#i would expect the same to happen to european history in japan | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lunarcloak · 8 months ago

Text

I love this!! I remember when the concept of "New Gen 11" was first introduced, I was a little confused on whether they'd be able to interact with each other because they're basically supposed to be the best players in the newest generation for those particular spots on field, right? There's no real inkling that they've played together before.

But then Lorenzo seems to know Kaiser well enough that they can read other. Assuming that the teams have remained the same for atleast the past two years, if not longer, that means Real Madrid and Bastard Munchen MUST have gone against each other enough that Kaiser and Sae are familiar.

(I was honestly expecting Kaiser to make a comment to Rin about his older brother during the PxG match, but seeing as he's having a mental breakdown and there's no inkling-- there's no real foundation for this.)

But technically speaking, Sae's striker dream was crushed somewhere in that four year bracket. Judging by the timeline, Sae returns to Japan roughly a year or under two years from present date. Briefly, assuming, because the start of the series has him returning for a second time for his passport.

BASICALLY. All of this to say. The timeline would match up perfectly. I'd try to get it to match up better but we don't actually know for sure how old Kaiser is. I want to say he's maybe the same age as Sae, maybe a year older? But literally EVERYTHING points to the fact that they've played against each other atleast a handful of times.

YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE THIS REMINDS ME OF??

I can't remember the chapter, but at some point Ego makes that big speech about how a Japanese player is worshipped in the media as their next prodigal genius, and then they get crushed under European talents before returning to Japanese football to finish in some mid level national leagues. This is almost Exactly what Sae does, except Sae still has an ego, just that it manifests in a different way.

He's talented, and he knows it, so rather than opting to get crushed as a striker, he flourishes as a midfielder. This is why there exist parallels between Sae and Isagi.

But I am curious-- why do you think this strips us of a badass character? I'd like to pick your brain on that.

Besides, if Rin were to be the world's best striker, then he would also need the world's best midfielder too, you know.

This is so interesting because, the way Sae behaves once he gets back from Spain is literally the exact opposite of this. He tells Rin to stop playing football, to stop pursuing that dream-- and it really makes you wonder. Obviously Sae is not very open with his thoughts, and often contradictory in his speech and actions. (Hilarious example, but see how he talks to Shidou vs acts with Shidou in the U20 arc.)

If this is true, and Sae chose to stay as close to Rin through his dream, then that means Sae is as dependent on Rin as Rin is dependent on him. Honestly? i think that was exactly what Sae wanted to break when he got back from Spain. He's not quite succeeded yet, but I think in his mind he was doing it for the sake of Rin. Except I think he needs it too.

I just. I was really looking forward to Kaiser picking on Rin for being Sae's little brother in some shape or form, yknow?? If they had history, I feel like he'd be more crass about it. But of course at the moment he's not doing too well LMAO. But if it happens, then that will easily give us some more evidence to work off of.

I APOLOGISE FOR THE LONG REPLY REBLOG!! Your thoughts just sent my brain into analysis mode and I had to add on my ideas and interpretations. Hope you have a good day!!

It was the end of Ubers match when I first stumbled upon a tweet on Pinterest which sowed the theory of Kaiser destroying Sae's dream in my mind. And honestly, after this seeing panel:

I'm starting to believe more and more in that theory.

It was evident way before Ness's backstory that Kaiser is definitely NOT a newbie in the soccer industry which gives an ample amount of time for Sae to face Kaiser in a match considering Sae didn't return to Japan for straight four years.

And I highly think that Sae faced off Kaiser in the later moment of those four years.

Why?

Because:

He looked miserable when he first returned from Spain in comparison to his later return (almost a year later) from Spain:

And I do think that if you were to lose a long-term dream, then it'll show on your face much more during the earlier days rather than a year later when you get used to the feeling of losing your dream.

Further, Kaiser crushing Sae's dream fits well in two questions that revolves in my mind whenever I think about Sae's backstory:

Why Sae started hating his own country, Japan?

The above question can be modified as:

Why Sae started hating Japanese soccer players?

As I said in one of my previous posts, I do believe that when Sae stepped into Spain, he realised that he was the Frog in the well—he realised how vast the world is and that he wasn't as great of a player as he thought he was. He probably struggled a lot but was somewhat successful in maintaining a balance when Kaiser came in like a wrecking ball to strike the nail in the coffin.

Of course, considering Sae's personality, he would've surely put up a fight against Kaiser just like Isagi did, but unlike that blueberry boy, Sae was already very exhausted and sadly, after some time, he gave up.

Now to address the actual answer to the question: Sae hated how much Japan celebrated him when he was just a child. He was showered with the title of prodigy since he was a kid and he hated that his own country made him feel like he was someone special when in reality, he was just the best among the worst. Further, even if he wanted to be better, there was no one in Japan who could help him do that. He hated how he was made to believe by his country's people that he had what it took to be the world's best striker.

Kind of like a betrayal of some sort.

This gentle soul explained it very well too:

Also, a bit unrelated, but this panel piqued my interest:

German you say, hm?

Moving onto next question:

Why Sae chose to be a Midfielder then?

I have two reasoning for this question:

Firstly, what is the position closest to the striker? Yes, a Midfielder. So, by being a Midfielder, Sae is still trying to be as close to his dream as possible. It is his type of compromise.

Secondly, do you remember what Rin really liked? Yes, Sae's passes. And which position's main role is to pass? Yes, a Midfielder.

You getting me?

It's like Sae is trying to get some kind of closure by reliving those good old times when Rin and Sae played in the Kamakura United (their soccer club). Besides, if Rin were to be the world's best striker, then he would also need the world's best midfielder too, you know.

You getting me?

The only reason I don't want this theory to come true is because it kind of strips us off from an opportunity to get a new badass character.

I also don't want this theory to be true is because I'm solely holding onto this panel:

I'm desperately holding into this panel as a hope that Sae still cares for Rin.

After we got an insight of Kaiser-Ness relation in chapter 261, I can't help but fear that Sae may think of Rin in the same way—someone for his own selfish needs.

And if anything like this happens, I'll transform into the biggest Kaiser's hater alive. Even after chapter 261, I still somewhat defend him for his behaviour, but Itoshi brothers have been the closest to my heart—istg I'll rip Kaiser's hair from his scalp if the brothers' bond gets tarnished because of him.

That's all, I guess.

#blue lock #lune thinks #can i just say #OP your theories are like #such bangers every single time #ive been following em for quite sometime #i also wrote that gigantic Itoshi sib dissection after being inspired by your post #its just a TREAT to see work from you #keep doing the lords work #keeping analytic braincells such as mine #constantly fed #hope you have a good day!!#anyways hell yeah #while it would be absolutely brutal if this is true #it would be so intriguing ngl #HMMMM

201 notes · View notes

glitterytidalwavedragon · 4 years ago

Text

Expanding into my other Fandoms (I’m gonna have to take a stance) Read the whole thing please.

One of my oldest and most beloved anime is Inuyasha. As of late I have been binged watching the hell out of it as I am getting my BFF into different anime shows. We are really close to entering the Yashahime part of the series, and she asked if I planned to write fanfiction involving the one character which made me even watch the show as a 10-year-old.

Sesshomaru

The first episode I ever watched involved this aloof, entitled dog fighting his brother over the sword in their father’s grave. Specifically, it was part 3 of that whole episode series were Kagome pulled out the sword. I at the time had 3 dogs of German Sheppard/wolf hybrid, they were MASSIVE dogs, fell in love with the big white fluff that was Sesshomaru’s demon form. I use to sneak staying up and watch the show faithfully to see the goodest boy as it was only on at 11pm EST on adult swim. Which meant it was bad and I was breaking the rules, I felt like a rebel.

Now I hesitated answering that question. She has no idea of what is in Yashahime, she is being careful not to spoil it so I told her I didn’t know. Recently, to find out what the feel is for Sesshomaru content, I looked into the tag on tumblr…

OH MY GOD.

Sesshomaru’s tag is FLOODED with hate. Like every four post, there is hate, distain, and attacking happening. As someone who watches Yashahime, I quickly knew why.

Sessrin.

Even now I sigh. And I sigh HARD. I am not for, nor am I against the Sessrin train. Same for the Sesskagu train. I think both sides need to look at things on a logical prospective. I plan to do just that. I know I will get hate from the either side and maybe some support as well. But if I am going to do anything in this fandom (as I like doing ships and reader inserts) it will come up.

So, like my Kaiba post, and my Sebastian Heel post, I will use my research skills as well as my COLLEGE DEGREE WHICH HAS BOTH ART AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY labelled on it to explain why this progression in the story is normal to anti-Sessrin fans and why this isn’t a crime by story standards nor should we look at it as a crime.

AS WELL

Explain to Sessrin fans why it is so weird for non-shippers to see it play out and why so much hate formed.

As I let out another sigh, we shall begin. Let’s start at an historical prospective. (Links at the bottom).

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING! I’LL BE ABLE TO TELL!

I will start with the information I can access right away.

While finding charts on the life-span of common folk in 1590’s Feudal Japan is rather difficult, Ancient.edu states that the average lifespan was about 50. To put this in perspective, the average lifespan of Europeans at the time was somewhere between 40-45 with the latter being rare. Since most of us reading are not from Japanese descent, I will through Europe in this first.

If we look at the same time frame of 1590, we are looking at most of Western Europe had now entered the age of Renaissance. According to sources from Learning Resources in association with the National Gallery of Art, marriage was not what TV drama’s from HBO or Hulu depicted. By today standards they would be a crime, as the average age for marriage of an adult female was age 14…

The reasoning behind the young marriage age had multiple factors. First being, females were considered an adult once they were menstruating. Birthing also proved to be fatal, and since the lifespan was at best 40 and 45 if they were lucky, there was really no room to wait. Also Europe at the time had became hugely focused on making sure blood lines were legitimate, meaning to ensure the girl was a virgin, the moment she was able to reproduced she was married off. Those they married were not young teenagers either. Most marriages, a man would be in their thirties, and had probably multiple wives as women died more than men when not counting the battle field.

To make matters worse for the Renaissance Lady, these marriages would leave many young males unable to marry and if their husband died in battle, well, unfortunately they were not seen as desirable. This was due to the idea of a ‘free woman’. Should the girl not have a father, brother or uncle to return to as they too died, a widow had her freedom. But that freedom came at a cost. She would be assumed to have slept around, and in many writings, such as the Canterbury Tales, where Geoffrey Chaucer writes about a Window on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land survived her five husbands and the men in her family. In short, she was made to be a slut and to be looked down upon as no man controlled her.

The point of talking about Europe is because that is something most of us Non-Asian or Japanese people consume and like to paint in large romantic brush strokes of knights and magic. Honestly, reading G.R.R.Martin Song of Ice and Fire, he uses this model as we see the Queen of Dragons, Danny start off at age thirteen shortly after she had her first menstruation.

Now let’s look at Feudal Japan.

As stated before, the lifespan was around 50 years. In some populations, this was even shorter. Nagaoka, Hirata, Yokota and Matsu’ura’s on demographic data at the Yuigahama-minami area in Kamakura, Japan and found both male and female remains that suggested life expectancy to have ended around age 24-25. This was largely due to living conditions and public health. In areas like these, it would make the most sense to marry and repopulate quickly as the expectancy of life was half the national average at the time.

To my frustration, I could not find a clear marriage age for Japanese women at the time of the edo period. HOWEVER, where there is a will there is a way. I took a look at famous Lords or Daimyo’s of the time. The average age of marriage of their wives was between 12-14. Much younger than I expected, but it made sense considering this is a time where war ran the show and marriage was strictly about political gain. One of these Daimyo’s was Masamune Date, who was also 13, but then as he got older took concubines who became considerably younger than him as he became older. The goal was to have as many children as possible for hires and for political marriages to gain power.

Now lets look at Inuyasha the MANGA

Lets get the manga timeline proper here. The whole adventure took place in 11 months, a month shy of Kagome’s 16th birthday. Doing a few estimations, Rin would have travelled with Sesshomaru about 8-9 of those months. But before we get into the relationship, lets look at something the ANIME made a huge mistake with in the beginning and tried to fix as the story went on.

For some reason I could only fine gifs for the Early appearances of Sesshomaru so bear with me.

Early appearances in the manga

^ He was so fickle and a trickster then...

Now early apperances in the anime.

Later appearance in the manga

Laster appearance in the anime

Notice the issue here?

Sesshomaru was CONSIDERABLY younger looking in the start of the manga. In the anime, he started off looking like an fully adult male. But as the anime went on, they tried to make Sesshomaru look younger with subtle changes to his jaw line, eye size, and his height. Yeah, his height had changed. They made him shorter.

While in the manga, we see this young-teen looking demon, slowly mature over 11 months to look like he is in his later teens and by series end, closer to being in his late teens or twenty. Yes, art changes over time, but the anime went a reverse route. I can only guess they spoke to the author of Inuyasha about her ships, as they did Drama CDs, and realized the mistake that was made in making him more mature than he was.

You can’t tell me he doesn’t look closer to his manga self in the final act, because he does.

Since we are on the topic of the anime, lets be clear. The anime timeline and manga timeline are very different. The story in the anime (in the English) suggests that OVER a year has past since Kagome started her journey. They try to fix this in the final act, but it was still so muddled as previous seasons are to be taken as cannon. This could have been due to an translation error in the early production when the anime no longer had anymore manga material to reference. But whatever the case, for English viewers the time the group spent together felt much longer.

So now we come to the heart of the issue.

Because of the mistakes of the anime, a lot of anti-sessrin see the relationship as father daughter. I’ll be honest, watching the anime and solely the anime as a teenager and as an adult (as the manga was on hold for a very long time due to author’s health. I was in college when it finished.), I too thought it was just a father-daughter relationship and Jaken the nanny who got punched all the time. In fact, the English took hard liberties with Kagura, as the English dubs often do with characters, and made it very clear her feelings for the demon lord and Sesshomaru very much recognized them (though he never responded). Even in her death scene, it felt as if he was saying good bye to a friend more than love interest. But who really knows, as there are things that point otherwise. When another demon mock’s Kagura’s death, Sesshomaru gets super pissy.

The manga did also play with this fact when it came out in English, idk if the wording or message is different in the Japanese. Translation errors happen a lot even in todays releases, look at Kuroshitsuji. So of course most anti-sessrin’s did not see this coming in Yashahime when Rin was named mother. In fact it felt like a betrayal as we were sure Sesshomaru had no romantic feelings.

Then there was the Kohaku/Rin mashup that was hinted left and right. The English anime, with its overly dramatic and blunt emotions made it appear one way. That in the end the two kids would probably be married. Then the anime as a whole made Sesshomaru older than intended. I can see why and understand how this became a problem.

On the other side of that coin.

If you followed the dub, seen ‘Swords of an Honorable Ruler’ and read the manga… Sesshomaru was not fatherly to Rin at all. In fact, Jaken picked up all of that leg work. Rin worried for Kohaku, but clearly loved Lord Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru cared about Kagura but he almost CRIED when he lost Rin.

We have to remember that Sesshomaru and Rin’s relationship must have been very hard for the demon. While we never see his mental process expect for a few rare times, we have to remember he hated humans. In the movie, he blamed a human for the early death of his father, Sesshomaru killed without mercy. It made sense that he wouldn’t be fatherly to Rin as her just being there should have caused countless inner conflicts. Hell, he even says his father’s weakness was humans, and look who picked up that trait.

Sesshomaru was designed to, someday, walk in his father’s footsteps. So sess/rin, not a surprise. Also when you see it in a historical perspective, Rin having kids around age 15-16, makes sense. In fact you could argue he waited too long for the time period.

We also need to look more at the manga when concerned with Yashahime. 8-9 months is all Rin travelled with him and he was like hold up, and left her at the village because he KNEW she needed to come to her own conclusion. That no matter what she picked he would live with and protect her. Unconditional love on his end. She cannon wise spent YEARS living with humans and MONTHS with Sesshomaru. Again, by manga standards of cannon.

Now I can already hear the screaming about age and what not. Some sources say Sesshomaru is over 900, by the rule of thumb, if we look at anime and movie releases, we have Sesshomaru being over 500 with no define age and Inuyasha around 270 years old being more pinpointed due to the movie. Just by going by ANIME CANNON. Kagome and Inuyasha, you have a 15 year old with a 270 year old man. If you say being pinned to the tree doesn’t count, then you have 220.

Also, here is something very interesting. In the episode where Inuyasha meets the unmother, he tells her, thinking it was his mom, she died when he was very small and we have flash backs later in the series of him being small running from demons. Demons clearly age much slower than humans, even half-demons. Inuyasha can be 270 but mentally and physically be 15, the same logic works for Sesshomaru, who in the manga is not much older than Inuyasha.

In the manga, there wasn’t any grooming, in the anime, there was a ton of mess-ups but no grooming.

Would this fly in todays world? HELL NO! NO, its gross, she’s a kid. Stop.

I know any fanfic I write will lean heavily on the side of father/daughter because that is what I grew up seeing on the screen. I can’t think of Rin as an adult because years of seeing her as a cheerful little girl. It’s like seeing G.O.T Arya about to have sex for the first time in season 8… I remember when she was a kid on the show. It was way to weird and I had to look away until it ended. But that’s my 2021 mentality.

But Inuyasha is not taking place in 2021. Feudal Japan is a whole other era with its own beliefs, morals and way of life. Those who understand this have nothing wrong with them. They just understand history.

Also, just to bang some nails in…

Anyone remember Bleach? Remember the MOST accepted couple was Ichigo and Rukia…. Rukia who was hundreds of years old and Ichigo who was 15… or Ichigo’s mom who was a teenager and his dad also hundreds of years old.

Most of this also boils down to Sesshomaru being a dude. As in reverse roles in animes its accepted and they don’t have the same historical context. Inuyasha is based off of historical context of Feudal Japan.

We need to stop spreading hate. We can’t accept some forms of literature because its European fantasy but bash other fantasy based literature for doing the same thing.

Sure, its weird for those who were use to seeing the father/daughter dynamic. Yes, there are extreme sessrin fans who post really questionable illegal content when they decide to leave Rin as an 8-year-old…

But this wasn’t ever meant to be perverted. The story was meant to make sense on a logical and historical base.

I hope everyone takes the time to read this. I love Inuyasha, I love Sesshomaru. I am just sick of seeing so many people fighting over what should be the revival of a beloved series. While yes, there is still room for sess/rin not being a thing, until it is stated otherwise, why hate each other? This fandom will only lose people by doing this. Calling people names or accusing them of illegal endorsement can hurt someone these days over social media.

Tumblr allows you to block tags. You don’t have to read anything or watch anything you don’t like. We gain nothing from attacking each other but can lose so much by doing so. Fanart, really good fan fiction, friends, ideas, sharing fond memories. Both sides have the right to feel as they feel, but no right in hurting each other.

A fandom is meant to bring people together. Not start a war…

Thank you.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.20402

http://www.italianrenaissanceresources.com/units/unit-2/essays/husbands-and-wives/#:~:text=Marriage%20not%20only%20reflected%20order,to%20ensure%20the%20bride's%20virginity.

https://www.ancient.eu/Canterbury_Tales/

https://www.ancient.eu/article/1424/daily-life-in-medieval-japan/#:~:text=Just%20as%20Japanese%20people%20today,in%20Western%20Europe%2C%20for%20example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_Masamune

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megohime

81 notes · View notes

peachyteabuck · 4 years ago

Text

come water me ☂

summary: after years of depending on science to give you a child, you think giving a magic a shot isn’t a half-bad idea (a commission for @myhoneybeeheart)

pairing: steve rogers x thor odinson x reader (established steve rogers x reader)

words: 3,538

trigger warnings: infertility, MMF threesomes, creampies, praise kink, breeding kink, cuckolding, angst if you squint but like REALLY squint. REALLY REALLY squint.

ask box / masterlist / commission info / ko-fi

You and Steve had both done every test known to every male and female fertility specialist in the United States, along with several European countries, Japan, China, and Australia. Every single one, for each of you, pointed to the same thing – infertility.

Persistent infertility. As in, the both of you are not only infertile, but will continue to be infertile despite any type of treatments any type of doctor wants to put you through. Steve doesn’t qualify for experimental treatments, and you’ve tried at least five to no avail.

Long story short, neither of you can have biological children.

The problem is, you both really want biological children. But, according to biology, it just isn’t going to happen.

“Science says so,” the last doctor had told you, voice full of apology. “I’m so sorry.”

That particularly heartbreaking appointment was in the late afternoon, but the battery of tests meant you and your husband were stuck in the shitty doctor’s office until long past when the sun had set. You were grateful how dark it was when you left, terrified some Captain America stan or paparazzi would get a high definition picture of both you with puffy faces along with snot and stray tears still running down your face. It was late when you got back to your secluded high rise, neither of you hungry nor willing to feign it enough to order something. You didn’t know about Steve, but the sadness had somehow overwhelmed every single one of your senses – making your taste buds pointless and limbs numb. Silently, the both of you got ready for bed and held each other as emotional exhaustion acted as a second weighted blanket and lulled you both to sleep.

It was the next morning when you thought of what you had dubbed “the plan.” You had gotten up before Steve (unusual, as you’d been together long enough that wallowing in self pity was a shared activity) and sat at the kitchen table with unbrushed teeth, messy hair, and the sort of determination that comes with a self-reflexive ultimatum: if “the plan” didn’t work, you’d stop trying. You’d tell Steve that you’ve come to terms with your inability to conceive and continue your journey to start from the assumption that there was nothing either of you could do to make it happen. It’s a heartbreaking reality, but it was one you were willing to accept.

It took a few days to work up the courage, to find the right time to broach the idea with the man you chose to spend the rest of your life with. The perfect moment ended up being when you were both eating dinner, Steve telling a story about something ridiculous Peter had done on a mission (turns out, flirting with a fellow agent undercover as a full service sex worker is not a good idea). You were both happy, incredibly so, and you knew whenever your husband talked about the kid it ignited the special light inside of him that wanted to be a father.

It was the tail end of the story, he was two beers down (a special mix Tony had concocted that balanced with Steve’s serum-induced metabolism), and he was happy. So with a deep inhale and sustained eye contact, you rambled with your prepared speech that covered a few of concerns you knew Steve would have and informed him of your personal deal.

You finished quickly – words tumbling out of your mouth before you knew they were being spoken. Your heart beat loudly in your chest, blood rushed to your ears. You were terrified.

That was, until Steve gave his reply a few hours later.

(He asked if he could table the conversation for a little while, wanting to “think it over.” Of course you told him it was okay, especially since you knew there was dessert still waiting to be eaten in the fridge, and you were still very hungry.)

You imagined a lot of responses from your husband, the worst of which sounded like the beginning of a particularly sad Shonda Rhimes television show:

“You want to what?” Steve nearly screams. “You want to invite Thor Odinson in our marriage bed so that we can have a child!? No! I won’t allow it!”

You fall to the ground, sobbing, clutching your phone as you scream back. “I want what’s best for us! For our family! For our future child!”

Steve storms out of the bedroom, turning back to your crumbled figure just before stomping out. “I’m calling a divorce lawyer. I want you out by Monday.”

You expected you’d have to convince him, would have to coax his clenched jaw towards your face so he’d know how serious you are from the look in your eyes. Maybe you’d have to wait days, weeks, months before he’d agree, would have to have long conversations with him and his colleague about negotiations and boundaries and whatever else.

What you didn’t expect was for Steve to agree not only immediately, but enthusiastically.

“T-that’s it?” you asked. You both were in bed, reading separate books before you’d each turn off the lights and go to sleep. He was reading something about battle tactics during Vietnam while you were thumbing through a book about the history of swearing.

Steve did not look up from his novel. “You want to have a threesome with Thor in the hopes it’ll give us a baby?”

You looked to him, brow furrowed. “Yeah?”

Now he puts the book down and turns to you. “The worst thing that happens is we have sex with a literal deity?”

At first you think he’s joking but, nope. He’s serious.

“Uh, yeah,” you reply again.

Steve shrugs before going back to his book. “Then yeah, but you have to call him.”

You blink a few times – shocked. Pleasantly shocked, but still shocked. “That’s…a deal. Yeah. I can, I’ll talk to him.”

Steve smiles, turning back to you once more and giving you a peck on the cheek. “Sounds good, babe. Let me know what he says.”

You nod, still a little surprised. “O-of course.”

With that, the conversation ends, and you need to figure out how to contact the man in question.

The next morning, you learn from the detailed calendar Tony’s assistant keeps that Thor’s on Migard for the rest of the month, doing…whatever. Honestly, you have no idea what he’s doing, and – even more honestly – you don’t care. Short of saving an entire population from destruction, you’re sure he can make time for you.

Luckily you find him easily, watching some reality show about weird white people in the living room of a common floor. You take deep breaths for stepping into eyeshot, asking if you can sit next to him (he says yes) before you start what is likely the most uncomfortable conversation of your life.

Somehow, though, Thor beats you to it. “If you want me to help you and Steve conceive, just tell me the date and time you want me in your bed.”

Even more so than when Steve accepted your recent proposal, you’re surprised by Thor’s forwardness. “Um-“

Thor smiles, putting a comforting arm around your shoulders before pulling you close against him. “Listen, I’ve done this with many families on many planets. I’ve never done it on Earth, but I’m willing to give it a try for you two. You deserve a child, and I’d be happy to help with that.”

You wipe a stray tear before allowing yourself to be enveloped into Thor’s massive arms. “Thank you,” you tell him after your heart had stopped beating at your ribs as if they were boxers going for the championship title. “Thank you so much.”

You feel Thor smile against the side of your head. “Of course, anything for you.”

You return to Steve with your findings, who agrees to set it up for the next night. The few hours before the mythical man is scheduled to arrive are an otherworldly combination, as if you had put giddy excitement, gut-wrenching fear, and determined optimism in a Nutribullet with bananas and strawberries and vanilla Greek yogurt and served it with-

“Honey, he said we both have to eat before,” Steve pulls the breaks on your train of thought, nudging your plate of food towards you with a small smile. “I’ve known you for long enough to know what you overthinking and forgetting to eat looks like.”

You nod and sigh, biting into the seasoned steamed vegetables. “Sorry, I-“

Steve shakes his head, swallowing whatever from his plate he was chewing. “I’ve also known you long enough to not need you to explain. Just eat.”

He’s right, you think as you clear your plate. You’ve known Steve for over a decade, dating for nine of them and married for seven. He met you through Natasha, who knew you from your work as a professor studying the differing effects of veterans and civilians (how she found you is still a mystery) and invited you to a conference that Stark was funding and therefore required the Avengers to make an appearance. He knew everything about you, and you knew everything about him.

For the first time in a long time, you wonder whether that’s a good thing, or a bad one.

When Thor arrives, he directs the two of you with ease, accepting a glass of expensive red wine as he follows you to the expansive bedroom.

He makes you strip first, tells you to lay in the center of the bed with your legs spread over the end and arms at your side. Steve’s next, already half-hard as he takes his position by your head, on his knees so he can watch the show in front of you. He’s naked, erection hard against his chiseled stomach.

“You’re so beautiful,” you tell him, blissed out before anything had ever begun.

He smiles down at you, same look in his eye the same day you got married. “You, too babe.”

Thor lets you have the moment as he undresses himself, letting you wrap a hand around Steve’s cock as he slots himself between your legs.

“Mm,” Thor hums, tracking your every move with a precise eye. “What a pretty cunt you have…”

A deep moan from you cuts him off as he kneels and licks a wide stripe up your dripping center, his large hands moving under your knees to bend your legs to your chest.

“Oh!” you cry, one of your hands moving to clutch his long blonde hair. “Oh that feels so good!”

You can feel Thor smiling into your folds as one of his perfectly calloused fingers slowly enters you, reveling in your now-mindless acceptance of pleasure. “So tight,” he moans. “Can’t wait to feel you around my cock.”

It doesn’t take long for your brain to fry, losing your ability to do anything but moan and sloppily jerk off your husband as Thor begins to fuck two fingers in and out of you at a bruising pace.

Steve watches you intensely, takes over jerking his own dick when you lose control of the muscles in your hands.

Thor scoffs, rolling his eyes you pout when his lips leave you.

“C’mon, love,” he murmurs into your inner thigh. “Don’t neglect the man.”

Nearly panting, you wrap your lips around Steve’s cock while Thor continues eating you out.

“Fuck you’re so good at this,” Steve hisses as you start to gag on him, running your tongue on the underside of his cock.

You do your best to smile as one hand moves to play with his balls, eyes screwing shut as you turn all your attention onto your husband’s cock.

“That feel good?” Thor asks, hand around the base of his cock. He grunts when Steve nods, his head thrown back in ecstasy. “C’mon, Stevie. Tell me how good your wife’s mouth feels on your dick.”

Steve swallows what little spit is left in his mouth before trying to remember how to speak. “It f-feels so good,” he’s breathless, chest straining as he tries not to come. “Wet and t-tight, the best thing I’ve ever felt.”

Thor grunts deep in his chest, as if he’s restraining himself. “Keeping going – and tell me when you’re about to cum.”

Steve moans when he hits the back of your throat, both hands now tangled in your hair. “F-feels so good, like she’s sucking the life out of me through my fucking dick- Oh fuck!”

You’re deep throating him now, breathing through your nose as you gag.

“T-Thor,” he moans, voice strained. “I-I think I’m-“

“Stop,” the man at the end of the bed commands as he continues fucking his fingers in and out of you. Reluctantly, you do as you’re told, ceasing all actions and giving Steve the most pitiful look you can muster.

“C’mere pretty girl,” Thor murmurs, leaving one last kiss at the most sensitive part of you. “It’s time for me to fuck you.”

You and Steve both moan deeply as he lifts himself to his feet and aligns himself with your center – hardened cock bobbing against his stomach. The sight is enough to make your center tighten, skin on fire as you wait for him to gift you reprieve.

“Such a perfect little pussy,” Thor mumbles to no one but himself, grinning wide as he enters you.

Little words are exchanged after that, Thor focusing on the feeling of your cunt instead of talking.

“Oh Thor-“ you moan, pulling away from Steve to throw your head back once more. “Oh shit holy-“

Thor just laughs, leaning down so he can kiss you. He places one hand next to your head for balance, the other moving to jerk Steve’s cock for you. His whole body works like a perfectly build machine, hips and hand working in tandem to get all three of you off. His movements are languid and purposeful, as if each muscle contraction and release was planned long, long ago in some expert fashion.

As Steve moans once again that he’s close, you remember what Thor had told you the day previous – that he had done this for other people attempting to build their families. In an instant, you were struck with the fear that this was somehow mechanical for him, something he was doing out of some sense of duty with half his brain focused on what he was going to have for dinner or what fruit was in season – something mundane and minutely distracting so he could phone it in and take the credit when the pregnancy test came back positive.

Thor notices you’re drifting away, grabs you with one hand and coaxes your eyes to meet his. “Don’t worry about anything, baby,” he tells you, voice low in his chest. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

It’s comforting – you can’t describe why, don’t even understand why; but even if you could, Steve’s begging cuts your train of thought short.

“Fuck please,” his voice is high and desperate, anything left of his precious Captain America façade torn to shreds by the possibility of denial. “Please let me come!”

Thor just shakes his head and smiles, putting him through the same torture as he did before but continuing fucking you – ignoring Steve’s cries as he rubs at your clit.

“Ignore him, baby,” he murmurs to you, “C’mon, focus on how good it’s gonna feel when I make you come.”

That’s all it takes for you to lose yourself, to throw your head back and buck your hips up and scream as loud as your exhausted lung will allow. At the last second before you reach your peak Thor moves away from you to grab the back of Steve’s head, pulling the man into a deep kiss.

“Fuck,” Thor groans against Steve’s lips. “Fuck you’re both so gorgeous I’m, fuck, I’m gonna-“

Thor releases himself inside of you with a deafening shout, moaning into Steve’s mouth as his come spills out of you. You’re speechless, watching them kiss above you while you pant.

For a moment there’s silence – the thick scent of sex and the wet sounds of their mouths and your pussy being the only things that fill the air. The only thing that cuts through it is Thor’s gruff voice instructing Steve to take his place between your legs.

The shuffling is awkward but gives you a minute to breathe, the clouds in your brain clearing with a few seconds of being left alone. Unlike Steve, Thor lays next to you on his side, one hand framing your jaw as he kisses you deeply.

Steve takes a moment to admire Thor’s cum dripping out of your pussy, resisting the urge to kneel down and lay his tongue there and drink it all down.

He swallows what little spit is left in his mouth as he enters you, body trembling as his eyes roll to the back of his head. The feeling of your pussy – though familiar – is sublime; mixed with the feeling of Thor’s cum inside of you makes him want to cry from the overwhelming pleasure.

He doesn’t, though, he somehow gets his brain and cock to reconnect so that he can fuck you despite his entire body screaming. You’re sensitive – if Steve couldn’t read your body language, your screaming moans and eyes screwed shut would tell him. It’s a precious thing to see you in such a feral state, to see you fucked out and desperate and begging to be pushed over the cliff again and again and again. You’re normally a very professional woman – always put together and well-spoken and knowledgeable in any subject necessary. To see you incoherent, lost to the pleasure – it’s something special Steve is determined to remember for the rest of his days.

“Such a good boy,” Thor tells him when he notices Steve’s concentration fading. “You fuck your wife so well for me,” he turns to you, leaving a kiss at the corner of your panting mouth. “Doesn’t your husband fuck you so good?”

“Y-yes,” you reply after you take a second to process what he’s asking of you. “Steve’s so good at fucking a baby into me, makes me feel so good I, oh!”

Something in Steve snaps as he listens to Thor, elicits something primal that makes him dig his fingers into the pit of your pushed-up knees as he pounds into you without mercy.

“Gonna-“ Steve moans. “Gonna fuck our baby into you, gonna make sure everyone knows how good I fuck you, fuck!”

Thor just smiles all big and toothy, looking between your face and Steve’s. Just as confident as before, he trails the same hand as before between your breasts and down your stomach, rubbing at your sensitive nub once more.

“You can do it, baby,” he whispers to you, coaxing another orgasm out of you with skilled fingers. “You’re so beautiful, I want to watch you come again. You can do that, right? You can come again for me?”

You shake your head, too overwhelmed to form coherent sentences. “I, I- “

“Shh,” he trails his thumb – still soaked with your slick and his precum – “It’s okay, my little dove. You can do it once more for me and Steve. C’mon, you can do it with him, right?”

You don’t speak, don’t move, don’t do anything – too focused on the feeling of Thor next to you and Steve on top of you and Thor rubbing at your clit and Steve fucking your pussy and the warmed sheets between your fingers and the sweat pooling between your breasts and-

“Fuck!” Steve’s screams mirror your own internal monologue. “Fuck I’m-“

Thor uses the thumb that was just under your lip to grab Steve’s jaw, forcing their eyes to meet just as he had done many times before. “Come for me.”

You and Steve’s orgasms come at the same time, the both of you twitching as you fall slowly, deliriously, from the shared delicious high.

When the French coined folie a duex, you’d always assumed it was about some madness that happened to manifest in two people. But what is defined as “madness?” Could it be the sweet satisfaction that flows through each of your veins like gold? Could it be the vacant contentment behind Steve’s eyes? Could it be the vacant content behind yours?

Somehow, Thor maneuvers the two of you so that all three of you can lay there, out of breath and sweaty all over as each of you stares at separate spots on the ceiling.

You’re the one to break the silence, stuck between the two men in the center of the large bed. “Do you think it worked?”

Steve turns towards you, leaning on one arm while the other spreads itself over your stomach. “I think so.”

Thor turns over next, mirroring Steve’s position. Free hand, though, goes to cup your face, pulling you in for a quick peck on the lips before guiding you to Steve for a much deeper kiss.

“I think so, too,” the large man says eventually, watching as you and Steve remain locked together. He doesn’t think either of you can hear him, but he smiles at the softness on both of your faces nonetheless.

#steve rogers x reader #thor odinson x reader #steve rogers x thor odinson x reader #thundershield x reader #lukis does commissions #lukis writes stuff

328 notes · View notes

sufficient-tenacity · 6 months ago

Note

Ok, but that's also not an actual fact. 😐

Americans responded to what they knew about the early stages of the Holocaust with a mix of reactions, as you might expect in a large, culturally, politically diverse nation. Many Americans were horrified by it, but didn't really think it was something they could do anything about. It was the middle of the Great Depression when the Holocaust began. There were distractions on the home front. Better to leave the Europeans to their own affairs, and focus on feeding yourself. Some Americans loved it. Antisemitism was and is a big thing in American culture.

There was absolutely a Yay, Hitler! crowd, but it was smaller than a lot of people think. Its most obvious manifestation, the German American Bund, only had about 25k members, mostly recent emigrants from Germany who were pro-Hitler by virtue of being Nazi expats. When you see those photos of them filling Madison Square Garden, that's because they got everybody to come. You could have wiped them out if you blew up MSG while they held the rally. Rallies are great propaganda for that reason, They project an image that there must be more supporters out there. The protestors holding signs that say Mr. Hitler has Not Attacked Us? They weren't exactly the majority opinion.

The US government already saw Nazi Germany as an enemy. Their expansionism threatened two of our closest allies in the UK and France, and they were allied with Japan, who were already showing signs that they were planning an attack.

But we also couldn't just immediately invade Europe to fight Nazis. Our army in 1939 was smaller than Portugal's. Our navy was first class, but focused in the Pacific against Japanese aggression. The US military came to be the most powerful in the world as a result of the Second World War. In 1939, it was pretty pathetic. We barely pulled off the Punitive Expedition, going toe to toe with the Nazis then and there wasn't an actual option.

We started moving to war production in 1940, beginning to supply the Brits, and after Operation Barbarossa kicked off, the Soviets. The Soviets would have a large portion of their industry destroyed, and we'd end up supplying them with a good half of their war material, because we had the Atlantic and Pacific on our side. Nobody could blow up our factories.

When we were attacked by Japan in 1941, it came as a surprise. Not that an attack would happen, but that they could hit Pearl Harbor. (Also it was the first port attack by carrier borne aircraft. Normally, that style of attack would be done with small boats carrying torpedoes.) At the same time, though, they invaded various US possessions in the Pacific. The fires in Pearl Harbor weren't even out four days later, when Germany declared war on the US.

I don't think that history reads like the US being "fine" with Nazi Germany. I think it's not a full-throated condemnation like we'd want, but it's certainly not the story of a nation just doing nothing until it got attacked.

https://www.tumblr.com/spot-the-antisemitism/755350115489890304/

Why is an antisemitism receipts blog cocksucking the usa like it's g-ds greatest gift to humanity?

Don't make me pull up the fact that the usa didn't give less of a fuck about the third reich and the holocaust and was fine with it's atrocities until japan became germany's allies~

Local Death to America Girlie cannot fathom any extreme besides

"Burn the USA to the Ground" and "If you hate the USA I'll help you pack"

Only a tankie thinks in absolutes

#holocaust tag #wwii tag #history tag

7 notes · View notes

urmomsstuntdouble · 4 years ago

Note

can we get a north italy character analysis too?? congrats on the 100 followers!! 💖💖💖

absolutely! i feel like im a bit unnecessarily hard on him sometimes...I really do love Veneziano as a character though. he’s so complex and well written! also thank you!

insecurity

So it probably comes as no surprise that I think Vene is very insecure. I think some of the sources of his insecurity are survivor’s guilt, how a lot of people see him as being useless and only good at art/fashion/food, and that he feels like nobody would care about him if he wasnt the grandson of Rome.

Where his survivor’s guilt is concerned, I think that there used to be a lot more personifications for Italy (and the entire world tbh), for all the city-states. Because of the strength of the “national” identity, i don’t think it’s out of the question for there to have been other personifications (see the war of the bucket), although only Veneto and Sicily are left by now. This is one explanation for why he seems so extroverted- Because he grew up surrounded by other people, and now he feels very much alone in comparison.

As for the only being good at art/fashion/food, he doesn’t like that people reduce him down to these traits. I think it makes him feel very weak, or like he’s bad at being a nation. Yeah, nobody knows what the purpose of the nations is, but the expectation coming from both the other nations and all their people is that they must be strong. So Feli really doesn’t like that nobody sees him as being strong- partially because in his mind, not being strong means he’s a failure. Part of this is just because that’s how it was for much of European history, but I think some of it is also because of how Rome treated him when he was a kid. More on that later. But yeah, it feels like nobody acknowledges him for anything other than the fun parts of his country. And that’s cool and all, one does like being known for fun times, but it makes him feel a bit insecure and he gets self-deprecating a lot because history ain’t pretty, ya know? More importantly, no one person is pretty all the time, and the way people see him as being so fun and cute and quirky and all makes him feel like he’s not allowed to express his negative emotions. That’s no good no matter who you are but for an immortal it’s just so much worse, because while you may have. idk 10 years of baggage. he has literal centuries.

I also think him being the grandson of Rome makes him really insecure and shaky in his identity. Such big shoes to fill, ya know? He’s not terrible at filling them- Venice being so incredibly welthy during the Renaissance and all- but the way that Rome treated him as a child didn’t help. I think that the way Rome’s parenting is viewed is often through the lens of neglecting Romano, but (and this is a bit of a while hc time) i dont think it was actually like that? or at least not super clear cut. I think that Rome tried to create some competition between his grandsons, maybe to prevent them from rising up as nations and lessening some of his power, or to keep them from developing a strong enough bond to topple him. Veneziano and Romano were definitely his two favorite kids, if favorite is the right word. He paid the most attention to them, and manufactured some of the basis for their present day relationship- Such as Romano’s jealousy, which isn’t as intense in the present day, but definitely stems from being made to feel like he wasn’t as worthy of parental love. The way this affected Vene, on the other hand, is that he suddenly felt like he had to be perfect at all times or his grandpa would cast him aside, just as he did with Romano and their other siblings. It also created Veneziano’s need for constant validation, as there was a constant fear that his paternal figure hated him for just existing (because Rome definitely made the other Italian personifications feel like that..and other Roman provinces, like Spain and France, but i think that’s a little off topic). All this is to say that his relationship with Rome set up a lot of his present day insecurities about how nobody loves him or needs him- Because as a little baby country, he definitely needed someone to care for him, but Rome didn’t need him back. This mindset that was established during his youth is very much still prevalent, down to him not being able to hold grudges. Because when Vene was young, his grandpa was the main person who had wronged him, but he couldn’t make himself hold a grudge against Rome- That’s his grandfather and his protector, so he didn’t feel like it was okay for him to hate him.

manipulative tendencies

A lot of people think that Veneziano is manipulative, and I would have to agree. I think that some of this is inherited from Rome, and some of it is due to his career as a businessman. Where Rome is concerned, the way that he raised his grandkids was super toxic, especially with how he turned Veneziano into someone constantly worrying about what other think of him. But...if Vene could control how others thought of him...he wouldn’t have to worry...and yeah that’s basically where I think him being manipulative came from. It’s also a little bit based on Machiavelli’s The Prince, as Veneziano wants very much to be loved, but the only way he knows how to make people like him is through fear, as that’s how his grandfather did that.

need to be useful

So, going back to what I said earlier about how his angsty childhood with Rome made him feel like he always had to be perfect- I think that might’ve contributed somewhat to this idea he has that he must be helpful and useful Or Else. This is seen throughout the comic, although I think it’s most obvious where Romano is concerned. He wants to make things easier for his brother, which is mostly done in the form of making sure Romano can relax and doesn’t stress himself out too much with work and all that. However, he doesn’t do this with other characters he’s close with, like Germany and Japan- Because he doesn’t think he can be of any use to them. I mean, he would like to be, but he’s not out here trying to do all their work for them and save them from stress. In fact, he more often relies on them for those things. But Romano is at his same level, sort of, so he could be useful for Romano. Of course Romano has an entirely different perception of this.

I think there’s also some lingering stuff from Youth that makes him need to be useful, other than just you are the heir of the roman empire and you are an utter FAILURE if you can’t be great on your own. I think his fear of abandonment stems from his upbringing too, which is why he’s so clingy and always trying to please others. He knows what might happen to him if he doesn’t, and if he’s in the situation of fighting for someone’s approval, he will play dirty.

Anyway, I think that’s about it! A bit longer than I anticipated, but ah well. analysis bb. I hope you liked it, and thank you for the request!

writing requests

#sorry this took me so long..i had Many Thoughts #italia veneziano did you mean king of complex characters???#i feel like the relationship with the italy brothers and rome is honestly very similar to catra and adora's relationship with shadow weaver #only they're not lesbians lol #anyway! hope this was satisfactory #hetalia #hws #hws italy #hws veneziano #rome romano germany and japan are also mentioned #character analysis #writing requests #long post #ceros posting

33 notes · View notes

leopardprintismybrown · 5 years ago

Text

Time for confessions

(From Music Life August Issue 1985)

In May, Queen made their sixth visit to Japan. Despite the disturbing rumous of a breakup, the concert was still amazing and once again the Japanese performance was a huge success. After Freddie’s interview for last month’s issue, this month we will share an interview with Roger Taylor and John Deacon. They will be open about confidential topics never shared before: the truth about the breakup, what will happen to Queen…

**********************************************************

★ This was the best tour even according to them

First of all, this year’s concert was awesome. It was very impressive and, in my opinion, it was better than any previous performances.

Roger: Really?! Thank you so much. Even in our opinion, this world tour was the best we’ve ever done.

John: Before coming to Japan, we’ve performed in Australia and New Zealand. Our last time in Australia was nine years ago and this was our first time in New Zealand, but the concert in Sidney was particularly great.

Roger: Exactly. 70000 people attended the 4 concerts in Australia. The tickets were all sold-out and right about that time the album was at the second place, it was amazing. Though, apparently, it was the wrong season. The weather in Australia is usually very nice, but it kept raining throughout our stay!

Well, well… And how was the response of the Japanese audience?

Roger: Very good! It’s not flattery, I’m serious. Since the security was strict, I had the impression that the people weren’t participating as expected, but everyone was singing with us and it was great!

John: Speaking of which, yesterday Roger and I were discussing about how many times we’ve performed at the Budōkan. I guess 15-16 times, maybe 17?

The staging and the set changed but it was as impactful as ever. When did you start with that stage set?

John: After “The Works” was completed. We started with the European tour. Then we toured South America, Brazil… and after that Japan. The one who designed that stage was…

Roger: Me! (laughs) Then with our tour manager we thought of a stage designer in Los Angeles. Basically, it’s the atmosphere of the movie “Metropolis”.

I was overwhelmed by the stage set, but I was really surprised to hear the early Queen numbers such as “Liar” and “Seven Seas of Rhye” because I wasn’t really expecting to hear those songs…

Roger: Uhm, we selected the songs together. The tour with this set started with Europe, but in the middle of it we wanted to include some early songs, too. Then we decided to do a medley with 5 early songs and to put it into the set halfway through the European tour.

John: We’ve played so many songs so far, that I even forgot some of them. It was so hard to remember! (laughs)

★ The scary story behind Rock in Rio

I have a few questions about “Rock in Rio” that took place in Brazil on January of this year. You’ve already played concerts in Brazil so far but this was the first time in Rio, right?

John: Yes, we’ve been to Argentina and Brazil in ‘81, but we only played at Sao Paulo Football Stadium. This was our first time playing in Rio, but the hall and the audience was great.

Roger: It was the biggest concert we ever did. We did two shows, the first day and the Friday night, and each one was attended by 250000 people. Everyone sang with us and the atmosphere was great! There was no violence.

John: And we were lucky. The two nights when we played it didn’t even rain. It was an outdoor location and the rain could have been a problem. The ground gets messy because of the mud... It rained the day Rod Stewart played.

Did you have the chance to watch the performances of other bands?

Roger: Of course. I saw Whitesnake. I also met Cozy and…. Oh yeah, I saw Rod Stewart.

John: I didn’t go… the venue was so distant. However, there are bars with televisions in Brazil and groups of young people watched together the part of the event that was broadcasted every night. AC/DC were good.

Would you care to share some interesting anecdotes?

Roger: Oh! I have a lot, but those are not properly the kind of stories to tell. (laughs) Because it was like a 10 day long party.

John: Oh yes, a lot happened…. Let’s see… The first day we had a hard time. Rio is a traffic jam. For this reason, the people in Rio leave their cars on the road when it gets jammed and walk. So we decided to go the venue by helicopter, just in case. However, the road was not packed at all and we arrived way too early.

Roger: Yes, we had to be at the venue by 6 o’ clock and we couldn’t be late. It’s good that we arrived early, but our set actually started at 2 in the morning! Next time we’ll go by bus no matter what!!

John: Also, it was fun to be able to meet people we haven’t met before. With him (if you look at the picture on ML April Issue, he’s pointing at Neil Murray) it was the first time. Oh, this is a picture we took at the party in the hotel (he’s looking at the picture of Brian with a local fan), Brian looks drunk. He jumped into the pool. (laughs)

What?? I can’t imagine Brian jumping into the pool! Well, now that you say that, his hair and trousers are soaked… Anyway, it looks like you enjoyed “Rock in Rio”! (laughs)

Roger, John: Yes, a lot! (laughs)

★ It was difficult (The Works)

It’s been almost 12 years since Queen was formed…

John: Yes, it’s been 12 years… 12 years! (he suddenly makes the imitation of an old man) 14 years that I’ve known the other members.*

In these years you’ve established your own musical style, you’ve released many wonderful records, and you’ve written a brilliant and shining page in the history of rock. And also, each member is now working individually as a musician. Is there a special reason for working outside of the group?

Roger: Uhm, my personal reason is simply because I like to work.

John: It was very difficult to complete “The Works”, to be honest… Of course, all of us want to pursue Queen. But it’s true that preserving the group is hard. When we entered the studio, we had a lot of expectations but it was as if the time was just flowing rapidly without realizing it… The recording of “The Works” took too much time and it was a bit tiring. Four people were not on the same page, musically speaking... though, of course, we made it work in the end, somehow. But this is the case for every band that has been around for years.

It must be difficult, because every member of Queen is an independent musician.

John: The next plan is to take a break for a while and then go back to the studio around November. This time we’re also going to change the producer.

Do you already have ideas for the new album?

Roger: I have something vague in my mind, but nothing concrete. I want to do something different from “The Works”. I think that “The Works” is a good album with a mix of modern and old elements, but we have to keep changing. “Tonight” by David Bowie was a mistake, in my opinion. The album was released too soon and it hadn’t changed enough.

★ Break up? We will someday

Do you want to do something in particular in your time off? Is John going to make a solo album?

John: I thought about it. I went to a little studio in London but I don’t have time to think during tours. But when it comes to singing… I’m sorry, but I need to get someone’s help for the song. (laughs)

And Roger? Are you going to make a third solo album?

Roger: I have no plans for a solo album but I’m producing something, lately. Sideway Look, Jimmy Nail… Jimmy Nail made it to the top 20 in the UK charts. It was the first record I produced, so it’s all the more satisfying!

Are there any musicians or bands you want to produce in the future?

Roger: Yes, a lot. Jeff Beck, and also Rod Stewart. It looks like we can do a good job.

Have you listened to Freddie’s solo album?

John: I’ve listened to some songs, but not to the whole album, yet. “Made in Heaven” is a good song.

Roger: The one I like more is “Made in Heaven”, too.

Finally, I’d like to ask a slightly more serious question. There’s been rumours about Queen breaking up…

Roger: (bursts into laughter) Mwahahahah…

Of course, I don’t want to believe in these rumours, but I’d like to know the truth.

John: Well, someday we will breakup. But does anybody know when this someday will be?

Roger: In these 14 years, we’ve always denied with a firm “NO!” whenever someone asked about Queen breaking up. That’s just a rumour. There are absolutely no plans to break up at the present day. I wonder if everyone wants Queen to break up so bad... (laughs)

John: Certainly, touring is getting harder, because we have to completely change the shows and the approach. But it’s been decided that we’ll work on the new album starting from November.

Please continue your work with Queen forever, no matter what form you want it to take in the future. I think this is the wish of all the fans.

Roger, John: Thank you very much. You’re right, that is way better than breaking up.

Ok, this is really the last question. What do you want to do in the future as members of Queen and as individuals?

Roger: Personally, I want more kids! (laughs) As a Queen member, I want to be more successful in America. It’s true that we have a certain notoriety in America, but the last album didn’t sell that well… Well, there are ups and downs in everything. That’s why I want to hit big in America again. To achieve that, we must do a looooong tour centered in Midwest. (laughs)

Roger and John have clearly denied the breaking up of Queen. They’ve talked about ambitions for the future, like achieving a bigger success in America. Their eyes focused on the future have still not lost their glow.

*I don’t own the magazine where this interview was released so I cannot double check. I think the numbers have been reversed because Queen formed in 1970 before John met them. And if you read further below, Roger mentions 14 years of activity.

**********************************************************

A/N: As always, I am not an English native speaker, so forgive any possible error. Also, remember that translating into a foreign language is difficult and I hope I have preserved the original meaning.

#translated by me #music life #music life magazine #queen #queen interview #queen in japan #80s #80s Queen #roger taylor #freddie mercury #Brian May #John Deacon #rock in rio #1985 #the works

62 notes · View notes

dragonrajafanfiction · 4 years ago

Text

Dragon Dancer IV: Heart to Heart

Zihang and I walked down the streets of Tokyo at sunset on a warm spring day. He was carrying a backpack full of supplies. Even though supposedly he couldn’t fight, he was very strong and made a good pack mule. He was so good, he remembered to grab Ru’Yi’s carrier and the diaper bag when he ran out of the burning warehouse.

I was wearing a simple jeans and polo shirt combo provided by the hotel. Side-by-side, we looked like the couple we should have been. We looked like the future of Tokyo: A young man and a young woman with an infant.

A family with much room to grow and a long future ahead of them.

“My teacher knew your dad.” I said by way of beginning. “That’s why I saw the picture of you, when you experienced your first snow.”

Zihang kept his eyes forward and didn’t say a word in return.

“That’s why I know his name was Tianjiao Chu and he worked as a driver. And that his favorite food was braised intestines.”

I glanced up at him but still he stayed silent and expressionless.

I tried a different angle. “Don’t you think it’s strange that you don’t remember Lu Mingfei even though you went to the same school?”

That got a response. “Yeah. I’ve been trying to remember him and I can’t see him in my mind. It’s odd because, he said that when he went back to his high school he was an important person.”

“Right... and don’t you think its strange that you can throw a bookcase?”

“Brother says that he remembered I was very strong...”

“Did you think you were Superman?” I asked, giggling. “That bookcase is so heavy, not even four strong people can lift it. But you knew you could.”

He fell silent again and my smile faded. I forgot how difficult he could be to talk to. We’d grown so close as a couple, we could have long conversations even deep into the night on subjects like science, history, philosophy and art.

I would ask him questions and he would give a serious but absurd answer, and I would laugh.

----------------------------------------------------

The grocery store was uncomfortably crowded with people making last minute purchases before going home after work. “What ice cream do you want?” He asked me.

I started to say that I wouldn’t have any, just out of habit, but then I saw that his head was down, standing in front of the glass doors in the frozen food section.

“Strawberry.” I said quietly. My emotions began to rise, boiling below the surface like water in a kettle. “I... it’s pretty crowded. I’ll go to the baby section and get what I need.”

I quickly walked away to the back of the store, aiming for the public restrooms. Fortunately, one was open and I pushed my way inside shut the door and locked it, leaning against it.

I let go of the sobs I’d been holding back, covering my eyes with my arm.

I told myself I’d give myself one minute and one minute only. It wouldn’t take long for Zihang to reach the checkout line and I didn’t want to take too long or Nono and Mingfei might suspect something.

I missed his smile. I missed his arms around me, his kiss on my lips and neck and shoulder. I missed the comfort and company of someone who knew me and was there. Zihang was someone I could relax around.

I checked my phone. I had fifteen more seconds. I went and grabbed the tissues and wiped my face and nose. I stared at myself and forced myself to breathe deeply until the redness in my cheeks faded behind my dark skin.

After a few more seconds of forcing myself to relax, I felt ready to face the world again.

I opened the bathroom door and there was Zihang, leaning against the wall, the ice cream in the basket.

I froze.

He didn’t look directly at me. He had to have heard me. The door wasn’t that thick. I swallowed hard, lowered my eyes and walked out.

“The baby section is the other way...” He mumbled.

We walked in silence while my mind raced wondering what he must think of me now.

When we reached the aisle I grabbed tube of the nipple cream that kept me from getting raw and chafed from Ru’Yi spit and also some more diapers and wipes.

“I don’t like talking about my Dad.” He said.

I stopped shopping and looked at him. He stared at his shoes.

“I don’t know what your teacher told you. But... he was pretty terrible. He married someone he couldn’t support and when they got divorced, he didn’t even fight for custody of me. He just said he would find a better job. But he was never able to stop being a chauffeur.”

“Oh...”

“He had the right to visit me once a month. But he would miss it a lot... And when he was with me... he was... really annoying and stupid.”

I folded my lips between my teeth. I’d forgotten that children with absentee parents, regardless of the reason, often resented them. Even though the Zihang I knew had come to terms with his father’s futile attempts at being a good father, this Zihang hadn’t had that sort of time. By telling him things the adult Zihang recalled fondly, I was hurting the teenage Zihang.

“I’m sorry...” I said.

He gave me a small shrug.

“My parents abandoned me as a baby.” I said. “I was left at a foster home with no name and no origin. My foster dad, Robbie, always told me that my mother was running from a dangerous circumstance. She left me behind because she was very afraid that I would get hurt.”

“So... for a long time I didn’t question it. But sometimes... I did feel a little angry that she didn’t come back to check up on me. Sometimes I would look for her, just in case she was watching in secret. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t true. But... when I was your age, I mostly forgot I had parents other than Robbie and Sandra.”

He stayed quiet, fidgeting with the straps on his pack.

“...will you forgive me?”

He looked at me, his eyes shifting uncertainly. “Y...yeah.”

“Okay...” I chewed my lip and together we walked out to the check out line.

I suddenly noticed that people were whispering and glancing at us because we were a mixed race couple. They glanced at the baby muttering the word for ‘half’.

As Ru’Yi was growing, it was clear from her eyes that she had some Asian descent. Her hair also didn’t curl all the way, was jet black, and was silky but had thicker strands than mine. Anyone who looked at us could tell it was our child without question. I couldn’t believe anyone would look at Mingfei with his more European features and look at Ru’Yi and say, “Yeah that’s his kid!”

Once we made it back outside, however, Johann once again proved his powers of observation were far keener than the people at the College. “Who is the baby’s father?”

I laughed a little. “My teacher. If you hadn’t figured it out.”

“I was wondering... if it was Crow.” He said seriously.

“No! Oh no. No....” I shook my head emphatically.

“He is very fond of the baby and you know a lot about Hydra.” He explained, looking up in wonder.

“Well, you’re wrong! Ru’Yi is a Chinese name! Chinese!” I grimaced. “I know a lot about Hydra because I had a major mission in Japan.”

No wonder if he asked me if I liked Crow earlier! I decided to just spill the beans. “The truth is... my teacher is her father.”

“Where is he?” He asked.

I sighed. “When I was still pregnant, he stayed home with me, but a week before Christmas, he was called away for one more job. He didn’t want to take it but he had a special skill that they really needed. I think he felt pressured.” I gave a little shrug. “I was okay with it too. The job was simple.”

“But later when the job was finished, he called me. He said he felt regret for leaving and thought about quitting his job.”

“What would he do after he quit?” Zihang asked, eyes wide.

“He was very smart and capable and we could live off savings no problem for a while. I wasn’t worried. I was surprised because he was very dedicated to his work and I did not expect him to quit.”

Zihang shook his head. “What happened?”

I didn’t know how to explain. If I said he disappeared, it would sound like he ran off. But if I said he died, it would be a lie.

So I didn’t say anything and let Zihang draw his own conclusion.

When I didn’t answer he said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about sad things.”

“It’s okay...”

“I think... leaving was a mistake, but at least he said he was sorry. That makes him better than my dad.” Zihang said.

I smiled a little. “If we see each other again some day, I will tell him you said so.”

#Chu Zihang #Johann Chu #Dragon Raja #Fanfiction #Writing

5 notes · View notes

ladyofpurple · 5 years ago

Note

answer all of the questions!!

holy SHIT ok bless you omg

(sorry it's a full day late i took this shit SERIOUSLY. don't ask me how many hours this took, i was in A Mood™️ last night. removed the ones already answered xoxo)

angel; have you ever been in love?

yeah. didn't end too well, but i loved him.

petal; favorite novel and author?

this is like asking me to pick a favorite child. i guess favorite author would be stephen king, if only based entirely on the sheer quantity of his books i own alone. favorite book would probably be special topics in calamity physics by marisha pessl, and i'm only saying that because it's been my go-to response for years. i have lots of favorite books. ask me again in five minutes and i'll give you another one.

honey perfume; favorite perfume/scent?

freshly made coffee. lilacs. jasmine. cut grass. the ground after it rains. chocolate chip cookies in the oven. cigarette smoke on skin. my mom's shampoo. my grandma. my dog when he's just had a bath. thanksgiving dinner. acrylic paint on canvas. sawdust. that one cologne i can't name but can smell on a guy from a mile away. mulled cranberry and apple juice. vanilla. coconut. fresh laundry. peppermint.

sweet pea; what’s your zodiac?

virgo sun, pisces moon, scorpio rising ✨

softie; talk about your sexuality.

i'm biromantic asexual, primarily attracted to men more than women (but have had too many crushes on girls to consider myself het), generally sex repulsed when it comes to the thought of having it myself. i prefer to call myself queer in passing conversation, it's easier than explaining asexuality and the differences between sexual and romantic attraction. if someone asks more specifically, i'll usually just call myself bi for simplicity's sake, even though the ace part is a much more important (to me) part of my identity. monogamous as fuck.

i'm still struggling with internalized homophobia and a lot of "am i even queer enough" thoughts, which is super fun. took me a long time to even consider the fact that i might like girls at all. i'll probably never come out to my parents. not that they'd, like, disown me or whatever, but they're juuuuust homophobic/transphobic enough that my few attempts to educate them when they say something A Little Yikes have shown me that i should probably just stay in the closet unless i absolutely have to come out. like i'm getting married to a woman or something.

sugarplum; what’s the color of your eyes and hair?

i usually say my eyes are green because it's easier, and they mostly are, but i have rings of greyish blue around the irises and sometimes they're more hazel in the middle. they always have a green tint to them though, even if the intensity of the green varies.

my natural hair is brown, a little on the darker and slightly ashy side of completely generic. currently a former blonde, although i'm hoping to bleach my fucking YEAR of growout soon, and then go some crazy color as a last hurrah before i have to go dark again. being broke fucking sucks.

wings; coffee or tea?

tea!! black tea. chai, to be specific, with an irresponsible amount of milk and sugar. chai lattes are a fucking drug okay? coffee makes me sick (not a judgement, a literal fact. last time i tried some i threw up).

fairytale; are you a cat or dog person?

cat!! but my family has a chihuahua named sonny and you can pry that little monster from my cold dead hands ok i will fight you.

snowflake; favorite time period?

okay, i wrote and rewrote my answer to this about 10 times. then i tried to divide it up into categories (aesthetics, history, fashion, vibes, geographical location, etc), but that didn't help. so basically: i don't have one, because i have too many.

i like the american 20s-60s for the aesthetic, music/movies, and the fashion. i also like the european 1600s-1800s for the interesting history and also vibe. i love the french and russian revolutions — the fashion! the art! the wars and political upheaval! I FUCKING LOVE HISTORY. then, of course, we can't forget the rennaisance. or the witch trials (pick your continent). and ancient greece? the roman empire? hello?? did i mention empires? how bout we mosy on over to south america — can i interest you in the mayans? incans? aztecs? what about china and japan? korea? vietnam? and don't even get me fucking STARTED on the black plague.

ancient egypt? sign me the FUCK UP. vikings? yes please. the celts? oh boy. the MYTHOLOGY. the ARCHITECTURE. the LANGUAGES and POLITICS and LITERATURE and REVOLUTIONS and GOD HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN ANY OF THESE

i uh. might have gotten a little excited. basically i like history a lot. and mythology. and linguistics. and cultural practices. and the politics and prejudices behind wars and stuff. and learning in general. moving on.

vanilla; do you believe in ghosts?

let's put it this way: i don't not believe in ghosts??

listen. we don't know jack shit. we don't know what happens after we die, there are constant scientific revelations that turn our understanding of the universe completely upside-down, and there is literally no way to know which religions or myths or urban legends could have some grain of truth to them. like, dude, i've literally thought i was haunted before. psychology is bananas and the universe is infinite.

demons could be real. ghosts could be real. what if we just haven't invented the necessary technology to prove it yet? what if we never do, and they just fuck around alongside us, moving furniture and making shadow puppets on the walls just for kicks until the earth explodes? what if that one tumblr post was right and ghosts are actually real people from alternate universes or timelines that we see accidentally bc some cosmic wires got crossed? who fucking knows.

i love horror movies and scary stories and ghost hunter shows just as much as the next gal. but listen. psychics? mediums? people who accept every single creepypasta retold third-hand from their neighbor's kid's classmate's second cousin who "totally knows a guy"? doubt.jpeg

i don't understand the sheer amount of assumptions made willy-nilly about the nature of ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. the assumption that "oh this machine that totally doesn't look like a coathanger taped to a walkman will work because ghosts have this temperature and can always communicate like this and are electromagnetic" or whatever just baffles me. to a certain degree, following a general consensus is one thing — some basic things everyone can agree on? that's cool. ghosts can walk through walls and are probably dead people or whatever. but oh my god, taking every single story as absolute, undeniable proof?? taking these stories and expanding on them to infer intentions and scientific facts to something that by it's very nature is unknowable and assuming, like, every spirit is created equal?? and yeah, ghost hunting shows are fun and campy and kinda creepy but like. you really, genuinely don't think any of them have ever faked anything at all??? even if ghosts are real, it's fucking reality tv, my dude. it's the entertainment industry. at least maintain the slightest ounce of critical thought before taking zak bagans' word as the goddamn gospel.

and sidenote, maybe it's just my limited exposure as a white woman in the western world, but of all the shows and podcasts and movies and documentaries and whatnot i've been able to find and consume, there's the constant use of christian ideology applied to every situation that just really burns my bacon. what, there's never been an atheist ghost? if you see a shadow person and you don't know the lord's prayer by heart, are you automatically fucked? why are there never stories about, i don't know, viking ghosts? does your religion in life preclude you from becoming a ghost in the first place? is that why people never mention buddhist ghosts? i don't get it, and that's why even though i'm self-admittedly the most superstitious person i've ever met, true believers make me roll my eyes so hard they almost fall out. makes me come across as more skeptical than i theoretically am. I HAVE VERY STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT THIS OK

but like, you couldn't pay me to fuck with a ouija board. i'm not stupid.

delicate; diamonds or pearls?

both have their appeal and their place, but diamonds, i guess. i like the sparkle. but fake ones!! or synthetic. diamonds are overpriced and artificial scarcity is a scam and i don't need a dumb rock that some poor person in a mine somewhere was exploited and possibly died for. no blood diamonds in this house, thank you very much.

if i ever get engaged, i don't want a diamond ring. i'd want something cool, a little unusual, like a ruby or a sapphire or some other sparkly gem that isn't literally shoved in your face every waking moment as the expected standard symbol of True Love. they're cheaper, they're cool-looking, as a ring they still hold the cultural symbolism of an engagement/wedding ring. and honestly, as long as it's well-made and durable, whatever hypothetical gem it is doesn't have to be real either. i'm a woman of simple needs and demonstrably low standards. no point in going into debt for a fucking piece of jewelry, regardless of ~tradition~.

lavender dream; favorite album?

oh lord. welcome to the black parade, i guess. or anything by panic! at the disco. there are dozens of possible options — my interests are mercurial and my memory is garbage. but i'll always be an emo little shit. black parade and vices and virtues were also the first two albums i ever listened to where i loved every single song on them, and i happened to listen to them for the first time at around the same point in my life (i got into mcr super late. like, 2012 late. rip).

silky; what’s your biggest dream?

it's cheesy but i guess i just want stability and, by extension, happiness. emotional stability, mental stability, financial stability, stable living situation, stable routines, stable relationships... you get the idea. i have ambitions and passions, of course, but my ultimate goal is happiness at this point in my life, and i'm pretty sure stabilizing all those things would go a pretty long way in achieving that goal.

a little apartment with walls i can paint because white walls make me angry. bookshelves and posters and fandom merch on every wall. a computer i can actually play games on again, and somewhere i can paint and draw and record my podcasts. someone who loves me, maybe. a cat, if i'm stable enough. space for people to come visit me, and a place for them to sleep if they need. a tiny balcony, if i really want to shoot for the stars. a job i don't hate. the spoons to hang out with my friends, and the money to not worry about buying little presents for the people i care about sometimes. i don't need much.

strawberry kiss; do you have a crush right now?

nope.

glitter; favorite fictional character?

another loaded question. like books, if you ask me again in five minutes i'll probably give you a different answer. but in this particular moment, caleb and jester from critical role (please don't make me choose between them). i won't go full shipping mode rn, but jester is so funny and silly and sweet, so much more complex than she seems, and she tries so hard to make everyone happy even when she's so sad inside. the healer who treats healing as an inconvenience in battle (she's so fucking valid and also mood), the glue that keeps the party together. and caleb learning to trust again, facing his trauma and coming out of his shell. he loves his friends so much he plays wizard as a support class and i love him so much.

i love the mighty nein in general, of course, and all the guests/honorary members they've had. pumat!! pls don't be evil reani!! keg!! shakäste and grand duchess anastasia!! cali!! kiri!!!! the brotps! empire siblings! chaos crew! nott the best detective agency! i still love molly and all his assholery to bits (fight me), and mourn his lost potential. i adore yasha, even when she's gone; fjord has grown so much; beau and nott and caduceus — i love all their flaws and disagreements and their character arcs and the excitement of watching them grow and learn. but if i had to choose, caleb, jester and molly have always been my top 3 since day 1 and, well, molly isn't really an option anymore.

but like i said, ask me again in a minute. i have a fucking list.

swan; share a quote or passage that means something to you.

a collection of things off the top of my head:

Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition. — Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

a tired feminist Mood™️

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not foolin' a soul." — American Gods, Neil Gaiman

i got my love of books from my grandma — some of my favorites i got from her. sometimes, as a treat, she used to take my sister and i to bookstores and we'd stay there for ages, getting to pick one out, roaming the shelves, the mental torture of having to choose. the peace of being surrounded by thousands of potential worlds, so much information, so many stories just waiting to be told; being surrounded by strangers who share that same wonder. the anxious drive home so we could read them, being unable to wait that long so i inevitably start reading in the car and make myself sick. telling her in excited detail all my favorite parts. if we were lucky, maybe we got to split a bear claw, or she'd drive past starbucks and get us something there too (tall vanilla soy steamer with one pump of vanilla syrup, whipped cream on top that always melted too quickly and squirted out the hole in the lid, so hot it burned my tongue but so good i didn't care). i have never felt more at home than i do when i'm surrounded by books.

"There are a lot of different types of freedom. We talk about freedom the same way we talk about art, like it was a statement of quality rather than a description. “Art” doesn’t mean good or bad. Art just means art. It can be terrible and still be art. Freedom can be good or bad, too. There can be terrible freedom. You freed me, and I didn’t ask you to." — Alice Isn't Dead, season 1, chapter 2: Alice

as cringey as it is to admit it, this line made me cry a lot after my breakup.

"So you aren't American?" asked Shadow.

"Nobody's American," said Wednesday. "Not originally. That's my point." — American Gods, Neil Gaiman

[side-eyes white america real hard]

there's more, of course. there's always more. don't even get me started on song lyrics, we'll be here all day.

lace; what’s your favorite plant/flower?

lilacs and roses.

mermaid; do you prefer the forest or the ocean? why?

both, i guess. but in different ways, and in different circumstances.

the sea is wild. it is endless and deep and unknowable. it is beautiful and dangerous. i am terrified of the ocean, and yet my favorite place in the world is an empty beach on the oregon coast. i have picked sand from between my toes for days with hair crusted in salt, danced around bonfires and watched the stars while marshmallows burn, gotten pulled under the waves as a child and nearly swept out to sea. picked starfish and crabs from small pools in the rocks, and swum (accidentally) with wild sea lions. in a long skirt, too early in the year to be swimming, i once took off my shoes and waded fully clothed into the water to my waist and just... danced. splashed and kicked and laughed with a boy i barely knew until our throats were sore and our toes were numb, walking home hours later with our soaked clothes clinging to our legs, shoes squelching, dripping algae as we went. the ocean is freeing and overwhelming all at once. i love it and am petrified by it in equal measure.

the forest is beautiful in a different way. it is silent and dense and serene. you are surrounded by life and yet, somehow, completely alone. there is magic in the forest, and history, and even when all else dies, that will remain. the trees grow from the corpses of their ancestors, and some have lived dozens of our lifetimes — with luck, a few dozen more. it is quiet there, peaceful, even the tiniest wood in the middle of a city muffling the outside world through the trees. you can feel the ancient ways deep in your soul as you follow winding paths strewn with fallen leaves, the mystery and wonder and superstitions of your forefathers. you wonder what it would be like, to run your fingers over the moss, to take off your shoes and socks and just run, leaping and dancing over rocks and roots, hair wild and air filling your lungs in deep, pure gulps as you shed the responsibilities and struggles of modern life, for just a moment remembering what freedom tastes like. it is primal, this connection to nature, one we have nearly forgotten over time. and as the sky grows dark and the silence of night presses against you, shadows looming, every footfall deafening, perhaps you begin to understand why some believed in monsters.

honeymoon; do you keep a journal?

i used to. honestly, that's a good idea, i should start doing that again. lord knows i have enough empty journal-type books.

starlight; do you believe in love at first sight and soulmates? why/why not?

i want to. i want to believe there's someone out there for me, the love of my life, someone to whom i'll be the love of their life, and that when i meet them i'll just... know.

but when i met my ex, i didn't really look twice at him for a while — no love at first sight. and when we were together, when i loved him and he swore he loved me back, i thought he hung the stars in the sky and knew i would marry him someday. couldn't even consider the idea that that wouldn't happen. and then when he broke up with me, he ghosted me so suddenly and thoroughly that he even preemptively cut contact with every single one of our mutual friends he thought might side with me in the breakup, before anybody even knew we'd had a fight. so, not soulmates either.

i really want to believe that someday the perfect romance will just fall into place and i can have the happily ever after i've always dreamed of. but the reality is i might never even have another s.o. for the rest of my life. maybe i'll get hit by a car tomorrow, or my hypothetical soulmate moves to argentina to become an alpaca farmer on a mountain somewhere and we never even meet. maybe i'm so traumatized by the betrayal and lies that i'll never have the courage to even try again.

and even so, happily ever after doesn't have to include a fairytale romance, regardless of whether i want it or not. i still like to cling to that hope though, deep down.

princess; what do you value most in people?

i'm going to assume you mean "real people" as in people i have positive relationships with, and not random strangers on the street.

loyalty. kindness. support. humor. similar values. patience. being able to grow together and teach each other things, so we can make each other better. honesty. trust. compassion. confidence. emotional vulnerability. communication. intelligence, or at least a willingness to learn. strength.

#nobody asked me to go this hard and yet here we are #my favorite pasttimes: talking about myself and being pretentious on main #Lady answers stuff #anon good nurse #Lady of Purple's slice of life #ask meme

6 notes · View notes

rjzimmerman · 5 years ago

Text

Angst from reading

Summer is supposed to be the time to read lighter stuff, allowing the reader to escape. So what have I been doing? Reading the heavier material that pulls me deeper into the muck of angst and high blood pressure.

Two books that I read this summer (or completed reading this summer) are “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming,” by David Wallace-Wells, and “Losing Earth: A Recent History,” by Nathaniel Rich. I also read the Mueller Report, including all the footnotes (which allows any of you to put me in the “seriously disturbed” category). Each of them smacked my sense of security, if it hadn’t been already, and drove me to the realization that most of us are ordinary people, with limited resources, in a big, sorry, scary world, manipulated and used by a handful of very wealthy, very powerful people and families whose primary objective is increasing their personal wealth and power to the exclusion of the rest of us.

I’m sharing three passages from each of the three pieces that still haunt me, long after I closed up the books (and report) after I finished reading them. Why? Because each passage gets to core issues each of us should consider.

The piece from “The Uninhabitable Earth” is exhausting, because the author puts into three paragraphs a description of some of the most frightening climate-related events and catastrophes that occurred in 2017 and 2018. As a consequence, you read the bits and pieces but also see the big picture, or the forest from the trees, along with all the trees that make up the forest.

Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

It is not yet widely understood, though it will be, that the politician who claims that climate change is uncertain betrays humanity in the same fashion as the politician who fabricates weapons of mass destruction in order to whip up support for a profiteering war. It is not yet widely understood, though it will be, that when a government relaxes regulations on coal-fired plants or erases scientific data from a federal website, it is guilty of more than merely bowing to corporate interests; it commits crimes against humanity. The rejection of reason - the molten core of denialism - opens the door to the rejection of morality, for morality relies on a shared faith in reason. Actions to hasten carbon dioxide emissions are the ineluctable corollary of climate denialism. Once it becomes possible to disregard the welfare of future generations, or those now vulnerable to flooding or drought or wildfire - once it becomes possible to abandon the constraints of human empathy - any monstrosity committed in the name of self-interest is permissible.

It is almost hard to believe just how much has happened and how quickly. In the late summer of 2017, three major hurricanes arose in the Atlantic at once, proceeding at first along the same route as though they were battalions of an army on the march. Hurricane Harvey, when it struck Houston, delivered such epic rainfall it was described in some areas as a “500,000 year event” - meaning that we should expect that amount of rain to hit that area once every five hundred millennia.

Sophisticated consumers of environmental news have already learned how meaningless climate change has rendered such terms, which were meant to describe storms that had a 1-in-500,000 chance of striking in any given year. But the figures do help in this way: to remind us just how far global warming has already taken us from any natural-disaster benchmark our grandparents would have recognized. To dwell on the more common 500-year figure for just a moment, it would mean a storm that struck once during the entire history of the Roman Empire. Five hundred years ago, there were no English settlements across the Atlantic, so we are talking about a storm that should hit just once as Europeans arrived and established colonies, as colonists fought a revolution and Americans a civil war and two world wars, as their descendants established an empire of cotton on the backs of slaved, freed them and then brutalized their descendants, industrialized and postindustrialized, triumphed in the Cold War, ushered in the “end of history,” and witnessed, just a decade later, its dramatic return. Harvey was the third such flood to hit Houston since 2015. And the storm struck, in places, with an intensity that was supposed to be a thousand times rarer still.

That same season, an Atlantic hurricane hit Ireland, 45 million were flooded from their homes in South Asia, and unprecedented wildfires tilled much of California into ash. And then there was the new category of quotidian nightmare, climate change inventing the once-unimaginable category of obscure nature disasters - crises so large they would once have been inscribed in folklore for centuries today passing across our horizons ignored, overlooked, or forgotten. In 2016, a “thousand year flood” drowned small-town Ellicott City, Maryland, to take but one example almost at random; it was followed, two years later, in the same small town, by another. One week that summer in 2018, dozens of places all over the world were hit with record heat waves, from Denver to Burlington to Ottawa; from Glasgow to Shannon to Belfast; from Tbilisi, in Georgia, and Yerevan, in Armenia, to whole swaths of southern Russia. The previous month, the daytime temperature of one city on Oman reached above 121 degrees Fahrenheit, and did not drop below 108 all night, and in Quebec, Canada, fifty-four died from the heat. That same week, one hundred major wildfires burned in the American West, including one in California that grew 4,000 acres in one day, and another, in Colorado, that produced a volcano-like 300-foot eruption of flames, swallowing an entire subdivision and inventing a new term, “fire tsunami,” along the way. On the other side of the planet, biblical rains flooded Japan, where 1.2 million were evacuated from their homes. Later that summer, Typhoon Mangkhut forced the evacuation of 2.45 million from mainland China, the same week that Hurricane Florence struck the Carolinas, turning the port city of Wilmington briefly into an island and flooding large parts of the state with hog manure and coal ash. Along the way, the winds of Florence produced dozens of tornadoes across the region. The previous month, in India, the state of Kerala was hit with its worst flood in almost a hundred years. That October, a hurricane in the Pacific wiped Hawaii’s East Island entirely off the map. And in November, which has traditionally marked the beginning of the rainy season in California, the state was hit instead with the deadliest fire in its history - the Camp Fire, which scorched several hundred square miles outside of Chico, killing dozens and leaving many more missing in a place called, proverbially, Paradise. The devastation was so complete, you could almost forget the Woolsey Fire, closer to Los Angeles, which burned at the same time and forced the sudden evacuation of 170,000.

#The Uninhabitable Earth #Losing Earth #Mueller Report

11 notes · View notes

byobossworld · 5 years ago

Text

The Japanese Model of Success Written & brought to you by Ken Crause – Business Transformation Coach. The war in Japan had ended in chaos and destruction. Nothing could look bleaker for the Japanese. Their country had recently been bombed with an atomic bomb and life in Japan had become one of survival. How does one take a country in such ruin and turn it into the economic giant it has become? It has little land base – it’s a small island country. It has minimal resources in terms of material things and was broke after spending so much on the war which ended in disaster. Their pride caused them to make the stupid mistake of trying to take on the giant America and they paid dearly for it. What did they have left? Well the only real resource they had left was people. As manufacturing began to revive slowly because of lack of capital, products they produced soon earned the reputation of “Jap crap”. Things made in Japan were inferior in quality to American or European made. How would they survive and thrive? It is often in the place of desperation that we give up our notion of grandeur and pride. It is often at this place that we realize we don’t know it all and need help. This is where the Japanese found themselves. But what of America? Well the bombing of Hiroshima and decisive end to the war caused Americans everywhere to be proud, believing they knew it all and needed nobody to make them better – they were the best. This same foolish attitude has shown up throughout history in many countries and empires – all of which ultimately lead to their demise. The same attitude has caused many great companies such as IBM to fall from their once place of leadership in their industry. There was at that time an American by the name of Dr. W Edwards Deming. In 1950 Deming was a renowned quality control expert who General McArthur had commissioned to go to Japan to help improve things there since America itself was having trouble doing what it needed to do in the country they had just defeated. Nobody really gave Dr. Deming any serious consideration but the Japanese who were willing to learn now, did. Dr. Deming devised 14 “Principles” of success which he faithfully taught the business owners and government in Japan and soon from practicing these principles, the rise of Japan became meteoric and they soon became the country to be reckoned with in trade. This lesson is not designed to cover the extent of what he taught them, but I would like to point two of those principles I consider vital to success. “PRINCIPLES ARE THE RUDDERS THAT GUIDE OUR SHIPS THROUGH CALM AND STORMY SEAS, METHODS ARE SECONDARY. “ It is for this reason I am passionate about and teach fundamental principles of success and without being prideful in any way, I believe every business person would do well to seek to learn and implement success principles – many of which I teach. One of the key principles Deming taught. I call it “SID. So what is SID? It’s an acronym for “Small Improvements Daily”. What Deming taught the Japanese to do is simply this. 1. Find a product or service that interests you. 2. See who is making the best product or offering the best service in the world in that area – 3. Work daily on finding ways to improve on it. The Japanese soon became criticized for “copying” the American, British and German manufacturers, but that did not last long. Once they were able to duplicate them, they went about applying SID which they in fact called “Kaizen”, and a revolution soon took hold in Japan. Instead of greedily focusing on how to cut costs and make more profit, the Japanese focused on how to produce the best product and services in the world... period. Years ago I had started a greeting card company and when I went to print my cards I learned something very interesting. Most printers in North America do a 10% over-run which is to cover off any mistakes or poor product – it happens in all manufacturing in North America. They then pass it on to us and we have to sort out the bad from the good. The Japanese however do not do this. They sort the quality and do not permit anything inferior to leave their plant to a buyer. Their commitment to quality and improvement to this day still sets them apart from many. However, today successful companies around the globe are finally implementing this very basic yet profound principle. So where are you at today with your business? Are you in as bad a shape as Japan was? Do you have as little resources at your disposal as they had? Zimbabwe, where I was born and raised currently has a 90% unemployment rate. They lack resources as badly as Japan did excepting one – people. This country can become a powerhouse just as easily as Japan did, if the government were to wake up there and bring in business teachers to teach these principles of success to their people instead of greedily bleeding every last penny they can for themselves and their friends. In fact many countries in Africa today suffer from the same ailment. But what about you? Why not commit yourself today to make “SID” a way of life for your business. Why not teach this to your staff and hold them accountable to look for ways they can improve what they do in your business daily. A plant in nature does not grow overnight. It takes time, water and sun. By feeding your mind and the minds of your staff daily with positive and exciting stuff, you will cause yourself to grow and along with it you will grow your business – one small thing every day. The Bible says, “Do not despise the day of small beginnings” It’s usually the small things done consistently that either make or break a great business. HOW DO YOU EAT AN ELEPHANT? – ONE MOUTHFUL AT A TIME. Sometimes we become so overwhelmed at the huge job ahead of us. The goal seems so far away and so far out of reach. But if you will learn the lesson the Japanese did, making small improvements Daily (SID), in time you will find that you have risen to greatness and will remain a leader in the years to come. Make a difference and learn what the Japanese learned – commit to excellence through Small Improvements Daily. Focus on one thing at a time (each day) and consider how you might improve it - today. The second principle Dr. Deming taught is equally as important. – “Perfection is NOT optional” For years I have observed what I always considered to be a very strange behaviour in education. That behaviour is how arbitrarily, passing marks are set for considering someone to pass a test or exam. Of particular concern to me is the fact that a doctor only has to get 70% right on his or her exams to pass. Would you really want to be treated by someone who could be wrong 30% of the time? When I took my training as a commercial helicopter pilot I was subjected to the same passing percentage. Yet, what it meant is that 30% of my knowledge or ability as a pilot could be wrong. Would you seriously want to fly with someone who could make a mistake as a pilot 30% of the time? Okay I got 81% so I could be wrong only 19% of the time. PEOPLE WILL RISE TO WHATEVER STANDARD IS EXPECTED OF THEM When South Africa changed to a black government, one of the things that they did was immediately lower the passing grade in all professions to allow more black people to pass and qualify as professionals. They did not even believe in themselves or that they could do as well or better than the whites did. Pretty sad isn’t it? From what I have learned they are not the only ones who have done this. LOWERING STANDARDS OR “GOOD ENOUGH” IS A SURE PATH TO FAILURE AND DISASTER Deming was a quality control expert and as such had taught manufacturers and other business people that if they wanted to succeed it was critical that they adopted immediately the attitude that the only acceptable standard is “perfect”; No defects whatsoever, no short cuts, no “good enough”. Today a new phrase has taken root to motivate people to a higher standard. This started with the publication of a book entitled “Pursuit of Excellence” by Terry Orlick, a sports phsycologist. There is a saying, “the devil is in the details”. Over the years I have observed that the difference between mediocre and excellence is the attention to details. The difference between the person who finishes first and the one who comes second is in the details. This is why SID – Small Improvements Daily is fundamental to attaining perfection and why without the application of both these principles you will simply never rise to greatness or success. Walt Disney was a classical example of this. He paid so much attention to every detail of his productions that he was the best in all key elements of his productions – music, volume, color, speed transitions, story, characters, lesson etc. etc. In order to pursue perfection it is a matter of attention to the details. So what is “good enough” for you? When you buy a product are you okay with less than perfect? The truth is we all want the perfect “whatever” but we are not prepared ourselves to make the perfect “whatever”. The focus of many business failures has been money or profit rather than a commitment to make the best or do the best. I wonder how much better a standard we could achieve – especially in areas like professions where a mistake could spell death or injury to someone else. What would happen if our schools or universities raised the bar or standard for passing? Is our goal to pass as many people as possible or is it to train the best to be the best? I challenge everyone reading this to raise the bar or standards in your personal life and especially in your business. Your staff will rise to the level you expect of them. There have been teachers who have gone into schools where kids were failing miserably, raised the standard and inspired the students and seen their classes filled with 100% grade “A” students. It’s all a matter of what we accept as “good enough” and how committed we are to perfection. Failure as we grow does happen, but we should never quit, only strive to do better next time. PERFECTION IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO NOT TRY, IT IS THE GOALPOST WHICH WE STRIVE TO REACH. Failure is only our aid to show us we need to improve. It is not an indicator that you are by nature useless or a failure. On the contrary the most successful people in life have usually failed more than anyone else. Failure means you are striving to be better and have successfully learned what does not work, so by all means embrace failure as a friend on your path to perfection. Ken Crause – Business Transformation Coach Email: [email protected]

#perfection #japanese #principles #improvement #business

1 note · View note

strawberryspeachy · 5 years ago

Text

So when i watched death note in high school it made me curious about real japanese police work. I read about it alot and came to the conclusion that their justice system isnt too great.

Im currently upset that a coworker who i took as a friend - not only disliked me all along - but went as far as to lie about me to get me in trouble. That no one cared to hear my side. That i was fired on the spot. That people turned their back on me immediately. That no one cares.

Well. 17 year old me would have said. But of course. In Japan your guilty until proven innocent. That japanese put on a show but dont truely like most people. That they band together and will go out of their way to avoid any kind of conflict. That they care more about a pretty appearance than solving anything. 17 year old me that only heard and read about Japan knew these things. 17 year old me imagined this cool different country that works because theyre proud of this... performance way that they live. And i was amused by it. All i knew was america and european history. I was so hungry for something different. I was so interested in different people.

Then I went to Japan. I got here and it was too similar to manga. How silly, i thought, those a comics - i didnt actually expect the country to be like those comics. And ive never really been able to place what that made me feel but id grown past this bemusement of different “alien like” people. Theyre just people who live in another country i thought. I dont like america and our norms. I know nothing but america but i dont agree with any of our steriotypes. You cant describe me the way most would try to describe a typical american. So why would people from any other country be different. Im sure theres people like the sterotype - but certainly more not at all like that.

And i got here and i watched the smiles on service workers slowly fade when they thought no one was watching. I watched children put trash where it didnt belong thinking no one was watching. I was girls laugh loudly and run around and yell at their boyfriends. I watched drunk college kids hollar and reak havoc in the city. Not robot people, not obedient children, not, quiet and demure girls listening to the men, not studious students worried about their reputation. Just people. The same people i saw back home.

And so i thought. Its the same. Different history. Varrying values. Same old people - judgmental and watching everyone ready to scold them if they deem it necessary.

But that guilty until prooven innocent thing. The fact that the old way of caring about your reputation is still a solid work practice.

These things. Make me feel like... i guess.... to my dissapointment. Maybe america really is more free...

I dont want that to be true. The us is so full of itself. Just like healthcare. I want universal health care to be a good thing and at very least in japan its not really. Its better. Its more affordable. Maybe their problem is just how much they hate drugs and thats what stops real care.

But. Ive always been a cautious person - i just dont want to get in trouble. But ive never thought id be in a situation i couldnt talk my way out of - because i dont do anything super bad. Maybe sometimes ive pressed the limits - but never outside of... like i drank underage. I tried to get into bars i wasnt old enough for. Ive dodged paying for the train fare. Dumb things. Things that the worse that would happen is i gotta pay it somehow or id get scolded. Drinking under age is against us law but its almost never taken too seriously.

But its occurred to me. Yeah. In japan it is guilty until prooven innocent. I really could have gotten in legal trouble for baseless allegations.

And japan is as racist and people say. Theyre friendly and try to talk to you in english and say nice things. And it doesnt seem like racism to a person from the states. Out racist look at you with digust. They wont touch you. They wont talk to you. They dont want to know about you

But here... it takes the form of a racist parent who grew up in the 50s and knows that theyre not supposed to be racist but still is.

Theyre welcoming and friendly to your face but talk shit behind your back. They ask a bunch of questions like (in america “where are you really from”) they refuse to accept you might actually belong. They constantly want to assert how different you are so instesd of telling you that your different - they ask questions or explain what theyre doing. And if you say ‘yes we also do this’ they react with disbeleif - what? No! You couldnt possibly get this - this is our thing and you are not us! And they constantly ask if you miss your home. Assume that you’re uncomfortable because they are. Also also. Instred of not wanting to touch you here - theyre much more willing to push you out of the way

Theres many mixed race kids here now though. I assume theyll have to do the same thing that happened in America. I havent met any mixed race adults but ive met plenty of white dads.... all trying super hard to assimilate to the point that they walk around talking like robots. Swearing that everything japan is great and they dont miss their home cointries at all. Pretty similar to the immigrants of america from when my mom was a kid.

So i still think at least for japan. Theyre way more similar to the west than they think they are. But these restricting regulations that they live by... really does make the country seem not as free as id ignorantly beleived it was.

It surprised me because their rules are so much like the way my great grandmother talked about stuff. And while were supposed to care... we just dont in the states. Respect your employer? Sure we say we do to their face but talk shit with coworkers. Worry about your reputation? Eh think im a bitch i dont give a fuck whatcha gonna do about it? Nothing thats right. Dont like another person? No one cares. Like that person or dont - it doesnt change anyone elses relationship with them. Make a mistake? Well if your boss fires you - everyone already probably thinks their an asshole cause generally mistakes are just met with some form of dickwaving belittlement. Pretty sure most of us get mad everytime we hear a story about someone getting fired because they posted a picture of them in a bikiki or having fun - most of this generation agrees thats dumb and has to change.

I feel more like an american now than ever. Americans are reluctant to change im told. Yes. I suppose we are. We might not know the rest of the worlds history but we kinda know our own. And as much as ive alwags agreed with the sentiment that cultures are different and thats just the way they want to be.... we used to be these ways but decided it was restrictive and controlling and mentally abusive and fought it...

Ive been reading more about the work culture in japan to figure out how he fuck this went so wrong. Apparently when young japanese people enter the work force, they cant even have friends as distractions outside of work because their boss will move them away from home.

Ive already read that japanese think suffering is good and seniority and witness first hand their preoccupation of appearing busy over actually being productive. Its just this constant performance.

Perhaps i did stress him out to the point of physical pain. I remember having a massive meltdown where i shook and it felt like my brain was melting after i tried so hard to be a good nice person. I did whag people apparently like. I changed myself to just agree with people and be positive and assume the best in everyone. Then my “friend” told me that i was a bad friend because i asked them if they would people drive their friends home so i could to sleep at 4am. And the two things just didnt click. I didnt go to sleep that night. I sat at my desk shaking for the next 5 hours and having flashbacks.

Im talkative. I talk as much as i do here in real life. And i have alot of questions. I talked to him a lot. Made him look not busy. I know he liked talking to me. I know he did. Thats why i got confortable talking more. He was always surprised when i asked him questions about himself but once he started answering he kept talking. Yeah. Its nice to have someone ask you what your thoughts are on topics. What your experiences have been. Did you like those things or not. I know japan it a group think culture - i guess they get there by really draining out ANY idea of individualality. He told me hed never been asked what he likes about himself. In the us were asked that constantly from elementary school “what do you like about yourself. What do you like about your friend. What makes you different?”

It kinda baffles me... questions and thoughts like these are so common in anime.... and obviously anime is popular in japan. Obviously obviously. Im confused how theyre watching these programs often with such deep meanings.... and not taking anything away from them. In the states our tv programs are always being restricted and stuff because they might give us “bad ideas” but they aren’t restricted here and yet... it seems no one takes anything from them

When i visited japan in 2013 i saw a teenage girl in huge heels lose her balance and stomp on a middle aged womans foot. That woman had already been standing like her feet were in pain and she made a face of being in so much pain. The girl rudely didn’t apologize and the older woman said nothing. She smiled through her pain...

And i also complained to my coworker. Not full on complaining. The small ones you make at work when youre not sure of the extent you can go to. At first he held off like the other teachers. But. Then. He started complaining back. It got to me not needing to be the one say an annoyance first. Like i asked how his meeting was. Other people i worked with might leave it ah it was a bit slow but necessary. And he started that way. But instead he started responding to me a succession of statements the slowly crept more toward his real feelings. ‘It was good... we didnt do much... or anything, i just sat and listened and took notes. we dont learn anything, it takes up a lot of time but we have to go. I dont like those meetings. I dont know their pupose... but were told to go so we must’

Whatever. Im just gonna keep rambling and complaining about this cause it sucks and is awful. Contracted woth my company i wasnt allowed to publically critisize japan. I imagine thats why you dont often find many things on the internet complaining. You will literally be unemployable if your name is attached to critisisms of this country.

Where as everyone can come to the states and tell us to our faces how much we suck and how much cooler their countries are. And generally the younger general is just kinda like - ‘you right’ people write articles all the time shit talking the states and we just go ‘ya we deserve that’ we do. Im not saying dont do that... but like... maybe just maybe. Were doing the good thing where were like

Haha call us fat! We are fat. We love us some mcdonalds. Hm.... why though. Actually we need to fix that. Why are people eating so unhealthy? What is the underlying cause of this problem? Lets try to work on that - and then we fight amoungst ourselves.

I like that... i like thay thing we do

In the states you might not want to become a ‘whistleblower’ and in some industrys you might get black listed for something dumb. But at least we talk about it and agree its a problem. In japan no one wants to even admit they have problems.

Know what else i told him. I talked about how were overworked in the states. That our work culture has gotten too similar to japans and we hate it. No one working 80 hour weeks thinks that they should have to do that. Of course i didnt go about it that way. I told him that my friends back home work 80 hour weeks and its unhealthy. That i cant work that much and refuse to. He i imagine counted how many hours he works and laughed and i said - oh haha yea i guess you also work that much. And he looked so much like he wanted to cry about it in the same way my friends back home. But said its natural in japan and that hes gotten used to it. But he definitely didnt mean it as he said it. I told him my friends say that as well. That i think theyre workaholics and i personally cant do it. That when work calls them they always pick up the phone even when they dont want to. But i dont do that. When my job called me as a server id ignore it and call them back later when it was too late for me to be asked to come in and ask them what they wanted.

Maybe to him my stories felt like when i read about students in europe being allowed to not go to school without reprucussions. It made HAVING to go to school evem more annoying. Why cant we choose to take breaks? I heard that place doesnt have homework - meanwhile im given at least 6 hours work a night! Not everyone has to do this? Other places learn things for fun?? They dont have to keep up with standardized exams that dont account for different teachers and school districts?? A 50% in that country isnt a failing grade???

Those were already shitty things but to read about them not bein universal did make having to endure it more upsetting.

Doesnt change that im stoll upset with him for not saying anything to me. Doesnt change that im mad that he made stuff up.

Really me rambling on about this doesnt change my presepective on any of it. Im just bitching

1 note · View note

superchartisland · 5 years ago

Text

Super Mario All Stars (Nintendo, SNES, 1993)

Any overall roadmap for this project (and my brother’s related predecessor) is very lightly sketched, but this is a useful point to reflect on it. We grew up playing Dizzy games; part of what we’re doing is trying to reclaim video game history as we and many other Brits lived it, to demonstrate how the American-led received wisdom is a rewriting of the record. All of my research suggests that we were in the majority there -- in the UK the NES didn’t get a look in, and we’re not going to properly encounter the Game Boy until it’s a decade old.

Even this first Nintendo direct encounter is somewhat of a guess. Super Mario All Stars was a documented best-seller for the SNES, but in an absence of evidence I don’t know for sure that it was big enough to be an overall UK #1. I remember hearing about it a lot at the time, and by then the SNES had had a chance to build an audience, but remember that this blog covers games which were a #1 but not necessarily always the #1. Yet at the same time as I refute the story that Nintendo swept in to replace a dying industry -- neither happened like that in the UK -- we’re pretty keen on many things Nintendo. I have a NES Classic Mini, SNES Classic Mini and a Famicom Classic Mini sitting under my TV: loving recreations of consoles which I never owned.

In the internet era, this kind of adoption of history is probably more common. When I wrote the first version of this post I had recently watched the period piece music video for Satellite Young’s “Don’t Graduate, Senpai!” and was overwhelmed with contented nostalgic feelings, left with the power of a glimpse into a familiar and loved past. All that despite the fact I’ve hardly ever listened to the Japanese genre that it takes after, City Pop, or watched shoujo anime, and never when I was growing up. The person who it is precision targeting isn’t me. But it needn't be. There can be a feeling that is just as real, but second hand, a gravity exerted on adjacent culture that was invisible until something made me look over and notice its force.

youtube

There are lots of ways that the influences on the song and video reached me. My partner did grow up with a lot of Japanese pop culture in Hong Kong, and talking with her about that and having watched a couple of episodes of Creamy Mami means having a feel for her fond memories. I have years of happily browsing tumblr gifsets of Sailor Moon, absorbing love for it and its place in culture. I can still get good use from a “but you didn’t do anything!” meme even if I’ve never actually watched the show. I’ve listened to 80s referencing music elsewhere, and modern Japanese music taking cues from City Pop, and that has added up to giving the sounds of the song a similar personal gravity.

And all of that has been made easier by the world getting smaller, by the internet giving providing an easy route to interests you share with people elsewhere in the world and from there to interests they share that you don’t. Look at it negatively, and it means a winning narrative can travel faster and become more comprehensive than ever, reaching into places where it doesn’t belong. But at the same time, it gives us a Japanese band and some Swedish animators uniting in their shared nostalgia, and it reaching out to me through next door culture which I’ve taken in via friends from all round the world, and me having feelings shared with those friends. That’s an amazing thing.

In common with most people I knew, we didn’t have the internet when Super Mario All Stars came out, and the world was still huge. Nintendo had other tools to work with, though. Their games were successful enough to reach out and have an outsized cultural impact beyond the limits of people actually playing them.

When I started primary school, before football stickers, there was a craze for Nintendo sticker books, and friends and I collected images of all of their games. People tried to negotiate enhanced swaps for stickers of Game Boy screenshots by maintaining that they were gold stickers, even more valuable than the special silver ones. I knew more about the characters and background for Mario through Saturday morning cartoons, and I remember watching American TV programmes where people competed through playing Super Mario Bros. levels. I assume it made it to the UK’s own Gamesmaster at some point too. And of course, many of the European games we were playing took their own influence from Nintendo. I may have been unaware of Metroid until years later, but hours spent playing Turrican still gave my first impressions of it that nostalgic gravity.

Mario was Nintendo’s most successful reach out to the wider culture, and that wider culture drove people back to Mario’s original form. That could work better for Nintendo if Mario games were easier to access, and so we get Super Mario All Stars. What to do when moving on from the NES to the SNES? Reissue, repackage, re-evaluate the games! Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, and Super Mario Bros. 3, now brought together in one place. With an extra track, no less, in the form of Japan’s very different Super Mario Bros. 2, new to the rest of the world and hence called The Lost Levels. From 2019 the very idea of levels being lost feels faintly absurd – someone will dig it out in a mod, or you can just log onto your alternate Japanese online console account, surely? I guess a handful of British people probably did own imported Famicoms even in 1993, but everyone else got their cross-fertilisation of culture mediated by Nintendo’s eccentric international release schedule.

Super Mario All Stars presents each game in its entirety, complete with newly upgraded graphics. Yet, in some way, the games seem to shrink in the transition. The act of selecting a game to play from a menu, turning them into pinned specimens labelled by year, emphasises the overall history and starts you off with a reminder that each world is only a part of a newly defined whole. Maybe that's why there is no Super Mario All Stars on the SNES Classic Mini, an assessment that the bird-inside-a-bird effect of featuring a retro collection on a retro collection would be that bit too spookily recursive.

And that idea of recursion is where the realisation struck me as I played Super Mario All Stars. It wasn't the first version of Mario I played, (it was the first Super Mario Bros. 3 that I ever played, though, the briefest of enchanting glimpses). But it feels absolutely right as my version of these games, even for Super Mario Bros. 2 where I'm pretty sure I'd never played this version before. The very sense of diminished scale, the way that All Stars exists as a Mario game aware that not only each individual game, but the games as a whole, are but a small part of the Mario out there in the world, feels totally fitting. The feeling runs through everything. The upscaled renditions of the music which expand on it but nonetheless can't escape how iconic the basic originals were. The decision to put Super Mario Bros.’ underwater waltz on the title screen with the new confidence that duh, it rules. The little portraits of what to expect that have been added to the start of each level, not spoilers but cute reminders. This is a Mario for the late to the party, an artefact of the games' immense second hand cultural gravity, reflected back into the games themselves. It's a sign of so much to come.

In reflection of it being the first time these games have come up on my route through history, here are miniature entries for each of the four games on Super Mario All Stars, pinned to one place:

Super Mario Bros.

It’s all about the movement. Specifically, the jump, the balletic means of progression which sits at the tempting boundary of predictability and control. It is not the only game jump, it was not the first game jump, but it is somehow still the Jump. When you press the jump button the moment stretches in time, a repeated joy that resounds slightly differently from Jump to Jump. Sometimes the Jump is relaxed, sometimes the Jump is tense, sometimes the Jump is a celebration of achievement. Gravity and momentum make their claim on you, and you must not reject them or bow to them, but turn towards them, take their hands, and dance. Only when you are the lead in the dance can it proceed in its full majesty. All of the subtle design, killer music and cleverly revealed secrets play their part too, of course. The richness of the world, day and night, water and dungeon, clouds and green groundclouds, isn’t to be underestimated. The dance wouldn’t be as kaleidoscopically beautiful without all of that. Fireworks might not always be necessary, but they are still fireworks. And yet it is the dance of the Jump that gives meaning to it all.

The Lost Levels

It’s common in games for many a character or object to be accompanied by its inverse, its mirror, its shadow. Maybe it’s a product of how games are made, were made, of the commonality of repetition and the short distance from repetition to repetition with a twist. Super Mario Bros. 2 (“The Lost Levels”) introduces one such shadow as almost its first move with the poison mushroom, power-up turned to power-down. It takes that to a whole new level with the negative warp zones: welcome to warp zone, now a trick on you. The whole game, in fact, is a cruel mirror held up to Super Mario Bros., a reflection that looks right but doesn’t wave back. Much of its cruelty comes from luring players into familiar actions and then turning them back against them. This game is a dance too, but it’s one where the floor is trying to throw you off, where the steps and flow that you have learned are not only impossible to use but will quicken your downfall. But for some people who already know the dance back to front, perhaps trying to freestyle your way through some spiky math-rock is an enjoyable next step.

Super Mario Bros. 2

It’s common in games for many a character or object to be accompanied by its inverse, its mirror, its shadow. Maybe it’s a product of how games are made, were made, of the commonality of repetition and the short distance from repetition to repetition with a twist. Super Mario Bros. 2 (“Super Mario Bros. USA”) is the Waluigi of early Mario games, a mirror of a mirror. It doesn’t focus on the shadows of objects and characters, though, but whole shadow worlds. Pick up a magical potion and you can open a door anywhere, take a subtle knife to the fabric of the universe, walk through the doorway and find yourself literally in shadow. Even outside of that mechanic, there are doors everywhere, and each one could go anywhere. This is the world of the subconsciousness, where possibilities extend to such things as a playable princess and gliding across the world on a gravity-resistant egg. Super Mario Bros. 2 is barely even a Mario game, and handles more awkwardly than one. Yet among all of its doors, it opens one to one of the series’s futures, platforming which is first and foremost a series of puzzles and doors to unlock.

Super Mario Bros. 3

This is the game where Mario learns to fly, tail flapping, on unseen wires in front of platforms casting shadows on a sky painted on sheets. The game is a show, and it’s some production. It has a cast of thousands and is the introduction point for almost as many iconic series images as the original. Its brilliance as sequel and as theatre is in taking the solid and dependable gameplay and mechanics of the original and using those as building blocks, the platforms of its stageset, then rearranging them. Each world rejigs and relights them and makes them interact with new props and characters for a set of dramatically different scenes. Water levels go from brief distractions to an entire world; the desert and an idyllic grassland emerge; World 7 turns off all of the lights to interact with the bare mechanics of pipes. The transitions between levels feel like curtains down and a chance to move things round. And then occasionally it breaks all the underlying rules and throws you into giant world or climbs up through the clouds, and there is nothing to do but laugh in delight. This is the game where Mario learns to fly.

SNES chart, Edge 004, January 1994

#every number one #retrogaming #SNES #Super Mario Bros.#Super Mario All Stars

5 notes · View notes

learningpiner · 2 years ago

Text

World war 3 russia vs uk

If the Russian population knew what is happening, they would not be backing this awful conflict. However, this support rests on false information. Up to now, polls coming from Russia show significant support to the war, or rather the “special military operation” as baptised by the Russian leadership. There are three factors to consider: the war’s impact on the Russian population, the fate of the war, and pressure from the international community. The question is when the Russian President will accept that persevering in the military path he has chosen will bring more harm than good to his country, or to his own political role. But if the war started with a personal decision, it could also end the same way. Based on his own interpretation of history, it is not adapted to realities of the 21 st century. It is the decision of one man, President Putin. The present conflict is not the outcome of centuries old hatreds: it is a war of choice. Such “neutrality” may respond, of course, to a variety of reasons, from hidden alignment to fear of reprisals, but it becomes in practice support to Russia and its war of aggression. Putting them on the same footing fails to differentiate between the attacker and the attacked. “Defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion is rejecting the law of the jungle, the notion that ‘might makes right’”ĭefending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion is rejecting the law of the jungle, the notion that “might makes right”. The core principles of our international order, which UN Secretary General António Guterres will certainly underline when visiting Russia and Ukraine this week. Most states, from all regions of the world, know that what is at stake, fundamentally, is the protection of weaker states from more powerful ones that could prey on them. Reassuring allies closest to the conflict with preventative deployments, the prudent - and yet firm - reaction of NATO conveys a clear message: the Alliance will not flinch in defending itself, yet it harbours no offensive intentions vis-à-vis Russia.įinally, the international community has - notably on three occasions so far through the UN General Assembly - sent clear messages rejecting an invasion that contradicts the core principles of international coexistence as reflected in the UN Charter itself: the equal sovereignty of states, the peaceful solution of conflicts and the ban on the use of force in international relations. We provided abundant warnings of what our response would be, to discourage the Russian invasion and replied substantially to Russian security demands, hoping a true negotiation would ensue. The response was coordinated from day one, and even earlier, as intelligence was shared in unprecedented ways, to ensure awareness and preparedness. The EU, together with the US, the UK, Canada, Japan and other like-minded partners and allies, have championed the international defence of Ukraine. “The EU has strengthened itself as an international player and one can even speak of the birth of the geopolitical Union. The EU has strengthened itself as an international player and one can even speak of the birth of the geopolitical Union. We are increasing our resilience and shedding dependencies on energy at a much faster pace than anyone could have envisioned before. EU countries have welcomed close to five million refugees so far and will keep their borders open to all those fleeing the conflict. The Union is making extensive financial and humanitarian support available to Ukraine and contributing to the financing of military equipment provided by member states. It adopted the most severe sanctions ever and keeps widening their scope and reach, as the war continues. The European Union reacted swiftly and robustly in support of the Ukrainian government. This was the sentiment I strongly felt when meeting President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv. Contrary to what President Putin might have expected, this war will be a landmark in the consolidation of Ukraine as a sovereign nation and in the reaffirmation of its identity, separated from that of Russia. Instead, the Ukrainian government has rallied the whole nation in a fight against the invasion and has organised a fierce resistance, putting Russian troops in considerable difficulties and pushing back their offensive. Since the beginning of this war on 24 February, four Russian assumptions have proved clearly wrong: that the Ukrainian government would crumble and Russian forces would take Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities swiftly that the European Union would be at pains to show resolve and respond to this aggression that the “Western world” would be divided and uncertain in its reaction and that the broader international community would not condemn Russia’s invasion.Ī landmark in the consolidation of Ukraine as a sovereign nation

#World war 3 russia vs uk

0 notes

johnmauldin · 6 years ago

Text

Trump’s Tariffs Echo US Trade Policy That Led to the Great Depression

We all wonder if Trump’s trade actions are as random as they appear or if there is a broader strategy.

Some of my contacts argue that the relatively strong US economy allows the administration to take a harder line than would normally be advisable. We can ride out a trade war better than China can, the thinking goes.

This only works if the US economy keeps prospering long enough for the tariffs to make China bend.

We can postpone a recession for another year or two if the trade war doesn’t intensify and Europe holds together.

But it is intensifying, so we may not get that time. In other words, tariffs could end the conditions that justified them.

Stepping on Same Rake

It’s happened once before.

Like today, the Roaring 1920s saw rapid technological change driven by cars and electricity.

This created a farm surplus as fewer horses consumed less feed. Prices fell and farmers complained of foreign competition.

Herbert Hoover promised higher tariffs in his 1928 presidential campaign. He won, and the House passed a tariff bill in May 1929.

The Senate was still debating its version of the bill when the stock market crashed in October 1929. Today, we use that event to mark the Great Depression’s beginning.

But at the time, people didn’t know they were in a depression or even a recession. Most economists expected a quick recovery. Stocks did recover quite a bit in the following months, though not back to their prior highs.

So, when the Senate finally passed a tariff bill in March 1930, the thinking was not that different than we see today.

They thought they could preserve and even extend the good times. But conditions worsened quickly, and by 1931, unemployed men were standing in soup lines.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

In 1932, both Smoot and Hawley lost their seats as Franklin Roosevelt beat Hoover in a landslide—57% of the popular vote.

That history won’t necessarily repeat this time, but it’s surely not a good sign.

Multiplayer Game Theory

John Nash (one of the world’s great mathematicians, Nobel laureate, and centerpiece of the brilliant movie A Beautiful Mind) developed multiplayer game theory.

Essentially, an equilibrium develops around the rules as they are at the moment. If somebody changes the rules, no matter how rational it may be, it makes everybody else change their response.

Trump’s actions, especially in regard to China, may be perfectly rational. China is not playing fairly. But his actions change the rules and everybody else is forced to react.

Throw in NAFTA, Europe, and all the other trade negotiations, and things get complicated.

Yes, we have a new trade deal with Korea. The US is marginally better off. Trump is trying to do a one-off trade deal with Japan. Abe is cautious because Trump wants to open up Japan’s markets to US agriculture.

We pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) because it had flaws—clearly. But it served the purpose of isolating China.

Trying to do bilateral trade agreements with every one of those partners is going to be very difficult and time-consuming, if not impossible. And so, everybody reacts to try to change the circumstances to their own benefit.

This is multiplayer game theory on a scale so vast that it is almost impossible for the average voter to understand.

And so, they get angry and say we need more tariffs to protect America. Just like every other voter in every other country is trying to figure out how to protect their markets.

Unstable Trade Sandpile

Something else I keep hearing is variations of, “China is cheating, and we have to do something.”

This is partly true.

Free and fair trade is not what we have, nor have ever had. But trade isn’t a binary condition.

Today, we see near-total isolation on one extreme (think North Korea) or at the other end extensive trade freedom within the European Union. There’s lots of room in between.

China cheats in many and various ways. I’m not happy with the status quo, and I want to change it.

The question is, are tariffs the best way to accomplish this? A second question is, even if tariffs accomplish the goal, will there be side effects that reduce or eliminate the benefits? I see a lot of unintended consequences.

A few weeks ago, I described how a sandpile can slowly grow in size, apparently stable. But in reality, it has many hidden fingers of instability. At any moment, something could trigger an avalanche. The global trade system is something like that.

Of course, it’s not perfect or even optimal. Countries erect barriers to their advantage. I can point to several countries whose economic policies are mercantilist, but at least everyone knows about them.

We see the fingers of instability and leave them alone, lest we trigger an avalanche whose victims are impossible to predict. It is a kind of equilibrium. Everyone’s incentive is to avoid catastrophe and make incremental improvements. That makes trade talks extraordinarily difficult.

The Trump administration doesn’t seem to care about equilibrium. Their strategy appears to be “kick apart the sandpile and make everybody rebuild it.” And whether we like it or not, many of Trump supporters actually like the concept of throwing a wrench into the system.

So, it is not the case that the US has no choices. We have many choices. Tariffs are the wrong one. But then, that is just me and I am one lone voice and vote.

Join hundreds of thousands of other readers of Thoughts from the Frontline

Sharp macroeconomic analysis, big market calls, and shrewd predictions are all in a week’s work for visionary thinker and acclaimed financial expert John Mauldin. Since 2001, investors have turned to his Thoughts from the Frontline to be informed about what’s really going on in the economy. Join hundreds of thousands of readers, and get it free in your inbox every week.

1 note · View note