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hayatheauthor · 7 months

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Do you have any tips/guides for writing abusive parents? How they act, and how a fight where they lash out at their child would be? I’m writing a story in which one of the main characters grows up with abusive parents that mistreat her because she doesn’t fit into society’s definition of ‘normal’ (they basically see her as a monster in the literal meaning of the word), and at one point they have a fight because the parents find out that she’s kept a secret close friendship from them for several years, and they snap at her for going behind their backs (despite the parents not really caring about her and what she’s up to normally) while simultaneously being skeptical of their friendship, what it entails, and what being friends with them child says about the friend.

The problem is that no matter how I try to write the scene, it feels dramatized, if that makes sense. I get the feeling that it becomes unrealistic or stereotypical, especially since I know that in abusive households, a lot of the aggression and communication happens without words. I’ve tried researching a bit, but I struggle to find anything that’s relevant, and my childhood struggles were (luckily) not related to abusive parents, so I don’t have many experiences to use as reference when writing.

Resources And Advice For Writing Abusive Parents

Your story sounds really intriguing! I don't have personal experience with this but I asked around and did some research, and I uncovered a lot of interesting facts. If just been looking for a bit of advice/resources, in which case you can scroll straight to the bottom of the blog where I have some resources and niche advice for you.

But, if you, or any other reader for that matter, needs general help in writing abusive parental figures, here is everything I've uncovered thus far.

Understand The Abuser

Most of the blogs I read stated it's important to first understand your abuser. While not excusing the behaviour, understanding the motivations behind the abuser's actions can make your portrayal more nuanced. Abusers often have their own traumas or issues.

Abusive parents can emerge from a variety of traumatic backgrounds, each influencing their behaviour in distinct ways.

Some may have experienced abuse themselves, perpetuating a cycle they learned as children. Others might grapple with deep-seated insecurities, projecting their fears onto their children in an attempt to regain control. Understanding the diverse motivations behind abusive behaviour allows you to create a more authentic and layered portrayal of your characters.

You mentioned your character's parents mistreat her because she doesn't fit in the social norm, so start with figuring out why they're behaving this way. More often than not parental abusers abuse their children because they think they're 'saving' their child from something.

This is a common trend in female relationships, i.e the mother will abuse her daughter in an attempt to 'protect' her from what the mother faced. A mother who faced fatphobia might become an almond mom, etc.

The Motive

Understanding their motive will help you build a reason for their abuse, and then you can create realistic reactions based on that.

Let's continue with the almond mom example. Now, the mother might presume by verbally abusing her daughters and telling them to look/eat a certain way she shelters them from ever having to face this from other people.

If the mother's purpose is to ensure her daughter doesn't gain weight then she would likely have a more subtle abuse style.

So rather than having the mother snatch away the daughter's food in public and eat it for herself, the mother would take her daughter to a food court and fish out veggie bags from her purse claiming that is their lunch.

Maybe she constantly checks the daughter's weight and takes away certain food privileges (carbs/sugar) depending on the changes.

First, figure this out, or if you're having a hard time, you could tell me their motive and I'll help you with some realistic reactions/abuse tactics.

Complex Relationships

One important thing to understand about abusive parents is that at the end of the day. As children, we naturally crave parental approval, an instinct deeply embedded in our emotional fabric. This yearning persists even when we recognize the toxicity of the relationship. The deprivation of affection intensifies our desire for it, leading to a complex interplay of emotions.

In the context of your narrative, consider how your character might unconsciously seek their parents' approval despite the abusive dynamics. The power dynamics are not solely physical; emotional manipulation plays a significant role. An abusive parent's disapproval, expressed through statements like being disappointed or claiming their actions are for the child's benefit, can profoundly affect the abused child.

Perhaps their new friend is teaching them to detach from this mindset, something the parents deeply dislike and thus they want to distance your character from this friend to reinstate their control.

The Emotional Turmoil That Comes With It

Incorporating subtle cues to showcase your character's emotional turmoil can add layers to their experience of abuse. Consider a poignant example: your character choosing to wear a hoodie as a shield against the verbal assaults from their mother.

Perhaps on a day when they wore a hoodie, their mother made a disparaging comment, implying that concealing certain features made them appear more "normal." This traumatic incident could prompt your character to adopt hoodies as a protective barrier against the verbal onslaught, highlighting the lasting impact of emotional abuse.

Abuse vs Negligence

Exploring the nuances between abuse and negligence is crucial for creating a realistic portrayal of an abusive household. While physical and verbal abuse may be more visibly evident, neglect can be equally damaging, leaving lasting scars on a child's psyche.

Negligence encompasses a range of behaviours where parents fail to fulfil their responsibilities. This could involve emotional neglect, where a child's emotional needs are consistently ignored or dismissed. It might manifest as a lack of guidance, support, or affection, creating an environment where the child feels invisible or unimportant.

Moreover, neglect can extend to physical care, where parents neglect their child's basic needs, such as nutrition, hygiene, or medical attention. This form of neglect can have severe consequences on a child's health and well-being.

In your story, consider how neglectful behaviour intertwines with the abusive elements. Maybe the parents, consumed by their own issues, consistently overlook your character's struggles, reinforcing a sense of isolation and abandonment.

This interplay between neglect and abuse can deepen the emotional impact on your character and provide a more comprehensive portrayal of their traumatic experiences. It can also help you build a more meaningful tie with this friend. Maybe your character befriended this friend at a time when they felt abandoned and rejected by everyone, including those who were supposed to care for them the most.

Manipulation

In the realm of abuse and negligence, manipulation becomes a powerful tool that abusers often wield to maintain control. It's essential to recognize the subtle ways in which manipulation seeps into the dynamics of an abusive relationship.

Manipulation in neglectful situations might involve gaslighting, where the parents distort the child's reality or dismiss their feelings and experiences. This psychological manipulation can make the child doubt their perceptions and question the validity of their emotions, further intensifying the emotional toll.

Abusers may use manipulation as a means to deflect responsibility, shifting the blame onto the child for their own neglectful behaviours. This can create a warped sense of guilt and shame within the child, fostering a belief that they are somehow responsible for the inadequate care they receive.

In your narrative, explore how manipulation intertwines with neglect. Perhaps the parents employ manipulative tactics to downplay the severity of their neglectful actions, creating a distorted narrative that serves their agenda. This manipulation can deepen the emotional trauma experienced by your character, adding layers to their complex relationship with their parents.

General Resources

Here are curated resources to aid you in portraying the complexities of abusive dynamics and crafting a scene that resonates truthfully:

Movies:

Precious (2009): A poignant exploration of abuse and resilience.

Sleepers (1996): Delves into the impact of childhood trauma.

Books:

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls: A memoir unravelling the intricacies of challenging family dynamics.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker: A powerful narrative addressing abuse and empowerment.

Real-Life Stories:

RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network): Offers survivor stories and resources.

Domestic Violence Hotline: Real-life narratives and support.

Online Articles:

Psychology Today: A wealth of articles dissecting the nuances of abusive relationships.

National Domestic Violence Hotline Blog: Real stories and insightful perspectives.

Approach these resources with sensitivity, understanding that the subject matter can be triggering. Always prioritize your mental health and well-being while navigating the intense world of abusive relationships in your writing journey.

Resources Specific To Your Question

My main advice would be to read personal accounts or case studies of individuals who have experienced abuse. This doesn't have to be real people, it can also be fictional characters. One character who comes to mind is Rapunzel.

Hear me out—just like your character Rapunzel meets Flynn who is someone her mother does not like. The ending of Tangled is a scene that comes to mind. You mentioned a fear of seeming too dramatic, but you could showcase the parents suddenly showing their 'true colours' in order to reinstate control over their child.

This can either backfire and the child realises it's now or never, they need to take a stand, or the child is terrified of the repercussions and gives in. Maybe you could write things like 'and suddenly, she was a five-year-old again, with tears and snot racing down her face as she begged her parents to simply look at her.'

I hope this blog on Resources And Advice For Writing Abusive Parents will help you in your writing journey. Be sure to comment any tips of your own to help your fellow authors prosper, and follow my blog for new blog updates every Monday and Thursday.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks?

Are you an author looking for writing tips and tricks to better your manuscript? Or do you want to learn about how to get a literary agent, get published and properly market your book? Consider checking out the rest of Haya’s book blog where I post writing and publishing tips for authors every Monday and Thursday! And don’t forget to head over to my TikTok and Instagram profiles @hayatheauthor to learn more about my WIP and writing journey!

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reflectionsofneptune · 4 years

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little things I associate with the Mercury signs.

Little dreamy, abstract things I associate with the Mercury signs in Astrology.

Aries Mercury

Authoritative. When I want something, I make it clear. Crystal clear. No beating around the bush. A forceful way of speaking. Don’t talk about it, be about it. Short sentences. A hint of arrogance. Competitive edge seeping through my words. What can I say, I like to be a winner? At all times. A raspy voice. Adopting a youthful charm when it suits me. Attuned to perceiving danger in my environment. Disliking an over-emphasis of niceties in conversation. Keeping it real. Exercising to clear the mind. Pep - talks. The rev of an engine. Pedal to the metal. Talking to me, I need you to bring your A Game and something new. Conversation needs to be stimulating.

Taurus Mercury

Savouring. Words need to be savoured. Like beauty, they only get better with age. Listen carefully and hear what I stand for. Slowing down. Something about the handwriting. Cursive. An even tone. Words flow out of my mouth like maple syrup oozes down the height of a stack of fluffy, warm pancakes. Stubbornness. When am I ever wrong? Pictures, or it’s not real. Proof being recognised from what my base senses pick up. Inspiration from nature. A level-head. Choosing to see the beauty in my environment. For better or for worse. Don’t be fooled by my lack of conversation, I peep everything.

Gemini Mercury

Riddles. I’m not going to tell you the answer but the curve of my lip might reveal itself when you’re getting close. Starting one conversation with one subject. Finishing the conversation with a completely different one. Playfulness. Humour as a tool of deflection. Quick texts. Leading conversations. Making a best friend in the supermarket. Another one, on the bus. Seeing the duality of things in my environment. Information is like crack. I can’t get enough. Multiple tabs, open. Nervous energy. Fiddling. Mimicking your mannerisms if I like you, verbally ripping you apart if it tickles my fancy. Or not, I get distracted quite easily so you may be let off the hook.

Cancer Mercury

Introspective. Thinking about the past. Sometimes not finding my way back to the present. Emotions filtering through my words. Perceptions are protective. A vintage film, the introduction devoid of colour. An interest in knowing where one comes from, what comforts someone. Needing to cleanse myself of everybody’s emotional baggage. Again. Pathetic fallacy. Finishing your sentences. Promise its not on purpose. Wanting security from my environment. A psychological slant to conversations. A rich inner imagination. A diary, signed, sealed and under my pillow. Withdrawing into the cocoon of my thoughts when I feel threatened.

Leo Mercury

Commanding. A leadership position sounds good to me. Confidence in my thoughts. Words that can brighten up your life. Disney movies. Teasing conversations. Class clown. My thoughts are copyrighted. Bluffing. The curve a chest, puffed out to its maximum, makes. Talking loudly so I’m sure you hear me. Describing something in such detail, so you can feel as if you were there. Piping hot tea. Intellect and ego tied together. Creativity expressed through speech. Seeing my immediate environment as a stage. Conversations in the mirror. The little grooves formed at the corner of the eyes when the smile is genuine. Blowing my own trumpet because if I don’t, who will?

Virgo Mercury

Organised. Seeing flaws in my environment. A to-do list, covered on both sides. Polite but not foolish. The spine of a book, crease free. Stepping back in conversation. The few creases that appear on the skin when a nose is wrinkled. Monotone. Advice given freely. Or withdrawing all help if I see it going through one ear and out the other. Discernment in conversation. Sticky notes. Attuned to see the bullshit in conversation. In life. Helpful suggestions. Take it or leave it. Mind feels like a hamster wheel. How do you turn this thing off? An upward line of a tick, in red. Not an excuse, but know that the harder I am on you, the harder I am on myself really.

Libra Mercury

Flirting. Feels as natural as breathing does. A sweet talker. The stem of cherry. A gentle lilt that comes alive in conversation. A fickle mind. Forever weighing up the pro’s and cons. Birdsong, cutting through morning dew. Wanting peace from my environment. Trying to maintain peace in my environment. A white flag fluttering in the wind, atop a hill. Indecision feels paralysing. Waiting for you to finish speaking before I provide an opposing point of view. Feigning innocence. Learning about myself through conversations with others. Sometimes not liking what I see. 3 sides to a story. I am capable of a decision, I just feel better when the internal scales of my thoughts are balanced.

Scorpio Mercury

Power. Power plays in conversation. Checkmate. Words are comparable to pieces on a chessboard. Not a fan of small talk. Unless it’s for my benefit. Intuition on point. And then some. Probing. Trust issues. Talking to someone for a minute but deducing years of their life from a single meeting. Burner phones in a drawer. The eerie silence that comes around, say 4 AM. Secrets, mine and yours, help me fall asleep at night. Receipts for weeks, days and months. I’ve got it all. Past hurts cut deep in my psyche. Eyebrows pulled together. Pretending to be deaf when convenient. Subject changes. A full stop. Knowledge is power. I am capable of sharing intimate details of myself…..you first though.

Sagittarius Mercury

YOLO. Sending those kinda texts to the wrong group chat by mistake. Saying what we were all thinking, even if it’s not the ‘right’ time, ‘cos fuck it. Slidin’ in the DM’s. Popping up like it’s nothing. You know me. Is time even real? The underside of a desk, covered with tags, love notes, and condom wrappers. Going off on social media. For a good cause, most of the time. Falling back on spirituality when life gets tough. Thought patterns are expansive and influenced by cultures and theories different than mine. Appreciating the differences in life. In people. Gift of the gab. That person who’s laughing when no one else is. Believing in abundance because that's what my environment reflects back to me. Stretching the fine line between truth and fantasy…….’cos fuck it.

Capricorn Mercury

Blue ticks. Time is of the essence. Thoughts are disciplined. A 3 tier desk organiser, stuffed to the brim with documents. Elocution lessons. Did you know I used to stutter? Deadpan jokes. A raised eyebrow. Judging people. We all do it, it’s innate to us. Keep your friends close. Enemies closer. Voicemail. I don’t need people to like me, but respect me is all I ask. A calculating mind. Always planning ahead. Sudoku puzzles. People give themselves away all the time, you just need to listen. Believing people’s actions over words. Thoughts focused on external recognition became a burden I often didn’t ask for, weighs me down.

Aquarius Mercury

Observant. Seeing the subtle layers that make up human behaviour. People are fascinating. A 360 way of looking at things. Reverb on an electric guitar. Solution-focused. A finger on the pulse of undiscovered knowledge. Static from a radio dial. I’m not afraid to question everything. An outdated statue, tipped. A love and hate relationship with time. Flashes of intuition. Needing time to process thoughts. A cool perspective. Shades of sunglasses, tinted yellow. Including people I’ve never met in my thoughts. In my dreams. My wishes. A Brave New World? I’m still waiting for people to step up and take responsibility.

Pisces Mercury

The red and white swirls of a helter-skelter ride. The path connecting my thoughts and my words is a little beaten. But not many people have bothered to venture this way. Pillow talk during the day. Drifting off in conversation. Overspilling in conversations. Or people, overspilling details of their life onto me. Missing appointments. Two circles merging into one if you stare long enough. Tapped into Source. Weaving you a dream with my words so good, I start to believe it. The afterword in a novel. Doodles in a margin. Sensitivity in conversation. Picking up a million and one signals from my environment. Using music to lose myself and ironically, find myself in the end.

————

| little thoughts about venus placements

| little thoughts about the mars placements

| little thoughts about the saturn placements

#astrology #astro #mine #zodiac #zodiac signs #mercury #aries #taurus #gemini #cancer #leo #virgo #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquairus #pisces #astrology observation

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bondsmagii · 3 years

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omg you read we need to talk about kevin? what did you think? i went through a whole range of emotions, most of them bitter & negative, bc i saw too much of my mum & brother in eva & kevin, something i’m still working through. i started off hating eva bc i projected my resentment towards my mum onto her, but i found myself sympathising with her a bit more towards the end. it’s helped me sympathise a bit with my mum too. this book has probably had the most lasting effect on me than any other!

man, I love that book. I first read it years ago and liked it then, but I recently reread it and I loved it even more. it's such a brilliant book -- profoundly uncomfortable and incredibly bleak, but I think it asks so many important questions that, face it, most people are too scared to even acknowledge. it simultaneously asks the huge taboo of a question -- what if you regret having your child? what if a child is just born bad? -- and also combines it with that other big question: why do kids shoot up their schools? the nature vs nurture debate has been absolutely raging for years regarding children who commit violence at school; as someone with an academic interest in this particular crime, it's one I've banged my head up against multiple times. people seem to always be firmly in one camp: the parents are to blame, or the kid is just evil. nobody seems to consider the interaction between these two things, and how it's always ultimately a choice.

the book is a pretty intense read for me, as I'm sure you can relate. the difference is that while you can see your mother and brother in Eva and Kevin, I actually see myself and my mother in Eva and Kevin. I was an unwanted and a resented child. my parents did not want to have me. I was what my parents referred to as "a surprise", said in the same tone as you would describe a sudden house fire as a surprise, or bad news at work as a surprise. the major difference between my parents and Eva and Franklin was that they had me very young (they would have been 19 and barely 20 when they found out, and 20 and barely 21 when I was born) and this most certainly added to the resentment. my father was always away for work, often getting to go to some pretty interesting destinations; my mother wanted to be the kind of woman who wanted to be a stay-at-home mother, but she hated it. like Eva and Kevin, my mother and I were very, very alike in personality and what we did and did not want out of life, and we were engaged in some level of warfare for my entire childhood. while I wasn't quite on the level of Kevin in terms of blinding my siblings and whatnot, I was quite the terror as a child. by the time I reached my teenage years I was uncontrollable and my parents had given up trying. I could not be punished. I did not care. any punishment they did hand out, I was maliciously compliant to the point of infuriation. I'm sure my parents could argue that I was born evil, and indeed that's what they told the extended family. I admit I was not an easy child. however -- I was a child.

I did not ask to be born, and when my parents made the choice to have me and then resent my existence, that was on them. a child knows. a child can tell when he's not wanted, when he's an inconvenience. I knew it very well, from an early age. my parents' resentment of me resulted in them abusing me right up until I left home. I was like an unwanted pet, except they couldn't dump me off at a shelter. no, they never laid a finger on me physically, so they can claim they didn't abuse me -- but emotionally and psychologically they were abusive, and especially in my teenage years, they neglected me severely. (think along the lines of being left at home alone for extended periods with no food, no money, and no way to get supplies as we lived in rural Ireland and the closest supermarket was 30 minutes away. this was not something they did out of malice, but rather something they did because they did not consider me at all. they forgot my existence, most of the time, or they deemed me so inconsequential that making provisions for me was a task that could be forever put off.) understandably this made me hate them in return, and I took great pleasure in being a little shit. it was all I had. nature vs nurture, which is it? my parents weren't exactly nurturing, and they taught me very bad behaviour -- but at the same time from the moment I was born I had my mother's personality, predisposing me to being a little shit. even now, grown up and after many years of working on myself, I still find myself fighting the urge to be as cruel and as judgemental as she could be; likewise I see those positive qualities she had, that she could have shown more of if she had put the work in like I had. we went from being furious carbon copies of one another to an example of the best and the worst case scenario.

basically what it comes down to is choice. Kevin and I had a similar situation going on, but Kevin chose to try and find what he was looking for in mass murder, and I chose to try and find it by getting out of my house and never returning. I mentioned earlier that I have an academic interest in the kind of crime that Kevin committed; since the age of 17 I have been researching these things, and now have expertise in several specific incidents. I bring this up to illustrate that this crime was on my radar when I was around Kevin's age, when I was suffering from the same problems as he was. thousands of kids find themselves in this position, yet so relatively few commit the act. why? it's choice. nature, nurture -- it doesn't matter. there comes a point where you have to make the choice, and honestly? it's chaos theory, baby.

as well as researching this kind of thing I'm also an amateur meteorologist. I love weather. I love trying to work out what makes it tick. and weather is a good example of what I'm trying to say here. weather cannot be predicted. we can get decent ideas, but at the same time we never really know for sure and also weather acts differently every time. there are too many variables. it's the entirety of the earth's atmosphere we're talking about here. identical weather conditions can arise time and time again, and each time the weather is different. a sunny afternoon one day is a washout the next. this is because -- and I broadly sum it up here -- there are so many tiny variables that we cannot possibly predict how they will change the weather. and I mean it's tiny variables. I'm sure you've heard of the butterfly effect -- this comes from the idea that a butterfly somewhere on the coast of Africa can flap its wings, and this tiny reverberation can spread through the atmosphere, creating a bigger and bigger ripple, until a hurricane smashes into the Gulf of Mexico. tiny atmospheric changes all interacting in ways we cannot imagine. this is why some kids shoot up schools. it's easy to look at psychology broadly, but no two people are ever the same. siblings growing up in the exact same house are not the same. identical twins, genetically identical to their very DNA, are not the same. tiny, tiny events, microdoses of chemicals in the brain, exposures -- they all change us in subtle ways. two people -- Kevin and I -- can grow up with almost identical familial issues and outlooks, but Kevin shoots up his school and I study my ass off and get myself to university to escape my parents. why? I don't know. I don't know what tiny little things might influence me one way and another kid in the other. personality, brain chemistry, waking up that morning and having enough or not -- I don't know. it's chaos theory. the variables are too small to say. nature vs nurture are only two variables out of millions. it's an oversimplification.

so to go back to the book -- who do I blame? neither of them. it was a perfect storm. we could say Eva didn't help, but I know of plenty of kids with decent parents who still committed such a crime. we could say that Kevin was just born bad, but there are plenty of people with his resentful outlook on life who don't commit mass murder, or any harm against anyone whatsoever. it's like how every tornado comes from a supercell, but not every supercell will spawn a tornado -- that final genesis point is unknown to us. we just can't predict it. there are no easy answers. there is no simple formula. we just don't know, and that's what makes Kevin's story -- and its real-life counterparts -- so terrifying.

#sorry for going off but this combines two (2) of my Major Academic Niches so you got the full 1hr lecture with slideshow i'm afraid #anon #asks

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ambiguouswhotopia · 4 years

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Somewhat scattered reactions on rewatching “Kinda”

There's nothing subtle or terribly nuanced about the themes of this story but there's so much unsubtle stuff going on that it ends up rather dense. The central conflict is between ways of living that are aggressive, extractive, and seek to exert control over their environment on the one hand, and ways that are enlightened, collaborative, and harmonious with their environment on the other. This conflict instantiates itself over and over, and often on several levels at once in a given scene: between the colonial culture and the indigenous one, between individuals in each culture, between men and women, and within the psyches of the characters. The suggestion is that all of this is facilitated by the corrupting influence of the Mara, a "creature from the dark parts of the mind" who encourages violent, fearful, and selfish behaviour.

Binary gender essentialism is baked into the worldbuilding in surprising ways. Women in this story are fundamentally rational and clearsighted in a way that men are not. The colonial men are desperately violent, clinging to hierarchical authority and the trappings of their civilization to reassure them of their own ability to assert order on the world around them, ready to defend that order with truly disproportionate force. Even Adric, when he's piloting the mech suit, is a danger to those around him because his very fear of losing control causes the body he's in to lash out unpredictably (and then he flees from this knowledge, insisting to Tegan afterward that he had been getting the hang of it). By contrast, the Kinda men, and other men who have opened the Kinda box, seem to have peacefully surrendered control. They are placid, gentle, and kind, but they happily go along with the whims of whatever strong personalities are nearest; Kinda culture seems to rely on a situation in which the only such personalities will be the wise women, the only ones (in the ordinary way of things) who can be exposed to the Kinda collective experience and still retain an individual voice. On the other hand, when Todd the female scientist opens the box it doesn't seem to wreak any major changes on her personality or worldviews, and Panna the wise woman isn't surprised by this.

(As an aside, this is a story in which masculinity and British imperialism are treated very critically, but it doesn't do well by women or indigenous people either. Even though the script suggests that they're very advanced (and presumably as in North America the bountiful forests of the planet are the product of long and careful human cultivation), the Kinda as they appear on screen are, by and large, noble savage caricatures; meanwhile, the women characters mostly spend the story reacting to the men around then. The story's interest in femininity and indigeneity seems to be mainly in holding them up as an idealized contrast to the characters it takes as its main concern. At this point in the series' history, to my knowledge, we still have a year to go before we get a televised story not written by a white man.)

So what's going on with Tegan, then? The Mara is a transparent metaphor for feelings and tendencies of fear and aggression which are masculine-coded in the story, and itself seems to prefer to speak in the dream space in the form of a laughing and predatory young man. Tegan is the only woman we see who seems to fall prey to those feelings even briefly, and she goes so far as to be completely possessed by the Mara, one of only two characters to whom that happens (and the only one of those two that there's any sense of interiority for). Karuna later suggests that the reason that she was vulnerable was that she slept by the chimes alone, something that all the Kinda know they should never do. Tegan is isolated in part because her closest companion of the TARDIS crew, Nyssa, isn't really in this one (which presages "Enlightenment", another time she'll be menaced by a masculine figure the Doctor can't protect her from because he doesn't spot the danger). Even so, the fact that women must observe taboos to keep from welcoming in the Mara suggests that the story's gender essentialism needs more active shoring up behind the scenes, and is less just part of the fabric of the universe, than it would prefer to admit.

The other figure who troubles gender boundaries here is, obviously, the Doctor, who opens the box and experiences it as women do: a new piece of information, rather than an annihilation of his former self. This does startle Panna, who suggests that it must be because the Doctor is "an idiot." It's a jarring choice of words; one doesn't want to imagine that the Kinda, who are otherwise harmonious and enlightened and et cetera, go in for the quasi-eugenicism of insulting people for being mentally deficient or unfit. There's also the question of what it is about men she calls idiots that makes them immune to the effects of the box. One headcanon I like is that what we're hearing is a sort of mistranslation or equivocation, that by "idiot" she really means "fool," like the capering clown figure we see entertaining the Kinda and mirroring their emotions to defuse moments of stress: someone playfully open to the world, someone who doesn't take himself seriously. This is able to nicely parallel the way that the Twelfth Doctor will much later use the same word, declaring himself an "idiot with a box" as part of a deliberate turning away from his series 8 tendencies to try to control and manage everyone around him, from the accusation of trying to be "an officer" in a violent hierarchy like the colonial men in this story.

I'm pretty sure this was the first serial in which I ever saw the Fifth Doctor, and I was immediately really taken with him. He seemed to be thoughtful about other people in ways that I wasn't used to from the Doctor, and he's still one of my favourites of the classic series. Watching this time, I was struck how much of what I liked was in his performance rather than the writing. Davison acts the Doctor as someone warm, unassuming, understated, a little bit anxious, more interested in hearing about you than talking about himself; the Doctor is written here as someone who doesn't listen to his companions but is quick to berate them when something goes wrong, who is frequently frustrated to know more than the people around him and not be able to find the ways to explain so that they'll shut up and do as he says for once. This is, as I recall, a tension that will continue in his Doctor going forward. My immediate and intuitive reading of it on that first encounter was that he was someone who was consciously trying, though he was very unused to it, to put down his power and approach other people open-handed; I wonder how much of that sense was influenced by the context of this story happening around him.

#fifth doctor #kinda #tegan jovanka #Twelfth Doctor

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oosteven-universe · 4 years

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Female Force: Stormy Daniels

Female Force: Stormy Daniels Tidalwave Productions 2020 Written & Illustrated by Joe Paradise Stormy Daniels, film star and director, rose from the strip clubs of Baton Rouge to the top of the lucrative adult film industry. She's also a savvy media mogul and entrepreneur, turning her brand into a worldwide phenomenon while empowering women to stand up for themselves and defy those who would marginalise them. Catapulted into the mainstream as the spicy centre of a hush-money scandal involving President Donald Trump, Stormy has weathered threats, lawsuits, and politically motivated arrests by steadfastly refusing to back down in her demand to hold the president responsible for his actions. Containing new pages, a new ending, and bonus images, this graphic novel retelling of her rise to fame is edited by Stormy and contains a foreword she wrote, proving you should never underestimate her. New cover by famed comic book artist Dave Ryan. Regardless of what you think of the occupant of the White House or of this amazing woman this is something that makes me smile, laugh and shake my head. This time around there are changes and Stormy herself was involved in the editing process so there’s a lot here that is much factually accurate. At least from her side of things, including but not limited to her interactions with him. While this is far from being an actual biography, she has her own novel out for that and I highly recommend it, it is some pure campy fun that’s done in a way we know what’s going on. I mean the man’s behaviour in public, caught on camera, sound any and all of that are public record at this point. As is Stormy’s relationship with him. What I really like here is seeing things go from look it’s Trump to Enter Stormy. How she entered his life and what she did from there these are the things that I find interesting. You can try to discount her because she’s an Adult Entertainer but she’s fierce, shrewd and a hell of a lot smarter than most anyone realises. That comes across here in some interesting ways. Joe really knocks it out of the part here with the story & plot development we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information. Yes it’s a form of Satire ringed with the truth which makes it more unique than folks understand but it also shows us that through the character development we see she’s nobody’s fool. It is a nice translation to be able to write in ways that portray folks strength through this form of storytelling. The interiors here are kind of crazy. It is actually a pretty nice blend of theme park caricature artist and comic book style art. It is extremely easy to see Joe’s influences with his work and the fact that we see the subtle context of Donalt’s hair, hands, eyebrows and that piece of his neck that looks like a vagina show a whimsy through the attention to detail. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a really good, solid, strong eye for storytelling. I love Stormy’s contribution to the issue here as it’s just a hoot to see her throwing her full support behind the book. Also if this is what we can expect out of this format of storytelling I personally would love to see what could be done with a serious comic done on her. She’s a fascinating woman and I would love to learn more about her. Stayed tuned too because she is also going to be starring in the forthcoming Space Force comic.

#comic books #comics reviews #tidalwave comics

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plagueamon · 5 years

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Code Geass MBTI Challenge Turn 7: Kallen Kōzuki - ESFP

The last member of the Ashford Academy group and the first member of the Black Knights that we are analysing, Kallen Kōzuki plays quite an important role in the story of Code Geass: being the simple fighter for her fellow people’s rights surrounded by scheming masterminds and twisted murderers, she represents, to a degree, the perspective of the audience when looking at the thoughts and actions of the rest of the colourful CG cast. She is also the first of several Se-doms, that we are going to take a look at (turns out Code Geass has quite a few of those, which really just goes to show how some types are more common than others). Before I start explaining this character’s functions, please keep in mind, that this post will contain heavy Code Geass spoilers, so consider yourself warned. With that out of the way, let us analyse why Kallen Kōzuki is an ESFP.

Dominant Extroverted Sensing/Se

From early on in the series Kallen’s Se is quite apparent in terms of how she acts and thinks: she is very much practical and action-oriented and prefers to focus on issues in her immediate sphere of influence. This ability to quickly assess her surroundings and think on her feet is what makes her such a good soldier and pilot despite being a rather young member of the Black Knights. This is especially visible when Zero first contacts the resistance group: even though nothing is known about him, Kallen is one of the first to trust him, not because she necessarily sees him as trustworthy, but because she has a very good understanding of the situation she and her friends are in and therefore knows that listening to Zero’s advice may be their best chance to survive. However, Kallen’s improvisational combat skills are only the stereotyped tip of the iceberg that dominant Se actually is, so let us deconstruct some misconceptions.

In the MBTI community it is often assumed that types like INFPs, ENFJs and especially INFJs are by default “good at reading people”. The truth, of course, is quite different from that as well as much more complicated. While dominant Ni can provide a good understanding of other people’s thoughts by the means of reflection, Fe can have a good understanding of people’s social behaviour and Fi tends to be good at relating to people on a personal level, the process that we tend to imply under “reading people” is actually much more likely to be an attribute of dominant Se (especially with auxiliary Fi), and Kallen actually demonstrates that ability a lot. We see that from all the Black Knights she really is the only one to see subtle changes and details in Lelouch’s behaviour (both as himself and as Zero) and that is how she chooses to assess his and other people’s personalities and trustworthiness. To Kallen it’s not only important what people say, but also how they say it, to feel the meaning behind their words and see evidence to their claims. This is why it’s hard for her to believe that Lelouch had been using the Black Knights when he claims to have done so - it does not at all align with the person she has known him to be.

Another aspect of Kallen’s Se, mostly seen in her in relation to Lelouch and Gino, is that for her trust is gained through shared and proven experiences (Se as a whole primarily deals in experiences). It is why she starts off questioning Lelouch’s motives, but after having fought battles side by side with him, she trusts him in a way that could be considered more personal than that of a soldier - he has proven himself to her. Gino’s example is different, but also an interesting one: the two start off as enemies, and while Kallen at first sees him as nothing but an arrogant murderer, after he sees the consequences of Lelouch’s and Suzaku’s actions and is forced to reevaluate his own morality, she starts to actually understand and trust him, as she knows that his inner conflict and change for the better is genuine.

Auxiliary Introverted Feeling/Fi

I talked a lot about how Kallen gains trust in other people when talking about her Se. Her Fi, however, is why trust matters so much to her to begin with. She will follow a competent leader that shows results, sure, but at the end of the day she will not feel safe as a follower until she knows that the one she is following can be personally trusted. And while she tends to see the Britannian nation as a whole as her enemy, we can still see that her anger and desire for revenge come from a much more personal place than a simple ethical argument. As was pointed out several times, Kallen would have had no difficulty just sticking to her Britannian roots, but she chooses to side with Japan specifically because Britannians are the people who killed her friends and especially her brother and who oppress those who don’t have the strength to resist them.

Compared to Fe, Fi concerns itself a lot more with how people should treat each other regardless of universal rule systems, meaning the part of morality that is unconditional and does not need to be agreed upon. This of course makes it a lot more personal to its user, as it is highly based on personal experiences and the conclusions drawn from them. This is exactly what makes Kallen’s shared Se experiences with people so essential to her, why her perception of them changes so much over time. However, unlike with an ISFP, it’s Kallen’s Fi that assists her Se and not the other way around. Being an auxiliary function, her Fi is what helps her find alternatives to solutions that aren’t quite straightforward to her, to stop and reflect when she can’t just trust her eyes. Because Kallen has quite a developed auxiliary function, she uses it in a healthy way, which makes her a good judge of character a lot of the time, knowing when others act in ways that don’t align with their usual judgement and being able to hold on to her sense of morality and faith in her friends at the most dire of moments. It is exactly this ability, that helps her get Lelouch back from his episode of desperation when Nunnally is revealed to be the new viceroy and what helps her understand Lelouch’s motivations after Zero Requiem has occurred.

Another interesting example to note here is the way in which Lelouch deceives Kallen that he isn’t Zero when they first start working together: he tricks both her Se and then her Fi by first using a fake phone call (providing factual evidence for Se) and later making a remark about how it’s more beneficial for the Japanese to obey Britannian rule (this solidifies the lie, as it completely contrasts with Kallen’s Fi perception of the kind of morally just leader that Zero is to her).

Tertiary Extroverted Thinking/Te

We actually see quite a bit of Kallen’s Te during the series, but it could be suggested that this frequent use of her tertiary is caused by her having to participate in a civil war - not the best place to make good decisions for your personal health and development. Te is essentially what Kallen resorts to when she gets angry, using it defensively: she doesn’t care about what her enemies reasons and motivations for fighting are if they chose the wrong side, instead oversimplifying and seeing most Britannians as simply evil (at least the Britannian military and ruling class). This is mostly to cover for the pain caused by the loss of her friends and brother, using those events to justify her anger. A very similar situation can be seen in regard to Kallen’s mother (more about her in the inferior section), whom Kallen resents and jumps to conclusions about because she is unable to understand her self-sacrificing behaviour. Both situations are eventually solved with a healthy use of Kallen’s Fi, as she allows herself to take time and understand others’ personal motivations instead of judging them just based on what she sees on the outside (Se-Te loop): first with her mother as she realises that she is solely motivated by her daughter’s well-being and later with Gino, when she sees and accepts the human side of some Britannian soldiers like himself.

On a smaller scale Te can help Kallen be a competent pilot and soldier, helping her understand Lelouch’s tactics to a degree, which solidifies her confidence in him, as well as being well disciplined and generally obedient in regards to orders for the sake of being a part of an organised military force. However, as shown with Lelouch’s deception example above, it is when Kallen is forced to rely on her Te that she is the easiest to trick and manipulate.

Inferior Introverted Intuition/Ni

Kallen is a firm believer in actions speaking louder than words and certainly louder than reasons. For her no motivation or well developed theoretical argument, personal or otherwise, can justify doing something amoral or hurting people she cares about. This kind of mentality can at times cause her to misjudge people, whose motivations and personal beliefs aren’t obvious to her or are too well hidden for her to pick up on. Not being able to understand what someone is about causes a lot of fear and frustration in her, the best examples of that being her mother, Suzaku and Lelouch (repeatedly). The first causes her constant frustration and regret, because Kallen is unable to understand that her mother subjects herself to humiliation for her child’s sake, instead being confused and agitated by her “useless” behaviour until she actually overhears her mother talk under the effect of Refrain. Suzaku angers Kallen immensely, because to her he is constantly betraying his people and committing crimes agains them. The evidence speaks for itself to her and she once again completely misses his intentions.

Lelouch’s case is a bit more subtle, and seen especially well at the end of R1 and start of R2: we see that Kallen’s idea of Zero didn’t match the person he turned out to be, which she takes quite personally, as the realisation effectively betrays her expectations and the image of the fair leader she had in mind. When she says that she will “follow Zero, but not Lelouch”, she really means it, because her Se experiences with those two “different” people provide very conflicting evidence (made only worse by the fact that she was lied to by the person she trusted the most). This kind of naivety about the uncertain can be common amongst some developing or unhealthy Se-doms, but in the case of Kallen she manages to overcome it multiple times, seeing and accepting that there can be more to a person than their behaviour suggests.

However, please keep in mind that this is only my opinion on the matter and I will welcome any criticisms or alternative opinions to discuss them. If this article was interesting for you, stay prepared for next time, when I shall discuss the MBTI type of Kaname Ohgi.

#mbti #code geass #code geass mbti challenge #Kallen #kallen kozuki #ESFP #Se #Fi #Te #Ni #fictional characters

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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It’s interesting how we interpret things diff in fandom. For ex, I’ve always felt negatively towards dean’s use of sex as comfort Bc of my own experiences w csa but to some other people this reads as more positive on the whole. Do you think that maybe this is what makes people have such astronomically different takes on a character/plot event ?? Maybe this would also apply to 8x17 being read as conversion therapy while others wouldn’t see it. Not original thoughts but interesting nonetheless

Yeah, this is a whole thing in literature/media interpretation classes… You know what’s wild, it’s a pretty postmodern concept that everyone has their own interpretations and there’s rational reasons why we would see things very differently based on our own experiences. Incredibly this wasn’t always the case, and it used to be that there were definitive interpretations and analysis created by a sage literary critic which were then the be all and end all of the interpretation, even if with modern eyes those might seem inherently flawed. It’s why when we learn about historical texts they teach us both the context that the original audience would have interpreted it in, the stuffy academic opinion, a range of other thinkers, and importantly the modes of interpretation to attack it for ourselves, and a chance to write our own opinions.

When it comes to fandom, people as a whole seem very set in the original stuffy one true interpretation thing, which is completely wild to me. I don’t see it as contradictory to read and reblog a dozen different metas on a scene and even if there’s one I personally lean towards, I find it fascinating to consider multiple interpretations and how they come across to people. And, often circumstantially, certain things seem to fit better than others. For example there are a few Dean hook ups I’m quite positive towards that he seemed to be in a healthy place and it wasn’t too weird, while others are quite tellingly wrongbad to me where he’s in a very poor place and it makes me very sad to see him trying to apply that comfort to very little effect. If someone writes meta that ALL of them are good or ALL of them are bad then I’m probably going to end up reblogging meta that says both to get both viewpoints to have the meta background to pick and choose to where it seems more suited to me to say either.

But I guess a lot cases people get really invested in their particular theory or analysis and can’t see past it either to how other people could think different things, or to find it interesting that they do, and to see how those ideas can be equally merited either talking about the same instance or how it can’t be applied uniformly. Some people just aren’t very flexible and get very angry about their one idea being challenged, even though something like a very specific read of a scene, like that 8x17 reads as Naomi putting Cas through conversion therapy, could be given a few different readings but it never hurts to say “this scene also can be interpreted as…” even if when you have your overall opinion of what’s going on there it might not mean as much overall.

I personally read a huge overall narrative of Cas vs Heaven as a queer kid in a conservative family so it makes a lot of sense for me to read it that way. Someone who generally leans towards interpreting him as various other things such as portrayed as a soldier first or a metaphor for him being an immigrant among humanity, or other ways in which this metaphor don’t apply so neatly might have much less use for that interpretation but I find it super weird to think of the ones that apply less to a personal read as therefore wrong. There shouldn’t be a right and wrong in this case, but a collection of interpretations you can understand, respect, see the reasoning for, but at the end of the day are not the ones you fall back on for your overall personal meaning and understanding of the show.

But then at the end of the day, I think the way we all approach the story differently and that leading to different interpretations also comes down to our need for validation etc. I approach it with a somewhat detached academic curiosity when it comes to the fandom’s meta project, as much as the story and characters mean to me, the analysis can be super fascinating but also not particularly relevant or “useful” in the sense of getting a clear grounding in tools to keep on understanding the ongoing show like abstract literary parallels to old episodes or whatever. Like, I just like reading essays branching off and exploring themes and parallels and such, while a lot of people are more interested just in hashing out a clear picture of what happened in each episode, what influenced it, and how to use those tools to guess what happens next or something, which is a fascinating practical application of analysis which is really a hallmark of fandom for ongoing projects and something I’d never even thought you could use analysis for before I got to fandom…

But for people who are much more interested in a clear interpretation of validation of their readings of characters an plot, they just want the things which will prove to be the most accurate to canon and give them the clearest answer and vindication with new episodes, and that means a lot less room for theoretical asides, and for clear answers for what things mean so that when that thread of the story continues there’s certain ground on what it’s telling them… It means a lot less room for having multiple points of views on events and knowing clear right and wrong interpretations means that it’s easy to determine how things are going.

Which I think in some ways can lead to quite aggressive fandom behaviour, not just in the obvious gatekeeping of ideas and fighting over interpretations, or refusing to engage with theories that contradict the one you’re most invested in instead of dabbling in them all, but also that when new content appears, people get upset or argumentative about events in very odd ways about what things meant. Obviously you can see it most with anti-factions which are aggressive about people applying interpretations about ships and stuff, but also with getting so rigid about a reading that if the story changes meaning, people are left in the lurch.

To not be contentious about any current specific stuff so I’ll just use a large vague example, Carver era had very clearly defined symbolism and themes and tropes, but Dabb era didn’t use these and Dabb’s approach to storytelling is very subtle in some ways and really brash in others, none of which can be read like the carefully weighted symbolism of Carver era. I find a LOT more use in analysing the emotional arcs than the symbolism between showrunner eras, even when there is symbolism, it’s often… topically applied? Presifer sat with flames burning behind him in his staff meeting, but Cas sat in front of a similar open flame pit in 14x01 and I don’t think there was any parallel in their intent or behaviour, and I wouldn’t draw the two together, but to take the symbolism of each. But for some people who had been really hugely into the language of Carver era, Dabb era completely threw them, and was physically enraging by how much Dabb wasn’t writing like Carver used to, and there was a lot of upset about how basic his writing was and how wonderful Carver’s symbolism was, and how the show didn’t MEAN anything any more. Of course it still meant TONS, but it wasn’t being expressed in the same way any more, and by running headlong into Dabb era still trying to read it like Carver era, these people bounced off completely and could never get into it in the same way as when there were very prescriptive symbolic and metaphoric rules to follow which made understanding events so easy you could just take a glance at a single screenshot towards the end and explain everything about the scene and its wider meaning in the mytharc.

(What’s interesting is that the show wasn’t previously written like this - Kripke era runs on mirrors and flips in a way which is actually more similar to Dabb era but minus, of course, 10 years of show history which makes Dabb have such a meta, kaleidoscope version of this, and it was in a very heightened, dramatic form which is very elegant and sublime and worked well as the tragedy it was set up to be… Gamble era was more like Dabb era in running more off emotions but lacked a clear symbolic language AND didn’t have the back to front structure Kripke did, being caught in the middle of completely overhauling the story, and I honestly don’t blame her showrunning in a sense that it was an almost impossible job to salvage the subtextual telling of the show from itself in the wake of Kripke essentially ending the show in 5x22 with raised middle fingers at anyone who dare continue past the original vision. Leaning into their trauma and the story’s trauma was a sensible bridge, all things considered, but it makes hers the least elegant storytelling >.> Anyway this is a total aside… it’s early in the morning and I’m just sitting here :P)

Anyway. Yeah, you can tell I do find it interesting to think about how everyone has all their own interpretations :P I mean I know it’s my own experiences which make me so annoying about having this uwu all interpretations are valid sort of approach to it as well, which is just another interpretation at the end of the day. Though I will be snobby and say I do think it’s better that people could read each other’s analysis and even if it doesn’t go hand in hand perfectly with their pet interpretations at least acknowledge it’s interesting and has its own merits, rather than dumping on it in a knee jerk reaction. But then, some people come to the show and end up with their interpretations because the emotional meaning they give is so intrinsically personal, another interpretation DOES feel like an attack, and trying to deal with people who CAN’T accept that some of us are just shooting the breeze and aren’t in a death grip to any one meaning can get very sticky. Especially when someone seems rational for a while but then on disagreeing they get very emotionally violent and it takes you completely by surprise when you thought you were just chatting and then it turns out you’ve hurt them in their most deep emotional place by being like, anyway lol whatever I still mostly ascribe to this other idea - OH NO SORRY D: WE WEREN’T ON LOL WHATEVER TERMS OH GOD OH -

#Asks #this blogs stance is 'lol whatever' on most subjects :P #fandom problems

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generousartisangladiator · 6 years

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Sam and Dean as they were. Season 2. Part two

02.12 Nightshifter

This episode don’t reveal a lot of the character dynamics, but nevertheless it gives some of the subtle details. Sam now takes the hunt more seriously, he is more driven, more determined, more mature. He seriously takes his FBI role, it’s a little thing, but very telling. Dean is still playful about it (his advances to the witness are also telling as well as his childish ideas about him and Sam as Bonni and Clyde), but not for Sam. And his professional behaviour with Ronald also underlines it and Dean kidding about that serves only to highlight it more. And he is extremely concerned not to involve anybody in it, because it’s a dirty, risky and hopeless life and he does everything he can to try to keep Ronald from it: at first from the dangerous knowledge, than he tries to look out for him in the bank. Such determination and the change in the behaviour and his accepting the hunt (not as his free choice but still) as his life, are caused by several factors: firstly, he found the satisfaction in saving lives (it sucks, it hurts, but they live because of me), secondly his hope that by saving lives he can change his dark destiny and he firmly believes to fight Yellow Eyed Demon’s plans for himself and he thinks that the more good he will do, the less are chances he will be turned into something evil, thirdly, his feelings towards his father – he wants to do what his father would have wanted from him, he starts to develop the sense of duty and, the last but not least he lost the hope for his personal happiness and thinks it will be impossible for himself. All this was shown in the previous episodes and this episode showed the result of all that. And the result is stunning: a brilliant professional, easily getting evidence under the pretence of the FBI agent, finding the guilty and preventing the murder of the innocent, capable to think fast under pressure – Sam’s plan of withdrawal was spontenuous and absolutely brilliant. And professionally Sam already exceeds his brother: it was him who stops Dean from killing an innocent girl, who Dean mistook for the shapeshifter, and it was him who provides the plan of departure.

Dean is shown as rush in his decisions but still he gives the initiative in the investigations to Sam, as well as his dare may care approach to his own safety.

02.13 Houses of Holy. An excellent episode revealing the new sides of the brothers’ characters. If Usual Suspects was focused on their similarities, this episode underlines their difference. Their lives were hard, there was a lot of dirt, death and blood in their lives, they saw a lot of tragedy but the same experience led to the opposite approaches to such thing as faith. All that evil that Sam saw in his life made him believe in Good even more. Because it there is evil then there should be Good as well, something which is bigger, greater and wiser. He believes that there is somebody who is listening, somebody who cares, and that means there is hope.

SAM: I don't know, Dean, I just, uh . . . (he sits on the bed) I wanted to believe ... so badly, ah ... It's so damn hard to do this, what we do. You're all alone, you know? And ... there's so much evil out there in the world, Dean, I feel like I could drown in it. And when I think about my destiny, when I think about how I could end up...

DEAN(sitting on the bed beside him):Yeah, well, don't worry about that. All right? I'm watching out for you.

SAM: Yeah, I know you are. But you're just one person, Dean. And I needed to think that there was something else, watching too, you know? Some higher power. Some greater good. And that maybe . . .

(Eric Clapton's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" slowly enters)

DEAN: Maybe what?

SAM: Maybe I could be saved.

As for Dean all that evil he has seen in his life made him not believe in the Good in the world.

DEAN: Okay, all right. You know what? I get it. You've got faith. That's — hey, good for you. I'm sure it makes things easier.

(he sits again) I'll tell you who else had faith like that — Mom. She used to tell me when she tucked me in that angels were watching over us. In fact, that was the last thing she ever said to me.

SAM: You never told me that.

DEAN: Well, what's to tell? She was wrong. There was nothing protecting her. There's no higher power, there's no God. I mean, there's just chaos, and violence, and random unpredictable evil th, that comes out of nowhere, and rips you to shreds. You want me to believe in this stuff? I'm going to need to see some hard proof. You got any?

02.14. Born under the Bad Sign.

In this episode Sam clearly understood that Dean under no circumstances will keep his promise to kill Sam. In any case, it was stupid hope.

Dean. Dean understood that under no circumstances he will kill Sam, it will be easier for him to die himself, even if Sam grows horns and a tail. He is ready to fight for Sam until the end.

02.14. Tall tales

Sometimes living in the close quarters can be irritating and even the best of us have the annoying habits.

02.16 Roadkill.

Sam finds forgiveness to those who did something bad because they became the victims of the tragic circumstances:

SAM: Well, they weren't evil people, you know? A lot of them were good. Just... Something happened to them. Something they couldn't control.

With the time his mercy is shaping and chrystallising more and more, acquiring the more mature form. And Sam is still hopeful and doesn’t reject his Faith in God, because the faith is not about God, it’s about a person who has such faith:

DEAN:I guess she wasn't so bad... for a ghost. You think she's really going to a better place?

SAM:I hope so.

DEAN:I guess we'll never know. Not until we take the plunge ourselves, huh?

SAM: Doesn't really matter, Dean. Hope's kind of the whole point.

02.17 Heart.

Sam fights for every life he can save and insists on trying to save Madison, on trying to find the cure for her, she doesn’t want to kill and that means she is not a killer by nature. At last he gives in the feelings he had been afraid to feel after Jessica’s death, pushing away girls he liked because he feared they might be in danger because of him. Awful is the revelation that Madison is doomed. She was doomed not because of him, but it changes nothing. Is there really any hope for him? In Nightshifter there were hints that Sam doesn’t have much hope for any happiness for himself anymore. But in this episode it was shown much more clearly. He began to lose hope. In season 4 he will start his crusade against the evil without any hope, but the beginning of losing hope has started now. Sam is courageous and he himself shoots Madison, because Sam doesn’t know what the cowardice is (Dean was very wrong when he thought that Sam didn’t kill Amy because he couldn’t. He could, but in fact Dean doesn’t know Sam as well as he thinks and often extrapolates his own characteristics on Sam. More about that later)

Dean. Dean feels for Sam, he doesn’t especially care about Madison, but he is hurt to see how Sam’s hopes are crushed.

02.18 Hollywood Babylon

It’s an easy comic relief after so heavy Heart, but nevertheless it reveals some interesting details about the brothers. Sam tries to distract himself by more and more plunging into hunts. And Dean is happy to be a part of the team, he easily adapts and easily fits into any group (if you throw Dean in the pack of wolves, the pack will get a new member, if you throw Sam into the pack of wolves the pack will get a new leader and new goals). And it has already become habitual that it is Sam who solves the case. Again. He is all in his day’s work. He is not that hopeful and happy boy anymore we met in Pilot.

02.19 Folsom Prison Blues.

This episode is interesting in two aspects. The first one it shows that Dean easily adapts in any group as I already mentioned. The second one is that the episode shows Dean’s influence on Sam. Not only Sam influences Dean when it was the case when Sam taught Dean to stand up to his father and taught him to take the decisions he himself thinks are right, and that they should be discriminative in their job and let innocent creatures go. But this episode shows how Dean teaches Sam by his example. In this case it’s Dean’s sense of duty. Dean is a man of duty, he was raised in such a way. Sam has been learning this from Dean. “We owe him or her, or them”, I do what I have to do” were more Dean’s phrases than Sam’s, but this episode shows that Sam has started to act by the sense of duty too. How Sam’s attitude changed can be seen from these two dialogues:

The first one, in the beginning of the episode

SAM: Well, you barely even know the guy.

DEAN: We know he was in the Corps with Dad. We know he saved Dad's life. We know we owe him.

SAM: But don't you think he's asking a little much?

DEAN: It doesn't matter. We may not be saints, but we're loyal and we pay our debts. Now, that means something to me, and it ought to you. I'm not thrilled about this either, man, but Deacon asked us to hunt this thing down, and that's exactly what we're going to do.

And the second one, at the end:

DEACON: Boys, uh... I can't thank you enough for this. I know it was asking a lot but you still came through. Your daddy ... raised you right.

SAM: Well, we owed you.

DEAN looks at SAM.

The sense of duty and the sense of responsibility are often mixed, but they are different. The duty is connected with service to people, or to family or to anything else and the responsibility is connected with freedom. That’s why I have always asserted that Dean has always been dutiful and Sam has always been responsible. Dean is obedient Daddy’s soldier, but he has always experiencing troubles with taking the responsibility upon himself. Sam has always taken the responsibility upon himself: he never was afraid to take decisions and readily took the responsibility for the consequences of those decisions. But the sense of duty is becoming to develop in him too.

02.20. What Is and What Should Never Be

It is fully Dean-centric episode, the first one, later it will be one or two a season every season. From this moment onwards Dean’s PoV in the narrative will be prevailing.

The episode is devoted to Dean and reveals his inner conflict between his inner desire for a peaceful life and his sense of duty:

DEAN All of them. Everyone that you saved, everyone Sammy and I saved. They're all dead. And there's this woman, that's haunting me. I don't know why. I don't know what the connection is, not yet anyway. It's like my old life is, is coming after me or something. Like it like it doesn't want me to be happy. Course I know what you'd say. Well, not the you that played softball but... "So go hunt the Djinn. He put you here, it can put you back. Your happiness for all those people's lives, no contest. Right?" But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero? (begins to cry while talking) What about us, huh? What, Mom's not supposed to live her life, Sammy's not supposed to get married? Why do we have to sacrifice everything, Dad? (pause) It's... (Dean's lips tremble. Silence. We hear the sky rumbling. Tears begins to falls on DEAN's cheek.) Yeah...

DEAN wipes the tears on his cheeks. He turns around and walks away as the camera goes higher and we see him further and further up from the sky.

Dean chooses the duty (On a lighter note: Dean likes to ascribe to himself Sam’s achievements and Sam’s victories. It was Sam who saved that plane, not Dean:

REPORTER (cont'd) Indianapolis residents held a candlelight vigil in memory of the hundred and eight people who lost their lives...

DEAN No, no. I stopped that crash.)

02.21. All Hell Breaks Loose: Part One

This is Sam-centric episode and reveals Sam’s character. Sam was right when he assumed that Yellow Eyed Demon is modeling the conditions to break special children, to make them take a choice to go Dark. The winner in this beauty pageant could be only that who is not only highly trained and can kill, that is not enough, the winner needs to make a choice between “to kill or not to kill” in favour of “to kill” for the sake of his own survival. And this choice was essential for the Yellow Eyed Demon because he needed the agreement of the special child both for opening the Hell Gates, but mostly to say Big Yes to Lucifer. And Yellow Eyed Demon puts the special children under those conditions, those who don’t kill are killed. “I will not kill”, somebody’s desperate vow on the blackboard as a death note.

And what this episode reveals about Sam? Sam is an inborn leader. Leadership comes to him as naturally as breathing, he doesn’t even notice how easily he organizes people so different and panic-stricken, calm them down and care about their survival. It is noticed by Jake as a military man he knows the leader when he sees him:

JAKE: By the way, I appreciate what you’re doing here.

SAM: What am I doing?

JAKE: Keeping calm. Keeping them calm. Especially considering how freaked to hell you really are. I’ve been in some deep crap before myself. I know the look.

And Sam refuses to play by Yellow Eyed Demon rules and try to save the lives of everybody in the group. And Yellow Eyed Demon can’t break Sam and when he defeats Jake he refuses to kill him and shows him mercy and spares his life, though he understands that Jake is not worth it. But Sam is not a killer. And it costs him his life.

One more important detail about Sam. Sam learns that demon blood runs in his veins and it shakes him to the core. It’s not just a destiny which can be resisted and can be fought, it’s something you can’t get free of. He loses his hope and starts to think that he is cursed and his soul can’t be saved, but nevertheless he decides to fight against the evil to his last breath and fulfill his duty.

Dean is a protective older brother here, who does everything he can to find Sam.

02.22. All Hell Breaks Loose: Part Two

Dean. Dean is completely broken. Sam died and that means Deans doesn’t care about anything else

BOBBY Something big is going down – end-of-the world big.

DEAN (yelling):Well, then let it end!

BOBBY You don't mean that.

DEAN (gets up and stands in BOBBY's face) You don't think so? Huh? You don't think I've given enough? You don't think I've paid enough? I'm done with it. All of it. And if you know what's good for you, you'd turn around, and get the hell out of here.

Sam died and pain is so blinding that he can’t stand it anymore and goes to the Crossroads. In this Dean’s decision several things mixed: his love to his brother, his pain that he lost him, the terrifying understanding that the whole family died and he left alone (and this frightens him, may be for the first time in his life he understood how it’s awful for him and further this fear will control him more and more) and the feeling that he failed his duty (it was my job and I failed it), his feeling of guilt to Sam (I promised I will save him) and to his father (he died because of me).

I understand. I sympathize. But all that burden from this moment was put on Sam. Dean felt guilt that he had failed in his lifelong responsibility of looking out for Sam, AND he felt guilt that because of him, John was dead. And he puts Sam in EXACTLY the same horrible position that John had placed him in. Remember his words in Crossroad Blues?

EVAN She had cancer, they'd stopped treatment, they were moving her into hospice, they kept saying... a matter of days. So yeah, I made the deal. And I'd do it again. I'd have died for her on the spot.

DEAN Did you ever think about her in all this?

EVAN I did this for her.

DEAN (advancing on him) You sure about that? I think you did it for yourself. So you wouldn't have to live without her. But guess what? She's going to have to live without you now. But what if she knew how much it cost? What if she knew it cost your soul? How do you think she'd feel?

These words Dean should have addressed to himself…

Dean manages to revenge the Yellow Eyed Demon, but before his death he seeds serious doubts in Dean’s soul:

YED Well, it's a better shake than your dad ever got. And you never wondered why? I'm surprised at you. I mean... (YED approaches DEAN to speak to him face-to-face) you saw what your brother just did to Jake, right? That was pretty cold, wasn't it?

(Chuckles) How certain are you that what you brought back, is 100%, pure, Sam?

From this points Dean’s doubts in Sam will greatly increase, he will doubt his every step, every his action and again and again will try to find any signs that Sam is not his Sam which in its turn will lead to Sam having stopped being honest with Dean and will start to lie to him.

Sam. Sam turns out to be in a very bad place. At first he he devastated by the thought that he has demon blood in him and he begins to consider himself half a demon, if he had any hope left before this episode he losses it and he begins to think that he is cursed from 6 months:

BOBBY This thing's so powerful, you'd practically need an A-bomb to destroy it. No way a full-blood demon gets across.

SAM No. (Pause) But I know who could.

Sam means Jake (who is not full-blood demon just half a demon like me. This can be easily read in Sam’s bitter words and look)

Later from Bobby’s reaction at his appearance and Jake’s words at the cemetery Sam understands that he died and Dean sold his soul for him. Sam’s anger flares up, and he kills Jake without mercy

Sam comes to the conclusion that his mercy which he has shown to Jake not only led to his own death, but to Dean’s being condemned to Hell. This conclusion was the wrong one, he started to blame himself for Dean’s decision, but it’s in character for Sam, he is the responsible one and feels responsibility for people surrounding him. And this tendency will go on. He will take upon himself the actions of other people, mainly Dean and Dean will be happy to shift responsibility on Sam not to feel guilt himself. Sam also comes to the conclusion that he needs to change, he should learn to be tougher, and learn to overcome his merciful nature. And he kills Jake without hesitation, stomping on his mercy. It’s intention to become tougher, to stomp his mercy, become more pragmatic, to learn to kill without hesitation, to become more like Dean (luckily he didn’t achieve that) will control his actions in season 3.

#SPN #canon #Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #season 2

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wxnnabe · 6 years

Note

Hello there! Congratz with your own hcs blog~☆ Some general hcs for La Squadra boys?:з

IT’S FINALLY HERE!! SORRY THIS HAS TAKEN AGES AND LAGGED PROGRESS BUT ENJOY THESE HEADCANONS! More under the cut! (Also a lot of their past and background are simply my own speculation so you don’t have to take them all too seriously!) also Risotto’s is a bit shorter becuase I lost some of his headcanons rip :(. But I hope you enjoy these!

- Risotto’s father was much the same as he is now-his face hardened face from the not so pleasant and often labour intensive jobs he took to keep himself and the young Risotto alive. Risotto was a bit of a troublesome youth; though no one would ever find out about his past, he holds a lot of regrets about how he treated his father and the petty arguments he started, and when he’d end up storming out of the house only to come back late in the night with cuts and bruises that came with stalking the dangerous streets of his neighbourhood as a youth. They were poor, yes, but his father stayed within the confines of the law and would give everything to his son in the hopes he would pursue a life that was better than his own. When he found out about Risotto’s involvement in Passione, his eyes bored into him with nothing short of unbridled outrage and betrayal. That night was silent, and there were no goodbyes or an argument to be had; only the sounds of packing and Risotto’s footsteps out of the door where to be heard.

- In the late hours of the night, Risotto can be found in the kitchen, where the soft sounds of simmering pasta sauce and bubbling water calms even his more intense nightmares and pulls him into a relaxed state. He is quiet, in order to make sure that no one will wake up to the commotion; but he is not the only member of La Squadra that has little sleep at night. He is often accompanied by Proscuitto, Ghaccio or any other member who is finding it hard to keep their eyes and minds switched off, who will keep silent and to themselves, respecting their capo and welcoming the peaceful silence of the night. If they manage to stay awake, Risotto will occasionally make conversation with them-it’s never about missions or their work as an assassin for the deadliest gang in Italy, but rather domestic topics; where he’d found the recipe, what they’ve been currently reading, why he’s managed to collect enough cat fur off Formaggio’s pants he worries he will start growing a tail of his own. If they may even get to try some fresh dishes courtesy of their capo. If not, they will find the surprisingly endless amounts of ready-made meals in the fridge to be fully restocked by the time they awake.

- On that note, Risotto cares deeply for all the members of his gang. He never allowed himself so much of a family as a child and neither at his current state, but he respects them for their obedience and their devotion. Their personalities make for an interesting bunch, but they manage themselves well so he, much like his father, pours all his energy into making sure they get what they deserve.

- Proscuitto is not as silent as his capo, but other members respect him equally and for good reason-without Proscuitto the team would be at wits end with one another, so it’s good to have an equally respected member that can calm down the hotheaded Ghaccio and warn Melone when he’s clearly overstepping on some woman’s comfort zone, all the while mentoring his little brother Pesci in his missions.

- Pesci did not become a member of their group right away-Proscuitto, along with capo’s Gelato and Sorbet were adamantly against the youth joining arms. It was only with the passing of Gelato and Sorbet that Risotto suggested Pesci tagging along, for his own safety. Proscuitto couldn’t argue with his reasoning, and Beach Boy could prove quite useful if used properly. Proscuitto keeps a close eye on him, because he not only wants to train him personally but also wants to keep him away from some of the more questionable people in the gang. As much as he respects the members of Las Squadra, he doesn’t really enjoy the thought of his little brother being influenced by that of Melone or Ghaccio.

- Everyone was deeply affected by the deaths of their capo’s and Proscuitto was no different-his patience for the gang grew thin and he would was often on edge-his cigarettes, which the two of Sobert and Gelato were trying to get him to quit, became his meals. It was a subtle change for some and more noticeable for others, but none of the gang could deny that something switched in him; that his eyes, although they were usually cold and and calculating, had a sort of fire to them, and one that was bent on revenge.

- Proscuitto, within his spare time, can be found in the sitting room, eyes closed, while the soft sounds of Debussy fill the room. He is rarely joined by anyone else; he seems so peaceful in moments like these that no one bothers to disturb him, and he’s silently grateful each time a passerby continues their pace and walks past the small and dim sitting room he has set the CD player up in. When he wants to join in someone else’s company, he will either join them if they too are relaxing, or will assist them in any way he can. He is slightly less of the serious, cold and determined man that he is during missions, and more warmer, open to a smile and the occasional chuckle during these times, and is one of the more pleasant members to spend free time with.

- Ghaccio has a very limited patience and it’s known by everyone in the gang-it’s not like it’s not obvious with his loud and grumpy demeanour. The more mature, polite members of the gang will leave him be unless they need him and will not push his patience, which although he doesn’t voice, it’s hard not to notice the loud sigh of relief that Ghaccio lets out when the room is not frequented by his usual offenders in it-if either Melone or Formaggio are present, he will give them a hard glare as if telling them not to try anything-not that it helps all that much, but even they tend to leave him be on a bad day. Anyone can tell on his bad days; it’s as if, as soon as he’s walked into a room a cool chill follows it. And his face, which is usually set in a scowl or occasionally a tight smirk, is set in a face devoid of emotion.

- It’s days like these that only Prosciutto can pull him out off his reverie, paired with a bottle of wine and two glasses. Ghaccio doesn’t like to admit how easily Proscuitto can get him talking about all his issues, and as much as he tried to refuse Proscuitto when he first tried to crack him open, with the recent passing of his capo’s he let him in, and while sipping their wine (it tastes bitter, and comes as a reminder of their place in the gang, which just makes him furious all over again but he ignores it and focuses on Proscuitto’s mellow voice and reasoning words to bring him back to the present moment) he slowly reveals any issues and troubles that have him in such a dark mood. Proscuitto isn’t really surprised by most of them, and seems to have an answer to all of his issues no matter how impossible they may seem to him; if not at the moment then later on the next day or that evening when he calls Ghaccio over or approaches him himself. Ghaccio is proud to call Proscuitto a friend, despite his usual biting behaviour towards his other friends he tones it down whenever he’s with Proscuitto. He feels like he owes him that much.

- Being grumpy and cold aren’t his only two emotions, and however hard it is at first to distinguish any other emotions from the assassin they are there. His past, although he doesn’t talk of it much left him with the idea that a cold, calculating front will not leave him as hurt, vulnerable and weak as he was in his past. A cold, distanced mother-or an abusive father-a divorce which led to him being shunned by his caregiver-any could be a likely explanation, but Ghaccio would much rather no one know him by his past, so he hasn’t told a soul as to why he ran away from his home and joined Passione. There are rare times that a smile; an actual, real smile can be seen on the assassins face, and no one dares disturb it or mention it aloud in case he doesn’t do it again.

-Pesci is used to living under his big brother’s shadow, and it’s not to say that he is weak-he’s far from it, but he’s gotten used to relying on his older brother for protection. Still, when push comes to shove, Proscuitto knows that he has potential to grow and to take his own fights, should he not be there to assist him. Because of this, he’s trying to expose him to life in the group. It’s not like Prosciutto wanted to show his little brother how to kill; he wanted a peaceful life for his little brother away from what he has known ever since he left home. But Pesci insisted that he join his brother in the gang, and who was Proscuitto to deny him? As children he had done so when he ran away from home, only to have Pesci trail him silently to the underground subway, exhausted and in desperate need of food and water. Pesci knows his brother better than anyone, and he knows that, if given the chance to ensure he is safe, he would cut off all ties from his little brother and never see him again-Pesci also knows that he couldn’t live like that, never knowing whether his brother was alive or dead, so he resolved that he would follow him until he could no longer walk. And Proscuitto, in realising this came to a solution that if he could not protect his brother he would train him so that he would be ready for an assassins life should he decide to pursue it.

-Pesci is quite close to his brother; as such, he rarely talks to many others in the gang. He’s fairly new to the group, and the members within are a colourful batch of personalities that can take years to get used to. He finds Illuso, however, to be pleasant company. He is silent, yes, but he was the last to join the group before Pesci arrived, and when he can he offers advice to the new member. Don’t eat those, Avoid him today, Pesci is very grateful for Illuso helping him out, and occasionally showing him the mirror world so that, when Pesci is ready to start taking missions, he will know more of his allies power and limits and his own, and how he can exploit their target with such knowledge. Pesci has found that the best way to repay him is to give him something amusing; a show, of sorts. It’s never with ill will or violence toward a civilian or a member of the gang that he perches on a high surface and keeps their possessions just out of reach with Beach Boy, but it gives Illuso an excuse to relax and to take a break every now and then. Especially now, other members have joined to watch someone go chasing after their hat although there’s no wind in the air in utter confusion or for their bag to seemingly materialize out of sight once they look away from the mirror. It gives everyone a jovial moment in their usually dreary lives, and each member is glad to have Pesci in their group for the bits of joy he brings them.

-Pesci himself, however, is still quite intimidated by most of the group. He still feels like the rest of the group is more mature, more experienced than he is (which is mostly true) and that by joining the gang, he has let them down. At one point, Risotto approached him. Pesci respects Risotto as much as he looks up to his own brother, and it’s partly why he fears him also. Risotto sensed this, and he had planned to reason with him after gaining revenge for their Capo’s deaths. That at one point every one of the other members was in his position. But he would grow, if he lets himself, and he will become just as fearful as any of the others seem to be to the young man.

-Pesci, in his own time when he is not training with his brother, Illuso, the other members or even himself, is usually out at the beach. True to his Stand, he has a fondness for the peaceful, relaxed pace of fishing. He can sit in peace of the world and everything around him, and focus on the water and the pull on the line. He would let Proscuitto come along with him on these trips, but lately, he finds his brother more caught up in kidnapping Trish Una and seeking revenge on the boss, or in his own thoughts of what ifs and why did this happen to disrupt him with something as silly as a fishing trip. Still, at times Proscuitto may ask him where he is off to, and embarrassed, Pesci will answer him. He feels guilty for taking a break from the gang and the life that he has joined, Proscuitto will realise and will snub out his cigarette and tell him that he will be 10 minutes. The last thing Proscuitto wants is his little brother drowning his thoughts in something as destructive as alcohol or cigarettes or violence, so he joins him in the activity. It’s amusing for Pesci to be the one teaching Proscuitto how to do something and at first, Proscuitto doesn’t understand quite how Pesci can go with the feeling of being an amateur; he’s so used to being good at the things that he does that the feeling is foreign and quite frustrating at that. Pesci will smile at his brother-he is a patient teacher, like his brother. Even though it takes him a week to catch a fish, Pesci is proudly coming home and showing everyone of just how talented a fisherman his brother is, and his smile will widen when he catches the small smile that his brother has on his face.

-Melone is strangely alluring at first glance, and he holds true to that the closer somebody gets. Strange, definitely, but he isn’t just some dangerous creep-he’s quite the talent for making people feel at ease when he’s not asking about what their preferred sex position is. He likes to tease, and he often has trouble deciphering when it’s best to quit it or not even tease someone at all. It’s lucky he’s so observant, because if he wasn’t he’d have a hard time getting himself out of the trouble he causes.

-Melone didn’t have a good upbringing-like many of his peers, although what’s for sure is that Melone had one of the more darker upbringings of La Squadra-particularly on the course in which his Stand takes, and his general stance on women; surprisingly, though, not all women suffer his need to add their DNA into creating the perfect weapon for Babyface. Softer, peaceful, or motherly types are no good for his Stand-particularly if the DNA is of his own or of a non-confrontal male. He usually targets particularly aggressive women or women with some sort of fiery nature; ones that will give Baby Face a fighting chance. As such, he also acts quite different towards softer women and men. He’s less teasing and more encouraging, calm, and they will find him much less of an annoyance than someone with a particularly fiery nature, particularly because they don’t hold much of a fight in them. It’s not that Melone doesn’t like fiery women; it’s more that, within his own twisted past, he’s seen firsthand what such a women can do, and has learnt to use such a specimen to his and Babyface’s advantage.

-On the subject of his past, it’s likely that his mother had some role to play in the cold analytical state in which he views breeders of Babyface, along with his status as a hitman. His mum may have been particularly cold toward him; she certainly had a fiery personality and wouldn’t take much crap from anyone, which Melone still admires to this day despite her mistreatment towards him. Unfortunately, she was young when she had him, and not yet ready to settle and have a child-so she would provide him with food, water, shelter-but much of the love that is expected in a mother was nowhere to be found. It caused Melone to understand very early on that he should not expect love and care from people. When he joined the group, and grappled with his Stand and it’s curious power, he saw an opportunity to push his-and Babyface’s-abilities. He isn’t hurting the mother and father of Babyface; merely taking a sample of blood and asking some particularly invasive questions, then they will never have to talk to him again, so although it creeps some of the members out still how fascinated he is with the variables of the fighters Babyface could emulate with different patches of DNA, or different methods as to raising his Stand, his argument is that he isn’t doing any permanent damage to any innocents, and the mission gets completed in a timely manner. When he is in the moment, he barely sees these innocents as people; rather, he sees an opportunity to create a stronger, loyal, smarter Babyface, which can bother some people. However, with time, he’s learnt that, outside of missions, he needs to treat people as they are. Particularly his gang, who, thanks to Sorbet and Gelato, now have a teasing yet caring member to call a friend.

-He’d like a family when he’s older. He’s promised himself that he will retire when he gets the money, and he will find someone to settle down with. He’d love to have children, but it has nothing to do with trying out the methods of raising that he used on Babyface. No, he wants to raise his children not to fight people, but to fight for their hopes and dreams. Once he retires, he really doesn’t see the need to continue using his Stand or to even use violence-in fact, he’d be gladly stripped of his abilities once he’s got the life that he’s always wanted, when he’s got a family to share his love and care to.

-Illuso is usually mistaken for being the quiet, reserved or even shy member of the group; however, the members know him better for being very analytical, and somewhat of a cocky nature. There is some truth in him being quiet, and reserved-he doesn’t really like talking with anyone, rather observing them. Not for any particular reason, it just calms him and, at times, interests him. Man in the Mirror is quite handy for watching people come and go, and often in his free time he can be found people watching. He’ll stop watching if he thinks there’s something private going on or once they reach closed doors-he can respect peoples privacy, despite his ability giving him leeway to observe further. Illuso is quite friendly to everyone in La Squadra, and though he is only close to few, everyone in the gang is glad to have him in the gang, for his observant behaviour gives them an advantage should they need to scout out an area or find an escape route.

-Illuso had a peaceful upbringing,and many members of the gang often wonder how he got into the gang life. He was quite intelligent as a child, and although he had few friends he had a family that loved him and a good future. It was through a twist in which brought Illuso into Passione. His family, as loving as they were, came under hard times. The small business that his parents owned fell under hard times and had no way of paying off the debt that they had amassed from the investment. In a desperate effort to save the business and his families dreams, his father made a decision to loan money from the most feared group of Italy;and, as they had no other way to repay them, Illuso offered his service in place of money. He was smart, and incredibly resourceful when it came to getting information; even before gaining his stand, he managed to gain Polpo’s attention and gained rank as an informant in the lowest group of the gang. He still writes to his family, and he used to visit them on the few days he had off-though, since their disbandment from Passione, he cut all contact with them, settling for observing them through Man in the Mirror to make sure they are still alive and well. He was never a religious man; yet he sends a silent prayer for his family every night before settling in for the night.

-Formaggio gets along with Illuso, and they became friends in the most unlikely of propositions-where Illuso is usually quiet and observant, Formaggio is loud and quite outgoing-he also loves to tease ad irk a lot of the members of the gang, and Illuso was a new target for Formaggio when he first joined the gang. Formaggio found him to be boring after a while and wouldn’t specifically chase after Illuso; however, after being teamed up with Illuso ore often, he noted how much more tired, and how shaken the young adult would be after their mission was completed. After some thought on the matter, he decided to confront Illuso about it himself. Illuso was hesitant to tell Formaggio much at first, but when Formaggio mentioned letting it slip to Gelato and Sorbet he relented. Truthfully, Illuso, although being a mere informant and rarely involved within the actual murder that was so often involved with their job, he was finding it hard adjusting to the shock of it all and had been losing sleep over the looks of their targets faces the more he killed or was involved with Passione. (Illuso had even considered escaping Passione-but did not want to place his family in even more trouble than they already were. Besides, he didn’t quite want to be at the business end of some of his fellow assassins’ Stands and their prowess now that he had seen firsthand what they were capable of. He was too deep into the gang to ever come out on the other end to live the normal life he had.) Formaggio gave him a weary smile and with a pat on his back, told him that he’d best find himself an outlet to return to once the mission was finished. In that moment, that smile, Illuso swore his fellow goofy team member aged almost 5 years, and he realised that Formaggio must be one of the oldest members of La Squadra. He offered to take him through many effective outlets, good ones that would leave him feeling refreshed, and bad ones that although made you just as shitty (if not worse) than when you first drank/smoked/etc., sometimes it was better that way. Formaggio offered a wisdom that none of the other gang members had offered, mainly, Illuso noted, as they were still trying to adjust to him being apart of the group, such an innocent young man with so much he could’ve done with his life rather than spend his days a slave to the gang. Illuso decided to trust Formaggio in that moment, because even though he didn’t trust any other gang members, and certainly didn’t want to start trusting Formaggio. He still viewed them as separate, for he himself was not directly killing anyone yet, not quite, just aiding. But Formaggio already considered him apart of the gang-he supposed that every one of the members had this inner conflict at some point, and Formaggio had seen enough of it to know what he was going through. He supposed it was nice enough of him, and next time Formaggio shot him a snide comment, instead of his usual silence and raised eyebrow, he smirked at the redhead and gave him a quick and witty comeback that surprised everyone. They’ve been friends ever since.

-Formaggio seems quite young, and many make the misconception for his immaturity to be youth-they’d be suprised to know he’s a couple of years older than Risotto, and actually helped mentor the silent, serious man (breifly) when he first joined La Squadra. He’s had a lot of time to mull over the conflicting emotions of taking lives, living in a gang and in the constant peril of death and the mistreatment of the Boss, so although he still festers a fiery rage at the misfortune the Boss has caused his group, he manages to quell it and accept it well, or better than many of the other members of the gang.

-That was before the deaths of Sorbet and Gelato, though. They were especially close to Formaggio, being almost like old friends to him. When they pieced everything together, it was like someone doused him in gasoline and lit the match. He was violently mad, and Risotto hunted him down after quite some time following his trail of trashed property and beaten bar fights. Formaggio, although maintaining his laidback, immature nature, seemed more older; liked something had aged him in those bars, almost similar to the glimmer of age Illuso had seen in him when the redhead confronted him when they first met, but now it was clear as day that the deaths of his friends took more of a toll of him than any other things he had seen throughout his time in Passione, since he had first been recruited as a bratty, violent teen with an eye for trouble. Sorbet and Gelato were a second family to him; his own family were…somewhere, but as a child he could never connect to them and no matter how hard they tried they could not get him to stop coming home bringing cuts, bruises, and biting words. Sorbet and Gelato changed him, made him into the seasoned assassin he is, taught him how to channel his anger and calm down when needed, and taught him to regret the years of mistreatment he held to his family. Though there was not much he could now do to fix things with his family without making them a new target for the Boss, he did find a new family, and sought to do right by them, and to bring some lightness into the gang; even if that meant leaving Ghaccio fuming to find Pesci chortling quietly over the little prank he played on the blue-haired assassin.

-On a lighter note, Formaggio is quite fond of cats. He finds their sleek, sly nature and independence to be quite appealing, particularly once he joined the gang. Even as a boy, he would stop to give them a scratch behind the ears of some food if he had some, and he is usually found lying around the base playing with some kittens or walking around leisurely with a cat or two following suit. It’s a mystery where all these cats come from, and why they follow him, but whenever anyone asks he smirks and explains that he’s a pussy magnet, often gaining the groans of more than a few of the members. His laidback and carefree nature, when not in the middle of a mission can be frustrating for some of the members, but often times many of the members agree that his personality takes the edge off some of the worst days and even brings an amused smile to some of their faces. Proscuitto wishes he’d stop shoving cats around him, though, and starting up his more violent bouts of hayfever (that the man is somehow oblivious to).

#Ask #talt0sh #risotto nero #proscuitto (jjba)#ghaccio (jjba)#pesci (jjba)#melone (jjba)#illuso (jjba)#formaggio (jjba)

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tobeornottotc · 7 years

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Demian Analysis BTS and Love your self

Demian Analysis BTS

This is a brain dump this means that there is a lot of just spurred notes here and there analysing the BTS theories, I will be doing more brain dumps like these to get to the root of the story before Love yourself the film airs next year

Extracts describing Demian in bold are from Sparknotes

Let me know your own theories and how you think the storyline began and ended, because the timeline is what’s throwing me off a lot.

Thanks R.

Cain and Abel- Jealousy, Betrayal, Brotherhood, Youth

The first episode occurs when Sinclair is ten years old. Sinclair invents a story about stealing some apples and is then blackmailed by an eleven year old thug, Franz Kromer. Not having enough money to pay off Kromer, Sinclair begins to steal and is otherwise subjected to tormenting humiliation by Kromer. A slightly older, but amazingly mature boy, Max Demian, soon enters Sinclair's school. He approaches Sinclair one day after class and presents him with an inventive interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel. This interpretation contradicts the standard Christian story Sinclair has been fed and the new idea excites Sinclair. Seemingly knowing everything, and with unbounded capability, Demian convinces Kromer to stop tormenting Sinclair. Freed from the source of his tensions, Sinclair abandons Demian and attempts to become a more model child.

Apples- Jimin is the start of everything linked to Jin as well - Apples are a huge sign of tortured child hood, linked to Adam and Eve and temptation, sin etc… Jimin’ story whatever it is gonna deal with all these feelings and I think that the Cain and Abel storyline might also be linked to him and Jhope’s storyline.

Demian- Each character in Bts HYYH has their own duo for Demian apart from Jin who I believe is meant to be Abraxas

Suga is Demian to Jung kook

R.M is Demian to V

J Hope and Jimin are connected as well

But what is maturity though?

Focus of this Brain dump is Jung Kook and Suga – Growth and Independence

In HYYH the boys delve into many situations linked to their “Demian figure” Suga is always by Jung kook’s side and always like a calming influence but then suddenly it changes and Suga breaks down beating up Kook and also burning down everything after we see him in the hospital waiting room waiting for someone who we now know from love your self is Jung kook. The reason Kook got in the hospital is because he got into a car accident and pre accident Kook is seen to be beat up again. Kook definitely is young Sinclair in awe of his Demian. He paints pictures of Suga and shakes his head in fear and pain screaming Hyung, his solo song for Wings Era is a song praising friendships between boys and how relationships can help someone grow.

He approaches Sinclair one day after class and presents him with an inventive interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel. This interpretation contradicts the standard Christian story Sinclair has been fed and the new idea excites Sinclair. Seemingly knowing everything, and with unbounded capability, Demian convinces Kromer to stop tormenting Sinclair. Freed from the source of his tensions, Sinclair abandons Demian and attempts to become a more model child.

So is this one of the reasons why Suga and Kook fall out, because as Kook sings in Begin, he’s like a young baby bird (which is why the image at the end of his video reel is the birds nest circle thing) who just started to grow because of his friends and Suga especially. You notice when he paints in his video Kook sees a piano in flames and that’s what causes him to start actively screaming in pain Hyung. But also the weird thing about the image he’s painting Is that it also looks very similar to Rap Monster who I can’t help link for Kook’s p.o.v as Alfons who would be discussed later, in Demian. Rap Monster’s influence is heavily subtle yet seen as we watch I need you and the videos from HYYH, and I feel like he is one of those influences that causes Junkook to also start to spiral. In Blood sweat and tears you see Kook putting his finger to his lips in what looks to be like the green absinthe drink that Rap Monster was drinking and then you see him well, hanging from the ceiling etc… Etc.

We get to know Max Demian only through the eyes of Emil Sinclair. Since Sinclair sees Demian as almost divine, Sinclair would not be one to critique Demian, to offer deep insights into his personality, to see how Demian grows and changes. Thus, in Demian, Demian remains a fairly static character. This is just as well—Demian's function in the novel is to help Sinclair break free of his upbringing. Demian is Sinclair's guide through life. He watches out for him when he is being blackmailed by Kromer and offers him intellectual excitement. Demian teaches Sinclair to think differently, to discover himself and his desires. Demian is there for Sinclair during the final period of time when he is becoming independent. Finally, when Sinclair has broken free, become an independent being, Demian leaves him. Demian's purpose is to make sure Sinclair develops. Once Sinclair is equipped to handle the world on his own, to act in accord with his desires, Demian's purpose is fulfilled, his mission accomplished. He has no more use in Sinclair's life—he must leave Sinclair alone.

I do think that reading from this description of Demian that yes Suga is Kook’s Demian figure and his own storyline in the ‘arc’ heavily influences the reason for why he does breakdown and abandon Kook at the end.

Sinclair enters boarding school, confused and unsure of what he thinks and believes. One day he is approached by an older boy, Alfons Beck, who invites him to a bar. They go off together, drink wine, and chat. This marks the beginning of a rebellious streak and a new group of friends for young Sinclair. He often goes out late into the night, drinking and carousing. However, he refrains from one of the activities popular among his friends: he refuses to go with them when they visit women because Sinclair has a yearning for love, not sex. One day in the park, Sinclair sees a girl who is, for him, the paradigm of beauty. She has some male features, but is surrounded by an incredibly alluring air. Though he never speaks to her, he names her Beatrice, and she becomes a symbol for him, an ideal for whom he acts. Immediately he reforms his behaviour and ceases his activities with his friends. Also, he begins to take up painting and paints a picture of this girl. Days later he realizes that the picture is also a picture of Demian.

Yearning for Love, the new era we are in is called Love yourself, in the highlight Reel we see Kook see a girl figure and be dazzled by her. Like Omg she’s Beatrice, 100% and I think people seriously need to understand that she is not meant to be the reason for why she loves himself but she’s meant to be an ideal for him not being himself and she’s meant to also I think be a representation of his obsession of Suga who is his role model and inspiration etc…

Jin as Abraxas

In class one day, Sinclair finds a note that speaks about breaking free. Also, it mentions a god, Abraxas. Sinclair is certain that the note is from Demian. Only half paying attention to the day's lecture, Sinclair perks up when he hears his teacher mention Abraxas. The teacher says that Abraxas is an ancient God who contains both divine and satanic elements.

I mean it when I say I think Jin represents the idea of Abraxas for the theories. We see Jin sometimes struggle between being angelic figure, sees the future, is always kissing fallen angel statues, wanting to reach the sky, the butterfly, etc seeing paintings etc. But then you also see a dark element around him, the paintings he’s looking at are of chaos, his stares of in the darkness, his dark looks etc… His song awake is about wanting to break free and reach the sky limits but not being able to, the idea of a fallen angel in my opinion which is why the mirror image of the fallen angel in blood sweat and tears occur with the statue breaking and Jin’s face breaking too…

Strolling about town one day, Sinclair hears music emanating from a small, locked church. He is moved by it and sits outside to listen for a while. He does this many times and eventually decides to trail the organist as he leaves after playing on one occasion. Sinclair follows him to a bar and sits beside him. They begin to chat and Sinclair mentions Abraxas. At once, the organist, Pistorius, takes a great interest in Sinclair. This is the start of an intense relationship between the two men. Pistorius becomes a mentor to Sinclair, helping him to learn further things about himself and teaching him a bit about Abraxas.

Pistorius= Suga again I think this one is obvious though

Sinclair begins to see that Pistorius has limitations. He tells Pistorius that he is too "antiquarian." He brings Pistorius to recognize that he can only teach Sinclair about old gods and ideas of the past—he is not creative enough to invent new ones. Their relationship ends as Sinclair ends his time at preparatory school. Before entering university, Sinclair visits Demian's old house. There, the new owner shows him a picture of Demian's mother. Sinclair realizes that she looks exactly like the portraits he has been drawing, and he unsuccessfully searches for her.

MAMA and LIE

This is linked to J hope as it is shown in one of the music videos that he suffers from a syndrome:

Munchausen's syndrome

People with Munchausen's syndrome can behave in a number of different ways, including:

Pretending to have psychological symptoms – for example, claiming to hear voices or claiming to see things that aren't really there

Lying about symptoms – for example, choosing symptoms that are difficult to disprove, such as having a severe headache or pretending to have a seizure (fit) or to pass out – Which I think is why Jimin is linked in that hospital scene to Jhope.

Tampering with test results – for example, heating a thermometer to suggest a fever or adding blood to a urine sample

Self-infliction – for example, cutting or burning themselves, poisoning themselves with drugs, or eating food contaminated with bacteria

Aggravating pre-existing conditions – for example, rubbing faeces into wounds to cause an infection, or reopening previously healed wounds

Some people with Munchausen's syndrome may spend years travelling from hospital to hospital feigning a wide range of illnesses. When it's discovered they're lying, they may suddenly leave hospital and move to another area.

People with Munchausen's syndrome can be very manipulative and, in the most serious cases, may undergo painful and sometimes life-threatening surgery, even though they know it's unnecessary.

THE PILLS and JIMIN AND WATER / DROWNING - Signs of this syndrome occurring

Causes of this syndrome:

· Emotional trauma or illness during childhood – this often resulted in extensive medical attention- Jhope losing his mum that near that carousel

· A personality disorder – a mental health condition that causes patterns of abnormal thinking and behaviour

· A grudge against authority figures or healthcare professionals- I think this is why Jimin was smirking and acting weird in lie when he’s being interrogated and tested. The idea of HYYH is also the idea of the distance between modern youths and adults, which is why they are seen terrorising everywhere and going crazy and being rebellious.

Back to Kook/Suga

Sinclair soon becomes a regular in the Demian household. He is immensely happy to be spending his time with Demian, Demian's mother, and others of their type who pass through. There is, however, a note of darkness—both Demian and Sinclair have premonitions of evil to come. Talk about a war begins to brew. Sinclair spends that summer with the Demian family, further strengthening his bond with both Demian and Frau Eva. One day he summons his mental energy to telepathically call Frau Eva. She hears his call and sends Demian to him. Sinclair is ecstatic that it works.

War- War is written on the phone box that Rap monster is desperately trying to go into to get to V

A woman is involved- Yes people Eva is involved this relationship seems really paralleled not by jungkook and Suga but by jimin, jhope and the woman in their highlight reel.

War begins and Demian is called to serve as a lieutenant. Before Sinclair goes off to war, Eva tells him that he now knows how to call her and whenever he needs to, he can do so and she will send somebody like her to his side.

Sinclair is wounded in battle. He summons his energy and finds Demian by his side one night in the infirmary. Demian tells Sinclair that if he ever feels like he needs help, he no longer needs to call Demian. He simply needs to look inside himself and he will see that Demian is within him. With that, Demian gives him a light kiss on the lips—a kiss that he says is from Frau Eva—and vanishes into the night.

Wounded- The car accident

If he ever feels like he needs help, he no longer needs to call Demian. He simply needs to look inside himself and he will see that Demian is within him. – LOVE YOUR SELF THEME

Next I’ll try to analyse V and Rapmonster and what their deal is for this whole thing

Thanks R.

#bts #analysis #bts theories #wings #love yourself #hyyh #demian

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friendshipsavetoxic · 4 years

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Signs That Show Your Friend Is Toxic

Toxic friends complicate your life. These folks tend to be more than a nuisance, they are parasitic. Precious time slips away because you cope with their negativity; and you are left wondering why you should are feeling despondent. If you are ready to simplify your life, you can't condone these poisonous friendships no more.

What Fixing Friends Can

They drain you. -- You feel psychologically and emotionally drained after spending time with them, rather than uplifted. (Read Emotional Blackmail.)

They're unsupportive. -- You're scared to inform them about new, significant areas of your life because they have been unsupportive or completely rude about your ideas in the past.

They're up to no good. -- They often partake in activities that are morally unfair.

Their values and interests are contrary for your own. -- Dissimilar value systems frequently mix like oil and water. This doesn't necessarily indicate another person is wrong, it merely means they aren't suitable for you.

They are unreliable.

They simply contact you when they need something. -- Maybe you never hear from these.

They are not satisfying you halfway. -- In case you're always the person calling your friend to create plans and moving out of the way to be together , but they never return your favor and try to go out of her way for youpersonally, there is a issue.

They're envious of you. -- Jealousy is:"I need what you need and I wish to take it from you" As they say,"You can not soar like an eagle if you hang with turkeys."

They always drive you to minutes of insanity.

My Story of Toxicity

Here's why I know how bad these friendships can be: I have been on both sides of the courtroom. Yeah, I've my share of victim stories about friends who had been friends only if I agreed with them gave them exactly the spotlight. I've got stories of woe about past friends who were fabulous and fun, given I did not attempt to cut into their time by (gasp!) Spending time and having other friendships. (You know, with a life out of them?)

But the truth is I have been a terrible friend sometimes, and I recognize this. Previously I've failed several friendships by simply relying on the other individual to stay in touch rather than reaching out myself. A few of those friendships withered away over time because of my toxic behaviour. Bottom line: Toxicity is really a two-way road -- you have to be a fantastic friend too. (Hold this notion; we'll come back to it.)

How to End a Toxic Friendship

In my experience there are two ways to end a noxious friendship: fast and or awkwardly. Neither is fun, neither is neat, and is simple.

In the Event That You still wish to keep this Individual on your lifetime, just to a lesser level:

Quit reacting to bogus emergency calls. -- In case you do not drop everything to choose their"I'm so devastated! My supervisor gave me a look that I believe he disturbs me and that jerk from advertising wore the same shirt as me" calls, but they'll find someone else that will. Or they will address this. Either way, it's okay to step back and eliminate the very first awake calling list to get non-emergencies.

Take positive control of unwanted conversations. -- It is okay to change the subject, discuss you, or even direct discussions away from pity parties and self-absorbed sagas. Be happy to disagree with them and deal with the consequences.

Prove that you will not be insulted or belittled. -- To be honest, I've never had much luck trying to call toxic folks out when they've insulted me. The best answer I've gotten is,"I am sorry you took what I said so personally." A great deal more effective has been finishing discussions with searing sweetness or just plain abruptness. The concept is clear: There is no reward for subtle digs and no other matches will be played at your end.

Be brutally honest. -- Some people truly don't understand their own hazardous trends or their inconsiderate behavior. You are able to really tell a person,"I feel like you ignore me until you need something." You can likewise be honest if their overly negative mindset is what is driving you away:"I'm trying to focus on positive matters. What is something good that we're able to chat about?" It might work and it may not, however, your honesty will make sure that any friendship which continues forward is constructed on mutually beneficial floor.

In the Event You Only Want to Totally end your connection with the Individual in query:

Stop taking their calls entirely. -- If you're stuck seeing them on a regular basis, such as, for instance, a coworker, store things on a purely professional degree. Find a reason to depart and explanation yourself as necessary. It is passive aggressive to anticipate avoidance to handle the issue, but it is an important element. You can't cut ties should you still chat on a regular basis.

Firmly tell them you've had enough. -- If you have decided it is time to reduce a really poisonous influence out of your life, it is possible to tell them frankly (without being cruel). "I just can't be friends with you right now" isn't fun to listen to, but it's the benefit of putting everyone on precisely the exact same page.

Create new friends worth having. -- Seriously! Offer your time to buddies you associate with and enjoy. The long shadows of poisonous friends shrink considerably when you've got much better things to do with your time than worry about their negativity.

Finally, Be a Great Friend

It doesn't help to reduce toxic friends out of your life if you're not prepared to boost quality friendships. Frankly, I'm not trying to preach; this is something I am working on in my life. also you can send them daily friendship quotes(here it is) which helps you a lot!

Make that initial telephone, offer a real glow, schedule an enjoyable outing with another individual in your mind, send this ridiculously amusing card for no true reason -- there are tons of ways to nurture your spirits. When you're surrounded by good friends and good intentions, it's amazing the way pettiness and toxicity only vanishes.

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boatiechat-blog · 7 years

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Snape, Dumbledore, and when the end narrative is counter-moral

I’m reposting here, with minor edits, a (long, sorry) comment I made under a super rich discussion on the abuse Snape suffered. My main thesis is that Rowling uses narrative and symbolic cues to paint characters as positive or negative, especially in the first book, but then subverts these alignments with several plotlines. This is not resolved in a satisfying way in the end, with a reversal to black-and-white morality based on redemption, undermining the more subtle developments of the mid-series. *** I think all of those analyses [about Snape’s victimhood] are absolutely fascinating and pretty spot on, but there is one thing that gets glossed upon in all of those replies. This a work of fiction shaped by narrative processes that are meant to manipulate our emotions into feeling a certain way. Most of the disagreements I see in fandom, and the conflicted emotions people have within themselves regarding Snape, usually boil down to this. I’m taking most of my analysis from Margrethe Bruune Vaage’s book The antihero in American Television (she’s my PhD supervisor and a total badass, I love her). Most of the arguments can be used for literature too, but for the specific narratological points, I would refer to Dorrit Cohn’s Transparent Minds, Representing consciousness in fiction. I- How do we form moral judgements? Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Greene speak of a “dual process” of moral judgement. The first one is rational: one weighs the pros and cons, the various outcomes, the validity or impact of a certain course of action, and passes a judgement. The second is intuitive: it’s a quick-and-dirty process, through which we intuit a positive or negative value to an action based on subconscious, or at least not causal, connections. See it as a shortcut of sorts: if you hear someone raise their voice in anger at an old person, your first intuition would be distaste. You do not make the conscious reasoning “this person is vulnerable and disoriented, therefore one should use patience and not violence in order to interact with them”. You’re like “wow, that’s mean”. Rational judgements can, with time, transform themselves into intuitive judgements. For example, someone might weigh the pros and cons of eating meat, decide to become, vegetarian, and stick to it. Years down the line, the very thought of eating a steak could be repulsive for that person, without needing to rework through the rational judgement all over again every time. II- How does that apply to fiction? Fiction deactivates, or at least, tunes down, the rational part of our moral judgement values, encouraging us to use intuitive judgement, which can be relatively easily influenced by narrative methods. Basically, when you’re reading or watching a work of fiction, you put your reasoning mind on hold and you buy into the moral undertones of the work you’re reading. Which is why people actually root for Walter White, or Dexter, etc. Bruune Vaage calls it “fictional relief”: the fiction relieves you of the burden of making rational judgements because it doesn’t really matter, and so the things one might find reprehensible in real life can be justified in the fictional world (such as stealing, or killing). Depending on the work, killers and thieves can be the most moral people around (ex Game of Thrones). Sometimes, our rational judgement kicks in, and we find ourself torn by our feelings. This is what makes anti heroes so compelling. We KNOW that selling meths to kids is not a moral course of action, but we still appreciate seeing it. III- Which brings me to Harry Potter: The first few books try very hard to present Snape as a repugnant character. “Repugnant” is related to disgust, which is an intuitive form of judgement. Snape is dark, dirty (greasy hair), unpleasant and rude, and harassing the people he was supposed to be caring for. Dumbledore on the other hand, is presented as a positive, comforting figure. Sweet, excentric grandpa, who supports and comforts Harry and the trio. He gives them information, sets them on their tasks, and generally moves the narrative forward by empowering the (very young!) protagonists. This pattern is very effective, and, it’s a children’s book. We don’t expect subversion of these tropes at all. Repugnant = BAD, Comforting = GOOD. Even the sounds of their names evoke contrasting reactions.The performances in the film reinforce these impressions. As the narrative progresses, we learn more things about the backstory and past actions of Snape and Dumbledore. We learn them as the trio does, so it comes after the first impressions we had, and progressively. In HPAPS, people accuse Harry of being biased against Snape because he’s mean. This subversion is progressive and subtle. First it is revealed that Snape was not trying to steal the stone. Then, several books later, it is revealed that he is a member of the Order of the Phoenix. To complicate matters, we also learn that he HAD been a Death Eater, but had repented for .. dubious moral reasons (selfish, regarding the one person he loved). We also learn that Harry’s dad was arrogant and a bully, but that he did change, that his mother used to be a friend of Snape, but stopped when he got radicalized by an extreme racist cult. We learn that Dumbledore had used Harry while knowing he had to die. I’m trying here to present things in the most morally neutral way possible, but it is almost impossible. At the end of the series, both Dumbledore and Snape have sacrificed themselves for the Cause, and proved their alignment towards the Good. A lot of “do they end justify the means?” arguments have been made, but I won’t get into that. My point is: at the end, the two most prevalent adult figures in Harry’s life, polarized from the beginning, ended up being a lot more ambiguous and morally grey that what was suggested at the beginning. The characters are rich, and the tension between moral alignment, likeability, and perspective (we see things from Harry’s PoV, mostly) are absolutely fascinating. I love it! It produces a lot of rich discussion (like the ones above). But ... IV- Where, IMO, Rowling failed: A lot of these discussions happen because people have turned their rational moral judgement back on. At no point does the narrative condemn Dumbledore for the creepy, irresponsible things he’s done. Ultimately, the narrative redeems Snape, by having Harry name his child after him and Dumbledore. “the two bravest men I knew” is a very dubious line. The end of the last book returns to the morally obvious distinctions of the first few books, despite the fact that the narrative, the trio, AND the readers, had grown up. Our rational judgements tell us that Dumbledore and Snape were part of the Good Guys. That Dumbledore was friendly and supportive of the protagonists, while Snape was rude and emotionally violent. Dumbledore, despite his abusive behaviour, remains likeable all along (there’s a plot arc in which Harry learns the bad things Dumbledore has done, but still decides to see him as a positive figure -- after all, it’s LOYALTY that helped Harry in the Chamber of Secrets). Dumbledore’s abuse of Harry is never really discussed, let alone the very real abuse he conducted against Snape, or Lupin. None of what has been written above is touched upon AT ALL in the books or movie. All of this is (very valid) rational extrapolation from the facts we get in the books. Snape is never really presented as likeable, but he and Harry share a touching moment when he dies, and Harry seems to (IMO, unbelievably) forgive him years of abuse and degradation. Rowling seems to think that the resolution of a conflict implies the disappearance of its consequences. Snape redeemed himself by making the moral choice, so he’s forgiven. The trio defeated Voldemort, and so “all was well”. The narrative tries to make us feel something that most of us are reluctant to feel. The “fictional relief” is not enough to make us buy into the smoothed out morality of the epilogue. V- How I think it should have ended: I think fighting with the good guys does not make one not be an abuser (Snape), and being likeable while fighting for the good guys does not make you not be an abuser (Dumbledore). Both in their ways were shitty people that had a positive impact on the world, and a mixed (at best) impact on Harry. It would have been much richer and complex if, for example, the wizarding world had recognized the heroism of Dumbledore and Snape by giving them posthumous titles or honours. I can buy into the fact that Harry could still have positive feelings about Dumbledore because I totally believe he was groomed into loyalty from a young age, and that in itself would be an interesting aspect if it was brought forward by one of the other characters (my bet would be Hermione, she’s always had perspective, or Ron, as he has a very strong sense of familial support and morality). Similarly, imagine if Snape had been celebrated, and the trio (plus Neville, and most of the Hogwart students) had expressed doubt, or at least mixed feelings towards it. I’ve had feelings of antipathy for people who had done far less egregious things to me than Snape did to the students. Hostility and enmity do not vanish after having been present for years, with cause, just because you understand, rationally, that a person was actually on the right side of history. Imagine a scene in which the trio learn that Snape and Dumbledore are going to be celebrated with a new special Wizarding medals. Harry understands for Dumbledore, but Ron/Hermione point out all the dubious things he’s done. Then all agree that Snape shouldn’t be celebrated. Our own history is full of very morally dubious people who still get celebrated: (Churchill, Ghandi, Nelson ...), while others, much more deserving, get forgotten, like McGonagall (a woman), Hagrid (mixed-race), or Dobby (an elf). This could have been a really deep and interesting ending, leaving open all the moral ambiguities created by the later books and films, and putting the character’s perspective better in focus, while allowing our own interpretation of the events.

#fiction #Harry Potter #Snape #Dumbledore #meta #engagement #morality

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allisonawakened · 7 years

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Thank you for the answer about free will, it's something that has really bothered me lately, I've always believed in free will but certain things like when people talk about karma and astrology that confuses me a lot but I'm not sure I believe in karma anyway except just consequences and thought cycles and patterns. Could I also ask what play astrology has to do with this if free will is a thing and astrology is very fixed? Especially Vedic astrology, or their beliefs about astrology. Thank you!

( part 2 ) Oh and I must say that I’ve started to get a weird feeling when I focus on certain things, it’s like I’m more aware of how things I do everyday interact with my past and present and how my focus could really change my personality and who I am in the long run. It’s very subtle energies but at the same time very powerful bc right now I’m making decisions and needing to plan a bit for the future and you’re kinda right it’s a bit like a web or different tunnels of energies connected to

( part 3 )connected to each other and the more you focus on one thing instead of another I can kinda feel the consciousness and possibilities line up to a different path. I think that must have to do kinda with me being led by spirit or my intuition just because I have so many choices to make rn since I just graduated. Sorry for the long asks and thank you for the work you do on this blog, it’s very helpful and I need to get a reading from you as soon as a get a job haha won’t be long I hope😊🙃

Hi, Hi, Hi!

You are so very welcome for my last answer re: Free Will. It’s why I’m here and do this. What I don’t know from personal experience, I ask Spirit about. And sometimes not even my own Spirit Guides - but any Spiritual Allies floating about that are willing to engage in real, honest, thought-provoking conversation.

You ask some really compelling Spiritual things.

And a long Ask = an even longer Answer ;)

So I’ve answered your questions in 3 sections below:

Astrology & Free Will

Vedic Astrology… Say What?

Psychic Awareness While Living: Healthy or Not?

Note (for those following along at home): I do reference some concepts previously discussed in [ My Post / Answer about Whether I Believe in Free Will, and Why / Why Not ] …. If you are arriving late to the party (and happen to find this interesting), I suggest you read through that first.

* Keep Reading to learn more about the relationship between Astrology & Free Will, my channelled thoughts on Vedic Astrology, as well as how Psychic Awareness & Abilities can Influence How we Choose to Live / Behave *

Astrology & Free Will

I can read Astrology. I know a fair amount about it. It’s more of a hobby / personal interest of mine. I also offer reads on my website on the basis of different planetary and zodiac energies, but I am so very NOT a self-proclaimed “Expert” in that field. So my answer is based on personal opinion, experiences with Spirit, and channelling happening right now as I invite Spirit in to discuss this.

I see Astrology (as a method of reading, learning more about people & situations) like a similar Spiritual Study & (ultimately) Spiritual Tool - used to seek / flush out information about the self. This to me is really similar to how I also see other Spiritual Studies / Tools - like: Numerology & Palmistry.

There is a reason why practicing Astrology is called, “Charting”. I see it exactly as that. A chart of the position of planets at the time of your birth, determining which Houses & Zodiac Signs influence (energetically) the planets’ relative positions in your Chart (upon birth). And therefore, likely characteristics, personality traits, motivating factors, and emotional responses you may (or - to be fair - may not) possess in your life.

So (in my opinion) a Natal Birth Chart is like an energetic Road Map of YOU, based on the measurement of the relative position of the Planets & Zodiac signs.

Just like how - the sum total of the numbers associated with your Name or Birthdate (Numerology), is like an energetic Road Map of YOU, based on the energetic / symbolic significance of each Number in relation to your “Life Path” Number, “Soul” Number, “Destiny” Number, “Personality” Number, and other significant numbers in your life.

Just like how - the markings on your Palm (Palmistry), are like an energetic Road Map of YOU, based on the measurement of your “Life Line”, “Head Line”, “Heart Line”, “Planetary Mounds”, and other such markings.

Although each of these methods, in turn, are super cool, interesting, unique, and compelling… They are as I said: Road Maps.

Much like how we Map our planet, we see Maps everyday, we use Google Maps (GPS), just because we are aware of the information of where we could possibly go / travel to in life DOES NOT MEAN we will see & visit everywhere we have seen on a map or even heard of.

There are things in our Natal Charts - connected to Astrology - that will resonate and make sense / help you to identify & define yourself, your motives, your actions, your emotions, your behaviours… But just because you have that Natal Chart DOES NOT MEAN you will experience and behave *exactly* like everything that has been charted out for you.

That’s where, in my opinion, these schools of thought are tools for us to better know ourselves. But at the end of the day we still have Free Will and possess the ability to choose / decide all aspects of ourselves and our lives - WITH or WITHOUT the added information of our Astrology / Natal Chart, Numerology, or Palmistry.

They may serve to fill in some blanks for us, but they do not pre-determine how we will think, act, feel, behave, or CHOOSE in our life.

Side Note:

I have a client that is a Professional Astrologer. And when reading with them they fully admit to me “Yes, what you say from Spirit is true based on what I’ve already Charted for myself… But I wish to act *outside* of what I’ve Charted. So what does Spirit have to say about that?” ***

*** This is me paraphrasing / glossing over what has been said, as my sessions with clients are confidential.

Vedic Astrology… Say What?

Okay so Full Disclosure (because I’m super honest and don’t know how to be anything other than that):

I have no idea what Vedic Astrology is. I am curious though.

So I’m going to do a quick Google for the definition of that and see what Spirit has to say…

* 3 Minutes Pass *

OHHHHHH.

So Vedic Astrology is… Astrology. But traditional Hindu / Indian Astrology. And it seems to be most focused on Charting / Mapping for the purpose of determining one’s “Destiny”.

Gotcha.

Note: If I’ve butchered that quick-3-minute-Google-dive explanation, I do so thoroughly apologize AND encourage you to write in to *lovingly* provide further information not only for myself, but those that read my blog.

Spirit is showing me that Charting one’s “Destiny” via a Vedic Astrology Reading is no different than what I do as a Psychic Medium when I tell my clients what I see for them in the future (via my Clairvoyant & Clairaudient abilities - visions & spoken word from Spirit).

And Spirit goes further to say (as soon as I’ve typed that up) - “Yea, that’s pretty close Allison”.

So rather than speaking about Vedic Astrology at this point (something I don’t know / practice) - I’m going to switch over to speak about reading the future as a Psychic Medium (something I do know / practice)… Because Spirit has given me the “Green Light” to say that the two are comparable, in terms of the end goal / achievement (pre-determining one’s future). The means though (technique) could not be ANYMORE different ;)

So as a Psychic Medium when I read the future I am reading the highest possible likelihoods / probable events (think Statistical Maths for a second here), based on who you are, how you behave, and the decisions (Free Will) you are enacting in your life right now (so in maths - the “known variables”).

I imagine in Vedic Astrology, the Astrologer is Charting your highest possible / probable “Destiny”, based on your Natal Birth Chart AND the predicted trajectory of the Planets through each of the Astrological Houses & associated Zodiac signs - something that is mathematically pre-determined.

I feel like I’m speaking a lot of jargon here.

BASICALLY. The words that are most important that I just typed are: HIGHEST POSSIBLE LIKELIHOODS, HIGHEST PROBABLE EVENTS, HIGHEST POSSIBLE “DESTINY”.

As with Statistical Maths, there are outliers. Or rather, DATA THAT CANNOT BE ACCOUNTED FOR OR CHARTED.

In Psychology you would maybe say that: “Past Behaviour predicts Future Behaviour”.

Key Words: Predicts! Does not guarantee.

So the way I see it [ WITH HEAPING AMOUNTS OF HELP FROM SPIRIT ] is that Vedic Astrology, or even what I do as a Psychic Medium (when consulting Spirit about a client’s future), is really our “best educated guess” about your future or “destiny” based on your past (or in Vedic Astrology - your Natal Birth Chart & the predicated future position of the planets relative to the Astrological Houses & associated Zodiac signs).

The past - by the way - is something that is Linear. It’s happened. Everything is known to you (and Spirit). The only unknowns are thoughts, decisions, motivators, behaviours, emotions, etc. of those around you that may have at one point or another, influenced your life.

The future - as I said in my post about “Free Will” - is a web of potential.

So can Vedic Astrology influence / supersede Free Will?

In my opinion… No.

Just because something is charted / calculated / psychically determined, doesn’t mean it will *actually* happen in that exact way.

YOU are the “unknown” variable in that equation. Or rather, your Free Will.

You can choose at any time to turn Left instead of Right.

Even if your map, your GPS, your significant other, your family, or every other variable in your life point towards turning Right. You still have the ability to *randomly* turn Left.

Psychic Awareness While Living: Healthy or Not?

Ever heard of the phrase: “Too much of a good thing”?

That’s how I see this Spiritual / Psychic stuff.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s so-so-so amazing. I love my gifts. I love being able to know things / see things / hear things. I love getting “insider” information about my life, my loved ones’ lives, and the world.

BUT.

But, but, but…

Knowing more, feeling more, sensing more… Well that’s not always the *best* thing.

It also reminds me of that phrase: “Ignorance is bliss”

Sometimes knowing less can be best.

When you are (what we now call in the New Age community) ��Awake” to the world around you. Spiritually Aware that your are 100% a Spiritual Being / Entity having a Human Experience…

When you are in tune with your Psychic / Intuitive abilities, you work with them, your use them (or… they use you)…

Well when those things happen… Very quickly you may start feeling *extremely* small, in this world, this universe, all universes. And you realize the space around you IS SO FREAKING, BEYOND, BIG. LIKE, BIGGER THAN EVEN THIS. LIKE, BIGGER THAN EVEN ALL OF THE CAP LOCKS IN THE WORLD.

And when that happens. You. Start. Questioning. EVERYTHING.

Not just one thing. Not just teeny weeny things. But.. EVERY. POSSIBLE. THING.

When you possess these gifts and know how to use them?

Well then you: obsess about the past

“what could have been different”

“where would you be now if you have chosen this instead of that?”

“who would you be if he / she / they had treated you differently?”

“who would you be if he / she / they had RAISED you differently?”

“where would you be know if you knew then what you know now”

Etc…

And you also: obsess about the future

“I want *this thing* but what is the best way for me to achieve *that thing*?”

“How will I know when I need to go for *that thing*?”

“Is *perfect timing* even a thing? How will I know?”

“Could there be something I’m doing now that’s actually holding me back?”

“What if I’m working so hard to *do this thing* right now, when it actually won’t even *give me that thing*?”

Etc…

Then the unfortunate outcome of all of that obsession about the Past & Future results in:

Being so, ridiculously, terrifyingly, hopelessly STUCK in the Present.

SO THE SECRET IS:

Please, please, please let me tell you the secret to this…

What I learned a very long time ago is this:

Listen. Receive. Feel. Sense. Gather & Know more information than everyone else that is still “Asleep”.

Do that. Actively engage in your Sixth Senses. Connect to your Spiritual Allies. Embrace the incredible, amazing, awesomeness that is you & your potential.

Do that. Be that. But then take all of that extra information and THROW ALL OF IT OUT OF THE WINDOW.

IGNORE IT.

Let it come into your awareness, and right back out again.

Because although there is this super-awesome, Psychically-aware, spiritually-savvy, version of yourself. That Spiritual Being / Entity I mentioned earlier.

Although there is her / him / them.

There is also You. The Human Being version of You that is actively living (right. the. frick. now.) this *sometimes heart-rending & emotionally turbulent* Human Experience.

So… Psychic Awareness While Living: Healthy or Not?

Not so much.

But you can change that with that Free Will of yours… By choosing which messages from Spirit you allow to influence your day-to-day thoughts, behaviour, emotions & actions.

Believe me when I say that this takes practice. It’s easier for some than others. But when you get the hang of it, all of the over-obsessing will be like flies buzzing around your head. Psychic / Intuitive insights that you are aware of but see as things OUTSIDE OF YOURSELF. Energies *you can choose* to feed into, or… (and this is WAY more healthy)… IGNORE.

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alderferamarey1997 · 4 years

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How To Get Your Ex Girlfriend Back After 6 Months

#Ex Girlfriend Doesnt Text Back Wondrous Useful Ideas #How To Get Your Ex Boyfriend To Want You Back W

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endorsereviews · 4 years

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Dealing with Difficult Emotions in Product Management

Why Difficult Emotions Matter Particularly for Product People

We may not like difficult emotions like confusion, frustration, anger, envy, sadness, and worry, but we all experience them. This is especially true in times like these, with the Coronavirus pandemic causing many people to be concerned about their health and jobs and the wellbeing of family members and friends.

For us product people, however, difficult emotions are particularily relevant. Here is why:

We routinely interact with individuals who have different perspectives, interest, and needs, such as users, customers, stakeholders, development team members. Users don’t always have the same wants and needs as customers, and the ideas of the stakeholders and dev team may diverge. This can lead to friction and conflict, which gives rise to difficult emotions.

We are responsible for their success of our products. While I really appreciate this entrepreneurial aspect of our work, it can bring up tension, stress, and frustration when we are trying to progress our products towards agreed goals but are in danger of missing them, be it a sprint goal, product goal on the roadmap, or a strategic user or business goal.

We have a rich and creative but equally challenging and multi-faceted job. It ranges from carrying out product discovery and strategizing work to managing the product backlog; from talking to users to meeting with marketing and answering questions from the support team—to name just a few examples. Having to attend to so many different tasks can be challenging: It can create difficult feelings like restless and irritation.

Negative emotions, however, are not only unpleasant. They influence how we perceive reality and how we communicate. When you feel hurt or grumpy, for instance, your thoughts are likely to show a negative discolouration, and you might interpret what others say as criticism rather than take it as their observation. This can lead to misunderstandings and damaged connections, as well as wrong analysis of feedback and data and wrong product decisions.

To put it differently, learning to skilfully deal with difficult emotions increases our mental wellbeing, strengthens our connections with stakeholders and development team members, and improves our ability as product people to make effective decisions.

A big shout out to Marc Abraham who, according to my knowledge, was the first person to bring attention to challenging feelings like frustration in product management.

Becoming Aware of Difficult Emotions

To constructively deal with difficult feelings, we must become aware of them and learn to accept them. This might seem trivial, but it is a crucial step that is sometimes hard to take. There are three reasons why this can be the case:

Self-view: If you firmly think of yourself as a gentle, kind person, then you might find it difficult to accept that at times, you too can feel emotions like anger, ill-will, and envy.

Mental State: If you are very busy, rushing from one task to the next, then noticing difficult feelings will be harder. In fact, you might not become aware of them until they have grown so big that they can’t go unnoticed any longer.

Work Environment: If you work in a male-dominated environment, then tuning into your feelings may not feature very high on your agenda, especially if you are male. The male-dominated workplaces I have experienced were largely characterised by ignoring difficult emotions, rather than acknowledging them.

But ignoring and suppressing unpleasant feelings won’t make them go away—trust me, I’ve tried this more than once. Instead, it will affect your mental well-being and impact your ability to make the right decisions. In the worst case, an emotion will eventually grow so big and powerful that it overwhelms you and that it causes you to act it out, thereby possibly saying or doing something you will later regret.

Therefore, bring awareness to how you are feeling, and allow difficult emotions to be present. One way to do this is to spend a few minutes going through the following sets of questions, which are adapted from Jay Oren Sofer’s book Say What You Mean:

How are you? Are you feeling irritation, worry, or anger?

If that’s the case, where do you experience the feeling in your body, for example, in your belly, shoulders, hands, or face?

What does it feel like? Is there pressure, tightness, aching, heaviness?

Don’t rush through the questions above. Take your time to answer them. Be aware that sometimes several feelings are present that can be initially hard to discern. If that’s the case for you, start with the most dominant one. Afterwards, look at the more subtle emotions. If you find, however, that you don’t feel anything, then try to relax. You might be caught up in thoughts, or your awareness might be impacted by stress or tiredness.

Overcoming Difficult Emotions

Once you have become aware of a negative feeling, try the following six tips to overcome the emotion:

First, accept the feeling for what it is: a difficult, unpleasant emotion—no more, no less. Label the feeling and call it out as anger or worry, for example. But don’t be self-judgemental and don’t beat yourself up for having the feeling. Rather see it as something natural, a part of the human experience we all share.

Second, take responsibility for your the feeling. An emotion like anger may have been triggered by someone’s speech or action. But it belongs to you and you are responsible for dealing with it. Let’s say that Jon, a senior stakeholder, requested another feature, despite you having already explained to him that you would not be able to accommodate any new requests. Your emotional reaction to his request is worry and anger: worry about what might happen when you decline the request and anger at Jon’s apparent lack of respect for your role and the established product management processes.

But it would be wrong to blame Jon and make him responsible for the worry and anger you are feeling. After all, you didn’t have to react this way. You could have responded with empathy whilst kindly but firmly declining his request. Therefore, don’t blame others for difficult feelings and don’t hope that your mental state will change simply by others changing their behaviour.

Third, don’t hold on to or identify with the feeling. Don’t label yourself as an angry or anxious person, for example. Simply recognise that anger or fear is present—just like it is in millions of other people right now. Don’t allow negative emotions to define you. What’s more, the most difficult feeling will dissolve over time. Emotions come and go. No feeling lasts forever.

Fourth, become aware of negative thoughts that feed a difficult emotion make an effort to let go of them. Let’s take the example above and let’s say that Jon’s request triggered anger in you. It will be hard for you to overcome the emotion if you keep thinking of what happened and how mean and selfish Jon is. Instead, put things into perspective and think of a positive quality that Jon has. This will help you stop having negative thoughts about Jon and allow your anger to dissolve.

Fifth, counteract difficult emotions with positive thoughts. When we are stressed or worried, everything can feel difficult and bad. To help yourself snap out of a negative mindset, put your emotions and thoughts into perspective and count your blessings. Consider all the positive things in your life and the goodness you have received. This helps you mitigate a strong negativity bias where you view everything from a negative perspective and where difficult emotions dominate, and it brings balance to your mental state. (But don’t use this technique to ignore or suppress negative emotions!)

Finally, pay particular attention to recurring difficult emotions. We all occasionally experience tension, grumpiness, or worries. But if you are regularly tense and stressed, grumpy, irritated, or worried, then investigate the cause of the emotion. Explore why the feeling is present. Are there any thoughts or stories connected with the emotion? Do they point to an underlying need? For example, if you are routinely overworked, them you are likely to regularly experience irritation and tension. Overcoming these emotions will then require more than relaxing into them and letting them be. It will require you to change how you work and how much work you accept.

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