#i know the feeling I’d exacerbated at the moment because it’s late and my social battery is low

[bookwyrminspiration]

being mature feels like turning your spine inside out sometimes. I’m gonna do it but also GOD I wanna not

#shitpost #i know the feeling I’d exacerbated at the moment because it’s late and my social battery is low #(and my dear if you see this it has nothing to do with you or this evening I promise :) ) #ANYWAY! #grggrrr i don’t wanna be mature I wanna be a bitch #i won’t be. but i wanna

[sorcerersofnyc]

The Last Thing Left (Zemo x F!Reader) 6/9

If it wasn’t so painfully ironic (and hilarious to watch,) Helmut would find the relationship between Sam and James a little sad.

Ghosts weren’t enough to hold two people together.

While they wait for Torres to locate Donya Madani, Zemo brings Sam and Bucky to the home he once shared with you.

You reunite and he reflects upon his relationship with you (his wife’s friend and his friend’s wife) and your journey from being people with mutual friends to partners.

Chapter 6: When he wakes up beside you, Zemo remembers the day everything changed.

Angst, various mentions of death & mourning, Zemo’s wife’s name is Heike because of comics. Implied alcoholism by Zemo as a means to deal with his guilt. I use Serbian Cyrillic as a stand-in for Sokovian. The reader likes waffles (this is a non-negotiable fact).

Note: Main Character is neutral in most regards, but the story was written with my own cultural background in mind. (In other words, I won’t say what she looks like but I envision her as being black.)

First Chapter | Previous

***

Grief softens, but it never truly leaves.

So when Helmut wakes beside you, he isn’t surprised to find grief there as well. Pain has been a constant companion over the years but today’s grief is nothing but a dull throb in his chest.

He had a dream about his wife again. It wasn’t a sad dream, it didn’t hurt to look upon her face, but his heart ached for her regardless.

In his dream, she was happy, happy to sit and chat in a home that wasn’t quite in Sokovia or Spain, but rather a mix of them both. You were there, too, laughing and smiling alongside her.

She was taking the time to explain something to him, something you already seemed to understand. You both laughed when he failed to get the joke.

With a sigh, Helmut sits up in his bed and turns toward the window.

It’s dawn. The rising sun baths the room in an orangy-pink glow and you sleep soundly beside him. He traces little circles unto your shoulder as he thinks about breakfast, what might he make for you. The answer is obvious, really.

He then turns his thoughts toward his mission, whether or not Sam’s associate would locate Madani soon.

He also thinks about what you may do if he kissed you awake.

He thinks about many things as you sleep beside him.

And as he listens to the steady rhythm of your breath, he thinks that he’s truly happy.

***

You never asked what happened to Vasily Zaev and Helmut didn’t offer.

News of his death never reached any headlines in Spain or any other International News Broadcast for that matter.

There were the occasional rumors of a scandal, many of which were exacerbated by social media, but nothing outside the ordinary.

His demise was attributed to liver failure and he’d given his entire inheritance to a young woman about a quarter of his age. Tragic indeed.

In the weeks that followed that night at the Opera, you took an interest in his work. There would be no more missions like the one with Vasily (none would ever be that easy and he didn’t like to see you so scared,) but there were plenty of opportunities to conduct research.

And on some nights, you’d talk about more than just mission, nights when you shared your hopes and dreams for the future, your past sorrows, and secret anxieties.

He’d sit with you while you worked on your art, bought you flowers when you completed a commissioned project, and asked plenty of questions about some of your more unorthodox means.

Sometimes you’d take breaks together and watch television or read.

It was strange, just like the day you first hugged him, Helmut felt as though the two of you had breached something.

He now knew where you were born, how you became involved in the arts, how you felt the night you met Dominik at Heike’s dinner party, (“I always thought she set us up on purpose, but she always denied that she did.”)

It was those stories, those small, stolen moments that made him see you differently.

So by the time autumn settled and painted the leaves orange, red and brown, you were no longer just a friend his wife had—you weren’t even the wife of a friend that he had.

You were a friend to him as well.

*

“Have you seen this?” You asked one day, sitting right beside him on the couch. You were so close, Helmut could feel the heat of your body pressed up against him.

“See what?” He asked, though he knew what you would say.

“This article.” You slid your phone closer to him, leaned forward so close that the curve of your bosom pressed against his arm for just a moment before you leaned away. For the sake of your pride, he pretended not to notice.

The articles mattered more than creating an awkward situation.

He learned that you found articles about the Avengers to be the most interesting. Each headline would often read something like: ‘Accountability: Who Pays for the Avengers’ Mistakes?’ or ‘Sokovia Six Months Later’ and ‘‘Banning Ironman? One Minister Holds Firm.’

They were engrossing.

“They say the U.N. may get involved.” You said one day. “What do you think would happen if they did?”

“Something I’d like to see.” Was his thoughtful reply. And it was true; because even with your help, even as you grew closer together, the weight of his promise still bore down upon him.

The weight of his failure still haunted his sleep.

So for every moment he spent with you, he worked ten times harder. He worked late into the night to complete his research, learned everything he could about the Avengers and the Winter Soldier to complete his plans.

He had to work; he had no choice. Because every laugh, every smile, every lingering glance, every reprieve from his grief was a betrayal to that promise he made to his family—because happiness, even for a moment, meant that he had forgotten them.

There was no other way to justify his actions. In what other way could he be happy in a world where his family was dead?

He hoped to find the answers at the bottom of a bottle, but scotch, whiskey, brandy, and vodka, couldn’t provide a balm for his soul. Not the way your smile did.

So clearly drinking was his only option, the safest option, because he couldn’t let his thoughts linger on you.

He couldn’t compromise his mission.

But then one day, in mid-November, something changed.

Helmut read the headline for an article he knew would suit your fancy, but you didn’t come down for breakfast to discuss it with him, nor did you open when he knocked on your door.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” you told him—but you never came.

*

You left your room around noon but you barely spoke a word.

Helmut should have been happy for the opportunity to work, the chance to focus without you stealing his gaze, but he couldn’t ignore the lump that formed in the back of his throat when his thoughts drifted to you.

Over the past 7 months, you encouraged him to talk about his feeling, to open up more—but it seemed you weren’t interested in doing the same.

You left the house a word to him.

So Helmut waited for you to return:

He conducted his research and decrypted more files.

He brewed a pot of coffee.

He prepared lunch.

Had a glass of whiskey.

He checked his phone for messages but found nothing from you.

He reorganized your spice cabinets, bringing the most used containers to the front.

He checked his phone again.

Had a glass of whiskey.

And finally, when evening arrived and you still hadn’t come home to him, Helmut went into your room without permission.

He was careful not to disturb your things, (even if he wanted nothing more than to pick your stray socks off the floor,) and looked around the space.

There were books and magazines neatly stacked across every surface, their genres ranged from art and fashion to relationships and grief.

He lingered on that last title before turning his attention to a paper on your nightstand. The page was wrinkled, spotted, and ripped in many places, but he knew what it was before he even held it in his hands.

It was the letter Dominik kept in his pocket, the one he held on to so tightly, the one he had with him when he died.

He frowned, and his eyebrows knit together in concern for you.

You were grieving, and your grief had taken you backward, back to the promise of a simpler time. The letter was filled with the musings of budding love, a love that had grown and flourished before the cruelties of life intervened.

Helmut understood the unpredictable nature of grief, how it came and went without reason or regard, how days or even months could go by before it returned in full force.

So he set the letter down with a sigh and left your room as quickly as he came. You arrived home 20 minutes later.

“Hello,” He greeted you by the door.

“Oh—hi.” You paused by the door, a bag of groceries in hand. He followed you into the kitchen.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” He asked.

“No, I’m… I got it.” You placed the bag on the counter, unloading a bag of flour, eggs, and a box of powdered cocoa.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” You said, but then pause when you opened the spice cabinet. Your movements slowed before you stilled completely.

“Helmut? Did you…”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No, no, it’s just… I…”

Helmut didn’t know it at the time, but Dominik would organize your cabinets when he returned from duty. It was his way of telling you he was home if you weren’t there to greet him.

It was that gesture that broke you.

You placed both your hands over your mouth but even that couldn’t force back your cry. “I’m sorry,” you apologized, “I’m sorry—I’m ok,” you lied, but it only seemed to make you cry harder.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Helmut spoke softly. With a hand on your shoulder, he turned you around to face him but you only shook your head. "Let me help you.”

It took a few more moments of coaxing, but once you calmed, you told him everything.

“His… his birthday is next week.” You said, and it didn’t take a genius to know who you were speaking of. “He wanted me to bake a cake.”

You set a yearly reminder to try new recipes a week in advance, a reminder you’d gotten that morning. “Sometimes I look down at my ring and I still can’t believe it. That’s I’m a...that I’m a widow.” Your voice shook around the word and you sniffled again.

Helmut walked you over to the table, helped you sit on a chair, and poured you a glass of Chardonnay.

“… I never wanted to move to Sokovia—did he tell you that?” He did, but Helmut thought it best not to interrupt you. “I wanted to be with him but I never would have considered it before I met Heike… but I loved him, Helmut, I loved him so much and he promised I’d be happy. There are days when I wake up and-” You didn’t finish that sentence, but he thought he knew what you’d say. There were days when you’d wake up and wonder why you were saved, why your loved ones died and you survived. He didn’t know if you remembered, but you told him this before, on the day he first brought you to Spain.

“… He used to wonder if he made a mistake,” Helmut started, “If he’d done you a disservice by asking you to move when his duties kept him away.” He released a bitter laugh at the memory. “He asked me once if he were selfish.”

“What did you say?”

“That he was.” Helmut shrugged, remembering the look of resignation that crossed his friend’s face, a look you then mirrored exactly.

Helmut put his hand on your shoulder.

“He was selfish, but he didn’t make a mistake… your happiness wasn’t wasted and he’d want you to be happy again.” After all, you didn’t fail Dominik. You hadn’t given him a false sense of security, a promise of safety away from the fighting—Not like he had with his own family.

At first, you looked as though he said something outrageous, something you couldn’t quite believe. But then you nodded, releasing your emotions with a shuddering sigh.

“You’re right… he would want me to, want us both to…”

He sat beside you for the rest of the night. He’d listened to you talk and then when there was nothing left to say, he sat with you in peaceful silence, your head against his shoulder.

And on his birthday, Helmut helped you bake a cake.

You stood in the kitchen together, mixing batter and flouring pans. The sweet scent of your creation spread and the home you shared was filled with joy and warm memories.

By the time you finished, you were exhausted, so he offered to take you to the best restaurant in the city.

It was the least he could do for you.

*

When you arrived, Helmut told the hostess of your reservation—Zemo, a party of two—and she checked his name off a long list that he somehow managed to get ahead of. The hostess noticed your wedding bands, and as she stepped away from the podium, she said,

‘De esta manera, el señor y la señora Zemo.’ Right this way, Mister and Misses Zemo.

Your eyes growing to the size of dinner plates as you turned to him, but he kept his gaze settled on the hostess, his jaw set closed.

It was an honest mistake, one he’s sure others made before, but to hear it said aloud was baffling. He intended to correct the young lady, but she gestured for you to follow before he thought of what to say.

If he said you were friends, others would presume you were having an affair. Normally, the opinions of others wouldn’t concern him, but he didn’t want anyone to think badly of you.

“That was weird,” you said. “I forgot people must think we’re…”

“Should I have corrected her?”

“It was an honest mistake, nothing worth embarrassing her over.”

And that was that.

You both agreed to treat it as a joke, to have fun with the idea because the alternative, explaining how you came to be together, was much worse.

And besides, Helmut thought while taking in his second cocktail, it wasn’t exactly hard to feign some level of attraction to you; you looked beautiful that night. He liked the way your formal clothing fit around your curves, and the way your heels gave shape to your legs.

He felt immediately guilty for that, however, and followed that guilt with another sip of his drink.

But that night wasn’t the only time someone mistook the two of you for a couple. Like meeting someone whose face one begins to see everywhere they go, he began to notice it more and more.

When he signed for your packages the delivery person would look at his ring and never bother to ask for familial confirmation. The old woman at the bakery would smile a secret, knowing, smile when he asked for two pastries to take home with him. The list of culprits went on and on. Everywhere he went people saw his ring and they’d assume he had a wife at home—that you were his wife at home.

*

On a gloomy day in January, you convinced him to visit an art gala with you. You made a group of friends around the area but one fell violently ill after a trip to New Jersey. You didn’t want to go alone so he agreed to put his work on hold for the evening.

You lead him to a room of abstract paintings and his attention was torn between the open bar and dizzying array of dark shapes pressed across the underside of a canvas. He couldn’t appreciate the work the same way you did, but he tried.

As he looked for what you described as ‘the emotional turmoil conveyed by the paint strokes,’ you drifted to the next piece and a gentleman approached you.

He was tall, with neatly trimmed hair and a clean-shaven face. The man seemed to recognize you from somewhere and offered his deepest condolences for Sokovia.

“Thank you,” you nodded.

“It was a genuine tragedy, a modern-day Pompeii.” His words gave you a reason to pause, which he seemed to take as permission to wax poetic about Sokovia’s demise in some futile attempt to prove his intellectual prowess.

“Yes, well, thanks for that.” You continued on politely. He didn’t seem to notice the exasperated edge. He opened his mouth to say something else, to perhaps touch you on the shoulder, and Helmut made the immediate decision to ensure that didn’t happen.

“Драга,” Dear, he called as he approached you, placing his hand on your lower back. “I’ve brought you a drink.” Helmut offered you the cocktail from the table, one he was about to drink himself before the man made you uncomfortable. You smiled, a look of relief on your face.

The man was no genuine threat, probably just a lover of art, but something in the way he looked at you, the way his gaze drifted from your face to your wedding band and the instant look of shame that overtook his (admittedly handsome) features, gave his intentions away—and Helmut didn’t like his intentions at all.

“Хвала ти љубави,” Thank you, my love, you replied with the mischievous smile you adopted whenever someone mistook you for being his wife. It was a playful flirtation, one that meant nothing.

Helmut greeted the man with a simple nod, pretending to have been oblivious to his blatant flirting, before guiding you away.

“I never would have thought to compare the destruction of Sokovia at the hands of an Artificial Intelligence to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius near Pompeii. How truly genius.” He said in a mocking tone.

“Stop that,” you nudged him, hushed laughter in your voice.

“I hope that isn’t what passes as flirting these days.”

“Flirting? He wasn’t flirting.”

Helmut struck you with a judgemental look. You tilted your head in contemplation.

“He wasn’t flirting,” you repeat. “It was just weird, that’s not really a topic most people bring up at parties.” You finally slowed your steps and you looked at a statue in the center of the room. It was clearly meant to represent a couple, but their abstract forms created a tangle of limbs that hurt his eyes to look at.

It was then he decided he hated contemporary art.

You took a sip of your drink—his drink—and turned to him. Your eyes met briefly, and you smiled, your eyes sparkling with mischievous glee.

“Let’s see what’s in the next room, душо,” Honey. You exaggerate.

“Of course, драга, lead the way.” You hooked your arm around his and you explored the rest of the gallery.

Eventually, you reached the main lobby where you set your empty glass on a table with dozens of others. An orchestra played a mix of soft melodies and something he thought to be tunes from an action movie. The music found it’s underscore in the murmurs of the guests who indulged themselves in cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.

He watched them for a moment and a dark feeling filled his belly.

This was the life he should have been living—perhaps not at a gaudy contemporary art gallery but something just as fabulous and amazing. This was the life you deserved to live.

Had it not been for Ultron, for the Avengers and others like them, he’d be enjoying this life between missions and military tours.

He might have even retired early, lived his life in bliss.

He felt angry, distraught, and disappointed all at once. So many dangerous thoughts spun around in his head and without even thinking, he looked at you. In his moment of grief and self-pity, he looked toward you to anchor him.

Your eyes landed on the couples swaying back and forth on the polished floor of the gallery. He noticed how close you stood to him, how your arm wrapped around his, the way your hand rested on his forearm.

He took a breath and he made himself smile.

“Would you like to dance, драга?”

“I’ve seen you dance, Helmut. I don’t.”

“You wound me.” He said, pulling you toward the others anyway. “You’ve yet to see me waltz.” (Or perhaps you did, at his wedding or your own, but it wasn’t the time to bring that up.)

He unraveled his arm from your and slid into position, pulling you close.

“You remember the steps, don’t you?” He asked because you had far less practice waltzing than he did. You nodded, but your eyes proved less certain than the gesture implied. “Don’t worry, I’ll lead.”

And he did.

Helmut led you through the steps of the dance, a simple box step he mastered many years ago.

“I think people are looking at us,” you whispered.

“They can take notes,” he replied. You were the only person in his gaze.

You anchored him; your kindness, your friendship, your playful banter, and your outlandish sense of design. With you he felt like less of a failure, his grief softened and he could see a clear path forward in your eyes—an alternate path if he was strong enough to take it.

But the U.N. taking actions against the Avengers seemed all but inevitable then. Helmut knew he could use their plans to his advantage, but it also meant he was running out of time.

Still, part of him wanted to surrender to your gaze, but the other part, the part that won, held firm. He tried to look away but then somehow ended up noticing the soft curve of your mouth and the fullness of your lips.

When the orchestra stopped playing, your dance slowed to a stop. But you couldn’t stop staring at each other, both cursed with the knowledge that something between you had changed.

***

Thanks for reading! Next time we'll get to see what happens when your flirtation with Helmut is no longer a game.

Feedback is very much appreciated. Please tell me what you think! This was a fun chapter to write.

Tag list:

@actuallyanita @fillechatoyante @viviace @buckyandlokicanhaveme @sapphiredreamer26 @robur-bellicum

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#zemo #baron zemo #helmut zemo #zemo x reader #mcu zemo #this was the longest chapter yet #my goodness

[michaelsheenpt]

Michael Sheen: The pandemic has shown what is possible on homelessness

The actor now uses his Hollywood cash to fund his passion for activism. Sheen reveals why he revels in spending money on the things that matter and why he has hope for the post-Covid future.

Michael Sheen, activist and actor. It is in that order these days. And he’s doing rather well in both spheres. He has spent the last few years trying to find a way to balance his twin passions. And, he says, he is slowly getting there.  

“A big part of it was shifting things in my head and knowing what the priorities were,” says the 51-year-old.

“I made the shift psychologically to go, right, the acting work and everything that comes with that is going to support the other stuff I’m doing.  

“So even though to the outside world, maybe it wouldn’t seem like it – because I’ve been doing lots of acting work and things that have kept the profile up and all that –  from my point of view, the priority has been different. Now the acting work fits in around the other stuff.”

That ‘other stuff’ involves supporting the Homeless World Cup and the fight to expand access to affordable credit, campaigning to get the right to a good home enshrined in law in Wales and combating loneliness with the Great Winter Get Together (an idea inspired by the late MP Jo Cox). Then there’s working with Social Enterprise UK, for whom he is a patron alongside The Big Issue’s Lord Bird, helping local journalism and communities get access to trustworthy information, publicising and supporting both foodbanks and theatres and fighting period poverty.  

It’s a heady and righteous cocktail of vital causes. And it takes up a lot of Sheen’s time. With the Covid pandemic of 2020, and Brexit around the corner, he feels his activism is going to be more important than ever in 2021.

“Everything that was happening before Covid came along which has been exacerbated,” says Sheen. “So it’s not like issues I was focused on beforehand – around homelessness and high-cost credit – are going away.

“We’re bracing ourselves for it getting a lot harder and more people being involved. The work that was going on pre–pandemic is going to get even more pressured. Because when you look into anything around poverty and inequality before the pandemic, the fallout from the way Universal Credit was being rolled out was having a massive effect. Well, there’s going to be a lot more people on Universal Credit now.”  

But Sheen also sees this as a moment to seize, a chance to rebuild society anew, a period that is packed with potential.  

“We saw what was possible around homelessness during the pandemic, where people were able to get off the streets and were put into accommodation and given support that wasn’t there before,” he says.  

“That has made a lot of people think. If that’s possible during a pandemic when people are really motivated, then why can’t it happen afterwards as well? Why does it take a pandemic to do it? We have seen that the fact there are still people living on the street is a political choice.

“So while we are bracing ourselves for really challenging times, that’s balanced out by a sense that there’s the chance to build up from the ground again. How do we reimagine who we are and how we live and how we work together? The status quo wasn’t working. So we have to innovate, we have to reimagine, we have to reinvent – there is a moment of possibility to build back better.”

He is on a roll. He sounds like a politician. A good politician. With that rich, sonorous voice rising as he advocates a new way of living, a new vision for society. He compares the imminent, we hope, post-Covid moment to the situation facing the post-war Attlee government. 

“When you go through a big, nation–changing event, which this has been, there’s the opportunity to reimagine a different relationship between the state and society and between us as a community,” he continues. “To see how communities have pulled together gives you a new awareness of who we are and what we can be. We can rebuild our nation in the light of that.  

“There won’t always be that window of opportunity. We’ll go in a new direction and a new status quo will emerge. Let’s hope it can be a fairer one.”

But Sheen is not just about ideas for a brighter future for Wales, the UK, and beyond. He’s also at the top of the acting profession. And we’ve seen a lot of him in 2020.  

There was his brilliant, uncanny, portrayal of Chris Tarrant in Quiz back in March – the memorable pop-cultural drama-doc which drew a massive lockdown audience to its exploration of the infamous, scandalous, did-they-didn’t-they ‘cheat’ storm on ITV’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire – shedding light on the inventive, pre-internet ways WWTBAM fans across the country hooked up to game their way onto the show.

Sheen was – not for the first time in a career that has seen him portray with such skill a diverse crowd of famous names, including Brian Clough (The Damned United), Kenneth Williams (Fantabulosa), Tony Blair (The Deal, The Queen and The Special Relationship), and David Frost (in Frost/Nixon) – utterly, bewilderingly believable as Tarrant and the three-part series, aired over consecutive nights, was genuine event television. 

Then, when it became clear this pandemic and these lockdowns weren’t going anywhere fast, Sheen joined forces with his Good Omens co-star David Tennant to make Staged – the first, and perhaps only show to capture the tedium, the disconnectedness, the discombobulation of lockdown life.  

With the big–name actors playing heightened versions of themselves – Sheen pompous, cultured, guzzling wine, Tennant eager to please, upbeat, hapless – it was a roaring success on iPlayer.

“David is very different to what you see in the series in real life,” says Sheen. “But although I’d like to say I’m different to the version of me in Staged, that’s pretty much what I’m like.”

The surprise second series of Staged catches up with Sheen and Tennant (or should that be Tennant and Sheen?) a few months down the line.  

“We knew the series was very easy to do, filming it at home on a laptop – or that even if we went back to a more normal life again and were working elsewhere, we could film it anywhere,” says Sheen.  

“And by the time we came to the second series, it was different. Even though we were still spending a lot of time at home, the second series was during a period where everybody, including David and I, were trying to go back to do things. Then the rules kept changing.  

“So you never quite knew whether what was going to happen from day to day. The second series reflects that. But obviously, going back to work and trying to go back to normal is very different from me and David than they are for a lot of people – so we were aware that had to be dealt with as well, because never wanted it to be about two poncey actors and their lives. We wanted to find a way to do it so that people could still identify with it.”

This year, Sheen, like most of us, has spent more time at home. He has, he says, enjoyed catching fewer planes, appreciated his friends and extended family more than ever, raced through five series of Line of Duty and been wowed by Normal People, starting his way down Schitt’s Creek but still found little time to read novels (“I’ve asked for a few from Father Christmas”).  

Because if he does find time to read, it is usually research on housing, on fighting poverty, on rebuilding the broken or the out-of-control housing market, alongside the occasional script.

But if 2020 has been about anything for Sheen, is has been about spending time with his baby daughter Lyra.

“When we went into that first lockdown in March, she was only five months old,” he says.  

“So our focus has been her this whole time. Really our experiences wouldn’t have been massively different. The main overwhelming part of our experience of the last year has been having a baby, as opposed to Covid. And I know I’m very fortunate to be able to say that. But anyone who’s had a baby knows that that just takes up all your bandwidth.

“They give you structure, don’t they? A reason to get up in the morning. A lot of people have said it is difficult getting motivated to do stuff – but that’s not an issue when you’ve got a little one, is it? So I have got very used to being in the house. I even got to do two seasons of a TV show from my kitchen, which is pretty nice…”

Staged returns to BBC One and iPlayer on January 4

Michael Sheen on the legacy of the Homeless World Cup in Wales

In the summer of 2019, Cardiff hosted the Homeless World Cup. As the football tournament, featuring players from around the world, all of whom were experiencing homelessness, kicked off, we knew Michael Sheen had played a huge role in bringing the event to Wales.

What didn’t emerge until later was that, when some promised funding failed to emerge, Sheen was faced with a choice between sinking more than £1m of his own money into making it happen or cancelling the event.

He paid. They played.

It was a triumph and will last long in the memory. So how does Sheen feel now about it?

“It is an extraordinary event that happens every year,” he says. “It was going to be in Finland this year, which I was really looking forward to – because Finland has been quite pioneering in the Housing First strategy and I was looking forward to being able to find out more about that. But I still feel the way I did before – and what motivated me to try and make it happen here in Wales is that it is life-changing for people and can be a transformative experience in all kinds of ways.

“For some people who take part in it, it has an immediate effect. And for others, it may be years later that the effects of it manifest in their life. But that was why I was so committed to being a part of making that happen.

“A lot of the motivation for us in Wales was about what it could act as a platform for afterwards. And that has been affected by the Covid crisis, because a lot of the legacy work we were doing was unable to move forward in the way we’d hoped because of all the restrictions. But what I learned and discovered during that period has made a massive difference to me and the work I’m doing around homelessness.

“The relationships we developed through that time with support service organisations, the people I met and the insights I got into what people are struggling with and what would help were invaluable. It’s been a huge thing for me. I’m still paying for it. So that still affects my life as well, obviously, and things that I’m doing.

“But my acting work is there to support the other stuff. I’m putting money into things constantly, even though I still owe money to do with the Homeless World Cup. So until the time comes when I’m not able to earn money in the same way, then I’ll keep on spending it on the things that matter to me.”

SOURCE

#michael sheen #homelessness #his commitment and passion and effort to help others is one of the things I admire most about him #he does care #the big issue #poverty #constantly researching and coming up with ideas to help stop homelessness #non acting stuff #activism #staged #good omens

[ingravinoveritas]

What is happening with Michael?!! I saw he created a petition for Staged being banned. Maybe it was a joke for him, look at this: https://twitter.com/devildykedils/status/1319956377503137792?s=19

This is not fun!! There's something going on with him. This is nothing like the old Michael I've admired.

I’m right there with you, Anon. It’s absolutely not fun anymore, and hasn’t been for some time. I saw the post you linked to and Michael’s subsequent response earlier, and it is beyond disconcerting:

For a while now, I’ve felt that something has been off with Michael. This isn’t the first time he’s gone on a blocking spree in the midst of a frenzy of late-night tweeting, but this incident has struck a particularly discordant note with much of the fandom because they know the OP. Whatever is happening--whether it was OP’s tweet that set him off or a bunch of other tweets that happened when he did the petition thing and OP’s just got caught in the crossfire--it seems to just be accelerating instead of slowing down, and it is deeply concerning. And now he’s double-downed on his blocking of that fan and created a schism in the fandom as a result.

I keep thinking of the Michael Sheen I became a fan of last year. I remember how he took no shit then, too...but even his sassiest remarks were underpinned by a certain warmth. There was a joy to his tweets that uplifted everyone--both him and we the fans reading them--and that joy has been conspicuously absent for months now. In recent pictures of Michael, his smile no longer reaches his eyes. He does these videos for various causes and events and looks like he is just about holding himself together. That’s where many of us are at the moment--stressed, tired, and anxious over the current state of our world and our own personal situations.

But Michael is the one who has a following of half a million people, which means everything he says and does is magnified, in a sense. The emotional response to what he puts out there is magnified for the fans who read it, and the emotional response that he has to how the fans react is magnified as well. And when things were good--when the GO press tour was happening last year and his life was in an entirely different place--it was a beautiful thing, a hallmark of a symbiotic relationship between actor and fandom. But when things are bad, like they are right now--with Covid and him having to worry about work and his daughters and God knows what else--those two sides are only making each other worse, and it has become so incredibly ugly for everyone involved. 

The fact is, social media is a good thing until it turns toxic. And whatever Michael is going through right now--and I do believe he genuinely is depressed and unhappy and having a difficult time--for him, social media seems to only exacerbate that problem. I think he needs to get away from Twitter for a while, from this cycle of black-and-white binary thinking where everything is either “hate” or “praise,” and remember that there’s such a thing as nuance. Twitter may be one of his only outlets, but taking things happening in his real life out on people who look up to him is not a healthy coping mechanism. Above all else, I want Michael to get help, to be happy again, both for his sake and the sake of the people around him.

You know, it’s funny...I think that’s actually why I keep waxing nostalgic over the Good Omens press tour days. Not only because of the loveliness between Michael and David, but because of how it brought out the best in him. It brought out the best in fandom, which was something I never thought I’d find again after being so burned and hurt in my last one. And it’s what makes what is happening right now stand out in such sharp relief, because it is the same drama and heartache I fought so hard to get away from.

I used to feel so proud to be a fan of Michael’s. And I’d very much like to feel that way again someday.

#anonymous #reply post #michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #i am still a fan of Michael's work #but recent events have been A Lot #and I feel like I no longer recognize the man I became a fan of #i've been trying to make sense of this all day #and it's still beyond me #michael please stop #just back away from social media for the love of god #honestly i'm so confused right now #fandom woes #discourse

[invisibleicewands]

Michael Sheen: ‘There is a moment of possibility to build back better’

The actor now uses his Hollywood cash to fund his passion for activism. Sheen reveals why he revels in spending money on the things that matter and why he has hope for the post-Covid future

Michael Sheen, activist and actor. It is in that order these days. And he’s doing rather well in both spheres. He has spent the last few years trying to find a way to balance his twin passions. And, he says, he is slowly getting there.  

“A big part of it was shifting things in my head and knowing what the priorities were,” says the 51-year-old.

“I made the shift psychologically to go, right, the acting work and everything that comes with that is going to support the other stuff I’m doing.  

“So even though to the outside world, maybe it wouldn’t seem like it – because I’ve been doing lots of acting work and things that have kept the profile up and all that –  from my point of view, the priority has been different. Now the acting work fits in around the other stuff.”

That ‘other stuff’ involves supporting the Homeless World Cup and the fight to expand access to affordable credit, campaigning to get the right to a good home enshrined in law in Wales and combating loneliness with the Great Winter Get Together (an idea inspired by the late MP Jo Cox). Then there’s working with Social Enterprise UK, for whom he is a patron alongside The Big Issue’s Lord Bird, helping local journalism and communities get access to trustworthy information, publicising and supporting both foodbanks and theatres and fighting period poverty.  

It’s a heady and righteous cocktail of vital causes. And it takes up a lot of Sheen’s time. With the Covid pandemic of 2020, and Brexit around the corner, he feels his activism is going to be more important than ever in 2021.

“Everything that was happening before Covid came along which has been exacerbated,” says Sheen. “So it’s not like issues I was focused on beforehand – around homelessness and high-cost credit – are going away.

“We’re bracing ourselves for it getting a lot harder and more people being involved. The work that was going on pre–pandemic is going to get even more pressured. Because when you look into anything around poverty and inequality before the pandemic, the fallout from the way Universal Credit was being rolled out was having a massive effect. Well, there’s going to be a lot more people on Universal Credit now.”  

But Sheen also sees this as a moment to seize, a chance to rebuild society anew, a period that is packed with potential.  

“We saw what was possible around homelessness during the pandemic, where people were able to get off the streets and were put into accommodation and given support that wasn’t there before,” he says.  

“That has made a lot of people think. If that’s possible during a pandemic when people are really motivated, then why can’t it happen afterwards as well? Why does it take a pandemic to do it? We have seen that the fact there are still people living on the street is a political choice.

“So while we are bracing ourselves for really challenging times, that’s balanced out by a sense that there’s the chance to build up from the ground again. How do we reimagine who we are and how we live and how we work together? The status quo wasn’t working. So we have to innovate, we have to reimagine, we have to reinvent – there is a moment of possibility to build back better.”

He is on a roll. He sounds like a politician. A good politician. With that rich, sonorous voice rising as he advocates a new way of living, a new vision for society. He compares the imminent, we hope, post-Covid moment to the situation facing the post-war Attlee government. 

“When you go through a big, nation–changing event, which this has been, there’s the opportunity to reimagine a different relationship between the state and society and between us as a community,” he continues. “To see how communities have pulled together gives you a new awareness of who we are and what we can be. We can rebuild our nation in the light of that.  

“There won’t always be that window of opportunity. We’ll go in a new direction and a new status quo will emerge. Let’s hope it can be a fairer one.”

But Sheen is not just about ideas for a brighter future for Wales, the UK, and beyond. He’s also at the top of the acting profession. And we’ve seen a lot of him in 2020.  

There was his brilliant, uncanny, portrayal of Chris Tarrant in Quiz back in March – the memorable pop-cultural drama-doc which drew a massive lockdown audience to its exploration of the infamous, scandalous, did-they-didn’t-they ‘cheat’ storm on ITV’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire – shedding light on the inventive, pre-internet ways WWTBAM fans across the country hooked up to game their way onto the show.

Sheen was – not for the first time in a career that has seen him portray with such skill a diverse crowd of famous names, including Brian Clough (The Damned United), Kenneth Williams (Fantabulosa), Tony Blair (The Deal, The Queen and The Special Relationship), and David Frost (in Frost/Nixon) – utterly, bewilderingly believable as Tarrant and the three-part series, aired over consecutive nights, was genuine event television.

Then, when it became clear this pandemic and these lockdowns weren’t going anywhere fast, Sheen joined forces with his Good Omens co-star David Tennant to make Staged – the first, and perhaps only show to capture the tedium, the disconnectedness, the discombobulation of lockdown life.  

With the big–name actors playing heightened versions of themselves – Sheen pompous, cultured, guzzling wine, Tennant eager to please, upbeat, hapless – it was a roaring success on iPlayer.

“David is very different to what you see in the series in real life,” says Sheen. “But although I’d like to say I’m different to the version of me in Staged, that’s pretty much what I’m like.”

The surprise second series of Staged catches up with Sheen and Tennant (or should that be Tennant and Sheen?) a few months down the line.  

“We knew the series was very easy to do, filming it at home on a laptop – or that even if we went back to a more normal life again and were working elsewhere, we could film it anywhere,” says Sheen.  

“And by the time we came to the second series, it was different. Even though we were still spending a lot of time at home, the second series was during a period where everybody, including David and I, were trying to go back to do things. Then the rules kept changing.  

“So you never quite knew whether what was going to happen from day to day. The second series reflects that. But obviously, going back to work and trying to go back to normal is very different from me and David than they are for a lot of people – so we were aware that had to be dealt with as well, because never wanted it to be about two poncey actors and their lives. We wanted to find a way to do it so that people could still identify with it.”

This year, Sheen, like most of us, has spent more time at home. He has, he says, enjoyed catching fewer planes, appreciated his friends and extended family more than ever, raced through five series of Line of Duty and been wowed by Normal People, starting his way down Schitt’s Creek but still found little time to read novels (“I’ve asked for a few from Father Christmas”).  

Because if he does find time to read, it is usually research on housing, on fighting poverty, on rebuilding the broken or the out-of-control housing market, alongside the occasional script.

But if 2020 has been about anything for Sheen, is has been about spending time with his baby daughter Lyra.

“When we went into that first lockdown in March, she was only five months old,” he says.  

“So our focus has been her this whole time. Really our experiences wouldn’t have been massively different. The main overwhelming part of our experience of the last year has been having a baby, as opposed to Covid. And I know I’m very fortunate to be able to say that. But anyone who’s had a baby knows that that just takes up all your bandwidth.

“They give you structure, don’t they? A reason to get up in the morning. A lot of people have said it is difficult getting motivated to do stuff – but that’s not an issue when you’ve got a little one, is it? So I have got very used to being in the house. I even got to do two seasons of a TV show from my kitchen, which is pretty nice…”

Michael Sheen on the legacy of the Homeless World Cup in Wales

In the summer of 2019, Cardiff hosted the Homeless World Cup. As the football tournament, featuring players from around the world, all of whom were experiencing homelessness, kicked off, we knew Michael Sheen had played a huge role in bringing the event to Wales.

What didn’t emerge until later was that, when some promised funding failed to emerge, Sheen was faced with a choice between sinking more than £1m of his own money into making it happen or cancelling the event.

He paid. They played.

It was a triumph and will last long in the memory. So how does Sheen feel now about it?

“It is an extraordinary event that happens every year,” he says. “It was going to be in Finland this year, which I was really looking forward to – because Finland has been quite pioneering in the Housing First strategy and I was looking forward to being able to find out more about that. But I still feel the way I did before – and what motivated me to try and make it happen here in Wales is that it is life-changing for people and can be a transformative experience in all kinds of ways.

“For some people who take part in it, it has an immediate effect. And for others, it may be years later that the effects of it manifest in their life. But that was why I was so committed to being a part of making that happen.

“A lot of the motivation for us in Wales was about what it could act as a platform for afterwards. And that has been affected by the Covid crisis, because a lot of the legacy work we were doing was unable to move forward in the way we’d hoped because of all the restrictions. But what I learned and discovered during that period has made a massive difference to me and the work I’m doing around homelessness.

“The relationships we developed through that time with support service organisations, the people I met and the insights I got into what people are struggling with and what would help were invaluable. It’s been a huge thing for me. I’m still paying for it. So that still affects my life as well, obviously, and things that I’m doing.

“But my acting work is there to support the other stuff. I’m putting money into things constantly, even though I still owe money to do with the Homeless World Cup. So until the time comes when I’m not able to earn money in the same way, then I’ll keep on spending it on the things that matter to me.”

#Michael Sheen #Interview #The Big Issue #Activism #a lot of tv and books now I understand he couldn't sleep

[firelord-frowny]

I’ve talked a little bit about how at least one ~negative aspect~ of white supremacy/racism that impacts white people is that it can be SO DIFFICULT to avoid being Accidentally Racist over something that really shouldn’t have been that deep, and WOULDN’T have been that deep if not for the pervasiveness of white supremacy in america, and this bit about the lil country band Lady Antebellum and the controversy surrounding their name illustrates that pretty well, I think:

The band members have always said that the band's name was chosen arbitrarily, complaining about the difficulty of choosing a name. Inspired by the "country" style nostalgia of a photo shoot at a mansion from the Antebellum South, they said, "one of us said the word and we all kind of stopped and said, man, that could be a name"[40] and "Man that's a beautiful Antebellum house, and that's cool, maybe there's a haunted ghost or something in there like Lady Antebellum."[41] Haywood concluded, "[We] had a lady in the group, obviously, and threw Lady in the front of it for no reason. I wish we had a great resounding story to remember for the name, but it stuck ever since."[40] The name was always controversial, with a critic in Ms. Magazine writing in 2011 that the band's name "seems to me an example of the way we still — nearly 150 years after the end of the Civil War, nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act; and in a supposedly post-racial country led by a biracial president — glorify a culture that was based on the violent oppression of people of color".[41][42]

On June 11, 2020, joining widespread commercial response to the George Floyd protests,[41] the band announced it would abbreviate its name to its existing nickname "Lady A"[43] in an attempt to blunt the name's racist connotations.[1] The band members stated on social media that, never having previously sought the dictionary definition of the word "antebellum", they now consulted their "closest black friends and colleagues" so that their "eyes opened wide to the injustices, inequality and biases black women and men have always faced and continue to face every day. Now, blind spots we didn't even know existed have been revealed."[44] Fan response was mixed, with many decrying virtue signaling or even disparaging the protests.[41]American Songwriter said, "Given that the world knows what that A stands for, to many this change does little more than add extra insult to this ongoing injury."[45]

The next day, it was widely reported that the name "Lady A" had already been in use for more than 20 years by Seattle-based African American activist and blues, soul, funk, and gospel singer Anita White. The band again admitted ignorance of any prior use, which White called "pure privilege". Interviewed by Rolling Stone, White described the band's token acknowledgement of racism while blithely appropriating an African American artist's name: "They're using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn't have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it. It's an opportunity for them to pretend they're not racist". A veteran music industry lawyer observed that such name clashes are uncommon due to the existence of the Internet.[46][47] The band members contacted White the next week to apologize for having inadvertently co-opted and dominated her name,[48] saying that the Black Lives Matter movement had inspired them to a collaborative attitude. They nonetheless required retaining the same name, though she believed dual-naming is inherently impossible.[49]She said "We talked about attempting to co-exist but didn't discuss what that would look like"[48] because the band members would not directly respond to that explicit question three times during the conversation or in two contract drafts. She soon submitted a counteroffer that either the band would be renamed, or that her act would be renamed for a $5 million fee plus a $5 million donation to be split between Seattle charities, a nationwide legal defense fund for independent artists, and Black Lives Matter.[49]

On July 8, 2020, the band filed a lawsuit against White, asking a Nashville court to affirm its longstanding trademark of the name. The press release read: "Today we are sad to share that our sincere hope to join together with Anita White in unity and common purpose has ended. She and her team have demanded a $10 million payment, so reluctantly we have come to the conclusion that we need to ask a court to affirm our right to continue to use the name Lady A, a trademark we have held for many years."[50]

On September 15, 2020, White filed a counter-suit asserting her claim to the Lady A trademark and rejecting the notion that both artists could operate in the same industry under the same brand identity. She is seeking damages for lost sales and a weakened brand, along with royalties from any income the band receives under the Lady A moniker.[51][52]

Like????????? this REALLY didn’t need to be a thing. 

And one thing I think black folks and other poc need to chill out with is dismissing any white person’s attempt at Being Better in how they move through a white supremacist world in a way that seeks to undo or at least not exacerbate white supremacy. I can TOTALLY believe that, in their white ignorant bliss, this band really did choose their name without realizing for a moment that it might leave a fucked up taste in some people’s mouths. Honestly like... antebellum IS a cool sounding word lmfao and if it wasn’t so heavily associated with slavery-era america, i’d wanna name something antebellum, too! 

And like, yes, it’s true that it ~shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death~ for anyone at all to suddenly decide that they want to go a little bit out of their way to denounce or at least not seem to promote racism in some small way. But it did. And it does. And every fucking time there’s a gross act of violence and injustice acted out on a person of color in front of the world, there’s always going to be a brand new white person out there who Sees The Light for the very first time. That doesn’t mean their new perspective isn’t genuine, and it doesn’t mean it happened All Of A Sudden. If anything, it was something they’d been thinking about for a long time, but didn’t know how to address it, or what to say, or who to say it to, or how to talk about it in their own community. OBVIOUSLY that problem is WAY LESS BAD than, ya know, actually experiencing racism, but it’s still a real thing that some white folks go through, and being mad about it isn’t going to make it NOT a real thing. it shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death. it shouldn’t have taken trayvon martin’s death. it shouldn’t have taken the instatement of one of the most vile human beings to ever assault the face of the earth for This Person or That Person to finally want to make a positive and public change, BUT IT DID. It always does. That, unfortunately, is How It Works. 

And so, this band adjusts it’s name in an effort to not seem hostile. OBVIOUSLY it’s not a grand show of solidarity. OBVIOUSLY it’s not meant to convince anyone that they’re Super Amazing White People Who Will Stop At Nothing For Racial Equality. It was literally just a small, simple gesture. They’re just modifying their image, because they were no longer comfortable with knowing how that word makes a lot of people feel. Bc like... let’s be real: probably a solid ZERO of their fanbase would have given a shit if they’d just left the name as it was. Nobody who’s going to a Lady Antebellum concert was pouting about the name. And if anything, they prolly stood a better chance of LOSING fans for ~being politically correct~ than gaining fans for changing their name to something less annoying. 

And it JUST SO HAPPENS that the slight lil adjustment they made to their name steps on the toes of an existing artist, and it JUST SO HAPPENS that this artist is black, and is also an ACTIVIST in social and racial justice. 

Oops. 

And so, obviously people don’t interpret it as an honest mistake. Instead, it’s a result of white privilege. And I mean like??? ok, maybe it is. But I ALSO had never heard of Anita White until I read this fucking wiki page lmfao. So like... my ignorance isn’t due to no white privilege on my part. Maybe it’s a consequence of a white supremacist culture that wouldn’t glorify her and celebrate her and put her name everywhere... but that’s a different thing from privilege. 

So now not only are the bands efforts to adjust to a world that’s becoming more aware of racial injustice being dismissed as disingenuous or too-little-too-late, but now they’re ALSO being accused of Using Their White Privilege to trample all over an artist they’d never heard of. 

i DO think that after finding out the name was already taken, and after talking with her about it and determining that she wasn’t interested in sharing - as is her right - they should have just said “ok, sorry, thanks for talking with us about it” and picked something different. i think it’s kinda ridiculous that they think they should sue her and i think she’s HELLA right for suing their asses right back, and I hope she gets her damn money. 

But I’m also cognizant of how emotionally/psychologically upsetting it can feel to have to just Change Your Name after so many years of living with it. It makes sense that despite their desire to adapt and choose a new name that doesn’t make people cringe, they still want to try to hold on to the feeling that THEY associated with their own name. “Lady A” seemed like a happy medium: They can remain Who They Are while also showing that Who They Are is someone who’s not trying to glorify a disgusting era of history. But if “Lady A” isn’t an option... what’s left? What else could they call themselves that wouldn’t feel like a totally new, alien identity?? 

So, I understand how, on an emotional level, they want to fight to keep it. 

But uh. They really need to just Be Sad about it and let it go. Just consider it one of the small, upsetting sacrifices that white folks may sometimes have to make as we ALL struggle and stumble through this fuckin long-ass road of Making The World Less Terrible For People Of Color, and move on. 

But yeah, like. 

It’s fucking ridiculous that this was even an issue, and it was only an issue because of racism!!!!! If white supremacists didn’t manufacture a culture that oppresses people of color and glorifies the pre-civil-war era SPECIFICALLY for the good ol slavery, then perhaps people could wax poetic about the artistic and environmental aesthetic of that era without it being assumed that they Must Be Racist. Bc like??? idk if yall know this lmfao but i LOVE????? colonial american music. like, the kind of stuff with that Ashokan Farewell vibe. I think it sounds beautiful. And i really fuckin love the black spiritual music that was developed in that time. and i think so much of the architecture and fashion was so???? Nice. Just pleasant! But I can’t even get myself to fully enjoy it because of all the fuckin connotations that have been stuck to it. 

A band should be able to name theirself a name without it being such a goddamn fucking cultural crisis. 

But they can’t! And it is! 

Thanks, White Supremacy! 

[dear-wormwoods]

Someone truly in the reddie tag saying Myra was not abusive and that she wasn’t like Sonia. Even saying Bev and Eddie don’t have similar arcs bc their abusive situations were entirely different and that people just reach to bend arguments in order to prove reddie. Biggest bs I have read in a while ahdhd

I’m assuming you are new to my blog, because uhh, I’m sorry to burst your bubble anon, but I am also someone who doesn’t consider Myra abusive. Idk what post you’re talking about specifically but I’d sure like to know what ‘proving reddie’ has to do with it, lol. But anyway, I have said before that I consider Eddie’s marriage to be toxic, but not abusive. These two people should not be married. And not just because Eddie is gay and doesn’t love her. Beyond that, they are definitely bad for each other. The entire marriage is a conduit for misery and deception. It’s a codependent circus of projection and enabling. It’s unhealthy as hell! But it isn’t abusive. And here’s why I think that: 

Stephen King wasn’t trying to make a point that Sonia and Myra are exactly the same. He was, however, making a point that when people enter into adulthood and adult relationships while carrying a bunch of baggage from trauma they never properly dealt with, the cycle will continue in one way or another (this is why Eddie and Bev are ‘parallel’ characters, not the surface-level abuse interpretation). Eddie suffered from emotional abuse for most of his life; Sonia was very calculating and intentional about it and made sure that she always held sway in Eddie’s life to suit her own needs. The result is that Eddie is a very inexperienced and sheltered adult who believes in all of the lies his mother told him. He tried to move out three times and failed each time. Sonia controlled him until the day she died. It’s all Eddie knows. So in his mid-thirties, alone in the world for the first time, he doesn’t know how to take care of himself and, more importantly, believes he can’t learn. Because of his history of abuse and control, Eddie can’t fathom taking the reins in his own life and instead seeks out someone who will take care of him the way he’s become accustomed to. 

So, Eddie meets Myra and latches onto her because she’s inexperienced and malleable, like him. She physically reminds him of his mother, so it’s easy for him to project onto her all of the abuse Sonia inflicted on him. And because that life was all he knew, it was also what made him feel comfortable, so he nudged Myra into the role he wanted her to fill - a replacement mom. He did this subconsciously at first, but he was able to recognize it before they got married… and then he decided to go through with it anyway. 

Eddie brought a lot of baggage into that relationship, baggage that Myra was most likely completely unaware of. Obviously he’s a repressed gay man, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Eddie doesn’t love Myra, but it’s not just because he’s gay, it’s also because he has created a maternal figure in her and, since he (rightfully) resents his mother, he also resents Myra. She conforms to that caretaker role and enables everything he’s learned from a life with Sonia, and he in turn enables her bad habits too. Enabling is toxic behavior, but it isn’t inherently abusive. 

But then, when he leaves to go back to Derry, it all comes to a head. She freaks out because as far as she knows, he’s very sick, and he’s leaving her without an explanation, this man who she is married to and financially dependent on. She has no idea how to communicate, so she resorts to panicky, emotionally manipulative attempts to get him to talk to her and stay. On the flipside, Eddie has no idea how to communicate with her either, so he withholds information, deflects, and snaps at her in moments of frustration. They both have irrational thoughts about hurting each other and they both do and say things that make the situation worse. They are both VERY bad at communication. Because they’re both grown adults with almost no relationship experience outside of each other and are therefore emotionally stunted. 

That whole chapter reads, to me, like “bad breakups 101″ - one person can’t articulate how they feel so they’re deflecting and coming off as cold, and the other person is so over the top emotional that they end up making no sense and coming off as hysterical. And it’s no wonder! If you make it to your late 30′s without ever having much of a social circle or relationship experience, you’re not going to know how to act in a situation like this. And this applies to both of them. If what Eddie says about her is true, this is probably the first time Myra has ever been left by a partner, and it’s happening suddenly and with no explanation. So, she’s hysterical and resorts to manipulation - not out of habit, but out of desperation (Eddie makes the distinction that this isn’t typical behavior for her!!). For Eddie’s part, this is the first major decision he’s made in probably his whole life, and he doesn’t know how to explain himself, so he just… decides not to. And because he does not love Myra, he is completely emotionally detached from her. Their individual reactions to the situation just make it worse for them both - Eddie shutting down makes Myra more hysterical, and her hysterics cause him to shut down more.

People like to cite a couple of damning quotes about Myra as proof that she’s exactly like Sonia, but making that argument requires you to actively ignore the damning quotes about Eddie. There are also quite a few quotes that highlight the differences between her and Sonia, things Eddie himself acknowledges, as well as quotes about the guilt he feels for knowingly projecting his own baggage onto this woman. (Note: see the posts linked at the end of this for a breakdown of all those quotes) The text makes it clear that this was never a happy marriage. Neither of them are better for being in each other’s lives. They don’t help each other become healthier people. Rather, they both actively enable each other’s toxic habits. The marriage is, in a lot of ways, a form of self-harm for Eddie, and he knows it - upon Sonia’s death, he exited the cage his mother built for him and then built a new cage for himself and threw the key at Myra’s feet. For her part, I believe Myra began as an unwitting enabler but ultimately realized that she gained a “purpose” from the relationship (being a caretaker, being “needed”) and subsequently turned a blind eye to all the ways it wasn’t actually a healthy marriage. 

This is such a long post already but I want to make it very clear that Eddie’s cycle of abuse continuing does not actually require Myra herself to be abusive - rather, it is Eddie’s projection onto her that exacerbates the toxic environment. It’s the ghost of Sonia that haunts him in that chapter and throughout the rest of the novel. Myra is not a villain in Eddie’s life - he hardly even thinks about her after he leaves. This is one of the main points that make Eddie and Bev’s parallel arcs different - Bev very clearly has a secondary villain in her life, Tom, and she gets the closure of him dying in the end. But Eddie doesn’t need closure about his marriage, because Myra is just an extension of what Sonia did to him. 

The one time he does think of her unprompted is during his walking tour, and it’s such a great example of what his marriage actually means for him: when faced with the leper offering him a blowjob and other IT manifestations, he wishes he was home with Myra. He doesn’t think of her badly - he’s not afraid of her in any way. But she represents his comfort zone. IT is forcing him to confront things like his repressed sexuality, and he decidedly does not want to do that. That’s the only moment he “misses” Myra. But he doesn’t actually miss Myra. He misses the way her enabling allowed him to escape from having to face himself. And that’s really what it comes down to - Eddie’s marriage is toxic because it’s an escape, a way for him to avoid having to grow as a person and face the hard realities of who he is and what his mother has done to him. Myra isn’t evil, she’s not a calculating abuser like Sonia was, but she is toxic because her very presence prevents Eddie from reaching his full potential and being happy. 

Sonia’s abuse permeates Eddie’s entire life, even well after her death. Her actions dictate how he sees himself, as well as how he acts in relationships. Sonia is the reason Eddie’s marriage is the way it is. Hell, Sonia is the reason Eddie’s marriage exists in the first place. It is Sonia’s ghost that continues to manipulate him throughout the book and it is Sonia’s voice he needs to overcome in the end. If Myra were truly abusive, she would matter more in the overarching narrative of Eddie’s trip to Derry. But she doesn’t matter and because of that, she’s never really given a personality or motivations. She’s truly a blank canvas for Eddie to project his issues onto, and then he simultaneously berates himself for projecting and resents her for existing within his projections. Through all of this, everything always comes back to Sonia. Due to the vast disparity between their respective levels of influence, placing Myra on equal footing with Sonia is, in my opinion, a form of downplaying how bad Sonia truly was. 

Finally, and it’s wild that this even needs to be said, people need to recognize that saying ‘Myra isn’t abusive’ is NOT the same thing as saying she did nothing wrong. Myra was an enabler and that’s not okay, whether she meant to be or not. She also had moments of manipulation, terrible communication skills and poor emotional regulation. She was a toxic presence in Eddie’s life. Saying she isn’t abusive doesn’t mean I’m excusing her actions. But it’s also important to recognize that the chapter in which she appears has a lot more nuance to it than some people realize, and it’s necessary to hold Eddie accountable for his part in making that night so difficult. On that note, holding Eddie accountable and recognizing his harmful moments is not the same as calling him abusive either (fsr that’s become some kind of urban legend, but literally no one ever said he was! ever!!). There does not always have to be an abuser and a victim - sometimes bad relationships are just… bad.

Eddie is obviously a lot more sympathetic than Myra because we know about his past and get his POV. We know that he’s a good person. We also know that Sonia is the root of all of his issues. But the fact is, he has some shitty moments in that chapter, just as Myra does! His past experiences are not an excuse for that, they’re just an explanation. And, because I know there are people out there who equate accountability with victim blaming, being able to recognize where Eddie went wrong and why he entered into this marriage to begin with is NOT the same as saying he deserved any of his misery. There’s a huge, huge difference between accountability and blame. Holding people, even fictional characters, accountable is a good thing. In the end, Eddie is a very damaged person - an inherently good person, to be sure, but sometimes damaged people who are inherently good can, and often do, create, foster, and contribute to unhealthy relationships. It can’t all be unquestioningly pinned on Myra. 

Anyway, if after all of that you’re still confused as to why some people choose not to use the abuse label, here’s some additional reading:

An amazing breakdown of the entire chapter, using quotes, by @tossertozier

A more recent & shorter breakdown using quotes by @richietozierhateblog 

#asks #love how of all the things in my inbox this is the one i choose to respond to #the one that will give me the most stress #the dreaded myra discourse #long post #stephen king's it #it novel #it meta #my meta #eddie kaspbrak #myra kaspbrak #eddie spaghet tea #meta

[thaumaturtles]

Begin ANGELQUEST

The other day, I was doing some.......

...... studying.......

When I came across an advertisement. This isn’t at all an unusual experience; I’ve been on the internet for a decade and change and I’ve come to accept that ads are a part of the experience. This was an ad I’d seen many times before, too. I’m so accustomed to seeing it that my eyes often skip right over it. However, I’ve been reading a lot of articles about Enlightenment, lately, and I’ve been trying to put that into practice in my everyday life. I’ve been attempting, to varying degrees of success, to become more aware of myself and my environment, to probe onward into my mind’s own blind spots. In short, I’m trying to blitz my chakras. (Don’t worry, am Indian, can reclaim.)

And so, for perhaps the first time, I took a moment to truly see the ad in front of me. To stop and smell the dogshit hiding behind the roses. And, goodness, was it a sight to behold. Ladies, gentlemen, and all who fall betwixt, I present to you, THIS:

Take a moment, if necessary, to take it all in.

Have you collected yourself? Good. You’re holding up the rest of the class.

I don’t know how I’ve managed to let this pass without mental comment on more than one occasion. How did I look at this image, think “angel reading? yeah, sure, that’s a thing that exists” and then shuffle along? The only explanation I can muster is Divine intervention, which would ironically lend this product some legitimacy. I need to understand. What does Angel Reading mean? How could such a process be personalized, and, furthermore, how could it take place over the Internet? Who is this “Celeste”? What is she after? Why does she look vaguely disappointed in me? Can she see my soul? What is an “Angelic Medium”?????

Clearly, if I want answers, I’m going to have to dive in. I place my Crocodile Dundee hat on my head with no small measure of trepidation, though I must confess a moiety of excitement deep within. As I hike up my Adventurin’ Shorts and stuff a few hundred metres of rope into my backpack, I consider the long road ahead. And then, with my cosplay explorer’s outfit put on to my approval, I sit down at my computer. I’m really not sure why I felt the need to do all that when I’m just gonna be here at home.

I steel my will, and I click.

This loading screen appears, and I’d like to mention that the URL for this page is perhaps longer than any URL I’ve ever seen before in my 16 years.

Okay, let’s just take a moment to get our bearings here and-

HOLY MACKEREL, THERE’S A COUNTDOWN!

And only twenty-seven minutes left! Sakes alive, I clicked this link just in time! Imagine If I’d wasted more time farting around and dressing up like Indiana Jones!

Although, weirdly enough, whenever I refresh the page, the timer restarts, and it always restarts at 27 minutes and 50ish seconds, which is a random-enough number to seem legitimate.

Hmm. Odd.

I wonder if maybe the countdown isn’t actually real and is just there to pressure you into typing your info more quickly so you don’t notice how fishy this whole opera-

OH MY GOD ONLY 26 MINUTES!!!!!!!

OK, gotta think quickly here. Gosh, they’re asking some personal questions right off the bat, but I can’t let them know it’s me; they might recognize me from tumblr. If this sting operation’s gonna go forth I gotta lie my ass off. My name? Uh, uh.. My name is Dyl-Dy- Uhhhh, shit, okay, it’s Dylan-NO, Dylllllllll...... Delilah? Delilah. Like from the Bible. Yeah, that’s fitting, especially since I’m swindling these fools. Soon, Celeste, your hair will be mine.

They’re asking for my date of birth, which I’m hesitant to put because my 16th birthday party was kind of a big deal and Celeste might’ve heard about it, in which case she’ll know it’s me AND things will be super awkward cause I didn’t invite her to the party.

I put 4/13/1969 obviously

They’re also asking for my e-mail address, which I can’t give out because it has my full name, address, and social security number in it, so let’s just pull this ripcord real quick and parachute out of this nightmare zone, and over to a quick, free, secure e-mail client. That is, protonmail.com, which is not my usual e-mail server and will thus throw Celeste’s goons even farther off my trail

Wow, that was a surprisingly quick and painless process! I might just have to use protonmail in the future

So anyway here’s my info, sent in right under the wire, with a mere 24.3 minutes left! God that was close. Picture that classic scene in Indiana Jones where he slides under the door and then reaches back in to get his hat, only it’s an out-of-shape teen and also the door hasn’t even started closing yet.

I went with my actual country because, c’mon, there’re a lot of people in Jamaica. Statistically speaking, how likely is it they’d find me through that?

You know I didn’t. You know I fucking didn’t. Why are you asking.

Also, here’s a quick rundown of what Celeste is actually offering in case anyone was curious. It does somewhat tickle me that she claims she’ll “get to work immediately” as soon as anyone clicks the link and subscribes, as though the process isn’t completely automated. It evokes a clear image of Celeste, in full angelic garb, sitting at a computer screen and answering calls while also typing into three discrete keyboards simultaneously.

The idea that she could personally take the order of every individual who clicks this ad betrays either a complete lack of confidence in the desirability of her product, or an incredible amount of confidence in her own ability to multitask.

Who is “she”? Celeste? That doesn’t make much sense in the context here. Peter’s Guardian Angel? But earlier Celeste made it sound like all angels use he/him! Also, what does “bring her back” mean if it’s the angel? Can angels leave and later be found again? I feel like if you find your guardian angel once, that should be it forever, but apparently they can leave and you have to ensnare them again?????

Hooray! A link from an unknown source to an unknown destination! I sure can’t wait to click it all day long!

The things I do in the name of science, I swear to God Celeste.

It took a minute but here it is. Sidenote: I rather enjoy the irony of an inbox which consists of three e-mails about encryption and ways to curate a safe internet experience, and one which is an automated link from a bullshit ad for a product that doesn’t exist. There’s a subtle poetry to this image. I almost want to frame it, and then sell it for an exorbitant amount of money.

Here’s the e-mail, folx. If ever you needed proof that this was a scam, look no further.

Who on this good green earth would think beginning such a missive with, “Thank you for your trust,” would be a good way to garner MORE goodwill? When I go to my local grocer and I purchase a party-sized bag of Tostitos to eat by myself over the course of a day and a half because I’m in control of my body, goddammit, the bag doesn’t say, “Thank you for believing in us! We promise we won’t give you dysentery!

Like, what the fuck? “Thank you for your trust.” Your product should be able to stand on its own two feet and proudly proclaim, “I’m gonna give you a fucking angel reading or die trying!”

That initial line has honestly made me more scared than ever for this process. I’m confident I’m going to click that link and it’s going to auto-download a terabyte of obscure Norwegian pornography to my hard drive. I did just update my computer this morning, however, and all my data are backed up, so I feel somewhat more secure than I might otherwise.

Did I really just say “data are”? I know it’s grammatically correct and all, but it’s still jarring to hear. Messes with my mental flow. And wouldn’t the proper, descriptivist thing to do be to use “data is” to avoid confusion? Using “data are” feels clunky, is more difficult to say, and makes me look a bit snobbish. I’d delete it but that would require hitting the backspace button on my computer and I’m frankly quite lazy about that sort of thing. What was I talking about again? Oh, right. I have to click the link.

 Again with the “thank you for your trust” bullshit! Whatever, I’m going to let it pass. They’re clearly going for a friendly, approachable persona here, even if they’re doing it in the most threatening, ass-backwards way possible.

This next email took a seemingly endless eight minutes to arrive, during which time I meditated, raised a bonsai tree to adulthood, watched Marley & Me, grappled with intense feelings of loneliness, and worked on some of my homework.

Or maybe I just played games on my phone. You decide!

Okay, not quite what “hereby” means, but sure. It’s a common mistake, likely exacerbated by the presence of the word “here” within “hereby.” Sort of a “wherefore does not mean where” situation I suppose.

Anyway, I’m submitting to the mortifying ordeal of clicking the link yet again.

Christ get a load of this shit. How fitting that the Angelic stone for someone born on 4/13 would be Jade. My archangel is Megatron apparently??? His info claims he’s some sort of scribe. My major planet is Neptune, and my secondary planet is.... the sun? Is anyone going to tell Celeste what stars are or do I have to do everything myself around here? I do like that ram up in the top left though. I’m naming you Ram Elliot.

Now for the pièce de résistance. Meet Mahasiah. Mahasiah is not my guardian angel; Mahasiah is the guardian angel for anyone born between April 10th-14th. My guardian angel is Yerathel, apparently. A few things I learned while researching this: both Mahasia and Yerathel have “feminine energies” (???) and both have Fire as their associated classical element. Also, Yerathel rules over Intelligence, which is one thing I actually somewhat like about myself. This is actually kind of neat to learn about!

I mean come on. That’s pretty fuckin cool. His name means “He Who Punishes Evildoers” which is beyond epic, and his associated gem is Smoky Quartz, aka the only Steven Universe character.

You know, maybe this whole Angel Reading business isn’t a scam after all. Maybe it’s a perfectly safe process and I’ll be totally fine, what am I worrying about? At the very least, it couldn’t hurt to explore her site a bit more..... for research’s sake.

yeah baby tell me more

h-

certainly, miss celeste, anything for you

wait, aren’t I already in a relationshi-

JAZZERCISING JUNIPERS BATMAN THERE’S ONLY 28 MINUTES LEFT

holy shit! I want accurate readings!

Oh god oh no okay i’ll do whatever you want celeste please don’t leave me i need my tarots

THEY KNOW ABOUT ME ALREADY OMG

Well, okay, even in my currently addled state I can still see that “Duo-Telepathy” is complete bullshi-

OH WELL IF AMANDA GAVE THEM THREE WHOLE STARS I HAVE TO TRUST IT

Amazingly, my info was pre-filled in. Almost like this site is linked to Celeste’s in some way, or perhaps even run by the same group of scammeUPSTANDING CITIZENS IS WHAT I MEANT TO SAY

Ooh, another e-transmission from my good friend Celeste! Oh, how I’ve missed her! And apparently large and surprising discoveries have been made concerning me! She’s presenting me a Guide? I sure hope I’ll be able to open it, hassle-free, with no additional purchases/information required!

OHOHOHOHO

bro i’m shitting my drawers rn

I have no fucking clue what that means but you said FREE so i’m in!

oh my god there’s still so much left. just shut the fuck up and take my money you fools

AW TITS YEAH

....i think

Okay, I know the original thing said FREE and I should be “mad” or watever, but look at that bargain! that’s more than half off! It might as well be free! I’d be stupid NOT to buy it!

I’ve invented a lot of secondary information for Delilah. The phone number is merely (559) YOU-SUCK, as a subtle way of establishing the power dynamic at play here. I’m sure Celeste will appreciate it.

Hmmmmm.............. It would seem my method of “just input numbers randomly” won’t work here. Such a shame. Credit card fraud used to be so easy. I’ll have to put that on the backburner, though, because look what just appeared in my inbox!

You can see where this is going.

I’ll take my leave now, this post is getting long enough as is, but I do feel it’s important to note that doing a quick bit of research shows that Celeste & co. are famous for emotional manipulation, as well as getting people addicted to their products and forcing a sort of dependency upon them. It’s important to do your research, and remember basic internet safety tips like don’t click popups or check if a site is legit before downloading from them. It’s incredibly easy to get trapped down this sort of rabbit hole, where you wind up buying more and more of their products like you’re stockpiling for the Rapture. Not me, though, I’m obviously fine and can quit anytime I like. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go try a bunch of credit card numbers until one works.

#dylan talks #angelquest #long post #why do i keep making these #also yes this post was inspired by 'come with me on a magical journey through the internet' and 'an offer you cant refuse' #what about it

[questionablygourmet]

I Like This Show A Normal Amount: Will Graham As Autistic Representation

In a previous meta post about Will, I briefly alluded to my appreciation for Will as good autistic representation, and for Free-For-All Friday, @tin-can-paladin prompted me to do as I’d said I might and write a Thing about that.  (Hopefully today is the day I actually get this post finished and up!)  So here we go.

First of all, this post will be starting from the premise that Will is an autistic character.  I don’t particularly care if Hugh’s said he’s not; whether or not he meant to, he and Bryan gave us an autistic-coded character and I reserve the right to be delighted about it!  (Actually, that’s not quite true - I do care, in the sense that I wish he hadn’t said that, because acknowledging portrayals of characters on the spectrum that aren’t a walking fucking stereotype played for lulz *cough BBT COUGH* or as a tragedy inflicted upon their neurotypical family members as being on the spectrum is Important.  But whatever.)

This post will address aspects of Will as a character, but also to an extent how he’s handled in the wider context of the show, and why that matters.

Agency

This was my primary focus on that previous Will meta post, but in context of autistic representation, I think it’s an important thing to highlight in this post as well: Will Graham is a whole-ass adult in control of his actions even when other characters don’t think so (see: Alana, Jack, et al in late season 1) or are actively trying to subvert that (see: Hannibal, You Asshole).

Autistic characters in various media are all-too-frequently infantilized and handled as though their environment/circumstances completely dictate their behavior.  Will both implicitly and explicitly (“You can’t reduce me to a set of influences” - ironically for a later part of this post, the next thing he says mentions behaviorism), resoundingly rejects this, and I love that as part of his narrative in general but also as an autistic character in particular.  

Empathy

This one’s gonna be a doozy.  There’s a lot to talk about here that all generally falls under the heading of “autism and empathy,” so I’ll do my best to stay organized.

First, the simplest: He cares!  So!  Deeply!  And complexly!  And we know that throughout the show!

Frankly, this in particular massively exacerbates my irritated wish that the creators would explicitly acknowledge him as autistic because holy shit the stereotypes he combats with this.  Autistic people in the real world have widely varied, diverse relationships with empathy and compassion (which are different things, and I have some beefs with the way the show uses the word “empathy,” but that’s a digression and this is already going to be a long post), but media largely erases this, conflating difficulties with normative, neurotypical-passing social behavior with inability to empathize, and/or display compassion, and/or even feel emotions (FFS).  

There’s a related point about “normative-passing social behavior” that I want to expand on a bit, here: we see a lot of profound differences in demeanor for Will over the course of the show, and that’s something I’ve seen interpreted as manipulation sometimes when it really isn’t.  (Not to say Will is not manipulative/capable of being manipulative, because he is, very!  But not everything calculated is necessarily manipulative, and I see the two conflated a lot and that annoys me.)  Will has, to my eyes, four basic social “modes.”  

I’m Dealing With Most People With Whom I Have No Particular Antipathy Or Affection - Aloof, and either standoffish or polite depending on how his boundaries are being treated.  He’s not particularly interested in making people comfortable when they’re making him uncomfortable (and being a white dude generally enables him to take this attitude without big repercussions), and people frequently make him uncomfortable.

I’m Dealing With Someone I Perceive As Vulnerable - Exaggeratedly calm, kind, careful.  He’s trying to connect and provide comfort and support.  He’s minding his every move and word because he doesn’t want to cause harm incidentally.  (Abigail, Peter, Walter, etc. and to some extent, Margot, though with her it’s mixed with other attitudes.)

I’m Dealing With An Enemy - This is where the manipulativeness (and even, particularly in the cases of Bedelia and Hannibal, cruelty) comes in.  He’s minding his every move and word because he wants to elicit a specific response from the person he’s interacting with.  (This comes into play with Jack and Alana at various points even though they are rarely full enemies.)

I’m Dealing With A Trusted Friend - Has neither the deliberation of 2-3 nor quite the standoffishness of 1.  He’s neither projecting an image appropriate to a specific kind of fraught social situation, nor actively trying to deflect attention and interaction.  In my opinion we really only see this with Hannibal (in season 1 and then with flashes of it in 2 and 3) and Molly, though he gets close in a handful of moments with Alana, Beverly, and Jack.  

All these modes deal with a) to what extent he is acting, and b) why he’s acting.  And I love that we get to see this breadth of social interaction modes from him, because that is an accurate and sensitive portrayal of an autistic adult, reflecting the often-dramatic differences in “difficulty setting” of an interaction - how and to what extent are we expected to (or otherwise have a need to) mimic neurotypical mannerisms?  What are the stakes of the situation?  These are explicit considerations for a lot of autistic people, and Will demonstrates that vividly throughout the series.

Another way in which empathy and social interaction come into play in terms of autistic representation is that Will can and does form strong social bonds - not very often, because the way most other adults treat him isn’t conducive to it, but with people who display acceptance/a lack of judgment for his non-neurotypical reactions and behaviors, and importantly, who don’t treat him as Other for the way he can reconstruct crime scenes, we see that can form very strong bonds.  Hannibal is obviously the prime example of this, but also Molly, and to a much lesser extent, Alana and Margot.  (Though Jack refers to him as a friend and they have some friendly interactions, their bond is not a strong one and not at all marked by the kind of humanizing acceptance it takes to get truly close to Will.)  People who accept who he is, and who are neither threatened by his skills nor dependent on them.

Finally, in this section, let’s look at the crime scene reconstructions and “getting inside killers’ heads” bit.  

I have complex feelings about this aspect of the show, or more precisely, how other characters talk about his reconstructions and serial killer profiling - they (even Hannibal, to an extent) talk about it in mystifying terms, and I thoroughly dislike the term “empathy disorder” that gets thrown around so much in seasons 1-2 to explain what he does.  Will is apt to testily correct people that he just interprets the evidence, and that is exactly what he is doing.  His vivid imagination coupled with years of active study of criminal psychology allow him to take that interpretation a lot farther than anyone else would, and sometimes make intuitive leaps that the other characters can’t follow.  But it’s clear that this intuition is founded in concrete evidence, as we frequently see him stymied when he doesn’t quite have enough of it, much to the frustration of Jack, who is particularly shitty about treating him like an oracle.  

I like that Will gets to stick up for himself and correct people on several occasions, but I wish the ableism and the Othering was less pervasive amongst the other characters because it makes me want to slap them.  I find that I really appreciate how most of the fic I’ve read since entering the fandom thoroughly and often explicitly rejects the pseudo-magical divination and/or Crazy Person With Magic Brain angle.

Perspective

There was something I was reaching at that was eluding me in my first attempt at this draft, and then I ran into an excellent article about writing autistic characters that suddenly and thoroughly solidified it for me.  It’s really brilliant; it discusses and illustrates the strong difference between a behavioristic (see previous reference) approach to characterization and a humanizing one.  Behavioristic analyses divorce themselves from the actual mindset and experience of the subject, whereas humanizing portrayals display the subjective experience of the person who is perhaps behaving in a way other people may find confusing.  

Since Will is the main point of view character in the show, we get front-row seats to his subjective experience and can therefore more properly empathize with him.  An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.  The behavior that Jack and various other characters are exasperated, impatient, and/or unnerved over all looks pretty reasonable when we know how Will is experiencing the crime scene, or are seeing his nightmares and hallucinations along with him!  And while the nightmares and hallucinations in season 1 are a matter of encephalitis and trauma rather than neurotype, it still matters that we’re led to understand something of what he goes through, from his own perspective rather than an outside one.  

It’s incredibly necessary emotional context moving forward in the show, giving us an autistic character who is flawed but deeply human and whose darkness we can understand.

#hannibal #will graham #my meta #meta #thanks for the nudge to actually write this #it was difficult enough that it probably wouldn't have happened without said nudge #but i really wANTED to write it so #I Like This Show A Normal Amount

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CONTRACTORS

In big companies software is often designed, implemented, and sold by three separate types of people. Tcl is the scripting language of Unix, and so its size is proportionate to its complexity, and a funnel for peers. By this point everyone knows you should release fast and iterate. Programming languages are for. They don't even know about the stuff they've invested in. But I think there's more going on than this. If you run out of money, you could say either was the cause. Nearly all programmers would rather spend their time writing code and have someone else handle the messy business of extracting money from it. Every programmer must have seen code that some clever person has made marginally shorter by using dubious programming tricks. In one place I worked, we had a big board of dials showing what was happening to our web servers.1 Every designer's ears perk up at the office writes Tenisha Mercer of The Detroit News. There are borderline cases is-5 two elements or one?

I decided to ask the founders of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, will destroy you if you choose them. It's due to the shape of the problem here is social. In the arts it's obvious how: blow your own glass, edit your own films, stage your own plays. Only in the preceding couple years had the dramatic fall in the cost of customer acquisition. The organic growth guys, sitting in their garage, feel poor and unloved. So the first question to ask about a field is how honest its tests are, because this startup seems the most successful companies. A good deal of that spirit is, fortunately, preserved in macros. The second way to compete with focus is to see what you're making.

But more important, in a hits-driven business, is that source code will look unthreatening. In DC the message seems to be the new way of delivering applications. White. I'm going to risk making one. But looking through windows at dusk in Paris you can see that from the rush of work that's always involved in releasing anything, no matter how much skill and determination you have, the more you stay pointed in the same business. PR coup was a two-part one. It's conversational resourcefulness. We're more confident. That certainly accords with what I see out in the world.2 Treating indentation as significant would eliminate this common source of bugs as well as making programs shorter. Once you take several million dollars of my money, the investors get a great deal of control.

The dream language is beautiful, clean, and terse. It works.3 It could mean an operating system, or a framework built on top of a programming language as the throwaway programs people wrote in it grew larger. I'm not saying it's correct, incidentally, but it seems like a decent hypothesis. The most important kinds of learning happen one project at a time. Instead of starting from companies and working back to the 1960s and 1970s, when it was the scripting language of a popular system.4 Blogger got down to one person, and they have a board majority, they're literally your bosses.5 Unconsciously, everyone expects a startup to fix upon a specific number.6 But as long as you seem to be advancing rapidly, most investors will leave you alone.7 What readability-per-line does mean, to the user encountering the language for others even to hear about it. Users have worried about that since the site was a few months old.8 If it's a subset, you'll have to write it anyway, so in the worst case you won't be wasting your time, but didn't.9

It's exacerbated by the fast pace of startups, which makes it seem like time slows down: I think you've left out just how fun it was: I think the main reason we take the trouble to develop high-level languages is to get leverage, so that we can say and more importantly, think in 10 lines of a high-level language what would require 1000 lines of machine language. Well, that may be fine advice for a bunch of declarations. Trying to make masterpieces in this medium must have seemed to Durer's contemporaries that way that, say, making masterpieces in comics might seem to the average person today. I kept searching for the Cambridge of New York, I was very excited at first. Which was dictated largely by the hardware available in the late 1950s. This comforting illusion may have prevented us from seeing the real problem with Lisp, or at least Common Lisp, some delimiters are reserved for the language, suggesting that at least some of the least excited about it, including even its syntax, and anything you write has, as much as shoes have to be prepared to see the better idea when it arrives. And I was a Reddit user when the opposite happened there, and sitting in a cafe feels different from working. The Detroit News.10

Most founders of failed startups don't quit their day job, is probably an order of magnitude larger than the number who do make it. But the clearest message is that you should be smarter. But hear all the cutting-edge tech and startup news, and run into useful people constantly.11 You won't get to, unless you fail. Running a startup is fun the way a survivalist training course would be fun, and a funnel for peers. It's since grown to around 22,000.12 You may save him from referring to variables in another package, but you need time to get any message through to people that it didn't have to be more readable than a line of Lisp. A rant with a rallying cry as the title takes zero, because people vote it up without even reading it. I'm just stupid, or have worked on some limited subset of applications. This is supposed to be a lot simpler. Whatever a committee decides tends to stay that way, even if it is harder to get from zero to twenty than from twenty to a thousand.13

With two such random linkages in the path between startups and money, it shouldn't be surprising that luck is a big factor in deals. Most of the groups that apply to Y Combinator suffer from a common problem: choosing a small, obscure niche in the hope of unloading them before they tank. A programming language does need a good implementation, of course. Look at how much any popular language has changed during its life. With a startup, I had bought the hype of the startup world, startup founders get no respect. A real hacker's language will always have a slightly raffish character.14 The eminent feel like everyone wants to take a long detour to get where you wanted to go. But there is a trick you could use the two ideas interchangeably. Their reporters do go out and get users, though. A throwaway program is brevity. I do that the main purpose of a language is readability, not succinctness.15 You can't build things users like without understanding them.

At the moment I'd almost say that a language isn't judged on its own and b something that can be considered a complete application and ship it. They're so desperate for content that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you preferred, write code that was isomorphic to Pascal. When I moved to New York, I was very excited at first. To avoid wasting his time, he waits till the third or fourth time he's asked to do something; by then, whoever's asking him may be fairly annoyed, but at the same time the veteran's skepticism. There are several local maxima.16 Defense contractors? When, if ever, is a watered-down Lisp with infix syntax and no macros. Hackers share the surgeon's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in popping zits.

Notes

What happens in practice signalling hasn't been much of a long time in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings till the 1920s. Even Samuel Johnson seems to be a good idea to make money.

A related problem that they decided to skip raising an A round VCs put two partners on your own mind. That should probably question anything you believed as a cause as it might take an angel investment from a company's culture.

If you don't think they'll be able to formalize a small company that could be made. There was no more unlikely than it was putting local grocery stores out of business you should be.

If Congress passes the founder visa in a time machine, how can anything regressive be good employees either.

If big companies to acquire the startups, the light bulb, the initial investors' point of a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, but I think what they campaign for. When governments decide how to distinguish 1956 from 1957 Studebakers. How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an absolute sense, if we think your idea is that parties shouldn't be that the Internet was as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work to have this second self keep a journal. While the audience already has to be more at home at the start, e.

Some will say that it also worked for spam. The closest we got to the Internet worm of its identity. Icio.

Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or butter n yellow onions other fresh vegetables; experiment 3n cloves garlic n 12-oz cans white, kidney, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Robert Morris says that a startup in the US, it would do it is genuine. Com in order to attract workers.

But the early adopters you evolve the idea that could start this way, except in the back of your last round of funding rounds are at some of these limits could be ignored. Comments at the mafia end of the latter without also slowing the former, and also really good at generating your own time in the computer world, write a new SEC rule issued in 1982 rule 415 that made steam engines dramatically more efficient: the attempt to discover the most promising opportunities, it is very vulnerable to gaming, because there's no center to walk to.

Though it looks like stuff they've seen in the first year or two make the kind that has become part of a large chunk of time, default to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in one where life was tougher, the television, the more subtle ways in which those considered more elegant consistently came out shorter perhaps after being macroexpanded or compiled. For these companies unless your last funding round usually reflects some other contribution by the high-minded Edwardian child-heroes of Edith Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods.

Mozilla is open-source browser. They may not be led by a big factor in high school kids arrive at college with a truly feudal economy, at least should make what they claim was the recipe: someone guessed that there are before the name implies, you don't, but that we didn't do. They overshot the available RAM somewhat, causing much inconvenient disk swapping, but they hate hypertension. Living on instant ramen, which are a hundred years ago.

I don't think you should probably question anything you believed as a rule, if you're measuring usage you need, you don't have one. Don't be fooled. So managers are constrained too; instead of admitting frankly that it's a seller's market. This is one subtle danger you have a group of people who are both genuinely formidable, and would probably also encourage companies to say how justified this worry is.

One of the biggest winners, which is where product companies go to grad school, because you can work out. It's conceivable that a their applicants come from meditating in an equity round.

So where do we draw the line?

In 1995, but he got there by another path. If you treat your classes as a company if the potential magnitude of the 2003 season was 2. An investor who invested earlier had been trained that anything hung on a desert island, hunting and gathering fruit. Confucius claimed proudly that he had more fun in this essay, I can imagine what it would have started there.

I'm satisfied if I could pick them, and they succeeded. Consulting is where your existing investors help you even working on Viaweb. If they were taken back in July 1997 was 1. But the change is a scarce resource.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #implies #essay #identity #films #content #illusion #college #applications #Hackers #Consulting #companies #latter #sup #PR #years #twenty #complexity #customer #way #subset #leverage #center #mind #beef #lot

[kiederen]

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE review

I said I would give my impressions on #FE and I neglected to do so till now, but better late than never.

I’ll be talking about:

Story

Setting/Theme

Characters

Gameplay

1. Story

The story is nothing special - I enjoyed it, but it's a fairly typical jrpg "power of friendship and bonds" deal that is only made unique in any capacity by the idol culture that frames it. It's not bad, but it's not groundbreaking either. I wish the story were a bit longer to give more of a build up into the final confrontation. The earlier stages slowly start to set things up but even just one more dedicated chapter to ease into the final arc would have probably made the ending feel less rushed. That and I just enjoyed playing it overall and would liked more content.

The distinct chapters format to the flow may have been meant to simulate FE chapters while still also representing how persona stories often have noticeable breaks between dungeon arcs. In TMS though, it felt a bit more artificial, not damningly so, but I think the plot momentum was a bit worse for it. 

The set up for each chapter break also revolves around Itsuki himself improving as an entertainer, even though he doesn’t know what direction he wants to focus on, and while it’s most emphasized early on, this aspect of Itsuki’s development himself feels almost abandoned or ignored through the mid and late game until the very end. The solution does make some sense, but some of the details that enable it to happen are a bit questionably contrived, and like the overall story, it felt a bit rushed in the final hour, based on what I remember.

Otherwise, the story did a good job of setting itself up, providing the characters with adequate motivation and means to seek the goals they set and each dungeon gave reasonable purpose for the main characters to tackle it.

The final chapter seemed to be trying to make up for the lack of build up by twisting and turning a bit more than usual, but most of its attempted twists were fairly standard fair for trying to draw out suspense and unfortunately were somewhat predictable for it. I was a little surprised at the host for the big bad, but mostly because I hadn’t been paying close enough attention so that was on me.

2. Setting/Theme

The Tokyo idol scene setting is the most interesting aspect of the story and while I can see it being polarizing, I found it novel myself. Mechanically, it does a good job of unifying the dungeons under a common theme of "things idols do" - such as posing for photo shoots or acting on TV.

Beyond dungeon design, the idol theme also naturally informed character designs and the multitude of costumes that appear throughout.

You can even see this thematic flair in the way that spell casting involves a character signing their autograph as a glyph!

If there’s one oddity that stands out to me about the aesthetics of the game, it’s that the monster designs seem to be unable to decide whether they should be FE inspired or SMT inspired or neither, but even in the latter case most don’t seem to fit in with the idol theme in any capacity.

Even when enemies are FE inspired, they seem to have gone through a similar (if not more extreme) filter that the Mirage characters went through - becoming dramatically stylized and the only real purpose I can conceive for it is to make enemy classes that were definitely human in FE appear non-human here. For instance, the middle and right monsters above are myrmidon class enemies - unpromoted swordmasters from the FE universe.

Not to mention: Why do their out-of-combat sprites look like Organization XIII members!?

3. Characters

Like the story, the characters are good if nothing particularly revolutionary. Most seem built around one or two tropes but then are fleshed out beyond that which is fine. You learn more about them as you do their individual side quests (social links) and these do a good job of giving the feeling of evolving your bond with that character. The pacing of the side stories is mostly okay, though the gameplay reward for those that are plot locked to be very late doesn't always feel equal to how long you had to wait to do them. There's a bit of persona syndrome wherein all the chars get plenty of opportunities to interact with the MC, but would benefit from more time interacting with each other as well.

I liked all the characters in the end. There's a good variety between both the girls and boys, though because of join times some chars got more focused screen time than others. Again, I think a longer late game with more story side quests (instead of fetch quests) would have helped balance things out. 

If I had to be as base as to rank the girls in terms of waifu ratings: 1. Eleonora 2. Tsubasa 3. Kiria 4. Maiko 5. Mamori = Tiki Though it's worth noting that top four are all really close, and each slot only wins out over their competition by a small margin. I don’t dislike Mamori or Tiki, I just am not into the little sister appeal.

I suppose Barry Goodman is worth mentioning as well. Barry is a foreigner who settled in Japan and behaviorally embodies the most cringe-worthy aspects of otaku culture. He’s heavy-set, roughly groomed, and somewhat aggressive/abrasive about his passions. I’m not one to judge him for the subject of his passions, but the way he interacts with them would make me uncomfortable around him had he been a real person. Ultimately he is a good person at heart, but his poor people skills are unlikely to endear him to anyone on first impressions, and the fact that he doesn’t care only exacerbates his problems.

Finally, and predictably most disappointingly, the FE chars (heroes and villains) are barely developed and could be replaced with persona or persona like motifs without changing the overall plot. The FE aspect is little more than a coat of paint that gives secondary theme to the invading 'otherworld,' and it's a real shame and waste of potential.

Aside from the Mirage characters and Tiki themselves, there are however a few unmarked references that are at least self aware enough to be welcome Easter eggs for fire emblem fans:

Anna is your convenience store shopkeeper, and there’s even a ‘shadow anna’ who will sell you more dubious dungeon consumables that a normal convenience store wouldn’t stock.

Ilyana works at the cafe, keeping close to her beloved food.

Aimee runs the jewelry store as she was the item store merchant in FE9 and 10

And Cath runs the costume shop. She’s a thief in FE6 with a distinct affinity for money, not unlike Anna, though not as extreme either. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve read over her supports though.

I saw an npc employee at one of the random background shops in Shibuya central street that could also be Brady from FE Awakening, but the camera never got close enough to see him clearly enough to make a positive ID.

Finally, I found it amusing that all the playable chars' names are class puns/references 

蒼井樹 = Aoi Itsuki > Aoi means blue in reference to FE lords typically having blue hair

織部つばさ = Oribe Tsubasa > Tsubasa in reference to her peg knight class

赤城斗馬 = Akagi Touma >  赤 (Aka) gives us “red” while  馬(uma) is “horse.” Red cavalier (partnered with a green cavalier) is a reoccurring archetype in FE. The Red cav tends to be the hot-headed one.

I can break down the others if desired, but these will do for examples.

4. Gameplay

Going to break this into a few parts:

General

Combat

Dungeons

1. General

The real reason this game is compared to Persona; gameplay mirrors a lot of persona's elements and it's almost easier to describe how it deviates from the Persona format than spend time detailing how they're the same. That said, if you like the persona formula (as I do), you'd probably enjoy TMS's gameplay flow as well.

While the lack of daily life and day limits for dungeons removes a lot of the tension of time management for them, I think it's fine since a lot of persona players rush dungeons in 1-2 days anyway and in TMS, once the dungeon is done, you don't have to worry about doing busy work to tick off the days until the plot is allowed to move forward again. The lack of social stats is an element of depth removed, but without a time cost element to activities, it makes sense and is probably a good thing for it to be absent from TMS (even if story wise it could have actually be viable as Aoi and the others grow their skills as performers).

Using the WiiU game pad as a smartphone screen to facilitate off-screen character interactions as well as display more detailed enemy information was clever if perhaps unnecessary (as persona 5 showed). Having the only map on the game pad actually made it a little disorienting to reference for me since my eyes had to leave my tv entirely, leading to me either holding my game pad up or bobbing my head up and down to compare my map with my surroundings. On the DS, the two screens are at least close by. I’d like to say there may have been a better use for the game pad, I’m not thinking of anything off the top of my head, so it may have been wise to minimize its use as a gimmick anyway.

This is already in your phone history when you start the game, but it’s still probably my favorite moment from the text message logs:

#relatable.

Replacing persona fusion is a more straightforward crafting system that is the source for your weapons and passive skills, and in turn, much like Tales of Vesperia, your weapons are the source of your skills, both active and passive. The system sounds more grindy than it is in practice though. Simply advancing through the dungeons and fighting 70-80% of the monsters you encounter naturally will provide you with enough materials to forge most weapons as they become available. In fact there were a number of times when I ran out of new weapons to forge and had to push on with already mastered weapons equipped. I liked that bosses and some savage encounters would drop mats of a higher tier than what was readily available from current monsters, and you had to spend them wisely before advancing the plot to the point where those mats became common. It let you preview the next tier of weapons and abilities for select characters but who you gave those weapons to was never overly stressful since you could get the other weapons you passed on later anyway.

Rare monsters drop unique mats that can make weapons that give unusual or otherwise off-type skills to characters and it makes catching rare monsters that flee rather than engage the player rewarding. IIRC, I encountered fewer than ten rare monsters in my entire play through though, so I did not feel it worth the time to actively hunt them unless there was some trick to make them appear more reliably (and catching them was also a bit dependent on the surroundings). Like treasure monsters in P5, they usually had some kind of gimmick where they were only weak to one thing if they had any weakness and the latter ones also came with dodge [weakness] passive and had a chance of just up and running from battle.

2. Combat

The one-more mechanic is replaced by "Sessions" which are not unlike self contained one-more combos anyway. The tag in attacking animations were pretty fun and though late game sessions can get quite long, there’s no way to speed up or skip session animations, possibly in part because of the existence of duo arts which use the session animations as a timer. They could have prohibited skipping prior to deciding on a duo art and then allow skipping or speed up after, though. Long session animations didn’t bother me, personally though, as session attack animations were varied and interesting enough that I never got tired of even the early basic ones (most of which were replaced by late game).

Openly displayed turn order, plus some late game skills that can actually influence turn order were both welcome features as well. 

Beyond sessions, specials, duo arts, and ad-lib performances were great at providing extra variety and changing the pace of what might otherwise be rote combat. While duo arts and ad-lib performances were rng bonuses that you mostly just take whatever you can get and be grateful, specials were more deliberate, needing a resource that builds slowly at first. Later on, with longer sessions and meter boosting passives, the sp gauge builds up much faster, but even then specials usually should be selected carefully, especially within boss battles where recovering lost sp is a bit trickier. 

That said, special skills were not created equal. Even though buffs and debuffs are powerful, some of the later buffing and debuffing specials came late, at a point where I already had normal skills that could buff or debuff at almost if not the same potency without spending SP. Similarly, as my repertoire of skills grew, my ability to hit weaknesses improved and using specials to break through resistances became less necessary, even as monsters began appearing with more resistances. 

Finally, Itsuki’s second special - “Strike A Pose,” was absurdly good and only got better as my session combos grew longer late game. The ability to give everyone twice the actions in a turn opens up so many other combos that often times, there was little reason to use offensive specials in favor of either two individual sessions or a concentrate/charge boosted session. 

Inversely, I found myself using healing specials a lot less, and perhaps it was because I used Tsubasa a lot less late game - I made Chrom a great lord which gave Itsuki healing and support which was kinda Tsubasa’s niche previously, so with Touma able to out damage Tsubasa and Elly covering flying enemies, Tsubasa just wasn’t out in combat all that often, which meant Mamori was the only one with healing specials (which were helpful on occasion) but in the end using Strike A Pose allowed me to get normal heals out in extra abundance while still enabling attackers to make a play to help clear troublesome enemies.

The FE weapon triangle’s representation in strengths and weaknesses among weapon types (not extending to magic though) gave a welcome way to predict weaknesses for enemies I had not encountered yet. One of the frustrating things about persona had always been that weakness/strength attributes for new monsters were difficult to predict and late game could cause you to walk into a bad situation that was never really your fault. Not only did the weapon triangle help mitigate some of the arbitrary mystery, but weaknesses were frequently consistent across similar enemy types at different levels even outside of the sword/lance/axe trinity. For example mage type enemies were, with few exceptions, all weak to swords and fire. Skills that deal effective damage (i.e. horseslayer/armorslayer) were also a great addition that gave characters tools to start session combos on enemies that they might otherwise be powerless against. The player also gets other ways to work around pesky resistances, features that are both welcome and necessary because...

If I have one glaring critic of the battle system it’s that Itsuki, like persona protags is mandatory. However, unlike persona protags, Itsuki has static combat tools and extremely limited ability to influence his own strength and weakness attributes. He’s always weak to fire and lances and since you can’t remove him from the front line, you always have someone in combat weak to those elements. Fortunately this is less deal breaking for the fact that Itsuki dying in combat doesn’t immediately game over (hallelujah!). In addition, later in the game most chars get passive skills that greatly increase their avoid against elements they’re weak to, Itsuki included. Still, being able to remove Itsuki from the front line would greatly increase your party diversity and flexibility. For a while after recruiting a second sword character, I had difficulty justifying putting him in the active party because Itsuki already filled the sword role. Eventually, I promoted Itsuki to a more support role and let the other char handle offensive sword plays. 

One more minor complaint I have is the inability to swap out fallen allies. Having only three party members means that even one of them dying can be crippling, especially later on and on harder difficulties. I’ve wasted turns reviving downed allies and trying to heal back only for enemies to just repeat what killed someone in the first place and put me exactly where I was last turn with less healing items or sometimes in an even worse situation. While the boss dichotomy of easy/impossible with little in between that some persona bosses suffer from is present here, the existence of specials, ad-lib performances and duo performances that heal or revive greatly alleviate some of the comeback struggle that has a tendency to snowball in this combat system. As the only active non-rng option, specials in particular are important to the system. The severity of boss gimmicks isn’t quite as punishing in TMS compared to persona, but TMS’s smaller party size, can still cause a bad situation to cascade into unsalvageable territory.

3. Dungeons

The dungeon design of TMS is interesting in that it departs from persona 3/4′s formula of randomly generated floors in favor of deliberately organized floor plans with usually only one correct path to the end. The linearity is sometimes broken up by treasures that you’ll have to backtrack for, but aside from that, there’s little mandatory backtracking within a dungeon. Dungeons stick around even after you clear them, allowing side stories to ask you to venture back over familiar ground for one task or another.

That said, the linear nature isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In TMS’s case, it allows the developers to give the player a learning curve for the dungeon’s mechanics and then challenge how well the player understood the earlier lessons, because the devs can guarantee that the player experienced the earlier sections before the later ones. It may sound obvious on paper, but it means that the developers can have a better awareness of the player’s competency at any given point in any dungeon, which is something that can’t be tracked when the player can go multiple routes at any given time. But I digress.

Another mechanical difference of note is how the player, Itsuki interacts with enemies pre-battle. In persona 3 and later, you could swing your weapon to hit an enemy in the field and that would start combat (at an advantage if they didn’t notice you), but in TMS, striking an opponent on the field knocks them back and stuns them, giving you the choice to then get closer and touch them to begin combat at an advantage or to avoid combat entirely. I like this greater degree of choice and it fits within the philosophy that TMS dungeons are made to be less stressful - less about meticulous resource management - than persona games. There’s still an incentive to engage in combat: you need to keep up a certain amount of level growth just to have the raw stats to beat bosses, but if you’re low on health and/or healing items or just plain short on available play time and you think or know there’s a checkpoint up ahead so you just want to make a push to reach it, you aren’t forced into battles you don’t want to engage in... with the exception of “Savage Encounters,” which are challenge monsters that seem to just exist to screw with you anyway. I think there was only one area prior to the last or second to last dungeons that had savage enemies I could actually beat albeit with great effort.

Playing TMS after Persona 5, it was also apparent that TMS’s idolaspheres were prototype palaces, from the set floor layouts and linear progression to the overarching themes of the dungeon informing its aesthetic and unique mechanics. In fact there are a number of things that TMS pinoeered for Atlus that then went on to feature in P5. You can read about some others here.

Puzzles were almost entirely navigation in nature - that is, how to use the dungeon mechanics and infrastructure to get from your start to your goal. It may be because it’s been a little over a month now, but none particularly stand out in my memory as being exceptionally good, while one or two I remember for being somewhat arduous or tiring. I’m still of the opinion that areas that the player is trying to solve puzzles in should have lower if not 0 encounter rate with random enemies, as battles, especially turn based ones that don’t tend to resolve in a single turn, can disrupt problem solving trains of thought.

Overall the dungeons are good though, and that’s important as they’re the meat of the gameplay. They are generally well paced with plenty to do and some minor stuff to find on your way to your target goal. Each dungeon’s unique mechanics fit with the dungeon theme and aside from a few exceptions the enemies are fairly distributed.

5. Conclusion

It has its flaws but I think, in the end, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE gets more right than it gets wrong. Even though the story was standard fair for this genre, I thoroughly enjoyed it and wished it had more content to its core for me to experience. I know there’s dlc, but the nature of dlc means that it’s nothing integral to the story and I’m not sure it would scratch the itch the way I want.

The setting is unique and the game fully embraces the themes it sets up and the themes in turn inform and affect almost every aspect of the game, giving it a unified appeal.

The combat is arguably more interesting than persona. It takes the same core formula of targeting weak points for massive damage but allows players more tools and freedom to circumvent bad matchups, make carefully planned strategic plays, or simply style on enemies with flashy satisfying attacks.

#TMS #Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE #Sharpfe

[cathymartinnez]

7 Ways for Social Marketers to Avoid Social Media Burnout

The fuse of a social media manager burns at both ends. Most people experience social media burnout and workplace fatigue at some point. But social media managers often feel the burn of both at the same time.

For social media professionals, self-care tips smack a little differently. How do you unplug when being plugged in is your job? Can you actually downward dog your way out of a downward spiral? Where do you schedule a “digital detox” into the daily grind?

i’d be interested to know if the events of the past few years, especially 2020-present, have any other social media managers considering changing careers. i don’t know how much longer i can do this.

— amy b (@arb) January 7, 2021

The need to address social media burnout is urgent as pressures mount, conditions worsen, and the number of qualified professionals willing to stick it out in the industry plummets. Experts and professionals offer advice on how to combat burnout and advocate for a more supportive work environment.

What is social media burnout?

Social media burnout is a form of occupational burnout, which the World Health Organization defines as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

Burnout can transpire in any line of work but occurs at a high rate in the social media industry where it’s often more difficult to unplug.

Stressors unique to social media burnout identified in a study by West Virginia University include the need to be “always-on,” being underpaid and under-appreciated in their role, and lack of buy-in from leadership.

Causes of social media burnout:

Unmanageable workload

Unclear job expectations

Stigma associated with social media

Lack of support from leadership

Limited autonomy or control

Negative workplace environment

Work-life imbalance

Social media burnout can be compounded by systemic and social inequalities such as gender, race, age, and disability discrimination. As the Black Lives Matter movement and pandemic-related gender parity setbacks have revealed, the added tolls of race-based traumatic stress, emotional labour, compassion fatigue, etc., are often experienced on a personal and professional level. Financial struggles, family crises, health problems, and lack of support at home also exacerbate work pressures.

I see and read a lot about social media burnout from professionals in the field. Advertising and social is extremely white. It’s a bit fascinating to me that this very racist time our lives has seemingly affected the mental health of others much more than it has me, a Black man.

— DAKARI is booked. (@dakaridunning) January 14, 2021

Signs of social media burnout may be subtle at first but can result in a breakdown if left unattended. According to the World Health Organization, symptoms include:

Energy depletion or exhaustion

Job dissatisfaction

Negativity or cynicism related to work

Inability to fulfill responsibilities

10 ways to avoid social media burnout

1. Set boundaries and expectations

Social media may be “always on,” but that doesn’t mean you should be. “24/7 social media coverage is just not realistic or healthy,” says Nick Martin, Hootsuite’s global social engagement specialist.

“I always set firm work hours,” he explains. “You need to set expectations right off the bat, in my opinion. On my team, we all made it very clear that work-life balance is really important.”

To keep work-life boundaries in place even while working remote, he keeps his work accounts off his personal phone.

Whatever boundaries you choose, it’s essential that you communicate them with your colleagues and managers, says Sallie Poggi, director of social media at UC Davis. “Boundaries are just another word for expectations,” she explains. “So set those expectations with your supervisor, with your teams, and also with your audience. Tell them when you will respond and when you won’t.”

My phone is on DND 24/7 since 2016. Zero notifications. Life is so much better!

— Kenneth Dimalibot

(@kendimalibot) May 5, 2021

Need help drawing boundaries? Try website blockers or internet restriction apps.

2. Know and show your worth

The work of social media managers is often underpaid, under-appreciated, and unrewarded. Misconceptions about the industry abound, and while skill-level expectations are high, social jobs are often relegated to the intern economy.

Plus, social media platforms themselves have earned a bad rap for their role in spreading misinformation, hate, and harassment.

“Don’t allow the stigma of the tools you use to disseminate your work define you. You don’t just work in social media,” says Nikki Sunstrum, director of Social Media and Public Engagement for the University of Michigan, in a tweet. “You are a strategic communicator, public relations expert, marketer, customer service provider and so much more! Know your value and ensure others do too.”

I was reminded today after 25 years in my profession I still qualify recommendations. “This might be…I was just….I think….”

A senior leader once called me out on it “Do you THINK Jennifer, or do you KNOW?”

LPT: Lose just, might and think from your vocabulary

— Jen Hartmann (@jenalyson) May 8, 2021

Look for opportunities to advocate for your work on and off the job. Ask to be included in relevant meetings and on appropriate committees. And use data to show the value your work provides, whether it’s crisis aversion, community building, or return on investment.

If the “social media” part of your job title proves to be a hangup, propose an alternative title.

3. Work smarter, not harder

Across the globe, the pandemic has pushed people to put in more work hours.

A recent survey by Blind, an anonymous community app for professionals, found that 61% of parents are working three additional hours to complete typical workday tasks. For many working from home, scope creep has crept way out of hand.

Overworking puts people on a fast track to burnout. Instead of putting in extra hours, implement tactics that make you more efficient. Martin recommends the Pomodoro method, which involves 25-minutes of focused work interspersed with five-minute palate cleanses. “It helps me focus on one task and saves me from getting locked into a social vortex,” he says.

Dividing your day and tasks into segments through time blocking is another effective productivity technique. “I use time blocking to set boundaries on how much time I spend doing notifications and comments, and I’m very strategic with my time blocks,” says Poggi. “If you have a really intense task, say it’s comment moderation, time block something after that that allows you to unplug and refill.”

4. Recognize your warning signs

It’s not easy to pinpoint where a doomscroll begins and ends. But the sooner you learn how to spot the signs, the better you can equip yourself for when the downward spiral beckons.

“Treat your mental fortitude as a muscle you have to condition and exercise,” says Poggi. “Observe when it just gets to be too much. And pause in those moments.”

How do you spot signs of burnout? Start with questions like these from Mayo Clinic.

Do you feel negative or cynical at work?

Do you lack energy and motivation on the job?

Do you find it hard to concentrate?

Do you lack professional satisfaction?

Have you become more isolated?

Have your sleep habits changed?

Take your responses seriously. If taking a walk or other coping mechanisms don’t seem like viable solutions, it’s time to ask for help. Notice a colleague experiencing burnout? Offer your support.

Sometimes we recognize burnout ourselves and the need to take a break, other times we need to be told. Let’s keep an eye out for each other and make sure we are encouraging those we care about to take breaks. #Mentalhealth

— Rinki Sethi (@rinkisethi) May 5, 2021

5. Ask for help

Social media managers are often self-starters. Just because they can handle the work of an audience analyst, graphic designer, copywriter, and conflict resolution specialist in a single tweet doesn’t mean they should. And no one should have to tackle management, systemic, or mental health issues alone.

When the workload starts to get too heavy, “build out a business case to hire a contractor, part-time support, or a new role,” says Martin. “A social media manager can’t be a blog writer, and Google Ad Words specialist, and Photoshop expert, and so on.”

Work in social media also has a heavy toll on mental health. Let your managers know when you find things difficult.

“We need to start normalizing asking for help and asking for people to share the mental load,” says Poggi. “The first step in asking for help is actually to ask for it before you need it.”

While seeking support early tends to be more effective, it’s never too late to ask for help.

Establish check-ins. Take mental health days. See if you can incorporate therapy into workplace health benefits. Build a support network. Seek professional help.

6. Prepare response protocols

Most days social media professionals rate their mental health and well-being as a 6/10, finds a study by West Virginia University. During a crisis, that number drops to around 4.5/10.

Dealing with sensitive subject matter, public emergencies, online harassment, and other conflicts is understandably stressful. No one should have to handle it alone or without a proper crisis communication plan in place.

Work with your team to develop scenarios, determine protocols, and identify appropriate stakeholders. “One thing we’ll do in the event of a crisis is press pause on social media,” says Martin. This strategy prevents rash decisions and allows the team to properly assess the situation and choose the best plan of action.

In our webinar, How to Combat Mental Fatigue for Social Media Professionals, experts also suggest forming or joining an emergency response team or committee.

Put plans in place for non-emergencies as well. Establish a protocol that defines how team member responsibilities should be covered when someone needs to take a mental health day. If the idea of taking mental health days stresses people out, it kind of defeats the purpose. With a predetermined support plan, people can check out without worry.

7. Advocate for equitable mental health resources

While the conversation around mental health has advanced, the stigma lingers. In the workplace, mental health discrimination remains common. As a result, more than 70% of people with a mental illness actively conceal it from others.

If you manage a team, foster a climate that puts employee well-being ahead of like counts and sales leads. Researchers from the London School of Economics found that employees who feel able to talk openly about depression with their managers are more productive at work. Normalize talking about depression and anxiety, and you also normalize talking about solutions and coping mechanisms.

what helps you with anxiety?

— Hina Surani (Hee-na) (@hinasurani) April 16, 2021

There are significant differences in how mental health is experienced and viewed across racial backgrounds, gender, age, sexual orientation. If you can, advocate for equitable support, resources, and culturally appropriate assistance within your organization.

Employee Resource Groups, for example, can provide safe spaces for employees to connect around shared experiences, support each other, and feel less isolated.

I led our Black ERG – Blackflow – last Friday through a mediation exercise to acknowledge the grief and trauma we’ve experienced as Black folks in the last year.

This is a great 10 minute exercise you can do with your own ERG or even as a team.https://t.co/ca25QmtPkj

— Sean Page

(@SeanTalentW) May 4, 2021

8. Maintain healthy habits

Set yourself up for success with healthy habits.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things you can do to stay healthy on the job:

Protect your eye health.

Take regular breaks.

Exercise.

Meditate.

Eat healthy meals, away from your desk.

Keep your phone out of the bedroom.

Get a full night’s sleep.

9. Celebrate victories

The dark side of social media has the gravitational pull of a black hole. Combat the darkness by placing emphasis on good outcomes and personal victories.

Create a folder or presentation of positive feedback you’ve received. Pin your best tweets to your wall. Reward yourself and team members for hitting benchmarks, milestones, and other major achievements.

Pay it forward, too. Call out great work when you see it. Even the smallest gestures can leave lasting impressions.

One of the nicest moments I’ve had as a social media manager was when I worked at @TXST. I was walking on campus when I saw that a professor had printed up one of my Star Wars Day posts & pinned it to their door. It was a small thing, but made my day more than 5,000 likes could. pic.twitter.com/4DAj3AoYcq

— Jon-Stephen Stansel (@jsstansel) May 10, 2021

10. Make time to do what makes you happy

The “eat, work, sleep, repeat” routine gets tired real quick. Don’t let your #CareerGoals get in the way of time with family, friends, and the things that make you happy.

“Research shows that those who feel time-poor experience lower levels of happiness and higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress,” writes Ashley Whillans, assistant professor at Harvard Business School, for Harvard Business Review.

“They experience less joy. They laugh less. They exercise less and are less healthy. Their productivity at work is diminished. They are more likely to get divorced.”

Remember: there’s more to life than what happens on your social media timelines.

Take a walk. Get some air. Spend some time doing something that truly brings you joy.

Have a good weekend + take care of yourself, friends

— Nicole Tabak (@nicoletabak) April 23, 2021

On the flip side, research proves that pursuing passions lowers stress and ups dopamine. A 2015 study found that people were 34% less stressed and 18% less sad when they engaged in hobbies. Another study found that creative activities have positive effects both on and off the job.

These are just a few tips you can use to help keep social media burnout at bay, or get back on track if you’re already experiencing it. Remember, no job is more important than your own mental health.

Hootsuite can help you stay organized, focused, and prepared to handle anything on social media. Try it for free today.

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[msvulnerable-mystory]

FINDING PEACE ON THE INSIDE - #1 PRIORITY FOR MY MENTAL HEALTH IS FORGIVENESS FOR MYSELF FOR MY MISTAKES

1. What things will you NOT miss about the relationship and the person you were with?

I will not miss feeling REJECTED! I will not miss feeling EXPOSED! I will not miss feeling lonely, alone, even though I had a boyfriend and partner. I will not miss feeling isolated and misunderstood. I will not miss feeling unimportant. I will not miss not being a priority. I will not miss the arguing. I will not miss the weekly heart aches, disappointment and REJECTION! Reflecting back, it seemed as if Lee and I had different thought processes and beliefs. I was willing to move to make a relationship better and to improve our lives. He didn’t want to take any next steps together because of our fighting, arguing, bickering and disagreements. I will take ownership of starting the arguments, the majority of the time. I was pretending that our relationship was better and healthier than it truly was. I wanted to move forward and onto the next step in our lives, so by living in a fantasy world of our relationship, our communication (OR LACK OF IT), our lack of effort and our arguing was consistently, EVERY WEEK. I will not miss feeling undeserving and less than Lee and that I was never going to find a guy like him again. Ultimately, I was willing to move states, change jobs, my life to be with Lee and he didn't communicate to me that he was willing to make equal or similar changes in his life. The actions or non actions, the lack of effort to see me or to be together was obvious that we were disconnected. We didn't and do not want the same things in life, in terms of family, the possibility of children. Even if we didn't have children, I wanted the opportunity, the choice, the ability to decide. I felt as though he wasn't willing to provide this piece of the puzzle for me. I felt as though it was a consistent no with Lee. Including with the most sensitive, emotional and very personal life issues or situations, Lee communicated no. He didn’t communicate that he was open or flexible. It’s felt like a consistent blatant NO or I don’t know if I want kids or I’m not ready, right now. I translated that into, let’s give it time. If I’m in the same house as Lee and if we grow closer, he’ll fall more in love and be attached. Lee rarely communicated his attachment to me. The attachment weakened, as we argued more. The tension was thick and he was getting advice and conversations from his inner circle that they approved of us not taking the next step because we “fought constantly!” Personally, to me, in my heart of hearts, when two people love one another, it’s natural and human to think about making a human together. It’s the sweetest GIFT and SENTIMENT. As a woman, this is the number one sign of being in love and committing to that person. Personally, as a woman in my late thirties, it’s the ultimate gift and symbol of love. Making a tribe together.

2. What things WILL you miss and why? Oftentimes, the things we miss are how we felt within the relationship, not the actual person themselves.

I will miss having a companion to share stories with. I will miss the conversations with someone whom I thought “got me.” I will miss the silent support Lee provided. I will miss traveling together. Exploring this country together. I will miss feeling like I was a part of a team, working towards a common goal to be together and be life partners. It was a fantasy that I was dreaming of and conjuring by myself about our future and the potential our future held. There was so much hope. This was definitely part of my fantasy story in my fantasy world that I have been in for the last year. I wasn’t practical or realistic about the facts of our love story. I made words and actions mean what I wanted them to signify to keep our story alive.

3. What negative things did you contribute to the relationship? Which of your actions made things worse? It's extremely important to acknowledge your responsibility here - blaming one person for the downfall of the relationship is an impossibility.

I contributed to the argumentative communication. I take ownership of starting fights to "scream" for attention or if I didn't feel listed to or noticed or appreciated, which after months of negative long distance interacting and phone calls that ended with fighting, arguing, attacking or projecting and blaming. I would hold a grudge from something that I felt wronged for and I would attempt to move on and past it, but because there was never a sincere apology or ownership taken or any in person discussions, arguments got more serious and more toxic. I own that I had the tone to start off the conversations. I was bitter and it came across. I lived in a fantasy world, where I told myself that if we lived in the same city, we would be harmonious. The arguing was 90% to 10%. Lee avoided, over committed and would just not call or check in if he was out drinking or socializing. He would call the next day. That happened quite a bit. He would look for reasons to not talk. I didn't enjoy our conversations. I felt like I was getting graded and that he would talk about me negatively to people he is close with. When we would argue, he would say that people didn't like us being together. Apparently, Lee is perfect and is avoidance because it's not arguing is acceptable. His people enable him. Bet he never told Maria or Dan how much I cared for him, what I was willing to do to be together, how faithful and loyal I was, bet they never heard those positive traits.

4. What would you differently if you had it to do again?

If I did it all over again, what would I do? This is a layered questions. First, I'd be more friendly, harmonious, peaceful and accepting. I would change my tone in conversations to be welcoming and warm, so that I brought us together and didn't exacerbate the distance and disconnection with  temperamental moody and emotional conversations. I would be a better listener. I would instill patience. I would stop interpreting friendship actions for being in love. I would have recognized much sooner the different things in our future we wanted. I would have separated from this relationship earlier this year, when I realized we weren't compatible, probably around April. I stayed with him because of my testing and diagnosis and then I had to tuck my tail between my legs and swallow my pride when I was diagnosed. So much guilt. So much shame. 

5. What relationship skills do you need to strengthen for the next time you're in a relationship?

Being open, non judgmental and willing to listen. Being conversational, kind and respectful. Being consistently respectful and speaking the same to my partner whether someone is listening or not. Not speaking in a toxic tone to my partner. Not having the moodiness or anger. Recognizing if we aren't compatible, then take the steps to separate sooner rather than making excuses, justifying negative behaviors and building up resentment.

6. Write down the following emotions and how they pertain and relate to your ex and yourself:

Guilt - I probably made Lee feel guilty at times to try to get through to him what my emotions were. I felt like, otherwise, he didn't understand my feelings or why I would get upset. Anger - There was a lot of anger from me. I own that I had 80% of the anger and that was really pain and hurt underneath, but I showed it with angry and fighting words. Happiness - We weren't "happy." Period. Literally, the word never came off our tongues. Blame - We both justify and blame one another for the mistakes that were made. Fear - lots of fear of rejection, fear of not be accepted, fear of abandonment on my part. I cant' speak for Lee on his fears. He had fears about not succeeding in his career. Love - we do care and love each other as friends. Denial - I lived in denial and in my fantasy love soap opera. It was more sad to let go of the potential of a future than our actual relationship. We didn't have a physical bond. Hatred - There were lots of moments of hate. Pain - the anger I showed was pain underneath Joy - very rarely did  I feel joy with Lee. Depression  - all the time, consistently in a funky depression.

7. Are there things you want to be forgiven for? Are you willing to forgive yourself? 8. Are you willing to forgive your ex for the things they were responsible for? 8. What did your ex and your relationship teach you that you're grateful for? 9. How are you stronger and wiser through this experience?

[unproduciblesmackdown]

sometimes the wild thing with depression is looking back and trying to figure out when it started and never really being able to draw a line for anything like "this was the earliest age it All Began(tm)," probably because there's not generally such an On-Off Switch type process to it. i know usually circa ten yrs old or later in the teens is usually what people point to but sometimes more of a period of exacerbation rather than origin, and who can say it's not also having the emotional and psychological capabilities and capacities that young children don't that bring a greater sense of perspective and awareness, idk anyways so i'm not sure if i was ever not-depressed or anything....i know i was always uncomfortable outside what was familiar and "shy" and i know that as soon as i was around other kids in a way more socially organized than running around together, namely preschool at 4 yrs old, i was aware of not feeling like i fit in and noticing i couldnt make friends like other people could. ive been good at bs-ing school from the start and happen to pick up things very quickly so even though i probably had the same habits as kids with the worst grades and had no particular ambitions re: academia (beyond avoiding parental wrath and later maintaining the identity that kinda protected me a bit in school) since i got really good grades and was quiet and pretty much just read in a corner when left to myself from kindergarten through middle school, i was probably considered a usually ideal student. i remember a couple of people who i felt i was genuinely friends with, a kid named michael who i think went to a different school after a couple of grades, and a kid named jacqueline in 2nd grade who was like me so quiet in retrospect i'm not sure if she knew much english but we played legos together and stuff but then we got in trouble for not paying attention during not even a lesson but i had to move seats b/c arbitrary Making An Example and since we were both so quiet we just didnt interact much anymore to avoid further attention. i made other friends technically but generally it took a long time to be comfortable with them and we were never close and in the meantime i dont think i ever much liked school. i remember one random sunday evening just getting upset about not wanting to go back the next day just because it was boring and meantime at home of course it sucked but i didnt quite realize it til i was older and it helped of course being young enough to be able to go outside for hours and be perfectly entertained playing in the dirt and trees and stuff. i read a lot at home too i remember having pretty skeptical thoughts about Life from earlyish on but, besides spending a crap ton of time just in my own head (reading, playing in dirt) i think i had ideas that life and the world was pretty amazing. like earlier on of course it was like "is magic real??" but then later its just stuff like reading in books about how kids had good friends and families and got to pursue their interests and do things and work out drama and have nice endings with a lot of hope for the future. for all i could tell the only thing keeping that from being my life was that i wasnt old enough, or probably i hoped that it was just a matter of time. it was less like i was extrapolating from my own limited observations of the worse aspects of life that life must be great and more like i was already noticing that my world was lacking and just hoping that it would grow out of it; not to mention being given the hint that stuff like abuse was my own fault and shortcomings i started getting more aware of being fed up with things / that they weren't inherently going to change around like late elementary school / middle school but it would take another year or two to really get the extent of it, and in the meantime by 14 or 15 at the latest i was consciously suicidal so like, moving fast there. i probably by that point had already caught on to the fact that my world had just been kind of shitty and that it wasnt going to change or seem better after a certain amount of time like i'd thought it would. and then add also having a better understanding of the rest of the world just by being older and getting more experience and realizing that its a lot more chaotic than initially taught to you and that being depressed and having developed few interests and zero ambitions and having antagonistic parents and very few friends doesnt do much to give you as much a cushion from that chaos as it could tangent: honestly i like programs that teach instructors how to recognize things that look like Behavior Issues as maybe more being signs of external issues. i wasnt the best at paying attention and i was often quiet in school whether in class or not and it mightve been a problem if i didnt get good grades but since i did i could just be in the background. i don't particularly resent this or anything because i know how teaching is and i myself didnt really understand i had serious problems at home until much later, but in retrospect i think i always had signs. i remember one particular incident when i was about 8 really shouldve been a bit of a warning sign. i know nobody can really do anything even if they know things are bad but considering i had to learn what abuse looked like by myself and i didnt feel supported by any adult and even when i knew what was going on when i was much older i still just didnt tell anyone in any position of authority because i had learned i had to protect myself by keeping personal things totally confidential and that if i exhibited any signs of struggling i would be blamed and chastised for it. wouldve been nice to at least be informed what was going on at an earlier time and maybe given some sense of confidence or at least a sense it wasn't completely my fault. turns out what gave me any ounce of confidence at all was being like 19 and being so blamed and maligned that it backfired and i started feeling like if i was as awful as i was made out to be then surely i didnt need to feel ashamed and responsible for everything that was being done to me. if i already deserved to be dead then what more could i bring on myself by daring to be so terrible as to feel i shouldnt be treated like i was! checkmate atheists anyhow, i feel like my Good Concepts About The World kind of evolved from "later on everyone has adventures" to "later on everyone goes to middle school / high school and makes friends and bonds with their family and follows their dreams" to something just more vaguely escapist with abstracted ideas about simply feeling comfortable and nice, with maybe general imagery, usually like summer sunsets or just some nice stars or something. i thought about it once and it made a lot of sense, thinking about stuff in terms of the concept of feeling ok and good things existing in the world and being able to sense it despite it also being at a distance or otherwise removed like dont get me wrong just because i wanna be dead i dont have some kind of notion that everyone else's experience of life is the same as mine i.e. that life and/or the world is inherently shit, i know its no more objectively bad than it is objectively good. i still like to think about the good side of all of it. i think its a total mistake to have the idea that if someone is suicidal or even just depressed that it necessarily has anything to do with what they think of the philosophy of the concept of Life, its more personal and immediate than that. honestly i hate all the advice about how you need to write a poem for your suicidal friend to teach them the magic of life or do some otherwise melodramatic bad y.a. novel shit that'll give them a New Perspective on the wonders of life literally overnight. not only is it always disgustingly patronizing and often counterproductively Tough Love-esque but also totally like unrelated to the root of the problem of "what if i'm worried about a friend making a suicide attempt." if you're personally wanting to do something i s2g literally just provide a distraction. talk about random shit or play online scrabble or go over and make midnight snacks, not like set a flower on fire while dropping a porcelain teapot on the floor and lecturing them about how this Doesnt Solve Any Problems or is a permanent solution to a temporary problem like no. just be a distraction jfc and dont insult anyone by generalizing their experience and guessing at what's probably an extremely complex and personal matter and turning it into empty clichés anyways: this was the longest way to get to the idea that isnt it wild when, like how you can Hear a sound in your head and despite recreating it decently its different from actually hearing it externally, you can sometimes remember what it was like to feel nice about the concept of life? i cant really summon earlier things but sometimes i can remember flashes of having those later sad-person-in-their-own-head moments of thinking of distant abstract concepts like seeing the sky as a medium for connection to the infinite experiences of humanity, and i can get like the equivalent of a visual image of a recreated feeling from back when i still had a few lingering overly-optimistic notions that things would be good soon. don't get me wrong, again im still aware of the good things in life and i still have good experiences and still feel good feelings. but i dont harbor expectations that the course of life must and will average itself out or lean towards improvement for any reason, like knowing that good things happening to you out of the blue is the same as how terrible things can happen for exactly the same reason—namely no reason at all. so i just dont have the same feelings i used to about my own personal life, and i dont feel the things i used to when i hoped it still could be Only A Matter Of Time. so its wild when for some reason i mentally stumble on the memory of having those feelings and theyre still recent enough that i get a moment of recreating the feeling like i do when i can picture something in my head, and its totally different and dissonant than what's currently true for me. it wasn't a more accurate perspective to think that life being bad meant it had to improve, but its obviously a nicer feeling. and it sounds like overused to the point of meaningless comparison but its like getting your head above water for a second in terms of the momentary contrast of sensation tldr its wild when you depressioning 24/7 and dead inside and have an instant of remembering What It Was Like To Feel Things

#long post ///////

[emmatrustsno-one]

Red Dwarf re-watch slashwatch

As I have been on a re-run of Red Dwarf in the last few weeks (it had been an entire six months since I last watched it!! Nightmare!) I though I’d take a break from spirk and post some episode analyses from a rimsy x listy POV. Feel free to add anything you think I’ve missed. It’ll take a few months to do them all. To be clear, I am not saying they are simply gay, or even that they are in a relationship; just that they are more than friends and they develop complex feelings for each other. If you can’t handle it, don’t read it!

Series 2, Thanks for the memory

This isn’t a very slashy episode in terms of hot moments, especially given that it’s all about a relationship with a woman. It is, however, the story of how Rimmer and Lister are growing closer and developing feelings for each other. There is little animosity, or even banter, in this episode. They are simply depicted as good friends who care about each other and are on each other’s’ side. For instance, at the start the others are throwing a party for Rimmer, and everyone is having a good time. Lister makes a nice little speech for Rimmer as well. Once they are back on Red Dwarf we see a relaxed domestic scene, and once Rimmer wakes up, they chat away like mates. After the triple fried egg chili chutney sandwich scene (which I’ll deal with separately below) the conversation turns to Rimmer’s ability to interact with others, which is a serious and fairly upsetting issue really. The fact that Rimmer doesn’t really have time for people but believes that he does because he used to suck up to Todhunter show how inadequate his social skills are, which is a fallout from his difficult childhood. I also believe Rimmer is a bit autistic (something I will try to write about at some point), which exacerbates his difficulties with social interactions. These difficulties make it easy to see how he has not had the opportunity to properly consider and explore his sexuality, which is why he is one of the most closeted gay (or possibly bi) characters in television history, in my opinion.

During this conversation Rimmer confirms that he has only slept with one woman, and that that sexual experience lasted less than 12 minutes. No wonder he is emotionally immature – he hasn’t tried anything that would enable him confront his feelings. I find it interesting that it is mentioned that McGruder was a boxing champion – it feels like they are making her seem masculine. The only woman Rimmer has slept with has, presumably, a somewhat masculine personality, and maybe even physique. Incidentally, despite Rimmer’s fears, Lister isn’t bothered about Rimmer’s lack of sexual experience. The only reason he doesn’t want Rimmer to tell about it is to protect Rimmer – he knows he is too insecure to cope with having told Lister such things. Drunkenly honest, Rimmer also explains that he would trade his career to be loved. This is also quite sad: this man was told what he wanted by those around him; he never considered what he wanted from his life until it was too late. Being a career-man wasn’t the right thing for him. Arguably, he ends up inadvertently trading his career for Lister’s love in series 8, but we’ll get to that when we get to it. Right now, Rimmer has nothing: no career, no love, no life even. Lister understands this and that’s why he gives him the memory of Lise Yates. The deep care and affection implied by this act prove that the fact that he hasn’t “met the right girl yet” doesn’t matter, because he has met the right boy.

Lister’s decision to give Rimmer the memory of Lise Yates was drunken and ill-conceived. However, it was a decision born of genuine care for Rimmer and a desire to see him feel real happiness. Think how personal so much of what Lister transferred to Rimmer’s mind was, and what Rimmer now knows about Lister – how he likes sex, how long he lasts, what he says during sex – but it didn’t stop him doing it. Lister gave up a private relationship that meant a lot to him and allowed Rimmer access to some of the most vulnerable parts of his life, all because he wanted to see him happy. If that’s not love then I don’t know what is. I love how excited Lister is when he hears Rimmer’s music playing on his way back to their quarters – he feels pure joy at the idea that he has made Rimmer feel loved and happy. When they are watching the recording on the black box, Lister is visibly sad that he has ended up causing Rimmer pain instead. Indeed, on the recording we see that, once the plan failed and he realised that Rimmer was heartbroken, he went to extreme lengths to fix it. The fact that he made this great, romantic gesture while drunk further strengthens the notion that they have repressed feelings for each other, since we often do when drunk what we haven’t got the courage to do while sober.

Going back to the sandwich scene, it is Rimmer who is making drunken declarations of love. This scene is definitely slashy. Firstly, Rimmer essentially tells Lister that he finds him delicious. His famous comment about all the ingredients being wrong but the result being fantastic shows not only that Rimmer really likes Lister, but also that he doesn’t really understand why. I think this alludes to Rimmer’s repressed homosexuality. He is strongly attracted to Lister, to extents that he doesn’t even realise, and yet he can’t figure out why. The reason, of course, is that he believes he is straight. It’s like a sum that he has the answer to but not the question: ? + ? + ? = I love Lister. Moreover, if, in Rimmer’s words, the sandwich is Lister, then Rimmer’s description of how the sandwich makes him feel also describes how Lister makes him feel. Rimmer explains that it makes him feel like he’s “having a baby”, and that it’s “a cross between food and bowel surgery”. What can we take from this? That being with Lister is fulfilling, miraculous, hormone-inducing, exciting, leaves a pleasant taste in the mouth, makes him feel connected to life and meets raw, instinctual needs. But that it’s also excruciating, confusing, new, intrusive, scary, messy, uncomfortable and makes him carry heavy baggage. Again, if that’s not a great description of love, I don’t know what is. His facial expressions as he eats the sandwich allude to a continuous cycle of pleasure, which turns to horror, which turns back to pleasure again, and so on: another metaphor for their coming to terms with their growing feelings.

Lister gave Rimmer the relationship with Lise Yates because he wanted Rimmer to feel love. In a way, giving him love in the form of the relationship is a metaphor for simply giving him love, something he doesn’t feel able to do yet. Another key reason for giving Rimmer the relationship was trying to make him feel in general. This isn’t the first time Lister has manipulated Rimmer into emoting and confronting his feelings, because he knows it’s better for him (i.e. gazpacho soup). Wanting him to be more secure with his feelings shows how much he cares for him, and coaxing a man to emote/share feelings is also a role traditionally associated with the woman of a relationship, which offers some more evidence of Lister’s role as a sub in this relationship. The fact that the plan to erase 4 days from their memories was laughably poor suggests to me that maybe Lister wanted it to fail; maybe he wanted Rimmer to have to confront this, so that he would have access to emotions that would help him grow as a person. The scene in the observation dome certainly points in that direction. Once again we see Lister adopting his position slightly behind Rimmer, looking up at him sweetly, the two of them alone against a backdrop of stars, and Lister trying to soothe Rimmer, assuring him that having loved and lost is normal, that it’s healthy to feel these feelings, that they make you a more rounded person. Rimmer isn’t convinced and Lister agrees to un-do it, but he is right. Perhaps he set them up to re-discover their erased memories.

Whilst this episode shows them lusting after a woman, the truth is not so two-dimensional. Without a doubt, the story is about love, not sex, and without a doubt the predominant love in the story is Lister’s for Rimmer. The clarity of that fact makes the next episode, Stasis Leak, difficult to understand. More on that soon.

Totally unrelated to the previous paragraphs, I think it’s worth mentioning how Rimmer appeared in the dream he was having. He definitely looks reminiscent of Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror (another sci-fi with comedy and singing), though, of course, without the confidence and sexual magnetism. He’s like a de-sexualised, drab Frank-N-Furter, in fact. There’s probably an essay in that alone if anyone wants to do it!

#red dwarf #rimmer x lister #arnold rimmer #dave lister #slash #gays in space #space husbands #chris barrie #craig charles

[mr-yuri-katsuki]

When I first moved to Detroit, I came to find the atmosphere of the rink was definitely nothing like what was basically a private rink all to myself in Hasetsu. Everyone was friends it seemed like, and very laid back and casual with each other. For a 19-year-old, anxious and shy skater that comes from a culture that is heavy on respect and social etiquette, it was a bit hard to get used to. Eventually though thanks to the social butterfly known as Phichit, who would get me to go with him to hangouts with the rink people, I started to come out of my shell a bit and get a grasp on how things were.

That's how there ended up being video evidence of just how big a fan of Victor Nikiforov I was (am) exists.

It was 2013, an exceptionally snowy Saturday night. Detroit is prone to a phenomenon known as lake-effect snow, which would dump feet of snow on the city and suburbs in just a few hours. We had a decent amount of snow days off from practice in the winter because the staff couldn't get in to the rink, and we had not been in to the rink that day because of the storm. It was mid-March and because we'd all been hanging out all day, we were all pumped for the men's long program from Worlds to be shown on TV that night. It was the talk of every corner of the skating world for one very big reason.

I was freaking out because all season long, there had been rumors that Victor had finally mastered the quad flip. No one had seen him do it though, and he would never say in interviews if he did indeed have it after trying for about a year or so before that. At that time, he was the only skater rumored to be attempting it, and all anyone could talk about was what he would do in the long. Everyone thought he'd try it in the short, because the program didn't take as much stamina and he could probably land it easily. But his base score in the short was so high he didn't need it and he was sitting in first place. With no one really challenging him that year, the rumors were heavy that he would try the quad flip for the first time. If he landed it, it would make skating history.

I'm really surprised we all never got in trouble for having alcohol in the dorm we lived in near the rink, as some of us (including me, by one year) were underage. But we were all pretty buzzed by the time the skating broadcast began. Phichit knew how excited/nervous/freaked out I was over Victor's long and the possible quad flip, and just like always, he was ready. I never found out until about a month later that he'd recorded me and my ridiculousness, which was amplified by the fact that by the time Victor skated, I was about four very strong Jack and Cokes into the evening.

I had never been able to watch the video because I did remember that night and knew I was OTT. I was too embarrassed and I threatened Phichit with death if he ever showed it to anybody. But recently, during a conversation that I don't exactly remember the beginning of, I confessed to Victor about that night. Phichit then eventually found the video again and sent it to me. I still hadn't watched it up to today. But something happened at the rink today that made me finally suck it up and do just that.

I was still cringing at my 20-year-old self's drunken goofiness, but I actually stand by the feelings I had at the time. When Victor skated out to center ice I was literally holding onto Phichit and he to me for dear life, having an anxiety attack on Victor's behalf because I was so excited and nervous for him. If he was going to do the quad flip it was going to be the second or third jump in the program. I literally couldn't breathe; Phichit kept saying “breathe Yuri” (he had one of our friends holding his phone to record us). When Victor landed the most textbook, picture-perfect quad flip, his first ever and the first ever in competition, I completely lost my shit. Screaming, crying and jumping around like an idiot because I was so happy and proud of him. This person I had only ever admired from afar, but still loved (I didn't realize that part till later) nonetheless. Everyone in the room was laughing their butts off at me except for Phichit -- because he was freaking out right with me, just like he always did, because he’s my baby bro and BFF and has always gotten me and my obnoxiously dorky, awkward self.

I had always tested myself by learning Victor’s programs and skating them, even as far back as when I was still in Hasetsu with Yuko. At the time of 2013 Worlds I was struggling with my jumps because I'd suddenly grown six inches within a year (they didn't call me a late bloomer for nothing); it was part of the reason I'd gone with a new coach and moved to the US. But I said I would learn a quad flip one day, because by the time I would be any kind of contender, you'd probably need it. I used to always strive to one day be even a fraction as good a skater as Victor was. I was determined to keep trying... at first. It wasn't long after that that my anxiety issues, probably exacerbated by a few things, got worse, and I started to lose faith in myself and the ability to reach that goal right up until the 2015 Grand Prix Final, when for a while, it left me completely.

And then it was restored in the most unexpected way possible, just a few months later.

Fast forward to today, a day that has now become like most days: Victor Nikiforov is no longer the skater I idolized from afar, that I had dreams of knowing even just as an acquaintance, of being an equal and a peer to him as far as my level of skating. Today, Coach Nikiforov chose some music for me to improvise to to end my second practice session of the day when I had nothing in mind of my own. He gave me Tchaikovsky's “Sleeping Beauty Waltz”, a piece of music I was familiar with but hadn't ever done anything as far as skating to. I just let the music lead, falling into movements and positions that I'd done and learned from various places, spins and a few jumps... including a quad flip, which I have been able to call my own since the 2016 GPF. When I finished, I could tell something was on his mind and eventually got him to tell me what it was.

“I could tell you've watched me for many years. It's apparent when you skate as you were. It was like seeing myself in you,” he said.

And just like that, for a few moments I was that kid again. The one that dreamed of someday being even remotely close to a fraction of the skill and talent he possessed. And... confession time... I was that kid again that dreamed that one day, at some competition where I'd managed to get on the podium with him, even in the bronze place, I would hear him say something like that to me. I found out just this past weekend that, unbeknownst to me, Victor had watched me crash and burn at the 2015 GPF, and had actually noticed then that I was influenced by him. That in and of itself was enough to set off a twinge in my heart, but today was basically a critical hit.

And instead of waking up from a daydream that had been started by staring at a poster on my wall, I walked over to the man I still idolize and love, just in a different way now, and hugged him because he’d stolen any voice I had with just a few words of his own. He has that effect on me. I didn’t want to bawl my eyes out in front of the entire rink so I finally let him go, and told him to go practice because his last session of the day was starting. Then I went into the locker room and was composing myself while wiping down my blades when Georgi, who was on the ice when I was improvising, said his new name for me was “Mini-Victor”. Oh lord. That’s going to be fun to live up to! Challenge accepted, however. Because now, I believe I can realistically shoot for it.

Today I learned that sometimes, your dreams and goals don't come to you in the ways you expect them to. Sometimes you're already there, and you just need the right person to help you see it.

I forgot to ask Victor if he recorded me, like he usually does when I improvise. I hope he did. This is one video of myself I won't mind watching again.

#victor nikiforov #yes i am still a hopeless fanboy so what #mental randomletters #punched in the feels #i love him i love him i love him