#on a more personal basis this is killing me because this is pretty much irma's entire character and backstory.

[unionizedwizard]

so. many people have already pointed that koana is sort of like an ARR alphinaud remix and while it is not untrue, i think this analysis is only superficially correct. because the salient point of koana's character is that he feels shame and resentment towards his roots & origins and therefore overcompensates with sharlayan weabooism (well-intentioned, but still unsuitable). he comes off as really weird and stuck up, in the beginning especially, where it's like. "what the fuck is this guy's problem" in a way that's rather similar to the average player's reaction to ARR alphinaud.

BUT!

the thing with ARR alphinaud is that he was the Quintessential Sharlayan, both on account of his upbringing and family tree, and of his personal interests and achievements. he was (and still is) secure in his origins and cultural identity. koana's case is different, because he clearly loathes tradition and turali cultural practices in a way that comes across (and fundamentally is) really weird and destructive, which comes to bite him in the ass on many occasions during the rite of succession (and understandably so).

it all starts to make sense when you learn about his backstory though. while we know that wuk lamat doesn't remember anything of her own childhood, having been adopted by gulool ja ja as a toddler, koana was adopted at a much older age. he remembers his early years, and that's what fuels his entire vision for the future of tural. as he tells it, he was born to one of the most traditionalist hhetsarro tribes in tural, and abandoned (accidentally(?) left behind) during one of their yearly migrations, only surviving thanks to a pelupelu merchant who rescued and took him in before employing him in his tuliyollal shop. an obviously incredibly traumatic event that would shape everything about his future mindset: he's closed off and withdrawn to the extreme, highly analytical, values self-sufficiency and independence and technical innovations above all else, because that's how he survived to begin with. because his nomadic, highly traditional, presumably (from what we've seen of the one hhetsarro tribe we've met so far) tight-knit, spiritual and social tribe rejected and abandoned him. it would make sense that he'd rationalize this unfathomable violence by leaning hard into the opposite, and letting his own pain and resentment color his entire vision, turning his own feelings into a more general mindset of shame, resentful inadequacy, and complete rejection of anything "traditional"

i think sharlayan was a good choice for him because it's pretty much, indeed, the opposite atmosphere: in sharlayan culture, family ties are a lot less emphasized, while the kind of ties that colleagues, peers, teachers and students develop are considered as very important (see pretty much every sidequest and margrat's custom deliveries and all). all these relationships based on a common work and aspirations rather than origins would indeed agree with koana's character better, and his analytical skills, vision and intelligence are pretty much the most valued traits to them.

which is why it was actually such a stroke of genius to have thancred and urianger specifically support him. of course, both of them had a character development arc that echoed with koana's issues: learning how to express himself more openly and acknowledge his feelings, all that, meaning they were uniquely able to help him. but when you look more closely, they can also relate to him on a more personal level: thancred was "adopted" by louisoix as an orphaned lominsan street urchin, probably at a similar age as koana when he was adopted by gulool ja ja; and urianger's parents notably "abandoned" him to the point he was mostly tagging along at moenbryda's house and, later, at the leveilleur estate, as louisoix's disciple and honorary uncle to the twins (also worth noting that urianger and koana share the same flavor of autism).

so the rite of succession was a much-needed window into his own biases and (literal) coping mechanisms, and must have been quite difficult to deal with considering pretty much all the feats involved interacting with and strengthening tight-knit smaller communities with strong traditions and family ties. luckily, partly thanks to thancred and urianger (but not only! he did the work himself), he was clear-minded enough to realize his own failings, and well-intentioned enough to step down - because he did not want power for its own sake, unlike zoraal ja; he wanted to protect the turali people from a potential invasion by leaning hard into foreign technological advances, therefore mimicking his own personal journey and adapting his own tried-and-true methods of survival: anticipating the hardships, being as independent and self-sufficient as possible, and choosing isolationism.

and finally i want to point out that the new techniques and technologies he imported from sharlayan are all (safe, fast and reliable) modes of transportation: aetherytes, dirigibles (including the alpaca carriage adaptation), and trains. interesting choice, moreso considering that while aetherytes are the #1 sharlayan specialty, they have neither dirigibles nor trains; which takes on a whole new layer of meaning when you remember that his original tribe was nomadic and that he specifically was left behind, stranded in the desert, during one of their traditional migrations............

in this regard he truly IS green g'raha, considering that g'raha was, similarly, raised in a traditional seeker manner before being sent to sharlayan for his own (and the tribe's) safety; of course the difference is that g'raha embraced his heritage by locking himself in the crystal tower by the end of ARR, since the G tribe was tasked with guarding the remaining allagan ruins and weapons, to make sure their power would not be misused by yet another imperialist military force (he locked himself in the tower to reinforce its defenses and make sure the garlean empire would not access it to conquer eorzea)

thank you for your time 👍

[malgal7777]

Hiking with Tracy 2021:  Weekend 3, the Lost Weekend

As I went back to re-read my blog I noticed I had cut off my WHOLE weekend of 4/17!!  This is my 20 mile walk from the Emeryville Marina to the Richmond Marina and back via the Bay Trail along the water & Hwy 80.  So let me try to reenact my journey!

The theme of this hike was “Don't tell me this town ain't got no heart, you just gotta poke around” - Once again I tip my hat to the great Jerry Garcia.  Not sure if you all figured it out, but I love Jerry.  I came to the Bay Area to follow the Grateful Dead’s music and I never left.  

This particular hike was absolutely beautiful.  I wish it wasn’t so I can mix this blog up, but sorry folks, you live in a beautiful area.  Even along a dirty highway, there are things of beauty all around you.  Take for example this hike, wildflowers everywhere.  Even popping out of the sidewalk.  I'm reminded of Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park...”Life refuses to be contained...it just finds a way”.  And sure enough, Sunflowers out of the sidewalk!

Since I was next to a highway, I went with headphones this time around.  One of my positives during this pandemic is my rekindled love for music radio stations.  I love listening to a radio station and I definitely have my favorite DJ’s. My personal favorites this past year were:  WWOZ - a local New Orleans station; KCSM - a Bay Area jazz station and KXT - out of Dallas, TX.  These stations literally kept me sane during the lockdowns.  I highly recommend them, especially if you’re cooking, doing chores or working in the garden. 

This particular morning I went with WWOZ.  And what a good decision that was.  Ron Phillips was spinning his favorite Saturday morning tunes and I was going down the road feeling BAD (as in good)!  Irma Thomas, Anders Osborne, The Subdudes and a little known singer/songwriter out of New Orleans, Chris Smithers.  If you get overwhelmed and about to burst...stream Chris Smithers “Let it Go”.  So funny.   Anders Osborne is a name my friends have been trying to get me into for a long time.  And I’m a bozo, definitely missed the boat on this one!  From his new album, try this song:  Welcome to Earth.  

Ok, so I digress!  Back to the walk.  In one of my last posts, I mentioned the people I meet.  Well this am was a doozy!  As I was grooving to the sweet sounds of the Crescent City I was approached by a group of ladies.  They had a question for me:  What’s more important in a relationship:  Love or Economics?  My first response was “Wow, you ladies don’t mess around for a Saturday morning!  Going deep on me”.  But, because I’m me, I had an answer. Now usually I would have said Love, Love, Love.  Hands down right?  But they caught me at a weird time.  I have been obsessively thinking of a comment I overheard from another group of ladies while doing my Diablo hike.  One of them had commented “I have no desire to marry just for love.  Forget that, I need to be economically stable”.  My reaction was pity for this poor girl.  I literally felt sorry for her.  The more I thought about it (obsessively for two weeks) I came to realize, she didn’t necessarily say she wasn’t going to work, she just wanted someone with their shit together and would contribute to their family being comfortable.  What’s wrong with that?  Is being comfortable taboo now?  So when my Bay Trail friends asked me, that’s how I answered.  Love was great but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be comfortable, isn’t that love after all?  I obviously made one of the women very happy.  She loved it.  The other two nodded and smiled, they were on Love’s side.  So we said our goodbyes and I felt like I had gotten a weight off my shoulders.  As I was walking away though...I asked myself...But didn’t YOU marry for love?  And sure enough, I did.  Bob & I didn’t have a pot to piss in.  And while we’re not the Rockefeller's, we’re comfortable enough for us.  I love him dearly and love has to be the basis that you build your financial future upon.  If you don’t have that, it get’s ugly when $$ is involved.  The best part of this moment was that song “Welcome to Earth” was playing as I was coming to this realization and the last line is literally “Love is always the answer”.  The Universe works in mysterious ways!  But, where were the ladies...I wanted to change my answer??!!  No where to be found.  Man, I blew it.  I would now obsessively think about this for the next 20 miles. Told you I was a bozo. 

By this time I had reached The Albany bulb.  A Bay Area gem to the north of Golden Gate Fields.  There’s a great beach and then it jets out into a peninsula which is covered with art installations all over.  I’ll talk more about that later, since I came back on Sunday to finish my 25 miles. This morning though I watched a group of swimmers about to enter the freezing bay waters, no wet suit mind you!  CRAZY and No Thank You!  Brrr.   Next Stop, Point Isabel, dog heaven.  A large open spaced off-leach dog park.  I go there all the time.  If you have a dog, you should take them.  They will love you even more than they already do. 

Now past Point Isabel is where the trail gets interesting.  You start to wander away from the highway and are now among the prettiest beaches and marshes. It’s an interesting view of the Bay Bridge and you can no longer see the Golden Gate Bridge as you veer north of it.  You now start to come upon single family homes along the trail.  You’re instantly reminded of Cape Cod.  A ocean view from Richmond, CA.  The best part is once you see this neighborhood you know you’re close to the marina.  And sure enough, I turned the bend and there in front of me was the Ford Assembly plant, my 1/2 way point.  But, it’s a very cruel joke.  You see the plant across the opening of the marina, it’s literally right there!!  Then the realization hits you in order to get to it you need to go around the WHOLE marina.  And as you continue to walk and go around another bend, the sidewalk gets longer and longer and longer.  The Richmond Marina is HUGE. Lovely though.  Large green spaces with people doing yoga;  a ladies bootcamp class along the water; boats coming and going from the marina and two pretty cute restaurants also along the water.  

I finally made it to the Ford Assembly Plant and now Richmond Ferry Terminal.  The assembly plant hosts seasonal events, we’ve been to the women’s roller derby ones.  Nothing like watching tough chicks bully each other on roller skates.  Then there are a few businesses strewn throughout the building.  Dolls Kill, which I believe is a clothing business for those on the freakier side of the spectrum.  And Mountain Hardware!  Quality clothing for the outdoorsy types.  I should have gone in and gotten a windbreaker.  The wind was pretty brutal.  

The best part was of course the Rosie The Riveter museum.  A museum dedicated to the women that left the kids at home and joined the workforce to help build ships during WWII.  This whole area was built for the war effort.  Richmond grew from 25,000 to over 100,000 within three years!!!  Can you imagine?  How does any town build the infrastructure needed to maintain that population?  Grocery stores?  Clothing? Schools?  Highly recommended.  It’s a suggested donation, so don’t be cheap, donate.  You won’t be disappointed.  I once brought Charlotte and a couple of her Girl Scout troop there to meet a real life “Rosie”.  She told the girls her story and it was of course about LOVE!  The trials and tribulations of her and her partner as he was fighting in the war and she was here making the ships that would keep him safe.  Man, where were those 3 ladies!!  

The way back was pretty much the same. I made it!  Now onto Sunday, 4/18. The Albany Bulb!  A Bay Area gem.  Bob & I have been coming here for years.  Way back when it was a landfill full of broken concrete slabs and rebar.  Some artist types took it upon themselves to start living there.  They kept the concrete slabs and rebar and started to make installations out of them.  Giant sized figures;  rows of wooden paintings; mazes and one guy even built a concrete castle along the water facing the Golden Gate Bridge.  Best real estate in the Bay.  They exemplified the phrase “one mans trash is another man’s treasure”.  Of course the stuffed shirts got wind and kicked them out.  But gave the stuffed shirts an idea...Hey, why not make a park out of this dirty unused lot?  Duh.  So before you harass your kid for taking art classes, remember it’s usually the artists who push the rest of society in the right direction.  

It’s also a great place to bird watch and now the wildflowers are a blooming, so it’s quite serene.  If you’re looking for some inspiration, this is the place for you.  

So my posts/weeks are a bit out of order.  Oh well!  It’s my blog and I’ll create chaos if I want to!  

I’ll end on this note:  Love is ALWAYS the answer. 

So sponsor me (hehehe):  https://runsignup.com/tracyalbert/Donate

[insertclassyusernamehere]

True Life: I worked for a Sociopath

In early 2013, I started a journey with a company that I loved. I was hired on as a sales associate by a strong, powerful and amazing store manager who literally taught me everything I know. She promoted me 6 months in to a lower level management role, and when she got an offer to move onto bigger things in the company, she helped push me into a fulltime management role. Her assistant manager at the time ultimately ended up filling her position as she left, and to be honest, I had no idea what I was in for. I hadn't worked too much with this particular manager prior, and didn't have much of a real raport with her at all. I truly was excited about the change, and everything felt like a new beginning. The first year was pretty rocky in general, but we just chalked it up to us all being new in our roles, and pushed through it until we got onto a schedule. The assistant manager at the time and I were incredibly close, and it was pretty clear to me at the time that she was being bullied and demonized by our store manager, but I thought maybe it was just some kind of personal bad blood between them. The store manager (we will call her Sarah) would talk to associates and other managers behind her back, calling her names, and pointing her fingers at her for anything going awry in the store. Finally, our ASM snapped, and left the company. Sarah told us all that things would be SO Much better without her there "creating hostility". Most of us knew that the former ASM wasn't the problem.

With the separation of our ASM, I was then ushered into the role as a replacement. I was excited. I was excited about a raise, about more responsibility and the growth that I had worked SO hard for. To give you just a little information on my character: I'm a fiery personality, but I'm also incredibly compassionate. I'm a giant mama bear, and I looked at all my employees as my little cubs. With that being said, I was always doing everything with theirs and the stores' best interest in mind. Now at this time, Sarah had A LOT of personal stuff going on. She always did, to be honest. The personal shit never stopped. But, unlike most people who put themselves in a store management position, she used her power to work everything in HER favor so it didn't conflict with her super dramatic life. This meant breaking every rule along the way. She scheduled herself only opening shifts, on a consistent schedule. Every single Sunday off. And when any small thing happened in her life, she just wouldn't show up to her shifts. She would expect me to come in on my days off to cover her shifts on a monthly basis. She made me work doubles covering her shifts more than a few times. If you were not flexible with her, she would tell you that you just needed to take one for the team and would punish you with a cold attitude and talk shit about you behind your back to the rest of the staff. She bullied everyone in the store, but especially the management team. On the other hand, if you were sick and tried to call out... she'd refuse to cover your shift and make you come in anyways. When she wouldn't come in for a scheduled shift, she would just code in PTO for herself and move on with her day. When she was there, she didnt do anything at all. One time she passed out in the back room from pills while our sales lead was on the floor by herself. As fulltime managers we were assigned DORs (departments of responsibility). There was Operations, Talent and Merchandising and they were split between the 3 fulltime managers. My last year with the company, I was working 2 of the 3 while Sarah was doing none. I took more than half of the conference calls. I planned our entire fiscal year. I made ever schedule, did every interview and every new hire onboarding. I was training our keyholder in the merch DOR. When I say that I was literally running a 1.6 million dollar store with no help from my SM, while only making $13hr I AM NOT KIDDING. All the while, anytime I tried to initiate positive change, and enforce standards I was immediately shot down and told "I am not the Store Manger". So essentially - we were failing. At this point I learned that on top of everything I was doing, she was telling everyone else in the store than I was a horrible manager and did nothing. She called me names to people, and even lied to them about crazy shit she claims I did. When I confronted her, she would tell me it never happened. All our employees were quitting left and right because she was literally crazy. She would yell at them on the sales floor and make them cry, force them to stay past their scheduled shifts and the few times she did make the schedule she would schedule them outside of their availability and fuck us over with coverage on the weekend. She manipulated every single person on staff. I left work crying every day.

Now here's where things got fucking psychotic. My keyholder and I had to drive to Tampa for a training certification class, and one thing led to another that ended with us spilling only a small portion of the crazy shit going on in our store. The manager training us empowered us to go to our DM. I spent the night writing and incredibly detailed list of everything she had been doing with help of the rest of the store staff and management team. The next day I called our DM and she was floored. She told me that she was going through HR to get it figured out (this was in august) and while she got in a small amount of "trouble"for a few small things, Sarah was still our store manager and she was bullying us worse than ever. Sarah immediately assumed that I was the one that got her in trouble (even though every single person on staff contributed) and she took it out on me in the worst ways. She denied all of my request offs and had my working every single weekend. Things hit rock bottom after Hurricane Irma hit us on October 2018. We had an emergency close the day before the hurricane touched down because our entire staff was living in evacuation zones and were running out of the state to stay safe from the storm. The night we closed it was me, Sarah and an associate who we will call Ashley. Things were totally normal, low stress and went fairly smoothly. When we arrived back after the storm everything seemed normal. Another week passed, and my husband and I were driving down south to his parents house when I received a call from my DM. In this call she Informed me that my CRAZY BITCH SM told her that on the night of the emergency closing I told her that if we didn't close the store I was going to KILL HER AND HER FAMILY.

WHAT THE FUCK.

She also made the mistake of telling the DM that the associate was a witness. And the DM told her that she needed to have a conversation with me and ask me why I said that. The DM (thankfully) warned me that this conversation might happen, but neither of us thought this bitch was crazy enough to actually lie about something so serious that she claims I said TO MY FACE.

BOY WERE WE WRONG!

She called out of her next shift with me, but then proceeded to come in before hours at 8:30 AM as I was opening the systems, cornered me alone in the stock room, and this bitch looks at me and says "Kianna, do you remember saying anything inappropriate to me during the emergency close?"

Me: No...

Her: Nothing... at all?

Me: Nope. Nothing at all, why?

Her *yelling*: SO YOU DONT REMEMBER THREATENING TO KILL ME AND MY FAMILY??!

ME*completely shocked that she literally said it*: No, Sarah. Seriously? We both know I would never say something like that. I literally dont even use that kind of language jokingly.

Her: Just admit you said it and apologize.

Me: I'm not going to admit to something I didnt say.

Her: Ashley was working she heard you!

Me: Oh really? Ashley happens to be my opener. Let's ask her! If she heard me say that, I will apologize and just accept that I somehow said this horrible thing and blocked it out.

Her *hesitantly*: oh... okay.

When Ashley arrived, we sat her down and Sarah asked her the same uncomfortable question. "Do you remember Kianna saying something incredibly inappropriate and threatening the night we emergency closed?"

Ashley: Uhh... no?

Sarah: So you don't remember her threatening my family's life?

Ashley: UHM, DEFINITELY NOT?!

Sarah: UGH, WELL I HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY, ASHLEY, THAT SINCE YOU WON'T ADMIT THAT SHE THREATENED ME THAT I WILL LOOK LIKE A LIAR TO MY BOSS!

Turns out she then tried to groom Ashley into lying for her by offering her a raise if she lied. Ashley told our DM this. SARAH WAS STILL OUR STORE MANAGER. By the end of October, 3 MONTHS AFTER TURNING HER IN, I was done waiting. I turned in my notice, found a better paying job and left that toxic situation. I left because I felt unsafe in my work environment and despite all my evidence and her threats and her literally lying in hopes to get me fired and arrested I WAS STILL BEING FORCED TO WORK WITH HER.

The day I turned in my notice, I found out I was pregnant with my son. Leaving that toxic environment was the best decision I ever made. KNOW YOUR WORTH, GUYS.