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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: Nickolaus Hines

Published: Oct 18, 2021

In 2016, the famous nun Mother Teresa was declared a saint by Pope Francis — but many people say she doesn't deserve it.

Ever since the Vatican made Mother Teresa a saint in 2016, the response has been controversial and polarizing.

In order for Mother Teresa to achieve sainthood, the Vatican had to recognize two miracles that the famous nun performed after her death. Pope John Paul II recognized the first miracle in 2003, just six years after she died in 1997. And Pope Francis recognized the second miracle in 2015.

The popes claimed that Mother Teresa performed miracles when she cured one woman and then one man of their respective tumors. However, these “miracles” have been disputed by some — especially since a doctor who worked on the woman’s case said that she had been treated with drugs.

But debates over Mother Teresa’s miracles didn’t dissuade the Vatican from moving forward with its plans. Pope Francis officially proclaimed Mother Teresa a saint on September 4, 2016. But the decision remains controversial, and the dispute over her miracles is just one small part of it.

Of course, Mother Teresa’s sainthood may seem well-deserved to some. After all, she cultivated a mostly sparkling reputation as a selfless humanitarian while she was alive. But in recent years, her image has lost its luster. And when you take a closer look at her story, it’s not hard to see why.

Inside Mother Teresa’s “Selfless” Intentions

Mother Teresa was intent on converting as many people to Catholicism as possible, even at the expense of the poor and sick.

No one builds a church purely for the love of God — especially in places like India where critical services, like hospitals, are lacking. Religious groups that erect churches in these areas do so not just out of the kindness of their hearts, but to increase the number of people who believe in their faith.

Like those missionaries, conversion — the Church’s key to survival — was Mother Teresa’s primary goal. And in the context of the Catholic Church, charity can be viewed as a self-interested act.

“It’s good to work for a cause with selfless intentions,” said Mohan Bhagwat, the head of a Hindu nationalist group. “But Mother Teresa’s work had ulterior motive, which was to convert the person who was being served to Christianity. In the name of service, religious conversions were made.”

And when The New York Times reviewed the British documentary Hell’s Angel, a film that highlighted some of Mother Teresa’s flaws, the paper concluded that she was “less interested in helping the poor than in using them as an indefatigable source of wretchedness on which to fuel the expansion of her fundamentalist Roman Catholic beliefs.”

Still, some argue that even if Mother Teresa had ulterior motives, at least the people she cared for were better off for it. But others who have actually visited and worked in her medical centers wholeheartedly disagree.

The Horrific Conditions At Mother Teresa’s Medical Centers And Missions

Though Mother Teresa’s medical centers were meant to heal people, her patients were often subjected to conditions that made them even sicker. In the same documentary, an Indian journalist compared Mother Teresa’s flagship location for “Missionaries of Charity” to photographs that he had seen of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Nazi Germany.

“Workers washed needles under tap water and then reused them. Medicine and other vital items were stored for months on end, expiring and still applied sporadically to patients,” said Hemley Gonzalez, a noted humanitarian who briefly volunteered at Missionaries of Charity.

Gonzalez continued, “Volunteers with little or no training carried out dangerous work on patients with highly contagious cases of tuberculosis and other life-threatening illnesses. The individuals who operated the charity refused to accept and implement medical equipment and machinery that would have safely automated processes and saved lives.”

It wasn’t just volunteers who criticized Mother Teresa’s treatment of patients, either. In her hospice care centers, Mother Teresa practiced her belief that patients only needed to feel wanted and die at peace with God — not receive proper medical care — and medical experts went after her for it.

In 1994, the British medical journal The Lancet reported that medicine was scarce in her centers and that patients received nothing close to the treatment that they needed to relieve their pain.

Meanwhile, some doctors took to calling her missions “homes for the dying” since her Calcutta home for the sick had a mortality rate of more than 40 percent. But in her view, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In response to all the criticism, Mother Teresa allegedly said, “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.”

However, when it came to her own suffering, Mother Teresa apparently took a different stance. When she began experiencing severe heart problems, she received care in a modern American hospital.

The Questionable Company That Mother Teresa Kept Throughout Her Life

While neglecting the needs of the sick, Mother Teresa was also called out for rubbing elbows with several wealthy — and corrupt — world leaders.

This included Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, who was eventually charged with crimes against humanity for his abuse of his fellow Haitians.

At one point, 60 Minutes released footage that showed Mother Teresa praising Duvalier’s wife Michele. In the footage, Mother Teresa said that she had “never seen the poor people being so familiar with their head of state as they were with her. It was a beautiful lesson for me.”

That wasn’t the only friendship that raised eyebrows. Mother Teresa also received $1.25 million from her friend Charles Keating.

Keating was one of the key figures behind the 1980s savings and loan crisis, brought about by housing market and loan speculation, which cost American taxpayers $124 billion. And while he was on trial, Mother Teresa wrote to the judge presiding over his case — seeking clemency for him.

“I do not know anything about Mr. Charles Keating’s work or his business or the matters you are dealing with,” she said. “I only know that he has always been kind and generous to God’s poor and always ready to help whenever there was a need. It is for this reason that I do not want to forget him now while he and his family are suffering.”

Though a co-prosecutor of Keating actually responded to Mother Teresa after his conviction — and pointed out that one of the people Keating stole from was a poor carpenter — he never got a response from her.

And that wasn’t the only issue related to Mother Teresa’s finances.

The Enduring Mystery Of Where Mother Teresa’s Money Went

Countless well-meaning Catholics gave money to Mother Teresa’s charitable organizations throughout the years, but many of them would never see their generous donations go toward good works.

Keating’s $1.25 million donation alone would seem large enough to lift all of those in her care out of poverty, but one volunteer said that “even when bread was over at the soup kitchens, none was bought unless donated.”

Once, after running up an $800 tab at a grocery store to feed people at her charity, Mother Teresa refused to get out of line until someone else paid.

A 1991 report in the German magazine Stern also estimated that only seven percent of the millions of dollars she received were used for charity.

But seven percent of what total figure, exactly? The world will never know. Nirmala Joshi, the leader of Missionaries of Charity who succeeded Mother Teresa, said the donations were “countless,” and there was only one person with the actual numbers. “God knows,” Joshi said. “He is our banker.”

One is left to wonder where all of that money was actually going — and what happened to it after Mother Teresa’s death.

Mother Teresa’s Views On Reproductive Rights

Though it’s not surprising that a Catholic nun would be against abortion, Mother Teresa still raised eyebrows when she discussed her stance while she was accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

In reference to Bosnian women who had been raped by Serbs and who were seeking abortions for their unwanted pregnancies, Mother Teresa said, “I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing — direct murder by the mother herself.”

She also rallied against birth control, claiming that “natural family planning” would solve the woes of women who were not ready for a child.

What Mother Teresa did promote in the realm of family planning — like abstinence — didn’t help anyone, either. And despite abstinence-only education being proven ineffective, she still stuck by her claims.

But even though she gained some critics for views like these, Mother Teresa was mostly successful at avoiding controversy while she was alive. However, a glimpse of her “dark side” would slip through the cracks every so often — especially when it came to her infamous homes for the sick.

In hindsight, these issues are hard to ignore today. And it’s also difficult to understand why the Catholic Church decided to make Mother Teresa a saint. She may have been revered for helping the poor and the sick, but her practices ensured that they were mired in pain until their final moments.

Reminder: Mother Teresa was a sadistic fundamentalist.

#Nickolaus Hines #mother teresa #catholic church #catholic #religious fanatic #sadistic bitch #roman catholic #catholicism #fuck you mother teresa #fraud

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sanguinosa-blog · 2 months

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U.S. approved more bombs to Israel on day of World Central Kitchen strikes

The Biden administration signed off on thousands more bombs to Israel despite global condemnation of the IDF’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen employees

By John Hudson　April 4, 2024 at 9:37 a.m. EDT

The Biden administration approved the transfer of thousands more bombs to Israel on the same day Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed seven aid workers for the charity group World Central Kitchen, three U.S. officials told The Washington Post this week after the incident elicited global condemnation.

The transaction demonstrates the administration’s determination to continue its flow of lethal weaponry to Israel despite Monday’s high-profile killings and growing calls for the United States to condition such support on greater protection for civilians in the war zone. A U.S. citizen was among the dead.

The move also casts new light on the emotional statement by President Biden that he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the tragedy and was insistent that such events never happen again.

“They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war,” Biden said. “They were brave and selfless.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The Israeli government confirmed it carried out Monday’s strike but called it “unintentional,” saying the military would conduct a “transparent” investigation and make the results public.

The State Department approved the transfer of more than 1,000 MK82 500-pound bombs, over 1,000 small-diameter bombs, and fuses for MK80 bombs, all from authorizations granted by Congress several years before the latest hostilities between Israel and Hamas began, said the U.S. officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive arms deals.

A State Department spokesperson confirmed the approval and said it occurred sometime “prior” to when the Israeli aircraft struck the aid convoy.

The U.S. government has the authorityto suspend an arms package any time before delivery, which the spokesperson said probably would not occuruntil 2025 or later. It has not done so in this case.

When asked why the Biden administration did not at least pause the process afterthe incident or until the Israelis’investigation was completed, the spokesperson did not provide further comment.

Officials have not publicly disclosed what type of munition struck the aid truck, but the small-diameter bombs the United States has provided to Israel are “certainly comparable,” said Josh Paul, a former State Department arms expert who resigned in protest of the administration’s Gaza policy.

Biden, in his statement followingthe attack, offered his most pointed criticism to date of Israel’s treatment of humanitarian workers, who have died in greater numbers than in any other recent conflict.

“Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen,” Biden said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the slain workers, who included individuals from Australia, Britain, the Palestinian territories, Poland, and a U.S.-Canadian dual national, were “heroes.”

“They have to be protected. We shouldn’t have a situation where people who are simply trying to help their fellow human beings are themselves at grave risk,” he said.

Some Democratic supporters of the Biden administration criticized such statements, saying they result in little change when U.S. actions convey unconditional support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/04/world-central-kitchen-us-weapons-israel/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert

#free palestine #save palestine #gaza #israel #ceasefire now #Biden #U.S.#IDF

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madamlaydebug · 1 year

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The crown chakra is perhaps the most mystical of all chakras.

Located at the top of the head, it sits like a crown, governing the pituitary gland.

It is represented by the color purple or white, and its pictorial presentation is that of a purple flower with a thousand petals.

In today’s guide we’ll be talking a closer look at how the crown chakra works as well as giving you some simple but powerful tips for healing and crown chakra effectively.

An underdeveloped crown chakra usually manifests itself as close-mindedness and cynicism about life. Individuals with a blocked crown chakra may also have a hard time letting go of the need to intellectualize everything and may want to look for logical answers to all the mysterious things they may encounter in life. In addition, a malfunctioning crown chakra may put you in the peculiar state of obsession with spirituality and spiritual matters, as well as the need to want to get away from an environment that seems too stimulating when it comes to harsh light and sounds. Mystical depression, chronic exhaustion and disorders of the muscular system all show up when there is an imbalance of the crown chakra.

A healthy crown chakra, on the other hand, allows us to be stellar humanitarians that make it easy to see how we’re all interconnected. On top of that, we may have a highly developed sense of ethics and personal values that we won’t compromise for anyone or anything. A healthy crown chakra also leads us down the path of spirituality, connecting us to the divine source energy that is also known as God. We are able to build an identity that’s not connected to outside things, and we are more likely to trust others and give of ourselves in a selfless manner.

Here are a couple of things you can do to balance your crown chakra:

Give up fluoride. This substance is found in treated water as well as toothpaste, and it has the potential to calcify the pituitary gland. Opt for fluoride-free toothpaste, and look into purchasing soft water that’s not been treated using harsh chemicals.

Take time out to meditate at least once a day. This helps you build a connection with the Source in a gradual fashion. The meditation you perform doesn’t have to be attached to a particular religious doctrine; whichever religion or God you subscribe will be right for you.

Let go of attachment to things and titles since these are what make us develop an ego that is unhealthy. You need to realize that your essence is not who you are or how much you make or even where you live. You are a valid member of the universe that can be the best they can be regardless of these trappings.

At the end of the day, balancing your crown chakra can go a long way in ensuring that prana moves through your body the way it should.

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ngopartner · 6 months

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Charity and the Crucial Role of Food Distribution Campaigns

Charity, a cornerstone of human compassion, has been a driving force throughout history, shaping societies and uplifting those in need. At its core, charity embodies the selfless act of giving, driven by empathy and a sense of communal responsibility. In the diverse tapestry of charitable initiatives, food distribution campaigns stand out as a lifeline for many, exemplifying the power of collective goodwill. This article delves into the multifaceted nature of charity, exploring its motivations and, more specifically, elucidates the vital role played by entities such as the Food Distribution Firm in Delhi in the realm of food distribution campaigns.

Motivations Behind Charity:

The motivations that propel individuals to engage in charitable acts are as diverse as the causes they support. At the heart of it all lies a fundamental human desire to make a positive impact on the lives of others. Altruism, a selfless concern for the well-being of others, serves as a primary motivator. The joy derived from knowing that one's actions have made a difference, even in the smallest way, often sparks a continuous cycle of giving.

Additionally, empathy plays a pivotal role in charitable endeavors. Witnessing the struggles of others, whether through personal experiences or exposure to global issues, can evoke a deep sense of compassion. This empathy becomes a catalyst for action, driving individuals to contribute to causes that aim to alleviate suffering, address societal challenges, and foster positive change.

Social responsibility also plays a significant role in motivating charitable actions. As members of a global community, individuals feel a duty to contribute to the betterment of society. Whether through financial donations, volunteering, or advocacy, people recognize their role in building a more equitable and compassionate world.

Importance of Food Distribution Campaigns:

In the vast landscape of charitable initiatives, food distribution campaigns emerge as a critical intervention, addressing one of the most fundamental human needs—nutrition. The Food Distribution Firm in Delhi stands as a testament to the impact such campaigns can have, particularly in densely populated areas where food insecurity is a pressing concern.

Food distribution campaigns go beyond providing sustenance; they are lifelines for communities facing economic hardships, natural disasters, or other crises. The Food Distribution Firm in Delhi, with its strategic approach to food distribution, becomes a beacon of hope for those grappling with hunger. By efficiently channeling resources and leveraging local partnerships, such entities can make a substantial difference in the lives of countless individuals and families.

Food distribution is a fundamental aspect of humanitarian aid, promoting health and well-being. Adequate nutrition is not only essential for physical health but also influences cognitive development, educational attainment, and overall community resilience. In the context of poverty alleviation, food distribution campaigns become catalysts for breaking the cycle of deprivation, empowering individuals to pursue education and employment opportunities.

In regions like Delhi, characterized by a diverse socio-economic landscape, the Food Distribution Firm plays a crucial role in tailoring its campaigns to address the specific needs of the local population. By understanding the nuances of the community it serves, the firm can ensure that its efforts are impactful and sustainable, fostering long-term positive change.

Moreover, food distribution campaigns contribute to community building. The act of coming together to address a shared challenge fosters a sense of solidarity among community members. It creates a platform for collaboration and mutual support, reinforcing the idea that, as a society, we are collectively responsible for each other's well-being.

Conclusion:

Charity, as manifested through food distribution campaigns, epitomizes the compassionate spirit of humanity. The Food Distribution Firm in Delhi, along with similar entities worldwide, plays a pivotal role in translating the altruistic motivations of individuals into tangible and transformative actions. As we navigate the complexities of our interconnected world, the importance of such campaigns cannot be overstated. They represent not just a response to immediate needs but a commitment to building a more equitable and compassionate future for all. In the tapestry of charity, food distribution campaigns are threads that weave together communities, fostering resilience, and nourishing the heart of humanity.

#funding #ngo #ngo donation #charity

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disasterreliefsupplies · 7 months

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Humanitarian Aid: A Beacon of Hope in Times of Crisis"

Introduction:

In the face of adversity, humanity reveals its strength in compassion, resilience, and the collective will to make a distinction. Humanitarian resource stands as a beacon of wish, embodying the selfless commitment to providing relief in instances of dire need. This blog delves into the vital factors of humanitarian comfort, emergency useful resource, disaster response, catastrophe assistance, and the tireless efforts that go into alleviating suffering around the world.

1. The Essence of Humanitarian Relief:

Humanitarian remedy is the embodiment of empathy in action. It goes beyond borders and transcends variations to extend a helping hand to the ones grappling with the aftermath of screw ups or facing the challenges of battle. At its middle, humanitarian alleviation is about saving lives, preserving dignity, and restoring desire.

2. Emergency Aid:

When disaster strikes, time is of the essence. Emergency aid involves the rapid deployment of sources, personnel, and substances to affected regions. Whether it is earthquakes shattering communities, floods submerging villages, or conflict displacing families, emergency useful resource serves as a lifeline, supplying instantaneous help to the ones most in want.

3. Crisis Response:

Crisis reaction requires a well-coordinated and strategic approach. Humanitarian corporations leverage their know-how to swiftly verify situations, plan responses, and execute alleviation efforts. This segment is critical in addressing both the instant desires and laying the groundwork for long-time period recovery.

4. Disaster Assistance:

Disasters, whether natural or man-made, depart a trail of destruction in their wake. Disaster help encompasses more than a few offerings, from hospital treatment and safe haven provision to the distribution of food, water, and essential substances. The goal isn't simply to offer brief alleviation but to assist communities in rebuilding their lives.

5. Relief Efforts:

Relief efforts are a testomony to the dedication of individuals and agencies committed to making a superb effect. It entails the collective mobilization of assets, fundraising, and collaboration with local groups and governments. These efforts purpose not simplest to meet on the spot needs but additionally to create sustainable answers for the destiny.

Conclusion:

In the tapestry of humanity, the threads of humanitarian aid weave a tale of compassion, cohesion, and resilience. It is a reminder that even inside the darkest hours, there are individuals and organizations geared up to increase a assisting hand. As we navigate an ever-converting world, the significance of humanitarian relief, emergency resource, disaster reaction, catastrophe help, and relief efforts will become more said than ever. Together, we will build a extra compassionate and supportive global, where the mild of wish shines even within the face of the maximum challenging situations.

For more information visit our site:- www.disasterreliefsupplies.com

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acharyaganesh123 · 7 months

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The Age of Aquarius: Ganesha's Guidance

In a world where ancient traditions meet the ever-evolving tapestry of the present, the timeless wisdom of Ganesha, the beloved elephant-headed deity of Hinduism, has found a unique connection with the astrological era known as the Age of Aquarius. The Age of Aquarius, characterized by its emphasis on progress, innovation, and humanitarianism, harmoniously aligns with the attributes and symbolism of Ganesha. In this article, we explore the significance of this celestial convergence and how Ganesha's guidance can serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration in this new age.

The Age of Aquarius - An Era of Transformation

The concept of the Age of Aquarius is rooted in the precession of the equinoxes, a cosmic phenomenon that results in the gradual shifting of the Earth's axis over a span of approximately 26,000 years. Each age corresponds to a zodiac sign, and the Age of Aquarius is said to have begun in the mid-20th century, replacing the previous Age of Pisces. The transition from Pisces to Aquarius signifies a profound transformation in the collective consciousness of humanity.

Aquarius, an air sign ruled by Uranus, is associated with qualities such as innovation, social progress, and a commitment to humanitarian ideals. It encourages breaking free from old patterns and embracing change and evolution. This age fosters a sense of unity and interconnectedness, promoting a more inclusive and diverse world.

Ganesha's Relevance in the Age of Aquarius

Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles and the Lord of Beginnings, has long been a symbol of wisdom and divine intervention in Hindu mythology. His elephant head, symbolic of intellect and wisdom, complements the intellectual and innovative qualities of Aquarius. Ganesha's primary role in Hindu culture is to remove obstacles from the path of seekers, ensuring a smooth journey toward their goals.

In the Age of Aquarius, Ganesha's guidance becomes particularly pertinent. The emphasis on progress and innovation can bring about new challenges and obstacles, which Ganesha can help us overcome. His presence reminds us that while change can be challenging, it is also an opportunity for growth and personal development.

Aquarian Ideals and Ganesha's Blessings

The Age of Aquarius encourages us to embrace humanitarian values and work towards the betterment of society as a whole. Ganesha, with his compassionate nature and ability to clear the way for positive change, can inspire individuals and communities to act with compassion and selflessness.

Ganesha's blessings can also be seen in the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, which are highly regarded in the Aquarian age. As the deity of intellect, he symbolizes the pursuit of knowledge and the wisdom to apply it effectively. In a world that values critical thinking and problem-solving, Ganesha's guidance is invaluable.

Embracing the Age of Aquarius with Ganesha

As we navigate the currents of the Age of Aquarius, Ganesha's presence reminds us to stay open to change, embrace innovation, and maintain a compassionate and humanitarian perspective. His wisdom can guide us through the challenges and opportunities this new age presents, helping us to remove obstacles and create a more harmonious world.

In this age of transformation and enlightenment, let Ganesha's guidance light the way as we collectively strive for a better and more connected world. As the water-bearer of Aquarius pours the waters of knowledge and compassion, Ganesha's blessings will be there to ensure that we navigate these currents with grace and purpose, creating a brighter future for all.

#astrology #vastutips

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echo31s · 9 months

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i think that alex partially holds himself accountable for the gas and where it got off to after the incident in verdansk. it was his mission. it was stolen out from underneath his nose. if he’s going to follow its trail and right his wrongs (even though it wasn’t really his fault), he’s going to see it through to the end. and don’t get me started on how he feels being the lone survivor. that’s a whole other can of worms. it’s one of the reasons he gets in so deep with farah and hadir and the whole urzikstan situation.

alex’s heart of gold is another. he’s helpful and he’s selfless. he loves missions where he feels like he’s actually making a difference versus ‘go here, eliminate this target, and get out.’ humanitarian work is his lifeblood. he forges bonds. he connects. it’s who he is, and so it’s so easy for him to get behind the cause.

growing up, alex and his younger sister were very close. she was fierce. wild. alex likes to tell people she was the first person who taught him how to be brave. they’d go out and play by the water, and she would proudly pick up crawfish barehanded while alex was too scared to even get near one.

so, in a way, farah and hadir remind him of that. and, in the end, while he thinks what hadir did is wrong, he can understand why he did it. because he would have done anything to protect his sister, too.

and the detonator incident? he’s a selfless idiot ready to give himself to something he truly believes in. the aftermath, and a more in depth analysis of why he’s willing to risk himself, is also a whole other can of worms.

alex likes playing caretaker. giving back. getting to be by farah’s side gives him another chance at that. he feels like it’s what is right. for the people of urzikstan and in the name of his sister.

i know a lot of people ship alex/farah, but i don’t think romance has anything to do with it. besides, at this point in his life, alex had been pining over john price for years.

#* ⟢ 𝘼��𝙀𝙓 𝙆𝙀𝙇𝙇𝙀𝙍 ❮ hc ❯ ━━ ❝ this is one i believe in !

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bitcofun · 2 years

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Sam Bankman Fried, the boy of Two Stanford teachers and the ex-CEO of FTX exchange, painted himself as the Robin Hood of crypto. SBF's slogan worked selflessness, however in the end, he did not offer as much as assured to charity. FTX's humanitarian fund, FTX Future Fund, aspiration was to contribute $1B in brand-new jobs. After FTX's collapse, the workers of FTX Future Fund all resigned. Sam Bankman Fried, the ex-CEO of FTX, was when among the most affluent individuals in crypto, with a projected net worth of $172 B prior to his empire came all crashing down in November2022 The child of 2 Stanford law teachers who studied physics at MIT and traded ETFs prior to changing to crypto in late 2017, Bankman-Fried was understood for his generous personality, painted himself as the Robin Hood of crypto, who wished to end up being so abundant that he would ultimately offer all his wealth away. How much of this was simply an exterior? Bankman-Fried at first made his wealth through arbitrage chances in the crypto market he made use of at Jane Street. He made the most of the rate distinction of Bitcoin, which traded at a greater 10% premium in Japan compared to the U.S. The chance existed to make 10% every day by purchasing bitcoin on a U.S. Exchange and sending it to a Japanese exchange to offer. With this method, wealth built up from $10,000 would rely on $1 billion in less than 4 months. At simply 30 years of ages, Sam Bankman Fried went from purchasing his very first Bitcoin to ending up being a crypto billionaire. His primary objective? To offer all his revenues away to charity. How Much Did SBF Donate To Charity? According to a report from Sequoia, SBF had actually embraced the approach that "he was going to get rich, for charity's sake." According to an interview with CNBC, SBF provided $100 M away in 2022 to charity. His slogan works selflessness; he wished to make as much cash as possible so he might contribute as much out as he might to the world's most effective charities. SBF hasn't been excellent with contributing his billions away. The most substantial contributions he has actually made are political. According to Open Secrets, a platform following contributions in politics, SBF is the 6th biggest factor who contributed over $36 M to Democrats and$235,200 to Republicans. The FTX Future Fund, his philanthropy company, declares to have actually dedicated over 160 million in grants however does not define where these grants have actually gone. Following the FTX personal bankruptcy procedures, The FTX Future fund's whole personnel resigned on the 11 of November. According to their resignation letter, there are numerous grants the fund will be not able to honor. The fund has actually had amazing aspirations, revealing previously in the year, that they would invest $1 billion in brand-new jobs balancing 100 M a year. Nathan Young, the director of Head of Forecasting at Zeitgeist, a crypto forecast market that seems among the funds to have actually gotten $182 K by FTX Future Fund, has actually revealed on Twitter that he is frightened by the entire charade. I am more than mindful that I am moneyed by @ftxfuturefund And likely the scams was currently taking place when the cash was contributed. That weighs on me. I am frightened by the conceit of this entire charade. And by its all individuals it will harm.-- Nathan (@NathanpmYoung) November 11, 2022 FTX 32 Billion Dollar Collapse Bankman-Fried's $32 B fortune vaporized after discoveries of enormous illiquid possessions on Alameda's & & FTX's balance sheets. It is reported that FTX had actually unlawfully siphoned user funds from the exchange to Alameda." I'm deeply sorry that we entered this location and for my function in it," Bankman-Fried informs staff members after his resignation. "I Fucked Up". In an interview released by Bloomberg, the secretary of the United States Treasury likewise talked about FTX's collapse." It reveals weak point in the whole sector," Yellen stated.

" The idea that you might utilize the deposits of clients of exchange and provide them a different business that you manage to do dangerous leveraged financial investments-- this would not be something that's permitted. Read More

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harrystylesleftkneecap · 3 years

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This is just a ton of basic info I compiled. Some you may find from other people, if I used some of your information, let me know and I’ll edit the post for credit!

BASIC ASTROLOGY 🐉

Zodiac signs- environments that planets occupy which affect how they express themselves.

Six components that go into the zodiac signs

1. Element- air, fire, earth, water.

2. Modalities- cardinal, fixed, mutable.

3. Image- figure or symbol associated with the sign. (The constellation! Aries is a ram, they act ram like. Taurus is the bull, they act more bull like.)

4. Sign expression- how they carry, talk or express themselves. Feral( Leo and last half of Sagittarius) bestial (Aires and first half of Sagittarius) humane (Gemini, Virgo, libra, Aquarius) domestic (Capricorn and taurus) mute ( cancer, Scorpio, Pisces)

5. Polarity- masculine or feminine. Active of passive. Yin or yang. Masculine (passive) - fire and air signs. Feminine (active)- earth and water signs.

6. Planetary ruler- the planet that is said to rule the signs. (Mars rules Aries, Taurus is Venus)

Planetary rulers

SIGNS DO NOT RULE THINGS. PLANETS RULE SIGNS. The qualities of these planets are more influential when planets are positioned Therin. Being ruled by a planet means the planets energy has a powerful influence on personalities.

Mars ♂- Aries and Scorpio. Masculine. Action and progression. Go forth and conquer. Firey and intense.

Venus ♀- Taurus and libra. Feminine and fluid. Refinement and grace. Love for beauty, finer things. The senses.

Mercury ☿- Gemini and Virgo. Good communicators. Communication planet. If your sign falls here, you are a good communicator.

Sun ☉- (Leo) your ego. How you carry yourself.

Moon ☾ - cancer

Jupiter ♃- Sagittarius and Pisces

Saturn ♄- Capricorn and Aquarius

I am a (sun sign) with the soul of a (moon sign) wearing the mask of a (rising)

☀️Sun sign- (represents your mother) most commonly associated with astrology. (The one you already know) deepest part of you! What season the sun was in when you were born. Essence of who you are. Most important. Doesn’t represent your emotions, or how you love. You may not feel like you relate to this. But you have other more dominant signs in your birth chart. A big part of you, but definitely not all of you.

⬆️Rising- (the sign that was rising over the horizon at your time of birth) what people first meet. This would be how people view you at a party. What you seem like on the surface.

🌙Moon- (represents your father) emotional side. Where the moon was placed during your time of birth. How you process your emotions.

Mercury- usually the same as sun. Planet of communication. Whatever sign this is is indicative of how you communicate with others.

Venus- how you love or build relationships. Beauty and material items. Whatever signs you have here dictates these aspects of your life. Don’t use sun for compatibility, use Venus!

Mars- anger, aggression and motivation.

Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune are generational planets. Which means they take years to move out of signs. You probably have the same signs in these houses as your friends. This means these planets aren’t so much about the sign but the houses they are in.

Jupiter placement- where you will see the most good luck and expansion in your life.

Saturn placement- restrictions. Luck with finances and inheritance.

Uranus- uniqueness and differences. Weirdness and quirkiness. Where in your life you will see the most uniqueness.

Neptune- blurriness, fogginess, confusion.

Pluto- placement of this house will deforming what areas of your life are most intense. Might even be obsessed with the power struggle associated with that house.

The 12 houses

Whatever sign/ planet you have in each house determines your issues and prosperity’s in each area of your life.

1. Appearance, outward personality. The House of the Ascendant, it’s on the left side of your chart. The sign, or signs, in this House as well as the planets tell you about the self and your appearance. Leadership, new initiatives, fresh starts and beginnings are also covered by this house. (Ruled by Aries)

2. Money, possessions, values and skills. This house is related to your material environment, like taste, smells, sound, touch, sight but it also rules income, money, and self-esteem. (Ruled by Taurus)

3. Mental activity, learning, siblings, communication. The third house rules all forms of communication - talking, thinking, social medias. It’s also related to siblings, your neighborhood, libraries, schools, teachers and community affairs. (Ruled by Gemini)

4. Home, parents, roots, inner security. This house sits at the bottom of the chart and is known to be the House of the Foundations, because it rules your home, privacy, parents and your relationship with them (especially with your mother), children and your predisposition to have some. (Ruled by Cancer)

5. Romance, children, fun, creativity. The fifth house governs self-expression, drama, creativity, color, attention, romance, fun and play. You can find great insight about your love life in this house! (Ruled by Leo)

6. Work, health, service and self improvement. Taking a look at this house you will know more about your personal organization, schedules, routines, fitness, diet and exercise. Here you will also discover if you will be selfless, a friend that fights for their loved ones. (Ruled by Virgo)

7. Marriage and partnerships. The seventh house is the sector of relationships and other people. It governs all partnerships, both business and personal, and relationship-associated matters, like contracts, marriage, and business deals. (Ruled by Libra)

8. Sex, death, letting go, regenerations, other people’s money and sharing. This house is found on the right, and is probably the most mysterious as it rules birth, death, sex, transformation, energies, and bonding at the deepest level. Let’s remember that the 8th sign, Scorpio, is ruled by both Mars and Pluto so of course this house is as intriguing as the sign is. The eighth house also rules other people’s property and money. (Ruled by Scorpio)

9. Higher education, philosophy, publishing, religion, travel and law. The ninth house is related to the higher mind, expansion, international and long-distance travel, foreign languages, inspiration, optimism, universities and higher education, luck, risk, adventure, gambling, religion, philosophy, morals and ethics. EDs are also pointed out here. (Ruled by Sagittarius)

10. Career, status, reputation, vocational purpose, power. The House of Midheaven, the tenth house is at the top of the chart and it covers traditions, public image, fame, honors, achievements, boundaries, discipline, authority and fathers, as Saturn represents The Father. It also shows which would be the best career path for you. (Ruled by Capricorn)

11. Friends, groups, goals, aspirations. The eleventh house rules friendships, society, technology, video and electronic media, networking, social justice, rebellion, and humanitarian causes. It also rules originality, eccentricity, sudden events, surprises, invention, astronomy, science and futuristic views. (Ruled by Aquarius)

12. Solitude, institutions, self sabotage and transcendence. The chart ends with the twelfth house, which (obviously) rules endings. This house covers the final stages of a project, the afterlife, old age, and surrender. It’s also associated with separation from society, institutions, hospitals, jails and secret enemies. However, it rules imagination, creativity and arts in general, and the subconscious mind. (Ruled by Pisces).

Not all houses will be rules by planets. They can be empty, this is okay!

MODALITIES

Cardinal | Fixed| Mutable

These derive from the seasons. Cardinal signs begin seasons, pass them on to the fixed signs which maintain the season, mutable signs are a mix of both seasons. (Aries begins spring, when the sun moves into Taurus its “spring at its peak”. And when sun moves into Gemini spring mixes with summer.)

🧨Cardinal- (Aries, cancer, libra, Capricorn)

Starting things. Self motivated. Ambitious, driven. But these signs don’t always follow through and finish. Historically referred to as “moveable” Forward moving. They don’t always finish, they’re always looking for the next thing. They’ll jump from focus to focus without following through. Easily led to new things. Initiator but not the leader.

Aries is a fire sign, so it expresses cardinal qualities in a fiery way. Cancer is cardinal but is a water sign, so this shows in emotions. (Moody) libra is cardinal but is an air sign, so cardinal is exhibited in social connections. Capricorn is cardinal but also earth, so this is seen in their practical grounded matters.

🏔Fixed- (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius)

Stands ones ground. Consolidate.

Slower, stubborn, rigid. Set in their ways. Loyal, dependable. Always do their job. Not wild cards. Taurus is earth, so fixity is seen as stubborn, likes its comfort zone. In the tangible realm. Leo’s fixed nature comes through the fire element . This is where you see leadership qualities, and “look at me” qualities. Seen as a beacon. Also in a territorial nature. Scorpios fixed nature comes through water. This is where the stereotype of secretiveness. They like to contain and keep emotions behind a wall. They like to hold onto their emotions. Aquarius’ fixed sign comes through air. They love to exist in the idea realm, but once they find an idea they maintain it in a fixed way.

🧶Mutable- (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces)

Adaptable and flexible. Can fill whatever need is there. Can be seen as flaky. Gemini is air so mutability is seen in exchange of ideas and communication. Virgo expressed mutable characteristics through the earth element. So it is seen in much more tangible and practice ways. They can reorganize and restructure well. Sagittarius expresses mutability through fire. Adaptability and flexibility of mutable, and energy and passion through fire. They are often known to be down for anything, pick up and head out the door. Pisces shows mutability though water. So it is typically shown in emotions or feelings. This can lead to Pisces being viewed as “wishy washy” or not knowing what they’re feeling. They try to adapt to everyone else’s feelings (mutability) but because of the constant movement of water they don’t really know what they’re feeling on their own.

The 4 qualities

Heat | coldness | moisture | dryness |

These qualities come together in pairs to produce the elements.

Heat + dryness= 🔥

Coldness + moisture= 💦

Coldness + dryness= 🍃

Heat + moisture= 🌬

☄️Heat: active and expansive. Energizing, outward, movement, extroverted. When you heat things, molecules literally move faster.

❄️Coldness:passive and condensing. Inward, contemplated, introverted. Slowness, stillness, reflective. When water gets cold, it freezes into ice.

🌊Moisture: connecting, bringing things together. Flexibility. Wet sand can be clumped together. Moisture brings grains of sand together to be one pile. Community sense. Big big connection. Compassion. Understanding. Empathy, sensitivity. Sees the likeness.

🏜Dryness: everything moisture is not. Spermatic and resistant. Dryness wants to separate things. Categorizing, distinctive. Sees the differences. Organization and orderliness .

The elements

🍃earth - Taurus Virgo Capricorn

Grounded, down to earth, stubborn, slow to change. Practical, stable,materialistic.

(Dry) practical, resistant, socially isolated, reserved, homebodies. Structured, rule based. Separative, rigid and resistant.

(Coldness) slow paced, methodical, restraint. Passive. Introverted. Reflective.

Dry+coldness= calmness and stubborn. What earth signs are most well known for.

💦water cancer Scorpio Pisces .

Sensitive, emotional, moody.

(Coldness) introversion, passivity,

quiet, keeps to themselves. Water takes shape of whatever container it’s in. IE the coldness, settling. Connective. Can take sand and make it mud because of its connective qualities.

(Moisture) seeking to connect, feeling based connection. Flexible. Feeling. Understanding.

Coldness + moisture = emotional, empathetic and sensitive. What water signs are most well known for.

🌬air Gemini libra Aquarius

Communicative, sociable, idealistic

(Moisture) connection, brings things together. Always moving and touching everything. Connective

(Heat) active, explorative, seeking experience.

Moisture + heat = social qualities. What air signs are most well known for.

🔥 fire - Aires Leo Sag.

Energetic, enthusiastic, impulsive

(Heat) Passionate, driven, energized, extroverted.

(Dry) separative and resistant.

heat+ dryness= driven and competitive. Fire signs are most known for

The signs

1. Aries (RAM, 🔥March 21- april 19) Cardinal(spark!)♈️ 0-7 babies: very chill, have a great aura. Seem perfect. Hard to get close to. One you get to know them, can’t rationalize or control them. Sometimes are rational unless very angry. Attract a lot of people. Tend to shear if not satisfied. Don’t mess with them! Very bad at concealing feelings. Masculine energy. If they get riled up they can cool down. Don’t hold grudges. Go go go. Come into a room like Kool aide man. Sparks light quick and go out fast. Will set your house on fire if mad. Vital, aggressive, confident, outgoing.

2. Taurus 🍃(garden)( fixed April 20- may 20)♉️ preteens 7-14: brings stability. Lifelong friends. Loyal, no second guessing there motives or intentions. Helpful. Can be lazy. Finds the easy way to do something, but get it done! Can’t see their faults or when they’re wrong. Like the finer things in life. Pleasure! Very sensual. Kind. Don’t get angry often but when pissed off it gets bad. Feminine. Workaholics. Chamomile tea. Very calming. Not the sharpest. Stubborn but soft. Bond with a great one they’ll have your back.

3. Gemini 🌬(mutable, May 21-June 20) ♊️teenagers 14-21:open minded, very cool. Can be loners. Low key. Can be attention seeking. Very fake and two faced. Quick temper. Several personalities. Love able. Goofy. More to meets the eye. Not ditzy even though they come off that way. Talk a lot of game. Social butterfly. Dicey emotional security. Don’t know where to direct it. Great friends bad lovers.obsessed with how people view them. (Kanye west, trump.)

4. Cancer ♋️ 💦 cardinal(spark! June 21-July22)21-28, young adults: emotional and sappy. Can be snobby, think they’re better than u. Insecure. Often put up a front. Manipulative! Moody! Hard to get out of the house. Sort of introverted but not shy. Home bodies. When they’re out they’re a good time if things go their way. Talkative and friendly. Hard to feel awkward with them. Can be very I touch with feelings or manipulative. Moody. Take anger out on other people. They can fake cry! Can be a cute crab or mean crab.

5. Leo ♌️ 🔥( fixed, July 23- August 22): literally they are the sun. They’re fixed obviously. annoying. Thinks the world revolves around them. Very attention seeking. Outgoing, shallow. Some depth. Very smart. Super motivated and driven. Get shit done. Don’t mess with their drive. Great work ethic. Entertaining, life of the party. Great story tellers. A lot of friends. Don’t often build real connections. Want people to like them. SO MANY FRIENDS. Popular but not many genuine friends. Make sure they’re not forgettable. Literally love beings Leo’s. Great in bed.take you to a party and then leave you to be the center of attention.

6. Virgo ♍️ 🍃 (mutable,(clay) August 23- September 22) : cool, overanalyzes.over thinking. Fun, funny, life of the party. Creative. More to meets the eye. Attractive, charming, flirty! Come off as hollow but have a lot of depth. Very smart. Don’t miss a thing. Always know your next move. They watch! Scatterbrained. Sneaky! Open minded, take interests in your ingests. Everything has to be done a certain way. Kinda controlling. Can let themselves be the clay. Don’t cross them. Virgin in denial. Peoples people.

7. Libra ♎️ 🌬 cardinal( spark!) September 23-October22) : open minded, spiritual, chill. Nothing bothers or worry’s them. Very relaxed. Funny, good humor. Avoid conflict, rarely have drama. Very open. If they cheat they’ll tell you. Easy flowing convos. Great conversationalists. Enjoy intellectual. Can be cold. Steel hand in the velvet glove. Act like they know when they don’t. People pleasing. Power bottom. Can see all the gray. Playful whimsical energy.

8. Scorpio ♏️ 💦 (fixed. Fixed water= Ice. October 23- November 21) : trouble lmao! Eye contact. Bad ass aura. They cannot be messed with. Don’t do it. Fun, overly loving. Can be suffocating. Talkative. Build walls. Hard to break them down sometimes. Can be magnetic. Mysterious. Intellectual brooding. Sexy kind. Very black and white. Hardest people the change. Hate you or love you. Great in bed. Sensitive, and emotional. Sensitive but weaponize it.wouldn’t stab you in the back but would stab you in the front. Make their opinions known.

9. Sagittarius ♐️ 🔥 (mutable (changing fire, plasma. Space dust?November 22- December 21) : possessive, super chill. Jealousy!!! Crazy! Stick up for you! Defend you. Low key sad. Come across as bubbly and happy. Messed up in the head. Good at deceiving. Good at coming across a certain way. Desire to be liked. Expect things but don’t vocalize them. Usually resent things on the inside. Can control temper but once it pops off it POPS OFF. Will do anything for you if they love you enough. VERY FUNNY. Open minded. Will talk about whatever whenever. Impulsive. Often too much. Adventurous. Move partners, jobs etc. keep it moving. Don’t give a shit. There is no limit. Dance on moonlight. Everyone loves a good sag. Shit space glitter. Impatient.

10. Capricorn ♑️ December 22-January19. 🍃 cardinal(spark) mountain : hard worker, good savers. Aggressive but nice. Good at getting what they want. Seem like they want the best for you but won’t go out of their way. Friendly and mature. Can be awkward. Can have good convos. Can be silly. When in love they’re totally different. Good lovers. Very corny and cheesy. They don’t open up easily. Stubborn. Late bloomers.intense focus. Pessimistic. Wants to be so many different things. Sadness. Dark humor.

11. Aquarius ♒️ 🌬 (fixed, January 20- February 18) : over thinker. Like virgos. Weird. Emotionally distant. Heartless. Don’t know what they want. Great friends. Quirky. CREATIVE. Intuitive. Can’t lie to them brutally honest, blunt, tell it how it is. Voice opinions often. Selfish. Hypocritical. Attractive. Introverted extroverts. Strive for paradise. Uprising. Idea of change. See things from a bigger perspective. Not into mainstream things. Think they know you better than you know yourself. VERY MANIPULATIVE. Alien wearing a human mask? Awkward but controlling.

12. Pisces ♓️ 💦 mutable (ocean) February 19- March 20) : emotional. Caring and considerate. 2 sided. Manipulative but sweet. Really funny. Everyone loves a Pisces. Loves me personalities. Intuitive. Very open minded. Can’t help but fall in love. Don’t want to see you fail. When in a bad place they can become the devil. They hate you but they love you. Always come crawling back. At deaths door. All the zodiacs compiled. “You’re not listening to me” savior complexes. Mindfuck. Wisdom. No surface level conversations. Complexities lead to complications. Hard to deal with a moody one.

#astrology #zodic signs #scorpio rising #saggitarius #leo moon #virgomoon #birth chart #beginner astrology

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oathofoaksart · 3 years

Photo

YOUNG JUSTICE/DC OC: JO “LOVETAP” SHINODA

bio under the cut!

BASICS

Name: Josephine Shinoda

A.K.A: Lovetap; Jo, Jojo, Jo-Hoe, Tap

Age: 29 [S3]

Gender: Cisgender Female

Orientation: Bisexual

Occupation: Music Store Owner, Star Sapphire Corps Member

Race: Human

Ethnicity: Japanese-Caucasian

Location: Santa Monica, California

Hometown: Hana, Maui; Hawaii

Skin: Fairly suntanned with visible bikini tanlines, lightly freckled around the nose and cheekbone area

Hair: Naturally black with a blonde ombre gradient, gradient turns dark magenta when powered up.

Eyes: Red-Brown [civvies], Glowing magenta sclera with white-pink irises [powered up]

Height: 5'4

Build: Well-toned, with strong arms and legs; ample curved.

Distinctions: Inscription of the One Ring tattooed on her right shoulder blade, fond of yoga pants and loose band muscle shirts combo

RELATIONS

Parents: Haruto and Tara Shinoda

Siblings: Jack "Daiichi" Shinoda (twin brother; deceased)

Friends: Emi Homura (deceased), Ghia'ta, Carol "Star Sapphire" Ferris, Guy "Green Lantern" Gardner, Leiko “Inari” Ara [OC], Tora "Ice" Olafsdotter, Shayera “Hawkgirl” Hal, Hank “Hawk” Hall, Don “Dove” Hall, Charlie “Scribe” Jenson [OC]

Partner/s: Several noncommittal relationships and one-nighters; Bryce "Red Lantern" Richards [OC] (ev.)

Misc.: Queen Aga'po, Gi "Riot/Geode" Flores [OC]

Affiliations: The Star Sapphire Corps, The Justice League

PERSONALITY

Personality Type: ENFJ-A [Assertive Protagonist]

Temperament: Sanguine-Choleric

Alignment: Neutral Good

Relaxed | Positive | Idealistic | Sensitive | Stubborn

Jo is the poster girl for the coastal surfer babe; laid-back, fun-loving, and friendly. She’s an honest woman, though not scathing, which makes her a go-to for advice and well-placed encouragement. Because of her many interests, she meets and makes friends in all walks of life, often making her the social link between vastly different groups. Her passion rears its head in concern of humanitarian subjects, from LGBTQ+ issues to food crises, and will jump at the chance to lend aid.

This is especially true as Lovetap, where she feels she has a more hands-on approach in doing good. Her personality doesn’t change in costume as it does amplify, she stays playful and lighthearted in tense situations, but her morals are steadfast. Tap is a loyal and dedicated ally to her fellow Sapphires and friends in the Justice League circle, and a personable hero to civilians she encounters.

She’s very well-meaning, but she also tends to bite more than she can chew. This becomes a problem when she’s too headstrong to admit she needs a breather and will continue shouldering the weight until someone steps in. It also applies to her emotions, Jo is quick to lend a shoulder to cry on, but struggles to admit when something is amiss in her personal life in fear of bogging down others. Her way of coping with her problems is usually done by busying herself with projects, but sooner or later it becomes too much and she’ll spiral.

ABILITIES AND WEAKNESSES

Powers and Abilities

Violet Energy Conduit: As part of the Star Sapphire Corps, Jo wields a Violet Power Ring. Like most power rings on the emotional spectrum, it allows Jo the ability of flight, survival in vacuums, manipulation of energy, creation of force fields, creation of light constructs at will, and tap into a xenolinguistic database. Because the Violet ring is powered by love, it also has attributes found only in the Sapphire Corps.

Love Empathy: Love is the center of the Sapphire Corps and much of the Sapphire’s abilities tie to it. Jo can detect feelings and connections of love from which she can draw power from outside her actual power battery. She can also form connection tethers to people she feels close with, she can use these tethers to know if the other person may be in possible danger and quickly teleport to their side. Being around other Sapphires greatly increases her power as they feed off each other’s love like an echo chamber.

Crystallization: Special to the Star Sapphire Corps is the creation of Star Sapphire crystals, often in conjunction to their energy constructs. These crystals can also be used to encase a victim and place them in suspended animation, in some cases able to use the victim as an extra power source by influencing them with love. Jo personally doesn't like to take it up to this point, as she finds it too intrusive.

Violet Energy Constructs: Jo is able to conjure light constructs at will, her ring being able to create any object. Jo is fond of using mecha-like weapons, classic horror and kaiju characters, and figures from her favorite Kurasawa movies.

Healing Capabilities: Jo’s ring not only lets her heal at an accelerated rate, but also heal injuries of, or even revive, others provided she has a strong enough connection to share the life energy for such a feat.

Avarice Immunity: Because Jo’s love is of the selfless sort, Jo is immune to the attacks of an Orange Lantern as long as her love stays that way.

Limitations and Weaknesses:

Emotional Instability: The Sapphire ring is a double-edged sword in that while it's formidable in raw power, it can easily turn against Jo with an overload of emotion. If she’s not careful, the ring can influence her day-to-day life from being overly jealous and protective of those she cares for, to being too sensitive of her own feelings. In a worst case scenario, the ring can completely overcome Jo’s mind and force her into a frenzy.

Ring Dependency: Without her ring, Jo reverts to an average human woman, so she is entirely dependent on her ring for protection and offence. It’s necessary for her to have her ring on at all times or at least on her person should the need arise.

HISTORY

Born second of fraternal twins, Josephine Shinoda lived an idyllic lifestyle with her parents and brother in her hometown of Hana, in Maui, Hawaii. Jo and her brother Jack were an especially close pair of siblings, sharing interests from surfing with their father to classic pop culture. Jo was the much more extroverted sibling and had no trouble making friends where she went, whereas Jack had difficulty asserting himself socially; Jo often made strides to make her friends friends of Jack’s. This continued all through their young school life, even as Jack’s social anxiety gave way to depression. Jo and her parents were supportive of him throughout, and continued to be so when the twins finally separated when college came around.

Jo chose to study in Los Angeles whereas Jack left for Metropolis. Admittedly the distance worried Jo for a while, but college proved to be an overall good experience for Jack, especially once after the introduction of his later girlfriend, Emi.

Jo spent her college years partying and submercing herself into the music scene, eventually sparking the idea of opening a music store after college. Jack jumped at the idea with Emi right behind, she also being involved in music via playing guitar for an alternative band. Jo and Emi became solid friends in their own right, meeting and sharing even more when Jo would visit on the occasion.

Not long after college, Jo learned Jack had proposed to Emi and was elated by the news. The three went into making wedding plans, but things were cut short two months into the engagement. Jack and Emi were caught in a fatal car crash, leaving Jo inconsolable. After their respective funerals and some time reflecting, Jo followed through with opening a music shop in their honor, “JJ’s Music and Records.”

Jo operated in LA for a handful of years before deciding to expand out of her comfort zone and opening another store somewhere else. With an intern in tow, they settled on Bludhaven, where Jo spent another few years. Despite how well her business was doing and that her life was going in a good direction, Jo hadn’t been able to shake off the loss of her two closest friends. She was restless and tried to bury her feelings by distracting herself with anything she could involve herself in, as she didn’t want to set this worry on anyone, especially her parents. Jo was steadily wrapping herself into a depression and refused to admit it. She returned to LA in hopes that the move and reconnecting with old friends would clear her mind.

With no such luck, Jo proceeded to shell within herself. Her days dulled and she became stuck in routine, spending most of her time in the shop and locking herself at home. While in a particular bad spell, Jo decided to go to the beach to surf and Jo was caught in a minor car crash herself. She wasn’t injured, but the experience was jarring and Jo’s previous experience with car accidents sent her into an emotional break.

At the same time, Ghia’ta, niece of Queen Aga’po of the Star Sapphires, arrived on Earth with an agenda. The Star Sapphires had experienced a bit of a moral shift, currently spearheaded by Ghia’ta, after she’d met a human by the name Carol Ferris. Carol had been inducted into the Star Sapphires in order to gain the upper hand on the Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, while he found himself on the Sapphire’s homeplanet of Zamarron. But Carol had resisted the Sapphires’ urging and instead gave Ghia’ta an alternate view of what love was, selfless and kind. Moved by Carol’s insight, Ghia’ta began to try to teach the other Sapphires this new view. She was met by rebuttal and while she continued to fight for reform, she knew doing so alone wasn’t going to get her far.

She’d come to Earth in search for a new Sapphire that could better follow Ghia’ta’s new outlook, as Carol chose not to join the Corps and Ghia’ta had gotten word of Earth’s Lanterns being of a special crop. What she came across was Jo, stranded and crying on the side of the road. Initially Ghia’ta approached her to see if she could be of any help, but to her surprise, her ring detected Jo’s broken heart. Jo’s loss of her brother and friend left a deep hole in her heart and Ghia’ta discovered that this was caused by the love stripped away from her. Sapphires, Ghia’ta included, believed true love to be inherently romantic, but while looking into Jo’s heart she found her love for her brother and friend to be just as true as any. Overjoyed at this realization, she decided to choose Jo as her new champion.

Jo was thrown for a loop. First by the appearance of this stranger who showed herself to be an alien who’d somehow read into why she felt the way she did, then by her request to join her galactic love brigade. Still Ghia’ta’s ring called out to her and the more she explained the situation of the Sapphires, the more Jo felt a sense of duty. Jo had never been the kind to turn down an opportunity to help, even if the road sounded steep, and so she accepted.

Jo became the newest member of the Star Sapphire Corps. Her induction was met with heavy scrutiny by the Zamarrons, the leaders of the Sapphire Corps, as she didn’t fit the perimeters in which they chose their new members. In a slight twist, Queen Aga’po allowed Jo to join as a “experiment” partially to show Ghia’ta her claims were being taken seriously and that Aga’po herself was becoming open to her niece’s words.

Jo still isn’t completely sure what she’s gotten herself into, but plans to make the most with what she was given. And she hopes, if there is an afterlife, that Jack and Emi could be at peace with what they helped aspire.

NOTES

For no reason other than personal preference, Lovetap is set on using a surfboard construct as her mode of flight, even during battle.

Jo is very athletic and a bit of a gym rat, enjoying activities from various sports to yoga. She is also an avid reader and lover of pop culture, reflecting in JJ’s as it doubles as a bookstore as well. She found a fellow Justice League ally with a pop culture store named Charlie Jenson and the two quickly made their store affiliates.

Jo’s birthday falls on Valentine’s Day and she finds the irony of it funny

Jo had a hardcore, but thankfully, short-lived, crush on Guy Gardner. It’s a secret she’ll take to the grave.

Jo learned how to play the acoustic guitar because of Emi and plays outside her LA store on nice days, something she eventually teaches her young friend and eventual mentee, Gi Flores.

Her father was a gourmet chef and much of what he knew he taught his children, Jo is a wicked cook, but is often too lazy to get creative with her dishes.

#meet the ocs #gar's oc #gar's art #young justice oc #oc #lantern oc #star sapphire oc #i wasn't even expecting to work on her any time soon #but jo possessed me and made me work on her bio in one sitting #it's kinda insane i never really finish bios that quickly

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butterfly-winx · 3 years

Note

Fairy magic headcanons?

Fairy magic is the oldest form of human magic practiced across the Magic Universe.

It can be traced back to Arcadia, named so by anthropologists of later ages, who has somehow achieved first contact with the forces underlying magic itself and bargained a form of it accessible to humans. Records of Arcadia’s life reveal their powers to have been of metaphysical nature, but their aspect was never recorded, most likely because they didn’t have one yet.

Fairy magic in its primordial form was more in the realm of probability manipulation. Practitioners of fey magic were known to be able to bring about the occurrence of desired events with a higher likelihood and assumed positions like shamans or spiritual leaders in societies that people turned to with their woes.

Only through centuries of scholarly and societal development did fairy magic assume the form it is known for today. It was a lot of trial and error and inspired pressure through magic user wars that taught fairies how to form the random gifts the Flow rewarded them with into concrete, controlled expressions of magic.

The most simple way to explain how fairy magic works is like this: Fairies work up a positive net of good deeds performed for the Flow of the Universe, the underlying metaphysical force that fuels every form of magic. They perform these in surplus and the Flow grants them an appropriate base of power, quantified as their Magic Core, that they can use to express as magic. An active fey magic user is therefore always in the process of tending to their Magic Core through acts of selflessness.

Gathering a tally of good karma, of Favours (as old texts call it) or Magic Core strength (as modern medimagic calls it) has challenged enthusiastic magic sensitive people ever since. However it can be argued that it was easier to perform simple tasks of good will in less industrialised times and societies. people are more hurried, less open and less trusting the kindness of an unknown fairy.

Historically, fairies usually engage in trades of favours when doing so, which doesn’t always play out in the favour of the initial giftee. Fairies often trades these favours and I-O-Us among each other as well, which might mean one ends up indebted to a completely unrelated person to the one one originally made an agreement with.

Though it is actually a mistake made by layman to conflate the two: when a fairy engages in an act of good will to build up their magic core, they don’t expect anything in return. A Trade of Favours is more like a contract, and does not directly contribute to a fairies’ magic. It is a social activity among fey magic users, who see each other as connected despite them hailing from completely different ethnicities, countries or realms.

Doing nice things for other people is actually not the main way for fairies to cultivate their core powers. There are tomes upon tomes filled with helpful suggestions how one could interact with nature to gain a positive feedback and how to develop a sense for the whims of the Flow, what it would desire a fairy to do in particular situations.

The oldest and easiest trick in the book is connecting waters. Little streams just emerging from below the earth can be easily connected with the drag of a finger, which can boost the power especially of young, training fairies considerably. It is a simple way teachers employ to teach children the feeling of gaining magical potential.

Fairies also look out for individual plants and animals, as well as whole ecosystem. Keeping them whole pleases the Flow greatly (it is the Universe’s most important goal after all, to keep itself whole and undamaged). However to keep a whole system intact, fairies often need to make decisions that sacrifice the good of the few for that of the many. If the Flow tells them so, fairies will let animals die for them to perform their role in the cycle of life.

(Sometimes fairies will stand by as whole human civilisations disappear, because their disappearance would benefit the surrounding world more than their continued existence or conservation of their rites. It is seen as just, if they have been especially cruel and left nothing but scars in nature and on related peoples.)

Fairies are seen as objective judges in many cultures, as their magic reaps no gain from subjective justice. A fairy may have an own sense of right and wrong, but where it matters, and especially when it comes to the application of their magic, they will always behave objectively as the Flow demands them to.

As they are seen as objective bringers of aid, they are often called to emergency situations to bring relief. This is beneficial for the fairies as well, because the “worth” of humanitarian aid of this scale boosts their Magic Core immensely. Of course, being moral beings they need no added incentive and would not refuse to save people from death or peril, just because.

This has a snowball effect: saving some people will grow a fairies powers and make their name known. With more power at their disposal, fairies can help out people more and in situations of larger magnitude. The more they can help, the more they are called in and so on and their Magic Core size gets to grow basically ad infinitum. (No one knows where the upper limit exactly lies).

To be able to adapt their powers to specialised situations beyond the scope of their natal aspect, fairies have developed and ingenious way of partitioning their powers: specialised transformations. Fairies can and do use Magic Cores beyond the ones found in their bodies, a form of power leeching frowned upon in ancient times. By connecting to natural, wild magic or arcane cores of realms they can use the magic potential built up by entire ecosystems and realms to gain temporary power ups. Permanent attachments are only possible in the form of Guardian Fairy melding with planets’ core or in the form of achieving nymphdom that ties one to the entire Universe.

Fairies with very general aspects or with aspects of wide interpretations can further share their own core with followers possessing similar or related aspects. they get the title Major fairy and build own social units in which they teach their followers and develop specialised spells for their shared aspect together. Boons given by major fairies however are not full transformations and are called gifts instead.

The reputation of fairies as well as the development of their powers itself have taken a turbulent ride through the memory of history. One can only imagine where the future will take them.

#winx club #butterfly fic #worldbuilding #magic lore #fairy magic #asks #this is less a headcanon collection and more all that I was thinking I would put in more detailed encyclopedia entries #Anonymous

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

Link

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 26, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

In Afghanistan today, two explosions outside the Kabul airport killed at least 60 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. troops. More than 100 Afghans and 15 U.S. service members were wounded.

ISIS-K, the Islamic State Khorasan, claimed responsibility for the attack. ISIS-K is an extremist offshoot of the Taliban organized in Pakistan about six years ago by younger men who think the older leaders of the Taliban now in control of Afghanistan are too moderate. The ISIS-K leaders want to destabilize the Taliban’s apparent assumption of the country’s leadership after the collapse of the Afghan government.

The Taliban joined governments around the world in condemning the attack, illustrating their interest in being welcomed into the larger international sphere rather than continuing to be perceived as violent outsiders. Increasingly, it seems their sweep into power surprised them as much as anyone, and they are now faced with pulling together warring factions without the hatred of occupying U.S. troops to glue them together.

Taliban leaders continue to talk with former leaders of the U.S.-backed Afghan government to figure out how to govern the country. Western aid, on which the country relies, will depend on the Taliban’s acceptance of basic human rights, including the education of its girls, and its refusal to permit terrorists to use the country as a staging ground.

The attack was horrific but not a surprise. Last night, the U.S. State Department warned of specific security threats and urged U.S. citizens to leave the area around the airport immediately.

Later in the day, observers reported explosions near the airport. Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief of Task and Purpose, tweeted that he had heard from a source that the explosions were controlled demolitions as U.S. troops destroyed equipment.

Tonight, President Joe Biden held a press conference honoring the dead as “part of the bravest, most capable, and the most selfless military on the face of the Earth.” He told the terrorists that “[w]e will hunt you down and make you pay,” but on our terms, not theirs. “I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command,” he said.

Despite the attacks, the airlift continues. Today, General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of United States Central Command, said that more than 104,000 people have been evacuated from the airport, including 5000 U.S. citizens.

I confess to being knocked off-keel by the Republican reaction to the Kabul bombing.

The roots of the U.S. withdrawal from its 20 years in Afghanistan were planted in February 2020, when the Trump administration cut a deal with the Taliban agreeing to release 5000 imprisoned Taliban fighters and to leave the country by May 1, 2021, so long as the Taliban did not kill any more Americans. The negotiations did not include the U.S.-backed Afghan government. By the time Biden took office, the U.S. had withdrawn all but 2500 troops from the country.

That left Biden with the option either to go back on Trump’s agreement or to follow through. To ignore the agreement would mean the Taliban would again begin attacking U.S. service people, and the U.S. would both have to pour in significant numbers of troops and sustain casualties. And Biden himself wanted out of what had become a meandering, expensive, unpopular war.

On April 14, 2021, three months after taking office, Biden said he would honor the agreement he had inherited from Trump. “It is perhaps not what I would have negotiated myself,” he said, “but it was an agreement made by the United States government, and that means something.” He said that the original U.S. mission had been to stop Afghanistan from becoming a staging ground for terrorists and to destroy those who had attacked the United States on 9-11, and both of those goals had been accomplished. Now, he said, “our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan are becoming increasingly unclear.”

Biden said he would begin, not end, the troop withdrawal on May 1 (prompting Trump to complain that it should be done sooner), getting everyone out by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks that took us there in the first place. (He later adjusted that to August 31.) He promised to evacuate the country “responsibly, deliberately, and safely” and assured Americans that the U.S. had “trained and equipped a standing force of over 300,000 Afghan personnel” and that “they’ll continue to fight valiantly, on behalf of the Afghans, at great cost.”

Instead, the Afghan army crumbled as the U.S began to pull its remaining troops out in July. By mid-August, the Taliban had taken control of the capital, Kabul, after taking all the regional capitals in a little over a week. It turned out that when the Trump administration cut the Afghan government out of negotiations with the Taliban, Afghan soldiers recognized that they would soon be on their own and arranged “cease fire” agreements, enabling the Taliban to take control with very little fighting.

Just before the Taliban took Kabul, the leaders of the Afghan government fled the country, abandoning the country to chaos. People rushed to the airport to escape, although the Taliban quickly reassured them that they would give amnesty to all of their former enemies. In those chaotic early hours, seven Afghans died, either crushed in the crowds or killed when they fell from planes to which they had clung in hopes of getting out.

Then, though, the Biden administration established order and has conducted the largest airlift in U.S. history, more than 100,000 people, without casualties until today. The State Department says about 1000 Americans remain in Afghanistan. They are primarily Afghan-Americans who are not sure whether they want to leave. The administration is in contact with them and promises it will continue to work to evacuate them after August 31 if they choose to leave.

In the past, when American troops were targeted by terrorists, Americans came together to condemn those attackers. Apparently, no longer. While world leaders—including even those of the Taliban—condemned the attacks on U.S. troops, Republican leaders instead attacked President Biden.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blamed Biden for the attack and insisted that troops should remain in Afghanistan under congressional control until all Americans are safely out. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who replaced Liz Cheney (R-WY) as the third-ranking Republican in the House when Cheney refused to line up behind Trump, tweeted: "Joe Biden has blood on his hands.... This horrific national security and humanitarian disaster is solely the result of Joe Biden's weak and incompetent leadership. He is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.”

The attacks on our soldiers and on Afghan civilians in Kabul today have taken up all the oxygen in the U.S. media, but there is another horrific story: the continuing carnage as the Delta variant of Covid-19 continues to rip through the unvaccinated.

In Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has forbidden mask or vaccine mandates, 21,000 people a day are being diagnosed with coronavirus—more than twice the rate of the rest of the country—and almost 230 a day are dying, a rate triple that of the rest of the country. Right now, Florida alone accounts for one fifth of national deaths from Covid.

Ten major hospitals in Florida are out of space in their morgues and have rented coolers for their dead; those, too, are almost full. Intensive care units in the state are 94% occupied. Sixty-eight hospitals warned yesterday that they had fewer than 48 hours left of the oxygen their Covid patients need, a reflection of the fact that 17,000 people are currently hospitalized in the state.

Appearing on the Fox News Channel last night, DeSantis blamed Biden for the crisis. “He said he was going to end Covid,” DeSantis said. “He hasn’t done that.”

—-

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/us/politics/isis-terrorism-afghanistan-taliban.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/world/asia/kabul-airport-bombing.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/26/leaders-condemn-kabul-airport-attack-afghanistan/

Travel - State Dept @TravelGov#Afghanistan: Due to threats outside the Kabul airport, US citizens should avoid traveling to the airport and avoid airport gates unless you receive instructions to do so. Those at the Abbey Gate, East Gate, or North Gate now should leave immediately.

ow.ly/chJu50FYgpW

1,467 Retweets1,337 Likes

August 25th 2021

https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/comparing-al-qaeda-and-isis-different-goals-different-targets/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/25/daily-202-us-allies-dangle-carrots-taliban-evacuation-end-looms/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/25/taliban-afghanistan-government/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/15/afghanistan-military-collapse-taliban/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/26/politics/republicans-kabul-biden/index.html

https://www.newsweek.com/10-major-florida-hospitals-using-rented-coolers-morgues-covid-deaths-overflow-1623499

https://www.wmfe.org/survey-68-florida-hospitals-have-less-than-48-hours-worth-of-oxygen/188797

Ab. Sayed ترمذی سادات @abdsayeddI don’t know when I will be able to write a piece on heartbreaking developments in Kabul but meantime, a thread on Islamic State Khurasan Province as I am seeing both interest and confusion about the group. 1/n

367 Retweets895 Likes

August 26th 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/26/ron-desantis-criticizes-biden-not-ending-pandemic-hes-exacerbating/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Kabul #Afghanistan #terrorism #ISIS #American traitors #Civil War #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

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lupinusalbus · 4 years

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Why Sansa Revealed Jon’s Identity

I have seen a lot of criticism of Sansa’s character on the internet, and I suppose (as her fans) many of us have just grown used to that. A lot of the later criticism was about Sansa telling Tyrion about Jon’s identity in episode five of season eight, The Last of the Starks. Here I’m offering a quick analysis of why she did it that I’ve developed based upon reading between the lines of what was given on the show. I think most of us were very unhappy with the inadequate character development and coherency of the plots, but here goes:

Sansa’s Intuition about Dany was Key: One aspect of the plot that didn’t get enough attention was the dynamic between Sansa and Dany when the latter arrived at Winterfell with Jon. The two only had one scene alone together (during episode two), which was inadequate, but something in that conversation offers a big clue. In that scene, Dany tells Sansa that she came North because she loves Jon, and that it’s “Jon’s war” that she is fighting. When Sansa heard this from Dany, she most likely thought that Dany’s first instinct was to be self-centered. Unlike Jon, who is concerned about the welfare of humanity; Dany is ostensibly there to please her lover. The absence of a humanitarian motive in Dany ( or even lip service to that effect) compared to Jon’s selflessness would be likely to raise some red flags for Sansa. Notice also that Dany appeared unwilling to even give the appearance of entertaining Sansa’s concerns about Northern Independence. In spite of Dany’s apparent willingness in season seven to go North with Jon without his bending the knee, she now seems unwilling to listen at all.

Of course Sansa had some prior reservations about the Targaryen dynasty in general as well, which she voiced to Jon when he first announced his plan to go to Dragonstone.

Dany Always puts Herself First: At every planning or strategy session that Sansa observed, Dany’s priority is in one way or another about herself and her claim. After the Battle for Winterfell, Dany has learned that Jon’s identity is a possible threat to her, and that he is thinking of telling Sansa the truth. Instead of listening respectfully to Sansa’s concerns about the armies not being adequately rested; Dany arrogantly informs the assembled group that she is the rightful queen, all while looking Sansa in the eye in a triumphantly condescending manner. For Dany, everything is about her claim, especially now that she has perceived potential dissent from Sansa and other Northerners.

Given what Sansa intuits about Dany’s personality, She Senses that Jon is Mired in a Toxic Mess of a Relationship: Sansa knows that Jon is a faithful, honorable and good person from first hand experience. She likely thinks that because of his honor, he will be unable to extricate himself from his fealty to Dany. At best he will become her lapdog, at worst she will kill him because he is actually her rival.

Sansa sees that Tyrion is afraid of Dany (he even admits it): Right before Sansa tells Tyrion about Jon’s lineage, she observes to Tyrion that he is afraid of her. Given Tyrion’s usual irreverence for authority figures, this is another bad sign.

Sansa values what Jon Values - and she Knows he would be Better: Despite their personality differences, Jon and Sansa basically share the same values. They both want a good life for the Northerners and for the other people of the Seven Kingdoms. They care about these things more than they care about themselves. Even though Sansa knows Jon is reluctant, she also knows he’s better. Sansa loves Jon and wants to save him from Dany’s clutches, but its also a pragmatic reality that Jon would be better.

Sansa May have sensed Ambivalence about Dany from Jon Himself: The audience sees evidence of his ambivalence in the post-feast scene at Winterfell, and also right before Jon leaves for King’s Landing. In that scene, he told Tormund he wished he was going North with him. Perhaps Sansa realizes Jon’s internal conflict, but she also knows that his honor will prevent him from admitting his misgivings to anyone. We also saw scenes where the facial expressions and body language between Jon and Dany were indicative of problems between them. Sansa was also in the vicinity for most of these interactions.

The Smartest Person In the Room

#Sansa Stark #jon snow #daenerys targaryen #got season 8 #sansa is smart #jonsa #the starks

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nomanwalksalone · 4 years

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ALTERNATIVE STYLE ICON: RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN IN WALLENBERG: A HERO’S STORY

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

The writer George Santayana famously wrote that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Ironically many who repeat his quote forget who first uttered it.

I had long meant to write about Richard Chamberlain in this role. I once referred to him as “the fey king of the miniseries” and I don’t regret it: foppish, almost milquetoast in fare as varied as a two-part TV version of The Bourne Identity (with Jaclyn Smith, natch), Shogun, and as a leading candidate for an honorary Seinfeld puffy shirt: Not only did he play the Count of Monte Cristo in a 1975 TV movie, but a bunch of what Elaine Benes would have called chandelier-swinging characters in other Dumas adaptations, including Aramis in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and Louis XIV and his twin in The Man in the Iron Mask. Postmodern swashbuckler author Arturo Perez-Reverte even described a character in one of his own novels as looking “like Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds, only more manly.” That same Thorn Birds role, Father Ralph de Bricassart, also inspired a certain Rhunette Ferguson to give her son, a future New York Jets player, perhaps my favorite name ever: D’Brickashaw.

Dubbing Chamberlain an Alternative Style Icon for his role as Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is low-hanging fruit. For years this TV special dwelt at the bottom of my Netflix queue for that express purpose. Former Savile Row tailors Manning & Manning won an Emmy award for the outfits they made for him; decades later Bryan Manning had some very interesting things to say to the inimitable Simon Crompton of Permanent Style about the 1930s and 1940s cutting styles he had to adopt for Chamberlain’s outfits for the movie. Chamberlain’s costumes are appropriately dashing, from the full diplomatic gala white tie ensemble worn while conspiring with the Papal Nuncio of Budapest to a tan double-breasted suit with horizontal peaked lapels that is, quite simply, magnificent. Zagreb, one of the most beautiful cities in eastern Europe, admirably filled in for 1940s Budapest and Stockholm in the making of this production. I’m fairly certain that I’ve stayed at the Zagreb hotel on whose esplanade Chamberlain wore that suit, in an early expository scene where the American and Swedish governments encourage Wallenberg to take a position with the Swedish legation in Budapest. I’ve been told Zagreb’s one of two cities in Europe where the street lamps in certain neighborhoods are still gaslit. Gaslighting happens to have been one of the reasons that I finally wrote about this icon.

Of course there’s plenty to mock in the conventions of this telefilm, even beyond Chamberlain’s indisputable 1970s and 1980s stock hero status: its heavy-handed setup and plotting, making Wallenberg out to be a one-man anti-Nazi force from his time at home in Sweden (wearing a U. Michigan sweatshirt to indicate that he had studied in the US - did college sweatshirts even exist back then?). Miniseries meant melodrama and its archetypal characters: an adorable child whom Wallenberg saves from the death camps only to die of illness; a shoehorned-in love interest in the form of a kindhearted baroness who lobbies her suspicious husband to relax the Hungarian government's strictures on Jews; a fiery Hungarian resistance fighter who provides the unofficial, combative counterpoint to Wallenberg’s diplomatic, humanitarian efforts through official channels. And, of course, Wallenberg’s kidnapping by the Soviets at the fall of Budapest meant his story was perfectly framed for 1985, when we still couldn’t trust those Russians. (In fact, to this day no one knows what they did with him.)

A few appropriately haunting and powerful moments do ring true, including Wallenberg’s cordial verbal fencing matches over contraband Scotch and cigarettes with Adolf Eichmann. Whether those meetings really took place in that form or not, their film versions appropriately capture the realities of how we are forced to engage with evil. Rarely are we simply battling an easily identifiable other, weapon to weapon. Instead, we encounter evil in the everyday – in fact, it seeks us out, finds shared ground, converses with us over pleasantries and hospitality even as we recognize its intentions. It identifies with us, we identify with it. Even as you know it is evil.

Eichmann had made it his avowed duty to kill the Jews of Europe. Wallenberg’s mission, as an emissary of an officially neutral power, was to help save as many as he could. And he did, through famously fearless, reckless endeavors including the distribution of thousands of official-looking Swedish passes to the Jews of Budapest, the creation of vast cultural centers and warehouses in the Swedish mission buildings in which these new countrymen could work under the aegis of their adoptive country, and savvy diplomatic maneuvering with the Hungarian and German authorities and military. He went as far as to climb on top of a train bound for Auschwitz and distribute passes to as many deportees as he could while soldiers fired shots at him. Looking back, historians suggest they were firing over his head to warn him as they could easily have dropped him at that range, but it’s not likely Wallenberg knew that at the time.

At that time diplomats of neutral powers could make fortunes more safely as armchair heroes: playboy Porfirio Rubirosa reportedly did so in Paris selling visas to the Dominican Republic to French Jews during World War II. In that respect, perhaps, both he and Wallenberg were heroes… of different sorts.

Wallenberg did not do it for money. The Wallenbergs were Swedish aristocracy (with, the film takes pains to remind us, an ounce of Jewish blood) with considerable means – hence the finely tailored wardrobe for Chamberlain. Thus, an easy cynical response to this essay could be that a rich aristocrat with diplomatic immunity risked nothing swanning around the salons of Budapest, just like the fictional gentleman spies we read about and watch on screen.

That response is wrong. Heroism is not just born of opportunity. It is recognizing when a choice confronts you and taking the difficult, unpopular and dangerous one in order to do what is right. Fictional heroes like Bond or Steed rarely suffer meaningful personal loss and rarely confront the reality of evil. Evil is your friend with many positive qualities, maybe more intelligent or cultured or better dressed than you, the one you looked up to, who gradually reveals the awful things he or she believes and has done. Evil is those complicit in carrying out those things by their inaction, their credulity, or their cooperation, not at the point of a gun but of a paycheck. Evil is legal, logically explained, repeated and reported until its baseless reasoning becomes fact and the foundation for more lies, more evil. Evil can so easily become the system.

Hindsight is a handicap, for it doesn’t usually permit us to see that there were no times without ambiguity in battles between good and evil and no certainty that good triumphs. We have the privilege of retrospect to acknowledge the dashing diplomat in Savile Row suits was a hero for saving innocents from deportation and death as part of the most ghastly genocide in history. We learned what genocide is, and had to invent the word to describe it. Because at that time the people singled out for persecution and death were unpopular, historically, socially and legally marginalized, supposedly easily identifiable and classifiable. A group that societies had made it easy - through regulation, ghettoization, oppression and antagonism – to hate, and whole false narratives drawn up to explain why that group hated and wanted to destroy us even more than we them.

One of A Hero’s Story’s most timely and inspiring lines is Wallenberg’s reply to the Hungarian ruler’s query why the King of Sweden cared so much about the Jews of another country, when he was a Christian. Wallenberg reminded the prime minister that the King’s “concerns transcend religion or national borders.” That concern is humanity, our lowest common denominator, our shared recognition of our capacity for suffering. That concern drove a man to acts of incredible selflessness, a generous mercy that seems to have cost him his liberty and his life. There is no romance to Raoul Wallenberg’s fate. It is worth remembering that he probably saw little romance in the actions he took in Budapest.

Now is no less an unromantic time, no less a time when others – so many different others –are easily denigrated, feared, distrusted, brutalized. Otherization, both of many within our borders and pressing against them, has returned, as has fascism, with apologists blandly elegant or brutally populist, like some inauspicious comet in our skies. Now, again, is a time for heroes – men and women who recognize how difficult and dangerous it is to do what is right. That struggle is far from those of Chamberlain’s habitual roles swashbuckling against a monolithic, universally despicable, evil. Evil is among us, habituating us, desensitizing us, gaslighting us. Far from frills and fanfare, celebration, or certainty of triumph, can we place ourselves in Wallenberg’s Budapester shoes and do what is right?

Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This post first appeared on the No Man blog in February 2017.

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peepingtoad · 4 years

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO / 50-50 (There’s a lot of love and a lot of hate, but I think many are actually pretty neutral on him too!)

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / 50-50 (I’d say he may be an... acquired taste? Of course a lot of people I know here find him sexie so it’s hard to say for certain, heh. We may just be the weirdos of the fandom :P )

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO

Are they underrated? YES / NO (Not in terms of ability, but underrated for just how complex and multi-layered he is, I’d say)

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO /

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO.

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL (I honestly think he’s a man of many reputations, both in canon and in fandom :’D)

How strictly do you follow canon? — I’m very much a ‘use the bones of what we got in canon and do my best to flesh them out’ kinda roleplayer. There are some things that can be taken too easily at face value that I see fit to build upon. For example, I think Jiraiya’s feelings on the prophecy and his relationship with Konoha is something that could be too easily played off as simplistic, or like they were immovable constants. But that’s unrealistic for a man of his years and many experiences, so I try to put myself in his emotional setting at various points in his life, and trace how his feelings and behaviours change, if that makes sense?

I try to avoid saying that any of the writing was straight up wrong because it’s disrespectful to the creator. But especially for Jiraiya, who had such a significant role to play in the narrative that it sometimes took precedence over his actual character, I do find some of his actions, and the way some interactions were handled in the canon to be a little OOC... so I’ll work with it and try to spin it in a way that I feel fits how he was characterised.

Basically, I’d say that I follow canon, but I like to enrich it in areas that were lacking detail or a nuanced view that took in all the surrounding events of the time. After Jiraiya’s canon death, of course, that’s when more divergence comes in to my portrayal... otherwise I wouldn’t be able to play any post-war scenarios! But the essence of his character is the same, which I try to keep as close to canon as possible.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — A man of many experiences! You can bet that any topic that comes up, he’ll have some sort of amusing anecdote to share, or be able simply to talk shit about it. He's seen so much, and has a sensitive soul enough that he’ll give anyone a chance; he’s very open-minded and non-judgemental, and honestly is a humanitarian that wants to help those in need. Might leave your muse a little baffled as to how he could hold the status of ‘legend’, only to show it when they least expect it. You never quite know what you’re going to get with him: he’s generous and selfless, yet has many vices that seem selfish at times; he’s both a lover and a fearsome fighter; he’s immensely resilient at the same time as incredibly vulerable and damaged; he’s a himbo and a bit of a jock with the soul of a poet. Love him with no restraint and invite his love in return, and you’ll get not only a lover, but a devotee. Wears his heart on his sleeve... or does he? Chip away at him and find out!

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — The pervy, flirty, jokey schtick could get grating, or come across as disingenuous. In romantic situations, he’ll keep quiet about putting a label on whatever it is, and beneath his overall sweetness and devotion there may be an underlying reek of commitment issues and a fear of admitting he is afraid. He also has a habit of deflecting negativity in general, and playing things off as if they don’t matter or they’re a joke, making him actually rather a difficult person to get to know the heart of. One might feel as if they’re getting nowhere with him...

... Either that, or they get the complete opposite. Yes, as equally as he can be guarded, he can overshare like crazy, and has a tendency to become codependent with those he gets attached to, which is inconsistent with his free-spirited nature, and how adept he is at keeping others at arm’s length from his less sunny side. This inconsistency might make him seem unreliable—if the fact he’s always off who-knows-where doesn’t do the trick already.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — I’ve been a big fan of the Sannin ever since I first read the Deadlock, but being a very young person at the time I perhaps couldn’t relate enough to people who had experienced so much to do them justice in my teenage fic-writing endeavours, so I remained on the sidelines enjoying content by other people (there may also have been a little bit of ‘what the fuck, why do I dig the old dude so much’ denial in there haha). I’ve picked up and dropped my obsession with the series several times over the years, and my love for those three seemed to grow each time. They really are ‘the lost generation’, and as the sole survivors—alongside having a huge impact on the plot, how the shinobi world is shaped, and the three main protagonists—there’s a lot of juicy material there, a lot of emotional background, along with decades of history that basically goes untapped in the canon.

Anyway, I digress. Coming to the Naruto RPC for the first time around this time 2 years ago at the age of 25, I made this blog and my Deidara one on a whim, but focused on the latter at first. Villains were always comfortable territory for me in my other RP experiences, and I think it made me doubt that I could possibly do someone who is frankly a lovely guy any justice, no matter how much I loved him. I even had the intention of making him fully Akatsuki/Missing-Nin AU at first. Yeah. That’s how stuck in my villain/anti-hero zone I was! But, I think in the end, the fact he actually isn’t a two-dimensional typical ‘hero’ was something I chewed over and realised would be incredibly enriching to write, worth stepping out of my comfort zone for. And being a little more mature and less angst-ridden myself by that point, I found I could resonate with his feelings and ideals in a way that I know I couldn’t have as a teen... but I was still tentative.

Anyway, after leaving his blog empty for a bit (with its placeholder URL ‘frogdaddy’, which sadly got hoarded by someone else), I cosplayed the old bastard, along with my partner as Orochimaru. We’d been stanning that particular ship and talking about how great the Sannin are in general for quite some time by that point, but being casually in character for fun while drunk off my tits at a boat party, was a bit of an epiphanic moment. Not long after that, I threw myself right into writing this chaotic-good old bastard with gusto, and here I still am :’)

What keeps your inspiration going? — Taking breaks to recharge as and when I need to. Seriously. The death of all my other blogs has been pressure (mostly from myself) to be there and force myself to put out regular content, so I went into this not thinking that way and it’s really helped!

Of course, there’s also the fact that there simply seems to be no shortage of areas I can delve into with this guy. Again, it’s his age and all the missing years in canon... but I think it’s also how much love he has and his genuine eagerness to engage with others that makes him one of the most naturally bountiful muses I’ve played. Because honestly? Most of my villain muses wanted people to just fuck off :’D this guy is open to everything.

That aside, I guess I just gel with him more than I ever expected to. I’ve changed a lot as a person and gained more confidence since various areas of my life got better, and I really just vibed with this chill, funny, romantic, pervy, big-hearted energy. I enjoy angst, but my real love is peppering the serious and heartbreaking with romance and comedy—and isn’t that just befitting of him? Writing through his eyes also helps to keep my outlook positive, so that keeps me stuck on him as much as the seemingly limitless content potential.

And this is without even going into my cross-fandom AU ideas I have on the back-burner. Honestly, they’re there but I want to put a real effort into them while keeping his essence the same, which for some, involves brushing up on my lore!

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO.

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO.

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO / RARELY. (depends on whether I get a flash of inspiration—which mostly comes with random asks that happen to stir up an idea for a scene, such as this one (NSFW warning))

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO.

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO.

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO.

Are you a sensitive person? YES / 50-50 /NO. (I tend not to take things personally but am also very passionate—call it my innate Leo-ness!)

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal? — Hmmm. I haven’t actually had any critique on my portrayal, so I’m not sure haha! I’d say if it’s constructive, then I’ll take it into account and consider it, especially if it’s a case where it helps me realise I’ve perhaps not gotten across what I intended to very well. But I’m also quite fond of my portrayal in its essence, so I may end up just thanking the person for their opinion and carry on as usual :P

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — Absolutely! I’ve had some wonderful ones recently and it’s exactly the kick I need to get ideas out, some of which I’ve had on the back-burner but not had a framework within which to write it without it getting derailed. I definitely appreciate a question that will keep me at least a little on-topic, otherwise if I go off on my own volition I really tend to... well, go off! Even if a question is a similar topic to something I’ve already done, it’s a good exercise for me to go back to the similar headcanon and see if I can build further on it, deviate, and link it to show what past thoughts I’ve been working with. A great way of keeping some consistency in my portrayal while making improvements, I find! And then of course I’ve had some questions that are entirely new morsels for thought, and it leads me to something new and fresh, which I greatly appreciate.

Basically, any questions at all, fire away! I may take a while but I will get to them eventually!

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — Yeah. I mean I think it’s just polite to present a reason as to why not, instead of just being like ‘this is wrong/a bad take’ or whatever. Source material is down to personal interpretation, so if I draw different ideas from it to another person after discussion, then we can simply agree to disagree on it.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — They are welcome to disagree with me I guess? So long as they’re respectful and don’t then treat me as if my interpretation is ‘AU’ or talk about ‘canon Jiraiya’ as if he’s obviously a different entity to my own, then disagree away. But if prompted enough, know that I will most likely defend my portrayal with what I consider to be justification from the source material :P I did pay close attention to it, after all, and I do consider my portrayal to align well with it.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — Depends on the nature of it and the conduct, really? Like, people are allowed to dislike characters. I myself find a couple of characters pretty annoying or don’t particularly care for them (granted, usually it’s in a love-to-hate or simply a ‘this character doesn’t interest me’ way), but that doesn’t affect how I behave towards the RPer of a character. It’s just manners, really. People tend to RP characters because they like them, so why would you take negativity right to their doorstep, in this space they’ve made as an expression of enjoyment for, and to develop said character?

There’s been some people who admitted to me that they didn’t care much for Jiraiya, but then began to like him more with my portrayal and that’s more than fine; I take it as the highest compliment in fact. It’s also the kind of open-minded attitude I like to have with portrayals of characters I don’t necessarily like or have much interest in, because by and large, people do tend to add more depth and nuance than the busy and character-packed canon allowed.

However, if it’s the type of hate that’s got its own devoted circle of bitter bitches, who seem to use so much energy hating a character... then please, don’t engage me. Doesn’t matter who the character is, don’t expect me to follow/keep following your negative ass if it’s constant on the dash—and if the target character is any of the Sannin then frankly I’ll have probably blocked/blacklisted in a heartbeat. The ‘critical’ views of them tend to diminish them as humans, diminish the context and events that surrounded their choices, and in a way that I find is a gross double standard compared to what people will allow other (read: young, attractive, fandom faves, ‘babies’ or ‘beans’) to get away with and excuse the behaviours of. I don’t need that kinda negative energy sullying my hobby, nor do I need moral superiority that isn’t applied consistently across the board.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — Absolutely! I meticulously fret and check, and cringe when I get a reply and happen to spot errors while rereading what I wrote before it! I edit a lot but don’t always pick up on errors, so I’m more than happy to have it pointed out. Chances are, I’ll be far more brutal to myself about it than anyone else would be!

Do you think you are easy going as a mun? — Overall, yeah. I’m not possessive or clingy (I don’t think) and don’t expect the world from people, nor for them to focus on or favour me or be super fast. I just expect the same respect in return. Having said that, I will express it when I don’t like something or it makes me uncomfortable, provided we’re familiar enough, because if we’re strangers I’d feel like I was coming across as entitled to your energy and emotional labour. I do my best to be diplomatic about it though, and rest assured it doesn’t mean I’m forever mad at you or turned off in any way just because I have a small grievance. I just find that being honest with each other rather than letting things pile up and fester makes a friendship more solid, and basically more genuine and long-lasting.

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

Tagged by: @dokuhebi Tagging: Whoever hasn’t done this yet!

#this got super long yikes #{dash games}#{ooc}#{long post}

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