#things to ponder while falling 2021

[sklira]

Things to Ponder While Falling | Sweet Trip

Home, where I'll rest From these wounds of coyness and shame Home, where I'll be From this throne I'll ponder into the night Of the joy I once knew before the fall

[sageworld]

The Christmas Kids • Rafe Cameron. (part II)

“the christmas kids were nothing but a gift,

and love is a tower where all of us can live.”

he was really sweet in the beginning but then something changed

WARNINGS • Cheating, mentions of sex work, reader catches an STD, overall just a upsetting chapter

christmas kids masterlist; here

06/13/2021

it had been hours and you couldn’t stop the tears. you laid yours’ & rafe’s half full bed in your pajamas sobbing your eyes out.

1:34am

your bed side clock read, rafe still wasn’t home he had texted you saying he was going out with top & kelce to watch the football game at the local bar around 7:30 & that was the last you heard from him.

you ponder back onto the events that had happened before that. you had walked into your local planned parenthood, complaints of vaginal pain, slime like discharge & a overall smell that you’d been insecure about for about two days now.

“hi mrs. cameron, im maddy & i’ll be your nurse today. i see on file that you want to get STD tested today.” your nurse greets you while closing the door behind her.

“yes, i’ve been having some issues and i just wanna make sure.” the small talk continues on for some time before she gives you the small green lidded cup & you head to the bathroom.

as you finish your business you leave it in the small metal box in the bathroom, going back to wait in the nurses office like directed. the nerves running through you.

bing

your phone buzzed.

rafey💍🧿: hey babe, just checked your location. wyd?

y/n: just been having some cramp issues is all.

you put your phone down when the nurse comes back in, your phone binging as you do so but you choose to ignore it.

“hi again, so we got your results back & unfortunately you’ve tested positive for chlamydia.” you don’t hear much past that. trying to swallow down the lump in your throat, focusing on trying not to cry in her office.

“mrs.cameron?” she tries to gain your attention to which you look up to her from your chair, teary eyed. “you will have to alert all partners you’ve been with-.” “i’ve only been with my fiancé, they’re must be some mistake.” the tears start to fall.

“i know this is hard, you should recommend your fiancé come in for some testing as well.” she rubs your back. “i want to be tested again, there must’ve been a mistake.” you sob, feeling the headache coming.

“mrs. cameron, we can test again but i can assure you that you’re positive for it, im gonna prescribe you some antibiotic that you can pick up at any local pharmacy.”

fast forward back to now, over pondering on the events of the day. your heart aches, you knew rafe. you knew of his infidelities but the thought never crossed your mind that he wasn’t using protection.

a nervous rumble fills your belly as you hear the roar of his trucks engine pulling up in your drive way.

2:57am

your clock now reads, football game my ass.

you knew he was never really watching football, rafe had more than a few addictions. somewhere in between the cocaine and money, strippers had fell into it. there was a club about 30 minutes away on the mainland that you’d seen rafe’s location at a few times. and after a few text searches you knew top & kelce had always gone with him.

at first you didn’t think it was bad, you’d looked at other guys before while in the relationship, hell for your eighteenth girls sleepover your friends got you a male stripper as a joke. that was until you woke up and saw nearly 2900 had been withdrawn from your & rafe’s account. it didn’t say what on but you could only assume he had taken out cash.

as time went on & it got worse, you could only wonder. why them?

he was engaged to you but he always found his way back to them. why couldn’t you be good enough? it felt like no matter how many hours you spent in the gym, no matter how clean and lean you ate it wasn’t enough. you always wondered if he was bored of your body, seeing the same things over and over again. but, that’s not much of a topic you should be thinking about.

you try and contain your sobs as he opens your bed room door, stumbling over to you. it’s clear he thinks your asleep. “mm sweet kitty.” he slurs, liquor taken over him as he bends over the bed to plant a kiss on your forehead.

you don’t move or dare open your eyes even after you hear the door to your master bathroom shut & the shower water turn on.

you shove your face into the pillow and quietly sob, the pillow nearly soaked from the hours you’d spent crying, salivating & snot running onto it.

3:26 am

you quickly open your eyes to see the time as the bathroom door opens again, he turns off the light before hopping into his side of the bed, cuddling you under the covers. even though your backs faced to him you can now smell rafe and not some cheap whoreish perfume.

you debating for a bit, should i tell him or wait till tomorrow

but as soon as you get ready to turn you hear his soft snores.

6:24 am

despite the lack of sleep you’re up early & cannot stand the idea of staying cuddled up with rafe. you quietly get up and sneak away, grabbing a cute gym two piece set.

after doing a few hygiene things and grabbing the essentials, gym bag, pre work out, stanley, airpods & a small protein bar for the road you’re off.

working out was always a good way to clear your mind, just put your airpods in and focus on you.

your body drips in sweat as you’re 30 flights into your stair master. you’d done a few other things and had been here for god knows how long.

buzz buzz buzz

your airpods ring in your ears.

FaceTime call: Rafey🧿💍

you hesitate to answer but decide to anyways.

“mm kitty, why’d you run off so early?” rafe answers, sleepy voice and still in bed.

“just wanted to get out the house.” you simply answers,looking down to focus on the stairs. “should’ve woken me up i would’ve come.” rafe frowns. you shrug on the camera, “what’s wrong?” rafe asks, your attitude upsetting him.

“nothing just have somethings i need to talk to you about when i get home.” you can tell what you said make rafe anxious as his eyes open a bit.

“really kitty? about what?” his voice holds excitement. ok so maybe not nervous.

“im finishing up here and i’ll tell you when i get home.” the conversation goes on for a bit longer with rafe just wanting you to tell him but untimely he agrees for you to tell him at home, after saying your goodbyes and love yous, you make your descend off the machine.

you don’t wanna go but decide it’s for the best, packing your stuff into your gym bag & making your way out the door.

it feels all too soon as you walk into the front door of your house, the tv playing loudly. it’s a saturday so rafe’s off today, the sound off last nights football games highlights playing.

“hi kitty.” rafe smiles, man spread on the couch still in his pajama pants and no shirt. “hey rafe.” you say blandly, the sight of him disgusting you. “c’mere kitty, what’d you wanna talk to me about.” he pats his lap for you to sit. “i-i think i’m gonna shower first.” the definitely wasn’t a conversation you wanted to have with rafe.

you were sure, rafe knew you knew he was cheating. yet the one or two times you had even slightly brought it up he shut it down saying he didn’t know what you were talking about. you knew he saw your face when you once saw a hickey left on his neck that wasn’t from you. when you can smell another woman on him, when he comes home at the late hours of the night/early hours of the morning.

“no, no. i have to shower too but let’s talk first.” rafe’s voice is soft, inviting it usually is when rafe thinks he gonna get home kind of good news from you. what does he think i wanna talk about?

“rafe, have you been using protection like when you’re having sex?” the lump in your throat forms as rafe sits his body up completely, nervous look on his face. “well uh-kitty we don’t use condoms but you’re on your birth control.” he runs his hand through his hair, a tall tale sign he’s nervous or feels like he’s been caught.

“not with me rafe and, i swear to god if you’re not honest with me i will walk right back out that door and i will not come back.” you’re frustration only grows.

“i-i usually do but just sometimes i don’t but i promise when i don’t i pull out or-or-or i make them take a plan b in front of me i swear.” rafe stands fidgeting with his hands as he steps closer to you. “whyre you asking me this?” rafe stops in front of you, voice shaking.

“i went to planned parenthood yesterday & turns out i have chlamydia. we both know you’re the only one i’ve ever been with so, yeah.” you nod your head, a tear falling as you bite your lip.

“so you’re not pregnant?” rafe’s head hangs low as he reaches for you, making you step back. “why the actual fuck would i be pregnant?” is that what he thought?

“well i saw you went there yesterday and you said cramps but i knew you weren’t on your period because we’ve been having sex like everyday, so i just thought.” rafe explains, grabbing his hair in both hands before letting out a breath of air & before you know it he’s hyperventilating.

“r-rafe, calm down.” you wanna tell him it’s okay just to get him out of this state but it’s not okay, it’s not fair to you. you walk up to him and he begins to slowly place himself on the ground, one hand on his chest and one still in his hair and he tries to find his rhythm to breath. “rafe you need to calm down, now.” your tone more stern as you get down next to him.

“i’m so sorry my kitty, im so fucking sorry.” he sobs into your stomach. “rafe, stop fucking cry please and let’s talk.” you’re over it at this point. you’ve been cheated on, embarrassed & given an std by the man who’s supposed to love you the most & he’s here crying.

he looks up to you, shocked by your tone. “o-okay.” he sniffles, sitting his back up against the side of the couch.

“i’m just going to keep it simple rafe. i want you to go to planned parenthood for antibiotics, i want you to stop fucking these bitches, i expect you home by no later than 10:00pm and if you can’t do that then the weddings off.” you shrug and let out a sigh at the last part. “o-okay, i-i promise.” he stutters out when suddenly it hits him, “please don’t take away the weddding.” his sobs almost remind you of a child who’s favorite toy has been taken as he goes back to crying into your stomach.

“rafe, we’re still getting married as long as you get your shit together.” you sigh, scratching his scalp with your acrylic nails which you know he loves.

“i swear baby, im gonna ma-make this right.”

god i hope so.

[mlobsters]

saw a post yesterday (3 months ago now) that was like finale reactions from not-wincest shippers saying wincest won - but wincest shippers said it wasn't even wincest. which brings me around to my pondering how there's this divide of the ship into wincest / weirdcest / gencest which I'm still not totally sure the difference between the last two. but like, if I'm talking about wincest, I'm not talking about them with fucking required? it's just the dudes in a not-strictly-familial-platonic relationship. which to me, canonically, even in the most literal reading they've got a queerplatonic situation, so that qualifies

i think what i'm boggling over is that (sometimes?) the ship isn't the ship (the key is the key, man) it's like, ship+what they're doing with their dicks.

which led me to reading fanlore's gen and slash and smarm etc articles -> looked for a gencest article, reading the gen sam & dean one and the sam/dean one which is understandably packed with the related shipwar-ish stuff and i'm reminded i just. shouldn't read what anyone has to say about ships and this show. I feel like I'm rarely on the same page as anyone else, which is impressive in a fandom this large. i still don't really understand how the lines between them get drawn. but after all that i read, it sounds like people aren't really in agreement out there on the internet either.

so, this has been in my drafts since december and another post/reply got me to open it back up, someone saying if you want to tag the non-sexual situation it's gencest or weirdcest, not wincest. but I think now my personal understanding/interpretation is that those are just a subset of wincest, not standalone. I think another component of why it gets under my skin too is the inherent devaluation of queerplatonic relationships. a definition borne of the aromatic and asexual communities

and who's to say it isn't romantic? if the lines and beats are romantic, does it stop being so because they're brothers? would we have the same splitting up of the ship if they weren't related? (can guess what my answer would be)

ANYWAY. this was supposed to be how one ship has been split in a way I haven't seen before and find really weird. I can see how say, on tumblr, it's nice to have a tag that's just the qpr relationship, but not to the exclusion of the main ship.

I thought on AO3 it would be more clear cut, but of the 282 tagged with "Gencest | Emotionally Incestuous but Non-Sexual Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester" only 118 are tagged with Dean/Sam. and in the 79 works tagged "Weirdcest | Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester Appear Incestuous to Others Due to Lack of Boundaries", 40 are Dean/Sam.

and while I like the expansion of the tag name to include a definition, what even is emotionally incestuous :p and if there's incest in your definition, how does that not fall under the ship rubric

but being that there's 34,387 works tagged with Dean/Sam, and while there's more things tagged with gencest pre-2020, the majority is 2019+. and weirdcest is nearly exclusively 2021+. so, large consumer of fic that I am, I am sure things that would fall under those labels weren't tagged as such in the main tag.

going back to fanlore, the article about qprs:

Queerplatonic relationship tags are canonized in freeform tags on AO3, but uses in relationship tags are synned to the / tag.[4]

and the reference is:

Cisco Ramon/Caitlin Snow (Queerplatonic) has been made a synonym of Cisco Ramon/Caitlin Snow. Works and bookmarks tagged with Cisco Ramon/Caitlin Snow (Queerplatonic) will show up in Cisco Ramon/Caitlin Snow's filter.

which honestly made me laugh. that's a very specific situation!

but I think a lot of this, for me, circles back to what is a ship even, and why doesn't love for each other above all else+life partners qualify

and yet, look at me the hypocrite, because I tag stuff with "sam and dean" that are the canonical qpr things, but I wouldn't tag wincest because I know a lot of people would have it filtered. whereas anything remotely shippy in xfiles canon, I tag with msr. *facepalm*

and the advice/explanation I've received about tagging other people's posts, canon gifs, what have you; as wincest - that you might be putting their personal squick right in their notifications. so, don't do that! and I've internalized those rules.

and I guess there's plenty of people that watch the show and think they're just regular brothers ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

spn fandom is a minefield even with my skirting at the edges of it.

I don't know what anything means anymore

[kyndaris]

A Great Detective's Beginning

I think I've said before that Sherlock Holmes is a character I greatly admire. Ever since reading about his adventures in a huge omnibus collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work, I wanted to emulate the great detective in all things with a doctor companion by my side. The art of observation was something I attempted to train my younger self in by studying the fingers of a stranger or the scuffs on their shoes for just a hint of what it might tell me about their life.

Unfortunately, it's not every day one stumbles on a murder. Second, it's not like many a policeman would allow a random civilian to take part in their investigations. Life, it seems, is unlike the world of my many stories. A shame, really. I feel like I would have been an excellent sidekick to the great Sherlock Holmes.

Since my childhood dream is but an impossibility, playing as Sherlock Holmes in a series of video games has become the next best thing for someone like me.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One released in 2021 and was developed by Frogwares, a video game developer headquartered in Ukraine. Over the years, I've played many a game that they've churned out. While the quality is middling at best - given the studio straddles the line of indie developer and triple-A studio - there is something endearing about their games that keep me coming back for more. Jankiness be damned!

Chapter One is set in Sherlock's younger years before he meets his erstwhile companion, Dr John Watson. While the game demonstrates that Sherlock has always had a special talent for deduction, there is an uncertainty to the character that we meet as he ponders the best way to utilise the truth. For example, one of the latter cases involved handing over incriminating evidence of a leading political leader of Cordona to better the lives of all African refugees. True, Sherlock could publish the information and see another corrupt politician fall, but doing so would not serve to benefit many an individual. Nor would it see restitution to the victim.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Chapter One centres on Sherlock visitng the island of Cordona, a fictional island that feels like it borrows elements from Cyprus and Malta's history. Our not-quite-great detective arrives to visit his mother's, Violet Holmes, grave. Upon immediately disembarking, he is embroiled in one mystery of another sparked by a challenge from his companion, Jon.

The Jon that stars in Chapter One is no doctor, however. Rather, he is Sherlock's imaginary friend. Because of this, Frogwares is able to incorporate their janky gameplay for narrative purposes, such as the teleporting John Watson from the good old days, the vanishing and clipping of Jon as he fades in and out of existence, or the fact that he is able to walk up walls.

He's not real to the people of Cordona and is a figment of Sherlock's imagination.

This plays into the story of the game as well, culminating in a showdown as Sherlock reckons with a traumatic event from the past. While I didn't like the choices that eventuated - agreeing with many people on Reddit that the logic Sherlock incorporated in his assessment of what had happened to his mother when he was ten was a little harsh - I did very much being given the opportunity to take a peek at a Sherlock before the one many of us fans see in his first novel appearance: A Study in Scarlet.

From a gameplay perspective, Chapter One incorporated many elements from the previous games including the mind palace and the connecting of clues to make deductions. Though 221b Baker Street didn't exist, Sherlock was able to make use of the archives in the city of Cordona and seemingly carried a box of chemicals with him to deduce whatever strange fluid he stumbled upon. This streamlined a lot of the gameplay from older games and also made sense from a story narrative.

My main issue, of course, was failing to take into consideration elements of the environment or character writing/ behaviour when making my deductions to certain cases and allowing my own biases to shine through. For example, the very first case. I very much wanted it to be the prone-to-anger partner, who acted like a rich entitled arsehole.

Alas, it was the poor spirit medium.

The other cases didn't have such clear cut culprits, with many open to interpretation. Fortunately, there were three major side quests that were able to fill the void left open by the need to have a very obvious antagonist - leading up to Sherlock wowing them with his deductive prowess before breaking down.

This added additional flavour to the island of Cordona, even as it worried me that so many murders or accidental manslaughter could be happening in and around the island.

Still, as a mystery nut, I very much appreciated how much of these cases Frogwares scattered throughout the game and probably would have preferred some more if I'm being perfectly honest.

Then, of course, there were the combat elements Frogwares included in their game. While previous titles didn't have as much action sequences beyond a few quick-time action button presses, here, Sherlock was facing off against various thugs. Most of these involved stunning them by shooting at weakpoints (such as their hat or a molotov cocktail strapped to their back) before rushing forward to knock them out.

While these encounters added a little spice to the usual 'go here' and 'search for clues' aspect of the game, these elements did also become quite repetitive due to how little these elements changed from encounter to encounter.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Chapter One much more than I did Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong solely because of how open the game world was and how much it tickled the itch I had to deduct the events of what happened. While I appreciated Jon's commentary of my greatness, I was also aggrieved when certain things I did, which felt logical at the time, were gated by how the game wished for Sherlock to proceed with a certain clue or piece of information.

In the end, though Chapter One still made me feel like I knew what I was doing. And honestly, that's probably the only real way to make a consulting detective of a modern-day 30 year-old woman who grew up reading tales of Victorian England and obsessing over the BBC version of Sherlock in the year of 2010, starring the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

[arthurdrakoni]

Out of Place is an audio drama that accomplished something I would have said was impossible: it combined alternate history and horror, and it did so frighteningly well. This is my review.

I’m always grateful to have the r/audiodrama sub help to help me find new audio dramas to listen to.  I find my new shows to fall in love with.  Such is the case with Out of Place.  

Out of Place follows a man named Andrew Moss. He had been studying history in university, but wound up dropping out. Still, he's making the best of things. He's gotten as an archivist for a mysterious organization called The Carruthers Institute. He's cataloging historical artifacts, but there's something off about them. The artifacts seem to contradict recorded history. It soon becomes clear that the artifacts are from parallel worlds where history went differently. Andrew must examine the artifacts to determine how the history of their worlds differs from our own. All the while, Andrew ponders who his mysterious benefactor is. 

Out of Place is part of the Midnight Disease network of audio dramas. It includes several other fine show, like Theatre of Tomorrow. Out of Place is created by Ben Counter, who also voices Andrew. It is produced by @pacificobadiah, who is the founder of Midnight Disease. The episodes are presented in the form of audio logs that Andrew has recorded. This means that Ben has to carry the entire show all by himself. Well, with the exception of the final episode of the season, but we'll get to that in due time. Anyway, there's no music or sound effects; it's just purely him narrating. In situations like this the narrator is going to make or break the show. Thankfully, Ben's narration is all that Out of Place needed to succeed. 

Out of Place managed to do something I would have previously said was impossible. It combined alternate history and horror, and did so to great effect. It also did so without resorting to the typical Nazi victory or Confederate victory scenarios. Some episodes hint at supernatural elements, but for the most part, the horror is derived from down-to-earth alternate history. Much of the horror comes simply from the cruelty of humans to their fellow humans. The premise of a man cataloging strange artifacts for a mysterious organization reminded me of the SCP Foundation. In fact, I'd argue that Out of Place is almost a better SCP podcast than most of the actual SCP podcasts. 

I also appreciated the amount of creativity and originality put into the worlds featured in Out of Place.  They aren’t alternate host scenarios you tend to see very often.  I applaud everyone at Out of Place for going against the grain. 

Have you listened to Out of Place?  If so, what is you think?

Link to the full review on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-alt-hist-file-out-of-place-season-1.html?m=1

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Denial Masterlist

Advent Calendar 2021 (ao3) - Phantje

Summary: Phil lives and works in a town in the North called Lylchester. Well, 'works'. He does charitable things in the name of being nice and his (adoptive) parents. Things are fine. Yeah. Fine. Meeting Dan who has strong opinions about peculiar things shakes up Phil's life and he is falling before he can help it.

Dan lives and works somewhere, or anywhere really. By fate, or call it the British Railway train running times, he ends up in Lylchester. Before he can help himself, he has made the first real best friend he has ever had - Beatrix. And suddenly, life does not seem so difficult anymore. Dan appreciates the work he can do, even if it has him interact with the rich idiot Phil more often that he would personally choose.

a theism in evolution (ao3) - Tarredion

Summary: The sungod, Phil, sends letters to Mother Gaia. He puts all his worries into words… even when he himself can't see right through them

A Wick That Burns Far Too Slow (ao3) - pulpphiction

Summary: Daniel ponders his friendship with Phil over the light of that beautiful monochrome candle he got for his birthday.

Bring Me Home From Hell (ao3) - the_unwritten_ruler

Summary: It’s an important moment for Dan when he finally perfects the ritual for summoning a demon, but he gets a lot more than he bargained for when he sets the creature loose on his life.

florist (ao3) - dnovep

Summary: Phil's a florist - he hates it.

Friday The 13th of October (ao3) - Spring_Haze

Summary: Phil surprises Dan after reading his boyfriend's suggestive tweet with regard to a hockey mask and a surprise male visitor in the night on Friday the 13th. Based on Daniel Howell's tweet on October 13, 2017.

Got It (ao3) - Spring_Haze

Summary: Dan surprises his partner with a little stress relief while traveling on tour.

Love You For Always (ao3) - TwistedRocketPower

Summary: In the UK, an estimated 6,000 children die each year. When Dan and Phil became parents almost seven years ago, they never imagined they would become a part of that statistic.

No Hugs - ticklishhpickle

Summary: Dan Howell does not like hugs. Or Phil Lester. And he certainly doesn’t like hugs with Phil Lester.

Nothing Like a Storybook (ao3) - Merrydith

Summary: University Of Manchester, 2009 Dan Howell is an aloof loner and Phil Lester a well-known weirdo. In theory they are worlds apart, but a chance post-party meeting under the Manchester moonlight sends their lives spiraling and soon they find they have a lot more in common than they thought.

Red Like Roses (ao3) - your_starless_eyes

Summary: Red like roses fills my dreams and takes me to the place you rest...

Shit! (ao3) - Jenayisonearth

Summary: And how lovely sickening is that feeling when you've spent so much time arguing your point when the other side was right all along.

The Boy In The Garden (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: (Highschool AU) Dan Howell and Phil Lester had nothing in common. But when the two of them end up working together in the abandoned school garden, will friendship- or something more- develop between them?

The Swear Jar (ao3) - Spring_Haze

Summary: Phil teases Dan about his language during a gaming live stream and offers him a deal off camera. The sexual game proves to be a real challenge for Dan, who wants nothing more than to collect his unique reward.

too long 'till i drown in your hands (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: The Blue Neighbourhood ft. Dan and Phil. That's basically it.

[captainfightingflower]

ALRIGHT! ENOUGH YIPPY YAPPING ON MY END!! I’m never gonna get these things to see the light of day if i just put them off. So here we go: EVERY (Jackbox Games) ILLUSTRATION AND SKETCH I AM STILL PROUD OF THAT I HAVEN’T POSTED PUBLICLY (With dates included according to their properties) MASTERPOST! [MAY OR MAY NOT UPDATE!]

Nothing violently inappropriate, but i did draw The Wheel in a non-revealing maid outfit at some point as well as M. Bubbles eating a heart they ripped out of the wall, but nothing that’ll give grandma a heart attack...except for maybe Cookie Masterson getting tricked into reading the Ẓ̷̛̞͚͗̋̌ạ̵̢̨̬̿͐͂͘͠ḻ̴̯̲́͒g̸̰͌͛ȯ̵̙́ incantation, that one’s pretty intense!

The Trivia Murder Party victims but as grotesque monsters (Date: 28th of November, 2020)

Fun fact: i ended up sculpting both Sloth & Envy’s designs out of clay during art class, no i do not have them.

This comic featuring Cookie Masterson i never finished, but it’s really funny like this so i’m posting it anyways (Date: 31st of December, 2020) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Greed attempting to steal one of the Murder Hotel’s lamps (Date: 30th of January, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Realistic fullbodies of Skippy, Gus & Sparkles (Date: 31st of January, 2021)

The Keeper reading out the definition of CBT (Date: 15th of February, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Creepy Voice, however it’s referencing the end of the proper You Don’t Know Jack: Full Stream trailer (Date: 2nd of April, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Cookie Masterson getting tricked into reading the Ẓ̷̛̞͚͗̋̌ạ̵̢̨̬̿͐͂͘͠ḻ̴̯̲́͒g̸̰͌͛ȯ̵̙́ incantation (Date: 24th of May, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED] {WARNING: VIOLENT}

FUN FACT: the power went out on a sunny day and made me lose the original file, but i was able to remake the comic using a snapshot i sent to a friend! Also: the pencil brush used to make this comic no longer exists on Photopea by default, which sucks absolute BALLS because it was a dope ass pencil brush i haven’t been able to fully replace!

Buzz Lippman falling unconscious based on a Tumblr post about him (Date: 30th of September, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

My Jackbox host designs that coincidentally look like other characters (Date: 17th of October, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Mayonnaise multi-tasking, bringing his child home from school while exiting a pet door (Date: 19th of November, 2021)

I also have a doodle of him stretching like a cat and him eating a rat, but i’m not proud of those so i’m not showing.

Sketches of food for my redux of my first Wattpad story: Jackbox Culinary (Date: 10th of February, 2022)

Redraw of that kid annoying a girl with a trumpet, but with Creepy Voice annoying Cookie Masterson with bagpipes (Date: 10th of February, 2022) [DESIGNS OUTDATED]

L’averne Caverne pondering her orb & a redraw of that Cars comic where Lighting McQueen states that it’s nice to be back in Radiator Springs, but with The Wheel of Enormous Proportions preparing to answer the winner’s question (Date: 2nd of March, 2022)

There’s also a sketch of [REDACTED] dragging The Screamer to the Plinko by the legs while she screams in terror, but his legs always bothered me so i’m not posting.

The Job Job Heart by Jackbox Games (Date: 17th of March, 2022)

The funny explanation as to why my interp of The Wheel of Enormous Proportions suddenly got jacked (Date: 1st of April, 2022)

Octoputtz crying in the fetal position (Date: 5th of May, 2022)

What happens when people stream Quiplash (Date: 22nd of May, 2022)

This drawing of The Wheel of Enormous Proportions in a Victorian English maid outfit that i drew exclusively because i thought it would be funny to put a God in servants clothing {and also because The Wheel makes me feel things i don’t like admitting} and a drawing of it holding a Peep in it’s grasp to mildly prank a friend (Date: 23rd of May, 2022)

There’s also another bust doodle of The Wheel, but that one looks off so i’m not posting it.

Rue Meringue & [REDACTED] swapping clothes due to how similar their outfits’ silhouette resembles (Date: 3rd of June, 2022)

Rue Meringue but with proper freckles (Date: 4th of June, 2022)

FUN FACT: This was originally going to be apart of a series of drawings where i draw characters who’s freckles are represented only via 3 dots on their cheeks and then drawing them with more realistic freckles, however this never got realized and i stopped at Rue.

Cookie Masterson being repackaged (Date: 29th of August, 2022) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Redraw of that comic where a grown man dresses up as a thirsty little flower but it’s The Wheel of Enormous Proportions again (Date: 23rd of October, 2022)

Realistic headshot of Greg (Date: 25th of March, 2023)

Redraw of that image of a woman looking at a man’s particularly perky pectorals that i drew to practice muscles, but it’s M. Bubz & The Wheel (Date: Actually today! But was most likely not going to see the light of day otherwise, so consider this a cheeky bonus!)

FUN FACT: I HAVE MORE, but i haven’t taken photos of them yet, so they can’t be included here as all of their dates would be labeled as “today”, which isn’t in the spirit of this masterpost, but trust me: they are equally as fun as whatever these things i showed you are.

Maybe i should really start posting these things more often...i mean some of these are REALLY good, even today compared to my improved artistic abilities. It’s a real shame that i was...and sometimes still am embarrassed to post these when i really do still like them! So i’m biting the bullet and seeing how they do.

[wartakes]

Some Musings on Avoiding Empire (OLD ESSAY)

This essay was originally posted on July 14th, 2021.

In this essay, I continue my musings on how a democratic socialist state engages in warfare in support of like-minded allies and partners and peoples across the world without falling into the trap of becoming the same as the empires it wishes to both forsake and combat. I don't pretend to have the answers completely, but I at least try to get the ball rolling.

(Full essay under the cut).

When I first started writing these essays, the earliest topics that I covered – and the ones that I keep returning to consistently throughout the overall thread of my work – is that a.) war isn’t going anywhere, and b.) it’s something that we need to understand and be prepared for on the left, even under a different system to the one we live under now. To that end, I’ve talked about the circumstances under which it may be necessary for us to go to war.

However – disregarding those who are acting in bad faith or have ulterior motives – there are still many people who have justifiable misgivings about the idea of the United States or any great power or superpower using force, even under a hypothetically more just governing system and even if it is defendable as the right thing to do under specific circumstances. I’ve had a number of conversations with friends on this topic, which has come up sporadically as various events and crises unfold in the world and the topic of outside intervention invariably arise. While I hold a different view, I can understand why some folks may be suspicious of or hesitant to suddenly get behind the idea of a powerful state notionally using its military power for “good” – especially those who live in other countries and have had to live at the whims of U.S. foreign policy or that of other foreign powers. To some, it may simply seem like empire under a different name.

That raises a question that I felt was worth an essay in its own right: in that hypothetical future I try to think about from getting too bummed out with the present, how do you conduct a global foreign and defense policy without being an empire? While I don’t think the idea of a changed-United States or any country using military power in a more just fashion is equivalent to empire in its own right, I feel like the danger of backsliding into imperialistic attitudes is still very much present and a danger. I see how it could be very easy to make a poor decision here, an exception there, and end up doing the same sort of foreign policy that got us where we are today.

After spending some time pondering this, I’ve come up with an extremely non-scientific, purely vibes-based set of principles that – while I make no claims towards being definitive, exhaustive, or foolproof – seem like a good starting point for how to carry out the kinds of concepts I rail on about without just being what we currently have and have had before but in a different guise. Those four principles, which I will go into more detail on each below, include: being selective of allies and partners, respecting countries’ consent, promoting countries’ self-sufficiency, and maintaining a minimal international footprint. Some or all of these may seem obvious to some, but I’ve found in this day and age, I can’t take anything like this for granted. So, let us begin.

1. Being Selective of Allies and Partners

To be a good leftist or socialist or however you label yourself, one almost by definition needs to be a good internationalist. You should care not only about improving the lives of everyone in your own community, city or country, but also about improving the lives of all people, everywhere. Thus, part of this naturally should entail establishing partnerships and forging alliances with countries that are similarly inclined in order to defend one another from hostile forces and to continue to try and improve things the world over (yes I realize this may sound a bit sappy and idealistic as I type this out, especially in the current environment, but I have to believe that something like this is achievable and that life is not endless sorrow and agony).

Note, that the key terms here are finding allies in countries that have similar principles, those principles of course being things like a democratic system of government, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, a legal and judicial system that isn’t draconian and doesn’t grind a bootheel into the neck of its citizens, supporting said citizens from want and deprivation, etc. etc. All that good stuff that we’re into, and that some governments claim they’re about.

When you look back at the history of the United States and other great powers from the past, you’ll find that the track record of finding allies based on these principles is “spotty” if I’m going to be charitable. The Cold War is an excellent example of this. When the United States searched for partners across the globe in its competition against the Soviet Union, its criteria were more about whether or not governments or leaders opposed communism rather than sharing any sort of affinity towards the principles that the United States claimed to value. What this resulted in was the United States supporting or installing regimes that were extremely right-wing or even fascistic purely on the basis of them hating communism (or any form of leftism) and doing everything they could to oppose it – including mass oppression, imprisonment, and murder of their own citizens. From Latin America, to Africa, to the Middle East and the Far East, you’d be hard pressed to find an area where the United States didn’t support a questionable regime in the course of great power politics.

This practice found new life to a different ideological end following the September 11th Attacks and the outbreak of the Global War on Terrorism. This time, the enemy wasn’t communism, but Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. If the United States wasn’t choosy about its allies during the Cold War, it was even less so in finding allies and partners to help it fight al Qaeda and similar groups – some of which were about just as bad as al Qaeda, had a role in its formation, or were even actively supporting them or other similarly minded or aligned groups like the Taliban.

This is a very long-winded way of me saying, in the future, if we want to conduct ourselves justly in the world of international relations, it means thinking critically about who our friends are. This is a problem that not only conservatives and liberals have, but far too many people on the left have when it comes to uncritically supporting unabashedly authoritarian regimes just because they’re aesthetically leftist or just anti-American. If we don’t want to be morally bankrupt to our own beliefs, then we’ll have to take a long, hard look at any country we consider as an ally and about whether aligning ourselves to them is the right thing to do, or something we’re doing purely out of self-interest or for political or ideological street cred.

2. Respecting the Consent of Other Countries

Our being more selective of allies and partners based on our principles and beliefs is only one part of the equation when it comes to working with other countries throughout the world. The flip side to aligning ourselves to countries more in sync with what we believe, is also realizing that countries and their populaces may not always necessarily want to be our ally, even if we think they have much in common with us and we’d like to help them. As with many other things in life, the magic word here is consent. If a country and its people do not consent to accepting help from us, then forcing the issue is simply adopting a paternal or imperialistic attitude.

There may be a myriad of reasons for this. Part of it may be the suspicion and wariness that I spoke of earlier, which may take generations to pass for some – or may potentially never pass for others. But there may be other reasons as well. The reasons matter less though, then what a country – but more importantly, its people – want. At the end of the day, if a government does not want anything to do with us or any other country offering help, and this is a genuine reflection of the will of its people as a whole, then that’s that. Unless they change their mind at some point in the future, any further efforts are simply trying to unjustly impose your will on another country – the very thing we’re supposed to be trying to avoid.

This same sort of logic applies to supporting movements seeking liberation, whether they are trying to establish an independent state for their people, or to overthrow a government that is oppressing them. Even if we have much in common with the principles of a liberation movement and want to help them, if they want nothing to do with us, we really have nothing else we can do other than cheer them on and wish for the best and hope maybe they change their minds. If I’ve found one thing out from being active on the internet as an artist and writer for most of my adult life, it’s that you can’t force people to be you friends. Sometimes, things just don’t ‘click’ from one end, and you just have to accept you’ll never be as close as you’d like things to be. Sometimes people may warm up to you over time or under different circumstances, but the key thing is that’s up to them, not you. In my eyes, the same thing applies to this case.

Now, I feel like there are potentially exceptions here. One big one that comes to mind is when humanitarian intervention comes up, such as intervention to provide aid to a starving populace or to stop the genocide of a group of people by a state – something behind the basis of the United Nations concept of Responsibility to Protect (something that is invoked far too little in my opinion). These are cases where you can strongly argue that its acceptable to intervene without a request for help – or that it is actually necessary to do so in order to prevent further death and destruction. That all being said, I also think if you look back through history, you’ll be very hard pressed to find any situation where a people were being brutally massacred or were starving to death and were flatly refusing any assistance and aid rather than begging any country with the means to do so to save them from being wiped out. But I felt I should bring that one up regardless just for the sake of being intellectually honest on the issue of consent.

We see the repercussions of ignoring the idea of consent across twenty years of Forever War, in particular Afghanistan and Iraq. While the United States may have initially been welcomed as liberators in both countries and both the Taliban in Afghanistan and Ba’athist state in Iraq were objectively terrible regimes, at the end of the day there was no genuine, country-wide mass movements or representatives of said movements requesting that the United States aid them in their liberation. Our invasions of those countries were forced on them from the outside, and that is part of why they were doomed to failure from the start – as most regime changes are.

3. Promoting Self-Sufficiency

Throughout the modern era, great powers have lavished military aid and arms sales upon allies and partners that suited them. Such aid could be made under the claims of ensuring that country’s ability to defend itself or being out of some notion of brotherhood and comradeship. Of course, like so many things, this aid is also about the game of great power politics and serves just as much as an instrument of influence and control as it did as a means of self-defense – if not more. As much great powers have an interest in ensuring certain countries could defend themselves and their regimes, they also had a vested interest – for many reasons – in making sure said countries were dependent upon them in some shape or form for defense.

There are some glaring examples of this seeding of dependence in how the United States provides military aid or sells arms to other countries currently, especially in an age of more complicated and technologically sophisticated weapons. Often the United States provides arms and armaments to an ally or partner without going through the effort of teaching and enabling them how to maintain them. Instead, it will simply employ contractors or even U.S. military personnel to maintain the equipment for the country, meaning that country is dependent upon the U.S. and U.S. companies (who also naturally have a vested interest in continuing to make money from servicing said equipment) for their defense – putting them in a precarious position.

Under a more just system, the intent of such aid prior to a conflict actually breaking out, would be the exact opposite. The primary purpose of our support to a country in bolstering its defense should be to make it self-sufficient as possible in its own defense, so that it will only need outside help under the most dire of circumstances. We should be genuinely trying to help a country stand on its two feet and not be beholden to any outside power for its survival (and this should be the case in general with all things, though obviously I’m focusing on defense and the military here as that is my wheelhouse and the focus of this blog, but felt it needed calling out). This would mean not only providing arms to a country, but also teaching them how to maintain them, helping them build the means to maintain them domestically, or even setting up their own domestic ability to produce weapons and material, and more – if they are able to do so.

The old adage goes that if you love something, set it free. Well, if we truly care about the well-being of an ally, then we should be building them up so that at the end of the day, they either don’t need us at all or only need us when things get really bad. If we treat them well and help them earnestly and in good faith, then even when they don’t need us, they will want to stand alongside us in defense of the same, shared ideas and belief. Likewise, we’ll have made that community of like-minded peoples and governments stronger by increasing the overall ability to defend itself as a whole against hostile, reactionary forces.

4. Maintaining a Minimal Footprint

One of the aspects of U.S. imperial attitudes that is brought up much on the left is the expansive, worldwide U.S. military presence. The United States maintains bases and troops to varying degrees in a wide swath of countries across the globe – around 40% of the world’s countries in 2019. These bases can serve as a point of serious contention even in countries where their presence is more welcome or at least not reviled. Even if they are not significantly or directly affecting the country they are located in, overseas bases are a lightning rod for their role in perpetuating conflict and U.S. imperialism. As a result, what I often have heard on the left is a desire for the United States to vacate all of its overseas military bases and bring all of its troops back home. While I completely understand this desire and empathize with it, I also feel it is unrealistic if in the future we want to be anything other than isolationist and inward looking – something that is incompatible with the very idea of socialism.

Contemporary warfare is a fast-moving endeavor, under which reacting quickly can mean the difference between victory and defeat – as well as how much destruction is visited and how many lives are lost. Even if we wish to spurn being an imperial power, if we want to be in any position to help other countries that come under attack by an aggressor and are unable to defend themselves on their own and request assistance, we need to be able to react swiftly so that our solidarity doesn’t end up coming too late to be of any help to those under attack. Having a military that can rapidly deploy, rather than be permanently or semi-permanently forward-deployed – may actually deter potential conflict better anyway.

Of course, rapid deployment of forces this still means crossing vast distances of time and space to get to wherever an ally may be in danger.  So, in my typical wishy-washy, “enlightened centrist leftist” fashion, I advocate there has to be some kind of middle ground. If we want to be of any help to allies and partners but still avoid empire, any overseas military installations we maintain need to be kept to a bare minimum. They need to be limited only to what we think we really need. What we “need” should be based on doing actual analysis and assessment of what our stated national security goals are, who are allies and partners are that we anticipate we may need to come to the aid of, where they are located, and etc. It basically just requires us going through the effort of thinking critically about what we need to do what we think is important and in line with our principles and not just gobbling up bases left and right in order to further our own power, influence, control as an imperial power does.

This can’t account for every instance, of course. There may be a case when we need to come to the aid of a country or group that we did not anticipate. This is just a risk you run when planning for various scenarios of war. You set yourself up to be ready for the most likely cases, and then when the least likely or unexpected ones occur, you make do best you can. In those instances, we may be able to lease bases or request temporary access for the duration of a campaign from a third country along the way to the operational area – packing up and going home ASAP once our (hopefully) very clearly defined objectives have been completed.

With that in mind, we should be viewing these bases as being temporal in general. None of them should be thought of as “permanent.” We should be planning out our needs with the idea that they will change over time. We should be reassessing on a regular basis as to what ones we still need, based on the abilities of our allies and partners, the various threats we face, and so on. Over time, it may make more sense to leave one base and set up shop somewhere else. Not only does it make good strategic sense, but it also aids in avoiding digging in roots and fostering imperial attitudes towards the lands that we’re supposed to be guests in – not overlords of.

At the end of the day, no matter how good of relations you have with a country, over time you’re going to wear out a welcome. That in itself is not a good reason to not have military forces stationed overseas at all, but it is a good reason to make sure we only maintain the bases and troops we really need to honor our principles and commitments – especially in peacetime. Despite our widespread military presence currently, most of the military still is stationed in the United States, so it really wouldn’t be that huge of a change. It would just mean thinking harder about what paths and processes we need to rapidly move it to a conflict zone. Really, a lot of this is about thinking harder in general, not only about what we believe as leftists, but also about practical applications of military force and the challenges that involves. We just need to think.

We Can Try (And We Should)

One of the things I grapple with when I try to think of a more ethical and just use of military power is, no matter how I try to dress it, there are always going to be people that I otherwise express solidarity with that are going to be suspicious of it and opposed to it. Some people may take a very long time to come around to the idea and may only do so in part. Some may never come around to it. Frankly, I’ve come to accept that. As much as I want to try and educate and elaborate on why I think this is the realistic and right thing to do, I know that I can’t convince everyone and that ultimately, I can only do so much to try and convince people and the rest is up to them and is their own choice. That, and I can’t blame people – especially those living overseas who have been more directly affected by imperialism than I ever have – for having these attitudes towards the idea of foreign military intervention.

While that is definitely a little discouraging and demoralizing, I try not to let it get me down too much. God knows there so many traps I can fall into – and still fall into – on a daily basis that can lead to depression, discouragement, and borderline “doomerism” and “black pilled” thought with how the state of the world is and the likelihood for change. But I have to believe in something. I have to believe there can be a better world, and I also have to believe I can somehow use what I know from my professional life to contribute to that.

I strongly believe war isn’t going anywhere even if we do (and I hope we do) affect political change. I think we’re going to want to help people beyond our own borders and that will sometimes require providing military aid or carrying out military action. Doing so runs the risks of falling back into old habits unknowingly. While the ideas I’ve laid out here are by no means a panacea for avoiding that sliding back into imperialism, I feel like its maybe a solid starting point. Even if there are going to be people who will still be justifiably suspicious of trying to use military power throughout the world for any sort of positive ends – and that may create stumbling blocks towards doing so, I still think we owe it to try and be a global force for good in that hypothetical future even if it may be difficult and frustrating at times. Why? Because it’s still the right and necessary thing to do. If there’s one thing we know as lefties, it’s that doing the right thing is sometimes a demoralizing pain in the ass – but that doesn’t make it any less right.

[ryqoshay]

Happy Life: Owlhane

Primary Pairing: YohaRiko Words: 514 Rating: G Time Frame: Sometime during their college years Prompt: Pianissimo

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Author's Note: Primary entry for the 14th

Summary: Yohane dresses as an owl

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“Are you really going to eat dinner dressed like that?” Riko inquired.

“Dressed like what?” Yoshiko returned a question of her own. “This is Yohanowl’s natural garb!”

“You said earlier that it was your newest garb.”

“Geh…”

“Also, wouldn’t Owlhane sound better?”

Yoshiko pondered for a moment. “Perhaps… Owl… hane…” she sounded it out before nodding. “Yes, Owlhane is better. It seems the elite little demon knows best.”

“I’m back to being a little demon again?”

“I-I mean angel ascended!”

“I thought I was the guardian of Owlhane’s prey?”

“Mohhh… Riri!” Yoshiko whined, waving her arms in frustration, making it look like she was actually flapping her wings due to her owl outfit.

Riko couldn’t help laughing a bit at the absurd, and thus very Yoshiko, scene before her. It was exceptionally cute as far as she was concerned.

“I must say,” Riko said after a moment, “that costume is very well made. Your wings are actually silent, like a real owl.”

Yoshiko grinned with pride. “Of course it is well made! Yo… Owlhane herself had a ha… wing?... claw in its creation!” She flapped again. “Although I must admit it’s not completely silent. I’m not sure that’s possible without using actual owl feathers. Nonetheless, Owlhane insisted that we strive to at least achieve pianissimo!”

Riko wondered for a moment if it was selfish to assume Yoshiko used a music term to refer to her costume because she was dating a pianist. Obviously, Yoshiko knew the term from her time singing as a school idol, but Riko couldn’t recall her using music terms outside of such situation. Or perhaps she did, and Riko only started noticing after the two became a couple. Still, intentionally introducing words from her girlfriend’s interest into her normal daily lexicon seemed very much like something Yoshiko would do.

“Eh?” Riko startled away from her thoughts as a feathered wing flapped near her.

“See?” Yoshiko asked, having moved around the table while Riko was distracted with her thoughts. “It’s just barely audible, but you can hear it. But with everything else happening on stage, I doubt anyone in the audience will notice.”

“I couldn’t hear it from across the table.” Riko admitted.

“Pianissimo achieved!” Yoshiko declared.

Audience. Stage. Riko recalled. “That reminds me, Yocchan hasn’t told me what this new play is about.”

“Oh, well you see…” Yoshiko began to explain excitedly as she returned to her seat.

The couple began to discuss the upcoming play being planned by the theater club Yoshiko had joined at the college they both attended. It was an original work written by a group of students in the literature club based on an amalgamation of several myths and legends. Yoshiko had been assigned the role of a wise owl that would assist the protagonist along their journey.

Riko listened intently to Yoshiko’s descriptions while trying not to laugh whenever the owl costume interfered with Yoshiko’s meal. It all made for an enjoyable, if again, a bit absurd, time. But, such was often the case when one loved and lived with a purported fallen angel.

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Author's Note Continued: Some readers may remember my entry for Promptober 2021 that I called Yohanowl. It was a quickly written, silly idea I had while trying to fall asleep. And since it was a bonus entry already, I didn't bother with much editing or whatnot. The important part was that I enjoyed writing it.

But it has apparently stuck with me, as it was the first thing to come to mind when I started thinking about the entry for this year, and my self-challenge to include the prompts from the two prior years that I participated; there was a Promptober 2020 edition, but I hadn't joined IFH by that time.

Honesty, I've no idea how much I will delve into this made up play for Yohane's college theater club, where she plays an owl. I don't even know what myths or legends I would draw on, I just typed that out for the sake of giving Yohane something to explain. But gods help me if it turns into some massive story arc or the like...

And for the record, Owl was the prompt from '21 and Wonder was from '22.

[the-cinnamon-snail]

Hey haha anyway I found this piece of writing from December 2021. It's been a while I think the main character's name is Ian? I'm gonna post this without reading it so if there's any warnings that need to be added tell me.

Everything started getting blurry, I could barely see anything. Tears were pouring down my cheeks as the world spun. My hands were shaking violently as I looked down, and stared at the dusty, blood covered ground. My best friend was there, asleep on the ground, surely he was just sleeping, right? He did not look like he was breathing though, the world seemed like it started heating up as I got angrier and angrier on what had happened to him. I became furious, and then I screamed.

I shot up in my bed, instinctively covering my mouth just in case I actually was screaming. I was in a cold sweat, shaking. That dream felt so real.. like it was reality. I have been having a lot of dreams like that one lately, but not all of them left me with this horrified feeling though. The dreams however, could simply not be real. First of all, I would never get myself into any situation like.. well like that. The second reason why these dreams were not real, was that the boy that was my best friend, I have never seen him before in my life. It was still concerning that I was having dreams like this, though.

I have had other dreams like this, a lot of dreams like that, but none of them play out exactly the same. The first one of them was.. somewhere in the beginning of last month, and I have so unluckily been getting them constantly since then. They managed to turn me, the caring, trusting Ian Raider into quite the paranoid teen, I am luckily able to hide it from my parents, though. What really worries me is that next week, I will be going back to highschool, and I honestly do not think in the slightest that I will survive. If I do, I have the feeling that a lot of things will change.

I rolled over in bed and checked my phone for the time, luckily it was on my pillow. The clock revealed that it was extremely early in the morning at 4:57 AM. I was not required to be up for another four and a half hours, give or take a few. With how exhausted I was from the dream, I decided that if I accidentally overslept by a few minutes, or maybe even an hour, that it would be worth it. With that in mind, I layed back down in my bed, and drifted back off to sleep.

The next few days were exactly the same. Wake up early from those crazy dreams, go through a boring day, and go back to bed earlier to actually end up getting a healthy amount of sleep. I went through the next 5 days after.. that dream pretty well, and the dreams were fairly tame. The sixth day, however, was a different story. I woke up at 6 AM from a dream that was not so settling. I was running from something, but I did not know what. I kept running, and running, and then I was caught. I was filled with a suffocating feeling, and then I fell. I could not even go back to sleep because I had to be up 2 hours later, so I laid in bed pondering what that dream was about. LIke usual, I came up with nothing for it.

That night, I just was not able to fall asleep. The next day was my last day of break, and then I had to go back to school. In short, I was freaking out, I tried but I could not keep myself calm. What if something happened the next day and I would not be well enough to go back to school? What if I fell asleep during school and had one of those freaky nightmares, and then made a scene? So many things could go wrong, and it felt like so many things just could not go right. I sighed as I rolled over in bed, I was worrying myself, I just needed to go back to sleep, no matter how bad the dream just may be. I got back into a comfortable position, and tried to make myself go back to sleep.

I was.. holding on to something? No, I was hanging from something, I opened my eyes to look down at the gym floor in my highschool, that room was gigantic. I panicked the moment I realized that if I was hanging from something, the only thing that I could be handing from was one of the lights hanging on the roof of the gym. I looked up and yep, I was hanging off of one of those blinding lights. My fingers began slipping, and then someone I could not quite see was crouching on the light, next to where I was hanging. I reached out to them but, when they grabbed my hand, I was thrown off, and I fell all the way down to the ground.

I bolted awake in my bed, glad that I was still on it and not on the floor. Almost all of the dreams I have had, I never recognized the area, but that was definitely the gym in my school. I was deathly worried of going back to school now, what if that actually happened? I would definitely be dead if anything like that happened. I shook my head, I already decided, all of these dreams were fake, they would not happen at all. I was just being crazy, still not a good sign as I had to go back to school the day after next. My life really had thrown a loop on me, quite an unfair one at that.

Being as it I could not sleep, I decided that I may as well find out maybe why I am having these dreams, well more like nightmares honestly. The first thing you need to do to find out where something is coming from, I thought, is that you need to identify exactly what that something is. The best, and only way, I knew how to find out what they were, was to start a dream journal. Yes, one of those dreadful things. Normally I would despise making one, but I did not think I had any other options at the moment.

I slowly climbed out of bed, it was definitely still late at night, although I had not checked the time yet. I walked over to my drawers, and opened the bottom right one, filled with school supplies I did not need and never used. I pulled out one of the black composition notebooks, I figured it would be big enough. I did not exactly want anyone snooping through my room to find this, so I opened to a random page and wrote down the date of my first nightmare. July 7th, man I would never forget that one. I went back to my bed and used my phone for a light. I noted the time was 3:18 AM, and that I should just write down one dream and be done, I would need energy for tomorrow. After I was done writing that one out, I hid the book between my mattresses, and went to bed, hoping for my sleep to be dreamless.

Luckily, it was dreamless for the rest of the night, I am not sure that I would be ready to wake up in the morning if it was not. I woke up at 10:45, my alarm had not gone off yet, which was strange. It only meant that my parents were not in the house, as they would have woken me up before that. I was alone in the house, so I decided writing down some more dreams would be fine, I decided on writing the more recent ones, I could not stress my brain to remember too much this early in the morning. I wrote down 3 major ones that had happened in the past week, and then a thought finally caught up with me. 

This was my final day of break, all of my stuff was already put together, I had done it earlier in the week, but this meant that I would not have a lot of time to myself. That would be really bad, I would not have time to figure more of this out, I sighed. I could always drop a few classes I guess.

[ninxuisle]

It's a long process, indeed.

It’s a collective idea how everything started, how it was disrupted, how’s the resumption, what changed? what are the lesson learned, wasted time. How you realized you were on the right track and suddenly got lost.

The answer to that question is simple: MOTIVATION!

In decent term THE NORTH STAR

In my case, the MOTIVATOR

This is why I told my colleagues ‘not to depend into someone else’ coz when you do, you gotta face it’s blinding spot which is the downtime of your motivator. There downtime is your downtime. You gotta start again, or restart maybe?

But to tell you, there’s a magic in restart. You learned, you regretted but eventually you earned wisdom from it. What you gonna do is to properly navigate the “why” in everything.

Okay, to make everything clear, in my own point of view it started 21st of April, 2020. A month after the lockdown announcement in our country. After a month of figuring out about the shut down of everything, the Motivator was just like a falling star, shining from the skies and sparkled some light in dark and vast land. That’s the effect of my Motivator. I was doing right all those time after some month, the bright light faded. 15th of October, 2021 one of my strongest pillar fell in to her deepest slumber. Everything was blackout until the last day of 2021.

In year 2022, something blossomed. An add up to the heart and everything was overwhelming. I was motivated by unknown that time. Maybe by the feeling and compassion, everything when well but it seems all was in haste that time, fugaciously flowing indeed. I came to realized that year was my initial formation year, I was coined of who I needed to become. I was motivated to motivate, educated to educate, taken care of, to take care and inspired to inspire. God really gives us things to ponder, things to learn from. Just like reading a book, its like we are reading 15 pages of knowledge and 100 pages of advertisement because they can’t sell a 15 pages book.

In year 2023, something misleading came which if you are not wise enough to decode and filter it you’ll fall into a dark and dirty pit. But nothing comes easy, it was the fastest and exhausted year of my life. Upon seeing my output I even ask myself “how the hell I did all of those? who i was chasing?” Well my friend, life will give us a shiny and healthy green watermelons to believe that everything was made of glitz and glamour, that everything was made of gold and you need to grab it. But little did we know that when we peel the watermelon it will show us the reddish surface and by the time we squeeze it, only 1/4 of its insides are solid. This is only a metamorphosis of life that was shown to us. We might see its dashing yet blinding packaging but little that we know it’s substance was made of toxic materials. So when entering a den make sure to have your timeline and objective. Give them benefit while benefiting from it, there is no such thing as free in this free world.

Make sure before entering a den you have a complete and impeccable self awareness and by the time has come ask yourself “who am I becoming?” refurbish and re-assess yourself. Are you on the right water or are you flooded and submerged into toxins? Do you still have your heap of patience and virtues or are you becoming impatient and easily angst? Are you still feeling hopeful and motivated or hopeless and vindictive? Do you still see things with silver linings or do you only see things with thin line and become red?

If you feel the latters, pack your things, finish your pending tasks, it’s time to leave don’t ever look back for you are becoming the worst person you’ll ever become. When that seeds that you have planted was being watered with used and dirting water, you might wither and soon dead. Choose what shows you kindness and love than who shows you the bad side of the world to get your emphaty and to take advantage of your abilities.

Put your head down, what took all of your time will take the steering wheel of your life. Make sure that you are on the driver seat, it may be a long ride but you’ll navigate it eventually just choose to be kind and patient, trust in God and pray for everything and everyone.

Remember your North Star is praying for you, it will shine by time when you need the light, even you didn’t noticed that you under the darkest skies.

How did I know?

I just regained the energy had God let my North Star light the skies I am into. By that, I realized that I am trapped in the darkest valley of my life and I need to get away from here with my North Star’s light shining throughout my way all the way from the glamourous city of Dubai.

[xprojectrpg]

This Day in X-Project - February 12

PHASE 2

2015: Warren e-mails Matt about Xavier’s for him and his friend’s benefit. Warren, Matt, Miles, and Peter finally reveal their identities to each other and Warren pitches Xavier’s to them. Warren meets Wade in the kitchen and things are awkward.

2016: Wanda emails Clint about Everett. Everett, Clint and Tasha have a SHIELD reunion and talk about why they’re at the mansion. Something Slender This Way Comes: During her lunch hour, Maya is kidnapped by a strange child and transported to another world; Alison, Rahne and Tabitha also find a strange child, and while trying to help, they too are transported to another world; Clea and Stephen witness the girls’ disappearance and get the Gen-X crew together; while discussing their plans, Spider-Man makes an appearance; Meanwhile, in Askew world, Alison, Rahne, Tabitha and Maya find each other and the other kidnapped children, including Ganke, Miles’ friend; Clea texts Topaz before doing something ‘stupid’; Topaz texts Billy and Megan when she finds out what’s happened to the kids; They agree that they need to call the X-Men in to help out but while they’re arranging that, the Gen-X squad takes matters into their own hands and enters Askew World; Things were going well until they are surrounded by the Slenderchildren; Not too long afterwards, Topaz and the X-Men arrive to help defeat the Slendermen, and teleport the kids out of there; Topaz then posts to her journal, letting everyone know what exactly happened and posts to xp_staff, reminding everyone not to be too hard on the kids for taking things into their own hands. Topaz also texts Hope A., Tandy, and Megan to see if they want to drink with her, and texts Amanda to give her an update on what happened. Miles texts Matt and Peter and lets them know that Ganke has been found. On the ski trip, Wade and Amanda have a chatty breakfast; Felicia posts a picture on Instagram about her travel plans for the long weekend; Domino and Wade go skiing and Domino learns that snowburn is a thing; Amanda and Dom go clubbing; Dom comes to Kevin’s room very drunk and attempts to seduce him but falls asleep instead; Amanda learns about the Slendermen returning and also gets drunk, joining Kevin in the hot tub for some interesting confessions.

2017: Tabitha posts about having received a late birthday gift from her dad and wondering what to do with it.

2018: Warren thanks XFI for his birthday party. Bobby is excited about Cheap Chocolate Day.

2019: Gabriel lets X-Force know he’s going to be heading to China for a week or two for intel gathering.

2020: Jubilee posts about how people should be used to seeing Asians wearing masks instead of being racist when they see one.

2021:

2022: Jean and Garrison meet at Harry's, and go on an excursion. News out of the Winter Olympics reports that a competitor has been suspended after testing positive for the X-gene. Gabe, Darcy, and Artie post responses. Alani ponders a chicken coop. Matt and Maya work out training their oversplits and are grateful they are bilateral people and not octopus.

2023: Operation: Bat Country - X-Force gathers to discuss their next move, which will be a road trip to Nevada; Marie-Ange and Jubilee talk transportation.

[hyojongpromo]

ELLE SINGAPORE: DAWN ON HIS “NARCISSUS” EP: LOVE, LOSS, AND FINDING HIMSELF

Author: Laura Sirikul

Date published: September 15th, 2023

DAWN knows a thing or two about his life being held under a microscope.

The 29-year-old artist, real name Kim Hyo Jong, has had his life in the media circus since the reveal of his romantic relationship with fellow Cube Entertainment labelmate and idol HyunA, which was seen as taboo in the K-pop industry, in 2018. Both DAWN and HyunA did the unthinkable and remained committed to their relationship, prompting the label to cut both of them out. The duo sparked support from fans domestically and abroad, solidifying their status as one of K-Pop’s most beloved power couples. They later signed to Psy’s P Nation label and released their solo EPs. For DAWN, he released his 2020 hip-hop album “Dawndididawn”, which marked his debut as a solo artist. Both DAWN and HyunA later released a collaborative EP called “1+1=1” in 2021, which was the first — and only — in K-Pop history for a couple in the industry to release one together. But DAWN and HyunA were known for their unconventional and unconditional love. After leaving P Nation in 2022, DAWN and Hyuna announced their break up.

Now working with producer duo GroovyRoom’s AT AREA, DAWN is ready to share his music in his own words. His new EP “Narcissus” tells the story of his life in his 20s as he experienced love, loss, and finding himself through it all.

“I prepared [this album] like it was my first album,” DAWN tells ELLE Singapore over Zoom from Korea. “For the first time, the stories I wanted to tell with those thoughts and good feelings. I really prepared it with a lot of effort like it was my last album.”

While many speculate that the album is about HyunA, DAWN doesn’t deny it, but he also wants people to know that it’s also a letter to himself about the trials and tribulations he’s gone through. While the world has known DAWN with HyunA as a duo, even throughout his Dawndididawn era, he is ready for that narrative to change. Just who is DAWN now — and without HyunA?

“It’s really hard to think of one word to describe who I am now,” DAWN ponders. “I am a person who enjoys adventures now. I’m very optimistic and think about a lot of things at the same time. I really enjoy this process of self-searching. I’m very adventurous now and I’m very happy about that.”

The title of the EP “Narcissus” stems from DAWN’s belief that when we fall in love with someone, we mirror ourselves to them in a way where we basically fall in love with ourselves and when the relationship falls apart, we lose a part of ourselves. He recalled the Greek story of Narcissus, a beautiful hunter who became entranced by a reflection of himself, and thought it greatly matched his concept.

“It’s quite simple,” says DAWN. “The tracks talk about different phases of what I experienced in my 20s through my love. When I first dated the person I love, and then during that love then the end before the farewell and then the love after the farewell. It’s the full story of all the emotions.”

In “Narcissus”, DAWN shows a more gentle, humble, and wise side to himself, one that has been through many challenges and came out with more poise and gratitude. It was also an opportunity for DAWN to tell his truth and not hold back on his emotions. All the songs in the album for DAWN felt like he was reading a 10-year diary.

“I’m still thinking about it now,” he says. “After I released it, it felt like I was publishing a book. I’m now feeling ‘Oh, that’s how I lived and that’s how I loved’. I wonder what kind of love I can [have] in the future? Will I be able to love? So there’s just a lot of emotions going back and forth right now.”

In the sweet ballad Star, DAWN sings about falling in love with a star and it not working out because they’re different people. He reflects he “doesn’t believe in who is wrong or right, but just their differences and acknowledges that is enough [to break down]”. Memory (featuring Kim Sawol) tells the male and female perspective of their memories of each other and their wish to erase their love in order to hurt a little less. DAWN describes this haunting melody as sci-fi meets fantasy “inspired by the film Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.” There are some love songs Fallin (featuring pH-1)’ and Abyss, English tracks, that describe falling in love and the lengths they would go for their loved one.

Compared to “Dawndididawn”, which DAWN says established him as a commercialized idol, “Narcissus” is about who he is now as Hyo Jong rather than the character DAWN. For many years, DAWN has kept Hyo Jong in the dark and is now ready for the world to meet Hyo Jong.

“This album is [both] DAWN and Hyo Jong, the person,” DAWN reveals. “An album containing my story that shows me, the real me. That’s why this album feels different.”

As for the fans and people who are dissecting the album, DAWN says it’s natural for fans to be intrigued by his personal life. It comes with the territory of being a public figure but hopes that audiences will feel different kinds of love when listening to the album. Not just romantic love or the feeling of love, but the many aspects of love.

“There are so many different emotions of feeling loved,” Dawn explains. “It [could be] feeling nervous about meeting a person for the first time or feeling hurt because they’re going through a breakup. I just want people to listen to this album and feel their own emotions about love because this album is about that.”

source: https://elle.com.sg/2023/09/15/dawn-on-his-narcissus-ep-love-loss-and-finding-himself/

[dmikaelamiranda]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐚𝐰: 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨 𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐨𝐭𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞

Article for IAS Paragon

Written on: November 27, 2021

The horrifying stories that we have unraveled in this series of #UntoldStoriesOfMartialLaw has shed light on the fearsome human rights abuses carried out on activists and critical Filipinos against Martial Law at that time. From electrocution, torture, rape, and many more inhumane cases of abuse, the story of today’s series is no different. The third and final part of this series is the story of Fortunato Bayotlang, who has become one of the many victims of the brutality under this regime. However, unlike the previously featured victims, Fortunato was not a political activist during that time. Back in the late 1970’s Fortunato Bayotlang was only 26 years of age. He was a salesman and was working at a pharmaceutical company named Philusa Drug in Davao City. Pondering over this plain yet simple description about Bayotlang than life, it seems that tragedy will not come along to the young man’s life. Fortunato Bayotlang also had two brothers who were both minors, named Fernando, who was 14 years old, and Ruperto, who was only seven years old back then. Even kids like Fernando and Ruperto had to witness and at the same time experience themselves the cruelness of what happened in the late 1970s in the outskirts of Davao City. On the date of August 24, 1979, at 1:00 in the afternoon, the Bayotlang siblings Fortunato, Fernando, and Ruperto were traveling to a place called 'Tagum' to run errands and to deliver pharmaceutical supplies. The younger siblings Fernando and Ruperto accompanied their older brother because they did not have classes at that time, and it was on a Saturday. Little did they know, this day will also be the day they will fall victims to the brutality of Martial Law. On their way to run their errands using Fortunato’s company car, they were stopped by a group of men—roughly around five to six—and arrested the Bayotlang siblings even though they did not carry any warrants. The siblings were forcefully brought to the Fourth Constabulary Unit in Davao, particularly in a place called PC compound, and they were interrogated. Fortunato was the only one who was taken out and was brought to the compound by the group of men, all while Fernando and Ruperto were left inside the car, eventually manhandled by the same men who captured them. According to the younger siblings, their older brother suffered abuse and beatings as they heard his continuous grunts. Fernando also stated that he saw a man holding a '2 by 2' stick, and another man afterward followed who had stains of blood all over his clothes, in his hands, and his pants, as if he bathed on it. The younger siblings also have shared that they saw their brother handcuffed behind his back, covered in blood, and suffering in agony, confirming that Fortunato indeed suffered heavy beatings. Ruperto and Fernando have not been able to do anything back then but obey what they were told to do. It was said that Fernando had to cooperate with the interrogation of the group of men as he was threatened to undergo what his older brother had gone through. As a 14-year-old kid back then, Fernando surely did not understand a thing about what they did for them to be captive and tormented like that. They eventually knew that the group of men was looking for a man named “Dodong” which they merely knew nothing about. Later at 3:00 in the afternoon, it was said the group of men alongside Fernando raided their house, without again, warrants. On August 25, a day after the ruthless event, Fortunato Bayotlang was pronounced dead after he was brought to a hospital in Davao. According to a coroner’s report, Fortunato Bayotlang’s cause of death was “subdural hemorrhage”, which is a buildup of blood outside the brain. It was later on concluded that the men who captured the Bayotlang siblings and murdered Fortunato Bayotlang was a case of “mistaken identity”. What the Bayotlang siblings experienced under this brutal reign was beyond horror nor trauma. It was beyond injustice. Their story should illuminate that the kind of leader our country needs is the one who can create a chronicle where violence ceases to exist. This featured story should also be able to open a new perspective about how it is not acceptable to stay blind and ignorant in these trying times. Thousands of tortures, disappearances, and even deaths in history are enough reasons to abhor and oppose another tyrant to govern us, or perhaps, oppose those who aim to revise our dark history. We have to be conscious that this is possible if we choose the wrong leaders. The people of our country have suffered enough in the past, and we should not let these fears and terrors surface in our nation once more. References: Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (1976). Political detainees in the Philippines. Anti-martial Law Coalition (Philippines). Mijares, M. The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos (1976). Union Square Publications.

[ercaudit]

Staff member Retention Credit -- Warnings and Information

Employee Retention Credit Audit

Key insights

There exists still time to get eligible employers to be able to claim the ERC on the amended payroll returns for being qualified periods. Review critical considerations, and information your decision points to shield and defend ones claim with the IRS . GOV. If you're not entitled or have already acquired funds, other focused opportunities are still offered to your business

Employee Retention Credit Audit

While the majority of COVID relief applications have run your course, it’s worthy of your time to keep an eye fixed on the employee preservation credit (ERC) - whether you’ve presently claimed the benefit, are thinking about it, or even covered it off pondering it didn’t submit an application due to limited and evolving guidance. Boasting the ERC

In the event you meet the eligibility standards and paid qualified for wages during getting qualified periods, the ERC is still available to state on an amended payroll tax return designed for three years after the genuine filing deadline.

This particular gift of time helps you properly assess ones own eligibility to assert up to $5, 000 per employee around 2020 or $7, 000 per staff member per quarter for ones first three sectors of 2021.

Evaluation key considerations, such as, but not limited to, these below. Document the one you select points to protect and additionally, if necessary, look after your claim while using IRS.

Can you show you experienced a vital decline in uncouth receipts or had been subject to a full and also partial suspension involving operations? If you ended up being under a full or even partial suspension associated with operations, can you examine the governmental choose that triggered a suspension of surgical procedures, as well as produce files used to determine perhaps the order had a very than nominal affect your operations? To get computed and revealed your average variety of full-time employees inside 2019, in order to show whether you met the criteria as a large manager subject to limitations from available wages? Can your credit calculations include wage levels and show the best way qualified health schedule expenses were computed? If you are a member connected with an aggregated group, would you show how aggregation affected the eligibility for and circulation of the ERC? In case you received a Income Protection Program (PPP) loan, have you examined your wage share across PPP lending product forgiveness and ERC?

Some challenges keep on being:

There is limited information concerning the IRS safer harbor for course under a part suspension of organization operations. It is getting 9 - 12 months or extended to process amended forms and difficulty refunds. Federal tax returns must be amended to add the consumer credit amount back to a wage expense inside the year the credit ratings was generated, as opposed to the year the credit standing was claimed or simply received. The INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE may audit a person's refund and perhaps disallow it - if you are determined ineligible for the credit, you will want to repay it using interest and possibly fines.

Avoid bad celebrities

Be aware of bad stars. On October 20, 2022, the INTEREST RATES warned taxpayers to get cautious of manufacturers approaching employers just saying the ERC can be “easy money” in addition to “everyone is permitted to claim. ” Such vendors don’t at all times appear to properly thing eligibility, follow RATES Notices and Money Procedures, or estimate wages paid being large employer.

Additionally , these bad characters may fall short upon key qualities with supporting you. For example , some may not be able to glimpse before the IRS, will possibly not retain documentation assisting the credit, and might not account for possibility of an uncertain taxation position requiring suitable reporting in your budgetary statements. Other options available are available

Many bosses are wondering how they may still receive gains in the current economic restorative healing period. While not all of federal tax consumer credit rating programs are like lucrative or refundable like the ERC, there's lots of impactful, long-term choices, including the Work Possibility Tax Credit, Federal government Empowerment Zone loans, and training packages for employers getting their workforce.

Quite a few states enhanced their particular state credits along with available discretionary advantage programs. It is essential employers meet with certified advisors to understand such opportunities as well as the operations in place to get them.

[blackmagicspecialist786-blog]

Fed Officials Ask How to Better Understand Inflation After Surprises

NEW ORLEANS NEW ORLEANS Federal Reserve officials kicked off 2023 with a difficult issue that could confront the central bank for the rest of all of the time: how can central bankers perceive the effects of inflation following 18 months continually wrongly judging it? Lisa D. Cook, one of the seven Fed governors governors based in Washington, made her speech at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association conference at New Orleans to talk about how the Fed could be more accurate in forecasting price rises in the near future. Cook's voice was part a growing crowd at the event, where economists pondered the reasons they didn't anticipate inflation correctly and how they can be better next time. Fed officials need to "continue to advance our understanding of inflation" and "our ability to forecast risks," Ms. Cook said during her remarks and suggested central bankers should upgrade their models in order to better take into account unexpected events and better anticipate the times where inflation may begin to take off. Her comments highlighted the issue that monetary policymakers face this year. Officials have swiftly raised rates in an attempt to reduce the economic heat and bring inflation to a level that is manageable. They have to decide not only when they can stop the rate increases but also for how they can keep prices for borrowing that are sufficient to significantly limit economic activity. It will be difficult to come to. While inflation is decreasing, it's difficult to determine how fast and in what extent it will diminish. The Fed will try to keep rates from falling too soon, however, keeping rates excessively in the high range for too long could be costly and harm the economy and the labor market further than is needed. To make matters worse is that policymakers are making these decisions in a time where they don't have a clear idea of how the economy will change after the pandemic and are relying on information that's being distorted due to the long-lasting consequences. "The pandemic has triggered a lot of changes in terms of how our economy operates," Raphael Bostic, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta spoke on a panel on Friday. "We're very much in flux, and it's hard to know for sure how things are going to evolve on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis." Understanding the role of inflation is crucial to answering the complex policy questions that confront the Fed. However, determining the causes of inflation and the causes of price increases is a complex economic issue as recent experiences have shown. Fed officials as well as economists in general have had a poor track in predicting inflation since the start in the terrible pandemic. When prices in 2021 first started to increase and rise, the government predicted it would become " transitory." If they continued to rise longer than anticipated as well as policymakers, the majority of forecasters working on Wall Street and in academia were predicting that they would start to diminish quicker than they actually happened. In light of these mistakes Policymakers have begun in suggesting the central bank has to review the way in which it considers inflation. Inflation F.A.Q. Card 1 of 5 Is inflation a real thing? It is the loss of the purchasing power of a consumer over time, which means your money will not get as far in the future as it did today. It is generally described as the annual increase in the cost of everyday products and services, such as furniture, food, apparel, transportation, and toys. What triggers inflation? It may be due to a rise in consumer demand. However, inflation can also increase and then fall due to changes which have nothing to be related to economic factors, such as insufficient oil production or supply chain issues. Are inflationary pressures bad? It is contingent on the situation. Price increases that are too fast can cause problems However, modest price increases can result in increased salaries and employment growth. How can inflation affect the market for stocks? Inflation that is high can spell troubles for stocks. The financial assets have been a victim of inflationary booms and tangible assets such as houses have performed better. "Our models seem ill equipped to handle a fundamentally different source of inflation," Neel Kashkari the head of the Minneapolis Fed, said in an essaythis week. The Fed has always seen long-lasting inflation as the result of two factors: An excessively tight labor market, which is increasing wages, as well as consumer and business expectations of increased prices. This could be a self-fulfilling prophesy because it makes it easier for businesses to increase their prices. However, today's price hike has been driven by pandemic-inspired shifts of demand, which have converged with the tightening of supply chains and Russia's conflict in Ukraine. Although shocks of this kind tend to recede however, they've held force this time around, and they were exacerbated initially when rents increased rapidly and lately as other prices for services are exploding. "We don't understand inflation," David Romer, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley spoke in the discussion panel with Mrs. Cook. As of now, Fed officials are betting that inflation will ease as supply chains unravel and an increase in housing costs that began in 2021 starts to ease. But they're concerned that, even though inflation wasn't originally due to today's rapid wage increases, it is likely to be supported by it. And the labor market is just now showing signs of slowing. "The pandemic has had a much more prolonged effect on labor supply than many expected," Ms. Cook said on Friday. "Rapid nominal wage growth has accompanied the recent rise in inflation in ways that traditional measures of labor market tightness -- such as the unemployment rate gap -- might not be capturing." Fed officials may find relief from the cooling of wage growth, as was apparent in employment data that was that were released last Friday. Mrs. Cook pointed out in her remarks that "recent data suggest that labor-compensation growth has indeed started to decelerate somewhat over the past year." Understand Inflation and How It Affects You However, some policymakers have said that they're searching for a greater slowdown in the economy prior to when they can be certain that the economy is back to normal and that inflation will be reduced completely. "The economy is moving in ways that we will start to see that imbalance disappear," Mr. Bostic, the Atlanta Fed president, told reporters on Friday. However, he noted it would require some time. The government has been stressing the fact that uncertainty is abounds this means they have be cautious. Central bankers are trying to ensure that they do not prematurely end their fight against inflation but they are also reducing the rate of rate hikes in order to give them time to assess how their policies impact the economy. "The experience of the '70s showed that if you back off on inflation too soon, it comes back stronger," Tom Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in Richmond, told reporters on Friday. He was referring to an event from fifty years ago, when prices rose and remained high for several years. "If you think supply chain improvements and our actions to date are enough to bring inflation down quickly, then our more gradual rate path should limit the harm," Mr. Barkin added. Mrs. Cook underlined that she as well as her coworkers are searching for information and models that could help them better understand what's happening in the dynamics of inflation and the economy. "We're not accepting anything as religion," Ms. Cook said. "We're not just listening to the measures and taking them wholesale." "We're not a monolith," she said. Read the full article