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jokeroutsubs · 5 months

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ENG translation: "When I'm on stage, I know that I have to be here and only here"

An interview with Bojan Cvjetićanin in Slovenian newspaper Delo, originally published 31.10.2021.

Original article is available here for Delo subscribers. Original article written by Beti Burger for Delo; photos by Blaž Samec; English translation by a member of Joker Out Subs, native proof reading by IG GBoleyn123.

If you repost quotes from the interview, please link back to this post! And if you repost the photos, do not crop out the photographer credit.

Bojan Cvjetićanin, frontman of Joker Out, says that the success happening to them is not the result of something that happened overnight.

When he's standing on stage, he doesn't know what's actually going on. Even though after the concert, he realises that he was on it, and remembers certain moments, he's actually in a zen-like state: his head is somewhere else, and his brain does what it wants to do. Young, reflective musician Bojan Cvjetićanin believes that he was born to write music and lyrics and sing them on stage. "What I enjoy the most at a concert is when we play a new song from start to finish with the band for the first time and we're 'vibing'."

And if some of the lines above did not have context yet when we talked the day before the first concert, and sort of 'hung in the air', in packed Cvetličarna it was crystal clear what he had wanted to say. They were 'vibing' not only when they played well-known hits - Omamljeno telo, Umazane misli, Vem da greš - but also to new songs from the album, when they felt the strong energy and heard the audience was singing the new songs with them... She'll find herself there, where no one knows her, where the road always carries the smell of fresh rain (...) where pearls are in seashells, not on necklaces (Barve oceana).

Bojan truly, as he said, seems a little distant on stage, as if he's in his own world, but also in contact with the audience at the same time. He is both confident and childishly playful at once, with a wide smile on his face, with the charisma of an experienced frontman. His friend and member of the band, bassist Martin Jurkovič, with whom they started their musical journey as young teenagers already, described him well in an interview as someone who "draws all the attention to himself and the band during a concert". When the band members look at each other during a gig, they recognise each other's exact thoughts, and a kind of perversion of pleasure happens. We witnessed this exact thing at the album presentation.

"On stage, I feel sexy, I feel free and accepted. I'm on autopilot and I'm never thinking about what my next move will be, it's when I'm 'free as a bird' because I am surrounded by friends who know me very well, so I don't have to be ashamed of anything. It's also a good feeling when you know that there is a crowd of people in the hall who came to our concert because they like something that we give them. This mutual accumulation of love and energy is very strong." Are there places where he doesn't feel accepted, I query his words. "I think that we all sometimes find ourselves in a situation when we feel like we don't belong there and we ask ourselves what we're even doing there. When I'm on stage, however, I know that I have to be here and only here."

Bojan Cvjetićanin Born in 1999. Frontman of currently the most in-demand young Slovenian band Joker Out which, with their shagadelic rock'n'roll, a genre they actually invented themselves, sold out Cvetličarna twice last week with their just-released album Umazane misli. Even off-stage, he's the 'joker' in a group, optimistic and talkative and an occasionally childishly playful young man. His lyrics (and music) are mature, sensitive and empathetic. The Ljubljana resident, otherwise a sociology student, has been making music for almost half of his life. Last but not least, a listener can quickly recognise that he actually grew up exactly where he feels the best: on stage.

Tired and sleep deprived, just a few days before the concert in Cvetličarna, which had been postponed (more than once) due to Covid-19 and which seemed like it would never happen, he had a nightmare. He dreamed "that there was one song that we just could not start and we tried again and again". He really had a lot of stage fright before the first concert this year. At the end of April and beginning of May, it still looked like there wouldn't be concerts in the summer, and then everything started to open up. They've never had as many concerts as this summer. "Those concerts hit us like a train, because we were neither mentally nor physically prepared for this many performances. We'd got used to rehearsing all day long and being completely self-sufficient. It was pretty hard before the first sold-out concert in Čin čin in Ljubljana, because the audience's expectations, as well as our own, were high. We performed with a new drummer for the first time, so the tension was even greater. When we stepped on stage, however, an enormous wave of energy that reflected from the audience washed over us, you could feel and see that people had been locked up at home, that they needed to relax, needed concerts."

"In these times, when the internet and media constantly bombard us with so much information, that defines us pretty strongly. So it seems like any kind of thinking for yourself, about anything, is already a dirty thought."

The epidemic was also a time when changes happened in the group, as during the creative process, they realised that not all members of the band have the same creative drive, so in the end, they switched their drummer. Since then, they have significantly changed the way they work. They have created, even if not completely intentionally, a spirit of band co-production, they've become more dependant on each other. They've realised that music demands that they help each other. It's also important that, when they start to grow wings from all the congratulations and praises, they pull each other back to solid ground. In interviews and articles, he is described as "the most recognisable voice of the new generation of Slovenian rock" or as "a rising star" and he feels honoured by those compliments, but in truth, those titles don't really tell him a lot. Hearing that from the people who listen to their music is what means the most to him. He says that it's not the sea of congratulations that caresses your ego, but rather certain moments and situations when you actually feel strong and in your own skin. "In the moment when the light shines on you on the stage, the feelings are indescribable, you feel like a god. That's the 'awesome' thing, not when someone tells you that you're a god." He adds that he thinks he's still the same Bojan he was years ago, when all those congratulations and titles didn't exist yet.

"The bassist Martin and I have been making music for almost half of our lives and I think that with time, we've managed to work through everything that happens during the evolution of a band. Our current success didn't come overnight, it is the result of a long period of work." The pivotal year for Joker Out was 2017, when it first started looking like this band could truly become 'something'. "From the start, you want it to be something more, but it's usually just a distant wish, like Cvetličarna used to be." Back then, however, after the single Omamljeno telo, all the positive response gave them the feeling that everything was being taken to a higher level. And there were several of those levels, they have jumped over many of them. "If I look at the situation objectively, it seems crazy to me that we sold out Cvetka (Cvetličarna, a.n.) twice with three singles." As he says, however, nothing that they do in the band is left up to chance. "Very early on, we put our heads together and had an in-depth discussion, first of all about our relationships with one another, and then about our duties, and we promised each other that we would never be afraid to tell each other what we wanted. When we determined our wishes, we turned them into goals, which we are now achieving." In his words, something that definitely contributes to their success is that they're surrounded by people who love what they do. "Now we work as a team, and if a team works well, it can't miss." In the future they want to release another album, and they're also drawn beyond the borders of Slovenia, to the Balkans.

As a band, they want to give people the things that drive them as artists - currently the prevailing theme in their lyrics is love, but also self-reflection and musings. These are very general, many songs talk about how young people sometimes feel constricted or lost and are looking for their place in the world. "We're currently not interested in politics and we don't plan to define ourselves politically one way or another, although our songs do feature some messages about society. We think that our job is to spread love and that people can, based also on our lyrics, come up with their own political opinion, without our imposition," he says.

And when I challenged him to use one of their songs to describe his current feeling before the concert (adrenaline, fear, uncertainty, expectations), he said that "there's a butterfly in my head that's just swimming through a weird universe. It feels like people around me are buzzing and not actually talking." Metulji ('Butterflies') is actually his favourite song. He wrote it at the same time as Omamljeno telo and it already meant a lot to him back then. He wanted to hear a recording of it, but today he says that he's happy that they recorded it later, because back then it wouldn't have been anything like it is today. "Now, the song is exactly as we imagined it back then, but didn't know how to embody it."

As the singer, Bojan Cvjetićanin is also the most recognisable and exposed member of the band. On the Slovenian scene, his role models are (were), among others, Tomi Meglič from Siddharta and Gregor Skočir, the singer of the band Big Foot Mama - "today I can already call them friends, they feel respect for us, as we do for them and for both bands. They come to our concerts, we hang out in private. Even though some people say that you shouldn't meet your idols, because then everything falls apart, now that I know Tomi and know who the person who made all that music is, I like listening to it even more." Among foreign frontmen, his favourite is Liam Gallagher, who became famous with the band Oasis. He was actually his inspiration for keeping his hands crossed behind his back while singing on stage. "I had a period of that 'Liam pose'... I didn't know what to do with my hands on stage, and when I put them behind my back once, it seemed like a good trick. Today, I grab the guitar more and more on stage, so I don't have an issue with what to do with my hands anymore. (smile)." What, then, are the key characteristics of a good frontman? "He has to be honest, genuine. There are many types of lead singers, Mick Jagger, for example, gives himself away completely, goes crazy and dances, while some others stand still constantly, but they both completely enchant you." He doesn't think about this too much, he simply exists on stage.

While some musicians, actors, or other performers are completely different, introverted, in their private lives and in the backstage, Bojan is generally very talkative and smiley. "Even as a little kid, as others have told me, I talked all the time, I wanted to socialise, with older people too, so it seems like I really never had issues with making connections. Now it's actually the same, there are just more people in front of the stage." At Poljane High School, which, as he has stressed many times, shaped him a lot as a person, he performed in a theatre group, so he already experienced the stage in the role of an actor, later he was on TV in the role of a host. These days, he still often says, half-laughing, that - if music won't be what he earns a living with - he'd like to be a sociology professor at Poljane. "But I heard they just got a new one, so I don't know how realistic the chances are."

But for now, he doesn't have to do anything other than make music. Bojan Cvjetićanin is also the author of the lyrics of most of the songs, in which, as he said, he's a kind of medium who conveys others' pain. While he did say not long ago that as a songwriter, he sometimes lacks unhappy emotions and that he doesn't know the pain of a broken heart, it's different now. "I got my dose of inspiration for quite some time..." He says that when making songs, it's almost always the music that comes first, and then the lyrics. "Most often, I take the guitar, lately I also sit at the piano, and I try to find the chords that sound interesting to me in that moment, and then I also sing along. Usually, associations form in my head and it feels like it suddenly becomes clear to me what the lyrics will be, sometimes I "accidentally" sing some lines that end up staying in the song and define what I will talk about." The lyrics are mostly, as mentioned, about love and self-reflection, but there are also a few slightly different ones among them. Aleppo, the duet with Omar Naber, who has been by his side from the beginning and helped him record demos, was created differently. The song, which talks about the city Aleppo in Syria, which is ravaged by war, was created when, in a TV report about what was happening there, he saw a young girl that inspired him. Then, he immediately started writing.

As someone who is sensitive to feeling other people's pain, does he ever fear that he could lose this empathy in the rather apathetic world we live in? "Just last year, there was a moment when I thought that I was completely alienated from myself, and I felt like I was never going to fall in love again. For a while, nothing excited me, I thought I had gone numb, but then something suddenly changed, I just waited for that natural 'click'." When songs become evergreen, hits that everyone sings and that connect generations, is it also important how much empathy the lyricists have?

"Absolutely. You have to have enough empathy to be honest with yourself. If you're honest, some people will connect very strongly with your lyrics. Nowadays, so many songs in the musical world are written just to be written. Not because they carry a real story within. And you can really feel that. It's that easy."

If you repost quotes from the interview, please link back to this post! And if you repost the photos, do not crop out the photographer credit.

#bojan cvjeticanin #bojan cvjetićanin #joker out

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luxe-pauvre · 10 months

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Taking a walk in the countryside, like listening to a favourite song or meeting friends for an evening of conversation, is thus a good example of what the philosopher Kieran Setiya calls an “atelic activity,” meaning that its value isn’t derived from its telos, or ultimate aim. You shouldn’t be aiming to get a walk “done”; nor are you likely to reach a point in life when you’ve accomplished all the walking you were aiming to do. “You can stop doing these things, and you eventually will, but you cannot complete them,” Setiya explains. They have “no outcome whose achievement exhausts them and therefore brings them to an end.” And so the only reason to do them is for themselves alone: “There is no more to going for a walk than what you are doing right now.” As Setiya recalls in his book Midlife, he was heading toward the age of forty when he first began to feel a creeping sense of emptiness, which he would later come to understand as the result of living a project-driven life, crammed not with atelic activities but telic ones, the primary purpose of which was to have them done, and to have achieved certain outcomes. He published papers in philosophy journals in order to speed his path to academic tenure; he sought tenure in order to achieve a solid professional reputation and financial security; he taught students in order to achieve those goals, and also in order to help them attain degrees and launch their own careers. In other words, he was suffering from the very problem we’ve been exploring: when your relationship with time is almost entirely instrumental, the present moment starts to lose its meaning. And it makes sense that this feeling might strike in the form of a midlife crisis, because midlife is when many of us first become consciously aware that mortality is approaching — and mortality makes it impossible to ignore the absurdity of living solely for the future. Where’s the logic in constantly postponing fulfilment until some later point in time when soon enough you won’t have any “later” left?

Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

#Oliver Burkeman #Four Thousand Weeks

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edwinspaynes · 4 months

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Re Follow up to Wessa spicy and loving ur work > CC and long fits Q

I CANNOT WAIT FOR WESSA SPICY, U WRITE SPICY SO FREAKING WELL! I also have never thought about historical spicy stuff. which obviously happened cuz hello folks back then did it as well, it's not just a present day thing haha.

I think I just feel ur engagement is way more motivating and higher than CC's. Obv CC has mad kudos for creating this Universe, but like any author who has made It so clear that she wants to move on from the universe, the fun part is playing within it YK? Not just creating plots and marriages just so that the union and the good ending is the telos of it. The pay off is now seeing them banter about together, have the dynamics shift as they age, see how they view the world and how they continue to problem solve yk? And it gets even more fun when you create ensemble casts, bc THATS why Downton abbey is so long! It's so much fun to see it through, throughout!

An example I use is I follow these two authors who LOVEE their book universes, and also write generational fun family (modern day) ensamble casts with friends, and they spend normally 3-4 books focused on one character's OTP, seeing it through, throughout, and than moving onto another. Not the traditional stickler predictable "one book per pairing" in a series we see too often. AND THAN, when they move on, they continue to write publish 2 bonus chapters, update their interests boards, and talk about everything on their Patreon for like less than 3 dollars a month. there are over 100+ chapters now at this point!

Not to say that's what CC wants to do, but when you have amounted such a huge fandom, a lot of it is not just about making annual deliverables and canon events occur, but having fun just domestically and I feel like she doesn't want to do that. Which is totally fine! I respect that. But obviously the type of fan I am, as you can see, I gravitate towards the way you produce, engage and write (u write for yourself and ur fans, yes u have fans and I am one) more so than her. That's kind of what I was trying to get at in my initial post :-). Bc when CC wants to move on, it feel so lovely and safe, to know my safe space won't go, because ur still leading it. <3 <3 So again, from the bottom to the top of my heart, thank you <3

This made me tear up. Thank you so much, friend.

Messages like this make me feel extremely motivated to write. I really hope you enjoy my Valentine's fic as much as I am liking writing it.

I think I understand what you're saying - Cassie does a really good job of creating characters and telling their stories. I consider her to be one of the best creators of our time, specifically in TID and TLH as well as Sword Catcher (even if that one has less of a hold on me, it's inarguably one of her best works world-building and plot-wise.) But yes, sometimes you just want little fluffy post-canon stories of the characters, which is not always possible for a world-famous writer with tons of ongoing projects. I'm looking forward to Better in Black a lot because of this.

I just write what I want to see and roll with it. I am glad that it's what you want to see, too.

Dear God, I am tearing up a lot. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I truly appreciate everyone who has read one of my fics and given me a chance to play with their blorbos.

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hallowmoon-art · 2 years

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Last Legacy Theories

Should have had the balls to post these much earlier when it could have been relevant so posting it now so I didn't type all of this/ think this much for nothing.

The Lord of Shadows and his Relic

In Sage's route, it's confirmed Mike, Gramme, and the LoS are all the same person and when Gramme introduces himself, he admits the has a relic and says "wielder of Sacervates." Gramme states that a relic can wield its owner if they are inexperienced which is pretty much confirmed by MC when they and Elowen are transported into Sage's dreams.

The LoS seems to be the complete opposite of the MC so it could be that Sacervates' associations are death and darkness/night. The Astrolabe's associations are healing and dawn.

So what if Sacervates traveled across planes to find a weak minded wielder so it could carry out its purpose, death?

It's pretty evident that the relics have some sentience so one being "evil" aligned isn't impossible. Plus, there's the common trope of dark/night themed weapons being evil or being used for evil.

How does Gramme have Light based spells?

As above, Gramme is the LoS so he's very powerful. He could have every spell in existence. And if Sacervates is truly associated with night/darkness and night/darkness is usually associated with illusions and trickery. The guy has 3 different personas.

Why didn't Felix or Rime know about Sacervates?

Gramme had a position of power within the Starsworn (He's the founder) before Felix and Rime were inducted. He could have come up with a total BS story about his relics powers and they had no reason not to believe him.

From what is published of LL, the relics are very well known as in people know they exist. But not much is known about them other than they are very ancient, powerful weapons possibly created by gods. The main 3 seem to know little about their own relics so they wouldn't know the in and outs of someone else's. But this is honestly hard to tell. For relics to be so central to the story, they don't show up often and aren't really talked about.

Sacervates - where the name possibly came from

The Latin term “sacer vates'' translates to "sacred poet" so maybe the relic is attracted to storytellers? Video game creators have some stories to tell for sure.

What if Mike's just a dick?

That could be part of it. But I feel like there's more to it than "Mike's a dick with a god complex." BUT, as seen by Sage, if you don't live up to what the relic wants, it will reject you.

There's a sixth unknown relic

In one of the Q&As by the writer and artists, it was confirmed that they are six known relics.

Telos - associated with Air and the Stars, owned by Anisa.

Elegy - associated with Water and the Moon, owned by Felix

Zenith - associated with Fire and the Sun, owned by Sage

The Astrolabe - associated with Healing and Dawn, owned by MC (prev. Rime)

Sacervates - possibly associated with Death and Darkness/Night, owned by the LoS

And then the sixth relic would presumably be associated with the element earth and the World/Creation.

When and if the stories are continued, hopefully we'll get to see this sixth relic in Anisa's route. It could pop up in Sage or Felix's routes as well, but I'm banking on Anisa since the boy's routes are close to finished.

One idea I had was that Lucan could have owned this earth relic and that was a main reason the LoS targeted him. But Lucan is dead now so who would have the relic in present time? And I feel like Sage would have known if Lucan had a relic. So from what I can tell, the LoS just targeted Lucan because he was the spearhead of a strong group of muscle. But that was a fun thought.

But who has this relic? Ayanna is an option, but there's been zero evidence of it and I personally can't see it. The only character introduced so far that I can see having it, is Exalted Seer Azimuth. But they were only introduced at the end of Anisa's last chapter so nothing is known about them other than they are more eccentric than other Rivathi and that they're the one Saaros is crushing on. Or this character just hasn't been introduced yet unfortunately.

Tulsi kinda sorta fits the bill when I think about it? She has an earth zodiac sign (Her and Lucan are both Taurus which is why Lucan was a first thought) Most earth based weapons tend to be hammers which we know she uses as a blacksmith. BUT she admits to not being a fighter. Maybe this relic can only repair other relics and create other weapons? Could possibly be why Tulsi is experienced enough to repair an ancient Relic at 27. And she keeps referring to Zenith as 'MY SWORD', but that could be just because Sage left it in her care for so long and she cares for the condition of weapons.

Celena - What happened/will happen to her?

I am so unsure of her purpose in the story. She appeared in the Prologue (at the con and at The Saucy Gull outta nowhere) and I think 2-3 times in Felix's route. She is just forgotten. Like did she just get caught in the crossfire of MC being summoned to Astraea? Was the LoS there when MC found the Astrolabe, and yanked Celena because she was just there? or does she have the earth relic and was easier to get to? Hell, can the LoS yeet people from Astraea to Earth and Celena worked for him the whole time?

Not necessarily a theory, but I just have questions.

What's MC's role? + How do Relics work?

In the prologue the tagline for Last Legacy II is "“A mysterious harbinger from afar opens the gates of calamity, spelling doom for the Starsworn in Last Legacy II: Ex Nihilo.”

This makes it seem like the LoS (or maybe Celena) was the one to toss the Astrolabe at MC's feet. But the Astrolabe did choose MC. There was no guarantee that tossing a relic to a random person would work.

Or the LoS knew Felix was trying to resurrect Rime so he had to get the Astrolabe to someone else before that happened since he had possibly already resurrected Rime? Not sure if that would have much to do with it other than giving the Astrolabe to an inexperienced person so Rime could just easily kill them off.

In all the routes, it seems like the LoS is trying to convert/force everyone to his side so he has all the relics. He probably can't wield the physical forms to their full potential either because that's too much at once or because a relic's physical form can't be fully wielded by someone else when it's attuned to its chosen warrior.

In Anisa's route, the LoS literally just says to come join him - that he and MC could be gods with their outside knowledge of Astraea. That made me think that Sacervates could be the earth Relic for a moment. That Mike literally built this world from the ground up. But that seems like way too much of a stretch. I think Astraea already existed and Mike just uncovered a lot of secrets in his time adventuring. The first LL game he made was 12 years previous, and Mike adventured way before meeting Ayanna so Mike has had like 30+ years to uncover ancient knowledge.

In Sage's route, he sends Elowen (via Rime) to take Zenith. It was returned to Sage because Elowen went rogue. She just wanted a real fight with Sage to avenge her brother. Rime is then sent take/talk to Sage and MC - trying to convince Sage to run the Griefers again. That would have put Zenith under the LoS control essentially. With Sage out of the way, Rime could have just killed MC and taken the Astrolabe back or hoped MC just followed Sage. Then when Sage and MC meet with Balsam, he states that "he wanted you both alive, but death's not much of an obstacle for our master."

All of that seems like the LoS already knew who MC is and that the Astrolabe was going to pick someone from Earth. So how did he come about knowing that if he wasn't the one who staged it? How did he stage it?

Do the relics just auto attune to the first person who touches it then it's trail and error from there? Because in the prologue everyone seemed astonished that a relic crossed the planes to find a wielder. In Sage's route, he says that relics choose their warrior. But in the Q&A, it was said that the Starsworn Knights in leadership roles had to undergo rigorous trials and tests to earn their relic and prove themselves. So do the relics choose their person or nah? Bc Sage has a relic obviously, but it didn't seem like he had a leadership role. He was just reconnaissance. It was said that Sage was invited to the Starsworn just because Gramme liked him. How did Anisa and Felix get theirs? Either the relics choose themselves or there's a trail regardless of a leadership role. Which one is it? Or do only the Astrolabe and Sacervates require a trail? But MC didn't go through anything like that sooo just kinda confusing. At this point I'm assuming Mike (as Gramme) had already found the Relics and gave them to certain people after he founded the Starsworn. Anisa bc she's his daughter. Felix bc he's good with magic and related to Escell. Sage bc of his involvement with Lucan and the Griefers, and Rime bc he was also a magical prodigy.

Zenith Breaking

Zenith was snapped in two when Sage fought Lucan. Sage didn't go into that meeting thinking he was going to be fighting. He didn't even have Zenith with him.

Either 1. His relic jumped in to save its wielder or 2. Sage realized he couldn't handle Lucan and called for Zenith but didn't realize it would land a killing blow.

Then the Relic broke. It could have been because the corruption was too much, but I think it was because when Sage realized the situation, his confidence in himself and Zenith shattered. He couldn't save his best friend and he may have scorned Zenith for technically aiding him in murdering Lucan. Which is why, even after physically being repaired, Zenith rejected Sage in the fight with Elowen at Tulsi's shop.

#last legacy #last legacy sage #sage lesath #fictif sage #fictif anisa #last legacy anisa #anisa anka #last legacy felix #fictif felix #felix iskandar escellun #rime solano varela #last legacy rime #fictif #last legacy headcanons #last legacy elowen #elowen de bhaldraithe

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redbirdandhersafespace · 8 months

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Ok I've finally found and read "Doctor Who: Shell Shock" - a Doctor Who novella from Telos publishing. And it has no right to be so good!

Plot: the 6th Doctor and Peri visit an ocean planet and nearly drown. However, they both are saved: the Doctor - by the community of strange crab mechas, and Peri - by the omnipresent entity, who wants to make a god out of her.

"Shell shock" is written by Simon A. Froward and told in 3 pov's: the Doctor's, Peri's and one of the crabs'. This story is very introspective and it's main theme is overcoming the psychological trauma.

The story explores Peri's tramatic past (tw: this novella has mentions of sexual assult). I really felt for her: for nearly whole her life Peri was a victum, she lived through so much fucked up events, and the worst part is - she always needed someone to save her, or otherwise she would have died long ago. Even in this story she can't escape on her own, but the option of finally gaining power to solve her problem is much worse. So to keep in control of her future Peri must stick to her worst memories and find a way to help the Doctor. As only working in pair they can save everybody and return to the TARDIS.

I liked that "Shell shock" explores the injustice of being a Doctor's companion. It shows how friends of the Doctor often feel as if they're disposible and unimportant. These relationships can be very toxic and unhealthy, especially when the Doctor themselves treats them as lesser people (a consistent trait of the show, likely born out of showrunners' unwillengness to let the Doctor's character evolve over numerous regenerations and not make the same mistakes over and over again).

I was pleasently surprised that the 6th Doctor's pov was his actual pov. Many DW novels (written in the 3sd person) suffer from the same strange choice: they show the Doctor's bits of the story too "detachedly" - like a reader is not in their head, but follows them like a movie camera in a TV show. As a result, readers don't trully know what the Doctor thinks, why they're worried and what their plans are. Even some Doctor's solo stories are told from the pov of an original characters. But in "Shell shock" we can experience all emotions of the 6th Doctor, like his grief (when he thinks he lost Peri) and his determination to make everybody as happy and save as they can be. That's why revelations in this story hit so hard - the reader identifies themselves with the Doctor befriending all new characters and wanting to protect them. As a result, the 6th Doctor feels more fleshed out and sympathetic than in some longer dw novels.

To sum up, I highly recommend reading "Doctor Who: Shell shock". It reminded me of "The island of Dr Moreau" in the best way possible - sort of aquatic retelling of that story with lots of deep themes and gray characters to explore.

#Doctor Who #Doctor Who shell shock #doctor who novels #Dw #the sixth doctor #The 6th Doctor #Doctor Who novellas

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 11 months

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By: Erec Smith

Published: Jun 17, 2023

The apparent goal of contemporary anti-racism activism — which is not the activism of the civil-rights era — is not to end racism but to perpetuate it.

At a former university where I taught and served as a diversity officer (yes, that happened), I had a meeting with the school’s black-student union. Toward the end of the meeting, I asked something to the effect of “Is your goal to be obsolete in the near future?”

Most of the students insisted that they didn’t understand the question. One student, who seemed to be the de facto leader of the group, expressed that he did understand and answered that the group would live on even if, ideally, racism went away. I didn’t have time for a good follow-up question, such as “Would your mission change and how?” But I did wonder.

Today, this question occupies my mind even more. Seemingly permanent organizations and protocols are being created that strongly suggest racism is here to stay. This seems inconsistent with the traditional discourse about civil rights, which has focused on ending racial discrimination once and for all. The apparent telos (or ultimate goal) of contemporary anti-racism activism — which is not the activism of the civil-rights era — is not to end racism, but to perpetuate it.

Why would I say this? If an activist group has no intention of ever being obsolete — i.e., if it doesn’t have a sacrificial telos according to which it conceives of its own end — it is not an activist group. It is, at best, a special-interest group, and a dishonest one at that.

I think it is only fair that I use my own endeavors as an example. As a member of Free Black Thought, an organization that celebrates viewpoint diversity within the black collective, I believe that race essentialism — the tendency from within and without a particular group to think each member experiences and interprets the world in identical ways — is a problem I’d like to see solved.

Currently, mass media present and represent viewpoints from black people, but only those who fit the popular narrative imperative to the politics of pity. Free Black Thought is here to showcase the fact that groups are made of individuals with separate goals, pursuits, interests, values, etc.

However, if we ever succeed in bringing about a world where people are judged individually and not by their membership in a particular racial group, our mission would be outdated. If race essentialism, or the very concept of race, period, were overcome, Free Black Thought would no longer be needed. Free Black Thought wouldn’t fold, necessarily; but our mission would have to change. Because our original mission would have been fulfilled, staying with it would be performative and dishonest. If race essentialism were overcome, we would not be needed. We would either fold or adopt a new mission.

Clearly, other organizations dealing with race relations do not understand their missions similarly. Ibram X. Kendi provides two examples.

First, he is the director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, which states that its mission is “to convene researchers and practitioners from various disciplines to figure out novel and practical ways to understand, explain, and solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice.” He adds, “We are working toward building an antiracist society that ensures equity and justice for all.”

This is a noble endeavor, but what would happen if inequality and injustice were eradicated? There is a fine line between “intractable” and “immutable.” The website says the center is still developing, but part of that development is an affiliates program connecting faculty and students into a network that may be difficult to undo.

It may be hasty to assume that ending institutional racism is not the true goal of the Center for Antiracist Research. But another brainchild of Kendi’s lends weight to the notion that perpetual racism serves the interests of Kendi and other DEI professionals. Kendi has written that he wants the United States government to pass a constitutional amendment to “establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees.” He elaborates:

The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.

If you look carefully enough, you may see that the statement’s precarious nature could easily have the department functioning in perpetuity. A governmental department created as a result of a new constitutional amendment is not something anyone would plan to dismantle in the near future. In order to justify the perpetuation of such an entity, one would need to perpetuate racism.

A nongovernment organization like the Center for Antiracist Research is one thing; an addition to the current federal system is something else entirely.

Of course, Kendi is not the only culprit; other phenomena point to the false telos of racial harmony. Many major universities have created graduate programs in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). That is, advanced if not terminal degrees are being given to people who plan to make a career out of DEI initiatives. The University of Maryland-Baltimore, the University of Pennsylvania, and Tufts University are just a few. But if one’s livelihood consists of fighting racism, wouldn’t the end of racism spell trouble? Wouldn’t the perpetuation of racism be the very thing putting food on the table? This also goes for the explosion of administrative positions in DEI in colleges, corporations, and other institutions.

Jane Kellogg Murray of Indeed.com — a job site that assists people in finding employment — writes about the rise of DEI (She calls it DI&B: diversity, inclusion, and belonging) in the American job force:

Between September 2019 and September 2020, Indeed job postings in diversity, inclusion and belonging have risen 56.3% — from 140 jobs per million to 219. More significantly, after the U.S. economy declined in Spring 2020, the DI&B industry recovered quickly, with job postings rising by an astonishing 123% between May and September.

That sounds like a large number of people with jobs that literally depend on racism, the very thing the jobs are meant to eliminate. So a dip in racism could have a correlation with a rise in unemployment.

Of course, missions can change. Perhaps at racism’s end, these positions would be transformed into something more relevant, or the people occupying those jobs would move into other fields of employment. We cannot know for sure. However, the fact that these employees have skills directly connected to ending a particular thing like racism suggests that fighting racism is their area of expertise. What happens to diversity, equity, and inclusion officers when society actually becomes diverse, equitable, and inclusive?

Maintaining vigilance could be a new mission. That is, when racism is finally defeated, DEI officers can work to make sure it never comes back. However, this is also problematic. Maintaining an anti-racist society would get pretty boring without racism. Might such a mission make frequent use of the concept of microaggressions or the idea that, when it comes to racism, impact always outweighs intention? If bias is considered implicit, then a fine line separates DEI officers from “thought police.” To show they are not expendable, it is in their best interest to “find” racism, but what happens when there is no racism to be found?

I stopped wanting to be a diversity officer when I realized how ineffective it was — I came to this insight before contemporary “wokeness” took hold. But DEI work was a secondary job for me; I still intended to remain a professor and scholar of rhetoric. What would have happened to me if DEI were my full-time job? Would I go the way of Kendi, or would my fate be more like that of Tabia Lee, who was fired for not abiding by the current narrative that deems racism a permanent problem?

I don’t know, but I do know that all people in such positions should aim toward a sacrificial telos, which would eventually deem those positions unnecessary. If you are a DEI officer and your main goal is not to render your job obsolete as soon as possible, you are enacting the very definition of a grift.

[ Via: https://archive.is/dfeGZ ]

When the demand exceeds the supply. The fact that an entire industry of DEI bureaucracies (complete with bogus credentials) have, and still are, being built up as racism itself has never been lower - and yes, even in the current hypersensitive era we occupy - gives the game away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p1BmryFRF8

[As] we know from the war on drugs and the war on terror, for those in the business of providing protection, high threat levels are bread and butter. Likewise, for those in the business of healing race relations, racial division is your sworn enemy but your secret friend—so much so that wounding and healing become part of the same operation.

Now you know why "microaggressions" were invented: because the industry had grown too big for the remaining problem, but there's money to be made if only the right product could be marketed.

It's the same thing as the church. Being "right with Jesus" is a subscription plan. You can't just perform the soul-cleaning ritual and you're done. If that was the case, they'd do themselves out of a job and out of power. So instead, you have to come back next week and tithe again.

Same thing again with organizations like Stonewall, HRC and GLAAD. After the last big battle of marriage equality had been won, they didn't know what to do with the large organizations they'd built up. It was either scale down, or pivot to a new mission. Which is when they took on the anti-gay mission.

#Erec Smith #diversity equity and inclusion #DEI bureaucracy #DIE bureaucracy #grifters #race grifters #neoracism #antiracism #antiracism as religion #cult of woke #wokeness #woke #wokeism #wokeness as religion #religion is a mental illness

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downthetubes · 9 months

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In Review: The Illustrated Journey: A Visual Celebration of Doctor Who

Telos Publishing continue what seems to be their mission to surprise and delight, with “The Illustrated Journey: A Visual Celebration of Doctor Who” by artist Daryl Joyce

Telos Publishing’s recent Doctor Who-related books include The Fanzine Book: The Golden Age of the Doctor Who Underground Press, This is a Fake! A Collection of Unreal Things by Andrew Mark-Thompson and The Art of Phil Bevan (reviewed here). The small independent publisher, also known for its stunning art books such as The Art of Reginald Heade and much more, continues what seems to be their…

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#Daryl Joyce #Doctor Who #reviews #Sophie Aldred #Telos Publishing

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radiofreeskaro · 1 year

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Radio Free Skaro #882 - A Well-Prepared Meal

Radio Free Skaro #882 - A Well-Prepared Meal - #DoctorWho in production! - RTD in @DWMtweets - Commentary for "Earthshock", Part Four

http://traffic.libsyn.com/freyburg/rfs882.mp3 Download MP3 It’s another exciting week for fans of one Doctor Who as shooting begins on the Ncuti Gatwa era and the RTD hint-o-rama initiative fills the pages of Doctor Who Magazine. The BBC is planning to go online only over the next decade, saddening owners of CRT televisions all over the United Kingdom, and we have the usual tat and Big Finish…

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#Andrew-Mark Thompson #BBC #Big Finish #Commentary #doctor who #doctor who magazine #Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder #Dylan Holmes Williams #Earthshock #iPlayer #Merchandise #Ncuti Gatwa #Obituary #Series 14 #Shirley Coward #Telos Publishing #The Curse of Clyde Langer #The Sarah Jane Adventures #Toby Hadoke

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gravalicious · 1 month

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“In theory, artists shocking the bourgeoisie is an old story. “This sort of thing has been seen before,” says John Ganz, author of a forthcoming book on political volatility in the early 1990s. “A certain cultural elite thinking the transgression and vulgarity of fascism or right-wing populism is amusing and upsets all the right people. When Celine published his crazy antisemitic rant in the ’30s, lots of French intellectuals thought he must be being ironic: ‘This is such a wonderful provocation of middle-class sensibilities and hypocrisy.’” But, Ganz continues, “The problem is they also have to keep coming up with stuff to be provocative.” In a 2017 article, political scientist Joseph E. Lowndes tells a cautionary tale about Telos, a once-Marxist journal founded in the 1960s that, by the 1990s, had become home to far-right thinkers who provided the intellectual backbone for the alt-right. Frustrated by their sense that all forms of dissent were co-opted and neutralized by capitalism, Telos’ editors had searched farther and farther afield for movements that truly challenged social norms. Much of what they found was on the nationalist, racist Right.”

Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet - Losing the Plot: The “Leftists” Who Turn Right (2023)

#leftist #alt-right #fascism #politics #marxism

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art-of-manliness · 2 months

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Towards a Philosophy of Household Management

“Household management” has become something of an interest and a watchword for me this year, due to the coincidental confluence of two books coming into my life at the same time. The first is Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. Several months ago, two friends, one male and one female, independently recommended this book to me. I hadn’t heard of it previously, but Home Comforts has been a bestseller since it was published in 1999 and was ranked by Slate as one of the 50 best nonfiction books of the past 25 years. Mendelson has an unexpected background for an author of a book about housekeeping — she’s a Harvard law grad and a professor of philosophy — and she brings a scholarly seriousness to a giant tome that’s aimed at men and women alike and unpacks the details of everything from stocking a pantry to laundering clothes to protecting a home from burglary. While I was browsing through Home Comforts, I also came across a book called Oikonomikos or Economics by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. From the title, I thought it would be about trade, monetary policy, and the like. But what I discovered was that for the ancient Greeks, economics wasn’t about those things. The Greek word oikonomikos is better translated as household management. Aristotle’s Economics is about the role husbands and wives play in effectively organizing and marshaling the resources of a household. What both Home Comforts and Economics got me thinking about is the bigger purpose behind home management. Something we reflect on a great deal is that one of the biggest things lacking in the present age is context. Modern citizens go about their lives with very little context as to why they’re doing the things they do. Why get married? Why have kids? What’s the point of work? If we operate with little context as to the why behind questions concerning life’s big pursuits, we certainly do likewise with day-to-day household tasks as well. There’s no want of content out there about how to budget or clean your bathroom, but there is almost nothing about the greater purpose behind such chores. A clean and organized household is more pleasant, surely, but is there more to why you’d want to run a home smoothly? While Home Comforts largely covers the practicalities of keeping house, in the intro for the book, Mendelson makes the case for why such tasks are not superficial but have a significant impact on the quality of one’s life. Aristotle argues in Economics that household management is part and parcel of achieving true happiness. Together, they can get us to a philosophy of household management — one that can be embraced whether you live alone in a small apartment or with a big brood of kids in a sprawling home. The Telos of Household Management Aristotle believed that every object and person had a telos — an ultimate aim or purpose. The telos of human beings was eudaimonia, which is happiness or flourishing — a life lived to its utmost potential. Achieving eudaimonia required the pursuit of arete — excellence or virtue. We tend to think of “virtue” in an exclusively moral sense, as having to do with qualities like courage and compassion. But for the Greeks, virtue meant doing anything well. Courage was a virtue, but so was being intelligent. Being strong was a virtue. Being a good friend was a virtue. Being able to cultivate beauty was a virtue. For Aristotle, the telos of a home was to help the individuals living within it each achieve their personal telos. Household management — which includes cleaning, organizing, maintenance, and budgeting, as well as safety and home defense — does this in two ways: it develops virtues in and of itself, and it creates an environment conducive to the development of further excellences. The Virtues Developed by Household Management It is household management, Mendelson writes, that “makes your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms.” Aristotle argued… http://dlvr.it/T4fbD7

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eurovision-facts · 2 years

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Eurovision Fact #50:

Over the contest’s 66 year history, a total of 61 different languages (62 if you count all of the songs sung in imaginary languages as another language) and dialects have been sung by contestants. This does not include songs that only featured a word or two in another language.

The most common language sung at the contest is English. A total of 754 songs have been sung entirely or partially in English. The second most popular language is French, with 179 entries entirely or partially sung in the language.

Other popular languages that have been sung at least 20 times include:

German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Hebrew, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Turkish, Danish, Serbo-Croatian, Croatian, and Slovene.

A total of 193 songs have been sung in a language that has been used less than 20 times. These languages are:

Serbian, Icelandic, Russian, Polish, Bosnian, Hungarian, Macedonian, Albanian, Romanian, Estonian, Montenegrin, Bulgarian, Catalan, Ukrainian, Slovak, Armenian, Georgian, imaginary languages, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Arabic, Breton, Corsican, Maltese, Romani, Antillean Creole, Belarusian, Crimean Tatar, Czech, “Franglais,” Irish, Latin, Latvian, Mühlviertlerisch, Neapolitan, Romansh, Samogitian, Sranan Tongo, Styrian, Swahili, Tahitian, Udmurt, Viennese, Vorarlbergish, and Võro.

20 languages have only been sung once:

Antillean Creole, Belarusian, Crimean Tatar, Czech, “Franglais,” Irish, Latin, Latvian, Mühlviertlerisch, Neapolitan, Romansh, Samogitian, Sranan Tongo, Styrian, Swahili, Tahitian, Udmurt, Viennese, Vorarlbergish, and Võro.

5 performances featured sign language on stage, each time a different form of sign language was used:

Latvian, Polish, Lithuanian, Yugoslav, and French.

When collecting this data, if a song was sung in multiple languages, each language was counted as having been sung once. An example would be "In Corpore Sano" by Konstrakta sung at the 2022 contest. Both Latin and Serbian were counted as being sung once.

[Sources]:

Fact requested by: @because-its-eurovision

Roxburgh, Gordon (2012). Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. Volume One: The 1950s and 1960s. Prestatyn: Telos Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84583-065-6.

Participants of Lugano 1956, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Frankfurt 1957, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Hilversum 1958, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Cannes 1959, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of London 1960, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Cannes 1961, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Luxembourg 1962, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of London 1963, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Copenhagen 1964, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Naples 1965, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Luxembourg 1966, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Vienna 1967, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of London 1968, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Madrid 1969, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Amsterdam 1970, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Dublin 1971, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Edinburgh 1972, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Luxembourg 1973, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Brighton 1974, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Stockholm 1975, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of the Hague 1976, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of London 1977, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Paris 1978, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Jerusalem 1979, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of the Hague 1980, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Dublin 1981, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Harrogate 1982, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Munich 1983, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Luxembourg 1984, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Gothenburg 1985, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Bergen 1986, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Brussels 1987, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Dublin 1988, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Lausanne 1989, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Zagreb 1990, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Rome 1991, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Malmö 1992, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Millstreet 1993, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Dublin 1994, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Dublin 1995, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Oslo 1996, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Dublin 1997, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Birmingham 1998, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Jerusalem 1999, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Stockholm 2000, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Copenhagen 2001, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Tallinn 2002, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Riga 2003, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Istanbul 2004, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Kyiv 2005, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Athens 2006, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Helsinki 2007, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Belgrade 2008, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Moscow 2009, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Oslo 2010, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Düsseldorf 2011, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Baku 2012, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Malmö 2013, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Copenhagen 2014, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Vienna 2015, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Stockholm 2016, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Kyiv 2017, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Lisbon 2018, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Tel Aviv 2019, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Rotterdam 2021, Eurovision.tv.

Participants of Turin 2022, Eurovision.tv.

List of Eurovision Song Contest Entries (1956-2003), Wikipedia.com.

List of Eurovision Song Contest Entries (2004-present), Wikipedia.com.

List of Languages in the Eurovision Song Contest, Wikipedia.com.

#esc #eurovision #eurovision song contest #esc facts oc #eurovision facts oc #language #languages #request #because-its-eurovision

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