#t theyre almost too easy to discuss.. they have more going on but

[cosmik-homo]

The thing with timelords is that yeahh theyre people but theyre also sort of complicated moving sculptures. or they all see themselves or function in some way as Projects as much as people. partially because doylistically, they... are.

[yandere-daze]

may i have 24 from the yandere prompts with okuyasu:)? theyre so cool and nice!!! good job on them

Of course!!! Sorry for the long wait!! I decided to combine this with another oku request I got, I hope that´s okay ^^ And thank you so much, I´m glad that you enjoy my writing 😳

24. “It’s okay for you to love me.”

27. “What’s so special about them?”

39. “You’re mine. You know that right?”

Yandere! Okuyasu with prompts 24, 27 and 39

“So we´re going to meet up later at Tonio´s, right?”, Josuke asked his friends while leaning back into his chair, not caring that he was dangerously close to falling over backwards and maybe breaking a rib in the process. It was currently lunch break at school and you were discussing plans for an after-school hangout. It was one of the rare days you didn´t get any homework to do for the next day so you decided to seize the opportunity to finally spend some more time together. Josuke, Koichi, Okuyasu and you have been friends for a few months now, but rarely had any time to just relax and lay back for once. You had already discussed your plans in great detail for a few minutes now.

“Yeah! We said 4 pm right?”, Okuyasu asked to make sure. He wasn´t very focused at the best of times and now he almost didn´t get anything that was said. All this time, he couldn´t help but look at you and admire the soft look on your face, a wide smile tugging on his lips as he sent you a questioning gaze as if waiting for you to confirm his assumption. But to his dismay, you didn´t show any sign of paying attention to what he had to say. You were just sitting there in your chair and absentmindedly starring out the window, a soft sigh escaping your lips.

“Y/n? Hey y/n, did you hear me?”, he exclaimed once more, raising his voice by a large margin. Maybe he just spoke a bit too quietly and you didn´t hear him?

“W-what?!”, you practically jumped out of your seat, clearly startled. “Did you say something? Sorry I wasn´t paying attention.”, you explained sheepishly while rubbing the back of your head in an embarrassed manner.

“Yeah he did. Quite loudly in fact. We were going to meet at Tonio´s after school at 4. You coming?”, Josuke sounded a bit exasperated but managed to still keep an easy smile on his face.

“Oh sorry about that, I was lost in thought. And I´m sorry but I don´t think I have time today. Lots of homework and stuff.”

It was then that the bell rang, signaling that class was about to start again as everyone returned to their table and quietened down.

Okuyasu was about to do the same when Josuke suddenly put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.

“Hey don´t you think y/n has been super distant lately? Barely paying attention and always staring of to who knows where?”, he sounded mildly concerned.

“Really? I mean she didn’t hear what I said earlier but is it that bad?” Then a thought shot into his head. Were you getting bullied? Was someone harassing you? Okuyasu wasn´t the smartest person around but if anyone was hurting you there would be hell to pay. No one was allowed to hurt the most precious person in his life!

As he wondered, a shit-eating grin formed on Josuke´s face as he leaned in further and nudged Okuyasu with his elbow. “Who knows? Maybe she´s just madly in love with someone!”, he then lowered the tone of his voice as he suggestively wriggled his eyebrows at his friend as he continued his sentence. “Maybe…madly in love with you?” At Josuke´s suggestion, Okuyasu´s face immediately flamed up, just the thought of you liking him back filled his heart with so much joy, he couldn´t contain it. He has had a crush on you for as long as you have known each other, he couldn´t imagine any other person staying at his side for life. His best friend was the only other person that he had entrusted his crush to and for that little mistake he was getting teased relentlessly now. He only hoped you didn´t hear that as he shout-whispered at Josuke to stop. Before their banter could go on any further, they were promptly stopped by the teacher raising their voice and asking them to head to their table so the lesson could start.

“Okay but seriously, maybe check out how they are doing. They should be at the library, they usually are after school.”, with that, his friend gave Okuyasu an encouraging final clap on his back before heading back to his seat.

Okuyasu wasn´t able to concentrate on the lesson at all, not that he could usually follow what was being taught. But today especially he was lost in thought, always thinking about you. He had to get to the bottom of this, he wouldn´t stand for you getting hurt.

After the final bell, Okuyasu wasted no time while going to the public library in town, a slight haste to his step. Rounding around the corner after about 15 minutes of walking, he could already see your form through the tall windows the library had installed. He couldn´t help but stop in his tracks and admire you before heading in himself. You were sitting in the far-off corner at a table, seemingly writing something on a piece of paper in front of you. Your posture was a bit tense as you paused your movements to seemingly read over what you had written before raising your pen again, furiously erasing whatever you had written before. After staring at the paper some more you crumpled up the paper and threw it into the nearest corner, joining a seemingly endless pile of previously discarded papers that had met the same fate. Deciding that he finally wanted to talk to you, Okuyasu walked past the window and made his way through the front door, heading straight in your direction, his gaze fixed onto you. In the meantime, you had picked up another blank paper and started to slowly write something down again. He couldn´t see what you were writing about from this distance though, but he wondered what made you so worked up. Drawing closer and closer, you seemed to have finally noticed the sound of his footsteps and looked up, your face suddenly flushing as you caught his gaze, going rigid and scrambling to hide the paper you were just writing on from him by half-heartedly covering it with your arms.

“O-okuyasu! Didn´t expect to see you here! Where you looking for something?” Your voice was a little uneven and you even stuttered a bit, which even took Okuyasu aback. Glancing under your arms he could see little red hearts drawn all over the paper, the words “love” and “crush” sticking out to him as well.

“I was worried about you y/n. The others said you´ve been super distant lately and I didn´t want you to be hurt.”, as he spoke, his gaze was still focused on the paper in front of you. Catching on, you glanced down to what your friend was so intensely looking at, tensing up once more once you realized the truth of the matter. Chuckling awkwardly, you decided to speak up once more.

“Yeah sorry about that. There´s just been a lot of stuff on my mind.”

“Stuff like what? Has anyone been hurting you? I´ll beat them up if you just give me the names!”

At this you frantically shook your hand and waved your hands around in a placating manner,

“No, no! That´s not necessary! No one has hurt me! At least… not yet”, you whispered out the last part, thinking that Okuyasu wouldn´t hear. But he did. And he didn´t like that notion one bit. He doesn´t want you to get hurt.

“What do you mean not yet? Is someone threatening you?!”, he was getting agitated now, who would dare to treat you like that? His little angel?

“It´s not like that Okuyasu, please calm down! It´s just uhmm”, you shuffled your feet a bit and fiddled with you sleeve before speaking up once more. “Have you ever been in love?”

Oh.

OH.

Now it was his time to blush as he nods his head and croaks out a “yes”. Love was an understatement. He would do anything for you, absolutely anything.

“Well… there´s someone I really like. I´ve done so for a long time. I want to confess to them how I feel but I´m scared that they won´t feel the same. I don´t want to accidentally make things awkward and destroy our friendship!”

His mind started to slowly process the information you had just given him. There was someone you liked. And they were also a close friend of yours. Wait. A friend? You don´t know that many people. Could it be… that you like him as well? You feel the same? His heart swelled at the mere possibility of this being true, a dumb grin spread on his face.

“Don´t worry about that! I´m sure they feel the same way.”

“You really think so?”, you asked in uncertainty. Yes, he was. He was absolutely sure that you must like him just the way he loved you.

“Yes I´m sure of it.” And as a smile slowly spread onto your face he added, “It’s okay for you to love me.” He walked around the table so that he was now standing next to you a happy grin on his face as he laid his hand on your shoulder.

“Wait what?”, you asked in confusion. Then after a second your eyes widened and your eyes shifted around uncomfortably as your smile fell from your face. “Okuyasu no, I think you got something horribly wrong.” At this, he gazed down at you curiously, not understanding what you were trying to say.

“Okuyasu. You´re not the one I´m in love with.”

With just this one sentence, he felt as if his whole world fell apart in front of him. This couldn´t be true. You were wrong, no! You loved him! You love love love love him! His grip on your shoulder tightened as he tried to reign his frustration in, it almost starting to turn painful from the way he gripped onto you for dear life.

“Please let me go. You´re starting to hurt me”, you whimpered and shied away from his touch as best as you could but Okuyasu kept a firm grip as tears slowly started to gather in his eyes. No, he couldn´t let you go now, not under any circumstances. If he let go now, you would be gone forever. You would leave him all alone, his heart would burst from the sheer pain of potentially seeing you with someone else. Yes, someone else. Someone was trying to take his place at your side. Anger built up in him, an almost rare hate growing inside of him towards this person he didn´t even know. He didn´t need to know them to know they weren´t worthy of your love.

“Tell me y/n! What’s so special about them? What do I need to change so you can love me? Are they smart? Am I not intelligent enough for you? What can I do?”, he started to grow desperate now, holding onto you with a vice-like grip as he started to shake, the tears just kept rolling down his face in a mix of anger, sadness and frustration. He felt hopeless, You were one of the only people in his life that he could trust, that cared about him. You two would be so perfect together, so why did someone else need to ruin this?

“Okuyasu please st-“, you tried to start again but were promptly interrupted.

“No y/n. You’re mine. You know that right? You care for me and I care so much about you as well! So it was meant to be. There´s no one else for me! We´ll figure this out, don´t worry!” He hugged your form tightly now, pressing his face against your chest as the tears kept streaming from his eyes, soaking your shirt in the process.

“I´m not the smartest person but I love you so, so much. Please we could be good together.”

Then, his voice grew hard again as he tried to hold back his sobs.

“Just forget about them. Forget or they won´t be able to attend school for the next few days. They´ll regret ever trying to get between us.”

[disaster-fruit]

could you tell us more about the brarg family au with the 3 babies and trans luci?

I definitely can! This au has been living rent free in my head since i started that drawing and I was actually sketching more stuff for the AU right before I got this ask so- I definitely can ramble more about it

This was supposed to be just a collection of a few hcs and now it’s a multi-pages word document the size of a fanfic so – Im really sorry.

I didn’t think a lot about their backstories tbh, though I have it in my mind that Luciano transition in his late teens and that he and martin either met after that or knew each other before luciano came out, lost all contact, and then met again after (and you can blame oxiosas fic for that yeah im not even subtle)

But I imagine them having some sort of meet cute and kinda progressing really fast in their relationship without realizing – yk, its just a fling, no big deal, yeah ive met his parents, yes I basically spend every weekend in his apartment, yeah I have a spare key now, ops I guess we’re adopting dogs and plants together- oh I think we’re married. Yeah. We’re married.

Ok but for real Luci does the proper proposal-with-a-ring-and-knelt-down-on-a-special-day thing and Martin is just bright red saying yes over and over again

It is Afonso (port) the first to be all WHERE ARE MY GRANDCHILDREN like… the night of their wedding.

They live in a house in a not too big city with two dogs, one cat, one parrot and all the birds that Luciano feeds and names that aren’t actually theirs. Still, they choose the house with two spare rooms because they always talked about having two kids.

In this AU they can buy a nice house and don’t have to worry about money and can raise kids like the world isn’t ending.

I think right after they got married they got in line for adoption. However, everything indicated that it would take a long long time so they started talking about the possibility of trying to have a biological kid. I think luci was the one to suggest it when he noticed martin had been thinking about it but not saying anything for a while.

Lots of boring doctor visits and confused doctors looking at luciano and trying to process it like the dumb cishets they are. Boring exams and all that, but everything is on track eventually, luci pauses his hrt and keeps his jockstrap on the drawer and they’re googling the best positions for fertility on those weird cishet sites and doing it like bunnies etc etc

Getting pregnant the natural way after years of testosterone is not the easiest thing in the world, so it takes a while. But eventually it works.

Both of them are kinda freaking out with this whole first pregnancy thing. Martin is the ultimate protective husband, and spends way too much time on the internet finding out what luciano can and can’t eat, what exercises he should do, and going to every single doctor visit. He’s very committed to it.

Luciano has to drink non-alcoholic beer and hates life. There’s a single teardrop shed every time he buys it. And drinks a lot of lemonade like it’s the same as caipirinha. Poor guy. Martin doesn’t help on that, life isn’t fair, he buys his own beer.

But he also has to drive absurd lengths to find the weirdest fruit or make the most hideous, blasphemous pizza toppings because Luciano is constantly craving absurd shit. But poor baby actually really NEEDS that chicken M&M pizza at 8am.

They’re super proud daddies though, and both their instagrams at this point are just baby belly pictures. Luci had top surgery on this au on my hc so also. Lots of shirtless pics. He looks like an old uncle with a beer belly and he’s PROUD. Just. Baby bellies all over.

Martin picks the entire baby layette. Because of course he does.

Their baby shower is a huge deal though. Their dads are there, Antonio brings an entire trunk filled with diapers and tells everyone how many tincho used to need when he was a baby, Afonso is cooking for everyone and talking about how he’s gonna be a grandfather (!!!). Iracema (pindorama) is scolding Luci about his bad habits while also quietly being a super proud grandma. Zola (angola) bought toys because she knows that’s what kids actually like, Samero (Mozão) keeps asking if they installed all the necessary security stuff in their house – we will, chill, we still have some months to go – Vera (Tomé) is teasing Simão (Timor) about him no longer being the family baby, Fatima (g.bissau) is another one who bought a huge amount of diapers, Rosinha (cabo verde) is taking pictures of everyone and everything, Sebas and Dani are discussing if the kid should speak Portuguese or Spanish, Maria brought a huge pink plushy as a gift, it’s quite a party.

Once they’re late in the pregnancy, Luciano mostly spends his time on Martin’s oversized t-shirts asking for foot rubs and not getting much sleep because the baby keeps moving. Martin on the other hand is a little nervous about being a dad, but absolutely loves feeling the little kicks and talking to the baby all the time, except when its 3am and he wants to sleep but Luci cant because of it so he just does his best to keep him company. He mostly ends up falling asleep on his chest though and doesn’t help much

I wrote all of this but I still don’t have a name for the girl lol Anyway, she’s finally born, and if martin was overprotective when Luciano was pregnant, he’s ten times more with his baby girl. Tbh theyre both kinda going crazy with this whole parenting thing, both are overprotective, tired, and have no idea what theyre doing.

Zola and Sebastian are the girl’s godparents. Sebastian isn’t very good with kids so when he takes care of his niece he either puts on a tv show and lets her eat whatever crap she wants, or relies on Daniel to do the actual taking care, since he is good with kids.

Luciano and Martin are very much neurotic first-timers and have all this schedule of what their girl can eat and when and when she has to sleep etc etc.

When Zola takes care of her, she just ignores it and does it her way. She helped raised Luci since he was a baby anyway, he survived just fine and even married and reproduced, she knows what to do better than both the dumbasses, and they never even find out.

Afonso on the other had follows everything when he’s with his granddaughter, determined to be a better grandfather than he was a father, and the baby loves him so he’s doing a good job.

They’re a very cute family yes yes

She grows up well and happy, a bit shy maybe but very smart and sweet, loves the dogs and her aunts and uncles and granddads (afonso more than antonio though)

By the way, Iracema is soft like butter with her granddaughter.

When she’s about four or five years old they start talking about having a second one, considering the age difference and all. So back to doctors, Luci stops the hrt again and they go back to trying, but again it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do it naturally after years of hrt.

But god listens to the prayers of such good catholic family, and right after they start thinking about a second child, they receive the news they will finally get to adopt a baby.

Luciano is the one to receive the news, he’s working at home when the social worker comes to tell him they can finally adopt. He’s extremely happy, he hugs the poor lady and is barely able to concentrate as she explains the paperwork that is left and the details of it because he can’t stop smiling.

He immediately texts martin saying something like “CALL ME RIGHT NOW WE NEED TO TALK” and it’s in happy caps but martin understands it wrong and thinks someone is dying or dead but then his phone is what dies so he gets home as fast as he can thinking all the worst scenarios just to find luciano jumping on him with a smile for ear to ear. It’s such a shock he takes a while to react but when he does you have two idiots so happy they can’t function.

It’s another girl, she has big brown eyes like her sister and it’s a few months old.

They quickly reassemble the crib and paint the second room to get everything ready in time to take her home, and the next week or so it’s nothing but all the family visiting to meet their new baby.

Since they managed to adopt, they decided to stop trying to have another kid. Luciano goes back to the doctor do some routine exams so that he can go back to testosterone and the doctor just awkwardly explains that, well, that won’t be exactly possible. Not for the next eight months, at least.

He’s quite shocked at that, and takes him a while to tell martin. They just got a new baby and do they even have space to raise three kids? Eventually it just escapes from him and martin is shocked as well, but ultimately both of them are just worried about their place being too small, and once they relax about that they can’t shut up about having another baby on the way to anyone.

Still, it’s not easy to manage, martin is just as worried as he was with their eldest, except that this time he’s simultaneously worried about their new baby and about Luci’s pregnancy. Poor dude needs a break asap. So he’s trying to do most of the work of caring for a little baby to spare luciano from the stress, while also taking care of him as well as he did the other time.

Luci is more chill about being pregnant, he’s done this before, he’s fine. He’s even a little too chill about it, as shown in the art, he still wants to carry their kid on his shoulder and having a few sips of martin’s beer is no big deal and honestly he’s fine, he can help with the baby, and Tincho just needs to relax and it will all be fine.

Again, poor tincho needs a break.

Some things don’t change though. Them being super proud daddies who do nothing but take pictures of their kids and Luci’s belly every chance they get. And they’re really happy and excited to have their house full and this big family.

Just a good cute family AU where nothing bad ever happens thank you very much.  Yet it took me almost 2k words to say it. I have no self control and I’m very sorry. However, if anyone has their own hcs to add about this whole au, I will be more than happy to hear and talk about this AU even more than I’ve already done.

[itissadbutitsmy-life]

the funniest jokes in bfdi

flower’s announcer crusher that she just. has, and everyone else just uses it too

trying to put out a fire by holding ice cube’s recovery center over the fire so she just falls into it endlessly

every single one of yellow face’s products, including but not limited to

fork attractant, for when you need a fork but don’t have the cutlery on hand

headphones you cannot change the volume on or remove

money slips, you just write an amount on them, and it counts as legal tender

“thats a pentagon!” “yeah! like if you took my name and added ‘Tagon’!“

in like episode 2 when they all run away from something and a second later flower casually power-walks away from it instead of running

when balloony deflated and a while later cloudy flies over and goes “i cannot believe it! this is a dead body!!”

“he’s not dead, he just needs a little help thats all! (starts reinflating him too fast) but i agree, he is a hindrance when he is deflate- ohh noooo”

hollow jawbreakers that sound can come into but can’t go out of

when they stuck loser in a jawbreaker they inverted it, so they can hear him talk to himself but he cant hear anything around him

no one seems to know that thats why they can hear him

one time they all ended up in space. because of budget cuts.

actually every time budget cuts lead to something that seems way cooler than their previous stuff, like sparkly purple lasers instead of a mechanical arm to eliminate people with

the consistently bad cake at stake prizes. one time it was just a block of ice cut into six pieces. one time it was dirty shovels.

the magical die of judgement

when freesmart drove across the ocean in their van and they managed it by holding their breath and each time one of them died they just recovered them and threw their corpse out the back

golf ball messing up naming her team by saying things like “we need to be another name” and ending up on teams called Another Name and A Better Name Than That

one team was formed entirely around learning to not kill people. pillow overhears them say “youre against killing?” and goes “:D did someone say killing??”

tennis ball admonishing rocky for not knowing how to write: “no arms is no excuse”

they had to find a needle in a haystack and needle just turned herself in, successfully

when they started using a board with the points written on it on flaps of paper instead of a computer screen, but due to budget cuts, it could only display two digits per contestant, so anyone who went over 100 started immediately dropping to the bottom of the rankings

when ice cube was sleeping at the cake of stake podiums and got shot up into the air at like 3000 mph

2763

when the eliminated contestants tried to escape the loser chamber and they just rolled it off into the ocean

theyre saved because the sun rises and picks them up out of the ocean

also apparently the chamber opens for like five minutes a day for sunlight, but instead of just climbing out during that time, which they seem to be capable of doing, they do a much more convoluted thing

they were sick of four so they got rid of him by multiplying him with donut, and it worked

ruby has some really weirdly specific ideas of beauty and coaches flower

the line delivery of “killing a bubble is as easy as one, two, th(pop)” “i just learned two things about bubble: she can be su i c i d a l and she’s S O D U M B she CANT even count to T H R E E!”

a few episodes later bubble angrily shows them she CAN count to three if she lives long enough to do so, and pencil and match are both like :O :O

bubbles first line in season four is her rapidly counting to ten before getting popped

the way each team breaks their jawbreakers

8 ball just goes “MNYAH” and bites it in half

"okay black hole, do the thing”

leafy tries to use woody’s tongue to lick it open even though rocky and balloony were doing just fine using acid

iance just going ‘bwehbwehbweh’ all licking the same one

team ice cube was doing a mix of bwebwhbehbbwehbw and loudly drilling it open with naily

when four loved so hard he shot eraser off over the horizon

when they’re discussing team names in season one  and theyre all talking over each other so you cant hear what theyre saying, except match, who grabs a megaphone and screams “SMOKY HOT FIERY BUNS”

when needle made a cake and put so much yeast in it that it breached earth’s atmosphere and astronomers apparently began classing earth as part of a three planet system (”consisting of the earth, the moon, and something called ‘needles cake’”)

“it’s ice cube! and she’s shrinking?” “she’s falling”

saying “(x character)! wake up!!” when it’s unclear (to the audience) why a character looks silly or apparently isnt responding

blocky’s sleeping pose is him with his eyes wide open, sporting a big goofy grin and hugging his legs

david’s sleeping pose is him with X eyes

one time the contest was to fill a tank with water from crying, and golf ball immediately ordered tennis ball to cry. he couldn’t do it on command, so golf ball tried, and cried her first ever tear, just... her first one

when the prize was fortune cookies, the fortunes were bracelety’s notes about how much she loves ice cube

“four, where’d you get these fortunes again?” “dumpster!”

“lightning always forgets to fly, so he had to be the fake”

when they were flying paper planes and stapy accidentally stapled his teammates into theirs, and he just hovered next to it while he was talking to them before they all started to plummet

the entire scene where liy tries to use ice cube to force teardrop to talk

“i’ll hold teardrops jaw open and you wiggle her vocal chords”

“i hate you” “yeah i hate her too!” “no. i hate you.”

“ice cube will only stop when she WANTS to stop!” “i want to stop”

“YOU SAID YOU WOULD HELP ME! YOU SAID YOU WERE COOL!” “so r r y (starts wiggling)”

“ICE CUBE! I AM APPALLED!!!!!”

ice cube gets bitten and starts screaming while bracelety is yelling “YEAH ICE CUBE! I CANT HEAR YOU, LOUDER!!”

apparently everyone who hates golf ball gets physically sick when they get near her (or at least, ruby does and snowball did once he knew she was there)

blocky got eaten by a monster in episode two but it turned out the monster missed him by a bit so he was fine

taco’s teammates thought she was dead forever and wrote eulogies for her, and once they found out she was alive lollipop threw hers away, but saw kept hers because in her eyes they’re still valid!!

when things started to get dramatic in the s1 finale, and leafy called announcer on the phone and he was in a ball pit

loser’s trapped in a jawbreaker and the only thing with him is donut’s diary. the next time you see him he’s reading it furiously and it’s filled with color-coded sticky notes

pillow decided if you wave your arms it means all your “care spirit” is getting sucked out your arms and sent into space (”a true indicator that person doesn’t give a fluff”)

remote got hacked and her FIRST INSTINCT is to send the hackers a bomb

“if theres an announcer recovery center now, that means we can kill the announcer as much as we want and he’ll still come back to give us dream island!”

they ask black hole to push them in their swing and he says he can’t push, but he can pull like there’s no tomorrow

“no i can literally warp space time so that there will be no tomorrow” “yeah,h don’t do that.”

when they have a tiebreaker announcer pulls out a silk tie and goes “first team to break this tie wins”

the second time, almost before he finished speaking, snowball just reached over and ripped it in half effortlessly

“proves you don’t need frills to make a feast for the eyes!” “more like taco doesn’t need to be dead to be deceased in my eyes!!!”

they had a race where everyone on each team had their legs tied together (like a three-legged race, but with like six people on a team)

pen’s team was doing fine but he wasn’t, so they just dragged him along behind

snowball tied his team into a ball and dragged them himself, to predictable results, and wouldn’t stop until he got to the finish line even though it took him until after the sun went down

he failed, actually, and him and his team plummeted down a ravine when he passed out

“the opposite of dream island! night...nightmare moon!!”

donut stuck his arms through a one way camera to the moon (it transmits matter as well as light), and to fix the fact that his arms were on the moon and his body was on earth, he pushed the entire earth through the camera

the moon is smushed up against the earth now. it has not been resolved yet

“gelatin and firey tied their legs together and fell off” “ya, seems like the kind of thing they would do”

pencil got caught by a monster and couldnt get away, so they had to kill her so they could recover her somewhere else, and they let her pick how they did it, which lead to everyone just sawing her in half while she grinned ear to ear. she was singing too. iconic

but first, match, her best friend, started waggling a big butcher’s knife around at her going “hoohoo hoeheehee im killing pencil loookat me” and pencil said “match put your butterknife away, you have to ACTUALLY kill me”

and when they were sawing her in half bubble had the BIGGEST, most BLISSFUL grin, with her eyes half closed like a happy cat

bell asks for help making people stop climbing her string, and snowball assures her he can do it, but he’ll have to climb her string to get to them

then like twenty people followed him up

when writing utensil characters use themselves to write with

sometimes they have tiny versions of themselves (sans limbs), but sometimes they just like, pull their caps off and write with their heads

(the same scream noise they use every time a group of people screams) “HONESTLY! (grabs a new can of fork repellent from hammerspace) are you guys going to scream like that EVERY time i use up a can?”

dodecadangit

OH THANKS AN OCTADECILLION, MATCH

they were basically playing hot potato where if you look at someone who was glowing you’d catch the glow, and most teams ended up just chilling with their eyes closed, but golf ball yelled “EVERYONE GET ON MY ROCKET” and she and her team just left earth entirely

this did not stop them from catching the glow

someone’s like “the communicator dish still works” and book goes “oh,” dips a chip into the communicator dish and splashes dip everywhere, “THATS what this is?”

the, like, five minute long end-credits scene of ice cube falling off a cliff eternally

pencil tells ruby which button to press and she keeps getting it wrong, partly because NEW BUTTONS KEEP APPEARING

the poison antidote that has the side effect of making the recipient eat one other contestant

pencil coaching her teammates on how to jump higher

“MMR? I love measles, mumps, and rubella!”

“golf ball knows how to do, like, everything!” (cut to golf ball) “i don’t know how to do, like, anything”

basketball invited 8 ball to be on her team cuz they’re both balls, then 8 ball said “sure, and let’s adopt these three” in reference to three other ball characters

loser said when he was younger he used to play with a toy that was apparently only just invented an hour ago, and everyone, like 60 characters, immediately disowned him and started a turf war over the situation

“black hole, you’re strong! open this jar for me!”

(as the world is literally ending) “FLOWER! WHATAVE YOU DONE??” “i got this jar open!!!”

whenever a host dies or is otherwise put out of commission and the contestants just keep trucking along until they remember no one can get the prize if the host isn’t around to give it to them 

that time announcer used like ten negatives in a sentence 

the way announcer says “wow!” with more emotion than anything else he says? idk if it’s intentional, or even a joke, but it’s the best thing 

(slow mo) “i want to cry now, i really do”

“and i cry acid”

ruby died of sadness and book made it big by selling her remains 

when they say some line that’s just regular words in a slightly unique way, and then the line gets repeated throughout the series 

announcer accidentally-on-purpose got everyone killed, except david (who’s immune to bugs), and he had a david cloner, so he just went ahead and replaced everyone with davids in costumes

halfway through cake at stake, the original contestants show up unexpectedly and explain that they “faked their deaths! obviously.”

“ive decided to not cancel bfdi!” “aw, seriously?”

the noises david and dora make when they do things, like clattering, or sprouting leaves 

bubble and match pretending to be trees

“NO BUBBLE! TREES DONT SAY THAT!” “OH, RIGHT! FSSHHHHHH! FWWWSHH!!!!”

when nickel and coiny get close together bad things happen

“how’s the tree-climbing going?” “it’s okay, but it’d be easier if you helped. (swoop) okay, just got to the top” 

“yes! I am the first one up the tree!” “that’s NOT true, I was here FIRST” 

i guess we’ll just have to use this trebuchet tennis ball built before he died 

“wha! yhad this the HWOLE TIME, I DIDN EVEN HAVE TO CLIMB THE TREE?” “physical exertion builds character :)” 

when everyone’s begging four to bring back their dead teammates, especially saw, who lost her entire team, and four is like okay I’ll bring back one (1) person, and saw very reverently starts to ask him for her dead team leader, but grassy says “tennis ball!” and four listens to him instead, and everyone immediately starts nagging four again to bring back more important people 

leafy, about to melt ice cube down for metal scrap: “ice cube, come on down! you can be my alloy!”

they met a new character and they’re like “who is that?” and pie’s like “I dunno, try squishing it” 

“theres another one? whoa! it totally has a different texture from the first one!”

8 ball beginning every single statement with things like “although I don’t have a favorite number...” 

“I do this!” (grabs pin and turns her, screaming, into a squiggly pile of lines) “pretty cool, dontcha think?” 

“can,,,, you bring her back?” “no” (five seconds later) “HEY CHECK THIS OUT! (brings back pin)” 

pen high fived black hole and his arm spaghettified 

“what are you doing?” “im going to die!” “hi needle! he’s not going to die.”

iance was trying to dig their way up out of the ground but they couldnt because golf ball kept blocking them from the surface

“maybe theyre trying to communicate with me?” “yeah they’re telling you to stop”

“they raise a very convincing argument. BUT IT’S NOT ENOUGH!” “OH what a pain!!”

she accurately guessed the fact that there was a group of people underground running from some lava who “clearly value avoiding [golf ball] more than their own safety”

“ohhhh so THIS is golf balls idea of fun!” “(sigh)... yep”

they looked through a camera and couldn’t see donut (the zoom wasn’t adjusted) and marker went “donut’s a vampire too?” 

too???

“meh, I’ve still got other evidence”

one time the eliminated contestants got to vote who to eliminate and snowball was like “ice cube, cuz it’s really hot in the TLC and I can’t be the only one cooling it off” 

like four other people were like “oh man he’s right” and did the same thing

“wouldn’t it be cool if the last word of the last episode was the same as the first word of the first episode?” “yeah :)” 

“take. a deep breath. you know. A DEEP FRIED BREATH” 

at the end of the episode he shows up with some boiling oil and is like “LIKE THIS! ONE, (sizzling and screaming noises)” “COINY NO” 

leafy was about to throw a knife at them but watched this happen offscreen with horror and then left them alone

david’s human, and that’s just weird

“im still mad you killed bubble” “youre one to talk, you were about to impale TWO WHOLE teams” “yeah, but bubble’s life? is special”

pen’s like “okay we three need to stick together while we’re picking teams!” but then eraser hears some other team has free food, so he runs off and pen very flatly goes “okay, we lost eraser.”

“well let’s not pick pen, he’s still two hundred bigintillion dollars in debt” which is mostly hilarious without the first three seasons of context, but even with context it’s hilarious. he looks so shamefaced when they say it too. i love pen

once someone finally picks him he IMMEDIATELY perks up and takes charge

the hphprcc went into self destruct mode and everyone started frantically trying to figure out what to do, and book’s like “okay it’ll either just disappear without a trace, or blow up and kill us all, 50/50 chance” and then of course, it exploded, and ruby started screaming, and then book was like “ruby, stop hallucinating! see? it just disappeared, without a trace!”

“YOuuOURE HalLUCINAATING!!” “DON’T do that!! it is K-R-E-P!”

pin tried to knock everyone off the eiffel tower by shaking it and book was like “who does she think she’s kidding? it’s the eiffel tower we won’t fall off”

“name ONE! name ONE friend you haven’t gotten extremely angry at!” “thats not fair,! there isnt even any of them!”

8ball was saying the opposite of everything golf ball was saying, up to and including calling the members of their team, a better name that that, “worse namers”

“is this because i killed you last episode?” “what?? no, i dont care about that!”

“life is CHEAP! get me a BANANA!!!”

flower bit off half of announcer’s head and he couldn’t make the K sound anymore

“have this -ashew” “bless you”

“no i said -ashew. -ashew. -ashew. -ashew.” “wow you must be allergic to something”

“maybe announcer’s allergic to this cashew? here bubble, you can have it!”

pencil won the staring contest because david’s allergic to sunrises

freesmart was making video diaries during the three year hiatus, but apparently did absolutely no editing or even rewatching of the videos, because they found out three years too late that ruby left the lens cap on every time she used the camera

when four played the cake at stake song in the classroom he played it on a low-quality portable tv instead of cutting to a fullscreen video

“iknowafasterway!” “NORUBYYOULLDIE!”

pin said she didnt want to halve the votes she got because she hadnt done anything that would make people want to vote for her, and it immediately cut to a series of old scenes of her throwing people under the metaphorical bus

literally nothing is funnier than “i mean, i havent done anything to make people vote for me” (cut to flashback) “there’s too much weight on this sinking ship!!! we need to throw someone OVERBOARD!!!!”

one team got stuck doing their nine-piece puzzle for a MONTH because all the pieces were the same dark brown color

the pieces were upside down

a month

“the finish line! it’s only twenty or so yards away!”

two people talking and using the word “needy” twice and pausing to throw their hands up protectively and go “HNnnnynGH”

“why do i have filling, but also a hole?” - donuts diary

in 5b theyre talking to some npcs and theyre like “well dont hurt us, because we just got finished being punished in lego brick’s dungeon” and the npcs were like “oh yeah he does that. he’s a great guy, but he does that.”

also in 5b when book met lego brick the FIRST thing she asked is if he’s “safe to look at” which,???

they did a trivia contest and multiple questions were in complete gibberish

presumably this is an actual language in canon since like three other people answered correctly, also in gibberish, but still

“you’ve got this, bubble, you’re great at mental contests” “question one: ooba grooba, grooba shmooba?” “HUH?”

“but tennis ball -- oh... tennis ball....--”

team naming, especially in season four

“we’re not ALL in the alliance!” “well, if you take ‘the all’ out of the alliance, you get...”

“and what is your name?” (everyone says their own actual names at once)

ice cube is not on team ice cube

Death Prevention And Creating Trust

“let’s be called The Losers!” “awww! you didn’t have to”

wheel ooze a hole bunch. WOAH bunch!

“but then it sounds like youre saying free-DUMB!” “and we are so like totally not dumb!”

when the losers decided to use iance’s idea to win the swing contest and it was styled like an overenthusiastic science video 

“WHOA!!! iance just had a RADICAL idea!!!”

“TREASON! TREASON! TREASON!” “im in what?”

“seriously why are so many people drowning? it’s not even quicksand, or anything” - announcer, responding to five people drowning in a basket of bread

they were whispering with “susuusus” noises and cloudy whispered “zuzuzuzzuz”

the spaceship with the sign that says “this spaceship runs on big squishy contestants” or whatever and after the credits it slowly flips over to say “this spaceship runs on VOTERS”

“stop shooting at me!” “no way! i got these cannonballs on sale and IM GONNA GET MY MONEYS WORTH!!!”

eggy and cake’s argument over who has a deeper spiritual connection with loser

“my connection is so strong that when i crack, i bleed loser’s COLOR”

playing catch with a star they plucked out of the big dipper, and leafy’s horror over it

adding “ey” to people’s names (personal favorites are announcery, fourty-four, flowey, treey, and belly)

blueberries are EXPLOSIVE, including the ones inside pie, so sometimes she just explodes

“but over a year ago, four said you dont need frills to make a feast for the eyes, so that means hes okay with trash!”

the anti-advertisements advertisement!

four ate a whole team and they just sort of stood around inside him sticking their arms out his mouth and laughing hysterically

“again! again again again !!!!”

“we could be leaving!” “yeah, but when’s the last time you saw remote this happy? this is good for her!”

book, three episodes into season 3: hey, what is it we’re even battling for?

(iconic voice): dwream island,??

when they had a beauty contest and firey speaker box and flower speaker box just immediately chose firey and flower to be the winners without a second’s hesitation

“book! come help us catch a criminal!” “no thanks, im good!”

donut tried to punish people for getting the wrong answers when he was hosting, but it turns out a recording of four screeching doesn’t work... quite as well as the real deal

four zapping gelatin

ok ok ok this is insanely long but please add more if u have any favorites i missed

[haupokemon]

an andi mack reminisce + a thank you to you all

i wanted to write something just remembering all the experiences and joy ive had with this show and fandom as well as give thanks to every single one of you in the fandom. this is probably going to get Really Long so i’ll be putting this under a keep reading border so it doesnt clog up peoples dashboards :3

anyways, to start this long ramble off, i’ve been in this fandom for almost 2 years. i found andi mack through a “top ten gay disney characters” youtube video a day after season 1 episode 1 had aired while i was sick actually which is the absolutely weirdest way to find the show but im so happy i found it. i actually wasnt going to watch it originally but i saw a character i had never seen before in the thumbnail, and that peaked my curiosity. of course, this character was cyrus, and upon finding him and this show, i immediatly bingewatched every episode to get caught up to the storyline for cyrus, and i got hooked on the first episode. this show is so important to me for so many reasons, and im so incredibly greatful for how well everyone working on the show has done in bringing these characters to life to show so many important aspects of life. seeing topics such as being lgbt, anxiety, teen pregnancy, and learning disabilities being brought up as well as seeing such a diverse and amazing cast makes me so incredibly happy and i am so glad the kids watching this can get introduced to these things in such a good way. i was also very depressed when i had found andi mack, and it and its fandom helped me through all of that and i will always be greatful it was there in that point of my life.  this show also has such relatable and great characters, and the actors to these characters are just as amazing. i was able to easily relate to andis love of crafts and arts, the loyalty of buffy, the awkwardness and kindness of cyrus, and also the complete dumbassary of season 1 jonah beck when i started watching. the characters have always been written in such an entertaining and great way too, so its always been easy to get immediately wrapped up in whatever a character may be doing or dealing with. seeing all of these characters develop and grow throughout these past few seasons has just been amazing to watch, especially since ive grown so attached to these characters. i also can relate a lot to the lgbt and anxiety storylines, as i am lgbt (bi and trans, yeehaw!!) and also deal with an anxiety disorder. watching cyrus deal with coming out multiple times and living his life as a newly discovered gay kid is just what i needed to see and relate to back when i was fresh into 8th grade and starting to get used to life after realizing i was bi, and i can relate to it even more now that ive realized im trans. with jonah, seeing him have such a realistically portrayed reaction to panic attacks as well as a very realistically portrayed panic attack in general was just the representation i needed, and helped to keep reminding me that all of what i deal with doesnt make me any less of a person. all of this representation being shown so well has made the experience of watching this show even better. and now, onto all of you guys!! :D when i first started watching this show all the way back at season 1 episode 1, i scrambled to find any other fans out there, and i started my search at tumblr. i was instantly welcomed with an excited and passionate fanbase that welcomed every new member with open arms and kindness. the fandom has always had a sense of us all being a tight-knit group, even with the fandom getting quite large now. also, with our fandom being so large now, you would expect a crazier fandom with more drama, but weve stayed so peaceful throughout the shows entire run, and i think thats really impressive!! honestly i feel like sticking through the hiatuses together has just made us an even tighter-knit andi mack fandom family and has also given us a  l o t  of patience DGKLJSDGLKG you all make such great content and ive never seen a fandom this passionate or dedicated before. the quality of fics, edits, art, animatics, animations, covers, theories, discussion and also baking in this fandom is incredible. being in this fandom has been so much fun and ive always been happy to come see whats in the tag everyday. its been a wild ride since the beginning of season 2 and you guys have made this fandom the best experience possible :D also some random memories: - y’all remember when tyrus was a crackship?? i remember shipping tyrus at the swingset scene and being so low on content in the tyrus tag omg, i still cant believe theyre finally becoming canon in just a few hours :,) - when we first started trending when cyrus came out to buffy.. that was WILD - DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER WHEN BEING AROUND YOU HAPPENED GLSJGDLKGD it feels like its been forever since that episode aired omg - m u f f i n   t h e o r i e s - literally every time a promo released we all gained exactly one braincell hellbent on making as many theories as possible and we all shared it until the episode or episodes released - i remember when josh confirmed that cyrus would get an endgame and also crying a lot that day because of said confirmation - i remember being on vacation when the episode with cyrus talking to tj about his dyscalculia and i remember my brother wondering why i was freaking out DGKSHDSGK the fandom was wildin when that episode released its been a fun ride guys, and i hope we can keep the fandom alive for a long time after the finale :3

[saints-row-2]

film watch day 31: Every Halloween Film

happy Halloween today i watched every Halloween film currently available to me. i couldnt get to rewatch Halloween 2018 but i already wrote about it a couple of weeks back so feel free to revisit that post. anyway, i watched ten Halloween movies today. It took around 17 hours. i started at 11:15am and im writing this now at 6 am.

so lets get to the post. for the most part i went in chronological order, except i chose to start with Rob Zombie’s remakes because i knew if i didnt id be finishing the day by watching them at the break of dawn and the idea of doing that was so fucking putrid to me that i decided to get them out of the way first.

Halloween (2007)

i hate this fucking movie. i mentioned in an ask the other day but im happy to repeat here, i dont hate the idea of expanding on Michael’s backstory. like the fact is we largely know his backstory, the issue is how this film chose to portray it. the original Halloween is frightening because its based around the idea that the seemingly safe, quiet suburbs are not as safe as they seem; you can be on a street youve known your entire life, only a few metres from your own home, and still at risk. the whole idea of showing Michael as a murderer when he was six is to tell us that anyone could be a threat, that our conventions that all killers are a particular kind of person is false.

Halloween 2007 says fuck that, we know what serial killers are, and theyre those poor kids who come from shitty neighbourhoods and have abusive parents and mothers who are sex workers. everything that Halloween brings to the table is fucking tedious, played out, and massively uninspired. it wants to bring us the truth about why Michael is like he is, but Rob Zombie’s only understanding of serial killers is in the cliche and exploitative. he has nothing honest about human nature to show us, only the exact same stories that have been fed to us by crime and horror movies past.

this film is incredibly loud and in fucking constant motion. even on steady shots of still scenes the camera constantly shakes, and in every other scene its always whirling around from tracking shot to panning over the scene to just idly zooming in and out of nothing. Zombie’s favourite shot is to have something large and out of focus in the foreground -- like some plants -- and to shoot the characters standing about six feet away muttering to themselves. every single fucking shot in this movie lingers too long, every scene drags a little longer than it needs to. this film moves with the pace that i would describe as “family guy gag”.

and this film is so loud. people are always talking or screaming, largely about nothing important or interesting. theres always music, but it never particularly adds anything; for reasons i fail to fucking understand the entirety of the original theme plays over mostly uninteresting tracking shots of a minor character walking around yelling filler lines about nothing.

the writing is horseshit. everyone in this film is vile, no one talks or behaves like real human beings. almost every exchange in this movie is the characters saying the exact same thing back and forth inanely, frequently punctuated by screaming FUCK as loudly as possible and talking about sex in a way that 40 year old men really really wished teenage girls talk about sex. Halloween (2007) is thoughtlessly gross and mean and nasty, disconnected from any kind of human sensitivity and empathy. it wants to be complicated and to be deep but its crushingly simplistic and stupid. the only thing that redeems it is that its not Halloween II (2009). speaking of which...

Halloween II (2009)

jesus christ this movie is so fucking boring. Halloween II is two hours long but feels like its about twenty hours long. i felt like i was watching this film for twenty days and twenty nights. i was trapped in an eternal purgatory with this movie.

i really cant fucking emphasise how boring this film is. endless scene after scene of nothing of consequence happening, uninteresting death scenes that add nothing, and Michael wandering around doing jack shit. Halloween II fucking made Michael Myers boring, and im saying this as someone who (as i repeat once every 8 seconds) has a tattoo of him. this film couldnt hold MY interest in two of my favourite characters of all time.

the big fun new addition from the first movie is the presence of Michael and Laurie’s mother as a kind of weird goth ghost guiding Michael to kill. i dont know why Michael had to be Jason Voorhees and be a mommy’s boy all of a sudden, but this addition brings absolutely nothing of interest to the film or to his character. its meant to be symbolic of fucking... something im sure, but it feels meaningless. somehow Michael and Laurie are both able to see and interact with this ghost and the ghost has an agenda to do... something? it feels about as intelligent and coherent as the bullshit cult of thorne shit from 6, but a lot less fun. at some point Michael Myers apparently has mind control powers?

not to repeat myself a hundred fucking times but this film is insanely unpleasant to watch. every scene someone is screaming, generally wailing “fuck you bitch” at anyone in their vicinity. this is two hours of people howling swear words at each other and not infrequently making rape jokes. Rob Zombie loves rape jokes! almost as much as he loves putting sexual assault in his movies over and over again for no reason.

there is nothing to enjoy in this film. theres nothing to gain. there is too much slow-mo and far too many strobe lights and absolutely nothing of any intelligence or grace. Halloween II is a thirteen year old boy in a korn T-shirt calling his mom a bitch while he draws zombies on  the back of his homework, which he will get an F for because the only thing he wrote was “reading is for faggots”.

Halloween (1978)

what the fuck can i say. this is one of the greatest horror movies ever made, if not the greatest. its one of my favourite movies. its forty years old and still just as chilling and frightening as it ever was. it has some shot composition and cinematography thats up with the best ive ever seen, all while being shot on a budget of $300,000. it does more with less than just about any film, launched the slasher genre, shot Jamie Lee Curtis to stardom and created a pop culture icon that stayed strong for decades. its a masterclass in tension and suspense, a lean-cut perfectly paced film with heaps of atmosphere and character.

i love this film with a frantic passion that makes me unable to talk about it in a particularly helpful way. i cant “review” Halloween. I love this film beyond reason and sense and you either get it or you dont.

Halloween II (1981)

Halloween II is largely one of the less remembered entries in the franchise; its a decent enough movie, neither matching up to the highs of the original or the lows of the later films. its a pretty enjoyable little film, created under the logic of ‘well the first one did well, lets do the same thing again’. Carpenter wrote the script but didn’t direct, and while the film has a solid story, the directing lacks his signature flair. its hard to pinpoint, because the film is generally fairly well-shot, but lacks a kind of eye for shot composition that Carpenter made look easy, doesnt have as much patience for suspense.

on its own merits, theres still some great shots and great scenes in the movie. and a lot of really cool kills; II got a lot more creative with what Michael was capable of, and i think the boiling water drowning kill is rightfully pretty infamous.

this was the last Halloween movie Carpenter wrote, and it was the film where the idea of Laurie and Michael being siblings was introduced. and believe me ill defend this fucking decision to the grave. adding the human connection between Michael and Laurie gives a whole other layer to their relationship thats so fascinating to me, and i love that other films try to expand on the themes of family. in general, deciding that this film would continue to focus on Laurie and not do what later slashers did with bouncing around between different casts was a great fucking move, ironically for a franchise that was intended to be an anthology.

quietly exploring the aftermath of the first film was a good idea for a follow-up, and i especially really enjoy Loomis’ role in this movie, and his discussion about who Myers is. the biggest disappointment for me personally is that Laurie lacks a lot of presence in this film. Curtis is great, as always, but the movie dawdles on some side characters who are too disconnected from her to get a sense of what shes going through.

all that being said, Halloween II is decent. the ending is really great, with some really powerful shots. Michael bleeding from the eyes of his mask after Laurie shoots him is one of the best fucking images in horror and him swinging blindly as Laurie and Loomis slowly orchestrate his death is a fucking amazing scene. i have an immense fondness for this movie, with all its flaws. it brings a lot of really cool concepts to the table, and i think it deserves some appreciation.

heres a question tho; where the fuck were Laurie’s parents. theres a suggestion theyre missing, but theres no explanation why and we never hear from them. did michael kill them too? hello? mr and mrs strode? your daughter just fucking killed a guy and all her friends are dead. where the fuck are you.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Halloween III is infamous as being the Halloween movie that isn’t about Michael Myers at all. when it first released it was wildly unpopular and remained so for quite a while, but has had a surge in popularity over the last few years. i think just about every horror critic i know now considers Halloween III one of the best in the franchise. and to be fair to it, its a great little movie. not a slasher at all but rather a conspiracy thriller, Halloween III is all about the mystery of what the Silver Shamrock mask-making company are really up to, and why people are disappearing. its a weird and creative little movie, with some really fucking great practical effects that turn it from just being a thriller to being an all-out horror film. it has a few too many ineffective jumpscares and some of the plot twists are kind of disappointing and feel a little too much like the easy option -- and then others are so wildly bizarre no one would see them coming because theyre fucking completely out there. but i kind of love that sort of nonsense in a horror movie. like lets just have a fucking good time in here for once in our fucking lives.

Halloween III is not a perfect or even a really great movie, but yknow, fuck it. the idea that only perfect films are worth watching is dumb. i appreciate the weird shit this film tried and i think it deserves a lot more respect than what it got; if it had been released under another title it probably would have gone down as a classic instead of being derided for years, you ask me.

now things start going rapidly downhill

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Halloween 4 is when Jamie is introduced as the new final girl; Laurie’s seven year old daughter, after Laurie herself died off-screen in a fucking car crash. the decision to kill off Laurie came from Jamie Lee Curtis decided not to return to the character and instead of recasting her, they went with just having her… die. off-screen. in the franchise where the previous two movies were about her triumph and determination to stay alive. like its the casual thoughtlessness of this that, the idea no one would give a shit a character returned, that in my eyes epitomises how fucking little anyone cared about this franchise going forward.

man the idea of Laurie dying completely irrelevant to Michael… thats a lot. anyway continuing on his quest to erase anyone related to him, Michael starts targeting his niece Jamie for the three movies in the franchise. this is where the series started rapidly losing any grip on reality. while Michael always had some kind of superhuman elements to him (he took six bullets to the chest and survived in the first movie) these became increasingly wildly exaggerated. now hes crushing peoples skulls with his bare hands shit like what the fuck. first of all do that to me and secondly, it was this kind of slide into unreality that let the supernatural elements of the series creep in further until you end up with the shitshow that is Halloween 6. like it was the decrease in the impact of violence and human life that really fucked this franchise over.

this film is not great. its a definite decline in quality after 2 and was on the slippery slope downwards. it has some high points, primarily in Dr Loomis. Donald Pleasance is a better actor than most movies deserve and brings gravitas to a role that in the hands of a less capable actor would be laughable. his sincere plea to Michael at one point to just kill him instead of going after Jamie is honestly fucking tragic.

outside of that, the film isnt massively interesting. Michael himself isnt particularly threatening or engaging, and his mask looks like shit in this film. the characters in this film are largely very stupid, also, which doesnt help anything much.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

if theres a Halloween movie people talk about the least, its this one. II has the sibling twist, III is the black sheep, 4 is the return, even 6 gets talked about for its troubled production history. no one has anything to say about Halloween 5. and thats mostly because there is fucking nothing to say about Halloween 5. it is a relentlessly fucking dull movie that pads out its 100 minute run time with endless unnecessary scenes of shit that does… nothing. this film is dull in a way that i find incredibly detestable. i cant even watch it through a haze of impassioned anger like i can with the also incredible dull Halloween II (2009). its just fucking boring. every single scene drags like its trying to walk on two broken legs. the plot is so bare bones its nonsensical. it constantly adds new characters and new elements but all that does is makes it more incoherent and confusing. watching this movie i literally found my fucking eyes glazing over in my skull. if this film was edited correctly it would be twenty minutes long. i cannot fucking emphasise enough how much of relentless slog it is. Halloween 4 was dull but even that had the lifeline of ‘some cool ideas’. Halloween 5 is nothing. Halloween 5 is puddle dirt water.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers

if Halloween 5 is puddle dirt water Halloween 6 is just a fresh hot glass of piss. there are two versions of Halloween 6, the director’s cut and the theatrical release, and both are wretched. this film went full ham with introducing the supernatural elements, telling us that Michael was his whole life psychically controlled by a pagan cult called the Cult of Thorne in order to make Halloween scary again or summon the devil or who fucking cares. this movie is fucking insufferably dull, totally absurd, and wildly unsympathetic. i loathe Halloween 6 and every terrible, stupid plot decision it makes. Paul Rudd defeats Michael Myers by drawing druid symbols on the ground and Michael just gives up and lies down. theres a baby that does nothing and serves no purpose. Halloween is apparently banned in Haddonfield, which makes this more closely related to Footloose than Halloween i think. this film takes itself incredibly seriously while spouting nothing but total fucking bullshit drivel and i dont believe that anyone involved in this movie, from the cast to the cameraman to the guy who served the lunch had any faith in this movie outside of the vague hope it might make money and i wish this movie had been burned at the stake. also i hate Paul Rudd.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

oh thank fucking god finally some good fucking food. Halloween H20 took the decision to retcon all the sequels (except II) twenty years before Halloween 2018, proving that everyone knew 5 and 6 were fucking mistakes.

this film loses a lot of the Halloween feeling in favour of making a more generic late 1990s/early 2000s style horror. theres nothing particularly interesting about the way this movie is directed or shot, the music is largely very generic, it has a generally uninteresting glossy quality to it that studio movies always do. its very obvious this movie was inspired by Scream and it looks a lot more like Scream than it does Halloween. all of this makes me kind of sad, but other films in the franchise have proved that other directors generally are not capable of imitating Carpenter’s style so maybe its better they dont really try.

what H20 does so well, and the reason i love it so much, is that it explores the relationship between Michael and Laurie, which is something im endlessly fascinated with. this was the first movie to have Laurie shake off her fear and rise up against Michael, and while it doesnt do it with quite as much depth and intelligence as Halloween 2018, it still has a fucking good crack at Laurie’s character, and its still powerful watching her turn on the man who terrorised her for years. Michael is great in this movie too; while he has a terrible mask, watching him back on his shit as a furious force of nature who wants nothing more than to destroy anyone who gets in his way.

honestly i kind of enjoy having a Halloween in a different style; theres something fun about seeing characters recontextualised and done with justice and empathy. most of the Halloween sequels before this one (and after, looking at Resurrection) are shallow, unconcerned with any kind of emotional depth or personality. and while a lot of the stock filler characters in H20 who are lined up for the chopping block arent that interesting and dont particularly standout, watching Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance and seeing her interplay with Michael is enough. and most of the side characters arent particularly annoying, which is more than i can say for half this franchise.

this film also has what is one of my absolute favourite endings in a movie ever; the final confrontation between Michael and Laurie has a particular interaction between them that i absolutely adore and that alone is enough to make this movie one of my favourites.

H20 isnt perfect; it weirdly feels like a blueprint that Halloween 2018 would later refine into a better movie, but the idea its going to be completely disregarded for Halloween 2018 in the future makes me a little sad. in the face of so many fucking mediocre and awful Halloween sequels it did the right thing in trying to focus on what actually mattered; the connection between Michael and Laurie, although i dont feel like it succeeded in making Michael as scary as 2018 would much later. that said, the shot where Michael and Laurie just stare at each other through the glass of a window? that gives me chills every time. and hearing the Halloween theme kick in as Laurie marches off into the school with an axe looking for Michael is so fucking triumphant.

i love H20 even if Michael’s mask looks like his hair was dunked in a bucket of water and then gently blow-dried. i have no idea why it looks so fucking stupid in this movie. why is it so hard to get Michael’s mask right. you wouldnt think it was that fucking hard. anyway, i really fucking love Laurie Strode a lot, which didnt help to make Resurrection any easier to swallow.

Halloween: Resurrection

so whats the obvious thing to do after you have a movie where the power and emotion all comes from the emotional catharsis of seeing a woman get her vengeance on her tormentor? you, uh, make a sequel in which she is immediately defeated and pointlessly killed after its revealed her victory at the end of the previous film was entirely false, and then you never return to focus on her and instead introduce a horde of entirely uninteresting stock characters. yeah, makes sense.

Resurrection is fucking incredibly stupid, in the kind of fucking hysterical way only really bad horror movies can capture. theres absolutely nothing of Halloween in this other than the presence of Michael, who just as easily could have been replaced with anyone or anything. the story has a group of people on a reality show staying in the Myers house to… stay there? its not entirely clear what the challenge is meant to be, other than to just be inside the house, which i imagine gets to be pretty dull viewing pretty quickly. theres no suggestion theyre like, hunting for ghosts or something along those lines, theyre just… looking at stuff.

Michael slopes around this movie like he doesnt fucking understand where he is or whats going on, an entirely out of place relic of better times past while the cast cavorts around him doing nothing of interest and having no plots or characterisation to speak of. the film has exactly two or three funny moments, including the legendary ‘Michael Myers getting electrocuted in the dick by Busta Rhymes’, but youre way, way better off just looking that up on youtube instead of watching this movie. there is an hour of pointless plot development about characters no one cares about until Michael starts fucking killing people. this movie shouldnt exist and we should all go back to pretending it doesnt.

and thats it. thats all the halloween films. i can die now.

[first-year-writing-blog]

The American Dream

Marshall                                                                                

FYW 1000C

Fall 2018

Inga Oladottir

10 Ways of Looking at The American Dream, a Numbered Multimodal Multi-Genre Research Composition

STORY

My best friend is from Bel Air, Maryland and her name is Annie. Me and Annie both go to St. Johns University in New York city and she used to always tell me how different New York is from her hometown. I never really understood what she meant by that because in my mind it was all America, how different could it be? But boyyy, I definitely saw the difference Annie always talked about as soon as I was in my friend’s town. The first time I went home with Annie, I was a couple months into freshman year and New York was the only place I had ever been to in America. I had no idea that there were places in America so different from New York that it almost felt like stepping into a new country. When I saw the town that she is from, and the neighborhood she grew up in, I just thought: That is the epitome of the American dream. She lives in a big, white house with a big front lawn. The house is surrounded by a white picking fence, and then when I looked around, so did all the other houses in her neighborhood. There was a yard sale going on in front of one of the houses so I got to see a couple of her neighbors, and they were all so friendly and happy looking. When we went back to New York a couple days later, my opinion about what the American dream is had certainly changed. I actually have two best friends and both of them are from America, but now when I look at them, I would only think that one of them has lived the American dream.

FACTS, STATISTICS, MEDIA

1.    The ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. (googled the American dream definition)

2.    

http://www.generations.com/2015/09/21/the-evolution-of-the-american-dream/

3.    

http://scpaworks.org/2018/05/workforce-chartoftheweek-the-fading-american-dream/

4.    The road to success is not easy to navigate, but with hard work, drive and passion, it’s possible to achieve the American dream – Tommy Hilfiger. https://people.com/celebrity/hilfiger-launching-fashion-reality-show/

5.    Less than 20% of Americans say they’re living the American dream https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/19/less-than-20-percent-of-americans-say-theyre-living-the-american-dream.html

6.    

https://www.pri.org/stories/2011-11-21/souring-american-dream

7.    What’s killing the American dream? Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nXxPMsOIs

8.    Myths and realities of the American dream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQvAsXfMkiw

9.    Myth: If you have money, you will find happiness. Truth: Money isn’t everything.

http://www.paleobosslady.com/blog/the-american-dream-is-a-lie

10. The American dream on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream

11. An article on what the American dream is today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream

12. 36% of people that think their family has achieved the American dream.http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/31/most-think-the-american-dream-is-within-reach-for-them/

13. Fact: If your parents are on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, there’s a good chance you’ll end up there too.http://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/five-facts-about-achieving-american-dream

14.Cartoon on the American dream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L4YIkYP5uU

15.We need to remain a nation that doesn't just welcome but celebrates legal immigrants who come here seeking to pursue the american dream. - Ted Cruz

https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-ted-cruz-post-hispanic

TEXUAL ANALYSIS

The article “The Transformation of the American Dream” by Robert J. Shiller was published in The New York Times on August 4th, 2017. The article explains how the American dream has transformed over the years and how it shifts from being an idea about social justice and equal opportunity, to the idea of wealth and homeownership. It also deals with how American’s associate having a home and a business with living up to the standards of the American dream. The text shows us how the idea of the American dream has changed over the years, depending on what was happening in the country at the time. The text talks about different perspectives that different leaders have of the American dream, and how that influences how the public views it. The author uses facts and statements to support what he is discussing in the text and he uses it to make his own statements clearer. Using other people’s words to support your own is a powerful way to get people to listen because it proves that you are not the only one thinking that way. Another way to say this is that the author uses logos to appeal to the audience, he presents plausible arguments on logical or apparent logical terms to support his text. I think that the text provides us with a good example of what the American dream should be, but at the same time it also shows us what it is in reality. Today, the American dream is just about being rich and having a big, fancy house but that is not what it is supposed to be. In my opinion it should be hope, it should be a way for people to know that they are worthy and that they deserve to be treated like everyone else. The last passage of the text struck me the most because it stated what I have been thinking all along about the American dream concept. Shiller said in the passage that “we need to bring back the American dream of social justice” and for me, he last passage is the beauty of the whole text because it puts the American dream into perspective and I think that it is the central idea of what the dream is about. On the contrary, even if humans want the American dream to be about social justice, we get caught up in our greed for material things and forget the true idea of the American dream. We get stuck on this idea that we have to have money to live up to it and that ruins the clear concept of what the American dream is really about. This text is very important to my research paper because it deals exactly with my question, what is the American dream? The text shows us what it is supposed to be but it also shows us what many American people perceive it to be and that is why this text is so important to my research topic.

VISUAL ANALYSIS

List of things:

·     Many doctors trying to save the man

·     The man is old àThe American Dream is an old concept

·     The man has a hole in his chest

o  Maybe he was shot

o  It could be a hidden connection to the gun violence happening in the US.

1.    Whose message is this? Who created or paid for it and why? Where was it originally published?

This is a message from a girl named Karly Tinervia. She is writing on her blog about the book The Working Poor Invisible in America by David K. Shipler, where the picture was originally published. Karly talks about how the American dream is dying and how it is hard for people in poverty to get out of it.

2.    Who is the “target audience”? What is their age, ethnicity, class, profession, interests, etc.? What words images or sounds suggest this?

The target audience is everyone that wants to listen to her message. She wants people to understand what Shipler is talking about in his book and be influenced by it. Karly is talking about a subject that relates to everyone that lives in America because the idea of the American dream relates to everyone and the man in the image is dressed in the colors of the American flag which suggest that it relates to Americans.

3.    What is the “text” of the message? (What we actually see and/or hear: written or spoken words, photos, drawings, logos, design, music, sounds, etc.)

We see an old man that is lying on a table with a shotgun wound on his chest. The man is surrounded by several doctors but by the look of it, he has passed away. The man is dressed in the colors of the American flag.

4.    What is the “subtext” of the message? (What do you think is the hidden or unstated meaning?)

The subtext of the message is that the American dream is dying right in front of us and it is too late to prevent it from happening. More and more people are not able to make enough money to live a good life and so many people never reach their goals of fulfilling the American dream.

5.    What kind of lifestyle is presented or what kind of injustice does the image seek to address?

The image seeks to address the issue of poverty and how unfair the system in America works. There is only a certain number of people that can live the American dream and those people are often those that are born into rich families, so everything is handed to them from the day they are born. People that don’t have that advantage have a hard time of reaching that same level of success and most of them never do.

6.    What values are expressed?

Social justice and equal right (or more precisely, the lack of it) are the values that come to my head when I look at the picture

7.    What positive messages are presented? What negative messages are presented?

The positive message presented is that there will always be people that are willing to help others, no matter if they don’t benefit from it. The negative message is that there are also people that will not do anything, they stay away and watch everything happening from a far.

8.    What groups of people does this message empower? What groups does it disempower? How does this serve the media maker’s interests?

I think that this message should empower every American to be a better version of himself and maybe help the less fortunate.

9.    What part of the story is not being told? How and where could you get more information about the untold stories?

The part that is not being told is how we got to this point. Why is the American dream slowly dying? Who is responsible for it and who is responsible for saving it?

10. What conclusions can you make about this image?

This image illustrates what is happening to the American dream and that if we don’t start doing anything about it now, soon it will be too late.

Analysis

This image was originally posted in the book “The Working Poor Invisible in America” by David K. Shipler. The book along with the image was first published on January 4th2004 but I discovered it on a personal blog. The owner of the blog is Karly Tinervia and in the blog that the image appears in, Karly is talking about the context of the book. The image displays an old man that is lying flat on a table with a shotgun wound on his chest. The man is surrounded by several doctors but by the look of it, he has just passed away. The man is dressed in the colors of the American flag but despite what we might think we see, the image has a hidden message. It symbolized how the American dream is dying right in front of our eyes, and that most people just stand by and watch it happen. In the image, there is one doctor that is still actively trying to save the life of the old man while the others just watch him and that is supposed to symbolize the reason for why the American dream is dying. Most people think that there is nothing they can do, or that the power is not in their hands, but, most people don’t realize that you don’t have to do anything significant to make a change. You can start by doing something small, such as helping the less fortunate in this country with small acts of kindness. Those little things, might just be the start for some people on the road to a better life that perhaps, makes them a little closer to achieving the American dream.

SURVEY

Do you consider you family to be a part of the middle class?

Are you an American citizen?

What do you consider to be the American dream?

Do you think that your family lived out the American dream? Why or why not?

Analysis of survey results

Most people that took the survey considered their family to be of the middle class and most of them were American citizens. When it came to provide an explanation of what people considered to be the American dream, I noticed that all the answers had something to do with having money and being able to provide for themselves. Some answers involved having a house, usually a big house with a family. Most people thought that their families had lived out the American dream, but there were couple participants that did not think so. You can see a couple of examples in the picture above, but the reason those people didn’t consider their families to have lived it out the dream was because of a financial crisis. When I look at the last two questions and compare the two, I see a clear link between them, due to the fact that people measure their success based on how much money they have. The people that think they are living the American dream are those who have money, and the people who don’t think they are living it, are the people with little or no money.

One answer in the survey really caught my attention. It was an answer to the question about what the American dream is and that person said “I think the American dream is that everyone has an equal opportunity to be successful if they put all their hard work into it.” I feel like that statement sums up the original idea of the American dream and the reason that people from all over the world come to live in America. Somehow, over time, the idea has shifted over to being a dream about wealth and power, and I think that my results show that.

EXPERT OPINION

The article “Envy and the American Dream” by Nitin Nohria discussed the issue of how jealousy can shift people´s focus away from their own goals and over to other people´s success. It is an interesting aprroach as to why the American dream has been deteriorating over the past years and because of that, I think it will take a lot of work to re-establish what the American dream used to be. “In the meantime, instead of envying the good fortune of others, let’s focus on what we can do to stoke and further individual ambition,” (Nohria).That is a part of why the American dream is becoming a very distant for some people is because they envy other people’s success and that prevents them from working on their own goals and having success in what they are doing. If those people would just shift their focus back on what they are doing and stop comparing themselves to others, they would get closer to their own goals, and even better, they would get closer to the American dream. I think that Nohria also provides me with a different perspective on my research topic because he is not originally from America. His views of the dream might be different from other Americans since he came to the country with his own ideas about the dream and what he thought represented America.

RESEARCH QUESTION DIALOGUE

Research question: “What is the American dream?”

Me: “Where is the American Dream?”

Source:““The American Dream is back.” President Trump made that claim in a speech in January” (Shiller).

Me: “What is the American dream about?”

Source: “Mr. Trump and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, have suggested it involves owning a beautiful home and a roaring business, but it wasn’t always so. Instead, in the 1930s, it meant freedom, mutual respect and equality of opportunity” (Shiller).

Me: “What is the difference between the American dream then and now?”

Source: “It had more to do with morality than material success” (Shiller).

Me: “Why is the dream slowly dying?”

Source: “One reason Shipler believes the American Dream is dead is because hard work does not pay off” (Shipler).

Me: “Does hard work not pay off any more?”

Source: “This results in these people being trapped working a few low paying jobs with no advancement opportunities. America was built on the notion of hard work that will then lead to opportunity and success, but Shipler shows that this is not the case anymore” (Shipler).

Me: “Do you even stand a chance if your parents are poor?”

Source: “If your parents are on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, there’s a good chance you’ll end up there too” (Dwyer).

Me: “In our modern society, do you even stand a chance then if you want to start your own business?”

Source: “We are going to create an environment for small business like we haven’t seen in many many decades,” (Shiller).

Me: “What about the dream of owning a house, or a home of some kind?”

Source: “Mr. Carson has explicitly said that homeownership is a central part of the Dream. In a speech at the National Housing Conference on June 9, he said, “I worry that millennials may become a lost generation for homeownership, excluded from the American Dream”” (Shiller).

Me: “But is homeownership a part of the American dream?”

Source: “Mr. Adams emphasized ideals rather than material goods, a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” And he clarified, “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages...” (Shiller).

Me: “Does everyone have an equal opportunity to live the American dream in our society?”

Source: “If you want to achieve the American dream, the color of your skin matters” (Dwyer).

Me: “That needs to change, right?”

Source: “we need to remain a nation that doesn’t just welcome but that celebrates legal immigrants who come here seeking to pursue the American dream” (Cruiz).

Me: “The fact that immigrants want to come to America to pursue the American dream, does that make it a rather important concept?”

Source: “The American Dream is the country’s most important asset—more valuable than its extraordinary natural resources, deep financial capacity, or unparalleled workforce. It’s so valuable because it is a narrative that continues to draw people here from other countries, and it inspires those of us who are already here to work hard every day to better ourselves and our children” (Nohria).

Me: “What can help us save it?”

Source: “I agree with him that restoring confidence in the link between business success and social prosperity will be vital to sustaining the American Dream” (Nohria).

Me: “So what is keeping people from business success?”

Source: “Lately there are signs that America is shifting from an orientation of ambition toward one of envy. Whether it is the 99% who envy the 1% or the 53% who resent the 47% who are receiving government distributions, we are beginning to show signs of focusing more on others than on ourselves” (Nohria).

Me: “How does envy affect the American dream?”

Source: “It shifts people’s gaze toward others in a negative way and takes their focus off their own goals” (Nohria).

Me: “How can we change that and save the American dream?”

Source: “Fixing the problems that imperil this status will require difficult collective action. In the meantime, instead of envying the good fortune of others, let’s focus on what we can do to stoke and further individual ambition” (Nohria).

Me: “How do we want the American dream to look like when we save it?”

Source: “Instead, we need to bring back the American Dream of a just society, where everyone has an opportunity to reach “the fullest stature of which they are innately capable”” (Shiller).

Me: “But despite all the work that is before us, what do you think about America?”

Source: “Thirty years after my arrival as an immigrant, and despite the current hard times, I still see America as the best place to live and work and dream. Fixing the problems that imperil this status will require difficult collective action” (Nohria).

WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED TO KNOW, OR WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT TO SAY?

The American dream has always been about freedom. People came to America to pursue the dream of freedom and happiness, being their own master and making money only for themselves. The American dream protects anyone that wants to pursue their dream and reach their potential to the fullest, (The Balance). The original idea about the American dream was that America should be the best country and that other countries would strive to be like it. “The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement,” (The Balance). Over the years, the idea about the American dream has been criticized due to the fact that the poverty rate in this country is increases and there are very limited options to help the people that fall into poverty. Homeownership has always been a big part of the American dream and president Roosevelt created a system that insured mortgages to help more people be able to afford a home. President Roosevelt said that everyone has the right to own a decent home, have a job that supports one’s family, and that everyone should have the opportunity to get an education and receive health care, but to this day, many families still don’t have enough money to afford health care. president Obama made it his mission to try and change that, and furthered the FDR’s idea that affordable health care is a fundamental need in every country. Today, there are many disagreements over the definition of the American dream and some people even say that it does not exist anymore, (The Balance). There is a need in this country to do something, it does not matter if people think the American dream exists or not.  Income inequality, which is the gap between rich and poor, has been growing in America for approximately 30 years and Americas top 10% makes about 9 times as much as the bottom 90%, (Income Inequality). The wages in America have also been stagnating for over 30 years so the average American worker and the country’s lowest wage workers see no growth in their weekly wages, (Income Inequality). That means that even if you work and work, you always stay in the same place. You can’t climb up the income ladder because you are stuck with the same wages every week and that money goes to bills and things that are necessary for living. People have  a hard time getting themselves out of that circle and therefore most people get stuck there, (Income Inequality).  

CONCLUSION

The American dream is a concept created a very long time ago that, since then, has shaped American society and how we think about America. By definition the American dream is idea that every American citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success through hard work, determination, and initiative, (American Dream). The concept about the American dream has always been the same but over time, people have changed it’s meaning into something else. The American dream has been turned into a competition between people, to become more successful than others and have a bigger house, better car and, overall, a better life. As stated before, the American dream is in essence about achieving success and being successful but it was never about being more successful than others. Everyone has their own ideas about what success is and in addition to that, everyone has their own goals and ideas about what kind of success they want to achieve. Fulfilling the American dream should not be about fulfilling the same dream, but instead, it should be based on what each individual desires. People need to stop comparing themselves to others because we all have our own journeys and we never know the motives behind each individual’s actions are. The original idea of what the American dream stands for has to be brought back. The idea that everyone is equal and should have an equal opportunity to reach their goals and be successful. For that to happen, there has to be a change in the American society, so we can be able to say that everyone has equal opportunities. The American economy has to change from being an “envy economy” back into what it was before, which is an “ambitious economy,” (Nohria), meaning that people have to shift their focus away from other people, over to themselves if success is what they are looking for, because that is how you achieve your own dreams.

Works Cited

Amadeo, Kimberly. “5 Ways Our Founding Fathers Protect The American Dream.” The Balance Small Business, The Balance, www.thebalance.com/what-is-the-american-dream-quotes-and-history-3306009.

“The American Dream Is a Fu*King Lie.” PaleoBOSS Lady, www.paleobosslady.com/blog/the-american-dream-is-a-lie.

“American Dream.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Nov. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream.

“American Dream.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Nov. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream.

BridgeWorks. “The Evolution of the American Dream.” BridgeWorks, 24 July 2017, www.generations.com/2015/09/21/the-evolution-of-the-american-dream/.

Carter, Shawn M. “Less than 20% of Americans Say They're Living the American Dream-Here's Why.” CNBC, CNBC, 19 Sept. 2017, www.cnbc.com/2017/09/19/less-than-20-percent-of-americans-say-theyre-living-the-american-dream.html.

Dwyer, Dustin. “Five Facts about Achieving the American Dream.” State of Opportunity, stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/five-facts-about-achieving-american-dream.

Dwyer, Dustin. “Five Facts about Achieving the American Dream.” State of Opportunity, stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/five-facts-about-achieving-american-dream.

“Income Inequality.” Inequality.org, inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/.

“Hilfiger Launching Fashion Reality Show.” PEOPLE.com, Time Inc, people.com/celebrity/hilfiger-launching-fashion-reality-show/.

Jr., Ruben Navarrette. “Is Ted Cruz 'Post-Hispanic'?” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 22 Jan. 2015, www.thedailybeast.com/is-ted-cruz-post-hispanic.

Nohria, Nitin. “Envy and the American Dream.” Harvard Business Review, 1 Aug. 2014, hbr.org/2013/01/envy-and-the-american-dream.

PragerU. “What's Killing the American Dream?” YouTube, YouTube, 26 Sept. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nXxPMsOIs.

Productions, WorldBeat. “The Myth and Realities of the American Dream.” YouTube, YouTube, 22 Mar. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQvAsXfMkiw.

Shiller, Robert J. “The Transformation of the 'American Dream'.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 Aug. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/upshot/the-transformation-of-the-american-dream.html.

Smith, Samantha. “Most Say American Dream Is within Reach for Them.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 31 Oct. 2017, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/31/most-think-the-american-dream-is-within-reach-for-them/.

“The Souring of the American Dream.” Public Radio International, PRI, www.pri.org/stories/2011-11-21/souring-american-dream.

Star, Clovis. “The Collapse of The American Dream Explained Cartoon.” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L4YIkYP5uU.

Tinervia, Karly. “Karly Tinervia.” Karly Tinervia, 1 Jan. 1970, karlytinervia15.blogspot.com/.

“Workforce #ChartOfTheWeek | The Fading American Dream?” SCPa Works, 7 May 2018, scpaworks.org/2018/05/workforce-chartoftheweek-the-fading-american-dream/.

[sailorrrvenus]

People Call My Photos Fake… But They’re Not

The idea of this article came from a recent photo series I saw on BoredPanda about viral photos people thought were real but were fake. It reminded me of some of my photos people always call fake.

People online judge you really easily. It used to really annoy me when people called my work ‘fake’ when I spent countless hours planning and executing that particular shot. Now I don’t care as much anymore as I used to. This is the Internet, after all. And if I think about it, often I can’t blame them.

Take the last super moon for example. More than half of the pictures you see online are indeed fake. People paste the moon in all kinds of settings, and if you know your photography, you can easily see what’s fake and what’s not because of focal lengths not matching. However, people who don’t really know the technical aspects of focal lengths, the ‘general crowd’ can’t really tell what’s real and what’s fake. So if something looks ‘too good’ people often think it’s fake.

The so-called ‘haters’, in particular, will scream fake at you and will sometimes even directly insult you.

In this article, I will discuss a few shots I’ve taken over the years that look ‘unreal’ and thus were hated upon a lot. All the shots I am discussing have their own article on PetaPixel.

2015: Alone in the Universe

This photo gave a boost to my photography career. It shows the ISS (International Space Station) flying over a friend of mine standing on a hill who I was photographing with the Milky Way. This was a lucky shot. I had been to this area a bunch of times trying to shoot the Milky Way (which is not easy in the Netherlands) and this on this shot I saw something flying through the frame.

Upon doing research afterward and asking local astrophotographers (on astroforum.nl, very nice and helpful guys) it was confirmed that this was indeed the ISS flying through my frame. I already knew it was something special when I took the shots, because it was flying much slower than a shooting star, and it was much brighter than a meteor and different than a plane.

A meteor shower was predicted one week later, and with some clever title, a photo story and the image itself, the image spread on the Internet extremely quickly. The result was tons of media attention, and a lot of people calling the shot fake for numerous reasons.

Most common were the people who don’t know anything about photography saying you can’t see or photograph the Milky Way in the Netherlands.

There were ‘Experts’ saying the ISS flew a different direction so the shot could not be real. But they forgot that the exposure started when the ISS was on the right, and that’s why it’s brighter there. And it went to the left, fading out there because it was making its turn there. So while it looks like the ISS is going to the left, its actually going to the right.

There were also haters saying the shot was planned (but not calling it fake) and saying I made up a bulls**t story. At that time I tried everything to convince everyone the shot was real. Luckily I also had support from people from astroforum.nl, and I showed some publishers the raw file. But you simply can’t please everyone.

2019: The Supermoon

My most recent picture that I planned of the supermoon was also called fake by some people, especially people who don’t really know photography. As I mentioned earlier, you can’t really blame them, because there were so many fake moon shots out there.

For many people, a shot like this is again “too good to be true.” The perfect alignment of the moon in between the two towers screams Photoshop. But the challenge is to plan shots like this, and once you tell people how you do it, they turn around.

People calling it fake because the moon is too big. By using a very long lens and planning you can align the moon with building and objects. It’s great fun when you succeed. You can also see a video about it here:

People were also calling it fake because there are hundreds of fake pictures of super moons out there, even featured by news channels.

2017: Erupting volcano Lined Up with the Milky Way

These two images are by far the most extreme. Especially the first image where you can see the Milky Way in line with an erupting volcano in Guatemala. The second image was actually much more challenging, but the first image looks way crazier so that one gets a lot of hate, even today.

I planned this shot to great lengths and before I made the shot. I already told lots of people about my plan, making it even more satisfying when I was finally able to take this shot. Literally hundreds of people insulted me over this particular shot.

Again, when you think about it, you can’t blame people. The number of fake Milky Ways you see on social media nowadays is probably more than the number of real pictures you see. And especially with a shot like this, even I would probably think that it’s fake if someone else had taken it. It was, and is still, featured on worldwide media. Here are some of the reasons people were calling it fake and photoshopped:

First, the top of the peak on the left. Lots of people said it looked horrible. “Such a bad Photoshop,” was often said. The fact is that the peak right there is rising above a thick fog layer, making it look like that. If I had Photoshopped that, I probably would have made it look better!

Because of the very defined haze layer, it looks like the sky is just pasted in the image. What people forget is that I am standing at close to 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) of altitude here. The haze layer was very apparent that night. Compare it to being in an airplane at high altitude and looking out of the window — you’ll also often see a very defined line of the atmosphere.

People also said: “The light pollution looks very strong, but the sky is not polluted.” This is Guatemala. What you see in the image are very small villages. They almost don’t give off any light pollution. It just looks way more extreme on the image because of the long exposure. You can see this on a light pollution map if you check the surroundings of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala. There is not much light pollution, so it’s very easy to spot the Milky Way.

Also, many locals shoot the Milky Way there. The fact is that this shot was technically not that hard. It is not a single shot but was rather a panorama to get the whole valley in the frame. I planned the alignment and the shot, and “just” needed the volcano to erupt. The planning and the whole trip was the most difficult, but being there was simply executing and enjoying the spectacle unfolding in front of my eyes.

I shot the erupting volcano with the Milky Way first and then moved panned to take more shots to get the whole Milky Way with the valley. There were a total of 5 (vertical) shots. No HDR, bracketing, or whatever. But yes, multiple shots to create the full panorama. The second more challenging photo is a single exposure.

‘Photoshop’

I do have to say that all of my shots are indeed ‘Photoshopped’. I always work on my images to make them look good on print and social media. I change contrast, vibrance, saturation, make color adjustments, etc., so you can call them ‘fake’ in that regard. But I don’t change the moment.

When you shoot in RAW format you maximize the data your camera can capture. The photos always come out very flat, so to make it look somehow appealing you have to do some processing. When you shoot in JPG, or when you shoot with your smartphone, for example, the device itself already does all the processing so you don’t need to do any processing on the computer anymore. This is an endless discussion that I will not write about in this article, but can be talked about another time.

The bottom line for me, in general, is trying to display the moment in a photograph. To close, I would like to say that before you judge anyone or think something is fake, don’t just start screaming “fake!” or insult the photographer. If you have doubts, there is sometimes more to it than you think. No matter how much experience I have with this particular thing, it still hurts when people insult me over work I spent lots of time on.

About the author: Albert Dros is an award-winning Dutch photographer. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. His work has been published by some of the world’s biggest media channels, including TIME, The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, and National Geographic. You can find more of his work on his website, or by following him on Facebook and Instagram.

source https://petapixel.com/2019/03/01/people-call-my-photos-fake-but-theyre-not/

[pauldeckerus]

People Call My Photos Fake… But They’re Not

The idea of this article came from a recent photo series I saw on BoredPanda about viral photos people thought were real but were fake. It reminded me of some of my photos people always call fake.

People online judge you really easily. It used to really annoy me when people called my work ‘fake’ when I spent countless hours planning and executing that particular shot. Now I don’t care as much anymore as I used to. This is the Internet, after all. And if I think about it, often I can’t blame them.

Take the last super moon for example. More than half of the pictures you see online are indeed fake. People paste the moon in all kinds of settings, and if you know your photography, you can easily see what’s fake and what’s not because of focal lengths not matching. However, people who don’t really know the technical aspects of focal lengths, the ‘general crowd’ can’t really tell what’s real and what’s fake. So if something looks ‘too good’ people often think it’s fake.

The so-called ‘haters’, in particular, will scream fake at you and will sometimes even directly insult you.

In this article, I will discuss a few shots I’ve taken over the years that look ‘unreal’ and thus were hated upon a lot. All the shots I am discussing have their own article on PetaPixel.

2015: Alone in the Universe

This photo gave a boost to my photography career. It shows the ISS (International Space Station) flying over a friend of mine standing on a hill who I was photographing with the Milky Way. This was a lucky shot. I had been to this area a bunch of times trying to shoot the Milky Way (which is not easy in the Netherlands) and this on this shot I saw something flying through the frame.

Upon doing research afterward and asking local astrophotographers (on astroforum.nl, very nice and helpful guys) it was confirmed that this was indeed the ISS flying through my frame. I already knew it was something special when I took the shots, because it was flying much slower than a shooting star, and it was much brighter than a meteor and different than a plane.

A meteor shower was predicted one week later, and with some clever title, a photo story and the image itself, the image spread on the Internet extremely quickly. The result was tons of media attention, and a lot of people calling the shot fake for numerous reasons.

Most common were the people who don’t know anything about photography saying you can’t see or photograph the Milky Way in the Netherlands.

There were ‘Experts’ saying the ISS flew a different direction so the shot could not be real. But they forgot that the exposure started when the ISS was on the right, and that’s why it’s brighter there. And it went to the left, fading out there because it was making its turn there. So while it looks like the ISS is going to the left, its actually going to the right.

There were also haters saying the shot was planned (but not calling it fake) and saying I made up a bulls**t story. At that time I tried everything to convince everyone the shot was real. Luckily I also had support from people from astroforum.nl, and I showed some publishers the raw file. But you simply can’t please everyone.

2019: The Supermoon

My most recent picture that I planned of the supermoon was also called fake by some people, especially people who don’t really know photography. As I mentioned earlier, you can’t really blame them, because there were so many fake moon shots out there.

For many people, a shot like this is again “too good to be true.” The perfect alignment of the moon in between the two towers screams Photoshop. But the challenge is to plan shots like this, and once you tell people how you do it, they turn around.

People calling it fake because the moon is too big. By using a very long lens and planning you can align the moon with building and objects. It’s great fun when you succeed. You can also see a video about it here:

People were also calling it fake because there are hundreds of fake pictures of super moons out there, even featured by news channels.

2017: Erupting volcano Lined Up with the Milky Way

These two images are by far the most extreme. Especially the first image where you can see the Milky Way in line with an erupting volcano in Guatemala. The second image was actually much more challenging, but the first image looks way crazier so that one gets a lot of hate, even today.

I planned this shot to great lengths and before I made the shot. I already told lots of people about my plan, making it even more satisfying when I was finally able to take this shot. Literally hundreds of people insulted me over this particular shot.

Again, when you think about it, you can’t blame people. The number of fake Milky Ways you see on social media nowadays is probably more than the number of real pictures you see. And especially with a shot like this, even I would probably think that it’s fake if someone else had taken it. It was, and is still, featured on worldwide media. Here are some of the reasons people were calling it fake and photoshopped:

First, the top of the peak on the left. Lots of people said it looked horrible. “Such a bad Photoshop,” was often said. The fact is that the peak right there is rising above a thick fog layer, making it look like that. If I had Photoshopped that, I probably would have made it look better!

Because of the very defined haze layer, it looks like the sky is just pasted in the image. What people forget is that I am standing at close to 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) of altitude here. The haze layer was very apparent that night. Compare it to being in an airplane at high altitude and looking out of the window — you’ll also often see a very defined line of the atmosphere.

People also said: “The light pollution looks very strong, but the sky is not polluted.” This is Guatemala. What you see in the image are very small villages. They almost don’t give off any light pollution. It just looks way more extreme on the image because of the long exposure. You can see this on a light pollution map if you check the surroundings of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala. There is not much light pollution, so it’s very easy to spot the Milky Way.

Also, many locals shoot the Milky Way there. The fact is that this shot was technically not that hard. It is not a single shot but was rather a panorama to get the whole valley in the frame. I planned the alignment and the shot, and “just” needed the volcano to erupt. The planning and the whole trip was the most difficult, but being there was simply executing and enjoying the spectacle unfolding in front of my eyes.

I shot the erupting volcano with the Milky Way first and then moved panned to take more shots to get the whole Milky Way with the valley. There were a total of 5 (vertical) shots. No HDR, bracketing, or whatever. But yes, multiple shots to create the full panorama. The second more challenging photo is a single exposure.

‘Photoshop’

I do have to say that all of my shots are indeed ‘Photoshopped’. I always work on my images to make them look good on print and social media. I change contrast, vibrance, saturation, make color adjustments, etc., so you can call them ‘fake’ in that regard. But I don’t change the moment.

When you shoot in RAW format you maximize the data your camera can capture. The photos always come out very flat, so to make it look somehow appealing you have to do some processing. When you shoot in JPG, or when you shoot with your smartphone, for example, the device itself already does all the processing so you don’t need to do any processing on the computer anymore. This is an endless discussion that I will not write about in this article, but can be talked about another time.

The bottom line for me, in general, is trying to display the moment in a photograph. To close, I would like to say that before you judge anyone or think something is fake, don’t just start screaming “fake!” or insult the photographer. If you have doubts, there is sometimes more to it than you think. No matter how much experience I have with this particular thing, it still hurts when people insult me over work I spent lots of time on.

About the author: Albert Dros is an award-winning Dutch photographer. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. His work has been published by some of the world’s biggest media channels, including TIME, The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, and National Geographic. You can find more of his work on his website, or by following him on Facebook and Instagram.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/03/01/people-call-my-photos-fake-but-theyre-not/

[trendingnewsb]

Thank you, Sinad OConnor, for showing the messy reality of mental illness | Paris Lees

The Irish singers Facebook video is difficult to watch, but vitally important, writes freelance journalist Paris Lees

Three cheers for Sinad OConnor, who has this week torn down the glossy facade of the public debate around mental health. The video the Grammy-award-winner posted to her Facebook page on Monday a motel room recording that has caused concern around the world is not easy viewing. Seeing her desperate call for help and her honesty about suicidal feelings is excruciating. And not just because we know that she was once one of the biggest stars in the world. She expresses her pain so passionately you can almost taste it.

And I tell her this: thank you. For showing the reality of mental illness. The wailing, ranting, desperate demon that secretly tortures millions. Ive never been to that motel in New Jersey but I have been in that room with you. Earlier this year I suffered a particularly serious mental breakdown. I have been too ashamed to talk about it publicly as Im keenly aware of the stigma attached to pain and chaos this raw. Thank you for showing millions of us that we are not alone.

As OConnor notes, the stigma is often worse than the mental illness itself. And while we are now used to thinking of stigma as being a consequence of mental ill-health, research shows that, in the form of prejudice and alienation, it is also a driver of morbidity. In other words, people who feel stigmatised in life are more likely to become ill and die. We know that gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people are much more likely to suffer with poor health, as are people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Almost half of all trans kids in Britain have attempted suicide. Stigmatised already, they then face further stigma when they become ill. Talk about kicking people when theyre down.

In the past decade fantastic campaigns such as Time to Change have transformed the conversation. Matt Haig has no doubt saved many lives with his book Reasons to Stay Alive, and Bryony Gordon deserves praise for all shes done. She landed the scoop of the year by getting Prince Harry to open up about his mental health battles. The younger royals are doing admirable work to raise awareness.

But while I applaud the efforts of these campaigners, I cant help feeling that the conversation about mental health has, up until now, been sugar-coated and sanitised. The focus is on illnesses that seem more easily relatable so, for example, we hear lots about depression and anxiety but no so much about schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder. Everything is past tense: battles have been overcome. The chaos is hidden.

I understand. Few people want to listen at the point when someone is struggling most. Its too awkward for everyone involved. And who wants to show the world the depths that mental illness can take you when youre right there at the bottom? Not me. Ive only felt able to talk about my mental struggles in the past tense myself, as though the depression I suffered as a student was a neatly packaged thing Id since tidied away. Its not.

In addition to laudable mainstream campaigns we also need to see the reality of what mental illness can do to people up close the same way we need to see images of people fleeing other harrowing situations for which there are political solutions if only there was the will. The world is not all roses and sunshine and Instagram filters, sadly. It is messy and, for many people, hopeless. Its time we woke up and asked why. OConnor has spoken openly about being abused as a child. There is no point discussing mental illness without acknowledging the circumstances that can lead to it.

I wasnt surprised to see Annie Lennox was one of the first to voice concern for OConnor. Lennox has spent the past 30 years expressing exquisite pain and joy in her music, music that has helped me find a way out of more dark tunnels than I care to remember. If only we were all as compassionate. I saw many people on social media dismiss OConnor as crazy and an attention seeker, as though the solution is to just lock her up and forget about her. She needs love, support and understanding. Everyone struggling with poor mental health does.

As OConnor rightly points out, though, many people lack her resources. I am university-educated and tenacious. Yet I know how difficult it is to access therapy on the NHS. I had to wait almost a year before I was accepted, during which time I ran up huge debts going to see a private therapist. God knows how people who are already not coping are supposed to deal with all the many hoops youre expected to jump through. No wonder some people can feel like there is no way out. Yes, mental illness kills people. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in Britain. It is a real crisis.

Theresa May talks the talk when it comes to improving mental health services but it remains to be seen if she will deliver anything but bluster during her premiership. Maybe if watching OConnors self-proclaimed rant makes us uncomfortable its because we are uncomfortable with our complicity in failing to address the things, such as abuse and poverty and stigma, that can drive people to mental ill-health.

There are millions of people suffering in their own private hells as we speak. Thank you again, Sinad, for giving this secret misery a face we need to see it.

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here

Paris Lees is a freelance journalist, campaigner and presenter

Read more: http://ift.tt/2vNwoxj

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2yxmemW via Viral News HQ

[trendingnewsb]

Thank you, Sinad OConnor, for showing the messy reality of mental illness | Paris Lees

The Irish singers Facebook video is difficult to watch, but vitally important, writes freelance journalist Paris Lees

Three cheers for Sinad OConnor, who has this week torn down the glossy facade of the public debate around mental health. The video the Grammy-award-winner posted to her Facebook page on Monday a motel room recording that has caused concern around the world is not easy viewing. Seeing her desperate call for help and her honesty about suicidal feelings is excruciating. And not just because we know that she was once one of the biggest stars in the world. She expresses her pain so passionately you can almost taste it.

And I tell her this: thank you. For showing the reality of mental illness. The wailing, ranting, desperate demon that secretly tortures millions. Ive never been to that motel in New Jersey but I have been in that room with you. Earlier this year I suffered a particularly serious mental breakdown. I have been too ashamed to talk about it publicly as Im keenly aware of the stigma attached to pain and chaos this raw. Thank you for showing millions of us that we are not alone.

As OConnor notes, the stigma is often worse than the mental illness itself. And while we are now used to thinking of stigma as being a consequence of mental ill-health, research shows that, in the form of prejudice and alienation, it is also a driver of morbidity. In other words, people who feel stigmatised in life are more likely to become ill and die. We know that gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people are much more likely to suffer with poor health, as are people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Almost half of all trans kids in Britain have attempted suicide. Stigmatised already, they then face further stigma when they become ill. Talk about kicking people when theyre down.

In the past decade fantastic campaigns such as Time to Change have transformed the conversation. Matt Haig has no doubt saved many lives with his book Reasons to Stay Alive, and Bryony Gordon deserves praise for all shes done. She landed the scoop of the year by getting Prince Harry to open up about his mental health battles. The younger royals are doing admirable work to raise awareness.

But while I applaud the efforts of these campaigners, I cant help feeling that the conversation about mental health has, up until now, been sugar-coated and sanitised. The focus is on illnesses that seem more easily relatable so, for example, we hear lots about depression and anxiety but no so much about schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder. Everything is past tense: battles have been overcome. The chaos is hidden.

I understand. Few people want to listen at the point when someone is struggling most. Its too awkward for everyone involved. And who wants to show the world the depths that mental illness can take you when youre right there at the bottom? Not me. Ive only felt able to talk about my mental struggles in the past tense myself, as though the depression I suffered as a student was a neatly packaged thing Id since tidied away. Its not.

In addition to laudable mainstream campaigns we also need to see the reality of what mental illness can do to people up close the same way we need to see images of people fleeing other harrowing situations for which there are political solutions if only there was the will. The world is not all roses and sunshine and Instagram filters, sadly. It is messy and, for many people, hopeless. Its time we woke up and asked why. OConnor has spoken openly about being abused as a child. There is no point discussing mental illness without acknowledging the circumstances that can lead to it.

I wasnt surprised to see Annie Lennox was one of the first to voice concern for OConnor. Lennox has spent the past 30 years expressing exquisite pain and joy in her music, music that has helped me find a way out of more dark tunnels than I care to remember. If only we were all as compassionate. I saw many people on social media dismiss OConnor as crazy and an attention seeker, as though the solution is to just lock her up and forget about her. She needs love, support and understanding. Everyone struggling with poor mental health does.

As OConnor rightly points out, though, many people lack her resources. I am university-educated and tenacious. Yet I know how difficult it is to access therapy on the NHS. I had to wait almost a year before I was accepted, during which time I ran up huge debts going to see a private therapist. God knows how people who are already not coping are supposed to deal with all the many hoops youre expected to jump through. No wonder some people can feel like there is no way out. Yes, mental illness kills people. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in Britain. It is a real crisis.

Theresa May talks the talk when it comes to improving mental health services but it remains to be seen if she will deliver anything but bluster during her premiership. Maybe if watching OConnors self-proclaimed rant makes us uncomfortable its because we are uncomfortable with our complicity in failing to address the things, such as abuse and poverty and stigma, that can drive people to mental ill-health.

There are millions of people suffering in their own private hells as we speak. Thank you again, Sinad, for giving this secret misery a face we need to see it.

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here

Paris Lees is a freelance journalist, campaigner and presenter

Read more: http://ift.tt/2vNwoxj

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2yxmemW via Viral News HQ