social Roles • 145s like to dig deeper into untouched waters and make seemless links between disciplines. They are good at finding out what's missing and what's been overlooked;

Miscellaneous Differences • 145s are less preoccupied by performance and has a harder time to shapeshift than 125s and 135s;

• 145s can be a bit more poetic and mystical in their choice of words.

• 135s are better at making their work look attractive and convincing than 145s, who will prefer the actual content only then showcasing what they've worked on; • 145s are moodier and can have periods of melancholy while 135s are more removed from their emotional states; • 125s care deeply about what people think of them, even though they don't show it often. They are also able to ''mirror smile'' more often than 145s; • 135s can work on projects faster than 145s who will take their time more to fully grasp the actual subject; • 145s are more dependent of their internal state than 125s, who in turn are more affected by their emotional environment.

-----

[source]

Both the 451 and 459 are reserved and introspective and self conscious. The 451 is very critical of themselves and others. They are very particular and have a lot of shoulds. They can be strident. Dissatisfaction is visible as their energy can be prickly. 

[a-student-out-of-time]

Yeah, they did all of that uh- human experimentation stuff, man, Hope's Peak am i RIGHT?! Making their students to "participate" and not allow anybody else to know, including their own loved ones, they are SURRRRRREELLLY using the money they *leech* from the Reserve Course AREN'T THEY?!.- Miru

I thought this school had problems, but that’s just....evil! It’s pure EVIL!

And they’ve had people like me working to keep up their spotless image. Crimes on campus don’t get investigated, we have to bury the evidence and they keep recruiting whoever they want to study talent.

So...Kobayashi-Kun’s mom...

She was another victim of the project. They used her, and then they discarded her. The disease she had was the long-term effects, and they killed her when she reached age 30.

And thanks to Nakamura, another seven Reserve Course students met the same fate. For all I know, he helped them perfect their methodology.

And then he dropped out, and hasn’t said a word about it since.

[antigonick]

FIVE CHARACTER TROPES

RULES: List five tropes applicable to your character, then tag others to do the same. (Tropes Wiki), repost / do not reblog.

(okay apparently it’s a Una day today, let’s do this). 

tagged by @forestcreatures​ and @impossible-rat-babies​ ♡ thank you, I’ve been losing my mind on TV tropes for a full hour. Tagging @ace-of-kings @mihqorio @heartbrreak and @ardellian​ if you want to!

Una.

FALLEN HERO / ANTI-HERO / FACE-HEEL TURN Not all villains are born. Some are made, and none are more tragic than the Fallen Hero. As the name implies, the Fallen Hero used to be a hero before doing a Face–Heel Turn. They may even have been an Ideal Hero or another equally optimistic archetype, up until the moment when they suffered something bad enough for them to lose all faith in good and idealism, be it the loss of a loved one, too many good deeds coming back to bite them hard, betrayal by someone they trusted the most, too much distrust from those who should have been allies, or some other faith-shattering event. It might even be a drawn out process of seduction to The Dark Side or fall from grace. Some Evil Old Folks happened to be this type in their younger days.

What they choose to do about it determines what they become:

If they retreat into themselves and fight evil mercilessly to dull the pain, they become an Anti-Hero, though if this fight is motivated by vengeance, they may run the risk of becoming like the very monsters they have sworn to destroy.

DETERMINATOR

A character — good or evil, male or female, young or old — who never gives up. Ever. No matter what.

There is no stopping the Determinator. They do not understand tact. They do not Know When to Fold 'Em, and it's a waste of time to tell them the odds. No one can reason with them. They'll do whatever they have to without question. No price is too great to pay for success, up to and including their own life. Do not expect them to realize they might be better off letting it go, even if they can barely stand. If you're ever kidnapped or lost with no hope of rescue, they'll be the one who will find you. Their adversaries will shout, in exasperated rage, "Why Won't You Die?!". For them, there is no line between "perseverance" and "insanity."

The nobility of their goal is not necessarily proportionate to their persistence. This is just as often an obsessive rival with a grudge as it is a hero on a chivalrous quest, and where their willpower ultimately leads them will depend both on their role and on where the work stands on the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism.

TELL ME HOW YOU FIGHT

and I will tell you what you are. You can tell a lot about a person by the way he fights. This is when a character's fighting style reflects his personality or methodology. Similar to Weapon of Choice except here, it's not so much what you use as how you use it.

• Suicidal Tactics: Character launches forward, not caring about leaving himself wide open to attack. It is a style appropriate for Blood Knight, a Death Seeker, a Leeroy Jenkins or a Berserker. Could be an Action Bomb.

• Self-Imposed Challenge: Character eschews weapons when everyone else uses them, or otherwise limits his power (and it may not be by choice); appropriate for a Proud Warrior Race Guy or variety of Martial Pacifist or "smiling, wrinkly old man" types. May be used by Blood Knights or Worthy Opponentswho can't get a satisfying fight any other way, which shows deserved overconfidence. May be fond of saying I Am Not Left-Handed.

• Fights Like a Normal: If a superpowered character prefers good old martial arts, then either he is too arrogant (villain) or afraid (hero) to use his powers, or he might simply find "normal" skills more enjoyable (either hero or villain).

• Close-Range Combatant: The character in this case is strong, confident and/or reckless, shining on hand-to-hand combat and often overlapping with the suicidal tactics described above, but with an emphasis on this character's lack of reach being a potentially crippling weakness.

ENEMY WITHIN

A specific form of Split Personality. Maybe the Body Horror became a bit too fused with someone. Maybe the Unstoppable Rage is getting... too unstoppable. Perhaps The Atoner's past is taking on a life of its own. Either way, the enemy is behind the hero's eyes, and its time is coming when it can take over. Until then, it'll do all it can to control him and get him to give in to its Horror Hunger. The thing to stress most is that the Enemy Within is the hero. He or she cannot simply exorcise it out. Often the Enemy Within is the cause of the powers that the hero has that allows them to do what they do. With Great Power Comes Great Insanity, remember?Often, since Evil Is Cool and Evil Feels Good, other characters may realize the danger before the hero and need to convince him.

SHE WHO FIGHTS MONSTERS

Usually, not quite a villain, but they act antagonistically enough that they're little better. Something has happened to our Fallen Hero: his village was destroyed, his friends killed, his puppy roasted on an open spit, his bike stolen, whatever. All that matters is that It's Personal, and he feels that the law just isn't suitable enough (or has become too corrupt and ignorant) to be of any use to him in settling the matter. He may justify his actions by claiming that it's Justice he's after, not vengeance, but anyone with half a brain can easily see that he's out for Revenge... unfortunately, we can also see that the more he hunts the cause of his woes, the more he takes on the villain's personality and mannerisms—something that our "hero" is too blinded by his single-minded goal to realize.

Our avenger may have good intentions—the fiend may well be too dangerous to be kept alive—but ultimately, his obsession with dealing out due punishment (or worse) and his refusal to think about what he's doing twists him into a monster just as bad as, or even worse than, the one he's hunting. And even before he gets to that point, it's nigh-impossible to turn him away; calling him out on it will be ignored or retaliated against. The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love were lost to him the moment the atrocity that sent him on his wild goose chasehappened; he feels that Team Spirit is just a hindrance, and that Love Is a Weakness that he can't afford to have.

Also includes, but not limited to (can you tell I’m cheating yet?): What You Are In The Dark, Beneath The Mask / Becoming The Mask, Escaped From the Lab / Become a Real Boy, Unreliable Narrator, No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, Berserk Button, Blood Knight / Knight Templar / Death Seeker / in Harm’s Way, Don’t You Dare Pity Me!, Heroic Sacrifice, Cute Bruiser, Mugging The Monster, Jerk With a Heart of Gold, Sir Swears-A-Lot, Telepathy, Love is a Weakness, Mind Rape, Roaring Rampage of Revenge, Humans Are the Real Monsters, The Power of Hate, and, indulgently, Birds of a Feather, Interplay of Sex and Violence, In Love With Your Carnage, Undying Loyalty, The Only One Allowed to Defeat You, I Know Your True Name. 

[upcycleability]

A Response to a Commenter: Corperate Capitalism

I generally just try to put out good information on things we can do to help when and if we can (because corporations are not on Tumblr reading my blog), but apparently, this brought criticism of me and my shop, so I am going to address that criticism.

The article this is about is the only one out of 121 articles written so far that has somehow gone viral. You can read it HERE

The person who mentioned this had a few things to say about me, so let's start off with this:

"Corporations are personally responsible for the majority of all industrial waste including textiles. the og post is written in a way to make you feel socially guilty and obligated to do minuscule acts to "help" (just like all the cutesy water conservation tips that blind us to the fact that corporate farms and golf courses use more water in a week than a human uses in a year)."

I 100% agree that the main issues are a result of corperations and governments. I talk a lot about how we need systemic change and how the governments are to blame in my article on overpopulation.

"Living an eco-friendly lifestyle ourselves is a good starting point, but the governments and corporations make the majority of the trash and environmental harm. Do not harm minorities because you have an ignorant misunderstanding of how the world works. Do your part, and force the people who are causing this problem: rich folk, corporations, and governments, to do theirs."

I talk about this all the time, both here on my Tumblr, but also over on Medium. I am not trying to make anyone feel guilty about their life while giving corporations an out. I am calling out corporations, while also providing nifty tips that I have learned about myself to help in what little ways that we can. We need both systemic change and social change.

Hold companies and government accountable, but also live ourselves in a way that we want to see the world. This is how I personally live my own life.

op then punctuates the post with adverts for her shops: where she'll make money off of concepts that are supposed to help mitigate needless consumption. it doesn't take into account that interstate transport has a shitty "eco footprint" too and thus shipping via Etsy or Poshmark is adding in new pollutants.

Yes, at the end of most of my posts with links to my shops where I sell secondhand and salvaged materials. I do this so that if anyone is going to buy something anyways, they can buy it in a more sustainable way.

I only sell within my own country or the one country adjacent, and I only ship using longer shipping times (no 2-day shipping if I can avoid it), and I only use the US Postal Service as they are heading to your home to deliver your mail anyhow, so it is a greener option and easier for me to implement.

I also know that all things shipped has a carbon footprint, which is why I buy carbon credits, and donate 5% of my rather low income to intersectional climate activist group 350 dot org.

And as I often state: Don't buy from me if you don't need anything. I sell used clothing, destash fabrics, salvaged materials for crafts, and upcycled products that I make. If you are going to sew anyways, buying salvaged fabric and the like is far better than buying brand new fabrics that are often made using harmful chemicals and poor labor rights.

it's remarkably clever, the monetization of "wokeness", and OPs post is a fantastic example of it.

I am a trans woman, pansexual, disabled, neurodivergent, and live in poverty. I know very well what "wokeness" is, and I doubt what I am doing is anything close to that.

i'd be amazed if they didn't take any business or advertising classes because the setup of the OG post is nearly textbook... and I do mean textbook, as in "I personally have textbooks that describe using the methodologies OP is using in the OG post to make herself money".

I did not take any business or advertising classes at all. I suck at advertising. I have been writing blogs and the like for myself for over 15 years on a variety of different topics, and that is the only way I know how to promote my business. I write about something I am fascinated in and want to learn more about myself, or else share knowledge with people who don't know what I have learned via research, and then link my upcycle shop if anyone is interested in finding some things they may need without the impact of buying new.

And I love how they make it sound like I am striking it rich. On Etsy, over the last 3 months (after fees), I made about 235$, or about 80$ a month. On Mercari over the same 3 month period, I made 66 dollars, so 22$ a month. On eBay, 90 day total is 242$, or about 80$ a month. Poshmark has my most income, at 377$ since January 1st, or almost 4 months. That is, again, about 80$ a month. So for all of my "monetization of wokeness" I make about... 250 bucks a month. And that is about half to a little more than half of my monthly income. The rest I get through what few freelance writing clients that I get in a month.

I live off 400-500 USD a month in earnings. I get by with this, and I am happy to do what I love, such as dumpster diving, disassembling clothing, and selling or reselling what I make or find. It also allows me to work from home, as someone who is a trans woman, pansexual, disabled, neurodivergent, and in poverty.

I am not trying to trick anyone, I am simply trying to survive in a Capitalist hellscape. If selling salvaged handbags and scarves made from T-shirts is my sin, then burn me at the stake.

I will be writing a new article soon about more eco-friendly craft supplies.