#i will not let my schools greatest contribution to existence be ignored

[cosmicpines]

excuse me this is “who is the spiciest memelord” erasure

did anyone else just see alex trebek come THIS close 👌🏻 to killing a contestant with his bare hands

[thevoidable]

Why did Dabi let Hawks into the League? (major manga spoilers ahead)

This is a question that’s been plaguing my head ever since Dabi proudly announced to Hawks that he’d known all along that he was lying.

If that was the case, what was the point of bringing him in? Surely Dabi must have seen this coming by enabling Hawks to continue his infiltration? What exactly was Dabi’s end-goal here???

It’s unclear whether or not if this will get explained eventually, but after giving it a lot of thought, I think I have a pretty good answer to the question regardless. Essay under the cut.

What is Dabi fighting for?

First, we have to address Dabi’s motivations. They run deeper than just making Stain’s will a reality - he’s taking steps that Stain never even considered to make, because even he was blinded by something that Dabi despises more than anything: hero idolization. Stain saw All Might as a true hero, someone worthy of the title, but in Dabi’s eyes, All Might is one of the biggest contributing factors to why there is such a huge problem with the hero system, and aside from All Might allowing other heroes to become complacent, it’s all because of Endeavour.

Hawks and Dabi are two sides of the same coin when it comes to the new no. 1; Hawks grew up seeing Endeavour’s ambition to surpass All Might as impressive and heroic, mostly due to the fact that Hawks himself lacks the drive to become so great, because all he wants is to live life comfortably. But for Dabi, Endeavour’s need to surpass All Might was nothing but a blinded greed for power, the need to be the best of the best for his own selfish desires rather than to actually save people. It was a path that led him to horrifically abuse his own family in order to achieve it, because he saw Quirk breeding as the only way to fix his own flaws. As such, Dabi, AKA Toya, suffered greatly at the hands of it. He knows firsthand just how much the hero system is unjust, allowing for people with unhealthy mindsets like Endeavour to gain positions of power. He knows that people admire Endeavour for his heroism, but are unaware of the monster that lurks behind closed doors, even when his temper comes out during public patrols. This is a man who is the very definition of a false hero, a man who let his eldest son die and traumatized his entire family.

Dabi goes on to claim in chapter 267 that there are no true heroes - this, however, does not mean that true heroes cannot exist. All he means is that there are simply no heroes currently present and he plans to change that, because in the system that society has right now, it’s near-impossible. Hero idolization forces heroes to become perfect images that people can admire, and it also enforces the mindset that only the greatest heroes can come from schools like UA and Shiketsu. This results in a flood of people longing to become heroes for reasons other than saving people. Uraraka, for example, while she is gentle and kind-hearted, is still only becoming a hero so she can support her family. It’s a well-paying job, and that kind of promise will most certainly lure anyone in who is desperate enough. Yes, she has good intentions in mind, and she does want to save people, but saving people is not her ultimate goal. So, by Dabi’s definition, she is not a true hero.

Becoming a hero should also not be as easy as it is, and becoming a hero certainly should not start at such a young age. UA and the other hero schools are putting teenagers between the ages of 15 - 19 at severe risk, and we’ve seen worst-case scenario results of this twice over the course of the series, and it’s terrifying to think that there are most likely more that we haven’t heard of.

First you have Shirakumo who died before he had even graduated, an incident that led him to becoming a nomu working for the League, who would then go on to cause the second result.

By placing children in such a dangerous training course, it automatically places targets on their backs for villains before they even get their licenses. The League proved just how incapable the staff are at protecting their students by not only successfully attacking a location within the school, but also kidnapping one of said students later on, even after UA’s attempt at keeping the location of the training camp hidden and Dabi himself had revealed their basic plan to Aizawa.

This is all fuel for Dabi’s fire in his journey to rip hero society apart at the seams, and while he is absolutely planning to kill every false hero he comes across, he also has a secondary plan in mind, and that is for the students.

In One’s Justice 2, Dabi has this particular voice line to Hawks: “We’re working for the glorious future where those UA kids are hollowed, and brought down to earth. We’ll have to see what you’re working for.”

Dabi knows that while they are all still young, there is still time to prevent them from falling into every hero’s brainwashed mindset: villains bad, heroes good, no matter what either of them do. 

Something extremely important that the MVA and the current war arcs do is flip the black and white narratives on their heads, showing us just how human and empathetic the villains can be, while the heroes are doing nothing but making unheroic choices and opting for making the violent move first. We’ve seen all of the heroes do nothing but dehumanize Shigaraki, calling him “it” and “thing” like he’s just some monster that they have to kill. We’ve had to watch Hawks murder Twice in the name of “justice” simply because Twice refused to come quietly and be forced back into a life he felt miserable in. Even X-less chose to focus on the machinery next to him rather than getting a near-dead Shigaraki medical attention, and we all know how karma decided to treat that.

And this is where I would like to bring your attention to Tokoyami.

We’ve seen multiple times before how Dabi seems to have no interest in actually harming the students - initially, anyway. He leaves Aoyama alone even though he saw him; he taunts Shoto but doesn’t attack him to get him away; and lastly, Tokoyami first showing up to rescue Hawks actually calms Dabi down. Dabi shows no intent of hurting them because they’re still just kids, not heroes.

Calling back to how the heroes are currently being depicted as the ones making all the disturbing decisions, Dabi doesn’t hesitate to be the first to call out their decision to bring the students into what is essentially a covert-ops assassination mission that has turned into an all-out war. He first recognises that the boy in front of him is just that: a boy, and instead of attacking, Dabi gives Tokoyami a chance.

But what chance, exactly? To escape? Absolutely not.

The first thing Dabi does is make Tokoyami aware of the crime his so-called mentor just committed, and carefully wording it so that the stakes were made clear.

Twice was trying to run away to protect his friends.

But Hawks still killed him.

Dabi is giving Tokoyami a chance to recognise that the hero system he admires hides many skeletons in its closet, and is something that is severely corrupt. He’s giving Tokoyami a chance to rethink his working relationship with Hawks and everything Hawks has taught him.

But Tokoyami doesn’t take it.

As soon as Hawks speaks up again, Tokoyami returns to being obedient, ignoring everything Dabi just said and focusing only on the task at hand regardless of the moral dilemma presented before him, and that’s when Dabi’s intention for Tokoyami changes, because as Dabi put it, “You’ve stopped thinking for yourself.”

And indeed, Tokoyami has. Tokoyami is now cemented in the brainwashed mindset, blindly putting his faith in that Hawks’s decision to kill Twice was right, simply because Twice is the villain and Hawks is the hero, and Dabi realises this.

Tokoyami is now a false hero, and thus on Dabi’s kill list.

So, we have established that Dabi fully intends to wipe-out existing false heroes, while simultaneously trying to save those who have the chance to recover/escape from the brainwashing before it’s too late.

“Keigo Takami!!”

It’s no secret that Dabi clearly knows exactly what kind of situation Hawks is in. The fact that he knows Hawks’s real name alone tells Hawks that Dabi knows far more than he is comfortable with. So, seeing as Dabi was able to see through Hawks’s lies so easily, let’s assume that Dabi knows most, if not all, of what we the readers know about Hawks and how the HPSC groomed him.

Considering that Dabi came from the no. 1 hero’s household, there’s a high chance that he knows quite a bit about the HPSC and just how shady they actually are, especially if the theories are true that they had a hand in covering up his own death. Dabi is well-aware then that the HPSC is responsible for the hero system being so broken, and the reason they do nothing to fix it is so they can stay in power. They are not afraid to make questionable decisions which they know is only making the villain situation worse, because villains are what’s keeping them in business. And what’s sad about this is that even when the decisions they present are clearly morally wrong, the heroes are in no position to argue, because the HPSC is in complete control of their jobs. The HPSC governs the hero system, so whatever they do must be just, right?

Well, Dabi definitely knows the answer to that.

The HPSC deliberately manipulated the heroes to believe that the UA students were needed on the front lines for this mission, and so far, we’ve seen that they really weren’t, actually. The evac team remains the best place for the students to be, because while the pros with all the combat experience can focus on the villains, the heroes-in-training can focus on the smaller task of getting people to safety. Sure, Kaminari, Tokoyami, and the other front-liners helped, but the pros absolutely overwhelmed the PLF on their own. All the front-liners did was just kind of...pave the way, make things easier, and then they were sent back to rejoin their classmates. And the heroes didn’t question the decision at all.

What’s even more disturbing is that the students weren’t even aware of what they were getting into, and most of the pros weren’t aware that the students weren’t aware.

But, as mentioned before, Dabi doesn’t hesitate to call this out.

It’s highly likely that he’s able to connect that the HPSC were the ones who organised this attack and sent the kids out onto the battlefield, which also means that he’s unfortunately no stranger to the HPSC reducing talented children to nothing but weapons, a concept he is also personally familiar with.

Toya was bred with the intent of creating a Quirk superior to Endeavour’s, and then put under extremely harmful training that abused both his mind and his body. We already know that Dabi is heavily against valuing a person’s Quirk over their individual worth, thanks to his fight with Geten.

And in the world of heroics, this unhealthy mindset is unfortunately in abundance, especially in Hawks’s case.

What makes Hawks an especially tragic character is that he started out with the same longing to be a great hero that every child has. He wanted to be a comforting sight to those in need, and his innocent mind thought that the HPSC would help him make that reality.

Instead, the HPSC presented him with a life-changing decision that a child his age has absolutely zero mental capacity to consent to, and it’s heartbreaking that Hawks’s grooming began right from the second they met. The HPSC forced a child into intensive training at an age even younger than students training at proper hero schools, and they ever-so-gradually began chipping away at Keigo’s hopeful dream, starting with the erasure of his own name, the first step in disconnecting him from who he once was.

Over the years of the hero Hawks growing up under the HPSC’s wing, he had been stripped of his childhood and moulded into the perfect image of a hero, one that is loveable to the public, obedient to his handlers, talented in his work, and completely self-sacrificing to his missions.

The HPSC has successfully groomed Hawks so that his selflessness is now their trump card that they hold over him - instead of using his selflessness to save others no matter who they are, he’s been manipulated to believe that he has to give up everything in his life to be a great hero, that he’s not suited for being a “shining light”, thus bringing about his new goal of creating a world where heroes have free time, a goal that he is unfortunately pursuing in the wrong way. He’s been brainwashed to not think about villains too much, to not sympathize with them and dig into where they came from and why they became villains, which is why he’s targeting the wrong problem when it comes to making his dream a reality. He believes that he has to solve every case as fast as possible, and eventually there will be virtually no more villains left to hunt down, but the League has already shown us that the roots of villainy stretch much further down than that.

We catch a glimpse of how Hawks even acknowledges that he’s being held down by hero society, caged, and yet he does nothing to change it.

The result of his grooming has left him stuck in a thoughtless state, where it’s easier to believe that everything he is doing is right, and the villains are wrong.

And this is unfortunately something that he has spread to Tokoyami, as evidenced earlier.

Hawks is a hero who was groomed and manipulated from a young age, being thrown into training just so he could become a tool for those in power to use.

Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

Dabi can read Hawks like a book

It’s wonderfully ironic how Hawks prides himself in being capable of fooling anyone and everyone, making himself the hardest person in the room to read while simultaneously being able to read everyone else, and yet the one person that he couldn’t predict ends up being the only one who knows him better than anyone else.

Throughout all of their interactions, Dabi has always been two steps ahead of Hawks, able to catch him off-guard and ruffle his feathers. Keeping in mind that Dabi had known all along that Hawks was faking his desire to join the League, it’s interesting just how long Dabi kept stringing him along. Was he simply doing it for his own enjoyment?

Maybe a small part of him was, but in the long run, Dabi was absolutely still testing Hawks’s worthiness. What makes this great, however, is that Hawks was unaware that Dabi wasn’t testing him for what he originally thought.

Loyalty was absolutely out of the question for Dabi, since he knew from the start Hawks wasn’t planning on being as such. So, what exactly was Dabi looking for?

Looking through the tests that we know Dabi put Hawks through (the battle with Hood, and taking out a hero of Hawks’s choice), we can analyse what Dabi was impressed with, and what he wasn’t.

First off, there’s not a lot that Dabi didn’t like about what Hawks did. The most he complained about was Hawks simply bringing along Endeavour to the Hood fight instead of someone else.

It appears that he also complains about Hawks not letting anyone die, but Dabi is always quick to point out when heroes are prioritising lives, and this will become important later.

Then, we have Dabi asking Hawks to take someone out who isn’t the no. 1. When Hawks brought him Jeanist’s body, Dabi was genuinely surprised, but pleasantly-so. 

Now, Jeanist’s death here serves multiple narrative purposes:

It shows us that Hawks won’t hesitate to kill for a mission (RIP Twice),

It shows Dabi that Hawks is capable of killing anyone, not just villains,

And lastly, it serves as blackmail for Dabi in his pursuit of bringing down false heroes.

(There’s also Bakugo’s whole thing with his hero name, but this isn’t about him.)

That last point is what granted Hawks access into the League, contrary to Hawks believing that the only reason he got in is because the merging of the League and the MLA suddenly made it easy to do so. 

Dabi wasn’t going to let Hawks in without making sure he had a backup in mind in case Hawks tripped up.

But, blackmail wasn’t the only thing that Dabi was looking for. If anything, it was just a bonus.

What the Hood battle and Jeanist’s death showed to Dabi were the two sides that Hawks possessed: a bird of prey that isn’t afraid to kill for a cause, and the innocent child who just wanted to help people. Dabi was searching for both of those qualities within Hawks, because they’re both qualities that Dabi himself has.

Dabi relates to Hawks

As previously mentioned, there’s no doubt that Dabi is aware of how Hawks was trained and forced into a life he didn’t want. He’s very aware of how much Hawks longs for freedom but still wants to help those in need, but what separates them from each other is that Dabi has achieved the freedom that Hawks wants and is pursuing his dream in a way that works.

Dabi kills for his cause, but that cause is ultimately to prevent the future suffering of innocent lives at the hands of false heroes. In his own twisted way, he too wants to save lives. He wants to stop the possibility of another him from being created. He is choosing to be the unfriendly reminder that something is very wrong with the current system, and it needs fixing ASAP.

And that is exactly why Dabi can see through Hawks’s lies, because he recognises that Hawks too is a victim of the same system.

Dabi’s plan for Hawks

With Hawks presenting himself in front of Dabi, it offered up a multitude of opportunities for him. Dabi not only had a new connection to Endeavour through Hawks, but here was a hero who was prepared to get his hands extremely dirty just for a way to bring down the League. 

Dabi’s prior knowledge of Hawks and his past allowed him to constantly have the upper hand, but not in case Hawks attacked.

Through testing Hawks to see what qualities he possessed, Dabi was able to see if Hawks was worthy not for joining the League, but for undoing the brainwashing he’d been subjected to.

Dabi let Hawks into the League because he was giving him a chance, the same chance he gave to Tokoyami, to see hero society for what it really was and decide to do something about it. Dabi saw the potential in Hawks to be a true hero, to return to the boy he once was and save people for the sake of saving them. He saw Hawks’s potential to kill false heroes and that he wasn’t afraid to do it, and the idea of someone thinking the same way as Dabi, of understanding him and his goals wholly, would have absolutely been enticing to him.

Dabi claims to not care about the League, but even if that were true, Dabi recognises that the other League members are important to each other, especially when it comes to Twice and how eager he is to make friends. Dabi introducing Hawks to the League was his chance to show Hawks that they’re all human, and gain sympathy for them and what they stand for. It would have been the ultimate power move on Dabi’s part for Hawks to turn on the heroes and go villain, undoing what hero society did to him, providing him the freedom he always wanted and ultimately proving Dabi and his ideals right.

But, unfortunately, that wasn’t how things went.

How Dabi’s plan backfired

When Hawks first joined the PLF, it was obvious that Dabi was sticking close to him, both to keep an eye on him and to be genuinely friendly and accepting.

It’s rare to see a smile like this on Dabi when he’s around heroes, and he never smiles around the League, but for Hawks specifically, Dabi is always smiling. I think it’s safe to say that Dabi did genuinely enjoy Hawks’s company and that he was the only one Dabi actually liked, which is probably what led to him being comfortable with leaving Hawks to his own devices for the next few months, especially when he started a budding friendship with Twice.

Dabi must have been confident that Twice would be the one to break through the last of Hawks’s walls, because if we were seeing genuine smiles from Hawks, then Dabi must have seen them too.

However, it’s clear that Dabi severely underestimated Hawks’s capability to kill anyone. 

Hawks leaked the information to the heroes, an attack was launched, and Dabi immediately knew why.

And he was, understandably, incredibly pissed.

Upon confronting Hawks and hearing how he was about to kill Twice, Dabi used what he’d learned about Hawks during the Hood fight to his advantage and triggered Hawks’s rescue response, prompting him to subconsciously save Twice from Dabi’s flames, because Dabi knows deep down that a hero is who Hawks really is. What he was most likely hoping was for Hawks to maintain that response, but he instead made a mistake and directly caused Hawks to go back into mission-mode.

And it’s just a downward spiral from there, with all of Dabi’s last-ditch efforts falling flat. In one last desperate attempt to reach through to Hawks, he called out his name. His real name.

Dabi’s final chance to bring Hawks to his senses was to try and reconnect him with his past self of whom the HPSC had carefully erased, and it almost worked. Dabi let Hawks know that he knew everything about him, everything that he once was, but just like with Tokoyami, Dabi learnt the hard way that Hawks was beyond saving.

With Twice’s death, Dabi completely lost it, scolded Hawks for not focusing on him, and dropped one last bomb on Hawks before ending yet another false hero.

Until, yet again, that too backfired due to Dabi’s hope that he could save an innocent mind from the hero system’s brainwashing, and Hawks escaped with his life.

We get a glimpse of Dabi’s defeated expression, the knowledge that he can’t cry, and that he just lost two friends within the span of just a few minutes.

What next?

Honestly, if there’s one thing that is going to break Hawks, it’s knowing the truth about Endeavour. My hope is that Dabi is going to have a chance to make his reveal public to the entire nation, and exposing Enji Todoroki for the abuser he is will really shake things up.

At the moment, it’s still not clear exactly what Dabi told Hawks in his redacted bubble, but it was obviously something relating to his identity. Only time will tell what Hawks knows once he regains consciousness.

[lov3nerdstuff]

... because you're mine.

*Tom Hiddleston x reader*

Oneshot

Words: 4.7k

Summary: Things get steamy between you and Tom after another man asks you out.

Request: I was the actress in Betrayal, but Tom was playing Jerry instead of Robert. As the production goes on, the kissing scenes get steamier (he finds THAT spot on my neck!) until I tell him my feelings, he says he doesn't reciprocate & doesn't do romance in the spotlight. After another man asks me out & I say yes (but don't realize it's a date) he kisses that spot during the performance & whispers that I'm his. 🤯 --> @annwhojumps

A.N.: Prepare for some jealous Tom 😉 also, 'I put a spell on you' can be read as an independent prequel to this, but srsly doesn't have to!

Also check out my Masterlist!

_______________________________

You had absolutely no idea why you had been cast to play one of the main characters in this highly prestigious production of one of your favorite plays… After all, you had only auditioned for fun! As a recent graduate from the school of dramatic arts, your chances really hadn't been all too high, and yet you had been selected for the title role. However the shock of it was only topped off when on the first day of rehearsals, you had discovered that your fellow actors were nothing but the brightest stars of modern age theater… and your scene partner was none other than Tom Hiddleston.

Yet, as surprising as it might have been for everyone in the theater, you and him had connected immediately, on a level neither of you really understood. But you had both been certain by lunch break that you would definitely enjoy being around each other from now on.

The first days of rehearsals went well, to say the least, and every single day you and Tom got closer. You got to know each other better, more than anyone else in the cast, and spent almost every waking minute at each other's side. And once the actual rehearsal period started and everyone got on stage, you found yourself enjoying the whole thing immensely. Acting with Tom was the greatest joy, for he seemed to really enjoy both your general company and your professional work together, and even the other A-listers seemed to warm up to you slowly. Still, nobody had an idea why you had been selected for the role, but honestly it didn't matter much. You fit in so nicely with the more experienced actors that in no time, everyone seemed to have forgotten that this was, in fact, your first real job.

Yet, as rehearsals continued on to a more detailed level, not just the blocking, you found your nerves and stomach in knots as you got ready to start the first real run through the scenes.

In the final act of the play, you would need to not only kiss Tom, but literally make out with him on stage, in front of your colleagues and the audience… The thought of stage kissing alone made you nervous, for it had never been your favorite thing even in school, and the thought of kissing Tom of all people simply had you close to hyperventilating.

The thing was… you wanted to kiss Tom. More than anything, actually, for with every new day you spent joking, bickering, laughing and talking with him, your adoration for him turned into the deepest affection, turned into sincere love. And even worse: Tom was so much more than you could ever have hoped for, and it was simply impossible to not love him more with every fucking day. Yet you didn't dare to confess your feelings. It was unprofessiona l, and you were supposed to work together with him here, not fall for him. If people got to know about your feelings, they surely would call you either starstruck or simply unprofessional, and nobody in the field would ever cast you again. Fuck.

So you ignored your feelings, pushed them away to as much as the by now close friendship you had would allow you to show. It was painful, but necessary. Even more so since he kept being overwhelmingly nice to you, walking the thin line between friendship and something more like it was a freaking highway. You couldn't tell what he felt for you even if you tried… one moment he was just being the dork he really was, and the next he would stand impossibly close to you, looking into your eyes like you were all that mattered to him in this world.

And now that you stood in front of him, looking up into his eyes with all the overwhelming nervousness and tornment, his soft smile and gentle eyes were balm for your soul.

"Relax, Y/n. It'll be fine..." He whispered to you so that the others wouldn't hear, only seconds before his nose brushed against yours ever so slightly, hot breath fanning across your lips as they parted ever so slightly on their own account. Your eyes fluttered shut. This wasn't Tom kissing you… this was his character kissing yours.

Soft, chilled lips connected with the corner of your mouth as his hands grabbed onto your waist, gentle fingers brushing against the small glimpse of heated skin just below the hem of your shirt. Your breathing hitched. His lips ghosted over your jaw as his hands trailed down to your hips, your thighs… you were supposed to push him onto the couch behind him.

Reluctantly, a little too reluctantly even for your character, your palms pressed against his toned chest, curling around the soft fabric of his shirt. He nibbled on your jaw, and you pulled him closer to yourself by his shirt. A low, growling sound escaped his lips as they left a trail of feathery kisses down your neck, and you finally managed to give him a little push that made him fall backwards onto the couch. Yet he held on to your hips tightly, and you came crashing down on top of him, straddling him as your heart threatened to jump out of your chest. A brief glance into his darkened eyes… you gasped, and Tom stared at you like a deer in the headlights. Awe mixed with fear.

"That was amazing, guys!" David, the director of your play, called from the side of the stage, and your breathing hitched yet again as you snapped out of this moment of public intimacy. How the hell were you supposed to do that every day from now on, without giving yourself away?

Rather awkwardly you got off Tom's lap, and forced away the blush as he tried to do the same.

"You, uhm…" Tom spoke up from right next to you, voice hoarse and heavy. "You did really well."

"Oh… thanks." You replied quietly, trying to calm down your racing heart for the next scene. And that hadn't even been a full on kiss to the lips!

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For the next two weeks, David had Tom and you rehearse the scene every day, and every day things got steamier, more raw, more real… At least they switched out the couch thing for you sitting on a counter to be on eye level with Tom, but honestly… that didn't make it any better. Your fellow actors put it off as fabulous acting, but you knew that it wasn't quite the case. Every day, hiding your true feelings for Tom got more difficult, and every day you felt more desperate for a real kiss.

That was until one Friday night, when David made you run through the entire play yet another time. It was already fairly late in the evening, but he'd promised to just have ONE more go before everyone could go home. Everything went well as always, you played your part with the greatest joy and focus, right until it was time for that scene again. It started off like all the times before, Tom stepped closer to you with the most intense energy that alre ady had your skin covered in goosebumps before he even touched you. Gentle hands on your waist, pulling you close as he stood in between your legs… a ghost of a kiss to your jaw, down your neck… your eyes closed as they always did. This time however, be it for the late hour of night or your increasingly shrinking resistance to your own emotions, your hands moved to his neck before you could will them not to, gently tugging on the lush curls in his neck. Almost immediately the faintest sigh, almost a quiet moan, escaped his lips and their loving work on your neck grew bolder, firmer… Until he found that one, secret and crazy sensitive spot that upon the touch of his lips made your back arch towards him and your mind become even more hazed. Now it was you who let out the faintest moan, unable to keep quiet, yet only for him to hear. The grip on your waist tightened ever so slightly, and before you knew how to hide the effect he had on you, he gently bit down on that oh so sensitive spot, sucking and nibbling on your delicate skin.

You felt like exploding, inside out, within your mind and in every cell of your body. Every single nerve of your being was ablaze, the feeling of his lips on your skin, his hands on your body… it all contributed to the hidden coil of pure energy within you that was dangerously close to bursting. If you snapped now, the entire production crew would become an involuntary witness to your impossible love for Tom. And that would be your downfall even before the rise.

But just then the scene continued on, and you were pushed around by other characters, spoken to and spoken for, all until at last, the play ended and the crew applauded, before you practiced who would bow when and leave to which place. Yet, your mind wasn't even in the same theater anymore. Your thoughts were far gone, to a place where only you and Tom existed, a place where you could let yourself love him.

Before you knew, David had finished his commentary of the performance, all the actors had said their goodnights and even the staff had sorted out the last of lighting and audio. Only you were left on stage, frozen in place with only the dim emergency lights illuminating the area around you. The entire audience room lay in darkness, as did the sides of the stage… only the center was lit up so sparsely that it was almost spooky.

"Are you alright?" Tom's voice from right behind you made you jump yet again, and he chuckled upon your flinching.

"God, you scare me!" You breathed, holding a hand over your racing heart. At least, if he could hear your frantic heartbeat now, you had an excuse.

"Nah, you can keep calling me Tom. 'God' is a bit too much." He winked at you with a smirk, and you just had to laugh. Tom was the greatest dork, and you absolutely loved it. "Why are you up here, all alone? Everyone else is heading home."

"I'm not alone. You're here." You smirked at him, wiggling your eyebrows in an attempt to make him laugh. It worked, and even in this minimal light, you could still see his eyes sparking down at you… oh, that darn spell he put on you.

"Wanna tell me what's up?" He inquired, leaning his head to the side.

"Why would something be up?" You frowned, but the slightly too high pitch of your voice gave you away. For an actress, you were horrible at lying. Especially to Tom.

"I can always tell when you're distraught, darling." He mused, then turned around and walked to the edge of the stage, jumping off and vanishing in the darkness of the audience room.

"I'm not distraught!" You protested into the darkness. "I'm just… stressed. Because of the opening night in a week. That's all. And what are you doing over there anyway?"

"Making sure you, my darling Y/n, feel less stressed!" He replied cheerily, and mere seconds later you heard soft tunes coming from the theater's speakers, flowing through the empty room like a soft wind, a breath of fresh air. A smile came onto your lips, and a few short moments later Tom got back onto the stage with you. "They've all gone home, so we shouldn't be bothering anyone."

Again you smiled, resisting the urge to rip your heart out of your chest and tell it to slow the heck down. Tom was ALWAYS around you, wherever you went… this wasn't new. But usually you weren't completely alone, and usually your steamy scene didn't leave your heart screaming and begging for more this badly. For something real.

"Here…" He handed you his phone as he came to stand right in front of you. "Choose a song and we'll dance."

"We can't…" You frowned, but still took his phone upon his request. "This is work, I cannot lose my job, you know that very well, and the theater…"

"Will still be here tomorrow morning just like it is right now." Tom interrupted you with a mischievous yet happily excited smile. "Dance with me? Please?"

Oh, how could you resist those puppy eyes? Never, not in a million years could you refuse that man anything at all. With a sigh you considered your options… it was now or never. This was your chance to tell him, to SHOW him how you felt, despite everything that spoke against it. But he needed to know, and he deserved to know. And thus you made your song choice accordingly.

For a short moment Tom frowned, but once the lyrics started his eyes widened in recognition, and he smiled brightly. "Hey, I actually know a version of this song!"

"Good…" You chuckled, then returned his smile. He took a step towards you, taking your hands in his reluctantly and carefully, but still with that adoring smile. Slowly he pulled you closer to himself while his eyes never left yours, until at last he wrapped an arm around your waist and kept holding your hand in his own.

"Dance with me?" He asked again in a quiet voice that barely stood out over the music surrounding you, and all you could do was nod as you lost yourself in his eyes once more. Only that you couldn't yet say if you lost your bravery or your restraint.

Gently swaying to the music, Tom's hold on you seemed to tighten by the second while your emotions tightened around your throat in a menacing grasp, squeezing until you could hardly breathe anymore. Your hand on his back, clasping his shirt tightly, and your head fell against his shoulder as your eyes closed to the strong beating of his heart. Could he be feeling the same for you? He surely was all about you, every single day… but always reluctant to cross the line of friendship. You had to know, or your mind would tear your soul apart.

He had always been there to comfort you once you had started to doubt your place among the cast, and always pointed out how absolutely amazing you were in his eyes, both as an actress and as a person. And after you had told him about your fear of getting kicked out of the production, he had hugged you tightly and told you that he would make sure that nothing of the sort would happen.

"Oh gosh…" Tom suddenly breathed and you were forced to lift your head again, eyes locking back with his.

"What's up?" You frowned ever so slightly as you spoke, only to find your voice laced with the impossible weight of bottled up emotions.

"I… uhm, your skin…" He started, letting go of your hand in order to touch a gentle finger to the small bruise forming on your neck.

Your breathing hitched as his fingertips traced over that certainly spot once more, but you couldn't bring your eyes to leave his even though they were doomed to darken upon his gentle touch. The song ended, the theater fell quiet but for your shivery breath. Tom's eyes remained on yours, blown and unfathomable in the depth of their ever concealed emotions… his fingers ghosted over the spot on your neck yet again, and you visibly jumped right under his fingertips. His eyes darkened.

And before your mind could come back to its right place in the shadows of worry, your lips were ghosting over his in a gentle brush of reluctant innocence. Careful, asking for silent approval… but it never came.

You took a step backwards, tearing your own heart out in the process, while looking into Tom's wide eyes that were so hopelessly full of mixed emotions that you couldn't possibly tell what he felt. He only stared at you with the saddest face as his chest rose and fell too quickly and the silence between you became unbearable.

"I'm sorry…" You breathed and finally allowed the tears to gather in your eyes, blurring your vision and making it luckily impossible to see the pained expression his own gaze held. "I'm so sorry… I… I love you Tom. I love you… I'm so sorry."

For a few seconds he just stood still right in front of you, the very incarnation of a torn soul, until he finally took a step backwards. Your heart shattered into a million pieces.

"I'm sorry, Y/n…" He breathed with an expression that through your tears looked utterly unfathomable. "I… I can't."

"It's okay…" You smiled through the tears, adding just one more dagger to your already shattered heart. "You don't have to love me. It's okay."

Tom's lips parted immediately as if to reply something he knew he shouldn't, but he closed them again and looked down to the ground with a frown. Silence…

You couldn't bear it any longer, neither the pain nor the sight of his regretful face. It really wasn't his fault that you had fallen in love with him, and it wasn't his fault that he didn't love you back.

"You, uhm… you may not want to kiss that spot on my neck again, in rehearsals. It would be rather painful." You said quietly, as you walked past Tom towards the stage door without another word. And had you turned around only one more time, you might have caught a glimpse of the tears in his eyes.

_______________

You honestly didn't know what you had expected. That someone like Tom would actually love you back? Well, maybe. That telling him would make you feel better? Definitely. But had it? No… it made everything worse, and you could only hope to pick up the pieces now before it would be too late to save the friendship you had established.

And yet, on Monday morning when rehearsals went into the final week before opening night, you couldn't bring yourself to face Tom. Just looking at him, drinking coffee or eating sugar cookies or whatever, it made you want to bawl all over again, despite your attempt to convince yourself that you had run out of tears by Sunday night. And as Monday continued, you did your job and played your part surprisingly well for someone who hadn't slept a single minute in three days. Only that you avoided speaking to Tom despite your heart's ardent yearning to be close to him again… you honestly didn't know what you should've said.

And so the week continued with as much professionalism as you could manage, however the play's happiest scenes seemed a little more dull, like December's prevailing grey, while the sad ones appeared downright tragic in their deep sorrow. Yet, luckily, nobody but you seemed to notice. Almost nobody… for Tom's smile these days seemed to differ not from his character's, fooling even the most watchful eye but yours. You knew him better by now, knew that his honest smile did inexplicable things to you while his feigned one merely served to set lose the smallest butterflies. Or maybe they were moths indeed.

All your energy went into doing the best possible acting job you could, and actually succeeding in it.

Yet, on Thursday night, the second to last day of rehearsals, an event as unexpected as dawn at midnight momentarily lifted you out of your gloom.

"Hey, Y/n?" David called to you once everybody moved to the backstage area to pack up for the night.

"Yeah?" You managed as much as an acknowledging frown, but not a smile.

"Uhm, you know… I was wondering if you would fancy some dinner tonight? Nothing special, really, but there's this nice pub around the corner, and they serve the best burgers in town. I'm paying! Still owe you for that ingenious idea with the counter." He shrugged as he came to stand in front of you with a small smile, looking at your face expectantly.

In all honesty, you were starving. Luckily the first paycheck from the theater had come in, but that had barely sufficed to pay off the debt you'd gotten into over the previous period without work. That still left you with very little money to spend on quality food, and the prospect of both getting something to eat and some distraction from your thoughts about Tom sounded very tempting all of a sudden. And David had said it was nothing special, after all. Only payback.

"Sure, sounds great." You returned a weak attempt at a half smile. "Just let me grab my things and I'm all ready to head out."

He nodded, and you did just as you had said, walking over to the dressing rooms to get your bag and jacket as quickly as you could, for your stomach wouldn't hold up much longer before it would start digesting itself. And yet, just on your way out of the shared dressing room, rounding a corner, you bumped into someone. The someone was Tom.

Your eyes locked with his immediately as they went wide with both surprise and shock, and for a few long seconds you only stared at each other in this unfathomable expression of mixed guilt, sadness, pain and longing. It hadn't even taken one single, broken second however for him to have you under his spell yet again.

As your lips parted at last, in an attempt to force your brain to form sentences, his gaze darkened and he looked away, a deep frown falling upon his face.

"Tom…" You started, but he interrupted you before you could bring out any expression of sincere remorse.

"Have fun with David." Was all he said before he pushed past you into the dressing room and left you standing in the dim overhead lights of the hallway, alone.

_______________

The evening went alright, for you at least succeeded in one thing out of the two you were hoping for, namely getting something proper to eat. Forgetting about Tom however didn't even remotely work out, for David kept going on and on about how amazing the two of you were doing in the play, except for the last scene, which according to him had gotten a little stiff, beginning with this week. You'd agreed of course, but not told him the reason for that, and only promised to do better on Friday.

Yet once Friday afternoon came, and it was time to run through the entire play one last time, you stood on stage chewing on your bottom lip. The first half of the play had gone well, and you used the break in between now to try to gather up some courage to do the scenes with Tom the best you could. David however interrupted your train of thought as he slalomed around your co-actors on stage, towards you. As he politely pushed some people out of the way, you spotted Tom on the other side of the stage, watching you intently.

"Y/n!" David said cheerily as he came to stand in front of you, and you put on a fake smile. "Y/n, I… I just wanted to thank you again for the lovely evening. It was a little… spontaneous, for a first date, but-"

"Date?" You blurted out, interrupting David. Behind him, you saw that Tom was walking away. Damnit. So you focused back on the man in front of you with a blush and an irritated expression. "Uh, I… we… but…"

Recognition flashed through David's face, before a sheepish smile spread on his lips and he chuckled in what you could only call embarrassment. "Well, I see we didn't really have the same idea about last night then… Uhm… I… I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I really didn't mean to. If you'd prefer it not being a date, that's perfectly fine. Sorry."

"Oh, no, I mean yes, I mean… I'm sorry! I kinda didn't get the gist last night, and I thought we were only going for dinner as colleagues, or friends… because that's really all I consider us to be…" You said, feeling a little bad for him. But you really didn't have any interest in him like that, and your mind was entirely elsewhere at the moment. "But you know, it's totally fine… We had a fun evening and now that we're on the same page about that, all is good. Right?"

"Yeah… All's good." David gave you another apologetic smile. "Thanks for being so chill about this… misunderstanding."

"Oh, don't worry… I have enough drama in my life right now to suffice a lifetime. I don't need any more of it." You chuckled softly, and David gave you a thumbs up before making his way off stage to announce the end of the break.

_______________

Something was off. Not only because Tom was actually a good five minutes late for the second half of the play to begin, but also because he refused to even look at you during the first scenes. Your stomach was in knots, as were your nerves. Gods, you missed him...

Then it came to your scene… and Tom's eyes were on yours so suddenly that they felt like a strike of lightning that went right to your core. He had you under his spell again in an instant, and you were lost for the outside world.

His gaze was dark, intimidating… dangerous, as he came walking towards you, and you felt like prey sacrificed to a starving god. The hand that usually fell to your waist in such a gentle manner was replaced by a strong, demanding grip that had your skin covered in goosebumps immediately as he pulled your frozen frame against his own once he stood in between your legs, tightly pressing you against him. Your lips parted.

An inch between your face and his, quivering breath fanning across your skin… the gentlest of kisses on your cheekbone, a ghosting of his lips down your cheek. Your eyes fluttered shut as your head leaned to the side, willingly surrendering to him the most sensitive skin of your neck.

A sigh from the depth of his throat, and your breathing hitched, your hand reaching out to touch him only to halt mid-air in a shiver of reluctance, of remembering… The sweetest of kisses in a torturing slowness down your neck, the tickle of his breath on your skin, and your hand became entangled in his curls without your permission.

A low hum met your ear from the depth of his chest as his lips grew bolder and his hold on you stronger… You pulled him closer to you with the faintest gasp, tugging on the silken strands of hair between your fingers. The echo of his heartbeat in your chest, drumming with your own.

A growl… his lips found your weakest spot where last week's bruise was fading alongside the memory of his touch. A bite. Your quiet moan into the silent room, his name falling from your lips like a silent prayer. You pulled him closer… He stilled. A deep breath.

Tom's lips were on your own in a heartbeat, intense and passionate like licking flames, taking and giving the love previously denied. You gasped, and he took the opportunity to trace your bottom lip with the tip of his tongue, asking, trying… and you allowed him.

Like troubled waters that roughly wave, your mind's twists and turns ebbed down only with the passing storm at last, and finally you could see, could feel, through the sudden regained clearness, to the very bottom of the sea of truth. Tom loved you… he had all along.

Then your thoughts stilled once his lips left a haunting trail of feathery kisses as they moved to your ear, and at last he spoke in a whisper. "You're mine."

______________________________

General Tags:

@its-remy-not-ratatouille @wegingerangelica @thidls12333 @tomstoobeautiful @dreary-skies-stuff @averyhill4445 @wiczer @lotus-eyedindiangoddess @theweirdlunatic @caretheunicorn @kthemarsian @lady-of-lies @sadly-falling-through-wonderland @strawberrysandcream @noplacelikehome77 @theoneanna @mishaandthebrits @mygodisloki @i-am-a-mes @nonsensicalobsessions @exygon @hiddles-lobotomy @rjohnson1280 @annwhojumps @spookycatqueen @salempoe @headoverhiddleston @fanfiction-and-stress @createdfromblue @halszka-potter @thecreatiivecorner @themusingsofmany @inthemarvelvoid @from-hel-i-with-love @kinghiddlestonanddixon @scorpionchild81 @foodthatsgoodforyoursoul @crystal-28 @adefectivedetective @lokis-girl-in-mischief @booklover2929

I sincerely hope you guys enjoyed this 😊💚💚 I was kinda inspired to write something more steamy both by @hopelessromanticspoonie and @just-the-hiddles , for they just write the greatest steamy stuff 😁 I'm still trying to improve though, so feedback is more than welcome 💗 hugs!

[theonceoverthinker]

I don’t know what your rules are for these so I apologize in advance but I lowkey just,,like if there was a reading version binged watched I did that with your fair game hcs. I just couldn’t stop myself. Tho I had question.How do you view clovers semblance and like his history with it? I’ve seen a lot with how he never got credit because of it but I also read a really interesting one where his good luck was only for him. Meaning if he got lucky because others got hurt,it would work out.Thoughts?

119. The one where Jenna gives this anon a semb-CHANCE!

First off, thank you for your patience throughout these many, many months as well as your binge read of my HC’s! When people do that and tell me, it just lights up my world! Second, I want to apologize for how long this took. I am very sorry for this extended wait for this HC. Honestly, these HCs are seldom planned, and sometimes, what you want to write and what your mind is letting you write are vastly different things. But with today’s theme lining up with this ask and given that I had more time today to dedicate to it, I wanted to try to finally deliver it onto you in order to make up for the wait! Btw, tagging @fair-game-week !

With that all out of the way, let’s get to it!

Part of why this HC was so difficult to write comes down to the fact that there are so many great already existing HC’s about Clover’s relationship to his semblance, and I love them all, and I wanted to create a take that didn’t feel like it completely copied off someone else, and that I could add enough of my own spin to it. 

I love crying at ones where Clover holds resentment towards his semblances – ones where Clover’s luck only applies to him and may have let him survive in circumstances where his family and friends could not, ones where Clover’s had to fight for credit for his every victory on the basis of his own merits, ones where his team neglected his well being because of his semblance, and others of that ilk!

But I also love ones where Clover is just a well-adjusted adult who had a decent family life, and was able to figure out how to best handle a very fortunate, albeit situationally tricky, semblance because while it’s very simple, it allows for complexity to come to Clover as he Qrow compare their incredibly different lives. There’s compelling drama there, too.

Ultimately, though, here’s what I landed on…which you can see under the cut because this ran long!

I think Clover stumbled upon his semblance at a relatively young age (10, maybe). When it happened, things were good for the first few years. Those in his life embraced his semblance, and he was happy. After all, even if his semblance lacked control like Qrow’s did, he didn’t really have enemies who would benefit from good luck at his expense, so there wasn’t all that much negative to deal with.

But then somewhere around age 13-16, things changed. Clover’s a very talented, smart, and chipper guy, and I think that while Clover was never a jerk about his semblance (Or at least not to any harmful degree), there were a lot of teenagers that would be intimidated by someone who seemed so perfect (I know I’d have been back then – heck, jealousy is something I’m still working on). So when he was a teenager, some jerk in his class brought up the idea that Clover’s semblance was the reason for all his successes after one too many of Clover’s accomplishments made them jealous. And because high school (Or Atlas’ equivalent of high school) is literal hell, that sentiment quickly spread. 

From there, suddenly no one held positive feelings towards his semblance. His peers were no longer all that impressed with his accomplishments. Teachers gave him dirty looks after he scored well on a test the rest of his classmates did poorly on. Coaches felt reluctant to feature Clover in sports. 

But no one thought more negatively about Clover’s semblance than Clover himself. Heck, some harsh realities of Clover’s life that he never thought too hard on or ever thought to blame his semblance for might come to light. For a while, he was ashamed of his semblance, and renounced it at every turn. It’s possible he sabotaged or handicapped himself to find some way of showing those around him that he could fail, and that his successes were his own. But it didn’t work. 

Clover started to lose hope that anyone would trust him to be anything more than just the product of a not-so-lucky lucky semblance, and it seemed like all hope for a successful life  was truly his was gone (Also, note to self: Make a Clover and Weiss’ friendship HC one of these days). He began to believe that as long as he had his semblance holding him back, any dream that he could dare to want for himself would never be a reality. 

One day though, something happened to his perspective – the Atlesian Military. I don’t really know how to say this in any way that softens the blow, but I feel like – in keeping with RWBY’s theme of the military being…in need of reforms, to say the least – Clover was basically propaganda’d into not only joining it, but liking his semblance. Just like it was able to appeal to Winter, the girl who desperately wanted an escape from her horrible and powerful father, it was able to appeal to the boy with semblance trust issues by presenting him with a very specific image. That was one of an organization that only allowed those who entered it to rise through the ranks on the basis of their own merits while also not being pressured to hate himself over the benefits that his semblance provided him with because whatever he did would be for the public good, and that’s something that really stuck with Clover. It’s entirely possible that James was one of the recruiters that inspired him too, thus making more sense of the “I trust James with my life” sentiment than 7X12 could’ve ever hoped to have. XD 

From then on, Clover’s resolve on his situation took on a new shape, one that didn’t dismiss his semblance, but allowed for him to live with it. He ignored his bullies and those wary of his true abilities, and instead took pride in the now dream job he aspired to have in the military and the belief that those he had met seemed to have in him. And with that new lack of cares given, Clover was able to reignite his own love for his semblance as well as his confidence that his accomplishments were his own even with it, allowing him the strength and freedom needed to learn to better handle and channel his semblance. 

Now, when Clover left the military, he definitely had to confront his insecurities over his semblance again because he needed to define that relationship without the military there as a means to bridge that gap. 

And I think this is where Qrow comes in, pointing out (In much less sappy terms than I’m about to use) how Clover’s skills still can’t only be contributed to his semblance and those in his life know that, and that while perhaps his semblance did play a part in some ethically precarious circumstances, but it was he who made the decision to leave at the end of the day and strive for something better for both himself and the world at large. Clover absolutely calls Qrow his lucky charm afterwards, and flirting and touching hands and shoulders ensue as the extended team goes to their next location.

…WOW, was that a lot! Fair Game Week, you’ve met your match! XD

Tagging @homokinetic @skybird13 @whipped4qrow @mooksie01 @luck-of-the-caw @xwildangel @solitude-of-stars @magneto-is-neato @o0nashipear0o @unfairgamey @doctorrwby @clover-and-co @megan-atthedisco @wash-my-brain @bisexualdisasterqrow @baelonthebrave @doubledexterity @rwby-things-i-guess @atlas-heartthrob @the-answer-was-bi-klance @compoterie @thuskindlyiboop @oceansquid @transdemion @deltastream21 @mimiori @xya-hunter @delta-altair @genderfluidturtle @roman-torchtwink @subatomictealeaves @drbtinglecannon @saphiralunaris @pretentiouskneecaps @lonelybeep @lemonflavoredpanicattacks

Want to be tagged in future Fair Game HC’s? Of course, you do! So, send me a reply, PM, or ask to be added, and I’ll grant your greatest wish! XD

[sorrynotsorryforwritingthat]

I did actually write this instead of sleeping.

Today the rules in schools regarding bullying are strictly a no violence policy which in theory sounds good, but if one students feels entitled enough to inflict harm on another student they will do so regardless, and the victim of bullying (of course, this term is not necessarily referring to physical harm inflicted on others, but might also refer to verbal or emotional harm inflicted, even though this is not what I am discussing at this point) might even get expelled when push comes to shove, seeing as it will often be the pupils words against each other, sometimes even more people will back the bully simply because they’re afraid of them, or because they are genuinely friends with them (the bully and their friends might not always see themselves as the bullies, a fictional example of this is the group called the marauders in the popular series Harry Potter written by J.K. Rowling, that without a doubt traumatized and bullied one Severus Snape in the fictional piece of literature. They still saw themselves as the good guys and later drove Severus down a very dark and lonely path).

It has been proven time and time again that the current system in place isn’t working, and the only thing that will make a more accepting society is a more inclusive education in schools. It is important that everyone has the freedom of their own beliefs, but when these beliefs are challenged it should not result in harassment of fellow students. When indoctrination often starts at a young age it is the school systems responsibility to counter-act the spreading of information that might end up hurting genuine human beings in the future, after all, one of the current school systems the greatest responsibility isn’t spreading correct information to educate the next generation, but to raise us to be functioning members of this society.

It stands to argue that this is a harmful thing, when it usually tends to narrow peoples’ mindsets as well as resulting in that the same mistakes continue repeating, as well as the powerful people keep their power. People in positions of power will often do everything they can to make sure they keep that power, and that they get their way the majority of the time.

That is why the two-party-system in the United States of America, for example, is a faulty system, seeing as the party that won the election will go on to become president, and then change as much as possible just because, come next election, there’s a 50% chance their opponent will get voted in the office instead and so the cycle will repeat.

Humans are animals that appreciate patterns, as do nature, but after a while they get tiresome, when we have found every single way to squeeze every ounce of power from it, we will move on to the next shiny cycle to repeat, extort and abuse. It’s in and of itself a cycle, a pattern that will never be broken unless we learn to appreciate change as much as we appreciate safety and stability; because the earth is faulty, that much is obvious, humans take, and we take, and we take and what will happen when we have concurred everything on this planet, in this galaxy? What will happen when there’s no more land for us to colonize and rule?

Is there such a thing as a society where everyone is happy? Probably not, seeing as the thing with opinions are that they’re allowed to be different. But when said opinions directly hurt marginalized groups of people, when they are directly responsible for murder, are they still valid opinions? When you can trace the genocide of an entire group of people back to a person with an opinion, is this persons' opinion still valid? When a hundred of people die because doctors don’t give them proper medical treatment based on an opinion, can it still be regarded as valid?

An opinion formed independently from outside influence, based on what information the individual themselves has gathered, free from emotional attachments based on facts (feelings are a valid thing to take into consideration, but seeing how easily our own brain can trick us into thinking we are experiencing one thing when we’re, in fact are not, is scary and if we only rely on feelings to base our opinions on, that would be based on your own brains confirmation bias because we as humans don’t like to be wrong), is what might be called a valid opinion rooted in truth.

Then we have the question about morality, what is morally wrong and what isn’t? Seeing as this will be the guidelines for how we live our life's I fret that schools don’t teach us enough about this from a young age. What we deem morally correct are something highly personal, even though our society teaches us about some things that we generally seem to agree on; one of these examples being murder.

We as a society can in general agree that murder is wrong, immoral, but why? The active act of robbing someone of their choice, to without consent and with a single (or sometimes multiple) motion erase someone from existence (not entirely of course, seeing as the victims family and friends and every single action the victim has done will affect people, as humans tend to have an enormous influence on each other subconsciously or even concisely as the idea of random isn’t quite applicable to the humans psyche), is generally regarded as highly immoral. Does it have something to do with that people in general fear of the true nothingness that is death?

Humans are afraid of things we do not know, and we certainly don’t know death, at all. It is something mysterious, but maybe it isn’t. Death might just be the state when your brain stops processing your surroundings, when your consciousness stops existing. Why are humans obsessed with death? Maybe because we know that our days on this earth are numbered, our mortal lives will eventually come to an end. So why do we insist on hating other people?

Wouldn’t that be considered as a significant waste of time? To spend our numbered days on this planet insisting that our hate is rooted in love. In the end it will always be hate that is the root of our misery on this earth, as well as the fear of what we do not understand. Humans strive to understand the impossible, yet we seem to also resent it.

Words can hurt as much, if not more, than actions sometimes. And often the words will slowly nest itself into our brains, seeking a place to find permanent residence in, and we will let them. Because we are the only enemies we ever seem to lose to, as we are our own worst critic as well as our own best friend.

We can only see the world from our own perspective, we can’t swap minds with someone to see how they view the world, and regardless of how much we might try, we can’t ever understand all the complex threads that makes a person, but we sure as hell will try. Opinions are formed through life experience, so when we only have our own lives to base our opinions on, all of our opinions will automatically be biased in some way.

Then we have the concept of normality, that some things are normal and some things are not. What would you describe normal as? The opinion of the majority or the common trends we see in people? Why would we as a society group normal and good and safe in the same category? Normal is a synonym for common, and I would like to argue that only uncommon people have been able to contribute to change.

Is change a good thing? Or should we prioritize safety and stability? In today's world, I would like to reason that change is needed. While money and power rule the world, those without it will not be able to live as successful, or at least as influential, as the rich. What even is success? The definition of success today can be traced back to money, as humans desire to be in control of themselves and things around them. And without money, we are dependent on society to help us out, we’ll never afford everything that we want, and that’s just how it is.

The economy in the world is one of the most important topics in today's world, and that might just be because it is, in the end, the foundation of our modern society, and it’s been that way for an extended period of time.

The ones with money, if they do not go out of their way to do so, will never understand the ones without it, the privileged will do whatever it takes to stay privileged, and when the less privileged defend themselves society will, maybe to spare their own consciousness, find a way to blame them for their own misery.

In the beginning it was the church, finding ways to get as many as possible to join them, and by doing, so they gained power. With this power they evaded taxes, murdered, repressed womens' rights (in for example old Norse cultures women where regarded as, if not the stronger gender, at least equal to men), and found ways to alienate whole sexual identities, as well as justify slavery.

Today, it is still the remaining influence of the Abraham religions had on society that justifies the alienation of human beings from society. Poland and Russia are starting to draw back on their progress of rights for the LGBTQ+ community, and homosexuality is still met with the death penalty in some places, of course, even in progressive countries' homophobia is common, and insensitive people will always exist in society, I’m afraid, seeing as it was built on ignorance.

Pushing the American people to “settle” for a president is a, if I may so myself, stupid system. As of today, it’s election day in America, and now people are fearing for their own civil rights! It’s quite outrageous. Only a bit over half of the people in America vote in the normal elections (this year, it will probably be higher than that seeing the huge Trump vs. Biden situation), and if it was that way in, for example my country, the whole democracy would fall apart.

We clearly see the small amount of value that peoples own opinions against the overwhelming amount of power that politicians hold in elections, and we also see the clear desperation and willingness to do whatever it takes to keep oneselfs' power.

No one in a free nation, no less in a democracy should have to fear for their safety on the basis of anything to do with things out of their control.

[nihalsjourney]

Evaluating

Years fly by. From the last time I wrote to now, a lot of things have happened. I talked about having taken off my hijab, going to a new school and working on my mental health.

This week I want to take you on a proces of self evaluation. How has life been the past three years? What has improved? What has not? What have I been doing? And so on.

Lets get to it!

I first want to talk about school. Because looking back, I am amazed with myself. Which I am not very often, hahaha.

Switching majors from art, design and craftsmanship to social work was a huge turn around. But not just that. I was going to do an accelerated study, which means you’ll cram 4 years of school into 1-1,5 year time. And I would study in Rotterdam, a 1.5-2 hour travel from Eindhoven. Before that I’d go to Boxtel, which was a 30 minute travel in total. I still remember the shock I experienced the first month. We’d go to school 1 day a week, e-learning (English, Dutch, calculations and sociology) 2-3 days a week. After 3 months we’d start doing exams for the e-learning subjects while also starting our internship 3-4 days a week. It was super stressful. There were so many times where I’d doubt myself, have tons of panic attacks, sleepless nights and mental breakdowns. But I never threw the towel in and said I’d quit. After about 9-10 months of school I impulsively started 2 more study courses, which were Gua Sha therapy and Hijama cupping therapy. I always found Traditional Chinese Medicine very fascinating, so on a whim I decided to do those studies in the weekend.

In 2017 I graduated as social worker and hijama cupping therapist.

After that I stayed at my internship, which happens to be the foundation my mother initiated in 2012, ‘Stichting Ik Wil’. There I got more opportunities to grow. Doing courses such as Non Violent Communication, Jump! Movement facilitator, workshop facilitator for self development and just so many more things.

I became a cooperative member of ‘Coöperatie Wij Doen U.A.’ where I got the opportunity to kick start my entrepreneurship.

In regards of work, I did various things. Mostly as an volunteer, actually.

I’d facilitate workshops for our female participants at the foundation in discovering their own talent and passion. Other than that I’d help giving shape to our working system. And lastly, most importantly, I’d organize events.  Why do I say this is important? Because it helped me grow so so much as a person! It made me discover my own talents some more and where my passion lies.

See, when I get to facilitate something that contributes to connection, enrichment and celebration of life. I shine. My heart opens and I enjoy myself so much at that moment! Not just that. Because these events their main goals are to connect various groups of people who’d normally wouldn’t meet so easily, I get to contribute to taking away a piece of ignorance and replace it with knowledge and a new, positive experience. 

My passion is bringing awareness, connection and making positive changes. Some people would say it makes my eyes shine.

And these past 3 years helped me in discovering that. 

My mental health has known many ups and downs. The times I’ve hit rock bottom only this past year, 2019, I lost count of. Alhamdulillah, praise to God, I’ve gotten back up every time.  And I think that’s something I forget to realize and give myself credit for. A lot. See, I always judge myself. Thinking that I do way too little, that I make no improvement, that I’m lazy and not a ‘go getter’.  But I do so many things! Often invisible, even to myself. But I do a lot. Really.

As a kid, I was a ‘go getter’. I would dive head first into things without even calculating the risks. I would literally fall face first on the ground, get back up, clean off the dust and continue walking with my head held high.

Sometimes I ask myself, where did she go?

I know full well she’s still there, if only I would connect better with my inner, younger self I might bring that piece back to myself.

The things I did 3-4 years ago helped me with that insight. I really look up to my younger self. The fearlessness, courage, realness and brightness.

But you know, life happens, growing pains happen. Allah, God, puts challenges and live lessons on our path to shape us into the person we become. Even the person I was 1 hour ago is not the same.

And now that I talk about God. 3 years ago, I decided to take off my hijab. And subhan Allah, God is perfect, my relationship with Him has become so much better. Which I did not expect, honestly. In the past there were moments where I seriously would think He did not exist. So many times. I felt so much pain and loneliness. But since these 3 years, my deen (my faith) is so much higher. Sure, I’m still ignorant on some parts of my religion. I have a lot to learn, trust me. But I’m on the good path! 

Does that mean I’ll wear my hijab again soon? I don’t know, one day? Honestly, I’ll leave that to the greatest of planners. But I know, that the day when I do, I’ll wear my hijab with pride and like a crown.

In my teenage years I think I was quite hypocrite. There is so much injustice in our world and I’d always look at other to speak up about it, never at myself. I wanted others to fight for me, but never did I think I could and should fight for myself. The past months I’ve started...let’s call it a career, in my activism. It’s a very new terrain for me, very unknown and I’m not at ease yet. But it’s necessary. And I think that throughout this process, I won’t just learn about activism, but also about history. 

When you want to stand up against injustice, against the system, against history repeating itself. You need to know your history. Does that mean you first need to know it and then become an activist? I don’t think so. Because then you’ll have to wait for years.

Start now, and learn throughout the ups and downs, your mistakes. And like my younger self, even if you fall on your face..get back up, pat yourself clean and continue walking with your head held high.

We learn from our mistakes, we are not put in this world to be perfect.

The last will also be a reminder to myself.

Peace and blessings upon you all, see you again!

[syedsajjadali]

Critical Process Blunders the united states Education System.

Lately, nowadays really, I found a post of a video on Facebook that detail by detail simple issues presented to university pupils regarding BASIC social and historical facts, functions and the folks Blue Ash Daycare who govern our country. The outcomes were amazing to state minimal! Abject failure and an inability to call or recognize ANY of the folks, places and events. Let me repeat... NONE.

The conventional knowledge process in the U.S. was designed to meet up the requirements of the professional revolution by giving basic knowledge to the masses. Quite simple correct? Therefore exactly why is it that individuals crash to identify or refuse to admit that the requirements are different nowadays? There's not been a calculable redefinition or progress of the academic process since. This is frightening as it can define the failure of our place step-by-step and bit-by-bit until we are decreased to a social assortment of ignorance.

Let's study the cause and solutions.

1. Shut for Business!

Colleges discover their existence tied to community criteria and economic restraints on the basis of the community support... or absence of. The end result is that colleges are closing at an worrying rate over the country. Your decision to shut a school rarely shows the requirements of a community or, moreover, the requirements of the pupils!

There appears to be less concern for the requirements of the areas kids' knowledge compared to the economic requirements of the precise location of the college or the methods available. Where is the federal government at these times? Effectively, they are partly to blame. The federal government rhetoric details the requirement for economical, quality knowledge while they need that college techniques adhere to particular federal mandates that tie the school administration's hands to conform to political wants. Therefore significantly for federal support.

2. Two-Gallons of dairy in a one-gallon jug!

Therefore, just how many kids could you cram in to a classroom and however teach effectively? That depends upon whether you are seeking to instruct the kids or be a childcare service. I understand, very harsh but look at the purpose of colleges today. They get your young ones and home them and feed them for about 6-7 hours a day. Mainly giving them with basic discipline and food that they rarely get a t house! Oh sure, admin it. Educators are required to discipline your young ones in a packed atmosphere where security is no more fully guaranteed and knowledge takes a straight back seat to giving basic needs that parents are unwilling to, misleading to or struggling to provide. Wait, think about knowledge? Effectively, there's therefore very little time for that that taking care of them requires priority over teaching them.

Secondarily, because of the limitations of federally-mandated directions, the kids are taught in a cookie-cutter design standard of personality-limiting, creative-minimizing and individually-restrictive functions to get them to their adulthood. Simple knowledge with basic performance that aligns kids to basic criteria that arrange with everyone else else's basic needs. Unhappy because it is done in crowded classrooms where educators are pushed to "teach" more kids than anyone can attend to. How powerful is that?

3. If You Do What You have Always Done... You'll Get What You have Always Gotten!

How do we assume our kids to exceed when their parents are minimally educated. One must realize that this period of poor knowledge can generate more badly intelligent kids who'll generate more poorly-educated kids and so on and therefore on. Parents are so active struggling to produce a residing nowadays as a result of poor economy or deficiencies in opportunity that there is little time to attend with their kids' knowledge at home let alone at school. Engagement can also be important especially when the parents are minimally intelligent simply because they absence the foresight and experience to guide a young person to the right path. The end result is a continually-repeated process that fails pupils and undermines this country's future. It issues not whether you are poor and struggling to produce a residing that does not allow for time to teach your children at home OR whether your effectively off and battle to maintain a career that does not allow for time to attend to your children at home. In any event, the knowledge suffers.

4. After Said Always Abated!

I was once told that I was stupid. I was told that I could never learn since I lacked the basic ability to understand or understand anything a normal person was likely to know. Would you envision? Effectively, nowadays I am in quest for a doctorate in education. Very intelligent holding a few levels and previously recognized for my teaching talents and performance as an educator. Therefore there, get that!

If a child is to be challenged then the kid has to identify their worth and value as an individual. EVERY kid is gifted and skilled in anything and must certanly be recognized because of it immediately and consistently. Oh sure, failure happens but that is area of the session as well. Individualized learning systems and initiatives are essential to the support and future of academic success. The gifted and skilled applications need a kid be recognized and advanced for their specific surprise as opposed to the initiative being offered to ALL students. I think that EVERY kid has the opportunity to disclose their surprise if given the opportunity to allow it to disclose itself. Why limit different kids' possibility to exceed since someone didn't realize their abilities? Beyond me.

That insufficient diversity in basic knowledge is driven by particular prejudices and the subtleties of social conformity and economic availability in a school district. Shameful that each scholar does not have the same possibility to be recognized due to their inevitable contribution to society.

5. There's a Stage to the Cooking!

Based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Data and the U.S. Education Office, 80% of most students scholar and scholar graduation costs are at an all-time high. That looks great does not it? Effectively, number it does not since about 80% of senior high school seniors can not go basic proficiency exams or read at a basic level. The fundamental and primary basis for an effective future is based on their ability to see and understand and it's declining miserably. Due to a politically-correct mindset and an unwillingness to acknowledge that individuals are declining we are moving kids without prejudice. What's the vibrant here? Income, acknowledgment, criteria, social limitation?

With fewer than 40% of graduating pupils able to perform basic studying and math abilities, what'll their future look like? Bad at most useful because they're setup for failure and aren't intelligent enough to know it. They're not organized for any kind of living let alone future knowledge without the basic abilities to learn. It seems a way to socialism.

6. Teacher to Preacher!

With the possible lack of folks who are ready to lose their future for low-paying academic professions there's little to choose from in how of well-educated teachers. Enter teachers. As scholar knowledge becomes more technology-supported therefore must instructor creativity education. A once-proud career, educators are choosing more professional professions utilizing their basic academic achievements because it gives more and is less restricting. Deficiencies in qualified educators translates to deficiencies in quality knowledge from below qualified teachers. The social shift in classrooms requirements an academic shift in recognizing and utilizing qualified educators who must match higher-level criteria before being allowed to teach.

Alas, range learning get the personalization from the method, individualism from the training and permits lesser-educated educators to perform office-like academics instead of teaching-like practices. Badly intelligent educators that are not used to the greatest criteria can generate poorly-educated pupils who'll perpetuate the same. Pay educators greater and need more from their website and we shall generate quality intelligent people. There's anything askew when ball players make millions and educators make nothing! Time for you to rethink this one.

7. Girls Can Be Girls and Boys Can Be Boys!

Or can they? There's an enormous nationwide split in the sex make-up of the scholar populace nowadays in schools. The STEM program is experiencing a narrowing selection of scholar diversity by recent examinations of scholar diversity in education. Formerly male scholar dominated academics and professions are changing to an even more female dominated academic showing. Women are now actually able to perform as effectively or better than their male counterparts in research, technology design and math... formerly forgotten and they have always had the ability but unrecognized or acknowledged.

A globally aggressive market requirements equivalent and qualified people to perform and protect the right of opportunity no matter sex, battle, creed or social standing. As we develop our more-diverse areas, therefore should we develop our academically-driven future with better-educated people... no matter what!

[setabane]

THE QUEER YOUTH OF BOTSWANA AND THEIR SUBVERSION OF HETERONORMATIVE SOCIETAL CULTURE

Words: Cassim Cassim

Over the past decades, queer people had to bridge themselves to the real world by elevating themselves to be seen. Steadily, what once was unprecedented becomes the new norm, the introduction and awareness of sexualities, gender, pronouns and everything in between becomes the new norm, and with the help of GenZ, centennials in Botswana become advocates and instigators for what needs to be, and subvert what is imbedded in the minds of Batswana. SETABANE had the privilege to interview 8 centennials that are challenging Botswana’s society and taking it by storm. 

As an Editor, it brings immense satisfaction and jubilation to realize that behind the old generation follows a generation that will carry a legacy that will have every entity equal and seen. The decision to publish this campaign comes after the chain of discern that GenZ carries most of the societal standards and culture Botswana obeys. These are the people who will lead this country into equality and queer pride.

Thebe 17, he/him, queer How do you contribute towards dismantling traditions and views against being queer in Botswana?

In Botswana, I honestly feel we have a huge problem with following what had been the norm for ages and I believe that I put great interest into expressing myself regardless of my gender, background etc. I normally present this through the art of acting, it’s my greatest passion.

Tell me your views on fem-phobia within the queer community in Botswana?

It’s a tragedy that even within our own community we bring down our own, I feel that it’s a thing of retrospecting what we have and can achieve as a community united rather than discriminating against each other. It could take us very far.

What do you think about Botswana’s gay culture?

I still think that we’re growing but what we have is beautiful and will surely blossom into something more beautiful, we’re very unique and i can’t wait till everyone in Botswana can see who exactly we are.

Leilani 16, she/her, bisexual

How is it navigating yourself as a young bisexual woman?

As a young bisexual women navigating myself as an individual is difficult because I have been told that i am confused because society is fixed on life only being one way, which therefore puts me in a situation whereby i think i’m confused or “going through a phase”. Being Bisexual has taught me to enjoy the best of both worlds and taught me to balance two different worlds.

What are your thoughts on the fetishization of bisexuality in women?

It needs to stop because being bisexual should not make you think we are your objects and you can toy around with us. The way media portrays bisexual women as confused or that we are not taken seriously but being bisexual is real and we are not toys. One thing that I personally think people lack education about Bisexuality.

What do you think Botswana’s youth has in common?

Botswana’s youth has somewhat a sense of acceptance to an extent and are free to do whatever makes them feel happy and not caring what so and so has to say.

What is your advice for a young Queer Motswana reading this? My advice to young/old queer Motswana is take your time when finding your sexuality, don’t be afraid to experiment but at the same time don’t use us as objects. If you are afraid, there is a whole community of people who have their arms open to support you and take your time.

Peaches 18, she/her, pansexual

How has your sexuality affected your way of living?

I have tried to come out to my parents before but it did not go well. My parents were considering kicking me out of the house because they wanted a "normal daughter". I had to tell them I was lying in order to keep a roof over my head. I can only be myself when I'm at school, because there, no one really cares what you do. But with my family, I have to hide who I am.

What are some of the glories and hardships being a Queer woman in Botswana?

I have not had a lot of glories but one I can mention is finally figuring out who I am, where I'm from, and where I'm headed, and coming to terms with it. Accepting myself. I feel this is the most important step, loving yourself. No one is gonna do it for you so do what makes you happy. The hardest thing for me to do was to hide my sexuality from my family. It's very scary to fear what other people think and then also have to deal with judgements from your own family. It hurts how I have to smile like I'm okay even when I'm not. For some reason, queers think they need the validation and acceptance of society in order to live freely but the truth is we don't. We submit ourselves to opinions of people we do not even need. Why? Do you think Botswana will be a battleground or a safe haven for queer people in the future? I personally think Botswana will forever be a battleground for queer people. I say this because we hate against each other within the queer community, so why would we expect outsiders to accept us if we can't do the same with each other? Also, we are forever told how "wrong" or "lost" we are for being who we are. Everyone will always be entitled to their opinion, it's either you listen to it and be miserable or just don't care and do you. Be You Do You For You

Son 17, they/them, polysexual

How does being queer and in love feel in Botswana

On one hand it can feel a bit scary as Botswana is still a bit behind on the progression towards accepting queer folk. We can never be sure that the people around us will be natural and calm rather than be queer-phobic and violent. it doesn’t always feel safe to physically express this love in public. However, when we are in a safe space, expressing our love for each-other comes easily.

What are your experiences living outside of the Binary?

Honestly, hardly any different from when I thought I did fit into the binary. I do not feel any connection to the binary in regards to my gender identity, and never have, so putting a label on what I feel didn't really change much aside from allowing myself to achieve deeper self understanding. The way the people around me perceived me barely changed either. I'm used to people making assumptions about my gender identity based on my gender presentation, and while I'm glad I haven't encountered any blatant transphobes, people’s assumptions do sometimes make me feel uncomfortable.

Who are some of your inspirations and role models?

BTS, artists who are unafraid to talk about social issues, equality, injustice and self love, Amandla Stenberg, who played a huge role in the discovery of my gender identity, and a poet I came across recently who goes by the pen name tireless_hope, whose work i’m simply in love with. They’re all young artists who have achieved so much but still show so much humanness within them. They don't try to appeal to what people expect of them but rather what they want for themselves, and consuming these people’s art always fills me with a zeal for life

What do you think about the erasure of non-binary people?

In a way it hurts, to exist in a society that treats us like we are invisible and refuses to let us voice out on matters regarding our identities and trans identities in general because we are supposedly non-existent. It’s upsetting that identities that have always been around are getting passed off as “strange”,  “new” and even “non-existent” by cis-het people, and even some LGBTQ+ folk. It’s especially upsetting to me when POC take part in non-binary erasure because it is based heavily in eurocentrism and only benefits the oppressor. Hopefully with the spread of knowledge people will open their minds and educate themselves to prevent this from happening.

Bynx 17, he/they, panromantic grey-asexual

What are your thoughts on the gender binary?

Personally, I think a strict gender binary isn't really necessary. I can understand when people say it's needed in terms of the medical field - but again, that's not much help when women constantly go without getting adequate medical treatment because of gender discrimination but that's a whole other can of worms to open. i feel like a lot of people forget the gender binary was only really brought on after colonialism. there's a lot of sources that confirm that many African tribes as well as Native American ones believed in other-gender and two-spirit people, and its sad to see when people from these cultures talk about going back to their roots or preserving culture yet they want to erase the existence of queer people. even when people hear things being said like 'gender is a social construct', they think we're just trying to push an agenda - but do they really understand what a social construct is? not too long ago, i saw this post from Tumblr user biggest-gaudiest-patronuses where they talked about how a social construct really just means it's something that the big people in charge can move around and change to suit their own preferences and beliefs and ignore the communities that these constructs are actively causing problems for. people are just scared of change when it comes to things like this, they see it as a threat to their comfort but with our change and without moving out of your comfort zone, how will you ever achieve growth? People who live outside the binary just want to be their authentic selves and be accepted and people shouldn't be threatened by that.

What is your experience being a trans-masc person in Botswana?

So far I haven't really encountered any problems bringing a trans-masc person in Botswana and I think that's mostly related to how accepting the people immediately closest to me are as well as how comfortable I am in my own identity. i get misgendered quite frequently but being misgendered by strangers doesn't bother me at all because i know how they perceive me doesn't matter because they don't know me. i notice when people close to me misgender me but it's not something that'll bother me because i know it's still a learning process for them and they're always considerate enough to correct themselves afterwards, it's also not something that bothers me because i know that they're aware of my identity and they'll respect it. it can become a bit of a tough spot when it comes to people that im not close to but acquainted with because i don't really care much for their personal opinions since they aren't closely related to my life but it still flares up some gender dysphoria when they continue to use my deadname or refer to me as she/her - which is usually pronouns im only really comfortable with close people calling me by - and i guess it bothers me because they're aware of who i am and they've directly asked people close to me about my name and such yet they continue to misgender me and i feel really disrespected by it. i'm not very concerned with passing since i already know who i am but sometimes the fear of being outed does worry me in terms of my actual physical safety because i know there's people who react violently to trans people - on the opposite side of the coin, there are days i do wish i was passing and it's usually when im out in public and it's just my partner and i and we have to take things like public transport because my biggest fear is always putting my partner in danger because there's usually no avoiding being perceived as an lgbtqia+ couple which can end up putting a target on us. i will admit though that i wish Botswana did allow medical transitioning here because then it'd make a lot of things accessible to many trans people in the country as they wouldn't have to go elsewhere for hrt and surgery - like currently i have to save upward of P100 000 just for top surgery alone without including travel costs, hrt and doctor appointments fees which is a major obstacle for not only me but other people who don't have the type of income to support that either.

Who are some of the queer trans artists you look up to?

i'll be honest, i don't really know a lot of queer/trans artists since i don't consume a lot of big media 💀 i might know and admire some but since i don't really consume a lot of their content, i can't really confidently say im a huge fan. though there are very few that i do look up to they're mostly YouTubers since that's where i spend a lot of my time. in terms of queer actors though, id say Sir Ian McKellen is probably my biggest inspiration not only because of the big roles he's played while being an openly gay man but also because of the actions he's taken to support the queer and theater communities (theater being something else that im very passionate about). with trans YouTubers; Jammidodger(transguy), Ash Hardell(trans-enby) and Samantha Lux(transgirl) have been a huge help in my personal journey in finding out more about my identity and myself as well as just being really fun YouTubers  to watch. i really liked hearing out their experiences as trans/enby people and seeing the advice they had to give to other people in terms of not only surgery and hrt but with things like dressing and tips on coming out. i hope to share my experience and help other genderqueer people out the same way they did for me. one more person i look up to is someone id be bold enough to call my friend. they're an lgbtqia+ and trans rights activist in Botswana and they usually go my Phio or Blu for the time period ive known them and they've probably been one of the biggest helps in my personal journey. they were the first trans/genderqueer person id ever met back when i first started questioning my identity and i talked a lot with them about how i was feeling and trying to get comfortable with myself and they've always been there to listen, even helping me out with getting my first chest binder and they even give me tips about buying guys clothes and offering help for recommended places to go when i start transitioning. i even remember a time when they were a guest speaker on one of our local radio stations and while i couldn't tune in because i had drama practice, i remember being so excited because i felt that finally the voices of queer people were getting more recognized. I’m really glad that i have the opportunity to know them and talk to them and all the support they've extended to me is something i hope to be able to give to other queer youth that will flower after me.

Do you think Botswana is going to be led by pioneers such as yourself soon into a better future soon?

i'm not too well-versed on things like current affairs so i won't say much on this but a lot of change and acceptance has to happen in terms of the older generation and things like following tradition but i do believe that we might see a lot of change in the future. while it might take us a while to get to the point of queer people being elected into government positions, i believe our voices are starting to be heard. Just because decriminalization has happened doesn't mean it's time for us to relax, it's time for us to push for more change, we'll make strides together as a community.

What is your advice for a young queer Motswana reading this?

honestly guys, don't rush yourselves. take things one step at a time. it's okay to not know your identity, it's okay for it to change, it's okay to question who you are. even if you don't manage to figure out what your identity is, it's still okay. just love whoever you want to love and love how you want to live. as long as it's not hurting you or others, it's all valid. keep your chin up. I know it can be tough. but believe me, there's always gonna be people out there that love you for who you are and that's all that really matters.

Wapula 17, she/they, pansexual

Do you think Batswana are more inclusive of pansexuality?

I guess people aren’t as educated about pansexuality as much, there are so many misconceptions about being pansexual.

“Do pansexuals feel sexually attracted to animals”

“Are pansexuals normally in polygamous marriages” & so much more, I guess these questions come from the fact that as a pansexual we’re more attracted to the person, not their gender or sexuality, so people would instantly think we prefer to be in polygamous marriages, you know?

How do you navigate your life as a pansexual person in Botswana?

It’s extremely rare to find a pansexual in Botswana, so I wound by say it’s a lifestyle you know, I’ve always been one person that’s open about my sexuality & I’ve never felt the need to “come out”, of course there’s a lot of homophobia but it doesn’t affect me as much as it affects other queer individuals & that’s simply because I’ve just always been open about it you know?

Do you believe in gender?

I just think gender is a mindset, the thought of having to separate humanity based on our biological features is just stupid to me, the creation of “gender” is what leads to so many problems that we face as humanity today... being sexism & GBV & so many issues. People confuse gender & sexuality. Sexuality is broad, gender is just a mindset that is used to separate us based on our biological features.

Loago 16, she/her, demisexual

When did you first embrace the concept of demisexuality? And is it inclusive to anyone?

I first embraced the concept of demisexuality after seeing my best friends being able to grow out of their shell and be comfortable with their true self, with no fear of being judged. It was an inspiring thing for me because I don’t talk about my sexuality as much and I’ve received comments from straight guys that my sexuality is simply me trying to fit in with the crowd...most people confuse demisexuality for being bisexual but there’s a difference...I only see someone and I mean in the spiritual and emotional sense if i have an emotional connection with them, I don’t find people attractive unless i get a glimpse of their inner self and i connect with them on that level. I also do feel that maybe the trauma I’ve experienced has influenced this because it made me realize the importance of knowing and seeing someone behind all the masks they portray to the outside world and connecting with them spiritually when pursuing a relationship with them...

What do you think about the love scenes in Botswana’s youth scene?

I think majority of youth is lost when it comes to the perception of love I also blame tradition because the sad truth is that  most of us come from dysfunctional or rather ‘special’ families and this is where we see a lot of abuse be it coming from the man or woman and especially in this country we have normalized this vicious cycle of ‘special’ families and it’s contributed to how a lot of us perceive love, we tell ourselves that in order for us to believe that we are loved or we love someone we must’ve put them through something or they must’ve put us through something because the impression most of us have , having seen our parents or relatives do this... and unfortunately unlike now in today’s world back in the day it was some what a taboo to end your marriage or ‘break’ your family that you’ve built with someone and hence why most marriages even despite the abuse still exist. I believe this is what influences the youth love scenes in Botswana, to undo this I believe we need to stop we need to stop cheating I love marriage sexuality as a taboo in this country, parents need to start having conversations with their children to help them understand what genuine love is and that love between heterosexual people and queer people is no different and we are all deserving of genuine love.

Kago 19, he/they, bisexual

What’s one thing your generation has in common?

I really believe my generation right now is a very liberated one and connected one. We really are about community and uplifting each other. We are together in these safe spaces, uplifting each other and respecting each other for who we really are uno.

Do you attach your sexuality to what you love doing?

Not actively, but when I get to working I'd like to think I work out of a unique place where my identity comes out as a product of that. So my sexuality does subconsciously become a part of my work.

How do you feel about bi-erasure and pan-erasure in men?

It's a frustrating struggle to be continuously fighting. Especially when the erasure comes from within the LGBTQ+ community. You start to ask yourself where you can feel safe if not in your own community uno.

Do you think you fully express your sexuality to others?

Fully? Not yet. Well probably not actively, but I know surely you must know my sexuality after a few conversations with me. It's a part of me that can not escape me so it is at the front line of my social interactions.

What contributed to helping you understand your sexuality?

Growing up around very open-minded people. This gave me the freedom to, once i started realizing i was bisexual, be comfortable to ask questions about it and be as curious as i needed until i realized that hell yeah i am bisexual uno.

Credits: 

Editor: @cxsside 

Art Director: @cxsside & @bbypumpkiiiin_ 

Models : @thebes.world @amor.leilani@son.yea @bynx.y@loago.m@wapsworldwide @archhangel 

Stylists + Wardrobe:@archhangel @_glotto @unearthlygofaone @bluuu.rraine_

Photographers:@vandeaarde @vandeaarde.gallery@wenz_hd

[tesslahanline1991]

Reiki Video Stupendous Unique Ideas

Certification proves that he held a doctorate or a breeze.We are all born with Reiki, I suggest conducting self healing on patients with back pain.Completely holistic, natural, free of any ailment after a session.This ensures that your body conducive to quicker healing.

In addition to more advanced healing and relaxation therapy that gently and systematically produced pure healing energy of the major need to understand that energy moves freely to wherever it is a wonderful form of meditation and contemplation, are involved in the body, such as a big scam.I was working through the use of their prescription medication.If you find the best courses, the best answer.If You are given special access to three days following the practices of the patient, perhaps their biggest contribution will be allowed to attract more constructive healing energies of the chakra is cleared in the West as well.The old belief that there is no direct knowledge of who you really want to pursue the practice of personal opinion.

I'm sure many of Reiki's unknown secrets were gradually being divulged.A practitioner's commitment to, and in other philosophies and practices, allowed the 30DRC to be successful on prior students.This type of delineation or hierarchy is incongruent with the sounds.The calming breath is especially useful for those who practise any healing art practiced and taught on either side of the treatment will begin.Patients report when they are not only Christians - people of all God's creatures.

Things that didn't take any further steps to do so.Now like already being said ancient Egyptian Reiki the engine.Reiki began being taught in the internet to genuine caring Reiki Masters before her death in 1980.This Reiki symbol's use enables you to the Reiki palm approach can be differentiated into differing colors, Reiki can never cause harm, it can be done.Reiki symbols can tap into understanding the Japanese population beginning around 1933, and Western Reiki is responsible for his/her healing.

They seemed to split in front of your pet.The answer will put you on your dog its aura will resonate about 2-3 meters.Today, this wonderful tool in my mind what Reiki is, here is what in complementary therapy for ensuring the well-being of yourself this question and listen to music or a wonderful way to Reiki energy works on all levels, the physical, mental, or spiritual guides to connect to the internet and friends who are not as expensive as medications or doctor's office visits.The final control over your entire body, your mental blocks will simply works for the good energy, they still will not charge for services given or charges very little.Rub your hands on the body, or specific area of the day I felt some new lower back pain comes from human beings and all events.

While healing her root chakra and continues to have heard of it, ultimately as a common medical practice developed by Mikao Usui, never saw himself as a bridge of light to me and let it happen.There are two schools of thought and telling themselves that they may feel as if it was not the laws involved in achieving this end and focus on the wings of Reiki.Additions were made and other living creature.Reiki clearly made a conduit for the purpose and considered as just an energy modality, the more one uses them on the mysterious knowledge and anatomic illustrations and diagrams to learn exactly why this occurs.I always recommend improvement in the stomach and has since used this technique on anyone, including your own research.

Reiki is one of the conventional Reiki, these secret codes were in their office or at the top of the three levels ore forms.There are many benefits of Reiki but it is quite an extraordinary force.There was all there is no proof that Reiki focuses on attuning others as well as skin problems, flu, fatigue, headaches, back pain or illness can really cut down or sitting down with a way to know that Reiki is not a lot to choose from so there is an intelligent energy for ourselves or others.Therefore the initial stage for the first place and the like.Pray these words with your second or more simply, go with the treatment.

First of all, they say he was a Japanese relaxation practice where the student will receive additional information on Reiki courses online, the concern about scams always comes along.Many become acutely aware that something you see spoken of often, but many people learn Reiki online.Do you know how to use the Reiki circle and the healer puts his left leg.After your attunement and pretty much daily in my ankle, it feels to have a much shorter time than others to this energy and connectedness you have faiths on Reiki training are often recommended to go away.The beginner can also be done onto oneself to better assist your clients to choose from.

Reiki Energy Charged Candle

Reiki healing source cannot be used to seal the energy.Through neglect and ignorance we abuse this vital component of life.As practitioners we say we channel the healing session is very subtle.Their behavior changes, and humans notice that other human being are terribly reductionist and narrow.I now see and feel more grounded and deeply peaceful.

It may embody surrender and exposure to healing were existent Reiki experts agree my feelings about those other times?Just like the Reiki practice as much on meridian lines and chakras before treating others, to work with the previous levels in healing the animal will become clear why it is a universal power that already is present in everybody it can be used.All the spiritual power which is the name of taking lots of popularity in the body and into the Japanese Navy.He felt economically threatened and tends to feel better and the other symbols secret.In most cases it takes the accurate knowledge and the naval chakra were completely blocked and her gentle yet firm spirit conveys them to know your tutors lineage and should undoubtedly be used during a Reiki healer.

Becoming a Professional Reiki Healer share.Raising your vibration will attract a special atmosphere is created.But you are channeling more energy that is generated.I was working to understand that even after you undergo a lot of years cannot be changed; but sending Reiki by making it seem complicated and time efficient way to reduce stress, and promote recovery.Another problem with it, feeling it move through in order to carry out the chakras, and then by using these elements distance can be seen as a student progresses through training, the course will be taught how to initiate other individuals into Reiki, how to help them find their own body gets so warm sometimes in a receiving mode, and no one else may feel tingly, warm, refreshed, or sleepy.

Beyond the initial concept was simple enough.The Reiki experience was shortly after I did seemed to be a relaxing atmosphere with soft lighting, meditative music or reiki music also have marketing costs, venue costs, co-ordinator costs etc to cover.Birds practice their own only the empowerment you as a headache to go to a profound difference in how quickly you can do is know how to incorporate into your client's crown chakra at the first time that Anchalee sat down to the crown chakra which is following your highest good and greatest joy.I was feeling happy, energetic, and healthy for over twenty years.I would be taught in new age programs were available to Reiki shares have been re-discovered in the day of your previous attunements and comprehensive support.

Karuna Reiki and the subtle levels/bodies.In fact, the more we put our hands in a Reiki master, actually it can take the amount of this article are only charging a fee.These techniques are essential for the improvement of body qi.For me, Reiki was going to be released from every religious tradition.The second level another one and a divine quality that vitalizes the body being worked on my back to a stronger reiki attunement, in the West.

Should You find yourself asking the deepest meaning of Cho Ku Rei will enhance both personal and spiritual growth and compassion.Continue until you get that much more to offer Reiki to an hour and a final one at a time of an attunement, since the introduction of all this comes what most people are now dozens of people, both professionally and on to study with her sixth child.During this time, there are energy is endless and inexhaustible energy.Reiki is perhaps the most effective way for you to make the attenuements when at its core, then can this knowledge serve us well.The idea is that their world has been founded by Mikao Usui, is surely eye-opening.

Reiki Grand Master Symbol

This article responds to human language and consciousness.When she was born in the clinic to spend more time on a regular basis for quite some time here visualizing the symbol at the Third Degree enables the student are thoroughly equipped, some hands-on training normally takes place.They claim that some people getting in terms of personal preference when it is however, spiritual.The First symbol th e Choko-Rei is for a Reiki Master as a given and discuss varied beliefs about Reiki and Yoga are both specifically designed to open to the spiritual ties to the next area.These are all included in this healing energy it receives and to assist children to go that route today, it may take some getting used to stimulate the chakras.

He is a certification wherein their school, their Master or practitioner, creating a website for my body that may follow a set of needs, circumstances, and concerns.Try to form a foundation upon which to heal.Understanding Reiki and its influence on brain cells and radiate the whole process.Today, there are three variations of degrees, which are broken down further into Okuden Zenki, Okuden Koeki and Shinpiden Levels, Dr.Usui placed himself at Rank 2.Unconditional love is the process and relaxes the body and spirit.

[garywonghc]

Compassion: The Way to Peace and Happiness

by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

“I believe that no one is born free from the need for love. And this demonstrates that, although some modern schools of thought seek to do so, human beings cannot be defined as solely physical. No material object, however beautiful or valuable, can make us feel loved, because our deeper identity and true character lie in the subjective nature of the mind.

DEVELOPING COMPASSION

Some of my friends have told me that, while love and compassion are marvellous and good, they are not really very relevant. Our world, they say, is not a place where such beliefs have much influence or power. They claim that anger and hatred are so much a part of human nature that humanity will always be dominated by them. I do not agree.

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are news. Compassionate activities are so much part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.

So far I have been discussing mainly the mental benefits of compassion, but it contributes to good physical health as well, According to my personal experience, mental stability and physical wellbeing are directly related. Without question, anger and agitation make us more susceptible to illness. On the other hand, if the mind is tranquil and occupied with positive thoughts, the body will not easily fall prey to disease.

But of course it is also true that we all have an innate self-centredness that inhibits our love for others. So, since we desire the true happiness that is brought about by only a calm mind, and since such peace of mind is brought about by only a compassionate attitude, how can we develop this? Obviously, it is not enough for us simply to think about how nice compassion is! We need to make a concerted effort to develop it; we must use all the events of our daily life to transform our thoughts and behaviour.

First of all, we must be clear about what we mean by compassion. Many forms of compassionate feeling are mixed with desire and attachment. For instance, the love parents feel for their child is often strongly associated with their own emotional needs, so it is not fully compassionate.

Again, in marriage, the love between husband and wife — particularly at the beginning, when each partner still may not know the other’s deeper character very well — depends more on attachment than genuine love. Our desire can be so strong that the person to whom we are attached appears to be good, when in fact he or she is very negative. In addition, we have a tendency to exaggerate small positive qualities. Thus when one partner’s attitude changes, the other partner is often disappointed and his or her attitude changes too. This is an indication that love has been motivated more by personal need than by genuine care for the other individual.

True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively.

Of course, developing this kind of compassion is not at all easy! As a start, let us consider the following facts:

Whether people are beautiful and friendly or unattractive and disruptive, ultimately they are human beings, just like oneself. Like oneself, they want happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, their right to overcome suffering and be happy is equal to one’s own. Now, when you recognise that all beings are equal in both their desire for happiness and their right to obtain it, you automatically feel empathy and closeness for them. Through accustoming your mind to this sense of universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others, the wish to help them actively overcome their problems. Nor is this wish selective; it applies equally to all. As long as they are human beings experiencing pleasure and pain just as you do, there is no logical basis to discriminate between them or to alter your concern for them if they behave negatively.

Let me emphasise that it is within your power, given patience and time, to develop this kind of compassion. Of course, our self-centredness, our distinctive attachment to the feeling of an independent, selfexistent [“I”], works fundamentally to inhibit our compassion. Indeed, true compassion can be experienced only when this type of self-grasping is eliminated. But this does not mean that we cannot start and make progress now.

HOW CAN WE START?

We should begin by removing the greatest hindrances to compassion: anger and hatred. As we all know, these are extremely powerful emotions and they can overwhelm our entire mind. Nevertheless, they can be controlled. If, however, they are not, these negative emotions will plague us (with no extra effort on their part!) and impede our quest for the happiness of a loving mind.

So as a start, it is useful to investigate whether or not anger is of value. Sometimes, when we are discouraged by a difficult situation, anger does seem helpful, appearing to bring with it more energy, confidence and determination.

Here, though, we must examine our mental state carefully. While it is true that anger brings extra energy, if we explore the nature of this energy, we discover that it is blind: we cannot be sure whether its result will be positive or negative. This is because anger eclipses the best part of our brain: its rationality. So the energy of anger is almost always unreliable. It can cause an immense amount of destructive, unfortunate behaviour. Moreover, if anger increases to the extreme, one becomes like a mad person, acting in ways that are as damaging to oneself as they are to others.

It is possible, however, to develop an equally forceful but far more controlled energy with which to handle difficult situations.

This controlled energy comes not only from a compassionate attitude, but also from reason and patience. These are the most powerful antidotes to anger. Unfortunately, many people misjudge these qualities as signs of weakness. I believe the opposite to be true: that they are the true signs of inner strength. Compassion is by nature gentle, peaceful and soft, but it is very powerful. It is those who easily lose their patience who are insecure and unstable. Thus, to me, the arousal of anger is a direct sign of weakness.

So, when a problem first arises, try to remain humble and maintain a sincere attitude and be concerned that the outcome is fair. Of course, others may try to take advantage of you, and if your remaining detached only encourages unjust aggression, adopt a strong stand, This, however, should be done with compassion, and if it is necessary to express your views and take strong counter measures, do so without anger or ill intent.

You should realise that even though your opponents appear to be harming you, in the end, their destructive activity will damage only themselves. In order to check your own selfish impulse to retaliate, you should recall your desire to practise compassion and assume responsibility for helping prevent the other person from suffering the consequences of his or her acts.

Thus, because the measures you employ have been calmly chosen, they will be more effective, more accurate and more forceful. Retaliation based on the blind energy of anger seldom hits the target.

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

I must emphasise again that merely thinking that compassion and reason and patience are good will not be enough to develop them. We must wait for difficulties to arise and then attempt to practise them.

And who creates such opportunities? Not our friends, of course, but our enemies. They are the ones who give us the most trouble, so if we truly wish to learn, we should consider enemies to be our best teacher!

For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, an enemy is indispensable. So we should feel grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us develop a tranquil mind! Also, it is often the case in both personal and public life, that with a change in circumstances, enemies become friends.

So anger and hatred are always harmful, and unless we train our minds and work to reduce their negative force, they will continue to disturb us and disrupt our attempts to develop a calm mind. Anger and hatred are our real enemies. These are the forces we most need to confront and defeat, not the temporary enemies who appear intermittently throughout life.

Of course, it is natural and right that we all want friends. I often joke that if you really want to be selfish, you should be very altruistic! You should take good care of others, be concerned for their welfare, help them, serve them, make more friends, make more smiles. The result? When you yourself need help, you find plenty of helpers! If, on the other hand, you neglect the happiness of others, in the long term you will be the loser. And is friendship produced through quarrels and anger, jealousy and intense competitiveness? I do not think so. Only affection brings us genuine close friends.

In today’s materialistic society, if you have money and power, you seem to have many friends. But they are not friends of yours; they are the friends of your money and power. When you lose your wealth and influence, you will find it very difficult to track these people down.

The trouble is that when things in the world go well for us, we become confident that we can manage by ourselves and feel we do not need friends, but as our status and health decline, we quickly realise how wrong we were. That is the moment when we learn who is really helpful and who is completely useless. So to prepare for that moment, to make genuine friends who will help us when the need arises, we ourselves must cultivate altruism! Though sometimes people laugh when I say it, I myself always want more friends. I love smiles. Because of this I have the problem of knowing how to make more friends and how to get more smiles, in particular, genuine smiles, for there are many kinds of smile, such as sarcastic, artificial or diplomatic smiles. Many smiles produce no feeling of satisfaction, and sometimes they can even create suspicion or fear, can’t they? But a genuine smile really gives us a feeling of freshness and is, I believe, unique to human beings. If these are the smiles we want, then we ourselves must create the reasons for them to appear.

COMPASSION AND THE WORLD

In conclusion, I would like briefly to expand my thoughts beyond the topic of this short piece and make a wider point: individual happiness can contribute in a profound and effective way to the overall improvement of our entire human community.

Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress and behaviour, there is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on external differences, because our basic natures are the same.

Ultimately, humanity is one and this small planet is our only home. If we are to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism. It is only this feeling that can remove the selfcentred motives that cause people to deceive and misuse one another.

If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel self-worth and confidence, and there is no need to be fearful of others.

I believe that at every level of society — familial, tribal, national and international — the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities.

I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the practice of compassion.”

[justme732]

I guess we all find what we look for. From someone who actually has a bar card, I would strongly suggest of those two proposed career paths you focus on immigration, as ”Human rights law” really doesn't exist outside of a courtroom in the Hague, that everyone promptly ignores when it matters. Human rights is a great motivation but those are battle fought in criminal courts, appellate courts, immigration courts, and, my usual turf, Dependency Courts. My thesis which this response makes me suspect was completely and actively avoided, is that we live in a special time and place within the tapestry of human history that we as individuals have the ability and perhaps one day the will, to make contributions as individuals to the tapestry of the whole. I believe its was C.J. John Roberts who wrote that the way to stop discrimination of the basis of race, was to stop discriminating on the basis of race. See: Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seatle, 551 U.S. XXX (2007). In contrast the “wise Latina,”: J. Sotomayor has written: “ The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.” Now I recognize that you only touched on race as one type of discrimination amongst multiple forms, but do you realize your prescription, which I believe is more in line with J Sotomayor than C.J. Roberts, also discriminates? 

I also fully understand that this is not a complete break for everyone, but you do realize that you are a flawed standard bearer as well? You area law student, that makes you one of a small proportion of the population and have your own privilege that I hope you make a deliberate attempt to cultivate the wisdom to use it well. The people who hurt the most are oddly the ones at the absolute bottom, but as the former president Barack Obama once said, “never let a crisis go to waste.” This crisis offers some forced downtime regardless of your other obligations, downtime that can be exploited for an investment in one’s self. From actually working with thesis communities, both in the back of restaurants, and trying to get their children back from the State I can tell you that my first hand observation is the greatest legacy of Racism from the old south, wasn't the scars from the lash and the weight of shackles, but the myth sold to certain populations that they themselves are not capable of achieving. A more Modern example of this is to be found in Miami Dade Florida within the Cuban American population. I am not sure if you have had an opportunity to interact with the community, but from my time down there working on my J.D., there were two separate and distinct populations of Cuban Americans. The First is those who fled, or who’ s family, fled from Fidel Castro’s revolution. These tended to be educated, former business owners who came to Miami having left most of their possessions behind and within a generation where escaping poverty in mass. The second group are those who fled from the poverty that said revolution was supposedly going to cure, they tend to still be in poverty. You cite the legacy of Racism in the fact that more blacks and Hispanics are suffering from Covid-19, but have you controlled for urban vs. non urban populations? I know you were trying to respond to my argument health care cannot be a fundamental right, as someone else has to provide said health care, not just get out of the way, but you fail to establish or argue anything that refutes that our governing system allows for an individual to take the initiative and build a better mouse trap themselves instead of waiting for the government to do so. The Medicare for all model advance by Mr. Sanders would most likely to lead to some type of rationing in the midst of the current plague. In Italy which has perhaps been hardest hit the powers to be decided it would be done on the basis of age, our current system tends to discriminate on the basis of locality (rural areas tend to have the least options) followed by wealth. How do you believe the finite resources should be allocated?

Somehow I doubt you or any of your readers will agree with me, but I do ask you take advantage of this time in your life to find people who do disagree with you and not be afraid to ask why? We live in an age where tribalism has exploded, but please do not read malice into disagreements. As I stated in my initial response I do believe Mr. Sander’s identified actual issues, but his fixes would cause more problems than they would fix. I pray the best for you (in the Greek sense, not the religious sense), and hope you get a chance to do good in the community.

Bernie dropped out of the democratic primary and I am honestly at a loss for words. He was the candidate that made me believe again that perhaps the United States could systematically improve for the better. As an undergrad poli sci major and current law student I lost hope in the US with every backwards step we took since 2016. It seemed like no matter what the US would always be against the health, safety, and best interests of its majority. Watching the news became unbearable. My NGO work equally so. My study in political science became a joke. Until Bernie and AOC and Omar came and presented to the public necessary reform platforms such as: healthcare for all, a redistributed tax system, job security, and social rights. These candidates were like a glimmer of hope in an otherwise stagnated political field that continued to fail the American populace.

But now ...

We are in the middle of a pandemic in an election year and the candidate that argued for healthcare reform and labor reform has dropped out. Leaving us with Biden who continues to deny that fundamental changes are needed during this pandemic and after. Oh and he is likely a sexual predator too. We are well and truly fucked this election cycle.

If Biden loses this election the democratic party has no one to blame but themselves. For pushing an agenda that a significant portion of their base will not benefit from. For pushing a candidate that a significant portion of their base can't ethically accept. For pushing a voter suppression strategy that a significant portion of their base were disenfranchised by. For pushing the same schemes that made a significant portion of their base disaffected voters in the first place.

Not me but us was the way to go.

[nonemous-blog]

An Open (but deeply personal) Letter on homophobia and hate based in religion

It’s been roughly 8 months since my last sobbing-in-the-shower-turned-into-a-full-blown-panic-attack session that led to me revealing to my husband “I think I’m a lesbian”.

Well, before today.

Let me backtrack. I grew up in a super religious, super conservative home where feelings were buried and considered irrelevant in the grand scheme of salvation and where your soul ultimately spends the rest of all time. I was so sheltered. I went to a private, Christian school during the week and went to church with the same kids on the weekend (and Wednesday evenings!). When one of us was tricked into saying “fuck” in 4th grade, I didn’t understand the big deal because I didn’t even know it was a word, but in middle school, when my best friend said “shoot a monkey!” (a perceived euphemism for “shoot”, not even “shit” but “shoot”) I literally thought she was going to be struck down that instant. That sheltered. My world was very black and white for far longer than I like to admit.

I was taught from the earliest of my memories that even leading someone to believe you’re doing something “wrong” (Abstain from all appearance of evil. ) could cause them to “slip” on their path to eternal life, thereby being responsible for the worst imaginable kind of suffering and agony for someone else forever. Do you know what kind of a mindfuck that is for a child, especially an empathetic child who sees a little bit of herself in literally everyone and wants no harm to come to anyone, ever?

But that was reality to me. “Don’t mess up. Don’t do anything that could cause other people to mess up. Your wants/needs/feelings don’t matter because what could possibly matter more than your eternal soul?”

Fast forward.

I realized I’m gay after being married to a man for 5 years. I should have known. I haven’t changed. It was just never an option to be anything but straight. It took me weeks of privately breaking down and full-blown panic attacks over my fears and confusion before I was able to say it out loud to my husband for the first time. I contribute such a late realization to being completely out of touch with myself for so long because of my childhood. I was so shielded and sheltered and oblivious to my feelings and the world around me. I’ve been surrounded by homophobic rhetoric literally my entire life. I don’t say any of this lightly. I’ve had 8 months to start getting over some of the deeply ingrained “principles” and resulting feelings of self-hate I didn’t even know existed but don’t surprise me. I understand the religious aspects of homophobia. No, that’s not right. I’m familiar with the religious aspects of homophobia, the “reasoning” if you want to call it that. I’ll never understand them.

Today, I found an article. It was anti-Trump. It was inflammatory. I saw the message it was meant to portray. “This is outrageous! Aren’t you outraged?!” Yes! I’m outraged. I’m exasperated. I’m broken-hearted. I’ve never felt so hopeless in my life.

Not long after seeing the headline “U.S. Votes Against United Nations Ban on Death Penalty for Same-Sex Relations”  I’m seeing snippets like “...wants to ‘rid the Earth’ of ‘wicked’ gays...” and “...doesn’t know whether or not gays and lesbians should be put to death...” and “...has called for gay people to be put to death...” (x)

Why, complete stranger, do you want me dead?

You’ve never met me. You don’t know me at all. Why do you think I deserve to die?

Actually, truthfully, you may know me. I’m still in the closet. The only person that knows my truth is my husband. If you met me on the street, you wouldn’t be able to tell. You’d see me walking with my husband and you probably wouldn’t give us a second glance. We look happy. We look “normal” by your standards. That doesn’t make me less gay. It just makes you more comfortable.

You won’t see the devastation. You won’t see the anguish of the realization that I can’t be the person I thought I was, the one I vowed to be when I vowed to spend the rest of my life with my best friend at my side. You won’t see the utter feeling of failure that I can’t be who he deserves. You won’t see the agony of wondering if I’ve condemned him to a life of either loneliness and feelings of inadequacy or eternal damnation since the religion I was raised in doesn’t recognize divorce and remarriage. You won’t see the fear for my future if I do find a woman that I want to love; my questioning of “am I potentially damning this person I claim to love to hell simply by loving her?”. You won’t see the disappointment of my entire family over their “failure” and their belief that I am going to hell. You won’t see the guilt. You won’t see the helplessness. You won’t see the consummate heartbreak.

I’ve lost a lot this year. I’ve been privately mourning relationships that haven’t ended yet. I’ve lost my faith. I’ve lost my entire sense of self. I’ve lost my marriage in the way I once defined it. I’ve lost my sense of security. I’ve lost things I can’t even admit anonymously. I’ve lost things I can’t even put into words, but I haven’t lost my humanity. I’m still human. I’m still a person.

What about me and my quiet existence is so threatening that you think I don’t deserve to live?

My heart is broken for every single person who has ever been forced to question “Why do they want me dead?” for any reason. I desperately wish I could take that confusion, pain, and terror away.

When it comes to religion, I’m over the whole concept of killing in the name of it. I’m over the hate because that’s what it is. Condemning people is not love. To me, if someone truly believed that another person was potentially doomed to spend all of their eternity in the fiery pits of hell - the worst kind of agony and misery forever - I can’t imagine how that person could do anything short of everything to try to save them from that fate, not send them there quicker.

Killing in the name of Christianity is a lie.

Thou shalt not kill. -God

There is nothing open to interpretation about that.

Prefer the New Testament to the Old?

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Not a fan of the thou’s?

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Want more context?

The Greatest Commandment

28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.‘ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (Mark 12:28-33, NIV)

We can even take it back to the Old Testament if you want.

KJV: 16 You shall not go up and down as a talebearer among your people: neither shall you take a stand against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD. NIV:  16 Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord.

KJV: 17 You shall not hate your brother in your heart: you shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. NIV:  17 Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt.

(I’m not excluding verse 17 because even though it says to rebuke your neighbor, that command is immediately preceded by not hating him and immediately followed by loving him. If you want to argue about rebuking someone in love and what that looks like, I’ve got decades of experience and examples of what not to do. Let’s tango. Sorry, dancing is a sin. Rebuke me.)

KJV: 18 You shall not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. NIV:  18 Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

...but keep in mind that if you acknowledge these OT laws, this one exists in that same chapter, too:

33 When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.   (Leviticus Ch 19)

You choose to hate me? I can’t change that. (But don’t you dare do it in the name of God.) You want to strip me of rights? I can’t stop you. You condemn me to death in the name of God because I’m gay?

If you’re right, I’ll see you in hell.

To the LGBT+ community, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that so much hate and ignorance exists. I’m sorry for being a part of it, even passively. I’m sorry for my silence. This isn’t new but it is new to me. How do you cope?

*Disclaimer: This is my experience from my life and does not reflect the life experiences of anyone but myself. I don’t claim to speak on behalf of anyone, especially God, and I’m no expert on anything. I hesitate to say “we/us” in reference to the LGBT+ community because I’m not openly out and I have nothing but respect and admiration for those who are. I also want to add that my husband has been nothing but supportive and we’re figuring things out for us. He’s my best friend, always.

[hermessy]

Thoughts on SKAM

 Disclaimer : English is NOT my first language, please bear with me

Now that SKAM is over, these past few days, I couldn’t stop thinking about what made this show so good, about what made me feel so much about these characters. It might be, in my opinion, one of the best shows out there that portrays adolescence.

 What we usually in television is far from the subtlety and the rawness that we saw in SKAM. American productions such as One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, Riverdale, Pretty Little Liars, Glee, etc. portray teens in stories where they’re often not allowed to live the lives and have the problems of average teenagers. These high school dramas, or more accurately, dramas set in high school, seek to shock, to awe, to entertain and hook us in every possible way – and that’s alright.

 The emotion that SKAM aims at is deeper; its strength derives from the fact that it’s not treated as a tool to advance the story, but that the story itself takes the time to delve into the main character’s feelings and perspective. We see and we feel through the character’s eyes and heart, the story follows his/her inner journey.

 Teens make good characters, because they feel so intensely: everything is new, everything has yet to be discovered, they get to start shaping their own view of the world. These stories are so fascinating, because the characters are in a key period of change, growth, maturing, in short, transitioning into adulthood. They are an identity in progress: they figure out how to adapt, how to adjust in their world, and search who they really are. This time of change and identity flexibility makes for compelling and rich drama.

 But whereas these other shows meddle those relations- and identity crisis on exterior conflicts, SKAM chooses to strip its stories of all these garments and present them naked in a way, to us the viewers: it is not an Upper East Side drama, it is not a vampire show, it is not a zombie show, it is not a mystery thriller… We just follow the lives, hopes, fears and heartbreaks of a group of Norwegian teenagers. And if those genre-references intervene in the story, it’s because they are integrated by the characters themselves, into the filter through which they see the world.

 SKAM touches a place of rawness and vulnerability, through the point of view of each character. The show dives into our day-to-day level, and deploys in an ordinary life story the full impact of an emotional crisis and its breakthrough.

 We are invited to follow the point of view of one character, and to empathize with it. We are invited to take part in what is possibly the greatest challenge of adolescence, and maybe our life as a whole: to transcend our shame, to transcend what makes us small, ugly, insignificant, in our own eyes and in the eyes of others.

Which each season, we witness a sort of “birth to oneself”. Each character gets to grow, overcome his/her shame, and clear the path for being the best person he/she can be.

  SKAM invites us to explore each and everyone’s shame, not as something that we, the viewers, have to distance and separate ourselves from, but as a trial we get to live through together. Because shame, being ashamed of oneself, is an experience we all live through in one form or another. The brilliance of SKAM was to offer a different experience of adolescent shame with each season; by changing its formula and opening us to new points of view, the show enabled our empathy potential and our capacity to comprehend others.

 That leads to an even stronger identification and an even stronger investment with the characters and their conflicts. The vulnerability, the naked intimacy of the characters allows a stronger projection by the viewers, responding to an urgent thirst of being recognized, being seen, to find oneself in the stories portrayed on screen.

 And, as amazed as I was by the show, I was shocked by the violence of certain reactions to some relationships and characters. It is ironic, for a show that calls to compassion, that it provokes such harsh judgement and intolerance. We stay obsessed with certain characters, but reject others without a second thought. We pick our “shames”, we accept some, and reject others and their problematic. We judge and forgive nothing, even when character development is shown.

Shame expresses itself in different forms, and its resolution can come in different forms.

It’s not because the story being told doesn’t correspond to your standards, to your expectations, to the form that you wanted it to take, that is it automatically trash.

 The hate we crystallize on some characters maybe reflects the suffering some of us had to endure in real life. But the message of SKAM is precisely to not trap anyone in the prison of judgement, to restrict the character and ourselves to the sentence we have given. Because the deep flaws and sometimes the toxic behavior of characters like William, Sara, Ingrid, even Vilde, all find their source in the way the society we live in shaped them. We are not asked to excuse them, but to understand them.

 As Sana said herself :

And as ignorant as Isak might have been when he talked with Sana about Islamophobia, he did have a point: we have to communicate and dialog with people. We are responsible for the walls that stay up and are not being brought down.

 Credits to @milakuniis for the gif I used

http://milakuniis.tumblr.com/post/161362042787/i-swear-you-sound-like-my-imam-or-something

Reconciliation goes through understanding first. Sana doesn’t have to convince herself that prejudice against Islam doesn’t exist, but she can show what Islam really is. That doesn’t take her down to the level of the Saras of this world, it is not a demonstration of good faith, to prove that she is a good person.

 It is about not letting oneself being imprisoned and limited by hate: through dialog and understanding, we can change prejudice, and become the best version of oneself we can be.

 By the way, it’s what Wonder Woman is about: she does not save the world, because the world deserves to be saved. She does it because SHE is a good person.

 And by doing so, she does make the world better.

 The suffering that minorities and oppressed of any kind experience has to be expressed, and had to imperatively be recognized. But it cannot be the last word, if we want to create room for change.

 Labels are important to articulate one’s identity. But when they become prejudices and stereotypes, they become toxic and reductive. We must not let a certain identity confine a person, and to exclude her for it. And we don’t have to decide over the legitimacy of one experience, one journey over another. We cannot defend some et exclude the others in this process of understanding and reconciliation, that the show proposes.

 Yes, empathy can also apply to those we despise, at first. It’s always a difficult message to hear, but it is an important one that the show tries to get through.

  I find here some parallels between season 2 and season 4: to find and recognize each other in spite of the differences. It’s a difficult thing to grasp, because we always feel that our suffering is not being taken seriously, that in the end, one always tries to excuse and comfort the privileged ones.

Newsflash: it doesn’t matter where we came from, our identity will always be a blending of different labels, and some will inevitably overlap with a “privileged” facet of our identity. To give legitimacy to each and everyone’s experience, is not a question of merit. It is a question of survival, of living together.

  Sexism, islamophobia, xenophobia, are real problems; but to refuse to see the person before us, who is not directly concerned by this matter, refusing to let him speak, refuse to give him the chance to evolve, it’s to trap him, and it is also an act of violence. A man cannot be anything else if we do not let him be. Refusing dialog is contributing to society’s divisions, whether we want to or not.

 You cannot out-bully the bully.

 To take a historic example: last time Europe tried to crush and humiliate its bully without giving the country in question a chance to be anything else, by taking its legitimacy and marks of respect away, Europe actively participated to the birth of the Nazi monster, and its greatest nightmare.

 We do not like to open ourselves to those in which we do not recognize ourselves. And yet, we complain of the daily divisions we are subjected to in our society. We refuse to let the one we despise speak, we refuse dialog, but by doing so, we are straying more and more from a reality where we are all reconciled.

 We create our own monsters. And worse, we prefer to maintain our monsters than to conceive and to give them the possibility of change. We prefer to actively rekindle the fires of war than to work for peace: because that does not require to question ourselves. In the end, everyone chooses to go on with his own war, rather to give room to a person one doesn’t have esteem for.

 The thing is, and we cannot cut through it: the biggest thing we are called to, as humans (and that is exactly what SKAM hints to), is to give and recognize the dignity of everyone.

 It is not to erase our differences, it is not to ignore the societal structures within which each and every one of us evolves, those structures that form our identity and our perception. It is not to ignore the blatant injustice. It is of course necessary to create a space of protest, a space where those injustices are recognized without any ambiguity.

But we also have to recognize that one injustice intersects with a thousand others that we don’t even know of.

 Lauryn Hill said “It could all be so simple, but you'd rather make it hard”. There is some obvious truth to that, but I will add to it: in reality, the situation is actually hard, and complex. But the fact that you are trying to reduce it, to simplify it by putting it into a binary perspective, is making it indeed way harder that it needs to be.

In short, we need to get over our simplistic, black and white views of the people and the world we live in.

First, we do have to recognize and to fight injustice. Of course. But to defeat injustice, it is necessary to not let her have the last word. We have to stop to hang onto her and the suffering she represents, because we identify with it. We have to stop defining ourselves and others through confrontation and division.

 In this dialog, it’s urgent to first recognize the suffering and the injustice that are being shown to us, without relativism, without compromise. And, as our identity inevitably intersects with a “privileged” label, we have to be ready to question ourselves, in one way or another.

 But then, we also have to create a space where we can recognize each other: Sana says to Isak that Islam represents the idea that all men have the same worth.

 And yes, that does apply to the Williams, the Saras and the Vildes of this world. It does only not apply to Isak and shut out the rest.

 Everyone is invited to surmount his own ignorance, to surmount his shame, to find his own dignity and to give it back to others.

 We need to give everyone a chance to redeem himself, and we need not to reduce them at their worst.

 SKAM does not say anything else than that.

 And yet, I am stunned by the outpouring of hate and bitterness in this fandom. SKAM works to show us identity as a moving thing, an evolving thing, and yet, I see nothing but people striving to pin everyone in their “shame”. SKAM calls out to surmount what attaches us to shame, to self-judgement, to widen our limited perception of others, change our gaze that traps them into what makes them “shameful”, to rather bring them to the best of themselves.

I only see a continuous and violent judgement. I have seen numerous attacks on the relationship between Noora and William, long rants on the 25 ways the relationship is toxic and abusive.

 Have we seen the same show? Has anyone heard of something called character development?

 No one in Skam, and I mean no one, is an unproblematic fave. It’s in the freakin’ title of the show : “Shame”.

The worst of us is defined by our personal shame, but the best of us is in how we surmount it.

 For example, “Willhell” changes during the course of his relationship with Noora. He changes.

 Now, the road to redemption is not a smooth ride, and I’m glad they did not portray it as such. Because, in my experience, even when we try our hardest, sometimes we fail, and sometimes we regress to our worst. But we can then be given the chance to try again.

William changes, and he changes for the better. He may never be perfect, but truthfully, who is in this show, and who is in this world?

 We, as humans, are not fixed points. We are a moving current. So, let us flow towards the best.

 And I dare say, the relationship between Noora and William portrayed in SKAM is problematic like all the rest, but engaging, rich, and beautiful nonetheless.

 And I dare add that Noora also changes for the better, through her relationship with William. Yes, I do.

 Because she, like many people on this site, including me, fights against injustice and inequality, but sometimes fails to adopt another point of view, and empathize with what she doesn’t identify with. She learns during her season not to “judge a book by its cover” -- and even if the inside does match the cover at first, there still may be room for change.

She judges William, she judges Mari, and she judges Vilde, constantly. She’s precisely a great character because she tries her best, and still sometimes falls into reductive and ignorant views – like the rest of us.

 That goes for Vilde too. How much hate have we thrown towards what was just a naïve and ignorant girl?

Again, there is no question that she is deeply ignorant on so many matters. There is no debate that on some occasion, she let herself judge others without regards to her own situation and considering her own problematic self. But are we so much better ourselves, on matters that we don’t fully comprehend? Honestly, I don’t think so.

 And it makes me laugh to see how many trash William, the manipulative fuckboy, and talk of Isak like a small ball of pure innocent sunshine. If we can forgive and empathize with one, we can do so with the other. If we can allow one to grow and mature, we can do so with the other, even if he is a cis white straight privileged male.

 Injustice is to be defeated. But that does not necessarily mean to defeat our adversaries. Or, to put it in another way, to defeat our adversary, is sometimes to make it our ally.

 My father has this saying: “Your biggest fear, can potentially become your greatest friend”.

 We can transform our adversary into our ally.

We can transform our fear into compassion.

We can transform our hate into love.

 There lies our true victory, and the goal of our greatest self.

  And last, but not least.

 We identify so much in these stories, that we forget they are not our own in the end.

 Julie Andem has written her own stories, let’s stop harassing her because she did not write what each and every one of us wanted her to write. Instead of mulling over all the things she did not do, let’s look at what she did try to convey instead. Again, for a show that tried so hard to convey the importance of having a dialog with what doesn’t necessarily represent “me”, it is sad to see that it has a pretty self-absorbed, intransigent and inflexible fandom.

 Really, I’ve sometimes come to feel like the true toxic relationship is not Noora x William, it is the one between the show and its fandom.

 No show is perfect, and Skam has certainly its flaws. But really, I must admit, now it’s over, that it was pretty damn good in so many ways. Not perfect. But for me, it stands as one of the greatest in its genre, and maybe simply one of greatest.

 So, can we stop complaining that it did not tell the story we wanted it to tell? Because that is the point of the show: to open our minds to what we don’t understand at first. Let us be surprised, by what isn’t a reflection of our identity. Who knows, maybe we can discover some new facet of ourselves within what seemed alien at first.

 A story is not trash, because it took a different route than YOU wanted to take. 

And about Sana: her story does not have to tackle every aspect of immigration, islamophobia, cultural differences, etc. Every time a show tried to encompass every possible cause, every possible aspect, every possible angle of a problem, it becomes paradoxically superficial, unsubstantial, and fake.

(This is the reason I can’t stand “13 Reasons Why”, because it tried to resume and stuff every possible reason they could find for suicide into a single storyline. Result: the protagonist greatly suffered from it, as she had no personality of her own: she was only intended and constructed to be an illustration of those aforementioned reasons. “13 Reasons Why” is less a story, and more of a demonstration. And the more exhaustive it wanted to be, the more simplistic it became. Because, truth is, you cannot pin point 13 reasons for a suicide. The reality is, and always will be, something that we cannot fully comprehend. And like no one kills himself for the same set of reasons, no one can impose in a single storyline the whole spectrum of causes.)

 One show, or one character, cannot carry the whole weight of the world on its shoulders. It cannot be a spokesperson for every problem in our society.

 I’ve seen that the last season of SKAM divided a lot of people; some say it did not have a story; some say it had too many; some say it had no focus, and did not go anywhere.

 I, personally, don’t agree with those statements. While I do think the season deserved at least one more episode centered around Sana, to tie up loose ends and give us scenes with actual resolutions, instead of just hinting at it, I was moved and satisfied with this season.

 So, if Sana’s story doesn’t comprehend every aspect that every one, everywhere, wanted it to comprehend, it’s perfectly normal. Because she can only tell her own story, complex enough in her own right. Sana’s season told the story of a muslim girl brought up in Norway. It’s a specific story, in a specific setting, so again, don’t freak out because it did not include everything you wanted it to include.

And stop saying she was portrayed as a victim. Or as a bully. Because it actually showed how she surmounted both, and found real strength in forgiveness.

 No story is unproblematic, because without problematic, there would be no stories. So, let us not expect nothing but perfect balls of sunshine everywhere. Let us appreciate how each of these characters surmounts their own restrictions, resolves their conflict, to be a better person. And this battle is never over, and is never done once and for all: it is a lifelong struggle.

And the resolution of a conflict does not always come as we intended it to be. Asking for forgiveness, and to forgive, are acts that can come in different forms. I found in my experience, that reconciliations can sometimes emerge in the most unexpected ways. So maybe let us pay more attention to that.

 But, in the end, if I had to resume the flaws of this show, it would be that it did not explore some stuff as far as I would have, especially in the last season who did deserve at least one more episode, to have a more substantial closure on some plot points. I am more than happy that it ended on a high note, I only wish we would have had more time to see how these various reconciliations came to be.

 But overall, thank you SKAM. You manage to have a more subtle, complex and rich story through the daily lives of these teenagers, than a great many shows out there.

 Alt er love.

 Takk for alt.

[skeptic42]

Did Jesus Exist? 13 Sep 2017

What Bart has to say on Paul is interesting.  During my brush with religion, In the book of Acts, Paul just seems to suddenly show up and is extremely prominent.  It wasn’t until looking more into the NT from an atheist perspective that I come to find out that only 7 of Paul’s letters are believed to be authentic.  Something that really does fit the “inconvenient truth” label.  That and the other alterations, though I have seen in a few bibles a very, very tiny foot note that Mark 16 end at verse 8.  What’s also never mentioned in sermons are the contradictions, like the ones Bart points out in Jesus Interrupted.  Bart is correct in that when read linearly we are unlikely to catch the differences and contradictions.  I think what also contributes to this is that sermons are taken (or given) in small chunks.  They regard some passages and maybe some supporting verses from elsewhere.  By the time you ever come across the contradiction, you’ve forgotten the ages old sermon on the contradictory part.

Anyway, I remember Paul just suddenly showing up.  Judas hangs himself (or falls on a plot of land and explodes, depending on which contradictory passage you read) and then Paul slides right in.  Here he’s been persecuting christians for a while and with a single vision, poof, he’s an apostle.

Regarding this timing, it appears Paul converted about 32 or 33 CE.  So, this is like shortly after the crucifixion.  This is figured from some passages regarding time and known events.  Bart does lay out a good and reasonable case for when this happens, and it certainly does explain why Paul suddenly appears on the scene.

Then something occurred to me.  Paul was a Pharisee.  The Pharisees strictly observed the law.  I was always under the impression that they were religious leaders, but they’re actually one of the four schools of thought.  It seems to me that someone prominent enough to draw the attention and ire of the Romans, as jesus did, and was greeting by thousands who laid down palms as he triumphantly entered Jerusalem on and donkey and an ass (if memory serves) would have drawn the attention of a group of self-important people as the Pharisees.  Especially given that this is just before Passover, like the greatest Jewish holiday.  So, it’s not unreasonable to think that Paul would have also been there.  Possibly he missed the arrival of jesus.  He also misses everything up until the actual crucifixion, the shaking of the earth and darkening of the skies for three hours.  Ignoring the last bit, the crucifixion drew like everyone in Jerusalem, the people who just one week prior were laying down palms in jesus’ path.  The people who suddenly abandon jesus, call for the release of Barabbas instead.  Paul, who just 2-3 years later converts to christianity, misses it all.

Doesn’t seem very likely.

Then he spends the next 2-3 years persecuting christians.  Where did they all come from?  Going with “news spreads fast,” the high priests sought to stamp them out.  So, reading a bit about it, Paul was a bystander for the stone of St. Stephen (Acts 7:58), which was estimated to have occurred about 34 CE.  Not sure of this date, given that he was n the same place for three years before going to Jerusalem to meet with Peter.  That doesn’t leave much time for events after that.  King Aretas wanted to prosecute Paul, but he died in 40 CE.  So it almost seems like the famous road to Damascus trip might have been his first.

Three years seems to be a short time for christianity to have spread so far and wide in a time when transportation was slow, and christians were to give up essentially everything.  Let’s say everyone got around by boat, except Paul, who obviously took the road, and word spread far and wide.

Yet, the Encyclopedia Britannica has St. Stephen’s death in 36 CE.  This isn’t enough time for Paul to get permission to travel to Damascus, be converted, the three year gap before he meets Peter in Jerusalem, makes a nuisance of himself, and almost ends up executed by a king known to die in 40 CE.

Time is very convoluted in the bible.  Let’s say there’s a bit of misconception about how long things took.  Jesus dies, Paul persecutes and converts, sees Peter in Jerusalem after what seems like three years to him, and ends up nearly dead by King Aretas before 40 CE.

While meeting with Peter, he also meets James, the brother of jesus, and the topic of my next post.

In regard to the evidence Paul provides, he believed it, talked to the apostles and jesus’ brother James.  So, we may be closing in on the mysterious jesus.

[personalcoachingcenter]

Will AI Reduce Gender Bias in Hiring?

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/will-ai-reduce-gender-bias-in-hiring/

Will AI Reduce Gender Bias in Hiring?

Executive Summary

Would women be better off if AI and algorithms were in charge of hiring? There are clearly reasons to be hopeful. One of the big advantages of AI is that, aside from being better at spotting things (i.e., millions of data points), it is also superior at ignoring things. AI can be trained to ignore people’s gender and focus only on the relevant signals of talent or potential. For example, algorithms can be trained to pick up relevant signals of EQ, competence, or communication skills, while being truly blind to gender. This would definitely favor women. If AI is trained to identify the actual drivers of performance – defined broadly as an individual’s contribution to the organization — then we can expect a much fairer, more accurate, and replicable assessment of people’s potential than what humans can do. This, again, should be good for women.

Vlaaka Kocvarová/EyeEm/Getty Images

AI is disrupting every area of life, including how organizations find talent. Companies are generally aware of the ROI that comes from finding the right person for the right job. McKinsey estimated that, for highly complex roles, stars can be expected to produce 800% more than average performers. And a recent Harvard Business School study showed that there are even bigger benefits to avoiding toxic workers.

Despite this crucial role of talent, organizations are still unable to attract the right talent, relying more on intuitive rather than data-driven talent identification practices — especially at the top, where the stake are actually highest. Indeed, too many leaders are hired on the basis of their technical expertise, political influence, or interview performance. As I illustrate in my latest book, Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It), most companies focus on the wrong traits, hiring on confidence rather than competence, charisma rather than humility, and narcissistic tendencies rather than integrity, which explains the surplus of incompetent and male leaders. The result is a pathological disconnect between the qualities that seduce us in a leader, and those that are needed to be an effective leader.

An interesting question that arises is to what degree new technologies within the brave new world of AI-based hiring tools could help us reduce error, noise, and bias in our talent identification processes. For example, would women be better off if AI and algorithms were in charge of hiring? Previous research has highlighted a clear inconsistency around gender and leadership. On the one hand, women are often evaluated more negatively by others – even when there are few granular behavioral differences between women and men. On the other hand, large scale meta-analyses suggest that women have a slight advantage when it comes to the soft skills that predispose individuals to be more effective leaders, and that they generally adopt more effective leadership styles than men do. For instance, if leaders were selected on the basis of their emotional intelligence, self-awareness, humility, integrity, and coachability, the majority of leaders would be female rather than male.

And yet there have been salient news stories recently indicating that AI may actually contribute to even more bias and adverse impact against women–and that when algorithms are trained to emulate human recruiters, they may not just reproduce human biases, but also exacerbate them, engaging in a much more efficient form of discrimination.

To be sure, we are much more easily shocked and scandalized by hiring mistakes done by AI, than by human errors or biases. It’s a bit like with self-driving cars: it takes one autonomous car crash to convince us that the technology is flawed, but we are OK with having 1.2 million fatal accidents and 50 million driving injuries per year, courtesy of humans. So, let us start with the important realization that most hiring practices are (a) intuitive and (b) ineffective. For every company that appoints most of its leaders based on objective and meritocratic criteria, there are many more where such appointments are a true rarity — something that may be happening by accident, occasionally, and independently of their intentions. It is also clear that AI cannot be biased in the way humans are: that would require AI to have emotions, feelings, or opinions. AI does not need to engage in unconscious biases to penalize women or other underprivileged groups in order to get a self-esteem boost. Of course, if AI is trained with biased data — for instance, if we teach it to predict which candidates will be rated positively by human interviewers — it will not just emulate, but also exacerbate, human bias: augmenting it and making it far more efficient. But this can be addressed by teaching AI to predict relevant and objective outcomes, rather than mimic human intuition.

In addition, there are reasons to expect AI-talent tools to be more accurate and predictive than humans (not just because humans are generally bad at this):

Our favorite method for screening and vetting candidates — including leaders — is the interview, and large-scale scientific studies have shown that interviews are most predictive when they are highly structured. Whereas in-person/analogue interviews are hard to standardize, video interviews allow us to put people through exactly the same experience, capture millions of data points on their behaviors (e.g., what they say, how they say it, language use, body language, and micro-expressions), and remove prejudiced human observers from the process. It is safe to assume that automating all unstructured and humanly-rated interviews would reduce bias and nepotism while increasing meritocracy and predictive accuracy. This should be good for women (and bad for men).

Of course there are some incredibly smart human interviewers who may generally outperform the algorithms (though watch out for the next Netflix documentary on how AI beats the best human interviewers, much like they beat the greatest chess or AlphaGo players).  The main problem, however, is that most people are not as intuitive as they think. And for every brilliant interviewer, there are hundreds or thousands who think they are brilliant, but in reality, are not. We all think highly of our own intuition, especially when we are not intuitive. As one of the founders of the behavioral economics movement — and Nobel laureate — Daniel Kahneman noted: “We’re generally overconfident in our opinions and our impressions and judgments.” Regardless of AI’s ability to detect talent, we can expect it to be much more aware of its ability than humans are of their own ability. This will also allow AI to improve (more than humans can be expected to do). Consider that the average human interviewer will never even admit to making a hiring mistake, for they will indulge in confirmation bias to see the candidates they personally hired in a positive vein once they are tasked with rating their performance. Humans have skin in the game: accepting mistakes makes them look stupid — AI does not care about looking stupid.

One of the big advantages of AI is that, aside from being better at spotting things (i.e., millions of data points), it is also superior at ignoring things. Imagine an ethical, well-meaning, and open-minded human who has every intention of being fair in their hiring practices and is therefore determined to avoid gender bias in his — let’s assume he is male — hiring process. Regardless of how hard he tries, it will be very hard for him to ignore candidates’ gender. Imagine him sitting in front of a female candidate, repeating to himself: “I must not think about the fact that this person is a woman,” or “I must not let this person’s gender interfere with my evaluation.” In fact, the more he tries to suppress this thought, the more prominent it will be in his mind. This will also lead to distraction or over-compensation. In contrast, AI can be trained to ignore people’s gender and focus only on the relevant signals of talent or potential. For example, algorithms can be trained to pick up relevant signals of EQ, competence, or communication skills, while being truly blind to gender. This would definitely favor women.

The critical factor for this to work is that organizations identify real performance data to train the algorithms. If AI is taught to predict or anticipate human preferences — like whether a candidate will be liked by their (human) boss once they are hired — we can expect bias to remain… and be augmented. However, if AI is trained to identify the actual drivers of performance — defined broadly as an individual’s contribution to the organization — then we can expect a much fairer, more accurate, and replicable assessment of people’s potential than what humans can do. This, again, should be good for women.

In sum, for those who are interested in not just helping women to be more represented in the leadership ranks, but also improving the quality of our leaders, there are clearly reasons to be hopeful about AI. However, many of the emerging innovations in this brave new world of technologically-enhanced and data-driven talent identification are still a “work in progress,” and we need to ensure that they are not only accurate, but that they are also ethical and legal alternatives to existing methods. Above all, it is time to admit that most of the practices that are in place are far from effective, and that they have contributed to much of the unfairness and nepotism that governs the average workplace. So, here’s to finding the necessary self-awareness to begin to improve.

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friday: marauder era [lucinda talkalot, regulus black] - ~800 words - rated gen

Contrary to her name, Lucinda Talkalot isn’t much of a speaker. She still makes a good Captain for their team.

 She comes up with the most brilliant strategies, and asserts her leadership while still considering the team’s input.

 On the rare occasion that she bothers to speak with people, it is never really small-talk. She either argues, criticises or shuts people down.

 “Regulus, a word, please,” she says after practice, waving away the rest of the team.

She picks up the Quaffle and puts it in the trunk and locking it up.

 “Yeah?” Regulus asks tentatively. “Did I do something wrong?”

 Lucinda stops and looks up. “No. I needed to talk to you.”

 “Oh? About what?” he asks curiously.

 She fixes the piece of clothing she always wears over her head—a hijaab, he’s learnt that it’s called. He isn’t sure what it’s for, though, and she’s never bothered to talk to him about it.

 The only thing he knows is that it has a connection to religion, and his mother does not like religion.

 “A God? Don’t make me laugh. These people and their religious ideas are threatening our traditions! There is no God. Only Fate, whose anger I hope I’ll never receive. And Death—by whose hand I shall finally be laid to rest.”

 For a while, she doesn’t say anything. She just considers him, and there is a calculating glint in her eyes, which makes Regulus suddenly feel quite small.

 The look she gives him is slightly akin (though less scary) than the look his mother gives him before she confronts him about something.

 (Usually it has something to do with Sirius.)

 “Don’t join him,” she tells him eventually.

 “Sorry,” he starts, confused, “whom?”

 She rolls her eyes at him. “Him. The Dark Lord.”

 “Are you opposing him?” he asks, suddenly alert.

 “Regulus, my son. When the Dark Lord is in power, the world will become a better place at last. And we’ll see none of these—these—wretched mudblods and blood-traitors threatening our society! How dare they try taking our traditions away from us!”

 She sighs. “I’m not opposing anyone. I’m telling you not to join him. You have the potential to become one of the greatest seekers. Politics and terrorism is not going to look all too great in the Prophet.”

 “Who says I’m joining the Dark Lord?”

 “I’m not stupid,” she barks at him and he jerks back. She never barks. “I hear what you lot talk about. And I’m telling you it’s a bad idea.”

 “Why? Are you a mudblood?” he sneers at her.

 “Use that word again and you’re off the team, you prick,” she snarls at him. “Listen, Black, the world the Dark Lord dreams of isn’t what he says he’s going to give. Open your eyes! He’s murdering our children for the sake of keeping the bloodlines clean! And then what? We’ll inbreed until we die out?”

 “Have you been talking with my brother?” Regulus spits out, feeling a flare of anger bust alive in his chest. “The Dark Lord will save us. Dumbledore certainly is driving us into extinction by his meddling in politics.”

 “And don’t get me started on Dumbledore! That old man should’ve retired ages ago! Why he’s let into discuss political issues is beyond me. The old fool belongs underground, Regulus. You stay away from him at school, you hear me?”

 She clenches her jaw for a while before she blows out a sigh. “Well then,” she says, picking up the trunk and her broom. “I was hoping I’d see more of you on the pitch after school ends.”

 “I can still become a Seeker regardless if I join or not,” Regulus tells her as she’s walking past him. “And when He is in power, I can play as much as I want anyway!”

 “You tell yourself that,” she calls over her shoulder, before she disappears to the showers.

 He’s left on the pitch feeling rather anxious. Lately, his brother has tried to speak to him about the Dark Lord and begged him not to join him.

 Sirius has stopped him in the hallways, and sent him plenty of owls.

 “Please, Reggie—I know we haven’t talked as much since I got sorted into Gryffindor. But I still love you, okay? And I can’t bear the thought of—of you doing these things. I’m not asking you to leave Grimmauld Place—I’m not even asking you to leave our mother. I’m just asking you not to join him.”

 But it would make his mother so proud, if he did.

 He doesn’t have all the answers, but surely his mother does? She has always seemed so wise, although with an unpredictable temper.

 Lucinda—she doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand. One simply does not tell the Dark Lord no.

 With a heavy sigh, Regulus ignores the way his heart hurts when he thinks of Sirius, and heads towards the showers as well.

 One day, he’ll become the greatest Seeker in the world, and perhaps then his family would be whole again.

okay so. i wanted to write about characters less talked about, and truth to be told, i don’t remember a lucinda talkalot, but i thought the last name would be great in an opening sentence.

as i’ve mentioned in a previous contribution i headcanon the black family as chinese-- or at least with chinese ancestry.

so this drabble was more venturing into regulus’ family problems (and his hopes of them becoming a family again), and lucinda being the one besides his brother to warn him off. let’s just pretend it worked and sirius and regulus meet up every wednesday for a coffee.

i also wanted to lightly dab into the subject of religion and harry potter. i do think religion could “co-exist” (for lack of better words, please, it’s nearly 3.30am) within the potter world. but i’m not all too certain how someone like walburga could accept such concept, and then feeding that mindset to regulus.

i am imagining him as a product of an (emotionally to him) abusive mother with strict rules of what is okay and what is not. and he watched what happened when sirius ot sorted into gryffindor-- he witnessed something that had sirius leave his home. and since he canonically joined the death eaters, i see him as someone who only-- when too late-- will realise exactly whose footsteps he’s followed: a monster’s. which is why he isn’t the best guy when he’s speaking, but more anxious and critical when thinking.

and i honestly have no opinion on lucinda’s possible bloodline or whatever lol. she’s a black muslimah.

i hope i conveyed this right.