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calypsolemon · 1 year ago

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like ok. I think this is a subtler aspect of SU so it's not really talked about as much but SU sort of like. Has a lot of undercurrent criticisms of the concept of nuclear family, which manifests in more places than just showing families in nontraditional structures a la "steven's three moms" and the like.

Like the problem with nuclear family as a concept is not just the idea that the only correct "family" is a mom a dad and two children. It's that it reduces people into units easily exploitable by greater power structures. The only successful units are ones that have a strict hierarchy, where parents have total authority and control over their children. A lot of ink is spilled over how this negatively effects children - obviously that level of authority results in a loss of autonomy and dehumanization - but it has a negative effect on the adults in the situation as well, as they are essentially intended to be perfect beings that never falter financially or socially (sound familiar?). The moment they do so in the public eye, they are at risk of losing their children.

SU takes the time to not only show alternate family structures, but to show parents as, well, people. People who are not natural caregivers, because the "natural" instincts of the parents is a myth. People who have their own problems going on that will negatively effect their children, but that are completely outside of their control. People who, despite having literal superpowers, are not omnipresent and therefore can't perfectly predict what the child in their care needs if said needs are not communicated. It shows these flawed parents and caretakers, and it dares to say "Its ok that these people are not perfect. It's natural, in fact. They didn't have the support they needed to not make some of these mistakes. This does not make them bad people, though it also doesn't mean that their children can't be upset at them for it."

This is... unfortunately a really hard pill to swallow for some people, because I think to many it sounds like "making excuses" for parents' fuckups. But the truth of the matter is, the expectation of the idealized nuclear parent is also dehumanizing, and its often what causes abuse and neglect to manifest in the first place. I think SU understands this on a deep level, and has no interest in furthering the mythology of the Family by portraying "perfect" parents or demonizing caregivers who are trying their best but who don't always make perfect choices, or who just live in unavoidably harmful situations.

If i am totally honest I kind of don't like how harsh some of the fandom is at Greg sometimes for being literally homeless and having a magical gem son at the same time. For sure there are places where Greg actually messed up but I feel like in the case of Steven partially growing up in a van and not really having access to medical care and lacking structure because of it is like. Homeless and poor people have kids and its not a moral failing on their part for our society not helping them meet their needs, yknow?

#idk its really real #also like inb4 anyone comes at me I had a pretty abusive upbringing and I dont talk to my own mother anymore #and I dont think the show ever equates forgiving abusive figures with understanding the social structures that cause the abuse to happen #its just pulling eye teeth to get people to differentiate that sometimes

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clevelandstate · 4 years ago

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May 2021 Outstanding Graduates

Each graduating class at CSU is full of extraordinary students who excel in various fields, from academics, to charitable work, to athletics, and much more. We wanted to spotlight just a few of the class of 2021's outstanding graduates. From the CSU family, we offer our sincerest congratulations to all graduating seniors on this amazing feat. Below are some notable graduates from Washkewicz College of Engineering, the College of Science and Health Professions, and Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs.

Claudia Bougebrayel

Civil Engineering Major

A female civil engineer graduating with highest honors, Claudia is no stranger to working in a male-dominated field. She has held internships at the Ohio Department of Transportation and the structural engineering firm Thorson Baker & Associates, and she also volunteers at MedWish, which provides medical equipment to those in need. Claudia began volunteering at MedWish when her parents’ home country of Lebanon suffered from an explosion in the capital city of Beirut, and she worked with the other volunteers there to get medical equipment to those affected by the explosion.

“Interning with the Ohio Department of Transportation during the summers following my freshman and sophomore year at CSU was especially helpful for me in realizing my interests, and I was grateful to be exposed to such a wide range of unique, heavy civil projects.”

Gabe Arsulic

Health Science and Psychology Double Major

Gabe is a student who has faced seemingly insurmountable odds during his time at Cleveland State. At the beginning of his senior year, he was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Throughout his final year at CSU (and in the middle of a pandemic!), Gabe underwent chemotherapy treatment and beat his cancer before graduation. Additionally, Gabe has served in the United States Air Force Reserve during his time at CSU since August 2018, and he plans to enter active duty following graduation. Gabe also was a cheerleader for the men’s basketball team since his freshman year. He picked up cheerleading from wanting to remain involved in sports during his college career after playing football and basketball in high school. He says that his only regret is that he couldn’t be there to cheer on the men’s basketball team in their awesome run this year, due to the pandemic.

Of his journey so far in life, Gabe had this to say: “My faith in God helped my peace of mind, and I knew no matter what that I’d be okay. My support system of my family, friends, fellow airmen, the cheer team, and my professors helped me immensely. Life is a precious gift that a lot of people seem to lose sight of sometimes and I have such an appreciation for that now that I did not have before, so if there’s one positive thing that came out of all this, it’s that.”

Ron Ramsey

Urban & Regional Studies Major

Ron is one of many nontraditional students who call CSU home. He served in the military following high school with deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba from 2008–2016. After he finished serving, he enrolled in Lorain County Community College, where he continued his connection with the military by assisting others who served in their transitions into college and civilian life. After finishing his associates degree at Lorain County Community College, he transferred to CSU to pursue his bachelor’s degree in Urban and Regional Studies. Ron says that choosing to pursue a four-year degree following his service was one of the best decisions he’s ever made.

To those who might be intimidated by higher education if they didn’t pursue it immediately out of high school, Ron has this message: “Be open, and stay organized. Having a support channel — whether through the college, or friends and family to help keep me motivated — has been a great help. At the end of the day, time is going to pass by regardless. Would you rather spend it wishing for more, or take steps to grasp the future before you?”

#Engaged Learning #2021 Graduation #Cleveland State #Cleveland State University #CSU

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the-coldest-goodbye · 5 years ago

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Brienne of Tarth courting you would include...

Brienne of Tarth x fem!reader

Requested by Anonymous: “Could you please write a Brienne au where she is a sworn sword under reader’s family and she begins courting reader?”

A/N: Sorry! This was requested a super long time ago but I only just now got around to finishing it up. Also, sorry I formatted this as a “would include” in case you were expecting it more as a one-shot, but ya girl is laaaaazy. (GIF not mine. Found on Google.)

TW: Mentions of societal homophobia.

* * *

► Brienne of Tarth was a sworn sword for your family, and she was the most loyal and honorable person you had ever met.

► Your parents generally tasked Brienne with protecting you, which meant she accompanied you almost everywhere. You enjoyed her company and loved getting to know her, finding Brienne fascinating and lovely, You two quickly developed a friendship beyond her just being a sworn sword.

► Your friendship then began to morph into something more, though neither of you voiced it. Brienne thought of you as kind and gentle, someone she truly respected. You represented everything she wanted to see in the world, everything she wished to protect. Without you knowing, she pledged her heart to you soon after meeting. You saw Brienne as one-of-a-kind and honorable. Out of all of the knights you had met through your life, Brienne was the only one who truly seemed like the knights described in the stories from your childhood. She was strong and truly beautiful despite the cruel jibes others would make about her.

► One day, you lamented over the fact that your parents were likely to arrange a marriage for you soon, dreading whoever they could possibly match you with. “For all I know, I could be married off to someone cruel or humorless or absolutely awful,” you sighed. “I’d much prefer staying here with you. In fact, I wish I could marry you,” you smiled wistfully, only partly joking.

► Brienne stayed quiet for a moment before saying, “Maybe you could.”

► Knowing how nontraditional her request is, Brienne decided to be quite formal and traditional in asking your parents for permission to take you as her spouse. The very next day after your conversation about marrying each other, Brienne presented herself in front of your parents, asking to begin a period of courtship in hopes of potentially taking your hand in marriage. She made a strong case for herself, explaining how she will one day inherit Evenfall Hall on the island of Tarth, assuring them that she would provide for you and protect your honor, and citing many of her brave deeds and accomplishments.

► Your parents had always been fond of Brienne, her being their finest sworn sword and never having been anything less than dependable and honorable. They saw the way Brienne doted on you and protected you. They also weren’t blind to the way the two of you looked at each other. They had never seen you as smitten and happy with anyone as you were with Brienne. Your parents told Brienne that they would consider her request.

► That day, your parents met with you in private to discuss the matter. A marriage to Brienne of Tarth would certainly benefit your house, but a union between you and her would be rather nontraditional. Your mother emphasized the social repercussions that may come from such a marriage, asking you if you were prepared to handle them. You assured her that you were and that there was no one you’d rather marry.

► The next day, your parents officially announced that they had accepted Brienne’s request to begin a period of courtship.

► Knowing that your union would automatically draw in unwanted attention and criticism, Brienne was dead-set on making your courting period as traditional and chaste as possible, wanting to keep your honor in tact and trying to reduce any additional opportunities for people to criticize your relationship.

► Brienne and you would go for strolls through the market or gardens, places in the public eye where no rumors could begin of the two of you being anything other than innocent with one another. She would take your arm while escorting you, and the two of you would chat about what the future together might look like. To your knowledge, a marriage like yours certainly had not taken place before, at least not publicly, so there were no blueprints on how to structure your lives together. Both of you found this refreshing and liberating, knowing that together you would both have the freedom to be yourselves, as well as a little intimidating.

► Brienne in particular tended to listen more than offer her own thoughts on the matter, happy to do anything as long as it pleased you. It takes a bit of coaxing to get her to talk about her own hopes and desires for your future life together.

► Brienne would become even more diligent with her work for your house, wanting to show that she still took her duties seriously. She became more conscientious of how you two interacted while she was working, trying to make sure she maintained professionalism. While your relationship before the courtship had been closer to friendship than being protected by a guard, she now tried to be less casual and instead focused more on performing her duties in a respectful way. If you chipped away at her and tried to convince her that she didn’t have to be super formal all the time on the job, she might relax a little bit, but she would still be more inhibited than she had been before.

► Whenever Brienne joined your family for dinner as a guest and not on duty, she would bring a nice gift for your parents, like an expensive bottle of wine. She would also present you with small beautiful gifts, like little trinkets and necklaces, or a brooch she had custom-made that combined your house sigil with hers.

► She would be chivalrous and courteous, like pulling out your chair for you at the dining table and pushing you in, pouring you wine, and serving you food from the table first before serving herself.

► During dinner, she’d be shy and stumble over her words when your parents asked her about herself since she was nervous and stressed out about wanting to make a good impression. Your parents were kind and patient with her, though, as they had already liked her throughout her time of service. You would gently cover her hand with yours to comfort her. As the evening went on and she got a little bit of wine in her, Brienne’s nerves would calm a bit and she became much more at ease, charming your parents and you.

► She would greet you or say goodbye to you with a small bow. In more private situations, she would also take your hand in hers and place a kiss on the back of it, the most physical affection she was willing to show during your courtship.

► If anyone dared to flirt with you, she would appear right behind you, hand on the hilt of her sword, asking you if this person was bothering you. No one wanted to make the giant lady with a sword angry, so they got the idea to back off pretty quickly.

► Your period of courtship would last for many months until your parents told you and Brienne at dinner one night that you had their blessing to marry at any time.

► Although Brienne obviously respected your parents, she still wanted to make sure that this was what you wanted. It took her a few more weeks to gather the courage to propose to you alone during one of your strolls through the gardens as the sun was setting. Her voice quivered a bit with nervousness, but you assured her that there was no one you would rather marry, and you quickly placed a kiss on her cheek. Brienne flushed bright red with a pleased yet shy smile on her lips.

#Brienne of Tarth #Brienne #Game of Thrones #GOT #Brienne of Tarth x reader #Brienne x reader #Brienne of Tarth headcanons #Brienne headcanons #Brienne of Tarth headcanon #Brienne headcanon #Brienne of Tarth imagines #Brienne imagines #Brienne of Tarth imagine #Brienne imagine

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beatriceeagle · 4 years ago

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no pressure if you're busy but i was wondering - is titans good? or is it more a show where you're like it's not /good/ but i like it? i thought it looked interesting but then everyone was so negative about it i kind of got put off. And then your (really excellent btw) video resparked why i thought it'd be interesting to watch in the first place. thanks!

I haven’t paid a ton of attention to what fans have said about Titans, although I’m aware that there’s a general negative vibe around it. I suspect that whether Titans is worth watching for you depends a whole lot on what you want out of Titans.

I went into the show having never read a DC comic in my life. I was coming off of a week-long Wikipedia binge on Batman and his associated characters—the Robins, the Batgirls, some dude named Signal—and was talking to @thirdblindmouse about how it had become overwhelmingly clear to me that we’ve been doing Batman all wrong for decades, and the way to tell the story is as an ensemble family drama about intergenerational trauma. And she was like, “Uh, have you seen Titans?” So all of my pre-existing understanding of the characters comes from Google and selected comics scans.

I suspect that the show’s interpretation of Dick Grayson, in particular, is... skewed? I’m almost certain, based on scans of comics I’ve seen/the half a season of Teen Titans I watched a lifetime ago, that its interpretation of Starfire is highly nontraditional. There are certain storylines that I know they’re adapting, but like, they are playing very loose with the adaptation of even some of the characters’ basic personalities. (I’m pretty sure—again, not really a DC comics fan!)

So if you’re very committed to a generally cheerful Dick Grayson, Titans will not give you that. If you have a vision of Batman as a generally decent man, Titans will really not give you that. In general, I think that the show would be better if it erred more towards a lighter tone for Dick—there are moments where he has shades of Quentin in season three of The Magicians, when Q was kind of endearingly hapless, and the show is better for it. But I think it earns its ambivalent stance on Batman, and uses it well. Batman in Titans looks and acts like your dad whose office you’re not allowed into. And Titans!Starfire is really amazing. Like, Anna-Diop-is-a-revelation, fuck-now-you’ve-got-me-shipping-against-my-will amazing.

The bigger issue that Titans has—and this is not unrelated to Dick’s characterization, I guess—is its relationship with violence. Titans is a really violent show, especially in its first season, and it’s off-putting. Pretty much every superhero show involves the heroes beating up bad guys; not every superhero show involves the protagonist mutilating someone in the course of a fight.

This is not unthinking hyperviolence. Titans (which is actually annoyingly pretty good about tracking character through action sequences) is trying to make a point: The compounding traumas of Dick’s childhood resulted in an explosion of rage. Batman funneled his anger into Dick; Dick funnels his anger into whatever bad guy he’s fighting. The show isn’t subtle about this idea. Dick says it out loud several times. Nor (after the first fight) does the show endorse Dick’s over-the-top violence. Everyone from Donna Troy to Dick himself remarks on it with, at minimum, concern. And over time, Dick’s fighting style changes; he consciously leaves the hyperviolence behind, until his final fight of season two is primarily evasive.

But Dick is not the only Titans character who is working out his rage on the criminals he apprehends, and the show is considerably less coherent in its tonal approach to other characters’ violence. Hank and Dawn—the masked hero team Hawk and Dove—have an origin story that plays out like the the backstory of a serial killer couple, their interlocking trauma and rage and grief finding expression and acceptance in each other. The show is aware of the dynamic, but it’s not clear that it’s aware of how disturbing it is. Hank and Dawn are, primarily, people who need to cause violence in order to be at peace in their own heads—and only secondarily, people who want to protect others from danger. Season two does do some work exploring this idea, but the exploration is confused by the fact that, in the end, the show wants both of them on the cast.

Which is kind of the problem with any superhero show that sets out to explore the ethics of superheroism—at the end of the day, the characters aren’t gonna retire to Wisconsin, you know? So Titans presents hyperviolence, presents it as problematic (sometimes), presents it as almost an inevitable consequence of traumatized teenagers deciding to pursue vigilante justice... and then builds a superhero team of traumatized teenagers and young adults. As is its basic conceit.

And on a more fundamental level, the hyperviolence just sort of makes the show feel very grim. It’s already an aesthetically dark show, a lot of the time, and then you’ve got people getting mutilated, and Batman’s an asshole and Dick Grayson’s got anger management issues, and it feels like the show’s grimdark.

I don’t think it is, though. First of all, despite everything, Titans actually has a sense of humor, both in general and occasionally about itself—I mean, it’s not Legends of Tomorrow, but it understands how to crack a smile every now and then. (They have a superdog. He shoots lasers out of his eyes!) But more importantly, at the end of the day, Titans is hopeful. Yeah, it’s a show about anger and violence and intergenerational trauma—but it’s more specifically about moving beyond those things. At its heart, it’s about being a better parent to your children than your parents were to you.

That central relationship between Dick and Rachel—Dick trying, and sometimes failing, but always caring and trying to be better for Rachel, and Rachel’s absolute fury with him when he fails, but her unshakeable devotion to him for being there, the unbelievable amount of sway he holds in her world—that’s what makes the show work for me. There are other vital relationships, too—Rachel and Kory, especially, but also all of the pseudo-familial relationships built up between all of the characters—but it all comes back to Dick and Rachel.

I mean, it’s a found family show. So much so that in season two, there are like, three separate speeches about how this is a family, not one of those stupid biological families, but a family we found, and isn’t that the important kind? And how grimdark can a found family show really be?

The other thing that might throw some people off—but which is actually one of my favorite things about the show—is the structure. If you take a look at the Titans episode list, you’ll see that roughly 75 percent of the episodes are named after a character or characters. Season one of Titans is basically about Dick, Starfire, Gar, and Rachel (Raven from the comics) traveling the midwest, picking up the people who will eventually form the main Titans team. When they encounter those people, they get a spotlight episode. So in episode two, “Hawk and Dove,” when Dick and Rachel lay low at Hank and Dawn’s, the episode starts out with an extended cold open, entirely disconnected from the main characters, just introducing us to Hank and Dawn as characters. Episode eight, “Donna Troy,” sees Dick go to visit his old friend Donna in Milwaukee, and... basically just hang out with her for half the episode, while the rest of the cast does plot stuff. Occasionally, these spotlight episodes stop the plot completely: Towards the end of season one, an episode ends on a cliffhanger. the next episode, rather than showing the outcome of the cliffhanger, is “Hank and Dawn,” an episode that flashes back to show the story of how Hank and Dawn met and became masked heroes. (There’s an in-episode device that eventually makes it clear why this story is related to the cliffhanger.) Season two uses the cliffhanger-into-a-flashback-spotlight-episode structure two more times, once with a character we’ve never met before.

I can see this being deeply frustrating to a viewer watching week-by-week (and I would not recommend watching Titans in that manner). And it’s certainly an unconventional way to structure a season of television. But honestly? I think it’s half of what I like about the show. The spotlight and flashback episodes are good—often some of the best the show’s produced. They don’t stop the plot for no reason; in season two, in particular, they provide context and backstory and characterization in a way that would be almost impossible to do, or to do so well, without the space of a full episode. They make the show more episodic than it would otherwise be—always a joy, in a television landscape full of 10-hour movies—and give it space to experiment with tone and genre. They make the characters richer, and the relationships more complex.

Does it slow down the plot? Absolutely. But Titans is not overflowing with complex plot, and I don’t really think it should try to. The plot of Titans hangs together juuuuuuuust enough to make the themes and characters and relationships work. It’s coherent—we’re not talking Teen Wolf, here—but it’s not brilliant, and honestly, that’s fine by me. But I suppose if you want your plot to be really good, this may not be the show for you.

Finally, I’ll say that Titans, though not what I would call a feminist show (it has a primarily male writing staff and I think it shows) does have a kind of surprisingly large female cast? I wanna say it’s five men, five women, by the end of season two? (Yeah, it’s a fucking enormous cast.) And the women have actual relationships with each other, ones that the show puts some effort into maintaining and remembering. I realize this is damning with faint praise, but honestly I’d just expected a show like Titans to not do that, and was prepared to ignore it, and was kind of pleasantly surprised when I didn’t have to.

In summary: I told my sister that Titans is 10% men in spandex standing on cars, 30% team as family, 30% intergenerational trauma, 20% an uncomfortable relationship with is own hyperviolence, and 10% Krypto the Superdog. I think that tracks. That show, despite having Anna Diop’s glowing presence, has a lot of flaws, but it also really worked for me on some soul-deep level. I am exactly on its wavelength.

I do not think that Titans is a fantastic television show, but I also don’t think it’s a very bad one. I think it’s generally competent show that is very interesting in some aspects, is weak in some areas, falls prey to some inherent trappings of its genre, is thoughtful about familial trauma, is not thoughtful enough about violence and criminal justice, has a lot of very compelling performances, is really poorly lit a lot of the time, pays a lot of attention to its visual language, kind of thinks Batman’s an asshole, and has Krypto the Superdog. It really worked for me; I can see why others might not be into it; it might work for you!

#thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about titans #a show that has EATEN MY BRAIN #titans #meta

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paintedrecs · 5 years ago

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For the fandom talk meme thingy: C (not trying to start drama I swear), I, K, R, and X. =D

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

Hmmm, there are a few ways of answering this. One is by listing all my NOTPs, which would be excessively long and ultimately boring because it essentially boils down to “anyone else with either member of my OTP.” I monoship my primary pairings, so I’m pretty strict on what I do and do not like.

(With the way fandom is now, I should clarify that NOTP means that I personally do not like a ship and I therefore go out of my way to avoid it - by muting terms, carefully filtering tags and search results, curating my own space, etc. It doesn’t mean I think the ship is badwrong or that anyone else should stop shipping it. It just means I do not ever want to see it.)

This feels a little less specific on that front, though, maybe more just: people like this and I’m meh about it?

So Allydia comes to mind. I don’t hate it, and if the Sterek’s good enough I’ll still read a fic with them as a background pairing, but I don’t ever like it as a romantic ship. While I ship Lydia with lots of different characters, including Cora, I’ve always seen Allison as straight, so I suppose that’s part of it? And I love Lydia & Allison as bffs - I see them as entirely platonic, like Scott & Stiles, so introducing romance just doesn’t work for me.

Another one is Sheriff Stilinski/Peter Hale. I...I don’t understand it. Unlike the last answer, this background pairing will prevent me from reading a Sterek-central fic.

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

This turned into a complicated and kind of roundabout answer, so I’m putting the rest of the questions under a long-post cut!

I stopped frequenting tumblr for two main reasons:

that whole weird purge thing that made me think everyone was leaving, so I just gave up, which might’ve been premature cause it seems like folks are still going strong on here

the emergence of antis, specifically within the Voltron fandom (although they’re everywhere at this point)

There’s a saying in fandom now:

“Why is the younger fandom generation like this?!??” “Tumblr raised them.”

For me, for years, tumblr was a really wonderful space where I had a lot of great conversations and read very thoughtful threads that helped me to learn some important things about myself, other people, and a world much wider than my own.

But I was an adult when I joined this site, and it really does seem like there’s a whole new crop of kids who have no actual context for ideas like social justice, the need for canonical representation in our media, and a lot of other things that eventually got folded into a big ball of disconnected rhetoric that they now fling as hard as they can at the heads of fandom creators who are committing the ultimate sin of creating content for ships they don’t like.

It’s late, and I don’t feel like getting into a whole Essay Rant about all that.

So on an entirely personal level, I quit running appreciatejack (my Check Please/zimbits/Jack Zimmermann blog) because someone sent me really vile hate for daring to ship Shiro/Keith from Voltron (two unrelated adults in a cartoon). It’s why I turned my ask boxes/anon/chats off on most of my blogs, and then eventually just...got tired of running them.

When I started up appreciatederek, I got a couple asks from people who wanted to know if it was going to be multiship or just Sterek, and when I said it was Sterek, they presumably went off to find other things they were into, because I never heard from them again. Y’know, the reasonable reaction. And then the rest of it was wonderful: finding content for it, and getting responses from people who enjoyed that content.

I thought appreciateshiro would be similar, but it was all so messy from the very start. The Sheith tag was FULL of hate. I was initially checking it every day, trying to find artists and writers and gif-makers to reblog and encourage and support, like I’d done in Sterek fandom, but instead I’d spend literal hours blocking people who came into that tag just to talk about how much they hated the ship.

Every day, I’d look for content for my OTP, and every day I’d come away from it angry and sad and frustrated. I never seemed to run out of people to block. And they never, ever seemed to run out of hate.

It was exhausting. It made me reluctant to go on tumblr at all. And eventually I just...sorta stopped.

So the answer to this question is more, I guess, “fandom made me stop liking tumblr, and in the process I stopped liking most fandoms.”

I’m sure you can kinda tell from the fandoms I’m currently the most invested in.

I love Sterek, and I will always love Sterek. Part of that’s the ship itself, of course, and part is because I had an incredible fandom experience with it. People within this fandom are still really great - always so welcoming and super excited about new content, even so many years on.

Otherwise, my current fandoms are kiiiiinda tiny:

Xanatowen (Gargoyles), which currently consists of exactly 2 people and 12 fics (3 of which are mine).

Trevorcard (Castlevania), which only has ~200 fics on AO3.

Taibani (Tiger & Bunny), which is an oldish fandom with only ~600 fics on AO3.

Remember, I came from a fandom that has SIXTY THOUSAND fics.

So while I feel very lonely and very sad about the low content levels in these fandoms, they’ve also given me the space to let go of some of my fandom hurt & anger and remember what it’s like to just...peacefully love something. I really miss just loving things and talking about loving those things and searching for other people who also love those things without running into....thousands upon thousands of people who HATE that you love that thing.

(Until I wrote all that out just now, I actually hadn’t realized how much this had still been hanging over me, or why I was so hesitant to come back to “reclaim” a space I’d once been super active and happy in. Essay over! Next questions.)

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Answered here!

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

Answered here!

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Found family. This is probably a big part of why Sterek was my first real fandom, because the idea of Pack makes it incredibly natural to build out relationships beyond just the central romantic pairing.

It doesn’t have to be a werewolf thing, though. I’m honestly not hugely fond of the whole puppy piles concept - I’m less interested in “biological urges make characters literally physically all snuggle up together in bed” than I am in the actual build of the friendships, and the concept of choosing people who will become the family you’ve been missing for whatever reason.

Maybe it’s reconnecting with biological family, or maybe it’s discovering that your friends have been filling that space for you all along, without you even fully realizing it. (The concept of “home” is another big one for me. Home is where your heart is etc etc.)

And hey! Now I can pull back in another question from earlier: about “pairings” that I might not have initially considered. As I suspected, I do have more! Mostly platonic.

For instance: Derek and Sheriff Stilinski becoming bffs. I thiiiink I can probably tie my ABSOLUTE LOVE of this concept back to HalfFizzbin’s can't be hateful, gotta be grateful. And then Cupboard Love really has to be the source of ALL my alive!Hales feels, which also includes folding Stiles into their family.

Fic is largely responsible for building out Derek’s relationship with Boyd, Erica, Isaac, his sisters...making them into an actual pack and friends and family in the way the show never bothered. And frankly while I don’t like canon!Scott at all at this point, I love his friendship with Stiles in fics, and I absolutely believe Stiles and Lydia would be amazing friends once he got past his crush on her. I’d point to another fic here, owlpostagain’s will to follow through, as the ultimate source for major Team Human feels.

So yeah. I’m always going to be drawn to stories about family, in whatever form that takes, particularly if it’s one that’s a little bit off the normal white-picket-fence path.

In Tiger & Bunny, it’s Barnaby joining the Kaburagi family, and learning how to be a dad and a friend to his new husband’s daughter.

In Gargoyles, I’m completely obsessed with the (canonical!) idea of a family that consists of a man, his wife, their son, and the chaotically loyal fae babysitter/tutor/third parent. It is not a stretch to tweak this the tiiiiiiniest bit to turn it into a nontraditional family structure of a man, his wife, his son, and his fae boyfriend. Honestly.

In Castlevania, the fic that made me sob my eyes out at one point does something the show would absolutely never. It gives Alucard the time to rebuild his physical home while befriending the people in the little town that crops up around it. It’s about Trevor and Alucard falling in love, but it’s also about them making a place for themselves in a world where that kind of comfort and stability and friendship is so badly needed.

I think we all kinda need that in our world right now. So I love being able to find it in fic, for the characters who’ve grown to mean something to me.

#meme #fandom talk #long post #littlerosetrove #did tumblr seriously break my read more and stick it up in the ask section #i don't even know #thanks tumblr

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meta-shadowsong · 5 years ago

Text

On Change for the Jedi Order

Specifically in Relation to Nontraditional/Latecomer Students

So, there’s a commentary that’s been floating around lately, that examines whether the Jedi Order/culture should change purely because of Anakin’s issues integrating (and later issues as an adult, some of which are related). And if that were the question, then the answer is probably no--as these commentaries have pointed out, the vast majority of Jedi don’t have that kind of trouble and are, so far as we the audience can tell, happy/fulfilled. Or, if not, they’re willing and able to depart under peaceful circumstances. And, as has also been pointed out, if they did adapt to the changing galaxy in the ways that fandom, with its external viewpoint, would suggest, who’s to say Palpatine wouldn’t be thinking five steps ahead of them and have a contingency plan in place? (The man does love his contingency plans, I gotta say.)

These are valid points, particularly in terms of some of the doctrines/requirements placed on adults/full Jedi (i.e., no marriage, etc.) that tend to catch a lot of criticism, but I feel like there’s a piece missing from this conversation. And that’s a consideration of other nontraditional/latecomer students (and/or nonstudents who are rejected for being too old), aside from Anakin. Because, from where I’m standing, the evidence indicates that the traditionalist Jedi Order, as it is at the fall of the Republic, is not super great at helping them integrate.

Before I get into my actual examples/analysis, I want to say that I don’t think this is from a lack of compassion or effort on the part of the Order. I do believe that, once a nontraditional student is accepted, they are given support in terms of that integration. I just don’t think it’s very effective support, because I don’t think that the Order, as it stands at that point, is very well set up for it.

Second, I want to say that the reason why this matters is that there’s a not-insignificant implication that not all potential candidates are identified within the acceptable age range; and therefore some unknown, and possibly significant (in proportion to the size of the Order itself) number of people are actually affected by this policy. I’ve touched on this before, but the fact that Palpatine (who comes from a) a Republic sector capital, b) a culture that highly values children, and c) parents with means) is never identified indicates that there are some significant gaps in the search process; probably particularly for populations that are more likely to slip through the cracks in a society like the Republic (i.e., the deep underlevels of Coruscant; remote farming/mining communities that are essentially Space Appalachia; etc.)

I should also mention, as a caveat, that we unfortunately have very few examples of nontraditional students within canon, so it’s admittedly not the greatest sample size in the world--I came up with five, which I will discuss at some length. But the sample sizes for any discussion on this subject are pretty small (I think we have personal information/significant canon detail on maybe a hundred members (i.e., ~1%) of the Jedi Order of this period?), so assumptions have to be made regardless. The way I’m defining my five examples is that they are students who came to the Jedi Path later than the traditional Order would typically allow, and they were trained/raised by Jedi Masters who were themselves traditionally trained (so far as we know).

Okay. Moving on.

So, the five nontraditional students we see in any detail are Anakin, Rael Avaross, Luke, Ezra, and Ventress.

With Anakin and Rael, we see a failure to adapt to the culture. Again, this is despite a genuine effort given on the part of their teachers. Admittedly, I’m less familiar with Rael, since I haven’t gotten around to reading Dooku Lost myself, but I’ve read enough excerpts and analyses that I feel like I have a general idea of what’s going on. Basically, my understanding is that he has some of the same issues Anakin has, relating to the family he left behind, and wanting things that are out of step with Jedi values. And, yes, at least with Anakin, Palpatine’s manipulations play a role in that. But the fact that he’s not the only example indicates (to me, at least) that it’s not the only factor in play here.

Obviously, this disconnect does not in any way excuse what Anakin (or Rael) later does, when he comes to a crisis point. I’m not trying to say that.

What I am trying to say is that I think this is an issue of conflicting expectations, and a fundamental miscommunication/disconnect despite genuine effort, particularly in the early stages, that leaves nontraditional students with a shaky foundation even if/when they find workarounds to appear like things are on track. Because the fact is that the Jedi Order typically takes in very small children, who can absorb most of these cultural norms essentially by osmosis, through a combination of infant neuroplasticity and the Force. An older child needs a different approach, and I’m not sure that the Jedi Order actually has the tools it needs to adapt their teaching style effectively to those circumstances. Especially when trying to integrate someone into a close-knit, fairly isolated/insular culture, which is difficult for an outsider/newcomer under the best of circumstances, on top of the new modes of behavior/emotional processing/etc. And, given how few nontraditional students there are, this is definitely a factor.

So, then it becomes sort of a feedback loop--older/nontraditional students have trouble adapting, which means the Jedi Order is less likely to take them on in the future, which means any they do take in have further troubles, etc., etc. Legends sort of indicated how this cycle started; canon has not; but frankly it’s a chicken-and-egg situation as of the period we’re talking about. Once that cycle does start, it’s hard to break.

Which brings me to my next set of examples, and the reason I think this is at least in part an issue in the Jedi Order’s teaching style.

Luke and Ezra are also nontraditional students, who are taught by traditionally-trained masters. And they are both successful.

And maybe, in part, that comes down to some quirk in personality that they share that Anakin and Rael don’t. But there’s also the fact that (due to genuinely horrific circumstances; and I will interrupt myself here and now to say that, while I do advocate for change on this particular issue, I don’t think the catalyst for change had to be, let alone should have been, what it was; but in canon, it was a catalyst for a change in approach), their masters had to adapt traditional teachings and values into a somewhat nontraditional framework. One reason I lean more towards the second/change in approach as the stronger factor--and, granted, we don’t have many specific examples to cite; plus they don’t fit technically my established definition--is that Luke’s new Academy would pretty much have to be all nontraditional students, and, so far as I can tell, the vast majority of them seem to have been successful, or on their way there, until Kylo Ren happened.

So, that leads to the conclusion that there’s an issue in how traditional Jedi Order teachings/teaching styles work with nontraditional students. Meaning, the Jedi Order of the late Republic era has difficulty in adapting said styles to the needs of the few older candidates they do take in, though not for lack of trying.

At this point, I’ll interrupt myself again to say that adjusting these practices might have an impact on the children who are brought in at a more typical age, and there’s possibly a balance to be struck between the needs of those students and the needs of these others. The way the culture is structured now does seem to be beneficial for the majority of students brought in the usual way, and fixing this flaw might open another, which might be more detrimental in the long run. And if there were any viable alternatives for training and support, that would be the end of it, as far as I was concerned. But the fact is--there aren’t. Pretty much all other Force-adepts we see seem to be closed ethnoreligious groups (or Sith). So I think an increase in flexibility in the early-stage teaching style/age limit for adoption is actually of a net benefit. Whether or not any changes are made to the broader framework/culture past that period, which is a separate discussion.

And that brings me to Ventress, my final example, who is much more complicated and harder to discuss due to several key pieces of evidence that are missing.

Where does she fit into all of this?

The implication in her flashbacks seem to be that she does pretty well with Ky Narec, who--without the same awful circumstances pushing his choices--adapts and uses a non-traditional/one-on-one approach with her, rather than trying to bring her to the Temple and integrate her into the culture right away.

Of course, there are a couple of issues with this. One, Ventress falls apart when he dies, so his approach also clearly had some flaws. Two, her memories may not be the most reliable/she might not be a super reliable narrator. Three, we are missing so much information about how and in what order everything went down.

First, why did Ky Narec make the choices he did? One explanation is that he had no way off the planet/no long-range communications and couldn’t contact the rest of the Order. I find this hard to believe for two reasons: how did Ventress then get offplanet after he died; and how did she get onto the planet in the first place? Someone there has a connection with the wider galaxy, and if Ky Narec really wanted to make contact, I’m sure he could’ve found a way.

So, why didn’t he? Was it because he knew Ventress was too old, and he felt he lacked the standing/social or political capital to convince the Council to accept her anyway? Was that assessment accurate on his part? Alternatively, did he think he could get her accepted, but felt that some training on their own before trying to integrate her into the broader culture was the better approach; and then he died before he could complete that process? Was he already thinking about leaving (as did the Lost Twenty), and she was what pushed him to actually take that step? I’m sure there are other possible explanations, but those are the ones that jump to mind.

Second, what did he tell her? What were her expectations for if/when they finally made contact with the Order? Did he warn her that her training was unauthorized and the Order would not accept her (whether or not that was actually true)?

Third, what did she actually do when he died? Did she try to reach out to the Order? Did she assume that there was no point? Did she reach out to her sisters on Dathomir? (From what I recall, most likely not, but it’s been a while since I watched the relevant TCW episodes.) Did she go straight to Dooku?

Fourth, when she did finally contact Dooku, was she seeking him out as a former Jedi who might have some understanding and compassion for her situation, or was she seeking him out as a Sith Lord/Dark Side adept? (Unless that’s actually covered in her flashbacks as well; again, I might be misremembering/have forgotten.)

So…yeah. It’s really hard to evaluate this question fully without more information on how everything with Ventress went down. But all the other evidence does indicate a disconnect.

I guess my point in all of this was…no, it’s not right for an entire culture to have to change everything for one person. But on the other hand, there’s something to be said for a test case/case study that draws attention to an existing flaw in the structure. And Anakin, while the most visible, isn’t actually the only one here.

Also...on a more general note, cultures are dynamic. They do change over time. Sometimes very rapidly, when change is forced by external pressures, sometimes more organically, by gradual internal shifts. So, the implication that the culture of the Jedi Order should remain exactly as it is as of the late Republic because that’s the best possible way for it to be, no matter how much the broader culture of the galaxy and/or their role in it might shift, feels…a little off to me. Especially since the war itself was already an impetus for change. The postwar Jedi Order was almost certainly going to be somewhat different from the prewar Order; how drastic or subtle that change would be without Anakin making all the wrong choices is a little harder to determine. And--look, I know I’m citing Legends here, because canon has yet to provide deep (i.e., 100+ years pre-TPM) backstory, but some of these things already have shifted over time, in response to both internal and external pressures. The age limit for taking in initiates/apprentices being one of them.

...but I’ll admit that that last paragraph may be me misinterpreting/reading too much into some of the posts and my There Is No One True Way button getting pushed again whether or not it’s merited in this case XD

Anyway, tangent aside, I just wanted to highlight why I feel this particular issue should be addressed, even if the expected cultural norms/code of conduct for Jedi who have integrated into the culture remain the same. Because, yeah, those seem to work out for most members, and the option to leave is there for those who have issues.

But the problem of latecomers/nontraditional students, particularly when there aren’t really any other options available to them for training and support, and there are an unknown (but possibly significant, in proportion to the size of the Order itself) number out there, is still a Thing.

((Also, one last tangent re: why this matters/is a Thing…look, applying IRL issues/politics/history and so on to Star Wars can be a weird/hinky/YMMV thing, apart from certain direct/explicit/obviously intentional parallels, and in general I try to avoid doing it--and, like, earlier today, I had to stop myself from going off on a long tangent about the Constitutions of Clarendon and Thomas Becket on a semi-related post about Ahsoka; if I want to do it, I can--but given the issues older kids/teenagers have being adopted IRL, and given the idea that baby Jedi are essentially adoptees, the fact that older kids are excluded is a little…yeah.))

#fandom #star wars #originally posted february 2020

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thereinafter · 4 years ago

Text

Dear Yuletide Writer letter below (warning, this is a very long text post). I’m requesting:

Magdelene & Terazin/Terizan stories - Tanya Huff Midsummer Night’s Dream - Shakespeare The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow

Hello, Yuletide writer! Thank you so much! I’m also thereinafter on AO3. I like and am delighted to receive a wide range of things. Feel free to mix and match my prompt suggestions or come up with your own idea. I’m good with whatever rating of fic you want to write and any tense/person/structure. (And to cover other types of gifts, I think interactive fiction is very cool if someone happens to want to do that, and would be happy to get art treats.)

I’ve copied my signup below with a DNW list for each fandom, and those are followed by my long general fic likes list.

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Magdelene & Terazin - Tanya Huff Terazin/Terizan, Swan

(Note: this fandom tag covers a group of short stories by Huff that have appeared in a few out-of-print collections, and apparently the spelling of Terazin/Terizan varies by edition. I’m using Terizan, following the currently-available-in-ebook Swan’s Braid and Other Tales of Terizan.)

So, Swan’s Braid is a fun quick read about the master thief Terizan with a canon f/f ship that’s also quite fun (though the mercenary captain Swan only appears in a couple of stories). Some things I love about it: sword-and-sorcery-and-heist adventures, thievery competence porn, Terizan almost literally stealing Swan’s heart after having a big crush on her, the two of them being really into each other. I would like more of any/all of those. Fine to mention other characters like Terizan’s friend Poli, just not as the focus.

Prompts:

Terizan needing to steal Swan again from somewhere/break her out of somewhere?

Since Swan is away most of the time, do they ever write to each other? I like a good epistolary story. What if Terizan had to give thievery advice by letter?

A little shared adventure from Swan’s POV, since the stories are all from Terizan’s?

I missed nominating her, but these two interacting with Magdelene the lazy wizard from the other half of these stories (available as Third Time Lucky) could be fun, if you’ve read them/want to.

I would be easily pleased by something cute/humorous/fluffy about one of their reunions. Also not averse to PWP, although I do like a little plot.

Or use anything else from the long likes list at the end of this letter that strikes your fancy. A few that might be interesting in this world: holiday gifts, masquerades, magical accidents, time loops, bathing/caretaking, huddling for warmth, wilderness survival.

DNWs: setting AUs, pregnancy/parenting by requested characters, death of requested characters, unhappy endings, daddy/mommy kink, noncon, a/b/o, scat/watersports/vomit/spitting

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Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare Helena, Hermia, Titania

(Full text of the play is here, among many other places.) This request was inspired by seeing the National Theatre Live 2019 production with Gwendoline Christie, which is sadly unavailable to buy/stream now. If you've seen it and want to draw from it, great, but entirely not necessary! Just going by the text is fine.(That said: one unusual element I loved was that it swapped roles/lines for Titania and Oberon from act 2 scene 1 on, such that Titania is the one ordering the enchantment of the others, so if you feel like making this happen as an optional detail, lovely.)

No need to include all three characters if your idea doesn’t. Other characters from the play can be mentioned, just not a focus. I’m interested in Helena and Hermia’s friendship/rivalry, and in what else it could be, given lines like Helena’s speech here: “ … Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one and crowned with one crest. And will you rent our ancient love asunder, To join with men in scorning your poor friend?” and Helena being generally over the top about Hermia’s beauty.

Prompts:

There’s a long tradition of setting AUs for Shakespeare and it’s one case where I like them a lot. If you want to translate the story to a nontraditional setting like “in space” or “knights” or “small insular college” or “bohemian artists” or “Amazons” (considering the presence of Hippolyta) or something else I haven’t just thought of, I would be into that. Or if you want to focus on Titania more than the humans, something variations-on-a-theme like “X times fairies interfered with human romantic entanglements”? Along similar lines, I feel like there’s crossover potential with other “fairies behaving badly” stories like Goblin Market, Tam Lin, Sir Orfeo, etc. (so if you want to try that, other such unrequested fandoms are OK to include for this request).

Or for other gen ideas, could be a slice of life past or future scene or Titania looking in on what Helena and Hermia are up to in the past/future. does the magic on Demetrius wear off eventually? Or what if they went back into the wood again, as older women, looking for the fairies?

If you want to go with me on shipping Helena/Hermia, do they have repressed feelings for each other? Does the night make them realize it without magical encouragement? Or do they get the flower juice in their eyes and act on said feelings to whatever extent? (Open to going in a sex pollen direction with this, but I’m more into it for the disinhibition/magical sex aspect and would prefer no humiliation or regrets. Also open to including Titania if you do.) Do they end up running off together or with the fairies somehow instead of staying with Demetrius and Lysander? Do they go back to their lives but remember that night?

DNWs: death of requested characters, genderswap of requested characters, high school AU, underage sex, daddy/mommy kink, noncon (the canonical dubcon of the fairy enchantment is OK), a/b/o, scat/watersports/vomit/spitting

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The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra, Sabran Berethnet, Cleolind Onjenyu

(This is a standalone epic fantasy novel published in 2019 and can be found wherever you get books.) Things I loved about this book: canon slow-burn queen/protector f/f romance, dragons both evil and good, order of dragonslaying assassin mage nuns, court intrigue, sprawling world with lots of intriguing details. No need to include all three characters I requested (although if you think of a way to, that would be interesting). Fine to mention other characters, just not as the focus.

Prompts:

So, I loved Ead and Sabran individually and together and would be very happy to read missing scenes between them during the timeline of the book, or long-distance pining afterward, or time(s) they reunite.

I was really drawn in by the worldbuilding and all the varied places we see, and I’d love further exploration of any part of it through these characters. The dragons and dragonspawn creatures, the different mythologies/religions, the different courts. The trees: What happened to the hawthorn and mulberry? Are there other undiscovered ones/will new ones ever grow? Sterren: What else can it do? Can Sabran learn it given her ancestry?

I wished the book had spent more time at the Priory itself. What does Ead do when she goes back? What was her youth/training there like?

Following that: I requested Cleolind because I would just like to read more about her than the book gives us. Something exploring her more as a person, her experience being a sacrifice to/fighting and defeating the Nameless One, her rejection of Galian Berethnet, her relationship with Ead’s ancestor Siyati, her founding of the Priory, or whatever else would be great.

DNWs: setting AUs, death of requested characters (exception: Cleolind’s canonical death is OK), pregnancy/parenting by requested characters (Sabran’s canonical pregnancy is OK, mentoring successors is OK), daddy/mommy kink, noncon, a/b/o, scat/watersports/vomit/spitting

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The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Adelaide Lee Larson, Jane Irimu

(This is a historical fantasy/portal fantasy novel published in 2019 and can also be found wherever you get books.) When I read this I liked January’s story, but her intrepid portal-adventuring mother Ade and governess/protector Jane were the characters who most interested me. I’d love to see them develop a friendship. Or: they both have such compelling backstories that I’d equally love a fic centered on just one of them, before or after the events of the book.

I don’t really ship them with each other, so this is mainly a gen request, apart from wanting to know more about Jane’s past relationships. I was very fond of the Ade/Yule love story and it’s fine to mention him or January or other unrequested characters, just not as the focus.

Prompts:

A story from Ade’s travels: a Door where she didn’t find Yule (the St. Ours mansion, the selkie door, Toussaint Louverture’s door, Red Cloud’s door, the door to Locke’s homeworld, the door in Istanbul where she came back with dragon scales? and how did she learn about them all?), run-ins with the Society, building the boat, the time she spent sailing in the Written before finding him, the Doors she searched from there after she lost him again.

A story from Jane’s 22 years in her adopted homeworld of the wereleopards—her experience of discovering it and meeting the leopard-huntresses, or adapting to their society, learning to hunt monsters with them? Or she mentions having “two husbands and a hunt-wife” and I’m especially interested in the latter—what does that mean, how did they get together, do they find each other again?

Helping Jane find her way back: How does Jane get in contact with January’s family again? Does Ade decide she’s not done with adventure and go along if January reopens the ivory Door in Kenya? Or if that’s thwarted for some reason, use her knowledge to help Jane look for another Door? Does Jane visit them in the Written? Do the two of them help hunt down the remaining Society members or return Locke’s stolen collections?

I’m massively fascinated by all of the other worlds through the Doors referred to in the book, and further exploration/worldbuilding of any of them (even the ones only mentioned in a few words) would be great, whether from Ade’s or Jane’s POV as an explorer post-canon, or told in found documents or artifacts, or from the POV of the residents visited by these strangers.

DNWs: setting AUs, death of requested characters, unrelenting bleakness/hopeless endings, PWP for this fandom, daddy/mommy kink, noncon, a/b/o, scat/watersports/vomit/spitting

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General likes

If something’s not on this (long and probably overkill) list, that doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t like it, but I enjoy these things pretty reliably. Take from it as you wish, all of them are good alone or combined. (It’s mainly a fic-oriented list, but if you do art for me for an exchange and want to incorporate something here, great!)

for both gen and shipfic: Friendships, partnerships, rivalries, and relationships between women, complex and powerful female characters, adult characters with some level of life experience Lighthearted fluff and humor Slice of life/ how the characters manage everyday life stuff in canons where the focus is more on big dramatic events Casefic if the characters do cases or missions: anything like another episode or chapter or adventure from the canon Epistolary or “found documents” stories, and other unconventional story structures Time loop stories, Rashomon-style stories, and other sets of variations on a theme (including “five times” fic) Canon divergence AUs, meaning “what if x event in canon went differently” Worldbuilding/exploration of the canon world and backstory, especially parts unexplored in the canon; also, in-universe stories, songs, mythologies, histories, etc. Holidays, rituals, celebrations; balls, masquerade or not; dancing, romantic or not Magical accidents causing weird things to happen Heists, rescues/jailbreaks, solving mysteries Court plotting, etiquette/complex social rules, intrigue, spying Road or sea or space trips, wilderness survival situations, exploring ruins/haunted places/caves/dungeons/etc. Swordfights, duels, tournaments, sparring, training for all kinds of fighting Monastic communities, priestesses, witches, hermits, anchorites Characters doing things in disguise, whether they’re good or bad at it; bodyswap as a subcategory of both this and forced intimacy Characters making things for others, whether it’s art or music or crafting or food or magic or whatever, and giving gifts Artists (in any art form), artistic rivalries, artist/muse dynamics, artists inspiring each other, artist or crafting communities Competence/being very good at what they do (but perhaps awkward or lost in other contexts); relatedly, learning/practicing/teaching others new skills

for shipfic (pre-relationship, get-together, and established-relationship stories are all interesting to me if I like the ship) Everything above plus: Pining and crushes, preferably requited in the end Intensely emotional romantic moments or cute fluffy/silly/playful moments Angst with happy endings Repressed feelings, extended UST, slow burn, revelations of feelings Loyalty/dedication/faithfulness/devotion, us against the world, knight/queen dynamics (either one-way or where both consider themselves the knight to the other), bodyguarding, protectiveness, love conflicting with other loyalties, noble self-denial and sacrifice, courtly love Longtime friends to lovers, partners in adventuring or work or crime, old friends meeting again, old enemies who aren’t really anymore and have to admit they like each other, rivals who respect each other (enemies to lovers is more likely to work for me if they become friends/allies first, and I love pairings with a long history together) Ascetic/hedonist or repressed/libertine or inexperienced/more experienced pairings Stoicism, bad at feelings but has a lot, good at feelings and good at hiding them “The grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one,” or alternatively the two grumpy/intimidating ones who are soft for each other when no one’s looking Secret/forbidden relationships as a source of angst and/or for the excitement of sneaking around (though I prefer infidelity not be the reason, unless it’s a forced/political marriage situation) Forced-intimacy-by-circumstance tropes like bedsharing, huddling for warmth, fake dating, marriage of convenience, handcuffed together, dreamsharing/psychic bonds, whether in a lighthearted or angsty way Hurt/comfort, fighting beside each other, facing external threats together, rescuing each other, tending each other Snuggling/bathing/dressing/playing with hair/other caretaking Moments where the couple just gets a break from everything to be together

for sex scenes: cuddling, kissing, laughing, eroticized hands and voices, clothed/semi-clothed sex, complicated undressing, talking whether emotional or joking or dirty, asking for things, curiosity/discovery, playfulness/inventiveness, eagerness/desperation, being overwhelmed by feelings, having to keep silent or hold still, interruptions and delayed gratification and intentional teasing/drawing things out, body worship, sex against walls, informal mild kink (e.g., tying up, holding down, blindfolding, taking direction, scratching/marking, tearing clothes, mutual roughness), sexy letter writing, one fantasizing about the other, decadence, voyeurism/exhibitionism, writing/painting on skin, sex pollen, magical or magic-enhanced sex

#yuletide 2020

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liezelsibayan · 4 years ago

Text

Parenting Style

Did your parents teach you well?

Did you learn from your parents?

Do you have a good relationship to them?

These are some questions about the parenting style of our parents. But before we answer those questions, let me define first “Parenting Style.”

What

Parenting Style?

The style of parenting is conceptualized as a constellation of behaviors or a pattern of parental authority communicated to the infant towards the infant, providing the emotional context for the representation of the actions of the parent. The types of parenting widely used today in psychology are based on the work of Diana Baumrind, a developmental psychologist at Berkeley University of California in the 1960s. Maccoby and Martin also assisted in the 1980s by improving the concept.

Parenting style differs from parenting practice in that characterizes parent-child interaction across settings and situations, whereas parenting practices are specific to particular situations and domains ( Baumrind,1971; Darling & Steinberg, 1993).

These four parenting styles are sometimes called the Baumrind parenting styles or Maccoby or Martin parenting styles since they expanded Baumrind’s permissive parenting style.

AUTHORITARIAN PARENTING

High demandingness. Low responsiveness.

In this style of parenting, children are expected to follow the strict rules established by the parents. Failure to follow such rules usually results in punishment. Authoritarian parents don’t explain the reasoning behind these rules. If asked to explain, the parent might simply reply, “Because I said so.”

AUTHORITATIVE PARENTING

High demandingness. High responsiveness.

Authoritative parents have high expectations for achievement and maturity, but they are also warm and responsive. They establish rules and guidelines that their children are expected to follow. However, this parenting style is much more democratic.

PERMISSIVE PARENTING (Indulgent)

Low demandingness. High responsiveness.

Permissive parents, sometimes referred to as indulgent parents, make very few demands of their children. These parents rarely discipline their children because they have relatively low expectations of maturity and self-control. Permissive parents “are more responsive than they are demanding.” They are nontraditional and lenient, do not require mature behavior, allow considerable, self-regulation and avoid confrontation.

NEGLECTFUL PARENTING (Uninvolved)

Low demandingness. Low responsiveness.

They are indifferent to their children’s needs and uninvolved in their lives. An uninvolved parenting style is characterized by a few demands, low responsiveness, and very little communication. While these parents fulfill the child’s basic needs, they are generally detached from their child’s life. They might sure that their kids are fed and have shelter, but offer little to nothing in the way of guidance,structure,rules, or even support.

“Parenting style is thought to provide the emotional climate for interaction between parent and children and has significant impact on the family quality of life.”-William 2009

They are kind of AUTHORITATIVE PARENTING.

Ever since my parents aren’t strict compared to other parents. But sometimes when I make mistakes my mom gives me punishment not in phyiscal way but in a good way. My mom is my first teacher, she always teaches me evey time I make mistakes. She is willing to hear my reasons whatever happened. I remember when I break her watch she did not punish me but instead she talk to me and she said “Don’t do that again, it’s not good and it’s bad.” But sometimes she’s angry and yelled at me and I feel scared but she feel sorry and ended up hugs me tightly.

When I go to school, my mom never forget to buy me my favorite baon “snack” the one and only “yumyum” �� a kind of chocolate biscuit. And she gave never fails me, she really doing her responsibilty as a mom, and I feel blessed for that. My dad is “go with the flow daddy”, she spoils me but not all the time. I’m a daddy’s girl (sorry mom🤞hihihihi ) but anyways I love you both 😘. My dad gives me what I want but he knows if I need it or not. Both of them are willing to lend their ears and listen of what my opinion is.

They did not pressure me ever since, they let me do whatever I want, they didi not control me like a robot; they give me freedom but have limitations. They allow me wherever I want to go but first I ask permission and tell them where I go. But when I forget to ask them they give me my punishment and that punishment is no more ‘gala’ with friends this week or until I learned for my mistakes.

They are very supportive towards my academic achievement they are happy whatever my award is, they never doubt my skills and ability instead I doubt my own capabilities which is not good. But they never forget to cheer me up and encourage me to push harder until I succeed and achieve what I want in life.

Now that I’m not teen anymore, I will do my very best to become responsible enough and give my best whatever I do to make them proud of me but I know that they already proud of me ever since I’m a child.

“Encourage and support your kids because children are apt to live up to what you believe of them”. - Lady Bird Johnson

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lindseysoc101class · 6 years ago

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Concepts I Personally Relate To:

One thing these modules went into depth about is the concept of marriage and family and how they have changed over the years. Marriage and family are two common and key structures throughout most societies, however in the past few decades times are changing, and so are how we we define a “family.” There are many nontraditional families around the world and it is becoming more and more common every day. Although there are a lot of different opinions of what exactly constitutes a family, a study showed that 60 percent of U.S. respondents agreed that if you consider yourself a family, you are a family.

The traditional idea of a family consists of a mom, a dad, and at least one child, this was reflected heavily throughout television and entertainment over the years. We now have began to see a change throughout the way television shows portray a family. Our textbook mentions that within the past ten years we have seen a significant shift towards more non traditional tv families, one in particular, Disney’s Hannah Montana. Growing up I loved to watch this show, if you are unfamiliar with it, she is raised in a single parent household with her father and older brother. This was always something I felt I could relate to because I have lived with only my dad since I was about 12 years old. Most of my friends parents were still married or they had step parents making up the other half, so it was nice that Disney portrayed a different, non traditional family structure I felt like I could relate to.

In the section titled “Children of Divorce and Remarriage” I found it very interesting to read more in depth about the effects that a divorce has on the child because I felt like I was actually learning quite a bit about myself. It states that divorce is often justified by the notion that children are better off in a divorced family than in a family with parents who do not get along. I can see how people can see this to be true, and at one point, I did as well; I remember wishing that my parents would just get divorced so I could stop hearing the fights and we could all finally be happy. There is long term studies that show evidence of this to be entirely untrue, divorce causes a lot of stresses, emotionally, and financially. Now that I am older and can look back on all that has happened, I wish my parents would have just stayed together, I think overall the divorce made them both more angry than they ever were before, there is no level of respect between the two of them because they no longer live in the same house and have to answer to each other. So I guess in the long run, they both became more unhappy, and drag my brother and I through it even more playing “telephone” between the two of them. I also think divorce adds so much stress on everyone involved due to financial issues, divorce is EXPENSIVE and money problems are never fun to face. Often times I wonder how much easier life would have been if my parents just decided to stay in a loveless marriage almost cohabiting as if they were roommates.

When learning about work in the United States, the book talks about the ways in which the job market changes such as, automation, outsourcing, and the recession. Unfortunately the recession is something I am all too familiar with. In 2008 we faced The Great Recession, a global economic downturn that devastated world financial, banking, and real estate industries. It was the longest period of economic decline since the Great Depression in the 1930’s and resulted in millions of people to lose their jobs, homes, and life savings. I still remember the day my dad sat my brother and I down and told us life was about to change for us, although he was actively looking for a new job the entire time, it was extremely hard to find a new one, if one at all. It would be two years before he landed a new job, this one only paying half of what he used to make. We, like millions of others, lost our house, and our way of life changed tremendously.

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hcalderon17 · 7 years ago

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Get mom out of the box

In our culture there's a lingering belief that the ideal family structure for kids is a stay-at-home mom who devotes her full attention to the kids. That may sound like a relic from the past. But even just 10 years ago, 41 percent of people thought moms working outside was harmful to society, PEW research found. The result is a mom stuck in an apartment or a single-family home — which are both essentially boxes — raising children, alone.

But if you look around the world and throughout human history, this parenting approach is arguably one of the most nontraditional out there. The notion that the mom is responsible for raising the children, alone, is unique to Western culture. (This family structure is even strange within Western culture. Up until about 150 years ago, households were much larger and included extended family members and sometimes paid help, historian Stephanie Coontz documents in The Way We Never Were. And woman were expected to earn some income for the family. "Women not only brought home half the bacon, they often raised and butchered the pig," Coontz says)

Examples:

In one household with four kids that I visited, the aunt dropped off food, the grandma stopped by to help with a neighbor's baby and, all the while, the oldest daughter looked after the toddler — while the mom fed the livestock and started to make lunch. But in Western culture, over the past few centuries, we have pushed alloparents to the periphery of the parenting landscape, Gillis writes. They aren't as valued and sometimes even denigrated as a means for working moms to outsource parenting duties.

In the past few generations, fathers have stepped up and started helping with a big chunk of parenting duties. Since 1965, American dads have more than doubled the number of hours they spend each week on child care, PEW research found. But moms still carry most of the load. They spend, on average, 14 hours each week on child care while fathers spend about 7.

The result is something unique in human history: A mom stuck in a box, often alone, doing the job typically performed by a handful of people. As Gillis writes, "Never have mothers been so burdened by motherhood."

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wionews · 7 years ago

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Opinion: Fewer Americans believe in God on Thanksgiving

Fewer Americans may be asking for God’s blessing of their Thanksgiving meal this year.

Religious participation is declining among Americans even though religion is still very popular. According to the latest Religious Landscape Study by the Pew Research Forum, the percentage of Americans who believe in God, attend religious services and pray daily has declined significantly during the last eight years, especially among adolescents. The drop in religious participation is larger among whites and less among blacks. One group bucking the trend is political conservatives, who show no decline.

The Pew surveys document the rise in secularism but don’t attempt to explain it.

Psychologist Jean Twenge and her colleagues have cited a rise in narcissism and self-centeredness among young people, but in truth, there is no hard data scientifically linking narcissism to the decline in religious participation.

Could something else be behind this important shift?

As a researcher who has spent 30 years studying human motivation, I believe we embrace or reject religion based on our values. I see four possible psychological reasons for the recent rise in secularism in America based on decades of studying what makes people tick.

Surveying 100,000 people

Up or down? (Others)

Decades ago, we began by creating a list of every possible goal or motive we could think of. We then asked people to rate the extent to which each goal motivated them. The respondents indicated how much they love to learn, for example, play sports or do things their way. We have surveyed about 100,000 people from many cultures in North America, Europe and Asia.

As described in my book Who Am I?: The 16 Basic Desires That Motivate Our Behavior and Define Our Personality, we discovered that humans share 16 basic desires.

They are acceptance, curiosity, eating, family, honour, idealism, independence, order, physical activity, power, romance, saving, social contact, status, tranquillity and vengeance.

My colleagues and I now believe that everything that moves us – all human motives – express one or more of these 16 basic desires.

For the past 10 years, we have been learning how these desires play out in religion and spirituality. In my latest book, The 16 Strivings for God: The New Psychology of Religious Experience, I suggest that virtually every religious belief and practice expresses one of the 16 basic desires, or two or more of them acting together. Your most important desires may be curiosity and social contact, for example, but your partner’s most important needs may be acceptance and order.

We have a choice of satisfying our desires through religion and spirituality or through secular institutions. The believer may satisfy his or her need for acceptance by embracing God-as-savior, whereas the nonbeliever might embrace, say, positive psychology. The believer may satisfy a need for status by embracing the idea of having been created by God, whereas the nonbeliever might pursue wealth and materialism to feel important.

Religion rises and falls in popularity depending on how well it satisfies our needs versus the secular alternatives. Viewed in this light, four major shifts in secular culture may be behind the decline in religious affiliation.

1. Organised religion versus spirituality

Philosopher William James, whom some consider the “Father of American psychology,” and psychiatrist Carl Jung, who developed the idea of the extrovert and introvert, were among those who embraced mysticism, or a sense of the Absolute but had little use for organised religion. James taught us to search for the mystical, personal God that meets our needs as individuals. Jung wrote that organised religion gets in the way of the true religious encounter. Historically, mysticism – or what some call “spirituality” – has been associated with disinterest in organised religion.

More Americans than ever are saying that they are “spiritual, but not religious.” In the 2012 survey by the Pew Religion and Public Life Project, nearly a fifth of those polled said that they were not religiously affiliated. That number has increased to 23 per cent in the latest study.

People seem to be shifting their search for meaning by looking within rather than to the heavens. This may be motivating a decline of interest in organised religion.

2. Tribalism versus humanitarianism

A common way of honouring one’s ancestors is to embrace their moral code and religion. Historically, loyalty to the tribe and clan has motivated participation in organised religion. Freud called attention to the tribal roots of religion in his essay Totem and Taboo. French sociologist and philosopher Emile Durkheim observed the role of religion in communal bonding.

The global economy may have significantly increased social contact among people from different cultures and religions. As we learn the similarities of people everywhere, I suggest that many of us may be less inclined to think of people as Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews, and more inclined toward thinking of people of faith as similar regardless of religious affiliation.

Globalism may be driving a rise in interest in interfaith activities. As we relate more to people globally, we may realise as never before that ours is not the only true religion.

3. Traditional versus nontraditional families

Thanksgiving prayer. (Others)

Historically, organised religions have relied heavily on the family to raise religious children and recruit new church members. Today we have a major restructuring of the family, with fewer than half of US kids living in a traditional family. This change in family structure may be responsible for less successful religious training and recruitment of young people. Organised religion may put forth myths and symbols less relevant to children growing up in nontraditional families versus traditional ones.

The Bible, for example, does not address children of divorced parents. These children may feel uncomfortable with certain religious teachings, such as God’s disapproval of divorce. They may think God disapproves of their parents or them.

4. Trust versus loss of confidence in institutions

The internet has given us unprecedented access to information about our institutions, many times exposing their darker sides.

As we learn more about our society and its institutions, we sometimes become painfully aware of hypocrisy and scandal. That may be one important reason that confidence in many of our institutions, from business to schools to government, is below historical norms.

Confidence in religion, in particular, is at an all-time low, partly because of religious scandals in the Catholic Church and elsewhere. Such scandals encourage cynicism among many observers regardless of their religious affiliation. Interestingly, the confidence of Catholics seems least affected.

I believe these four factors have played a role in making organised religion less adept at meeting people’s basic desires. That doesn’t mean this will always be so. Religion may change and adapt – as it has before – to better meet our basic human needs.

Whether it will remain an open question.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

(Disclaimer: The author writes here in a personal capacity).

]]>

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thedeadshotnetwork · 7 years ago

Link

The Republican tax plan could cut major tax breaks for education GOP lawmakers announced their tax plan last week, calling it the "tax cuts and jobs act." The hallmark is corporate tax cuts, but there are other cuts that will affect individuals too. The student loan interest and tuition and fees deductions could be toast. Congressional Republicans have released their proposal for tax reform , and it includes a number of key provisions that will affect every taxpayer. Yet amid corporate tax reductions, the eventual elimination of the estate and alternative minimum taxes, and a simplified structure of tax brackets , some more specialized provisions of the tax bill haven't gotten the attention they deserve. In particular, the Republican tax plan would make substantial changes to the tax breaks people get for costs related to education, taking away some valuable provisions and making significant changes to others. Those who face educational expenses in the near future or who are still paying down student debt need to understand the implications of this tax plan on their finances. Say goodbye to student loan interest and tuition and fees deductions The Republican tax plan would eliminate the current provisions allowing many taxpayers to deduct the interest they pay on student loans as well as a certain amount of the tuition and required fees that they pay. Under current law, single filers making $65,000 or less or joint filers making $130,000 or less can deduct up to $2,500 of their student loan interest payments. Partial deductions are available for incomes up to $80,000 for singles and $160,000 for joint filers. The same income limits also apply to the tuition and fees deduction , which allows deductions of up to $4,000 for money spent toward these educational costs. One of the biggest benefits of both of these deductions is that taxpayers can claim them even if they don't itemize. Eligible taxpayers have been able to adjust their gross income downward to reflect these above-the-line deductions. With 13.4 million taxpayers claiming student loan interest deductions and another 3.9 million claiming the tuition and fees deduction according to the most recently available IRS data, the elimination of these two provisions will have a substantial impact on taxes for a substantial fraction of the American public. The Lifetime Learning Credit won't last a lifetime under the plan Also on the chopping block is the Lifetime Learning Credit. This provision allows taxpayers to deduct expenses for a wide array of educational expenses that include not only traditional college degree programs but also certain types of work and vocational training as well as isolated courses that weren't part of the pursuit of a degree. Taxpayers can get a 20% tax credit on up to $10,000 in tuition expenses. About 2.5 million taxpayers claimed the Lifetime Learning Credit. Given that the American Opportunity Tax Credit is generally more favorable for those who are in traditional college programs, most of these Americans are likely nontraditional students seeking to improve their career skills or gain other valuable knowledge. Making up for lost breaks The Republican tax bill does make one favorable move for education. It extends the popular American Opportunity Tax Credit, which more than 9 million taxpayers claimed according to the most recent year's IRS data, to cover the fifth year. Current law allows this credit for the first four years, with 100% of the first $2,000 and 25% of the next $2,000 in expenses eligible for the credit. That works out to $2,500 per year for up to four years. To qualify for the American Opportunity Tax Credit, students must be at least half-time. The full credit is only available for those with incomes of up to $80,000 for singles or $160,000 for joint filers. The bill would cut the maximum value of the credit in the fifth year by half, maxing out at $1,250. A potential tax increase In addition to eliminating existing breaks, the tax bill would also potentially add taxes to a currently tax-free benefit. Currently, employers can offer tuition assistance of up to $5,250 without their workers having to include that money as taxable income. Under the plan, this benefit would go away. Such awards would get taxed in the same way as your wages or salary, increasing your tax bill in a way that would require you to take cash out of pocket to pay the additional tax. A learning experience Education is expensive, and students and parents need all the help they can get. The Republican tax proposal makes changes that on the whole have some negative implications for families paying educational expenses. Although the extension of the American Opportunity Tax Credit will cushion the blow somewhat, lost tax breaks in the Republican tax bill will still hurt millions of taxpayers, especially those who've finished their traditional college education and are trying to dig out from student debt. NOW WATCH: Everything we know about the mysterious SR-72 — Lockheed Martin's successor to the fastest plane ever November 12, 2017 at 03:09PM

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tortuga-aak · 7 years ago

Text

The Republican tax plan could cut major tax breaks for education

GOP lawmakers announced their tax plan last week, calling it the "tax cuts and jobs act."

The hallmark is corporate tax cuts, but there are other cuts that will affect individuals too.

The student loan interest and tuition and fees deductions could be toast.

Congressional Republicans have released their proposal for tax reform, and it includes a number of key provisions that will affect every taxpayer. Yet amid corporate tax reductions, the eventual elimination of the estate and alternative minimum taxes, and a simplified structure of tax brackets, some more specialized provisions of the tax bill haven't gotten the attention they deserve. In particular, the Republican tax plan would make substantial changes to the tax breaks people get for costs related to education, taking away some valuable provisions and making significant changes to others. Those who face educational expenses in the near future or who are still paying down student debt need to understand the implications of this tax plan on their finances.

Say goodbye to student loan interest and tuition and fees deductions

The Republican tax plan would eliminate the current provisions allowing many taxpayers to deduct the interest they pay on student loans as well as a certain amount of the tuition and required fees that they pay. Under current law, single filers making $65,000 or less or joint filers making $130,000 or less can deduct up to $2,500 of their student loan interest payments. Partial deductions are available for incomes up to $80,000 for singles and $160,000 for joint filers. The same income limits also apply to the tuition and fees deduction, which allows deductions of up to $4,000 for money spent toward these educational costs.

One of the biggest benefits of both of these deductions is that taxpayers can claim them even if they don't itemize. Eligible taxpayers have been able to adjust their gross income downward to reflect these above-the-line deductions. With 13.4 million taxpayers claiming student loan interest deductions and another 3.9 million claiming the tuition and fees deduction according to the most recently available IRS data, the elimination of these two provisions will have a substantial impact on taxes for a substantial fraction of the American public.

The Lifetime Learning Credit won't last a lifetime under the plan

Also on the chopping block is the Lifetime Learning Credit. This provision allows taxpayers to deduct expenses for a wide array of educational expenses that include not only traditional college degree programs but also certain types of work and vocational training as well as isolated courses that weren't part of the pursuit of a degree. Taxpayers can get a 20% tax credit on up to $10,000 in tuition expenses.

About 2.5 million taxpayers claimed the Lifetime Learning Credit. Given that the American Opportunity Tax Credit is generally more favorable for those who are in traditional college programs, most of these Americans are likely nontraditional students seeking to improve their career skills or gain other valuable knowledge.

Making up for lost breaks

The Republican tax bill does make one favorable move for education. It extends the popular American Opportunity Tax Credit, which more than 9 million taxpayers claimed according to the most recent year's IRS data, to cover a fifth year. Current law allows this credit for the first four years, with 100% of the first $2,000 and 25% of the next $2,000 in expenses eligible for the credit. That works out to $2,500 per year for up to four years.

To qualify for the American Opportunity Tax Credit, students must be at least half-time. The full credit is only available for those with incomes of up to $80,000 for singles or $160,000 for joint filers. The bill would cut the maximum value of the credit in the fifth year by half, maxing out at $1,250.

A potential tax increase

In addition to eliminating existing breaks, the tax bill would also potentially add taxes to a currently tax-free benefit. Currently, employers can offer tuition assistance of up to $5,250 without their workers having to include that money as taxable income.

Under the plan, this benefit would go away. Such awards would get taxed in the same way as your wages or salary, increasing your tax bill in a way that would require you to take cash out of pocket to pay the additional tax.

A learning experience

Education is expensive, and students and parents need all the help they can get. The Republican tax proposal makes changes that on the whole have some negative implications for families paying educational expenses. Although the extension of the American Opportunity Tax Credit will cushion the blow somewhat, lost tax breaks in the Republican tax bill will still hurt millions of taxpayers, especially those who've finished their traditional college education and are trying to dig out from student debt.

NOW WATCH: Everything we know about the mysterious SR-72 — Lockheed Martin's successor to the fastest plane ever

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