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italianpitbullartworks · 1 year

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Finale for 2005! Again, the style shift was "toony/anime bad, pro = realism only" which was a trend at the time, however thats not true! Any style at ANY time is okay! Back then, I was pressured into thinking that I was only "worth it" if I tried for hyper realism AND did everything from memory, 0% references. ALSO NOT TRUE! Use photo/anatomy references no matter HOW GOOD or bad you are. Pro animators still use references, pro comic artists use references, STOP TELLING PEOPLE THAT REFERENCES ARE BAD. Stop telling yourself that too. All you're doing by beating yourself up over pulling up photos to study anatomy etc is creating low quality work and youre honestly wasting your efforts + not learning anything. You wont "magically figure it out". The human brain NEEDS a visual guide to understand how an object is constructed.

Also stop telling yourself that if you study anatomy that you HAVE to draw realism. No! Doing studies doesnt mean you "cant have a cartoon style". You're using those to learn "how to assemble" a skeleton, muscles, how an animal/human moves, and from there you can run wild with stylized lineart and caracatures/exaggerations. You want an example of this?? LOOK UP ALL THE ANIMATIONS JAMES BAXTER HAS MADE! Look at the wide variety of styles he has drawn! (Spirit, several Disney characters, Steven Universe *to name a few*) Anatomy and lines of motion/joints is NOT equal to style. SU still moves like a real human despite being that "CalArts" style! Also look up animators like Aaron Blaise and look at the variety of things he has worked on or Don Bluth (who makes very toony exaggerated animals!). Side note: A lot of these big animators have free tutorials they post to their social medias/websites and also very affordable/cheap online "classes" that you can take. Its super cool that they take time to teach new generations how to create things 🧡

Lastly- a reminder to NEVER use other people's drawings as your "anatomy" references. Every person draws things differently and even the "best"/most seasoned artist out there can still make mistakes. Everyone, including myself, will have something that they struggle with whether thats poses, perspective, lines of action, or just whatever. Anatomy comes from the physical real world. STYLE comes from the made up world. By using someone's art as your hard copy "anatomy reference", you will only repeat what flaws they have made. There are tooooons of stock photos on the internet these days. Use DeviantArt, use Shutterstock, there are just so many places to find stock photos of any kind! I even dump a lot of random photos on my DA for stock use. I upload higher quality stock photos to a site/app called Foap, but that doesnt mean that my lower resolution photos on DA arent good for drawing references! They just wouldnt be the best for photomanipulation or graphic design use. I really dont upload them with the intent of being useful for photo projects- I really post them because they're valuable drawing references. Head over to my linktree to find my links for those!

"But what about drawing tutorials?" Tutorials are a guide to show you the technique for how to build something. They are designed to help you keep proportions and learn how to use basic shapes to break up photos. These are good resources to have on hand and to research when you need to learn how to put something together. Again, there are different kinds of resources that are all parts of how an illustration is made. Each type is useful for its specific topic. Stop thinking theyre all the same and stop telling yourself that "everything" resource is for "anatomy only". Hunt down the appropriate resources for whatever it is you need to do!

"What about tracing? Does that help?"

Not really, no. Why? Because you arent doing the work. Its that simple. Tracing the lines of someone's finished art doesnt teach you how to draw something from the ground up. You didnt "make" anything- you just traced it. Guess what else can trace stuff and make an outline? A computer! There is no effort, no skill, no learning of any kind involved. Re-drawing (physically drawing from scratch) on the other hand DOES teach you how to physically create that thing. Just be sure to NOT post your redraw studies or claim them as your own art. While yes, you did draw that copy, it is still just that- a copy, a replica, a duplicate of the original. Only post things that you DID NOT copy from someone else UNLESS its one of those "Draw this in your style" challenges where the whole purpose is for you to copy what the artist drew. DTIYS contests are always announced as such and you will always see the person announcing who is hosting that challenge. The only other time you want to upload a "copy" is redraws of your old art and or screenshot redraws.

Remember, if you want to take drawing commissions, NEVER copy another artist just to undersell them. What does this mean? If someone comes to you and says "can you draw this for me in so and so's style because you're cheaper than them" or says "can you copy this person's drawing but make it my character instead"- THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS NO! Tell them that if they want art by that artist, they need to buy from that artist. If they want to buy from YOU, then they will get YOUR style etc. Its not fair to copycat someone just because youre cheaper. Yes, it might make you popular, but your following/fan base/popularity isnt created off of your own hard work. Instead, you gained a following at the expense of somebody else and people are only there for your copies. "But copying people pays the bills"- yeah well I've got news for you... SO DOES MAKING YOUR OWN ART. Dont be "that person". Think of it like copying someone elses homework- you may have passed the class, sure, but you didnt learn anything and if someone asks you about it later, you wont know any of the answers because you never actually did any of the work yourself! "But its hard"- no duh. Life is hard. Work is hard. Learning is hard. Welcome to the real world where nothing is easy. Anybody remember that Magic Broom short on Fantasia? Mickey didnt want to do the chores, so he used magic to get the brooms to do the chores for him. The moral of that story was real life doesnt come with shortcuts and in the end, you will need to do that work anyway.

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enderspawn · 3 years

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so now that we’ve had a few days since the syndicate stream, i think ive managed to cool down and step back to look at it more neutrally. ended up long and pretty rambly since its all pretty flow of consciousness so its under the cut, but heres some thoughts on the syndicate (and a bit on c!techno, since hes the originator)

in universe, techno has only just heard a new place was made. he doesn’t know jack abt it, so he goes over to check it out and learn whats happening. he meets w tubbo, who explains they arent a gov, and accepts it then goes. hes hesitant abt the nukes, but frankly? also understandable, they are nukes. any kind of mass weapon of destruction is something to look out for, same as if tubbo revealed his own wither vault.

i think the reason that i, and many other ppl, had such a NEGATIVE reaction to what is a mainly harmless and completely reasonable interaction is. well, bc we’re the audience. we KNOW more than c!techno does. we know that snowchester very explicitly was formed without a government because they’re afraid of techno attacking. we know that the nukes are made to defend them, based off what happened to lmanberg. we know that ranboo joined partially to try and spare snowchester if worst came to worst.

the reason we the audience were afraid of him going is bc we feared what would happen if he DID deem it a gov. bc we know the effort they’ve done to NOT be one, bc we have a connection to the town that c!techno doesnt.

after then came calling the syndicate/techno tyrannical. after all- if they strike down every government then they are forcing ppl to follow their beliefs under threat of destruction or death. which is uhh pretty fucking tyrannical.

the thing is that in the end the syndicate hasnt even done enough for us to like. KNOW if thats true. techno himself said hes totally fine w just group of people living together, hell hes in a damn SYNDICATE. you can def argue in general abt what gives the syndicate the right at all to decide if a gov deserves to exist, if being “”the deciders”” makes them inherently hypocritical. (this also is pushing that “they decide” bc, well, w the exception of tubbo now, theres very little chance the other ppl would win against techno and crew. it Would just be decimation. if they attack, they’re destroying it all).

after all, they preach abt giving ppl the right to choose but then dont let them choose to form a gov. paradox of tolerance i suppose, since in anarchistic views there isnt like a “non-corrupt” government so every government is worth dismantling. (note, this is all based off my p limited understanding of anarchy theory and also Very Simplified for ease of speaking)

another reason we the audience may have been so afraid is bc, historically, techno doesnt lose. he may suffer personal losses and feelings of betrayal, but narratively hes won every battle hes really been in. its the status quo, so any possible conflict in the future you kind of expect the same. we were afraid of any kind of conflict starting.

i think this stuff does kinda work in character too. c!tubbo admits himself he doesnt rlly know government stuff, and he doesnt seem to really know what techno would or wouldnt DEEM one- thus he has a similar fear to the audience of being struck down for it. ranboo, like stated before, partially joined bc he was afraid FOR snowchester.

again i get that anarchy is against that greater establishment, but theres something to be said for the fact that. well. this is a block game. its systems work a LOT differently than real life, and real life anarchist theory may not transfer over well. there are a lot of good posts ive seen recently analysing lmanberg (specifically early lmanberg) and like. it genuinely worked to protect its citizens. they were able to pool together their resources and man power and protect each other from outside threats that would overpower them seperately. there IS no big overarching societal and deeply built in system to overthrow like in real life, if anything “having a government” IS the new system trying to form instead of anarchy (bc, to my knowledge, lmanberg was the first real “government” and the dream smp’s gov kinda formed as a response) it could def be another reason so many ppl are against enforcing anarchy-- this isnt the real world, and being in solidified groups could help the weak. without that, instead its the strongest survive and thrive while everyone else suffers.

(then again to devils advocate my own point, a lot of times they’re referring in those posts to a time where wilbur, who was actually “in charge” wasnt around a ton, so there was less of a power structure in place. also, you CAN still have a group of ppl without being a “gov” (like snowchester or the syndicate) but then we get back to “what is a gov by the syndicate’s standards” as well as if they want to remove a gov at its start or JUST when it seems “tyrannical” (so if they believe a gov is inherently tyrannical). like if i started a direct democracy gov and explicitly called it a gov, do you take it down? its taking the opinion of all citizens and allows everyone equal power. is that corrupt just bc its ALSO a gov, or does it get to stay? where is the line? idk man maybe give the gov like a free trial. if it starts being corrupt then step in but if they’re vibin they’re vibin. chill w the anarchy /lh /hj JFKDLSJF)

idk man this isnt fully conclusion imo i just wanted to long think abt this. also fuck this block game for getting into legit political theory and ethics and shit. “is someone valid in doing something for another person that they believe will help the other person if it limits their personal freedom” (or, is techno correct in enforcing anarchy bc he believes it is the best form for ppl, EVEN at the cost of their personal freedoms to make a gov) is too deep to be asking for a fuckin block potato pig. this is why i dont do a ton of discourse im just stupid and it starts getting philosophical at some point FDSKLFJ

yall can respond w your own thoughts to this if you want, even debate it!, but idk if ill respond bc uhhhh Brain Empty fdjsklfj i just wanted to ramble and sort out my own thoughts on the matter now that im not uber pissed at c!techno JFKDLSJFKL

#dream smp #mcyt #techno #its not really critical??? but like you Could take it that way #i try to be more neutral #or like. less anti-techno bc i know the day of the stream i was PISSED fjdsklfj #idk man this block game conflicts start coming down to real ass philosophical debates and i op out #'was techno valid in destroying lmanberg?' no bc i liked it :(( THERE discourse ended im right /lh #og post #(jeb bush voice) please clap

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prorevenge · 4 years

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A stranger scammed me out of $300 online. I tracked him down, called his dad's work phone, and got my money back.

Long post, TL;DR below. Early last year I was deep in depression, spending the Spring in my room (I work in a seasonal industry which pays just enough to live on during the off months.)

All I did was play video games all day which led to me getting into game marketplace sites and planning on starting a side hustle selling in game items and accounts in MMos. I was brand new to the "industry" and didn't have contacts to learn from, so I just went for it and posted my first listing. I got a few hits back early and found an interested "buyer" (I'll refer to him later as C) who told me he was ready to purchase.

The way these transactions are supposed to go is this: A reputable middleman (There were several known MM in the community that I joined) takes in the product and the payment, verifies both, then distributes both ways after taking a cut for their services. This circumvents the "you first" prolem where you have to trust solely in the other guy to not scam you. -Well.. They impersonated a middleman well enough to fool me. I admit that it was 100% on me, I didn't know what I was doing. I just wanted to start selling so bad and I was glad to see quick hits on my first listing.

So, the "middleman" (To this day I don't know if there was a 3rd person acting as middleman or if it was C all along) takes the buyer's money, then the product which was a high ranked account in a popular competitve game. Suddenly, the MM says there was a problem with the payment and it needs to be redone.

At this point I know game's over and I just got scammed, but I went along with it as a sad parting gift to my first "sale." I message C and asked him how this was going to go. He told me he'll just direct paypal me the $300 now and apologized, which didn't make sense to me (you already scammed me, why haven't you blocked me yet?) I gave him my paypal email.

Conversation goes like this: C- "Sent." Me- "repeats my email same email correct?" C- "F%@& I sent it to the wrong email. I'll call paypal." Me- 3 minutes later "Are you going to send me $300 or no?" C- "I only had $450 in my paypal account, they should be able to refund me over the phone." Me- 5 minutes later "Okay. Progress?" C- "On the phone with them." Me 10 minutes of silence later- ":D" Then he goes offline. I call the MM several times but he's standoffish and won't pick up saying "something something privacy.. you arent giving me a reason to pick up the call." It's clear he's not being real with me.

I don't know what to do at this point as I've never encountered a sudden loss of hard work like that. I'm not a drinker at all but that night when faced with that emptiness while trying to get out of depression, I hit the bottle hard.

The next day I woke up naked on my bathroom floor in the pitch black and sheepishly checked my PC to see if it really happened. Without any hope at all I started googling this kid's two usernames that I knew of. I scanned the internet for every site that had an account with the same username that he used, but only found more scam reports (yep, I wasn't his first victim.) So I gave up.

A week later I came back and did it all over again, but this time I thought to check his discord profile to see if he had any other profiles linked to it (steam, twitch, etc.) and the genius did. I checked his steam profile and wrote down each of his past usernames that looked unique and wouldn't pull a million results.

After hours of scanning each one, I had his name, age (teenager,) city, email, skype, knew he went to chess tournaments as a kid, liked neopets, and found a youtube channel with his class project videos on it. It still wasn't enough though. All the information got me was another two contact methods, and I didn't want to start harassing him.

He ghosted me and emailing him wasn't going to change that. If I was going to get my money back, I needed to contact his parents and I knew this all along. In a last ditch effort I googled his emails again, found his google+ profile, and saw that he had a public photo library (which was discontinued by google very shortly after all this happened.) It had 1 picture. A perfect view of his house, from the street. Street number in view. After some searching without finding much I clicked "More info" on the picture and the the geo-tagged coordinates attatched to the picture appeared.

So now I have the address which I google along with the last name, which leads to me getting the first & last names of both parents. I pop that into trusty whitepages and have everything I need to spring my plan into action. While all this was going on I was updating my friend who lives in the same area as C. He asked if I wanted him to call since he had the same area code. It lined up perfectly so I agreed.

At this point I realize it's March 30th, just two days before April fools and C could probably play this off as some elaborate joke played by his friends so I call my friend off. It was so hard to wait, but we did and we waited long enough that it couldn't be looked at as a joke at all.

Two weeks later in a discord call I give my friend the green light and he calls phone #1. The cell. After a little ringing it cuts to voicemail and we decide to try phone #2, the work phone. This time the phone rang for significantly longer but also cut to voicemail and the message before the beep confirmed we had the right dad. My friend leaves a message saying "Hello Mr. ______, this is _ ______ with (marketplace name's) collection department. We currently have multiple fradulent activity cases open with your son C, totalling x thousands of dollars (I added up all the reports against him which were posted on the site and it totalled thousands, even talked to a couple people who he targeted.) At the moment we're reviewing the most recent case which involved a $300 transaction. If you could please, get back to us between 9am-10pm to resolve these cases. Thank you" All that was paraprased but that was his message.

He was very professional and seemed legit, and even though the dad might listen to it and ignore it we didn't think that was going to happen. It's worth noting that they live in a nice area of a nice state, so there was less of a chance that this would be a financial burden and the parents would likely just want to clear this up.

Two days later, while playing video games (yeah I had a problem.) I get a contact request notification. MY BOY C!

He tells me that he's a good person and he wants to give the account back. I check it and he played 10 games and lost each one which deranked and devalued the account (at this point I pretty much knew his parents were standing over his shoulder watching everything that was said. I could've even been speaking to them directly.) So I told him the account devalued, and I either want what he stole from me (the account at a higher rank) or I want $300. He told me he'll give me the account AND $300 (Parents coming through in the clutch!)

We went through a lot of hoops, trying paypal which he couldn't get to work, a few others and finally got google pay to work after troubleshooting stupid problems which I attriubted to him stalling. It was clear that they were scared of me since I got their info (and regularly called him by his first name throughout the convo as a power move lol) but I assured them I wasn't a bad person and told them to be extra safe of what you upload, especially if you're trying to scam people because when money is involved bad things can happen (playing into his parents who were surely reading it.) I explained the public Google+ upload of their clear to see geo-tagged house which I'm sure his they weren't happy about.

After he sent the money he asked for confirmation that I received it. I confirmed saying "YOU F** DID IT! SO PROUD OF YOU, C!" and he immediately went offline. I danced up and down the hallway and it was probably embarrasingly bad but I didn't care. I don't think the smile was gone from my face for an hour. It was a month long process and with the help of my friend the money was back. I haven't seen my friend in person since then, but when I do I owe him a top notch steak. He refused when I sent him $ online.

Instead of trying to resell the account and start back up in the marketplace I abandoned it all and went another way. I'm currently training for the military and in a much better place, but still have a long way to go.

A lot was left out of this story but it was a long one. I have screenshots of our conversations and I surely won't ever forget it.

TL;DR - I tried selling a video game account to see if I could make a new side hustle and got scammed since I was dumb, inexperienced and decided to trust the internet. I got scammed and took it hard but the scammer left too much of his info public and after a little bit of elbow grease I was able to obtain his & his parent's info and left his dad a voicemail. Two days later the scammer contacted me and gave me the money and the account back, apologizing. I learned from it.

(source) story by (/u/dstrezzd)

#prorevenge #by /u/dstrezzd #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

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la5t-res0rt · 4 years

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this was written several weeks ago in response to asks i was receiving i am posting it now it is very long the longest i have ever made and it is not very well edited but here it is in this final essay i talk about how shitty rae is about black people in her writing as well as just me talking about how her writing sucks in general lets begin

hello everyone

as you may know i have received a lot of anons in the last week or so about issues of racism in the beetlejuice community both just generally speaking and also within specific spaces

i was very frustrated to not be getting the answers i wanted because i typically do not talk about what i do not see but in an effort to be better about discourse i went looking through discourse from before my time in the fandom and i also received some receipts and information from my followers and from some friends

keep in mind that the voices and thoughts of bipoc are not only incredibly important at all times but in this circumstance it is important that if a bipoc has something to add you listen and learn and be better

i admit that when this happened i wasnt aware of the extent of what occurred and im angry at myself for not doing more at that time and i want to work harder to make sure something like this doesnt go unnoticed again

im a hesitant to talk about months old discourse because i have been criticized for bringing up quote old new unquote but this is very important and i am willing to face whatever comes from to me

lets talk about this

content from our local racist idiot that may be months old but its important

putting my thoughts under a cut to spare the dash but before i begin obviously this is awful

lets fucking unpack this folks

right out the gate op states that she supports artistic freedom but then within a couple words she goes against that statement

being entirely canon compliant isnt artistic freedom and even so if this person has so much respect for canon they wouldnt be out here erasing lydias obvious disgust for beetlejuice in the movie or ignoring lydias age for the sake of shipping that shit isnt canon either

also we love the quick jab at the musical there hilarious we love it dont we because god forbid a licensed and successful branch on a media have any standing in this conversation but whatever

now lets scroll down and talk about the term racebending

the term racebending was coined around 2009 in response to the avatar the last airbender movie a film in which the east asian races of the characters were erased by casting white actors in the three leading roles of aang sokka and katara

whenever the term racebending is used in a negative light it is almost always a case of whitewashing like casting scarlett johansen in ghost in the shell or the casting of white actors of the prince of persia sands of time instead of iranian ones

this kind of racebending erases minorities from beeing seen in media and is wrong

all that being said however racebending has also been noted to have very positive after effects like the 1997 adaptation of cinderella or casting samuel jackson as nick fury in the marvel movies nick fury was originally a white guy can you even imagine

i read this piece from an academic that said quote writers can change the race and cultural specificity of central characters or pull a secondary character of color from the margins transforming them into the central protagonist unquote

racebending like the kind that rae is so heated about is the kind of creative freedom that leads to more representation of bipoc in media which will never be a bad thing ever no matter how pissy you get about it

designing a version of a character as a poc isnt serving to make them necessarily better it serves to give new perspective and perhaps the opportunity to connect even more deeply with a character it doesnt marginalize or erase white people it can uplift poc and if you think uplifting poc is wrong because it tears down white people or whatever youre a fucking moron and you need to get out of your podunk white folk town and see the real world

the numbers of times a bipoc particularly a bipoc that is also lgbt+ has been represented in media are dwarfed by what i as a white dude have seen myself represented in media is and that isnt okay that isnt equality and its something that should change not only in mainstream media but in fandom spaces as well

lets move down a bit further to the part about bullying straight people which is hilarious and lets also talk about the term fetishistic as well lets start with that

this person literally writes explicit pornography of a minor and an adult are we really going to let someone like that dictate what is and what isnt fetishistic

similarly to doing a positive racebend situation people may project lgbt+ headcanons on a character because its part of who they are and it helps them feel closer to the character and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that

depicting lgbt+ subject matter on existing characters isnt an inherently fetishistic action generally things only really become fetishistic when the media is being crafted and hyped by people who are outside of lgbt+ community for example how young teens used to flip a tit about yaoi or how chasers fetishize trans people

but drawing a character with top surgery scars or headcanoning them as trans is harmless and its just another way to interpret a character literally anone could be trans unless if their character bio says theyre cis and most of them dont go that deep so it really is open to interpretation and on the whole most creators encourage this sort of exploration because it is a good thing to get healthy representation out in the world

as for it being used to bully straights thats just funny i dont have anything else on that like if youre straight and you feel threatened and bullied because of someone headcanoning someone as anything that isnt cishet youre a fucking idiot and a weak baby idiot at that like the real world must fucking suck for you because lgbt+ people are everywhere and statistically a big chunk of your favorite characters arent cishet sorry be mad about it

lets roll down a bit further about the big meat of the issue which was when several artists were drawing interpretations of lydia as a black girl which i loved but clearly this person didnt love it because they have a very narrow and very racist and problematic view of what it means to be a black person

and before i move forward i must reiderate that i am a white person and you should listen to the thoughts of poc people like @fright-of-their-lives or @gender-chaotic it is not my place to explain what the black experience is like and it certainly isnt this persons either

implying that the story of a black person isnt worth telling unless if the character faces struggles like racism and prejudice is downright moronic

why use the word kissable to describe a black persons lips now thats what i call fetishistic and its to another extreme if youre talking about a black version of lydia on top of that

the author of this post says herself that shes white so clearly shes the person whos an authority on the black experience and what it means to be a black person right am i reading that right or am i having a fucking conniption

how about allowing black characters to exist without having to struggle why cant a black version of lydia just be a goth teenager with a ghost problem who likes photography and is also black like she doesnt have to move to a hick town and get abused by racist folks she doesnt have to go through any more shit than she already goes through and if you honestly think thats the only way to tell a black persons story you need to get your brain cleaned

you know nothing about the complexities about being a black person and i dont either but you know wh odo black people who are doing black versions of canon characters they fucking know

lets squiggle down just a bit further

so the writer has issues with giving characters traits like a broad nose or larger lips if theyre a woman but if theyre a man suddenly its totally okay to go all ryan murphy ahs coven papa legba appropriation when approaching character design like are you fucking stupid do you hear yourself is that really how you see black men like what the fuck is wrong with you

none of the shit youre spewing takes bravery it takes ignorance and supreme levels of stupidity

do you really think you with your fic where a black lgbt+ woman is tortured and abused where you use the n word with a hard r to refer to her like that shits not okay its fucking depraved and yeah we know you love being shitty but like christ on a bike thats so much

can we also talk about this

what the fuck is this fetishistic bull roar garbage calling this black character beyonce dressing her up in quote fuck me heels unquote are you are you seriously gonna write this and say its a shining example of how to write a black character youre basically saying ope here she is shes a sex icon haha im so progressive and i clealry understand the black experience hahahaha fuck you oh my god

on top of that theres a point where this character is only referred to as curly hair or the fact that the n word is used in the fic with the hard r like thats hands down not okay for you to use especially not in a manner like this jesus christ

oop heres a little more a sampling for you of the hell i am enduring in reading this drivel

oh boy lets put a leash on the angry black woman character lets put her in a leash and have the man imply hes a master like are you kidding me are you for real and what the fuck is with calling her shit like j lo and beyonce do you actually think thats clever at all are you just thinking of any poc that comes into your head for this

also lydia fucking tells this girl that she shouldnt have lost her temper like she got fucking leashed im so tired why is this writing so problematic and also so bad

hold up before i lose my head lets look at some of her own comments on the matter of this character and what happens to her

hi hello youre just casually tossing the word lynch out there in the wide open world as if thats not a problem that is still real like are you fucking unhinged there have been multiple cases of this exact thing happening in our firepit of a country in the last five months alone like how can you still have shit like this up for people to read how can you be proud of work like this in this climate

and also what the fuck is that last bit

what the actual fuck

i dont speak for black people as a white person but you do!? im sorry i had to get my punctuation out for that because wow thats fucking asinine just because one black person read your fic and didnt find the torture and abuse of your one black character abhorrant doesnt mean that the vast majority of people not only in the fandom but in the human population with decency are going to think its okay because its not

i started this post hoping to be level headed and professional but jesus fucking christ this woman is something else white nationalism is alive and well folks and its name is rae

if you defend this woman you defend some truly abhorrant raecism

editors notes

in order to get some perspective on these issues more fully some of the writing by the author was examined and on the whole it was pretty unreadable but i want to just call back to the very beginning of this essay where the person in question talked about holding canon in high regard but then in their writing they just go around giving people magic and shit and ignoring the end of the movie entirely like are you canon compliant or nah

the writing doesnt even read like beetlejuice fanfic it reads as self indulgent fiction you could easily change the names and its just a bad fanfic from 2007

also can we talk about writing the lesbian character as an angry man hater like its 2020 dude and als olets touch on that girl on girl pandering while beetlejuice is just there like here we go fetishizing again wee

i cant find a way to work this into this already massive post but

im going to throw up

okay so thats a lot we have covered a lot today and im sure my ask box will regret it but this definitely should have been more picked apart when it happened

please feel free to add more to this i would love more perspectives than just my own.

#long post #racism #raecism #im so tired #thanks for reading

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rivertalesien · 3 years

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This has been a massively hysterical experience, but its also a good little look at how certain Men (and their Protectors) think a simple comment is somehow an attack on Them.

It looks like this:

https://rivertalesien.tumblr.com/post/655991360401408000/lmfao-i-guess-dudes-into-anime-tiddies-arent

Lesbian points out something obvious in a post (how dare she)?

OP doesn’t like it. Or maybe it was just the hashtags. Because lived experience is nowhere anyone should come from when making a comment.

These types especially don’t like it when you give them a once over and find it funny (this is a post the OP had RBd and, along with many other posts, kind of confirmed a quick question I had).

Their buddies tend to come to their rescue. Because you can’t just ignore something, you have to make it a reason to spread hate and harassment.

Against women.

Charmers.

Based upon one response to one post, easily ignored, these folks got their metaphorical panties wound up and decided it simply could not be that a woman could come into their pal’s space and disrespect him (never mind his post wound up on my TL).

They had to invent an entire character for me in order to justify their interactions. A character that suits their narrative purposes (”You have some issues and weird prejudices if you seriously think men wouldn’t call themselves a doormat”).

This isn’t everything I’ve received over daring to make a harmless suggestion in OP’s post. My gf is still deleting all the MRAs who decided to take up the Cause.

These folks are definitely not...doormats. Maybe closer to super-aggressive misogynists?

After all, OP in particular admired a post where he interpreted a male narrator as putting a woman “in her place” on a plane. Turning that around to suggest it might have been a woman standing up to another woman really fucks up that whole fantasy, doesn’t it?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But nah, no one would invent a character out of a stranger’s post to suit their narrative purpose.

Oh, here’s a fun bit if you try to look up the original AITA:

This post has caused PROBLEMS.

Or, I don’t know, maybe just the people interacting with it.

Either way, unless someone has the full screenshot, no way of knowing who the AITA narrator really was.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And then there is this:

Maybe instead of “hatefollowing” some people you know are POS, stand up to them. Too many people who could refuse to put any skin in the game of fighting against bullies of every sort and this is where we are.

Oh, and this was in the same time frame. Random, I’m sure.

Good thing someone decided we can’t trace IPs because this might be embarrassing to someone.

If we share a post, we’re likely sharing it with the people who follow us. How often do we stop to consider who they share it with? Do we need to? Is someone else’s opinion (about something in this case, the OP didn’t even come up with) worth all the effort of sending a small army of harassers against? Just to prove...what, exactly?

That you’re not an asshole?

#july 6 2021 #ps to any terfs out there:#this post isn't for you either #not all men but #when you're just body parts to some people #kind of says something I think #maybe?#misogny #online harassment #cyberbullying #homophobia

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eurydice-thefool · 4 years

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mental illness thoughts under the cut. don’t worry about me i’m safe just thinking a lot.

haha what if i once believed I was worthy of love? lmao jk jk... it would be nice though. i want. to have friends. to fall in love. to have people to fight for. i just don’t think im worth fighting for.

i dont want to push myself o n people. i dont want to be annoying. i think an outright rejection is SO SO much preferable than being... pandered to. tolerated. i dont want to be talked about behind my back with pity.

but at the same time i dont. deserve that. im gross-looking and i space out at all the wrong times– GOD i space out at the wrong times. i freeze and space out and im. i fail people. i dont pay attention or remember important things about them and then fuck up conversations. i want to be a good friend in theory and then i??? i dont know!! am i scared? am i lazy?? am i so afraid of rejection that i decided its not worth it to put in the effort? cause thats what happens w projects so???

hhhh i thought i was getting better. i thought i was getting more confident. thought i was going to be able to push through my anxiety and get projects done. so that when im back in school i dont freeze in panic until the last fucking minute and end up writing papers til 5am. so that i can actually pursue a career im passionate about. so that people who see potential in me arent disappointed. but i fucking froze on something for myself. something that i was gonna make quickly and post to make people laugh. and i got scared and overwhelmed even though i knew what to do. did i freeze up cause it was a lot of work? did my doubt and fear come first or did i decide i didnt want to do it and found excuses?

do i.

do i have depression? met with a psychiatrist who asked and i. didnt really know what to answer. cause she just said it was, like. feeling like i shouldnt be here. wanting to not be here. feeling like im not worth it. and then feeling suicidal. i’ve definitely felt like im not worth the space i take up. but im not... suicidal. im too selfish for that. too stubbornly hopeful. i like being alive. i like seeing people’s art and stories. i like living on a planet full of animals that want to be scratched and held while i have hands that are perfect for that. i like music. i like dandelions and how they re bright and happy and loud and obnoxious and stubbornly happily pridefully alive. i like being alive on this planet, even with shitty people. because theres still good things worth living for.

i just. feel like i dont measure up to that. like im just. here. taking up space. not giving as much as i’m taking. i never do. and if i try i’ll fail and people will have to take care of me.

am i right with the diagnosis of adhd and anxiety? or is there something else wrong with me? what if im wrong? im so scared to ask. cause its how im feeling but theres stuff that im told should work for adhd/anxiety and its not. fixing me. and i know it wont make me neurotypical and it shouldnt have to but. i cant meet my own expectations. and i know im failing people around me. i’ve already increased anxiety meds recently and i’ve started adhd meds that get me moving but

but am. am i wrong about adhd? i know im not normal but am i something else? cause my friend w adhd feels calm on aderall, it lets him focus. but my therapist said it was normal for me to feel energized so?? and then my new psychiatrist said she didnt like how energized i was on aderall so she wanted me to try a different med that s supposed to actually calm me down but its not doing anything that i can see.

and hhhhh i did a horrible job of explaining to my new therapist what i needed and i dont. i dont know if i gave her the wrong impression ?? or if she sees something i dont? cause i dont want her to be misinformed but when i called her i was Not in a good headspace to talk but i pushed myself to do it anyway and i kept freezing and blanking on what to say and whats important and she’d ask for like ‘why do you think you have this’ and i couldnt think of any of the symptoms i know i live with on a fucking daily basis and i . i dont know. i dont know if i screwed up or if i m just getting worse and she needed to see that or.

i want to cry and ask for help but at the same time i dont want to be a burden. i want to be a functioning person. i want to be a friend. and i dont..

im ok with being proven wrong. im ok with a different diagnosis. but i dont want people to think i was making excuses for lazy and selfish and shitty behavior. i dont want people thinking im faking it for special treatment. i dont want to be that asshole. but i... dont know how to get better

i can do thought exercizes til i fucking drop but whats that gonna change once i’m out of the therapist’s office? whats that gonna do when i’m having a bad day and forget to do things to help myself and ghost my best friend while he feels like shit? what do i do when i feel so fucking much that i cant move and my friend thinks i dont want him anymore.

hh i. need to. ask my therapist about this. but im... i dont know. afraid of putting in the effort. of change. of insinuating that she hasnt been doing her job right when i’ve failed to give her enough to work with.

cause i. im comforted when i talk to her and she validates that i have problems. that yes this isnt just in my head. that other people feel like this. and i dont have to feel like this. and then im so caught up in that euphoria of being understood that i forget to ask how the FUCK to make plans to change and actually follow through with them.

i cant even follow through on a diet . i wanted to lose weight this summer. but i cant keep the numbers down. cant go fast enough. cant keep an exercise routine cant even brush my teeth every day. i say i want to be strong and practice shit and learn a language and have a career and get a summer job and i just. give up. i forget. i get overwhelmed. i get lazy. i get scared. i feel inadequate for doing all those things and then feel too much shame to continue bettering myself, like because i slipped up right at the beginning i was a fake, and i was just like that asshole who thinks he can be a director and then drops out when he learns he has to do work. just like that youtuber who begs for pity and then treats other people like shit and flakes on all her plans because sitting back is easier. that if i start to give up after being excited about something then i wasn’t worthy of it. im a fake fan for starting a game and never finishing. for stopping a podcast right before it ends because im overwhelmed by the idea of a finale. for stopping japanese on duolingo because i hate flashcards. for stopping trying to learn shorthand because i got confused about one thing that i felt like should be obvious. for saying i’d write about my apprentices and then being too scared to type. for crying because i have adhd and get distracted and promise to pay more attention to my friend and then. not doing that. just staying the same and expecting him to get over being ghosted over and over. at least he finally got the hint that it was my fault and not his...

i wish i could love myself. i wish i could earn that. i wish i could trust people when they say they like me. i wish i could love and be loved. i wish i could just... live.

cause i value that so so so much. stories about not needing a destiny. adora realizing she’s worth living for and that loving her is not a bad choice for other people, Catra telling Adora that she loves her and Adora believing it. Hodaka telling Hina that he wants her more than any blue sky that the gods could grant them in trade for her and Hina believing him. Eiji and Patema recognizing that even though they experience the world in very different ways that they can still understand and hold each other, that they’re both valid and real and important. Agent Carolina learning to trust again and to value herself outside a leaderboard. Muriel growing to realize that his choices matter and that he isn’t defined by his past. Portia starting to value herself as a main character and not just a fly on the wall or a little sister to be rescued. cause i guess its. easier to believe that other people matter than it is that i matter.

and i knew that was a thing i felt when it comes to body image, i see portia and i think she’s beautiful and i see rose quartz and i think she’s beautiful and i look at real fat girls and think they’re beautiful and then i look at myself and i. doubt that im loveable. that these people are but im just a failure.

and like. i say these things. i say i want these beautiful things and i feel these beautiful things but. i feel like i rot everything i touch. or drop it and break it. or leave it to rust. and i even doubt feeling bad about letting people down because what if i only feel bad because it reflects bad on me? what if im a selfish prick? i dont want to make people feel like they’re not worth my time cause it fucking hurts and i dont want them to hurt. or maybe i just want to be liked. i dont fucking know. i dont know.

#posting here because... i dont know.#hoping for validation maybe. but not wanting to bother irl friends with it and have them worry over nothing #im not giving up or quitting or leaving or anything it just. hurts sometimes. and i want to put it into words #cause if i put it into words i have some power over it.... right?#anyway dont feel bad for scrolling past live ur life

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happymetalgirl · 4 years

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Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin Kynsi

Along with the entirety of fellow metal experimentalists Dark Buddha Rising, Oranssi Pazuzu in their entirety as well contributed to one of my favorite records of last year under the shared moniker of Waste of Space Orchestra. Their album, Syntheosis, was a hypnotic, surreal levitation through synth-heavy metallic psychedelia that Oranssi Pazuzu had been working more and more into their sound, which was at a height on their 2016 effort, Värähtelijä. After the release of its successor here though, not only the synthesizer boldness on Värähtelijä, but the band’s entire sound and artistic advancement as well pale in comparison to what they’ve done with Mestarin Kynsi.

Oranssi Pazuzu have been about this very sound their entire career, from their already rather impressive 2009 debut, Muukalainen puhuu, to this year’s effort. Even though they started strong, the band have been pushing themselves as best as they can to reinforce their sound, making little improvements from one album to the next throughout the past decade, in what has seemed like painstakingly slow, mild progress along a relatively high plateau, until now.

Mestarin Kynsi goes all in on the synths even more than two band’s worth of synthesizers did on last year’s Syntheosis did, but it’s not about simply upping a single element of Oranssi Pazuzu’s sound, but rather how the band uses that to truly evolve their sound beyond just being more synthy. The band’s fifth full-length is all about taking their captivatingly psychedelic black metal’s tangible, yet other-worldly horror to a whole new level for them and for black metal. The band manages to find this sweet spot of ideal balance between integrating so many synthetic elements and mutating traditional black metal elements while never losing that vital metallic realness and intensity in their music. No matter how many special effects the band brings in, the undivided focus is on the substantive mastery with which the band wields their massive sonic arsenal.

While most of the spook and psychedelia comes from the incredible creativity with which the synths are weaved into the dynamic metallic backdrop, the foundation that the band’s brilliance with manipulating those traditional metallic elements into a monstrous vehicle for the synths to amplify the various cerebral aspects of their music should not be left unpraised. While the instrumental pieces are rarely ever super flashy in isolation, the way they all work together in such harmony in a way that feels as though they arent even coming from a band with individual members but rather a superconsciousness where all the artists share and channel their creative energy through a single mind truly transcends the tightness of the vast majority of bands, who are often just incapable of entirely preventing everyone’s ego from leaking out just a little. With Oranssi Pazuzu in this album, it’s, again, like it’s all one mind and the only ego is the music itself. Before I get further into the kind of subjective abstraction this album seems to love encouraging me to dive headfirst into, I’ll get into the general technical aspects of it all.

First of all, the mixing of all the ingredients going into this album, for all sheer size of the sound being captured here, is a freaking feat of excellence and whoever mixed this thing deserves to take a bow. It’s not all crisp and clear the whole way through like some polished up techdeath record, but every phase in and out of the forefront and background of the mix is timely and constructive to the continuously sprawling movements of the compositions across the album. The drums really act as the album’s heartbeat in a way that few album’s drum sections can truly be described, pumping faster through the panic-inducing moments and maintaining a steady hypercardia through the calmer, yet still unsafe moments in the album. The guitars and bass provide the foundational aspects of the reasoning behind whatever is raising the album’s blood pressure, tastefully distorted and even maxed the hell out when the moment calls for it, and deceptively entrancing in their dark serenity of their hypnotically soothing dissonance when the tension needs to be built, never flashy or distracting, always committed to the greater good of the music of the album as a whole rather than any one instrumentalist’s turn for some time in the spotlight. And speaking of the spotlight, the part of the music that is usually prone to hogging it is as selfless and complimentary on this album as the rest of the band. The demonically liturgical, gravelly snarled vocals aren’t really flashy by any means either, but that’s not to say that the haunting hypnosis of the vocals is without character. Indeed, the vocals may be not be shooting for technical pizazz, but vocalist Jun-His really is playing a voice on the album and not just vocals behind a microphone. The vocal performances across the album (including all the effects used to enhance and accent then) really work beyond just the musical and extend into the theatrical, the voice of the album really coming from an otherworldly being all its own when the album is on.

Like I said, Oranssi Pazuzu has been melting and remolding black metal to do their bidding for over a decade, and the band continues to reform the genre much in ways that bands like Neurosis so vividly warps sludge and post-metal into something all their own and how Swans’ most recent incarnations have stretched out and apocalyptified the basic elements of rock music to a possibly maximal extreme. I mention that because I really am reminded so heavily of the genius of Swans and Neurosis with the way Oranssi Pazuzu approaches black metal in such an unrecognizable, yet unmistakable way on Mestarin Kynsi.

The creepy synth motif that traces through the eerie psychedelic guitars of the opening track, “Ilmestys” are brilliant and immediately mood-setting alone, but the freakish accents that also run through the song just heighten the tension even more, making the burst into the warped, but awe-inspiring metallic crescendo near the song’s end such a fulfilling payoff. It’s a tactfully tempered, brilliantly accented, and expertly strategically arranged, cinematic opening to an album that subsequently continues to build on that cinematic grandiosity set up by its opening track in a further display of specialty mastery by its progenating artists.

Taking a slightly more patient approach in the aftermath of the opener, the second track, “Tyhjyyden sakramentti” is a bit more of a gradual build through several sections of gradually thickening metallic psychedelia that takes all sorts of twists and turns through spooky and trippy swirls of forcefully mesmerizing guitar noise. The band integrates all sorts of effects on the guitars with great intuition on how to . The song eventually reaches a simple, straightforward guitar riff for a few seconds, which is very soon sucked into a synthy reverberation that sounds like it takes a quick breath of fresh, sober reality and immediately plunges it back into the synesthetic nightmare of shimmering, yet discomforting ambiance the song has so expertly conjured up.

The longest song on the album, “Uusi teknokratia”, winds its way through these fuzzed and hazed out Sabbathian riffs and super creepy hyperventilating (yet uncannily calm) vocal hums and haunting echoes of black metal screams. Similarly hypertension-inducing, dark-night, full-moon ritualistic guitar atmospherics of a wide variety of speeds, timbres join in in cementing the frightful visions that the song is conjuring. The plinky synths and anxiety-inducing uncanny calmness of the soft vocals really give this song such an immersive sense of under-the-surface panic and uneasiness during the buildup to the thicker body portions of the composition, which make great use of the tension that’s built up, both giving the release of that tension a fitting of the type of horror that the tension foreshadows and bringing the energy back down in a manner that allows the tension to build up again for another gratifying payoff rather than being completely expended, including the dark ambient drone that rounds out the track to set up the unease for the next one.

It’s a foreboding string motif, eventually treated with some warped/slowed-record pitch distortion, that opens the album’s fourth track, “Oikiamielisten sali”. After this arguably over-extended intro, the song then bursts through with these bright synth lines and electronically fuzzy guitar lines that eventually ramp up to yet another level of entrancing, distorted guitar ether that manage to encapsulate a feeling of out-of-body dread amid some disorienting other-worldly storm, which is even more terrifyingly transcendent in its lengthy, multi-phased climactic finish that more than makes up for the length of the intro it took to get there. The ethereal first half of the climax and the pulsing pounding of the drums underneath the instruments’ power-down/fade-out on the second half are just so godly, and they lead seamlessly into the darkest moment of the album.

“Kuulen ääniä maan alta” kicks off with a low-register electronic drone over a driving mid-paced beat and some twisted horn samples that immediately turn the fearfully heavenly mood from the preceding track sour (in a great way). Far more fierce and menacing than anything else on the track list, “Kuulen ääniä maan alta” takes an entirely unique approach to the concept of heaviness, guitar distortion and crashing drums being merely a portion of the grand orchestra of haunting sounds on display.

The album ends with a real boom with the song “Taivan Portii”, which instantly kicks off with a flurry of distorted guitars, warped and spirit-summoning synths, and driving blasts of drumming that all mount into this huge, gargantuan wave of sound that just swirls around and back and forth in a final expulsion of unhidden, unrestrained psychedelic black metal power, like a coercive malevolent deity that has finally revealed its true form and power and whose breath-stealing display prompts only simple terrified admiration in helpless, accepted anticipation of its exercise.

This album is so immersive in the disfigured world it brings to life, so accomplished in the style the band have been honing from the beginning of their career, and so impressively composed and well-directed, it’s honestly hard to stop talking about and hard to avoid in exchange for listening to something else, it’s like I’ve been hypnotized into repeatedly returning to its best inhuman seance. Or maybe I’m just addicted to a fucking great album. It is a truly singular display of a band creating something so much bigger than themselves on a sonic level. I don’t understand a word on it, but I can’t get over this album, and I can’t imagine how much more I would have to pour into this review if I were to try to find and translate the lyrics. But either way, this thing is an artistic monolith and a real declaration of the band’s importance. I’ve been listening to it over and over again, thinking admittedly way more than I really should about how to score this thing, and every time I listen to it and analyze for flaws I just end up loving it more for new reasons as it unfolds and unfolds over and over. You could argue that the length of the intro to “Oikiamielisten sali” is an imperfection, but I’m not going to fixate on a lengthy spacy intro on a psychedelic album as a flaw like a slightly long nose hair on a beautiful woman. To me, I can justify calling this thing imperfect, barely, but it’s not worth it. I believe in love. To me, Mestarin Kynsi is a...

10/10

#Oranssi Pazuzu #Mestarin Kynsi #metal #heavy metal #black metal #progressive black metal #psychedelic black metal #experimental metal #avant garde metal #experimental black metal #avant garde black metal #psychedelic rock #experimental rock #new music #new album #album review #great album

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keelywolfe · 5 years

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Fic: Hearts and Hopes

Summary: It's been a long week and Edge is tired. His husband still has a trick up his sleeve but that's okay, he keeps his heart on his sleeve, too. It's a fair trade.

Notes: If you thought to yourself that I couldn’t possibly get more fluffy with this, brace yourself.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Established relationship, Fluff, hurt/comfort

part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

Read it on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

The monitor screen was starting to blur in his vision and Edge rubbed at his sockets irritably, trying to focus. It was late enough in the day for it to be close to pointless and the stacks of folders at his elbow were a clear sign that he hadn’t gotten nearly enough done over the course of the day. Janice was sorely missed and as much as he wanted her to take her time recovering, he’d be relieved when she finally came back. Working without her was like trying to type with a hand tied behind his back, doable but slow going.

Edge sighed tiredly. He was being unreasonably annoyed with himself and he knew it. Along with missing his assistant, he hadn’t slept well, nightmares lurking in the corners of his sleep. Those dreams always came back when he was stressed. He hated that particular weakness, didn’t allow his nightmares to follow him into his waking hours but still, his sleep was interrupted, and it left him drained.

It was endlessly irritating that his subconscious mind refused to leave the past in the past. Underfell no longer had a hold on his daytime life, when would it leave his nights in peace? The probable answer to that was not one he particularly liked.

A knock on his door made him jerk and Edge swore under his breath. It was nearly time for him to go home, he wasn’t in the mood to deal with anyone else’s problems today and without Janice to run interference, he was going to have to put his own diplomacy to the test.

“Come in,” he called, trying to keep his irritation from his voice.

To his surprise, Stretch poked his head in the door, grinning cheekily. “heya handsome, you about done?”

Edge could only sigh in a mixture of fondness and exasperation. Days after Stretch had promised him to be careful coming down here, if he came down here, which he rarely did, of course that would be when he showed up at his door.

“okay, you can stop with the look,” Stretch chided. Not that there was a look, Edge was certain of that, but Stretch could always read him better than anyone. “i shortcutted into the lobby from the bus stop, as per. no one saw me outside. i even called reception before i did so no one would have a shitfit about me coming out of nowhere.”

“Thank you for your caution,” Edge said dryly, masking his relief that Stretch was at least taking him seriously. “Can I ask why you’re here when I would have been home shortly anyway?”

“you can ask and i’ll even answer,” Stretch grinned happily, rocking on his heels, and Edge waited, suspiciously. “i want you to drive me someplace.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Edge gave him a narrow look. “Where am I driving you?”

Stretch’s grin turned sly and he tapped the faint protuberance of his nasal bone, “now, see, that’s where you’ll need to be patient, babe. you’ll see when we get there.”

For one moment, he considered begging off. Whatever game Stretch was playing was surely heartfelt, but he was tired and wasn’t really feeling up to a mysterious road trip. Janice was supposed to be back next week, and even so they’d be days catching up to the backlog of work.

Tempting, but to do so would steal that look of glee from Stretch, his visible delight in whatever it was he had planned. Stretch would accept it if he asked, Edge knew, he wouldn’t complain or protest, and whatever disappointment he felt would be held back, muted into nothing but dimmer eye lights, his normal exuberance only slightly subdued. Nothing that most people would notice.

But Edge would know.

“Let me pull the car up to the sidewalk,” Edge sighed. “You can see it from reception, and you can shortcut to it.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Stretch said agreeably, bouncing on his toes as he waited for Edge to put on his coat.

You make me happy, Edge didn’t say, though he did reel Stretch in for a quick kiss, one that was happily given.

He did hope it wasn’t a long drive.

~~*~~

Stretch really hoped this wasn’t a mistake.

For one, he could tell Edge was tired. That was fucking disturbing as it was, Edge was usually a six-foot energizer bunny, his baby could go and go, and usually did. He wasn’t used to seeing lingering weariness in him, the way his eye lights were dimmer than normal.

Yeah, that and the nightmares he’d been having this week, thanks, if Edge thought he was hiding those, he was ever-fucking-wrong, and maybe he didn’t wake up screaming loud enough to peel the linoleum but even still, he wasn’t sleeping well.

Tempting as it was to play the hypocrite card and point out that he’d gotten dragged to a therapist when his nightmares were bad, eh, even he couldn’t pretend it was quite the same. His own issues had always been a little deeper than just a few bad dreams. Not that Edge probably wouldn’t benefit from a therapist; fuck, between him, Sans, and the Fell brothers, they could probably see about getting a group rate, but it didn’t feel like a battle worth fighting.

Not yet, anyway.

So, after spending a few days wracking his brain, trying to come up with something to do for Edge, he’d finally had an idea. Good idea? Time would tell, but he was hedging enough on it to have Edge following the GPS on his phone without letting him see the final address.

The building they pulled into was unimpressive, only two other cars in the parking lot and there was no sign to betray him.

Edge followed him up the walkway, waiting with silent wariness as Stretch knocked on the unassuming door. They didn’t have to wait long for a young Human woman to answer, smiling warmly even though she’d only met Stretch face to face once before, that very morning. They’d known each other on Twitter for a long time and had a pretty good working relationship, and she’d been eager to help when he asked for this very particular favor.

“Hello,” she said brightly, holding the door open, “Come on in, you’re right on time.”

“deena, this is my husband, edge.” Stretch told her as he toed off his shoes. Edge did the same, slower, though he nodded to her politely, shaking her hand when she offered it.

“It’s good to meet you in person, Edge,” Deena smiled. “Just follow me.”

“What is this?” Edge muttered, low enough to only carry to Stretch. His confusion deepened at the sound that was getting louder as they walked down the hallway, whimpers and whines. At the end was a doorway blocked by a baby gate and behind it were crying balls of fluffy puppy, all of them piled together in front of the gate.

“Get back, you little beasts,” Deena laughed, stepping over the gate. She made her way to the back of the room where there was a table laden with items. “You’ll have to excuse their manners, they’re hungry.”

Stretch followed her and, more reluctantly, Edge. The puppies milled at their feet and Stretch reached down to pick one of the squirmy bundles up.

“this is the hearts of hope animal shelter,” Stretch told his husband, petting the eager puppy in his arms. “i post for them all the time on my twitter for donations and adoptions. someone found these little guys in a box behind a dumpster and they’re fostering them until their old enough to adopt.” Without waiting for any protests, he thrust the puppy into Edge’s hands, waiting only long enough for him reflexively catch it before letting go and snagging up another.

“Rus…” Edge murmured warningly.

“it’s not what you think, i promise. i’m not angling for another pet, the chickens are good.” He grinned, nuzzling into soft fur. “but come on, look!”

The puppies looked like little toasted marshmallows, puffy white overlaid with tan, the leftover little ones tumbling around their feet, whimpering and crying. Deena came back carrying a box of filled bottles, handed one to Edge and Rus before gathering up a puppy of her own.

“Here you go, greedy Gus,” she laughed as the puppy latched on to the nipple instantly, suckling hungrily. “They eat so much at this age.”

Stretch offered the bottle to the puppy in his arms, sinking down to sit on a clean spot on the floor. Another puppy took the opportunity to clamber into his lap, and Stretch laughed, snagging another bottle and trying to feed two at once.

It was worth all the effort, all the worrying and planning, to see Edge shifting to sit next to him, inexpertly handling his own puppy, but soon each one of the floofs had a bottle and were eating with blissful eagerness.

It didn’t take long for them to drain the bottles and that left them with a lapful of sleepy little critters, their tummies round and full.

“There we are, you little troublemakers,” Deena crooned. She gathered up her puppy and sat it fearlessly into Edge’s lap where it curled up with his sibling. Stretch loved her a little for that, but then, she had a lot of experience in dealing with bruised souls, didn’t she? “Hold them for a bit, could you, while I clean up?”

“I…all right,” Edge agreed, a little helplessly, as Deena gathered up the empty bottles and left. He stroked a tentative hand over his puppies, petting gently. One of them kicked a foot, whimpering indistinctly and sighing as Edge scratched behind one tiny ear. Softly, he asked, “What made you think to bring me here?”

Stretch shrugged a little, petting his own sleepy fluffies. “you told me once how loyal the dogs of your Snowdin were. i just thought…you sounded like you maybe you missed them.”

“They were very loyal,” Edge agreed. It did not escape Stretch’s notice that he didn’t say anything about missing them. “But puppies of Aboveground are not the same as Monsters.”

Stretch only shrugged again. No, they weren’t, but Edge didn’t stop petting them, either.

He did slant Stretch a narrow look. “We aren’t taking one home.”

“nope, not even asking,” Stretch agreed, gathering up one of his puppies to nuzzle soft fur. “these are more like…therapy dogs.”

“I don’t—” Edge began and stopped, biting off the words.

“don’t what?” Stretch settled his drowsy puppy back into his lap, trailing his fingers through silky fur. “don’t need therapy? you can say it, i’m not offended.”

A flicker of something like guilt tinted Edge’s expression. “I don’t mean to imply there is anything wrong with needing it.”

“you aren’t,” Stretch said firmly. “now c’mon, these little guys need your help.”

It was deliberate phrasing, and even if Edge knew what he was doing, it tended to work. Edge was hardwired somewhere in a way that made him like helping. Even puppies.

“My help?” Edge said dubiously, but he took the sleeping puppy Stretch handed him, gently adding him to his pile.

“yep. he needs pets and loves.”

There was something indescribably precious about seeing his fierce, proud husband with a lapful of sleeping puppies curled against him. Petting them carefully, heedless of the shed fur clinging to his expensive trousers. No wonder Edge had so many clothes; married to Stretch, he sure as hell went through them. Their drycleaner was going to be able to retire in the tropics.

He couldn’t resist snapping a picture of it, planning on making it the background on his phone. Only to blink in surprise when Edge asked him, hesitantly. “Do you think posting a picture to Twitter would be helpful for adopting them out? My appearance is sometimes…unnerving for Humans.”

Well, that was an unpleasant realization to sneak in amidst all the adorable. Was that really why Edge didn’t like Stretch posting pictures of him online? It was on the tip of his tongue to say it wasn’t true and even if it was, he didn’t give a flying fuck. Edge was fucking gorgeous, sexy as all hell, and he didn’t give a shit what any coldhearted Humans thought about it.

He choked it back. That wasn’t going to help and Edge preferred honesty, even if it was unpleasant. They were using his Twitter and Instagram for propaganda, that was a fact, and Edge did look fierce sometimes to people, no, to fucking idiots who couldn’t look beneath the hard crust to see the marshmallow filling beneath. A picture didn’t give context; Stretch knew his love, knew how tender, how gentle and caring he was.

Stretch took a long, slow breath, and considered his words carefully. “tell you what, i’ll get a few shots that’ll let me post about the puppies online but still protect your privacy, yeah? so people don’t stop you on the street to ask for your autograph. and you can see them first, get veto rights.”

Must not have done too badly, because Edge’s smile was easier, his hesitance falling away, “All right.”

They stayed for a while longer, cuddling the puppies. One of them woke up enough to gnaw on Stretch’s fingers a little too enthusiastically with his needle-sharp little teeth, making him curse and Edge chuckle. It woke the rest of them and soon they went from snoozing balls of fluff to playful, tumbling ones, tugging eagerly on a rope toy as Edge held it or clambering into his lap for more pets and scritches, until they both were laughing, Deena staying tactfully away for the time being.

Not a cure for nightmares, Stretch knew, not an answer to his husband’s troubles, but it was hard to be too miserable when you were covered in puppies.

-finis-

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underswap papyrus #underfell papyrus #by any other name

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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How Do Republicans Feel About The Impeachment

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-do-republicans-feel-about-the-impeachment/

How Do Republicans Feel About The Impeachment

State Republican Parties Blast Members Of Gop Who Voted To Impeach Trump

New Poll Reveals How Americans Feel About Trump Impeachment

State-level Republican parties are blasting GOP members such as Rep. John Katko of New York for voting in favor of impeaching President Trump on Wednesday. Chip Somodevilla/APhide caption

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State-level Republican parties are blasting GOP members such as Rep. John Katko of New York for voting in favor of impeaching President Trump on Wednesday.

Some Republicans who broke from the GOP to back the Democrats’ historic second impeachment resolution for President Trump are facing heat from their local Republican parties for how they voted.

More than a year ago, all House Republicans voted against the president’s first impeachment. On Wednesday, 10 GOP members joined with every Democrat to impeach Trump, some of whom were the sole representative from their state’s delegation to vote that way.

Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, Jaime Herrera Beutler Washington, John Katko of New York, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Peter Meijer of Michigan, Dan Newhouse of Washington, Tom Rice of South Carolina, Fred Upton of Michigan and David Valadao of California voted to impeach.

The choice to split from the party’s majority comes with a risk that those members could face political blowback for their votes and lose support altogether from their state’s Republican Party come the next election.

Cheney, the No. 3 in the House Republican leadership as the GOP conference chair, is getting flak from the Wyoming Republican Party and her congressional colleagues.

Senate Votes To Acquit Trump In Historic Second Impeachment Trial

The Senate voted to acquit former President Donald Trump of inciting the January 6 riot at the Capitol in his second impeachment trial. Seven Republicans joined all Democrats in voting guilty for a majority of 57 votes but Democrats failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to convict.

The Republicans who joined with the Democrats were: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.;

Although he voted to acquit, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a blistering statement calling Mr. Trump practically and morally responsible for the riot, but he felt it was unconstitutional to convict a former office holder. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president, McConnell said.

Mr. Trump issued a statement Saturday afternoon thanking his legal team, as well as the Republicans in the Senate who found him not guilty and GOP House members who voted against the article of impeachment last month. He did not acknowledge the riot in his statement.;

Opinionthe Unfortunate Reason Republicans Like Rand Paul Are Already Attacking Biden

The callousness of lawmakers like Hawley is now a distressing image that stands beside the shouts of rioters calling for the lynching of then-Vice President Mike Pence as testaments to how far the GOP has fallen.

Republicans like Hawley may flee to the gallery when our nation needs leadership, but they wont be able to outrun their complicity in supporting the far-right radicals who raided their workplace. If they arent held accountable by voters at the ballot box, the impeachment trial will forever serve as a testament to their dark role in American history.

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How Long Will The Trial Last

How long the trial will take is not known, but most people believe it will be much shorter than the three-week trial the last time Trump was impeached over his actions over Ukraine, when he was accused of abusing his power and obstructing Congress. The verdict could come after just a couple of days.

It is unclear yet whether the Senate will vote to allow the legal teams to call witnesses in person, although the trial is highly unusual in that the jury are witnesses, as senators were present in the Capitol and were forced into hiding as the mob invaded the very chamber where the trial will be held.

Gop Largely Sides Against Holding Trump Impeachment Trial

WASHINGTON All but five Senate Republicans voted in favor of an effort to dismiss Donald Trumps historic second impeachment trial on Tuesday, making clear a conviction of the former president for incitement of insurrection after the deadly Capitol siege on Jan. 6 is unlikely.

While the Republicans did not succeed in ending the trial before it began, the test vote made clear that Trump still has enormous sway over his party as he becomes the first former president to be tried for impeachment. Many Republicans have criticized Trumps role in the attack before which he told his supporters to fight like hell to overturn his defeat but most of them have rushed to defend him in the trial.

I think this was indicative of where a lot of peoples heads are, said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, after the vote.

Leahy presided over the trials first procedural vote, a 55-45 tally that saw the Senate set aside an objection from Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul that would have declared the impeachment proceedings unconstitutional and dismissed the trial.

Lawyer group: Trump adds ex-prosecutor to impeachment team

Read Also: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

The First Next Step: Trump And The 2022 Elections

Now that the impeachment trial is behind him,;Trump is likely to first test his strength among Republicans in congressional and state elections including divisive primaries.

Trump and his supporters;vowed to back primary challengers against Republicans who supported impeachment, particularly the House Republicans who voted for it.

That target list ranges from Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the House’s third-ranked Republican, to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and;Secretary of State Brad;Raffensperger, both of whom rejected Trump’s demands to reverse the election results.

More:Donald Trump is unhappy with his legal team, allies say, but still confident he’ll be acquitted

Challenging primaries don’t always translate to losses.;

The Trump factor could hurt Republicans in general elections in states and congressional districts that are closely divided among the GOP, Democrats;and independents.

Trump is “still the 800-pound gorilla within the GOP,” pollster Frank Luntz said, “but he has no support outside the party.” Republicans will need those voters to win enough House and Senate races to reclaim Congress.

Republicans who oppose Trump are preparing to campaign for those who believe the party needs to move on from the impeached president.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who voted for impeachment and created a political action committee, told CNN, “I;don’t fear the president at all.”

Here’s What The Gop Believes

Cynicism comes easy in an era of maximal polarization. Different parties embrace different ideologies, agendas, and sometimes even entirely distinct constellations of facts and truths. From inside either closed world, the other one appears shot through with delusion with its leaders blamed for actively encouraging deception for the sake of political gain.

That’s what I’ve accused Republicans of doing in a pair of recent columns. I’ve called them cynics who manipulate voters by intentionally deceiving them with lies and sometimes even by eliding the distinction between truth and falsehood altogether for the sake of winning political advantage. But there is something more than a little cynical about this very accusation itself. Some, like President Trump and his most loyal minions in Congress , may well be comfortable spreading a miasma of epistemological confusion out of political expediency. But that’s not all that’s going on on the Republican side of the debate about impeachment.

There is at least one story that Republicans are telling themselves about impeachment that rises above cynicism. I find it largely unconvincing, but it is not reducible to a clamoring for power at all costs or an indifference to the distinction between truth and lies. Many on the right actually believe it to be true and defensible. And it’s worth making an effort to understand it from the inside, so that we can better understand our fellow citizens.

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Letters To The Editor Sept 26 2021

A group of House Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against President Biden over his handling of the immigration crisis at the southern border and his chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a report.

Rep. Bob Gibbs , who is leading the;effort, said Biden violated his oath of office,;in the three articles he filed on Tuesday.

Yesterday, I filed three articles of impeachment against President Biden based on what I believe to be clear violations of his duties as president, .

He is co-sponsor of the articles along with Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Brian Babin and Randy Weber of Texas.;

His willful negligence of the border crisis is a failure to maintain and defend American sovereignty. Bidens attempts to extend a federal eviction moratorium despite the Supreme Courts warning and his own admission that he has no power to do so is a blatant and intentional action that violates the separation of powers, Gibbs continued.

Gibbs claimed in the articles that Biden released thousands of migrants into the US without ordering them to appear in court for an immigration hearing on a specific date.

Biden also allowed migrants who tested positive for the coronavirus to enter the US, Gibbs said.;He said Biden extended the eviction moratorium despite a ruling by the Supreme Court urging him to get congressional approval first.

Gibbs;filed the articles because he was prompted by Bidens debacle in Afghanistan.

Opinionhere’s The Fastest Easiest Way To Keep Trump From Ever Holding Office Again

Watch: Republicans Demand More Impeachment Witnesses, When Clinton Was On Trial | MSNBC

Wednesdays opening argument exposed a president who gleefully ratcheted up his acid rhetoric to the point of violent insurrection, and a Republican Party mostly unwilling to face the terrible cost of their attempts to undermine the integrity of our recent election. The GOPs blindness isnt merely symbolic: When footage was played of rioters reading Trumps tweets through a megaphone, multiple Republicans turned away rather than accept what their party enabled. The impeachment prosecution means GOP senators can no longer feign ignorance.

Don’t Miss: States Voted Trump

Trump’s Iron Grip Loosens

With just a week left in his term, it now appears all but certain that Donald Trump will become the first president to be impeached twice.

Unlike his first go through the process, this vote will have the support of at least a handful of Republicans – including Liz Cheney, a member of the party’s House leadership team. There is also, unlike January 2020, a chance the Senate has enough votes to successfully convict the president. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s recent signals of approval are evidence of that.

Of course, the primary consequence of Senate conviction – removal from office – seems of limited relevance with so little time left in the Trump presidency. Democrats, however, view impeachment as a formal way of marking their outrage at the president’s behaviour, not just last week, but during his months of challenging and undermining November’s election results.

A successful conviction could also result in Trump’s being banned from ever holding federal public office again and stripped of the privileges enjoyed by ex-presidents.

That prospect alone, in the minds of Democrats , makes impeachment worth the effort.

Ways President Trump’s 2nd Impeachment Will Change Washington

The Wyoming GOP issued a lengthy statement early Thursday lambasting Cheney. The party alleges it has received harsh comments from its members, saying, “Our telephone has not stopped ringing, our email is filling up, and our website has seen more traffic than at any previous time.”

Those comments accused Cheney of aligning herself with “the Beltway elites” and “with leftists.”

The organization said, “We as a Party respect our elected officials and assume that they will respect and represent their constituents. We are receiving the message loud and clear that what happened yesterday is a true travesty for Wyoming and the country.”

Cheney said her vote to impeach was one of conscience.

She said, “The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

New York, South Carolina weigh in

Katko and Rice were also slammed by their state’s conservative groups. So far, however, those organizations have yet to comment on whether they will continue to support the lawmakers through the end of their terms.

The Conservative Party of New York State said the organization was “very disappointed” in Katko’s vote in favor of impeachment.

“We consider his action ill-informed. It will do nothing to end the national divide and will likely further aggravate it.”

Also Check: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

Republican Enthusiasm For Second Trump Term Lags As Impeachment Trial Nears End

By David Morgan

3 Min Read

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans, while likely to acquit former President Donald Trump at his impeachment trial, showed little enthusiasm this week for a possible second White House bid in 2024 after reliving his supporters deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Following days of graphic videos of the melee presented by House managers, Republicans expressed concern about his post-election behavior, including his repeated false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him – even as they insisted that his trial on a charge of inciting insurrection is unconstitutional.

Trump, the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice, could run for another term in 2024 unless the Senate votes to bar him from future office, an unlikely feat.

But the prosecution case by nine Democrats from the House of Representatives stirred painful memories of Jan. 6, when violent Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, interrupting Congress as it worked to certify President Joe Bidens victory and forcing lawmakers to flee. Five people died.

A Senate Republican aide on Friday said as many as 10 out of 50 Republicans could vote to convict the former president, more than the six who voted that the trial was constitutional, but still short of the 17 Republicans who would need to join Democrats for a conviction to stick in the 100-seat chamber.

Let me decide if hes guilty or not, Cassidy told reporters when asked if he could vote for Trump again.

Bill Clinton: Impeached In 1998

President Clinton walking to the podium to deliver a short statement on the impeachment inquiry, apologizing to the country for his conduct in the Monica Lewinsky affair and that he would accept a congressional censure or rebuke.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Clinton was plagued by legal troubles and scandals from the moment he entered the White House. In 1993, Clinton and his First Lady, Hillary, were the subject of a Justice Department investigation into the so-called Whitewater controversy, a botched business deal from their days in Arkansas. And in 1994, Clinton was sued for sexual harassment by Paula Jones, who claimed Clinton exposed himself to her in a hotel room in 1991.

Interestingly, it was a combination of both legal cases that would ultimately lead to Clintons impeachment. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr was appointed by the Justice Department to investigate the Whitewater affair, but he couldnt find any impeachable evidence. Meanwhile, lawyers for Jones got a tip that Clinton had an affair with a 21-year-old White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, a claim that both Lewinsky and Clinton denied under oath.

When the story went public, Clinton was forced to address the accusations on national television.

I want you to listen to me, Clinton famously said. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never.

Also Check: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Inside The Republicans Bunker

Its hard to be worried when you dont really like the guy. Thats what one senior Republican Senate aide had to say when I asked how concerned conservatives are about Donald Trumps fate.

The truth is, Trump fatigue is a condition that knows no party, and many Republicans are as tired of this shit as anybody else. Thats not to say theyre outraged, or motivated to Make a Difference. Theyre just tired. You can live inside the right-wing bubble in a state of depression, resigned to the fact that, yeah, every five minutes or so, the president is probably going to do something norm-shattering or potentially impeachable, and no, you probably wont or cant do anything to change that. Sad!

Im totally bored by the story, one person who speaks regularly with the president told me. Theres nothing to it. I already know all the details. This person is bored more generally, too with the topic of Donald Trump. When we talk about what it would take for the presidents defenders to turn on him, this crucial piece is missing: You cant feel outraged if you can no longer feel anything at all.

If you were to turn on Fox News, this is what you would hear. I called up Newt Gingrich the other day, and it was like he was just reading directly from these emails, which suggest a strategy of partisan bullying and obfuscation. In other words, no real counterargument or legal defense to speak of.

*This article appears in the October 14, 2019, issue of;New York Magazine.

House Manager Uses The Words Of Republicans Against Trump

The House impeachment managers presented senators with videos of their colleagues fleeing a pro-Trump mob, which breached the US Capitol shouting “stop the steal.” They showed the rioters searching for then-Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and rummaging through the senators’ desks on the chamber floor.

You May Like: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

0 notes

the0ther-side0f-dawn · 6 years

Text

personal rant

tw: eating disorder, anxiety, depression, suicide mention, fat shaming, abuse, idk, my life is one big shit hole, idk what tags to wack on here.

do not reblog - do not like if your likes are public - do not interact if youre over 25

warning: this post is super long bc i dont know what concision is and i have a lot of thoughts and feelings :)

so, this is going to get fairly personal, and talk about things ive never really talked about before, or felt comfortable talking about. i still feel so so so exceptionally uncomfortable talking about body weight, and weight loss, and fat, and eating disorders, and all that jazz, but the point of this post is to talk about personal growth, and then ramble and go into some self-loathing.

so, a huge part of how I used to justify my eating, when i was in secondary school, was i was really determined to enjoy every food, which was my favourite, as much as possible. and, so i would eat a lot of something, and just so much of it, because i had this fear, “what if the company stopped manufacturing this suddenly, and this is the last time i ever get to enjoy it?” so i’d eat like a whole box of shapes and a whole bag of chips in one sitting kind of thing. which is why in 8th-9th grade i gained like 25kg.

of course, this isnt factoring the huge huge influence in my eating that depression, and my mother [and my determination to do things to spite her out of anger]. and like obviously they played a huge role. like i ate because i hated life and was depressed, and it was “comforting” and it became habitual, and then my mum was the furtherest thing, and still is, from emotionally supportive, and when she would yell at me to stop, or shame me, or make me feel bad about my eating or my body, i would eat more just to spite her. just because i didnt want to be her little fucking minion, and all obedient and submissive and shit.

but, the fear of “what if i never get to enjoy this thing again?” was pretty big, and im just realising, on that front, i have come so so far. im sure the fact that last year, several of my favourite foods ceased to be manufactured, helped me, subconsciously, realise how fucking unnecessary that fear was, because in the end, it didnt matter, the things i like have changed, i have grown to like new things, i have grown to dislike things i used to love, its all so fucking arbitrary. a year or so ago, aldi had some specials, and my mum bought home this sesame based turkish dessert thing. i dont remember what it was called probably the most delicious thing ive ever tasted. and it was okay for me to just enjoy a little, and not go on looking for more. im getting better at stopping. im getting better at being content, instead of always trying to chase more satisfaction. but yeh, ive gotten better.

i still eat ALOT because of depression. and i think that is okay. its important to have priorities, and i think eating is better for me than many of the other ways i could or have coped with depression in the past. and generally, if im sad and want to eat, i have to go outside and go walk somewhere to buy food, which is good for me.

and doing things to spite my mother, still happens, because she is still so hateful. but my motives arent necessarily to spite her as such, as to fucking defend my right to exist, and my right to make my own decisions.

i still have good and bad times. i often lose 5kg over the span of a couple weeks, and gain 10kg over a couple months, it’s so back and forth. but it’s generally staying the same, on average, and for me, that’s like getting a C+. it’s sufficient.

this last year, has been really difficult for me with body image. i was covering up my mirrors for a good while. i still feel sick when i open up snapchat and the front camera is enabled. i have gone up a half dress size, and i hate it, but i should have caved and starting buying things in the larger size a while ago. its better to wear something that feels comfortable and looks like it isnt too tight, then to fuss over a number on a tag.

i feel like shit when my sister wants to go to shops at the mall like supre and valleygirl, and i cannot even look at the racks, because i know the only thing in the store that will fit me is the sunglasses.

i still am not on board with the whole fat positivity thing. i know its important. i know that someones body weight doesnt decrease their worth as a person. these are facts. but i still fucking loathe myself. and i still feel fucking worthless.

i feel like i am incapable of being loved because i am not pretty enough. i am not thin enough. pretty and thin are much the same to me. i would be pretty if i were thin.

i feel nauseous on public transport because i take up too much space on a seat. people have to press against me to move past me in the aisle. i try and make myself smaller, but i never am small enough.

when i am depressed and crying i put a pillow over my head to shield the universe from having to witness my face. i am too fat and ugly to cry, because only skinny girls look good when they cry. i dont feel entitled to sadness.

i dont feel entitled to a lot of emotions. because i am not pretty enough to be human. not skinny enough to be human.

and i know it is fucking bullshit, but i still feel it.

and i am angry, that there are only two possible portrayals for bigger people. bullies. or bubbly. i am not happy. i am not bubbly. i shouldnt have to be over the top smiling and laughing and have flawless skin and makeup in order to fit into one of the two boxes that exist for me; the only box where i am “good.”

i dont know i just really wish that when i was younger i had access to healthy food that tasted good, and to sporting activities that i enjoyed. instead of it being “we’re too poor to do club sport” and my mum telling me physical fitness didnt matter, and with food, it was like, no effort from my mum to try and find healthy options that i liked. she’d serve up peas, and force me to sit at the table til i ate them. and i would sit there for 4 hours with her intermittently yelling that if i didnt hurry up she’d shove them down my throat with a broom handle. instead of her thinking okay, what other healthy foods are that i could try and get the kids to eat, and trying to figure out what would work, but no instead she served up peas once a week and it was the same fucking ordeal. and i really fucking despise my mum, and blame her for a lot. because she socialised me, until i was 12, to not give a shit about my body and fitness, and then i start highschool, start eating out of depression, gaining weight like crazy, mum gets a diabetes scare, and next minute she’s determined to teach me how to hate myself. and to me, thats unforgiveable.

i wish things had been very very different in my life, and wish things were very different now. because its, probably not impossible, but really fucking difficult to make meaningful changes in my life when im dirt fucking poor, and constantly wrestling with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, etc, and have a p darn shitty family situation, and almost no friends that arent in very similar boats.

#do not reblog

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revol-lover · 7 years

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need to vent.

This weekend was a shit show and I took a mental health day from work today. I promised my husband I wouldn't dwell on the issues of the weekend and I would try to take it easy but I need to let this out, I need to vent. And then I can move forward. Its so important for me to write these things down because I can only be strong for so long before I become weak willed again and let toxic people start their cycle of abuse all over on me. I need to have written reminders of what I’ve gone through to remind myself that I don't deserve this abuse and I need to limit contact.

So as I previously posted, I haven't visited my parents in a couple weeks. They haven't bothered to check in on how I am doing even though I usually visit on weekends. No one checks in on me. I’ve put a shit ton of effort into my relationship with them since getting married (well since forever but especially since moving out, keeping in touch. Its all been one sided effort coming from me). I was legitimately busy and exhausted with everything we have going on, being in my third trimester of pregnancy. I work all week, I have things to do after work nearly every single day of the week except for occasionally one or if I’m very lucky, two days, and most weekdays I work, come home, rest for an hour, make dinner, husband comes home, we eat, then we do errands and things that we have to get done during the week (groceries, laundry, house tidying, tending to the plants at the cemetery, visiting his grandmother, visiting his father at the hospital).

Being pregnant has been for the most part easy for me, and I don't take that for granted. Regardless, I’m still getting bigger and less comfortable, I have to drink a gallon of water a day which is getting difficult. I’m just tired. Most weekdays we arent home from our responsibilities until 7 pm. Then we unwind and spend time together before going to sleep and starting all over again. Therefore, my weekends have become very precious to me, as they should be. And I haven't been feeling up to visiting my parents. I am never invited over. But I’m apparently just expected to make an effort, one they do not make.

Well this weekend was my godmother’s 50th birthday. Her boyfriend wanted to surprise her with birthday cake and have family over. I wasnt sure I’d be up to going but I got suckered into buying the cake because her son had to work and no longer could and her boyfriend was surprising her with this so he couldn't go get it himself. So now I “had” to go. My parents were going so I figured this is fair enough. They will see me. It kills to birds with one stone. Well as I’m standing on my godmother’s porch waiting for them to open the door my parents walk up to the porch. My dad says hello and how have I been doing, before I have time to even properly answer he follows it up with a very bitter sounding “haven't seen you in a LONG time”. He really is trying to give me a guilt trip when he doesnt even text me. He hasn't sent me a text since April 4th and that was a “lol ok” reply to a text I had sent to him trying to make conversation about the baby. He has not called me. He has not been in touch, but he is mad that I have not gone by to visit. So I told him, straight up. “Well, I’ve been busy. My week days are busy, we have had a lot going on and I have been trying to get things done and still relax on the weekends, Oh and I’m pregnant. Also you could text me to check how I am doing and you haven't so. “He of course got mad that I had the nerve to say whats the fucking truth and was like “ I know your pregnant what is that supposed to mean” and then he stuttered angrily on “what do you mean about texting” (does this even need an explanation? no. he doesnt get in contact with me but expects me to put him first at the busiest time of my life.) but I ignored the rest because my god mom opened the door and I Wasnt about to have an argument on her door step. So I go inside. And he persists the issue. He starts questioning me. “What do you do during the week” “what do you do during the weekend” as if I owe an explanation!!!!!! At this point I was getting flustered because I honestly wanted to fucking tell him off but being a decent person unlike apparently him, I wasnt about to have this conversation at someone’s birthday celebration! If you have problem with me address it at an appropriate time! How hard is that to comprehend. So I quickly listed off that I have been busy working and doing things we need to do to get ready for the baby and also, you know having a midwife appointment once every two weeks, soon every week. I shouldn't have even had to try to defend myself. i don't owe him a breakdown of my schedule and why he doesnt fit in it. Especially when the doesnt try to get in contact with me ever and was so disrespectful in the way he attacked me immediately with a guilt trip. The rest of the dreadful 30 minutes I was there was spent not looking at him or my mom and trying not to talk to them because I just can't do it man. I can't. My mom wasnt as bad as she couldve been but it doesnt matter. He made up for it. The annoying thing she did is, so my little niece was there, she’s 4. I haven't seen her either in a few weeks. So I picked her up. My mom literally SCREAMED “Hey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! don't do that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! your stomach!!!!!!!!!!!!” at me as if I am a fucking imbecile or flower petal who can't pick up a SMALL CHILD while I am pregnant. As if I don't know my own limitations. Oh that pissed me off and I told her that its not dangerous for me to pick up my niece and I know what I am able to do. Omfg god though. like seriously does she think I’m not going to pick up and give affection to my first child when my second comes? It was such a stupid thing to have her freak out about. As if she cares. She didnt care when I was a teenager and intentionally hurting myself because of her abuse but she is going to freak out about me holding a child while I’m pregnant..

As we were leaving my mom handed my husband a birthday card but not without “well we didnt see you last weekend so I couldn't give it to you sooner”. They did not contact me to tell me to tell him happy birthday lol. They live two minutes away. they could have easily dropped it off themselves. But its our fault, right? Then she tried hinting that I should try to visit sometime during the week “if I want” to which.. I didnt even respond. I just ignored it. I’m not doing this guilt trip shit. I don't owe them a visit. I’m not coming to them. If they want to see me they need to make an effort because all they do is bring me stress which I don't need right now. It could have been handled so differently. All my dad had to say was “How have you been?” and left out the guilt trip. There was no need for it.

So anyway. I kept my cool on the entire situation as best I could. But then we got home. And I just.. idk. I unravelled. I was so angry. I AM still angry. I twas out of line. I hate that my dad thinks he has the right to treat me that way. That I owe him something when he puts 0 effort into the relationship. When we do visit he's glued to his phone. He doesnt even interact. He had no right to attack me with a guilt trip. I was so upset by this when I go t home. I was pacing and shaking and having chest pain and I know this is all really bad for the baby but I couldn't calm down and this is exactly why I can't do this shit anymore. I shouldn't have to live my life afraid of when I’ll see them next because god forbid I have been making my own health and child and marriage a priority. I shouldn't have to apologize or explain that. I wrote a long message I was going to send him but didnt. I don't feel like theres anything I can say to get through to someone who doesnt understand the basic simple point of me putting myself first right now. Largely pregnant, less then 2months from the birth of my child with still a lot to do and decreasing energy and ability to do it, never mind making mentally exhausting visits to unappreciative people..

I thought about calling instead of texting it. But again. I was already stressed out. I was having chest pain My husband was worried sick about me and our baby. My father isn't worth the stress but I can't just turn a switch when it comes to being treated the way I was. How can I just turn a switch and not care? I do not like cofrontation or being attacked. And I didnt deserve it. I’m being attacked for doing the right thing. For taking care of myself and my child. I’m being attacked for having my priorities straight. Do you realize how fucking much that fucks with my psyche? Its not something I can just let go.

I thought for a second I should send him an article on how stress during pregnancy can affect the baby. Yeah except I saw a scary statistic about how third trimester stress can spike up your chance of having a stillborn and went into a legitmate panic attack and my husband had to just take the phone from me. I eventually calmed down but the situation hasn't left my mind. I am home today trying to mentally recoup. I’m trying to just take care of myself but it keeps creeping into my thoughts. The disrespect. What his attack caused - the chest pains and crying and freaking out. That didnt need to happen.. that hsouldnnt have happened. That could very seriously pose a risk to me and my child like pre term labor or other terrible things. Like it just fucks me up that my own father can be so immature and careless in his actions and not even realize how it affected me. Because I care too much. Because I can't believe that after being such a good daughter despite the abuse I’ve received in my childhood, and despite his complete life long lack of protecting me from my mother, the times I’ve thought about cutting my mom off entirely but didnt because I didnt want to lose him.... the fact that all of that exists and is a part of my life, and he doesnt even care enough to treat me with the most minimal amount of respect. That he caused me so much stress it caused physical pain and put me and my child at risk. It just baffles me. I feel like he needs to know what he has done. He needs to know it wasnt ok and he hurt me. But I dint have the strength to even try to talk to him again. And it sucks because I’m forced to see him sunday at my baby shower. Then the week after is fucking fathers day. Then what am I supposed to do with that? I don't even want to see him again period and I’m forced to. I can't be having these things happen every single weekend when Im supposed to be relaxing and I don't know how to avoid it. I’m so fucking stressed out. I wish I could just move far away and never see or speak to them again. I’m at my wits end and legitimately do not care anymore who I lose in the process but I can't do it with them being so close. I feel so trapped.

#personal

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fitnessexpert00-blog · 5 years

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Fitbitters of the world, unite! How the Soviets invented fitness tracking

New Post has been published on https://fitnessqia.com/must-see/fitbitters-of-the-world-unite-how-the-soviets-invented-fitness-tracking/

Fitbitters of the world, unite! How the Soviets invented fitness tracking

Health and fitness monitoring devices promise a future of good health and pre-emptive diagnosis. Not to mention reduced (for some) insurance premiums. So what connects our new obsession with personal productivity with the dogma of Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin?

At this years Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria, I happened upon a robot made of hacked and 3D-printed surgical components that can perform DIY keyhole surgery. Its builder, the Dutch artist Frank Kolman, was inspired by YouTube videos in which impoverished hackers and makers, largely without insurance, share medical tips and tricks. No money for bridgework? Try Sugru moldable glue.

A revolution is afoot in medicine. And like all revolutions, it is composed of equal parts inspirational advance and jaw-dropping social catastrophe. On the plus side, there are the health and fitness promises inherent in the artefacts of a personal health surveillance industry all those Jawbones and Fitbits and Scanadu Scouts, iPhones and Apple Watches that promises to top $50bn in annual sales by 2018. The devices arent particularly accurate (yet), and more than half of them end up at the bottom of a drawer after six months. Still, DIY devices are already spotting medical problems before their users do, raising the likelihood of a future in which illness and medical conditions are treated long before the patient gets sick.

On the minus side, there is Kolkmans terrifyingly practical robot, and its promise of a future in which DIY medicine is the only medicine the ordinary individual can afford. The sunny west coast self-reliant rhetoric of the making and hacking and quantified self movements disguise the disturbing assumption that they can be a substitute for civic life.

We have been here before. Not much more than a century ago the Russian empire was a ramshackle agglomeration of colonies, held together by military force and hooch. There were no institutions for reformers to reform: no councils, no unions, no guilds, no professional bodies, few schools, few hospitals worth the name; in many places, no roads.

The Fitbit. Photograph: Fitbit

The responsibility for improvement and reform inevitably fell on the individual. Utopia was a personal quest in Nikolay Chernyshevskys novel What Is to Be Done? according to Lenin, the greatest and most talented representation of socialism before Marx. Even more hysterical, Tolstoys The Kreutzer Sonata prefers the prospect of human annihilation to its current unreformed (read: lustful) condition. Outside the library and drawing room, pre-revolutionary Russia floundered in a sea of cults, from machinism and robotism to primitive reticence, antiverbalism, nudism, social militarism, revolutionary sublimation, suicidalism One outfit called itself the Nothing, its members neither writing, reading or speaking.

Into this stew came the railways and the clock and all of a sudden self-regulation became easy and practical. In Leningrad in 1923, a theatre critic, Platon Kerzhentsev, founded the League of Time, in order to promote time-efficiency. Eight hundred time cells were set up in the army, factories, government departments and schools. The Timists carried chronocards in order to monitor time-wasting, wasted motion and lengthy speeches. Without watches, they tried to guess the passage of minutes and hours, and were awarded medals for spontaneous time discipline. They kept meticulous diaries of their every daily action. Lenin had the leagues personal productivity posters pasted up on the wall behind his desk.

Man will finally begin to really harmonise himself, Leon Trotsky prophesied in 1922: He will put forward the task to introduce into the movement of his own organs during work, walk, play the highest precision, expediency, economy, and thus beauty.

The poet Alexei Gastev whose forbidding toothbrush-moustache and crew cut concealed a lot of mischief took Trotsky at his word. He built a social-engineering machine. This giant structure of pulleys, cogs and weights was a thing of no fathomable use whatsoever, yet Gastev insisted that a few hours workout would turn you into a new kind of human being. He rolled these machines out across the young Soviet Union, as a sort of mascot for his Central Insitute of Labour which, with Lenins personal backing, taught peasant workers how to behave in modern factories. A class at the Central Institute of Labour was a sort of drill practice: pupils stood before their benches in set positions, with places marked out for their feet. They rehearsed separate elements of each task, then combined them in a finished performance. (Judging by the sheer popularity of the classes, and the speed of the institutes expansion, the classes must have been quite enjoyable.)

Bernsteins kymocyclograph. Photograph: HANDOUT

Joining Gastev at the beginning of his career was the young Nikolai Bernstein, whose childhood spent assembling radios and building models of steam engines and bridges, set him in good stead when it came to mechanically registering the movements of the human body. He developed a high-speed camera called the kymocyclograph. The shutter, a round plate with holes in it, rotated before the camera lens, so that the photographic plate would record multiple images, each exposed a fraction of a second after its neighbour. (Motion-capture cinema, VR and all the other technologies that keep Gollum actor Andy Serkis on the talkshow circuit begin here.)

By the end of these studies, Bernstein had good evidence that motion could not be a simple matter of Pavlovian reflexes. His more nuanced model of motor responses amounted to a fully fledged theory of cybernetics, decades before Norbert Wiener coined the term in 1948.

The early Soviet Union gathered unprecedented amounts of data on human motion, fitness, behaviour and genetics, making it a world leader in the field. A new kind of human being healthy, fit, psychologically integrated and free of heritable disease seemed, for a few heady days in the 1920s, an achievable aspiration.

Then, in 1927, a miner called Alexey Grigoryevich Stakhanov went to work in a mine. He was no superman, but he was energetic and intelligent, and he could see ways of organising his work crew to increase the amount of coal they were able to dig in a single shift. On 31 August 1935, it was reported that he had mined a record 102 tonnes of coal in four hours and 45 minutes 14 times his quota. Barely three weeks later, on 19 September, Stakhanov and his crew more than doubled this record.

Alexey Stakhanov explains his system to a fellow miner, 1936. Photograph: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images

Others rushed to follow Stakhanovs example, and newspapers and newsreels across the Soviet Union celebrated their efforts. In Gorky, a worker in a car factory forged nearly 1,000 crankshafts in a single shift. A shoemaker in Leningrad turned out 1,400 pairs of shoes in a day. On a collective farm, three female Stakhanovites proved they could cut sugar beet faster than was thought humanly possible. Such workers were awarded higher pay, better food, access to luxury goods and improved accommodation. Stakhanovism soon became a mass movement. In factories and even in scientific institutes, wrote the American psychologist Richard Schultz, the workers names may be posted on a bulletin board opposite a bird, deer, rabbit, tortoise or snail relative to the speed with which they turn out their work. A great deal of prestige is attached to the shock brigade worker.

For as long as human beings labour for others, their lot will improve only so far as their productivity rises. Investment beyond this point makes no sense. The Soviet Union of the 1920s was an impoverished state dotted with institutes of labour, health and maternity clinics, mental health services, housing offices and countless censuses. Coming to power at the end of the decade, Joseph Stalin replaced all this social engineering with, well, engineering. Magnitostroi, which is still the largest steelworks in the world, housed its workers in tents downwind of the chimneys. The construction of the White Sea Canal cost 12,000 lives around a 10th of the workforce.

Drunk as we are on the illusion of personal control, we should remember that data trickles uphill toward the powerful, because they are the ones who can afford to exploit it. Today, for every worried-yet-well twentysomething fiddling with his Fitbit, there is a worker being cajoled by their employer into taking a medical test. The tests are aggregated and anonymised, and besides, the company is giving the worker a cut of the insurance savings the test will make. So wheres the harm?

Joseph Stalin: imagine how he could have exploited your Fitbit data Photograph: Hulton Getty

Well, for a start, anonymising data is incredibly hard to do. The bigger the datapool, the easier it is to triangulate data sets and home in on an individual. And while people can get thrown in jail for this sort of thing, algorithms are a lot harder to police. Has the computer said no to your mortgage application? Well, sorry, but there may simply be no human to blame: the machine has figured things out on its own.

An even bigger worry is the way that, in our smartphone-enabled and meta-data-enriched world, complete knowledge of human affairs is becoming increasingly possible, making redundant the entire gamble of insurance. At that point the scope for individual self-determination shrinks to zero and we are living in the world of Andrew Niccols excellent 1997 film Gattaca.

Unregulated wellness programmes are begging to be used as tools of surveillance, and thats not because anybodys actually doing anything wrong. Its because we have taken control of our own data, while at the same time forgetting that data ultimtely belongs to whoever can make the most use of it.

And it need not even be a problem, unless the class in power decide to replace social engineering with, well, engineering, health services with making and hacking, and civic societies with a desert, littered with the grinning skulls of people who aspired to west-coast radical self-reliance and failed.

Stalin and the Scientists by Simon Ings, is published by Faber & Faber (20).

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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samanthasroberts · 6 years

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Canada is North Americas up-and-coming startup center

Conrad Egusa Contributor

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They say that nice guys finish last and Canada, with its reputation for polite citizenry and its charming prime minister, is used to being overlooked. Sure, Canada may tower over the United States in physical size, but many countries of similar stature G7 nations, for example dismiss the Great White North as nothing more than Americas top hat.

This is a mistake.

Canada, with nine percent of the worlds forests, is a land of plenty. As well as an enviable array of natural resources, Canada also boasts incredible support for entrepreneurs, both homegrown and international. Many household names, such as Slack, Hootsuite and Shopify which may be mistakenly considered as U.S. products hail from north of the border. This proves Canada is capable of delivering on startup success.

And its no surprise that startups excel in the country. Sure, there is less access to VC funding and the persuasive call of Canadas southern neighbor, but the Canadian government is working hard to build and keep successful startup ecosystems. There is a huge selection of government aid available to small businesses, some of which includes grants that dont have to be paid back.

Alongside substantial government backing is Canadas array of world-class universities. The University of Waterloo increasingly known as Canadas answer to MIT sees incredible numbers go to Silicon Valley every year, while others all over the country produce thousands of talented grads.

While eventually losing out to Colombia, Canada was shortlisted as country of the year by The Economist in 2016. The United States northern neighbor boasts world-class universities and resources to develop talent and, currently, the Canadian dollar is 0.75 cents to the American dollar. This means a highly educated workforce is available for less capital for entrepreneurs all over the world who are ready and willing to make the leap to Canada.

Origin story

Canada has a proud history of technological innovation. Communications company Nortel pushed expansion in the 1970s, bringing talented telecom engineers. In 1983, after a wave of deregulation, Nortel gave way to Bell Canada Enterprise (BCE), which signaled an era of telecom preeminence.

If that werent enough, a year later, in 1984, Research in Motion (RIM), which today is better known as BlackBerry, was founded. While the sun may have set on BlackBerry, the impact of their phones and the eponymous messaging service has left a lasting impact on cellular phone technology.

Fast-forward to the nineties and the Canadian government expanded its Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentive program to allow for assistance to companies performing research and development. The legacy of this decision is clearly illustrated by Canadas fervent support of startups in recent times.

Since the turn of the new millennium, Canada has been determined to churn out initiative after initiative to support new business. The opening of the MaRS Discovery District in 2005 a 1.5-million-square-foot complex located in Torontos downtown provided entrepreneurs with skills via its venture program, and included a network of 1,000 high-potential-growth startups that collectively generated more than $1.3 billion in revenue from 2008-2015. Just two years later, Maple Leaf Angels set up shop in the city center, with a focus on investing in early-stage companies.

The MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. Photo courtesy of the MaRS Discovery District.

Universities across the country have worked to provide space and support for startups to grow, too. In 2010, Ryerson University founded the Digital Media Zone (DMZ), a combined incubator/accelerator program that has assisted more than 130 companies.

In later years, a wave of funding opportunities and globally recognized accelerator programs took root across Canada. The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) deployed $180 million in early-stage startups between 2011 and 2014, while BDC Capital launched its IT Venture Fund II, a fund worth $150 million. 2014 saw U.S. heavyweight The Founder Institute, founded by Adeo Ressi and Jonathan Greechen, open its first Canadian branch. In March 2016, 500 Startups announced its $30 millionCanada fund.

With such a strong foundation of startup initiatives and technology success, its no wonder that Canada is in such a strong position now.

Toronto-Waterloo corridor

Despite a population of just 2.8 million, Toronto has been named the most diverse city in the world. About half of its residents were born outside of Canada, and the city is home to 230 nationalities. As Canadas largest city, its quite naturally the countrys commercial, industrial and financial center. It stands to reason that this would make Toronto stand out as the countrys biggest tech hub, too.

As an example, Toronto-born FreshBooks, an accounting platform for small businesses, has more than 10 million users, and a 43,000-square-foot office in the city, which houses 245 employees. Self-publishing company Wattpad, which lets writers share their work on the platform, has 45 million users worldwide. In November, the company signed a deal with Universal Cable Productions the creator of Suits with the idea to sift through the stories online to turn the popular ones into TV shows. On-demand platform AskforTask has more than 150,000 taskers, and has doubled its business each year since launching in 2012.

The Toronto and Waterloo corridor is sometimes billed unsurprisingly as the Silicon Valley of the North.

The aforementioned MaRS Discovery District is a tower of strength in the citys startup community, too. The four-story brick building takes up almost one city block, and is one of the worlds largest innovation hubs, offering funding, mentorship and facilities to the citys creators. Ryerson Universitys Digital Media Zone incubator is also a resource for early-stage companies worldwide, as are a range of University of Toronto incubators and accelerators. BetaKit, a news publication led by Douglas Soltys that documents Canadian startup news, is also based in the city.

As Canadas financial hub, Toronto is home to much of the countrys investment. OMERS Ventures has had arguably one of the biggest impacts on the Canadian startup scene. The VC firm backs startups directly, including Shopify, of which the firm owns six percent. Canada also boasts the Venture Capital Action Plan (VCAP) to encourage more Canadian private investors. For every $2 in funding, the government gives another $1 to early-stage companies.

Other financial support includes 500 Startups Canadian fund; the Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program, a federal tax incentive for companies conducting research; and the Industrial Research Assistance Program, which provides entrepreneurs with funding and advisory services to help them develop technology.

500 Startups partner Sanjay Singhal. Photo courtesy of the 500 Startups team.

Yet despite this, Toronto is yet to birth a homegrown unicorn. While there are up to 4,100 active startups in the city, none are valued at over a billion dollars, and arent necessarily household names outside the tech scene.

Just 60 miles west of Toronto, however, is Waterloo, a small city of 134,000 residents, which holds much of Canadas tech talent. Like San Francisco and the Bay Area, Toronto and Waterloo form a corridor of startup innovation between them. Yet, while Toronto is yet to see any businesses hit that magical unicorn status, Waterloo has.

Waterloo is the home of telecoms giant BlackBerry, as well as newer companies that include video optimization platform Vidyard which last year raised $35 million in Series C funding and Bridgit, a communication app for construction teams that won Google Demo Day: Womens Edition in 2015. Similarly, Shopify, considered one of the countrys most successful startups, has an officein Waterloo (as well as offices in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and San Francisco).

Waterloo boasts the MIT of Canada the University of Waterloo which sends talent to startup ecosystems. In fact, every year, recruiters from Apple, Google and Facebook, among others, flock to this Canadian tech hub to onboard new employees; graduates of the University of Waterloo are the second-most-frequently hired in Silicon Valley after students from University of California, Berkeley. The universitys students are famously inventive, too. In 2009, Kik Interactive was founded by a group of students who wished to create new technologies for use on mobile smartphones; it has gone on to become an incredible success.

The Toronto and Waterloo corridor is sometimes billed unsurprisingly as the Silicon Valley of the North. Torontomayor John Tory has said that the Toronto-Waterloo corridor has all the elements for huge success, much of which comes from the quality of universities in the area. The University of Waterloo ranks 24th in the world for computer science and information systems, and the University of Toronto one of Canadas most prestigious schools ranks 16th.

While many tech giants already have a presence in these cities, there are efforts underway to make Toronto-Waterloo rise to the top of the worlds tech scene. Following the release of the City of Torontos Startup Eco-system Strategy in 2015, the city launched StartUp HEREToronto, a website built and managed by startup influencers to feature startup news and events and put a spotlight on entrepreneurs in the Toronto-Waterloo corridor.

Other notable leaders in the region include Sanjay Singhal, partner at 500 Startups; David Crow, advisor at Venture for Canada;Mike McDerment, CEO at FreshBooks; David Ossip, CEO at Ceridian; Matt Golden, founder at Golden Venture Partners; Marcus Daniels, CEO at HIGHLINE vc; Mark Organ, CEO at Influitive; and Salim Teja, executive vice president of Ventures at MaRS Discovery District.

Vancouver

Vancouver is found in British Columbia (BC), amongst the mountains on Canadas west coast. With a population that just exceeds 600,000, the citys easygoing vibe makes it one of the most attractive places in Canada. In fact, Vancouver is rated the fifth city for quality of life in the world by Mercer, the only North American city to make the list.

Vancouver residents arent shy about being in the greenest, and arguably most beautiful, city in Canada. Theyre also getting pretty good at representing their rising tech scene. The entire province of BC now boasts more than100,000 people working in the tech sector. Employment in the industry rose 2.9 percent in 2016, compared to the national tech sectors growth at 1.1 percent. Tech in BC employs more people than the mining, oil, gas and forestry industries combined.

Boasting mountains and ocean just like Silicon Valley, Vancouver also has seen some of the biggest Canadian acquisitions. Vancouvers PlentyofFish, the popular dating website, was purchased by Match Group in 2015 for US$575 million, for example. Even more, Vancouver is home to OMER Ventures-backed Hootsuite which is valued at US$1 billion as well as everyones favorite, Slack. Although Slack the company is technically based in San Francisco, CEO Stewart Butterfield also works out of Vancouver, or Vancity as its often called.

In the hopes of fostering more unicorns like Slack and PlentyofFish and fastening BCs startup scene on the world map, the provincial government set up a $100 million fund for early-stage funding in December 2015. Since then, there have been about 14,000 new tech jobs in the province. Also located in Vancouver is the BC Tech Association. Founded in 1993, BC Tech provides growth, talent and advocacy programs to tech companies in the province.

Canada provides affordable development talent, and thousands of people graduate each year from some of the best universities in the world.

Being on the west coast, and therefore the same coast as startup hubs in San Francisco, has its advantages. Startups in the city attract a lot of outside attention, including from Silicon Valley stalwarts. In February of this year, Vancouver-based TIO Networks, which offers online and mobile solutions for bill payments, and processed more than US$7 billion in fiscal 2016, was acquired by PayPal for $304 million. Similarly, Kickstarter opened its first office outside of the United States in the same month, after acquiring Vancouver-based startup Huzza.

Traction Conference, hosted by Launch Academy and Boast Capital, is one of a number of popular conferences in the city, and, according to BetaKits Jessica Galang, puts an emphasis on helping startups learn actionable ways to accelerate their businesses. Cube Business Media, led by Mark Stephenson and Dave Tyldesley, is another organization hosting events throughout the city.

Like Toronto and Waterloo, Vancouver boasts world-class universities, such as the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. SFU Innovates is a program from the latter, which seeks to build and support innovation and entrepreneurship across the university. It has so far contributed $1.3 billion to BCs economy. Similarly, UBCs Startup Weekend event inspires would-be founders to get set up within 54 hours in a do-or-die race to success.

Said investor Ali Saheli of 7 Gate Ventures over the phone, Vancouver allows founders to remove all of the noise that you would get from the Valley and to focus on building products. In the past couple of years the number of early-stage startups has significantly grown thanks to government grants and communities such as Launch Academy and The Next Big Thing.

Additional notable leaders in the city include investors Boris Wertz and Markus Frind, and entrepreneurs Stephen Ufford of Trulioo, Ali Davar of Qudos and Ray Walia of Launch Academy. Additional startups and events are well-documented by Alex Chuang of Launch Academy on TechCrunch here.

Montreal

One of North Americas most European cities, Montreal, Quebec, is also the second-largest primarily French-speaking city in the world, just after Paris. The city has an undeniable allure with tons of public art displays, miles of bike lanes and world-class festivals, such as Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, as well as Startupfest.

Although Montreal may host a less mature ecosystem when compared to other cities, it boasts world-class universities, including McGill University and Universit de Montral, and a host of government programs. Additionally, Montreal is home to almost 50 percent of all Startup Weekends in Canada, training close to 1,000 entrepreneurs a year.

Local government provides the best programs in North America with millions of dollars in grants, loans, innovation tax credits, and even government backed incubators without any cost to the entrepreneurs, said Montreal Founder Institute Director Sergio Escobar over the phone. As any emerging ecosystem, Montreal has many challenges. Among them, Montreal counts very few seed-stage investors and no pre-seed ones. Many times, seed investors tend to function closer to Series A investors with non-friendly term sheets and low valuations.

The Founder Institute team in Montreal. Photo by Charles Laberge, Collaboration Speciale, La Presse, 3 September 2015.

Startupfest is a three-day festival that takes place in a relaxed Tent Village. It features keynote speakers, how-to sessions and $200,000 investment opportunities from festival angel investors. Even more, the festival features a panel of infamously tough Grandmothers, to whom entrepreneurs pitch their startups.

While the city is considered the cultural capital of Canada, Montreal is also an artificial intelligence stronghold. Just in January, Microsoft announced it would double its investment to AI research and development in the city. Over a five-year period, the tech giant will gift $6 million to the Universit de Montral, and $1 million to McGill University.

A week before this announcement, Microsoft acquired natural language processing and AI startup Maluuba, which was founded by Waterloo graduates Kaheer Suleman and Sam Pasupalak in 2011. In February 2016, it also bought Groove, a Montreal music app that uses machine learning to come up with personalized playlists.

In terms of resources for entrepreneurs in Montreal, FounderFuel is an accelerator funded by Real Ventures, a Canadian VC firm. Entrepreneurs Anonymous is a peer-to-peer support group, which takes place at a different Montreal bar each month.

Notable leaders in Montreals ecosystem include John Stokes, general partner at Real Ventures; Sergio Escobar, managing director at the Founder Institute Montreal; LP Maurice, co-founder and CEO at Busbud; Chris Arsenault, partner at iNovia Capital; Mike Cegelski and Francois Gilbert of Anges Qubec; Alan MacIntosh, partner at Real Ventures; Daniel Robichaud, CEO at PasswordBox; and Helge Seetzen of TandemLaunch.

Ottawa and others

The three most popular cities in Canada do not exclusively dominate the startup ecosystem. There are flickers and sometimes flares of startup activity that certainly have the potential to grow larger in the coming years.

Canadas capital, Ottawa, sits on the border with Quebec, and is just about two hours from the city of Montreal. Parliament Hill is the citys main attraction and depending on the season, visitors and residents alike skate on the Rideau Canal, which winds for five miles throughout the city.

Ottawa is home to Canadian unicorn Shopify, and has been on a kick to make itself the best city in Canada to start a business. Ottawa-based SaaS accelerator L-SPARK, which is directed by Leo Lax, supports talent in the city and also hosts SAAS North, a conference that helps Canadian companies network and promotes Ottawa as the countrys capital of SAAS.

In Ottawa there is a wealth of experienced C-level executives from the telecommunications industry, and as that industry has slowed down it has created an enormous talent pool for startups, said Leo Lax over the phone. We can shortcut the challenges of building a SAAS company through the experience of the people here. Further support in Ottawa includes Invest Ottawa, a group that delivers economic development programs to give entrepreneurs a head start in Canadas capital.

The SAAS North team in Ottawa. Photo by Velour Productions.

Other notable leaders in Ottawas ecosystem include Tobi Lutke, CEO of Shopify; Allan Wille, CEO at Klipfolio, Terry Matthews, Chairman of Wesley Clover International; Jamie Petten, co-founder of SAAS North; Craig Fitzpatrick, CEO of PageCloud; Adrian Salamunovic and Nazim Ahmed of Canvas Pop; and investor Aydin Mirzaee.

Another city to consider is Edmonton, which is also beginning to carve out a place on the map in the countrys startup scene. The citys hubs include incubator TEC Edmonton a joint University of Alberta and City of Edmonton initiative ranked the worlds 16th best business incubator Business Link, as well as Startup Edmonton. For the past two years Startup Edmonton has hosted Edmonton Startup Week, which features more than 20 community events for entrepreneurs across the city.

Lastly, Labrador and Newfoundland, which are the most eastern point of North America, are beginning to develop grassroots startup communities. This includes StartupNL, a community of entrepreneurs led by Will Gough, Jason Janes and Roger Power that hosts events and programs. In 2014, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador unveiled a $15 million fund to invest in local entrepreneurs and startups, and in 2016, three St. Johns, Newfoundland startups announced funding of more than $2 million, including game developer Clockwork Fox Studios, marketing collaboration platform HeyOrcaand software provider Sentinel Alert.

Conclusion

Canadas ecosystem is still in its early stages. Companies tend to exit too early rather than focusing on growing something sustainable. It often feels like Canadians bow out where Americans for whatever reason might not. Similarly, sub-zero temperatures scare people to warmer areas, leading to a brain drain and serious demand for startup-orientated marketers. Many current marketing staff are not au fait with startup performance, due to their backgrounds in more traditional industries.

Canadian investors have historically looked at minerals and mining companies, which attract much of the capital. People tend to invest in other industries rather than startups because of their prior experience.

On the other hand, Canada provides affordable development talent, and thousands of people graduate each year from some of the best universities in the world. Founders are now beginning to enter the startup market again after their first exits, and there is a growing sense of community. In recent years there has been impressive growth in the number of people interested in startups. Government tax incentives reward companies for investing in research and development.

Then there is the Trump question. The new U.S. administrations hard stance against immigrants can only play into Canadas favor with worldwide talent flocking to the Great White North, the opportunity is Canadas to lose. Over the last five years, Canada has brought in more than 800,000 immigrants to fill holes in the jobs market. With an unfriendly U.S. approach to immigration, international talent could easily look to Canada instead of America as a land of hope and opportunity.

With 20 percent of Canadas population already born elsewhere, the country now offers a startup visa to encourage international entrepreneurs to immigrate, with permanent residence status. This is crucial to Canadas future success. By 2019, there will be 182,000 tech jobs up for grabs and nowhere near enough people to fill them. So while Canadas tech scene is growing, there is yet more to come.

There are a lot of bright things to come for Canadas startup scene.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/canada-is-north-americas-up-and-coming-startup-center/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/10/28/canada-is-north-americas-up-and-coming-startup-center/

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adambstingus · 6 years

Text

Canada is North Americas up-and-coming startup center

Conrad Egusa Contributor

Conrad Egusa is the CEO of Publicize.

More posts by this contributor:

Brazil: A look into Latin Americas largest startup ecosystem

A Look into Chile’s innovative startup government

Victoria Stunt Contributor

Victoria Stunt is a journalist based in Colombia and is a writer at Publicize.

More posts by this contributor:

Austria: The up-and-coming early-stage investment capital of Europe

This is a mistake.

Origin story

The MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. Photo courtesy of the MaRS Discovery District.

With such a strong foundation of startup initiatives and technology success, its no wonder that Canada is in such a strong position now.

Toronto-Waterloo corridor

The Toronto and Waterloo corridor is sometimes billed unsurprisingly as the Silicon Valley of the North.

500 Startups partner Sanjay Singhal. Photo courtesy of the 500 Startups team.

Vancouver

Canada provides affordable development talent, and thousands of people graduate each year from some of the best universities in the world.

Montreal

The Founder Institute team in Montreal. Photo by Charles Laberge, Collaboration Speciale, La Presse, 3 September 2015.

Ottawa and others

The SAAS North team in Ottawa. Photo by Velour Productions.

Conclusion

There are a lot of bright things to come for Canadas startup scene.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/canada-is-north-americas-up-and-coming-startup-center/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/179532600127

0 notes

allofbeercom · 6 years

Text

Canada is North Americas up-and-coming startup center

Conrad Egusa Contributor

Conrad Egusa is the CEO of Publicize.

More posts by this contributor:

Brazil: A look into Latin Americas largest startup ecosystem

A Look into Chile’s innovative startup government

Victoria Stunt Contributor

Victoria Stunt is a journalist based in Colombia and is a writer at Publicize.

More posts by this contributor:

Austria: The up-and-coming early-stage investment capital of Europe

This is a mistake.

Origin story

The MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. Photo courtesy of the MaRS Discovery District.

With such a strong foundation of startup initiatives and technology success, its no wonder that Canada is in such a strong position now.

Toronto-Waterloo corridor

The Toronto and Waterloo corridor is sometimes billed unsurprisingly as the Silicon Valley of the North.

500 Startups partner Sanjay Singhal. Photo courtesy of the 500 Startups team.

Vancouver

Canada provides affordable development talent, and thousands of people graduate each year from some of the best universities in the world.

Montreal

The Founder Institute team in Montreal. Photo by Charles Laberge, Collaboration Speciale, La Presse, 3 September 2015.

Ottawa and others

The SAAS North team in Ottawa. Photo by Velour Productions.

Conclusion

There are a lot of bright things to come for Canadas startup scene.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/canada-is-north-americas-up-and-coming-startup-center/

0 notes