#what was the social / cultural shift that made mixed couples become a thing

[solardrink]

The fact that mixed people really only commonly exist in the modern world and rarely in the past

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Review: Takeout Sushi by Christopher Green

I rarely read short story collections because I find them so hard to review as books. Obviously I'm going to like some of the stories more than others and therefore, the whole thing becomes a bit of a balancing act. However, this one stood out to me as something I'd enjoy because most of them are set in Japan and comment on Japanese culture, which is really interesting to me. Thank you to The WriteReads for allowing me to join the blog tour for it!

Takeout Sushi features 17 short stories each with a matching illustration. The stories focus on social interactions, corporate life, displacement, loneliness and more.

Each of the stories are prefaced by a simple line illustration by Rebecca Purton. They give a flavour of what's to come and I would have loved to have seen them in colour for that extra bit of life in the stories.

The opening story Swallows has a melancholic tone as it sees a couple who want different things in life. Matsu has always done the things that Tsune wants to do, so while she is full of wonder about certain things like the swallow nest in their building, he is bored by it. Although the ending is sad, there is an inevitability there.

Moving on to Burned, which is a funny story with a clumsy narrator. It's an honest, unromantic look at long term relationships in an amusing voice.

Spinning Wheels is a dark cynical satirical view of corporate life and how dangerous technology can be. It's a narrative where robots take over and how that could potentially play out. It's about being undervalued at work and how big companies value profit and efficiency over people and experiences.

The Choice is a strange story with a funny ending. It's about making choices and how sometimes choices are made for us. It is perhaps the most philosophical in the collection but still uses the dry style of the rest of the collection.

Swirl is a sad yet triumphant story of a widow who discovers that her late husband had another life as a poet, when he posthumously wins a haiku competition. There are mixed feelings of grief, anger and victory against him at the end as she is annoyed that he kept it from her and appears to have been inspired by a past that doesn't include her.

Like Burned, Crimes For Dummies is centred on an idiotic character. It has a very abrupt ending and that was really jarring.

Bodies is a story of introversion and a character finding their feet as an immigrant. There is a really lovely, satisfying, happy ending.

Magpie Man is a story of redemption and realising you were wrong. Much like the previous narrative, it's about feeling out of place in a foreign country.

In Apartment 601, there is a strange, unsettling vibe that has an unexpected dull ending. I really wanted some more darkness from this one because it had the potential!

The Tree is a story of neighbours and the effects of unemployment. It's a small contained story that perhaps has much more going on internally than what we see on the page.

Misdirection sees a classic anxiety dream come true, when the narrator meets a stranger who he previously gave wrong directions to. I definitely felt that anxiety in the writing and that character could have become really relatable, had I spent more time with them.

Plastic Irises explores feelings of loneliness and the disrupting of social norms within a big city, as the narrator is thrown out of a cafe for talking to strangers. It's also about transitioning between life stages, as the narrator has recently entered retirement.

The Jogger is a funny story about giving in to temptation, as the narrator steals a stranger's luxury car and goes for a joyride. The anxiety builds and then it gently puts you back down with a 'd'oh!'.

The collection then shifts to a group of stories set in other places and times than contemporary Japan. I'm not sure these stories really belong in this collection and would have perhaps been more appreciated in another book entirely.

Venus is about a painting that has been hidden from public view for decades and is finally unveiled. The story has a really poignant, sweet reveal at the end.

Henry Sparkles is a moving story set during World War One, following the relationship between a young artist and a sparrowhawk that he raises. I could feel the sorrow and fear that war brings as well as how it lingers but Barney the sparrowhawk felt like a symbol of hope.

The Pool is a strange tale of grief and obsession, told by a haunted soul.

Anything But Nice sees a woman with an odd obsession with a particular model of Citroen due to a man who ghosted her years before. She ends up letting go of her attachment to both the car and him.

Takeout Sushi is simply written and Green's style is very matter-of-fact. There isn't much in the way of description but as these little slice of life snapshots are so character focused, I'm not sure it matters so much. I don't think short stories as a format are really for me because I always end up wanting more but I did enjoy some of these stories a lot, so I'd recommend it if you like short stories.

Takeout Sushi by Christopher Green will be published by Neem Tree Press on 2nd May 2024.

[not-xpr-art]

Art Deep Dives #1 - The Value of Art ~

Hi everyone!

This is the start to another project I want to start on this account, a companion to my Art Advice tag, and each week or so I’ll be ‘deep diving’ into art history, arts & culture, society’s relationship to art, etc etc... (I basically want to make use of my history of art degree, and also because I genuinely love talking about this stuff... especially without the pressure of deadlines lol)

Side note: don’t worry about these being really ‘academic’ or ‘formal’, since neither of those things are in my vocabulary lol... this is a very casual, informal kind of ‘essay’ writing that I want to be accessible to everyone, regardless of how much you know about art! 

This first one is a kind of follow up of my Art Advice post talking about references, and I’ll be talking about the ideas of how we ‘value’ art.

(this is about 1600 words long by the way...)

The Value of Art

It’s no secret that art is highly subjective. Particularly when it comes to the question of ‘what is the most important type of art?’. It changes from person to person, country to country, and era to era. How we define ‘great art’ now is vastly different to how we defined it several hundred years ago. I mean, just look at the kinds of art in galleries in the modern era (Tracey Emin’s bed comes to mind) versus that of the 18th century (with the likes of Joshua Reynolds, JMW Turner and Thomas Gainsborough). Really, it’s clear to see that what we see as ‘the most important type of art’ is forever changing...

Or... is it?

In order to really answer whether the kinds of art we value now versus that of the past has changed, we need to first establish what ‘valued art’ even means. 

I think in today’s day and age, ‘value’ is often synonymous with ‘price’. So, a Banksy original chipped away from it’s original wall setting and having been sold at a Christies auction for £3.2million is, by this definition, what we as a society ‘value’ as art... Right? Or maybe ‘value’ is more to do with what kinds of works that are displayed in big galleries or public spaces? The Tate has an entire wing dedicated to the works of landscape/seascape painter JMW Turner, so surely that means that we today place a high ‘value’ on his work still? What about public sculpture? Architecture? Sculpture and architecture are often a lot more available for the general public, and even if most people wouldn’t be able to tell you who made the Statue of Liberty, they at least know about her and perhaps even enjoy to look at her? And surely the fame of buildings like the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal mean that they, too, are ‘valued’ as pieces of art? And what of artworks from other countries and cultures? A Chinese man may find no ‘value’ in a painting by a so-called ‘Great Master’ of the Italian Renaissance, but instead will ‘value’ a piece of Imperial Ming Dynasty porcelain instead, does that mean his opinion is the ‘right’ one? Colonialism has played heavily into what arts are now called ‘valuable’ and what are not, so how do we quantify whether a work has ‘value’ without placing our own individual cultural bias on it?

Basically what I’m getting at is, what we value as art in this day and age is very complicated, in a big way because our society is complicated. But for the sake of arguments, and for my next few points, I will be defining an art’s ‘value’ predominantly by whether it has been featured in a big gallery... Which also means I’ll be focusing on painting and sculpture... And also focusing on the Western world of art, specifically Europe, which I want to clarify doesn’t mean I personally ‘value’ that art more, it’s just where I’m from and predominantly what I studied in my course... 

Art historians often declare the Renaissance (around the 14th to 16th centuries) the ‘beginning’ of what we know as art today. But for this essay, I want to instead start a little before this, in the Early Medieval period. People often know of this era as ‘the dark ages’, in Europe at least, because it was after Rome had fallen and taken all their so-called ‘genius’ with them. A particular note for why for years we’ve seen this period as ‘regressive’ is through their art. A quick Google search of ‘Medieval baby’ will come up with a plethora of results for a wide range of paintings depicting babies (usually the baby Christ) as scaled down versions of adults, complete with receding hairlines and strangely buff arms and chests. 

Now, is this because medieval babies actually looked like this? I think this is... highly unlikely... I know most things happened earlier in that era than nowadays (girls getting married and pregnant at age 14, for example), but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to think their babies had six packs... No, instead it’s more likely that rather than being direct representations of babies, these were purely symbolic. And particularly given how they often were of Christ, art historians often say that the weird adult-baby hybrids are to represent Christ’s divinity. 

Now... What’s all this got to do with art and value? Well, the thing about early medieval art is that the value was almost entirely placed upon the symbology and meaning of a piece. Later in the medieval period, paintings began to become more ‘realistic’ to some extent, but it still for the most part stayed true to this idea of symbolism over representation. 

That is, until we get to the Renaissance and all of that gets thrown out of the window because artists want to be able to paint babies that actually look like babies, thank you very much! And with the likes of Leonardo da Vinci championing for art to become a science, surely this means that the kinds of art that was valued in this era were highly accurate portraits or landscapes... Right?

Short answer? No. 

Long answer? Well, portraits and landscapes had their place in the hierarchies of art. Portraits were often commissioned by wealthy patrons, and were basically ways of the artist showing off how good their portrait skills are. And landscapes were less important, more seen as ‘nice backgrounds’ than anything else. But the art that was highly valued by most wealthy patrons and art connoisseurs of the time was... (imagine a drum roll here please) 

History painting! These are basically big biblical or mythological scenes, often with a lot of figures doing a variety of things (think Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel), often with some pretty landscape as the backdrop, and often featuring a couple of portraits in the mix (including one of the patron who commissioned it, probably being blessed by the Virgin Mary, and a cheeky one of the artist peeking out from behind a bush or something...). From the Renaissance era up until basically the mid 19th century, History paintings were seen as the most important works of art to be featured in galleries. 

And really, things only really began to change when we reached the end of the 19th century, with the development of photography. 

Photography, and film, both lead to a massive shift in not only the kinds of art that are produced in the 20th century, but also the kinds of art that are valued. For so long art had been the main form of representation of society, and the advent of photographs meant that art had almost lost that ‘purpose’. Not to mention the leading towards a more secular society which no longer had a need for symbolic or spiritual artworks. 

So, the only place art could really go was to become a form of expression instead. The likes of artists like Picasso and Braque pioneering cubism, being about new ways of representing the world. The Surrealists delving into ideas of the subconscious. Pop-Artists like Warhol looking into media and consumerist society, and the list goes on... 

Which brings us onto my most hated period in the history of art: Conceptual art. 

I’m not going to go big into this period, which is still around today (unfortunately), but all you need to know is this twat Marcel Duchamp flipped a urinal (which he didn’t even make himself) upside down and called it a ‘fountain’ and shoved it into a gallery and thus art that has no value beyond it being ‘concept based’ was born. And yes, yes I hate it a lot (I’m not even trying to be objective about this, I hate conceptual art with a burning passion... some guy put some sh*t in a box and put it in a gallery & called it art and I am SO mad about it lol...). And as much as I hate this period, what it does signify is how art began to be valued not through the craftsmanship of the work itself, but instead the ideas. 

And this idea remains today. Damien Hirst has forged his entire art identity on creating works that are based entirely on some ‘meaning’ that could be forced onto it, rather than the aesthetic or material value. And as mentioned before, Tracey Emin’s infamous bed isn’t about the work and effort gone into the piece itself, but instead about what the artists intends for the piece to ‘mean’. So, the ‘value’ of the work is what it says, and not what it is, essentially. 

(This is not to say that there are no artists who work today that get featured in galleries and are highly skilled at their craft. The one that springs to mind is Grayson Perry, who’s well known for his pottery and tapestries with some kind of social commentary bled into them.)

This ideology around art also bleeds into online spaces of art (which I see as distinctly separate from the world of art galleries and the Turner prize). I still see artists, and non-artists, talking about how much they enjoy work that is ‘original’, and oftentimes ridiculing and demoting ‘fanart’ as purely ‘derivative’ or ‘unoriginal’. 

And all this brings us back to history paintings. Because their ‘value’ wasn’t just in the immense amount of skill that went into them. A large part of their ‘value’ was that artists and non-artists alike saw them as feats of the artist’s ‘genius’ or ‘imagination’ at play. And in the same way that Early Medieval art was valued for the symbology of the piece rather than the representation, history paintings had the benefit of including both elements. In essence, they were both meaningful AND beautiful. 

In conclusion (just to remind you that this is technically an essay lol), a lot about art HAS definitely changed in the last few hundred years, particularly in what kinds of art is getting made now (and why we make art in the first place). However, what we as a collective society ‘value’ as art has remained surprisingly the same, often with a heavy preference for a work’s meaning and symbology, which can sometimes overshadow the craftsmanship of the work itself. 

I still hate that godforsaken Duchamp toilet though...

(images used:

unknown medieval painting (I just liked that he had his hand down mary’s dress lool)

mona lisa by da vinky 

detail of the creation of adam on the sistine chapel by michelangelo

a photograph by louis daguerre, often known as the father of photography

*clenches fist* ‘fountain’ by marcel duchamp

‘my bed’ by tracey emin )

I hope you enjoyed this informal essay about art, I will definitely be doing more of these in the future! If you have any thoughts on this, feel free to reply to this or message me, etc! I love having open and frank conversations about art! 

[saoirsetm]

hey y’all ! i’m kat and we’re FINALLY opening ?!? i’m so hyped, you don’t even know. i’m a double leo Trying to survive video lectures in a noisy house who loves dark chocolate and 80% of the kpop releases so far this year ( stream feel good by fromis_9, it’s such a cute bop ! ) i’m also a cat mom to my almost fourteen year old babies who are still like energetic kittens, so ask for pics and you shall receive DSLKGJ but without further ado, here’s my girl who’s gonna prove that hindsight is INDEED 20/20, so this is gonna be fun:

✧ ˖ * ° ><> ╱  abigail cowen,  cis female,  she/her  —  look  who’s  fresh  from  the  ferry,  aren’t  you  SAOIRSE LEARY  ?  your  eroda  brochure  says  you’re  TWENTY-THREE  and  that  you’re  currently  residing  in  MARMOTON  .  your  favourite  tourist  attraction  to  hang  around  is  ERODIAN BEACH  ,  and  the  locals  around  these  ports  would  describe  you  as  INQUISITIVE  &  INTREPID,  STUBBORN  &  IMPULSIVE  .  your  resting  fish  face  really  gives  off  LONG HAIR BLOWN BACK BY THE OCEAN BREEZE, LATE NIGHTS SPENT PLOTTING THE NEXT GREAT VOYAGE, RED LIPSTICK IMPRINTED ON A MUG OF TEA  ,  and  i’m  a  big  fan  of  the  VINTAGE CELTIC KNOT NECKLACE  you  seem  to  always  be  attached  to.  well,  if  you  see  the  minister  this  morning;  make  sure  you  head  on  home  as  quick  as  possible,  you  never  know  what  bad  luck  he  could  bring.  ╱  ooc;  kat,  23,  she/her,  ast.

tw: needles ( tattoo mention ), cancer mention, death mention

miss saoirse...... oof

GDFLSJL where do i begin with her honestly ??

full name is saoirse eve leary, affectionately called cece by her family since she was young and runs with it as her nickname !

born and raised in cork, ireland with two siblings, a working class father and Slightly upper middle class mother

her childhood wasn’t like, Majorly eventful; she was considered a bit of a tomboy which isn’t a surprise bc she’s always been a bit of a spirited, adventurous girl, has the odd nomadic moment strike her and loves to travel

had a SUPER close relationship with her maternal grandmother before she passed a few years back, still has a close one with her grandfather and paternal grandmother as they’re still living

is a big family girl overall, so much so that she’s eagerly awaiting the day she gets to be the cool aunt

had a decent cluster of pals over the years that’s likely dwindled due to everyone going their separate ways after high school

saoirse Did go to uni between her travels — and graduated — and has aspirations of becoming an anthropologist to explore other cultures and meet new people/understand them

which.. obviously ain’t happening now LFSGJGF rip

came to eroda partially bc it seems like such a pretty and quaint place, partially to explore its “ myth ” that you can never leave; her naturally curious ass questions the whole thing, at least in the sense that there’s no way to challenge your supposed fate on the island and won’t deny entertaining some conspiracy theories around the mystery

she still doesn’t understand that.. yeah, she Literally is stuck here for the rest of her life now, probably because she hasn’t made a Real attempt to put that to the test, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it FDSLKJDS

anyways she came here solo ( more than likely ) and has enjoyed her time getting to know the locals and other visitors, taking in the scenery, etc

probably took up a part-time job at sally’s tavern to cover her expenses since she lives in marmoton and it ought to be close enough for her to get to gfjlsdg

personality and everything else

a sociable, ( relatively ) fearless ginger with an eclectic taste in music and a profound appreciation for pastries.. 

despite being all about cleaner eating habits and lowering her sugar intake, she takes a cheat day or week wherever she can LSDGFJK

parties, game nights, etc, you name it ?? she’s there !

kinda competitive while we’re bringing up games and such, but she’s not about the whole sore winner/loser thing — rather she’ll groan and sulk a little before moving on

like i said before, loves to travel, loves pretty places in general so prepare yourself for an abundance of pictures on her insta feed of where she’s been or where she wants to go

loyal as hell, but she has her limit if you misuse the trust that comes with it

she’s just v wholesome and has a mix of small town city/endlessly curious energy with a sprinkle of being the life of the party……. kinda

however, she’s the most ?? hard to place person all the same

that feeling of freedom that comes with her exploring and all makes her a little hard to tie down; she doesn’t plan on staying in eroda ( which is unfortunate for her considering.... fglsdk ) as she has more to accomplish and see

very much does her own thing and doesn’t wanna hear any criticism for it

as if she’s that out of line DLJGDSLK but still

always wants to try new things, no matter how dumb they might be; except for anything that’s a Legitimate death sentence or is.. a GENUINELY dumb idea, she has enough common sense to know what Not to do KSGFDJDS

has little tattoos on her wrist and behind her left ear for her Favourite trips/symbols/whatever and her family, will let y’all know what they’d be whenever i figure them out since i’m so damn picky with these things

a Big supporter for buying/investing locally, has little trinkets and such to prove it

in fact, she has a collection of thrifted or vintage clothes from her travels and back home, and a chest full of cute jewelry she switches between daily

one piece she wears all the time — only parts with it when she sleeps — is the celtic knot pendant mentioned in her app that’s become something of an heirloom on her mom’s side of the family !

she has the cutest irish lilt in my mind, kinda the same as miss ronan’s and aisling bea’s

really loves her freckles, partially bc i love her freckles and my own :(

tea > coffee, but she loves coffee-flavoured things; bring her a peppermint or camomile tea as her shift winds down or.. idk, just because, and she’ll be forever indebted to you fldjgs

loves to hang out by the water in her free time — she loves the scent and sounds that comes with it, it’s one of the few places where she can put her mind to rest for a bit

the sound of rain hitting a rooftop is her perfect sleep soundtrack

kinda wants to adopt a pet, but doesn’t wanna leave them if she goes on an excursion where they can’t come with her :(

baths with epsom salts, candles that smell like lavender or something just as pleasant and calming, etc during a night in soothes the hell out of her soul

top three products she has in her bag at all times, besides personal info and her phone ? lip balm, a powder spf and mints FGLGKSD

btw.. miss ginger hair and freckles will probably gasp at anyone going out with no spf on them and scold tf out of them bc ‘ hello, melanoma ?? sunburn ?!? ’

wanted connections

childhood pal(s) she’s bumped into: reunited by chance, cece’s glad she has a couple of people she knows to keep her grounded when her mind runs wild at what Might happen when she decides to try her hand at leaving

cousin(s), other relatives: idk, figured it’d be fun for her to have a family member or two running around and not realizing the other relative is the Only one they’ll see in person from here on out

best pal(s) in eroda: someone she’s taken to since arriving, likely spending their free-time eating pastries on the beach, talking shit over tea, little market dates, going to the rainzone half-drunk and trying to rope each other into new things

opposites attract.. of sorts sfdlgkj: basically just a traveler meeting a local who’s never been off eroda, telling all about their ( quite limited ) excursions and bonding in other areas over time !

hook-ups, fwbs.... ENEMIES with benefits?? idk, point is the girl’s probably gotten laid since arriving, it’s all a matter of the situation that fits your muse(s) best FHGSDKJ

roommate: she lives in marmoton, likely in a rental of sorts, and i can’t see her living alone given the situation on the island ( though i’ve viewed her as the type to live alone in a space for one and a half people any other time tbh ). so she has just One and they make the arrangement work ! depending on their personalities and such, we’ll figure out how well they get along Exactly, if at all

ex ??: the girl’s bi so y’all can toss anyone at her for this one as well ! question marks bc i was thinking it’d be an on-and-off thing but maybe not come the time i post this intro LSGKD. basically they were seeing each other for a few months, she fell hard Quick/they moved kinda fast bc they were vibing and they would distance themselves upon realizing this — though i see cece giving them distance bc she knows they need it rather than needing it herself. if it IS on-and-off, they’re definitely off rn and treading lightly ( though she finds it hard to stray and hates things not being fully resolved no matter what happens ?? ), so all it’s a bit angsty regardless of how it goes dfgkljsdg

fellow mystery fiend: someone please fuel her curiosity to the max and try to crack the impossible case of eroda’s captive capabilities with her.. and proceed to watch true crime shows with her when that clearly goes to shit SDFKLJ

older sibling or mentor dynamic: someone to look out for her/teach her some things to help fully support herself/give her advice when she probably needs it most.. idk, i just like the idea of someone becoming a stand-in relative type of friend to her 

just give her someone to confide in, to swim at night with, stargaze and all that cute shit, be it platonically or otherwise !

she’s not gonna click with everyone and that’s fine, BUT maybe they run in the same social circles and cece thinks they seem nice enough, but they never really talk amongst themselves ?? just a case of awkwardly starting from scratch and seeing where it takes us !

[wickedsrest-rp-archive]

Name: Nicole Salazar Species: Balam Occupation: Park Ranger Age: 27 Years Old Played By: Mary Face Claim: Adria Arjona

“Some wounds… they never show on the body. But they’re deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”

Ever since she could remember, Nicole’s family drilled into her head that she was meant to be proud of who they were. Their linage, their culture, their name, their courage, and so many other things Nicole would roll her eyes at during family dinners. The first register of her ancestors dated back to the Maya Civilization, they were keen to remind her. She didn’t understand what the big deal was, they had lived thousands of years ago. It was almost impossible she shared an ounce of blood or genes with them since, knowing they had mixed with the humans to avoid extinction. But, the spirit of the jaguar had carried onto the descendants all the same, Nicole included.

Her grandparents emigrated from Guatemala to Somerset, Vermont in the late 40s, where they dedicated their lives to agriculture. It seemed to come easy to them, even when the weather conditions weren’t favorable. Nicole and her two siblings grew up not too far away from her grandparent’s house. Her father helped his parents working at the farmer’s market, while Nicole’s mother took on secretary duties at one of Somerset’s public schools. Nicole could safely say that her childhood wasn’t perfect, but it was filled with happy memories.

As happy and loving her childhood might have been, Nicole and her siblings grew up with the sense that danger was always imminent. They had been warned and taught that you don’t become influential, respected, and powerful by staying on everyone’s good side. The enemies their ancestors had made along the way, the ways they could seek revenge eventually, it had been discussed. Nicole didn’t understand the weight of those words until that night of the attack.  She was 17 when it happened. Her first transformation. She was scared, unsure of what was happening, but her father had yelled at her and her siblings to run to the forest and hide there, he’d catch up later. There was no time to argue back like she used to, her dad was serious like she hadn’t seen before. Her instincts kicked in. He told her to run, so she did. One moment she was aware of her mother’s screams, a second later she was running without any care of the situation she had left behind. As the animal she traveled far north, quickly getting lost in the forests. Alone, without conscience or control, five years passed from the night she was separated from her family.

Nicole woke up almost five years later, in a cold forest near the Canadian border, with no money and no means to contact anyone back home. Her eyes just opened one day, and she was herself again. No explanation or reasons for the change, not that she would remember. The jaguar had decided it was time for a rest, and that was it. Memories rushed to her minutes after waking up. Her family, the attack, the beginning of her transformation, before losing control. Her first instinct was to go back, search for them, they had to be somewhere close. Her siblings had run in the same direction, she recalled. Stumbling into a gas station, she asked for a phone, but she never got to use it. The calendar by the register got her attention first. Learning how much time she had actually spent as an animal was devastating. It was hard to grasp, how it was possible for her to completely miss five years of her life.

The weeks and months that passed after she regained consciousness were another blur in Nicole’s life. She got a job at the gas station, slept in an abandoned car for a year. Alcohol became a friend, the only one she had really. Eventually, when she had enough savings, she decided to go back to Somerset. Her intent clear. She had to know if her family was still there. If they were okay.  The old phone numbers she remembered never answered her calls, but she assumed they were just as worried about her too. Her stay in Vermont didn’t last more than a couple of weeks, though. When she made it, her family wasn’t there anymore. Some said they had survived and gone into hiding elsewhere. Others thought they weren’t so lucky. No one had heard of them since that incident. Not even friends.

She couldn’t bear staying in the place where she lost her family any longer. The guilt overwhelmed her every night. Sleep was hard when all she could think of was how much she regretted shifting and running. Like a coward. She would’ve preferred to follow them, no matter the outcome. If she was meant to die that day, at least it would’ve been alongside them. They would’ve been together, like they always were. She couldn’t even remember the last words she had said to her mother. Going back to Somerset was a painful mistake. She got no closure or answers. She knew it was time to find new horizons, run away once again. Somewhere she wouldn’t be so miserable. But she had no clue where to go. She picked up the first place she laid eyes on her Google search. It didn’t matter where it was all that much.

Of the day she settled on a random fishing town in Maine called White Crest to start anew, four years had passed. She had managed to get her GED, since she wasn’t able to finish high school and after that, thanks to one of the few connections she had made on her stay, she found a job working as a park ranger. It was kind of perfect for her. Sure, turning into a jaguar was traumatic –and an experience she hadn’t begun to unpack yet–, but nature was always where Nicole felt more comfortable. Her family’s faith was still haunting her, though. Always would. Instead of just accepting it, Nicole had begun to wonder if maybe it was time to start doing some digging on that mystery.

Character Facts:

Personality: Wary, anxious, secretive, solitary, blunt, intuitive, loyal, alert, courageous, humble

She’s been in town for about 4 years now. She likes it alright. She has a small place in the outskirts and it’s exactly the kind of environment she was looking for when she first eyed White Crest. People don’t bother her, she goes about her business. It’s a great balance.

Not that she was ever particularly talkative as a teenager, but after transforming back from the jaguar, she became a lot more solitary and reluctant to engage in conversations with people. Having lost a good chunk of her young adult years stuck as an animal means she’s not great at social interactions. She missed a lot of “firsts” and common milestones people go through at a young age.

She hasn’t transformed since that youth incident. Not fully at least, it’s not something she’s practiced. She’s only able to change some physical features -mainly her eyes- and she can grow small fangs. She’s too afraid of losing control again, she’s worked hard to get some sense of normalcy back in her life and she’s not planning on ruining that again.

She works as a park ranger. She really likes it. She might even smile on the job sometimes. She’s fine with doing tours and providing information for visitors and hikers, but patrolling is her favorite part. She prefers doing it alone, and because of that, she’s ended up encountering more than a few supernatural incidents.

[khorosvein]

  hc ; random rambles i think about 

  Mera is lonely -- in a lot of ways. There’s a couple layers to this that I’ll try to hit in this post and I’ll talk about other characters that relate to some points.

  For one -- Mera is a new noble ; she’s only about two years into being part of nobility by the time the game even starts. Her social status elevation isn’t something that is voluntary and being forcibly and suddenly pushed into another socioeconomic class was very unsettling and anxiety inducing for Mera. Add the other layer that her family is new nobles who aren’t well established, this can make it very difficult to command a certain level of respect that “old money” nobles with generations ( esp with crests !!! ) under their names can easily get just for, well, existing. It puts her in an unfair situation that she has no control over -- some nobles !!! are jerks !!! -- where she has to work to build up respect and reputation in society / nobility with her own hands and on her own terms. 

  And because of the gap that exists between noble and commoner, there’s a big need for her to rush and learn as much as possible about “performing nobility” in as short amount of time as possible to avoid being outcasted and to assimilate into her new role. Because of these experiences and shifts, Mera has a lot of suspicion towards other people, especially nobles. This isn’t to say she won’t be friendly and kind to another, but that’s really different than actually coming to trust and bond with that person. 

  [ Because the game couldn’t give less of a [ redacted ] about Duscur, I need to reiterate that the people of Duscur were subjected to a massacre / pogrom ( pls be careful when looking up these words as there can be triggering images that can appear ) and the fact that this game doesn’t focus on the actual victims of this during its narrative is horrible. ]

  Mera has also had her entire culture and life uprooted post-tragedy. It’s noted that there are very few people from Duscur that still live after the tragedy. Loss of culture is also traumatic ( aside from the killings, please also remember that the people of Duscur also lost all their land and lost any traditional knowledge / teachings / customs / etc. along with the victims among other things ). It completely changed the way she identifies and exist within the world and it left her with an enormous amount of trauma ( depression and PTSD ). Due to this and the continued treatment of the people of Duscur in Faerghus, it’s generated this feeling of loneliness in terms of culture ( I’m not quite sure what I want to say ; perhaps later I will find a better way to say it ) in that it’s not typically possible for her to coexist in Faerghus society without facing some form of racism / discrimination due to her birthplace. It’s really only comfortable for her to exist within her small community made up of other people of Duscur that lives in Faerghus but doesn’t integrate / assimilate within society. 

  That’s why I think no matter what route she is on, pre-timeskip Mera will always feel very attached to Dedue in a way that I don’t think any other character in the roster will be able to experience. I really do think that in Mera’s perspective Dedue is “ the person who understands [ her ] the most in this world ”. Because there is no one else besides them at the Academy, who understand each other in that way. The Blue Lions route of my mind focuses more on the actual people of Duscur’s trauma, which would situation Dedue and Mera more to the forefront of the Duscur storyline ( like they deserve tbh ). 

  She’s also mixed and there are specific issues mixed people might face within their lifetime ( for reference, I’m mixed, so I’m speaking from my experience ). From my experience interacting with the world as a mixed person, I think there’s a certain .... expectation people of either race / ethnicity have of a mixed person. There’s quite a bit of “ well you don’t look like .... ” or “ you don’t act like ... ” or the v dreaded “ what are you ? ”. Sometimes it’s difficult to define myself in the world because I’m not one or the other and it’s not even simple as in I can say “I feel half this and half that all the time”. So, I want that to translate a little more into my writing as well, but Mera definitely identifies more with Duscur and its culture than Faerghus. There’s also definitely pressure for her to have a reversal on that and to assimilate into Faerghus culture more but she really won’t budge from it lmao she’s really just be like “die mad about it”. 

  ( thing i’m adding in here bc i’m thinking about it right now ) Mera assimilating into Faerghus / Fodlan society is really just a means to an end. She has Faerghus noble blood, why not put it to good use to help Duscur or even reform society as a whole once she’s powerful and influential ( that’s why when all the stuff happens during the timeskip makes her go like “my city now” ) ? Or just to have access to resources she might not have had before becoming a noble ? She never really gives up any of her Duscur heritage. And also make no mistake -- Mera doesn’t become intelligent and quick-witted from having education as a noble, she already is intelligent and quick-witted, her education is also just another way of displaying that.

  For the final bit because It’s getting later but Mera just doesn’t .... hardly like any big aspect of Faerghus culture presented in the game. She doesn’t care about the Chuch -- will admit to even downright hating it. She doesn’t think the ideals of knighthood and chivalry mean anything -- after all, isn’t it the same honorable, good knights that came into Duscur ? And based on my own hc about Duscur, she doesn’t really ??? get nobility or even the idea of monarchy ??? because Duscur doesn’t really have either of those things ( there are different social classes in Duscur but the gap is just not as extreme between said classes unlike Fodlan ) and local councils run the government in Duscur. She knows she has to respect Edelgard and Dimitri because, well, they’re the crown heirs of their respective monarchies but she’s not someone who believes that these aspects of society have to stay that way or that they even should. And I think within the Blue Lions house which at times gives off that feeling of upholding traditional values, it can be a little difficult to connect with others on those topics. 

[comicteaparty]

May 16th-May 22nd, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from May 16th, 2020 to May 22nd, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

What are you trying to show or tell with your story that you find to be underrepresented?

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

-Mind control/mind reading where both people are okay with it. I like themes of trust -"Superpowers" without secret identities. Because researchers aren't always evil goddamnit! -Portraying people who hurt others not as card-carrying megalomaniac villains but as pitiful and broken people. I haven't gotten to this part of my story yet but I hope I can do it well when I do. -Queer characters but they never say that they are or talk about it in any way. Yes I know I'm probably the only one who wants this

Also, maybe the idea that you don't need to "do anything" with your life for it to be worthwhile? But I'm not sure that I believe this myself

Deo101 [Millennium]

Mostly I'm trying to write about love, and I hardly think that's underrepresented! But, I'm also trying to show a bit of my own personal disabled experience, and I find that the kinds of things I've experienced are hardly represented at all. so, I think I'm trying to show a sort of hope and positivity for things that I think are usually pitied and viewed negatively, which I wish were done more.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I just wanted a good ol' classic Eddings-style fantasy romp, but with characters that would usually be cast in the "evil" role, without going the "misunderstood" route.

Plus I wanted to write about shitty family (born, found and married) and that you do NOT have to forgive them in the slightest to move on and better your life.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Hmm... One of the main things I want to express with Whispers of the Past is that after past traumas, you may not be the same, but eventually, you can be okay again—even if your "okay" of now, is very different than your "okay" of the past. Normalcy isn't a constant. It shifts with time and becomes something new. A new stasis. A new peace. A new normal. I don't know if I've ever seen another story show this in this way. Another underrepresented theme in WotP is that of the hero choosing mundanity over the amazing. When the quest is over, and all is said and done, and the big baddie has been vanquished, the hero doesn't become ruler, or claim bountiful riches, or sail across the sea to find new lands. No, the hero returns to a world that is familiar and unremarkable. The hero would rather just be an average person.

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

-Fanfiction. I’m very surprised there hasn’t been a webcomic talking about what it’s like to create fanfiction! But overall the culture involved around it and being a creator. -The relationship and hardships of having a stepparent/being one. Particularly stepdad/stepdaughter relationships -Anger as a reaction to trauma. I see a lot of trauma portrayed as mostly sad, but I want a story where the heroes feel anger, where it’s seen as both a motivator and a detriment -The hardships of dating as someone who’s both touch aversive and on the grey spectrum. Not everyone would be as wonderful or understanding, but it’s important to be around people who are and will stand by you.(edited)

eliushi [a winged tale]

This is why I gravitate towards all these stories made by independent creators I think. So many personal and poignant messages. I’m with you there on the queer characters Eightfish. I want a society where it’s fine to be what you wish and respected to be who you want to be. I think having more positive ways of showing how we can reach that sort of openness can be helpful. In AWT I further explore: - characters in STEM fields and approaches to research design - informed consent and what that means - how to live even when things are falling apart around you, when things are falling apart within you - navigating through crushes, confessions and friendships!

Wow the beginning sounds like the objectives at a science lecture and you won’t be wrong thinking so

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

For my Hybrid Dolls comic, there are several things I want to explore: - Psychological trauma and the effects or damage it can give, without proper treatment. -Writing queer characters without them needing a self discovery episode. But I know some identities are better to be upfront? But in the story, they simply live normal or exciting lives - Narcissism in a relative that one doesn't have to forgive. Being treated as invisible or judged by age, birthright. - Other Concepts of love explored. Attraction that isn't conventional romance. - Friendship bonds between girls, and my own take on an eccentric quirky girl lead. - Being unapologetically feminine, girls who doesn't need to feel like being 'one of the guys' I'm aiming for more character variety in historical fiction, instead of yet another story of a girl 'defying gender norms' by raised as a boy/disguises trope in other similar comics. So the women in my story, use their wits and charm.(edited)

DanitheCarutor

I complain about this all the time, so I'm just going to do a quick overview since I'm sure everyone is sick of it. - Abusers can be smart, popular, generous, charismatic and subtle. I'm kind of sick of them always being portrayed as really obvious, and sometimes really stupid, while there are people like that it's not very practical for them all to be like that. - General mental health stuff. More open representation of it, that it may be something you'll live with for the rest of your life and how that's okay. - Trauma, how it can change you, make you lose sight of the person you were and make you lose interest in things you used to enjoy. (this is coupled with mental health) - Non-romantic relationships with a queer cast. While this is showing up more in fantastical indie works, not very common in slice-of-life type of comics. I can only imagine this is because readers would find it boring or too mundane (can't tell you all how many people tell me my comic is boring. Lol), but being a person totally sick of romance in everything I wanted to do something focusing on family, friendship and the relationships we have with ourselves. - You don't always heal completely. I've already mentioned this, but I want to put a focus on how someone who's been through a lot of shit doesn't alway heal completely, and that's okay. I see in a lot of media where people just overcome their issues, and they live happily ever after with everything all perfect, I want something along the lines of "we still got a long way to go, but we're doing better and we're happier than before". - Not having labels for everything. This sounds like hipster trash, but I don't see the point in putting labels for every character. Like, I put labels for them, mostly during Pride, but it feels pointless in the comic. Apollo is happy to say he's a gay man, but with Julian they're not interested in categorising themselves, all they want is to be comfortable and I don't see nothing wrong with that.(edited)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

For me, it’s the importance of communication and empathy, and the dangers of its absence. And it’s something I’ve had to think about a lot recently, being more active on social media Everyone’s got their reasons/methods for cutting people off, but I’ve never been a huge fan of a point-blank communication cut unless it’s absolutely warranted. And I’m not a fan of instant demonization when someone messes up or does something I don’t agree with. People are people. We’re all different and we all mess up and we all can change. Keeping lines of communication open is essential for allowing that change, or else we all get locked into little echo chambers where anyone outside is automatically The Worst.™ In a world where everything has gone to hell - and may go further yet - how can things heal when no one is even listening to each other? Where the other side is automatically at fault no matter what? It’s something I grew up struggling to understand (maybe because I grew up outside Washington DC, lol), and really affects me to this day. And if you do end up protecting yourself with silence, how can you still allow other perspectives to be gleaned? I don’t quite have the perfect formula for it. But unless someone is genuinely trying to cause harm, I try to at least attempt to understand where they might coming from - whether I accept it or not. Otherwise it’s so easy to see a lot of people as monsters. It’s a complicated topic for sure, especially nowadays. But yeah. Something like that

Miranda

Hmm that’s an excellent question. Well, a big thing is the varying effects of trauma and ways to handle it. Mainly how burying the past and ignoring traumatic events can affect someone. Also that villains can be people we relate to that just take an extreme way of reaching a goal that most people can understand And how shared experiences can bring people closer (not a unique one) I also want to portray queer characters that are not solely defined by their queerness and don’t have to announce it to everyone.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

- Having some talks about the implications of asking what you wish for and the potential consequences that comes with it. - Having more unappologic Vietnamese things happening in the comic. Giving representation to some common things that most Vietnamese Americans (or Asian Americans) can face in terms of relationships, roles, etc. Also since er i'm also directly affected by this, how does the Mixed-Asian Identity plays about it too.(edited)

hmmm I think another thing is that I want to bring up that men who express themselves in a more feminine form is valid and there's no shame that comes with it (positive masculinity hell yaaaa). Also same about expressing characters who are also queer but aren't defined about it either. it's just what they are along with their other interests and goals.(edited)

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

wow, this is a great question! I'm trying to be better about interacting here so I'll give it a shot. My comic is a historical fantasy set somewhat in Interwar Europe/WWII Europe and partially in a fantasy world based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. -War stories/histories that aren't about the actual experience of combat: most memoirs and diaries of soldiers I read doing research are about the day-to-day activities, meals, sleeping habits, and random thoughts instead of fight descriptions. It really bothers me when people zero in on in-depth battle maps and obsess over what kind of rifle was used by whom when, when I think it's much more interesting and important to look at the mindset of who was fighting, why they were fighting, and what emotional effect it had on everyone involved (including civilians!) -Asexuality, especially asexuality in history, bc it tends to "disappear" in the historical record as people who may have been ace before that label was widely used tend to not self-identify as it. I'm ace, people in the past were ace, it's a history I'd like to talk about more! -gryphons, they're cool monsters and I think they should be used much more than they are haha

eliushi [a winged tale]

I agree sierrabravo. I find it’s the personal, down to earth, close perspective accounts in historical records that resonate the most with me. Gryphons are also awesome!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I feel like there's two separate answers for Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R (http://sgkdr.webcomic.ws/comics/) The first is what SGKDR represents compared to other webcomics. To me, a major thing I wanted to show with Super Galaxy Knights was a new style of creating webcomics. Animation is underrepresented as a storytelling style, sure, but the main thing I thought was underrepresented in the webcomic space was a "seasonal" method of storytelling. Like, most webcomics I see are either "each page is its own thing" or "it's one big long story, with chapters mostly there to split up different scenes/locations". I very rarely see webcomics build to a major climax in the story, then a resolution, then introduce a brand new conflict. The second is what SGKDR represents compared to other action series (specifically shonen manga/anime, as that's what SGKDR riffs off of the most). I can only think of one shonen story with a female lead, I can't think of any with an explicitly LGBTQ+ protagonist (i only know of one implied one), romance is usually handled very poorly (characters usually get paired with the protagonist due to being female and in the same room, with very little actual relationship building), there aren't many varieties of character motivations besides "pursuit of power/status" of some kind, power scaling usually gets way out of whack, and I... I dunno, I love those kinds of stories, but it just gets tiring after a while. So, I wrote my own that had all the things I wanted in it.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead) I totally agree with the difficulty and importance of talking about ace representation in a historical setting! It's extremely difficult to talk about when asexuality was so unknown at the time. I'm eager to see how you handle it!

eliushi [a winged tale]

@snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) can you speak about

I very rarely see webcomics build to a major climax in the story, then a resolution, then introduce a brand new conflict.

I find slice of life/ some really long mangas with continuous streams of antagonists/web novel like formats use this too but unsure if that’s what you were referring to?

I am also looking forward to more ace representation in the webcomic world

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah that format is the sort of thing I was talking about. It's out there, but I don't see it very often.

eliushi [a winged tale]

Ah gotcha! Thanks! I recall some slice of life high school ones I’ve read years ago that have that sort of narrative structure (which feels like the story can continue forever).

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

There's a recurring trope in SF/F where the robot/AI/golem learns that it wants to have free will and make its own decisions. Or there's a biological species that are assumed to be "natural servants", and inevitably you get to the reveal that they're not actually any different from humans in terms of wanting self-determination and independence. If you think of this as a metaphor for relationships between different groups of humans, then yeah, that's the obvious outcome! But one of the great things about SFF is that you can write things that aren't just "direct metaphors for real-world issues, with spaceships and dragons thrown in for flavor." So in But I'm A Cat Person, I wanted to write something about, what if there's a group of beings who really aren't going to develop free will or self-determination? What's the reasonable, ethical way to deal with that? ...also: there's a ton of nonbinary characters in webcomics these days, but at least I can say BICP did it before it was cool.(edited)

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Leif & Thorn, meanwhile, has a regular old "character forced into servitude, who definitely has independent thoughts and desires that are being controlled" situation. And there's no "Master has given Dobby a sock" loophole they can exploit for a quick fix, so they have to keep up a long-term process of double-talk and rule-bending, to communicate Leif's actual feelings without getting him in trouble. The "realistic language barriers with no convenient universal-translator to get around them" situation -- which, in this comic, is one of the biggest Underrepresented Things I wanted to explore -- makes it that much harder...

Capitania do Azar

I gotta commend you on that, @Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn) because you're out there serving my bilingual needs

kayotics

Ingress Adventuring Company is all about the hero after they've finished saving the world, which I think is pretty underrepresented. It's not a quiet contemplative story, since there's still a lot of fun questing stuff going on, but I'm trying to make it clear that this all takes place after the main character has done his big saving the world quest and is still trying to figure out his place after supposedly settling down.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I love that Kay

Toivo feels like he has so much history behind him

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I'm trying to represent orthodox/religious jews because I almost never see my community represented in media. There are orthodox Jewish characters that will be appearing in Joe is dead. In future comics I want to try to plan the story more around including more religious Jewish characters because there still aren't that many in my current project

Also mental illnesses, like trauma and intellectual disability I want to represent my own experiences with it

There isn't as much of a distinct lack of that in media but it's good to have in stories(edited)

Also androgynous lesbians

Nutty (Court of Roses)

With Court of Roses, I'm trying to tell a fantasy story that's for older audiences but proving that Mature Fantasy doesn't have to be ultra gritty. People have each other to depend on, the world isn't bleak, and not every noble is greedy, peasant is starving, etc. I know a lot of fantasy likes to take from realistic Medieval Europe, but the freeing part about making my own world is that it doesn't HAVE to be like that. Their religion is different, more accepting, and again, people are more focused on looking out for each other and having a good time.

Mature themes are still present, such as murder, banditry/pillaging, alcohol, traumatic experiences, etc. but my goal isn't to present them in a darker fashion.(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I wanted to make something influenced by my culture (Korean) without heavily drawing from the mythology. Mythology is just one facet of a culture, yet a lot of people who haven't read it expect HoK to be all about Korean mythology just because it wears a metaphorical hanbok. No. It reflects the traditional aesthetics, but more importantly, the cultural values and the unspoken rules of the society, regardless of whether I agree with them or not. Related to that is body language. I don't want my non-American characters using American body language, such as shrugging, or American ways of using eye contact, etc. I want to show them using (mostly) Korean gestures, sitting, standing and walking like Koreans. I always feel like there's a huge missed opportunity when friggin' aliens use American body language in sci-fi! I understand why people do that -- it makes the work more clear/accessible to English-speaking audience. But in HoK I'm taking the other path. It's a challenge for sure, but I would not have it any other way.

On a more thematic level, I really wanted to explore deeply hurtful experiences that happen in genuinely caring relationships. It's not about good guys vs bad guys, it's not about a nice person being hurt by someone who just doesn't care. Those stories certainly are valid, just not what I wanted to do with HoK. This story is about people who love each other, but don't always know how to communicate their love or needs.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

I am also looking forward to more ace representation in the webcomic world

@eliushi [a winged tale] I agree, the ace rep is a challenge I would like to take on, I'm also curious how it will work in historical times? Even tho I'm ace,I'm still learning new innovative things(edited)

eliushi [a winged tale]

It’ll be important to dig deeper and research into what things were like if you want to capture the authenticity of the period you’re writing in! I’m sure there are personal accounts or documentation of these lived experiences.

Capitania do Azar

I see all these beautiful answers and I almost struggle to find something other than those to say I guess for O Sarilho https://www.sarilho.net/en/ I wanted to write a weird love letter to where I live and how I see my country (tho I'm glad I got other places I love in it too). To my knowledge, we don't get much like that, or at least that's not from a city perspective which is not what I'm trying to go for, at all. There's a lot of tiny cultural things that I want to touch that may be invisible for people who are not from here, but I'm glad that I'm including them for those three readers in the back. Linked to this, in a way, is the fact that I get really tired of those white/gray Sci-fi stories where everything is super clean and super white and technology is absolutely overwhelming and organised. I want Sci-fis in the woods too. And finally, there's something about the way violence is portrayed a lot of times that almost makes you feel like human life just is that cheap. I really don't want to go that road, I'm doing my best to tell a story about war in which death still leaves a toll and violence affects everyone involved

TL;DR I WANTED TO PAINT MY HOUSE

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

And finally, there's something about the way violence is portrayed a lot of times that almost makes you feel like human life just is that cheap. I really don't want to go that road, I'm doing my best to tell a story about war in which death still leaves a toll and violence affects everyone involved

@Capitania do Azar This is so beautiful (and tragic). This is something I also hope to express in my work. Super underrepresented message surprisingly.

eliushi [a winged tale]

I enjoy exploring sci-fi beyond the current conventions and absolutely love your setting shizamura!(edited)

Capitania do Azar

Thank u I really love Sci-fi but I don't appreciate that it has become associated with a very specific aesthetic because tbh I find it very limiting

DanitheCarutor

@Capitania do Azar That is actually really refreshing! Horror and action are so packed with glamorized death and violence, you can get really desensitized. The only stories I've ever seen that take those things seriously are war movies based on real life events, like Saving Private Ryan, (which my grandpa, a Korean War vet, said was the most accurate portrayal of what war was like.) and even then you get flicks that totally glamorize the whole thing. I really admire you wanting to put that sense of gravity onto the violence and death in your work, also I love when creators want to tackle war in all it's "too close to home", upsetting realism.

Capitania do Azar

I really love Saving Private Ryan, it is a very nice portrayal with a great message: nobody wants to be here

DanitheCarutor

Yes! I love Saving Private Ryan too, it was nice seeing a movie that didn't make war look like some fantastical bs.

[soulvomit]

The Memetic Race to the Bottom

On Tumblr, I started seeing that there is a real way how good ideas can go bad simply because the ideas just don’t scale very well outside of the specific conversation they originated in. (The cultural appropriation conversation is one of these.) This does not invalidate the original idea - but a big danger is that a idea dumbing down too much, can make people reluctant to engage with it at all once it’s gotten beyond its original space, so that the scaling into the general public becomes part of the extinction/invalidation cycle of that idea rather than leading to the broad adoption of it. (And then once it does scale to the public, the pushback can cause a full on pendulum swing in the culture - which is where I feel like we are at with the main social meme I’ll be using as an example. The present mainstream culture is a huge *pushback* on that meme, which I’m calling Toxic Independence.) The example I’ll mainly use here, is what I’m calling Toxic Independence, mainly because “Anti-Codependency/Neediness/Enabling Culture” is just too much of a mouthful. This didn’t start off the Objectivist-adjacent space of normalized sociopathy that it became. Codependency, neediness, and enabling, after all, are all actually real things that very much need discussion. But the broader culture just did not know what to do with these concepts once they reached escape velocity into the mass consciousness. In many cases, the idea breaching into mainstream public consciousness, is actually the last stage before it completely gets discarded. This doesn’t always happen, but I feel like I’ve seen it happen with enough ideas. All it takes is for the most dumbed down version of the idea, to become the new “poster child” for that idea, and lots of people to broadly reject it. Eventually, the idea dies out. Another thing that can happen is that a meme can go extinct if the original people with the idea, end up getting deplatformed. Or if the torch just isn’t passed to the next generation. That’s how so many of the more positive Boomer social memes ended up lost by the 1980s, and ultimately, forgotten. The activist/counterculture Boomers were deplatformed and also weren’t the ones having the kids. Every hippie that moved to rural Oregon in the mid-late 70s was a voice lost, and the yuppie Boomers became the dominant cultural force in a lot of spaces. And they managed to pass *some* memes on to Gen X (Toxic Independence or Anti-Codependency/Neediness/Enabling Culture was still a big part of many of my middle class Gen X spaces in the 00s). But sometimes the meme contains the seeds of its own extinction.  I feel like Toxic Independence did. Instead of a broad conversation that I hear in most of my spaces, it’s now a niche conversation in a couple of very, very specific spaces. I would have to actually seek out those conversations. And I still hear people talk about codependence - but it’s in specific addiction/recovery-specific contexts, or among much older people, and nobody seems to be trying to make it the Grand Unified Field Theory of People anymore the way that they were in the 80s. Sometimes the meme comes under broad attack by the culture itself.  As left/right political polarization was picking up speed in the last decade or so, you started seeing Toxic Independence under attack by both the Left *and* the Right, and not even by the most extreme factions of each. The hetero female version came under attack via both intersectional feminism *and* traditionalism, for example. The male version became even more niche and subcultural.   The Personal Development movement of the 00s was probably this meme’s final form. But even PD environments aren’t pushing this anymore to nearly the same extent, and the PD people who promoted it, are now mocked to some degree: I don’t feel like people are as universally told to cut off their ill, disabled, or unemployed family members the way they were in the 80s and 90s. I mean, there may still be this pressure in a lot of spaces, but I don’t feel like it’s as overt and aggressive outside of specific socioeconomic niches and professions. When I was around Landmark people in 2016, the conversations were fundamentally different from the ones I had with Landmark people in 2003.  Now, it seems like you only get to go away once you become rich enough to throw money at the problem, or are sociopathic enough to be unaffected.  Sometimes the conversation moves on because future generations change the conversation via trial and error. It’s coming out in the wash that while the first generation of people to do it en masse may have fucked it up (and then written it off as not at all working - which is what a lot of Toxic Independence was a response to), there’s been a good 50 years of R&D on the problem since. It turns out that cooperative co-living (with mutualistic, not parallel-independent or nuclear, household economies) was the meme that just wouldn’t die. The failures of white hippies weren’t because co-living doesn’t work, but probably owe more to being the first generation of middle class white people to try to figure out for the first time what everyone else has already been doing forever. Sometimes the social space shifts: geek culture is becoming a much bigger share of the middle class than before, and I feel like Toxic Independence never really caught on in geek culture the way it did in the 80s mainstream aspirational space. If anything, geek culture was the one space where a lot of hippie torches ended up passed - for example, the idea that you can have a household that doesn’t consist of one provider male and a bunch of dependents, *and* you can also have a household that doesn’t consist of two fungible co-equal earners each half-financing a significant lifestyle upgrade, and that functional households don’t have to have any one particular shape to them.  Most geek spaces I’ve ever been in, have been mixed economy to some degree. Geek households seem to come in a whole variety of shapes. There seems to be a greater acceptance of people helping or even supporting unrelated adults in many geek spaces in ways that I haven’t seen outside of geek culture, which is where we get the conversation about “that guy on the couch” but it’s also why it’s a space I’ve been able to stay in since becoming a low income person with chronic pain. (We really, really need to have a conversation about the geek culture’s problem with grifters and con artists, though. And geek culture could probably *use* a little more conversation about codependency. But this is a serious place where I don’t know how to not throw out babies with the bathwater, because that same discussion is where Toxic Independence came out of. And how to have that conversation but not fuck over the very, very many disabled people in geek culture? I don’t know.) The privilege and ableism assumptions in Toxic Independence made the whole thing fall apart like a house of cards when confronted with the Great Recession and actual intersectionality discourse. Also, the pendulum swing toward online transparency and vulnerability made it so that we began to actually see more of the shape of each other’s lives - and this revealed that so much of Toxic Independence was based on smoke and mirrors. Sometimes the environment around us changes.  In the 80s, it was possible to be totally self-contained the way that the books told us to be, on a much lower income than would be required now. In the 80s, you could live like this and be middle income. It’s much harder when you actually have to  Now, in many spaces, you probably have to be high professional income to pull this off, at minimum, *and* it assumes you will never end up primary financial support or primary caregiver for *anyone* (unless you’re wealthy enough to not require any kind of mutualistic relationship with any co-caregivers.) (This is a way that traditionalism actually was part of the death knell, I suspect. It tries to hold onto a family shape that even predates Toxic Independence *and* it explicitly identifies Toxic Independence - under other names - as a problem.) Lots of people have had to fundamentally change the shape of their households and lives to *remain* middle class, whereas 80s psychology around being middle class was hugely about shedding as many dependencies as possible.   You can only really be totally self-contained the way that the books told us to be in the 80s, if you are financially stable, if your parents are financially well set, and if you have no dependents, and if your social space allows absolutely no weaker parties.  It’s clear to me that while Boomers could carry on with Toxic Independence (so long as they actually retire affluent), Toxic Independence stopped working for a lot of Gen X. Most Gen Xrs I know are having to juggle multiple dependencies. Toxic Independence just does not work for the middle class of the Sandwich Generation. Many, many ideas get thrown away because of the Memetic Race to the Bottom; the Memetic Race to the Bottom can make lots of perfectly sound issues very, very difficult to seriously engage, and often the entire framework has to be thrown away. Which means that if there was a grievance by a marginalized party that started the whole conversation, the whole discussion has been taken away from them and the milestone shifted. (This has happened with any discussion of cultural appropriation that isn’t centered specifically in ethnically/racially specific contexts, for example.) When something is in its end phases, you’ll notice that younger people are not taking that idea up. Newer experts aren’t exploring it. The original fans or adherents will still be there, though, and they’ll eventually get older. But the ideas they talk about, will stay within their group, and the memetic space they occupy will lose broad relevance.  There is always life experience, educational background, professional context (was this a conversation between academics? Was it a policy conversation?), and *specificity* (such as, specific events - for example, *specific* grievances) in the original conversation, and when the ideas scale, it becomes a race to the bottom for whichever member of the general public (who was the least involved in the original conversation) has the least nuanced, broadest, most authoritarian, most prescriptive interpretation. And this is what happened to codependency, how it devolved from something that actually had a specific meaning and context within addiction psychology (and to my knowledge, still do), to a set of toxic social memes that mainly were about providing a social scaffold for 80s/90s middle class/yuppie selfishness culture - a way to weaponize what amounted to Applied Objectivism 101. I’ve found it really hard to talk about codependency for years because of this.  For example, I don’t feel like I’ve met anyone younger than Gen X who identifies as codependent unless they’re actually using it in an addiction/recovery context; that is not the language that Millennials and Zoomers seem to be using. I feel like it’s mostly Boomers, Jones, and Xrs that I’ve heard use these concepts, and I’ve stopped hearing them used by Xrs so much in the past 15 years.

[theveryworstthing]

Rabbit Marriage Part 2

part two of today’s rabbit wedding post. warning, this one gets less fun dark, more ‘history sure does suck sometimes’ dark.

Terrible Mating And Marriage History: Rabbit marriage hasn’t shifted very much in the time that its been a thing. But when it did. Oh man.

The biggest mistakes are always the arranged marriages. They work fine for some races but rabbits just never had any luck with them personally.

Arranged marriages don’t even exist on the island anymore, as they were abolished after the fall of the Warren Kings. Rabbit history with arranged marriages is weird, it mostly existed as a blip of bad population control tactics in the far past before widespread birth control became a thing. When it did become popular it was because of the Warren Kings fucking stuff up.  Oh, and then there’s the mainland cult. They still do arranged marriages but. You know.

Anyway, here are some bits of history about all those things.

Population Control And Lotteries: Sometimes in the old old days things got cramped. This didn’t actually happen very often believe it or not. Between the predator mortality rates and modern medical practices just starting to get going, rabbits didn’t really have to worry about having too many rabbits around. Problems only arose in that tiny window where reliable birth control wasn’t a thing but life saving medical procedures were. Again, this was a very small window, probably like twenty-something years. Rabbits have been trying to stop having so many dang rabbits forever. Now all that life saving knowledge meant that all those lives were now just…hanging out. Living. So to combat overcrowding and the problems that came with it, some warrens instituted rules for mating and marriage.

Very little knowledge is left about these rules since there are very few necromancy-worthy skulls left from that era and the ones that are available don’t speak the form of lango known today. Plus these rules varied from region to region and some of them were only tried for a short period of time before they were given up on. A lot of population control seemed to be throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck, and boy did very little stick.

From what historians have gathered, in some warrens does and bucks were simply segregated and only allowed the privilege to marry and mate by lottery. Anyone who disobeyed the lottery was banished outside the warren to fend for themselves. In other areas, if you were born in a litter over a certain number your parents were forced to pick one or two of you to carry on the family name. These chosen siblings would go out and marry/reproduce as normal, while the rest of them were either:

A: Marked as symbolically sterile, meaning any pregnancy they’re apart of or even suspected to be apart of turns into an abortion (plus a castration for any buck involved). This was only popular in regions with a lot of doctors and crowding and the mark was only given after a few months to make sure they didn’t accidentally take a Midwife out of the gene pool. (Bonus fact, if rabbits commit infanticide its usually a few months after birth unless they really really don’t want that baby because saving potential Midwives has been so ground into them socially that they have to be sure.)

Or B: Loose ‘match’ betrothals where the rabbit was allowed to choose their partner, but could only choose a rabbit of the same reproductive role. This was especially prevalent with second litters.  Much better than the sterilization thing but a stray pregnancy still meant banishment at best.

Needless to say, there were problems with all of these solutions and rabbits had a tendency to buck against the system just enough so that none of them really worked for long. The lottery systems were especially bad because it was a gamble if your chosen kid was infertile or even ever wanted to be chosen at all considering that all rabbits aren’t straight and all rabbits aren’t cut out for parenthood. Then you went into a weird population drop and people left and it was a mess.

Now fast forward a whole lotta years.

The Warren Kings Are The Root Of So Many Problems Jesus Christ: Holy crap these dudes. After the whole establishing a monarchy thing evolved from a few narcissistic jerks wanting a more rigid class system to terrible crushing dictatorship, Warren Kings straight up stopped having interest in allowing others into their empires. They didn’t quite truck with the usual cross-warren upper class alliance marriages anymore because even THEY knew you couldn’t trust Kings and their families. They needed to Trust the rabbits lucky enough to share their bloodline, and their inbred paranoia made it so they didn’t trust anyone outside of their warren lands. This made upper class courting prospects pretty slim, especially when  they couldn’t ignore the genetic downsides of the whole marrying first cousins thing any longer. So they started arranging marriages with the much more genetically diverse commoners, which was terrible for a couple of reasons.

Reason 1: These marriages held no benefit for the chosen rabbit’s family. When a warren king married your daughter they were mainly in it for the kits, those were the only relations of their mate that they would tolerate. As far as they were concerned, the rest of her family didn’t exist unless they were super useful in some way. Like, literally, it was not uncommon for brides or grooms being taken into royal families to be declared orphans.

Reason 2: The reason the commoners were more diverse is because some of them were secretly still traveling and interacting with other warrens like normal people. Trade still has to happen somehow. Now, the kings were very insular and very hyper focused on predator and enemy defense. Making sure they had the safest, biggest warrens is how they kept their power in a time of civil wars and weaponized wolves. This, combined with their paranoia, distanced them from the people. If they didn’t need anything from the commoners, then their actual day to day welfare wasn’t their problem. Strangely, this hands-off ruling kept them in power longer because the people dealt mostly with warren staff and only had to come in contact with the royal family’s awfulness during special events. This paranoia and ignorance about how people lived made it so if your royal suitor caught on that you had living family or friends outside the warren and you actually interacted with them, it would rock their entire world. Then it was a 50/50 chance that they would either murder  your family for treason, or imprison your family for treason. They would still marry you if they judged you appropriately sorry about all the treason, but you’d probably live out the rest of your life literally chained to either them or an escort at all times. It would be a nice chain. But still.

Reason 3: I’m sure you’ve caught on by now but the royal families were just awful across the board. They were dismissive of rabbit culture. They treated people beneath them like expendable assets. They kept civil wars going on purpose so that people would feel too unsafe to leave for other, possibly hostile, warrens. They almost wrecked the trade system. They tried to  destroy rabbit skulls and writing and anything else historians and necromancers could use to call them on their crimes. The only blessing about their rule is that it was short and survivors of it did everything they could to make sure it never happened again. I’m not gonna elaborate very much on how they treated their commoner spouses, but you can probably guess that it wasn’t great! Having a necromancer around specifically to watch over the harem and revive disobeying does who caught their king on a bad day so they could keep up appearances at dinner was a thing.  Straight up disappearing spouses who were never to be spoken of was a thing. Princess Lily the Pure was said to have had at least 120 husbands. They were all taken from a king-less warren her father had taken control of and historically most of them are just…gone. A few half-burnt skulls were found, each saying how many had come before them mixed in with a few broken phrases about blood on her hands. That’s it. No one is quite sure what went down, but evidence suggests that she was either the unluckiest girl in the world, or the most dangerous serial killer ever born. Choose your own horrible horrible adventure.

Reason 4: As stated before, one of the reasons the revolution wasn’t sooner was because the people had little to no contact with their kings. The marriages changed that. People were being torn away from their families, treason was being declared, the royals were demanding  inspection of all engaged rabbits just in case they wanted the future bride or groom for themselves. It was terrible. Marriage became less about love and more about protection. The royal family wouldn’t take anyone already married. Being with a commoner was bad enough, but what if there were commoner kits  related to their kits hidden away somewhere, ready to challenge them for leadership? Unacceptable! Can’t take that chance! So parents started marrying their children off earlier and earlier in what were known as ‘Snow’ weddings. Snow meaning they were impermanent, meant to melt away with age until they found their real partner and sought a divorce (a process which literally lasted the time it took to walk their Snow partner to their new beau on their wedding day, leaving a time gap any wider was risky) . This actually worked pretty well for a while. A few people were killed so their ‘spouses’ could be taken but the public uproar was enough so that it was very rare. Trouble really arose when the royals started kidnapping attractive pregnant couples and imprisoning them so that they could take their offspring and betroth them to their own young children. Luckily this was towards the end of the the kings’ reign. So when the revolution hit, a few of these couples and their children had lived long enough for rescue.

After all this, you can see how rabbits on the island might think that arranged marriages are Not On.

But wait. There’s more.

Lapindary Rabbits And Breeding ‘Perfect’ Hybrids On The Mainland: The Lapindary Order is a group thought up by two of the original rabbits involved with the inner circles of the Warren Kings. They were in charge of trade for the kings and didn’t really live on the island, preferring to stay on the mainland for business reasons (and because they wanted to see if the monarchy thing would work out before they had to face the rabbits they were helping screw over). Lucky them, they missed out on the whole guillotine business when the people rose up. Unlucky them, all their power on the island pretty much vanished over night and it was a good bet that they could never return without having a date with the aforementioned guillotine. So they started over with another power scheme, because that’s what power schemers do. With the help of a ridiculously wealthy 1/64th rabbit-blood widow named English Ivy, they began the Lapindary Order on the mainland. The original goal was a small secretive match making club, devoted to marrying hybrid mainlander rabbits into positions of wealth and funneling that money back to the founders. It of course got out of hand, as these things do, and quickly became a legit cult that believes in a future where rabbit/mainlander hybrids are recognized as The Best of both races, taking their proper place beside the King and Queen themselves.

Back in the day (not that much has changed), rabbits that married into mainlander houses were considered trophy wives/husbands. They weren’t usually involved in ownership of businesses or control of the estate unless their mainlander spouse was indisposed and no mainlander family members were around to take over. Only mainlanders really knew mainlander affairs after all. Hybrids didn’t have it much better, it was (and still is) a gamble of which way your features lean. Plus your class and your gender and where your rabbit parent was born and the mainland’s weird view of rabbit attractiveness…its complicated. And frustrating. The Lapindaries took advantage of this, and sought to enlist the most ‘perfect’ rabbit half-breeds (low or attractive mutations, good health, strong rabbit features, susceptibility to the spiel) for breeding stock in their society climbing plans. Long story short, the order continues today as a web of intricately arranged marriages, some meant to eventually gain access to the royal houses, some meant to simply hold attractive public positions and turn out the prettiest possible hybrid kits. They’re still a secretive and selective club with only a few chapters and most people believing them to simply be a religious order headed by wealthy rabbits. They’re mostly joked about, like an attractive and harmless Illuminati. No one outside the order knows their true purpose.  No one knows about the notebooks or the curses or the poisoned wine glasses or the unnamed kits who aren’t born up to ‘gem standards’ either. No one is ever going to know.

They’ve spent too many years making sure of that.

[flairmagazineblog]

Reconcile Your Relationship with Najla Moussa

A family is a crucial unit in every society, and it plays a vital role in imparting values and imparting duties. Children growing up in harmonious households are more likely to form positive relationships outside of their homes. We believe most of us assume relationships to function on autopilot, and when they do not really, we have no idea how to mend them. That’s why relationships are important to every narrative we write, and as a personal writer of character-driven fiction. I used this occasion to pique my interest in love, commitment, and understanding how relationships work. I believe everyone will find the following experienced relationship coach, Najla Moussas’ answers interesting and awakening, Read on! 

What is the background that led to you becoming a Relationship Coach?

I’m a writer and have written for several international and worldwide publications on subjects pertaining to wellbeing. Through my research and interviews with experts, I stumbled upon the Gottman Method. It transformed the way I looked at my relationship. A few years ago, I became a certified Gottman- trained Relationship Coach, and accordingly, I’ve used it to help couples and individuals learn how to strengthen and better their relationships by learning how to manage conflict, create a stronger friendship in their relationship, communicate effectively, and reconnect intimately. 

When did you have the idea to use your relationship know-how to help others?

When I applied the Gottman method to my relationship, I saw how transformative it could be. It works. People can transform their romantic relationships – current and future ones, too. That’s something I want to help others achieve. 

What do you think is the number one contributor to relationship problems?

It depends on what’s going on in your relationship, but some factors contribute to the breakdown of a relationship. 

Our busy lifestyle means we are often distracted, which makes it easier for us to disconnect from each other. A research study on young couples showed that the average amount of time partners engaged in face-to-face conversation was 35 minutes…a week. Unfortunately, with digital entertainment readily available, couples spend “together time” streaming series or fiddling with social platforms on their screens rather than face-to-face interacting. This translates into neglected relationships. 

Expectations are another relationship killer. One is unspoken expectations – where we don’t communicate to our partners our expectations but act on those expectations being unmet. Or having unrealistic expectations. Esther Perel says it best: Today we expect our partner to give us what an entire village once provided. We want them to be reliable but also risk-takers; safe but also exciting; gentle but also wild. It’s a paradoxical mix of wants that one person can’t possibly fulfill. 

Friendship is another big one that is often overlooked. We lose or forget the friendship we built in the dating process of our relationship. We stop paying attention, asking deep questions, and communicating with our partners the way we would with a close friend. 

Money is a subject that causes a lot of tension and fights in a long-term relationship. Mainly, our attitude on spending in general – what if one prioritizes saving and the other just wants to enjoy the money now? What do we consider worth spending on –education, vacations, material possessions? Most people don’t talk about money before they get married because they think it’s gauche. But talking about money isn’t actually about money. It’s essentially talking about how we want to live, what our values and commitment to each other and our families are, and our plans for the future. 

What services do you offer?

I offer private individual and couple’s coaching sessions, online sessions, private-group workshops, and general workshops. Workshops can be done live or virtual and for safety reasons, space is limited. 

What kind of circumstance would preempt someone to contact Relational Coaches?

Anyone looking to strengthen and better their current relationship or looking to break toxic relationship patterns or cycles they’ve repeated in the past. 

Do you think marriage has value anymore? What do you think are the pluses and minuses of marriage today?

I think if people stopped looking at marriage as a fairytale, complete with a ‘happily ever after ending, we would collectively be a lot happier in our relationships. This idea that marriage is supposed to provide unending happiness, unwavering support, a place where our partners are not allowed to hurt us, fail us…this narrative is what fails us and makes it an unattractive prospect for many. What if we saw marriage as a place where two people grow together? Not together, but in parallel. A place where we can be flawed and complicated and messy, but also where we can self-explore and self-discovery and be supported on our journey by our partner? 

Can relationship coaching help if the partner doesn’t want it or is losing interest in the relationship?

It’s very common to have one partner coming in not wanting to be there. That’s pretty normal. Sometimes we are at the end of our rope and counseling is our last-ditch attempt to save our relationship. So, I will have partners come in feeling disheartened, angry, tired. But when we do the work, sometimes that perspective shifts. When we commit to behavioral changes, we start to see the changes we need. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s too late and one partner (or both) has checked out of the relationship and isn’t willing to be vulnerable anymore and put in the work required. Relationship coaching is a starting point to acceptance, healing, and growth so that you move forward with awareness, closure, and clarity. 

What’s standing in the way of many relationships being as good as people want them to be?

Lack of consciousness or awareness. We don’t think about why we react the way we do, think the way we think, feel the way we feel. Poor communication skills are another culprit. We don’t learn from a young age how to communicate effectively our needs. We engage in reactive listening instead of active listening. We don’t know and don’t have healthy boundaries. It’s a combination of many things. 

I know a few couples who met online and are happily married. I’m curious to know what it’s like as a single woman in this world of dating apps. Is it scary? Do you recommend it to women who are looking for the right man?

I think there are so many great things about online dating apps. It’s great to be able to connect with someone you otherwise would have had no opportunity of meeting. It’s also great to match up with someone that is looking for the same commitment and shares similar values. Certainly, dating apps have helped us by saving time from investing in conversations with people we don’t want to talk to. 

However, the swipe culture is killing long-term relationships. The problem with certain online dating apps is that they don’t cultivate human interaction. There are a lot of inauthentic connections and meaningless interactions. Another issue with online dating is having too many options, which sounds like a good thing but isn’t necessarily the case. Because we might find someone great but think to ourselves: what if there is someone better out there? We have a fear of missing out on the “perfect” person, and so we hesitate to commit. 

So, I would say dating apps can be great – if you’re on the right app. There are several out there where the goal is to get to know the person and foster meaningful connections. So, if you’re going the online dating route, think about the platform you are on and if it promotes the kind of connection you are looking to make. 

Why is self-love so important in our relationships with another person? 

We cannot accept love from others if we don’t give it to ourselves. When we don’t love ourselves, we sabotage loving relationships because we don’t trust them. Also, without having a strong sense of self-worth or self-love means we are more likely to enter into co-dependent relationships where we rely on others to feel good about ourselves. 

Of course, self-love isn’t as easy as it sounds. It means loving the shame-filled, insecure, perverse, fearful parts of ourselves. That’s extremely difficult. Let’s aim for self-like. Hopefully, self-love will follow. 

What aspect of coaching gives you the most satisfaction?

I love when clients come back to me using keywords, I’ve taught them in session for specific behaviors they’ve been exhibiting. For example, I had a couple come to me and say “Last night, she stonewalled me. And I looked at her and said, ‘You’re stonewalling!'” and they were laughing as they were telling me this. They recognized a behavior and understood why it was happening and that meant instead of being confused and hurt by it, they were able to talk about why one partner was acting this way and how it made the other partner feel. To me, that is everything. 

What do you think is the most important thing couples can do to keep their relationships healthy?

Know each other’s dreams. And support each other in achieving them. 

How would you describe an ideal relationship?

The “Good enough” relationship. It sounds like settling for less, but it’s not. In a good enough relationship, there are still high expectations. There is the expectation of trust, there is respect. We support each other. We are committed to each other. We are friends. We expect to be treated with kindness and affection. There is love. But we also recognize that sometimes we will hurt each other, we’ll say things we don’t mean, we’ll let each other down. That annoying habit of our partner won’t go away, and there will be some things that we can never agree on. That’s a real relationship. Perfectly imperfect, full of support, empathy, and forgiveness. That’s what we should be aiming for. 

Rapid- Fire questions:

What is love? 

Trust, respect, integrity, honesty, partnership. That’s love. 

Are men and women equal in a relationship?

They bring different things to the table. 

What are the most important qualities in a relationship?

Friendship, empathy, and support 

Do you believe in the concept of soul mates?

No. We can love more than one person in our lifetime 

Do you believe in love at first sight?

I believe in attraction at first sight. 

Would you share a toothbrush with your partner?

Yes. If I had to! 

Would you rather give up music or television for a month?

Television for sure.

What’s one material thing you can’t live without?

My kindle. 

Best advice you were ever given?

Give yourself time to think. 

Best advice you would give a struggling couple?

It’s not always as bad as it seems. 

Reconcile Your Relationship with Najla Moussa was originally published on FLAIR MAGAZINE

[xtruss]

The coronavirus pandemic has shown that the existing world order may be ill-equipped to confront crises, a new intelligence report said. Credit...Aaron Favila/Associated Press

U.S. Intelligence Report Warns of Global Consequences of Social Fragmentation

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted weaknesses of the international order, said the report, which is issued every four years.

World will face "more intense and cascading global challenges" over next two decades, U.S. intelligence report warns

— By Julian E. Barnes | April 8, 2021 | The New York Times

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials warned in a report issued on Thursday about the potential fragmentation of society and the global order, holding out the possibility of a world where international trade is disrupted, groups of countries create online enclaves and civic cohesion is undermined.

The report, compiled every four years by the National Intelligence Council, mixes more traditional national security challenges like the potentially disruptive rise of China with social trends that have clear security implications, like the internet’s tendency to exacerbate political and cultural divisions.

A previous version of the report, released by the Obama administration in 2017, highlighted the risk of a pandemic and the vast economic disruption it could cause — a prescient prediction in hindsight.

The new report said that the coronavirus pandemic showed the weakness of the world order and that the institutions devised to face past crises are inadequate to coordinate a global response to new challenges like the spread of Covid-19. The failure of those institutions deepened public dissatisfaction and further eroded faith in the old order, the report said.

“Efforts to contain and manage the virus have reinforced nationalist trends globally, as some states turned inward to protect their citizens and sometimes cast blame on marginalized groups,” the report said. The response to the pandemic has fueled partisanship and polarization in many countries as groups argue over the best response and seek scapegoats to blame for spreading the virus and for slow mitigation efforts.

The global trends report — unlike the intelligence agencies’ annual threat assessment — is not supposed to look at immediate challenges. Instead, the report takes a longer-term, strategic look, trying to peer 20 years ahead to examine how current changes could transform the world of the future.

The intelligence council provides long-term strategic analysis for the director of national intelligence. It also regularly produces reports and assessments for officials and the National Security Council.

The report predicted that current trends would make global politics more volatile. On the international stage, China will continue to challenge the United States and the Western-led world order, and politics in certain countries will become more contentious, officials predicted.

Climate change was also a focus of the report, which noted the difficult adaptations that countries would need to make, such as building rainwater storage and reinforcing sea walls. Climate change would further drive global migration, which is already increasing, the report predicted. Technological innovation and cooperation between China and the West are keys to adapting to climate change, demographic shifts and other challenges, it said.

Income inequality could grow worse, the report said, tying it at times to information inequality.

The “trust gap” between an informed public that has faith in a government solution and a wider public with deep skepticism of institutions is growing, the report said.

The problem is made worse by technology. Algorithms, social media and artificial intelligence have replaced expertise in deciding what information spreads most widely, and that has made the public more vulnerable to misinformation.

Still, positive demographic changes in recent decades, with people moving out of poverty and into the middle class, had creating “rising expectations,” said Maria Langan-Riekhof, the director of the intelligence council’s strategic futures group. But fears of falling income across the globe are growing, a worrisome trend when coupled with changes in how information is shared and social divisions have deepened.

“Those concerns are leading people to look for the security of trusted voices, but also of like-minded groups within their societies,” Ms. Langan-Riekhof said. “Overlay those trends I’m describing, and you kind of see that recipe for greater divisions, increasing fracturing. We think that is likely to continue and probably worsen.”

Over time, the report said, these trends could weaken democratic governments.

“At the same time that populations are increasingly empowered and demanding more, governments are coming under greater pressure from new challenges and more limited resources,” the report said. “This widening gap portends more political volatility, erosion of democracy and expanding roles for alternative providers of governance. Over time, these dynamics might open the door to more significant shifts in how people govern.”

The global trends report has often looked at possible future situations. In the 2017 report, one example contemplated a pandemic plunging the world into economic chaos. It envisioned nationalistic politicians eroding alliances, a drop in oil prices causing calamity and more isolationist trade practices. It also forecast a pandemic (albeit in 2023, not 2020), which restricted travel, caused economic distress and exacerbated existing trends toward isolation.

The report has discussed the risk of a pandemic for nearly two decades, said Gregory F. Treverton, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council who helped lead the 2017 effort. The 2004 report said some experts believed it was “only a matter of time” before a pandemic, he said.

“It was talking about a scenario exactly like what’s happened: a major global pandemic that shut down global commerce, air travel,” Mr. Treverton said. “The reports have been strategic warnings, and that is how I think of them, helping people who want to be strategic.”

The new report credited the previous documents for highlighting the potential for new diseases and pandemics but acknowledged that “we lacked a full picture of the breadth and depth of its disruptive potential.” For the new effort, the National Intelligence Council looked at which trends the coronavirus pandemic was accelerating and which were slowing.

“Much like the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to produce some changes that will be felt for years to come and change the way we live, work and govern domestically and internationally,” the report said. “How great these will be, however, is very much in question.”

Even before the spread of the coronavirus, National Intelligence Council analysts were examining the idea of more shared global challenges. But the coronavirus, Ms. Langan-Riekhof said, “really drove it home for us.”

“Challenges aren’t going to stay within the borders of a single country anymore, and we’re going to feel them globally much faster,” she said. “This may be a foreshadowing of things to come.”

— Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes • Facebook

— A version of this article appears in print on April 9, 2021, Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Intelligence Report Warns Pandemic Is Chipping Away at the World Order.

[wineanddinosaur]

Advanced Cicerone Chris Leguizamon Is Using Beer Education to Make the World a Better Place

It was the two-hour bus ride to and from his previous job at Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, Calif., that gave Chris Leguizamon time to become one of only two Advanced Cicerones in San Diego. Armed with a collection of beer magazines and books like Randy Mosher’s “Tasting Beer: An Insider’s Guide to the World’s Greatest Drink,” Leguizamon honed his expertise as a craft beer expert, eventually becoming the education program manager at Pure Project, a 1% for the Planet Company and certified carbon and plastic-neutral organization known for ultra-complex and highly sought-after brews. He shares his knowledge with beer drinkers of all levels through an Instagram livestream series under his account @chris.thebeereducator, with a goal of helping San Diego become home to the most Cicerone-certified front-of-house staff anywhere else in the world.

Sharing knowledge comes naturally to Leguizamon. As a former brewery tour guide for six years, as well as a first generation Latino/Hispanic American with a degree in physics and passion for renewable energy, he’s as well versed in discussions about the diversity in beer styles as he is about diversity and social justice. After the #BlackoutTuesday initiative permeated Instagram last June, Leguizamon says he found himself avoiding discussions about beer in order to focus on conversations around equity (and the lack thereof) outside the beer industry.

“I could not fathom educating people about anything that pertains to this fizzy carbonated beverage without addressing real social issues, because that’s what the world is going through,” Leguizamon says. When responding to critics who say breweries should “stick to beer,” he says, “If you just think that life is about beer, you’re missing the point … Beer is made by someone with hands, that’s working, that also has three kids — there’s more to it [than beer].”

With Pure Project’s backing, Leguizamon shifted his educational efforts online. (He calls his employer “the best leadership company I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”) In the following interview, Leguizamon discusses his entry into beer, his upward trajectory, and his desire to empower others to make their own impacts.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

1. How, when, and why did you get into beer?

When I was 15, I was visiting my uncle in Bogota, Colombia. I’d never really had beer besides like, family gatherings when you’re like two years old (laughs). He brought in a mixed 6-pack, sits it right down in the living room, and says, ‘Chris, today we’re gonna drink the products of our country.’ He presented one — Club Colombia, which has won a bunch of awards — and told me to look at the color (yellow, fizzy, straw-like), smell it, and then I tasted it. It was nothing like soda, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, God, this sucks!’

The second beer was Poker, and it had this attractive amber hue to it. The two didn’t look the same at all, so I tried it and it had this recognizable toast that reminded me of breakfast with my mom, and a touch of caramel. Colombians are attracted to caramel because of our obsession with arequipe. We put that on everything, so right away I thought it was way better than the other one.

At that point, I went down a rabbit hole of: Why does beer taste different? There are cultures behind this. There are centuries of science and art. I began wanting to read, wanting to learn, and indirectly change the stigma of what a Latino or a guy that looks like me is in beer. I’m a brown-skinned kid from one of the poorest cities in the nation (Reading, Pa.) and I want people to have a ‘Oh, holy smokes, this kid knows his stuff!’ type of mentality.

2. So when did you formally enter the beer industry?

In 2014, I worked at a brewpub in Pennsylvania called Chatty Monks, and at that point I was the only non-family member that was on staff; it was just a staff of six, including the three owners. I was this bushy, big-eyed 21-year-old, excited to finally be in craft beer and I would sing praises about flavors, pairings, and there came a point where like the guests were looking at me and they’re like, ‘Dude, it’s just beer. Why do you have so much passion behind this?’ It got to a point where I became an outlier in my own industry-slash-town. So I thought, ‘I’m gonna move to the place I like to vacation, which is San Diego,’ and I did in 2014. I remember thinking, ‘Holy shit, these people get it.’ I worked at Mission Brewery as a tour guide until 2015, moved to Stone Brewing until 2016, and then AleSmith Brewing Company until early 2019.

3. You’ve worked at a few big name breweries in San Diego. But you’ve talked about getting burnt out on the industry after a couple of negative encounters. What kept you in beer?

In 2019, I wanted to leave the beer industry, defeated. I was like, ‘Maybe I could get into bourbon, maybe get into coffee’ … but Kira Bouchard [currently the regional manager at Pure Project], who is my saving grace, was having coffee with me and asked what ‘beer adventures’ I was having. When I told her I was considering leaving the industry altogether, she encouraged me to apply to Pure Project, despite there being no open positions at the time.

Things fell into place: Someone left, I applied. I went through the whole interview process and the rest is history. I went from not wanting to smell a beer or talk about it to signing up for the Advanced Cicerone exam three months later.

4. What was the [Advanced Cicerone] exam study process like?

I studied for five hours a day. I would wake up at 5:30 a.m., put a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich in the microwave, and then coffee. I’d just sit there every single morning and by 6 a.m. the books were open. I sacrificed a lot. I’ve missed out on a lot, but that determination kind of got me back into the rhythm.

5. Why is beer education so important to you?

I’m very team-oriented, and I hate when people talk down to beertenders or try to stump them, mainly because of gender. That ticks me off. A lot of people try to stump [female bartenders] and I can’t stand that, so I want to empower everyone to be able to hold their own.

6. After you achieved Advanced Cicerone, how did you start to share your knowledge?

We at Pure Project all push each other to be better, and the way that it evolved was I was homebrewing this BrewDog beer through their DIY Dog program [an annual compilation of open-source homebrew recipes], and I asked Mike Czech [Pure Project director of distribution], ‘What if we do something like this at Pure Project? We’re releasing two new beers every two weeks. What if you announce the title, the ABV, and three important keywords the beertenders can use?’ But Mike tailored it so well; he cut out the fluff. I’m very raw with my ideas and I need someone to edit, and Mike made it happen.

At the same time, Matt [Robar, Pure’s co-founder] saw potential in me because I was a tour guide for so long. He asked me to jump on an IG Live, since we were about to release Hazelsaurus Rex and a barrel-aged sour. It was one of the rawest IG Lives ever, I’d never had the two beers and Winslow [Sawyer, Pure’s head brewer], who is like a foot taller than me, pours the beers and my face lights up. I’m just geeking out. When we cut, they thought I did a pretty good job, so they asked me to do it again the next week. And it went from there!

7. How did that segment on Pure Project’s Instagram transform into what you’re personally doing, and how did it change during Covid-19?

I started a beer account called Chris the Beer Educator, and the first video you find is literally me in the back of my girlfriend’s backyard, laying out the intention of this whole virtual education thing. It was literally just to highlight everyone who got me to the point where I’m at now — never to focus on me; it’s to highlight other people and what they’re doing.

Then Covid hits and I’m sitting there antsy, wanting to keep teaching people about beer. So this spawned off that IG Live that Pure Project had me do for a couple months. I thought if I can convince people to read one of the most fundamental books, which is ‘Tasting Beer,’ then hopefully people will follow along. It made me want to read that book again, and it kind of grew into its own beast.

Weirdly, people have told me I built a brand. I didn’t mean to — I literally just wanted to empower people that were just at home during quarantine, not knowing what the world is gonna look like, to read ‘Tasting Beer’ and show how amazing San Diego beer professionals are. It’s San Diego craft beer in its rawest form.

8. What’s one episode that stands out to you?

When George [Thornton, owner of Home Brewing Company] and I were talking, things were flowing, and we were talking about Black is Beautiful — that was just the most human side of me, and George. There was a lot of frustration with what’s happening in the world, a lot of ‘How can people not just want to listen?’ George and I had that one moment where we both had pain, we both had frustration, and this was the least we could do being beer professionals, just being human, is telling people, ‘Listen, we know that you feel attacked, but just stop yelling back — just listen, learn, read a book about what’s happening. Try to understand people’s perspective that you don’t understand. They’re not part of the same walk as you. Celebrate that diversity as we like to celebrate diversity in beer styles.’

9. Ultimately, what’s your goal in the beer industry?

The main goal of Chris the Beer Educator is to have everyone pass their Certified Cicerone and to get that Level 2. I’ve always, always, always wanted to have people go from Level 1 to Level 2 and say, Chris was that person when everyone else says ‘Just do it yourself,’ he didn’t mind that I messaged him and said, ‘Hey could you clear up this section for me?’

I asked a lot of people for help during the Advanced Cicerone studying, and I got a good amount of ‘nos.’ Then there’s those people that mentored me, and I want to be that person for San Diego, so that we have the most Certified Cicerones, the most [Advanced] Cicerones, and ideally the most Master Cicerones in the nation. Imagine San Diego not just having the most amount of breweries — that’s nice — but the most educated staff anywhere, where everyone’s really on top of their game. Making it both female and male, Latino, person of color, Black, Asian, whatever it may be to diversify. That’s the dream, honestly.

The article Advanced Cicerone Chris Leguizamon Is Using Beer Education to Make the World a Better Place appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/chris-leguizamon-beer-education/

[johnboothus]

Advanced Cicerone Chris Leguizamon Is Using Beer Education to Make the World a Better Place

It was the two-hour bus ride to and from his previous job at Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, Calif., that gave Chris Leguizamon time to become one of only two Advanced Cicerones in San Diego. Armed with a collection of beer magazines and books like Randy Mosher’s “Tasting Beer: An Insider’s Guide to the World’s Greatest Drink,” Leguizamon honed his expertise as a craft beer expert, eventually becoming the education program manager at Pure Project, a 1% for the Planet Company and certified carbon and plastic-neutral organization known for ultra-complex and highly sought-after brews. He shares his knowledge with beer drinkers of all levels through an Instagram livestream series under his account @chris.thebeereducator, with a goal of helping San Diego become home to the most Cicerone-certified front-of-house staff anywhere else in the world.

Sharing knowledge comes naturally to Leguizamon. As a former brewery tour guide for six years, as well as a first generation Latino/Hispanic American with a degree in physics and passion for renewable energy, he’s as well versed in discussions about the diversity in beer styles as he is about diversity and social justice. After the #BlackoutTuesday initiative permeated Instagram last June, Leguizamon says he found himself avoiding discussions about beer in order to focus on conversations around equity (and the lack thereof) outside the beer industry.

“I could not fathom educating people about anything that pertains to this fizzy carbonated beverage without addressing real social issues, because that’s what the world is going through,” Leguizamon says. When responding to critics who say breweries should “stick to beer,” he says, “If you just think that life is about beer, you’re missing the point … Beer is made by someone with hands, that’s working, that also has three kids — there’s more to it [than beer].”

With Pure Project’s backing, Leguizamon shifted his educational efforts online. (He calls his employer “the best leadership company I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”) In the following interview, Leguizamon discusses his entry into beer, his upward trajectory, and his desire to empower others to make their own impacts.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

1. How, when, and why did you get into beer?

When I was 15, I was visiting my uncle in Bogota, Colombia. I’d never really had beer besides like, family gatherings when you’re like two years old (laughs). He brought in a mixed 6-pack, sits it right down in the living room, and says, ‘Chris, today we’re gonna drink the products of our country.’ He presented one — Club Colombia, which has won a bunch of awards — and told me to look at the color (yellow, fizzy, straw-like), smell it, and then I tasted it. It was nothing like soda, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, God, this sucks!’

The second beer was Poker, and it had this attractive amber hue to it. The two didn’t look the same at all, so I tried it and it had this recognizable toast that reminded me of breakfast with my mom, and a touch of caramel. Colombians are attracted to caramel because of our obsession with arequipe. We put that on everything, so right away I thought it was way better than the other one.

At that point, I went down a rabbit hole of: Why does beer taste different? There are cultures behind this. There are centuries of science and art. I began wanting to read, wanting to learn, and indirectly change the stigma of what a Latino or a guy that looks like me is in beer. I’m a brown-skinned kid from one of the poorest cities in the nation (Reading, Pa.) and I want people to have a ‘Oh, holy smokes, this kid knows his stuff!’ type of mentality.

2. So when did you formally enter the beer industry?

In 2014, I worked at a brewpub in Pennsylvania called Chatty Monks, and at that point I was the only non-family member that was on staff; it was just a staff of six, including the three owners. I was this bushy, big-eyed 21-year-old, excited to finally be in craft beer and I would sing praises about flavors, pairings, and there came a point where like the guests were looking at me and they’re like, ‘Dude, it’s just beer. Why do you have so much passion behind this?’ It got to a point where I became an outlier in my own industry-slash-town. So I thought, ‘I’m gonna move to the place I like to vacation, which is San Diego,’ and I did in 2014. I remember thinking, ‘Holy shit, these people get it.’ I worked at Mission Brewery as a tour guide until 2015, moved to Stone Brewing until 2016, and then AleSmith Brewing Company until early 2019.

3. You’ve worked at a few big name breweries in San Diego. But you’ve talked about getting burnt out on the industry after a couple of negative encounters. What kept you in beer?

In 2019, I wanted to leave the beer industry, defeated. I was like, ‘Maybe I could get into bourbon, maybe get into coffee’ … but Kira Bouchard [currently the regional manager at Pure Project], who is my saving grace, was having coffee with me and asked what ‘beer adventures’ I was having. When I told her I was considering leaving the industry altogether, she encouraged me to apply to Pure Project, despite there being no open positions at the time.

Things fell into place: Someone left, I applied. I went through the whole interview process and the rest is history. I went from not wanting to smell a beer or talk about it to signing up for the Advanced Cicerone exam three months later.

4. What was the [Advanced Cicerone] exam study process like?

I studied for five hours a day. I would wake up at 5:30 a.m., put a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich in the microwave, and then coffee. I’d just sit there every single morning and by 6 a.m. the books were open. I sacrificed a lot. I’ve missed out on a lot, but that determination kind of got me back into the rhythm.

5. Why is beer education so important to you?

I’m very team-oriented, and I hate when people talk down to beertenders or try to stump them, mainly because of gender. That ticks me off. A lot of people try to stump [female bartenders] and I can’t stand that, so I want to empower everyone to be able to hold their own.

6. After you achieved Advanced Cicerone, how did you start to share your knowledge?

We at Pure Project all push each other to be better, and the way that it evolved was I was homebrewing this BrewDog beer through their DIY Dog program [an annual compilation of open-source homebrew recipes], and I asked Mike Czech [Pure Project director of distribution], ‘What if we do something like this at Pure Project? We’re releasing two new beers every two weeks. What if you announce the title, the ABV, and three important keywords the beertenders can use?’ But Mike tailored it so well; he cut out the fluff. I’m very raw with my ideas and I need someone to edit, and Mike made it happen.

At the same time, Matt [Robar, Pure’s co-founder] saw potential in me because I was a tour guide for so long. He asked me to jump on an IG Live, since we were about to release Hazelsaurus Rex and a barrel-aged sour. It was one of the rawest IG Lives ever, I’d never had the two beers and Winslow [Sawyer, Pure’s head brewer], who is like a foot taller than me, pours the beers and my face lights up. I’m just geeking out. When we cut, they thought I did a pretty good job, so they asked me to do it again the next week. And it went from there!

7. How did that segment on Pure Project’s Instagram transform into what you’re personally doing, and how did it change during Covid-19?

I started a beer account called Chris the Beer Educator, and the first video you find is literally me in the back of my girlfriend’s backyard, laying out the intention of this whole virtual education thing. It was literally just to highlight everyone who got me to the point where I’m at now — never to focus on me; it’s to highlight other people and what they’re doing.

Then Covid hits and I’m sitting there antsy, wanting to keep teaching people about beer. So this spawned off that IG Live that Pure Project had me do for a couple months. I thought if I can convince people to read one of the most fundamental books, which is ‘Tasting Beer,’ then hopefully people will follow along. It made me want to read that book again, and it kind of grew into its own beast.

Weirdly, people have told me I built a brand. I didn’t mean to — I literally just wanted to empower people that were just at home during quarantine, not knowing what the world is gonna look like, to read ‘Tasting Beer’ and show how amazing San Diego beer professionals are. It’s San Diego craft beer in its rawest form.

8. What’s one episode that stands out to you?

When George [Thornton, owner of Home Brewing Company] and I were talking, things were flowing, and we were talking about Black is Beautiful — that was just the most human side of me, and George. There was a lot of frustration with what’s happening in the world, a lot of ‘How can people not just want to listen?’ George and I had that one moment where we both had pain, we both had frustration, and this was the least we could do being beer professionals, just being human, is telling people, ‘Listen, we know that you feel attacked, but just stop yelling back — just listen, learn, read a book about what’s happening. Try to understand people’s perspective that you don’t understand. They’re not part of the same walk as you. Celebrate that diversity as we like to celebrate diversity in beer styles.’

9. Ultimately, what’s your goal in the beer industry?

The main goal of Chris the Beer Educator is to have everyone pass their Certified Cicerone and to get that Level 2. I’ve always, always, always wanted to have people go from Level 1 to Level 2 and say, Chris was that person when everyone else says ‘Just do it yourself,’ he didn’t mind that I messaged him and said, ‘Hey could you clear up this section for me?’

I asked a lot of people for help during the Advanced Cicerone studying, and I got a good amount of ‘nos.’ Then there’s those people that mentored me, and I want to be that person for San Diego, so that we have the most Certified Cicerones, the most [Advanced] Cicerones, and ideally the most Master Cicerones in the nation. Imagine San Diego not just having the most amount of breweries — that’s nice — but the most educated staff anywhere, where everyone’s really on top of their game. Making it both female and male, Latino, person of color, Black, Asian, whatever it may be to diversify. That’s the dream, honestly.

The article Advanced Cicerone Chris Leguizamon Is Using Beer Education to Make the World a Better Place appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/chris-leguizamon-beer-education/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/advanced-cicerone-chris-leguizamon-is-using-beer-education-to-make-the-world-a-better-place

[dippedanddripped]

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that everything’s fucked. This time last year, to look at a brand channeling youthful rage and anarchy might have seemed a bit extreme, but considering punk was incubated during the sociopolitical climates of the Reagan and Thatcher eras, it’s not too surprising to see that “middle-finger-to-the-world” attitude become all the more relevant in the post-Trump era.

That certainly hasn’t affected the gentrification of streetwear and sneaker culture. On the one hand, the resale market seems to be stronger than ever, with some models like the Dior x Jordan 1 fetching aftermarket prices that could legit be a down payment on a Honda Civic. On the other, plenty of streetwear’s OGs and upstarts have become galvanized by ongoing protests and paradigm shifts in the fight for social justice, and, well, they can generally agree that the way things are going is pretty terrible.

As a result, streetwear as a culture is continuing to differentiate itself from streetwear as an industry. That’s something we can see in the kinds of labels gaining popularity in this era. Among them is Jon Lopez’s “I Never Heard of You,” a cheekily-named brand that exists as a refreshing antithesis to the commodification of streetwear, sneakers, and digital clout-chasers.

Lopez grew up in Queens, and, like many teens, got into gear and kicks early on, but developed a fondness for graffiti, citing the late great Dondi White as a specific influence. Equally life-changing was when he discovered DMX, Slipknot, and Marilyn Manson.

“I was influenced by shit that was uncut and in your face,” he says. “I loved wearing the most shocking graphic tees I could find — stuff that would piss off any parent or teacher, but my friends would think it was cool.”

Eventually, he ended up working as a graphic designer for Angelo Baque’s OG Awake team (he gets mad background props in a GQ Style editorial from a couple of years ago). That led to a few other opportunities in design and consulting for a few other spots he can’t specifically name, for contractual reasons. But his time spent soaking up game at Awake also highlighted the disparity between streetwear as a business, the faces making a profit, and the faces doing the work.

“I want to put on more Latinx creatives like myself, the same way Angelo has for me and others. It’s not as common to see people who look like me or my friends,” notes Lopez. “It’s crazy, considering how much POC in general have helped influence the dope shit the industry often tries to package and sell for profit.”

I Never Heard of You serves as a call-out to “fake it ’til you make it” culture, and its profane gear speaks to Lopez’s appreciation of shock rock, hardcore music, and things that are intentionally unpalatable for the mainstream. Items range from graphic tees flipping characters like Bugs Bunny and Marilyn Manson merch (unlicensed of course, because fuck doing things the legit way), to all-over print pants and shirts scrawled with “EVERYTHING’S FUCKED,” a print made by Lopez manually scrawling the phrase over and over with a marker.

But these days, trying to go the bootleg route isn’t without its consequences. Less than a week after releasing his second collection, Jon’s @ineverheardofyou account was taken down for copyright violations, a charge filed on behalf of Marilyn Manson’s label. Even though he’s created a backup account @ineverheardofyoubefore, he’s faced with possibly hefty legal fees if he hopes to recover his original username.

On the one hand, it’s the most punk shit ever, but on the other, it’s a quandary not a lot of other smaller labels could face with a similar level of confidence. Owing to Jon’s network of industry veterans and mentors, as well as early co-signs from accounts like @hidden.ny, he’s fortunately more equipped to handle the situation — or if necessary, rebuild his momentum from the ground up.

“With so much corporate interest in streetwear, brands like I Never Heard of You are needed,” notes HIDDEN®, the anonymous founder of Instagram account @hidden.ny, who often posts Lopez’s products out of a genuine appreciation for them. “It’s not your conventional brand. Jon’s experience working in the industry has given him the foundations to build on, but it’s his unique attitude and approach to design which made me a fan.”

It’s a welcome mix of DIY culture with the same anti-corporate attitude that informed streetwear a decade and a half ago. It’s why I Never Heard of You’s most viral products to date are his sneakers. The first was the “Fuck Off 1,” a Jordan 1 hightop with the Swoosh replaced by a middle finger, and the Air Jordan “Wings” logo replaced with an anarchy symbol and “Fuck the Fuck Off” above it.

Of course, bootleg sneakers aren ‘t new. Heads in 2006 remember the way Consolidated Skateboard’s banana-bearing “Drunk SB” sneakers flipped Todd Bratrud’s “Send Help SBs” (probably an inside job, considering Bratrud is also the art director at Consolidated). There’s also Ari Forman’s cigarette-inspired “Ari Menthol 10s,” BAPE’s BAPEsta, and even the high-end flips like RHUDE’s Rhecess that takes its cues from the Nike Terminator.

Sure, Trevor Gorji’s recent “One In the Chamber” have an appeal in their own right, but the decidedly anti-corporate commentary I Never Heard of You brings to the Chicago 1 feels especially relevant, considering Jordan-mania in a post-The Last Dance world.

“I love sneakers, but the culture around it has changed a lot from when I first fell in love with it a few years ago, mostly because of the internet,” admits Lopez. His sneakers (he just dropped an Air Force 1 flip that sold out in a matter of seconds) comment on consumption culture while reluctantly being a part of it — similar to how a brand like Noah acknowledges the evils of capitalism while doing what it can to operate as virtuously as possible.

“The Fuck Off 1s pull from great bootlegs of the past but raise the bar on quality and presentation,” adds HIDDEN®. “They’re a pure expression of rebellion towards the over-saturation of the sneaker market and something I personally wear a lot.”

The middle-finger high tops have even found their way to the high-profile feet of celebs like Future. But to Lopez’s point about the internet ruining things for other people, the long wait time between purchase and delivery has been the bane of every small brand trying to satisfy a large consumer demand. Pairs took months to ship, a process worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic putting even more of a strain on logistics. In response, he coined the term “Amazon Shopper” for the instant gratification people expect after hitting the buy button.

“There is no real appreciation for the work that is put into the items,” he laments. “Amazon Shoppers are the worst. They’re a direct representation of the term with their shitty consumer attitude that plagues the internet and independent artists like myself.”

After selling out of his second drop earlier this month, Lopez isn’t necessarily in a rush to get his next project out, but his next release will likely be in line with more charitable projects he’s done between his capsule collections. He released two T-shirts in the past few months, raising funds for Covid-19 relief as well as bail funds for imprisoned Black Lives Matter protesters. It’s one of the things he picked up from his days at Awake — figure out a way to use your platform to amplify messages you believe in.

“I want people to also pay attention to the fact that there are kids in cages and people that have gone missing with no real answers, and a complete and total disregard for simple human rights here in this country,” he says. “I hope to continue creating items for charitable causes and raise awareness towards certain things with the small creative platform I have. Maybe it will inspire others to do more in their own ways.”

His mentor, Angelo Baque, couldn’t be prouder to witness his glow-up.

“The most important lesson that I hope he learned while working with me is that none of this was given or handed over to me. You have to really want it and bust your ass to get it,” says Baque. “What’s most important about Jon’s work is that he’s staying true to himself and not compromising his vision. I look forward to seeing what he does next.”

[thepermanentrainpress]

POST-MODERN CONNECTION – CREATIVITY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

Like all good origin stories, Post-Modern Connection came to be following a chance encounter at a university party.

It’s the story they’re sticking with, because it’s what they’ve been told happened.

“It sounds plausible. I threw a lot of parties in my first year,” lead singer and guitarist Tega Ovie said with a laugh.

They’re pretty sure Georges Nasrallah was playing guitar at the party in question and that Ovie – a frequent at open mics at the time – asked him to fill in for a friend at an upcoming gig. They started writing together soon after, diverse musical and cultural backgrounds spinning into something thoughtful, warmly paced, and unexpectedly energetic.

That was four years ago now. The two have finished their post-secondary studies – Nasrallah in computer science and economics and Ovie in business. When I caught up with them on a Thursday evening, they’d gotten off their day jobs just a short time prior.

“I actually don’t mind my 9-to-5. I like stability, so it’s perfect for me,” shared Ovie. Not having to plan around midterms and group projects has allowed them to really ramp up band endeavours; they aim to finish their debut EP this year, and take it on tour in 2021.

Ovie pens most of the lyrics. Him and Nasrallah typically build the framework of their songs before bringing them to the rest of the band – Steven Lin (bass), Mitch Howanyk (violin/keys) and Cam Wilks (drums) – to flesh out even further.

“At our next practice, Mitch will add his violin… maybe change our minds and we’ll do an entirely different riff in that section,” Nasrallah said. “Cam adds his drum beats. I’ll write, like, a basic bassline, then Steven makes it a trillion times better because I’m definitely not a bassist.”

“In some bands, everyone can do what the others do just as well, and I think it’s nice that we can’t [do that],” Ovie said. “Georges is the best at playing guitar, I’m the best at singing, Mitch is the best at violin, Steven’s the best at bass, Cam’s the best at drums. It forces each person to bring their own personality to the table.”

“Drowning” – the group’s latest single – is a testament to that. There is such an ease to Ovie’s vocals, propped against swooning guitar lines and vocal chants. Think ’70s high school prom with a more synth-y, but mentally exhausting disposition.

The emotions of the song are tied to a series of hardships faced by Ovie, his family, and his home country of Nigeria. “Being in university made the whole thing come to the surface and blow up… kind of like what COVID-19 is doing to the rest of world now,” he analogized.

They filmed the music video in a commercial space behind Bright Jenny Coffee (formerly Canoe Coffee Roasters). Directed by Teaghan McGinnis, its Wes Anderson-esque, vintage tones pair well with his resourceful takes on the song’s themes.

Jade of Wolfette Styling coordinated the very cool set decor and outfits.

“We ordered the overalls on Amazon. They’re actually women’s overalls because they’re the only ones that would fit properly,” Ovie said of the band’s matching tie-dye getup – which has already seen stage wear since.

They raised $1500 to produce the video via Kickstarter, and acknowledge the importance of community support for smaller artists like themselves.

“It’s nice to see. Music [streaming and album sales] do not pay the bills; shows are pretty much an artist’s main source of income for continuing to produce content,” explained Nasrallah.

And while these past few months have underlined the challenges of pursuing music full-time, it is still a conversation the group has, “at least once a month.”

“We do have goals with our music, but we’re also not going to say this is all we want to do,” Ovie said. The plan is to move to Vancouver in two to three years, once they’ve widened their fanbase enough to avoid starting from scratch in the western Canada hub.

Prior to Post-Modern Connection – PMC, for short – Ovie was in a couple high school choirs and Nasrallah a couple high school bands. Both learned the piano at a young age—not necessarily by choice, though Nasrallah admits having the theory background helped when he finally picked up the guitar.

“I hated it so much so I don’t remember anything,” Ovie laughed. “We had to do friggin’ Beethoven. I was like, why are we studying Beethoven in Nigeria? What is the point of this?”

Both moved to Kelowna without their immediate families, but are embracing the opportunity to pursue their own interests.

“My mom has always been like, this is your life – you need to be smart with it. I’m not gonna control it for you, but I’m gonna at least get you to a point where you can stand on your own two feet,” said Ovie.

Nasrallah listened to a lot of metal growing up. For Ovie, it was a mix of Afrobeat, rap, and Coldplay. Jazz chords are a staple of their sound, but they also trail into psychedelia and moody rock breakdowns. No two releases have sounded the same and the EP will be no different.

“We try to not make things boring,” said Nasrallah. “We want to start off by setting that expectation.”

Officially joining the band last October, Howanyk gives their sound a classical tilt that sets them apart from many of their indie soul counterparts. He shifts between violin and synths during their live set—the latter something they’d use often in the studio, but never live when they were a four-piece due to the challenges of juggling both it and their guitars.

They will be bringing in additional material on their laptops to further boost the live experience.

“I am super excited,” Ovie said. “It’s our next form.”

Unfortunately, the group had to postpone summer gigs as far east as Manitoba due to COVID-19. Neither Ovie or Nasrallah are particularly fond of Kelowna’s favourite outdoor pastime – hiking – but have been spending time reading fantasy novels, biking, and playing D&D.

They’ve also been using their platform to encourage discussion on Black Lives Matter and meaningful change in the music industry.

“I want to see more people of colour on the board of directors, more people of color labels… more community,” Ovie elaborated. “Blackout Tuesday and The Show Must Be Paused thing doesn’t help anybody. We can do better than this.”

On if they see social commentary becoming more prevalent in their own music, Ovie says he’ll continue to write from personal experience, without the pressures of a narrative.

“To be honest, I don't think I could do it artistically enough. But if my feelings are prevalently caused by what's going on [in the world], then that's probably what I'll write about.”

#PMCeats is a segment on their Instagram stories that started as a jab at each other’s cooking skills.

They’ve branched into rating restaurant food as well, but have no shame in denoting who has the laziest flavour profile in the band.

“Steven brought lentils and white rice to the [“Drowning” video] shoot,” said Ovie. “Unseasoned. I was like woah, what’s going on? Where’s the sauce?”

“Steven’s more of a critique rather than a cook,” Nasrallah added.

Segueing into our signature question [if you could be any ice cream flavour, which would you be and why?], Nasrallah went with Haagen-Dazs coffee because he loves coffee and it feels like part of his Lebanese heritage.

They think Mitch would be something sweet and sour, like lemon or salty caramel. Cam would be a calming flavour like vanilla.

“Steven would not be able to choose, because everything would be 8 out of 10,” joked Nasrallah.

“No, I feel like Steve is more on Cam’s wave… he’s very subtle, but there are a lot of undertones with Steve,” said Ovie. “So instead of just vanilla, strawberry vanilla.”

Ovie couldn’t decide on one flavour, but had some love for local establishments Parlour and Moo-lix—the latter in particular for their waffle cones.

Choosing a band name is a daunting task. When it was just Lin, Ovie and Nasrallah, they considered the Smooth Service (before a friend said it sounded like an escort service), and Triple A – ‘because there was an Arab, an Asian and an African in the band.’

Fortunately, neither name stuck, and when Ovie started thinking about postmodernism, parallels to their charismatic makeup were hard to ignore.

“The whole concept of postmodernism is to reject previous school of thought. To reject labeling, boundaries, and fitting into anything else. That’s kind of [our band] here in Kelowna. We don't fit into anything and that's what we want to keep, too.”

I wouldn’t expect anything less.

Written by: Natalie Hoy

[pokefan531]

My take on Pokemon Unite and covering the problems

Hey guys. I am gonna do my take on Pokemon Unite and put out what is going on with it, and what I think about it. I see a lot of negative feedback, so I'll address a couple of sides of this situation.

Well, last week, we got Pokemon Presentation that has more than one thing, and it covers Cafe Mix, New Snap, Sword and Shield Isle of Armor that came out the exact day, and new things about sleep and home. Last week has a lot of content on it, and they then say next week is a big announcement. It will make it seem like it's worth seeing since the first presentation was a good one due to its content.

When I saw the recent presentation, it was just Pokemon Unite on the entire presentation, and people seem to be disappointed of it. First off, I don't hate it and just thought it was just a League of Legend reskin to Pokemon that is on Switch and Mobile. We will be breaking down to each problems. I will put the good, the bad, and what they could've done to be neutral to the situation.

First problem is the marketing and what the last Pokemon Presentation said about the next presentation on the following week that it will be a big announcement. Well, if they say it's gonna be a big announcement, it will make people have high expectations like wanting a johto or sinnoh remake. You're pretty much giving it more hype by saying. So, I only saw the recent presentation with no expectations, because I didn't want them to make any remakes to begin with since Let's Go Games cost them development time on Sword and Shield, that brought up #BringBackNationalDex situation as well as being really rushed for the holidays with less effort on animation and graphics that I saw from DistantKingdom. I wanted games to be developed well and not disappoint people that last year's problem has. At the same time, I never really have high expectations on most panels since they always come unexpected, so the presentation didn't anger me or anything. I just thought if the game was really worth a big presentation. Mobile and Free to Play games aren't really a big announcement since they are just small games, but what is would be something that is exclusive on game consoles as a paid game. I do think they could've included the game on last week's presentation to have at least a bit longer presentation that is with all its games being announced. That way, it would've been more neutral and people would be like "Okay...A Pokemon MOBA game." instead of "THAT'S A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT?! A POKEMON MOBA GAME?". You can see the attitude change, if they either include that game on last week's presentation or swap it with Pokemon New Snap since it's an iconic game, and if New Snap was covering the whole presentation from Wednesday, it would've been a deal breaker. People would be more happy and it should include gameplay for a little bit. I think they should've present Unite better. Also, a presentation should have at least two things, with a little bit of showing off merch and stuff. I know Diablo has that problem two years ago because it was marketed as a big announcement for a PC franchise and it turned to be a mobile free to play game, and it was booed on the panel and blizzard people has some attitude on the fans, especially since there was no new Diablo game for a long time. With Pokemon Unite, it wasn't as worse since I don't every gaming news overreacting to its feedback, so the drama is pretty smaller than Diablo's situation.

The second problem of Pokemon Unite was it was made by Tencent, a Chinese company who makes free to play mobile games. People do not like that company and I'll explain why based on my research. Tencent is a level of EA, aka Electronic Arts. As we should know, EA is a very greedy company that is unfriendly with its consumers, and fill their games with microtransactions and trying to get more money from people. The best example of a game that has this problem was Star Wars Battlefront 2 when it came out, and it has microtransactions that let's players become stronger when paying powerups so it's a pay to win kind of thing. Also, you have to pay for characters to get it instantly, as you would have to grind for too many hours otherwise. There is also a game from EA called Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, a free to play Mobile game. It was heavily forced to pay microtransaction to progress the game much quicker, and it recently banned a player for reporting that there are hackers, and they ignored him and thought he was breaking their TOS. EA is a very shady company. So with Tencent, they're almost the same level as EA, so that is pretty much the reason why people don't like Tencent. They do stuffs like this too as far as I heard. I don't really play those type of games because I don't like when they decide to make free to play games that heavily relies on Microtransaction that really impacts the enjoyment of a game, but as for Pokemon Unite, we haven't seen more information yet besides the gameplay. I wouldn't expect it to be as much fun since I gathered information about Tencent.

[Edit 9/22: Well, right after I post this, people told me more about Tencent. They’re worse than EA, because they have huge connections with Chinese government, and they can control and see people’s data and such, as well as censorship, so they have much more government control, and they own so many things, moreso than Disney and Microsoft. Well, it was announced a year prior that Tencent would work on a Pokemon game, but SwSh not having dex was taking over, since it was a main game. With a poor presentation, it’s theorized that Tencent paid the Pokemon Company to have their own presentation for the game, or that TPC decided to do that, but more on the former. Still, it wouldn’t get as much backlash if it was included on the presentation a week before with the other games.]

As a concept, it looks decent. The models and its gameplay looks fine. I thought it would be all right on itself. MOBA games are really big in China and any mobile games there. They barely play console games since most consoles haven't sold there until the PS4 era, but everyone has phones so they can play games anywhere. It may be all right, but I wouldn't expect much. If you do want to play a new Pokemon free to play game, tryout Pokemon Cafe Mix. It's a lot more fun and its microtransactions are completely optional, and you an play the game without internet/mobile connection. Cafe Mix came out few days ago and it looks addicting. It's on Mobile and Switch.

So, do I think the fans have the right to be disappointed by the game, or are they really toxic? Well, I do think they were expecting the panel too highly because they said this presentation was gonna be big, but it isn't. I suggest not to make things clickbaity, and be more honest about it. Since I learned about Tencent, it isn't that surprising. [Also, I know they’re people who will have high expectations for the remakes and such, but they should remind themselves that Tencent made an announcement a year prior.] However, I don't think they should go after people that work on those games, or have a divide on a fandom of a particular game, because I don't want a split fandom. I had that problem with The Last Jedi and its problems (TLJ is much worse than this, believe me). [Yes, even with all the problems with Sword and Shield, Let’s Go games, and recently Unite, I believe almost every fandom I’ve been in had toxic sides that will react, and it is the companies fault for creating a mess of this hype and announcement. I didn’t feel ashamed enough with the Pokemon situations, unlike Star Wars, which was fueled by PC culture left and right since TLJ came out, and the fandom was worse. I am not doubting that Pokemon fandom, like most fandoms, have their bad sides, and we’re living in a social media era for over a decade. I never take part of any hashtags for protest, since I was BBND taking things too far to others on Twitter, and JusticeForChloeB was another one. I’ve seen things gets worse since mid 2010s because of stuffs like Twitter and shifts with game companies deciding things like Pokemon Unite, Star Wars Battlefront 2, or Diablo Immortal in this era that creates backlash due to companies decisions.] Overall, Pokemon Unite could've been presented better and the company who made it should try to avoid mistakes EA has made on their records. I personally don't play MOBA games or a couple of free to plays, so I am pretty much more neutral to Pokemon Unite itself. Still better than Sony's recent game, TLoU2. The beginning had a meaningful description of Pokemon fans, but I think it should've been with last week's presentation to have more neutral reaction. I'm glad it got sorta calm a few days after it. If you got information, you can comment.

My next take will be on Miraculous Ladybug Season 3, and my next video should be out nearly next week. Have a good night.