#she does so many amazing and important things and achieves so much its such a shame this sometimes gets forgotten and in the background

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

Jam, some interview for you https://youtu.be/FKk_Miqx6W4

Thank you anon!!!

A new Olena interview!

Mostly about her work with some interesting informations and background stuff.

Some private questions at the end but not really anything new.

Asked again about how Ze (and his character) changed during the war. Olena says she can't really give an answer to that because you can only assess any change after the war. But some of his character traits (that were already there) have come out more / are now stronger / sharper. Like he is now more stubborn (probably meant as in persistent) and determined.

Also no, she does not know more than the public, adding she wants it to end (like everyone else; it's a bit unclear what she is refering to - a second term? the war? the separation?)

Ze has become more emotional / sentimental about the things close to his heart / that are important to him as a person, especially family topics (communication with his family, with his kids, ...). He is now appreaciating that very much. You can now cheer him up (and he will get really emotional) with any little thing, like when Olena talks about the children (like when she tells him what the kids said) or sends him a pic of the kids. He wasn't so sensitive before the war.

She talks with the kids about the war.

In February, when the war started, she was on her way to the kids room to wake them and tell them what happened, wondering how and what she should tell them, that they have to pack the emergency suitcases. Oleksandra was already awake and had no questions, knew what happened. Kyrylo was confused and Olena tried to distract him and engaging him (them) in everything they now had to do. For Kyrylo the distraction worked for the first day.

Olena understands that it is a great honour for other First Ladies to be the "first advisor" to their President (like Jill Biden). But she is not Ze's advisor at all. She jokes that a good husband, of course, always will say that the wife is the most important advisor and she is sure Ze would say the same. But he is the President and it's not her place to tell him anything or advise him with anything.

[agirlwithglam]

🌟 become your dream girl before 2025! 🌟

THIS WILL *ACTUALLY* CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

do you know how many people are waiting until next year to glow up and actually start to become their dream self? now just think, if you started now, before 2025, how far you would be. how much more skills and knowledge you would have. you're literally getting a head start. so what are you doing dilly-dallying until 2025? heres your guide to ending this year accomplishing everything you need to and starting 2025 with everything you need.

in this post i will include mindset shifts, how to become a better person, actionable advice, actually becoming a new person <3

👑know what you want.

who do you want to become at the end of this year? what does your dream girl look like? what kind of body does she have? her clothes? who are the people she hangs out with on a daily basis- friends?

create a very clear version in your head and use pinterest to show photos of what your goals are- for ex: girls at the gym, journalling, writing, studying, reading, learning, walking, with friends, spending time outside, going swimming, playing sports, doing a skill/ hobby.

you can also find an idol/ an inspiration- a youtuber, influencer, parent, anyone who you look up to and want to somewhat have a similar life like them. (for ex: thewizardliz, tam kaur) whatever is important to you this goes hand in hand with the next point:

👑goals.

any unfinished projects, any goals you said you'd do in the beginning of the year, get them all down on paper. if you've finished any of them, great!- tick them off. but if you haven't then its time to lock in. pick the ones that are most important to you. that you know that achieving these will 100% get you closer to your goal. doing this makes sure you get rid of the ones that you think are "productive" when in reality they just help you procrastinate.

finish any unfinished projects or books you have before the new year begins because 2025 is about bringing in new, fresh opportunities and things. for me personally, i have a few crochet projects that i want to finish before the end of this year so i can start the new year with nothing old from the year before!

👑cutting.

you are going to be becoming a new person- new mindset, new values, new perception on life, etc. the people in your life currently probably won't align with this new version of you. because if the people around you still only know the old you, your growth won't happen because it will feel extremely unnatural without the right people around you. this means you're going to have to decide whether you are letting any of your friends go. if they don't serve you or make you feel happier or bring in any value to your life, im sorry but its time to cut them off.

but of course if you actually have good, kind, loving friends who grow with you and support you all the way, keep them. the goal is to remove the people who don't serve your highest self. not remove the people who you know will be there for you.

but along with this, if you notice that those people are acting a bit more weirdly/ strangely now that you're improving- giving you backhanded compliments, talking about you behind your back, or just giving you a weird vibe in general, trust your gut. those people don't want to see you going to a higher place where you're thriving- keeping them in your life can be terrible for your highest good.

remember that doing this doesn't mean that you're not going to get better because BETTER ALWAYS COMES. god will give you more people who you couldn't have ever dreamed could be so amazing. so never keep toxic people in your life out of fear that you'll be alone forever. (remember: 8 billion people in the world.)

👑mindset.

dont wait to change your mindset only once you achieve the dream body or the best grade- start now. people can take away everything from you but they can't take away your mindset, skills, and knowledge. here are some mindset shifts to develop:

the abundance mindset. know that everything happens for your highest and greatest good only! everything will work out in the end for you because God hasn't put you on this earth to suffer. if you are religeous (God) or spiritual (the universe) or even believe theres a higher faith, why on earth would you willingly believe that your purpose here is to have a bad time? obstacles will come your way and you will make bad decisions and mistakes. but all these jsut contribute to the person you are today and the person who you'll be in the future!

i will make it. believe in your vision and yourself so fiercely that you know in your bones that you will achieve your goals. you will travel the world and discover new places, you will get to retire your parents, you will get to buy expensive bags for your mom, you will be that rich sister/daughter/ wife, you will help people around the whole world, you will have people around you who love and care for you, you will achieve whatever dream you had since you were a kid and whatever dream you have right now. you will you will you will! know this so strongly but also know that i will achieve there one day, but i also am so blessed and grateful for the life i have right now! i have so many privileges and such an amazing life that i would never trade away for anything.

growth mindset if you fail, IT IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. please stop being afraid of failing, be afraid of never trying!! you have no idea how freeing failing is because once you do, then you'll never have that "what if" in the back of your mind, never have that small voice asking what could have happened if you had done that thing. so if you do fail, perfect! that means that you won't waste any more time wondering what would have happened. having a growth mindset means that you know you're human and you'll make mistakes, but that doesnt make you a bad person and it doesn't take away your capability to still accomplish your goals. if you fail be able to brush it off, and keep trying again and again. Thomas Edison had 1000 failed attempts to make the light bulb. yet he learnt from what didn't work, took that into consideration, then tried again. and again. and again. and now? your probably sitting in a room with light that you have because he persisted in his goal!

stay positive always have a positive outlook and perspective of life. look at the beauty and what you have instead of what you lack. feel happy joyful energy vibrate through you everyday. do things that just make you a more positive person in general! feeling happier makes you look 100x more attractive and will change the way you interact with the world!!

👑be a better person.

new year new you right? so its time you up level the way you talk and treat others. because the goal isn't to be A b*tch, the goal is to be THAT b*tch! so going around being rude isn't going to do anything for you. being kind however- having manners, checking up on people, asking how their day was, being charismatic, etc- thats what can get you so much more opportunities! you're going to be kind, but not a people pleaser- ofc prioritise yourself always but also at the same time- if you have made a commitment to be somewhere for someone at a certain time, honor that commitment. be the friend you wish you had.

being mean to everyone just because you were hurt by someone else is not it. yes, so you were hurt. grow, evolve, heal. you're stronger than this. you're stronger than you think. you can overcome anything and you can become an even better person, capable of loving fully and wholly!

misc tips:

change what you consume. start watching thewizardliz, tam kaur on youtube. have an inspiration/ idol to look up to in life.

workout. i dont care if its not one of your goals to have a fit body, but don't workout for that. workout because you love yourself. because its actually proven to make you happier, because you deserve a healthy, fully functioning body.

DRINK WATER. do you know how many benefits something as simple as that has? clear skin, unchapped lips, better digestive health, weight management, better health, feel more alert and energized, better for immune system, increases brain power, eliminate toxins, ETC ETC!

have a morning routine that literally sets yourself up for success. stimulate your mind with reading self help, learn something, study, focus on a skill, do something that makes your mind active.

journal & check in with yourself.- document your progress! write about how you felt after everyday. did you feel esp happy during anything? do you feel satisfied at the end of the day? or do you find that your day made you feel tired and drained? do you feel regret and wished you did more at the end of the day?

diary- links with the earlier point. document the day. you can write about it, or what i also like to do is video myself yapping to the camera. talk about whatever you want and let your mind wander free!

you are that it girl! dress the part, smell good, make yourself feel so good that you just can't help but feel like you can conqure anything!!

make sure you're consistently reminded of your goals. what do you want? why do you want to achieve it? reminding yourself of your goals will actually motivate you and make you stop procrastinating. for me its that i don't want any old projects or books having to continue into the new year so i've made a plan that will definitely get it done before the next year!

[my-castles-crumbling]

hi cas!! okay im just gonna pray to the lord that this wouldnt come out racist. week ago my little sister asked me “ people get upset when they draw black people white, so why dont they get upset when they draw white people black??” i honestly never give that much thoughts before so this question really threw me off guard. bc of that i cant give a proper answer to her and shes been asking the same question since then. i was kind of afraid people will saw it as racism so i was hoping that you would understand it and if its not a bother i hooe you can give me an answer to this

loveed the new chap of clandestine btw!! your jegulus makes me feel single in the best way posiible!! hope you had a good day

Ooo okay so please keep in mind that I'm white, so the things I'm saying are based off of what I've learned from research. Please please if someone sees something that is wrong, correct me!

First, I think it's important to listen to what POC have said on this subject. Here is a link to a youtube video I just watched by a POC creator and artist that does an amazing job of breaking down why this is an issue and how to correct it- even going into techniques for drawing darker skin. At time mark 4:25, he answers your specific question. This is, hands down, the best place to get your answer.

Basically, society has a history of whitewashing. For centuries, POC have been erased- taken out of history, not been given proper/literally any rights or voices, literally killed and hunted down. Both their achievements and the way they have been targeted have been purposely not discussed or reported on, and please be aware that even though people disagree, this is still a constant problem. It's not going away.

Society whitewashes in so many ways it's impossible to count them all- giving white people credit for the work of POC; casting white people for the roles of POC characters; basing healthcare rules on research conducted only on white people; teachers taking points from students if they don't use 'Standard' American English and instead speak using AAVE or HVE terms even if they still get answers completely correct; schools only teaching the history of historically white countries and populations; the list goes on and on and on.

Keep in mind too that for years, diversity in literature and media was close to nonexistent in most places. Why? Because any literature created by POC or about POC is not taught or as widely distributed. Think about the books you were/are given in school. Any books from years ago don't have racially diverse characters, and if they do, they either are a caricature of their race, or are solely written about based on the 'struggle of being their race.' They are not given the 'luxury' of personality traits outside their race. It is only recently, as POC have spoken out about this issue and are being given the chance to publish their own work with characters that reflect them, that main characters can both be black AND solve a murder mystery- amazing! (/sarcasm). So now that we are starting to see more diversity in media, it is vital not to take that away.

So, with that knowledge about the history behind whitewashing and lack of racial diversity in media, you now know the context. So when a person chooses to draw a black character as white, they are taking with them all of that history and context. And in a moment, by drawing that character white, they are bringing back that context, and taking away the diversity that is so needed in literature.

And- why? Why do people insist on drawing canonically black characters as white? There is no good reason. People can say "oh, I think she'd be better as white" but that's just racism, plain and simple. If an artist doesn't know how to draw dark skin, they can look up a video.

In contrast, drawing a canonically white character as a different race doesn't take anything from them. It doesn't bring up a history or context with centuries of racism behind it. The only thing it does is add diversity to a fandom and allow people to see characters that look like themselves in media where they might not have.

I hope this makes sense and I hope I've done the topic justice! Please know that any racist or hateful comments on this ask will be deleted, but if someone has anything to add or any corrections to make, please let me know!

[loosesodamarble]

Hiya Erika! i love this ask game so much, and these will all be for Kai’ichi since…Kaizio is rotating in my head like a frozen burito in a microwave 🤣! Also I apologize that its a lot so just take your time with it 🥰!

Eros 1, Philia 2, Storge 3, Ludus 5, and Pragma 2

I wanted to ask a couple of more but I didn’t want to overwhelm you so I’ll ask next time 👀😌!

The answers to your many questions are finally here, Lyra! Thanks for waiting for them~!

..........

Eros 1: Is your OC romantic in the traditional sense? Do they enjoy giving or receiving gifts of flowers or confectionary? Or are there other courtship traditions from their culture of origin that are important to them?

Unfortunately for Kai'ichi, he isn't much for traditionally romantic gestures. They're boring because they're the standard. If his partner wants flowers or chocolates, he would do his best to give them. And he'd go above and beyond giving the "best" versions of those gifts. But Kai'ichi would find little satisfaction in such things.

He'd much rather give his romantic partner experiences to treasure. There could be physical mementos of the activities and adventures they've gone on, but rarely does Kai'ichi think to actively give some kind of souvenir. It's being with the one he loves that he finds more romantic.

Philia 2: Does your OC find it easy to make friends? Or are there barriers to them doing so? If so then are these due to issues of inclination, communication, or something else entirely?

Kai'ichi can actually make friends pretty well, despite being a bit on the socially inept side. His enthusiasm is what draws people in. He can be a little pushy but most will agree that he's pretty encouraging. And having a friend who always encourages and supports you is what Kai'ichi is there for.

His more aggressive tendencies - fight first, ask questions later attitude - will scare away the faint of heart though. Not that Kai'ichi minds. He'd rather not befriend people that he'd have to hold back around.

Storge 3: How far does parental approval (imagined or expressed) impact upon their current sense of self-worth? What might they sacrifice or attempt to achieve in order to ensure the approval of their parents?

Ichika is a hard to please person in general, but I think she'd be a little lenient on her future children. Saying that, Ichika still holds some standards as she wants her sons to be upstanding individuals.

In general, Kai has high self-esteem. He's a natural talent, which not only gives him a good dose of confidence but compels him to work hard to keep up the reputation he has. However, Kai would take it pretty hard if he disappointed Ichika. Because he believes her to be the most amazing person in the world, he does his best to adhere to her example and advice. Being unable to do that would hit him hard and make him pause to question himself as her son.

If Kai'ichi was really truly desperate to gain Ichika's approval if he felt like he needed to, he'd actually try to restrain himself. He's over the top and less in control of his impulses than his mother and that would be one of the things she criticizes him for. Thus, Kai'ichi's fire would be smothered as he tries to be more reserved like Ichika. It would be sad to see since he's the liveliest person in the Yami household and their lives become duller without his chaos.

Ludus 5: What seduction techniques are most likely to be effective when it comes to your OC? Are there some things guaranteed to get them going? Or are they immune to such things?

Assertiveness. That shit will always make Kai weak at the knees when it comes to romance. When he's in the right headspace, he's very forward himself so it's a matter of matching energy.

Approach him from across a ballroom with a smile. Be the one to ask him for a dance. Just straight up compliment him while he's trying to decide what to say. As long as a prospective partner can essentially get a head start on putting the moves on Kai'ichi, then he's going to be giving them his attention.

Oh, also the lamest, cringiest pick up lines. He's sick and tired of the roundabout and flowery romance language he hears from Shigehiro's literature so "lowbrow" romantic flirtations will make him smile.

Pragma 2: What is the biggest challenge that your OC has had to overcome in a long-term relationship or friendship? What helped them get through this?

When it comes to all of his relationships (platonic or romantic), the biggest hurdle Kai'ichi faces is his inability to slow down. He's always trying to challenge himself and find interesting things to do. So friendships have ended due to the other parties being unable to take Kai's constant energy or talk him into relaxing. Because I think Kai'ichi could learn to appreciate quieter moments, but it's going to take someone strong mentally (and maybe physically) to get Kai to sit his butt down.

For his relationships specific to characters in Clover Kingdom, the distance between Clover and Hino is a huge challenge. I believe the two countries would be able to establish contact after the final arc, but it's not like Kai'ichi can drop by whenever he feels like it. It'd either take a long journey or powerful magic to get him there in a shorter time span. Kai'ichi would do his best to believe that his connections in Clover wouldn't forget him but he would have a little anxiety about missing out on things in their lives. I'm not sure what sort of solution there'd be for this issue except finding really loyal people to call his friends in Clover.

And when Kai'ichi develops feelings for Ezio, oh man will he be conflicted. Because it was always Kai's dream to become a member of the Ryuzen Seven like his mother. But he wants to live in Clover with Ezio. His childhood dream or his new dream? Which is he going to choose?

[londonandrewsandme]

CATFISH LOGIC

So, let’s look at catfishing logically and the reasons that my catfisher was London Andrews in a logically way. Catfishing is the creation of a false online personality to deliberately make friends with, influence and manipulate someone, to achieve whatever ends the catfisher wants.

The Naturist Lady account appears on MeWe (it is important that it is the MeWe platform) in 2021. She does not claim to be London, but a friend of London. That she is the wife of a couple who are in an open shared sexual relationship with London Andrews and London’s husband. She says that some of the OnlyFans video’s are of her husband having sex with London, because they of a similar build. But, he wears a tee-shirt because he doesn’t have a tattoo. And suddenly I start to think that a lot of videos lately, the guy you thought of London’s husband, was wearing a tee-shirt.

Plus, she provided evidence. Photos I had never seen before. Now this has an impact, I start believing. But this is why it had to be on MeWe. Because MeWe has the facility to send a photo on its chat/messenger section, that is only visible for a matter of seconds, then they self-delete !

Naturist Lady was sending me these self-deleting photos. This was how she provided private evidence. Photos I had never seen before, photos of London having sex, or at home. Photos that were not on OnlyFans or Patreon or Instagram or Tumblr or FaceBook !

And Naturist Lady was telling me the story of what was going on. Wonderful, enticing, seducing tales of her love life with her husband, with London’s husband, with her and both husbands. And between her and London or what London and her had done with one of the husbands or even all four of them together. And the trivial of her life and what was happening between when she visited the sanctuary and helped with the animals and then had more amazing sex. Incredible. And I really wanted to believe this. Wouldn’t you ? (I may share some of them later. With screenshots as proof that I am not making this up.)

But this first couple of months was just setting scene, as it were. Then Naturist Lady turned her attention to me. And given what had happened before and the conversations we had had, she knew what to do and that the door was wide open. I fell for the catfishing hook line and sinker. I now believe the term for what she did is ‘love bombing’. Naturist Lady was saying she wanted to include me and my wife in their group. Note that before Covid, my wife and I were due to retire very soon and had always planned a retirement tour of the USA. This pre-dates our friendship with London and then when London and her husband had moved into the farm sanctuary, London had said that we must come and visit and she would put us up at the farm, when we were visiting Seattle during this tour. Covid messed up our plans, like it messed up so much for so many.

Anyway, for various reasons that I will cover later, I began to suspect things with the Naturist Lady account. When I challenged her on MeWe in the summer of 2021, I got blocked from the London Andrews MeWe account. Think about this. This is 2021 and I argue with Naturist Lady, who says she isn’t London, but I get blocked from the London Andrews MeWe account that had been dormant since 2019 (one of the reason I started the London Andrews Project). Just work that one out for me please ?

So, this now confirms my suspicions the Naturist Lady account is run by London Andrews !

Just a quick recap on catfishing logic. It is the creation of a fake online persona to influence and manipulate, to play games emotionally and mentally with the victim. Someone had created the Naturist Lady account, Who? Some third party ? Naturist Lady had claimed to be a friend of London’s to gain my trust. I would never have believed anyone who contacted me claiming to be London on a new account...and believe me, back then this was a regular occurrence. So, I have challenged this catfisher, not by calling them out as some third party, lying and playing a nasty game with me. That everything was totally false and the whole thing was made up. No, I have just told this catfisher that they are London Andrews !

In catfishing terms, I have just given them the keys to the kingdom – my kingdom.

Because if Naturist Lady had been another person, a third party, all they had to do was say that they were London, then they could have taken their catfishing to a whole new level. That is the logic of catfishing.

Logically, if the catfisher was not London and was some malicious person, a third party, playing nasty games with me and they had spent the last six months pretending to be a friend of London, providing me with evidence to convince me this is the case. Working hard to suck me in and get me to believe the stories I have been told. And think about what I am saying ? I am not rejecting the events, I am not saying that all this is lies. I’m not saying that I am being catfished by someone else. I’m not challenge them that they are a third party, some unknown person.

I am saying that *YOU* (the catfisher) are London Andrews herself. A woman I have followed for years and care about immensely : and the catfisher knows all about this because they got me to open up about what London means to me. Imagine the scenario, the one posted by London and her trolls last year, that the catfishing MeWe account, Naturist Lady was just, “Some sad guy in a backroom, just like you.” Imagine giving this, “ some sad guy”, this golden opportunity ?

All they would have to say is, ‘Yes, I’m London.’ They would have to make up some sort of apology, some sort of excuse. But , given what they had done, the effort and work that they had put in already, why miss this chance to to take the catfishing to a whole new level.

‘Yes, I’m London, sorry, but let’s talk now, just you and me.’

What an opportunity for them to sucker me more and win the gold medal for catfishing.

This is the logic of catfishing.

But this is exactly what she did not do !

More soon

Andy. 

#londonandrews #londonandrewsmodel #beauty #sexy #beautiful #bbw #curvy #busty #voluptuous #glamour #kinky #curvymodel #photography #art #lingerie #erotica #model #onlyfans #patreon

[rightofjean]

Hi again!

In order to become successful today, you need very little - for example, start selling banalities, wrapping them in beautiful, imported packaging. The most amazing thing is that the simpletons who are ready to pay several thousand to a “business coach”, or, as they now say, “coach”, in order to become truly “successful”, as it turns out, are “through the roof.” The “buy yourself a little happiness” business, as it turns out, has not gone away even in the age of the Internet and high technology. Moreover, the vigorous activity of the army of coaches (such as Elena Blinovskaya, Ayaz Shabudtinov, and ... Anastasia Zykova), despite their dubious methods, does not subside at all.

The army of proliferating “gurus” is not embarrassed by the sad experience of “marathon runner” Elena Blinovskaya, who first shocked the respectable public with unattainable incomes, and then naturally got into criminal charges for tax evasion... The harsh hand of the law also grabbed Ayaz Shabudtinov, who traded in “business coaching”, maybe not so charismatic, but no less impudent... But what makes real adventurers so remarkable is that their restless followers are not at all embarrassed by the news of their epic failures. Easy money turns off the minds of even the most sensible businessmen, depriving them of the ability to analyze other people's mistakes.

Digital Lady Star On the topic of coaching, we were interested in the activities of a “new “star” named Anastasia Zykova who “broke up” in recent months on the heavenly slope. Much work has not been completed to find out that in the recent past Anastasia Zykova was the wife and mother of the famous Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena. They got married when she was 28 years old. At some point, the Arkhangelsk native apparently felt that she was quite capable of building her own happiness by filing for divorce.Heartbreaking details of the story of this faded love can be found on the Internet. At first glance, the dramatic divorce of another provincial woman from an eminent lawyer, about whom many secular publications wrote news, has nothing to do with the successes of the newly minted business coach Anastasia Zykova-Kucherena, but it depends on how you look at it. Still, a well-known surname could help start a new business, even though the family happiness was short-lived.

Anastasia Zykova graduated from the Kutafin Moscow State Law Academy with honors, combined study and work, gaining her first professional experience at the age of 19. While still studying at the university, she decided to focus on private practice. In addition, her background includes the Skolkovo business school, as well as training at Ernst & Young, Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov and in the ANO “Scientific and Methodological Center for Mediation and Law”.

In 2016, Anastasia Zykova registered her main project – the company “Business. Solutions. Partnership”, which later became Key Consulting Group (KCG). She assembled a team of lawyers, whose photographs can be seen on the company's website. Zykova herself acts as the managing partner and general director of the organization. KCG's profile is comprehensive business support in such areas as tax practice, criminal defense of entrepreneurs, bankruptcy; dispute resolution, corporate practice. In addition, Zykova speaks at various forums and conferences, where she teaches various business wisdom, for example, negotiating.

Unanswered Questions We sent her an editorial request, asking if she was active in the field of entrepreneurship? Which litigation cases does she consider to be the most successful in her legal portfolio? Also in our request, we asked to send to the editorial office any positive feedback from business entities about its activities in this field, we asked which of those who were trained using its methods had achieved any success thanks to them, what benefits, equipment and materials used in its educational activities? And most importantly, we tried to find out what caused such a high price for her services?

Alas, we did not receive a prompt response from Anastasia Zykova, and therefore we decided to study the video ourselves, a trainer for businessmen and top managers. Unfortunately, not many practical conclusions were born, rather more personal impressions - about them in order. It is likely that the big name of her ex-husband played a significant role in the early stages: at least, Anastasia Vyacheslavovna’s business grew literally before our eyes, like a bamboo grove after the rain.

Back on January 20 of this year, she was presented as a “professional mediator and professional negotiator,” and already on February 20, she was a “master dealmaker and business lawyer,” and on March 4, a new leap was made – “a business lawyer and expert with extensive experience in supporting litigation.” September 3 Anastasia Zykova – “moderator of strategic sessions for companies.” It should be noted that the latest stage in the evolution of our “digital lady’s” business looks as impressive as it is mysterious: all our attempts to find on the Internet any information about her participation in these sessions led to nothing.

Moreover, the very concept of a “strategic session,” as we found out, looks, at least for now, so vague and mysterious that “moderating” it, as it seems to us, is not so tricky: it’s like standing at a pedestrian intersection and inform pedestrians that they should go when the light is green and stand when it is red. At least, even such giants as Gazprom, judging by reviews on the Internet, do not see much sense in such events, and even top managers consider them empty chatter: after all, the “strategic goal” of any business company is clear and understandable: to sell make their products more expensive, while spending as little as possible on their production.

Anastasia Zykova gives her “protégés” advice of approximately the same kind - apparently hoping that they did not bother to read the works of Adam Smith, and even more so, the old Marx at universities. Can such information be considered exclusive and worth so much? This raises big questions.

The fact that her business advice is a storehouse of banalities and nonsense can be easily learned from the Internet: fortunately, many videos with her participation have been uploaded to YouTube. Here is one of them, it is called “9 mistakes of a novice manager.” In the preface, Anastasia Zykova (then Kucherena) explains what mistakes should be avoided in order to “immediately become an effective leader” and does this, in our opinion, quite simply.

In general, “leader” is a rather complex and vague concept. This requires a whole set of special qualities. Some people have the gift of leadership from birth, others are not given the opportunity to become one, even if they complete a hundred courses. But let’s not quibble - you can’t get enough of natural leaders for every company: of course, you need to learn a few things, since you’ve been put in charge of a team.

A lot comes with experience. But listen! If you have already been put in charge of a small department: let it be five to seven people... So, do you have some kind of life experience? Well, you can’t humiliate yourself like that by listening to “advice” from “strategic company moderator” Anastasia Zykova to novice managers!

So, in her opinion, “the first mistake is to open the door with your foot and think that the leader is above someone, and not with someone.”

Opinion for a million In other words, if you have been appointed “in charge” here, do not consider the rest to be cattle and “untermensch”, about whom you are now allowed to wipe your feet. The advice, to be honest, is so-so - any normal, educated person understands this perfectly well. The wish “not to open the door with your foot” when entering a room where your subordinates are sitting is generally pure banality, bordering on vulgarity. How many bosses have you seen, among whom, alas, there are complete boors and tyrants who kick the doors in their own office?

After recommending not to show off too much in front of your subordinates, the managing partner of KCG Consulting says that familiarity also does not lead to good, which, in our opinion, is also obvious to any reasonable person. A leader is a leader because he stands above his subordinates and is by no means obliged to be friendly with them - on occasion, he can strictly ask, or even punish. At the same time, he, of course, should not ignore their ideas, needs and interests. What's new here?

The manager’s second mistake, according to Ms. Zykova, is “not taking into account the team’s previous experience.” Hmm... Perhaps there are fools who do this, but, in our opinion, it is at least indecent to advise such a decent person who has occupied a leadership position. Here, Ms. Zykova, it seems to us, is not just banging on an open door - she insults her listeners, considering them complete intellectual nonentities.The designation of the third mistake: “ignoring the “one to one conversation” with employees, necessary in order to update the tasks facing the company,” makes the novice manager finally become convinced of his backwardness. Such a cleverly formulated thesis simply means a conversation with subordinates “face to face”, which the boss, according to Anastasia Zykova, should not neglect.

Here, most likely, the logic is simple: apparently, our “business coach,” sensing that his client, having reached the third point, might feel that he was being scammed like the last “sucker,” decided to let in foreign words. As a result, a person who does not speak English, and there are quite a few of them, will feel his intellectual inferiority and will continue to look the “coach” in the mouth, waiting for the next valuable advice.

Questions you knew the answers to Some of Ms. Zykova’s recommendations are simply stunning with the abyss of thought. “It’s very important,” she says, “that your partner is a dual type.”

This, probably, is the secret of the success of all modern coaches: their recommendations are so vague that they allow for the most incredible variety of interpretations, which allow, in case of failure, to blame everything on the client: they say, he did not understand everything correctly.

In any case, the success of Ms. Zykova’s enterprise looks stunning: at least judging by the dolce vita attributes that she puts on public display and the handsome checks that she, according to her, supposedly receives for the simplest actions available to even a novice lawyer.

At first glance, this will seem strange. It’s one thing when, for example, Bill Gates writes about “business at the speed of thought” - an innovator, a visionary, the founder of a giant empire, a thinker, a philanthropist - a global figure. But what kind of business did Ms. Zykova create and what benefits did it bring to people? The answer to this question is not yet known to science. A kind of “empty set” arises: Ms. Zykova’s success lies in the fact that he instructs those who thirst for success. At the same time, it does not matter that she did not achieve the required level of success in any real business, did not record any particularly important achievements in the legal field, and generally did not produce anything that would have any exceptional and independent value.

But here a cunning trick comes to her aid: she records many hours of conversations with truly successful businessmen, always emphasizing that they are “in the same club.” These businessmen, of course, need advertising, but the viewer gets the impression that the interlocutors have almost created a prosperous enterprise together and are sharing the profits.

In one of the latest videos, Anastasia Zykova states that she wants to try herself in a new field - energy coaching. For a session of such “coaching”, which, judging by the publications, includes a dinner with a successful entrepreneur or a visit to his home, Anastasia, according to her advertising, receives up to 800 thousand rubles. What exactly happens during these sessions is unknown to us and it would be impermissible to speculate.

[lookedafterchild]

[ultimate_gdpr_protection level=4] as your all well aware with now. I was homeless and as the final chapter, I want to share some very, very important life lessons I learned from my experiences being homeless. covering both positive and negative effects this had on me. What I learned From Being Homeless. Not Everyone homeless is an addict. the homeless are your elders, children, war veterans, people who have come into financial difficulties. your old neighbor. anyone can become homeless the biggest lesson I learned was I can never judge upon a homeless person again. take the time to learn their stories. it will really open your eyes. I learned a lot about myself, being alone and spending so much time in the woods. I had no choice but to reflect on the past, and future versions of myself. it was a very critical time in my life. and I was very harsh about the decisions I had made prior to becoming homeless. and made plans for my life after being homeless. I learned the powers of nature, the woods being the place I chose to spend my homeless days.  I never used to like going out. or even the idea of camping. but being homeless forced me out of that comfort zone. and it enabled me to really reflect. as of recently I've not had much chance to reflect. at least not in the woods. but if your stressed or lost in life. please consider spending a night or day in the woods. there is something magical and healing about it. I started to realize the reason for my drug abuse. and addictive behaviors. it was a mask. we all have bad experiences and things we want to forget in life. and drugs do an amazing job of hiding it. BUT what it does not do is heal it. this goes for pharmaceuticals as well as illegal drugs. as a nation, we should find new ways of managing our emotions and traumas. Friends/Family There was a small group of people at the time who was always there for me during homelessness. at the time not many of you knew. just close friends and family. I want to say thank-you to the small group of friends who checked up on me daily. brought me food. made sure I was capable of lighting the fire. and helping me to lift my general wellbeing. even though you were fighting your own battles too. I also want to thank those family members who were able to put up with me being stubborn and the refusals for your hands to help the thing is during this time I was still struggling and prone for a repeat. my mum making me homeless was the push I needed to make drastic changes. and I did not want to hurt any of you again. and as you know. I had a goal, one I fought for and achieved. I got my independence back, I got away from the drugs, my home, a job and a loving partner. I look back and think would this be possible without the move my mum put in place. she was not just protecting my siblings. but looking out for my best interest. however harshly it was done. it was the right move for me. Survival it's not easy! but when put in a situation that needed it's key! I learned a lot about plants, survival in the winter. fire starting  and general first aid out in the wild. Being homeless is Dog Eat Dog the meaning of Dog Eat Dog is something or some situation in which there is fierce, ruthless competition. and being homeless taught me its rough. not only because of general public putting you down, and sometimes attacking you/ ridiculing you but your biggest enemies being homeless is another homeless person! be careful who you trust. some people are there only to take advantage and stab you in the back. Lonely I've mentioned about being alone a lot of the time. let me explain what may be the first time publicly. when I first became homeless I did not tell anyone close to me. it just happened. I remember spending the first month in the woods totally alone. I would wake up take my hit and sleep. this may have been my addiction but during the latter days, I was more aware that I really isolated myself during the early days. and this was because I was depressed and ashamed of my situation.

Don't be a stubborn person, especially when homeless. - those times when people want to help you. even as a stubborn person who doesn't want to take any help.  you should really cherish those few people who generally care and offer a hand. it's hard to find these sort of people when your homeless but when you do. don't turn it down. it's okay to get help. Read Other Stories Regarding My Homeless Expireances   [Being Homeless Aged 18| My Life Stories 003 1 Of 3]   [From Homeless To Homeowner; My Journey (overview)] thanks for reading the Final post regarding my homeless experiences. thank you for following along my journey, it has been a pleasure to share this with you and to have received all the amazing comments, you always help inspire me to write more stories. if you've managed to get this far I want to thank you personally and would appreciate if you helped me reach new audiences. my aim for 2020 is to get my message further out there. I would be very thankful if you could share this post in groups and on your personal social media sites. thank you once again. for everything.

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

My opinion on bnha 329:

You can check in here my opinion about chapter 328, if you want the context.

I'm glad Horikoshi solved many of the things I pointed out last week. And I'm glad that I'm correctly reading into the manga, at least at some extent.

Let's see what we got this week: (long post)

After a long building up of relating Spinner to common citizens, mutants, people with weaker quirks and in general, the audience or the general public, we finally see this being explicitly acknowledged. He's on the end of his arc now, because the people picked him as their voice.

The last point is really important because Spinner now has great power. This is a direct parallel to the way Uraraka took control of the megaphone and spoke for the heroes. Now, it's Spinner's turn to speak for the villains, but because people wants him to do so.

On another note, we got an amazing graphic parallel of Stain and Spinner. While Stain is in shadows, Spinner is bright. And unlike Stain, Spinner has been chosen by the public. He was not there to be a leader, but people recognize him as one. This is very interesting because it shows how much Spinner has grown and how he is his own character, with his own achievements.

We saw Dabi back in a forest. This is a direct parallel to the way he stopped being Touya and got to be Dabi. It's a graphic reminder that we're getting the end of his arc with the Todorokis. What is his last step? We know he has his own plans and we know he wants to make Endeavor suffer, so could he be on a solo mission to achieve his vengeful desires? In which forest is Dabi? Are we're going to get more flashbacks? Are we going to see him back at Sekoto Peak?

Please note that when they mention Toga, it's exactly the way Curious wanted it. Toga is in front of a black background. She's being inserted on a narrative by force and not by choice, because someone else is putting her there. Alternatively, the white background tells us Toga's arc is still lacking definition and scenario for its end. Her fate is yet to be defined.

There's A LOT to say about AFO. Please look how the League of Villains is broken. AFO is using them as puppets. When referring to Spinner, he talks about him like he's a "bodyguard", not an equal or a friend like Tomura used to do. AFO clearly doesn't care about them and he won't stop to consider what they want, unlike Tomura. He has his own things to do and anything else must be forgotten and put aside.

AFO is still hiding behind Tomura. Please note how Tomura is treated like any other nomu. AFO took the throne of the king (Tomura) and made Tomura into a war dog.

Now, I've written some meta before about how Tomura never had an own identity until he met the League. Kotaro denied Tomura being himself, so much that the hand of Kotaro was still making Tomura faceless long after Kotaro's dead.

After Kotaro, AFO took away Tenko Shimura and imposed a new identity: Shigaraki Tomura. Please note that Shigaraki is AFO username, which means that even back then AFO was planning on using Tomura as an extention of AFO himself. And by naming him Tomura he pressured the kid to never forget his anger and sadness, caused by the tragedy of his family. It was AFO who repressed further the kid, all the hands being a physical reminder of such act. The hands were covering his entire face and because Tomura was unable to touch, he was only able to listen, just like the nomus. That's why Tomura scratches his neck so much. He itches for having an own voice, an own personality, an own identity.

If you pay attention to the panels in bnha 329, you can see how Tomura is wearing both a suit that resembles AFO's clothes and a cloak that resembles the one AFO was using on the world where Deku could see the vestiges. Tomura even has the white hair like AFO now. His pose and clothes are a direct parallel to Deku, but in a way AFO is a parallel to OFA.

Tomura has been stripped away of everything that made him himself. He doesn't have the hands, he doesn't have his clothes, people calls him AFO now, he doesn't even have his friends around. He's alone, a weapon and nothing more. I wrote another meta about how Tomura had no identity analyzing a panel from bnha 328. This is the direct consequence of that.

But this is not a separate case. It is pretty normal, in fact. When a system fails, when an entire country dives on a crisis, it's normal for everyone to question their place in that society and their identities.

Deku had an identity crisis and his friends for UA needed to rescue him and reminded him who he was. Toshinori had a crisis and Stain needed to helped him with it. Uraraka questioned too her identity as a hero and from there her speech above UA was born. Endeavor got a crisis, Shoto got a crisis, Toga needs to decide as much as Spinner does who do they want to be, Dabi is facing his old identity and his new identity conflicts...

This is actually pretty good. The narrative around heroes and villains are being questioned.

Who am I and why am I that person?

Do I need to be that person?

What is my role in society? Why?

What are my goals and why? Are they worth all the consequences?

Do I like the identity of my society? If not, can I change it? Can I change all the things before?

Bnha inner universe is walking towards a redefinition. What is a hero, what is a villain, who are they, why they are heroes or villains, etc. These characters were forced into certain roles or they assumed they needed to play those roles, according to what society told them. And now, they are free to decide. Time and time again, in every journey of any hero, the problems of the identity and the self vs the others is vital, and it shows through the decision making system.

On a final note, I'm a little sad that Horikoshi made a female version of All Might to fight Tomura, instead of giving her a more original character design in general. Women in the bnha universe tend to be seen as replacements of previous existent characters, or they are used quickly to further the plot and get forgotten. They deserve a better treatment, being honest.

The kids will get there rest time, because not all the cards are on the table yet. I love that it's the turn of the villains to play, because the final result of the next battles are going to be partially determined by what the members of the League of Villains decide to do.

Spinner will probably betray AFO, because he's not loyal to AFO's ideals but to his own ideas.

Dabi has his own thing going and he's also going to get rescued by the Todorokis. I really want to see Hawks, Endeavor, Shoto and Dabi all in a same fight, because parallels are going to fly around and I bet we're going to found out more about Dabi's heart.

I think Toga is still going to interact with the UA kids and help them somehow. I hope she gets to talk to Deku and make some good friends.

And for Tomura... He needs someone to reach for him. He has lost himself. His determination is gone, the sparks in his eyes, his fire. He needs a reason to fight, a reason to believe. He needs someone to believe in him, someone to call out his name and make him exists. He needs someone to see him. He's the same lost boy who walked on the streets asking for someone to rescue him. He's the same kid that asked for someone to believe he could be a hero. If Deku gives him that, if All Might helps him too, if the League is there to show them their loyalty, Tomura will be able to snap out of AFO's control and break free.

Nothing like a good villain chapter to make me excited about the future chapters. Let's wait and see.

[manikas-whims]

this person accidentally sent in a submission instead of an "Ask". So I'm gonna assume they'd like their blog to stay anonymous ✌

Let's do this for the request above & for that one anon who keeps persuading me to write kanej smut ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Kanej Smut Headcanons Pt1

• Every moment of physical contact, even the faintest ones are important to them. And so, being able to engage in sex is a big achievement for them. A moment of pure bliss.

Kaz finally experiencing everything he's only ever fantasized about late at nights.

Inej realising that physical intimacy can actually feel amazing with the right person.

• Kaz absolutely loves hearing her moan his name. You know it inflates his pride but also because it keeps him grounded. Her voice is like a tether and it never let's him get lost *sobs*

• Inej blushes everytime he takes her name or growls. Somehow his already gravelly voice is even sexier between the sheets and she's mesmerized.

• They're very touchy once they get over their traumas. They like to touch and feel alot.

• Inej definitely enjoys running her hands over Kaz's torso and feeling the taut muscles flex under her palms. She's imagined this so many times after witnessing him clean himself up that one time in the past.

The first time, she's surprised by the scars marring his gorgeous pale skin. Sometimes Kaz tells stories behind them, sometimes he doesn't. Either ways, she kisses every single one because they're a part of who he is (gotta add some kanej scar worship)

• Kaz has a thing for her legs. He's seen them clad in her fitting trousers so many times all these years but to be able feel the actual milky softness of them is too much for him. How do such delicate, small legs carry her whole weight on silks?

He just loves her legs, especially when wrapped around him because he gets to hold her by the thighs and he loves it. He definitely likes kissing the inner sides of her thighs (one of his favorite spots aside from her neck).

• Kaz likes her on top of him, especially when its one of those lazy sex days. He just folds his arms behind his head and admires her riding him, her long hair swaying, her hands holding onto his shoulders as her eyes are closed and lips parted in pleasure.

• But Kaz doesn't know Inej likes him in control more. With any other man, it would be a nightmare. But she knows its Kaz and he would never hurt her. She gets extremely turned on when he turns her around and takes hold of her hands and bends her back and..(rough Kaz needs a separate post). He's rarely rough but Inej relishes every moment of those times.

• Kaz loves going down on Inej. Sometimes he just lets her stand support at the door as he gets down between her legs (kneeling does hurt his bad leg but sometimes he just can't help himself). And some other times, he leans against the headboard and asks her to bring her kitty to his face. She's embarrassed the first few times because its just too filthy for her but the things his tongue do to her make her see the stars. Its the only thing that make her legs falter. He thinks she deserves to be pleased everyday like this and his mouth knows just as many tricks as his hands ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

• Inej is shy but when she wants something, she outright asks for it. And so she does tell him she wants him in her mouth. Now he's embarrassed for the first time. Like he's dreamt about it and most definitely fantasized but he was never sure if it was okay to ask that much of her. So when she does say it (her cheeks flush pink and all) he complies. And goodness, its as if she worships him more than her saints because Kaz has to put a hand over his mouth to muffle his groans of utter ecstasy. The sight of her kneeling before him, looking up as she swallows his release is a memory that disturbs him at odd times. Like when he's sitting in his office for work, leaving his pants a little too tight for comfort.

*these are a few i always like to imagine Kanej..lemme know if you want more..:3

SoC Masterlist

[a-room-of-my-own]

A while before the latest hoo-ha about Judith Butler, I had just been reading her again. Though she claims her critics have not read her, this simply isn’t the case. I read Gender Trouble when it first came out and it was important at the time . That time was long,long ago. She was just one of the many ‘post-structuralist’ thinkers I was into. I would trip off to see  Luce Irigaray or Derrida whenever they appeared.

I got an interview  with Baudrillard and tried to sell it to The Guardian but they  didn’t know who he was so its fair to say I was fairly immersed in that world of theory.  For a while, I had a part time lecturing job so I had to keep on top of it. Though Butler’s idea of gender as performance was not new , it was interesting.  RuPaul said it so much more clearly in a  quote nicked from  someone else “Honey ,we are born naked, the rest is drag”

What I was looking for again , I guess is not any clarity – her writing is famously and deliberately difficult-  but whether there was ever any sense of the material body. She wrote herself in 2004 “I confess however I am not a very good materialist. Every time I try to write about the body, the writing ends up being about language” . 

Butler from on high ,cannot really think about the body at all which is why they (Butler’s chosen pronoun) are now the high priestess of a particular kind of trans ideology.  The men who worship Butler are not versed in high theory. The fox botherer had a “brain swoon” at some very ordinary things Butler said. Mr Right Side of history nodded along in an interview. Clearly neither of these men are versed in any of this philosophy and would be better off sticking to tax law and the decline of the Labour Party. Butler is simply a totem for them.

Butler said in the Guardian interview for instance  “Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us.”

So yeah? That’s a fairly basic view of the social construction of gender though I take issue with the assigned at birth thing ,which I will come back to and why I started reading her again in the first place.

This phrase “Assigned sex at birth” is now common parlance but simply does not make sense  to me. I am living with someone who is pregnant. I have given birth three times and been a birthing  partner. I know where babies come from. There is a deep disconnect here between language and reality which no amount of academic jargon can obliterate. 

Babies  come from bodies. Not any bodies but bodies that have a uterus. They grew inside a woman’s body until they  get pushed out or dragged out into the world. 

The facts of life that we are now to be liberated from in the form of denial. Only one sex can have babies but we must now somehow not say that. The pregnant “people” of Texas will now be forced into giving birth to children they don’t want because they are simply “host bodies”. The language of patriarchal supremacy and that of some of the trans ideologues is remarkably close, as is their biological ignorance.

There is no foetal heatbeat at six weeks for instance. When a baby is born , doctors and midwives do not randomly assign a sex, they observe it and they do it though genitalia. 

There is a question over a tiny percentage of babies ,less that one percent with DSDs but even then they are sexed with doctors having  difficult conversations with parents about what may happen later.

Somehow, though when I read the way in which this is now all discussed it is clear to me that the people talking have never been pregnant, never had a foetal scan, never been near a birth , never miscarried, do not understand that even with a still birth babies are still sexed and often named. 

If you want to know the sex of your baby you can pay privately and know at 7 weeks ((*49-56 days from the first day of the mother’s last menstrual cycle). A 12 week scan will show it. That is why so many female foetuses are aborted . I have reported on this. 

Talking to paediatricians about this is interesting because they do indeed have to think through these things that we are being told are not real eg. that sex is just a by-product of colonialism for instance.  Sometimes pre-conception , geneticists will be looking at chromosomes because certain diseases are more likely in men or women. Males have a higher risk of haemophilia for instance.  

One doctor told me “When babies are premature, the survival advantage of females over males is well known throughout neonatology. This is sometimes something we talk about with parents when there is threatened premature labour around 23 weeks' gestation and options to discuss about resuscitation and medical interventions. In fertility treatment (or counselling around fertility in the context of medical treatments) it is pretty inherent to know whether we need to plan around sperm, or ova + pregnancy.”

She also said that if she involved in a birth that “assigning” isn’t the word she world use. “Observed genitals a highly reliable observation, just like measuring weight or head circumference which is also done at this time. “ Another doctor said that anyone involved with a trans man giving birth  would be doing the best for the patient in front  of them. 

Sex then is biological fact. A female baby will have all the eggs she will ever have when she is first born which is kind of amazing. It is not bio-essentialist to say that our sexed bodies are different nor is it transphobic to recognise it.

Except of course in my old newspaper ,The Guardian who are now so hamstrung by their  own ideology they have got their knickers in such a twist they can barely walk.  They completely misreported the WiSpa incident , basically ignored the Sonia  Appleby  judgement at the Tavistock. Appleby was a whistle blower ,a respected professional concerned with safe guarding. She won her case. The cherry on the cake this week was an interview with Butler, themselves (?) in which they went on about Terfs being fascists and needing to extend the category of women.

Does anyone EVER stop to think that most gender critical women are of the left, supporters of gay rights, often lesbian and that this is not America? We are not in bed with the far right. This is bollocks. Just another way to dismiss us.  

As we watch Afghanistan and Texas ,to say Butler’s words were tone deaf is to say the least. But they didn’t even have the guts to keep the most offensive stuff in the piece and overnight edited it out without really explaining why : the bits where Butler described gender critical people as fascist. Perhaps because the person their “reporters” had  defended against  transphobia at WiSpa turned out to be a known sex offender,  perhaps because someone pointed out that Butler was throwing around the word fascist rather like Rik Mayall used to do in the Young Ones. 

All of this is rather desperate and readers deserve better. When I left that newspaper I said that I thought and expected editors to stand up for their writers in public. Instead they go into some catatonic paralysis. I may have not liked this interview but it should never have been cut. Stand by what you publish or your credibility is shot.

But this is about more than Judith Butler and their refusal to support women . Butler is not really any kind of feminist at all. What this is about is the large edifice of trans ideology  crumbling when any real analysis is applied. Yes, I have read Shon Faye’s book and there are some interesting points in it and I totally agree that the lives of trans people should be easier and health care better . I have never said anything but that.

What Faye does in the book is say that there can be no trans liberation under capitalism so there will be a bit of a wait I suspect. 

Yet surely it is the other way round and what we are seeing is that trans ideology (not trans people – I am making a distinction here ) represent the apex of capitalism .

For it means that the individual decides their own gendered essence and then spends a fortune on surgery and a lifetime on medication to achieve the appearance of it. Of course lots of people spend a lifetime  on medication but not out of choice.  Marx understood very well that the abolition of our system of production would free up women.

Now it is all about freeing up men. Who say they are women. Quelle surprise.  

 Nussbaum’s famous take down of Butler is premised exactly on the sense of individual versus collective struggle “ The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment. In this sense, Butler’s self-involved feminism is extremely American, and it is not surprising that it has caught on here, where successful middle-class people prefer to focus on cultivating the self rather than thinking in a way that helps the material condition of others. “

Such thinking now dominates academia. There is simply an unquestioning  rehearsal of something most of know not to be true thus Amia Srinivasan writes in The Right to Sex  “At birth, bodies are sorted as ‘male’ or ‘female’, though many bodies must be mutilated to fit one category or the other, and many bodies will later protest against the decision that was made. This originary division determines what social purpose a body will be assigned.”

What does ‘sorted’ mean here? A tiny number of intersex babies are born. A tiny number of people are trans and decide to change their bodies. The feminist demand to challenge gender norms without mutilating any one’s body no longer matters. What matters now is this retrograde return  to some gendered soul. This is not something any decent Marxist would have any truck with . Of course one may change over a lifetime and of course gender is never ‘settled.’ We are complex people who inhabit bodies that often don’t work or appear as we want them to.

But not only is there a denial of basic Marxism going on here , what becomes ever more apparent is  that there is a denial of motherhood. Butler said “Yet gender is also what is made along the way – we can take over the power of assignment, make it into self-assignment, which can include sex reassignment at a legal and medical level.”

Self-assignment is key . One may birth oneself. No longer of woman born but self -made. This is a theoretical leap but it also one that has profound implications for women as a sex class. We are really then, just the  host bodies to a new breed of people who self-assign.

Maybe that is the future although look around the word and there isn’t a lot of self-assignment going on. There are simply women shot and beaten in the street, choked to death or having  their rights taken  away. There is no identifying out of this , there is no fluidity here . This is not discourse. It is brutality and do we not have some responsibility to other women to confront male violence ?

Instead the hatred is aided and abetted by so called philosophers describing  other women as Terfs. It is utterly depressing.

The sexed body. The pregnant body. The dying body. The body is in trouble when we can’t talk about it . I thought of Margaret Mary O’Hara’s  beautiful and  strange lyrics and what they might mean. I await my child’s return from the hospital as hers is a difficult pregnancy and thank god they are on the case. The sex of the child she carries does not matter to me at all .

It simply exists. Not in language but within a body. 

Why is that so difficult to acknowledge? 

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Gabriel Agreste: Interesting Villain, Horrible Character (400 Follower Special)

I'm honestly surprised more people didn't want me to talk about Gabriel, especially with how often I rag on how horrible of a person he is. But, three character analysis posts later, and we're going to talk about why the main villain of Miraculous Ladybug is a real letdown.

Gabriel Needs to give the Whining a Rest

The interesting thing is one of the few things I actually liked in Season 3 was Hawkmoth. His plans actually made sense (for the most part), and by playing the long game, he managed to turn Chloe against Ladybug and deprived her of several key allies. Granted, Season 4 immediately undid the latter, but I was still impressed by his strategy.

Generally, one of the better aspects of Gabriel as a character was just how over the top he was as Hawkmoth. Keith Silverstein is clearly giving it his all with his performance, and he is just so enjoyable to watch as a cartoonish supervillain.

And therein lies the first major problem with Gabriel as a character. While he is fun to watch as a simple supervillain, the show tries to give him more depth and unintentionally makes him worse.

In Season 2, when it was revealed that Gabriel was Hawkmoth, many fans speculated on what he needed the Miraculous for, until the Queen Bee Trilogy showed it was to save his possibly dead wife, Emilie. The idea of that is so the show can give more depth to its main villain, and I think it's an interesting idea in concept. After all, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

The problem is just how radically different Gabriel is normally compared to how he is as Hawkmoth. He always goes on about how he's “doing this for Emilie”, but it's hard to really sympathize with him when you consider he constantly gives evil monologues and evil laughs, really getting into the supervillain role. And let's not forget all of the “I'm going to wear Ladybug's skin as a suit” faces he loves to make.

Clearly this man is the picture of mental stability.

Gabriel's motivation for being Hawkmoth when compared to what he actually does as Hawkmoth is shady enough, but the thing is that the writers clearly want the audience to at least feel a little bad for him. They want to make the audience sympathize with him despite the way he acts with or without the mask. Without Miraculous Ladybug, he is routinely putting innocent lives in danger and never once shows regret for his actions. All he talks about is how “he's doing this for Emilie”, or that “he'll get their Miraculous soon”. There's no real reason to feel bad for him other than “because the script says so”.

Let's compare Gabriel to Malcolm Merlyn from Arrow. His big plan in the first season of the show is to create a machine that will cause an earthquake to destroy a crime-infested portion of Starling City, claiming to be trying to help everyone, but it's clear he is only doing it out of revenge for his wife getting killed by a criminal from that part of the city. In addition, throughout that season and future seasons, he always makes sure his plans lead to him benefiting in some way, showing he isn't just some noble man trying to achieve his goals with a less than noble method.

If we got some moments that showed that what Gabriel was doing was selfish, it would make him a more complex villain. But we don't get anything like that. What do we get instead? Well...

I Could Really Care Less About Emilie Agreste

We have known Gabriel's motivation has been to save his wife for a little over two years at this point, but at the same time, it's hard to believe that motivation because of how underdeveloped Emilie is as a character.

There have been a total of two lines in the entirety of the show that explain what happened to Emilie, and they're both vague as hell. One of them was from “Feast” that implied Emilie used the broken Peacock Miraculous.

Adrien: My mom used to have dizzy spells… just like Nathalie.

And the other that outright tells the audience what's happening to her in a clip show that most people will skip.

Nathalie: As I've watched Emilie falling deeper into an endless sleep, my sadness for her has deepened, too

That is literally all we get for an explanation, and nothing else. We have no idea of what she's like as a person or what her relationship with her family was like other than Gabriel and Adrien saying they miss her. Other than the way the narrative says she's important to Gabriel and Adrien, we don't really have a reason to care about her as a character. There have also been some lines that imply she went along with Gabriel's questionable parenting techniques, like how he was apparently only homeschooled as a kid (Origins) and never had a birthday party growing up (The Bubbler), so how do we even know if she's a good person? In fact, why not set up this question as a mystery to make the audience wonder if Gabriel has another reason to bring Emilie back?

It ultimately turns Emilie into a plot device and not a character that Gabriel and Adrien only bring up to make the audience feel bad for them, and meant to justify Gabriel's actions by saying that he's “doing this for his family”.

But hey, if he's doing this all for his family, surely Gabriel's redeeming traits come from his relationship with Adrien, right? Right?

As a Parent, Gabriel is Far From the Best

I've talked about this briefly before, but parenting in Miraculous Ladybug is written in such a black and white way, even by the standards of this show. Parents are portrayed in one of two ways. They're either amazing people who love and support their children unconditionally, or they're awful people who treat their own children like trash. And much like a lot of things in this show, there are times where the latter is treated like the former.

There are so many times where the narrative insists on making you see Gabriel as a troubled, but wellmeaning person who tries his best to be a good parent to Adrien, but it is far from the truth.

I'm not going to beat around the bush. Gabriel is a terrible parent. Like, he is awful at being a parent in so many ways, even before you find out he's Hawkmoth. In his first appearance, “The Bubbler”, he delegates getting Adrien a birthday present to Nathalie, his assistant. He literally can't be bothered to take time out of his schedule to get his own son a present for his birthday. And as the show goes on, he becomes more controlling and forbids Adrien from going out with his friends in other episodes (Captain Hardrock, Silencer). While this could be used to show Gabriel getting worse, it's never acknowledged in-universe, with Adrien continually defending his father essentially keeping him on house arrest.

“But IOTA!” You might say. “Gabriel has made efforts to bond with his son in some episodes.” While that might be true, most of those come right after his Akumas have almost gotten Adrien killed. He only hugged Adrien and made an attempt to learn more about him after Simon Says invaded their home, he only decided to watch that movie Emilie was in with Adrien after Gorizilla nearly dropped him off a building, and he only hugged Adrien again in public after he was turned into a gold statue by Style Queen.

In fact, let's talk about how Gabriel acts in the Queen Bee Trilogy. He actually decides to quit being Hawkmoth, but it's not because he realizes all the damage he's caused. Instead, he gave up because his “magnum opus”, a stronger than usual Akuma that only got the advantage on Ladybug ironically because of dumb luck, failed. Sure, he says he can't keep putting his son in danger, but he rarely ever acknowledges that he does so in the first place. When Riposte wanted to fight Adrien, Hawkmoth did nothing to stop her other than giving her a stern warning earlier on and nothing else. Where was this attitude earlier?

Hell, even then, he immediately goes back to being Hawkmoth as soon as he sees an opportunity, not even a day after his “mAgNuM oPuS” blew up in his face (because I guess Scarletmoth was just Plan B). If he made such a big deal about caring for his son, why didn't he try harder to spend time with him? Has he ever had doubts about what he's doing before? If Chloe didn't show up as Queen Bee, was he going to follow through on his promise and try to be a better father to Adrien instead of trying to get Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous?

And yeah, the whole irony is that Gabriel is doing this for his family when he is unknowingly fighting his own son, which could lead to some interesting drama if done right. The idea of how Gabriel would react to his son being Cat Noir could really lead to some internal struggles for him to go through. But then we got “Cat Blanc”, which shows just how terrible of a character Gabriel is.

In an alternate timeline where he found out his son was Cat Noir, what does Gabriel do? Does he try to steal Adrien's Miraculous while he's sleeping? Does he reconsider his actions or realize he was endangering Adrien's life?

NOPE! He just decides to akumatize him all while emotionally tormenting him, before causing the end of the world.

This is honestly one of the most appalling things I've ever seen in any TV show, because it's basically an abusive father ordering his son to listen to him all while referencing his (kind of) dead mother to back up his point. And rather than use this to show how despicable Gabriel is, the episode decides to blame Marinette for this happening. Yes, according to the show, her present to Adrien caused several events to happen which caused Cat Blanc, but this logic makes no sense. It's like blaming the JFK assassination on the man who sold a gun to Lee Harvey Oswald, instead of, you know, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Not only was this episode yet another excuse to blame Marinette for something that wasn't her fault, it leads into the biggest problem I have with Gabriel as a character.

Sympathize with Gabriel? Surely, You Jest

After everything I've gone over regarding Gabriel as a character, after all the awful things I've talked about, are you really surprised that I don't feel bad for him at all?

Gabriel is just an awful character and a despicable human being, but the show just keeps wanting me to feel bad for him. It's just so hard to when you consider everything he's done has made him anything but sympathetic. I'm just saying, it's kind of hard to feel bad for someone who tries to start World War III with the only justification being “i'M dOiNg It FoR mY fAmIlY”, especially when he treats his family like crap.

The writers go out of their way to show how horrible Gabriel is as Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth, but they think because they throw in a few moments where he looks conflicted, we'll immediately feel bad for him. What makes so many people interested in seeing Chloe become a better person is that they can tell she's the victim of a troubled upbringing, and know that because she's only a teenager, she still has room to grow as a person, represented by having more honest moments of vulnerability. Gabriel is a grown man who once caused the apocalypse because of how terrible of a parent he is, and has even fewer sympathetic moments than Chloe does. Which one of these two is supposedly irredeemable? The answer may surprise you.

But the frustrating thing is that this kind of villain could have worked. Instead of making him this mustache-twirling psychopath, show how much Gabriel regrets what he has to do, but keeps pushing onward despite all the lives he's risking if it means that he can save his wife. Instead of making Gabriel like Lex Luthor, make him like Mr. Freeze, who is basic a better written version of him.

But as it stands, there's a good reason why Gabriel gets little to no respect as a character in the Miraculous Ladybug fandom, as a villain, or as a father.

[moonlight-breeze-44]

Leverage Finale.

Thanks to my friend @echo-bleu, I just finished watching all five seasons of Leverage. The finale was exceptional, and the entire show is so extremely important to me. I’m going to do my best to articulate what I want to say, but it may come out jumbled. I apologise if it does - but this is too important and too meaningful for me not to comment on. 

I started watching Leverage because Echo told me that it was the “original found family” and featured a borderline canon autistic character who was both badass and scripted extremely well. When I first started watching the show, I thought to myself: “What’s another favour for a friend? Maybe I’ll end up liking it, anyway.”

This may have been the biggest understatement of my life. 

Leverage is so important to me. It’s genuinely one of the most meaningful, impactful shows that I have ever watched, and its message(s) shine clear as day. 

Message #1: Family

The Leverage team is made up of Alec Hardison, an expert hacker with a huge heart and a desire to be surrounded by people he loves; Sophie Deveraux, an accomplished grifter with multiple identities who wants someone (or a group of someones) that takes the time to get to know the real her underneath all of the masks; Parker, an esteemed thief who wishes for a family that teaches her & helps her grow while loving her for who she is and respecting what she can do; Eliot Spencer, a badass hitter who craves to be recognised beyond the violence of his past and loved for who he really is and the heart he carries with him; and Nate Ford, an ex-upstanding citizen turned criminal mastermind who wants to see corporations like the one that let his son die be brought to justice, but knows he needs help to do it. 

Together, they make up a ragtag team of criminals that love each other and have each other’s backs in every situation. Together, they form the Leverage team. They form a family. 

Family is about love, about trust, about caring for each other and staying together even when things get rough. Family is Nate Ford, Sophie Deveraux, Parker, Alec Hardison, and Eliot Spencer from Leverage. 

Leverage teaches its viewers that not all family has to be blood. Some families can be found. This show, these characters, this family? It’s exactly what family should be.

Message #2: Hope

Leverage doesn’t just appeal to every person’s desire to stick it to the high and mighty. While that’s a big part of it, Leverage is also about so much more than that. Leverage is about finding a home in the most unlikely of places, among the most unlikely of people. It’s downright inspiring.

Leverage is about hope. 

Hope that it’s not too late. Hope that you aren’t too broken to be loved. Hope that you can have a home, a real home, the kind of home that you always dreamed of having. Hope that you can make a difference. Hope that you can achieve your dreams. Hope that you can love and be loved in return. 

Everything about Leverage is executed perfectly, and the hope shines clear through it all. In the midst of nothing, a gang of criminals found their something. They found each other. 

Nate tells Eliot in the season finale, “You know, I’d say to call if you need anything, but you - you never need anything.”

Eliot smiles at Nate and says, “Yeah, I did.” He looks back at Parker and Hardison, and the message is clear enough. “Thanks to you, I don’t have to search anymore.”

Sophie asks Eliot to promise her that he’ll protect them; keep them safe. 

Eliot says, “Until my dying day.”

That kind of devotion, that kind of love, is something that everyone dreams of. Some of us have it. Some of us don’t. But regardless, it is everyone’s dream to belong. Everyone wants to belong in a different way, and everyone sees belonging differently, but everyone wants people who understand them and cherish them like the characters of Leverage understand and cherish each other.

With this finale, Leverage is telling everyone who has ever wished on a star or prayed to an angel that their hearts aren’t foolish or naive for daring to hope. Leverage is telling everyone who has ever wished to be loved and understood that they can be. They will be. 

Leverage tells us that we’ll find our people, even if it takes us a long time, and when we do, it’ll all be worth it. 

Message #3: The OT3

Over the course of the show, Parker, Hardison, and Eliot’s relationship continued to be something that spoke to me and made me feel more seen and validated than I had felt in years. 

Going into this show, I heard from Echo and a few of my other friends that Leverage had an OT3 that was “as close to canon as possible”, but I’ll be honest with you - I didn’t believe them. 

All my life, I’ve been queerbaited and kept on the edge of my seat by TV show after TV show, waiting for some big reveal that never happened because the show producers didn’t care as much about my views as they did about the views of their audience that might be offended by it. It’s not something that I’m even bothered by, anymore, aside from the principle of it; this is just the way the world works, and I’ve learned how to enjoy TV shows despite it. 

Still, with that knowledge and experiences in mind, I didn’t go into Leverage believing that the OT3 would be this. 

The Leverage OT3 is so much more than I could have hoped for; all three of them “died” holding hands, and they said words to and about each other that are the equivalent of marriage vows in the real world. The OT3 is, genuinely, as close to canon as possible for a USA 2012 television series, and that is beautiful. 

I know I’m not the only person that has watched Leverage and felt this deep, emotional connection to the OT3. I know I’m not the only person that has watched Leverage and felt so validated, so represented, and to me, that’s worth everything. The OT3 was given time to develop, and the characters align perfectly with each other in ways that most of us never would have dreamed of a TV show doing. The Leverage OT3 consistently tells me and people like me that we’re loved, we’re valid, and they understand. We’re not alone. 

The fact of that matter is, regardless of how much evidence there may be of that on the Internet these days, it can be easy to feel like you’re the only one in the world that’s like you when it comes to relationships if you never see relationships like yours or the ones that you want to have onscreen at any point. It’s easy to feel like you’re weird or strange or wrong somehow for how you feel without representation, and Leverage, I think, knows that. 

Leverage casts light on and says I love you, it’s okay to anyone and everyone who’s ever experienced attraction to multiple people at the same time, who’s ever been in a poly relationship, who’s ever been in love with multiple people at once, who’s ever considered a relationship with multiple partners, and who’s ever realised that they are polyamorous. And that, my friends, is NOT representation that we get every day. 

This kind of representation is so rare, but Leverage did it. 

Leverage did so many things, and all in all, watching this show was one of the best decisions of my life. I finished watching with love in my heart and validation in my smile and beautiful characters sewn into my soul. I love this show. 

There are so many more things I could say about why I love Leverage and why I think it’s one of the best shows to exist ever, but then this Tumblr post would be as long as a dictionary. For now, I’ll just settle with saying this: 

Leverage is one of the most amazing TV shows I’ve ever had the honour of watching.

[mhevarujta]

Zoya and the Darkling [Rule of Wolves Spoilers]

It’s a pity that fandoms mostly focus on romantic/sexual relationships, because The Darkling and Zoya have one of the most epic dynamics in the Grishaverse. The way they affect each other is so complex.

Zoya did not go to the Little Palace after being tested in the usual manner of Grisha travelling across Ravka to recruit children with powers. She was a young girl, a child really, living with a bitter and broken mother, in a home where her Suli inheritance was not appreciated, in a country that would condemn her both because of the power she let her demonstrated AND because of who she would have been without it. She was basically sold as a child-bride and her mother deluded herself into thinking that her daughter would not be raped by the old man she was marrying so that she’d feel better about herself, not to mention that she poisoned Zoya with her fears and made her afraid of her own heart. At the wedding her power broke loose and her aunt took her to a hard journey to the Little Palace so that Zoya would be tested and have a chance at a better life.

Zoya was taken in and she was separated from her family, but her aunt was ALWAYS in her heart. She started training and she was stronger than most, she was also driven and resilient. She arrived at the Little Palace when she was 8-9. When she was 13, she was the youngest one to be chosen as part of a group that would travel with the Darkling to Tsibeya to find the white tigers of Ilmisk because one of them was supposed to be an amplifier. By that age, Zoya was half in love with him already and she lived for his rare appearances at the school. She was the best, she had fought to be so, and he wanted him to see it. The Grisha were focused on hunting the female tiger, but the amplifier was a male one. He tried to kill the female’s cubs and Zoya gave them the protection of her body, she got scars that she never had tailored and she almost died, and killed the tiger to defend the cubs; not for the sake of power.

It wasn’t HER turn to get the amplifier, but since she killed the tiger only she could claim it. And THIS brilliant scene happens:

Some part of me always feared that he would send me away, banish me forever from the Little Palace. I told him I was sorry.

“But the Darkling saw me clearly even then. ‘Is that really what you wish to say?’ he asked.”

Zoya pushed a dark strand of her hair behind her ear. “So I told him the truth. I put my chin up and said, ‘They can all hang. It was my blood in the snow.’”

Nikolai stifled a laugh and a smile played over Zoya’s lips. It dwindled almost instantly, replaced by a troubled frown. “That pleased him. He told me it was a job well done. And then he said … ‘Beware of power, Zoya. There is no amount of it that can make them love you.’”

The weight of the words settled over Nikolai. Is that what we’re all searching for? Was that what he’d hunted in all those library books? In his restless travels? In his endless pursuit to seize and then keep the throne? “Was it love you wanted, Zoya?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I wanted … strength. Safety. I never wanted to feel helpless again.”

  “Like calls to like” fits the Darkling and Alina, but it also fits Zoya and the Darkling… in fact it fits Zoya and Aleksander even more so. Both were powerful and KNEW it. Both eventually learned to be unapologetic about it and saw it as their safety net. Both were taught that power would give them safety, survival, fulfillment in some ways, but not love. And yet, as much as they denied it and hid their hearts they DID want to be loved more than anything.

Zoya only rises thereafter. She gets her rank, she is one of the most valued Grisha in the Little Palace, she is admired for her strength and beauty, she armors herself with arrogance, and ruthlessness. But she has not friends. Both her and the Darkling are surrounded by people, they are admired, but they don’t have people close to their heart. The Darkling always cared about Baghra as much as he could still manage and Zoya cared only bout Liliyana and Lada (an orphan girl that her aunt had taken in).

The Darkling SAW her. He saw how she tried like no other, he saw her pain, her anger and he considered these to be things that he could use to control her and to push her towards the direction he desired. And despite not being appreciative of her devotion when he had it, he missed it when it was gone.

When Alina got in the picture everything changed for Zoya. Yes, Zoya had feelings for the Darkling and I DO believe that her feelings and vanity would have been hurt to some extent by the intimacy in the way he approached Alina, but the primary problem was Zoya’s sense of injustice. Zoya had tried for YEARS, had trained hard, had sacrificed to be where she is. Alina never asked for any of it, but from Zoya’s perspective Alina would have been an untrained Grisha who got all the status, power and recognition that SHE had fought for without even trying. Until then, Zoya had been praised for wanting power, but when her anger is not convenient anymore, the Darkling punishes her for it and does not have a second thought about her.

And yet she remained loyal as always.

Even more so than rank, the Darkling and Liliyana were Zoya’s safety-net. And in ONE MOMENT, by genociding Novokribirsk, Zoya’s own mentor, the one who gave her safety and who was meant to create a haven for the Grisha, a person who KNEW her and who KNEW that she had family there, showed that he had no care for her, not care for human life and she wiped out the last people that Zoya loved.

He left her broken inside. In Siege and Storm, Zoya was at her lowest. She has to plead to Alina to have a position in the second army and she has to reveal a part of her heart; not just her loss of Liliyana. Her voice BREAKS when she says that the Darkling could have warned her of his plan; her pain at the idea that he did not give a crap about taking EVERYTHING from her is raw and cutting.

But she is not a quitter. She adjusts, she pulls her pieces together fast, she is a warrior and she stays on the right side without a question.

Then the Darkling attacked the very Grisha he was supposedly fighting for and killed half the people that Zoya had EVER KNOWN. And she still keeps fighting.

 Enter Rule of Wolves. There is SUCH DEEP IRONY in this book and the way Zoya and the Darkling’s arcs interconnect is a prime example of Leigh’s amazing writing.

The Darkling had told Zoya that they would change the world and he completely stopped paying attention to her the moment the potential of Alina’s power blinded him to anything else. And yet, when he returns Zoya has gained the kind of power that could eventually rival his own. But he STILL thinks that he should be the one to rule Ravka. He still thinks that he is the best option for the country. And once more, he criminally underestimates Zoya and overestimates himself.

Who else is vengeful and afraid of his own heart, I wonder…

Aleksander considered Zoya weak for the very same things that were his own fatal flaws.

But unlike him, Zoya SAW her flaws. The Darkling shut himself off more and more in order to save himself from pain. Zoya eventually opened up her heart to grief and pain to become the person her country needed and to embrace her power. She opened the door, when the Darkling did not manage to do so. She showed more courage than he did… and he SAW it.

Aleksander hoped to become the savior during the battle, he wished to demonstrate how only HE could save Ravka. But seeing Nikolai and Zoya defending the country is the first time it registers that there are others who are up to the task and who may be better suited than he is.

And he becomes essential in Zoya being accepted as a saint and in her rise to power partly because he wants to gain her favor but also because he finally sees all her potential, all she can achieve, how a Grisha queen of such power might give the Grisha the haven they need, when he clearly can’t.

And what is left for him to do? What does he want? He wants to serve the country he loves in a way that will affirm his sense of self-importance (he wants to offer something that no one else can) and he wants to be loved. So his new objective is to stop the blight.

The blight was created because of his own power. This man who hunted down and ruined the life of a young girl (Alina) in order to force her to be his balance, so that he could freely use his power in a very imbalanced way, finally realizes that HE is responsible for his power and that HE can be the only one to balance it and himself. So there is a new path he sees ahead of him: he can sacrifice himself to stop the blight and in the process Ravka might finally see that he always wanted to protect the country… and it might love him back. He KNOWS that he has committed crimes, he does not seek redemption, but he desired for all he has done to matter. And it can’t matter if he is not at all responsible for its country’s well-being and if everyone hates him. He has lived so many lifetimes without happiness or fulfillment and they would all have been wasted.

But he can’t achieve this by himself. This man who always thought that he could do things alone, and who took away everything Zoya had fought for, NEEDS her allowance for his centuries-long life to gain a scrap of meaning. He needs her allowance to be appreciated and loved.

I can’t be the only one who sees what a beautiful twist of fate this is.

At the same time Zoya herself understands the Darkling. She understands how anger and using power as a coping mechanism can corrupt. Knowing herself and seeing how he turned out are essential in her becoming a good ruler. He is the cautionary tale of what she could but will never allow herself to become.

When he explains his plan, she KNOWS that he’ll be in eternal pain and she has does not mind that his will be his fate. But when she sees the aftermath of his sacrifice and when she feels the kind of pain he’ll be experiencing for eternity, it leaves her shaken. She feels that pain in her own heart and this is not a fate that she wishes even on him. Genya and Alina are very much willing to let him rot but Zoya, who also believed that she could forgive him, feels that she has to.The Darkling has not redeem himself. He is doing penance. But as Genya mentions, there’s a fine line when one has to do the math of how much a person has to pay and of how much pain they have to feel before their punishment stops being just and they become victims instead. Zoya, being afraid of becoming him, knows that learning to show forgiveness is the only way forward, it’s the way for her to keep her heart open and not become the avalanche.

Zoya Nazyalensky has become everything that Aleksander Morozova, the lost boy, wished to be. Poweful, eternal, with friends, with a true partner, holding the best position a Grisha could imagine without forcing her rule and finally giving their people a true chance without comprominsing them. 

The Darkling was hoping that Alina would have been his balance. We are told how she might make him a better man and she might make him a monster.

But at the end of the day it’s Zoya who allows the Darkling to become the closest thing to decent that he can be at this point.

It’s the Darkling’s life that allows Zoya to see the lines that she will not cross and how to not become a monster.

And it’s Zoya’s ability to forgive him and her willingness to save him that becomes the backbone for the next phase of the Grishaverse, whenever Leigh decides to write it.

The way their paths entangle will always be at the core of the story.

_______________________

@myfriendscallmeraba​ I’m tagging you because you asked for it. It’s very encouraging to have someone interested in my ramblings.

[mindibindi]

They are destroying Rebecca’s character this season and this Sam bullshit is the final nail in the coffin for her. What the f*** are they doing to their female lead ??

Well, I suppose this is the danger of offering resolution early in the piece and why so few television writers do it, particularly when it comes to romantic relationships. Because then there is the looming question of What Happens Next. So many writers prove that, while they may have the imaginative juice to create, they don't have what it takes to re-invent.

Whether you understand her as the protagonist or the antagonist of the first season of Ted Lasso, Rebecca's big revenge plot drove s1, gave it a clear narrative arc. This inaugural season likewise gave her character a clear and compelling arc. You could posit that, while Rebecca's pain drove season 1, Ted's pain is meant to be driving season 2...? But whatever Ted is going through does not have as clear-cut an objective so it is not giving the same sense of cohesion or direction. Within her s1 arc, we got to see Rebecca feel angry, frustrated, victorious, smug, thwarted, conflicted, heart-broken and vulnerable. Last season gave Hannah Waddingham so many opportunities to show the range of her skills as an actor and I still hope she wins an Emmy for this performance. But I doubt she will be winning any awards for her performance this season.

Most situation comedies stick to the same situation, snapping their characters back to where they were at the beginning of each episode. Certainly, this formula can become repetitive and dull after years. Ted Lasso received a great deal of praise when it broke this formula by offering resolution at the end of its first season no less. It broke the no-hugging-no-learning mantra of so many sitcoms when it allowed Rebecca to learn from her trauma, come clean and literally embrace Ted as a valuable part of her life. Since her character went on the biggest journey of the season, the question of What Happens Next was always going to be more significant for her than it was for any other character on the show.

Season 1 of Ted Lasso made me fall in love with Hannah Waddingham and the character of Rebecca Welton. But as much as it pains me to say it, in s2 she is nothing like the problematic powerhouse we met in s1. Her friendships with Keeley and Higgins continue on nicely enough. She's had some good moments with characters she had little interaction with in s1, like Roy and Nate. And it was great to meet her mother and god-daughter. But this fleshing out of the character is mostly work around her rather than work that propels her forward in any meaningful way. I understand that some people may be content just to watch Rebecca living her best life after the intensity of last season. But, for me, the pursuit of heterosexual romantic love by a woman to the exclusion of all else is a problematic aim since women have been told for centuries that securing a man is the single most important thing they can achieve in their lives.

Rebecca wants love and doesn't want to be alone. She's stated that, that's canon and that's fine. But romance seems to be Rebecca's ONLY aim, her single focus. We haven't seen her do anything in her role as club owner except make a phone call and look sharp, which I admit she does well. The woman looks INCREDIBLE. But if you are in your right mind (at least in my opinion), you are not expecting this amazing woman to end up with a pretentious windbag, a hot booty call or a wildly inappropriate youngster. So it all seems a bit aimless, purposeless. All of this dithering about with wrong dudes is just a waste of time when we have limited time with these beloved characters. We know we are only getting three short seasons of this show and I don't want to spend a full season watching a previously complex female character stare at her phone, only ever prompted into (questionable) action by her cute best friend. And I DEFINITELY don't want to watch...whatever the fuck they think this thing is with Sam.

Frankly, I am still flabbergasted that they have chosen this path. They genuinely seem to think that their audience will enjoy this as some hot romantic adventure...? And hey, a small but vocal minority are. Some diehard fans are trying to hold onto their faith with white knuckles. And the rest of us are just over here in compete and utter shock at the suddenness of the decline in this show's quality and ethics. The latest justification some fans are rather desperately grasping at seems to be that Rebecca's actions stem from her trauma. Now...okay. Trauma can be responsible for many things. But not this. Trauma can make you act in v strange ways but I don't see the connection here. I can clearly see how Rebecca's trauma from her first marriage dictated her actions towards Ted in s1. That is a very clear line to draw. I can see how, after her disastrous marriage, her judgement may be off and she may go for someone like John Wingsnight: someone safe, solid and appropriate. Again, a clear line to draw. I can also see why she would indulge in fun, shallow sexual relationships with the waiter in Liverpool and her booty call from bantr. All normal, understandable behaviour for a woman in her situation. And a v clear narrative line for the writers to draw. No problems there. Her actions in each of these cases can be traced back to Rupert and his abuse. But I cannot for the life of me draw a line between Rupert and Sam. As a traumatic reaction, that does not make a shred of sense to me.

It's true that sometimes those who have been abused become abusers, not that I'm saying Rebecca is abusing Sam in this scenario. What I am saying is that most trauma survivors will go out of their way to avoid becoming anything like their abusers. Most survivors try their damnedest to break the cycle of abuse, not perpetuate it. Most victim-survivors will act, sometimes even to their own detriment, to spare others from being impacted by their pain and trauma. Trauma and abuse does not break your moral compass. If anything, it makes it stronger. Trauma and abuse heightens your sensitivity to what is right, just and honest. Having seen Rebecca ultimately unable to follow through in her trauma-inspired revenge plot on Ted, it does not make sense to me that she is blindly (without any of the nuanced inner conflict of s1 Rebecca) allowing her trauma and abuse to lead her into a situation that not only emulates her ex-husband's hurtful, unethical behaviour, but endangers what is now supposed to be so valuable to her.

All the press for s2 as spruiked Rebecca as a dating disaster but enthusiastically committed to her club. There is a huge difference, however, between charmingly, comedically 'messy' and inept to the point of self-destructive stupidity. I just don't buy her as this dumb. Yet here she is, after all her dealings with the savage British press last season, endangering the reputation of herself, her club and one of its most vulnerable players. Oddly enough, the Rebecca we saw in s1, with her many layers and nuances, seems to me to be a far more moral (not to mention interesting) rendering of this character. This Rebecca was motivated by injustice, she had an acute understanding of what was and wasn't right. It's why she conceived of her revenge plot and also why she ultimately dropped it. It is one thing for writers to propose that there are multiple steps on the way to healing. It is one thing for them to lead a character into a dark forest full of conflict and complication. But, from what I can tell, some people don't know the difference between a dark forest and straight-up bad writing. And it really fucking shows.

[erricdraven]

i'm really intrigued by your s6 spuffy thoughts can you talk more about what you mentioned in your tags???

lol yeah i really lost my entire mind in the tags oops

but sure, i'm happy to talk more about it. it's the one hang up i have about the show that i still have yet to make peace with and honestly don't think i ever will. i really respect now as i've gotten older how characters challenge us to think from new perspectives, and buffy has always been a character that challenges me in a few specific areas. when it comes to buffy and spike, i'm immediately predisposed to empathize with spike when i comes to the way he's treated regarding his feelings because i'm very much a heart-on-my-sleeve, all in person with love myself, and so it's a really hard thing for me to consume something so personally difficult in media i enjoy. i also feel like i need to preface this by saying that at the root of all my thoughts about what their s6 arc is, i believe they are both in the wrong in certain aspects. i'm not saying that spike has done nothing wrong and buffy is the one making all the bad choices and saying all the bad things.

so, with all that said--

the best way i can think to pinpoint why i'm really bothered by buffy's part in their issues can be summed up in the scene in entropy (?) where buffy accuses spike of spying on her on the grounds that she believes that's well within his character to violate her privacy and life like that, and with all the things she lists that he does (lie, cheat, steal, manipulate), he says "i don't hurt you." that interaction really highlights how the power dynamic is really fucked up and skewed for buffy to use to take advantage of. she knows that spike loves her (and though she's really resistant to acknowledging he really does love her, she believes that he believes that he loves her) and has repeatedly acknowledged outright and acted on the fact that he wants to spare her pain in any way that he can. he wants to protect her from getting hurt and if he can't, he wants to comfort her and try to make it better. granted, sometimes his solutions aren't conducive for her, but the intention (which is really important!!) is always to help her and support her.

with this in mind, i think that is why i have such a hard time with s6 buffy. i've yet to get to a point where i can feel comfortable watching her relationship with spike in this season because of how tremendously cruel she is. i understand that she's in serious pain and she feels horrified at herself for wanting to engage in this dark twisted thing with him, but at its heart, i feel like the thing that makes it dark and twisted, given that she knows that he loves her and that sex with him means something, is that she has backed him into a corner by setting a boundary of "i can only accept this so long as it hurts us". as soon as she starts facing her feelings, she can't bear to let him in anymore. we see at the start of s6 that the dynamic between them is something very sweet and gentle and kind. spike is careful and kind and supportive of her as she tries to feel out how to live in the world again. he's understanding of her circumstances (empathizing with the pain and trauma of having to claw your way out of your grave), he kept his promise to care for dawn without any thought of reward (and continues to from then on out), she admits that when she wants to be alone, she still feels most at peace when she's alone with him, and she seeks his input and advice on how to try to figure out the things that she feels like she's way over her head about ("so what do you know about finances?").

people are fallible and characters aren't meant to be perfect, and i believe that's really how writing should be, but this is something i feel like is much more complex than just a flawed character in the throes of an extended major depressive episode. we don't really see any genuine remorse from her directed at spike for how she has treated him even when she admits her disgust with herself for how she was taking advantage of him. when we see buffy fall apart to tara in devastation at the person she's become, i feel like what we're seeing is just an overwhelming amount of self-hatred at what she sees when she looks at herself. it feels like very...self-focused shame, like people who are disgusted at the realization that someone sees and classifies them as a bad person. we recoil from that moniker because we know it's wrong, and that's what we see in buffy. she hates that she's "a bad person", but what feels really lacking for me is the self-awareness to then turn that self-focused shame into a more... i don't know, i hate to call it this, but altruistic shame at the way she has been hurting spike purposefully. taking responsibility for her cruelty i feel like should have looked like her bearing the burden of her shame about her actions, accepting the discomfort of having to humble herself and hold it and say 'yeah, this is mine.' all throughout s6 in particular, spike is consistently the bad guy in every equation when it comes to his relationship with buffy, and that has always felt wrong to me, like a huge disservice to the story and his character. is he a bad guy broadly speaking? yeah, he's more villain than hero for sure. but is he the bad guy in their relationship? i'd argue no, he's not, and we never really get catharsis for that!!

especially with spike having his soul in s7, the tumultuous and abusive dynamic of their relationship in the previous season is treated as something they can just look back at and say "oh well we can move on now and be good and okay because we're never going back there again" even though buffy never apologizes to him for what she did to him and acknowledges it was wrong by taking that responsibility. it's always framed as buffy's stance being "sex is bad and dirty, and engaging in "dark" sex with you was bad so we'll never do it again." i tried to hunt it down and couldn't find it, but @chasingfictions made an amazing post that really struck me, talking about how, while the idea of the soul being a determination of good and a lack of soul being a determination of evil is a bit too simplistic and unsatisfying in the debate of good vs evil, spike's pursuit of a soul and actually getting it all on his own so that he could be a better man to the woman he loves and the world she risks her life every day to protect is so powerful and beautiful. the fact that in the show's canon, no one that becomes soulless has ever sought out getting their soul back, and no only does he get it back, he wins it back!! he fought to have it as a step towards being better, and that intention of choosing to be better means so fucking much! and he made that choice to take an action of good without the soul in question, after having, on many occasions, acted contrary to his nature to be better.

the writing leads us to a point where we support spike's pursuit of redemption and are moved by it, but to me, i think buffy should have been driven to seek her own redemption too. without it, i personally feel a very pervasive sense that catharsis for everything they went through in s6 was never really achieved.

in conclusion (lmao)... everyone interprets text/subtext differently, and that's absolutely okay, so i'm not saying that this is the only right interpretation of things! but for me, after spending a really long time trying to reconcile this discomfort i feel with buffy's character and not being able to get there, this is where i've landed.

[letterboxd]

Chaotic Bisexual.

Shiva Baby writer-director Emma Seligman tells Ella Kemp about expanding her wildly cringey short film into an even more anxiety-inducing feature, why Virgo and Taurus make the perfect producing pair, and the eternal conflict of being a good Jewish girl.

“If I can skip a bris to see E.T., I like movies!” —Emma Seligman

It sounds like a strange riff on a guy-walks-into-a-bar joke: a girl walks into a shiva and bumps into her secret ex-girlfriend, then her sugar daddy, then his shiksa wife, oh, and their baby—yet the payoff is so much more rewarding.

Filmmaker Emma Seligman’s debut feature is a new kind of teen classic: 78 non-stop minutes teeming with well-drawn traits and tropes that define the best coming-of-agers, the best Jewish comedies and the best day-in-a-life psychological roller-coasters.

Shiva Baby began as a grad project—a short film of the same name—and Seligman’s feature-length embellishment impressed at last year’s virtual editions of SXSW and TIFF, where it was quickly snapped up for international distribution. In a way, Shiva Baby was perfectly tailored to the times we were living in: Danielle, our reluctant heroine, is trapped in a claustrophobic family event she can’t escape, as people from her past and lies about her future make their way deep under her skin.

Fred Melamed, Rachel Sennott and Polly Draper in ‘Shiva Baby’.

Shiva Baby is very much the product of a wry school of emerging filmmakers who understand excruciatingly mundane horror and pin-sharp comedy as intimate bedfellows. Seligman’s writing finds a way to flesh out gloriously caricatural Jewish relatives, probing and overbearing and irrational. She does this both through dialogue and a visceral, haptic aesthetic that lurches in and out of focus visually, and has a nails-on-chalkboard unease sonically.

Coming in hot with a 4.01 average rating, Shiva Baby is striking all sorts of discordant notes with film lovers. “Combines some of my biggest anxieties: being asked if I have a boyfriend as well as what my plans for the future are and people talking with their mouths full,” writes Muriel.

The film’s “bisexual chaos”, which hinges on a haywire performance from Rachel Sennott as Danielle, opposite Molly Gordon’s overachieving ex-girlfriend, Maya, is also one of its great strengths. Glee star Dianna Agron is the shiksa threat, Kim, while Danny Deferrari is Danielle’s hapless benefactor, Max. If that’s not enough? Polly Draper, Fred Melamed and Jackie Hoffman are also just there.

What do you think defines a Jewish sense of humor? Emma Seligman: It’s morbid usually, and darker—generally uncomfortable and cringeworthy. I think about Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld, and A Serious Man. It borders on, “Is this funny at all?” I think Jewish humor leans into the darkly funny British sense of humor. I’m Canadian, so I feel like I’m halfway between the UK and the US in terms of their sense of humor.

Was it always your intention to make a comedy that feels like a bit of a nightmare? You’ve mentioned Black Swan and Opening Night as touchstones… Because I came from a short film, the question when expanding into a feature was, “How are we going to keep everyone interested in this day?” It’s got to be a significant day, it’s got to be that this young woman’s life has completely changed from this day. So what is it that changes? Why are we watching it? I watched a lot of movies that took place in one day, one of them was Trey Edward Shults’ first film Krisha. And then from there I realized that anxiety and this scary psychological feeling is a great way to have the audience stay there.

I watched Opening Night because there’s a shiva in it, but it was more the lobby scenes that were so claustrophobic and tense. And then each step of the way with each department, we were like, okay, it’s gonna be tense, but then we got to music, I was like, okay, this has become a full nightmare. Initially, I was just like, it’s got to be tense, but by the end, I was like, well, it does feel like a nightmare to a young woman sometimes.

Because you mention that, I have to ask whether you’ve seen Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade? I have, it’s incredible. It’s so funny, they’re both coming-of-age [films], and one of them is about a fourteen year old and then the same sort of feeling exists when you’re 22. When you’re fourteen is when it begins, and when you’re 22 you’re sort of at the end of it and you’re like, “Oh, I thought I figured out what I was supposed to do when I started feeling insecure this way at fourteen about sex and boys.”

Diana Agron and Danny Deferrari in ‘Shiva Baby’.

Let’s talk about Rachel Sennott, who you have describe as your “Virgo rock”. What do you bring one another in your creative partnership? She’s a hustler, and she sets goals like nobody else. I think she moves very fast, and I’m more detail-oriented. I don’t know if the movie would have happened without her because she was like, “What are the goals to achieve this film?” After we made the short film, she just kept checking in with me. She goes well beyond what an actor does, which is why she’s an executive producer, because she was very, very invested in seeing the movie get made.

I think she pushes. We joke that she brings me out of my depression and I help calm her down. I feel like Taurus is a little more chill. Virgos are also earth signs, but they run on a faster frequency. So I think I calm her down, especially when we’re writing and bringing it back to structure. But she’s way funnier, she’s able to give jokes so quickly. We balance each other perfectly, for sure.

Do you think your partnership with Rachel is the kind of partnership you could see yourself maintaining throughout your career? Definitely. I think it’s important to have a good friend and also a young woman. She’s got different career goals from me, but they’re aligned. And we’re not in competition with each other. I feel so grateful because so much of the time I feel like the world does make you feel like you’re in competition with your friends that are trying to do the same thing as you when you’re a young woman—or just maybe in general.

Rachel Sennott and Danny Deferrari in ‘Shiva Baby’.

Her character in Shiva Baby completely subverts the idea of a “nice Jewish boy/girl” which can be a trope in movies, but also very much a real thing in life. Is that something you consciously wanted to subvert, or did it come organically from the story you wanted to tell? I wanted to contrast that idea of a “nice Jewish girl” because every nice Jewish girl or boy has a sex life. I felt the sort of nice Jewish girl stressors on me were completely opposite from the NYU art school sugaring worlds, and hookup culture broadly. My family is such a huge part of my life and I think that those two sets of pressures are completely contradictory; to be a good girl or boy and have a stable career ahead of you, and to be finding, even if it’s at the very beginning, your eventual partner, or to just be in a relationship. And I felt like in school, no one wanted to date, everyone was hooking up. So many of my friends are sugar babies. I tried it super, super briefly.

I felt like the world was telling me to be like “an empowered, independent, sexy woman who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, and doesn’t abide by any rules”, and I was like, “This is the opposite of being a nice Jewish girl!” And I just felt like those two things were screaming at me. So I did want to play on that. But I don’t even think it’s playing, just because that felt like what I was trying to battle within myself. And I think a lot of young people do, whether they’re Jewish or not. That’s their family’s expectations. And then the world is like, “But don’t care and don’t commit…”

Writer-director Emma Seligman. / Photo by Emma McIntyre

But then you still have to go home to your parents at the end of the day and they’re going to tell you what to do… Exactly.

What would you want viewers to take away from Shiva Baby about the sugaring community that you feel has been maligned in the past? I’m not a sex worker, so I don’t want to speak on behalf of this community, but I definitely feel like there hasn’t been many positive portrayals of sex workers. So I just wanted to show someone—because I knew so many friends of mine who did it—who enjoyed it, or purposefully did it and didn’t feel bad or shameful about it. I think maybe a lot of people think that it’s always something that comes out of dire circumstances. But whether that is the case or not, I think there’s a lot of people who enjoy it and enjoy what they do like any other job. So I just hope that they’re able to sort of widen their scope of what a sex worker looks like and acts like. Every sex worker has got a family, friends, a full robust life, as we all do.

It’s time for your Life in Film questionnaire. Can you give me a few must-watch Jewish films for people who don’t know where to start? Fiddler on the Roof, Yentl, Keeping the Faith, Kissing Jessica Stein, A Serious Man. Definitely Uncut Gems, and Crossing Delancey.

Shiva Baby has been described on Letterboxd, variously, as “Uncut Gems but make it chaotic bisexual”, “the most stressful Jewish movie since Uncut Gems”, “the chaotic successor of Uncut Gems”, “if Krisha and Uncut Gems had a baby”, and, of course, “Uncut Gems for hot Jewish sluts”… Amazing, I love that. Extremely nice comparison.

Who is your favorite promising young woman? Not Emerald Fennell’s film, but a young creative or performer who you think is making waves. I love Hari Nef—I think she’s amazing and am really excited to see what she does next. I loved her so much in Transparent and Assassination Nation, and I don’t understand why she hasn’t been the lead in a million movies.

Molly Gordon with Rachel Sennott in ‘Shiva Baby’.

What should people watch next after Shiva Baby? Those Jewish movies would be a great start. And then Krisha, although I think a lot of people have seen it especially if they’re on Letterboxd! But then those Jewish romantic comedies, and then Obvious Child, all those movies are very sweet and endearing and helped me make it.

Separate from film, if it’s shiva-related then Transparent. If I didn’t have Transparent I don’t think I would have seen world of grounded, nuanced Jews that I could do comedy with. It would have been more in the Curb vein, which is also amazing, but a little more schtick.

What was the first film that made you want to be a filmmaker? My parents are huge movie buffs so I’m not sure there was one moment, but I will say that when I was six there was a re-release of the 20-year anniversary of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and I was at a horribly packed bris and my uncle was like, “Fuck this, there are so many people here, I can’t even breathe. Let’s go see E.T.” That was the first moment where I was like, if I can skip a bris to see E.T., I like movies.

Related content

From Short to Feature: Rob’s list of 2020 films that made the jump

Jewish Cinema (non-Holocaust): Amelia’s list of films “for when u want to celebrate your heritage but don’t want to have to think all too deeply about the Shoah”

Best Directorial Debuts of 2020: suggested by Letterboxd members, featuring Shiva Baby

Follow Ella on Letterboxd

Shiva Baby is now in select theaters and on VOD in the US. Film stills by Maria Rusche.