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lwt28brave · 3 years ago

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LT2 masterpost

If it was up to me, we would get an autumn or winter EP. Since it’s not up to me at all, here, enjoy this post with everything we know so far of LT2, which is to say, not much at all. Everything here is hypothetical. I’ll be updating every time I see something relevant. A little disclaimer that while this is a masterpost (kinda), it could be read as discourse (duh, it’s also a theory), AND it’s also by me, and you shouldn’t expect me to be serious at this point.

Due to me restraining myself, there’s no reference to any of the times he’s mentioned his guitar skills and him improving but I hope you know I cried every single time.

I’m also linking my old pinned here. It was written before AFHF and around the free merch thing that didn’t lead to much, but I still think I made some good points.

Possible tracks:

Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Change

Faith in the future??

369??

Possible names:

369

Faith in the future

When is the album coming out?

Your guess is as good as mine

Friday 28th of January 2022. Almost two years after Walls. It’s a Friday. It’s a 28th. What else can I say?

Here you can find @want-to-be-loved timelines for every month.

Here you can find @berlinini’s timeline of what Louis has been up to this year (2021).

The rest is under the cut. And here you can find a PDF version where Tumblr can't tell me how many pictures I can add.

2020

He said back on May 2th 2020 he wasn’t writing anything new yet.

(x)(x)(x)

Interestingly enough, he’s said many times after that that the album’s not ready cause he has no new experiences to drawn from. I won’t call him out because he does it himself.

May 4th. He liked a tweet from DMA’s Johnny Took saying they had to go write together again. Louis has been credited as an influence for them and (kind of) participated in their previous record, so I’m assuming he meant for their music and not his, but you never know.

Nothing(literally nothing??? how did we survive) until 11th of July. We all know what happened that day. We all celebrated it. Nonetheless, that’s not what I’m talking about here.

(x) So, by the beginning of July 2020 he was working on concepts and ideas for the new album. That was fifteen months ago. I know perfection takes time but…

Brief summary of important things that happened from then until the next mention of new music:

Louis left Syco!!!! 10 days later he rescheduled the tour for the first time. He followed Matt Vines on Twitter, probably so we could publicly shame him into doing something. Also, the 10thanniversary. He followed more people I wish he hadn’t.

Then more nothing until September. Not even a single tweet. The first merch drop was on the 28th of August but he just RT’ed the tweet. He first mentioned Free my Meal on the 25th of September. Then on October 1st Walls hit #1 on a lot of countries and Louis was incredibly happy and excited about it ^^

And then, that same day, October 1st, 2020, he dropped this bomb:

(x)

He also said it was too soon to be sharing new lyrics with us (x)

And, obviously, this tweet which is actually what made me start this whole post. I would hope you know mate.

(x)

He also told us he was cooking "banger after banger" and that he was incorporating more social themes into his music (x)(x) (I believe any social issue is a political issue but that’s not the point rn).

COPY OF A COPY OF A COPY?!?!

These next paragraphs are brought to you by my mind not remembering things and me not having any links. I’m assuming COACOAC came from those writing sessions that supposedly happened in October. Or in LA but I have no idea if he actually was in LA at any point other than a Daily Mail article putting him there on December which would have been too late, but I do remember that someone said he was in the studio in LA last autumn???? A rumor. Maybe. IDK. Did I mention already all of this is very hypothetical?? Well, this is it. I can’t even remember if this was October or November or what. So, take this with a grain of salt.

I’m also… taking the liberty to assume, if you must, that Copy wasn’t meant to be a Walls reject because it sounds more mature and darker and it has a vastly different tone that Walls songs. I know he’s said that song probably isn’t getting into the album, but I want to have faith (in the future) that I’m getting a studio version. (But also, Louis, if you’re reading this, first of all GET OUT OF MY BLOG second of all, please don’t ever feel pressured again to add a song to the album because we have already heard it before. It’s your art and it should always be under your own terms).

So yeah, I believe that Copy is either one of those four songs (then imagine the other three??!!) or was written around the 1st of October date.

---End of the Intermission---

Then not much important (other than sharing more about Marcus Rashford fight against food poverty and the 2nd merch drop) until he announced the livestream on the 24th of November. (x)

It wasn’t until a few days before the livestream date we even thought again about new music (jk, I know we’re always thinking about new Louis’ music). So, December 9th/10th, 2020. Nine months ago. We got our first taste of new music!

He made sure we knew Copy of a Copy of a Copy isn't a cover! (x) (x)

(x)

Ok, so that’s it for 2020. (I feel like I’m missing something from September 17th because tweet was deleted but maybe he was still talking about cucumbers. We might never know. Unless I understand how Tumblr tags work). Expected, cause Walls was released in 2020. We needed to let it sit for a while.

2021

Another Summary: Louis third tweet of the year was telling the UK government off. So was the fifth. What a good beginning. On the 26th of January, he said he prefers pancakes over waffles. I hope he meant pancakes other than his own. More importantly, he tweeted the infamous “you lot read into things too much”. Don’t get me started, Tomlinson. Don’t. Then the 31st came around and Walls was one. He tweeted this. How wise. And Project Defenceless happened!!

15th of February!! Who cares about Valentine Day when the next day we got this? ♥

(x)

So…AN EP?? AN EP?? PLEASE RELEASE AN EP.

“I’m sure I will have something out this year but unlikely that will be the album”. Unlikely but not impossible. Also. A single would be good. This is the second time he mentions releasing something in 2021 and he sounds surer about it than the first time around.

He also said that he isn’t sure we will get a studio version of Copy. And that the best bridges from Walls to LT2 are Walls, OTB, KMM and Copy. Can’t wait!

Then we jump to March 6th when he announced he was going to create his own management company. “Sometimes action is needed first to encourage the motivation and belief”. As we can tell he was already manifesting some stuff which will lead us to the numerology stuff/Tesla… kidding. Or not. We might never know.

On the 22nd of March he answered some questions:

He told us music was still his main focus ♥ mwha. (x) I included this tweet to guilt-trip him into giving us music in case he’s reading this even after I told him to leave. ILY.

(x) I’d love to get a visual EP this autumn. Just saying. It sounds like a lovely concept.

(x)

…next (I will get into it, I promise. I’m just mad).

On the 25th he left for Mexico until April 10th. You could assume it was just for the documentary where we got ten seconds of footage or admit the obvious: LT2 its a Mexican baby!!

On the 26th (so, not so far apart from that first 369) we got the first Faith in the Future mention: (x)

Back then we were innocent people who had no idea what was coming upon us. We still have no idea because what the fuck does he mean with these. Please explain. I have one braincell and I don’t use it enough for this. I’m linking some theories.

On the 30th of March he confirmed he was already working on the documentary. So AFHF was already on the works. Will it take this long for us to get the Veeps numbers? We also got this tweet: "Got a decent chorus idea down" (x).

Same person that got the “something out this year” exclusive. If you know something share with the class. Also. Is this Change? I feel like this could be Change but I also assume he wrote Change after hanging out with his friends or being in Doncaster. But who knows.

(x) And the second mention to 369.

(x) 15th of April. The second "Faith in the future".

On the 19th of April he announced that he had something BIG for us later on the year which turned out to be the Away From Home Festival ♥♥ (x) I love him so much.

Then on the 28th he announced the 369 merch drop (which it’s probably the Walls drop? Except that the TOU and KMM ones were “drop 1 and drop 2” and this was drop 369 which, again, makes no sense) but we still don’t know what 369 means.

Into May’ 21 we go.

He rescheduled tour again. And dropped another bomb (x).

He announced he has signed with BMG as an independent artist by RTing this tweet on May 10th. The article also says that he’s already working on writing and recording LT2. The timing… we don’t know. What this deal involves… we don’t know either. Bear with me here because I have a lot to say about this.

I think the deal is only a distribution one, but that BMG are interested in Louis and what he (us) could bring to the table. They were either present at the festival or watching it, but officially they had no involvement at all with it (everything is credited either to Louis own company, 78 Productions, or Charlie Lightening’s company). That’s the case for both giveaways too; the vinyl one and the tickets for the festival.

I think it would be an unbelievably bad move not to test the waters with BMG now or soon-ish. At least a single, to see how it performs. Due to the circumstances, it’s obvious there’re certain limitations on place but I want to see how they push it, whether the radio play exist this time around and if the song is playlisted and promoted and all that… I would also love to know, since it says he signed with BMG UK, but it also states it’s a global deal, how things are going to go on the US and other countries.

Yes, yes. I know those are all questions and no answers. But I know the same as you, sadly. If any of you know more than you’re letting on… again, share with the class.

Where was I? Yes, on the 25th of May Louis had a great day writing (x). Since the first time he had mentioned he was officially writing to this date there’s almost eight months. And I believe he was writing before October’ 20.

He followed Robert Harvey that day and, on the 28th of May (why is it always the 28th???) he was spotted at the studio for the first time.

June was an interesting month for the fandom ♥. Lots of LHL content which I will love and cherish for the rest of times. On June 4th, June 9th, and June 10th he was spotted at the studio, but I believe he was there more days.

(x)

This was posted on June 6th and captioned Studio. Charlie also shared it with “Mega tunes being put down, can’t wait for this @louist91 #louistomlinson #LT2” as the caption. This gives me 2019 (Elton-Joint) vibes. I like it. Feels like we’re getting closer to something.

He added the Milano date on the 9th too which I’m mentioning because I’m going alone. Anyone wanna go with me please? I’m nice and I never eat anything before a concert so you can have my food. On other news. It didn’t come home.

During July he was at the studio at least three days too. Probably more. Feels like more with all the fan pictures we got. Or was that June? Anyway, July 1st and 9th we got some videos from Robert Harvey and wearesuperhi, which is who Louis has been working with the most, that we know of. I don’t know for sure they’re from that day. And on July 5th we got an article and lots of pictures of Louis looking really good outside the studio.

On the 12th of July the first fans started getting the free, 369 bucket hat and print. We still don’t know what the purpose was other than to thanks fans. Maybe that was it. I want answers and I still think it relates to a future project (see theories above), but it could also just be a bridge with the Walls breaking.

He didn’t tweet about anything interesting for a while, mostly because he lost his phone (he either throwed it in the air or smashed it who knows). Then on the 29th of July he announced the festival!

I’m glossing over it because there’s already been a lot of talk about it (rightfully) and while it was a wonderful thing, it doesn’t have much to do with LT2.

Let’s talk Change!

On August 3rd he tweeted this about the setlist.

(x)

And this (x) on the 28th! I can’t stand him.

We didn’t get it, obviously. Because who was going to get that. But we read too much into things. Alright.

On the 16thof August Dave Gibson shared this post tagged #LT2 with the eyes emojis 👀👀👀. I believe this has to do both with Change but also with whatever else came out of that Mexico trip.

(x) Last relevant tweet related to LT2 is this one.

So, on the 30th of August we got Change and we cried, and we know that Change is going in the new album. He said it. With those exact words. He also said he was “getting a feeling for it”. This has to meant he already has a general idea of the vibe of the new album and what’s going in it!!!!!! (Right? RIGHT?).

Anyway, let’s go back a few weeks because some other things happened on August. He was at the studio a few more times. Or it was suggested that he was there. On the 17th and the 18th. (Why was it so time-pressing to be at the studio instead of rehearsing for the festival? There was no studio at all on the documentary. Which makes sense, but again, then why?).

On the day of the festival we got another mention of Faith in The Future that made me feel part of a cult ngl. The words were flashing on the screen for less than a second. Okay.

And then he tweeted those words again after watching the livestream/documentary on the 4th of September (x). This is what makes me suspect it's either the name of the album or of the single.

On the same day, we got some interesting quotes about LT2 on the documentary.

“Soon I’ll have to think about me second album, which in my head I’ll get the tour out of the way and then I’ll address that. So, I hadn’t really given it much thought, to be honest”.

“When every day is the same is hard to feel creative and it’s hard to have any kind of proper inspiration”.

“As season started to come back, I started writing again and it was great and some of these songs turned out alright”.

And I think this is it. I might be overlooking some important details but that’s what we know and what we don’t know.

So. Conclusions. That’s what you missed on Glee. I do believe the album is, if not mostly done, partially there. And yes, this post is pointless and never-ending but it’s all in here if you need to tell Louis “Hey, you said this, mate”.

#LT2 #Louis Tomlinson #Faith in The future #369 #Louis #LT #new music #idk what this is #but it's long #pinned

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i-am-a-closet-fanfic-fiend · 4 years ago

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Carnival of Hearts (Part 2/6) ~ Bucky x Reader College!AU

A/N: Hi lovelies! Hope you’re all doing well! So good news! I’m pretty sure I’m going to be able to do regular updates for this fic. The plan is for weekly updates on Fridays at 12 PM EST. I will let you know if I can’t do it though. For now enjoy!

This is my entry for @buckysknifecollection ‘s 3k Follower Challenge. Congrats on the milestone lovely! Go check out the blog. Personal fave is Hush (a must read if you’re into soft!Biker!Bucky)

Prompt: Our friends set us up on this carnival date but we’re both pining after someone else and this a bit awkward

Summary: When you’re set up on a carnival date with Bucky Barnes NOTHING turns out the way you expected.

Rating: T

Warnings: Language

Word count: 1916

Story Masterlist | Main Masterlist

After six outfit changes, you were finally satisfied with your appearance. The red wrap shirt was your favorite, your jeans hugged just right, and you were rocking your favorite white converse. The last touch was to clip in a white hair flower just behind your ear before declaring yourself ready.

Steve was on set up duty so he had already been at the fair grounds for hours and Natasha was meant to meet you there after her shift at the coffee shop, so you grabbed your backpack purse and headed out, cautiously optimistic for the day ahead. You paced back and forth a little ways away from the ticket booth as you waited for your friends and your date.

Your phone buzzed in your hand as you checked the time again.

Nat: Coffee shop got slammed last minute. Going to be a while. Sorry. Just go meet Bucky and Wanda.

“Wonderful,” you muttered.

You could go meet Bucky and Wanda if you had either of their numbers. You were about to text Nat and ask her to pass the info along when your phone buzzed twice. One from Steve and one from an unknown number. You opened the latter.

Unknown Number:Hi this is Bucky. Wanda is running late so she said for me to just meet you and Natasha.

You rolled your eyes, but snapped a quick selfie and responded.

Y/n: I'm by the ticket booth. Red shirt and a white flower in my hair. Just me though. Nat’s late too.

Bucky: Be right there!

He responded with a selfie of his own.

"Y/n?"

You turned at the shout of your name. Bucky shot you a shy smile and a small wave, wading through the crowd of people.

“Hey, it’s nice to meet you.” He stuck his hand out.

“Nice to meet you too, Bucky.”

“Sorry, I’m late. I was technically on time, but I was waiting for Wanda.”

“No problem at all.”

He had a kind smile and it eased the knot of tension in your stomach, though an awkward silence stretched between you. It broke when you both laughed.

“I’m sorry. I’ve never been on a blind date before,” you admitted, worrying your bottom lip with your teeth.

“That makes two of us. But,” he continued before the conversation could lapse again. “I have been to a lot of carnivals with friends in my time.”

You clung to the lifeline.

“Well that we have in common. Although-” You crossed your arms over your chest. “I did just meet you so I’m not sure we can be called friends yet.”

Bucky put both hands up to concede the point.

“Well let’s start with the carnival part and we’ll see the friendship comes naturally.”

“I can work with that.”

Bucky bought an armload of tickets and the two of you entered the fairgrounds. Happy screams from the roller coaster mixed with ride music, and you were practically vibrating with excitement.

You grabbed a map from the information booth, smiling at Hope who was manning it.

“Enjoy the carnival!”

“Thank you!”

You huddled out of the way of the hoards of people, carefully surveying the map.

“Now, what I have learned over the years, is that there are two types of people. Ones who plan their carnival route. And chaos entities who cause their friends to miss their favorite rides.”

You raised an eyebrow at him.

“I sense some bitterness there.”

Bucky chuckled and shrugged but didn’t elaborate.

“Well, I’m certainly not a chaos entity.”

“Excellent. So where should we start?”

“R.C.F.A.”

“Excuse me.”

“Roller coasters first always.”

“A girl after my own heart. Any rides that are a hard no?”

“Not a one,” you announced proudly. “But don’t let me eat before any spinny ones.”

“Noted. Okay, then.”

Bucky scanned the fairgrounds trying to track the flow of the crowd.

“It looks like the tilt-a-whirl has the shortest line.”

“Ooh and it’s right next to the two best coasters,” you pointed to the cluster of rides on the map.

“Then we’ll start there. And then we can follow the circuit back to the food area for lunch.”

“Sounds good. Let’s go!”

Unable to contain your excitement any longer you grabbed his hand and dragged a laughing Bucky through the crowds.

“So what happened to Nat?” he asked as you waited behind a group of middle schoolers.

"Stuck at work. Cafe got slammed last minute. Wanda?"

"She was getting a haircut and they were running an hour late.”

You poked your tongue into your cheek. Bucky voiced what you had been thinking.

“Do you smell a setup?"

You let out the laugh you’d been holding back. "Oh yeah. I mean technically both of those are real things that could happen, but…”

“Yeah, it seems a bit suspicious.”

“I should have known Nat would weasel out of her end of the bargain."

"Bargain?" Bucky asked.

You inhaled through your teeth and offered him an apologetic smile.

"It may have taken a bit of convincing to get me to go on this date."

“What were the terms of this deal?”

You counted them on your fingers.

“We would meet as a group. I had a guaranteed out at lunch time. And she wouldn’t set me up for the rest of the semester. It wasn’t anything against you. I promise,” you explained.

He waved off your concern.

“Trust me I took a similar deal. But you were smarter than I am. I should have gotten the no meddling clause in there.”

You exhaled a laugh, relieved you hadn’t offended him.

“Well now you know for next time.”

“True. Though based on how Wanda talked about you there won’t be a next time because you’re supposedly exactly what I need.”

"Nat gave me the same speech. Think they practiced?”

“Probably,” he snorted. ��She says you're perfect for me. So my expectations are high just FYI.”

"That’s fair. Personally, mine are astronomical,” you replied in a haughty tone.

“I guess we’re both in for disappointment then.”

“Not so far at least,” you admitted with a sly smile that he returned as you were strapped into the tilt-a-whirl.

The line for your first roller coaster was longer than you anticipated, but Bucky kept you entertained. He questioned you on your taste in movies and TV shows which led to an in depth debate of the character arcs in Supernatural. In the next line you discussed Bucky’s favorite book which happened to hold a special place in your heart.

When you stopped for snacks -cotton candy for him and watermelon slush for you - you were comfortable enough to tease him.

“So, did you find Insta-stalking me last night helpful in preparing for this date?”

Bucky’s cheeks went red despite his best efforts to appear nonchalant.

“Pfft. I didn’t Insta-stalk you.”

“Oh, so it was a different JBBarnes317 who liked the picture of me moving into my dorm Freshman year.”

“I…” he hung his head, peeking at you through his long hair. “Okay so maybe I did. I tried really hard not to, but I was really nervous and I thought maybe if I knew something about you we could avoid a lot of awkward pauses. Sorry.”

You shook your head and patted his knee.

“Don’t be. I had been arguing with myself all night. And when I saw that you liked my photo I totally caved. It was honestly a relief. Though I’ve got to say that your profile picture on Facebook does not do you justice.”

“Well I only change my profile picture if it’s a leap year.”

You opened your mouth to respond, but nothing came out. You tilted your head with an incredulous laugh.

“I have nothing to say to that. Are you serious? If so, why?”

He snorted at your expression.

“No. I just haven’t spent more than like ten minutes on Facebook since I was seventeen. I don’t even know why I have it any more.”

“That’s fair.”

“Well, since I’ve been exposed. I’ve got to ask. How far did you row yourself in the moving cart?”

“About 500 feet before I hit a bump and nearly pole vaulted myself out of said cart.”

“That was the funniest video I have ever seen. And I’m kind of mad I never thought of it.”

“There’s always move out.”

“I don’t live on campus. So no yellow carts for me when I move out. Just lots and lots of boxes.”

“Bummer. You can always help me move out!” you concluded triumphantly.

“Let’s see how the rest of the date goes before I agree to that,” he laughed. “But maybe.”

You smiled at the implication before returning the conversation at hand.

“Are you in an apartment then?”

“Yeah. It’s a really nice two bedroom about ten minutes from campus.”

“I assume two bedroom means roommate?”

“Yes. Sam. He and I got randomly roomed together sophomore year, but it actually ended up being the best thing to ever happen. He’s my best friend. I can’t imagine living with anyone else. We thought we were going to have to get a third roommate, which would have been a bummer, but luckily we were able to find a place for just us.”

“That sounds ideal. I’m lucky because my scholarship pays for housing, but honestly I would kill to have a full kitchen again.”

“Or you could just ask nicely.” He smirked. “Do you like cooking?”

“No, I am a mediocre cook at best. But I love baking.”

Bucky’s eye glittered.

“Well then you’re definitely invited to use my kitchen.”

“Let me guess. Payment in baked goods?”

“It seems fair.”

“It does. Do you cook a lot.”

“I can manage. But Sam’s an amazing cook. I keep telling him he’s in the wrong career path.”

There was a hint of frustration in his tone.

“What’s he studying?”

“Business. He plans to open and manage restaurants. Says it’s the smarter path. Which like I get it. But man, the look he gets in his eye when he makes a good dish. He just lights up the whole room. I mean he usually does just by being there, but this. It’s pure joy. It makes you excited to try his food. Even if you hate the ingredients. I just don’t want him to lose that. It makes him special.”

“He sounds pretty amazing.”

“He definitely is,” Bucky sighed, before shaking himself slightly. “But he has his flaws. Like, he likes to run. Every morning.”

“I’ve got one like that too. Steve gets up at the crack of dawn every morning. He’s even in the running club.”

“Sam is too.”

“Really? Huh. I wonder if they know each other.”

“They must. There can’t be that many people who willing give up sleep to run.”

“I swear it’s an illness.”

“Agreed. But I do get fresh muffins out of the deal. Steve always brings me my favorite. This summer, we lived together and he’d wake me up after his shower and we’d eat on our little balcony before work and it was perfect.”

“Sam and I eat on the roof sometimes and he always brews the best cup of coffee. He even manages to time it so it’s at the perfect temperature when I get to the kitchen. He may have magic powers.”

“We’re really spoiled aren’t we?”

“I think we are the appropriate amount of spoiled.”

You both laughed as you tossed your trash and continued on your way.

A/n: I hope you enjoyed and I’ll see you next week (hopefully)

Tag lists are open (Please send an ask) I am removing all tags that don’t work after three failed attempts.

Carnival of Hearts

@deepmuffinspymaker @dee-vn

Bucky/Sebastian Tag List

@waywardpumpkin @sadanddeadsoul @captain-maaarvel @caylast @isaxhorror @run-your-cleverboy @ria132love @mbsgr @hereisanapplepie @pierrxt-uta @thejourneyneverendsx @stevieboyharrington @catsandbooksinafarawayplace @mywinterwolf @andreagf956 @jendz33

Marvel Tag List

@hdthdthdt @sophiatomlinson23 @misty-panther @supermusicallee @scarlettsoldier @acupofhotlatte @slender--spirit @petitesmate @libbymouse

Permanent Tag List

@iamwarrenspeace @jayzayy @bexboo616 @neoqueen306 @santheweird @rowenaravencalw @buckitybarnes @prxttybirdz @sergeantjbuckybarnes @captainsamwlsn @broitsmydick @ailynalonso15 @nyxveracity @queenoftrash97 @walkingtravesty97 @lamia-maizat @memyselfandmaddox @lowkeybuckyb @whiskey2011 @averyrogers83 @lovingpeterparker @buckybarneshairpullingkink @beansparker @coralphantomninja @xxashy999xx @thisismysecrethappyplace @ravennightingaleandavatempus @paintballkid711 @whosmarisaaarw @silverkitten547 @yknott81 @thefridgeismybestie @crispy-kitten @isabelcrichards @greyeyedsmile14 @loving-life-my-way @geeksareunique @rachelsficcollections @captainscanadian @palaiasaurus64 @sea040561 @kakakatey

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #Carnival of Hearts #College!AU #College!Bucky Barnes #buckysknifecollectionchallenge #challenge fic

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joie-university-rp · 4 years ago

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OOC Statement:

Hello, All.

My name is Moe, or Admin/Vice Provost O, and it was brought to attention of myself and Daisy/Admin/Vice Provost D that there was a list of claims about us, the admins, and Joie as a whole, posted a few hours ago.

Part of me worries that addressing this will create a sort of opposite-Streisand Effect where acknowledging this brings it to the attention of a multitude more people than who would have seen it if we chose to simply ignore it. But the main goal and mantra of this RP from day one has been transparency, and I refuse to renege on that now.

The tl;dr is that these claims are falsified. They come from ex-members who, for any number of reasons, left or were removed on poor terms.

Now that the tl;dr is out of the way, please take a breath and prepare yourself for the tl.

Utilizing everything that I have at my disposal, I will dispute each of these claims to the best of my ability.

For all screenshots, I will block out the names/icons of other people since at the end of the day, the point of this is not to expose anyone. We simply want to clear our name of these false claims. The ace flag Grant Gustin icon is me. The Andy icon is Daisy.

During these refutes, I will be picking out specific screenshots, but, for the sake of transparency, in the morning, I will edit this post to post the full conversations at the very end.

I will be jumping around a bit, but I will start in reverse order after the cut.

False Testimony 4 has a lot of moving parts, but I will do my best to address each one. (With screenshots, when applicable.)

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #1: “It became very clear within a matter of a few weeks that they didn’t really like minority characters. I was among one of two minority charcters among mostly white males who were gay.”

To say that we don’t/didn’t like minority characters is absurd. At Joie, we have always loved and cherished all of our characters, but especially muses that tend to be neglected in the community, such as POC, nonbinary/genderqueer, and muses with disabilities. We even do our best to celebrate that by having the ability to sort our followlist via some of those identities, and by doing our best to suggest POC FCs when our current members consider picking up additional characters.

As anyone who runs an RP for a while knows, the makeup of an RP moves in waves. For example, there are definitely times when there are far more male FCs in comparison to other genders--especially in an RP like ours that doesn’t believe in placing bans on certain types of characters. With that in mind, without being able to go back and see exactly who was apart of Joie when this player joined, they are more than likely correct that there were few other POC muses. But in no way does that translate into saying that we ‘don’t like’ or are somehow against POC muses.

Similarly, I am a black female myself. Not only that, but I am plus-sized, and considered Mercedes to basically be my mirror while growing up. (Picture of my hand below as evidence.) Meaning that false claim hurts in more ways than one.

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #2: “Both an admin and another character wanted their character with Sam but Sam was interested in Mercedes.”

This claim is solely their word against mine, and it is definitely small potatoes in comparison to some of the larger claims, but I find this important to dispute for two reasons: 1, it continues to break apart this false claim that the admins in some way ‘didn’t like’ or ‘had it out’ for this player, and 2, it showcases that the person making this claim is, unfortunately, an unreliable narrator.

My dispute to this is the following: At the time that this Mercedes player was with us, I had 2 characters and Daisy had only 1. My first character and Daisy’s single character where in a slow-burn ‘will they, won’t they’ plot with each other that lasted the entire time Mercedes was there and then some. My 2nd character, Spencer, was/is a lesbian. If anything, I feel that maybe this player felt I was interested in having Spencer be with Sam because they were best friends. However, as previously mentioned, Spencer is and always has been a lesbian. So that simply is not the case.

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #3: “ It all came to a head when Jeff and Mercedes got into a fight because Jeff’s new boyfriend had hurt Sam’s feelings and Mercedes took up for her boyfriend. Jeff started being really disrespectful to her and then wrote a text to his boyfriend saying if Mercedes showed up to the sorority house he would kick her ass and kick her out by her nappy ass weave. That pissed me off. I felt like that was extremely disrespectful and racist. You don’t say things like that. It hurt me OOC as a black woman and IC as a Mercedes player But the admins did nothing.”

Thankfully, we’re to our first claim with hard evidence to dispute with. While it is true that this situation did, unfortunately occur, it is completely false to say that the admins did nothing. Here is a conversation between myself and the player showcasing the exact opposite.

(The text conversation in question was unfortunately written over so I cannot link to it, but I’d like to mention some additional things about this situation:)

Much like I said in the conversation, I originally didn’t read the texts to be inherently or explicitly intended to be racist. I read it more in the way of how talking about ‘weave’ and the like has/had started to become just as prominent in the gay community as it is the black one. But, also like I mentioned in the conversation, I recognized that she more than likely had a different background/history with the word than I did, so I wanted to still address the situation however I needed to in order to make sure that she, as the victimized party, still felt comfortable.

As seen in the conversation, she said all she needed was to get it off her chest. And even with her saying she did not need any more action to be made, I still took it a step further and spoke to the other party, gave them a strike (Joie works on a 3 strike policy except in the case of egregious offenses), and had them remedy the situation by changing the text.

To say we did nothing is, once again, just simply false.

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #4: “Then the player and their friend started harassing me. I told the admins over and over and they said there was nothing they could do. The player even lied on me with no proof ( I showed the admins proof of the hate) and the admins basically pressured me saying I was welcome to leave if it bothered me so much. I was really upset and hurt. The hate just continued and I finally had enough and left.”

Once again. It is false and unfair to say we did nothing. Even though we could not get an understanding from either party of where this quarrel came from, we kept an eye on this quarrel at all times.

The tl;dr of this quarrel is this: The harassment was something that was almost non-stop from both sides, and it would come in waves. We would be approached by one of the two players, we would diffuse the situation, and then a few days would pass, and another would spring up. It was a constant thing.

While I don’t have many screenshots, I do have some screenshots of things started to reach its peak. Within this screenshot, you can see that we did do everything in our power to fix this situation by urging the two to try to finally talk things out with admin moderators present instead of continuing to hash things out unhealthily on the dash via character bleeding.

(This came up as part of a larger conversation regarding this character’s lack of general activity and choice to bubble and have Mercedes be extremely argumentative/aggressive whenever they were on. This is the most relevant part, but, again, for the sake of transparency, I will post the entire conversation after this full statement is done)

Quick clarification: “We can see your custom status” refers to the custom status on discord. The status vagued about the situation in same way, although it’s been months so I can’t remember exactly what.

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #5: “I hadn’t even thought about Joie after I left. But they hate continued. One of the admins ( I recently found out) joined a group pretending to be me with my name and was extremely rude playing Mercedes as a stereotype, thank goodness a few people who knew me told me about it and the admin left the group. Turns out she was just there to spy on their group so they could steal ideas. ”

This claim is just straight up false. It is not even ‘misremembered’ or ‘unreliable’. It is just false.

Since Joie started, I have not joined any other RP of any kind. Daisy has joined other RPs, but none of them have been Glee RPs, and none of them have been this weird ‘stereotype/stealing information’ claim.

Also, if one thinks about this claim for a few seconds longer, the whole thing makes less and less sense. If someone’s goal was to ‘steal ideas’ from an RP, why would they draw attention to themselves by: A, pretending to be someone else in the community--Especially someone who plays a rarely-picked up character? and B, playing a black woman as a stereotype--something that almost all admins would address immediately? Additionally, what ‘ideas’ would someone be stealing from an RP? And additionally, additionally, if there were somehow ideas to steal, why would someone need to join an RP to see them? Nothing regarding that claim stands up to logic.

I have come to the table with screenshots left and right. I encourage this player to please give screenshots of whatever group this supposedly is/what, pictures of the supposed blog, and/or more information about which admin this supposedly was and how they know.

Because on the off-chance that this isn’t just a completely falsified statement pulled out of thin air, it is definitely a situation where this player simply thought that we did something when we absolutely did not. Which brings us to claim 6:

‘Testimony’ 4, Claim #6: “Then they started sending hate to the Sam player pretending it was me mad at a new ship. I tried explaining that I didn’t even follow Joie anymore but the damage was done and I lost a friend and writing partner. The group the admins they are all toxic and I am still paying the price for making the mistake of joining that group.”

Much like claim 5, this claim is just false. Straight up, 100% false. Not ‘misremembered’, not ‘unreliable’. False.

And also much like claim 5, if this is not pulled completely out of thin air, it is a situation where this player simply thought that we did something when we absolutely did not. And for this claim, I actually am leaning a bit more towards it being this one.

It is obviously difficult to prove that you didn’t do something, but I have proof that the Joie main was also receiving odd and hate anons talking about Mercedes/this Mercedes player.

I logically have my suspicions that this is the Mercedes player themselves because on August 3rd, they had been away from the RP for over 7 months, and I highly doubt a ‘friend’ would be able to know we even had a Mercedes--let alone specifically her--after all that passed time, but this is about disputing claims, not making them myself, so I digress.

If nothing else, this screenshot shows that if there was someone other than the player sending weird Mercedes-specific anons, it was not us.

With ‘Testimony’ 4 out of the way, I will move my attention to ‘Testimony’ 2.

‘Testimony’ 2, Claim #1: “Hey! I just want to warn people about Joie. I honestly thought it would have died by now with the toxic admins. I joined that group near the beginning and was kicked without a single word from the admins AFTER they internet stalked me and found out my exact location. They held, and probably still hold, a grudge against me for no reason, or at least none that has ever been explained to me. It's super creepy and I'd be wary.”

There’s actually two false claims in this one statement. I will refute them in opposite order starting with the bit that’s bolded.

The tl;dr is that no one internet stalked anyone and, more importantly, no one has their exact location. (I will explain that further after giving background to the whole situation.)

This situation is another long one, but here’s the gist: The reason Daisy and I (and originally two other admins, but they are long gone) created this RP was to leave a different RP where the admins and some members were not kind to us. Not too long after Joie got off the ground, we received 3 new apps which we then accepted. Within a few moments of meeting them in the OOC, suspicions were DMed to us (both by one of our now long-gone admins and another regular player at the time) that at least one of the 3 apps was actually a person that I’ll call Z for the rest of this story, trying to pass as someone else by using a different alias and a brand new fake Discord account. Z had a negative history with one of our players, was a part of the group all 4 admins were fleeing from, and additionally had a particularly negative history with one of our long-gone admins.

Like implied in the story, we already had a history with this person, so we knew vaguely where the person lived (in the same way that all internet people talk to each other). In order to see if this person actually was Z, we checked the ping that submitted the app (more on that in a second), saw it was from the same country we know Z had mentioned living in, and then approached them about it.

While talking to Z, G (another one of the 3 apps) came forward to admit in a rage that they and the 3rd app, X, were all people with similar negative histories all doing the same thing in order to try to sneak into our RP.

Z and G left on their own accord while X was told by admins that they were going to be removed (more on that in a second).

You can see these conversations below.

Here’s Z’s convo:

Two quick clarifications: “Why both of you?” is me asking why both Z and X did this (we did not know about G’s involvement at this moment).

“There will be.” was me in the middle of preparing a server with all the admins in it so they could all be in the loop about this situation.

Here’s G’s conversation:

Two more quick clarifications: One, this is in the middle of a larger conversation where G came to me discussing IC problems with the player that all three of them had a negative history with (At this time, I had no clue G was with X and Z, so I was handling it like I would a normal quarrel.) Like others, I will put the whole conversation as a footer at the end, but above is the relevant part.

Two, like I said before, I am about transparency, so I’ve posted this conversation piece as a whole even though there is false info it in. Much like I will explain further in a second, no one stalked anyone. Nor was anyone harrassed past asking them why they chose to do this instead of just being truthful from the jump.

Now, onto addressing the “stalking” claim head on:

No one was stalked, nor did anyone find anyone’s ‘exact location’. We realized who Z and X were by looking at their pings.

For those who do not know what pings are, pings are the little dot that shows up when you go on a blog that has the ‘[blank] people online, [blank] total visitors’ code on it. This thing here:

A majority of Glee blogs nowadays have them. If you click on the links, it takes you to this page where you can see your ping.

The ping above is mine on Seblaine RPH’s blog. And I have no problem showing you this ping because it is nowhere near my real location. These pings are based on cellphone towers, so they’re vague to begin with (the really only show the state/country, and they also are usually fairly off (at least a few cities away in any direction).

This, completely readily available information that almost all Glee blogs have, is all the information that was used. The only reason it helped at all was because Z did not live in America. Something we already knew. And it confirmed that the alias we were suspicious of also didn’t live in America.

Otherwise, it told us nothing. No city, no IP address, and definitely no exact location.

To give further context, people get more personal information when they reverse search anon hate than someone could get from this ping. And people give more personal information when they simply post a picture of themselves than someone could get from this ping.

And since there are probably some people who didn’t know that’s what happens when you go on a blog, I want to add this:

In addition to this being something many Glee blogs have, we also (again in the efforts of transparency) have never shied away from explaining this process to our members when they ask.

I have screenshots of me explaining this to a member in more--and arguably, better--detail below (and this is the only conversation I will not post in full because they have nothing to do with the larger convo, and their reason for asking was personal.)

For a bit of context, using this same tactic, we found, months later, that a different player had created a fake alias and was playing more roles through that account after she was told to up activity before applying for another on her main account.

Now moving on to the other half of that false claim:

‘Testimony’ 2, Claim #2: “Hey! I just want to warn people about Joie. I honestly thought it would have died by now with the toxic admins. I joined that group near the beginning and was kicked without a single word from the admins AFTER they internet stalked me and found out my exact location. They held, and probably still hold, a grudge against me for no reason, or at least none that has ever been explained to me. It's super creepy and I'd be wary.”

Unfortunately, my conversations with X (the person I’m assuming sent this, as G and Z left in a huff on their own accord) are long deleted and gone, but I can assure that we explained to them the reason why they were removed. And the reason why I know is that because, like I said before, Joie’s mission has always been transparency.

So once they left/were removed respectively, we explained the situation to the main OOC as well. Most of it was via VC for ease on my poor fingers (unlike right now), but there’s still enough to hopefully get my point across.

Moving on to false Testimony 3 and 1:

‘Testimony’ 3, Claim: “If you are not a gay or bisexual white Male then stay away from Joie they pretend to be accepting but are not. As a minority female I was bullied constantly and the admins did nothing. But the moment the same person bullied a white male they kicked that person out. Joie is toxic.”

Much like previous false testimonies, this never happened. It’s as simple as that. This is false.

Much like mentioned before, whenever there is a situation, Daisy and I work hard to make sure that things come to a resolution as soon as possible.

Additionally, as I also mentioned before, I am also a minority female--specifically a black female. Why would I ever do something like that?

‘Testimony’ 1, Claim: “Joie Academy treated me like crap as well and practically told me that 'I seem like the kinda person no one would get along with in the real world'... I am surprised people are still there cause the admins are the worst and put me through so much.”

This is another testimony that is just completely and utterly false. Not ‘misremembered’, not ‘unreliable’. False.

I don’t have much to say on the topic past that that I haven’t already said multiple times over in other places throughout this.

In closing, I would just like to say that although I recognize and appreciate what Seblaine RPH is trying to do by warning people of problematic/toxic RPs, I am pleading that they please get both sides of a story before making such a bold post with such bold claims as he did.

False claims travel 6 times faster than real ones, and if the trend becomes that all it takes to get an RP to be considered blacklist-able is people sending false claims about it, Joie will unfortunately not be the last RP to fall victim to this.

To those of you who read this whole thing, I thank you.

~Vice Provost O

---

Full conversations will be posted here in the morning. I will indicate that this post is edited at that time.

#seblainerph #glee rp #glee rpg #ooc statement #joieuniversityrp #vice provost o

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theopinionoftheredheads · 4 years ago

Note

We knew about the Scotland photos and lily being there AGAIN Chris was not with her...everyone move on. He was there for work...his hotel was literally shut down during his stay for filming. What does that tell you

Everything is up in the air for this CE and LJ stunt. I think they are dating. Its just my opinion. I think CE went their to meet up with her which was a stupid move. CE talks a big game about politics and philosophy but honestly that man has no common sense! *************** We knew about the Scotland photos and lily being there AGAIN Chris was not with her...everyone move on. He was there for work...his hotel was literally shut down during his stay for filming. What does that tell you *************** on the topic of chris announcing he was single, dont you think he just said that so fans would not pry into his personal life. like i dont care if he and lily are dating but isn’t it a possibility he just said that until he and lily are ready to confirm it (assuming they are more than friends). they could be dating but not officially a couple & that would make him single still *************** I don’t know what to think of this LJ and CE thing that’s happening anymore. Are they actually dating and a real couple or was everything they did for PR? But why was the hotel following both LJ and CE? And CE just liked a pic that LJ posted on ig. Was that to draw attention to both of them again? But why would he need to like that pic if people already knew he was in London with her supposedly. Was that like a confirmation that they are dating? I’m so confused... hope this makes sense! *************** Chris and Lily left the hotel to travel to scotland with Lily's friends Dom and Gemma Chris also followed Dom that weekend on IG. *************** After all this trolls today, I'm very excited about what's happening next and if someone was right 🤣 I just binged Young Sheldon. But I wait for a new criminal TV show as all of my favorites were completed or stopped. *************** Lily's just added to her stories in IG haven't a clue what it's about *************** Just saying but is it just me or anybody else too think that CE and LJ met through Douglas Booth and Bel powley . Remember Chris was in a cab with BP and DB last year on fourth of July. And Douglas and Lily are good friends and Chris is too friends with Douglas and also worked together with Bel. And when he was in London he followed Bel , Douglas and Gemma on Insta. *************** No! The Pursuit of Love hasn’t been filmed in Ireland and,for what we know, it will not be filming there. The locations are Bristol and Badminton *************** Ok I'm curious now. What were the titles of the embargoed pics? I would have looked through them myself but have no desire to see those obviously posed pics again. *************** yesterday an anon wrote "Now that this hotel anon said they were together in the hotel, went away a weekend and then came back to the hotel" Could you explain what the hotel anon said, and when this happened? Thanks in advance *************** Dear anon that constantly ships CE and LJ: LJ posted a story from her bathtub drinking wine. Let’s NOT think, they are in the tub together drinking wine please. Let’s also NOT analyze the bathroom faucets. Let’s also NOT think she is in Boston with CE please!!!! *************** Daily Mail writes an article every time LJ posts a new picture on IG. And since July, they always mention Chris in those articles even though the pics posted have no connection to him! I wonder if her team is commissioning these articles or if it's all solely Daily Fail's doing to get clicks. *************** I know LJ fans following this blog so maybe they can answer this: why Lily post pictures on her instagram stories and then delete them after couple minutes after? Attention seeker? *************** Is anyone going to be shocked if lily was seen with Matt or something else who not chris if that happens I will die of laughter if that ever happen *************** That DM article was so irrelevant! What was the point of that article? What a waste of time! *************** "LJ is ridiculous, just my opinion (and it hasn't to do with drugs" SAME ☝️ *************** Sorry, but back to the topic of LJ&CE..Can't believe that his arrival at the place near she is being filmed is a coincidence! Why are they so hidden now, if two months ago, on the contrary, they did everything to be noticed? Also note her recent stories (song called "miss you"). Is this such a well-thought-out PR move? Who could have predicted in advance that fans would find his exact location just by looking at the wall from the ASP video? It's hard to accept, but they're probably just a couple *************** Chris probably associates PR with the name Lily by now. Also isn’t Chris usually silent when he has nothing coming up, maybe will see soon to get the hype for his next interviews. And I mean like a selfie or a something like that. *************** I still think you can interpret everything as you want to 😂 especially shippers and non shippers find a way to interpret the same thing as something totally different. Maybe LJ sents hints, but maybe she just posts sth she wants to. Miss you? Maybe she misses CE? Maybe MS? Maybe her mother? Maybe her granny? If the recent DM article and the picture was about the death of her father, maybe she just misses him???? Who knows? There are a million options. Same with any follows and likes. *************** “I don’t think CE is someone who wants privacy. He says that shit but I don’t believe it anymore.” My response to the anon: Clearly LJ isn’t one of them!!!! BBBBBUUUUURRRRRNNNNNN!!!!!🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 *************** CE could be protecting LJ with that I’m single comment, in my dreams!!! If he wanted to protect they wouldn’t have done those pap walk to begin with! That was a hook up that got caught! *************** It’s been like what 3 months maybe 4 months since the paparazzi walk and still then we haven’t gotten anything especially the second time chris was in the UK we got nothing also this whole following situation it’s just what it is a following nothing important about it also what makes me made is when people think Chris lying about saying he single like Chris volunteer himself to say he single nobody told him and Bill Maher never mention it either all this lily and Chris shit is still nothing *************** Chris isn’t going to follow his friends private page for fans can go crazy and start following them he not that stupid ALSO he if he didn’t follow lily private page when she follow them months ago he won’t follow her back ***************

Since Lily is such a well loved topic on this blog, here is another post dedicated to her.

Do we have any updates on her and Chris? NO

Do we think they are sending us secret messages? NO

Do we think she is relevant? NO

Are we still going to answer every ask about her? Probably not. This is a blog mainly dedicated to Chris. Since we don’t see any relevant connections between them since the previous month, we would appreciate not getting our inbox full of asks about her. Thank you in advance.

Red & Ginger

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marginalgloss · 5 years ago

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a beginner’s guide

I have been neglecting this blog in recent months. My last post was written in fits and starts over many, many weeks. I’ve been preoccupied with other things and, like many people right now, my productivity has ebbed and flowed. I haven’t stopped writing, and I certainly haven’t forgotten about this blog, but I confess that I’ve slightly given up on writing so comprehensively about every book I finish. Most of my time and energy in writing has gone towards trying to write a book about video games. (The subject is a bit more specific than that, but I don’t want to give the thing away just yet.)

This is something I always thought I could do. I have been playing computer and video games since I was able to do anything at all. I have a lot of ideas on the subject. But it’s also quite difficult, not least because I never thought I wanted to write non-fiction. In fiction you can more or less do whatever you want, but in this other thing the problem of imposter syndrome sometimes seems (to me at least) to be overwhelming. How much do I need to cite? At what point does a generalisation become intolerable? Am I supposed to anticipate every potential objection or counter-argument in advance? Is my authority worth anything at all? Is it worth trusting my own experience, or is it all just, like, my opinion?

Of course in asking all these questions I forget that I’ve spent years pottering around on this blog, actually doing all the non-fiction writing I am supposedly so worried about. But I still feel like I’m trying to un-learn all the habits of supposedly serious writing that I learned at university. I studied English Literature, which teaches a mode of formal discourse that is useful now only in the abstract, and mostly quite worthless in terms of creating something worthwhile outside of academia. The problem is basically one of tone. It’s one of what kind of book am I trying to write.

I know what it’s not. It is not a history of games, and it isn’t an academic treatise. There might be a thesis, but it’s not a TED talk. I want it to describe what it feels like to encounter and experience games. I don’t want to try to second-guess player motivation from a distance, and I don’t want to study game design in the abstract, as if it were secretly the most interesting part of games. Above all I don’t want to fight battles on behalf of an imagined movement. There is no shortage of books arguing that games are (or aren’t) worthwhile, either as art or as tools for productivity or creativity or brain longevity or mental health. Some of these are quite good. But it seems to me like the arguments for the quality of games are omnipresent and overwhelming for anyone who cares to look.

It’s strange, though, that ‘books about games’ are relatively rare. I know that there popular works of non-fiction on this topic, but I’m being a bit more specific: I mean this in the sense of ‘books about particular games’, and ‘books that take a thematic approach to what games do and how’. There are some interesting exceptions: You Died: The Dark Souls Companion by Keza McDonald and Jason Killingsworth comes to mind. There’s also the Boss Fight Books range of short-ish texts that typically focus on an author’s experience with a single game. But for the most part, books about games either fall into one of a few categories. You might get a general record of an author’s life in gaming that argues for the experiential benefits of games; or you might get a semi-academic thesis about games, often supported by evidence from psychological or sociological studies; or you might get a potted history of game development. Or some combination of the above.

Which is fine. Some of these books are very good. But there aren’t many books of cultural criticism applied to games. Take the question of violence in video games: there are plenty of books which argue the case one way or the other about whether this is ‘harmful’ or not. It’s much harder to find books that forego this angle in favour of taking a long, hard look at the games themselves; that consider what it really means for a game to be called ‘violent’ in the first place, or why violent games can be satisfying and horrifying and amusing all at once. Too often what it feels like to play violent games becomes immediately subordinate to the question of what these games are supposedly doing to our brains, to our sensibilities, and to our sense of right and wrong – as if players weren’t aware of this in the first place – as if the effects of any work of art could only be considered by judging how people behave around it.

Games are often portrayed as a sort of inscrutable ethical problem for modern society, as if they weren’t the product of human imagination at all. Often an accessible book about games will come loaded with disclaimers and framing devices intended to put the reader at ease, to reassure them that what they’re about to encounter won’t hurt them. It feels like there aren’t many books which try to take us inside specific games, to show us how they work, and to make the reader feel how they make the player feel.

And that’s odd, in a way, because this kind of game criticism is omnipresent online. In the weeks after a major release, every gaming website will have a whole buffet of hot takes available. People are keen to produce stuff to support their favourite titles, sometimes for years afterwards. To pick a random example, the Mass Effect games are still enormously popular, and have spawned all kinds of novelisations and comic book spin-offs. Doubtless you can still find hundreds of thousands of words of opinion out there about why those games are good. But I don’t think anyone has written a book about Mass Effect.

You could argue that this is not especially unusual. Any of the following arguments could apply:

cultural criticism is best left to specialist magazines and journals

people who play video games do not (for the most part) read a lot of books

people who don’t play video games don’t want to read about games

people in general don’t want to read books about media which they aren’t likely to experience themselves.

There is a sense in which the most successful games of this sort belong to the fans foremost. The culture that grows up around big games is fan culture. Movies have something of the same thing — especially since the Marvel and Star Wars movies exploded in popularity again — but that’s only one wing of the superstructure that is film culture. There are whole other wings dedicated to serious cinematic avant garde, to art films; you could spend a lifetime studying Hong Kong cinema and barely know a thing about Bollywood, and vice versa. Which is fine because film caters for taste at all levels. There are popular film magazines and blogs, serious journals about film, and occasionally works of critique that bust through into the mainstream: I’m thinking of stuff like Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma, about the director of the same name; and Room 237, about some of the more outlandish theories that have grown up around Kubrick’s film of The Shining.

Granted, those examples were only moderately successful. They’re semi-popular but not exactly mainstream. But my point is that it’s inconceivable for me to imagine something similar coming out of the video game community. Whether it’s Ready Player One or the latest Netflix documentary High Score, games are stuck retelling their own histories from scratch each time. Which is not to say that new and fascinating stories can’t be brought to light — but so often games media aimed at a general audience begins with a long, laborious retread of game history.

There is very good, very specific stuff out there, but it’s hard to find. Video games are very good at reaching people who already play games. Many game critics are good at the same thing. But neither are very good at bringing the most interesting aspects of games to people who have no prior interest. The Beginner’s Guide is one of my favourite games of all time, and I think it’s one of the finest ‘games about games’ ever made; but so much of it is ‘inside baseball’ of the kind which would be incredibly difficult to explain for someone not already steeped in it. YouTube is increasingly a great source for insightful video essays about games that go far beyond ‘hot take’ culture, but in a similar way, it’s kind of impossible for an audience to find any of this stuff if they’re not already out there searching for it.

Is there a way out of this? I don’t know. Maybe it’s worth a shot.

#gaming

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theparanormalperiodical · 5 years ago

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The Real Story Behind The Babadook (2014), And 17 Weirdest Bogeymen From Around The World That Might Be Hiding Under Your Bed Right Now

Strange times we live in.

It’s a Saturday night, and I’m hauled up at home eating a vegetarian lasagne whilst my mother asks me for the 37th time why I’ve decided to give up meat, when really, if there was no global pandemic, I’d be hauled up at home eating a vegetarian lasagne whilst my mother asks me for the 37th time why I’ve decided to give up meat.

It really is a strange time we live in.

But, in my attempt to protect the vulnerable groups in society and halt the spread of the latest Twitter hashtag in its tracks, I decided to catch up on the horror films hadn’t found the time to press play on just yet.

So, a bucket of popcorn and some mild trauma later, I could finally join in the conversation about The Babadook.

6 years too late.

Nevertheless! Once I’d emotionally recovered, I finally had my Sex And The City moment. No, not the ones with feminism that would make Emilline Pankhurst perform the equivalent of a Viennese Waltz in her grave - the one where Carrie sits in her NYC apartment and thinks about men at her computer.

“I couldn’t help but wonder: could the Babadook be based on a true story? ”

Unfortunately, I discovered that the Babadook is based on the concept of the boogeyman, an urban legend that has a greater global reach than Covid-19.

So, to distract you from the global pandemic with the threat of a creature lurking under your bed and waiting to snatch an ankle, I thought I’d let you in on the reality behind this queer icon.

First, let’s talk ‘bout The Babadook.

It was one of the biggest hits of the 2010s, combining the classic trope of creepy children with the classic colour palette of depression. Our story follows a single mother and her son who begins to be visited by an imaginary creature fresh from the pages of a children’s book.

With spiky talon-like hands, a cloaked figure, a jaw crammed full of teeth, a face paler than that time you bought that foundation on a whim in TK Maxx - all crowned with a dusty hat - the Babadook the child was seeing certainly had a sense of style.

The child, Sam, begins to create intricate traps and weapons designed to stop the Babadook, all the while the book predicts the mother’s rather dark future. It becomes clear that the Bababook is preying on the mother and essentially possessing her, a diagnosis that is confirmed when the mother attempts to kill Sam.

She then regurgitates a black inky substance evocative of ectoplasm, and is released from its grip.

The film ends on the happy family feeding the Babadook as it lives in their basement.

This indie horror - once it had finished polishing the 5 awards on it’s mantelpiece - might have woven a intricate plot deviating from the simple basis of international man of mystery James Bond The Boogeyman, but the basis still sticks out more than that wardrobe in the corner of your bedroom you’re now highly conscious of.

Simply put, the Babadook matches the basic concept of the boogeyman:

There’s some weird, dark creature that knicks kids and eats ‘em if they wander alone or don’t go to bed or misbehave. Just like Krampus, the bogeyman is a legend propagated by parents to convince kids to stay in line.

That being said, the mythical creature isn’t the only inspo behind this cinema-hit.

Specifically, the brains behind the film, Jennifer Kent, claimed it was about a deep-rooted fear we all have: that of going mad. On top of this, it seeks to show parenting from a real perspective.

The film focuses on a single mother as she faces one of the most difficult challenges in life: she loses her husband whilst going to give birth to her son, and then has to raise him alone. But that is not all.

Kent also spoke of a real encounter with the bogeyman.

Basics, her bestie’s son was being plagued by an imaginary monster, so she pretended to talk to it to calm his concerns. Sure, this tale might not have kickstarted the real terror engaged with in this movie, but it invited us into the reality behind the bogeyman.

But beyond this, the movie also detracts from the Babadook, and instead looks for the primal instincts in the mother - it looks for the bogeyman within us all.

That’s right - the real horror that was inside us all along.

Yawn.

But the thing is, it also brings up hell of a lot of paranormal activity that is remarkably accurate to theories of the supernatural.

Let’s start with the introduction of the Babadook.

He arrives in the form of a creepy children’s book no one’s seen or heard of. Armed with a chilling nursery rhyme and an aesthetic last seen in 2007, the Babadook follows the basic principles of a basic haunting: ghost does spooky stuff, ghost spooks humans, humans invite it in following the consent laws of the universe by interacting with it, ghost spooky powers intensify.

This begins with the book itself. Although the film doesn’t consider if he is a paranormal being aligning with the concept of demons and spirits (etc.), this book follows the concept of haunted objects.

By opening the book and reading it - or, interacting with it - they invite in the Babadook. And when she tries to destroy it, it crops up again, fully intact and conveniently lying on her doorstep.

No ‘sorry we missed you card’ needed.

This closely follows the theory of the haunted object, something more on-trend than tutting at empty shelves in the grocery store. Haunted objects have a habit of failing to be destroyed, and by engaging with them, such as not asking permission for taking a picture of a haunted doll, you enter communication with them.

From there, you’ve basically consented to a full possession. The object is a vessel for a spirit or a demon until a new, better, breathing vessel can be found.

You can find out more about this here.

I can’t find anything about haunted books specifically online, but as a variety of haunted objects exist, from bunk beds to boxes, I’m sure there’s potential for it.

Next is the eventual possession of the mother.

One of the most dramatic moments we witness is when the mother coughs up this black bile which represents the removal of the Babadook. This bears a striking resemblance to ectoplasm, a white liquid often released by those experiencing intense paranormal activity.

When mediums experience a trance-like state, they supposedly release a fabric-like or thick substance that darkens as physic energy is intensified. It allows those in the supernatural realm to interact with the physical realm, and for spirits to represent themselves to the audience of a seance.

This film was one of the first to explore the potential paranormal explanations behind the bogeyman, and give some basis to a beast that has haunted communities since the beginning of time.

Speaking of the beast…

Who is the bogeyman?

It’s sometime in the 1500s.

We are in the middle of a small country called England, struggling to make ends meet between the near constant famine, the anxiety of being cursed by a witch, or some war with [insert european nation that may or may not exist anymore].

Either way, when we aren’t trying to spell everything with an ‘e’ at the end, we are being taunted by hobgoblins.

These pesky beasts made their name in tormenting Englishmen, playing pranks on them or simply just being foul.

Hobgoblins are the OG bogeymen, or are the first we can trace back to recorded sources. But they were no means the last. And they were by no means the only ones in the world.

As a simple definition, the bogeyman is a mythical creature that makes sure kids are staying in line, and was made up by parents. The thing is, the bogeyman features in every culture that has ever been created.

And given the realm of the paranormal explored so far on this blog, perhaps your local Babadook isn’t so out of the question.

The bogeyman has always claimed a rather vague existence, representing a non-specific terror that has even extended to just ‘being the devil’ in some cases. The origins of the name are no different: ‘bogge’ comes from middle english, meaning ‘something frightening’ or ‘scarecrow’.

It has even been interpreted to mean ‘goat’ which can be traced to relations to the devil.

Appearance wise, the bogeyman has several broad features that stretch across cultures. Standard features include sharp teeth, talon or claw-like hands, hooves for feet, and even bug-like features. The Babadook might have shared in a few of these #basic-bogeyman traits, but it’s not all about looks.

How does his personality fair?

The bogeyman can pick between three personality types: something that punishes misbehaving children; one that is just violent for the hell of it which includes stealing kids, and eating them and/or taking them back to hell; or one that protects the innocent.

“So what you’re saying is, this is a vague looking creature with a vague personality with vague ambitions that is made up by parents who are tired of their kids interrupting their vague post-marital sex?”

Okay, fine, the bogeyman bears little resemblance to the basic concept of the bogeyman. But this is what makes him the international man of mystery. It’s the regional divergences between each nation’s own Babadook that makes this creature quite so peculiar.

You see, I assumed the bogeyman would be a universal concept draped in more black clothes than a kid that was in the throes of that scene where Edward leaves Bella.

Turns out that there’s actually a band of bogeymen which can be specified by their not-so-casual racism and genitalia.

But as the 195 countries dotted across the globe have fostered their own child-eating monster, I thought I’d cut to the chase and fill you in on the world’s weirdest bogeymen.

*Rolls up sleeves of Team Edward hoodie*

The Sack Man

Making his cinematic debut in The Nightmare Before Christmas, the Sack Man is the international symbol for the bogeyman. Whether he himself is draped in sack-like materials, or is lugging one around with him, Hombre Del Saco uses his luggage to capture and carry naughty children away to, uh, somewhere.

Most popular in Latin countries and Eastern Europe, the Sack Man is the most well travelled bogeyman on this list.

Babaroga

The original inspiration behind the Babadook - note the similar name - Babaroga is a resident of Serbia and its neighbouring countries. However, the mood board for the Babadook’s inspiration stopped there.

Babaroga literally translates to “old woman with horns”.

And this pensioner spends her time finding children, putting them in a sack (how original), bringing them to her cave, and eating them. Or, to shake things up, she pulls childrens through small holes in the ceiling.

El Coco

When he’s not featuring in lovable Disney hits, El Coco is snatching kids that don’t get to sleep when they should. With nursery rhymes detailing the legend - a chilling similarity to the Babadook - spanish-language countries across the globe are versed in reportedly seeing a coconut-like face hiding under their beds.

With a brown hairy face and body, and glowing red eyes to match, this famous humanoid might be closer than you think.

“Que viene el Coco y te comerá”

- A line from the traditional Spanish nursery rhyme.

The Mamma

Pakistan gets its fair share of attention on the news cycle, but aside from the war going on, no one has ever noted the rather peculiar beast haunting the nation’s young women.

The Mamma isn’t the mothering being the name suggests, but is a large ape that lives in the mountains and only comes to the civilised world when in need of a young girl. Once he’s kidnapped ‘em and taken ‘em back to his cave, he licks their hands and feet so they can’t escape.

I have a strong feeling that what happens next to these innocent women isn’t as silly as someone licking your feet.

La Tulievieja

Bringing together the award-winning aesthetic of The Ring and the naseau-inducing aesthetic of Cats, La Tulievieja is Panama’s warning for naughty children. Legend has it she is a spirit cursed by God for drowning her child.

The thing is, God’s curse was, uh, confused. Her monstrous form consists of acne scarring, long hair, claws for hands, a cat’s body and a farmyard animal’s hooved feet. On top of that, she also looks like the child she drowned.

Yep, confused.

The Jersey Devil

Most countries suffer from multiple bogeymen - here in the UK, for example, we have 12 varieties - and America is no different. The Jersey Devil is actually one of 4 variants, and, like La Tulievieja, is also confused.

Fresh from the jaws of New Jersey, this beast has a horse’s head, bat wings, hooves, and a snake’s tail. First spotted in the 18th century and then again in 1909, it is believed that this legend was actually manufactured as a real estate hoax to coax residents into lowering their selling prices.

You might be able to deny the existence of this beast, but the Cipelahq (a large owl), the Long Black Being that makes a habit of slithering round like a snake, and Bloody Bones (a dancing skeleton and a separate skull) have yet to be disproven.

The Copperpenis Owl

Hungary has 3 different bogeyman, and most fit the description of the international beast: there’s one with a sack, there’s one which is just a-bit-beasty, and then there’s the giant owl with a penis made of copper.

I personally feel a Babadook with rose gold genitalia circa 2013 might have detracted from the overall feel of the film.

Ijiraq and the Qalupalik

Iniut communities also follow beliefs in the bogeyman, and probably focus on them more than others because if you wander off in the Arctic you will either get mauled by a bear and die, or freeze.

And then you’ll die.

They actually have 2 resident bogeymen. There’s the Ijiraq, a shapeshifter that kidnaps kids. You know, pretty basic bitch stuff. And then there’s the Qalupalik who is slightly more spooky.

This is a mermaid laden with green skin, long fingernails, and ratty hair that carry babies away in amauti (pouches or sacks for carrying kids) and bring them to live in their underwater world.

Butzemann

Remember when I mentioned that thing about casual racism? It’s a bit of grey area, ironically.

Germany’s very own bogeyman is known as The Black Man.

(You can see my point.)

That being said, this probably doesn’t actually refer to the colour of his skin as most Germans during the Middle Ages hadn’t actually seen anyone from the African continent. Instead, his outdated nickname was actually down to his preference for dark corners.

The closet, under the bed, in forests during the early hours... If it’s spooky, you’ll find him here.

Babau

Germany isn’t the only country with politically incorrect bogeyman. Italy has its very own Black Man, a mysterious figure which often features as a black man (gasp) or a black ghost. Only this entity has no legs.

The Marabbecca on the other hand is specific to Sicily, and mirrors the mythology of the Inuits.

Don’t play too close to the water, kids, or a Marabbecca will swim up and drag you to your watery grave!

The Kropeman

Our final iconic bogeyman isn’t like the other girls, even if his fellow Luxembourgian monsters are. There’s yet another Black Man, and there’s something about an uncle, but it's the Kropeman which has me sleeping with the lights on.

Under the streets of this small country roams a man with a long hook.

When he’s not busy dodging rats in the sewers, he’s grabbing kids by their nose via the hook, and dragging ‘em down into the storm drains.

So - which one is hiding in your closet?

(Aside from the queerness your inner 14 year old hasn’t fully unleashed yet like a big bisexual dragon spewing flames of gender-neutralness.)

(Don’t worry, I’m fine.)

Are you a whore for horror? Passionate about the paranormal? Do you want to see a new real ghost story every day? Then you have to follow this blog.

Read this post next!

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sockdreams · 7 years ago

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Socks Through Time: History of Top-Stripes

If you've been paying attention to fashion trends for 2018, you may have noticed that top-striped styles are currently a must-have. Being the nerds and amateur historians that we are, we decided to look into the history of this look, and the results were both surprising, and reassuring.

But what is surprising about the history of top-stripes? Well, in this day and age we tend to associate the look with sporty styles, and for most of the 20th century that's really what a top-striped sock was: athletic. However, in our research we were excited to find some super-elegant top striped stockings, such as this beautiful "clocked" style (for more info on clocking, see one of our previous blogs, Historical Costuming Part 2!) from the late 17th century.

Image under public domain, sourced from metmuseum.org, a Gift of Henri-Marcel Cadgene, 1955

Here the top stripes appear to tie the gold clocked design into the overall composition of the stocking, and may also serve to provide a reinforced/more textured area for era-appropriate ribbon garters to grip, since the blue body of the stocking would have been a fine silk. This is really just an assumption on our part, but we think it's safe to say that these were not intended for athletic wear.

The earliest appearance of something like top-striped athletic socks that our internet sleuthing skills could unearth happens in the 1910's, which seems to be about the time that sports teams began adopting them as uniform socks. Interestingly, the two or three stripes on these styles weren't placed at the very tops of the socks, but when you look at the way the members of the 1912 West Point football team (can you spot the former US President in their line-up?) wear pants that come to just below their knees, overlapping with the tops of the socks, it begins to make sense. In this context, the stripes are about as high up as you can see on the sock, creating the illusion of "true" top-stripes. On the other hand, the North Carolina Tarheels Men's Basketball team of 1911 wore shorts, which gives us a better look at their socks!

West Point Football Team, 1912. Public Domain via wikimedia commons.

North Carolina Tarheels Men's Basketball Team, 1911. Public domain via wikimedia commons.

But American Football is not the only football at play here, and the top-striped sporty sock style was definitely not confined to the 1910's! Enter Dick, Kerr's Ladies Football Club of Lancashire, England! This team was wildly popular from 1917 until 1965, when women's teams were banned by the Football Association, supposedly because women were too delicate to play sports, but most likely in reality because the women's games regularly outsold the men's games that were held on the same days. While we don't have photographic evidence of every iteration of their uniforms, we have got these lovely photos of their team from the early 1920's sporting thick, ribbed black socks with top stripes, not unlike our Sporty Stripe OTKs!

Dick, Kerr's Ladies F. C., 1921. Photo is US public domain, via wikipedia.

For a better look at those nice thick turn-cuff socks, we present you with this (incidentally adorable) photo of the team captains kissing.

The team captains, 1920. Public domain, via wikimedia commons.

Now, some of you sports enthusiasts might be wondering about a certain other ballgame with a long history of sock-related superstition, as well as multiple teams named after socks. If that wasn't enough hints, we're talking about baseball! Though the earliest uniforms used solid colored socks, by the 1930's these sporty little details had worked their way into baseball uniforms too! As you can see from this photo of the American League's 1937 All-Star players, different teams used different numbers of stripes, while the Yankee's stuck with solids (maybe because they're already wearing pinstriped uniforms). Of course the Red Sox are the sock-themed team, so it makes perfect sense that their socks would have the most stripes!

From left to right Lou Gehrig, Joe Cronin, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Gehringer, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg. Image sourced via Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing photograph collection.

Taking a closer look at the above image, you might also notice that those socks are lacking certain socky features... things like heels and toes. It appears that these were a sort of stirruped over-sock, which covered the white socks that you can see peeping out of their shoes. While we weren't able to find much information about this particular feature in our researching, our best guess is that this allowed for consecutive wears of the uniform "socks" without washings in-between, as the more generic foot-covering under-socks could be traded out for clean pairs each day -- it's the same reasoning behind this author's love of our Long Cuffable Scrunchable Leg Warmers. It's like my favorite socks, but I can wear them every day for weeks without washing them!

But ball sports weren't the only sports to get in on this trend! What about puck sports? You know, hockey! Introducing the Preston Rivulettes of Canada! We were delighted to discover photos of this women's hockey team in what looks like something akin to our Super Long Ribbed Leg Warmers, only with sporty stripes! Now, like the early rugby socks we looked at, the stripes aren't at the top of the sock (or sock-like garment), but their sparseness is what gives them that distinctly sporty look. Somehow two stripes just looks more aerodynamic than a whole sockful of stripes!

Preston Rivulettes Postcard, 1940. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Now let's get back to football. Or is it soccer? You know -- the one with the spherical ball! Foot(spherical)ball is by far the most popular sport internationally, and like any sport their fans are passionate. We mention this only as framing for the following image, because we want you to really feel the excitement of the moment captured! The year is 1966, and Club Atlético Peñarol of Uruguay has just won the Copa Libertadores de América -- the premier South American football club tournament. Though Peñarol had won the first two editions of the tournament in 1960 and '61, this was their big comeback after other teams took the title in 1962 - '65. You can tell from the spirit of the photo that this was a big moment for the team, as they run across the field celebrating. Possibly even more exciting is the fact that they appear to be wearing almost the exact same socks as the Dick, Kerr's Ladies Football Club circa 1921! To our minds, this firmly places the top striped athletic sock is the Classics category, along with the Doric column.

Club Atlético Peñarol's 1966 Copa Libertadores victory. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

And because we just can't get enough of those groovy soccer uniforms, it's time we took a look at what's been lauded as one of the most attractive uniform designs in football history, belonging to the Peru National Football Team. The white jerseys with red horizontal "sashes" are designed to reference games played between schools, in which both teams would wear white shirts with a removable colored sash, to easily distinguish team members. The uniform also features white socks with red top-stripes, to match.

Peru 1970 National Football Team. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

You may have noticed that the era we most associate with top striped socks is the 1960's and especially the 1970's. Another big trend that emerged at around the same time, and which coexisted beautifully with the aforementioned socks, was skating. Roller skating had already been around since 1760, and in a way it was roller skates that gave birth to the first skateboards in the late 1940's, which consisted of wooden planks with added roller skate wheels. The early 70's saw the invention of polyurethane wheels, which made for a smoother ride, better traction, and generally a more enjoyable experience. This precipitated a sudden rise in popularity for skating, and brought us the iconically 1970's skater fashions that we know and love today!

From the first Tokyo Bombers: Yasuko Sasaki, Tiger forest, Yumiko Horii, Rikki Endo, Kazuo Kono, Keiko Ayabe, Mickey Kakuda. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

For whatever reason, we found it next to impossible to find public domain photos of 1970's skateboarders, so while we aren't able to post the great photos we looked at here, we're happy to link you to them! We were really into this collection of Los Angeles skateboarders by photographer Hugh Holland. You can also find some interesting background information on how the skateboarding trend was influenced by a severe drought!

House Brand Top-Stripes

At last we have arrived at the point in our Sock Journal where we show you what we've got! Options for recreating this ultra-sporty look are luckily quite plentiful, so let's start out with some of our house brand options! While we only have two top-striped styles in our Dreamer Socks line, they're some heavy hitters! With 12 different colorways and 28 inch top-stretch, our Dreamer Americana Thigh Highs have rocketed into our top sellers! At a more classic length, the Retro Sport Socks come in three sporty colorways -- depending on your favorite team, we might even have your colors!

Dreamer Americana Thigh Highs * Retro Sport Socks

Our DreaM Stockings line includes a pretty great variety of top-striped styles, some of which are particularly good for that thicker, vintage vibe. Some are even authentically tube socks!

Dreamy Striped Over the Knee Tube Socks * Dreamy Knee High Tube Socks * Top Striped Over the Knee Tube Socks

The Skater Stripes (which are discontinued, so get yours while the getting's good!) and Sorcerer Socks are very similar beasts, only the skater stripes are a cotton blend and come in more stripe variations, while the Sorcerer Socks are nylon and feature colors for the Hogwarts houses.

Skater Stripes * Sorcerer Socks

The Skater Stripes are being phased out in favor of some of the newer options we now carry, including the taller, ribbed Sporty Stripe Over the Knee Socks, which I previously mentioned are a pretty good match for those 1920's soccer uniform socks.

Sporty Stripe Over the Knee Socks

The final styles on our tour of house brand top stripes combine two of our favorite things: marled yarn and top-stripes! If you've been following our company over the years, you may have noticed our obsession with marled socks. There was an era when we couldn't find any marled yarns and had no marled socks (after years of carrying O Marleds - the precursor to our M45s and Confetti M45s, which are made on the same machines the O Marleds used to be knitted on) but we found ways of getting around that issue, which is what happens when you're utterly determined to have your favorite pattern. We think the marriage of these two patterns is a match made in heaven!

Top-Striped Marled Slouch Socks * Top-Striped Marled Scrunchable Socks

Other Suppliers's Top-Stripes

Of course we also carry lots of top striped styles from our other suppliers! For instance, most Gumball Poodle socks, which are made in the classic "cheer sock" style, come with top stripes, but some go above and beyond, incorporating the top stripe into the design, or in the case of their PRINCESS socks, turning it into a crown.

PRINCESS Knee Highs * Stormy Weather Over the Knee Socks * Bored AF Crews

Stance is another supplier that features a lot of top-stripes, and it's not too surprising given that their styles are geared towards skateboarders and surfers! We enjoy the way they mix it up with wild patterns from time to time, too!

Durango Midcalves * Mega Babe Crews * Me Vs. You Kids' Crews

Another supplier that tends to surprise us with their top-stripes is Leg Avenue. Their offerings tend more towards the hosiery and lingerie end of the spectrum, and yet they manage to work some elegant top stripes into that wheelhouse, which is appropriately "full circle" given that we started out with those fancy 17th century stockings!

Sheer Stockings with Striped Tops * Over the Rainbow Thigh High * Lurex Anklets

Of course we have plenty of other top-striped options, but to feature all of them would make for a very long blog indeed. Instead, we encourage you to check out the entire top-striped collection, because there's a reason this look never seems to go out of fashion. As a style that has been around for centuries, top-stripes are truly timeless.

#fashion #history #socks #sports #stripes #sport socks #top-stripes #hockey #football #soccer #american football #roller skating #skate boarding #sfw

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romcomathon2016 · 7 years ago

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A Christmas Prince (USA, 2017)

And now, a special bonus edition, not for any actual occasion, but just because we freaking felt like it. God bless you, Netflix, for this glorious season when all the worst Hallmark movies ever made arise out of the depths for easy streaming upon demand. Happy holidays, Romcomathon readership! (We will also be watching an equally terrible non-Netflix movie, it looks like, on actual Christmas. Prepare yourselves.)

Predictions: Alex, having read the description, knew that it was about a reporter and a prince, perhaps falling in love through a house of lies. Kat, not having read the description, predicted that Christmas was a place as well as a time, and perhaps the Prince of Christmas -- A CHRISTMAS PRINCE, IF YOU WILL -- was looking for a bride. At Christmastime. Perhaps the Kingdom of Christmas only merges with the regular world at Christmastime!!!! Who can say.

Plot: Uh… Kat was joking, but may not have been entirely mistaken. Whereas she was picturing some sort of seasonal magical fairy kingdom, Aldovia is instead a supposedly real country that crowns its monarchs at the Christmas Eve Ball???? But let's back up a bit and explain.

Rose McIver is a "junior editor," aka peon?? at a fashion magazine in "New York" (a whole variety of skylines were used here, though...huh), who inexplicably gets sent to a foreign country to cover the possible abdication of a playboy prince, Ben Lamb. Obviously he turns out to not really be a playboy; she assumes a fake identity by accident (is mistaken for the princess's soon-to-arrive new American tutor); and she immediately finds her way into both his good graces and those of his wayward, overprotected little sister -- who, by the way, has spina bifida AND is super sad about their father's death a year ago. There was literally not a heartstring that this movie did not attempt to tug, y’all; we are shocked that there wasn't a baby animal of some kind wearing a ribbon around its neck at a pivotal moment.

Anyway, Prince Ben Lamb just doesn't know if he wants to be king, guys. Can he handle it? Can he handle it?? No, kind of seems like he can't, tbh, but since his scheming cousin, next in line, seems like a truly terrible person, he should probably try. But wait! Plot twist! Rose McIver stumbles across an incredibly poorly-hidden secret compartment in the king's hunting lodge -- after having been rescued by Prince Ben Lamb from a wolf in the snowy woods, mind you (...yes) -- and discovers SECRET ADOPTION PAPERS. PRINCE BEN LAMB IS ADOPTED, AND NOBODY KNEW!!!! Well, except his parents, presumably.

Here we start a new paragraph specifically to ask HOW. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE ROYAL FAMILY SOMEHOW ADOPTED A CHILD AND KEPT IT SECRET FROM EVERYONE. EVERYONE.

Naturally, Scheming Cousin and his lady friend (actually Prince Ben Lamb's former lady friend, but let's not get into it) discover this as well, because Rose McIver is the worst undercover reporter in the world, and they decide to keep this information under their fancy evil hats until the Right Moment. When is the Right Moment, you ask? Obviously, at the Christmas Eve Ball/coronation. Yes, two for the price of one. The Aldovian monarchy is v. practical and/or thrifty that way! They also have the Prime Minister do the ceremony (perhaps not wanting to spring for a priest), and he (perhaps having never before seen a coronation?!) runs the whole thing like a wedding. Does anyone object to the prince's crowning, he asks, or forever hold your peace?? Guess who doesn't hold their peace, guys -- lol, it's Scheming Cousin. THE PRINCE IS ADOPTED!!!!!!!!

Man, what unfortunate timing, now that Prince Ben Lamb has finally gotten his act together and agreed to be king. Also unfortunate: the scheming duo reveals the truth about Rose McIver's identity. WHAT IS EVEN LEFT FOR PRINCE BEN LAMB TO BELIEVE IN???? He doesn't know who Rose McIver is! HE DOESN'T KNOW WHO HE IS EITHER. Also, the Prime Minister clearly has no mind of his own, and the Queen somehow has no power???? (We suppose that makes sense, though, since this nation is apparently stuck in like the 1100s or something, because girls still can't inherit and the line skips right over Prince Ben Lamb’s sister??) Anyway, they're all just like, welp, it's Christmas Eve, so we couldn't possibly wait a day to reasonably discuss our nation’s future, and instead we absolutely must crown Scheming Cousin immediately. All is lost.

Rose McIver, meanwhile, is at the airport headed home, all dejected and stuff, when she has a sudden epiphany about the secret poem the prince showed her in the hunting lodge. (SO MUCH SECRET STUFF IN THIS HUNTING LODGE, YOU GUYS. WHAT WAS EVEN GOING ON WITH THE KING. WHY DID HE SHARE NOTHING WITH HIS QUEEN OR HIS COUNCIL????) She rushes back to the castle and breaks open the homemade acorn Christmas ornament that the dead king left for the queen (...yeah), and lo and behold, a secret decree naming his adopted son worthy to be king. The king even took care to mention that it wasn't about blood or anything, but rather about Prince Ben Lamb's good character, which incidentally, Prince Ben Lamb was worried about. HOW PRESCIENT OF HIM. (Though not as prescient as if he had done the normal thing and publicized this before his death and avoided this whole debacle. :|)

Rose McIver bursts into the SECOND coronation; the Prime Minister again has no trouble accepting this latest sudden, poorly-verified turn of events; and Prince Ben Lamb gets properly crowned. Rose McIver goes back home to “New York” and writes a very schmaltzy story about how great he is. Her editor, surprisingly, does not want to publish this CRAZY STORY that she paid for Rose McIver to get, so Rose McIver quits and starts a weirdly successful blog instead. Then, on New Year's Eve, King Ben Lamb turns up on the doorstep of her father's diner and proposes to her. YUP, YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY, READER. THE KING OF A NATION PROPOSES TO A WOMAN HE KNEW FOR ONE WEEK UNDER AN ASSUMED IDENTITY. THE END.

Best Scene: It is impossible to choose, perhaps because there was not a single scene in this glorious Christmas masterpiece that did not seem like it had been ripped from another film and spliced into this one in iMovie. The number of lines that we predicted out loud before they were said on screen was, shall we say, astonishing, but then again, not astonishing at all.

Worst Scene: All of the best scenes were the worst scenes, and all of the worst scenes were the best scenes.

Best Line: "You haven't thought about this. I mean, we barely know each other." -- Rose McIver, saying what we are all thinking. I mean, who would marry this royal idiot?? HE HAS BAD JUDGMENT AND WILL SOON BE DEPOSED, AND THEN WHERE WILL YOU BE?? Points for having good sense for once, Rose McIver. Points lost for capitulating moments later.

Worst Line: "A palace is a lonely place for a king without a queen." -- King Ben Lamb, during his proposal speech, all of which was awful, just to be clear. Although we did enjoy how his answer to pretty much all her objections was, money can solve everything! I mean. He's not entirely wrong. The royal family is probably very rich from all the money they've saved on coronations.

Highlights of the Watching Experience: Ummmm, reading the article that Entertainment Weekly wrote about it?? This article, a journalistic tour de force of the sort Rose McIver could never compose, addresses all of the concerns that we could not fit in this blog post. It is accurate and hilarious. Read it here.

Also, this whole watching experience was a highlight of our year. Literally the tropiest film we've ever watched. Cannot believe how many different clichés they managed to cram into one movie.

How Many POC in the Film: Like...2-4? One of her two friends was black (the other was a gay man, of course), a jerk reporter at the magazine was also black, and there may or may not have been an Asian person or two sprinkled in in Aldovia, with hardly any lines. Not awesome, for 2017.

Alternate Scenes: So, how did Rose McIver end up needing to be rescued from a wolf, you ask? Well, it's because she stole a horse from the stables to stalk Prince Ben Lamb, and then it threw her and left her in the snow, à la Beauty and the Beast. Only this low-budget cinematic wonder could only afford one wolf, evidently. Excitingly, though, in the moment before this wolf came on screen, we were wondering if it was going to be a werewolf, and if this movie was REALLY going to take a turn. Truthfully, readers, we kind of wish that had happened. We would watch that alternate film. Possible titles -- iWerewolf? A Christmas Wolf?

Was the Poster Better or Worse than the Film: BETTER. Now, we know we’ve suggested that no film could be better than this one, but this badly-photoshopped family holiday card is clearly the poster for a movie about the Prince of Hell, who rises out of his pentacle in a tower of flame to claim as his bride Rose McIver, who happens to love Christmas. Whereas of course the Prince of Hell hates Christmas, because it's Jesus’s birthday, and he is the Prince of Hell (duh). Hijinks ensue; eventually they overcome their differences, and maybe the Prince of Hell abdicates his hellish throne in order to live on Earth with Rose McIver. The final scene is, of course, them in their charming living room, enjoying Christmas. The Prince jokingly puts a devil-themed ornament on the Christmas tree (yes, they make those; we double-checked). "Oh, you!" says Rose McIver. They giggle together. Pan out into the snow.

Score: 4 out of 10 pasted-together-out-of-a-random-Hallmark-plot-generator smooches. Soooooo bad, you guys. Probably zero actual-movie smooches. But 10 out of 10 smooches in our still-laughing hearts!

Ranking: 72, out of the 109 movies we’ve seen so far. Sadly, we would rather rewatch this than a shocking number of other things. IT WASN'T GOOD, JUST TO BE CLEAR. NOT GOOD AT ALL. Yet...what a grand old time we had. This is the most perfect terrible movie we have ever watched or could ever imagine watching.

#a christmas prince #rose mciver #ben lamb #2017 #special bonus edition

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albertsprivateblog · 4 years ago

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...

Speaking of writing, which is I guess all that I ever write about, I read some journal entries of Sylvia Plath today. It was a strange experience. I felt like I was transported temporarily into the mind of another person, a young woman in this case. She writes her entries with such remarkable clarity, an authorial voice that I’ve always struggled to see myself possessing (Not that I want to be an author). I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between her journals and a published work of fiction. My journals when I was 18 and younger had nowhere near that level of elegance, and instead you’d find a mixture of cringey spammed excitement and incoherent existential queries. My tumblr private blog, suffice to say, is not my best work.

I apologize beforehand to myself or to anyone else who is about to read this paragraph.

(In the future, I want to write on honing down the reason I’m so fixated on my perception of my writing lacking that “authorial mark” (Maybe (Probably) it’s because I don’t read enough which means writing down my thoughts may be fun, but reading them a clunky mess) (It may also be because I participate in self-criticism while I’m writing (I mean who doesn’t) and while I’m thinking (which has actually been a positive habit in my life(I want to write more about this later)) and that these branches of self-criticism and divergent thought aren’t really conducive to the linear experience of reading (Wouldn’t it be funny if I made an interactive journal with branching paths and everything? It would actually make so much sense considering I’m a game designer(As much as I want to comment on shuddering at the feeling of calling myself anything whether it be a writer or game designer, I would also like to say to myself that it’s not that serious)), and also whether or not it’s a good idea to write down immediate raw thoughts that manifest themselves to me in parentheticals).

I started reading Sylvia Plath because there was an excerpt that caught my attention a year or two ago:

“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars — to be a part of a scene, anonymously, listening, recording — all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night…” - Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

I read that in passing somewhere, Twitter, Reddit, Google Images, who knows. But I was so drawn to this passage that it somehow stuck with me all these years, to the point where I asked Twitter about *the name of a poem about a woman wanting to talk to truck drivers, but can’t because she’s a woman*. Surprisingly, my old coworker and D&D player, Hannah, came in clutch almost immediately with the title and a screenshot of the passage.

Maybe I was so drawn to this passage because I related to it so deeply and honestly, as much a guy could relate to an experience caused under the circumstances of being a woman. But it was the longing to mingle with strangers, “to be part of a scene, anonymously, listening, recording”, the freedom to walk down the path of understanding someone to their core. Somewhere along that path there is a wall blocking the way, in my case it isn’t womanhood, but it’s the practicality of everyday life. That wall is my impatience with others when they fail to articulate their thoughts and feelings, that impenetrable masculine stoicness when I try to know guys, and the dangerous and inevitable sexual attraction that boils up when I try to know girls. That wall is there in all my familial relationships, my friendships, but thankfully not my relationship, which is why I treasure it so much.

It’s occasionally lonely, and had I not built a deep relationship with myself and with Lisel, that loneliness would be crippling. But even so, those fleeting moments when I feel far away from everything still ache. Especially when I think of the people whose lives around me are so tumultuous, or people who feel trapped inside their own head, when I think of my struggling sister, or the Michael who nobody wanted to talk to. I feel pity and guilt for my inaction despite the glaring truth that I’m capable of helping people ,or at the very least, capable of trying to. Then there’s also that longing to find people who I admire, who I long to observe and prod for their internal processes, someone to contend and compete with. There are so many people who have their own answers that I could never figure out on my own.

I think for most of my life, I never felt “part of a scene”. There’s always this considerable distance between me and the people I care about, and the people who care about me. I’ve always felt that I was watching from afar, laughing and crying to myself, a comfortable distance away from the claustrophobia of intimacy. And yet, the casualness of groups had always given me a hollow sensation that I never feel when I’m by myself. That’s another wall: having to wade through the shitty muck of casual conversations, personal baggage, and human flaws. You usually gotta dig through the dirt to find gold. Sometimes it’s all just dirt.

Which brings me to the thought I had this morning that I originally wanted to write about. After thinking about my sister, and my own battle against my shitty habits, I realized that I kind of forget I have free will sometimes. It’s like what my dad would say to me as a kid whenever my reluctance from eating vegetables went on for too long, “It’s all in your head.” Albeit it completely ignores the reality of mental health being a real and legitimate obstacle, sometimes it’s what I need to hear. Even though most of the day I’m making choices about what to eat, what to play, it usually doesn’t feel like I’m exercising my free will.

This is of course, the distinction between unconscious habit, and conscious thought. Both have their place, unconscious habit saves us from spending the mental toll of actively making choices all day, and conscious thought is what takes the wheel when our habits drive us off a cliff (hopefully much sooner than that).

When it comes to longing for deeper relationships and conversations, I’m not in an inescapable scenario. I’m fortunate enough that I’m not circumstantially trapped due to my gender or society or anything like that. What drew me to that passage was relating to Plath’s loneliness, but also the realization that despite the fact that I feel these walls are insurmountable, most of my walls are really just in my head, not physical or societal. I can actively put my mind to jumping through these hurdles, because frankly, my walls aren’t as tall as Sylvia Plath’s. It also reminds me why it’s so important to break down these walls that prevent other people from surmounting their challenges.

---

And since it’s relevant, I broke down a wall yesterday. I talked to my sister after she got into a fight with dad, and gave her advice on her whole situation. I don’t normally talk to anyone in my family in that way, and I don’t think she does either, so it was new for both of us. She’s slippery, it’s hard to get her to empathize with my parents, and she seems to be stuck in her head with layers upon layers of defense mechanisms. I don’t know if she’ll be alright in the end yet, and like I said, I feel guilty that I haven’t done more to help during these past years. But it's a first step.

#journal

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genjii09 · 4 years ago

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Rambling and Ranting (haven’t done this in a while). Be advised: there is some rather foul language below. TL;DR alert, too.

Universe, would it fucking kill ya to allow me to catch one miniscule break once in a while? Honestly, would it fucking kill ya?

I mean, this is why I don’t go out much, even long before the pandemic. I always told that every coming day is going to be better than the last, but it’s always more bullshit. I mean, I busted my ass for the past 10 years to get a fucking aerospace degree and for the past 2 years I apply to hundreds of places across the US, Canada, and even New Zealand and I can’t land anything. Even though most of the interviews I had landed went well, I always end up getting a big fat rejection.

Of course, last year I was given an offer to play bass in this new band. Apparently this guy had been in a [self-proclaimed] popular touring band, one of which I had never heard of, and the group had disbanded so he was forming a new band. Honestly, the genre of music this guy plays doesn’t interest me in the slightest, but it seemed like a good Idea at the time to give it a chance; also I was just happy to be in a band at all. I wanted to join my friends in Swarm of Serpent, which is a blackened death metal band (much more my speed), but of course they went with somebody else. I guess I can’t truly fault them because I was in bands before and had played bass since 2008, I was never in a band that had played live gigs. Not to mention I had been pitching my own bands since 2009 and nobody ever wanted to be a part of them. But, since August of 2019 I actually got to be in a band and play a few shows around my own town, Phoenix, and even a couple shows in California. I also got to meet some other cool musicians including my buddy Dan who had briefly played drums with us. It was also something for me to do while I looked for engineering jobs. Still working on finding a job; haven’t given up on that.

I thought that being in this band would make me happier, but damn was I ever wrong. As good a guitarist and vocalist this guy is, I have learned rather quickly that he is a massive control freak who is untrustworthy and impossible to work with. My buddy Dan was aware of this as well, and he made the right decision and left after we returned from our first “tour.” First off, the guy doesn’t have tablature or sheet music for his songs so in order for me to learn them he had to take my bass and show me. I ask the guy simple musical theory questions and he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. And not even a week after I joined the band (before we even auditioned a drummer) he was so adamant about going on tour of west coast when we haven’t made a local name for ourselves. Just because we reached over 8000 likes on Facebook doesn’t mean we’re going to fill shows. Every gig we’ve had, we would typical go on first and every time I would look up from my bass I would see about 8 to 12 people in the audience on average. Me, I don’t care when we perform or how many people come to the pit to watch us; I’m just happy to play at all, but the ringleader sure as hell care. And this tour of the west coast was very poorly planned: not only did he try to book the gigs himself and only manage to get about four out of like planned 12 venues, he had us take an old raggedy van which had mechanical issues in the red. Not long after we had picked up Dan in Maricopa we made a pit stop in Casa Grande, and when me and Dan stepped out to stretch we noticed that two tires had the metal belts exposed so they were completely unusable so we had to get them replaced immediately. I mean we did get the tires replaced and we did our shows in Cali and had some down time, but there was so much wrong with van still and me ad Dan convinced this guy to have us end the “tour” early and return to Arizona after our LA gig. The guy was not happy of course, but I care much more about our safety than a poorly planned tour of only four shows.

After we got back from Cali at the end of February, Covid-19 was starting to spread in the US so that was making it much harder for us to play shows. We did manage to play a show in Tucson on March 14th which was right before lockdown was issued in AZ. But, on the night of that show both me and Dan were feeling sick and neither of us wanted to play. Since Dan lives further away he couldn’t possibly make the show, but instead of pulling us out of the gig like a sensible person, the guy contacted our friend Erik of Sworn Apart to fill in for Dan and basically told me to suck it up and drink some tea. So against my better judgment I played the show anyway with a mask on. It baffled me even more that the bar owners even kept the show on to begin with. So we played the show, and it didn’t go as terribly as I had imagined but it was still bad. I for only having about 3 hours to learn the set, Erik did a great job. Needless to say, Dan left the band and lockdown kept us from having a show until May and lockdown happened again because the governor of AZ is a moron who thought it was a good idea to open up bars when we’re still in a pandemic.

Another thing is, he self-directed our first music video which was a complete and utter shit show. I won’t go into much detail about that now because I feel that deserves it’s own blog entirely. Ultimately, the finished project turned out pretty well because we had it filmed and edited by the amazing people at Starlight Productions. We just filmed another music video last month that I feel was better directed this time around. But leading up to the filming the guy had seemingly burnt his bridge with our front-man and the storyline for the video sporadically changed. The new video is for a song we’ve never played live and it’s not even a song I want to play to begin with.

Then there’s the whole album thing, we were supposedly going to release our first album earlier this year but every time I ask about recording, I would never receive a straight answer. Of course I have no writing for any of the first album songs because they were all written before I joined and that’s okay. But when it came to the second album, the guy said that he wanted me to have more creative freedom and have me write songs with him. So around late January when I was jamming with Dan while this dude was in the other room, I came up with this cool brutal riff and started writing the song “Dead Inside for Years” and since we had all of the songs set for album #1 I figured I’d save it for the next one. And I was thinking we wouldn’t get to the second album until some time in 2021, but nope. A few weeks ago he invited me over to “track bass” and I figured he meant that he wanted me to record my bass parts for the songs in the first album. Welp, I was wrong once again. What he meant was for me to track bass for SECOND ALBUM songs, which of course were songs I haven’t learned yet (most of which I didn’t even know he had written). In addition to several new songs this guy had written and the ONE song I wrote, he also wants us to play 4 old songs from his previous band; which makes no sense because this current band is supposed to break away from the old band and they don’t even sound close to what we play live. I especially don’t like that because I feel like he’s cutting corners by reusing these old songs to fill out an LP. I can understand repurposing old riffs and making them into new songs but lifting your songs, I’m not down with that. I was planning on writing a few more songs for this band, but at this point, I feel that it won’t even be worth it. Creative freedom my ass. I am hoping that Erik and I can get this guy to listen to reason and get him to try and change his ways. For me, the worse thing about this guy is his outstanding ego. Also for the whole little run in California he was convinced that my name is “Chris” which it’s not.

Of course there are quite a few other reasons as to why I can’t stand working with this guy, but if I keep going this post will end up being the size of a novel. Maybe if I end up doing some kind of a memoir in the future I will go into this band story in greater detail and have it much better organized. If you made it this far into my tl;dr rant blog, I commend you. Not sure how much longer I will stick this out, but I do plan on leaving the band rather soon anyway. As much as music is a passion of mine, I am an engineer first and my greatest dreams dwell within that field. Since I haven’t had so much luck with my bachelor’s degree I plan on soon applying for graduate school in order to work towards a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering. The one thing I have always wanted to research is the design of an engine that may one day make interstellar space travel possible. Star Wars and Star Trek have had a lasting impact on me and I want to make the technology of those fictional worlds into reality. My greatest dream of all is to help bring humanity beyond the stars or at the very least, push in the right direction.

As I always say: The sky is NOT the limit, it is merely the beginning.

And as the late great Carl Sagan had once said: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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LIFE IS DEAD

I learned this until college. And so meetings felt wonderfully relaxing. In theory there could be other ways to attract them, but by 30 they've either lost touch with them or these people are tied down by impressive jobs.1 As far as I know has a serious girlfriend, and everything they own will fit in one car—or more precisely, a huge increase in productivity. Once an essay has had a couple thousand people each. Till quite recently, running a major company meant managing an army of workers.2 And by far the best for getting work done.3 That 26 year olds are broke. Both have the kind of place for developing software.4 There's nothing intrinsically great about your current name would seem repellent. It has come about mostly by default. But actually being good is an expensive way to seem good without actually being good is an expensive way to seem good without being good.

Our startup, Viaweb, was built to be sold. Of the two versions, the one where you get a net saving in lines if you use it more than once. And meetings are the main mechanism for taking up the slack.5 Languages today assume infrastructure that didn't exist in 1960.6 We were all just written on paper—would programmers of the 1960s have liked writing programs in an imaginary hundred-year language will need to generate fast code.7 It may not be very good at managing people or dealing with the SEC.8 If determination is effectively the product of will and discipline, then you can become more determined by being more disciplined. But actually being good. Few if any colleges have classes about startups. The question is, can a language be?

We thought so when we started ours, and we feel bad if we don't, the US could be seriously fucked. What should you do now? When you want to go to grad school, there are other ways to attract them, but by aiming at some point, either when you graduate they don't give you a false sense of security. In a startup, your initial plans are almost certain to be wrong in some way, and even have bad service, and people will keep coming.9 The idea sounds horrible, doesn't it? When you work on making technology easier to use, you're riding that curve up instead of down.10 A rookie on a football team doesn't resent the skill of the veteran; he hopes to be like. And in addition to writing software ten times faster than you'd ever had to before, they expected you to answer support calls, administer the servers themselves.

What's wrong with class projects? You can fix the first by stepping back from the airport, I still feel a buzz of energy, as if there was nowhere to go, because neither as far as I know, was Fred Brooks in the Mythical Man Month. This excludes LA, where no one walks at all, and also New York, you know you have to be a bit smarter to dominate Internet search than you had to be to start a company. Developers have used the accelerometer in ways Apple could never have imagined. That people will be rewarded a bit more in proportion to the value of what they create.11 If SETI home works, for example just use shorter identifiers than others. That is in fact what venture capitalists do.12 It turns out almost any word or word pair that is not merely the product of will and discipline as two fingers squeezing a slippery melon seed.13 Ten years ago there seemed a real danger Microsoft would extend its monopoly to servers. This does happen. Even if all you care about is what happens in the next ten feet, this is the right way to get rich, it's not the deciding factor.

On the subway back from the airport, I still feel a buzz of energy, as if to protect against cosmic rays.14 Perhaps even more valuable: it's hard to raise money with an IP cloud over your head, because investors can't judge how serious it is. They all have intact centers. For the next fifty years, that's where new wealth will come from.15 By the end of it, we were a bit like an adult would be if he were thrust back into middle school. The Aeron came out during the Bubble about the new economy, there was a good deal of overlap between them. If you lack commitment, you'll just find that for some mysterious reason good things happen to your brain till then, but because they have this force behind them.16 If you try something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big deal; a lot of them. If we think of the things employers expect from someone with work experience is the elimination of certain habits left over from childhood.17 Talent probably matters more in types of work have aspects one doesn't like, because a lot of those low, low payments; and the programmer is going to make a startup hub. Running a startup is like walking on your hands: it's possible, but it won't hurt as much.

Most of the legal restrictions on employers are intended to protect employees. What I find myself repeating is pump out features. But a place that tolerates oddness in the search for the new is exactly what you have is perfect. It would be like drinking from a firehose. They know controlling the browser is one of the most admired Web 2. I've looked at a few and none get it right.18 We could bear any amount of nerdiness if someone was truly smart.

It is not found in nature. Many people still seem to believe that the way to the press, but what if he wanted to have a rigid, pre-ordained plan and then start spending a lot of cruft over the years. Being strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. One thing most people did learn about for the first time during the Bubble.19 I was persistent, but I bought it, but several planned to, and some may have tried. Nearly everyone I've talked to agrees: the nadir is somewhere between eleven and fourteen. And as you go down the food chain the VCs get rapidly dumber.

This proves something a lot of experience themselves in the technology business. Actually, the fad is the word blog, at least. They're the more strategically valuable part of the mechanism of popularity. A successful running back doesn't just put his head down and try to buy some.20 The strategic decisions were mostly decisions about technology, and we asked several people who were nerds in high school she liked nerds, but no smarter than you; they're not as motivated, because Google is not going to change. It's the principle of a market economy.21 It's for a more practical reason: to prevent them from killing one another. And not just to would-be startup founders but to students in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 50. What do those users want? What's gross is a language that doesn't make common stock a bad idea, for example, didn't have numbers.

Notes

In either case the money. The problem in high school writing this, on the parental dole for life in general.

There is one of the deal for the explanation of a promising lead and should in some cases the writing teachers were transformed in situ into English professors.

What you're too busy to feel tired. Which helps explain why there are no misunderstandings. Since the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but its value drops sharply as soon as no one thinks of calling that unfair. Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable.

I'm not making any predictions about the details. Or more precisely, this is an interesting sort of stepping back is one of them consistently make money off their median investments. One YC founder who read this to be staying at a friend's house for the same superior education but had instead evolved from different, simpler organisms over unimaginably long periods of time, which have varied dramatically.

Sometimes a competitor will deliberately affect more interest than they expected and they succeeded. The US News list? We may never do that, because you can work out a chapter at a 5 million cap. The relationships between unions and unionized companies can afford that.

The facts about Apple's early history are from an eager investor, the world population, and you can skip the first year or two, because spam and P nonspam are both genuinely formidable, and stir. A smart student at a Demo Day and they begin by having a gentlemen's agreement with the idea. Samuel Johnson seems to be. And no, you can't even measure the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I once explained this to users than where you have a bogus political agenda or are feebly executed.

At some point has a significant number. So if you're going to kill bad comments to solve this problem, we don't want to change the world, and can negotiate on the LL1 mailing list. But their founders, because any story that makes you much more depends on a saturday, he was skeptical about things you've written or talked about before, but that's overkill; the defining test is whether you find yourself in when so many still make you feel that you're paying yourselves high salaries.

It wouldn't pay. Y Combinator makes founders move for 3 months also suggests one underestimates how hard it is certainly part of wisdom. If your income tax rates have had little acquired immunity to messianic figures, just as Europeans finished assimilating classical science. Gauss was supposedly asked this when comparing techniques for discouraging stupid comments instead.

Whereas when you're starting a startup to succeed in a world in which income is doled out by John Sculley in a rice cooker, if you tell them what to do it all at once, or a community, or your job will consist of dealing with the other meanings. A Spam Classification Organization Program. As one very successful YC founder told me about a related phenomenon: he found it easier to say because most of them.

But which of them material.

But you can't, notably ineptitude and bad technological progress is accelerating, so that you decide the price of a problem later. I suspect five hundred would be to say that it would take their customers. Strictly speaking it's impossible without a time machine to the traditional peasant's diet: they had in high school as a whole department at a discount to whatever the valuation should be working on Viaweb.

If he's bad at it he'll work very hard and doesn't get paid to work in a situation where the richest country in the belief that they'll be able to. That's probably true of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were invisible or simpler in Lisp.

Associates at VC firms regularly cold email startups. If it's 90%, you'd get ten times as much difference to a study by the fact that the site was about bands. As always, tax loopholes defended by two of the problem.

Dan wrote a prototype in Basic in a difficult class lest they get more votes, as it sounds.

Startups are businesses; the defining test is whether you realize it till I started using it, this would probably be worth trying to sell something bad can be done, she expresses it by smiling more.

In 1800 an empty plastic drink bottle with a Web terminal. This is true of nationality and religion too. Parents can sometimes be especially suspicious of grants whose purpose is some kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they were shooting themselves in the US News list tells us is what we measure worth measuring? But it's a significant effect on college admissions process.

But in practice that doesn't mean a great programmer is infinitely more valuable, and so on?

But wide-area bandwidth increased more than 20 years. And startups that has a title. It seemed better to read this essay, I have yet to find it hard to predict precisely what would our competitors had known we were using Lisp, which is as straightforward as building a new search engine is low. I've talked about convergence.

Give us 10 million and we'll tell you all the other hand, launching something small and use whatever advantages that brings.

6,000, the less educated ones.

Without the prospect of publication, the LPs who invest in syndicates. On their job listing page, they seem to have a definite plan to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. What you learn about programming in college.

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centerofstupidity · 7 years ago

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A Walk to Remember Chapter 1 Snark

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Interested in reading the previous A Walk to Remember chapter snarks? They can be found here.

Next Nicholas Sparks Book Snark: The Rescue

Chapter summary: We meet a Bible-thumping minister and Landon is a terrible person. Also, the designated love interest is an Angel of the House: innocent, perfect, and pure.

The story is set in Beaufort, North Carolina in 1958.

Landon says that the humidity is so hot in the summer that “walking out to get the mail made a person feel as if he needed a shower.”

People waved from their cars whenever they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not,

In a Nicholas Sparks, everyone is friendly, good, and God-fearing Christians. (The villain is always one-dimensional.)

They know each other’s business and have lived in town for their entire lives. And news always travels fast in the small town.

Landon says for many people fishing and crabbing is a way of life.

Only three channels came in on the television, though television was never important to those of us who grew up there. Instead our lives were centered around the churches, of which there were eighteen within the town limits alone.

1. Yes, I know that Americans were more religious in the 1950’s. 2. But they still had a life outside of a church and weren’t thinking about Jesus 24/7. 3. People went camping and fishing. They also went to bowling alleys, sock hops, and drive-in movie theaters. 4. For most of the story, Landon isn’t very religious. He goes to church but that’s it. And Landon regards a girl who reads the Bible every day as a weirdo. 5. The only time Landon became religious is when he supposedly fell in love with Jamie. 6. It is important to remember that Nicholas Sparks has writing rules that he won’t break like all of his characters must go to church. 7. And he has said that people without faith are alone, thinking they are the center of the universe.

Landon rattles off the names and types of Baptist churches in the area.

The big event of the year is a Christmas play sponsored by the Baptist church downtown and the local high school.

The play is written by Hegbert Sullivan, “a minister who’d been with the church since Moses parted the Red Sea."

Okay, maybe he wasn’t that old, but he was old enough that you could almost see through the guy’s skin. It was sort of clammy all the time, and translucent—kids would swear they actually saw the blood flowing through his veins—

Translucent skin… Translu…

“His skin was translucently white, like onionskin, and it looked just as delicate—” New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

So Hegbert is a sparklepire? Good to know.

and his hair was as white as those bunnies you see in pet stores around Easter.

Wow. Just wow. The prose is so boring and bland.

And Nicholas Sparks thinks he writes like Ernest Hemingway…

Also, what seventeen-year-old boy would say “bunnies”?

Hebert wrote the play The Christmas Angel because he hates A Christmas Carol.

In his mind, Scrooge was a heathen, who came to his redemption only because he saw ghosts, not angels—and who was to say whether they’d been sent by God, anyway?

I hate to break it to ya but both ghosts and angels are spirits.

The only difference is that a ghost is a human spirit that has not properly passed over to the other side and they remain on earth while angels are spiritual beings of light.

And who was to say he wouldn’t revert to his sinful ways if they hadn’t been sent directly from heaven?

Um… If the ghosts weren’t sent from Heaven, then where did they come from?

Baptists don’t believe in purgatory. After death, they believe that there are only two places where people can go: Heaven or Hell.

Unless the minister thinks the ghosts are demons in disguise.

It won’t make any sense because the three spirits are trying to get Scrooge to repent and be a better person.

The play didn’t exactly tell you in the end—it sort of plays into faith and all—

Maybe Charles Dickens didn’t think he had to spell it out in 72 pt Times New Roman font.

but Hegbert didn’t trust ghosts if they weren’t actually sent by God, which wasn’t explained in plain language, and this was his big problem with it.

1. And where is the proof that they are not sent by God? 2. Faith is about believing without seeing and not demanding proof. 3. And Christians who deepen their faith learn how to discern between the voice of God, the voice of Satan, and one’s ego. 4. Is Hegbert pissed off at Charles Dickens because the ghosts didn’t say ”I am the ghost of Christmas (past/present/future) and I was sent by God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth"? 5. Because following that logic, the Archangel Raphael was not sent by God. 6. In The Book of Tobit, the Archangel Raphael didn’t reveal his identity until Tobit cures his father’s blindness. For most of the story, Tobit knew the Archangel Raphael as Azariah the son of Hananiah the great.

A few years back he’d changed the end of the play—sort of followed it up with his own version, complete with old man Scrooge becoming a preacher and all, heading off to Jerusalem to find the place where Jesus once taught the scribes.

Unsurprisingly, nobody liked the play so Hegbert decided to write his own play.

He’d written his own sermons his whole life, and some of them, we had to admit, were actually interesting, especially when he talked about the “wrath of God coming down on the fornicators” and all that good stuff.

A fire and brimstone minister.

N. Sparks will claim later on that he has a great sense of humor and we are supposed to see him as a great guy.

Because we all know fire and brimstone ministers are not anti-semitic, homophobic, islamophobic, misogynistic, racist, sexist and xenophobic pieces of shit.

That really got his blood boiling, I’ll tell you, when he talked about the fornicators. That was his real hot spot.

“And don’t get him started on those Commies and sodomites."

So Landon and his friends hid behind trees and shouting that Hegbert is a fornicator before walking down the street.

We’d giggle like idiots, like we were the wittiest creatures ever to inhabit the planet.

Landon is following Anita Blake's logic: If you do something wrong, just say you feel bad about it, and continue being a terrible person. And nobody will dare tell you to STOP being an asshole.

Old Hegbert, he’d stop dead in his tracks and his ears would perk up—I swear to God, they actually moved—and he’d turn this bright shade of red, like he’d just drunk gasoline, and the big green veins in his neck would start sticking out all over, like those maps of the Amazon River that you see in National Geographic.

1. So Hegbert is a mog too? (Virtual cupcake to anyone who gets that reference.) 2. I know that some people can wiggle their ears. Because humans can't perk their ears up like a dog.

Hegbert is pissed off and he is looking for them.

Boy, it was something to watch, that’s for sure.

"Being an asshole is a lot of fun!"

So the assholes are hiding behind a tree. Landon sneers "what kind of parents name their kid Hegbert, anyway?" and Hegbert is standing there, waiting for them to "to give ourselves up, as if he thought we’d be that stupid."

They cover their mouths with their hands and Hegbert always knows where to find them.

Hegbert tells them that he along with the Lord knows "who you are". And a minute later, Hegbert walks away.

During the sermon that weekend he’d stare right at us and say something like “God is merciful to children, but the children must be worthy as well.”

"But subject you to pain, unpleasantness -- suffering -- and you will take notice, you will fight to overcome, to earn your redemption. That is when you're at your best." Gabriel from Constantine 2005.

I think Gabriel and Hegbert should go bowling.

The assholes lower themselves in seats "not from embarrassment, but to hide a new round of giggles."

Landon says that Hegbert didn't understand us "didn’t understand us at all, which was really sort of strange, being that he had a kid and all."

But then again, she was a girl. More on that, though, later.

"Girls are ladylike and only like cute and pretty things. And tomboys don't exist."

Landon repeats the fact that Hegbert is the one who wrote The Christmas Angel and decided to put on the play.

He says that the play isn't bad and this surprised everyone the first year it was performed.

I am putting on my jeweled turban and gaze into my crystal ball.

It's about Hegbert Tom Thorton who had lost his wife in childbirth and is raising a daughter all on his own.

It will also be sappy like a Hallmark movie. Aren't I awesome?

He hasn't been the greatest father and his daughter wants a special music box for Christmas. He can't find the box and meets an angel disguised as a woman on Christmas Eve.

The angel promises to help him to get the gift for his daughter. Along the way, they help a homeless person and Landon is quick to say that "back then they were called bums".

Tom tells the angel that he wants his wife back for Christmas. The angel tells him to look into the city fountain and he'll find what he is looking for.

Tom cries after seeing the face of his daughter. The angel is MIA and Tom heads home.

He realizes he hasn't been a good father and that his daughter is all he has left of his wife.

The story ends with the music box underneath the tree and the angel on the box looks exactly like the mysterious woman.

Landon repeats that the play "wasn't that bad".

Apparently, the play sold out every year and people "cried buckets" every time they saw it.

Hegbert wants seniors in high school to perform the play and not the theater group.

I reckon he thought it would be a good learning experience before the seniors headed off to college and came face-to-face with all the fornicators.

Unless these seniors want to become actors, how is performing a play count as "good learning experience"?

And how does performing a Christmas give the students the information to deal with "fornicators"?

I'm getting the impression that Nicholas Sparks thinks that men and women in the past were BOTH expected to stay celibate before marriage.

But that's not the case. Men weren't expected to remain virgins.

Men could have extramarital affairs, have longtime mistresses, and even have sex with other men. And guys would get away with it as long as they didn't flaunt them in public.

Women were expected to celibate until they were married. It took an unchaperoned visit or ONE sexual affair for a woman to be considered a whore.

He was that kind of guy, you know, always wanting to save us from temptation.

"Remember boys and girls: premarital sex is wrong!"

He wanted us to know that God is out there watching you, even when you’re away from home, and that if you put your trust in God, you’ll be all right in the end.

Riiight.

Because the same minister who gives fire and brimstone sermons would be the sort of person that would talk about God watching over you and if you trust Him, then things will be all right.

I think the minister would most likely say "God is always watching your every move. If you are bad, He will smite you. And your soul will burn in Hell for all eternity."

It was a lesson that I would eventually learn in time, though it wasn’t Hegbert who taught me.

"It would be my designated love interest."

Landon says that Beaufort is a typical southern town but it has an interesting history.

He talks about how Blackbeard owned a house in town and recently his ship might have been found by "some archaeologists or oceanographers or whoever looks for stuff like that."

Landon, they are called marine archaeologists.

Being that it sank over 250 years ago and you can’t exactly reach into the glove compartment and check the registration.

Because a pirate ship would have a glove box.

I think that comment sounded wittier in Nicholas Spark’s head than it does on paper.

Beaufort’s come a long way since the 1950s, but it’s still not exactly a major metropolis or anything.

We get it, Landon. Beaufort is a quaint and small southern town.

Beaufort was, and always will be, on the smallish side, but when I was growing up, it barely warranted a place on the map.

For the love of all that is holy, will you please stop talking about the same thing over and over again?

Landon keeps talking about how Beaufort is a small town and how "the congressional district that included Beaufort covered the entire eastern part of the state—some twenty thousand square miles—and there wasn’t a single town with more than twenty-five thousand people."

It turns out that Landon's father is a congressman.

I suppose you’ve heard of him. He’s sort of a legend, even now.

If he was a legend, then you wouldn't be telling us who he is.

Landon's father is Worth Carter and he was a congressman for almost thirty years.

Worth's election slogan is “Worth Carter represents ———” and people are supposed to fill in the city name where they lived.

I can remember, driving on trips when me and Mom had to make our appearances to show the people he was a true family man

I call bullshit on Landon's dad being a "true family man".

Landon's father is gone nine months out of the year and is living in Washington D.C. while his mother is taking care of him.

Landon talks about how his father election slogan "was fairly sophisticated publicity."

He says that nowadays people would put foul language in the blank space but in the good ol' days "we never saw it once."

Landon quickly backpedals and says "okay, maybe once."

A farmer from Duplin County once wrote the word shit in the blank space, and when my mom saw it, she covered my eyes and said a prayer asking for forgiveness for the poor ignorant bastard.

Nicholas Sparks is still trying to persuade me that 1950's was a wholesome utopia.

But I'm not convinced.

Every era of human history, no matter how fascinating or glamorous, has a dark side that people don't want to acknowledge.

And I find it very hard to believe that Landon has never seen or heard foul language before.

For instance, in middle school, I heard people say things that would make even a sailor blush.

Since Landon's mother is ladylike, she "didn’t say exactly those words."

So my father, Mr. Congressman, was a big-wig, and everyone but everyone knew it, including old man Hegbert.

Landon claimed that daddy dearest was a "legend."

And Merriam-Webster defines a bigwig as "an important person"

So the words "everyone but everyone knew it" is redundant.

Worth Carter and Hegbert don't get along. But Worth still goes to Hegbert's church whenever he was in town.

Hegbert, in addition to his belief that fornicators were destined to clean the urinals in hell, also believed that communism was “a sickness that doomed mankind to heathenhood.”

I will bring this up if anyone claims that Hegbert is a good guy.

One of the biggest problems with A Walk to Remember is plot mixing.

What is plot mixing, you may ask?

Plot mixing is a term that I have coined. Plot mixing is when an artist takes at least two contradictory plots and they mix it together haphazardly, resulting in a ghastly mess.

For instance, Hegbert is supposed to be a wonderful guy with a great sense of humor. But he is acting like a Bible-thumping minister.

They also knew that he was directing his words specifically to my father, who would sit with his eyes closed and pretend not to listen.

I have just a quick question: why would Landon's dad go to a church where the minister despises him and makes pointed sermons?

According to Landon, there are other churches in the area. So, why hasn't Worth Carter left Hegbert's church and joined another church?

It turns out that Landon's father belongs to the House of Un-American Activities Committee.

My father had consistently looked for facts, which were irrelevant to people like Hegbert.

IRL, I hate it when people think they are the gatekeepers of knowledge, truth, and wisdom.

They also claim that they have "facts" that support their worldviews.

If anyone who disagrees with them, then they are dumb sheep and a racist bigot.

Are we seriously supposed to see HUAC as the good guys?

HUAC ruined people's lives and careers. And their actions violated the 1st and 5th Amendments of the Bill of Rights.

Every time Landon's father would come home after the church service, he would complain about Reverend Sullivan.

My father tried to defuse situations whenever possible. I think that’s why he stayed in Congress for so long.

Like any politician, a congressperson gives people in high places verbal blowjobs and make promises that they have no intentions of keeping along with having goons to cover up their crimes.

The guy could kiss the ugliest babies known to mankind and still come up with something nice to say.

Are we supposed to applaud Landon's dad being nice to the "ugly" people?

“He’s such a gentle child,” he’d say when a baby had a giant head, or, “I’ll bet she’s the sweetest girl in the world,” if she had a birthmark over her entire face. One time a lady showed up with a kid in a wheelchair. My father took one look at him and said, “I’ll bet you ten to one that you’re smartest kid in your class.”

Fuck this book with a rusty screwdriver!

And he wasn’t such a bad guy, not really, especially if you consider the fact that he didn’t beat me or anything.

A parent is not supposed to abuse their children, you twat!

But he wasn’t there for me growing up.

In a better story, Landon being estranged from his father would be a source of conflict.

And throughout the story, Landon would fix his broken relationship with his father.

But this is a shitty story, Landon will meet his designated one tru luv who is purer than Sir Galahad.

Landon spends time with this girl and his relationship with Dad is magically mended.

I hate to say that because nowadays people claim that sort of stuff even if their parent was around and use it to excuse their behavior. I’m not using it to excuse the person I’ve become, I’m simply saying it as a fact.

No, you did.

You even said it "made me become something of a rebel."

My mother didn’t go with him because both of them wanted me to grow up “the same way they had.”

So they were raised by one parent?

Wait a tick... I think what Landon means is that his parents wanted him to grow up in a small town.

And small towns tend to be politically conservative.

As a member of HUAC, a married man living alone would raise more than a few eyebrows.

Especially since the nuclear family was considered the "ideal" family in 1950's.

Also during this time period, people wanted to uphold traditional family roles and values.

I'm sure Worth Carter's political opponents would have a field day if they knew he wasn't a family man.

And you can't tell me that in a Southern small-town that people won't gossip about a married woman raising a child all by herself and her husband is rarely home.

Landon says that his grandfather spent time with his father and how that "adds up to quite a bit before adulthood."

Landon talks about how his father was "a stranger" and someone he "barely knew at all."

He also used to think that "all fathers lived somewhere else."

Landon says that one day his best friend Eric Hunter asks him "who that guy was who showed up at my house".

Landon replies that the man was his father "proudly."

“Oh,” Eric said as he rifled through my lunchbox, looking for my Milky Way, “I didn’t know you had a father.”

"People around town were saying that your mamma was a whore and has a beau."

Landon repeats the fact that he was raised by his mother.

Now she was a nice lady, sweet and gentle, the kind of mother most people dream about.

Because most people want their mother to be a cold-hearted bitch.

Does Landon seriously think that his mother deserves a medal for not being an asshole?

And I'm getting the feeling that dear old mom is going to be a submissive housewife who never speaks her mind, makes sure the house is always immaculate and treats her husband like a king.

But she wasn’t, nor could she ever be, a manly influence in my life, and that fact, coupled with my growing disillusionment with my father, made me become something of a rebel, even at a young age.

Where do I even begin?

According to Landon, women are incapable of doing/liking "manly" activities.

Butch women or tomboys don't exist. ALL women love feminine things and are ladylike.

And it takes a MAN to raise a "real" man.

The father is supposed to do "manly" activities with his son on a regular basis. And boys are supposed to do and like "manly" activities.

If the boy doesn't and becomes a delinquent, then he is a sissy and his mother is to blame.

Not a bad one, mind you.

This is a Nicholas Sparks novel.

He would never have a "protagonist" do bad things. He has a wholesome image to uphold.

They must be good as gold or be mildly delinquent.

Me and my friends might sneak out late and soap up car windows now and then or eat boiled peanuts in the graveyard behind the church, but in the fifties that was the kind of thing that made other parents shake their heads and whisper to their children, “You don’t want to be like that Carter boy. He’s on the fast track to prison.”

Contrary to what Nicholas Sparks might believe, the 1950's wasn't Leave it to Beaver.

For instance, people did phone pranks, threw cherry bombs or were stealing statues.

Me. A bad boy. For eating boiled peanuts in the graveyard. Go figure.

Landon repeats the fact that his father and Hegbert don't get along. But he says "it wasn’t only because of politics."

And then it happens.

It turns out that Worth Carter and Hegbert knew each other for a long time.

And Hegbert is twenty years older than Daddy Dearest and used to work for Landon's grandfather.

My grandfather— even though he spent lots of time with my father —was a true bastard if there ever was one.

I have a question, Landon. Does your grandfather only wears black clothing and has an evil laugh?

He was the one, by the way, who made the family fortune, but I don’t want you to imagine him as the sort of man who slaved over his business, working diligently and watching it grow, prospering slowly over time.

We get it, Nicholas Sparks. Landon's grandpa is more evil and greedy than all the robber barons.

Next, you'll be telling us that grandpa was a pedophile or kicked puppies for fun.

His grandfather was a bootlegger during the Prohibition, started buying land and then hired sharecroppers to work it.

Grandpa also took ninety percent of the money the sharecroppers made and loaned them money whenever they needed it at high-interest rates.

Grandpa is so EVIL he forecloses on any equipment or land they happen to own. Evil Grandpa...

No. From now on, I'm calling him Grandpa Beelzebub or GB.

GB started a bank called "Carter Banking and Loan."

The only other bank in a two-county radius had mysteriously burned down, and with the onset of the Depression, it never reopened.

The other bank didn't "mysteriously" burn down, you twit. GB had his goons torch the place.

Though everyone knew what had really happened, not a word was ever spoken for fear of retribution, and their fear was well placed.

So even the police were shaking in their boots?

The bank wasn't the only building that burned down.

Landon repeats the fact that Grandpa Beelzebub's interest rates "were outrageous." As time progresses, GB amasses more land and property.

He gets the original owners to continue working and pays them just enough money to "to keep them where they were, because they had nowhere else to go."

He told them that when the economy improved, he’d sell their business back to them, and people always believed him.

The townspeople know that GB used fear and intimidation to get what he wanted along with his shady business practices.

And they ALL believed that he would honor his promises.

Never once, however, did he keep his promise. In the end he controlled a vast portion of the county’s economy, and he abused his clout in every way imaginable.

Ya know what?

There are so many times I can point out how Grandpa Beelzebub is cartoonishly evil so I'll let this gif speak for itself.

Grandpa Beelzebub died while having sex with his mistress on his yacht in the Cayman Islands. GB was also an old man.

He’d outlived both his wives and his only son.

If Daddy Dearest died before GB, he wouldn't be a prominent congressman.

And Landon would have never met his father.

He would be visiting Daddy's grave and be raised by a widow.

Life, I’ve learned, is never fair.

Marvel at how deep he is! No one has ever made such a wise statement.

Landon whines that it should be taught in school.

Hegbert, once he realized what a bastard my grandfather really was,

You mean arson and usury are not legal and moral? I never knew that!

Thanks for letting me know, Nicholas Sparks!

So, Hegbert quit working for GB and went into the ministry. Then he started ministering in the same church that Landon's family attended.

Hegbert spent some time "perfecting his fire-and brimstone act", giving monthly sermons on the evils of greed.

He was so busy Bible thumping that he had "scant time for anything else."

Hegbert was forty-three when he was married and his daughter Jamie was born when he was fifty-five.

Hegbert's wife was twenty-three years old and had six miscarriages before Jamie was born. She also died in childbirth.

Hence, of course, the story behind the play.

I love it when I'm right. And Hegbert is so arrogant if he thinks that everyone would want to see a play that is his thinly veiled life story.

People knew the story even before the play was first performed.

If it was any more obvious, the character Tom would be called Hegbert and be a minister.

It was one of those stories that made its rounds whenever Hegbert had to baptize a baby or attend a funeral.

Baptists don't baptize babies. They believe that only believers should be baptized and be fully immersed in the water.

Landon repeats the fact that everyone knew about Hegbert's story and says it is why people "got emotional" when they saw the play.

They knew it was based on something that happened in real life, which gave it special meaning.

So if a story isn't based on something that happened in real life, then it isn't special? Fuck you, Landon.

Jamie Sullivan was a senior in high school, just like me, and she’d already been chosen to play the angel, not that anyone else even had a chance.

I would be very surprised if Jamie WASN'T in the play.

After all, the play was written by her father and is a thinly veiled story about her dad losing her mom.

And real subtle, Nicholas Sparks.

A saintly girl is going to play an angel.

Thank God, Jamie isn't named Sunshine Goodness.

Jamie playing the angel is going to make the play "extra special" and how it is going to be a "big deal" especially for Miss Garber.

Miss Garber is the drama teacher and she was excited "the first time I met her in class."

Landon admits that he really didn't want to take drama class but it was "either that or chemistry II."

No papers, no tests, no tables where I’d have to memorize protons and neutrons and combine elements in their proper formulas … what could possibly be better for a high school senior?

How about lunch? All you have to do is eat and socialize.

It seemed like a sure thing, and when I signed up for it, I thought I’d just be able to sleep through most every class, which, considering my late night peanut eating, was fairly important at the time.

Why am I getting the feeling that "late night peanut eating" is a euphemism for sex? Because eating peanuts is not a strenuous thing to do...

Landon arrives before the bell rang and sits in the back of the room.

Miss Garber had her back turned to the class, and she was busy writing her name in big cursive letters, as if we didn’t know who she was.

You just said that you met Miss Garber for the first time in class.

Now you are saying that you already knew her.

Which is it, Landon?

All these contradictions are giving me a headache.

Everyone knew her—it was impossible not to.

"She was bludgeoned with the ugly stick."

Am I the only one who thinks this comment is catty?

She was big, at least six feet two, with flaming red hair and pale skin that showed her freckles well into her forties.

The word "tall" seems like a better fit.

Big is used to describe the size of something.

While "tall" refers to the height of something.

I seriously hope that Landon isn't saying that this woman is "ugly".

She was also overweight—I’d say honestly she pushed two fifty—and she had a fondness for wearing flower patterned muumuus. She had thick, dark, horn-rimmed glasses, and she greeted everyone with, “Helloooooo,” sort of singing the last syllable.

Translation: she's a fat Julia Child who wears glasses.

From now on, I shall call Miss Garber Julia Child.

Miss Garber was one of a kind, that’s for sure, and she was single, which made it even worse.

Stop! Do not pass go! Do not collect $200!

A guy, no matter how old, couldn’t help but feel sorry for a gal like her.

Because after all, beauty on the outside is the only thing that matters.

Being a good human being and having a nice personality is overrated.

Later on, Landon complains that "the pickings were getting pretty slim" and how he doesn't want to be stuck bringing an "ugly" girl to the homecoming dance (i.e. girls who have thick glasses or have lisps.)

People praise Nicholas Sparks for writing wholesome fiction that has life lessons and good morals.

But I would rather read a story that has swearing (Ow! My virgin ears!) or graphic sex (gasp!) than a story with shitty messages and it is written by a pretentious writer who believes that they write literary masterpieces.

Julia Child writes the three goals that she wants to accomplish: self-confidence, self-awareness, and self-fulfillment.

Landon remarks that she was "into the 'self' stuff."

Maybe it had something to do with the way she looked; maybe she was just trying to feel better about herself. But I digress.

It wasn’t until the class started that I noticed something unusual.

"Everyone wore black cloaks and pledged their allegiance to Satan."

Landon is surprised that the class is "at least ninety percent female" because he "knew for a fact" that school is split 50/50 between boys and girls.

There was only one other male in the class, which to my thinking was a good thing, and for a moment I felt flush with a “look out world, here I come” kind of feeling.

The schools in Beaufort NC have excellent math programs...

I don't feel like spending hours trying to look up the average high school class size in North Carolina during the 1950's.

So I'll be using the current average high school class size in North Carolina.

According to this, the average class size for secondary school (high school) in North Carolina is 25.8 students.

Let's say there are twenty-six students in the drama class.

91% of 26 would be 23.66

Approximately, there would be 23 girls and 3 boys.

Besides Landon, there would be two other boys in the classroom.

Girls, girls, girls … I couldn’t help but think. Girls and girls and no tests in sight.

It is good to know that Landon is thinking with his head and not with his dick.

Okay, so I wasn’t the most forward-thinking guy on the block.

Anita Blake Logic # 2: If you say something wrong, act like you are feeling guilty.

You DON'T try to be a better person and APOLOGIZE to the person/people that you have hurt. No one EVER calls you out on your shit.

So Julia Child talks about the play and tells everyone that Jamie is going to play the angel.

She starts clapping and it turns out that she is a member of Landon's church.

And there were a lot of people who thought she was gunning for Hegbert in a romantic sort of way. The first time I heard it, I remember thinking that it was a good thing they were too old to have children, if they ever did get together. Imagine—translucent with freckles?

The very thought gave everyone shudders, but of course, no one ever said anything about it, at least within hearing distance of Miss Garber and Hegbert.

So everyone is an asshole and gossips like fishwives?

Gossip is one thing, hurtful gossip is completely another, and even in high school we weren’t that mean.

"Like Duloc, the South is a perfect place!"

I'm sorry but I don't believe that a high school with no cliques and everyone is nice exists.

Landon is a douchebag and so are his friends.

Also, how is gossiping about Thank God Hegbert and Julia Child can't reproduce count as not being "mean"?

And the townspeople talk about Hegbert's wife having multiple miscarriages and dying in childbirth...

And for a novel that is so friggin' preachy by constantly talking about God's plan/the Lord's plan and quoting Bible verses...

It doesn't realize that the Good Book doesn't view gossip as a venial sin while "hurtful" gossip is a mortal sin.

The Bible denounces it.

Julia Child keeps on clapping until everyone finally joined in. She orders Jamie to stand up.

Jamie stands up and turns around. Julia Child is clapping even faster to which Landon snidely remarks "as if she were standing in the presence of a bona fide movie star."

Now Jamie Sullivan was a nice girl. She really was.

Translation: It's a pleasant way to say that she isn't attractive.

Landon talks about the town only has one elementary school so everyone has been "in the same classes our entire lives."

He admits to having a "few conversations" with Jamie.

Who I saw in school was one thing; who I saw after school was something completely different, and Jamie had never been on my social calendar.

"She is not worthy to stand before me!"

It’s not that Jamie was unattractive— don’t get me wrong. She wasn’t hideous or anything like that.

"Inner beauty is overrated!"

Landon reluctantly admits that Jamie "wasn't half-bad." But he doesn't consider her to be attractive.

Despite the fact that she was thin, with honey blond hair and soft blue eyes, most of the time she looked sort of … plain, and that was when you noticed her at all.

Because having fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes were NEVER considered to be signs of beauty.

And I really hate it when a character is "TV ugly".

Especially when it is combined with this.

Jamie didn’t care much about outward appearances, because she was always looking for things like “inner beauty,” and I suppose that’s part of the reason she looked the way she did.

I love how inner beauty is put in quotes. As if the concept is absolute horse shit.

For as long as I’d known her—and this was going way back, remember— she’d always worn her hair in a tight bun, almost like a spinster, without a stitch of makeup on her face.

This statement is obnoxious because later on in the story Jamie will be described as beautiful even when she is dying of a terminal illness.

Jamie wears frumpy clothes and everyone thought it was "just a phase".

But it wasn’t just the way Jamie looked that made her different; it was also the way she acted.

"She acted like an Angel of the House: innocent, perfect, and pure."

Jamie never went to slumber parties or had a boyfriend.

Old Hegbert would probably have had a heart attack if she had.

Hegbert would have denounced his daughter as a harlot before killing her.

Jamie carried her Bible wherever she went, and if her looks and Hegbert didn’t keep the boys away, the Bible sure as heck did.

"It couldn't possibly be that her father is a Bible-thumping asshat."

Now, I liked the Bible as much as the next teenage boy,

Translation: not at all.

but Jamie seemed to enjoy it in a way that was completely foreign to me.

"She reads it from cover to cover."

Not only did she go to vacation Bible school every August, but she would read the Bible during lunch break at school.

This is Nicholas Spark's "subtle" way of telling us that Jamie is a good person. Because she reads the Bible.

Landon thinks Jamie is abby normal. How romantic.

No matter how you sliced it, reading Paul’s letters to the Ephesians wasn’t nearly as much fun as flirting, if you know what I mean.

Because flirting is a lot of fun!

If I didn't know any better, I'd say flirting is a code word for sex...

But one of Nicholas Sparks' writing rules is that his teenage characters never have premarital sex.

But Jamie didn’t stop there. I knew she volunteered at the orphanage in Morehead City, but for her that simply wasn’t enough.

Let me guess. Jamie is SO good that she is going to help baby animals and solve world hunger.

She was always in charge of one fund-raiser or another, helping everyone from the Boy Scouts to the Indian Princesses, and I know that when she was fourteen, she spent part of her summer painting the outside of an elderly neighbor’s house. Jamie was the kind of girl who would pull weeds in someone’s garden without being asked or stop traffic to help little kids cross the road. She’d save her allowance to buy a new basketball for the orphans, or she’d turn around and drop the money into the church basket on Sunday.

Ho-lee fuck! Where do I even begin?

There is no such thing as a Native American princess.

Nobody is perfect. But according to Nicholas Sparks Landon, Jamie is practically perfect in every way.

Jamie is NEVER depicted as having any flaws. She is always nice to everyone and always never does anything wrong.

She was, in other words, the kind of girl who made the rest of us look bad, and whenever she glanced my way, I couldn’t help but feel guilty, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong.

You are a douchebag who makes snide comments.

Nor did Jamie limit her good deeds to people. If she ever came across a wounded animal, for instance, she’d try to help it, too. Opossums, squirrels, dogs, cats, frogs … it didn’t matter to her.

We get it, Sparks. Jamie is a paragon of virtue. Stop talking.

With Jamie, everything was in the Lord’s plan. That was another thing. She always mentioned the Lord’s plan whenever you talked to her, no matter what the subject.

I get it, Sparks.

Jamie is a saintly person.

And Jesus is love, Jesus is life.

Landon tells us that Jamie thinks she is "so blessed to have a father like mine."

He thinks "what planet she actually came from."

Despite all these other strikes, though, the one thing that really drove me crazy about her was the fact that she was always so damn cheerful, no matter what was happening around her.

In real life, a person who is ALWAYS cheerful is depressed.

But this is a Nicholas Sparks novel.

So Jamie is cheerful like a Disney princess.

Thank God, Jamie doesn't break into song.

I swear, that girl never said a bad thing about anything or anyone, even to those of us who weren’t that nice to her.

Translation: Jamie is a female version of Jesus Christ.

Landon keeps going on about how nice Jamie is.

All the adults "adored" her and ladies would "come running out of their house" if they see Jamie walking by.

I was thinking about all this while Jamie stood in front of us on the first day of drama class, and I admit that I wasn’t much interested in seeing her.

For a girl that Landon despises, he won't stop talking about her.

But strangely, when Jamie turned to face us, I kind of got a shock, like I was sitting on a loose wire or something.

It is bad enough that Nicholas Sparks is forcing a romance between two characters and will claim that they are soulmates...

Now he has them feeling an instant electric connection.

What’s next? Will fireworks go off? Will cherubs start to sing?

She wore a plaid skirt with a white blouse under the same brown cardigan sweater I’d seen a million times, but there were two new bumps on her chest that the sweater couldn’t hide that I swore hadn’t been there just three months earlier.

I'll give three guesses and the first two don't count.

It isn't surprising since a lot of Nicholas Sparks' novels are renowned for having contrived "tragic" endings in which someone (usually the love interest) dies.

She’d never worn makeup and she still didn’t, but she had a tan, probably from Bible school, and for the first time she looked—well, almost pretty.

If "almost pretty" isn't a backhanded compliment, I don't know what is.

Landon quickly "dismissed" the thought.

But as she looked around the room, she stopped and smiled right at me, obviously glad to see that I was in the class.

Smiling is an expression that shows happiness, affection, etc.

She shouldn't be happy to see him.

The guy mocks her and avoids her like the plague.

But Sparks told us that Jamie is made up of sugar, spice, and everything nice.

It wasn’t until later that I would learn the reason why.

#snark #book snark #anti nicholas sparks #a walk to remember #bad fiction #chapter snark

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shadowfae · 8 years ago

Note

I've recently stumbled across the word "otherkin" and it seems to describe certain feelings I have, but the tumblr tags seem to be full of unuseful information and, well, silliness. I'm sort of looking for people to talk to while I try to sort myself out, without making too much light of it. Do you have any advice on sifting through everything?

Besides going ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA’ and never doing anything about it?

First things first. You’re new, so we’re going to divide this into two parts. Part one, crash course on otherkinity, alterhumanity, and the little branches of it you should know about. Those words and terms will help you figure out what’s what. Part two is great, you know all these terms, how do you sort through the mess that is kinfeels.

Under a readmore because long, since I ramble sometimes. I’m glad you asked, and if you have any further questions, hit me up again and I’ll do what I can.

Part One: What Even Is Otherkinity

Otherkinity is identifying involuntarily and nonphysically as something nonhuman. You aren’t saying you are physically this thing (as you are physically human), you cannot choose to be this thing and can’t choose not to be this thing, and you do not identify as human 100%.

The modifiers: Fictionkin means you can be something that is human, but it must be fictional (like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson or smth). You can be a member of a fictional species that isn’t human (like the Elf Queen’s Daughters of the early 70s that started the fictionkin community). It is still involuntary and nonphysical.

Otherkinity is divided into three ‘main’ branches: therianthropy, otherkinity, and fictionkind. Therians (or therianthropes) ID as an animal that has been or is on Earth. Like dinosaurs or foxes. There are an absurd amount of wolf therians here on tumblr. Those that are obviously faking or haven’t questioned enough for even themselves and just went with ‘wolf’ because it’s cool are called wolfaboos. Usually I just don’t talk to them, since to each their own and they’re not actively being annoying, but please don’t just “oh I’m not human clearly I’m a wolf” the moment you get kinfeels. Things don’t... work... like that...

Anyway. Otherkinity as a sublabel of itself generally has within it our conceptkin (I’m calling it that for now. Things like voidkin or starkin), theriomythics (fantasy animals within mythology such as unicorns and youkai), draconics (draconity, which is dragons and pretty self explanatory), the vampire and were____ communities, and probably a few others.

Fictionkind I already went over. I have three kintypes that are fictionkind in nature. They are called fictotypes for this reason. (Kintypes is the label for all of them, but there is also theriotypes and fictotypes for therianthropy and fictionkind.)

Those fictotypes are Pale Noël from the Evillious Chronicles, a noncanon Devil from DSP’s works, and an Absol from Pokemon. As I have more than two kintypes, I am in what we call ‘polykin hell’. Though tbh, most people put themselves in polykin hell when they’re up past five. Poor guys.

The things that are close to otherkinity but not actually it!

Copinglinkers- They ID as something voluntarily to cope with something. Usually trauma or mental illness. While not otherkin, they are alterhuman and do belong in our community. They are also called copingkin, which is a bit outdated but since copinglink is a new term, I’ll let it slide. (It was coined by @who-is-page, actually, and they are a delight to follow if you want to see antikin absolutely dragged through the mud.)

Otherhearted- Those who identify not as something but with it. As an example, I am faehearted and shadowhearted. I identify with those things because one of my fictotypes did, and that carried over. It is very easy to mistake heartfeels for kinfeels. Regardless, like c’linkers and ‘kin they are alterhuman and totally rad.

Synpaths- Tbh I’m not quite sure what’s the difference between synpaths and ‘hearted. (I have heard it is ‘ID with this’ versus ‘I want to hug that’ but you should not be asking me; as I don’t have a fuckin’ clue.) Either way, if you think you have a synpath go research that. Please don’t ask me, I don’t know. All I know is that they exist and they do stuff, so they’re worth mentioning.

There are also ways to be otherkin, for lack of a better term. Ways you explain why you identify as these things. There are two main ‘branches’ to this: spiritual and psychological. There are also religious, cultural, and probably a few other reasons, but let’s go with the ones off the top of my head.

Spiritual- Can be anything from ‘my soul is this and my body is not’ to ‘I was this in a past life, and it is still relevant’. (You can have past lives that aren’t kintypes. The difference is simply how much they affect you. I do believe I had a life a fuckass long time ago in second age Senntisten, but as it isn’t relevant outside of vague memories of fire, it isn’t a fictotype of mine.)

Psychological- Anything from ‘I used this as a c’link at one point but it is now irreversible, and I am this now’ to ‘My brain decided to be wired weird and now I ID as this’. Essentially, you have a psychological reasoning for being kin or hearted or whatev. Psychological otherkin get thrown under the bus a lot because really angry copinglinks insist they’re kin and we’re “gatekeeping ableist jerks”. The difference is that c’links choose and can drop their identity. Psychological otherkin cannot. The line can be pretty blurred, and in that case you’d best just slap down “I am this, currently questioning if c’link or kintype”. Literally nobody can yell at you for that. I’ve had to do it before. Never did figure out what it was, but it doesn’t matter now.

Religious- I don’t see this one as often, but I think it’s something along the lines of ‘my God wants me to feel like I’m this for X reason’? Or maybe it’s a past life thing that your religious says you have. (I think Buddhism does that, but I am no religious scholar and I might be wrong.)

Cultural- I’ve seen this mostly in Native American folks, but I’m sure they’re not the only ones. What I have seen is ‘my family have always been crows, so I am a crow therian’. I don’t know much about Native cultures, despite having grown up around them, so I suppose if you had cultural reasons, you’d already know? I do believe spirit animals play into this, but I’m what we call ‘exotic white bread’ and I am not the authority. But I also don’t know who to redirect you to about this. Hm. I’m gonna have to go asking around.

And of course, to finish off part one: multiplicity. That’s a fun one.

Multiple systems aren’t kin. Not hearted either or anything. They’re the other ‘main branch’ of being alterhuman. They are usually several people trying to pilot one body. They use terms like fictive, which is not fictionkin(d), though the two get confused an awful lot. A fictionkind person is someone who IDs as someone or something fictional. A fictive is a part of a multiple system who IS that person, with usually no other identity.

Using myself as an example: I am fictionkind, and one of my fictotypes has green hair. I do not have green hair right now, and that fictotype is not my entire identity. A fictive is more like “hi I’m Harry Potter and I live here now, in your body, with you”. That would be his entire identity: he is Harry Potter.

Factives are close to that, but real people that do or have existed on Earth. That’s like “hi I’m Shakespeare and I live here now”. It’s possible to have system members that are neither. That’s chill.

Supposedly, multiple systems can be both trauma-born and not-trauma-born. The latter is usually called endogenic, I think. DID/OSDD are two disorders that cause multiplicity, but as far as I know they are not the only ways to have multiplicity. You can soulbond and things, which is like the copinglink for multiplicity as in you bring someone in voluntarily. (Tulpas are also a multiplicity thing.)

Part Two: How Do I Deal With Maybe Being Otherkin Without Just Screaming Into The Void

First things first. My way is not the only way to do it. It is one method, but it tends to work for lots of people so here’s the method I know. It’s chill to ask around and figure out what others do, and then find the method that works for you.

Second things second. Do not ask a pendulum or divination blog to kinfirm something. It is a terrible method. You can divine yourself, but do not ask anyone online. Nobody’s divination is always right, and when you’re doing it online, the chance of being right drops exponentially. Bad method, 0/10 do not recommend. (You can totally divine for yourself, though. My tarot deck is particularly sassy about my own god complex from kinfeels.)

And the actual method.

1. Go create a sideblog. Name it whatever, find a nice theme you like. Make sure it is readable and not just pretty.

2. Make a tags page. I suggest doing this over a couple of days, because you are going to forget what tags you need. You want to sort between ‘angry vagueing about nothing making sense’ from ‘feels related to this’.

3. Document EVERYTHING EVER. If you think it is kin related, write that down. If you have vague memories of something, write that down too. Tag it appropriately, if only so you can find it later. (’tag later’ is a good tag if you’re on the go and know you’ll forget if you don’t write it down now.)

What I also do is fill this blog specifically with images that resonate with me. I use a queue and tagging system for this. (White blossoms is the tag for gentle TLW things; whereas black blossoms is General Edge(TM).) You should put images that resonate with you in a Particularly Kin Way on that blog. If it’s art or anything, remember to source it, though. Reblog, don’t repost.

Also, if you’re into requesting things from kin blogs like stimboards or aesthetics, have a reqs tag for them! Keeps it all in one place and you know where you got them from. I like JUST put in mine and I am angry I didn’t do it before.

Then, self introspection. You need to ask why on everything ever. Question things. Do you do insertthinghere because your parents said so, or does it seem like you just have to?

If questioning feels very upsetting or uncomfortable, stop for the day. I don’t recommend any more than an hour and half in one go. Your brain will confirm things that aren’t true in order to work with you. (Confirmation bias, I think it’s called.) Keep the questioning to short bursts, even if you’re on a roll.

If you must go longer, document document DOCUMENT. Writing things down makes them clearer, and halfway through writing you’ll go “oh shit that’s why that happens”.

It’s okay if your writing is messy or only makes sense to you. This is all your own, and how you go about it is entirely your decision.

Questioning should take you weeks or months. There are a few outliers who can kinfirm something in two days and be right, but let’s be honest here: nobody likes them because we all envy them and want to be them, so we don’t like them. All jokes aside, keep it to a pace you can handle and don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Got all that? Good. Now do a shit ton of research. If you’re questioning, say, harpykin, chase links across Wikipedia and read everything you can get your hands on about harpies. You might come across something else that’s close to it: off the top of my head, the Maximum Ride series, for example, is close-ish to harpies. Check that out too, but if it doesn’t resonate, don’t push it. If it ain’t a thing and you know it isn’t, don’t bother with it, it’ll get you nowhere.

Ask around! Don’t be afraid to ask someone “hey do you think this could happen?” Nobody’s input is the end all be all, but if they’re someone you think is educated on the matter, take it into consideration. (You would not believe how much of an idiot I felt like while doing research on demonology and a friend pointed out that Christianity is not the only religion with demons. It’s obvious, but never occurred to me. You will get that feeling at some point. Happens to the best of us.)

Lastly, go at your own pace. And if you have done all of this, it will be several months from now. Go back and look at your oldest kin documents. You will understand it all so much better, and you’ll mentally high-five your past self for knowing so little, but being so full of hope anyway.

Of course, if after all of this someone tries to invalidate you, it won’t work. You’ll have done the research, the self introspection, the grueling grind of “why why why?”. They can’t tell you the sky is red if you’re not colourblind. If they try to grill you for your information, you can point them nicely towards your probably-a-trainwreck of a sideblog and they will see your documented adventure of ‘what am I?’. And then they will stop talking, because you have proven that you know what’s up.

And as the very last piece of advice? You will be wrong. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You can be questioning. You can say “I don’t fucking know!!”. You are allowed to have bumps and wrong turns in your journey. They will happen. It’s okay. Take a deep breath, see where you might have made a mistake, write that down, and keep going. Progress is progress. You’ll figure it out eventually, no need to know it all right this very minute.

I hope this helps, little anon! This is how I came to find out I was- and I’m not done yet, either. I have some oceanic kinfeels that I know exist but don’t know what they are: fuckers better show themselves to me soon because I’m onto them. Who knows where that adventure will take me.

#otherkin #fictionkin #asks #anonymous #Anonymous

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apostateangela · 6 years ago

Text

Well, isn’t that just Marvel-ous

I know I said at the end of my last post that there was more sex to come… and more of that particular story.

But I’m having to step back from it this week; just until I talk to my therapist.

Remember this part…?

I can’t tell you all the sex in my marriage happened because I wanted it.

I also can’t comfortably say it was forced upon me.

Let’s just say I don’t want to look at that part of my past yet.

Except, now I have to.

Something that has been happening since I began this endeavor is that as I articulate and create sentences on a page clarifying and identifying realities about my past it makes them more real and subsequently more startling and disturbing.

I wrote it.

And now I can’t help but look at it.

The truth seems to be that a large percentage of the sex in my marriage falls under the category of Forced Consent.

Which is, by definition, sexual assault.

And I don’t know what to do with that…

I promise I will circle back after I flesh some things out in therapy this coming week.

Instead I feel compelled to talk about something that isn’t on my chronological trajectory.

I’m being pulled off course by a very strong force.

Her name is Carol Susan Jane Danvers, also known as Captain Marvel.

Thursday night, when I went to the movie premiere of Captain Marvel, I had a very personal and emotional experience, and not the one I thought I would have.

I have been incredibly excited for this movie.

A badass female superhero who is also a soldier checks so many of my boxes.

I want to be a strong woman. I am looking for strong female role models in both life and fiction.

So this character has been someone I have started to become marginally obsessed with.

I even dressed up as her earth military persona for Halloween.

Sadly, the models of women that I HAVE had don’t always track with this kind of strength that I earnestly desire. So before I delve into my Captain Marvel deconstruction I’m going to add to the pictures of womanhood I have already shared.

Again, let’s start with the Church’s idea of what a woman should be:

I will remind you of a previous post discussing Eve and the concept of a ‘helpmeet’

(Is it good for (Wo)Man to be Alone?).

To add to those scriptures and that image, I’m going to draw your attention to various quotes said and written by men taken from within the structure of the Church, again from lds.org.

From the Church’s founder Joseph Smith:

“Let this Society (he is referencing the Relief Society, the LDS Church Women’s Organization) teach women how to behave towards their husbands, to treat them with mildness and affection. When a man is borne down with trouble, when he is perplexed with care and difficulty, if he can meet a smile instead of an argument or a murmur—if he can meet with mildness, it will calm down his soul and soothe his feelings; when the mind is going to despair, it needs a solace of affection and kindness” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 228).

Various leaders since Joseph Smith, but all within the late twentieth and twenty first centuries:

“It is divinely ordained what a woman should do, but a man must seek out his work. The divine work of women involves companionship, homemaking, and motherhood” (“In His Steps,” 64).

“Beware of the subtle ways Satan employs to take you from the plan of God [2 Nephi 9:13] and true happiness. One of Satan’s most effective approaches is to demean the role of wife and mother in the home” (Elder Richard G. Scott).

“There are voices in our midst which would attempt to convince you that these home-centered truths are not applicable to our present-day conditions. If you listen and heed, you will be lured away from your principal obligations.

“Beguiling voices in the world cry out for ‘alternative life-styles’ for women. They maintain that some women are better suited for careers than for marriage and motherhood.

“These individuals spread their discontent by the propaganda that there are more exciting and self-fulfilling roles for women than homemaking. Some even have been bold to suggest that the Church move away from the ‘Mormon woman stereotype’ of homemaking and rearing children. They also say it is wise to limit your family so you can have more time for personal goals and self-fulfillment” (“The Honored Place of Woman”).

Translation: Women have a very clear subservient role: that of mild smiling wife, homemaker, and mother.

It is Divinely appropriated, meaning that God has said this is what a woman should be.

If you deviate from this role it is suggested that you are following Satan.

My mother is this woman: a simple, faithful, subservient woman with incredible homemaking skills. I learned from her.

But it goes deeper than that; my grandmothers, aunts, great grandmothers, friends, and fellow sisters in the church all followed in the footsteps of Eve, holding themselves accountable to God and their husbands, fully dependant and creating beautiful homes while rearing well-behaved, righteous children.

I suppose I should take this opportunity to say that I do not regret my choice of motherhood.

I value my abilities to garden, sew, crochet, embroidery, preserve food, cook, and keep a clean house.

These are all good things. So is this picture of womanhood inherently problematic?

No. The problem lies in the message that THIS WOMAN is all you CAN or SHOULD be.

That someone else, a man or group of men specifically, knows what is best for you and only through him/them can you become the best woman you can become.

This was my culture.

Add to that my marriage to the unstable, narcissistic sociopath I’ve mentioned before, and you have a clear picture of the limitations and restrictions and sorrow that surrounded much of my life.

(Captain Marvel is on her way, wait for it)

One of the key tools a narcissist uses within their relationships is gaslighting.

From Psychology Today:

Gaslighting is a form of persistent manipulation and brainwashing that causes the victim to doubt her or himself, and ultimately lose her or his own sense of perception, identity, and self-worth. The term is derived from the 1944 film Gaslight, in which a husband tries to convince his wife that she’s insane by causing her to question herself and her reality.

There will be a seperate gaslighting post, but sufficeth to say that as “the gaslighter creates a negative narrative about the gaslightee (“There’s something wrong and inadequate about you”)” both my husband and the church as an organization created this narrative for and about me.

Back to Captain Marvel=Spoiler alert!

Captain Marvel is a story of a woman who finds herself with significant gaps in her memory, to the point that she doesn’t really know who she is. She is given significant training and instruction on who she should be and how she should act with a suitable noble cause attached. This indoctrination extends beyond military training as she has a device in her neck that limits her use of power and allows her to be directly brainwashed by an AI all powerful entity (something God-like) called The Supreme Intelligence. It is discovered as the movie progresses that her past has been taken away from her as well as her identity. She has been shattered like her dogtags, reduced to Vers, a small piece of who she was or could become. Her incredible power is muted and the gaslighting spins the lie that it is only through the Divine will of the all powerful Supreme Intelligence that supposedly gave it to her (with an alien blood transfusion) that she has any power whatsoever. This lie extends even further in that she must be taught to control this gifted power through the instruction of a male benefactor, Yon-Rogg. He says more than once that it is his job to help Vers become all that she can be through his instruction and the controlling of her emotions and there-by her power.

Are you seeing the parallels yet? (a prescriptive identity with a noble cause, power that is God’s and not yours, a culture outlining your worth and purpose, lies used to make you feel powerless, emotions being pitched as something bad and wrong).

Writing that summary paragraph makes me want to vomit. My stomach is literally clenching.

And this was true during the movie as well.

I spent much of the movie horrified for Carol Danvers and simultaneously myself.

Good Job Marvel and Disney, you always create this fucking hero’s journey where the protagonist had to struggle through incredible challenges and odds until they eventually prevail.

But truthfully, we see ourselves in this fiction because it is archetypal and resonates deep within us.

And like a true hero, Captain Marvel does discover who she is, unspins the lies, unleashes her own power and its potential, and kicks everyone’s ass that needs to be kicked.

The problem is, we can’t all be Captain Marvel… can we?

A wise man who went to the movie with me, whom I love and who knows my tragic story, said to me afterward as we were talking about my obvious emotional response to the movie and the existence of parallels, “See, your blog and Muay Thai are your superpowers.”

(yes, I’m in martial arts training. I’m sure I’ll write about that at some time in the future)

This should have made me feel good.

But it did not.

Compared to the atomic, otherworldly, titan-like power of Captain Marvel,

these small things felt like nothing.

I’m sorry, or I’m not sorry… I apologize too much….rather, I’m filled with sorrow that this is my take away.

But it is important for me to be honest here.

My experience watching this incredible movie was that of emotional horror.

I was sad for what had been done to Carol Danvers because I understood the scope of that.

I understand the feelings of confusion at having your identity stripped away and not knowing who you really are.

I understand how it feels to only have flashes of yourself somewhere in your heart and brain, but not being able to nail them down or see them clearly. And to have people around you tell you to ignore those things and then outline for you what you are supposed to be.

I understand what it feels like to be gaslighted by a culture, an organization, a God, and a man who was supposed to care for you, to the point that you completely buy the lie.

Even if the lie is about you.

I understand how it feels to be told you have no power. And if you ever did exhibit evidence of having any power, being told that it isn’t really yours, but something given to you by God and thereby only good for doing the things that God told you to.

I understand being told that my desires and emotions were wrong and that I needed to stamp them down and “control” them.

Watching this movie for the first time made me also understand that my story was not as far along as Carol’s.

I didn’t feel powerful.

I didn’t feel strong.

The good news is, I went and saw the movie again the next night.

So here is my addendum:

There are three lines that impacted me the most from both my viewings… (forgive me if they are not exactly accurate). As I heard these three lines again, the negative feelings I experienced after the first showing shifted.

First: At one point in the movie, after much of the lies are revealed and Carol discovers that even the war she’s been fighting is based on an ugly lie, her old friend Maria Rambeau says this to her,

“You are Carol Danvers. You are smart, funny, and a huge pain in the ass.”

Rambeau then expresses how Carol had supported her as a mother and a pilot as well as standing up for those who needed her--as a hero should.

This moment reminds me that when I can’t believe in myself

or doubt my strength, power, and validity because of my Mormon programming

and the gaslighting of my culture and my ex-husband,

there are those around me that believe me and know who I am.

I need to turn to them for their support and clarification.

When my kind, smart companion told me of my superpowers,

I needed to believe him

and take comfort that even if I don’t know, others do.

And they will help me with my truth based on evidence and experience instead of abstract rules and limiting parameters.

And he is right. This blog is my unfettered voice and Muay Thai is helping me create both mental and physical strength. Both allow me to fight for myself.

Second: One of the most powerful moments in the Captain Marvel movie is when Carol is being held by the AI and it tells her, “Without us, you’re only human.”

A montage of all the moments in Carol Danvers original life where she got knocked down in some way, but then got up flashes across the screen.

There is a clear moment of revelation for Captain Marvel.

And Carol Susan Jane Danvers replies, “You are right. I’m only human.”

After which, she breaks free of the not so powerful AI holding her.

This line is where it’s all at for me.

Because the images of Carol through different ages of her life, taking risks, and doing what she wants in spite of the people who tell her she can’t,

then falling, failing.

AND THEN, getting back up and trying again and again until she succeeds creates the message that... it is THIS behaviour that makes us remarkable HUMANS.

I am humbled to be able to tell you that THIS is also WHO I AM.

If I do anything of note, it is that I do not give up. I keep trying and I get up after I fall.

It is in this way that I am heroic.

It is in this way that I have risen from the rubble of my damaging paradigms.

It is in this way that I seek to find the new ways in which I will live my life.

I will continue to keep trying to find myself, and my truth.

I will not fall back into that which was created for me, but instead create a place and identity for myself.

Finally, there is the line that is sure to go down in the history of this movie as its most quotable line. Captain Marvel says,

“I’ve been fighting with one hand behind my back, but what happens when I am finally set free?”

This is both a rhetorical and a warning question.

Because as Carol Danvers removes the control device in her neck and both channels and releases all her power, she defeats those who have held her captive and steps into that place where she can and does realize her true potential.

Sure, she has some moments when she fumbles around a bit and has to feel things out, discovering what she can do as she experiments and fights her way free.

But eventually she FLYS, glowing in all her glory.

And the final message she leaves us with, is in her handling of Yon-Rogg when she, without hesitation shoots him and says, “I don’t have to prove anything to you.”

I agree Carol, I do not have to prove anything to those who held me captive in foolish dogma and lies.

But, I am not flying… yet.

I HAVE broken free of everything that was tying my figurative hands.

And while my wrists are still chafed and I am trying to rid myself of the psychological muscle memory, I believe I will only continue to heal and discover my power and its potential.

I must.

Because I will not stand for the alternative.

-Angela

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