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mightyflamethrower · 9 months

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“Name me a single objective we’ve ever set out to accomplish that we’ve failed on. Name me one, in all of our history. Not one!”

-President Joe Biden, August 16, 2023

Joe Biden in one of his now accustomed angry “get off my grass” moods dared the press to find just one of his policies/objectives that has not worked. Silence followed.

Perhaps it was polite to say nothing, given even the media knows almost every enacted Biden policy has failed.

Here is a summation of what he should instead apologize for.

Biden in late summer 2021 sought a 20th anniversary celebration of 9/11 and the 2001 subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. He wished to be the landmark president that yanked everyone out of Afghanistan after 20 years in country. But the result was the greatest military humiliation of the United States since the flight from Vietnam in 1975.

Consider the ripples of Biden’s disaster. U.S. deterrence was crippled worldwide. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea almost immediately began to bluster or return to their chronic harassment of U.S. and allied ships and planes. We left thousands of allied Afghans to face Taliban retribution, along with some Western contractors.

Biden abandoned a $1 billion embassy, and a $300 million remodeled Bagram airbase strategically located not far from China and Russia, and easily defensible. Perhaps $50 billion in U.S. weaponry and supplies were abandoned and now find their way into the international terrorist mart.

All our pride flags, our multimillion gender studies programs at Kabul University, and our George Floyd murals did not just come to naught, but were replaced by the Taliban’s anti-homosexual campaigns, burkas, and detestation of any trace of American popular culture.

Vladimir Putin sized up the skedaddle. He collated it with Biden’s unhinged quip that he would not get too excited if Putin just staged a “minor” invasion of Ukraine. He remembered Biden’s earlier request to Putin to modulate Russian hacking to exempt a few humanitarian American institutions. Then Russia concluded of our shaky Commander-in-Chief that he either did not care or could do nothing about another Russian invasion.

The result so far is more than 500,000 dead and wounded in the war, a Verdun-stand-off along with fortified lines, the steady depletion of our munitions and weapon stocks, and a new China/Russia/Iran/North Korean axis, with wink and nod assistance from NATO Turkey.

Biden blew up the Abraham accords, nudged Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States over to the dark side of Iran, China, and Russia. He humiliated the U.S. on the eve of the midterms by callously begging the likes of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil that he had damned as unclean at home and cut back its production. In Bidenomics, instead of producing oil, the president begs autocracies to export it to us at high prices while he drains the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for short-term political advantage.

Biden deliberately alienated Israel by openly interfering in its domestic politics. He pursued the crackpot Iran Deal while his special Iranian envoy was removed for disclosing classified information.

No one can explain why Biden ignored the Chinese balloon espionage caper, kept mum about the engineered Covid virus that escaped the Wuhan lab, said not a word about a Chinese biolab discovered in rural California, and had his envoys either bow before Chinese leaders or take their insults in silence—other than he is either cognitively challenged or leveraged by his decade-long grifting partnership with his son Hunter.

Yet another Biden’s legacy will be erasing the southern border and with it, U.S. immigration law. Over seven million aliens simply crossed into the U.S. illegally with Biden’s tacit sanction—without audits, background checks, vaccinations, and COVID testing, much less English fluency, skills, or high-school diplomas.

Biden’s only immigration accomplishment was to render the entire illegal sanctuary city movement a cruel joke. Given the flood, mostly rich urban and vacation home dwellers made it very clear that while they fully support millions swarming into poor Latino communities of southern Texas and Arizona, they do not want any illegal aliens fouling their carefully cultivated nests.

Biden is mum about the 100,000 fentanyl deaths from cartel-imported and Chinese-supplied drugs across his open border. He seems to like the idea that Mexican President Obrador periodically mouths off, ordering his vast expatriate community to vote Democratic and against Trump.

Despite all the pseudo-blue collar dissimulation about Old Joe Biden from Scranton, he has little empathy for the working classes. Indeed, he derides them as chumps and dregs, urges miners to learn coding as the world covets their coal, and studiously avoids getting anywhere near the toxic mess in East Palestine, Ohio, or so far the moonscape on Maui.

Bidenomics is a synonym for printing up to $6 billion dollars at precisely the time post-Covid consumer demand was soaring, while previously dormant supply chains were months behind rebooting production and transportation. Biden is on track to increase the national debt more than any one-term president.

In Biden’s weird logic, if he raised the price of energy, gasoline, and key food staples 20-30 percent since his inauguration without a commensurate rise in wages, and then saw the worst inflation in 40 years occasionally decline from record highs one month to the next, then he “beat inflation.”

But the reason why more than 60 percent of the nation has no confidence in Bidenomics is because it destroyed their household budgets. Gas is nearly twice what it was in January 2021. Interest rates have about tripled. Key staple foods are often twice as costly—meat, vegetables, and fruits especially.

Biden has ended through his weaponized Attorney General Merrick Garland the age-old American commitment to equal justice under the law. The FBI, DOJ, CIA, and IRS are hopelessly politically compromised. Many of their bureaucrats serve as retrieval agents for lost Biden family incriminating laptops, diaries, and guns. In sum, Biden criminalized opposing political views.

Biden has unleashed the administrative state for the first time in history to destroy the Republican primary front runner and his likely opponent. His legacy will be the corruption of U.S. jurisprudence and the obliteration of the American reputation for transparent permanent government that should be always above politics, bribery, and corruption.

If in the future, an on-the-make conservative prosecutor in West Virginia, Utah, or Mississippi wishes to make a national name, then he has ample precedent to indict a Democrat President for receiving bad legal advice, questioning the integrity of an election, or using social media to express doubt that the new non-Election-Day balloting was on the up-and-up, or supposedly overvaluing his real estate.

The Biden family’s decade-long family grifting will likely expose Joe Biden as the first president in U.S. history who fitted precisely the Constitution’s definition of impeachment and removal—given his “high crimes and misdemeanors” appear “bribery”-related. If further evidence shows he altered U.S. foreign policy in accordance with the wishes from his benefactors in Ukraine, China, or Romania, then he committed constitutionally-defined “treason” as well.

Defunding the police, and pandemics of exempted looting, shoplifting, smashing, and grabbing, and carjacking merit no administrative attention. Nor does the ongoing systematic destruction of our blue bicoastal cities, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. All that, along with the disasters in East Palestine or Maui are out of sight, out of mind from a day at the beach at Biden’s mysteriously purchased nearly 6,000 square-foot beachfront mansion.

Biden ran on Barack Obama-like 2004 rhetoric (“Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America).”

And like Obama, he used that ecumenical sophistry to gain office only to divide further the U.S. No sooner than he was elected, we began hearing from the great unifier eerie screaming harangues about “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” dangerous zealots, replete with red-and black Phantom of the Opera backdrops.

What followed the unifying rhetoric was often amnesties and exemptions for violent offenders during the 120 days of rioting, looting, killing, and attacks on police officers in summer 2020. In contrast, his administration lied when it alleged that numerous officers had died at the hands of the January 6 rioters. In addition, the Biden administration mandated long-term incarceration of many who committed no illegal act other than acting like buffoons and “illegally parading.”

The message was exemptions for torching a federal courthouse, a police precinct, or historic church or attempting to break into the White House grounds to get a president and his family—but long prison terms for wearing cow horns, a fur vest, and trespassing peacefully like a lost fool in the Capitol.

Finally, Biden’s most glaring failure was simply being unpresidential. He snaps at reporters, and shouts at importune times. He can no longer read off a big-print teleprompter. Even before a global audience, he cannot kick his lifelong creepy habit of turkey-gobbling on children necks, blowing into their ears and hair of young girls, and squeezing women far too long and far too hard.

His frailty redefined American presidential campaigning as basement seclusion and outsourcing propaganda to the media. And his disabilities only intensified during his presidency. Biden begins his day late and quits early. He has recalibrated the presidency as a 5-hour, 3-day a week job.

If Trump was the great exaggerator, Biden is our foremost liar. Little in his biography can be fully believed. He lies about everything from his train rides to the death of his son to his relationship with Biden-family foreign collaborators, to vaccinations to the economy. Anytime Biden mentions places visited, miles flown, or rails ridden, he is likely lying.

Biden continues with impunity because the media feels that a mentally challenged fabulist is preferable to Donald Trump and so contextualizes or ignores his falsehoods. Never has a U.S. president fallen and stumbled or gotten lost on stage so frequently—or been a single small trip away from incapacity.

So, yes, Biden’s initiatives have succeeded only in the sense of becoming successfully enacted—and therefore nearly destroying the country.

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joannechocolat · 1 year

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On why women’s rage is a superpower

My mother hates my new book. I gave her a proof just a few days ago, and although she’s still only halfway through, she can’t wait to tell me all the ways in which she hates my novel.

“Is this science fiction?” she says. (She detests science fiction.) “Were you ill when you wrote this?” (I was.) And repeatedly, she says: “Why are the women so angry?”

I get it. She’s out of her comfort zone. At 83, with no internet, no interest in pop culture and a deep-rooted hatred of anything close to horror or the supernatural, she wasn’t my target audience. And yet it’s never easy to hear such criticism from a loved one. But in some ways, she isn’t wrong. Broken Light is an angry book. It came from a time of lockdown, when social media was my only window onto the world. It came from a place of trauma, when I was fighting cancer. It came from a place of corrupt hierarchies, self-serving politicians, anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, victim-blamers, and those eager to blame all their woes on minorities. And of course, it arose against the background of the #MeToo campaign and the Sarah Everard murder – a murder that shocked the nation, not least because the murderer turned out to be a serving police officer with a reputation for sexual misconduct - which unleashed a collective howl of protest, as well as an ugly, misogynistic backlash. Even so, my story came as something of a surprise to me: the story of a woman’s rage, and, on reaching the age at which women often feel least valued, her coming into her power.

It surprised me, most of all because I wasn’t an angry person. At least, I didn’t think I was. Those who know me describe me as someone who tends to flee conflict, who generally tries to find common ground, who gets upset when people fight. And yet, writing this story, I found myself saying and feeling certain things on behalf of my heroine, Bernie Moon; things I might not have said for myself, but which felt right and urgent, and true, and strangely liberating.

Anger has a bad press. A woman’s anger, especially. While men are encouraged to express feelings of justified anger, women are often criticized when they try to do the same. Angry women are often portrayed as “harpies,” “banshees,” “Furies.” It suggests that a man’s rage is righteous, but that a woman’s is unnatural, making her into a monster. Male anger is powerful. The God of the Bible is one of wrath. Seldom is he ever portrayed as expressing any other emotion. In the same way, men and boys are often led to believe that expressing emotion is weak - except for anger, which is seen as acceptably masculine.

In comparison, women are often criticized when they show aggression. Angry women are hysterical, shrill, out of control, unreliable, unattractive, unfeminine. A perceived lack of “femininity” makes a woman less valuable, less worthy of respect and of protection. The Press coverage of women victims of violence is a case in point. A victim of violence needs to be attractive, white, gender conforming and virtuous in every way if she is not to be overlooked, or worse, portrayed as somehow having contributed to her misfortune. When trans teenager Brianna Ghey was stabbed, the Press were very quick to state that her murder was not thought to be a hate crime, whilst at the same time obsessing over – and questioning - her gender. When Nicola Bulley disappeared, police felt obliged to divulge details of her struggle with the menopause, as well as her alcohol issues, even though this was privileged information and of no public relevance. When Emma Pattison, the Head of Epsom College, was murdered alongside her daughter, the Press immediately assumed that her husband George must have felt “overshadowed” and “driven to distraction” by his wife’s prestigious job. In all three cases, the victim falls under the hostile scrutiny of the Press, while the perpetrator is given an excuse. In all three cases, the victim – one trans, one hormonal, one better-paid than her husband - is effectively portrayed as “unnatural”. Subtext: Unnatural women do not deserve the protection of the patriarchy. Unnatural women come to bad ends.

Once you start to acknowledge it, rage grows at a surprising rate. Over the past three years, I have found myself growing increasingly angry. Angry at the injustices committed by our Government; t the greed of corporations; angry at the prejudice extended to those who are different.

Connecting with others on social media has made me more aware of the lives and experiences of those from different backgrounds to mine, and with different levels of privilege. For a long time I’d been resistant to calling myself a feminist. Feminists are angry, I thought. What right have you to be angry?

Growing older, I realize that this was my mother speaking. A woman of a certain generation, who although she was aware of the challenges of living in a patriarchy, still had a level of privilege that many women do not share. White, professional, cishet women can sometimes have the luxury of choosing not to be angry. White, professional, cishet women can sometimes have the illusion of equality. But feminism isn’t only for just one kind of woman. A feminist must look beyond the limits of their own experience. And that’s where the anger really starts: anger at injustice; anger at corruption and lies. Most of all, anger at the prejudice against certain people for just being themselves; for being transgender, or Black, or old, or simply not conforming to what a white, patriarchal society expects and values. And once you start seeing injustice, you start to see it everywhere. It’s like an eye, which, once opened, cannot unsee inequality.

My anger flourished in lockdown. A time of growing divisions. Masks are invaluable in a pandemic, and yet they inhibit connection. They serve as a kind of reminder of who can speak, and who is to be silenced. While Boris Johnson was urging the public to trust the police, a vigil for Sarah Everard was broken up, with violence, by officers citing lockdown laws. While elderly people were dying alone; while I drove for four hours just to go for a half-hour walk in the park with my son; while I sat alone in my chemo chair, politicians were partying. Billionaires were enriching themselves. Behind the mask, the eye opened wide. I caught myself making faces behind my disguise at strangers. There was something weirdly liberating about this; as if, behind the piece of cloth, I could express myself at last. Not unlike writing a book, in fact. On screen, the eye opened wider. Bernie Moon, my heroine, was unlike like me in many ways, and yet anger connected us. The anger that comes from helplessness; from seeing others mistreated. Anger at a society that propagates inequality. And the anger that comes from hormones – those mood-altering chemicals that everyone produces, and yet which allegedly make women erratic; unreliable; hormonal.

In his novel, Carrie, Stephen King tells the story of a girl, whose telekinetic powers are unleashed by her teenage hormones. Carrie is unpopular, bullied, isolated. Her rage finds an outlet in her power. Driven to breaking-point by the bullies, she becomes a monster. Of course she does: after all, the author of this tale is a man, writing from the perspective of a couple of thousand years’ worth of patriarchal inheritance. In literature, a woman’s anger is unnatural; monstrous. It leads to terrible, unnatural things: makes murderers and infanticides of Clytemnestra and Medea; monsters of Medusa and Scylla. Unnatural, monstrous women are always punished in literature, even while acknowledging that they are often the victims of men. And unnatural women are often seen as physically repulsive – a reminder that, to be valued and loved, women must be young, and pure, and conform to the standards of beauty set out by their society. In literature, just as in life, those women who do not conform tend to be less valued, less seen, and when they do appear, do so as wicked witches, evil stepmothers, ugly crones and hideous travesties of womanhood.

But what would happen if a woman took control of the narrative? In recent years, we have observed a number of retellings of Greek myths from the point of view of the monster. Stone Blind, by Nathalie Haynes; Medusa, by Jessie Burton; Circe, by Madeline Miller. In both cases, the monstrous woman is seen from a different perspective; her rage absorbed and justified; her narrative reclaimed from a patriarchy that seeks to tame and subdue a woman’s rage, even at the cost of her life.

My new novel, Broken Light, comes from the same process of reclamation. It owes a debt to Carrie, but I have avoided the explicitly paranormal theme of the original, as well as the girl-on-girl bullying and the psychopathic mother. In my version, Carrie lives; marries her childhood sweetheart; internalizes all her rage and suffocates her power. Until the menopause – a topic which until recently has been largely misunderstood and taboo – at which point her power returns, and with it, a new kind of freedom. Freedom from the male gaze; from the responsibilities of motherhood; from the largely impossible expectations of society. Unlike puberty, menopause is triggered by a lack of certain hormones; and yet the symptoms can be just as dramatic and isolating. Loss of libido, exhaustion, depression, emotional outbursts as well as unpredictable and alarming hot flashes – my version of Carrie’s pyrokinesis. Whether my heroine’s powers stem from any kind of paranormal source is very much up to the reader to decide – after all, paranormal is only a step away from unnatural. And what counts as unnatural is in the eye of the reader – an eye that has been opened, I hope, to a series of new possibilities.

One is that rage is natural. Living in a patriarchy, women have a right to their rage. In fact, it seems more unnatural to me when women are not angry, given how much misogyny remains in our society. And growing old is natural. Being hormonal is natural. Differences are natural; so are disabilities. All women matter; whatever their age, or colour, or sexual orientation, or marital or reproductive status. The value of a woman’s life should not be defined by her popularity, or her age, or her looks, or her kids, or her value to the patriarchy. And no-one else gets to decide what a woman ought to be. A woman is not what, but who - a person, not an object; an active participant in her world. Women have lived too long behind the mask. They deserve their own stories. Stories in which they are allowed the full range of human possibility. So, to answer my mother’s question: Why are the women so angry?

Because it’s a superpower.

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choices-binglebonkus · 1 year

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Top Ten Annoying Children in Choices

There are many children encountered throughout the Choices universe, some more palatable than others. Though they’re all arguably some degree of annoying, this list ranks the top ten of the most annoying children. At least, in my opinion, anyway. So sit back, relax, and read as a 21 year-old grad school student with real life responsibilities tears fictional children to shreds.

10. The Heir.

The Heir is unique in that she’s the only directly customizable child on this list with six different sprites you can choose for her regardless of your own appearance. Throughout TRH and TRF, I can truthfully say I didn’t find anything endearing about her. Like, at all. It certainly didn’t help that PB wrote her like they write animals. But her personality did get slightly better as she aged as the books went on. The same cannot be said about her appearance, however. In fact, I’d say her appearance got worse as the books went on. The Heir as a baby looks perfectly fine. The Heir as a toddler looks like she’d infect me with COVID-19 by spitting a half-chewed chicken nugget into my coffee. And The Heir as a four year-old looks like she’d beat me unconscious with a cane and call me “whippersnapper”.

9. Daughter (MOTY).

Our daughter in MOTY is actually the only child on this list with a genuinely good design. She looks genuinely cute, and that is high praise from someone who doesn’t think kids are cute. I was also sympathetic to her plight as she didn’t fit in well at school and found herself perpetually bullied. However, PB wrote her in such an obnoxious way that I just couldn’t help but be annoyed by her. She’s a gifted and incredibly smart child, but PB could’ve written her so, so much better. To me, she just came across as a slightly less obnoxious Brainy Smurf because of how badly her dialogue and writing were done.

8. Taari.

Taari was a Nothing Character, plain and simple. He didn’t add anything to Endless Summer, and he didn’t appear much at all, which is why he’s not very high on the list. But my god. This kid had practically no sense of self-preservation and Seraxa constantly had to bail his ass out of danger and scold him for getting himself into it in the first place. Kinda like another kid who’s much, much higher on the list, but more on that later.

7. Camellia.

Camellia didn’t appear much at all, but when she did, GOD was she annoying. She mostly appeared in RoE where she and Jiro were constant obstacles during Jess’s job as a tour guide, though she was much less of a brat than Jiro was.

6. Bartie.

You knew going into this list that Bartie would appear here. You knew. Let me summarize it. Annoying family, hideous design as a baby, whiny as fuck, named after Barthelemy. Though interestingly enough, I’d say he and Bianca are the least detestable of the Walker family, which really says a lot.

5. Lula Jacobs.

Kids have no place in horror stories unless they’re integral to the plot, as is the case with ILITW and THoBM. Lula serves absolutely no purpose in Bloodbound and isn’t even remotely endearing. In addition to her character adding nothing of substance to the story, our character is forced to care for her just because. Also? She’s fucking creepy, man.

4. Jiro.

We’re reaching the really annoying ones now. Jiro, like Camellia, mainly appears in RoE as an obstacle during Jess’s job as a tour guide. Unlike Camellia, though, he is almost always the one who causes trouble. He whines, he tries to throw spitballs, he splashes Camellia on the boat ride, and is generally a nuisance during any of his appearances.

3. Augustus Blackwood.

Augustus “August” Blackwood is Vanessa Blackwood’s insufferable, classist little shit of a son. He bullies the main character’s daughter and doesn’t have a pleasant bone in his body. As someone who was bullied myself, I wanted nothing more than for Luz Mendez to punt this little asshole into the sun. He would have been number #1 on this list if he’d appeared more and had a bigger role because I know my annoyance would’ve gone up if he had.

2. Isaac & Lyra Achilles.

Yes. These are two kids. However, due to them being twins, ALWAYS appearing together, and having the exact same personalities, I’m ranking them as one entity. Anyway, these kids are spoiled rotten, uncouth, uncontrollable, arrogant, and remorseless. They are ungrateful little leeches and I was so happy to get rid of them. I cannot stand spoiled children. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them.

1. May.

But Binglebonkus, why is May your number one over these spoiled, entitled little brats? Well, hypothetical person, I’m so glad you asked. While May’s personality is at least pleasant, she has ZERO self-preservation and the most insane plot armor out of anyone in Choices when there’s no reason for her to even have any in the first place. She regularly gets herself into grave danger, forcing others to risk their lives to help her. Feather lost his status as an Elder saving her life, so you’d think she’d be at least a little more careful, right?

Apparently not. We have to save her several times throughout the book and even spend a sizable chunk of one chapter during a battle trying to chase after her and get her to safety. But that’s not even the end of it. Remember how I said children have no place in horror stories unless they’re integral to the plot? May adds nothing to the story like Lula Jacobs, and also like Lula, our character is forced to care for her WAAAAAY more than they really should. The only things that endear her to the player are that she’s super young and presumably orphaned.

With all that being said, PB constantly pushes May-centric diamond scenes on us. Gather plants with May. Buy May this plushie. Tell May a story. Build flower beds with May. PB seems to have wanted May to be like Clementine from The Walking Dead and have us care for her and want to protect her, so they tried to achieve that by pushing diamond scenes with her.

Unlike Clementine, though, May is an incredible liability. Yes, she apparently knows about plants and gardening, but she constantly endangers herself and others, making her unquestionably more of a liability than an asset.

To recap: while her personality is pleasant, I loathe May because she adds nothing to the story whilst being an unrealistic character in that she constantly endangers herself and others while somehow surviving every encounter no matter how severe (like being the only person the Queen didn’t eat, which I call bullshit on) and receives nothing more than a metaphorical slap on the wrist from anyone who has to haul her ass out of trouble. And of course, everyone still unquestionably adores her even after she nearly gets them killed trying to save her for the umpteenth time.

Basically, May is a veritable waste of manpower and resources and could have been a good character, but she was a garbage one instead.

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fuckitwebhaal · 8 months

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🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 (Also any advice for someone who's trying to start writing, for themselves primarily but still like. looking at my text and man :/ how do I start getting better? and yea it's a durge fanfic lmao)

“Well… you’re one of Lathander’s soldiers, right? That’s why you were in there. Lord of the Dawn and all. I know! I’ll call you ‘sunshine’. That’s much easier to remember.” Karlach beamed, evidently proud of her work. Bedivere couldn’t help but smile back. “So, sunshine. It’s a bit of a long story and probably one best told over dinner. You’re welcome to come back with us."

Ah! I've never been really asked something like that before, but I'm happy to give you some of my best advice. I'm a little scatterbrained with COVID atm, so if you need any clarification or have follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out.

Writing is a skill that's best honed through practice! And, truly, the best practice is to read. Start by reading authors whose work you admire. Why do you admire them? Is it the way they structure sentences, or tie together the plot, or handle character interactions? Dig into that! How do they do that? Don't just 'read', take notes. I am constantly highlighting and writing in the margins of books I love, especially when I see an excellent use of an author 'showing' and not 'telling' emotion; I struggle with that a lot!

And read and take notes on authors you wouldn't normally pick! Expanding your horizons is the best way to learn new things about yourself and new tools to pack your author's toolkit. I detest sci-fi, personally, but I do try to make an effort to read something in the genre now and then (maybe I'll like it this time! Or, maybe I'll just learn something new about how an author can build worlds)!

In a more technical sense, the best way to strengthen your writing is editing. This website has a lot of useful and practical PDFs explaining how to effectively proofread your work and strengthen your writing. This PDF of writing exercises may seem juvenile, but I refer back to it because it truly is the basics that can set you up for success. In my opinion and experience, proper grammar and sentence structure are the basic building blocks to get your writing to really take off.

"But how do I make it sound eloquent? And pretty? How do I make it sound the way it appears in my mind?" Practice! Your first draft is probably gonna suck. But every draft ever will get better and better! For my fanfics, I usually go through about three or four drafts before I let my beta readers take a look at it. And after they look I draft again! So usually five drafts before anything goes up on Ao3. (For Tumblr, I usually just throw up my second pass after my basic grammar has been fixed).

The more you practice, the more you will find yourself growing into your own voice, and that's something that can't be easily replicated. The way everyone tells a story is unique! And, personally, I would love if you would send me your durge fic once you've posted it! I would even be happy to take a look at it if you'd like some fresh eyes after a few rounds in the drafts--I'm full of free time, with COVID and all.

Send me a 🌹 and i'll post a line from my current wip!

#askbox #fiwb writes #bg3 fic #advice?

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blackswaneuroparedux · 1 year

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Anonymous asked: Now that Nicola Sturgeon has resigned as First Minister what are your thoughts on the prospects for Scottish Independence?

Not entirely unlike the passing of another Queen in Scotland, the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon changes everything, but it also changes nothing. Nicola Sturgeon may have exited the stage, but the threat of Scottish independence has not.

Like many people, I was taken by surprise by her shock resignation. But downing a dram of a 35 year old Dalmore single malt whisky, that should be drunk on special ocassions, really helped me wash down my disbelief and my joy. Whilst I didn’t personally disike her, I found her politics personally divisive and even detestable towards the end of her reign.

But whatever the triumphalism in London over the First Minister’s resignation, the idea that the secession crisis has ended is naive as it is short sighted. For the time being, the grim truth is that neither Scottish nationalism nor British unionism is strong enough to triumph - not because of some cult personality problem as Sturgeon cultivated or the debacle and fall out over the Gender Reform Bill, but because of deep, structural weaknesses on both sides.

Today, both secessionism and unionism feed off the other’s incoherence. Sturgeon’s press conference in Edinburgh compellingly proved this: she described her decision in ways that made it sound as if she were some kind of martyr. Under her leadership, she said, the cause of Scottish nationalism had suffered because it had become caught up in the irrational partisanship of her opponents, who had grown to dislike her so much that they could no longer judge Scottish independence on its own merits. She was, she intimated, sacrificing herself in the hope that a new leader would be able to bring more people into the tent of Scottish nationalism.

I think she was re-writing history to cloak the cause of Scottish nationalism as well as varnish over her political humiliation over the fall out of the badly received gender form bill. But nevertheless Unionists should not be complacent about this prospect - she may actually be correct - but the structural problem for Scottish nationalism is not the prejudice of its opponents, but the failings of its own offer.

Although the First Minister’s iron grip over her party has been rusting for some time, there is no question that the SNP has lost a considerable asset. Like Margaret Thatcher, she remained highly popular even whilst she was widely hated. The times were kind to her too: the sense of unease spread by withdrawal from the EU and the Covid pandemic favoured her matriarchal style.

This made for a contrast with the leadership of Boris Johnson, but only to a point. English liberals, amongst some of whom she became a strangely romantic figure after 2016, rarely saw that her politics were not those of a technocratic British Merkel. Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalism was febrile, and it carried all other concerns before it. Both Brexit and the pandemic were ruthlessly exploited to breathe life into the separatist ideal, at times when rudimentary questions about the future of basic services were far more pressing.

The delicate balancing of technocracy and nationalism is not unusual in the politics of modern Western democracies - it may, in fact, be the norm. Sturgeon mastered it. Unfortunately, it was a dead end. The rip-tide of pro-indy sentiment never came. The idea of a separate Scottish state is no more popular today than the day she became First Minister. Against the backdrop of Brexit, Covid, Partygate and Trussonomics, this is an astonishing political failure.

The Scottish people - even those who still call “Yes” - never really took the plan to heart. Polling by the think tank Our Scottish Future last year found that majorities of pro-independence voters supported the continuation of common UK healthcare, welfare and security systems, as well as common UK pensions, a common UK currency and even a common UK passport. The idea of the United Kingdom as the ultimate insurance policy against the world’s ills survived - in surprisingly rude health.

Meanwhile there was paralysis, as constitutional wrangling edged the real business of government off the political agenda. By the end of 2022, NHS Scotland leaders were openly discussing the need to introduce charges for healthcare. A range of experts now agreed that the Scottish education system (the envy of the world not long ago) has foundered - although the SNP’s decision to withdraw from most internationally-recognised performance measures makes it hard to specify the extent of this decline. Neither was there any hope of tackling the unintended consequences of devolution, like the balkanised state of NHS drug procurement and the rising costs associated with it, despite the British government’s growing enthusiasm for sensible cooperation and the new committees designed to facilitate it.

A combination of circumstances and Nicola Sturgeon’s political sagacity kept these problems in the shade. Her successor will struggle to do so. There was no question, watching the First Minister’s resignation conference, that here was a politician of formidable talents. I didn’t like her politics but I will give her her due as a skilful communicator and a street savvy politician.

Ultimately though her political skills let her down with her strategic miscalculation to go into government with the Greens. I’m surprised this has been little commented in most of the press media out there.

Historians will likely regard Nicola Sturgeon’s alliance with the Scottish Green Party as a fatal mistake for the nationalist cause. Patrick Harvie, the Green co-leader, insisted on gender reform being part of the coalition agreement back in 2021. It is and remains the Greens’ ‘red line’. The first minister accepted self-ID in prisons because of her adherence to the Stonewall dogma that ‘transwomen are women’. No buts, no qualifications. As her Green Party coalition partners put it, denying that transwomen are women is the ‘definition of transphobia’. So when the Scottish Prison Service was instructed to follow this dogma it started to house offenders according to the ‘social identity’ they presented.

Many of her supporters tried to downplay the role of her gender policies. Yet, in her final few months, self-ID became the defining policy of her administration.

She used up much of her political capital forcing the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill through the Scottish parliament before Christmas, after facing down the biggest parliamentary rebellion the SNP has experienced since it entered government 15 years ago. The legislation, which would allow children as young as 16 to change their legal sex, on demand, without any medical intervention, has been hugely unpopular in Scotland and remains opposed by a margin of more than two to one.

Many in the SNP would be pretty relaxed if the coalition with the Greens collapsed. The Greens are opposed to economic growth in principle and want to close down the oil and gas industry in the North Sea. Theirs is not a worldview shared by most members of the Scottish National Party. The whole point of independence is supposed to be to liberate the Scottish economy from the ‘dead hand’ of Westminster rule.

Cynics might say that the SNP has been rather successful in promoting the anti-growth agenda, since the Scottish economy has been underperforming the rest of the UK. But this is by accident rather than ideological design. The SNP leadership wants more growth not less to meet Scotland’s enduring social problems, like poverty and homelessness, and to shore up the collapsing NHS.

As for oil and gas, many nationalists, including at least two of the current leadership contenders, believe it is senseless to try to halt oil and gas production in the middle of an energy crisis when many Scots can’t heat their homes. The UK used to be self-sufficient in gas, as recently as 2003. Now it has to import gas from abroad at great cost to the environment and household energy bills. Anyway, the SNP’s economic prospectus had always regarded oil revenues as essential to balancing the books in an independent Scotland.

Nicola Sturgeon never sounded entirely convincing when, under pressure from the Greens, she opposed the development of new oil and gas fields like Cambo and Rosebank. She seemed to be going through the motions. The first minister knew anyway that the decisions on production licensing had effectively been made by the UK government. Similarly, she could curry favour with environmentalists by opposing nuclear power in Scotland because any decisions on building new reactors would be taken by the UK prime minister.

But her apparent willingness to collapse an oil and gas industry that supports more than 100,000 well-paid jobs was regarded as reckless by many nationalists, not least in the north-east of Scotland.

Nonetheless despite Sturgeon’s departure, the ‘Scottish Question’ - which is also the ‘British Question’ - will not go away. Its origins are embedded in our political system, in fact more than one system. It arises in part from the incestuous nature of Scottish politics, from the stranglehold that a small cadre of SNP leaders has been able to extend over civil society, business and the public sector. This phenomenon seems to have played no small part in les scandales curieux that accompany Sturgeon’s resignation. There is no reason to assume that ordinary partisan politics is about to materialise in its wake, however.

Brexit has made Scottish independence a far more complicated prospect than it was before. It is now possible that we will look back on the referendum in 2014 as the moment Scottish independence made the most sense.

Fair or not, Brexit means that Scotland cannot dilute the dominating reality of England simply by leaving the union and joining the rump UK in a wider EU. If anything, Brexit has made England’s hulking presence next to Scotland even more pronounced, while demanding answers from the SNP that it does not seem ready or able to provide.

What happens at the border with England? Will Scotland introduce the euro? Will Holyrood accept common European debts? Will it rejoin the Common Fisheries Policy? For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.

For unionists, however, Brexit might be an unexpected weapon in their constitutional arsenal, but it is one whose very existence is a reminder of the union’s inherent Englishness. Today, it is impossible to escape the reality that the UK has ceased to function in any meaningful sense as a unified British state; it now operates as an incoherent and imbalanced union of separate entities whose English character has not been softened by devolution, but incalculably sharpened. The fact is, the more Holyrood dominates Scotland’s national life, the more English the actual national parliament in Westminster becomes.

This is a hole in the national barrel, draining the legitimacy of parliament and in time the union itself. The irony, then, is that just as Brexit acts as both an irritant and a salve to the threat of Scottish independence, devolution itself is a prime source of the union’s instability, the unbridgeable fault line in the body politic which no-one in Westminster is prepared to confront.

Watching Sturgeon’s shock resignation, I was reminded of the late Tom Nairn, the great academic pin-up of Scottish nationalism whose book The Break-up of Britain argued that the British state was destined to collapse like the Hapsburg, Tsarist or Prussian regimes of the 19th and early 20th centuries. “It is a basically indefensible and unadaptable relic, not a modern state,” wrote Nairn. “The only useful kind of speculation has assumed a geriatric odour: a motorised wheelchair and a decent funeral seem to have become the actual horizons of the Eighties.” Nairn’s book was published in 1977 and yet the geriatric old relic endures, still supported by half of Scottish voters, despite Brexit and the political crises in Westminster that have followed.

Yet Nairn cannot be dismissed as a false prophet. As a political force, Scottish Nationalism has been transformed since 1977. The SNP is now the dominant force in Scottish politics, with independence supported by almost half the population and most of the young. As a result, Britain is easily the most fragile power in western Europe, or indeed the wider Western alliance. Almost no other country - apart from Canada or Spain - is as close to breaking apart.

Nairn was also right to argue in the 2002 edition of his book, when devolution was being hailed as a great reform which would permanently obstruct the demand for independence, that the British state remained structurally unstable. “A new tide seeking real independence is forming itself beneath the facade of Blairism,” he wrote. “It will rise into the spaces left by New Labour’s collapse, and by the increasing misfortunes of the old Union state.” Thirteen years later, the SNP expelled Labour from Scotland, winning every seat but three.

Nairn, in my view, was right to see long-term structural challenges to the British state, but wrong to believe that this made it uniquely outdated, or somehow destined to collapse. The fact that after eight years as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon has resigned, still unable to answer how Scottish independence will be enacted, is testament to the inherent challenges of secession, not just continuity.

The truth is both sides of the British Unionism and Scottish secessionism divide are making it up as they go along. None of us have been here, everything is new, and nothing is destined. Unionism has yet to offer coherent answers to the problems posed by devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but not England; Brexiteers have yet to offer coherent answers to the problem of Northern Ireland and its border with the Republic; and Scottish nationalists have yet to offer coherent answers to the problem of seceding from Britain after Britain has seceded from Europe. Nicola Sturgeon departs as First Minister of Scotland having failed to find them. But her opponents should not crow, for they have not succeeded in this task either.

The rise and (temporary) fall of Scottish nationalism has been a failure of the British state - and much of the British establishment - to break free of its bizarre obsession with its own mortality and to properly confront the challenge of reconciling devolved with central government and efficient administration with political liberty. This must be done without recourse to any of the lazy bywords - take your pick of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’, ‘devo-max’, ‘federalism’ independence itself - that have promised so much and delivered nothing.

Nicola Sturgeon’s political demise will have inflicted a grave wound on the United Kingdom if it causes the British establishment within Whitehall and Parliament to forget, yet again, about the Union. In this respect, it may turn out to be her parting gift to the cause to which she has devoted her entire adult life.

I believe that it was the pro-Unionist Prof. Jim Gallagher - the UK Government’s most senior official advising on devolution and the constitution - who was supposed to have said during the 2014 referendum, “the problem is, the nationalists have all the music, while the unionists seem only to be able to communicate in dry facts and figures.” Nicola Sturgeon went out with an aria - one that brought tears of sorrow from her supporters and tears of joy from the rest of us - but the music will play on.

Thanks for your question.

#ask #question #nicola sturgeon #scottish independence #britain #scotland #scottish #referendum #sececcion #union #westminster #first minister #holyrood #parliament #politics #politician #devolution #ideology #SNP

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historyhermann · 1 year

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Cleopatra in Space Review

The mythology and history of Cleopatra, pharaoh of Egypt, has often been a topic in popular culture, from Hollywood films, webcomics like Everywhere and Nowhere, and mature animated series such as Clone High. This year, a new show, titled Cleopatra in Space, tapped into those myths and stories and began streaming on NBCUniversal’s new streaming service, Peacock.

Reprinted from Pop Culture Maniacs, my History Hermann WordPress blog on Jan. 5, and Wayback Machine. This was the second article I wrote for Pop Culture Maniacs. This post was originally published on December 22, 2020.

The animated series is based on a graphic novel series of the same name by Mike Maihack, with Doug Langdale and Julia “Fitzy” Fitzmaurice as showrunners. As a fan of various animated series, especially those with sci-fi elements, this series drew me in, even though it’s aimed toward younger kids, rather than young adults or mature adults over age 18. Egyptian themes and mythology are interwoven throughout the show’s imagery and music, composed by Jay Vincent and Ryan Lofty.

The series begins with the premise that brown-skinned Cleopatra “Cleo,” voiced by Lilimar Hernandez, a rambunctious teenage princess in Ancient Egypt, touches a tablet, which sends her 30,000 years into the future. She enters the Nile Galaxy, where she is considered the “savior” to defend the galaxy from the evil clutches of Octavian (voiced by Jonathan Kite) and attends an intergalactic high school on a planet, Mayet, governed by a council of talking cats. Lilimar also sings the theme song, “Written in the Stars,” which opens every episode.

The show’s first season, which is 13 episodes long, begins Cleo’s adventures with her friends Brian (voiced by Jorge Diaz) and Akila (voiced by Katie Crown), and her mentor, Khensu. Cleo is shown to be sometimes brash, dislikes authority, and likes to do her own thing. However, she also respects Khensu (voiced by Sendhil Ramamurthy) and supports her friends, apologizing if she made a mistake or overstepped. Unlike other shows where the protagonist wants to talk rather than fight, she fights the robotic soldiers of Octavian, destroying them repeatedly, using futuristic weapons like laser guns and plasma staffs. At the same time, she is a relatable character, is resourceful, and can go into action as needed, not even needing to plan. She, Brian, and Akila form a team, which go on wild adventures, whether on Mayet or in the Nile Galaxy, fighting space scavengers, space butterflies, robotic dragons, or angry ex-cons who work at a space hotel. While there are serious moments, the show is filled with comedic moments. Like other animations, teamwork and friendship are emphasized.

Cleopatra in Space has compelling characters and stories, and various sci-fi themes, like time travel. Apart from Maihack confirming Cleo as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the graphic novels, which means that she would have the same characteristics in the animated series, Brian is shown to have social anxiety and Akila as a busybody who enjoys school. Specifically, Akila, unlike Cleo, who detests school, likes to study in libraries and is very gregarious. Cleo is further shown to have an academic rival, who is unique to the animated series, named Callie (voiced by Kari Wahlgren) and Zaid (voiced by Xolo Maridueña), a so-called “bad boy” who Cleo has a crush on. Additionally, the episode “Quarantine” has a lot of parallels to the current COVID-19 crisis, as Cleo ends up infecting the whole school campus with a virus from another planet after she ignores Khensu’s warning to quarantine. However, licensing issues have prevented it from being added to Peacock.

Currently, half of the show’s second season, six episodes, are listed on Peacock for streaming. This season begins with Cleo getting her own animal companion named Mihos, like similar companions in other animated series: Kero in Cardcaptor Sakura, Amaru in LoliRock, Luna in Sailor Moon, and Nut in Magical Girl Friendship Squad. The mystery of Octavian deepens as Cleo and her team tries to search for the UTA Tablet, while Zaid is expelled by the council. Like season one, there are many sci-fi and fantasy vibes, including simulated realities and futuristic technology. The importance of self-worth, accepting who you really are, and controlling your ego, are major points of these episodes, including when Brian employs an A.I. named Cyrano (voiced by Greg Cipes) to help him become more popular. Furthermore, at times Cleo begins to distance herself from her friends, while at others she plays matchmaker between Brian and Akila, whose romance expands during these episodes, and tries to establish herself as the team leader. In one episode, “School Break,” the show’s first confirmed LGBTQ characters are introduced: Theoda (voiced by Cissy Jones) and Pothina (voiced by Kari Wahlgren), the mothers of Akila.

If the show is renewed for a third season, after the second half of season 2 is added to Peacock, hopefully, the show improves moving forward. For one, the show could have more LGBTQ characters other than Theoda and Pothina. While Cleo and her friend Akila, who are roommates, do kiss each other in the episode “Do-Over,” it is clearly shown to be a “friendship kiss,” rather than a romantic one. Any same-sex pairings, either of Brian and Zaid, Akila and Cleo, or Cleo and Callie, some of which are favored by those in the small fandom for the show, are unlikely in the upcoming season, due to the emphasis on Brian and Akila as a would-be couple, and Zaid and Cleo are shown to have feelings for one another. The show could further benefit from re-casting the voices of brown-skinned characters, like Lakshmi and Yosira, so they are voiced by people of color rather than White actors like Kari Wahlgren.

If Cleopatra in Space is a success, it may result in more animated shows from DreamWorks are added to Peacock in the future, instead of on Netflix, like most animated shows from the company. However, due to the lack of promotion by DreamWorks and Peacock of the show on Twitter, and in general, there is a possibility that the show will be canceled after the second half of season two is added to Peacock. In the end, the show is fun, exciting, and can be enjoyed by everyone, worth watching in its entirety.

Cleopatra in Space is available on Peacock for streaming

#cleopatra in space #dreamworks #lilimar hernandez #lilimar #egypt #mike maihack #jonathan kite #magical girls #quarantine #covid 19 #adhd #lesbians #lgbtq #peacock #hulu #greg cipes #cats

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dreamywriter143 · 1 year

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Sorry the updates and requests are taking so long, I’ve gotten the worst cold and I cannot seem to focus due to this severe headache!!😭😭😭 (I wish it was covid, so I could have taken days off work😫)

But please look forward to the following works I have planned. It'll take a while but I hope to start posting soon!

Karyu + Badass (Will be uploaded around the same time) *Both are Requests*

Lo'ak Imagine *Original idea*

My Dearly Detested Part Two *Original idea*

Consequences OR Unfeigned *Original idea*

Jealousy *Scenario Request*

#avatar #avatar x reader #avatar x y/n #avatar the way of water #avatar twow #avatar fanfiction #avatar fic #avatar imagine

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spinoff-antithesis · 1 year

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[@distinguished-turtle-enjoyer ]

i actually have not stopped thinkin bout your bb!edit like,,,, its so good and scratches my brain right

how long have you been doin edits for? do have any tips for someone, who hypothetically, wants to start doin edits too? what programs do you use? how did you do the cool animated bits?

im so sorry for all the qustions 😭😭 i just think youre very talented and inspirational and i hope you have a good day ^_^

hi firstly oh my gosh you're literally so sweet i am gently shaking you i love you so much /p. secondly, i apologize for the long answer! (it's all under the cut. this got away from me. i'm so sorry apparently i have a lot to say.) (also you're so good about the questions i would constantly be asking one of my professors questions during class to the point where she said i didn't have to go "i have a question" every time i approached her)

i've been editing since 2016! around march/april, i think? loved it so much i went into film & video production in college as a major so i could do editing for a living. (i have done more motion graphics for my classmates than i have done edits outside of class assignments, BUT!)

the program i use is after effects - i started learning it when covid first hit the united states because i had nothing better to do with my time (other than music theory but i failed that bc my professor focused more on the history aspects than the actual theory soooo) and my ipad kept giving me the "no more storage" whenever i tried to use videostar lmao. (vs has, apparently, gotten a LOT of good updates, so if you're looking to start editing and have an ios system, i'd look into it! only downside is you have to pay for some of the cool stuff).

also the program i use for masking (i think i explain this later dwdw) is superimpose. i've been using it since 2014 and it's SO nice bc i can use my fingers to erase backgrounds & stuff instead of hoping i can get it to work correctly in ae or photoshop (photoshop my DETESTED i'll use it but i'll complain the entire time).

for people who want to start editing: tutorials on how your program works and how to do specific transitions are gonna be your best friend when you're first figuring things out! i forced a friend to literally walk me through how after effects worked when i was first figuring it out, and when i had swapped to videostar back in 2017/2018(?) i had watched a Lot of tutorials. that and played around a lot and figured things out on my own - which is also always a good way to start!! it's also totally valid to look at other people's edits for inspiration - most editors don't really care, as long as you don't flat-out remake their edit (some people don't like that!). i have a style insp folder on instagram where i save edits that i like so if i need transition ideas or i'm doing a different style, i can look there for inspiration. at the end of the day, as long as you're having fun with it that's all that matters!

also, starting simple is always okay!! my edits for a year were just me slapping gifs & video segments together on a timeline in cute cut pro bc imovie didn't load them lol & it'd crash every time i breathed. ++ it never hurts to ask people for feedback/constructive(!!!) criticism/etc! (also not to sound like everyone else but practice? good. it's so good. if i showed my 14/15y/o self some of the edits i can make now they would've passed out on the spot bc i was still trying to figure out transitions back then. programs can also sometimes make a difference in edits, but usually it's not super noticeable until you start getting to the Complicated Shit.)

a lot of popular programs i've seen are ones like video star (ios only), alight motion (android only), after effects (i recommend 🏴‍☠️ing it tbh, i only use it legally bc i had to use adobe programs for school), capcut, and i think some people still use sony vegas pro & maybe cute cut pro (i've heard it may have actually gotten better since i last used it in 2018)? i have no idea. programs also depend on whatever device you're using to edit on! since i've been using my laptop, i'm able to use after effects (it's computer-only), but when i used my phone/ipad to edit i used ccp & vs.

for the animation - it's a lot of cutting up the image and masking! more complex animations, like the one i had of leo walking down that red 'hallway' have several different layers that have been masked. (i removed the background & filled in the spot where leo originally was in two different apps - superimpose (taking leo out) & photoshop (filling in the bg)) in after effects, the way i've done this was mask out the specific thing i wanted to move (like an eye) and then put that mask on what i've called a "base" (not animated), and then stick a solid behind the base to match the color of the object. (some of my layers are not named appropriately; base 2 is the left arm & the four "SIX_[...]" layers are the mask/bandana tails)

an example of this would be for any of the eye blink animations i did! this (above) is the same shot, with and without the eye - since it's masked out and i have the background solid behind it, it doesn't look too unnatural/have a black outline/mass where his eye should be.

what it looks like without the solid layer behind it ^ (the red lines are from the null layers - ignore that)

this is what my timeline looks like if it's a more simplistic animation - the only five things being animated here are leo & raph's eyes. (there's only this many layers bc it's two characters in one shot & i was also animating their pupils - typically, an eye-blink animation is about 4-6 layers for me (solid, base, mask, & null to animate with, 6 if i'm animating both eyes & 4 if just one))

in after effects, there's this really cool tool called the puppet pin that one of my friends (lovingly) yelled at me for not knowing about - which. yeah fair she wasn't wrong it's SUPER useful in animating, provided you chop up your image first. if you don't it's a mess.

(separated by layer vs i should've really put the mask tails & leo's head on separate layers and didn't bc that was the 2nd to last animation i had to do and i was losing my mind bc i wanted to be done with the edit lmao)

the way people animate depends all on their style (there's two common ways to do blinking animation - having the anchor point at the bottom of the eye, or the middle of it) and the program they use. it's been a while, but i could probably tell you how to do some basic animations on videostar still even though i've been doing them in after effects for about 2-3years now. ALSO the best way to have an animation be noticeable is to over-exaggerate it/make them Big - which, yes, can mean 'breaking bones' and having the limbs be a little wonky at the start. (if you want it to be realistic though go Just to the point where it looks uncomfortable lmao)

uhm. again i am so sorry that this is so long i THINK this is everything? if not: my inbox/dms are always open if you ever want to ask more questions, wanna follow up on something, etc etc!! (also if you ever start editing please send me your edits!!! i'd love to see them <3)

#this got away from me im SO sorry (just put this in google docs out of curiosity. 1255 words. i am so sorry for the essay.)#uhm. ANYWAY YES like i said if you have any other questions feel free to reach out!!! i am always alway willing to help people out #with stuff like this!!! i can talk your ear off though if this wasn't enough proof of that /j #if nothing makes sense it's bc i'm responding to this at like. 5am my time. so. my bad if there's typos i'm so sorry #like i think i saw this ask at 4:40ish am and i'm still making sure i've got everything covered and its like 5:32am LMAO #me when i dont sleep bc i have no routine now #ask box pals #art creds in the screenshots to trubblegumm !! <- tagging to be safe #still in shock at the amount of positive feedback im getting from my bb!leo edit like oh my god you guys are incredible ilysm /p #sorry i discovered in the middle of typing out my tags that you can edit them now after you've hit enter where am i.#also this is offtopic so its down here but i am Not complaining about doing more motion graphics than actual editing.#a bitch has won two awards for their motion graphics at festivals and i've been doing them for a YEAR #(laughs in the first time i ever did a real one i won a student award. idk how. but i DID and i won the pro category this year <3)#it would be nice tho to do more editing for short films tho :( had a professor tell me i was good at it.#i should rly start using my camera and shoot my own stuff and edit it huh. maybe i will eventually i have a few ideas.#anyway. i need to stop rambling abt my experience as a film student and go to bed i apparently need to be up in the morning but idk WHEN

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foggyparadisecandy · 1 year

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On Anxiety

[CW: descriptions of anxiety, this is my real-life - not some sneaky trance]

Sitting at the restaurant, the waiter comes over and asks my wife and me if we want sparkling or still water.

And bam. Just like that.

I’m frozen.

Unable to speak. Unable to look up. Terrified. Feeling the world collapsing in on me.

How does this happen?

How does one get to this place in life where they are debilitated by such a simple thing?

I’m not exactly sure but I sure as hell think about it a lot.

I’ve spent 40+ years on this planet being a type A+ perfectionist.

I’m always the responsible one.

I’m always the caring one.

I feel the weight and burden of every choice, every decision, every mistake.

True story:

I used to nearly pass out when reading my work emails. I thought I had a neurological problem, but after many check-ups and tests, doctors convinced me I was “perfectly healthy … physically.”

I started to track what was happening and realized … I was holding my breath while reading emails because I became so stressed out, so anxious, so overwhelmed.

So. Much. Stupid in that situation. I started to watch myself from then when I read emails to make sure I was breathing.

Can you imagine? Having to make sure you breathe just to read your emails?

I’ve suffered from other phantom ailments over the years. Imagined illnesses that ultimately came down to doctors telling me I was “perfectly healthy … physically.”

And still.

I know from hypnosis that your mind can make your body feel certain things, certain ways.

My mind is riddled with anxiety and insecurities.

My body is happy to play along and report back that it's falling apart even when it's not.

Side note:

I say it often, but it's true. I sincerely appreciate when people like and reblog my posts because it puts some of those insecurities on hold. For a moment, anyway. At least a bit. I know it’s a false metric. My insecurities are not really solved by a like here and there. But it does help me feel good, so thank you all for your kindness.

So I’ve always had stress-related problems.

I’ve suffered from depression, which may or may not be related. Severe depression.

No need to worry about me on that front – my depression faded (mostly) when I left my 20s and developed better worldviews, and refocused my internal monologue through the consistent application of good coping strategies.

Enter: COVID

Since COVID, I have started having panic attacks.

It’s not consistent. It’s not every situation. It’s not persistent or constant.

It’s … random.

I evaluate. I watch. I try to find the patterns.

I know it has to do with feeling overwhelmed and out-of-control and in a fraught situation. But still … it’s not EVERY time, so that gives me hope.

But it’s frustrating.

I can be at my dinner table with my wife of 20 years and suddenly feel frozen and unable to speak or move. Feeling that impending sense of doom. While discussing dinner plans. Or what to watch on TV.

It’s completely fucked up.

I’ve been working on it.

I’ve even gotten some nice little pills from a doctor, even though I DETEST using nice little pills to solve my problems. But they calm me and let me move through life, simulating my old self, who was footloose and fancy-free.

I use meditation and forms of self-hypnosis. I talk with others. I'm more open about my struggles. I hear from others.

I had gotten to a place where I had gone for over 5 weeks without an attack.

It was lovely.

But then last week, in that restaurant, it hit me out of the blue.

There was stress involved. The restaurant was loud. We had been trying to find a place that could seat us over an hour. Every other place was packed.

My wife told me she didn’t think there was anything she would want to eat. She had us get seated anyway. And instead of looking over the menu, she proceeded to focus on taking off her jacket and getting situated.

I felt anxious.

Were we going to stay? Were we going to go? Why was she fucking about with her jacket if she wasn’t sure we would stay?

And then the waiter came over and my world folded in on me and I was done for.

Later I told my wife what happened and she said she wasn’t aware (she knows I’ve been struggling so it wasn't a surprise - but she didn't notice anything out of the ordinary) so I guess that’s good.

I guess I didn’t look like a complete weirdo.

But still.

And I don’t blame my wife for this.

I’m just describing *my* feelings. The problem is the way *I* felt. That's *me* and no one else.

My internal machinery took this simple and inconsequential situation and made it into this giant ball of anxiety.

Since that incident a week ago, I’ve frozen up three separate times on video calls and had to shut off my camera to be able to operate.

I guess my brain is ok with functioning if no one can see me? Good times.

So why am I sharing this?

For any of you who are struggling, you are not alone.

By most measurements, I’m successful in life. I have a good family life. I have a good job. I’ve spoken in front of large audiences before.

“Oh what do you have to worry about?” “Oh, you’ll be fine.” “Just get over it. You’ve done this before.” “Yeah, like you have anything to worry about.”

Anxiety and panic can happen to anyone.

You are not alone if you feel it.

I’m not sure that helps you but … I hope so.

Luckily my wife is a rock.

And I have friends I have spoken to who understand and support without the judgment of “that doesn’t make sense, you are so successful.”

I know they are trying to be supportive but fuck the people who try to wave away mental conditions. You make me feel even worse, like I'm completely defective.

Side note:

Special thanks to a wonderful friend I met here on Tumblr who has been a real treasure to me and shared her coping strategies. Thank you, sweetie.

Feel free to share if you think this will help anyone you know.

And, if you will excuse the indulgence, I will try my hand at a bit of poetry to express this bullshit.

I shake and reel, From phantom fears that feel so real.

I shut my eyes, Hide away and wait for them to pass me by.

I lock my doors, Curled in a ball, lying, waiting on my floor.

It isn’t me. This frozen thing that wants to flee.

And be free.

And I want to Be free.

And I keep working, working, Working on me.

And I can see, Someday I will find the key.

And be free. To be me.

Until that day, I’ll fight to keep it all at bay.

And find a way. To be okay.

And I keep working, working, Working on me.

Someday, the sun will rise, And I will greet it with Open arms and open eyes.

Shadows fade, and fall away, Leaving me free to seize the day And be okay. Free to be okay.

#stress #mental wellbeing #mental health #catharsis #self care #on topic #poetry

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infinites-chaser · 2 years

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I saw your tag on the demolished buildings post and I was interested in something - I just visited Seattle for the first time (from NYC) and everything felt creepily... new. And like, polished and fancy. If that makes sense. Did that all happen recently?? I was getting a weird feeling and I couldn't pin it down.

hi omg thanks for stopping by my inbox!!! FELT. SEATTLE MY BELOVED AND DETESTED CITY. ive lived here for eight years and I experience that on the daily lmao,,,I devoted a whole year of college to unpacking my love/hate relationship w seattle (city of the future? more like city of gentrification,,, disregard and active destruction of the past...)I wiLL rb this later w links to my sources cited and recommendations when I can find all the articles and pdfs !!! I have sm feelings abt seattle thank u for giving me the chance to scream !

So as far as I know gentrification has been happening ever since amazon and all the big tech companies moved their headquarters here in 2010-ish tho covid forcing the closure of many small and local businesses has made it Even Worse. idk if u visited south lake union (which is, imo, the shiniest and most disconcerting part of seattle) but that's where Jeff bezos' balls are + the Amazon campus + Google + other tech companies I don't remember off the top of my head, but the majority of the land all these campuses are on was supposed to be a public park before jeff et all bought the land up!!! head in my hands...we could've had a giant beautiful free park instead we got the uncanny valley of shiny polished instagram aesthetic buildings...

Also. ever since tech came to seattle the historically majority black district of Seattle have seen Massive drops in the proportion of the population that is black (specifically the central district, beacon hill and south seattle) and the white population in South Seattle (historically minority-majority) has been growing faster than any of the minority populations. lmao. which is awful bc seattle used to allow discriminatory clauses in property leases (like u cannot own this property if ur black, asian, etc) and black + other minority populations had nowhere to go except south seattle! and now they're getting priced out of their own homes argh north beacon hill in recent years has been one of the Most Gentrified districts of Seattle...

also (disclaimer I don't know as much abt this) smth similar is happening w cap hill and the lgbtq+ population and already happened w them Before bc the community used to be in the pioneer square area. and had to move to cap hill! now they might have to move again :/

anyway to focus on beacon hill specifically (which I did a community research project on for one of my classes), the local light rail's opening in 2014 (beacon hill station is in north beacon hill) also seems to have contributed to rising housing prices (and subsequent gentrification as local businesses shut down).. bc now South Seattle is convenient! accessible! if u ride the link south u will see sO many new businesses and modern apartment buildings right by the stations. and in beacon hill specifically a historic Chinese restaurant was demolished so the station could be built (anD this might. haha. happen again in 2 years?? bc the city transit wants to expand the station in the international district. once again my head is in my hands).

and like I said in my tags I got to interview a local chinese american historian! his name is Ron Chew and he's awesome! go read his memoir My Unforgotten Seattle!! it talks abt the history of chinese americans in seattle and also the districts he lived in. he lives in beacon hill rn and he talked to me abt how much it's changed since his childhood... like there's sm he and his generation remembers that was never written down + won't ever be remembered if no one writes it down! for example he said his mom worked in the linen factories along w a lot of native American women and his dad worked at the docks alongside a lot of black men! things u wouldn't ever know from the history books. how the history of Seattle is sm more than the story of the Denny party. white settlers. etc.

lastly I've just been thinking. a lot. about these passages from michel de certeau's essay walking in the city:

"[In the city] there is only a pullulation of passer-by, a network of residences temporarily appropriated by pedestrian traffic, a shuffling among pretenses of the proper, a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of places.

"Here, there used to be a bakery." "That's where old lady Dupuis used to live." It is striking here that the places people live in are like the presences of diverse absences. What can be seen designates what is no longer there: "you see, here there used to be..." but it can no longer be seen. Demonstratives indicate the in visible identities of the visible: it is the very definition of a place, in fact, that it is composed by these series of displacements and effects among the fragmented strata that form it and that it plays on these moving layers.

"Memories tie us to that place.... It's personal, not interesting to anyone else, but after all that's what gives a neighborhood its character." There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can "invoke" or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in-and this inverts the schema of the Panopticon. But like the gothic sculptures of kings and queens that once adorned Notre-Dame and have been buried for two centuries in the basement of a building in the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, these "spirits," themselves broken into pieces in like manner, do not speak any more than they see. This is a sort of knowledge that remains silent. Only hints of what is known but unrevealed are passed on "just between you and me."

Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others are not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic state, symbolizations encysted in the pain or pleasure of the body."

#aNYWAY. SO MANY THOUGHTS. SO LITTLE ELOQUENCE.#hopefully i answered ur question and didnt just info dump here!!#liek i said i will rb w a heck ton of pdf and article links lmaofjdks the post was just getting Very Long and i didn't want the ask to sit #too long #but yeAah. SEATTLE. seattle. s e a t t l e

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dgcatanisiri · 2 years

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Aside from house-related issues, the big thing that I know that my aunt and I are both always-background-low-key concerned about with my mother is what's going to happen when, eventually, my mother's progress with therapy plateaus enough that they cut her off.

Like that's the bind of our medical care system as is, you have to JUSTIFY every expense for medical, as if for some reason you are "faking it."

I mean, my therapist and I are having this talk as is, that as much as I like having the one-on-one therapist in terms of maintenance and stability, I recognize that the model that they're going towards is to focus on the most at-risk people for mental health crises, and, if I'm not in active crisis, and I've advanced in the goals we've set, we are probably going to be scaling back our current schedule - I'm presently seeing him every three weeks, we're discussing not having any meetings in December and seeing how things go forward in January (and we'll see how that goes, considering the winter months tend to be my lowest points, cuz seasonal and the bam-bam-bam hit of two family gathering holidays in two months, followed by my birthday month (acknowledgement of the passage of time, yay...), and then February and everything related to Valentine's while I grapple with my long-standing single status... November through February tend to be a rough patch for me.

Anyway... I get the plateau thing, the why of the medical stuff saying "we need to see progress from you in order to keep renewing this."

The problem being, with my mother... When she does plateau, when she reaches the point when she is no longer gaining anything from the work with the therapists and such coming here, making her do her exercises and that sort, she STOPS.

Legit, the only time that she does any of these things, it's when the therapists are here. And they'll cheer her on, celebrate her progress, but she NEVER does any of these physical rehab exercises when it's only me and my aunt around.

So when that plateau hits, when the nurses and therapists stop coming by to check on her, she will stop. And she'll regress again. And then, in several months time, she'll have a bad fall again, or she'll end up with another infection (god, I remember her hysterics about a UTI January before last...), something that could necessitate a hospital stay or calling out the EMTs (admittedly, while we are still living in the time of COVID, I hope it will end up only being the latter of those two), and then we'll be back in this position.

And she'll have learned nothing from the experience. Because so much of her reactions to me and my aunt are to say that we gang up on her, and she ultimately doesn't want us to be right.

She acts like it's a competition. While we are concerned about her health.

Because my aunt is the younger sister. Because I'm the son. We're not supposed to be right, we're not supposed to know better.

Sometimes I think we'd be better off emotionally sending her to a facility of some sort. Of course, to actually have her in a place where her needs would genuinely be met, in terms of physical therapy, it would take my aunt throwing her finances in as well.

Like we've actively been told by these home health aides, she gets far more personalized care here at home than she would at a facility, where the nurses are dividing up their time between like two dozen patients a person, so she's probably better off here. The problem is, though... Are WE better off having her here?

Have I mentioned how much I detest our health care system as it stands?

#dg gets personal #dg has mother issues

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