#tumblr don’t eat the quality challenge impossible

[peculiardiction]

He asked Tim like 7 times if he was too heavy and got a “no, dw!” each time. Tim’s just gonna have to cope at this point.

A timkon prompt fill for dc gotcha for Gaza! I imagine it’s movie night at the tower 😂

[juliesoutsourcingblog]

DIGITAL MARKETING 101; CREATING CONTENT TO ENSNARE THE MILLENNIAL HEART

Content is everything.

Content is king.

As digital marketers, we’ve read this proclamation so many times it’s burned in our brains. It’s been said over and over and over- so much that when I see the word “content”, it’s the first thing that comes to my mind. And it certainly is true.

Content still is, and would almost certainly always be, king.

It’s the heart and soul of every campaign. It’s the building blocks where we build our social media following. It’s the magnet that attracts behind every advertisement. It sends our narrative, our story, our message across to our target audience.

It builds credibility.

It establishes authority.

It attracts- which, I think, is its most basic, yet most important function for those of us who use it primarily for marketing.

Now the question arises.

Who do we want to attract?

Of course it’d be nice to think that we could write a piece that would engage and attract the attention of every group and denomination. But we have to be realistic and set our goals accordingly. Every time we create content, just as we always think about the quality of the article, or the infographic, or the podcast that we are creating, we should also be keeping in mind the people who we want to be on the receiving end of our finished product.

For me, those people more-often-than-not, turn out to be millennials. Which then, brings us to the title of this article:

DIGITAL MARKETING 101; CREATING CONTENT TO ENSNARE THE MILLENNIAL HEART

When we think about millennials, most of us often scrunch up our noses and think, pumpkin spice latte, twitter rage, trophies, student debts, entitlement etc. Which is a bunch of harmful stereotypes that does not exactly promote generational unity, but let’s not talk about that.

Instead, let’s define the term: Millennial.

Contrary to popular belief, millennials are not teenagers. Millennials are young adults, whose age range typically fall between 18-35 years, sometimes older (different groups have different opinions on the exact range). To clear any misconceptions, here is the general agreed upon birth years for different generations:

And according to Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, Millennials are actually the largest generation in the U.S labor force.

Which is good news for me, and other digital marketers and content creators whose target audience are millennials, for the most part. Because it means that the people we are writing for are earning money. It sounds mercenary, but again- let’s be real here. The main reason why we do content marketing is to attract customers. Prospective clients.

Buyers.

Since the mediums wherein most content creators like me disseminate our pieces are found in the internet, it’s also important to know just how much of our intended audience actually have access in it.

Statista, a site that publishes statistical analysis of facts and figures recently released the following:

SHARE OF ADULTS IN THE UNITED STATES WHO USE THE INTERNET IN 2019, BY AGE GROUP

“The statistic shows share of internet users in the United States in 2019, sorted by age group. During the survey period, it was found that 100 percent of 18 to 29-year olds in the United States were internet users. Overall, 90 percent of the adult U.S. population accessed the internet.”

 –STATISTA

The glaring numbers don’t lie. A huge chunk of the majority of the people actually spending time in the internet are- you guessed it- young adults. Again, good news for us, right?

Well, yes.

Also, not entirely.

See, just because they are in the internet, or are in social media, does not mean that they are instantly going to fall heads over heels with our content. Just because I published an article on Tumblr, or posted a link to my blog on Facebook and they happened to see it, does not mean that millennials will automatically start sharing and hitting the like button. There’s always the chance that they might ignore it. Or worse, start hating it so much that I become a victim to the of the prevalent boycott movement, the cancel culture.

Yes, that’s a thing now.

Millennials are like a double-edged sword, so to speak.

There are a lot of pitfalls in making them our target viewers, to be sure. But if there’s one thing that I know from experience, it’s this: the gains and advantages that can be reaped from having millennials as an audience far outweighs the cons.

Having said all that, it’s also very important to remember that this generation is not exactly impossible to please. To capture their attention, there are few things that can be implemented that won’t necessarily cost any money- just a considerable amount of effort from our part.

1. Be conscious of political correctness

Generation Y is a generation of socially conscious individuals. Remember, that these people were raised in a time where equality and awareness are the main advocacies. I am not saying that we need to start turning our backs on our own political beliefs and start catering to theirs- let’s just be mindful enough not trip over sensitive issues in our content unless that is exactly what our purpose is. Let’s try to avoid publishing material that blatantly belittles or discriminates against people because of their race, body type, hair, gender, age, culture, fame (or lack thereof), social status etc. The general rule of the thumb is, to be nice as much as we can, and respect people the way that we want to be respected.

2. Be aware of trends

I’m not talking about eating Tide Pods or mimicking other challenges that are physically harmful. I’m talking about trends in technology, software and social media updates, fashion, clothing lines, restaurants, travel, philanthropic acts and charitable institutions, art, architecture. Of course, we all have our own niche to pay attention to, but with a little bit of effort, there’s an unending number of trending topics out there that are just waiting to be featured no matter what industry we are currently focusing on.

3. Stop sounding like salesperson

In my opinion, this does not just apply to millennials, but to every audience subtype. Stop being so obvious that you are selling something. Instead, tell a story. Make your viewers empathize. Be a friend- someone who actually cares and someone who they can relate to.

Don’t tell them:

Buy my shoes. They have great price compared to other shoes.

Instead, tell them:

I have worked in a corporate office almost all of my adult life, and have always worn heels. I have shed copious amounts of tears from bleeding blisters, and have since learned to always keep a supply of band-aids in my purse and a small first-aid kit in my desk. But what can I do? There’s an office dress code that I apparently agreed to when I signed my contract. I could quit- but then what’d I do for my bills? Should I tell my mother I am unemployed, because I didn’t like my shoes?

That’s when I started to think- why not make my own? Something that I can actually design, something that is comfortable and does not cost a house mortgage.

See where I’m going with this? With more time effort, it’s not impossible to make the part that advertises a certain product or service even more low-key than this. We have to make our selling points part of the natural flow of the narrative. Remember: subtlety is the key.

4. Use millennial buzzwords

Language is dynamic. It’s constantly changing. Time, geographical location, culture, events- these things and more affect the evolution of language so much and with such consistency that it’s almost impossible to determine its original state. As years pass by, people incorporate more and more slangs and new terminologies in their everyday lives.

I won’t say that it’s absolutely necessary to imbue our every article with terms like bop, lit, or salty- just that there are certain terms or “buzzwords” that we can add in our writing that would make us seem more like a peer than a lecturer. It sounds silly, I know, but the goal is to be relatable. Here are some of the words that millennials have been known to use in the past year that could also be used in creating content, within the right context, of course:

Spill the tea

The struggle is real

Trolls

Goals

On fleek

Clap back

Break the internet

Said no one ever

Slay

Adulting

Here’s another advice- we don’t necessarily have to over-stuff our sentences with these buzzwords. Let it flow naturally. The secret is to sound casual, not to overdo the whole thing and end up sounding silly.

5. Inform and educate

The last, but most certainly not the least. The internet, for most of its users, act heavily as a source of information. When people read articles, guides, tutorials, and other types of content, one of the main reasons that they do so, is to learn. But in the event when people are reading for entertainment purposes, it’s still important to make sure that they get to take something out of it.

And even when we end up writing about, say, the dazzling blue waters of a certain Polynesian island, or the breathtaking view atop the Grand Canyon, let’s make sure to inject bits and pieces of interesting facts and advice that would make the reading experience not just fun, but also enriching in a way that would encourage visitors not just to return, but to also share our material to the rest of the digital world.

From the rise to the number of users for the information crowdsourcing site Quora, to the popularity of online entities Mashable, and the types of articles, infographics, quotations, and other forms of shareable materials that young adults are sharing on social media platforms, it is evident that millennials are leaning more and more towards content that contains fascinating information.

It is important to note that most people are heavily motivated by the desire to share something that they think others would also like. For our part, we have to make sure that our products are sufficiently valuable and are interesting enough to warrant their reposts and willing dissemination.

Final words

Always be reminded that in digital and content marketing, researching about the target audience is as important as ensuring that the technical aspects of content creation are on point, and that learning about the trends in the behaviours and opinions of the people we want to send our message to is absolutely vital, because it helps us tailor our content to their tastes and interests.

[e-w-movement]

The East to Western Movement

Growing up in a Filipino household, I never truly noticed the amount of Eastern Asian culture I was surrounded by. I was so used to watching anime before and after school or eating Asian foods my grandma cooked or bought from the supermarket down the road. It was not truly impactful until I was exposed to social media for the first time when I was 13. The impact of social media on the spread of international media is immaculate, as I watched throughout the years this spread of Eastern Asia taking over my news feed on Facebook and Twitter, to the point where it has almost become a social niche. Ranging from media to electronics to becoming so widespread that the Asian culture has become a fetish and aesthetic.

Above image 

The United States have always had an upperhand in media market, but in the last couple of decades, Asia has been trying to overcome and even challenge the west. Asia has one-seventh of the world’s population, yet they control two-thirds of the world’s total information control [here]. For example, a large breakthrough for Asian media is the growth of Japanese animations for the last couple of decades, specifically since 2013, where contracts from surrounding countries, including the United States, to own the rights to stream anime in their country has grown a tremendous 172% [here]. This is due to the influence of social media. Constantly, videos and pictures are shared, reviews bring certain shows to the top of the list, and friends bond and recommend shows to each other. It is a constant flow of exposure, which what has made mainstream animes, such as Naruto, Attack on Titan, and Dragon Ball, so popular to the point where anime conventions have become an event where thousands of people all over the country attend. San Diego had about 130,000 in attendance in 2017, with an economic impact of 140 million USD [here].  Of course not only Japanese Anime is the only thing given credit, as other popular U.S. shows and comics are included, it plays very big part. Just a couple weeks ago, I went to a local convention called Saboten where I watched several people dress up as their favorite character, including my best friend, and even spent more than I want to say on merchandise and posters (as you can see, my wall is growing in size).

Above Image is Mine

This popularity in anime has led to mascots and video games that have taken over the gaming industry. Pokemon has always been popular since the release of the game, making Pikachu an iconic mascot that even non-fans can recognize. This and Super Mario led to Nintendo’s worldwide popularity. Nintendo’s global net sales are an astonishing 9.95 billion USD and 75 billion USD in the global video game market, the U.S. being the largest share of Nintendo’s revenue (https://www.statista.com/topics/2284/nintendo/). Nintendo games have become a fan favorite, Pokemon and Legend of Zelda being big parts of childhoods. I have not met a single person, online and off, that don’t know or did not enjoy these games. There is also the influence of video games and anime on art, specifically fanart as seen on prints sold at conventions. Even my own art is heavily influenced by these, as I enjoy drawing my favorite characters from my favorite shows and games. This, in turn, causing my art to reach 300-400 notes on fanart on tumblr. This would not have been possible without the help of countries being connected through media and the internet in general, and that has only grown as technology has evolved altogether. A message and a post can spread within a matter of seconds all over the world. Without this, we’d be missing a part of our childhood.

Above Image

This can also be said about Asian film and media. Although not as popular as their anime counterparts, dramas and movies have been moving up, perhaps due to their storytelling that almost emulate those cheesy romance scenes you see in anime, or their stunning videography that make them so appealing. This can be seen specifically in the Korean industry, as movies like Train to Busan, A Love So Beautiful, and Descendants of the Sun, which are seen to be trending on Netflix. Usually, Asian dramas are typically shorter in length, so a lot of viewers tend to go towards them. This can also be seen in the popularity in some animes, which are shorter and usually have a interesting and flowing story line. The U.S. has also been introducing Asian actors and all Asian cast films into Hollywood, something rarely if ever seen before. Movies like Crazy Rich Asian ended up having a box office success of 76 million USD, and To All the Boys I’ve Loved before with an Asian female lead soared in popularity, but this wouldn’t have happened if not for the social media spread of Eastern Asian T.V. into Western media. Asians have always been cast as the nerdy side character or a comedic relief in sitcoms, yet in these films we see them portrayed as something more than that, someone human and not a martial artist specialist. This is important for young Asians in the West that don’t get very much representation in western media, making them feel left out, unattractive, and confused. Fortunately, this Eastern takeover has made Asians out to be more than a fetish dream, something we will get to more about later.

The U.S. has been seen making remakes of shows and movies like The Good Doctor (same title) and Boys Over Flowers (Between Boys and Friends), and upcoming is a remake of a popular Korean variety show, King of Masked Singer. Variety shows are popular for their ability to bring on famous pop singers and actors to learn more about them and make them seem like real people, rather than the pedestal they are put on here in the U.S.. King of Masked Singer is particularly popular for taking Idols and other popular T.V. persons to show their voice and talent, rather than their looks. This is important because of perfection that is portrayed in media, such as in music videos and T.V. shows. They are to be pure and without fault, making the idol status something to be sought after by not only young adults in eastern countries, but also now in the west as the spread of J-Pop and K-Pop has grown tremendously.

Above Image

K-Pop boy band BTS (as show above) and girl group BlackPink has hit the Billboard top 100, with BTS currently at 81 with their new hit “IDOL” ft. Nicki Minaj [here]  and BlackPink formerly at 55 with their single “Ddu-Ddu Du” [here]. Though, many idol groups aren’t far behind this peak, like TWICE and EXO and many more climbing their way up with millions of views on Youtube. This increase is most likely due to that challenge of western standards, with many songs emulating pop genres and simplistic beats and twisting it into something catchy, almost hypnotic. You’ll hear many songs incorporate several genres into one, such as pop, rap, and even rock. Along with this is how flawless an idol looks in their videos, their skin seemingly free of all blemishes and fashion that isn’t something ridiculously over the top or painfully simple, but fashionable and wearable. It’s as if these idols are perfect, which is desirable for many young people. Who doesn’t want to seem perfect?

This ideal in looks has turned Asians from being seen as ugly and undesirable, to gorgeous, cute, and natural. This, in turn, going again that human standard I was talking about before. Soon, people began to ask how they keep their skin like their favorite idols, what makeup they use, and how their hair is cut. Unfortunately, the pedestal the west puts their stars on are nowhere near the God-level the east puts their idols on currently, no matter how many variety shows they are on. This human-like quality is being drowned out by this impossible standard of beauty and personality set by none other than eastern media themselves. Eastern Asian beauty products have had a huge impact on how the west does their skincare. Even large sellers, such as Sephora and Ulta, have a section on their website dedicated to Korean skincare. Even I have put Korean and Japanese beauty products into my daily routine, in order to achieve that perfect skin they have (as seen below) and I have to admit, they are working so far, but it really strikes home as I am writing this that perfection is really what we are looking for in today’s society and it’s very difficult to escape.

Above Image is Mine

This has also hurt the idea that fetishization of Asian culture has also gotten worse, much worse. For years, Asians have been seen as the perfect little wives, shy and obedient. Older white men in the west have turned to dating sites and other sites to look for a Asian wife to marry, but just Asian. As you can see in this short trailer for the film “Seeking Asian Female” by Debbie Lum, the “market” for Asian women is large and has been ongoing for years upon years, especially when the internet really took off. “Asian” has become a tag on pornography sites (along with other races as well, but it is dehumanizing to depict a race as a fetish itself). The perfection of women and men in Asian media has grown this over the past decade, as men and women alike have only wanted to date an eastern Asian man or woman because they “look the best”. Users on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram exposed to Asian media are known for using Asian people to fit their “aesthetic”, or even going as far as wishing and lying about being Asian has become the norm. The Asian culture has been boiled down to nothing more than simply… an aesthetic and a fetish. “When you generalize a specific race or group of people, you deny each and every one of them their individuality and their right to be who they are.��� (http://beyondhallyu.com/k-pop/i-love-korean-boys-the-problem-of-fetishization/).

Yet, the east to west movement has opened up this opportunity to change this, as can be seen in western media movies like To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and Crazy Rich Asians. The people in this film are not perfect, far from it. They are shown as humans unlike the crazy high standards held in Eastern media itself. This would not have been done without the spread of eastern media to the west. Especially in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, there is no emphasis on the lead’s race, she is simply a normal girl in high school falling in love.

While this widespread media exchange has had it’s ups and downs on society as a whole, I think we are getting to a place where acceptance is the goal. Social media is a place of opinions and has the potential of creating an entire social movement overnight. The East to Western movement has been on the move for decades, but it is coming to fruition now and creating a change in how the West perceives the East.

Written by Silvia Jordan

[helena-studyblr]

a post no one asked for!

hello so i reblogged a questionnaire a lil bit ago and i’m going to answer them now because...why not

1. how old are you?

im 18!

2.  are you in high school or college(university)?

college

3. what year or grade are you in high school or (university)? 

im a freshman in college

4. what is your school’s grading system look like? do you like it? what problems do you have with it, if any? 

so my university has a standard letter grade system for most classes and pass/fail for some courses that don’t really need a grade. i do like it because it’s what i’m used to, however, a lot of times having a letter grade system can be more stressful because it makes you feel like anything but some kind of A is mediocre and not good enough, when in reality, a 75% or above is better than average.

5. if you are in high school do you plan on going to university or college? if you are in college do you plan on finishing and if you do, do you plan on continuing on to other graduate or professional schools? 

i plan on going to veterinary school after i finish my undergraduate degree! if i end up changing my major to my second choice(music education is my second choice), then of course I won’t be going to vet school.

6. if you are high school what do you plan to study in college, if you plan to go. if not, what do you plan on doing after high school? if you are in college what is your major? do you plan on changing it? 

i am currently studying biochemistry and molecular biology and i have a minor in music! i dont plan on changing it at this point, but if i do, i’d change it to music education.

7. why are you picking or why did you pick what you are currently studying? 

i want to go to vet school, and biochemistry has almost all the requirements for vet school admissions. also, i find it interesting

8. do you go/plan to go to community college, technical college, or a four-year institution? how did you make your decision, or how do you plan to?

i am at a 4 year university, and i went here because it fits what i want to do

9. what factors did you consider when picking a college, or what factors do you plan on considering? 

the college I chose is in my hometown, which is probably one of the deciding factors(i really wanted to be close to home). the campus is very pretty and small as well, and i really wanted to go to a small college. i could have potentially gone to The Ohio State University because i’m about 20 minutes away, but the camous is so big and i know i would have hated it. the school also has a good music program, soi can continue playing even though it isn’t my major

10. what is your favorite pencil?

i love my muji mechanical pencil and also the papermate clearpoint!

11. what are your top three favorite pens?

pilot juice, muji gel pens, and sharpie pens

12. do you prefer wide-ruled paper, college-ruled, dot-grid, or graph paper? 

college ruled is my favorite for class notes, graph paper for revised/nice notes/math work, and blank for planning generally

13. do you use different types of paper for different courses or classes?

i use college ruled for almost everything except math homework(i use graph)

14. do you use a backpack/bag for school or college and what kind is it? why did you choose it? price, quality, function, design? 

i use a backpack, i have no idea what brand it is, but its the perfect size for everything i need to take to classes and its also really pretty(it has a black background with flowers on it)

15. what is your favorite outfit to go to class in and why? 

i generally wear leggings and a sweatshirt/sweater just because they’re comfy and also look cute! if its warm enough, i wear flip flops but if not, i wear my vans or converse.

16. what is something you always have to have in your backpack or bag?

usually my laptop and pencil case

17. what is your least favorite subject and why? 

math!!!!!!! will always hate. guarunteed. 

18. have you ever gone to tutoring, if so, how has it helped your academic endeavors? 

i have not

19. have you ever seeked academic counseling, if so has it helped you?

i haven’t

20. has your mental health ever suffered during high school or college, and what did you do to cope? 

holy shit yes. i suffer from depression and anxiety(depression for almost a year and anxiety for 4 years). i could make a whole post about this but in general, i make sure i give myself time to relax. it can be so so hard to take care of yourself when you suffer with things like this, so even if you can barely get out of bed, try to make time to do things that make you happy. for me, it’s drawing, netflix, and video games.

21. do you like to listen to music when studying? if so, what genre, if you have a playlist share it! 

i do listen to music! i just listen to music i like, which is rock/pop punk/alt rock/etc. (here’s one of my playlists!: https://open.spotify.com/user/helenakitten14/playlist/4R6ZGIlz8K5UDEk80cVfV5?si=cXK0z3HTRUKCQSKx9F8tNA )

22. do you prefer to study at a library or at home at your desk?

depends what i’m working on and how much i have to do. if i feel like i have to be totally focused, i go to the library, but if i have some time to take breaks and get distracted, i just stay in my room. I also hate going to the library on my own, so sometimes i stay in my room anyway if no one can come with.

23. what are your top three items you keep on your desk?

my lamp, my laptop, and whatever drink i’m drinking while working( i always have a drink so i avoid snacking lol)

24. do you feel as if you are more productive during the day or in the evenings? 

evenings for sure

25. if you exercise, do you feel as if it affects your productivity and if so how? 

i do marching band which is usually my exercise, but i don’t work out. working out just exhausts me and i don’t have energy to begin with(ye ye depression)

26. do you participate in any extracurriculars and if so how do you manage your time?

marching band and wind ensemble! i’m also joing KKPsi, which is an honorary fraternity for music service! i am not great at time management, however, i plan out everything to hold myself accountable

27. do you use a bullet journal, a planner, or to-do lists? do you use a combination of all three? 

i use a combo of all three! i’ve been bullet journalling a lot recently, but i also use a planner during busy weeks when i dont have time to make a spread and i make to do lists for weekends

28. do you have a note-taking style?

nothing specific

29. do you have a color-coding system?

i like to make every different topic/spread a different color. also, when i make notes, i like to highlight vocab words.

30. what do you believe is one of the most overrated studyblr trends? 

100 days of productivity. its impossible to be completely productive for 100 days straight. shit happens, and i understand the purpose of the 100 days challenge, but i think it also takes a toll on you mentally.

31. what are your career goals, how do you plan to reach them? 

i want to be a veterinarian or someone that works with animals somehow. i hope to go to vet school and then have my own practice or join another practice.

32. do you use a laptop? if so which model? how does it perform, would you reccomend it? if not, what model would you like?

i use a macbook air! it is nice because it is easy to transport, but occasionally the functionality can be questionable(storage space is always my issue). i do reccommend it, though. if i could get a new laptop, i’d probably get a macbook pro. 

33. do you use a tablet? if so which model? how does it perform, would you reccomend it? if not, what model are you interested in?

i don’t, but i think having an iPad would be nice!

34. if you post pictures to tumblr, do you use a camera or your phone, if so, what is the model? 

i use my iPhone 6s

35. 0.5, 0.7, or 0.9 pencil lead? 

usually .5 or .7

36. 0.5, 0.7, 0.9, or 1.0 pens? 

.5

37. how many hours a day do you spend studying? are your hours consistent daily or do they differ depending on assignments and exams? 

i tend to study for a majority of the day most days, but it always differs. i have no set timetable

38. how many courses do you take? what are they?

so i am in 8 courses right now. Biology, Gen Chem, Bio Lab, Gen Chem Lab, Calculus I, The History of rock n roll, Wind Ensemble, and Marching band.

39. how long until you graduate? in credit hours, semesters, or years?

i still have 3.5 years left of college, which is 7 semesters

40. how did you find the studyblr community?

honestly i dont remember, it was so long ago

41. how did the studyblr community impact you? 

i was in a big funk my sophomore year of high school. i had no motivation, i hated learning, i hated everything tbh. but them i found this community and it inspired me and showed me that studying can be fun and pretty while also being a learning experience!

42. do you go to school in the day or night?

day!

43. what is something you are too afraid to be involved in at school or college and why? 

 in high school, i was very afraid to get involved with a lot of things, such as theatre and some other clubs just because of anxiety.

44. do you type or write your notes? 

i write them mostly, but my biology professor talks really fast so i usually type notes for his class

45. what do you do on your breaks from studying? 

netflix, eat, play video games, probably other stuff i’m forgetting

46. how do you study for math exams?

honestly i just look through lecture notes and hope for the best. occasionally i do practice problems but not often

47. do you rewrite your notes at home after class, or do you just use the ones you have already? why? 

i rewrite them because it helps me memorize things

48. what are your least favorite courses and why?

math of any kind! i also hate biology right now just because my professor sucks

49. are you in a relationship while in school? if so, why? if not, why? 

i recently got out of a relationship, but im open to being in a relationship with someone

50. if you are in a relationship, how do you manage that along with your studies? 

it was very hard to manage it honestly, but i did what i could to make time, even if it was only just having a meal together. 

51. if you aren’t in a relationship, do you plan on entering one while still in school? explain. 

if i find the right person, yea! being in relationsips is great, especially because you have a companion to help you when you’re struggling

52. do you worry about GPA, if so why, if not why?

oh my god yes i do. i have to have a certain GPA to keep my scholarship money and to stay in the honors program, plus i just want to do well.

53. did you or do you plan to take the SAT or ACT, how did you feel about the exams? did you study for them? have you taken it more than once?

i did take both the SAT and ACT. i did well on each, but the SAT was a lot harder for me. I got a 1220(i think) on the SAT and a 31 on the ACT. i took the ACT twice

54. did you or do you plan to take the GRE, LSAT, PCAT, MCAT, DAT (or any other grad exam)? how did it go? how are you or how did you study for it? have you taken it more than once? 

i’m going to take the MCAT

55. do you or did you take AP classes is high school? how do you feel about how they prepared you for college? did your school require you to take the exam?

yes i did take AP classes! i took 9 total, and they overall did help me learn how to manage time better as well as how to study. we weren’t required to take the exams, but i always did

56. do you or did you do the IB program in high school? can you explain it more for those who are unfamiliar with it? 

i did not, however the IB program is basically an intensive high school honors program that is very writing intensive. its like AP on steroids

57. do your or did you take dual-enrollment classes? how did you feel about how they prepared you for college? 

i didnt but i wish i did!

58. how many colleges or universities did you apply to or not? and why?

i applied to 5 colleges. i already knew where i wanted to go, but i wanted to be safe just in case i didnt get in, so i applied to the 5 i was most interested in. I also wanted to see if any other schools would give me a lot more financial aid.

59. how did you make friends in college or high school?

through band! in both situations

60. has your friend group stayed the same throughout your time in school?

yes actually! i’m still very close to all my high school friends and a few of them go to my college as well. of course i’ve met new people but i. also still have the same friends

61. how does your friend group influence your goals?

we all have our own goals, we just encourage each other and act as an outlet for stress

62. what is your favorite thing to learn about in your free time?

music and current events

63. what is your favorite study snack?

i like to eat carrots/pretzels with hummus or oreos

64. what is one thing that can completely make you stop studying? 

being depressed or tired

65. are there days during the week that you keep completely free from studying? 

yes. wednesdays are my hell days class-wise, so i refrain from doing work on those days after my classes are over

66. what do you do when you have to hustle? where do you go? 

i dont know what this means

67. are your parents or family supportive of your goals? if so how does this affect you? 

they’re very supportive!

68. do you like to read? and do you ever have any free time to do so?

i really love reading but i never have time

69. do you wear a watch? why or why not? what kind? 

nope, they annoy me

70. do you like to drink coffee or tea when working? decaf? what do you add to it? why do you like to drink coffee or tea? 

coffee with full caffeine! i always add creamer, and i drink it because it wakes me up 

71. how do you organize your notes after your finish writing them? 

i have notebooks for every class and binders as well

72. what do you do with your notes after the year or semester is over?

i either recycle them if they won’t be necessary anymore or i keep them in my closet

73. what are your favorite studyblrs?

studyign, emmestudies, and a lot more that i can’t think of

74. what are your favorite studygrams?

same as above except add on focusign and revisign!

75. what is the biggest impact a teacher or a professor has had on you?

my band director was very impactful on my life just because he was my teacher for 5 years, so we had a good relationship

76. what is the biggest impact that a class has had on you?

my film and lit class had a massive impact on me. it made me think in very different ways

77. who is your inspiration and who do you look up to academic wise and career wise? 

my dad inspires me a lot because he worked so hard to find a career he loved and kept going until he got there. he’s also endlessly supportive of me

thats it! this took me so long hahaha anyway. thanks for reading!

[thenerdofnerdynerds]

Back to school/pick-up Challenge

This challenge focusses on obstacles you might run into this year. It focusses on progression, solving problems and bettering yourself. (Although you are already quite charming.)

It is definitely not limited to being a ‘back to school’ challenge. It’s mainly a pick-up challenge, one that gets you up and running. You can start it on whichever date you want. I think that I’m not the only one who needs a little pick-up at the start of a new school year.

My idea was to have a question each day and then some tips, tricks or motivation below it to help you progress.

This is not a ‘I did all days successfully and I posted about it daily’ challenge. This is a challenge for you. It help you get through two weeks by making you think about the obstacles and offering multiple solutions so you can either chose or mix up your own way of dealing with these obstacles. Not necessarily for a nice tumblr challenge, but because you deserve a nice time. You’re only in high school/college once. Make the best of it!

Tag your posts with ’#back to school 17/18’ if you deside to make posts about it.

Day 1. What are your long term goals this year?

Write them down on a piece of paper and hang it in your room. Don’t forget to make milestones and reward yourself for every milestone you reach, you deserve it, darling!

Day 2. What is your notetaking method?

Do you make mindmaps or summaries? If you colour code, how did you assign the colours? If you don’t colour code, how do you make important things obvious? Looking through your method can get you exited for note-taking again. Everyone has their own unique style, especially you!

Day 3. What is your biggest ‘fear’ for this school year?

Write it down in the middle of a sheet of paper (and add the date when that moment happens if possible). Around your fear, write solutions you can come up with. You can add more solutions later and don’t be afraid to ask others for solutions as well. They have their fears as well. You’re never alone.

Day 4. How do you plan?

What method do you use: a separate planner or do you just use your school diary? Is your planner updated or could you give it a quick update? Updating your planner can give you rest, because it shows that time can be arranged the way you want it and that you do have you-time in between work moments (you deserve some quality binge-watch time)

Day 5. Do you make anti-stress art?

What in the name of anxiety is Anti-stress art? Well honey, lemme tell you. Whenever I get stressed while working, be it during a lesson, be it while studying, I draw that stress. I personify it. This way you visualize it and give it a place, which on it’s own can relieve some of that stress. (Drawing the personified stress in a shitty situation helps best for me. Karma is a bitch, ain’t she?) Why don’t you try it some time?

Day 6. How do you spend your study breaks?

Study breaks are very important. Of course you can skip them once in a while, but please have them. Every 25 minutes you should take a 10 minute break, and every third break should be 30 minutes. I can give you a few tips: Don’t use your phone if it’s not important (so no cat videos, sadly), get up and walk (moving will be refreshing), eat and drink something (stay hydrated bady!) and in your longer break, take a shower or take a walk (clear your head dear, it works) Day 7.

What’s your morning routine before school?

I know some girls who spend 30 minutes doing their make-up and then make a hearty breakfast and I know girls who never wear make up and eat their breakfast while on their way to class. Both of these things are okay! You just have to keep some things in mind: wash your face, it wakes you up (very helpful), eat something to get you going (you need some energy for those first classes, even if all you eat is a handfull of grapes) and brush your teeth and apply deodorant (you will feel way fresher throughout the day).

Day 8. What’s your opinion on group projects?

Group projects can be fun. You get to work with friends on an assignment and you get to split up the work. This way everyone does what they’re good at and you only have to do a small part. Group projects can also suck. You might have to work with people you don’t like or know. If this is the case, make sure you know everyone’s strenghts. This way you can split the work in a more ‘fair’ way. Sometimes people take advantage of someone’s abilities and they end up doing less or nothing. Tell this to your teacher (of course not before asking said person to do some work) if the teacher knows, they will take this into consideration.

Day 9. Do you track your health?

This might seem like a tedious thing to do, but it can be quite helpfull. I’ve seen people track every little thing, but you only have to track what matters to you. You sleep 7-8 hours every night but you always forget to drink something? Track that water consumpion. You drink enough, but you sleep like shit? Track your sleep! How much hours do you sleep and how much do you need? 7-8 hours is THE way to go love.

Day 10. What are your grade goals this year?

It seems like a very easy question: straight A’s, everything 10/10, but sometimes that’s impossible. I used to have this universal goal for my grades: every subject above 8/10 (cum laude at my school) and I would have depressive periodes after a grade dropped to below 8/10. Grade goals are to be set separate for every subject. You are extraordinarily good at math? Aim for that A! But physics has proven to be more difficult? That B is a gorgeous grade! Chemistry is more like cheMystery? Your C is not a fail grade, so don’t worry if that’s your goal. I can guarantee you that setting separate goals for your subjects feels way better. And you deserve that good feeling, honey.

Day 11. What does your sleep schedule look like?

Holidays fuck up my sleep schedule more than I’d like to admit. I fall asleep at 2 am and wake up at 2 pm. I did have some nice sleep, but the timing is kinda very off. You need 7-8 hours of sleep for your brain to function at its best. If you need to get up at 7 am, you should fall asleep between 11 pm and midnight. Another tip is to set a bedtime for yourself and to not use electronics after half an hour prior to your bedtime. This way your brain will properly make melatonin, a hormone that helps you sleep!

Day 12. When do you pack your bag and why?

There are basically 2 options: the day before or in the morning. The most preferred option is the day before. You have more time the day before, which means less stress and a smaller chance that you’ll forget something. You can dubble check in the morning. Maybe a class got cancelled. (I hope your first class honey, for your sake)

Day 13. How do you spend time in free periods?

We all know ‘em: that free period between classes. Whether it’s always there or a class got cancelled, it’s free time. I always see a lot of my classmates making homework… for the upcoming class. Like honey, you could be making tomorrow’s homework if you done did that stuff yesterday. That’s why you are doing tomorrow’s homework, you smartass! You’ll have more free time this afternoon, heck yeah! And of course you can play some games and check social media in your breaks now (it’s an environmental thing, my darling).

Day 14. How do you balance school and hobby?

Everyone has this one thing that they love doing, be it reading, drawing, playing games or doing sports. The balance between your hobby, your passion, and school, sometimes a passion and sometimes hell is very important. You should always have some time for your hobby. Make sure that you can do your hobby for one continuous hour at least once a week. You don’t have to do it one hour long, but make sure that you have the option to do it for an hour. Trust me, you’ll love that hour. It’s a you-time hour. Just don’t let that hour become a day. It will throw off that balance.

Bonus: How’s your mental health doing?

I’ve had and have some problems with my mental health. I have depressive periods and some form of an anxiety disorder that’s yet to be determined. There are a few things that I can highly recommend:

Know what you like. If you feel down/depressed you can focus on that. It brings joy. And joy likes to kick depression’s ass.

If you get stressed easily or get anxious about things, find some grounding exercises that work for you. (I imagine the anxieties as a dark cloud inside me. I can feel it running through my veins. I ‘guide’ it to my lungs and simply exhale it into the air around me where it clashes with the happy vibes from other people and it dissolves.)

Take a mental health day. Once a month you should take a day off just for you. Make sure you have your homework done for the next day and you are good to go. Just make sure it stays a day and it doesn’t become a week.

Sometimes the best option is to seek for help. Of course a psychologist is not necessarily the first option. Talk to friends, teachers or, if there is, to that person at school who is literally there for people who struggle. All you have to remember is: You are not and will never be alone. Everything is going to be alright. You are fierce.

All these tips and options come from my own experiences and from things I’ve run into here on tumblr.

I hope you’ve managed to pick yourself up and are now enjoying this education concept called school a little more.

[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasWatches: My Hero Academica

If there’s something I needed in my Anime Repertoire, it was a fun, pulpy Shonen Series.

I have selected My Hero Academia because frog girl.

Tsuyu Asui and the various tumblr posts she spawned is what drew my attention, and I was hearing good things about the series, so I thought I’d give it a go. Plus I’m catching it in the early stages, so there’s not too much of an archive to panic over. It’s a good time to get in.

I’m not one for long runners, since I enjoy definite start and end points.[1] Media designed to just go on forever, stuffed with filler and formula is a quick eject for me. And I’ve never been one for fighty man Shounen.

I couldn’t get into Dragon Ball Z, because I only caught brief segments, and those segments were the parts with Goku floating there staring down his enemy. Or Buu turning someone into a cookie and eating them. Contextless nonsense that was very unappealing.[2]

Naruto began it’s dubbed broadcast as I entered Middle School. However, those were troubled times of much grounding due to academic indifference, and I couldn’t be bothered to monitor the broadcast schedule. So I fell off the Naruto train… basically after the second episode.

I didn’t care about pirates enough to try One Piece, and Bleach seemingly left no cultural weight to enter the equation.[3]

However, these reviews are nothing if not a bizarre justification for making up for my misspent youth. Because yearning for the nostalgic past is what adulthood is for.

And I finally committed to Funimation’s streaming service, so, yay! More dubs for Canvas![4] Which leaves only the Viz stable to have difficulties with.

So… why does My Hero Academia succeed where it’s predecessors fail?

Likeable cast, mostly. While other self-perpetuating shonens have large casts with various interesting gimmicks, usually only one or two will resonate with the viewer, and there’s often little by way of character complexity or arcs.

Meanwhile, MHA has a cast that, oddly, are mostly characterized by positivity. There’s one or two grumpy loners, sure, but they’re handled with an almost parody tone, and the rest are actually nice kids you can appreciate.

And our protagonist, Deku, is notable for not being uniquely special. At the outset, he’s in the minority of people without powers. He eventually gains some, a decision I’m… conflicted on, but he gets superpowers by earning them.

Deku’s a tenacious fanboy, particularly idolizing the biggest hero in the world, wanting to follow the man’s example. However, as he doesn’t have a gift, he’s seemingly incapable of reaching that point.

Our hero takes this in stride, instead dedicating his attention to analyzing heroes and their methods. He’s a very clever and intelligent protagonist, and considering he’s following the trail of Naruto and freaking Goku, that defining trait is a refreshing departure.

Then he earns his chance at his dreams by being undeniably heroic despite being a squib.

Now there are obviously two sides to Deku inheriting All Might’s power:

One one hand, we miss the story of a muggle climbing his way up the ranks through sheer willpower and analysis.

But, with him getting All Might’s power, we instead see a young boy struggle with a power well beyond his control and capabilities.

While I’d prefer the Rock Lee route, the physical struggle of Deku literally destroying himself with every use of One for All, and the ramifications (risk of permanent damage and Deku needing to use it strategically) is a compelling narrative thrust in its own right, so I can’t complain too much.

The duality of All Might is an interesting sight to behold. In full hero mode, he’s nothing if not positive and encouraging. Outside of that persona, All Might is a little pessimistic and grumpy, but he still has a clear streak of good that’s never suppressed, even when he’s feeling sick.

It would’ve been easy and in line with established tropes to make All Might a lazy and harsh task master, but even when sending Deku through an excessively intense training regiment, All Might’s encouraging and positive, pushing Deku not for his selfish purposes, but because he honestly believes in Deku.

Then, after Deku goes above and beyond the task All Might set (clear out a stretch of beach), All Might tells his student to eat a strand of his hair, which is precisely the sort of thing I make jokes about when watching television.[5]

The even more amazing thing is that this positivity isn’t exclusive to All Might. The entire hero cast are positive and supportive people. Besides Bakugo, who’s the childhood friend turned rival character, no one specifically puts down anyone else. Every challenge and lesson has the whole of Class 1-A cheering each other on.

Even during the admission trials, where they’re literally competing against one another, you never see any character go out of their way to sabotage another.

Normally, it’s so easy to make the main character a total reject, give them a whole community of opposition and conflict. So it’s refreshing that everyone who wants to be a hero is a positive person.

It’s the same reason so many people gush over pages featuring Batman offering sympathy to others instead of punches. We want our heroes to be the best example of humanity, something to aspire to be.

Which is the exact philosophy that brings All Might to take Deku under his wing.

Then Bakugo, who’s introduced as a violent bully, wanting to believe heroics is his birthright, becomes mocked for being such a hothead. He’s got a powerful quirk, was number one for the admission test, but the rest of the class silently agree that they don’t wish to abide by his attitude. And it’s not even bullying Bakugo, but more gentle mocking and pushback against his egocentrism and violence.

Because the class are still children, but their nature shows a preference toward acceptance and teamwork, and an openness for redemption.  The class’s treatment of Bakugo is negativity towards his current actions, not the kid himself.

UA is structured to be a competitive environment, a whetstone to hone the next generation of heroes. You have to compete in a trial to get into the programs, teachers can expel whole classes, and you can lose your spot in class to someone in a ‘lesser’ course. However, even when the cast are explicitly telling one another they’re gunning for each other, it’s usually with a tone of ‘nothing personal, it’s just the situation,’ and there’s no hard feelings. No one resents anyone else, really, and there’s no hesitation to work together when the situation calls for it.

Which is important because this is a show for children, and it’s showing, by example, that intent and actions are a better defining trait than raw ability or natural born talent.

A lot of the quirks are explicitly underwhelming. Class 1-A runs the gamut between making explosions, nullifying gravity, sticky balls, being invisible, and having a tail, with various and unequal limitations. It’s not what you have that makes you good or evil, it’s what you do with it.

To further cement this, One for All is absurdly powerful, and after a training montage, Deku’s given a portion of the quirk. And that portion is so strong, so powerful, that even with the preparation All Might put him through, using it still physically breaks Deku.

Which means, while most Shonens are about the protagonist becoming stronger, working their way to being the best there is, Deku literally gets handed that strength in episode 4.  So, instead of growing powerful, Deku has to learn restraint and self control when using One for All.

Because being a hero isn’t about being better than everyone else, it’s about using what you have effectively to make the world around you a better place, with both physical abilities and personality.

Deku has the right personality and philosophy, he needs to learn how to use his power.

Bakugo knows how to use his power, but he doesn’t quite have the needed interpersonal skills or humility.

Thus why the two are the rivals.

The actual arcs do a good job of tracing old structures while also bringing in its own twists.

There is, of course, the introductory arc, where we’re introduced to the protagonist whose dream seems impossible to him, until a mentor figure steps in and grants him the one thing needed to proceed (A quirk for Deku, headwear for Naruto and Luffy). Then he meets his crush and turns a few low-grade rivals into allies (like you do) as he begins the journey to become the best… hero/ninja/pirate/grim reaper?[6]

Deku takes the entrance examine, which he technically failed, but he put in such a good effort that he was given bonus points so he could enroll at UA anyways.

Then we get a nice mix of Slice of Life and implied opposition from a mentor figure, who turns out to have been performing a secret test of character.

Next, the main cast is given their first field mission, which suddenly becomes a lot more serious than expected.

Which brings us to the end of the first season.

So, a quality that I find takes a series from good to great is its approach to balancing drama and comedy: namely, no one’s truly exempt from either. Naruto had shades of it, Fullmetal Alchemist did it to the hilt. Sometimes it’s well set-up jokes, sometimes it’s just goofy character designs.[7]

Class 1-A is filled with goofballs, and even though they serious up when a horde of villains crash their first rescue training mission, their personalities are able to leak a good amount of comedy where needed.

Then the entirety of the second season is dedicated to the required tournament arc. Which… okay, time for Canvas to zone out, right?

Well, no. Because My Hero Academia is pretty good at both dynamic combat and interesting situations. Further, the previous season already did a good job of establishing people’s powers, so there’s space to split the focus between showing fine details and solid character work.

UA’s tournament is actually a broadcasted sports festival, so the competition starts with a obstacle course, which revels in all the slapstick potential inherent. Deku also wins it by looking at the mine field that is the final obstacle, and says ‘Nah. I can use this.’

Good for our hero!

Then, the second event is a cavalry battle,[8] where Deku’s reward for winning the first event is getting a 10 million point bounty on his head. It’s so unfair it turns to the realm of parody. Which I’m all about.

The second event is thus a showcase of Quirk Synergy, more of Deku’s strategy and resulting counter strategies, and more slapstick. So that’s nice.

Since Deku soundly won the first round, our protagonist is getting diminishing returns for the rest of the arc.

The third event is straight up tournament battles, but with most of the cast already eliminated, so that saves time, and the show only really focuses on the big events, split between the second half of one episode and the first of another. Between those, there are match ups that are just squashes[9] and comedy.

The final winner is then Hannibal Lecter’d on the podium in a great mix of character drama (he didn’t like the way he won) and comedy (because the final winner has to be actively restrained and muzzled. That’s just silly!)

Then the cast picks out their codenames.

Which pretty much brings us even to where the dub’s gotten.

I’m having a good time with the show, and I look forward to more episodes. It’s going to be interesting to follow an anime episode by episode instead of marathoning the whole thing through. Let’s see if I can keep my sanity.

Kataal kataal.

[1] There are exceptions, mostly in the form of webcomics and Discworld. [2] Dragon Ball, meanwhile, had a youthful energy that drew me in. But it also aired infrequently so I never got totally invested. [3] Okay, I had a high school friend who was interested, much to the annoyance of another high school friend, who had a weak understanding of difference in media interests. [4] You had your chance Crunchyroll! [5] Seriously, ask Vulpin, it’s exactly my humor. [6] Again, never got into Bleach. [7] Depowered All-Might looks like a muppet. [8] A sport I’ve only seen in the context of anime, but should totally be more common. [9] Following a wrestling podcast may be helping me appreciate some of the meta-aspects of fight scenes.

[toooldforthis76]

In regards to Vegeta being “Father of the year”

I came across someone else’s blog who was really pretty disgusted that some people feel that Goku is unable to feel love with any depth beyond companionship and that so many people paint Vegeta as “father of the year” after spending so much time pushing Trunks away, verbally abusing him, disavowing him as a son until he demonstrated his power against Cell.  I don’t mean to do the passive aggressive thing by not answering someone directly, but I don’t really know anyone out here on tumblr and it’s not my place to barge into someone else’s conversation—I’m not some dbz expert, hell I only started watching the show and reading the manga within the last year or so, but I want to make a point about why *I* feel, just me, just a fan, that she is RIGHT but is maybe still skipping over the primary reason why Vegeta’s eventual *turn* to father-of-the-year was so utterly satisfying to fans.  Let’s be clear: 1.  To Goku’s defense, he and ChiChi have a very traditional love.  They met as children.  They had a courtship.  They married. They cohabitated.  Then they had kids.  

Guys, this seriously did not happen with Vegeta & Bulma.

Placing my head cannon aside and placing the generally accepted headcannon aside, the manga and the anime both make it pretty clear that Trunks came about as a result of physical passion.  It could have been a one night stand, it could have been a friends-with-benefits type situation, either way we will never really know for sure unless Toriyama decides to pen that side of the story, but in any case, Trunks is what Vegeta accuses Gohan of being during the Saiyan saga:  a half breed welp by an insignificant human female . . . a bastard.  

2.  Vegeta does not acknowledge Trunks as his son because he is, emotionally speaking, a narcissist.  Even after seeing what Future is capable of, and realizing that Future is the grown-up version of his bastard child with this earth woman, he refuses to acknowledge either the baby or the teen until the teen had something worthy of taking credit for—which is exactly what a narcissistic parent does, you are not worth until you achieve something that strokes their pride.  We see a toxic kind of companionship between father & son during the semi-perfect Cell saga because Trunks is so desperate for his father’s love that he plays along with this idea of being little more than an extension of his father.  He does this to such an extreme that although he has the ability to jump in and help his father while he’s getting his ass thoroughly kicked by cell, he waits until his father is knocked out before taking action.  He says it is because he knows how important pride is to his father and wants to protect it, but ultimately I think Trunks does not want to lose what precious little love he’s gained from his emotionally dysfunctional father.  

3.  the chains of narcissm could have very easily have continued had both Future and Goku not been killed by Cell at the end of the Cell games.  Future getting killed by Cell was shattering, but the fact that Goku was also killed by the monster that Vegeta willingly allowed to grow perhaps hit that soul-wound a little deeper because not only had Vegeta lost his direct bloodline legacy, he had also lost the last of what would have been one of his “subjects” had they still lived on their home planet. I don’t really want to say much more about this because it may undermine what I’m trying to do with my own fanfiction, but when you think about the way King Vegeta lost the planet to Frieza, you get a real sense that Prince Vegeta must have really resented his father on some level for allowing Frieza to fester until he was damn near impossible to kill . . . Prince Vegeta did the exact same thing with Cell, only, he has to suffer to live with the aftermath.  

I am no warrior, and I will never fight again  

4.  So we reach the Buu saga . . . and Vegeta, Bulma and Trunks are now living together as a family.  We don’t know that they have a healthy family relationship, but they are living together.  There is a scene where Trunks is in the gravity room with his father, who is very much annoyed by his presence until Trunks demonstrates that he is able to go Super Saiyan.  Vegeta is so surprised by this that he pauses his training to acknowledge his child and levels him a challenge.  If you land one punch on me I’ll take you to that park you’re always going on about.  –still very narcissistic, right?  But there’s a humbled quality to it as well . . . keep with me on this point . . .  Trunks DOES manage to land a blow, and Vegeta promptly strikes back.  He HITS his CHILD in the face—I never said I wouldn’t strike back—but Trunks is still happy because he’s going to get to go to this park with his dad.  Guys, this is EXACTLY how people with specific emotional dysfuctions such as narcissim and sado maschoism are formed in life.  When your source of love always comes with conditions or your source of love is deceptive to you or your source of love is manipulative, then it becomes greatly unsatisfying to receive love WITHOUT those twisted caveots later in life. But I digress.  My point is that Vegeta hasn’t bee “cured”, but BUT because he is perhaps still traumatized by the loss of his adult son by the actions of his own pride, he dials it down a notch and doesn’t take delight in having shown his dominance over this bastard that has caused him so much loss of pride in life, but agrees to do something “fatherly”.  And when Trunks is named jr champion of the world martial arts tournament, we see just for a second in the Anime a look of acknowledgement and pride as Vegeta pauses eating just long enough to listen carefully to what’s being said about the fight.

Then Bidibi happens.    

Bidibi knows . . . that the old Vegeta is just beneath the surface, and here’s the thing about psychological dysfuction:  it feels GOOD sometimes, to slide back into old patterns of thinking . . . because it’s very vindicating.  Those old demons don’t like being told that they were no good.  Nobody really wants to have a past that they’re ashamed of—they want to be justified in the way that they are, and when you think about how hard it is for a narcissist to admit their faults, it must be doubly true for them because they have such a deep need to be perfect.  It’s funny how, when Bidibi casts this spell to turn Vegeta Maijin, Vegeta isn’t under Bidibi’s complete control as Bidibi anticipated, probably because Vegeta’s old demons have a score to settle against those that tried to prove them wrong.  It feels GOOD to be evil, it feels good to be VINDICATED in your evil, but here the whole planet is starting to suffer . . . and Vegeta perhaps starts to see that pattern happening all over again with this planet he has come to call home.  Is he going to let earth be destroyed the same way his father allowed their Planet to become destroyed?  Could he do this in front of the son that he let down as an adult ? Can he let go of all those life lessons so easily over his love for power?  He could have . . . he owes no real allegence to the earth . . . but he’s also nothing and no one’s slave, including to that of his own pride.  His pride wants this power, but his soul wants freedom (as most souls do), so he holds the child who has been such a catalyst for so much healing in his life.  He protects him by knocking him out, knowing that Trunks, in that exact moment, is really wrestling with his own pride [dad knock it off, you’re embarrassing me], he asks piccolo if he’ll have a 2nd chance in the afterlife and piccolo flatly tells him no, that he’s going to hell for all the horrible things he’s done, and Vegeta. Does. It. Anyway. – because he has finally conquered that one thing in life that was his true adversary:  himself.    

5.  Potara fusion happens . . . and there’s a very interesting article that you can find here  http://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27546  that really illustrates the point that Vegeta changes after fusion with Goku , but I think this is also a kind of “spiritual cementing” of the fact that Vegeta is in fact in the process of being forgiven for his past transgressions.  He is still “in the bardo” during this time, and if you notice, this sequence where they are inside of Buu and the earth is gone and everyone they love is gone, is actually kind of light-hearted compared to the rest of the saga.  In buddhism there is this concept that we create a lot of our own suffering by taking out lives so seriously—we all walk around like WE are Goku and that WE have to save the world . . . well here is Vegeta, who has fused with the big dumb oaf, and maybe begins to see him as not being so frustratingly flawless afterwards. He still has anger towards Goku but he also has some modicum of pity,  probably because so many people have so many expectations of Kakarot, yet he really is just this free spirit with no real intentions of being a savior.

6.  And then we get to super, where father-of-the-year Vegeta is really in full swing, because he’s not just a father figure to Trunks, he’s a father figure to EVERYONE including Goku at a certain level, which is extraordinarily sweet because Goku never had a Saiyan father [I’m excluding the movies here guys, sorry].  Vegeta had a Saiyan father.  And because he was brought up as royalty, he has a memory of what it means to be a Saiyan in the highest sense of their culture, their fashion, their cultures, their customs . . . Now that he LITERALLY knows Goku inside and out, and he has conquered his pride AND he no longers harbors a serious need to prove himself better, Vegeta can be that fatherly figure that Goku maybe subconsciously needs him to be.  It’s very telling that Vegeta was the one that Whis chose to be an apprentice *first*. It’s very telling that Bulla came along during Vegeta’s apprenticeship because he is not done with his mission here on earth.  The thing that frightens me a great deal, however, is that Whis and Beerus are grooming him to be what they want him to be, and as these new “boogie back” credits seem to be indicating, I believe that he is going to leave that baby and go off to war by their command.  I guess we will have to leave that up to speculation for the time being, but he has such a sharp sense of “protection” now that he may not be satisfied until all threats to his little Eschallotte are obliterated . . . because he can’t depend on Goku’s dumb ass to do it <jk> sorry Goku-peeps  

 So this is kind of my take on the whole why-is-Vegeta-suddenly-father-of-the-year argument going around Tumblr this week. Feel free to leave a comment and read my Fan Fiction “Earth Vermin” on AO3 :)  [Shamless self promotion I know but what the hell]  http://archiveofourown.org/works/9672212/chapters/21847091

[wrenwritesometimes]

Challenge Game with forty some-odd fucking questions wtf guys

Rules: Answer all questions, add one question of your own and tag as many people as there are questions. I was tagged by @notnaturalanahi and @ghoulishfigure aND @imnoaingeal. I think. I lost fukin track. 

Lol help. 

1. Coke or Pepsi: PEPSI 2. Disney or Dreamworks: Dreamworks is amazing but Disney is awesome too.. pass 3. Coffee or Tea: Tea, sOMEtimes 4. Books or Movies: Both, dude 5. Windows or Mac: Windows! 6. DC or Marvel: BOTH ARE FUCKING AWESOME, BUT MARVEL CAN HAVE MY BABIES IF IT WANTED... was that weird? Too tired to care. ✌🏻 7. Xbox or Playstation: Playstation 4, yo 8. Dragon Age or Mass Effect: Dragon Age for its Medievalish qualities, and Mass Effect for it’s high-tech qualities, but Skyrim because fUCK games I don’t own! 9. Night Owl or Early Rise: Night owl. All the damn way. I work better at 1:00am than any other time.  10. Cards or Chess: Cards if I have to

11. Chocolate or Vanilla: CHOCOLATE 

12. Vans or Converse: Converse, man 13. Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash or Adaar: What the everlovin’ hell is that? *looked it up* OH. Oh Dragon Age shit. Trevelyan looks pretty badass. 14. Fluff or Angst: I prefer fluff... but LOL I ONLY EVER WRITE ANGST HELP ME 15. Beach or Forest: Forest, hands down 16. Dogs or Cats: Dogs 17. Clear Skies or Rain: RAIN 18. Cooking or Eating Out: Cooking, if I could. 19. Spicy Food or Mild Food: MILD. I’m a BABY 20. Halloween/Samhain or Solstice/Yule/Christmas: I’m not deciding between the two. 21. Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot: Cold!! I fucking hate heat!!! < SAME with naturalanahi’s answer. I’d rather be cold than hot, damnit. 22. If you could have a superpower, what would it be? PYROKINESIS. HANDS. DOWN.   23. Animation or Live Action: ANIMATION… but let’s be realistic. 24. Paragon or Renegade: What the fuck is with this Dragon Age/Mass Effect shit? Paragon. 25. Baths or Showers: Showers. Unless I’m sick and dizzy 26. Team Cap or Team Iron Man: Wherever Bucky is. I am. 27. Fantasy or Sci-Fi: Fantasy Sci-Fi. Defy me, bitches. 28. Do you have three or four favourite quotes? If so, what are they: 1. “Demons I get. People are crazy.” 2. “I understood that reference!” 3. “No no, we want tribute, it's just that, um... Tulio, tell him.” Tulio: “The stars are not in position for this tribute!” Miguel: “Like he said! Stars!... Can't do it... Not today.” 29. YouTube or Netflix: Both... 30. Harry Potter or Percy Jackson: Harry Potter, hands down 31. When You Feel Accomplished: HAH. HAHAHAHA. 32. Star Wars or Star Trek: sSTAR WARS 👏🏻👏🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻❗️❗️🎵🎶♥️💯💯 33. Paperback Books or Hardback Books: Hardback books feels fucking MAGICAL. 34. Handwriting or Typing: I type so, so, so much faster... 35. Velvet or Satin: Neither? Both feel gross to me. Lol sensory obsessions! 36. Video Games or Movies: BOTH, MAN, WHY ASK ME TO CHOSE?! 37. Would you rather be the dragon or own the dragon? What is UP with all these dragon related questions… I would both want to own a dragon and be one, so another impossible question. 38. Sunrise or sunset: Both, preferably sunset. I hate being up early. 39. What’s your favourite song? Currently? Too much to handle, so primarily Big Picture by London Grammar and Pretty Girls by Kaleo 40. Horror Movies yes or no: nOPE. Hate em. My mom makes me watch em all the damn time, and I hate em. 41. Long hair or short hair: I had short hair for a long time, but I’m growing it out because I want.. long. hair. 42. Opera or Theatre: Theatre, hands down 43. Assuming the multiverse theory is true and every story ever told has really happened somewhere, which one of the movie/book/tv show/game/etc worlds would you pick to travel to first? Supernatural, Star Wars, Merlin, Narnia, Lord of the Rin-- can I stop because if I don't stop now then I'll never stop and if I don't stop I'll die of old age. 44: If you had to eat only one thing for the rest of your life what would it be? Bread. Sourdough bread. 45: Older guys or young guys? For me in actual real life? Young but not younger. In my fandom world, I tend to fall for 25-to-40. 46: If you could erase any show from TV history, what would it be? Lazy Town. For fucks sake. 47: Singing or dancing? Singing!

48: Instagram or Twitter? Neither. Tumblr. 👍🏻

49: What quote or saying do people spout but is complete BS? Like personally to me, or in general and online? I can't decide. 

MY question, the beautifully PRIME NUMBER OF BEAUTY - 50: If there was a time period that you would gladly time travel to to live or visit, what would it be?

Now that that's over, I do NoT know 50 fucking people. 

@idreamofhazel, @livelovelike555, @winchesters-favorite-girl, @theimpossibleg1rl, @impalaimagining, @impala-dreamer, @wordstothewisereaders, @just-a-touch-of-sass-and-fandoms, @percussiongirl2017

And that's all I got lol yay me

[recentanimenews]

Cooking With Anime: Running Boi Bento from "Run With the Wind"

Haiji of Run With the Wind fame, has many talents: running, coercing others into running, building team spirit and being the perfect housewife. I mean, seriously, this guy cooks for all his teammates, which is nice, but he also goes the EXTRA mile by making a specialty bento box creation! These kinds of bento boxes rose to prominence when mothers wanted to show off their skills by making their child's lunch extra fancy, thus inspiring jealousy and intrigue amongst the other children and THEIR mothers. And for good reason! Bento box designs of this quality aren't something you just casually do. They take time, effort and serious planning. Which begs the question: where did Haiji find the time for this?

  I recreated the bento and it took me roughly two and a half hours. That's right, TWO AND A HALF HOURS! In the end, I had a full hour of footage to sort through to crop it down to the mere five minutes you see below. The key is all in the details with these bento designs. If you can't get the nitty gritty design elements down, you'll fall woefully short. That translates to cutting slivers of nori to make the shading between teeth and individually placing each mustache nori hair above the mouth. Something I totally FORGOT to do was the beard!  You don't notice it at first, but it's one of those design elements you really need to make it a perfect bento recreation.  

    The side dishes alone take some care and effort to curate. I bought the burdock root salad and pickles, but hand carved the carrot and made the tamagoyaki. I had to pick up the right cut of salmon from my local Japanese grocery store, but if you go to your butcher you can likely get them to cut you a fillet that looks right. The bacon wrapped asparagus is simple to make, and tasty to boot, but I found the overall challenge was that I had TOO MUCH of everything compared to what was needed for a single bento box. I'd recommend choosing sides based on two things: 1) What you love to eat and 2) What you don't mind eating a lot of, because it's impossible to buy anything in small enough amounts so that you only get what you need for the one bento. 

    Luckily, despite those small snafus, I was really happy with my end design. If you want to try this bento recreation out yourself, I'd recommend taking your time and having patience. If you expect to do this right, it takes planning and care. For example, I made or bought the side dishes a few days before, and spent all my time and energy trying to make the face as perfect as possible. It helps to have a design to follow, like I did, and that can serve as a stencil for your food items. 

Watch the video below to see the full process.

      Ingredients and Tools for the Akihiro Bento

  Ingredients:

-White sliced cheese

-Ham

-Nori Sheets

-Rice

-Salmon furikake

-Salmon fillets, grilled

-Burdock Salad

-Pickles

-Carrot

-Tomato

-Asparagus Wrapped Bacon

-Tamagoyaki

-Cooked Egg Pancake

-Lettuce

  Tools:

-Bento Box

-Paper cup liners for foods

-X-Acto Knife

-Tweezers

    To Make the Akihiro Bento

  1. See the video for the full process! It's part planning and part art, so it's hard to describe with written instructions exactly what you need to do. :)

    I hope you enjoyed this post! Check in next week for another recipe, and to check out more anime food recipes, visit my blog. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below! I recently got a Twitter, so you can follow me at @yumpenguinsnack if you would like, and DEFINITELY feel free to send me food requests! My Tumblr is yumpenguinsnacks.tumblr.com. Find me on Youtube for more video tutorials! Enjoy the food, and if you decide to recreate this dish, show me pics! :D

  In case you missed it, check out our last dish: Hot Tub Tamago from Kakuriyo-Bed and Breakfast for Spirits-. What other famous anime dishes would you like to see Emily make on COOKING WITH ANIME?

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[st-chrysanthemum]

Hey.. what’s up? I’m writing to you and not talking to you about this in person bc I haven’t mustered up enough courage to let you in on my deepest darkest secrets. I’m not fully confident with the idea of getting help myself, so I can’t talk to you about it in person quite yet. So here’s a little of my story, what’s been going on, and why I decided to get help. Sorry for the poor writing quality. 

It’s the night before my appointment (2:46 a.m). I’m laying in my bed reading articles of people’s stories and their experience with the disorder. I’m also becoming familiar with the cause and health risks of the disorder. Tears are streaming down my face ever so softly bc even as empty as I feel, I can’t cry... it really is impossible. But I’m laying here and I really feel nothing. Earlier I couldn’t really breathe and I kept telling myself to calm down... that I’ll be okay. I think I was having a little anxiety attack, those have been happening to me a lot recently so I’ve learned how to deal with them more. I saw this GIF on Tumblr that has been helping every time I feel like my chest is concaving.. It’s of this nature scene, the water is swaying back and forth and there’s a mountain in the distance with a pink and blue sky... (it’s further in my feed if you wanna see it) I pretend I’m sitting in this river, in complete silence, listening to the sounds of Nature. I’m completely happy with my life and self. I’m lying in a boat just in complete peace.  I stare at the GIF and play High Hopes by Kodaline and I stare and stare, until I feel ‘okay’ again. 

So as I lay here, I’m fully ready to get help. I’m fully ready to admit to myself that I have an eating disorder. I have Bulimia and it has robbed five years of my life. I have been living a half present life, allowing this to dictate and control everything I do. 

The saddest part about struggling with an Eating Disorder and Depression/Anxiety is the stigma that comes with it. People look at others struggling with this as weak, crazy, or overdramatic. There is nothing to be overdramatic about... trust me you would not wish this upon your worse enemy and you sure as hell would not just choose to live like this. You are literally your own worst enemy, you have no control, you can’t feel and even when you feel it’s weird.. kind of hard to explain I guess? It’s constant pain, even when you are distracted. You put on a front so that other’s don’t see what you’re battling. You really are living a double life. 

I’d say I’ve been able to hide this pretty well.. I mean I’ve slipped a couple of times and people have sort of caught on and realized something was going on but didn’t quite know what. After all, I have scars on my arm. I know everyone has seen them, but no one has been brave or curious enough to ask why.. But even if someone did ask, I’d laugh it off awkwardly and say I was a mess Freshman year of Highschool... I was just a typical teenage girl who thought she was sad and depressed for no reason. But that isn’t way I have scars on my arm.. I have these because of my eating disorder and lack of self-confidence.. it wasn’t over a boy or being stupidly dramatic, it’s because even at the age of 13 I was depressed and struggling with ED but didn’t really know what that meant. I fell into the social misconception of what Depression is, so I, like everyone else just laughed it off and paid little attention to how I was feeling. I regret these scars, I hate myself for allowing social standards to get to me. But all I can do is learn from this. 

Today has been considerably a “bad” day.. I mean it’s not any different from any other days. But I think today I’m just really ready to get help, I’m tired of feeling like I’m living the same exact day over and over again. I swear it feels like I’m stuck in time.

I have my appointment at 12:45.. I feel like I’ve been counting down the days and wishing it was Thursday already bc I’m tired of feeling hopeless. I want my life back.  

I’m ready to get help, but I’m scared to tell those around me. It’s going to be probably my biggest challenge I’ll face in this process. I guess you could say I’m letting my ego get in the way. I want to take this journey on by myself but I know that’s not possible... especially if I want to fully recover, I need the support of everyone around me. 

I never realized that the saying of those have the brightest smiles hide the most pain until I was the one who had the brightest smile. I’ve been helping everyone around me, when in fact I’ve needed to help myself the most.

12/16/17

I’m not scared to tell everyone now. In fact it’s nice to tell people bc it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I fee like telling everyone will keep myself accountable. I’m not looking for sympathy or pity, I’m looking for support, and to help other. I want others to see that it’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to fail and feel weak.. it’s the only way we’ll grow. 

My biggest fear with this is finding how much I messed up my body.. hopefully it won’t be too bad but I won’t know until Monday. 

[peculiardiction]

One of these days I’ll be able to keep Danny-o’s face consistent. Today is not that day!

Hehe roleswap au

[apsbicepstraining]

To the Bone: Is Netflixs New Anorexia Film Dangerous?

Netflix‘s new” anorexia cinema “ To the Bone is being marketed as one of the first mainstream movies about eating disorder patients. The movie’s sun, Lily Collins, told the Irish Examiner ,” There’s never been a feature film about eating disorders before .” It was this lack of representation, combined with Collins’ own strifes with the disease, that she articulates stimulated her to take on the challenging persona. In the film, Collins plays Ellen, a severely underweight anorexic who’s already moved away from or been knocked out of a number of inpatient curricula. In a last-ditch effort to save her life, Ellen’s stepmother communicates her to a new planned led by an unconventional doctor( Keanu Reeves ). There, Ellen bails with her fellow both patients and begins to struggle towards recovery.

This idea that anorexia nervosa and their victims aren’t regularly portrayed is a half-truth. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that those who struggle with, overcome, or fail to survive these disorders dominate a strange space between over-dissection and underexposure.

This idea that anorexia nervosa and their victims aren’t regularly represented is a half-truth. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that those who struggle with, overcome, or fail to survive these ailments fill a strange cavity between over-dissection and underexposure.

There is an abundance of literature and possibility on anorexics; loudness of poetry and pathology dedicated to practices like binging and purging. Still, the amount of ink spilled on the topic doesn’t inevitably correlate to our greater understanding of it. Instead, to make efforts to depict or explicate the anorexia nervosa case has essentially was amended to read as thoughts of a societal minute, offering far more insight into the commentator than the subject. Different historic moment have given delivery to different narratives. In the 1800 s, for example, anorexics were deemed hysterical–a catch-all diagnosis for ill-behaved or sad maidens. Later justifications re-shifted the accuse onto undesirable household dynamics, penalise standards of grace and the patriarchy.

For as long as wives have starved themselves, people have written words and generated artistry to commemorate those starving dames. Tied up in these narrations, woven in with relate, one can often find memoranda of romanticizing or even love. Look no further than some of a very early examples of anorexia nervosa, the sufferers of anorexia mirabilis–the” supernatural shortage of appetite” that was seen in the Middle Ages as a mark of particular passion among women and girls. Some of the qualities ascribed to these saintly sufferers, like self-control, triumph over one’s form, and a special brand of spiritual wise or view, abide prevalent in anorexia nervosa rhetoric to this very day. As Slate’s Katy Waldman writes in her strong paper, ” There Once Was a Girl “,” We’ve long linked pathological thinness to erudition or lyrical sensibility .” Whether it’s an artist who sketches so-called thinspirational art( as Collins’ character Ellen does in the film) or the deep oeuvre of writers drew attention to gaunt, stunning exponents on the verge of self-annihilation, anorexia nervosa and art go hand in hand–often to the disservice of actual sufferers.

That being said, it’s worth sucking a distinction between designs created by strangers and non-fiction illustrations. While eating disorders affect all genders, they’re almost exclusively associated with women. And the bodies of women, especially frail, thin girls, “ve always been” manufactured into artistry, often by intruders with their own plans. Faced with a long record of venerated saints and misdiagnosed hysterics, it follows that people who have actually experienced anorexia nervosa would want to recapture their own narrations. To the Bone columnist/ administrator Marti Noxon based the movie on her working experience with anorexia and bulimia. This sort of representation is more than just a personal obligation; anorexia nervosa are, if not under-discussed, in dire need of more attention: anorexia nervosa currently has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder. If a film could succeed in outlining more attention to a deadly and misunderstood malady, while also provisioning a( comparatively) realistic thought of actual survivors’ experiences, then it stands to reason that that cinema would be a step forward.

But the question of whether To the Bone might do more damage than good have so far been triggered a minor controversy. While most reviewers seem to understand the film’s purport is to offer a realistic entry into the eating disorder canon, some fear that the finished product divulges this exalted aim, and was likely to hurt the peoples of the territories it is attempting to draw. As the New Statesman ‘ s Anna Leszkiewicz wrote,” It must be possible to generate drives that are relatable and honest without resting on the specific imagery that motivates so many illness, or disregarding such large amounts of the media guidelines put in place by experts .” Leszkiewicz insists, as many other critics have, that the film glamorizes anorexia nervosa by showing a beautiful, white, dreadfully thin protagonist, a heroin posh Lily Collins covered in loose textiles and movie star sunnies.

There’s also the accusation that To the Bone operates not just as thinspo but as a veritable how-to guide to eating disorders, in spite of the fact that experts have cautioned the media against shows that disclose gatherings to ailment dining dress or proficiencies. But while To the Bone could very well offer eating disorder cases with new manoeuvres or aspirational ammunition, Kristina Saffran, a co-founder of Project Heal, an organization that helps eating disorder sufferers pay for medicine, has offered a counter-perspective.” Initiation are everywhere in eating disorder convalescence ,” Saffran told The Washington Post .” In numerous access, it would have been impossible to make any kind of film that didn &# x27; t have the potential to provoke somebody who is struggling .” In persons under the age of Tumblr thinspo and fitness Instagram, to name exactly a few potentially pernicious angles of the endless internet, the eating disorder “tricks” put forward in To the Bone are already out there. Still, it establishes perfect feel to admonish eating disorder sufferers or survivors to approach To the Bone with carefulnes( and including medicine resources with every brook isn’t a bad notion either ).

To the Bone ‘ s picture of a stereotypically beautiful, depriving booster is certainly problematic. As many pundits have pointed out, Collins’ Ellen perpetuates the belief that all eating disorder sufferers are thin and frail, and that this near-death position of starvation is the mark of a absolutely ill person. This simply isn’t the event, and it threatens to erase its own experience of people who don’t look like Ellen, sufferers who are often taken less seriously since they are skirt the stereotype. But the creators of To the Bone seem to understand that anorexia nervosa affect different types of beings, irrespective of gender, load, or ethnicity. If anything, it seems that To the Bone is suffering from a tension between its ideological the intentions and Hollywood beliefs. Like so many other films, To the Bone briefly boasts under-represented characters–like a male anorexic and a woman of colouring who binge-eats–but ultimately cores around an attractive grey exponent. Ellen is a beautiful, charismatic persona, because those are the characters who get to starring in big movies. There’s a fragile balancing routine between throwing the kind of actress managers trust to carry a cinema, and creating a protagonist whose irrepressible knockout doesn’t glamorize the oft-romanticized illness she’s suffering from.

One way that To the Bone arguably redeems its decision to core the undeniably cool Ellen is by creating a meta-commentary all over the aesthetics the movie has been accused of coping in. Ellen, an artist who is famous for the thinspo sketches she used to publish on Tumblr, bargains in these esthetics. Thinspo is her busines, both in her life and her art–she’s the badass cynic who garments like an Olsen twin and dignities herself on being cool than her inpatient companions. She is, we come to learn, something of a fame among fellow sufferers. But Ellen’s real life–messy, brutal, ugly, agonizing and dreadfully mundane–is nothing like her delicate Tumblr-ready sketches. Ellen’s aesthetic is only an armor she wears to stop people from getting close to her, and not a very effective one. Despite functioning as an idol for so many other sufferers, Ellen swiftly reveals herself to be both profoundly sick and confused.

Ellen’s reality, including her medication and eventual recuperation, is anything but glamorous. Perhaps the real aim in throwing Collins was to make a movie about an unwatchable subject matter watchable. With the aid of its charismatic supporter, To the Bone can represent something that look just like reality, with all the messiness that implies, and doesn’t “re going to have to” surrender to a knot of easy-going stereotypes or tropes. The talented, agitated, beautiful Ellen is exactly the kind of anorexia nervosa sufferer beings like to tell fibs about, and everyone–from her mother to her healer to her potential cherish interest–tries to come up with either an explanation for her illness or a rationale she should eat. Up until the very end, Ellen refuses to lieu accuse or chalk her anorexia nervosa up to a single crusade, be it her fucked-up clas or a emcee of societal afflictions. If there is one thing the eating disorder dialogue scarcities, To the Bone quarrels, it’s the voices of the endlessly glamorize and elegized mass at the centre of the questions.

The story of Ellen won’t be everyone’s narrative, but it is still effectively wielded to shed a harsh light on the way we seek to ascribe meaning to the illnesses of others, favoring easy reasons over the anguish of loving someone whose agitation cannot be understood or inspired away.

The post To the Bone: Is Netflixs New Anorexia Film Dangerous? appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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[apsbicepstraining]

To the Bone: Is Netflixs New Anorexia Film Dangerous?

Netflix‘s new” anorexia cinema “ To the Bone is being marketed as one of the first mainstream movies about eating disorder patients. The movie’s sun, Lily Collins, told the Irish Examiner ,” There’s never been a feature film about eating disorders before .” It was this lack of representation, combined with Collins’ own strifes with the disease, that she articulates stimulated her to take on the challenging persona. In the film, Collins plays Ellen, a severely underweight anorexic who’s already moved away from or been knocked out of a number of inpatient curricula. In a last-ditch effort to save her life, Ellen’s stepmother communicates her to a new planned led by an unconventional doctor( Keanu Reeves ). There, Ellen bails with her fellow both patients and begins to struggle towards recovery.

This idea that anorexia nervosa and their victims aren’t regularly portrayed is a half-truth. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that those who struggle with, overcome, or fail to survive these disorders dominate a strange space between over-dissection and underexposure.

This idea that anorexia nervosa and their victims aren’t regularly represented is a half-truth. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that those who struggle with, overcome, or fail to survive these ailments fill a strange cavity between over-dissection and underexposure.

There is an abundance of literature and possibility on anorexics; loudness of poetry and pathology dedicated to practices like binging and purging. Still, the amount of ink spilled on the topic doesn’t inevitably correlate to our greater understanding of it. Instead, to make efforts to depict or explicate the anorexia nervosa case has essentially was amended to read as thoughts of a societal minute, offering far more insight into the commentator than the subject. Different historic moment have given delivery to different narratives. In the 1800 s, for example, anorexics were deemed hysterical–a catch-all diagnosis for ill-behaved or sad maidens. Later justifications re-shifted the accuse onto undesirable household dynamics, penalise standards of grace and the patriarchy.

For as long as wives have starved themselves, people have written words and generated artistry to commemorate those starving dames. Tied up in these narrations, woven in with relate, one can often find memoranda of romanticizing or even love. Look no further than some of a very early examples of anorexia nervosa, the sufferers of anorexia mirabilis–the” supernatural shortage of appetite” that was seen in the Middle Ages as a mark of particular passion among women and girls. Some of the qualities ascribed to these saintly sufferers, like self-control, triumph over one’s form, and a special brand of spiritual wise or view, abide prevalent in anorexia nervosa rhetoric to this very day. As Slate’s Katy Waldman writes in her strong paper, ” There Once Was a Girl “,” We’ve long linked pathological thinness to erudition or lyrical sensibility .” Whether it’s an artist who sketches so-called thinspirational art( as Collins’ character Ellen does in the film) or the deep oeuvre of writers drew attention to gaunt, stunning exponents on the verge of self-annihilation, anorexia nervosa and art go hand in hand–often to the disservice of actual sufferers.

That being said, it’s worth sucking a distinction between designs created by strangers and non-fiction illustrations. While eating disorders affect all genders, they’re almost exclusively associated with women. And the bodies of women, especially frail, thin girls, “ve always been” manufactured into artistry, often by intruders with their own plans. Faced with a long record of venerated saints and misdiagnosed hysterics, it follows that people who have actually experienced anorexia nervosa would want to recapture their own narrations. To the Bone columnist/ administrator Marti Noxon based the movie on her working experience with anorexia and bulimia. This sort of representation is more than just a personal obligation; anorexia nervosa are, if not under-discussed, in dire need of more attention: anorexia nervosa currently has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder. If a film could succeed in outlining more attention to a deadly and misunderstood malady, while also provisioning a( comparatively) realistic thought of actual survivors’ experiences, then it stands to reason that that cinema would be a step forward.

But the question of whether To the Bone might do more damage than good have so far been triggered a minor controversy. While most reviewers seem to understand the film’s purport is to offer a realistic entry into the eating disorder canon, some fear that the finished product divulges this exalted aim, and was likely to hurt the peoples of the territories it is attempting to draw. As the New Statesman ‘ s Anna Leszkiewicz wrote,” It must be possible to generate drives that are relatable and honest without resting on the specific imagery that motivates so many illness, or disregarding such large amounts of the media guidelines put in place by experts .” Leszkiewicz insists, as many other critics have, that the film glamorizes anorexia nervosa by showing a beautiful, white, dreadfully thin protagonist, a heroin posh Lily Collins covered in loose textiles and movie star sunnies.

There’s also the accusation that To the Bone operates not just as thinspo but as a veritable how-to guide to eating disorders, in spite of the fact that experts have cautioned the media against shows that disclose gatherings to ailment dining dress or proficiencies. But while To the Bone could very well offer eating disorder cases with new manoeuvres or aspirational ammunition, Kristina Saffran, a co-founder of Project Heal, an organization that helps eating disorder sufferers pay for medicine, has offered a counter-perspective.” Initiation are everywhere in eating disorder convalescence ,” Saffran told The Washington Post .” In numerous access, it would have been impossible to make any kind of film that didn &# x27; t have the potential to provoke somebody who is struggling .” In persons under the age of Tumblr thinspo and fitness Instagram, to name exactly a few potentially pernicious angles of the endless internet, the eating disorder “tricks” put forward in To the Bone are already out there. Still, it establishes perfect feel to admonish eating disorder sufferers or survivors to approach To the Bone with carefulnes( and including medicine resources with every brook isn’t a bad notion either ).

To the Bone ‘ s picture of a stereotypically beautiful, depriving booster is certainly problematic. As many pundits have pointed out, Collins’ Ellen perpetuates the belief that all eating disorder sufferers are thin and frail, and that this near-death position of starvation is the mark of a absolutely ill person. This simply isn’t the event, and it threatens to erase its own experience of people who don’t look like Ellen, sufferers who are often taken less seriously since they are skirt the stereotype. But the creators of To the Bone seem to understand that anorexia nervosa affect different types of beings, irrespective of gender, load, or ethnicity. If anything, it seems that To the Bone is suffering from a tension between its ideological the intentions and Hollywood beliefs. Like so many other films, To the Bone briefly boasts under-represented characters–like a male anorexic and a woman of colouring who binge-eats–but ultimately cores around an attractive grey exponent. Ellen is a beautiful, charismatic persona, because those are the characters who get to starring in big movies. There’s a fragile balancing routine between throwing the kind of actress managers trust to carry a cinema, and creating a protagonist whose irrepressible knockout doesn’t glamorize the oft-romanticized illness she’s suffering from.

One way that To the Bone arguably redeems its decision to core the undeniably cool Ellen is by creating a meta-commentary all over the aesthetics the movie has been accused of coping in. Ellen, an artist who is famous for the thinspo sketches she used to publish on Tumblr, bargains in these esthetics. Thinspo is her busines, both in her life and her art–she’s the badass cynic who garments like an Olsen twin and dignities herself on being cool than her inpatient companions. She is, we come to learn, something of a fame among fellow sufferers. But Ellen’s real life–messy, brutal, ugly, agonizing and dreadfully mundane–is nothing like her delicate Tumblr-ready sketches. Ellen’s aesthetic is only an armor she wears to stop people from getting close to her, and not a very effective one. Despite functioning as an idol for so many other sufferers, Ellen swiftly reveals herself to be both profoundly sick and confused.

Ellen’s reality, including her medication and eventual recuperation, is anything but glamorous. Perhaps the real aim in throwing Collins was to make a movie about an unwatchable subject matter watchable. With the aid of its charismatic supporter, To the Bone can represent something that look just like reality, with all the messiness that implies, and doesn’t “re going to have to” surrender to a knot of easy-going stereotypes or tropes. The talented, agitated, beautiful Ellen is exactly the kind of anorexia nervosa sufferer beings like to tell fibs about, and everyone–from her mother to her healer to her potential cherish interest–tries to come up with either an explanation for her illness or a rationale she should eat. Up until the very end, Ellen refuses to lieu accuse or chalk her anorexia nervosa up to a single crusade, be it her fucked-up clas or a emcee of societal afflictions. If there is one thing the eating disorder dialogue scarcities, To the Bone quarrels, it’s the voices of the endlessly glamorize and elegized mass at the centre of the questions.

The story of Ellen won’t be everyone’s narrative, but it is still effectively wielded to shed a harsh light on the way we seek to ascribe meaning to the illnesses of others, favoring easy reasons over the anguish of loving someone whose agitation cannot be understood or inspired away.

The post To the Bone: Is Netflixs New Anorexia Film Dangerous? appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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To the Bone: Is Netflixs New Anorexia Film Dangerous?

Netflix‘s new” anorexia cinema “ To the Bone is being marketed as one of the first mainstream movies about eating disorder patients. The movie’s sun, Lily Collins, told the Irish Examiner ,” There’s never been a feature film about eating disorders before .” It was this lack of representation, combined with Collins’ own strifes with the disease, that she articulates stimulated her to take on the challenging persona. In the film, Collins plays Ellen, a severely underweight anorexic who’s already moved away from or been knocked out of a number of inpatient curricula. In a last-ditch effort to save her life, Ellen’s stepmother communicates her to a new planned led by an unconventional doctor( Keanu Reeves ). There, Ellen bails with her fellow both patients and begins to struggle towards recovery.

This idea that anorexia nervosa and their victims aren’t regularly portrayed is a half-truth. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that those who struggle with, overcome, or fail to survive these disorders dominate a strange space between over-dissection and underexposure.

This idea that anorexia nervosa and their victims aren’t regularly represented is a half-truth. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that those who struggle with, overcome, or fail to survive these ailments fill a strange cavity between over-dissection and underexposure.

There is an abundance of literature and possibility on anorexics; loudness of poetry and pathology dedicated to practices like binging and purging. Still, the amount of ink spilled on the topic doesn’t inevitably correlate to our greater understanding of it. Instead, to make efforts to depict or explicate the anorexia nervosa case has essentially was amended to read as thoughts of a societal minute, offering far more insight into the commentator than the subject. Different historic moment have given delivery to different narratives. In the 1800 s, for example, anorexics were deemed hysterical–a catch-all diagnosis for ill-behaved or sad maidens. Later justifications re-shifted the accuse onto undesirable household dynamics, penalise standards of grace and the patriarchy.

For as long as wives have starved themselves, people have written words and generated artistry to commemorate those starving dames. Tied up in these narrations, woven in with relate, one can often find memoranda of romanticizing or even love. Look no further than some of a very early examples of anorexia nervosa, the sufferers of anorexia mirabilis–the” supernatural shortage of appetite” that was seen in the Middle Ages as a mark of particular passion among women and girls. Some of the qualities ascribed to these saintly sufferers, like self-control, triumph over one’s form, and a special brand of spiritual wise or view, abide prevalent in anorexia nervosa rhetoric to this very day. As Slate’s Katy Waldman writes in her strong paper, ” There Once Was a Girl “,” We’ve long linked pathological thinness to erudition or lyrical sensibility .” Whether it’s an artist who sketches so-called thinspirational art( as Collins’ character Ellen does in the film) or the deep oeuvre of writers drew attention to gaunt, stunning exponents on the verge of self-annihilation, anorexia nervosa and art go hand in hand–often to the disservice of actual sufferers.

That being said, it’s worth sucking a distinction between designs created by strangers and non-fiction illustrations. While eating disorders affect all genders, they’re almost exclusively associated with women. And the bodies of women, especially frail, thin girls, “ve always been” manufactured into artistry, often by intruders with their own plans. Faced with a long record of venerated saints and misdiagnosed hysterics, it follows that people who have actually experienced anorexia nervosa would want to recapture their own narrations. To the Bone columnist/ administrator Marti Noxon based the movie on her working experience with anorexia and bulimia. This sort of representation is more than just a personal obligation; anorexia nervosa are, if not under-discussed, in dire need of more attention: anorexia nervosa currently has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder. If a film could succeed in outlining more attention to a deadly and misunderstood malady, while also provisioning a( comparatively) realistic thought of actual survivors’ experiences, then it stands to reason that that cinema would be a step forward.

But the question of whether To the Bone might do more damage than good have so far been triggered a minor controversy. While most reviewers seem to understand the film’s purport is to offer a realistic entry into the eating disorder canon, some fear that the finished product divulges this exalted aim, and was likely to hurt the peoples of the territories it is attempting to draw. As the New Statesman ‘ s Anna Leszkiewicz wrote,” It must be possible to generate drives that are relatable and honest without resting on the specific imagery that motivates so many illness, or disregarding such large amounts of the media guidelines put in place by experts .” Leszkiewicz insists, as many other critics have, that the film glamorizes anorexia nervosa by showing a beautiful, white, dreadfully thin protagonist, a heroin posh Lily Collins covered in loose textiles and movie star sunnies.

There’s also the accusation that To the Bone operates not just as thinspo but as a veritable how-to guide to eating disorders, in spite of the fact that experts have cautioned the media against shows that disclose gatherings to ailment dining dress or proficiencies. But while To the Bone could very well offer eating disorder cases with new manoeuvres or aspirational ammunition, Kristina Saffran, a co-founder of Project Heal, an organization that helps eating disorder sufferers pay for medicine, has offered a counter-perspective.” Initiation are everywhere in eating disorder convalescence ,” Saffran told The Washington Post .” In numerous access, it would have been impossible to make any kind of film that didn &# x27; t have the potential to provoke somebody who is struggling .” In persons under the age of Tumblr thinspo and fitness Instagram, to name exactly a few potentially pernicious angles of the endless internet, the eating disorder “tricks” put forward in To the Bone are already out there. Still, it establishes perfect feel to admonish eating disorder sufferers or survivors to approach To the Bone with carefulnes( and including medicine resources with every brook isn’t a bad notion either ).

To the Bone ‘ s picture of a stereotypically beautiful, depriving booster is certainly problematic. As many pundits have pointed out, Collins’ Ellen perpetuates the belief that all eating disorder sufferers are thin and frail, and that this near-death position of starvation is the mark of a absolutely ill person. This simply isn’t the event, and it threatens to erase its own experience of people who don’t look like Ellen, sufferers who are often taken less seriously since they are skirt the stereotype. But the creators of To the Bone seem to understand that anorexia nervosa affect different types of beings, irrespective of gender, load, or ethnicity. If anything, it seems that To the Bone is suffering from a tension between its ideological the intentions and Hollywood beliefs. Like so many other films, To the Bone briefly boasts under-represented characters–like a male anorexic and a woman of colouring who binge-eats–but ultimately cores around an attractive grey exponent. Ellen is a beautiful, charismatic persona, because those are the characters who get to starring in big movies. There’s a fragile balancing routine between throwing the kind of actress managers trust to carry a cinema, and creating a protagonist whose irrepressible knockout doesn’t glamorize the oft-romanticized illness she’s suffering from.

One way that To the Bone arguably redeems its decision to core the undeniably cool Ellen is by creating a meta-commentary all over the aesthetics the movie has been accused of coping in. Ellen, an artist who is famous for the thinspo sketches she used to publish on Tumblr, bargains in these esthetics. Thinspo is her busines, both in her life and her art–she’s the badass cynic who garments like an Olsen twin and dignities herself on being cool than her inpatient companions. She is, we come to learn, something of a fame among fellow sufferers. But Ellen’s real life–messy, brutal, ugly, agonizing and dreadfully mundane–is nothing like her delicate Tumblr-ready sketches. Ellen’s aesthetic is only an armor she wears to stop people from getting close to her, and not a very effective one. Despite functioning as an idol for so many other sufferers, Ellen swiftly reveals herself to be both profoundly sick and confused.

Ellen’s reality, including her medication and eventual recuperation, is anything but glamorous. Perhaps the real aim in throwing Collins was to make a movie about an unwatchable subject matter watchable. With the aid of its charismatic supporter, To the Bone can represent something that look just like reality, with all the messiness that implies, and doesn’t “re going to have to” surrender to a knot of easy-going stereotypes or tropes. The talented, agitated, beautiful Ellen is exactly the kind of anorexia nervosa sufferer beings like to tell fibs about, and everyone–from her mother to her healer to her potential cherish interest–tries to come up with either an explanation for her illness or a rationale she should eat. Up until the very end, Ellen refuses to lieu accuse or chalk her anorexia nervosa up to a single crusade, be it her fucked-up clas or a emcee of societal afflictions. If there is one thing the eating disorder dialogue scarcities, To the Bone quarrels, it’s the voices of the endlessly glamorize and elegized mass at the centre of the questions.

The story of Ellen won’t be everyone’s narrative, but it is still effectively wielded to shed a harsh light on the way we seek to ascribe meaning to the illnesses of others, favoring easy reasons over the anguish of loving someone whose agitation cannot be understood or inspired away.

The post To the Bone: Is Netflixs New Anorexia Film Dangerous? appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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