#me being beholden by the events I myself helped to create

[heyclickadee]

Yeah, okay, here goes:

I think some fandom infighting would be less toxic if we a really understood that all of us are here for different reasons.

And I don’t just mean that different kinds of stories are going to be helpful for some and hurtful for others and vis-a-versa, or that different people are going to tell different stories, you know, differently, and that should do our best to let people enjoy things. I mean that, at the end of the day, there’s a spectrum of the parts of fandom people enjoy.

For example, I have a sibling who’s in some fandoms strictly for the transformative aspect of fandom. Canon is more like a jumping off point and, to some extent, an afterthought. Their primary interaction with whatever a fandom is centered on might be fanfiction and other fan works. The characters and world they interact with in those fandoms are often completely unrecognizable from canon. The goal is often to create characters—self-inserts or otherwise—to exist in completely new stories that are (vaguely) informed by canon, but not beholden to it in any way. Most everyone in that fandom has a self-insert OC or a Y/N. The whole point is taking something you like, or wanted to like, and shaping it to fit you better. That’s fandom for them. And that’s great!

And then there’s me, who’s almost the exact opposite. Canon is more of a focal point. I love seeing fanfiction and fanworks that completely veer away from canon events and characterization, I appreciate them, but I don’t like making them myself. I love to write, but I have a hard time writing fanfiction, I couldn’t write a fic-it-fix to save my life (no, not even in the highly unlikely hypothetical scenario where it turns out a lot of us are wrong and Tech is dead for real). The closest I get to fanfiction are either short little half analysis/half story blurb posts, or doodley fanart that’s either a theory for something I think could happen in the future in disguise, or silly drawings about scarves. I compartmentalize fanon, my headcanons, and actual canon a lot. And I love seeing people’s OC’s, including the self-insert ones, but I dont want to make one myself. I don’t want to be in the story, because it isn’t about me; one of the things I love most about interacting with fiction I didn’t write is that it helps me get outside my own head and see things from a different point of view. I write a lot of metas and theories, but my favorite thing is being able to look a story that’s completely told and done, and getting to tease it apart. And that’s also okay.

Now, the two points I’m using as examples aren’t really opposites; there’s a ton (A TON) of very good character analysis and interpretation in fanfiction, and there’s often (maybe even usually) transformative aspect to analysis/intepretation. And I’m betting that most people in fandom fall somewhere in the middle of the range between transformative and interpretive when it comes to what they like about fandom. A lot of people write great fanfiction and equally great meta posts, and honestly, I think being good at the one makes you better than the other. But they are different approaches to enjoying and interacting with fiction, and I think at least a little of the friction in fandom can come from not recognizing that we all often have different approaches to this fandom thing.

Edit: I need to also mention that when it comes to interpretation and analysis, there’s a lot of wiggle room for contradictory conclusions that are all equally valid. Do I think that interpretive conclusions not supported at all by the text exist? Oh boy howdy, yes. But I also think there’s a lot of space before you get there, and a lot of ways for even one person to interpret the same thing, let alone an entire fandom.

Edit 02; I should probably also acknowledge that, as a lifelong Darkwing Duck fan, I also really enjoy shows or even books where ‘canon’ is more like a loose set of guidelines or a basis premise and the whole idea of the show is to do wacky things with that premise. I’m way more likely to get involved in the transformative side of things when this is the case.

[arcxnumvitae]

👌 - Favourite position? 🤗 - Do they like to cuddle after sex? Huaxiu

@fellbloom || Sexy Headcanon Meme

👌 - Favourite position?

Gosh, Huaxiu has so much going on when it comes to his sex preferences that it’s hard for me to keep it all in order. He’s such a horny little dragon. Huaxiu likes being on top of his partner because he considers it a major ego boost to be able to look down at them and get to see how good a time their having. Not to mention it gives him a measure of control. 

He’ll never admit it out loud (even if it is abundantly clear to his boyfriend) but he also likes generally anything receiving from behind because as much as he loves control, he loves getting to release it equally as much. From behind allows the opportunity to say pin his wrists down/restrained above his head, or keep him pinned down and only able to take what he’s being given. A variety of options to please his little sub heart.

Pft, if he’s topping though, no preference to be honest unless he’s been kicked into a dragon mood in which case maybe also giving from behind for domination and biting purposes. Anything that similarly restrains his partner.

🤗 - Do they like to cuddle after sex?

Before Vasilios he was very much a hit it and quit it kind of guy for trauma reasons. That soft afterglow period of sleepiness and vulnerability after sex he associated  with losing his eye, since it was during a time like that when his partner attacked him. 

Now though he’s been launched right back into loving it since he’s overall gotten a lot cuddlier after starting to date Vasilios. It’s just about mandatory with him now with Vasilios if the situation allows for it. And since I guess I should acknowledge current timeline events, it’s only with Vasilios he would want to cuddle. So not with any fling/s he has currently.

[adhd-asd]

Anonymous asked: "i have ADHD and ASD, I don’t know if they really play a role in my difficulty to write scripts or outlines, but it seems like whenever i want to start a story project and visualise it into writing and art, it just…..doesn’t work? Like, i have story ideas, but the way they come out never meet my satisfaction or, at least, the way i write them, feels too restricting and….i don’t know?

writing scripts, the dialogue feels very bland and tedious - writing outlines is fine for me but i put too much thought into them to the point they are restricting. but, also, when i try to make up a story as i go with a basic plot in mind, i lose a massive sense of direction if i don’t have an outline or script. and i just feel very, very stuck."

If you're just looking for a short-form list of tips and tricks that might help make creating easier, I have a post here that offers advice on writing with ADHD that you may find helpful.

However, I found this question really interesting and wanted to do a more in-depth exploration of the topic of creating with ADHD/ASD and the difficulties that can come with that, as well. I have a lot of thoughts on the topic as an ADHD/ASD creator myself, so it got quite long, but I hope you might find some of them interesting or useful.

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Do ADHD/ASD Play a Role?

Firstly, I believe that my ADHD and ASD affect just about every part of my life, including my creative process, and I imagine the same is likely true for you. It's entirely plausible (and I would even say likely) that they're playing a part in the conflict you feel when trying to create.

That being said, I also believe that there are ways we can accommodate or work around our unique challenges rather than putting effort into trying to overcome them or letting them get us down. I also don't think your difficulties are exclusively a result of ADHD/ASD, either, and I'll be discussing both points in more detail below.

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On Meeting Your Own Expectations

I think, at least to some extent, your first paragraph could apply to most creators, regardless of ADHD/ASD.

Very rarely do I find that my works end up matching what I visualise in my mind, and it can often be frustrating and demotivating when what I produce seems inferior to the hypothetical version I had planned or envisioned. And I've seen this same sentiment expressed by a lot of artists and writers.

When those feelings crop up, I try to remind myself that it's okay, nobody else has seen the hypothetical 'perfect version' of what I was trying to create that's in my mind, and they'll be judging the work on its own merits instead. I think an important part of being a creator is consciously working on accepting that things will almost never go exactly as envisioned, and that's okay. It's not a reason to abandon the work, and the more you keep creating, the more practice you'll have getting your ideas down.

It's definitely easier said than done, but as with all creative pursuits, feeling beholden to perfection will ultimately prevent you from getting anything done or growing as a creator, and sometimes you have to just let things go and keep moving forward. A work doesn't have to be perfect to have value and be worthy of praise.

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On Perfectionism

All that being said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if your ADHD and ASD were compounding on this common experience to a degree. It's very common for people with ASD to be inflexible and extremely detail-oriented, and many an ADHDer can struggle with perfectionism (which I've briefly discussed in the second half of this post). Falling into the trap of obsessively tweaking things until they're just right is pretty easy.

The good news is that I think when you're aware that these are pitfalls you're likely to experience, you can better notice them and implement measures to help you work around them. Better understanding your symptoms and being kind to yourself when you experience them can make the situation less hostile, and researching how to cope with/compensate for them could help not only with your creative process, but other areas of life as well.

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On Finding Your Creative Process

A big part of creating is finding a process that works for you.

Some people plan in meticulous detail while others fly by the seat of their pants; some prepare outlines and tough drafts and follow the steps in order and others bounce around and make it up as they go.

From the way you're describing things, it sounds like your current process isn't working for you, and you may benefit from changing your approach to creating entirely. You already seem to be consciously aware of the parts that are causing the most difficulty and frustration for you, so the next step is to brainstorm how to modify them to make your creativity more accessible to you.

I, for example, write scenes out of order and constantly go back and add to them as I get new ideas. I also draw my lineart in random sections, moving on to a new one anytime I get bored (even if the current section isn't finished) until it eventually comes together like a patchwork quilt. These are some ways I've found to keep things interesting and keep me engaged in the work, and they may seem weird, but they sure do work!

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So Let's Do Some Brainstorming

If you overthink your outlines and then feel stifled by them, try deliberately limiting how much detail you allow yourself to include. It's not an 'all or nothing' situation, and you can practise and experiment with varying document layouts and amounts of detail until you've found something that feels more approachable.

If you're currently writing paragraphs, try bullet points, or a flow chart, or sticky notes that you can rearrange. If you plot out every detail, try starting with only the most major events so you always have some direction for where the story is going but still allow for more freedom and creativity. If you spend hours on an outline, try setting a timer so you only have a set amount of time for each point.

And remember that you can change your outline as you go! If you're so caught up in following your outline that it's stifling your creativity, maybe it's an issue of perspective rather than process. Remind yourself that your outline is a tool to help you and that you're free to adjust it whenever it's not serving its purpose.

I don't know what your current process looks like so maybe these specific examples aren't helpful to you, but hopefully they can illustrate how to look at the areas where you're getting stuck and find a way to change them so that they suit your needs. Even if it seems unconventional or doesn't align with the process other people use or have told you to use, it's important to do what works for you.

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In Summary / TL;DR

Creativity in general often comes down to experimenting until you find a method/process/style that works for you, and that's true for anyone. It's also true that art rarely goes exactly as planned, and sometimes you just have to accept that you've done well enough and move on.

But when you're a creator with ADHD/ASD, it can be extra difficult to do so because of our unique challenges related to internal motivation, perfectionism, and staying focused and flexible. Being aware of your symptoms and the challenges that they might present, and specifically tailoring your workspace and process to account for them while being kind to yourself when you find yourself struggling, can allow you to create with a lot less frustration.

None of these changes will happen instantaneously, but hopefully being aware of them and making the effort over time will help you to start seeing a difference in your work. Good luck!

[panharmonium]

@once-and-future-gay​ asked: 

how do you think will would react to how merlin treats mordred were he alive??

Okay, I LOVE this question.

And my honest answer to it is that I think if Will were alive, things would never have gotten to a point where Merlin felt like he needed to treat Mordred like that in the first place.

(more details under the cut, because this got long!)

The reasons why Merlin ends up in a place where he is able to make those kinds of cold decisions about Mordred are obviously super complex.  But in the end, I think most of it comes back to the fact that by Season 5, Merlin has come to see himself as a tool.  The ultimate fallout of Merlin being constantly told about his role in Arthur's life is that he comes to see himself as an instrument of destiny, not a person in his own right.  His life isn't his own.  He has no inherent worth, no inherent self, just a purpose to fulfill.  His life was always earmarked for someone else.  His value, in his own mind, is inextricably tied up with whether or not he can succeed in his mission.  He doesn’t think he is allowed to have more than that.  He doesn’t think he deserves to have more than that, frankly - every time he tries, something terrible happens.

This isn’t the case, earlier in the show.  In the early days, Merlin still has hopes and dreams for himself.  He still longs for a day where he can be known for who and what he is.  He still chafes at having to hide.  He still thinks he deserves better than what he has.  He's still invested in his own life, as a person who is worth something just by virtue of existing.   But as time goes on, those feelings start to slip away.  He's still fighting, but for other people, not himself.  He stops asking Gaius, "When do I get to reveal myself?"  He doesn't expect that to ever happen now.  He starts defining his worth as how well he can fulfill his “destiny,” and stops seeing himself as a person in his own right.  He's been told so many times that his life belongs to someone else - that his only reason for living is to serve a higher purpose - that he now believes it.  And that makes him more willing to do things (in service of that destiny) that he would have balked at when he was younger, before he lost his sense of selfhood, before he became just a tool to ensure that events unfolded as they were “supposed” to.

In the earlier seasons, we see Merlin defy Kilgharrah's directives on multiple occasions.  He saves Mordred.  He forces Kilgharrah to teach him how to heal Morgana, even after she's been revealed to be a traitor.  He's not yet willing to do things he feels uncomfortable about to bring about “destiny.”  He still thinks things can be better than that.  But as time goes on (read: after Will dies, and especially once Lancelot is also dead) Merlin becomes so isolated from anything that isn’t The Mission.  He has no “real” friends anymore.  Which, as I've discussed before, isn't to say that he doesn't have meaningful, caring relationships with other people, just that every one of those relationships is, for him, undergirded by the knowledge that the friendship is conditional - aka, “if they actually knew me, they would hate me.”  He has nobody to meet his most elemental need for connection - to be seen and loved for who he is - and by the later seasons, Merlin has been deprived of that kind of care for so long that he just stops trying to find it anywhere anymore.  Every time he has had somebody to love him like that, it has gone horribly, terribly wrong, and by the time we reach S5, Merlin just feels like it's better for everyone if he stops feeling these "selfish" desires for real companionship and just focuses on the job he's meant to do, no matter how painful it is for him.  It doesn't matter if he's miserable, as long as he's be able to bring about the better world that has been promised.

Lancelot is able to serve as a buffer against this, briefly, while he’s alive.  His presence is a huge part of why Merlin is so happy in the S4 opener.  Finally, Merlin has a friend to know him, to share his burdens, and everything is changing for the better.  Arthur is basically running the kingdom, and it's only a matter of time before he actually becomes king.  Traditions are already changing, by Arthur's command - now Camelot's most respected knights are commoners!  The Crown Prince is publicly courting a servant!  This is a moment where Merlin really feels that the moment he has been waiting for is right around the corner.  He thinks they're almost there.  He has so much hope, at the beginning of Season 4.  

And then Lancelot dies - for Arthur - and everything starts spiraling.  Lancelot dies on the altar of Merlin's destiny the same way Will does, and that breaks something in Merlin.  He stops trying to make things better for himself.  “Destiny” is going to take everything from him anyway.  He gives up and accepts that the only worthwhile thing he can actually do with his life is to make sure that Arthur lives to create the better world that has been promised, and that he himself is always going to be alone.

And then Merlin is alone, for the next three years.  And that's who he is when we meet him in S5 - disillusioned, desperately isolated, all of his personal needs subsumed for far too long.  The only thing keeping him afloat is his mission, and he will do anything to make sure it succeeds, now, because if he starts doubting it, then that means that everything terrible that has happened has been for nothing.    

And this is really why I feel that having Will around would change things, to a degree where I honestly can't imagine we'd ever wind up in a position where Merlin would have been self-abnegating like this for years, or would have allowed Kara's execution or told Arthur to reject magic just to ensure that Mordred would die (TO BE CLEAR - I'm not putting the blame on Merlin for what Arthur decides to do in 5.05.  Arthur's a grown man; he's seen enough to have more nuanced opinions on sorcery by now).

Will is just....I know he was only in the show briefly, but his presence in Merlin's life was so much more important than that one episode, and his ABSENCE is more disastrous than is made apparent on the surface of things.  Will is Merlin’s anchor.  He gives Merlin something that Merlin cannot access from anybody else, Lancelot included.  He is the only person in Merlin’s orbit who is not somehow connected/beholden to Arthur and Camelot.  All of Merlin's other friends become knights, or become queen, or are deeply invested in Merlin's destiny and the emergence of Albion (eg, Gaius).  Every single relationship Merlin has is with people who are committed to Arthur and Camelot in the same way that Merlin himself is.  He has nobody to tell him “this is wrong; you're sacrificing too much,” because everyone he knows is on the same page as him.  All of his companions are sworn to die for the realm.  Will is the only person whose existence reminds Merlin “you mattered BEFORE you went to Camelot and got this magical homework assignment from the gods.  You were just as much of a person back then.” 

Will is the only friend Merlin has who links him back to his original self, who connects him to who he was before destiny buried its hooks into him.  Merlin in S5 has been so alone and so put upon for so long that he believes his only purpose in life is to be an implement of destiny, but Will, if he were alive, would throw a fit every time Merlin started saying things like “his life is worth a hundred of mine” or “I was born to serve [Arthur].”  Merlin might think he's a tool and that his life doesn't matter outside of its ability to usher in the new world, but Will wouldn’t tolerate that attitude.  Will would tell him you are NOT a tool; you are a person, one who likes to read and whose favorite fruit is apples and who gets the hiccups when he eats too fast.  You don't have to do everything somebody tells you to just because they told you to do it.  That's the kind of wrong-headed thinking that got my father killed.

Will would never let Merlin arrive at a spot where Merlin felt like his life and his principles were disposable or worthless in comparison to the success of the “mission.”  And Will would never let Merlin get away with doing questionable things in the name of keeping Arthur alive, either.  Will, in canon, is the person who serves as Merlin's moral compass - in 1.10, Will is the one who's telling Merlin “it is WRONG for you to consider letting all of these people die in order to keep your secret safe.”  Even Merlin's own mother won't tell him that - when she realizes that Merlin is planning to use his magic to help during the battle, she tells him not to do it, despite the fact that there is literally no way the village can defeat Kanen without Merlin's help.  She advocates for Merlin to protect his own secrets, even at the expense of other people's lives.

Will, though.  Will refuses to compromise.  Will wants Merlin to be safe, too, but not at the expense of what makes Merlin who he is.  Will KNOWS that sacrificing others for the sake of his secret isn't what Merlin really wants to do.  Will knows Merlin is better than that.  He tells Merlin to smarten up.  He tells Merlin to do the right thing.

So like - having Will alive would change things for the following two reasons: 1) Will, in canon, is the person who tells Merlin “you deserve better than this,” and 2) Will, in canon, is also the person who tells Merlin “you ARE better than this.  you can do better than this.”  I don’t think Merlin would have made the same choices with Mordred if Will had been present for the previous five seasons, because Merlin would never have fallen so far into the “i don’t remember who i used to be and i can only see one purpose for my life now” hole.  Will would not have let him get to that place.

Possibly more importantly - I honestly think if Will were alive, we might never have ended up in a position where Merlin had to make choices like that about Mordred in the first place.  Will living would change the entire story.  Now Arthur doesn’t just get to sweep the whole “oh man an Evil Sorcerer died/almost died saving my life; that really challenges my worldview; hope I don't have to think about it too hard” issue under the rug, like he does in canon.  He’d have to be confronted with that continuously, every day.  And he would not be able to just project his anti-sorcery beliefs onto Merlin like he does in canon, either - he would know that Merlin's best friend is a sorcerer, and that Merlin continues to stand by said sorcerer even after the sorcery itself has been revealed.  

In canon, Arthur and Merlin avoid this topic forever, and I think Arthur honestly tries to forget it ever happened, because it's easier for him and makes him less uncomfortable, but if Will had lived, they would have been forced to deal with that friction every day, and Arthur would have been constantly confronted by the cognitive dissonance of “sorcery is supposedly evil, but how can it be, when this guy so obviously is not?”  

Will being alive would mean Arthur had to confront his prejudices sooner, because a) I fully believe alive!Will would have eventually followed Merlin anywhere, even to Camelot, and b) once he was there, Will would absolutely have kept up the pretense of being a sorcerer.  He would never have allowed Merlin to be endangered by him abandoning the ruse.  So Arthur would have had to deal with that, and honestly, I’m not sure Camelot’s policies on magic wouldn’t have already changed by the time Mordred showed up again, in this timeline.

There’s one other thing that I want to be clear about when it comes to any question that deals with Merlin’s interactions with Mordred (or many of Merlin’s late-season decisions, to be honest).  

The way Merlin ends up dealing with Mordred is obviously something that we all are watching the screen being like "IF YOU WOULD JUST BE NICER TO HIM EVERYTHING WOULD BE OKAY."  Even before I finished Season 5, I typed up my thoughts/worries/predictions, and I said that I was concerned Merlin's behavior was going to be the thing that ultimately created the exact future with Mordred that he was trying to prevent.  We all know it's a messed up situation.

But I also personally find it absolutely imperative to recognize the unique situation Merlin is in, and that Merlin doesn't react this way to Mordred just for the hell of it, or even because he wants to.  

This is something I want to make sure I address, because when talking about the potential for alive!Will to have changed Merlin’s behavior, it’s too easy for the discussion to be framed like “Will would be able to stop Merlin from doing all those stupid/irrational things, like mistrusting Mordred,” and it’s also VERY easy for the discussion to slide into, “Everything that happens at the end of BBC Merlin happens because Merlin was so consumed by how much he cared for Arthur that he was willing to sacrifice everything to keep Arthur alive (and perhaps Will could have snapped him out of it).”  But I want to be very careful not to give either of those impressions.

There are two things that I am dead set on remembering when I think about any and all of the decisions Merlin makes, including his decisions about Mordred: first, that Merlin does not suspect/reject Mordred (or support/protect Arthur) in a vacuum.  And second, that he doesn't do either of these things solely on Kilgharrah's advice, either. 

Merlin, on a personal level, does not want to be in conflict with Mordred.  He still relates to Mordred as kin, even at the beginning of the Disir (“It won’t always be like this.  One day we will live in freedom again.”)  He LIKES Mordred, even, he tells Gaius.  But when he says so, he expresses it like this: “I like him myself - but I can't ignore what I saw.”

To get into this in a little more detail - why does Merlin struggle with Mordred in the first place?  Because he's been shown that Mordred is going to be instrumental in Arthur's death.  And why is Merlin fixated on preventing Arthur's death?  Because Merlin has been told, by multiple magical and/or godly powers, that Arthur is the key to establishing peace in Albion and returning magic to the land.

This is a non-negotiable point for me when I read things about Merlin's decision-making.  I've written plenty myself about the messed-up place Merlin gets into in S5, where keeping Arthur alive at all costs has overridden every other aspect of his better judgment, but it is ESSENTIAL to me that we recognize that this is not something that happens solely because Merlin has a personal attachment to Arthur.  He does care deeply about Arthur, obviously; he loves him - but that is NOT why Merlin in S5 is slipping into the murky waters of “save Arthur no matter what, even if it means doing things that go against my conscience.”  His decision in the Disir - any decision he makes about Mordred, quite frankly - is not made because of a selfish, personal desire to keep Arthur alive.  It is made because Merlin has been told, repeatedly, from all corners of the magical world, that keeping Arthur alive is the only way to establish peace in the world and liberate magic.  And thus, by the time S5 rolls around, Merlin will do anything to achieve this, even things that seem on the surface to be working against these goals.  He does not make his decisions because he is choosing Arthur OVER his people's liberation, but because he has been told that choosing Arthur IS the way to his people's liberation.

Merlin does not develop his obsessive fixation on keeping Arthur alive because his personal attachment to Arthur becomes so strong that he's willing to just let the rest of the world burn.  He develops it because he has been told that Arthur is the key to creating a world where all people can be free.  And it is ESSENTIAL to recognize that Merlin is not foolish for believing this, either.  He isn't just listening to some random dragon spout nonsense at him.  He has literal gods speaking to him, calling him by the name the Druids gave him and telling him his “time among men is not yet over”; he still has work to do.  Druid prophets show him the future (Mordred killing Arthur) and urge him to “alter the never-ending circle of [Arthur's] fate.”  Alator recognizes the legend Gaius speaks of as true and immediately offers Merlin his support.  Bendrui like Finna (aka the remnants of Morgana's own sect, the High Priestesses) offer Merlin the assistance of further prophecies and tell him “without you, Emrys, Arthur cannot build the world we all long for.”  The Catha pass on “ancient knowledge” about Arthur's fate that they've guarded for hundreds of years, in the hopes that it will help Merlin save Arthur’s life.  The Fisher King recognizes Merlin as Emrys and tells him “I have been waiting all these years for the arrival of a new time: the time of the Once and Future King” - and then he gives Merlin the means to enable Arthur's victory in the S3 finale.  

It's not just Kilgharrah telling Merlin about Arthur's destiny.  It's the wider magical world - and bits of the divine world, too.  Merlin is not stupid, gullible, or deluded to believe that Arthur's role in the prophesied future is true.  It IS supposed to be true, in the Merlin BBC-verse.  (And, once again, this is why the finale is, narratively speaking, garbage.  But that's a topic for another day.)

All of that said - the fact that Merlin has legitimate reasons to believe what he believes and fight for Arthur's survival does not mean that every single sacrifice he makes in the name of achieving that goal is necessarily the only way he could go about things, and that, I think, is where Will being alive would have made a difference.  Will, who loves Merlin more than life itself but does not care about Arthur or Camelot at all, would be a counterbalance to all the messaging Merlin receives about “destiny and Arthur over everything.”  Will would have pulled Merlin back from the brink, with his stubbornly honest, “All right, so you have to do this, but not like this.  Listen to yourself.  This isn't you.  This isn't the you I know.”  

I don’t think anyone else could have done that for Merlin.  Even at the very end of the show, after Merlin has been in Camelot for years, Will is still the longest-running relationship Merlin has ever had (excepting his mother, of course).  Will is the only relationship Merlin has that both predates Camelot and isn’t even slightly concerned with Arthur Pendragon’s well-being.  Will is the only one who isn’t beholden to Arthur or sworn to serve Camelot.  Will is the only person who cares about Merlin instead of Arthur, not along with Arthur.  Merlin has other people who love him, yes, definitely, but Will is the only one who says, “You, over everything else.  You are the only thing on the map for me.”   

The part Will played in Merlin’s life is not something that could be performed by somebody else.  That loss is a hole that cannot be filled, even by other people who know Merlin’s secret.  The history is unique.  Merlin can’t just grow up again with someone else.  Will was irreplaceable; the role he fulfilled in Merlin’s world was singular.  Without his influence, Merlin is perpetually off-kilter.  

Merlin needed someone like that in his life.  He needed somebody to balance out the perpetual focus on Arthur+Destiny, which all of his other relationships encouraged, to varying degrees.  The perpetual focus on Arthur+Destiny is what ultimately led Merlin to make the kind of decisions that he made with Mordred, but if Will had been around to push back on that, then I can’t imagine that things would have unfolded in the same way.

[lightcomingthroughthedarkness]

Do u think it was a mistake for Bob to not address the allegations right after the ex's statement came out? No point in addressing it now after the shitty response E got after denying the cheating. Not saying that he owed explanation to random assholes on the internet, but wonder if harassment wouldn't have been as severe if he had. What do u think? This just breaks my heart and affirms my decision not to join Twitter.

You are right, he doesn't owe anyone an explanation. People on social media are not entitled to information about their personal lives. I know some people say A made it public, therefor he should have responded publicly. I disagree. He can still choose to deal with this privately. Personally I don't know how else to tell people that actors aren't obligated to share their live with fans. They aren't elected officials, they weren't voted into office by us to speak for us, they did not make promises to fans. They're just actors. Which is why there's so much wrong with the celebrity culture we live in. We project onto famous people and WILL them into being what we want them to be or we idealize them in our head and then are utterly shocked when they turn out to be very flawed and very human. Just like you and me. They just happened to be on TV. We make it their responsibility to live up to the person we think they are and when they fall from that picture in our head, we blame the actor. Instead of looking within ourselves and asking ourselves why we let strangers on TV control so much of our emotional well being.

Because I have a lot of asks about this that I have left unanswered, I will answer this one only. I will not be answering any asks about A. I will just delete them. I'll answer this ask in two parts (Bob and Fandom) and then hopefully maybe the timeline can just move on.

Bob.

I don't know if he should have addressed the allegations or not. I'm left wondering.. would it have mattered if he did? If we break it down, it all comes down to the same thing to me. I will not say that A lied in her statement. Lets say Bob disagreed with her on some of the allegations. Maybe he had his own interpretation of events. What would have happened if he responded to it? It would have created a "she said/he said" situation. How would that have helped any of them? It still would have made people harass him and call him a liar and suppressing a woman's voice. And it would have cause a very private matter to be blasted on social media where it absolutely does not need to be.

Lets say Bob had acknowledged any wrongdoings and apologized if indeed there had been any cause for an apology. Would he not have been harassed? If anything, people would have felt their harassment would have been justified since he'd be "guilty". I'm not saying acknowledging wrongdoings is a bad thing but it also comes back to the same point I made earlier. A private matter would have been blasted on social media for strangers to judge. And it would not have stopped the harassment either.

So how should Bob had handled the situation at all? He chose not to handle it in public. He chose to remove himself from fandom's expectations of him and deal with this privately. How, we don't know. It's not our information to know. Like I said, he is a famous actor, but we are not entitled to his person.

Fandom.

At the end of the day, I don't think whether or not Bob addressing the allegation is the problem here. I think it's about fans. Fandom was presented with information that shook us all deeply. It causes a whiplash of emotions for all of us because we had built this actor up in our minds, we had a clear picture of who we thought he was or wasn't, we made this stranger an idealized version of a man we wanted him to be. Then someone poked a hole in that and it caused a crisis.

I think fandom wants Bob to address the allegations so fandom can process what is or isn't true so we can react and feel accordingly. A lot of fans don't know how to feel about this and we feel like there's a puzzle piece we aren't getting, so fans don't know how to identify feelings. Fans don't know in which box to place Bob. Fans don't know which parts are true, which aren't, which can be explained etc and most of all, fans don't know what to do to restore the mental picture of someone they looked up to and it is causing a lot of stress and emotional pressure. Fandom wants Bob to give us the puzzle piece we think will help get our emotions in line and restore, rebuild or change the picture in our minds. Bob not dealing with this in public leaves people feeling like this is unfinished. And we desperately can't stay here so we need answers, right?

The tricky thing here is, we are not entitled to those answers. They are real people, living real lives. Fandom just has to find a way to deal with this and to support them or not support them without any answers other than the ones we've gotten. It's our responsibility to look within. It is not famous people's responsibility to be a role model, they never asked for that. It's not their responsibility to be our safe place, they are human too. It's not their responsibility to fix what we need fixing. They are not beholden to us just because we crossed emotional and mental boundries to them.

I personally am doing well. I still like Bob and Eliza. I've seen the statments from A, from Eliza, from Eliza's mother and everything that's been happening online for weeks and I'm comfortable supporting Bob and Eliza's professional work while simultaneously acknowledging the fact that I do not know these people privately. And therefor, whenever I want to, I can choose to step aside and know, this is not my life. I will not project onto Bob and Eliza but rather support their professional work from the (sort of) comfort of my lumpy couch. They are not beholden to me because I am fan. That's on me. It's my responsibility to be the kind of fan/supporter that fits me. And I have no intention of condemning anyone or taking part in "cancel culture" of people I don't even know and about lives I have not been invited into. And I have absolutely no intention whatsoever to allow 19 year olds on stan twitter to tell me who I am, what I should feel or what is wrong or right. I can do that for myself, thank you very much.

Life does not happen in and around stan twitter. Acknowledge your insignificance and act accordingly. And hopefully the timeline will move on.

[makistar2018]

Why Taylor Swift Has No Problem Defending Herself—No Matter the Cost

by BILLY NILLES Jul. 2, 2019

As Taylor Swift approaches her upcoming 30th birthday, happening on December 13 of this year, she's begun taking stock of the things she's learned over the course of her first three decades on the planet. In March, she let fans in on a handful of them—30 of them, to be exact—via a self-penned piece in Elle and near the very top, perhaps belying its importance to the superstar, is the following:

"Being sweet to everyone all the time can get you into a lot of trouble. While it may be born from having been raised to be a polite young lady, this can contribute to some of your life's worst regrets if someone takes advantage of this trait in you. Grow a backbone, trust your gut, and know when to strike back. Be like a snake—only bite if someone steps on you."

As the last few years have proven, Swift has certainly grown unafraid to bite as a means of defending herself and the things she believes in. Not bad for someone whose so-called silence invited accusations of standing for nothing from critics.

Take this weekend's response to the news that celebrity music manager Scooter Braun, whose list of past and present clientele includes Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Kanye West and Demi Lovato, was the new owner of her entire music catalogue, thanks to his media holding company Ithaca Holdings LLC. reaching a "finalized" contract" with Big Machine Label Group, Swift's former record label, to acquire the company. The deal, made for a reported $300 million, includes Big Machine Music, which means that Braun retain ownership of the master recordings of each of the six albums she's released to date, as well as music from other artists such as Reba McEntire, Sheryl Crow and Lady Antebellum. And, as Swift admitted in an incendiary Tumblr post, it left her feeling "sad and grossed out."

After explaining that she'd hoped to own her work prior to departing Big Machine for Universal Music Group (Big Machine's distributor) in November of last year, only to be offered a deal to "'earn' one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in," as she wrote, she walked away from her past so that her future wouldn't be tied to a company that founder Scott Borchetta was clearly intent on selling to the highest bidder.

Jun Sato/TAS18/Getty Images

"Some fun facts about today's news: I learned about Scooter Braun's purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world," she wrote. "All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I've received at his hands for years."

As she explained in her post, she felt that Scooter's fingerprints were all over West and wife Kim Kardashian West's attempts to assassinate her character in the aftermath of the "Famous" lyrics debacle, which infamously find the rapper claiming that he "made that bitch famous," appearing in a screenshot of a FaceTime call between Bieber and West that the former shared with the since-deleted caption "Taylor swift what up" that she believes was intended to "bully [her] online about it" and allowing then-client West to release "a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked."

"Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it. This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at 15 to someone for whom the term 'loyalty' is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says, 'Music has value,' he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it," she continued. "When I left my masters in Scott's hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words 'Scooter Braun' escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn't want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever."

Taylor's move to take the two men involved in the deal to task has, predictably, drawn a line in the sand in the music industry, with folks like Brendon Urie, Halsey, Iggy Azalea, BFF Todrick Hall and other BFF Selena Gomezs mom Mandy Teefey publicly supporting Swift, while Bieber, Lovato, and Scooter's wife Yael Cohen Braun, who accused Swift of bullying her husband by going public with her beef, thereby sending her fan base his way, coming out in support of him.

While the minutiae of the deal and who knew about what when remains unclear, with Borchetta and Cohen Braun both furnishing receipts of some sort in their rebuttals to Swift that challenge her timeline, what is clear is that Swift is speaking up not just to shine a light on an injustice she's experiencing, but also to prevent other impressionable artistic youth from falling prey to the same sort of contract she willingly signed back in her early teens.

"Thankfully, I left my past in Scott's hands and not my future," she wrote. "And hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make."

It's hardly the first time that Swift has vociferously defended herself while also trying to move the needle forward for those less fortunate than her, be they artists or women in general.

Back in 2013, Swift informed bosses at Denver's KYGO-FM that morning show personality David Mueller had sexually assaulted her, groping her at a meet-and-greet event as they posed for a photo alongside Mueller's then-girlfriend Shannon Melchor. "When we were posing for the photo, he stuck his hand up my dress and grabbed onto my ass cheek," she explained to TIME in 2017. "I squirmed and lurched sideways to get away from him, but he wouldn't let go. At the time, I was headlining a major arena tour and there were a number of people in the room that saw this plus a photo of it happening. I figured that if he would be brazen enough to assault me under these risky circumstances and high stakes, imagine what he might do to a vulnerable, young artist if given the chance. It was important to report the incident to his radio station because I felt like they needed to know. The radio station conducted its own investigation and fired him."

Two years after the radio host saw his employment status at the station go from "current" to "former," he filed suit against Swift, accusing her of lying and suing him for making him lose his job. He wanted $3 million in damages. As result, she brought a countersuit against Mueller for assault and battery, taking him to trial.

AP Photo/Jeff Kandyba

By 2017, she was on the stand, showing an unflappable, steely determination to defend herself in the face of a man who'd wronged her and a legal team intent on discrediting her. When asked why the photos of the incident didn't show the front of her skirt wrinkled as evidence of any wrongdoing, she answered plainly, "Because my ass is located at the back of my body." When she was asked if she felt guilty about Mueller losing his job, she responded, "I'm not going to let you or your client make me feel in any way that this is my fault. Here we are years later, and I'm being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are the product of his decisions—not mine."

In the end, the jury threw out Mueller's unfair dismissal case, ruling in Swift's favor, awarding the singer the symbolic $1 dollar she'd asked for. In a statement released after the verdict was rendered, she said, "I acknowledge the privilege that I benefit from in life, in society and in my ability to shoulder the enormous cost of defending myself in a trial like this. My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard. Therefore, I will be making donations in the near future to multiple organizations that help sexual assault victims defend themselves."

A year later, Swift spoke to fans during a Tampa, Fla. stop on her Reputation Stadium Tour about the incident, thanking them for sticking by her during a "really, really horrible" time in her life. "I just think about all the people that weren't believed, or the people who haven't been believed, or the people who are afraid to speak up because they don't think they will be believed," Swift said. "And I just want to say that I'm sorry to everyone who ever wasn't believed because I don't know what turn my life would have taken if people hadn't believed in me when I said that something happened."

Over the years, Swift has also used her superstar muscle to advocate for what she believes she and all other artists deserve during this streaming revolution. In 2014, after penning an article for the Wall Street Journal in which she argued that "music should not be free" and that artists shouldn't "underestimate themselves or undervalue their art," she pulled her entire discography from Spotify.

"Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment," Swift told Yahoo that November, defending her position. "And I'm not willing to contribute my life's work to an experiment that I don't feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators of this music. And I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free."

A year later, Swift spoke to fans during a Tampa, Fla. stop on her Reputation Stadium Tour about the incident, thanking them for sticking by her during a "really, really horrible" time in her life. "I just think about all the people that weren't believed, or the people who haven't been believed, or the people who are afraid to speak up because they don't think they will be believed," Swift said. "And I just want to say that I'm sorry to everyone who ever wasn't believed because I don't know what turn my life would have taken if people hadn't believed in me when I said that something happened."

Over the years, Swift has also used her superstar muscle to advocate for what she believes she and all other artists deserve during this streaming revolution. In 2014, after penning an article for the Wall Street Journal in which she argued that "music should not be free" and that artists shouldn't "underestimate themselves or undervalue their art," she pulled her entire discography from Spotify.

"Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment," Swift told Yahoo that November, defending her position. "And I'm not willing to contribute my life's work to an experiment that I don't feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators of this music. And I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free."

Instagram

The following June, she penned an open letter to fans, explaining why they wouldn't be able to find her latest album, 1989, wouldn't be made available on Apple Music once the service launched. As she explained, her issue lay with Apple Music's decision not to pay artists during its free three-month trial for users to sign up. "I'm not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months. I find it to be shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company," she wrote, adding that she was speaking on behalf of fellow musicians who had some hesitation at speaking out against the tech company.

"These are not the complaints of a spoiled, petulant child. These are the echoed sentiments of every artist, writer and producer in my social circles who are afraid to speak up publicly because we admire and respect Apple so much. We simply do not respect this particular call," she added. "We don't ask you for free iPhones. Please don't ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation."

A day later, Apple announced that it would, indeed, be paying artists during the free trial period."When I woke up this morning and saw what Taylor had written, it really solidified that we needed a change," Apple's senior vice president of internet services and software Eddy Cue told Billboard in an interview after tweeting that the company was changing course. "And so that's why we decide we will now pay artists during the trial period."

By 2017, in time to celebrate 1989 selling over 10 million albums worldwide and, maybe, to tweak then-frenemy Katy Perry's launch of new album Witness, Swift's music was back on Spotify and added to Amazon Music and Google Play as well.

At every turn, Swift has revealed herself to be someone who has certainly found that backbone she wrote about in Elle. After West claimed he made her famous, he accepted Album of the Year at the 58th Grammy Awards with a speech that didn't mention the rapper by name, but spoke to him just the same. "As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I wanna say to all the young women out there: There are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success, or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame," she said. "But if you just focus on the work and you don't let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you're going, you'll look around and you'll know that it was you and the people who love you that put you there, and that will be the greatest feeling in the world."

When Kardashian West branded her a snake as she shared the questionably-recorded audio of a phone call between Swift and West as he was crafting "Famous," she took the animal iconography on as a central motif in her next album and tour, which became the highest-grossing domestic tour by a woman ever.

"A few years ago, someone started an online hate campaign by calling me a snake on the internet," Swift wrote in Elle. "The fact that so many people jumped on board with it led me to feeling lower than I've ever felt in my life, but I can't tell you how hard I had to keep from laughing every time my 63-foot inflatable cobra named Karyn appeared onstage in front of 60,000 screaming fans. It's the Stadium Tour equivalent of responding to a troll's hateful Instagram comment with 'lol.'"

When speaking with a German news outlet to promote new single "ME!" in May, she was asked if her 30th birthday meant she was going to settle down, get married and have kids soon. She shut that s--t down, saying, "I really do not think men are asked that question when they turn 30. So I'm not going to answer that."

As she's become more politically active, endorsing progressive candidates in her adopted home state of Tennessee, emphatically calling out President Trump, and advocating on behalf of the LGBTQIA community during this most recent Pride Month, after years of being criticized for sitting silently on the sidelines, she's opened herself up to criticism from those who wish their pop stars would shut up—unless they're spouting views identical to their own, of course. But it's no different to the criticism she faced when she was silent, or when she dared to demand fair compensation for her art, or when she simply wanted to be believed as a victim of sexual assault. All of which she's learned to look past.

"I learned to block some of the noise," she wrote in Elle. "Social media can be great, but it can also inundate your brain with images of what you aren't, how you're failing, or who is in a cooler locale than you at any given moment. One thing I do to lessen this weird insecurity laser beam is to turn off comments...I'm also blocking out anyone who might feel the need to tell me to 'go die in a hole ho' while I'm having my coffee at nine in the morning. I think it's healthy for your self-esteem to need less internet praise to appease it, especially when three comments down you could unwittingly see someone telling you that you look like a weasel that got hit by a truck and stitched back together by a drunk taxidermist. An actual comment I received once."

As for those in real life who are bringing her strife—like, say, Braun and Borchetta, currently—she's got a plan for dealing with that, as well.

"Banish the drama. You only have so much room in your life and so much energy to give to those in it," she wrote. "Be discerning. If someone in your life is hurting you, draining you, or causing you pain in a way that feels unresolvable, blocking their number isn't cruel. It's just a simple setting on your phone that will eliminate drama if you so choose to use it."

In other words, put quite simply, she's learned how to shake it off.

E! News

[violetsystems]

#personal

The mood indoors lately is a lot more calming than it was maybe a year ago.  A lot of that has to do with me growing through all of this.  I’ve been left to myself for the most part which I think is for the best.  I haven’t really had anyone to brag about the positives to other than writing here.  I’ve been working on setting up the apartment to be a little more energy efficient.  This sometimes has adverse reactions like when I fuck up and shut off processor game boost on my computer and try to do a stream.  I’m pretty sure the BIOS reset itself.  If there’s one thing I’ve become more conscious of the last year it’s how much I use of everything.  Last summer I dived head into a catastrophic situation by ruthlessly creating normality for myself.  I made a monthly budget.  I kept myself cash forward and away from credit.  I analyzed what I spent and why.  I navigated an unprecedented situation almost effortlessly according to some people.  But I can assure you with great confidence a lot of people in real life weren’t actually there.  Which is why I’m extremely skeptical when people from your past magically show up at your doorstep.  Whatever the reason.  However believable or wishful thinking it is in these times that we can just pick up where we left off.  I have the unfortunate habit of keeping tabs on everything.  It’s what got me through a year of total uncertainty.  And one thing for me is certain.  Serendipity and synchronicity may exist in my life still.  But for the most part I’ve seen the same old tricks evolve slowly over time.  Last Saturday I went out to check the mail.  Coincidence or not, someone I knew from years ago was fixing my neighbor’s bike.  Within the first seconds of saying hi, the person was already hurling stuff at me that they shouldn’t have known about.  How I lost my job at the school he attended a year ago.  A job he kept mentioning I applied for at a video game company where his friend works last November.  How he’s been buddy buddy with the neighbor who just moved in.  How serendipitous for this all to happen in America after a year of what I’ve been through?  It’s been more than a year if you want my post mortem on a dead issue.  I projected as best as I could.  That I had applied for the company but was focusing on other opportunities outside the city.  I had an envelope in my hand the entire time I had been waiting for.  Information about my health insurance from my old employer.  I went in and set it on the table and remembered a book on the shelf I had on loan from the very same person out front.  I grabbed it instinctively as if to settle all debt and contact.  Went back out front and returned it to him with out much commentary.  The next day I blocked that person following me on twitch.  Insane I know.  I only have two or three followers.  Most bots.  It’s like I’m shooting myself in the foot in the face of opportunity.  I also reported it.  Which makes me the asshole for shutting people out of my life who were never invited back into it in the first place.  I know how all this works by now and I will be gaslighted into the stage of history.  I think our confidence gets tricked often when we refuse to accept a sinking status quo.  We’re made to feel guilty through isolation.  Why am I so mean?  I brought this all on myself.  The last year.  I reached out to an entire network of those people I worked with and serviced on LinkedIn a year ago.  That network of people fell silent apparently scared to go on record talking to me on a digitally monitored platform.  Why now?  The shitty irony of the situation was the mail in my hand.  I opened the envelope after I returned the book I never read.  Something about ayahuasca and a cosmic serpent.  The envelope was more revealing.  My health insurance was officially covered for the next three months due to a subsidy.  There were also three months from April to June I had been paying where I owed nothing.  So it’s pretty much covered through the end of the year.  That is if I don’t find a job immediately like the video game company everybody from the past I keep holding at bay just happens to be friends with.  The same token I post an article about led wireless light security on a professional website and people from Shenzhen I don't even know visit my profile.  Which do I really want to connect to at this point?  The past or the future.  

That past largely has gotten it all wrong.  If it got it right I would not be sitting here bathed in crimson light at my kitchen table listening to 0pn at six thirty in the morning.  It wouldn’t show up to my doorstep unannounced leaving me to question the motives after a year of exile.  I get that it is the summer.  This city can be a blessing or a curse.  It’s an easy city to disappear in.  Affordable at times but often extremely bitter towards people who go their own way.  It judges everything around it based on a meat and potatoes Midwestern mentality.  Sophistication and creativity is stifled unless it’s part of a broader narrative that the city and the rich people who own it can leverage.  There really isn’t a place for you unless someone has their say and can roast you.  The negging is tribal and it punishes people who don’t offer up their entire life story for public record.  When you do offer up your side of events, it’s buried.  Like a zombie I rise from the grave to remind people weekly that I have no power in changing any of this.  I’m stuck in between the worst of everything and the best right around the corner.  I’ve been around the world and yet nobody wants to hear about it unless they can explain it for you.  People take words out of your mouth and insert themselves back into your life without any thought.  It’s like the city, state and communal shit pile of neighbors and acquaintances owns your future.  If you try to do it alone, they’ll let you know.  Societal pressure is on all sides.  If they can’t corral you in with politics, they’ll isolate you until you break down and plead for help.  A year later, the only real help I focus on is monetary.  I shudder to think staying another year here alone and yet it seems completely hopeless and futile to hope for anything else.  A large reason I want to put the past behind me is how utterly fucking irresponsible and worthless it is.  People think they know who you are because they spoke to you when you were drunk.  And since you don’t drink or get invited to anything social, people feel the need to engineer entrapment on your doorstep when you are beholden to the importance of the mail.  It’s not like my mail ever comes on time.  I’m looking at the fourth package in a few month that needs to be redelivered because it never made it to my doorstep.  I have not just given up on things getting better here.  I have taken evasive action and shut down pretty much everyone and everything that savored the opportunity to ghost me.  There is no excuse.  Not even a pandemic.  No real alibi to leave someone to rot after twenty years of service.  They forgot.  I don’t forget.  I’m constantly reminded that I’m lucky to even have a resume that points to how overqualified I am for everything.  Apparently getting a job isn’t about skill or experience.  It’s about who you know.  And I’m supposed to throw my arms open to the universe and thank the heavens that some pseudo commie spy has an in for me at the video game company for less than I’m worth.  That’s the real story.  I’m worth more than that.  You don’t just spend a year ignoring me and suddenly create a situation where my confidence is pressured into letting these people back in.  That is the very definition of entrapment to me.  So much so that it hurts to think about how close to home I feel unsafe.  I literally walk out my door and I cannot avoid people trying to crowbar their way back into my good graces.  That’s not normal.  None of this has been normal.  And so I react the way I do.  I block people.  I say no.  I isolate what’s working and what isn’t.  And it sucks.  The feelings of guilt that were orchestrated for the very purpose of sowing doubt in yourself and your decisions.  Men mostly trying to assert their authority and their freedom to dictate and pick apart your life.  It’s fucking foul what happened on Saturday.  And the foulest part of it is that I would be gaslighted for even questioning the timing.

So I don’t.  That’s the biggest trap of all this.  Me reacting.  Me getting even outside of writing.  I don’t really want to connect to my past at all.  I know how much baggage it is.  I know how much of my life got thrown away because I didn’t turn out as weak as people thought I’d be.  I know that moving forward is painful because letting go is hard.  And yet I don’t really have much information that would lead me to trust the people who have been absent from my life.  It’s bullshit.  And it’s harder still to realize that I have to feel awkward because I feel unsafe.  I’m the one who has had to tiptoe around all of this.  I do it well.  Obviously there’s things in my life that are welcome.  Things that inspire me without being overbearing.  Friends that keep in touch without any sinister connections or agendas.  People who keep tabs on me without acting like the secret police.  It’s such a tumultuous and unprecedented time!  Let’s celebrate it by reconnecting to the same old bullshit.  Let’s all make the same fucking mistakes.  Let’s pretend it never happened.  I’m fine with that.  Just leave me alone.  There is nothing worth reconnecting at this point that isn’t already strapped in for the ride.  There is nothing really for me to become other than gainfully employed in a job that I like.  At current that is working for myself.  I wish it were more lucrative and sustainable.  But folding back into the fray after being left alone for so long is a dead end.  I’ve pushed myself further than I ever would have in the past.  I’ve become another person entirely.  I know when I’m off putting.  I know when I have no reason to smile it away.  And I know I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with this much vitriol for a city that just wants to pretend it’s my own problem.  You get burnt by these slime for years and people don’t want to believe it’s true.  It couldn’t happen here.  It couldn’t be that bad.  That guy is just blowing it all out of proportion.  Forget the fact he’s travelled half the world alone.  Forget all the things we ignore that he’s done while we weren’t watching.  We know him best.  We’ve watched him his entire life.  If that were really true, what has anyone really learned?  I’m in pain?  Yes.  I hurt so deeply from all of this that I’d rather just forget it and move on.  But there is nowhere to go.  Everyone has their say or I stay invisible.  And what is there to offer?  In this city apparently nothing.  I can’t find a job unless I go get drunk with the bros at the bar or the noise show?  I’m supposed to take a pay cut when I already worked for a non profit.  If you ask me I want none of this.  I want better things for myself.  And I’m not going to sell myself short because I’m scared it will pass me by.  Look at the last year.  How much shit just pretended I was dead to the world?  That was apparently my fault.  Every time I’m faced with that accusation by the peanut gallery on the street causes me emotional pain.  The real truth is that it was never worth my time.  And I learned that a long time ago.  A year ago to be exact.  I was meant for better things.  And unfortunately the way things are, you have to take charge.  Of your life and your destiny.  Sometimes you have to say no.  Sometimes saying nothing at all is the biggest fuck you.  I know how it feels.  Nobody said anything substantial to me for about a year now.  Maybe that’s why a simple like in my dash means far more to me than a fake setup and an offer I can’t refuse.  This isn’t The Godfather.  This is the departed.  And I’m already far removed from what this city thought it could trick me back into.  That’s the baggage that doesn’t deserve to be brought into the future.  So don’t worry about me holding up the flight.  All I have is my carry on and a clean slate.  We can fly anywhere.  If I stay around here alone they’re going to clip my wings for good eventually.   It’ll be made to look like an accident.  Just like the entire last year.  And they’ll keep doing it because nobody calls them out for being wrong.  <3 Tim

[blindalleycomix]

Joe has read "Marvel Comics the Untold Story" by Sean Howe This could've been retitled "Why Joe Never Went Pro" but I can see why they didn't call it that.. The following is likely to offend any diehard Marvel fan that may be reading this, just as a heads-up. I think that's enough preamble. This book was a Christmas present (thx ma!) which I was immediately wary of "Untold story? 0 photographs? Can we substitute 'authorized' for 'told'?" But once I begrudgingly started it I was immediately transfixed. There was so much I didn't know, about how things got started way back when (the first "comic books" were reprinted Sunday funnies just repackaged UNTIL-) and I would have to say that the first few chapters were definitely my favorite. I will say as a narrative in & of itself "Marvel Untold" is an engaging read, to the extent I was able to plough through all 432 pages in a couple weeks or so. Some of it was a little bit dry, as a lifelong NOT big Marvel fan, there were plenty of eras I felt at sea in but was guided through fairly efficiently by Mr Howe. This is the product of an insane amount of research, & contained numerous quotes from archival interviews yes, but also living survivors (yes, survivors) the author himself seemed to have cornered somehow. Perhaps by "accidentally" jumping in their same taxi or disguising as a server at their favorite restaurant or who knows. But seriously I was very impressed with his wealth of knowledge, not just on Marvel Comics but comics in general. Probably my biggest caveat is the aforementioned void of photographs & illustrations which sent me googling more than was leisurely. As far as the story of Marvel itself goes: WOW. Where to begin. (well Joe, in the late '30's..) It's ridiculous of me myself to pass judgement on this monolith, this behemoth that chews artists up & spits them in the recycling pile (nowadays) -that has made such an impact on pop culture as we know it today. But what a trail of blood! Holy Moses. I guess as an outside observer reading the history without living it & being a part of it, much less running it, it's easy to point fingers & say "this is where you went wrong" or "this was obviously the wrong guy to run the show while Stan was hot-tubbing it in sunny L.A. (Jim Shooter, I'm looking straight at you)". But they didn't learn from their mistakes, like ever! It was a constant pattern of overexpansion which led to massive layoffs & destroyed lives. All too often quality was sacrificed for quantity, creativity for commerce. I know, "duh". Even as a 14-year-old I couldn't understand why one character needed 5 or more titles! I could go on & on, but you get my drift. It's actually NOT "Marvel sucks" it's more just. I dunno. As a guy that draws comics that I wrote, reading this book, my heart went out to all these artists and writers that "just wanted to tell a story" but came up against humanly impossible deadlines (two issues a month of the same title?!?), who were beholden to the restrictions of basically bean counters! For more than a decade, Marvel was ran by people who "didn't read comics"! Stan left his baby alone in the wilderness with the wolves of Wall Street. Complicated figure, uncle Stan. Ya gotta love 'im, I mean- ya gotta. He was a power house in his day & with Kirby & Ditko changed the world, more or less for the better. He was a firm believer in civil rights & did things in comics that were pretty revolutionary at the time, especially in the mainstream. Although in many cases it was more reactionary to world events (women's lib especially) but nonetheless I do feel his heart was...he fought for what was right & then I dunno. I think he got burned out. He also took a little more credit than he was due, but this is running long. Ultimately his contribution caused generations to read, and draw, and create, and that is always a good thing. Just thought it was funny how for years after Kirby left their policy seemed to be "we need you to draw just like Jack Kirby but we're not gonna pay you nearly as much. Sound good?" Printed in 2012 this book does suffer slightly from being already dated. Which is understandable, it looks like it came out shortly after the first (& best) Avengers movie. I'd be curious to read about how the movies affected the industry if at all, but maybe that'll be in the next book. My guess is, not a whole lot. Kids either read comics or they don't. One last word of praise, since the mcu is so convoluted & vast, I've long contemplated "boning up" on some gold or silver age but was never really sure where to start. This book was helpful in that it explored eras & titles that piqued my interest & may have given me a decent enough starting place, basically '70's Dr Strange. (Not saying "excelsior") I guess recommended? https://ift.tt/2uh6ovY

[comepraisetheinfanta]

Been back home for I think almost three weeks now? Anyway I'm obviously still depressed and anxious as fuck but I'm not 🚨🚨DEPRESSED AND ANXIOUS 🚨🚨 so that's definitely an improvement. I don't miss school all that much but I do miss living on campus and I miss my routine and I can't wait for my sister to get married... Though it's not a "yay I'm so happy for the bride" kind of eagerness (which I feel kind of guilty about especially since I'm her sister and her maid of honor but I just can't get myself excited about the wedding [growing up with a father whose emotional constipation rubbed off on me, being numb bc Depression™, a complicated relationship with my sister, and a boring af groom are the main things responsible for my lack of enthusiasm]) and more like I'm eager for this life altering event to FINALLY happen so that I can finally move on with my life. As soon as all the wedding madness is over I can finally start creating my own private space in the house, I can start building my own routine, looking for work, volunteering, finding a shrink etc etc. Actually, you know what? I don't feel guilty for not being excited about the wedding or my sister getting married. I literally could've derailed my sister's wedding with a single nod of my head because while I was completely losing my shit in January my parents asked if I wanted them to talk my sister into postponing her wedding so that they could help me deal with my clearly serious issues instead of focusing on all the time-consuming wedding prep, but I told them not to do that because I didn't want to be a Grade A asshole and fuck up my sister's wedding plans. I haven't told my sister any of that because I don't want her to feel "beholden" to me or whatever other awkward or negative feelings that might create. Like, Sis, I'm sorry I'm not particularly thrilled about who you're marrying and that the two of you as a couple lowkey annoy me, but I have sucked it up and have been supportive so I get to keep feeling whatever the fuck I want as long as I don't behave like an asshole.

[connorrenwick]

LikeMindedObjects Is a Multifaceted Studio Spreading Its Creativity Far and Wide

The following post is brought to you by Squarespace. Our partners are hand picked by the Design Milk team because they represent the best in design.

LikeMindedObjects is the studio of artist and designer Elise McMahon. Through her collection of resourcefully designed lighting, furniture, and objects, she hopes to empower us all by enhancing our quality of living. Aside from these colorful, lighthearted pieces that you can pick up in LikeMindedObjects’s shop, the team also works with clients to create custom furniture and lighting for all sorts of public and private spaces. LikeMindedObjects also collaborates on events and exhibitions that explore inclusivity and uniqueness. Squarespace helps Elise out with her website and her shop, making it easy to update her shop with new pieces, making her feel tech savvy while also taking the middleman out of the typical web developer/client relationship.

Photo by Kyle Knodell

As you can see, there are quite a few exciting aspects of LikeMindedObjects’ business. So we asked Elise the obvious – how did her business come about?

“LikeMindedObjects officially started about 7 years ago. I had been very casually self-employed for a few years, making furniture for people by word of mouth, teaching woodworking and upholstery at various arts studios in NYC, and intuitively making furniture and sculptures that resulted in what became my first collection. Mostly out of powder coated bent aluminum tubing and perforated metals, hardwoods, and upholstery of leather and hides from friends farms. I was, and am always, responding to the materials in my surrounding environment and at the time I had just moved to upstate New York in the Hudson Valley, and was feeling very inspired by my surrounding community and moved towards solidifying my independent business practices.,” she shared.

Photo by Kyle Knodell

Being casually self-employed and relying on word of mouth advertising is definitely a common jumping off point for creatives of all types, but what brought Elise to the point of actually opening LikeMindedObjects creative studio?

She says, “I was constantly motivated as an individual to create special, inclusive situations for social interaction and idea sharing – whether that be through furniture, interior designing, and building or collaborating with artist friends on temporary installations or activations like artist dinners, concept businesses, or education projects. This is what differentiated between a “Design” studio or a “Creative” studio. With the term creative studio I felt I could more properly portray the potential for various roles we could play for a client – from branding, curatorial projects, event planning, or interiors and furniture. I saw these all as fair game in approaching our work. That being said, I have always felt furniture, interior, and product design was the core approach. I believe each object can tell a super potent story, a story of the manufacturing, material and labor, and then ultimately the person who owns and displays this item in their home. We are communicating to our visitors and ourselves what our priorities are with how we operate in our daily life in our unique personal spaces, which pretty much expresses two things – how we spend our time and how we spend our money.”

Photo courtesy of Healthyish Bon Appetit

LikeMindedObjects really reaches wide with its breadth of capabilities and interests. We were curious which part of the multi-dimensional studio came about first and how things progressed from there.

“I think two things were happening simultaneously. Freelancing custom fabrication work in NYC honed my methods of making in a professional context, and then my personal creative practice honed my visual and material voice. When I married those two things together is when LikeMindedObjects came to be what it is. From a full interior to a piece of jewelry, these items are truly like-minded in the belief that there is so much humanity at play in our built environments and accessories.,” Elise says.

With so much on her plate, we had to ask Elise how Squarespace assists LikeMindedObjects in both maintaining their multifaceted portfolio as well as helping to run the e-commerce side of things.

“I am a real DIY gal, so having my site through Squarespace has actually been perfect for me. I love tweaking my pages regularly, updating with new projects and photos. It’s amazing that right when I have something new I can photograph it in my studio and put it up for sale that day. I never really thought of myself as particularly computer savvy, but with Squarespace I feel super comfortable adjusting everything to how I imagine it should be. I can create context around the objects by showing images of installations or interiors that have similar objects, or create click through pictures linked to project pages so people can connect the dots themselves. My parents are artists too, and I remember watching them deal with their website builder 10 years ago, how long it would take to get him to upload anything new and the costs associated. I remember thinking even as a teenager that if I ever had a website I did not want to be beholden to a middle man.”

Photo by Yulia Zinschtein

With so much being created it’s always interesting to learn how an artist pares down what projects to sell and what to start over or move on from.

Elise shared her thoughts on the process. “In contrast to custom furniture/interior design I feel like having the LMO shop, both online and IRL in Hudson NY, allows me to experiment and focus in on more playful product design and furniture collection. It also helps me focus my manufacturing practice towards multiples, not just one offs. I love thinking about what can be manufactured in an artist-style factory. The Hose Lamp or Face Mirrors, for example, have their unique parts and fabrication process but also are consistent with the functionality of other products within the same typology on the market (i.e. “lamp” or “mirror”), but how can we play with the normal assumptions around those items?”

Photo by Pippa Drummond & Sight Unseen

Having the chance to work on so many interesting projects and collaborations must make it difficult to play favorites, but we asked Elise what hers might be anyway.

“I have worked collaboratively on a number of projects over the years, mostly in an art context, but then again I truly believe that when a client hires me for furniture/interior work we become collaborators immediately. This past year, the LMO team created a very special food and game space for the NYC offices of online art gallery platform, Artsy. Their head of office environment, Sean Roland, commissioned us for a new space. He is a great collaborator and brought us on with a lot of clarity of functionality paired with flexibility of aesthetics, which allowed us to explore our most current excitements in materiality and fabrication. We created bleached reuse denim upholstered banquets, powder coated plant stand room dividers, lighting, and colorful formica floating shelving. When it all came together it made a super functional but visually rich space.,” she says.

Photo by Kyle Knodell

Rather recently Elise has taken LikeMindedObjects from living solely online to also having a physical presence as a brick and mortar showroom – ENKYU LIKEMINDEDOBJECTS SHOP – located in Hudson, New York, that’s shared with her partner Enky Bayarsaikhan’s clothing line.

She shares, “Alongside a webshop, the showroom really seemed to be the next step towards piecing together what is necessary for a design business. There needed to be a beautiful space to display collections in the interim between creation and purchase. My fabrication studio has projects moving through constantly, of course creating dust and other moving parts, so my finished pieces really needed their own clean reality.  Also the storefront we found was previously a photo studio, so we inherited an amazing fully built-out corner NYC wall for taking product photography. It felt quite serendipitous. Another serendipitous element was that a good friend, Enky Bayarsaikhan, was also looking for a storefront for her clothing collection ENKYU. We partnered on the space – my furniture, her clothing. So of course we called it ENKYU LIKEMINDEDOBJECTS SHOP, and the rest is history. We also use Squarespace for our store website and link it to our personal pages, which has been the perfect balance of together but separate business structure.”

Photo by Kyle Knodell

So, what’s on the upcoming horizon for Elise and the LikeMindedObjects team as we continue to roll through 2019?

According to Elise, quite a bit! “There are a couple of projects about to launch that I cannot say anything about yet, but keep an eye out for an LMO collection being distributed nationally this summer! Also, I have been working to develop a collection of zero waste upholstered furniture which is so exciting to me, as the typically found upholstery materials we have all come to use are actually made of quite unhealthy petroleum based foams – I am developing alternatives that feel really positive. I am working to further manifest an approach to design that is truly ethical. I want LikeMindedObjects to be deeply conscious of the labor, materials, and impacts of what we make to align with the foundational understandings necessary to respect within a circular economy. This has intuitively been at the core of our products since the beginning, but I feel even more empowered now to follow through on a larger more impactful scale. For obvious environmental reasons that I think everyone wants to get behind this, we just needs to have clearer paths towards making the correct choice, right?”

Ready to get to work on your site? Take the first step with a Squarespace website. Use coupon code DESIGNMILK at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

Photo by Kyle Knodell

via http://design-milk.com/

from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/29/likemindedobjects-is-a-multifaceted-studio-spreading-its-creativity-far-and-wide/

[joneswilliam72]

Meet Halt and Catch Fire composer & former member of Tangerine Dream, Paul Haslinger.

I caught up with Emmy-nominated composer,  and former member of the classic German electronic band Tangerine Dream, Paul Haslinger, for a chat on composing challenges, his career, what makes a great score, what it was like composing for Netflix's much-lauded Mötley Crüe movie The Dirt,  and more, as it relates to his latest project, "Halt and Catch Fire Volume 2 – Original Television Series Soundtrack", which can be ordered here courtesy of Lakeshore Records.

Paul Haslinger.

Tangerine Dream in Minneapolis, MN in 1986. Paul Haslinger is pictured in the middle with Edgar Froese. Source: welt.de

Haslinger is an LA-based, Austrian composer and electronic musician known for his involvement with legendary German group Tangerine Dream from 1986 till 1990, as well as his extensive work for film, television, and video game scores. During the 1990s, he also released a few solo albums (three under his own name and one as Coma Virus) that explored various ethnic influences as well as industrial, dark ambient, and triphop. He has collaborated with Nona Hendryx, Jon Hassell, Lustmord, Fennesz, and many others. 

Haslinger began scoring short films in the late '90s, in addition to programming and arranging film scores by Graeme Revell, including The Siege, Pitch Black, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Starting with 2000 HBO film Cheaters, Haslinger scored several films by director John Stockwell, including Crazy/Beautiful and Blue Crush.

He began scoring video games with 2005's Far Cry Instincts for Ubisoft Entertainment. Haslinger's music for the Showtime series Sleeper Cell was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2007. Other notable soundtracks Haslinger has composed include Shoot 'Em Up (2007), Death Race (2008), Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009), The Three Musketeers (2011), Underworld: Awakening (2012), Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016), The Dirt (2019) and Halt and Catch Fire.

Halt and Catch Fire—the AMC Studios series that ran for four seasons – captures the rise of the PC era in the early 1980s, focused on four main characters attempting to innovate against the changing backdrop of technology and Texas’ Silicon Prairie. The series was created and is executive produced by showrunners Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers.

Catch "Halt and Catch Fire Volume 2 – Original Television Series Soundtrack" out now, courtesy of those most-excellent purveyors of always spectacular film music, Lakeshore Records; also enjoy the exclusive track – titled "Dreamers and Misfits" – that The 405 premiered from it embedded below the interview here. 

HALT AND CATCH FIRE Season 1 trailer.

Hello Paul and welcome to The 405! To start things off, I was hoping we could get an idea of what your creative process as a composer looks like when you start a project.

I usually start by looking for creative sparks - could be a new sound, a conceptual idea, a script, some footage I see… or a combination thereof. Once there is a spark, there is usually fire and then you just need to make sure the wind does't blow it out.

Very true. On a somewhat related question, your approach. What are the main things that a great score needs to do?

Functionally speaking, score supports story. And a big part of that is to not get in the way of story. I find most projects over-scored. Music should have its moments to shine, but it should be content at other times to stay extremely simple and understated if that's what supports the picture the best.

I agree. The best is not distracting. It does not snap you out of suspending your disbelief with the movie itself. You still forget you're watching a movie – if it's a good one.

Pivoting just a bit, you have quite the variety of film genres under your "composed by" belt too. Do you consider one genre easier to score than another? Why or why not?

Not really. So far, I've found ways under any circumstances to have some musical fun – it doesn't really matter to me which particular country we're in, or where we're driving. One of the absolute perks of writing for film and TV is specifically the fact that you are not beholden to a particular style. You can try as many different things as you like. For someone who gets bored quickly, this is quite a gift. It also bears the risk of getting lost on occasion, a price I'm happy to pay.

That seems to be the consensus among many of the composers I've put that question to. I admire your adaptability there too Paul, I'd imagine it's key in helping keep things interesting.

Does your time in Tangerine Dream influence your approach as a composer? Why or why not?

 It certainly was my start in film scoring and it laid the foundation for many things that came after.

Tangerine Dream at the time was understood as an alternative to traditional film scoring and it's a principle I kept applying in my work after leaving the band. On the other hand, Tangerine Dream was asked for the same type of alternate score over and over again. Leaving the band allowed me to cast my net wider, to keep exploring and discovering.

Interesting. Did your time in Tangerine Dream color your approach to Halt and Catch Fire with it being an '80s period series? What else initially attracted you to it?

At the start, it was obviously just a project that seemed like a good fit, a great chance to have some fun. Once I began working on the show, it became clear very quickly that this was not just an opportunity to revisit some '80s music, but that the writing, the cast, the whole crew, was one of those lucky coincidences where the right elements come together at the right time. One of the best teamwork experiences I ever had, it really fuelled everybody to work extra-hard and come up with something special.

That's fantastic. I remember really enjoying the series when it first came out. That kind of atmosphere really bleeds over into the final cut. What were the challenges like on scoring it?

There was great mutual respect between all creatives on the show, and the biggest challenges were typically the ones I set for myself, wanting my work to match the quality of the material I was scoring. The show's creators, Christ Cantwell and Chris Rogers, are both huge music fans, so we would regularly geek out on all aspects of sound, mix and general sonic architecture of the show. We definitely kept challenging each other, in the best and most creative ways.

Cool! A twist on a question I usually ask, what films, scores, composers and musicians would you say most molded you as a composer and musician?

If you're asking who inspired me, that's a ridiculously long list…

Yeah, it's a big question.

I am not sure if anybody "molded" me –

Substitute "influenced."

I see myself in a long chain of musicians and music history, where certain composers and events always influenced and inspired the next generation – it's a fluid structure with no hard delineations.

Absolutely.

Picking a few favorite composers of recent times (and with a spotlight on film), I would mention Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, Georges Delerue, Jerry Fielding, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Warren Ellis, Arvo Pärt, Edgard Varése.

Cast of HALT AND CATCH FIRE. Source:AMC

One title you scored that jumped out at me because I consider the film a bit of a guilty pleasure is 2007's Shoot ‘Em Up. The film is pretty brilliant, high-octane, action movie satire and the "bullet ballet" moniker for it was very fitting. I'm curious, what were the unique challenges with that as a project?

It was a tricky project, for sure. They had tried a variety of music approaches and found that they wanted a more modern approach than the usual Hollywood orchestral score. The film had some edge and they wanted the music to reflect that.

Absolutely. That scene with Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” absolutely embodied that edge, musically-speaking, as an example.

My approach was to go into a studio here in LA and to form a band for the project (Justin Meldal-Johnson of Beck and NIN fame was musical director).

Nice.

We recorded a lot of material, some of it to picture, other parts just as free track developments. I then pre-mixed and went on writing the score based on these recordings, adding new parts. It was the first time I worked in this open, modular style (cycles of writing - recording - arranging) and have stuck with it ever since. It combines my knowledge of working in studios producing records, with writing for the specific purposes of film.

Monica Bellucci and Clive Owen in 2007’s SHOOT ‘EM UP. Source:YouTube

Fascinating how a movie like Shoot 'Em Up would help you find and refine that new way of working.

You've also scored great movies like The Dirt. What were the challenges like on that when much of the main music is Mötley Crüe level legendary? Does that put an interesting kind of pressure on a composer?

The Dirt was a lot of fun, in part, again, because we had a great team working on it. Knowing there would be a lot of featured and on-camera MC music, it was clear the score would function as a supplement, or glue, if you will, tying the story together and keeping the energy going in moments that did not feature any songs. It was a lot of fun, despite some of the gory details.

Interesting. Yeah, it's getting a lot of very justified praise. Our last question Paul, what's next for you?

I am finishing a new album project with Peter Baumann (ex-Tangerine Dream, like myself) which we hope to release later this year.

Wonderful.

I am also starting to work on the film Monster Hunter, which will reunite me with [director and writer] Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich. Monster Hunter is based on the computer game of the same name. Set for release in early 2020, it will be larger than life and a great opportunity to come up with more musical monster madness.

  Follow Paul on Twitter and Instagram. Like his page on Facebook too!

”Dreamers and Misfits” from “HALT AND CATCH FIRE, Volume 2 – Original Television Series Soundtrack.

THE DIRT (2019) trailer.

SHOOT ‘EM UP (2007) trailer.

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2I768VU

[chocolate-brownies]

Office politics. Dictatorial bosses. Coworkers’ emotions bouncing up and down and sideways. Hi-tech tools that keep changing and updating. An uncertain economy and a volatile job market. Escalating levels of expectation. Loss of direction. Too much to do. Too little time. Not enough sleep.

Whether you work in a traditional or progressive environment, on your own or in a sea of cubicles, work life is full of challenges. Most of us are beholden to the income we receive from our jobs, and beyond that, we get up and go to work because we have a real desire to contribute to the greater good. Turning away from work is not an option for most of us, so we buck up and throw ourselves into the challenges of the workplace. Some of us are doing well, successful and satisfied. But too many of us are not happy at work. We’re stressed out and quite possibly confused. We may appear to be effective, but gnawing issues like those above can make work secretly (or not so secretly) a drag. That’s not great for us and it’s not great for the people we’re working with. So where do we begin if we want to improve our work life for ourselves and those around us? I suggest starting with the mind. Ask yourself: what is the quality of my mind at work? What’s happening in my mind as the hours at work go by day in and day out? Is my mind working at its utmost?

Ask yourself: what is the quality of my mind at work?

The mind contains untold resources and possibilities—for creativity, kindness, compassion, insight, and wisdom. It’s a storehouse of tremendous energy and drive. And yet it can also be a nattering annoyance, an untamed animal, or a millstone that drags us down. Sometimes we would like to just shut it off so we can get some work done or have a moment’s peace. Yet our mind is the one thing we can’t shut off. So why not make the most of it instead? Why not put it to good use? Through mindfulness, we can train our minds to work better.

By training us to pay attention moment by moment to where we are and what we’re doing, mindfulness can help us choose how we will behave, nudging (or jolting) us out of autopilot mode. Here are a few suggestions for how to bring mindfulness into our workplace. This won’t just give us some relief from stress; it can actually change, even transform, how we work.

Four Ways To Create a More Mindful Work Routine

1) Keep an open mind

Do we see what is really there, or is what we experience filtered through our own thoughts and preconceptions? Maybe we should check how we’re seeing before we try to change what we’re seeing. First, we need to make sure our lens is clear.

Much of the suffering and discomfort we experience at work—and elsewhere—stems from our deeply held views, opinions, and ideas that become lenses through which we perceive the events of our lives. No doubt the machinery of perception each of us has developed has served us well for the most part, guiding and supporting us at critical junctures. But the burden of adhering to set patterns of perceiving while we grapple with the drama and minutiae of everyday life can be limiting and, frankly, an invitation to misery.

When we’re convinced things ought to be a certain way and they’re not, we suffer. When someone refuses to act in the way we think they should, we suffer. When we don’t get what we want, when we want it—or when we get what we don’t want, anytime—you guessed it: we suffer. The workplace, such a microcosm of life in its entirety, is rife with opportunities to march straight into suffering. What we need to explore is whether our distress really derives from the workplace itself or instead from how we apply our default ways of perceiving to the challenges we face at work.

The workplace, such a microcosm of life in its entirety, is rife with opportunities to march straight into suffering.

The mind will try to force any situation it meets into its favorite ways of perceiving and will react with distress when it meets resistance. Many years ago I had a coworker who consistently got me riled up. She had a way of doing things that just got under my skin. I would think to myself, “If she would only act this way instead of that way, we would all be happier and more productive.” This was pretty much a daily, and sometimes hourly, occurrence.

Of course, what I was really feeling was that if she acted differently, I would be happier and more productive. I was seeking the comfort of the familiar and the expected and yearned for my coworker to act in a way that precisely supported my needs. However, as soon as I realized that I was caught up in a particular way of perceiving, I found I could alter my perception and apply real choice to how I felt about her. And when choice entered the equation, I quickly realized I no longer needed my colleague to change—because I had.

It can be difficult enough to be open-minded toward others, but it is even more difficult to be open-minded toward oneself. It takes real training. To discover the ways of perceiving you’re apt to blindly apply, experiment with keeping yourself curious, attentive, and receptive.

Whenever you detect yourself falling into an old, familiar pattern, stop and examine what is actually going on. Notice the physical sensations in your body; notice the emotions that have bloomed; notice what stories your mind is generating that make your body tense and inflame your emotions. But it’s important not to disparage yourself for falling into an old and unhelpful pattern. Recognize the potentially explosive negative charge generated by your body, thoughts, and emotions. Accept that it has arisen, then make the decision to be in control of it instead of being controlled by it.

2) Learn to respond, rather than react

Inflexible patterns of perceiving inevitably prove too small, too confining, for all that our minds need to encompass and accomplish. Inflexible patterns of reacting squeeze the life out of us. Each of us has our own pet scenarios that chafe against our expectations. When they pop up, they threaten to stir up jealousy, anger, defensiveness, mindless striving, and a stew of other possibilities. We may end up saying or doing something hurtful, something we’ll regret later and may have to apologize for. We leapt before we looked.

Conversely, when we stop to examine how we typically respond to situations, we create space for more creative and flexible responses. Ultimately, as we build the habit of mindfully examining our responses in the moment, mindful awareness becomes our new default mode.

Let’s take an example that hopefully is not too familiar. You’ve been working tirelessly with a coworker on a project, but when it comes time to receive accolades for the project’s success, your partner manages to take all the credit. You’re now entering that decisive moment when you have the chance to become master of your reactions. Or, to put it another way, to meet your experience.

By decoupling what’s happening from your reaction to what’s happening, odds are you will prevent yourself from simply being carried along by the experience and instead will prove yourself capable of getting ahead of it.

Becoming aware of the impact the slight has had on you is the first step. Separate yourself from yourself just enough to allow you to examine, free from rote reactions, how your body, emotions, and thoughts are combining to gear up for a response.

By decoupling what’s happening from your reaction to what’s happening, odds are you will prevent yourself from simply being carried along by the experience and instead will prove yourself capable of getting ahead of it.

In examining your thoughts, you’ll probably see a story forming, something along the lines of how you heroically brought the project to completion, only to have it stolen away at the last minute. Once you can see this narrative open out before you like a book—once you have become the reader of the story instead of its protagonist—you have put yourself in position to let it evaporate. You may notice how the pounding heart, sweaty palms, and tightened shoulders you just experienced slip away along with the storyline you just let go of. You gently shift to a state that is more relaxed and, as a result, more confident. States of being, which can seem so permanent and monumental, are not in fact static. They shift moment to moment, and they can change in response to our awareness of them. It’s amazing how easily a grimace can morph into a smile.

There’s no need to assume that mindful self-examination means you have to allow your coworker to take credit where credit isn’t due. Rather, its goal is to allow you to respond in a new way that frees you from old, ingrained, automatic patterns.

3) Remember, thoughts are not facts

Consciously, confidently meeting experiences, instead of being carried away by them, is a practice you can apply in all situations. It is helpful not just in emotionally charged events like the one above, but also in situations that may seem insignificant, but which could become more significant if left unexamined.

Let’s say you’ve taken the attitude that the tasks assigned to you are unimportant or undervalued. Ask yourself if you feel that way because it is true. Or do you feel that way because you’re so used to telling yourself it’s true that you can’t think of it in any other way?

Think even smaller. Imagine something as routine as the way you hoist the phone to your ear when it rings. By really examining this action—seemingly so inconsequential, so unworthy of examination—you feel like it’s something you’re doing for the very first time. You may detect anxiety traveling down your arm and tension as you pick up the phone. Experiencing everyday actions up close in this way is not about being self-conscious. It’s about bringing choice, attention, and awareness back into things that you’ve allowed to become automatic. By opening up to the tiniest habit, you make it possible to crack open the larger habits, which seem more resistant to change. You can look at every action and interaction freshly.

The more you understand your own mind, the more you can understand the minds of others. If you come to understand your own body language, you can read the body language of others better. Mindfulness doesn’t give you a crystal ball, but it tends to increase your empathy, your ability to put yourself in someone’s shoes with greater understanding. It enhances your connection with other people and supports you as you build relationships. No action, reaction, interaction, or relationship ever feels uninteresting or unworkable if a curious mind is brought to bear on it. You can actually transform that feeling of, “Oh man, here comes John, my supervisor—I bet he wants me to change my work, again” into “Here comes John again. How can I see and hear him, without judgment, as though we were interacting for the very first time—just dealing with what comes up in the moment?”

4) Build healthy habits

For mindfulness to work at work, it helps to have both a formal practice of mindfulness and informal practices that extend mindfulness into everyday life. Formal practice involves learning a basic mindfulness meditation such as following the breath and practicing it on a regular, preferably daily, schedule. Informal practice, no less important, can literally take place any second of the day. It involves nothing more than focusing the mind on whatever is happening in the present moment, outside of the shopworn patterns we have built up over a lifetime.

Mindfulness interrupts the conditioned responses that prevent us from exploring new avenues of thought, choking our creative potential. Each time we stand up against a habit—whether it’s checking our smartphone during a conversation or reacting defensively to a coworker’s passing remark—we weaken the grip of our conditioning. We lay down new tracks in the brain and fashion new synaptic connections. We become less likely in the future to default to patterns that can trap us into being satisfied with ineffective and outmoded strategies. We take steps to improve not only how we are at work but the work environment itself.

In this way, mindfulness is not just personal. It has a contagious quality that will change the culture in an organization—not necessarily in big, sweeping ways but gradually, incrementally.

This article also appeared in the August 2013 issue of Mindful magazine.

more ways to be mindful at work

Work

How to Start a Mindful Community at Work 

Change doesn’t have to start at the top — Explore these five steps for creating a mindfulness group that’s right for your workplace. Read More 

Jae Ellard

September 12, 2018

Work

10 Ways to Be More Mindful at Work 

You don’t need to meditate every day to experience the benefits of mindfulness at work. Here are a few ways you can inject mindful moments into your day so you can de-stress and do your best. Read More 

Shamash Alidina

November 7, 2018

Work

Four Self-Care Habits to Practice at Work 

We are our own worst critic — and it could be holding us back in the workplace. Here are four ways to stop being so hard on ourselves and use simple moments during the day to wind down when we feel overwhelmed. Read More 

Leah Weiss

April 3, 2018

The post Train Your Mind to Work Smarter appeared first on Mindful.

[espensenfinnegan0-blog]

Mycie Włosów Balsamem Babydream.

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A Rose of Redemption

You're probably familiar with the song, "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming"—if you're not, shame on you, it's wonderful. The text for the first two verses loosely come from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 11:

Lo, how a rose e'er blooming From tender stem hath sprung! Of Jesse's lineage coming As prophets long have sung, It came, a flowret bright Amid the cold of winter, When half-spent was the night.

 Isaiah 'twas foretold it, The rose I have in mind; With Mary we behold it, The virgin mother kind. To show God's love aright, She bore to us a Savior, When half-spent was the night.

The chapter goes on to describe how the spirit of the Lord will rest on this shoot, this fruiting branch, how He shall gather His remnant in the final days, standing as an "ensign" (a signal or flag denoting a nationality) for the people, bringing a glorious deliverance and rest:

This flow'r, whose fragrance tender With sweetness fills the air, Dispels with glorious splendor The darkness everywhere. True man, yet very God, From sin and death He saves us And lightens ev'ry load.

 O Savior, child of Mary, Who felt our human woe; O Savior, King of glory, Who dost our weakness know: Bring us at length we pray To the bright courts of heaven, And to the endless day. 

This song and chapter of the Bible have long been associated with the season of Advent. The word Advent is derived from Latin roots meaning "to come" or "to arrive", as described in Isaiah and the Psalms: 

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

...

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.

 O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. — Psalm 130

I didn’t grow up celebrating Advent. I came from a religious background that didn’t like to see Jesus portrayed as an infant. Not because they deemed it as violating the second commandment, but for the same reason they disliked seeing Him portrayed on the cross: they thought he should only be displayed in glory, power, and might. Never as weak, hurt, or needing help — yet, He chose to be born in the usual way, to spend the usual amount of time as an infant, requiring food and diaper changes. He chose to die in the most humiliating way, not to call the legions of angels, to experience the full spectrum of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain, un-benumbed.

These were concrete points in time and human history, in which He chose to participate. I’ve grown to think this should be embraced, not shied away from. Other religions (and even sects of Christianity) have attempted to divorce the spiritual from the physical, but we serve a God who made them inseparable in the person of Jesus. Advent celebrates this inseparability … by waiting.

In Due Time

Waiting has been described sometimes as women's work. This is mainly because it has to be done, there is no way around it and there is no shortcut, and so we do it. Activities such as pregnancy and childbearing further foster this idea. Scripture bears this out.

I flipped to 1 Samuel the other night and wept with Hannah. Hannah in her bitterness of soul, imploring the Lord for children. Hannah in the abundance of her complaint and grief, silently crying out. Hannah, who brings forth Samuel—"For this child I prayed"—gives him over to the priesthood, in fulfillment of the vow she made before God. 

Ruth lost her husband and her husband's family (her entire system of protection) after already leaving her own family. And in this midst of this loss, she faithfully cares for her mother-in-law, in a land where she’s a stranger. She labors diligently and waits, remarries, and in time brings forth Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. David, the youngest son, the one out with the sheep, whom Samuel—yes, Hannah's Samuel—anoints at the Lord's command:

"Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah."—Matthew 1:17

When we turn to the New Testament (Luke 1), Elizabeth wasn't even waiting anymore. She and Zechariah were a couple who had dealt with infertility and loss, and had presumably laid this grief and struggle down as they approached old age. She is given a miraculous (what specialists would now term "geriatric") and healthy pregnancy. It is her husband who is struck temporarily dumb, as a result of his lack of faith that these events can take place. The angel Gabriel has commanded that the child be named John, the family objects that this is not a family name, a tablet is fetched and Zechariah, speechless for 9 months, writes upon it "His name is John," and his speech is restored. By the way, is this ringing any Genesis 17 bells for you? Because it ought to be. God appears to be in the business of miracles. Strange how that happens.

A young Mary is promised to Joseph, potentially not meant to be "married" for some time, when the angel appears to her to announce her pregnancy: like most angels in Scripture, such a frightening sight that among the first words they tend to speak are "be not afraid." Pregnant with true God and true man, she goes to spend the first three months of her confinement with her elderly cousin Elizabeth, and the child in Elizabeth's womb leaps at the presence of Christ—John the Baptist, cousin of Jesus, his elder by 6 months. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Ghost. John is filled with the Holy Ghost. And it is this same John who cries in the wilderness:

"This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’” (John 1:15)

John Donne's "Annunciation" puts it thus:

Salvation to all that will is nigh; That All, which alwayes is All every where, Which cannot sinne, and yet all sinnes must beare, Which cannot die, yet cannot chuse but die, Loe, faithfull Virgin, yeelds himselfe to lye In prison, in thy wombe; and though he there Can take no sinne, nor thou give, yet he'will weare Taken from thence, flesh, which deaths force may trie. Ere by the spheares time was created, thou Wast in his minde, who is thy Sonne, and Brother; Whom thou conceiv'st, conceiv'd; yea thou art now Thy Makers maker, and thy Fathers mother; Thou'hast light in darke; and shutst in little roome, Immensity cloystered in thy deare wombe.

I have been struck by the reminder that this baby called the "Prince of Peace" was born into a land stained by centuries of brutal war and bloodshed. It's easy enough to read the Old Testament and the New and allow yourself to think that times had changed, or that the history was somewhat removed ... nope. This was still fresh for them. The generations were countable. And it feels fresh now, in a news cycle where nearly every day brings reports of shootings and bombings. We long for rest and peace.

We Wait

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. (excerpt from T.S. Eliot's "East Coker")

I find myself, at the time of this writing, plunged into a seasonally appropriate bleakness of spirit: the longing and heartache produced by "the now and the not-yet" has never been stronger. Yet we rejoice in the midst of that tension, because we are not left alone, we are not left on our own. The deliverance is at hand, if not temporally, eternally. My pastor reminds us frequently that God is a good storyteller. The story is not over; it is simultaneously already written and being written. God is not bound by our constraints of time, after all, with Him, "a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day" (2 Pet. 3:8). What we experience here and now is nothing in the grand scheme of eternity. 

We wait. God is at work. 

There is no more fitting way to wrap this up than with Aaron Everingham's "Adventu," originally published on his site in Advent 2013: 

Forgive the land it is barren and demoralized it is inverted and crucified like St. Peter but in shape and form only for St. Peter was anything but hopeless

 Forgive the forgeries that are scratched in the dust by the shiny little onyx beaks of bastard crows who die in the wind which lifts from the wasteland hurling them against the side of the huntsman’s brow

 Forgive the behemoth beholden to Job when from the midst of the whirlwind the Lord the Lord the Lord

 Forgive the dry vessels whose parched clay hips are inscribed with insurrection as thirty gallons of emptiness proclaim the inauguration of the Kingdom

 Await we now in silent wonder with ears once deaf now open and eyeballs once cast in molten lead now full of light

 receiving forgiveness and the bleeding heart to forgive which is pierced by this taught wire strung across the loom between two holy Advents: one which the Temple passed through a womb, a feeding trough a cross and a stone and one we await in prayerful anticipation while in the now and not yet we, the drowned, are succored by the breath of the Lord the Lord

[sentellthesaint]

Little Known Facts About 8 ball pool cheats.

Appamatix is here now with 10 of the best secrets, tips and “hacks” that may help you to crank up your 8 Ball Pool experience. If you’re a fan of high stakes video gaming, competition, and top-notch multiplayer encounters, you’re in the right place, and looking at the right game. Read on! Mobile video gaming has been enjoying a proliferation of “old college” titles that take advantage of basic game mechanics that may be picked up and played quickly, and still, leave room for mastery. Honestly, it’s a comfort! When we down load mobile games, we’re not necessarily looking for the deep experience that you might find on a gaming console, with a steep learning curve and hours of personality development and…you know precisely what I’m talking about. Most of the time, it’s nice to truly have a game that you can grab and play for a couple rounds without being beholden to an hour of staring at your smartphone display. 8 Ball Pool is a casual game that’s easy to approach but has plenty of room for individuals to improve their skills and compete for in-game rewards and leaderboard reputation. On top of that. This isn’t necessarily a negative thing; it’s good to see simple app-store games with staying power, and it’s not like old-school video games of an identical vein didn’t succeed predicated on their addicting qualities. It’s pool, in the end! If it didn’t keep you connected for “just one single more game,” it might be doing something amiss. For players’ advantage, this does mean that you’re always heading to have plenty of people to try out against! The basic guidelines for a game of 8 Ball Pool aren’t recognized to everyone that’s just getting started off with the overall game, so we’ll mix in some of our starters hints with those tips meant for more advanced players. Follow these to a T, and you’ll be pocketing pictures still left and right! Watch the Timer One of the pitfalls that new 8 Ball Pool players run into the most frequently is a foul; they let the timer tick down because of their turn until, before they realize it, they’re out of your time! This not only leads to forfeiting your convert, it puts the cue ball in your opponent’s hands. Being that both these are exceptionally harmful to you, it’s important never to rely too much on taking your time with each shot. Sure, it could feel like ’youre being extra precise, or coating up some fantastic move, but the truth is, none of that’s going to total anything if the timer runs out. A much more sound strategy is to really get your eyes used to the time-crunch, forcing them to find your shot as fast as possible. Speed is key in 8 Ball Pool, and if you can’t continue, that foul will see you punished. Avoid the Obvious Fouls We’re engaging in some basic rules of pool, here, but that’s definitely not a negative thing. There are quite a few movements in 8 Ball Pool that will lead to a foul and, as above, business lead to your challenger having the ball in their hands. Since this will be avoided no matter what, keep the pursuing things at heart every time that you’re playing. 8 ball pool hack online Accuracy is Key Even though you shouldn’t take a lot of time planning your photos, it’s still important to be accurate. In the event that you pot the contrary color any moment except for when you’re breaking, it can place the cue ball in your opponent’s hands. If the cue ball strikes your opponents color before your own, you’ll get the same impact. Rail Contact The game will sign-up a foul if neither the cue ball nor a ball of any color makes contact with the rails on the table, too. That is one rule that always sneaks up on me (and being honest, my buddies and I just forget about it all enough time.) However, when you yourself have a gaming keeping track of the rules and your every move, nothing is going to slide by it. Focus on your Colors! Which brings us to something that’s oh, so apparent, but bears mentioning anyhow. Because so many players do actually forget whether they’re areas or stripes, I’ll say it once here with extra emphasis: don’t ignore which color you’re performing! Several fouls due to forgetfulness is all that your opponent needs to win the entire game. Advantage on the Break When it’s your consider break, you’re heading to be at the best point of benefit; greater than you’ll be at any other point in the overall game. Primarily, it is because you can fall into line the shot that decides how the rest of the game is likely to be performed, and also because you’ll be able to choose which ball color is yours for the rest of the match. Absorb what you pocket (if anything) during the break, too. Whichever color it is, you’re heading to get another convert, where you’ll decide if you’re playing areas or stripes. Keep in mind that nothing at all that you pocket during the break will count communicate score, and also don’t forget that if you pocket the cue ball only, it counts as a foul! Respect the 8 Ball Surprising nobody at all, you’ll need to have a certain amount of respect for the 8 ball through the remainder of any match, and not simply because it’s the namesake of this game. Following the break, mishandling the 8 ball is usually the foundation of all fouls that players both new and old earn for themselves. In the event that you pot the 8 ball before all of the balls of your color? That’s a foul. In the event that you pot the cue ball and the 8 ball collectively? Foul. If you pot any color before the 8 ball in one shot? Foul. You can view where I’m heading, here. Don’t hesitate of the 8 ball, but work around it as you intend your shots throughout the game. Calling Pockets Once you start playing 8 Ball Pool at higher troubles, you’ll run into tiers where you have to begin calling your storage compartments before every shot, to be able to increase your score off of them. As a result of this, it's rather a useful habit to get into once you have the basic guidelines of the game under your belt. Getting started, you’ll probably only be required to call the pocket before you pot the 8 ball. At higher difficulties, you’re going to need to call every shot. Several Pictures Ahead While you should never run out the timer (I understand, I repeat myself), you should also try to start seeing each frame several shots ahead of where you are. Don’t just react to where the balls are up for grabs during a given turn, and don’t just capture wildly in the expectations of disrupting the existing state of the desk (if you don't have to.) Instead, assume that the cue ball is the thing that’s going to move over the next several shots. Where do you will need the cue ball to be, to be able to pot the the majority of your own color? In this way, the game of pool is a lot like chess. An experienced player will take their time learning the place of each shot, but a professional will know the lay several shots prior to the current turn. Spin, Spin, Spin That little cue ball in the corner of the display screen? It’s there for a reason. If you wish to disrupt your opposition, make a difficult shot, or otherwise screen (or practice) some finesse, faucet that cue ball, rotate it according to the little red indication that shows up, and then take. It’ll apply a trajectory spin to the cue ball and keep it from moving in a predictable, right line. In the event that you make your shot (which should always be the goal) you'll be able to use spin to create yourself for pictures that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible. 8 ball pool hack online Play Offline! While 8 Ball Pool is mainly enjoyed as an online, multiplayer game, you can still practice when you don’t have an active web connection! Take advantage of this time around to brush through to the basics, or try some of the most advanced techniques or practices we’ve already talked about. If you’re like me, an offline practice program can almost be considered a form of relaxation since it’s removed from the pressured, competitive realm of online multiplayer. Try Playing on Miniclip.com Obviously, it’s plentifully useful to be able to play 8 Ball Pool when you’re on the run, but it originated on the Flash game website, Miniclip. You can play the full game there, still, and it’s just as free as it is on Google android and iOS. In addition, 8 Ball Pool was meant to be used a keyboard and mouse before it ever handled a smartphone screen, so if those touch controls and small screens are tossing you off, give it a whirl from the comfort of your laptop or desktop.

[tragicbooks]

These high school students threw an LGBTQ prom that few will forget.

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Prom night for Blair Smith didn’t begin in a stretch limo. It started with a broken down car in a high school parking lot and a ticking clock.

Smith had spent the last four weeks pulling together the dance amid a punishing schedule that included fundraising, advertising, and studying for AP exams. Now he had chaperones to organize, food to distribute, and a quickly dwindling supply of minutes.

Frantic, he hitched a ride home, borrowed his mom's car and sped toward the event hall, where he and his fellow student organizers helped put the finishing touches on their hard work.

By 7 p.m., the room was ready.

Photo by Brian Reach.

This was no ordinary prom.

There was no king, no queen, and few tuxedos. Instead, there was a space for over 300 LGBTQ youth to dress and dance how they wanted and, more importantly, a space to be completely themselves without fear of judgment.

The students at NOVA Pride Prom gather for a group shot. Photo via NOVA Pride.

The May 12 event, dubbed "NOVA Pride Prom," began two years ago at Loudon Valley High School. Smith, who took charge of planning this year's event as his senior project, partnered with local LGBTQ advocacy organizations to expand the celebration to include all of northern Virginia.

The goal was to create a prom less beholden to tradition and more open to free expression.

The theme was "Celebrate Our Past," and the venue was decorated with artwork paying tribute to LGBTQ heroes and history.

"There wasn’t the typical prom drama that happens where, 'Oh my god, she’s wearing the same dress as me,' or 'Oh, is he dancing with her?'" Smith explains of NOVA Pride Prom. "It was really just a place where people could come together and meet for the first time."

Smith (center) with advisor Amy Cannava at Pride Prom. Photo via NOVA Pride.

In addition to the dance floor, Smith and his co-planners set up a lounge with board games and couches for students to socialize and tables where local advocacy organizations — NOVA Pride, GLSEN NOVA, and the Trevor Project — could distribute resources.

Creating spaces like NOVA Pride Prom where young LGBTQ people can feel at home is crucial to their development.

"'Comfortable' may sound like a simple term to a lot of people, but it is not something that some people are experiencing in their day to day life. Just being comfortable is a huge deal," explains Brian Reach, who runs NOVA Pride, one of the organizations that partnered with Smith to run the event.

"Celebrate our Past" #novaprideprom #lgbtqyouth #novapride #loveislove #loveislocal

A post shared by NOVA Pride (@northernvapride) on May 12, 2017 at 5:18pm PDT

Growing up in northern Virginia, Reach recalled being the frequent target of verbal abuse. One incident, in which he was called "the other f-word" over the school loudspeaker injured him so deeply he wound up faking sickness so that his mom would take him home.

"I had a lot of sick days," he says.

For Reach, NOVA Pride Prom was a chance to give LGBTQ young people from his home region a celebration a chance to celebrate their lives and achievements in a way he barely could have imagined as a student.

"This is by far probably the event I’m the most proud of," he says.

While Reach says conditions for LGBTQ people have improved dramatically in the politically divided area since he was growing up, tensions still occasionally threaten to spill over and sometimes do.

Earlier in the school year, the LGBTQ rights group Smith founded in his high school was asked to remove promotional posters at the urging of a local parent.

In January, a motion to add LGBTQ protections to Loudon County school system's employment discrimination policy was defeated in a hotly contested school board vote.

Still, Smith says teachers and administrators at his school have largely applauded his efforts to organize and support his LGBTQ classmates.

Photo via NOVA Pride.

Both Smith and Reach say they received almost no pushback from the community about the dance.

The venue, the Bellevue Conference and Events Center, provided the space at a large discount.

Fundraising efforts were met with messages of support and donations from a wide cross-section of parents, students, teachers, and local residents. (Despite the community support, NOVA Pride is still raising money to cover the costs of the dance and supports continuing outreach efforts to LGBTQ youth in the area.)

In many ways, NOVA Pride Prom was a typical school dance — which was exactly the point.

As the night wore on, chaperones and students dropped their guard, made new friends, and danced the Macarena.

The success of the event, Smith thinks, shouldn't surprise anyone. He credits to his fellow student organizers for helping realize the best version of what a prom can be. "It’s amazing … to see how hardworking students can be when they’re passionate about something," he says.

For other students, the night was anything but typical.

"I'm trans and bi. I’ve grown up in a family that would rather have a dead daughter than a son like me," one student wrote  in an anonymous e-mail to Reach. The dance, the student explained, was the first time they'd felt not only accepted, but happy and among friends — something they never knew was possible.

The message was aglow with joy, gratitude, and perhaps most importantly, comfort.

"I can’t believe it was real," they effused. "I got to be myself and live the way I wanted."

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