#1. I have literally no connections to this website I found it in 2019 and posted this for mutuals

[samgiddings]

OK new game. Use this website to see how common your first name is, and then put that number in the tags. 

EDIT: This isn’t my website, so I can’t say how accurate it is. It’s just a fun tool to play around with. Sorry if your name doesn’t show up! :[ 

#my name is the 50219th most common! #med mumbles #friends and fans #tag game #edited: sept 14 #this post blew up so a couple things: #1. I have literally no connections to this website I found it in 2019 and posted this for mutuals #2. be careful when using this site I wouldn’t recommend using it outside of looking up names #(in other words don’t submit ur own info) #3. I’m an until d*wn (I realized this went into the hashtag accidentally oops) blog and this is nowhere near my regular content #100k #top post

[galaxyafterdark]

In honor of pride month, I’m gonna put up a brief FAQ about my transition! Keep in mind, these are questions I get in real life from people who want to educate themselves.

Under no circumstance should anyone who is trans feel obligated to depart any information about themselves they are uncomfortable with. For those who don’t know, I’m Sully, I’m 28 (going on 29) and I’m a trans-man that uses he/him pronouns.

1: When did you start your transition?

Around 2018 was when I really started exploring my gender identity, especially since I had spent decades feeling disconnected with the idea of femininity. In early 2019, I started to come out to friends and coworkers, and officially came out in May of that year.

2: What is it like being on hormones?

The first week I started testosterone, I was placed on a low dose once a week and nothing changed right away. Around the six week mark was when my voice started to crack and lower, my body hair grew in much darker, and any menses had stopped. I break out easier now and have gained some mass. But ultimately it has done wonders for my body and mental health!

3: Wait, so you do your own shots?

Once a week (nine days if I have shot fatigue) in the thigh. Remember to draw up your needle to make sure you don’t hit a vein, kids.

4: How did you pick your name?

Literally a baby name website. Names come differently to all trans people. Sometimes it a name they’ve carried with them forever, sometimes it’s after someone special to them. In my case, it’s a name that sparked joy and I knew was mine.

5: Do you wear a binder?

I wore an Underworks half shirt binder and a GC2B half shirt binder for two years. And let me tell ya, that’s something that needs to be washed regularly. Worth every second I wore one. From the first second I put it on I was like—

5: What about top surgery?

I had my top surgery in October of 2020. I was very fortunate to have a friend who had already the surgery point me to a plastic surgeon that specialized in FTM surgeries. It took about two hours for them to do and eight weeks to heal. And I was itchy the whole time. But the results have been phenomenal for me. I’m darn hamsum.

6: What about your spouse?

I ate him to absorb his power.

No really, jokes aside, my partner has been my rock, my cheerleader, my greatest support throughout my entire transition and I don’t know how far I would have gotten without his love ❤️ (and the fact that he cleaned my drains after my surgery. THAT’S LOVE RIGHT THERE)

7: Any parting advice?

Connect, connect, connect with other trans folk. It’s through incredible luck that I have access to friends and the internet as a resource to help guide me in the direction I wanted to take my transition in. I found comfort in the advice from other’s past experiences, education to make sure I was being safe, and discovering the vast history of trans folk who made massive changes and strides in the LGBT+ community. You aren’t alone out there and you’ll always find your family 💖

These are questions I get from passerby’s and the answers are all from my unique experiences. There is no benchmark for what qualifies someone as being transgender. Surgery isn’t necessary, hormones aren’t needed, and some even keep their given name. What I have experienced and how I navigated my transition was all done based on my needs to feel whole again.

Respect your fellow trans people. Trans men, trans women, non-binary, genderqueer, agender, trans masc, trans femme: You’re all valid, wonderful, and beautiful~

Happy pride month, you funky little peeps!

#trans pride #lgbtq #trans man #transgender #education #FAQ #pride month #testosterone #shots #top surgery #also no one is allowed to ask you what your junk looks like when your trans #that’s rude #as fuuuuck

[purplesurveys]

1146

survey by ehxsnohs

Do you remember the last movie you saw while on a date? Knives Out. I wouldn’t call it a date, though; my girlfriend at the time and I just made a super last-minute decision to watch the movie on a whim, met up at the mall like 5 minutes after deciding, and immediately parted ways after watching it, lmao. There was a typhoon at the time and classes were actually suspended that day because the weather was supposed to be really bad, so we had to make it quick.

Have you ever dated anyone on your top friends? Irrelevant Myspace question but I’ve dated neither of my best friends.

How many purses do you own? Just one and I don’t even use it anymore. I have no idea where it is, actually.

Do you expect to be married in the next two years? Hell no.

What would you do if you found out you were pregnant? Idk. I hate getting this question...

Could you handle being married to the last person you texted? Unsurprisingly, it’s another media person that I contact exclusively for work, so no. I don’t even know her, and I am 130% sure she’s married.

What are you excited for? The rest of my weekend.

What's the last thing you put in your mouth? My vape pen, to take a puff.

Have you told anybody you loved them today? I think just my dogs so far, but then again it’s 8 in the morning.

Did you sleep alone last night? Yes but Kimi stayed close as he always likes to do. Sweet boy’s almost going blind but always seems to know where I am and will do anything to be physically close to me.

Do you currently have a hickey? No.

Have you hugged or kissed anybody today? I mean, I did briefly take out Cooper to sit with him on our accent chair at like 4 AM earlier for a hugging sesh, if that counts. I don’t expect to do so with people today.

Who was the last person you took a picture with? We held a virtual event over Zoom last week for one of our clients and we snapped a group shot with the participants by the end of the session, which included the media and some local influencers.

Who was the first person you texted this morning? Funny that you asked this because I literally just got a text from one of the bloggers I emailed yesterday to invite for a PR execution we’re doing with another client. They just confirmed that they’re happy to join, so I’ll have to reply. Normally I would hate doing weekend work, but food bloggers are generally sweethearts so I’ll be happy not to ignore their text. I’ll respond right now, haha.

Who will you be sleeping with tonight? Just me.

What time did you go to sleep last night? I finally felt like passing out at around 4:30 AM earlier.

Are you listening to it right now? To what? I can only hear loud welding noises from the construction being done outside.

What kind of cell phone do you have? I have an iPhone 8 that I also really want to upgrade already.

Do your parents pay for it? They paid for it. Having free tuition in college really had its perks lmao; I’m their only kid they didn’t hesitate to buy a new phone for hahahaha.

Would you rather pierce your tongue or lip? My lip.

How old will you be on your next birthday? 23.

What color is your iPod? I don’t use mine anymore but the one I grew up with was blue.

Shuffle Your iPod And List The First 5 Songs: I’m shuffling my Spotify instead based on the last song I played:

1. free love - HONNE

2. La La Lost You - NIKI

3. Headaches - Raveena

4. At My Worst - Pink Sweat$

5. Mariposa - Peach Tree Rascals

Turns out they turned on the Radio feature because I can only recognize the first two songs.

Favorite thing to get at McDonalds? Shake Shake Fries. I also used to get the Burger McDo because it's their cheapest burger and yet, personally for me, the best-tasting; but now that I can afford their more expensive items I’ll probably keep getting McNuggets from now on, hah. McSpicy is a gift from the gods as well but it’s only seasonal, and it’s been a while since they brought it back :(

Have You Kissed You Number One? -

Where was the last public bathroom you used located? As in bathroom and not restroom? Probably the shower area in the Nasugbu resort my friends and I went to in 2019.

If you're on a laptop, how much charge does it have left? It’s currently connected to power so it’s at 100%.

Do you think baby clothes are adorable? Some of them are cheeky, yeah.

Are you a dog or cat person? Dog.

When were you born? (morning, afternoon, etc) 9 in the evening.

4 websites you recently visited...

1. Gmail, to answer an email.

2. Google Sheets because I needed to check on something to be able to answer said email.

3. Google, to look up a term.

4. Twitter.

Do you know anyone named Alex? So many people. It’s a very common name.

Whose house did you last sleep over at? Most likely Gabie’s.

What's the last personal question you were asked? I guess the question I just answered?

Time for the personals :)

Your first time having sex how old were you? I had just turned 18.

Top or Bottom? Bottom.

Ever had a one night stand? No, and I wouldn’t have one.

Ever gave/had a bj? I mean, I’ve done both but with a girl, and we don’t exactly call them blowjobs...

Watch porn? Occasionally.

Prefer a condom? It’s never been applicable to me before so I wouldn’t know my preference on it.

Foreplay? Are you asking if I’ve done it or prefer it? I’ve had it before, of course; but I don’t necessarily prefer it all the time.

Orgies? Threesomes? Etc.? Never done anything beyond intercourse with one person.

Would you ever record you having sex? I’m open. Unless it was done without one person’s consent, this really shouldn’t be an issue.

Ok moving on..

Do you prefer coffee or energy drinks? Coffee. Energy drinks smell nastily sweet and I can’t imagine liking the taste of it as well.

If you could adopt 3 unique pets, what would you get? I just want dogs.

Do you believe in sex before marriage? Yes.

Where did you buy the shirt your wearing? I just got it from my old school.

Last place you went in the car? Feliz.

What grade are you in, if you're still in school? -

#survey #surveys

[hostingcareer]

WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT BLUEHOST COMPANY!!!.

Today, I will give you genuine review on Bluehost hosting.

So let's start....

We’ve been a paying Bluehost web hosting customer throughout 2017 – 2021.That means we’ve been monitoring their cheapest “basic” shared hosting plan performance (both average load time and uptime) for 4+ years.This Bluehost review relies heavily on data, as well as the overall experience with their hosting features and customer support.In a nutshell, all Bluehost plans offer their customers 24/7 live chat, unmetered bandwidth, and five email accounts. Similarly to many other website hosting companies, they too offer their new users a free domain for the first year. Their plans start from $2.75/mo and include improved security, backups, and free SSL certificate. These help to keep your blog or website protected and safe.Overall, their last 24-month performance has been good. Bluehost is clearly at the top with its uptime (99.99%) and a fast load time of 405ms (0.4 seconds).Pros of Using Bluehost Hosting

1. Best Uptime – 99.99% – Throughout the YearUptime is one the most important aspects when choosing a web host – after all, if your site is down, your users can’t access it. So consistently good uptime should be one of your top priorities.After reviewing 30 web hosts, our benchmark for “good” uptime is 99.93%. That might seem pretty high, but it’s actually even slightly below average. Type those numbers into a calculator, and you’ll quickly see it translates into at least 26 minutes of downtime each month or just over five hours over the course of a year.So ideally, we don’t want to see anything less than that.The good news is that Bluehost easily surpasses this benchmark, comfortably keeping our test site live for 99.99% of the time during the last 34 months (2018-2021).Here’s the monthly breakdown of the past 12-months:January 2021 average uptime: 100% December 2019 average uptime: 100%November 2019 average uptime: 100%October 2019 average uptime: 99.96%September 2019 average uptime: 99.99%August 2019 average uptime: 99.99%July 2019 average uptime: 100%June 2019 average uptime: 99.98%May 2019 average uptime: 100%April 2019 average uptime: 100%March 2019 average uptime: 99.99%February 2019 average uptime: 100%Conclusion? Bluehost is one of the most reliable web hosting provider according to our uptime study.

2. Top 5 Website “Load” Speed – 405ms

A report from Google last year found that the vast majority of mobile websites are way too slow.That’s a problem for two major reasons. Google’s mobile-first index can either elevate or hide your site in user searches based on its loading speeds. Studies show that slow websites almost always translate into lower sales.So, after uptime, your host’s page loading times are the second most important thing that can literally make or break your site’s success.We have been keeping track of Bluehost’s performance since February 2018 using a third-party tool, Pingdom. And once again, we were pleased with the results — an average page loading speed of 405ms which places them as the 5th fastest site out of everybody that we’ve tested.

3. Low Introductory Pricing ($2.75/mo)

We’ll look into Bluehost’s full pricing and plans in just a moment.However, if you were to go check out the starting prices, you’ll notice the lowest advertised price is $3.95/month. That’s a pretty good deal considering they’ve supposedly reduced it already from $7.99/month originally.For that price, you get pretty much everything you need for a single website. That includes 50 GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and more.So you’d be getting a pretty good value for the price, plus their consistent uptime and page loading speeds.The good news is that we’ve been able to work out a deal with Bluehost for our readers that takes the starting price down even further to $2.75/month.This is the lowest rate we’ve seen anywhere online (and trust us, our team spends way too much time online as it is). So it’s a great deal if you’re in the market for a new affordable host.

4. Good Security Options

Even though Bluehost is one of the “cheaper” options on the market, we have been pleased to see that they don’t cut too many corners or skimp on critical features like security.Bluehost provides a lot of good security options by default, including the free SSL certificate for each plan like we mentioned earlier.All plans also include a domain privacy feature that will help keep the personal information you used to sign up for a domain private. This prevents hackers from finding and using these personal details for phishing schemes to trick you or others into handing over sensitive information.SiteLock is included to help prevent malware attacks, which are unfortunately fairly common on WordPress sites. CodeGuard is another form for protection, which also provides daily backups so you can roll back previous versions of a site if it does get hacked.Postini, from Google, is the final security tool worth noting. It provides spam protection for your email, so anything suspicious is prevented from getting in your inbox.Altogether, this is a pretty decent security package to keep your site safe and sound.

5. Many Integrations, Apps, and eCommerce Features

Beyond the included security features, Bluehost also provides access to a huge number of different apps and integrations so you can use the most popular services on the web.For example, they have a domain manager if you’d rather just purchase and manage multiple domains through them. You can set daily, weekly, or monthly backups just in case.You can install WordPress with a single click (more on that in the next section below). You can also install other popular content management systems (CMS) like Drupal, Joomla, run an e-commerce shop, and more

6. ‘Official’ WordPress.org Recommended Host

WordPress is the most widely used website platform on the market.Of course, you can use almost any web hosting provider to create a WordPress site. But the fact that Bluehost is one of the few officially recognized partners is encouraging.

7. Easy to Use for Beginners

Some of the web hosts we’ve seen are best only for advanced users.LiquidWeb, for example, is great if you know what you’re doing. But they lack a user-friendly interface for non-technical people. So if you’re a beginner, you’d have a tough time getting a site live.The layout of Bluehost’s control panel (cPanel) makes it easy to use. You just need to point and click in most cases.It also has features for advanced users, but beginners too can easily install and start-up WordPress.Or, they can use the Bluehost website builder tools(such as Weebly or Drupal) to start with a template that you can customize by just dragging-and-dropping features.

8. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Getting the best deal on web hosting usually means prepaying for a few months, a year or several years at a time.Bluehost is no different — more on that below. But they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on their plans.You can try out the service to gauge their performance for yourself, and then still ask for a refund if you’re not completely satisfied. We have a few words of caution, though.According to their terms, here’s what does and doesn’t fall under that guarantee:You can only get refunds on the web hosting cost, not any other products like domains or other add-ons.A $15.99 fee will be deducted if you received a free domain name in your plan.Any requests after 30 days will not be refunded.It’s not exactly a no-questions-asked policy like we’ve seen from some hosts. So make sure you’re OK with those points before signing up.

9. Customer Support

Bluehost offers everything from a knowledge base, to live chat, email ticket support, and even phone support. We tried out the live chat and Vinutha from Bluehost connected within two minutes.

Cons of Using Bluehost Hosting

Site Migrations Are Not FreeBluehost Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick FactsBluehost’s Basic plan will cost you $3.95/mo (or $2.75 with our discount).Free domain? Yes for 1st year, then renews at $15.99.Ease of Sign-up: Easy two-page sign-up process.Payment Methods: Major credit cards and PayPal.Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refund on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.

Upsells: Some Upsells. Unfortunately, it’s a common occurrence in the web hosting industry and happens with a lot of different big-name hosting companies.

Account Activation: Most users enjoy instant activation. If the information is inaccurate or there’s suspicion of fraud, activation might get delayed.

Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: Simple and easy-to-use control panel.Installation of Apps and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Mojo Marketplace makes app installation quick and easy.Do We Recommend Bluehost?Yes, we do.Bluehost has ranked at or near the top for both uptime and loading times for more than a year.In addition, they offer strong security support, a money-back guarantee, and plenty of user-friendly apps, all for one of the lowest rates in the industry ($2.75/month).So overall, Bluehost delivers strong performance and good value.So below is the Bluehost web hosting buy now button. Click to buy

#best web hosting #cheapest hosting plan #easy to install #highly rated

[moary-overwatch-reunion]

Q & A “Way of Echo”

Thanks to everyone who read the first part of my story about Echo! I am periodically asked questions about it, let me answer them here.

Q: Is it true that this story was invented by you before the official announcement of the hero? A: I began to become seriously interested in Overwatch back in august 2019, and, approximately then, I began to take notes about almost all the characters associated with Jesse Mccree. The Echo was originally recorded as someone else's reincarnation in the body of the robot.

Q: Why such a concept? A: She is very different from all the omnics shown earlier in the lore. She has a human face, an unusual body structure, and, frankly, she is a direct embodiment of the word "futuristic ghost."

Q: You were surprised when the Echo was announced? What did you decide to do with your story? A: I was in shock. Of course, I assumed that she would become a hero, but it could be thought of on any previously shown character. When the first “tips” came out, I thought that maybe this will happen in a month, but it came out literally in a couple of days! Too unexpected. As for the story, everything is complicated. I thought that I would first look at all the new information and think if I like my version or the official one more and just choose it. But in the end, it was so hard for me to “throw out” so much work that I found a compromise and connected the official part and mine.

Q: Your version does not really affect the history of Liao herself, what's the point then of all this? A: I also thought that my story might look a little alien, but I just more carefully studied the official text and animatic. 1. So, firstly - it seemed to me that Liao died almost before the Overwatch collapse, perhaps a year before, but in the picture with the explosion she looks young. If you remember, between the creation and the end of Overwatch a huge period of time is almost 30 years long. This organization was created by people in the middle age of 20-30 years old and now they are old, and Liao hardly differs in the frame where Morrison is talking to her from the frame with the explosion. So she died somewhere in the "golden age". And, do not forget that Mccree is mentioned in her story, so they did not know so much and he was very young. And now, we have a long period of time left until the end of Overwatch. Want to say all this time? Echo was in the capsule? Then why does she talk to newcomers like Winston, Brigitte and Tracer in “Zero Hour” as if they were already familiar? 2. Also, secondly - in the Echo history on the website it is indicated that, for the sake of the authorities, Echo had “cut off” such important things as the ability to make decisions independently and use its functionality normally, and also, as I guess, the rudiments of the personality. But after awakening, she does not experience any problems with this. I consider this an important part of her character, which is why I dedicated my story to revealing these two things.

Q: What is the essence of your story then? A: After the death of Liao, all of its developments were quarantined and classified. As you can read from Echo on the site, the organization was not going to continue working on it. In my story, Dexter did this, he resolutely proved himself as a former robotics engineer and offered the Overwatch bosses a development path that suited everyone.

Q: Who is Dexter? Is this the person in the illustrations? A: Yes, it can be clearly seen in the illustration where he examines the hand of the robot. Dexter Darrow, this is Liao's husband in my story. It was invented long before the announcement of the hero. (And he is of asian descent despite his name). Here he, as in the old version, grieves and longs for his wife and is slightly obsessed with the idea of ​​resurrecting her with the help of artificial intelligence. He accidentally meets Mccree, talks to him at the bar and lights up the idea of ​​continuing the work of his wife.

Q: How was he able to persuade the bosses overwatch to continue work? A: He proposed the idea of ​​an “ideal weapon against hostile omnites”, more details will be in the second part.

Q: What else did he do? A: As I mentioned above, the identity of Echo is very important to me, Dexter, of course, did not set the goal of resurrecting someone while working with her, but it so happened that he added a lot of human things to her, including emotions, independence and temperament. He would very much like to resurrect Liao, but the reality is that this is impossible. In general, he completed the work begun by his wife.

I noticed that the illustrations took a lot more notes than the record itself with the text and try to take this into account, the second part I will post a little differently.

#overwatch #echo #echo overwatch #way of echo #mina liao #dexter darrow #mccree #jesse mccree #headcanon #a&q

[radishreader]

Voice corpora are not the only male-biased databases we’re using to produce what turn out to be male-biased algorithms. Text corpora (made up of a wide variety of texts from novels, to newspaper articles, to legal textbooks) are used to train translation software, CV-scanning software, and web search algorithms. And they are riddled with gendered data gaps. Searching the BNC (100 million words from a wide range of late twentieth-century texts) I found that female pronouns consistently appeared at around half the rate of male pronouns. The 520-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) also has a 2:1 male to female pronoun ratio despite including texts as recent as 2015. Algorithms trained on these gap-ridden corpora are being left with the impression that the world actually is dominated by men.

Image datasets also seem to have a gender data gap problem: a 2017 analysis of two commonly used datasets containing ‘more than 100,000 images of complex scenes drawn from the web, labeled with descriptions’ found that images of men greatly outnumber images of women. A University of Washington study similarly found that women were under-represented on Google Images across the forty-five professions they tested, with CEO being the most divergent result: 27% of CEOs in the US are female, but women made up only 11% of the Google Image search results. Searching for ‘author’ also delivered an imbalanced result, with only 25% of the Google Image results for the term being female compared to 56% of actual US authors, and the study also found that, at least in the short term, this discrepancy did affect people’s views of a field’s gender proportions. For algorithms, of course, the impact will be more long term.

As well as under-representing women, these datasets are misrepresenting them. A 2017 analysis of common text corpora found that female names and words (‘woman’, ‘girl’, etc.) were more associated with family than career; it was the opposite for men. A 2016 analysis of a popular publicly available dataset based on Google News found that the top occupation linked to women was ‘homemaker’ and the top occupation linked to men was ‘Maestro’. Also included in the top ten gender-linked occupations were philosopher, socialite, captain, receptionist, architect and nanny – I’ll leave it to you to guess which were male and which were female. The 2017 image dataset analysis also found that the activities and objects included in the images showed a ‘significant’ gender bias. One of the researchers, Mark Yatskar, saw a future where a robot trained on these datasets who is unsure of what someone is doing in the kitchen ‘offers a man a beer and a woman help washing dishes’.

These cultural stereotypes can be found in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies already in widespread use. For example, when Londa Schiebinger, a professor at Stanford University, used translation software to translate a newspaper interview with her from Spanish into English, both Google Translate and Systran repeatedly used male pronouns to refer to her, despite the presence of clearly gendered terms like ‘profesora’ (female professor). Google Translate will also convert Turkish sentences with gender-neutral pronouns into English stereotypes. ‘O bir doktor,’ which means ‘S/he is a doctor’ is translated into English as ‘He is a doctor’, while ‘O bir hemsire (which means ‘S/he is a nurse’) is rendered ‘She is a nurse’. Researchers have found the same behaviour for translations into English from Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and Persian.

The good news is that we now have this data – but whether or not coders will use it to fix their male-biased algorithms remains to be seen. We have to hope that they will, because machines aren’t just reflecting our biases. Sometimes they are amplifying them – and by a significant amount. In the 2017 images study, pictures of cooking were over 33% more likely to involve women than men, but algorithms trained on this dataset connected pictures of kitchens with women 68% of the time. The paper also found that the higher the original bias, the stronger the amplification effect, which perhaps explains how the algorithm came to label a photo of a portly balding man standing in front of a stove as female. Kitchen > male pattern baldness. 

James Zou, assistant professor of biomedical science at Stanford, explains why this matters. He gives the example of someone searching for ‘computer programmer’ on a program trained on a dataset that associates that term more closely with a man than a woman. The algorithm could deem a male programmer’s website more relevant than a female programmer’s – ‘even if the two websites are identical except for the names and gender pronouns’. So a male-biased algorithm trained on corpora marked by a gender data gap could literally do a woman out of a job.

But web search is only scraping the surface of how algorithms are already guiding decision-making. According to the Guardian 72% of US CVs never reach human eyes, and robots are already involved in the interview process with their algorithms trained on the posture, facial expressions and vocal tone of ‘top-performing employees’. Which sounds great – until you start thinking about the potential data gaps: did the coders ensure that these top-performing employees were gender and ethnically diverse and, if not, does the algorithm account for this? Has the algorithm been trained to account for socialised gender differences in tone and facial expression? We simply don’t know, because the companies developing these products don’t share their algorithms – but let’s face it, based on the available evidence, it seems unlikely.

--Caroline Criado-Perez, Invisible Women (2019)

#caroline criado perez #invisible women

[chibinoyume]

Feb 15th - International fanworks day

So today I found out via this post that today is international fanworks day. As such, I thought I’d reminisce about how fandom & fanworks have changed my life, little by little. While I’ve been a fan of many things, to me, a level of love/obsession (and most likely, a ship) must be present in order for me to engage more in a fandom, read fic, make fanart, try to write, etc. Still, I’ll only mention the 4 most significant here, with drawings to match.

The oldest - Rurouni Kenshin (Samurai X)

My first fandom, Rurouni Kenshin, made me interested in trying to draw (by copying what I saw), especially as it was an anime/manga, I had (and still have) the comics and so the source material was right there. Here is my favorite character from that series, and possibly one of the oldest scans I have from any fanart. Fandom was hard to navigate because I was limited by the glitchy websites that were the norm back then and I was barely starting to learn really basic english at age 12 (my first language is spanish).

The one that kept me sane - InuYasha

As I fell more and more in love with a different show, InuYasha, I still felt most comfortable copying what I saw (above is one of my favorites from that time, copied from a page of the manga), and sometimes, with a ton of detail. It was a hard time in my life because personal things, family problems, depression, school problems... focusing on something I loved deeply at 13 -and weirdly for a fantasy story, identified with- was really helpful. I felt limited because the difference in results when I copied an image vs when I made it up was staggering, but I still tried.

I joined a forum, made friends online (some of which I’m still very close to today -some of them I’d definitely credit with helping me not... take drastic measures back then), ventured to write fic in spanish and, something I’ll always thank my obsessive brain for, I forced myself to learn english so I could keep up with the new releases (it was either english or japanese, easy choice which one was easier). 

It was literally trying to figure out via context what the english subtitles meant, sometimes pausing every 5-10 seconds in a 20 minute episode because sometimes I didn’t understand a single word and had to look it up on the dictionary (google translate was kinda trash back then). My english wasn’t great but I tried. I couldn’t read fic in english yet, though.

This era lasted for a long while, I don’t know how many years. While I never stopped being more comfortable copying stuff, I did venture into doing my own little drawings and comics from my own head, based mostly on things I liked, stuff that happened in real life and my love for chibis has never stopped.

The “taking a leap of faith” fandom - The Mentalist

There were quite a few years where I went fandom-less (at least to a significant degree), I don’t know why. I found The Mentalist relatively early on, but since it clearly involves real people and actors, I couldn’t quite copy anything since realistic portraits have never been a huge interest or my strong suit. I started using pictures as references instead. I joined a forum once again, they had a lot of activities and I got to interact with people I admired, especially fic writers (by this point, I could read if in english, which was great because the ratio between spanish fics and english fics is... like 1:100. Also the source material in this case is in english, so...).

I didn’t know if my very anime-y style would be well received in the fandom, especially as I was probably one of the youngest people there and one of the only ones that came from the anime world. I tried regardless, I felt accepted, and eventually ventured into making my mostly pencil-only drawings snazzier with some digital editing. 

I dipped my toe in writing fic, in spanish and (gasp) in english, even if I was slightly terrified even with a beta reader. I also became very active in my deviantart profile (an art sharing website) since I hada lot of material to show and the fandom was also active there and probably joined Tumblr around this time.

I stayed in that fandom for years, through universities, made a lot of fandom friends over the years (from my late teens to my early twenties), mostly from the forum and ffnet, and because of tl;dr reasons, I had the opportunity to travel eventually and I had the good fortune of meeting a bunch of them in person. A couple of them we’ve met irl more than once even if we’re from different countries, and we talk online very often ♥ 

Also I started experimenting with watercolor, just a little bit, encouraged also by university. I did a ton of fanart comics, mostly humor. All the constant interactions with my fellow fangirls helped me improve my english a great deal, especially when it came to slang, and ever since then, most of my online life is in english now. 

There was this blog that did episode recaps of the show, I was somewhat popular in this fandom by then because I did a lot of fanart, and the person in charge of the blog commissioned me to make a drawing or comic per episode. I had deadlines and this was the first time I considered making drawings to supplement income, the opportunity meant a lot to me because I had free reign to let my fanart ideas run wild. I mostly used colored pencils. I think it was the most creative period of my life, I had so many ideas I never did, some because I didn’t feel good enough, lack of time/energy, etc. Still, some of them I’m still pretty fond of.

The current one - Blindspot

Again, it was a few years between fandom/a show I deeply connected with/a ship I fell in love with. But I stumbled into Blindspot (and Jeller) around July 2019, and you all know I love it here ♥ I wish I had found it earlier on, but eh, I’ll take what I can get!

I now run my own tiny business where I make stationery and apparel goods with my own original illustrations (and making commissions sometimes), mostly working in watercolor, and while it’s not yet at the point where I can fully support myself with just my income, it’s been a very long ride to get here. Of course it took a lot more than just fandom love, but I can’t say it wasn’t a big part of it.

Blindspot will end in 2020 but I still hope I can keep it and the friendships I’ve already made from it close to my heart, and that the fandom lives on. I certainly have lots of ideas pending, and as opposed to my previous fandom, I don’t want to leave any just as a scribbled down idea on a notebook.

#international fanworks day #fandom #get to know me #fangirl life #personal #fanart #about me #long post

[reasonablespeculation]

Travis Aaron Wade’s “charity” Truth 11:11

Disclaimer: This is gonna be a little link- and image-heavy. I don’t know much about charitable giving so I just tried to do some research about how to confirm a charity’s status/legality/impact. What I’ve found has given me a lot of doubts about how legitimate the charity that Wade runs actually is. As a control I’ve also researched K9s for Warriors to compare the results. (Apologies in advance for the way Tumblr handles images because they render quite fuzzy despite my best efforts.)

1. Verifying Charity Status - IRS 501(c)3

How to Tell If a Charity Is Legitimate via Huffpost has a lot of tools to search for charities. The first tool they recommend is checking if a charity claiming tax-exempt status (501c3) actually has that status. Truth 11:11 has a page where they show their 501(c)3 letter, which looks like this:

So I started by checking the IRS website for both their name and Employer Identification number. Here are the results:

“Truth 11:11″ with the semi-colon returns an error because the semi-colon is not a valid character. Capitalization doesn’t seem to matter, as you can see with the K9s for Warriors result.

I’m not sure why the IRS wouldn’t have any results for Truth 11:11 when they have a 501(c)3 letter appearing on their website. I also checked if their tax-exempt status was revoked per the steps listed here, but Truth 11:11 does not appear on that spreadsheet. I can provide screenshots for that if requested.

A fellow detective was able to find one registration for Truth 11:11, which is with the state of SC as a non profit effective 02/21/2019.

2. Verifying Charity Legitimacy - other websites

The HuffPo article lists a lot of other tools you can use to search for charities. Here’s a few linking to their results for a search on K9s for Warriors vs. Truth 11:11:

Charity Navigator: K9s for Warriors // Truth 11:11 (and their EIN)

Give.org: K9s for Warriors // Truth 11:11

Guidestar: K9s for Warriors // Truth 11:11 returns this search page:

Excellence in Giving: K9s for Warriors // Truth 11:11

3. Confirming Charity status - Charities for Veterans or Military families

I’d also like to call your attention to this very good article about Veteran’s charities scams. Charitable Solicitations for Vet & Military Families  To quote:

Many legitimate charities are soliciting donations to support the nation’s military veterans as well as the families of active-duty personnel. And despite tough economic times, people reportedly are responding generously to these requests. But not all “charities” are legitimate: Some are sham operators whose only purpose is to make money for themselves. Others use paid fundraisers whose fees eat up most of a donation, so very little of it is shared with those in need.    

And

Check out an organization before donating any money. Some phony charities use names, seals, and logos that look or sound like those of respected, legitimate organizations – or they may claim veteran status themselves as a way to gain your trust.

K9s for Warriors has their credentials listed upfront on their website with links/badges to reputable charity verification agencies.

Truth 11:11 does not.

But hey, they do have that Impact tab! ... that links to a blog.

(Also hey, check out that warning in the address bar that this is not a secure website. Interesting choice for a site that asks you to donate. From the military scams article: “If you’re thinking about giving online, look for indicators that the site is secure, like a lock icon on the browser’s status bar or a URL for a website that begins “https:” (the “s” stands for “secure”). “)

4. Financials:

Again from the FTC article about veteran’s charity scams: “Donate to charities with a track record and a history. Scam artists follow the headlines and charities that spring up literally overnight in connection with military conflicts and related news stories may disappear just as quickly – with your donation funding their next move. In many cases, those “instant charities” don’t have the infrastructure to get donated money or products to the right place.”

K9s for Warriors also clearly links to all of their financial documents: here

I have not been able to find any financial documents, budget, etc. on the Truth 11:11 website. Their “About” section has three pages: 1) Call to Action, featuring a nice headshot of Travis, 2) Mission Statement, where he talks about selling his used clothing, and 3) the alleged 501(c)3 linked above.

Let me say that again: Truth 11:11 has no financial documents of any type. There is no record of the amount they’ve raised on auctions for their “alliances”. There is no budget showing how funds are allocated to charities vs. administrative costs. If anyone is able to find this information please contact me.

In conclusion, I have serious doubts about the legitimacy of this charity. They claim to function as a sort of intermediary between fans and actual charities by selling objects or clothing signed by celebrities on eBay. They allegedly send the money raised in the auctions to the charities listed on their website, but there are no clear records on whether this happens or if it does, the breakdown of how much money is actually sent.

#TAW #the taw issue #Travis Aaron Wade #Sebastian Stan

[visualstories123]

ALICE’S RESEARCH: Conspiracies within Television and Film (Part One)

OKAY LADS HERE WE GO!!!!

So a bit of an introduction to my research: The first topic I decided to research was conspiracies within movies. I performed research for both on screen and offscreen (for example marketing) and I found some pretty juicy information. I love a good conspiracy theory, as a lot of you probably know by now, so the idea of me being able to link this into my Historical and Contextual studies is brilliant! Would love to hear your comments and feedback! :) 

Little bit of audio material for you to enjoy whilst you read this research - makes it an immersive experience lads! 

Hey what’s up you guys, yes. Welcome back to the blog and today I am going to be talking about conspiracy theories within film and television. These days, conspiracy theories are a major thing - especially when it comes the younger generations. In fact, conspiracy theories (along with memes and clearly a few shots of vodka) are what started the idea and the commencement of the Area 51 Raid. There are so many conspiracy theories spiralling around these days - whether they’re about the government, aliens, the Mandela effect - each conspiracy has it’s own way of shocking those who find out, and they all spark their own debates. My essay in particular will, of course, be focussing on conspiracies within movies and television shows, and the ideology behind them. So, let’s go see them theories - they can’t stop all of us. First of all I’d like to talk about the Headless Women of Hollywood. Posters are a huge part of the marketing process when it comes to advertising and distributing a film. You see them everywhere - whether it be online behind the screen or smack bang in your face on billboards in public. Surely there can’t be any ideology hidden behind posters though, right? Wrong. Take a look at these movie posters here:

Each movie poster has a woman clearly present, and it can be seen that all of these women share multiple things in common. A ‘desirable’ part of their body seems to be centred and in some instances there are men framing the women. However all of these ladies have one major thing in common - and that is the fact that you cannot see their faces. The same thing happens with modelling agencies. When a female model is modelling clothes, a lot of the time the agencies won’t show her face. Why? Because they don’t have to pay her as much money if she’s unidentifiable. So, instead, they just objectify the models. Male stars rarely ever seem to have their heads cut off in movie posters, and this all leads back to the ideology of feminism and sexism. A comedian named Marcia Belsky noticed this and she made her own social media accounts to discuss the subject. An article was made about the subject, and a particular quote from this article caught my attention - “Accompanied by hilarious captions, the post draws attention to how viewers are made to believe that a women’s head – “the first and foremost the thinking part of the human body”, as the website says – is dispensable in a work of art.”. Overall the Headless Women of Hollywood movie posters are taking away the identities of these ladies and objectifying them instead. I will go into much more detail with this in my overall essay. In PART TWO of my research, I will be talking about how suicide and mental health is portrayed as a somewhat positive thing in children’s cartoons that are shown within films and television shows.

In PART THREE of my research, I will be talking about the literal Matrix and how people think we could be living in a simulation. Putting all jokes aside I will link this back to our real life government and how it connects to Plato’s Cave and William Blake.

REFERENCES Headless Women of Hollywood: 1) https://youtu.be/RbwR_uHhiI0?t=2010 - Shane Dawson Video (33:30) 2) https://scroll.in/reel/872522/headless-women-of-hollywood-a-social-media-project-highlights-the-faceless-women-in-movie-posters - Marcia Belsky 3) https://www.google.com/search?q=headless+women+of+hollywood&sxsrf=ACYBGNQ4_CF_vBQWCPjk71zhi5ms1n2DDQ:1574519746175&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjfkqaRx4DmAhUHUcAKHWoaAYYQ_AUoAXoECAwQAw&biw=1440&bih=821#imgrc=9EEd9aHxFzRecM - Image One

FEEDBACK NOTES FOR ME TO LOOK BACK AT 1) Emily - A League of Their Own (Google this and link it into the essay) 2) Glorija - Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking (Simulation/Life is a hologram). 15 Irrefutable Reasons Why We Might Be Living in a Simulation (https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/15-irrefutable-reasons-we-might-be-living-in-a-simulation.html). People convinced we live in the Matrix (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/computer-simulation-world-matrix-scientists-elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-ai-a7347526.html). 3) Caitlin - Comedies (The Headless Women of Hollywood), could compare this to other genres.

#alice #alice work #alice research

[bassfanimation]

Lightbox Expo 2019

Hey all,

I just got back from Lightbox Expo in Pasadena this weekend.  WOW.  This show was like 10 Christmases shoved into two buildings, it was absolutely incredible.  A veritable Who’s Who of the art world.  Everyone and their mama was there.  It was like sensory overload but in a mostly good way.

I want to talk a little bit about why I went to this show.  As most of you who are older followers know, I used to actually make art.  I still work professionally, but it’s been about 2 years since I’ve been able to make anything personal.  Every time I pick up a pencil or pen and even attempt to put it to paper, I freeze.  My heartrate spikes, I start sweating, I can’t breath easily, and my brain put’s on an audio recording of self deprecation.  It literally makes me hate myself.  So I stop immediately.  I put down the pen, I open a website *usually this one* and I just avoid art altogether.  I feel like I’ve slowly been dying. 

So, the reason I went to Lightbox is to see if I could find others going through the same problems.  What I found is that, yeah, about half the people there were, or are going through it.  I attended many panels out there, most of them being about mental health and the creative mind.  I think I went to like 1-2 panels that weren’t about this.  The rest were just about....how the fuck do you cope in life as a creative person when your mind refuses to allow you to do so? How do you make art if you have crippling depression?  Anxiety?  Trauma?  How do you pick up the pencil, and when your brain tells you to put it down, how do you defy yourself and hold onto that pencil for dear life?

One of the panels I went to was with Ahmed Aldoor and Sinix (you can find them both on Youtube).  That panel was so beautiful, it was the best thing I saw out there. It was everything I needed to hear.  Ahmed deals with depression, and Sinix had such terribly anxiety that he had to be hospitalized.  They both talked about medication, therapy, and taking care of yourself physically.  Also making friends, being social, finding connection and community.  Finding a way to make creating not just about yourself, but about reaching out.  I think that’s also something I’ve been missing in my life for a long time.

I also attended panels with many female artists who discussed anxiety, imposter syndrome, never feeling good enough and how to deal with burnout. They also discussed working in male-heavy environments, having to deal with people asking them why they haven’t had children, pushback when they want to add diversity, etc.  They also talked about how important it is for women to form community around each other, to help boost each other and build bridges to each other.  I thought it was pretty awesome, and it’s something I sort of lack in my life.  I need to do better to reach out to women in my own creative community.

Anyhow, I have literally pages and pages I could write.  This show was INCREDIBLE.  I would encourage anyone who draws, paints, designs, animates and even writes to go to this show.  Famous artists are dripping from the walls, and they’re all incredibly friendly and willing to talk with you.  It was awesome as hell.  I plan to keep going for sure. <3

#Lightbox Expo #Lightbox Expo 2019 #mental illness #depression #imposter syndrome

[lachalaine]

2020′s on the Way !! ✨

accepting

@secrecykept​ submitted: 

It’s the end of 2019 and I finally have time to do this meme I’ve been wanting to do for ages even if I’m not good at getting things like this out, I always forget things or don’t get them out right but here we go.

In this essay I will love on you and Jackie forever and ever…kdjnfkdnfknd

My girl, my bby, my sweetest crab cake and twinsie, you are so so important to me. You are so sweet and kind, you always know just what to say, and talking to you always eases my heart. You are amazing and so giving, you do so much for others but I’m glad for the times you take care of yourself, you deserve happiness and relaxation for yourself.

You are so smart, always having such great insights, your opinions and thoughts mean so much to me and I always want to talk things over with you because I know you will steer me right and you actually care. Life has been really hard on you, but you are so strong and will always make it through.

I’m so lucky to have you in my life, you’re the most amazing and easiest person to talk to. I love that you get me so well, and talking with you is always a highlight. I really don’t know what would have happened if we didn’t become close when we did. You have been such a positive influence in my life, and I can only hope I can do as much for you as you do for me. Chatting and plotting with you is the best, it has gotten me through so much. You are so good and so much fun to plot with, I have never had it so seamless. Your ideas are always so good and I love hearing what you think about certain scenarios and ideas.

And the way you have always been so accepting of All my muses ngjgghhjjj it means so much more than I can say. I know my kids are safe with you and Jackie. I can’t tell you enough that I’m so lucky and grateful to have you as a friend and writing partner. You are so supportive and have the sweetest heart.

I think I said the other day that your opinion means the mostest to me and it really really does, in all things but especially in writing. You are so smart and talented, your style is so pretty and unique, always flowing so well and being full of personality. You have a gift with tone and pace and mood, I always admire the words and feel that your writing gives. You’re hard on yourself and get stuck trying for perfection, but I look up to you so much, your writing is such an inspiration to me. I know you always want to give people your best, and you consistently do! And you are so amazing and smart with the way you notice things in my writing and others, and I always love seeing what you pick up from things, it’s always a good surprise and insight.

And let me talk about your girl. Jackie is my absolute favourite oc, my favorite muse. From the first time I read her info a couple of years ago I was amazed. There is so much to her that i love. A DJ oc? Super cool! Reincarnation? Super duper cool! Norse Mythology! Exciting!! She has a purple hair! I’m in love. Jackie has such a gorgeous design I legit feel my heart doki every time I look at her or think about it. I love that her hair is naturally black and she has to go through such effort to get it the way she wants, I love the depth and thought you’ve put into every bit of her. I love her mahogany eyes and her distinct sense of style. I love her humour and strength and the way she is so real. She has gone through so much and doesn’t always deal with it in a healthy way, she’s human.

And I’m so proud of her and the ways she has grown. I have never been so invested in another muse before but your girl has me wanting to read every little thing about her and to see her continue to grow. Her happiness means so so much to me, I would do anything for her! I admire all the thought, depth and effort you put into your posts for you. I will forever say your blog is my favourite, I can’t get over the quality of writing, aesthetics, musings and everything. You are the Best, every post is a total gem.

I could keep going forever but lemme just conclude. 2019 has been a good year because I’ve had you as a friend and writing partner. I’ll always be so grateful for the fact we started talking, it was ages ago now but I appreciate it so much. All I wish for 2020 is for you to have the best year, you deserve fun and happiness and all the good things. I hope we can continue talking and writing together. Thank you for existing, light of my life! ily lots always. Biggest huggies! (pls just accept my love and dont feel like u gotta reply on all this okie dokie)

momo, oh my gosh bby :((( i don’t know what to say :((( this is so much to take in, and it is so sweet, and honest to god, i couldn’t manage to read it all in one go earlier because i couldn’t keep from bawling like a baby every other paragraph :((( i am too soft and fragile for such lovely and kind words, i cannot handle it :c but my gosh, i have never, ever appreciated a message more!! 

there’s so much here to unpack but i don’t think i can do my feelings justice. all i can tell you is that i am so, so, so very glad that i met you, momo! honestly and with all my heart, that is the most genuine truth i have! you have been a blessing for me in so many ways since we’ve met, you’ve taken care of me even when i’ve been super darn messy in all my moods and have been endlessly understanding, even with all my faults :c you have given me so much calm and peace in the time that i’ve known you, have eased a lot of my anxiety just by being here, just by being my friend, and i can honestly say i don’t even know what it feels like anymore – i don’t remember what it feels like for my anxiety to be so bad :c you have helped me more then you know, more then i could ever say, and though i always, always wish i could do so much more for you and be around more often and not poof inconsistently like i do, because god knows you deserve only the Best and most sincere amount of Effort in the World !! - i’m just so, so comforted by the fact that somehow, even despite everything — it seems i’ve been able to do just enough 🤗💖 

gosh momo, i am glad. more then anything, i will tell you that i am so glad - that i’ve been able to be your confidant all this while, that i’ve been able to ease some of your concerns, that i’ve been able to help you and be a positive influence in your life, because more than anything and with all my heart do i wish you could be happy and thriving and living your best life every single day! you deserve all the good that the world can give you, and i’m glad that you’re slowly but surely getting the tools to achieve it! you have grown so much in the time i’ve known you, even if you might not always feel the same way, but i see the changes that have occurred in you, occurred in your life, and all i can wish for is that it continues for the better ❤ you are so very capable and so very wonderful and talented and good, so vibrant and positive and creative and sweet, and i am hopeful that i can help you realize this bit by bit every single day. you are of my bestest friends, my absolutely favorite blog, my favorite writer with literally ALL my favorite muses of all time! muses who are so unique and different and special and so wonderful in so many ways!! and by god, but the mere fact that jackie was somehow lucky enough to catch all their attentions! and the fact that they feel comfortable enough to be with her the way they do! they are so precious and wonderful and incredible, and i’m honestly in awe of everything we’ve come up with! all the ideas that are so different from each other yet each have their own special qualities ❤ it has been such a treat for us since day 1! and gosh, but it is my pleasure and honor that i am able to give jackie to you and your kids, because i know she’s safe with all of them too. even when things go south, i know she’s safe. i know our friendship is safe. i know everything that occurs is good and there’s a reason for it, and if nothing else we’ll figure it out and we’ll have so much fun doing it, and i am honestly one of the luckiest people on this website - to have stumbled on someone who gets me so well too, who is so seamless to write with, who listens and cares and understands, and gives me a reason to do my best every single time! 🤗💖 you are the easiest person for me to talk to as well, you make my heart warm and make me cry sometimes because i do adore you so, so much, with all my heart, and the warmth of your presence is a gift i could never repay 💖 

i’m so happy we found each other when we did, i’m blessed that we were there for each other when we needed a friend. i think we were really meant to find each other, and i’ll be endlessly grateful that i got this chance, because honestly speaking, i wouldn’t change you at all for anything in the world!! 

i’m glad i can be there for you! i’m glad i can be a positive influence for you! i’m glad i can do my best for you, even when i might not always be around in my fullest capacity! i’m glad it has helped you when you needed it most 💕 i’m glad my words can give you some peace, even just a bit hihi 🤗 thank you for all that you do for me in turn! thank you for always listening to me when i needed to vent and cry, for understanding when i couldn’t be around. thank you for granting me the compassion i needed to be better to myself. thank you for always appreciating my writing and my daughter and for inspiring me and teaching me to write better!! thank you for even always giving me the urge TO write !! thank you for always doing your best even when you are a soft marshmallow, and for always writing LIKE AN ABSOLUTE QUEEN AND FOR ALWAYS GIVING ME THE GOOD PLOTS AND SHIPS AND RAMBLES AND FOR ALWAYS SHARING AS MUCH AS U COULD WITH ME BECAUSE IT HAS GOTTEN ME THROUGH MY DARKEST DAYS AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WOULD DO WITHOUT U 😭😭😭 you have been! an absolute gift! a blessing ! an angel !! and i am so lucky to be your twinsie and be able to have this connection with you, my best girl! 

jackie and i are the luckiest! we are the LUCKIEST and i will scream about you and your kids to anyone that will listen ( and even to those who don’t ) for the rest of my fucking days !!!!!! you and your work! the dedication and thought you put in! the writing and the ideas and everything in between ! you deserve to be appreciated and adored and you deserve all the appreciation and admiration in the world! and i am lucky ! i am lucky that i got this chance !! to be your twin! to be your friend! to be your writing partner with each and every one of our kids!!! you mean the world to me, momo! an inspiration like no one else! who has taught me so much, who has given me and my muse so much, and is the main and literal REASON that i am still here and will KEEP COMING BACK, the reason that jackie herself has grown and experienced as much love and affection and positive change as she has! you and your muses are the reason she is getting healthier, the reason she feels more like herself again after everything! the reason she is happy, the reason i’m able to explore her in ways i could never manage before because nothing ever felt right, and yet with your kids - they all feel so natural. thank you for accepting her in her entirety, THANK U FOR LOVING HER IN ALL THE WAYS THAT U DO AND FOR HAVING AS MUCH INTEREST IN HER AS U DO !!! and thank you endlessly for giving us as much effort and dedication as you have! writing with you has been the best experience ever, it’s been so much fun and you’re so smart and talented and imaginative and creative and adshbhdbsahdbas i just!! i adore you!! i adore your writing and your talent and your style and you and everything and anything in between! you are such a spark of delight and i love you with my heart, bby!!! i look up to you in every way!!

you are the best person to write with, the person to plot with, the best person to be friends with, and i’m so happy i found you! and i just want u to know i appreciate it all !!! thank u for always spoiling us the way you do with all the good shippies 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 I HOPE WE CAN CONTINUE TO DO MORE FOR U AND YOUR KIDS IN THE YEARS TO COME !!!!! i love you so much, momo!!! with all my heart!! thank you for a wonderful and enjoyable 2019, and happy new year, my best girl!! to better days and a brighter future for us both in 2020, to more chatting and to more fun, more writing plots, more ships and threads and au’s every other day heheheheh 💕💕💕💕 i send u the biggest huggies every single day !!  🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗

// @secrecykept​

#&& make sure the stars is what you aim for (positivity) #secrecykept #&& waste time with a masterpiece (answered asks) #/ i cannot just accept ur love #/ it is not possible #/ I MUST SHOWER U WITH MY LOVE IN RETURN #/ MOMOOOOOO I LOVE U SO MUCH !!! #/ THANK U FOR ALL THAT U DO FOR ME #/ I LEGIT CRIED #/ SO MUCH WHILE READING THIS #/ I WENT FULL SOBBING #/ and just when i needed it the most !! 😭😭😭 #/ you are so sweet and lovely and wonderful momo how could i ever deserve u #/ how could i get so lucky #/ YOU ARE TOO GOOD TO ME #/ thank u for always being there for me and always being so wonderful all day everyday #/ you are a gem and i adore u with every inch of my heart!!! #/ i love u !! so much!! #/ HAPPY NEW YEAR MY BEST GIRL AND I WISH A STUPENDOUS CELEBRATION FOR US BOTH !!! #/ YOU QUEEN !!!!! #&& pre recorded tracks (queue) #submission

[dailyaudiobible]

11/21/2019 DAB Transcript

Ezekiel 42:1-43:27, James 5:1-20, Psalms 119:1-16, Proverbs 28:6-7

Today is the 21st day of November. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is wonderful it is a joy to be here with you as we take our next step forward, something we've gotten in the habit of doing, taking the next step forward each day. So, today we’ll go back into the book of Ezekiel before concluding the letter of James. And we are reading from the New Living Translation this week. Ezekiel chapters 42 and 43.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we concluded the letter of James today and yeah…I mean that…that book…that letter…that…that letter will kick your butt. And, so, if you're like me, then you’ve been challenged once again by the Scriptures. And as we concluded this letter, the final words of encouragement, as is…is customary with many of the letters in the Bible offers some practical postures that we need to live into or we’re supposed to live into. But as we look at the ending of James, we need to remember that James is writing to Jewish brothers and sisters, so Hebrews. And these Hebrews had been forced to relocate and move around because persecution had begun. So, James says, “dear brothers and sisters”, and man, that's the context for who he's writing to, but this is for every single one of us, “dear brothers and sisters, be patient as you wait for the Lord's return. Consider the farmers who patiently wait for the rains in the fall and in the spring. They eagerly look for the valuable harvest to ripen. You too must be patient. Take courage for the coming of the Lord is near.” So, what James is describing here is what we've started to talk about a lot because the Bible’s bringing up it…bringing it up a lot and that is endurance. Be patient as you wait for the Lord. How often do we do that? I cannot tell you the probably, thousands of conversations that I have been a part of over the years where a person is very frustrated at God because they are not willing to be patient. And yet what James says is true. “Look at the farmers, they have to wait for the rains to come. That's how it works, and so they eagerly wait for the rains and then they eagerly look for the harvest to ripen.” That’s the example the Bible is using. That's what James is using to illustrate this point. We must be patient in the same way understanding that the harvest comes throughout seasons. And as we wait patiently, we are being ripened. So, that is very encouraging for us but for those who had been, you know, displaced because of persecution and facing that kind of marginalization that kind of hardship, then those…those words give a person a reason to continue another day because we’re reminded that a process is underway. So, we’re impatient because we haven't reached the conclusion, but we are not at a standstill. No matter what it feels like a process is underway and in that process we must be patient and practice endurance, which can be more difficult than we can imagine sometimes, largely because our culture and everything we watch on television and listen to on the radio promises us that it’s gonna…that we can have it now. Buy now pay later is the way of things, instant gratification. But this process that's happening inside of us, the process of sanctification, it doesn't work like that. It’s like a farmer. So, a farmer can't plant a seed and then wake up the next day and go out and get the harvest. If a farmer plants a seed, he’s going to go out the next day and it's gonna look like nothing has happened and nothing will happen. Sometimes the long wait, right, as we ripen, the long wait through the seasons discourages us and then we find ourselves behaving just like the children of Israel in the Scriptures, grumbling, right, grumbling through our wilderness experiences. James actually spoke to that though. Brothers and sisters don't grumble about each other or you will be judged for look the Judge is standing at the door. So, we only spent a few days working through this fairly short letter from James, but we’re left with plenty to think about. James wrote a forthright, direct, clear letter so that nothing can be misunderstood in what he was saying and so we should be forthright in receiving what was said, and in bringing that to God, especially in terms of things we may need to repent of, things that may need to change so that where not just hearers but doers of God's word.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that, the point at which what we believe animates our lives so that what we do and think and say is centered around our relationship with You. And we…all…all of us confess that there have been plenty of times that it's been lip service, that we've talked a good game about a life that we are not living. And, so, we are inviting Your Holy Spirit to come and unify those things, reveal those things so that in heart, mind, and will we are in alignment with You even as we continue to explore the necessary aspect of life known as endurance. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website and that makes it home base for a community that’s virtual like ours. So, that is the place to go to stay tuned and stay connected.

Of course, if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app most of the things that we’re talking about at the website, they are also available in the app. So, you can just click the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner. But it's a portal, it's a way to stay connected.

And one of the one of the beautiful distinctives of this community that has kind of evolved over the years is the fact that we love one another well and we pray for each other continually. And the Prayer Wall is a place to go that really represents that because it's just always on and there are people praying all the time. So, it's a wonderful place to go if you're shouldering something you need to offload and you need not carry by yourself but it's also place to go when you're feeling strong and you remember what it feels like to be weak and you just go and offer some love, some heart, some encouragement, some prayer. And that's kind of…that's the glue here. And, so, the Prayer Wall is a wonderful resource. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, I cannot thank you enough. We literally and truly would not be here doing this if we did not do this together. And, so, I thank you…thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com, just lives kind of on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is a number that you can dial, or you can press the Hotline button in the app, the little red button that lives at the top and…and off you go.

And that is it for today. I am Brian I love you and I will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

I want to say hello to this beautiful community of believers that I have the privilege of being a part of. This is Mary from Georgia and I want to pray for Summer from Ohio and Running Desperately to Jesus. I just heard their prayer requests this morning and I just want to ask for God’s help for them. Father thank You so much for the beautiful gift of this community that You have given to all of us and I ask Your continued blessing on it and on Brian and his family and I ask that You would just grow this community even more so than You already have. I especially want to lift up Summer, my sweet sister in Ohio and my other sweet sister who called herself Running Desperately to Jesus. That is the most beautiful way to describe Yourself. That’s who we all should be. And I just ask that You would please, give them Your…more of Your grace and more of Your peace Father into their minds and their hearts. I pray that You would help them to fill their ears and their thoughts and their eyes with You with Your truth that is found in the Bible Lord. I ask that You would point them to people in their community, maybe their church or their neighbor heard or at work who could just speak more of Your truth into their lives. I ask that You would please, allow Your…Your people to lift them up wherever they are and just give them peace and rest from their mental anxieties from what weights so heavily on their hearts. I ask that You would use this time of struggle so that they can help bless others in the same way that I know You will greatly bless them and heal them Lord in Jesus’ name.

Hi DAB family this call is for Vivik’s mom who is blind. We haven’t heard from you for a very long time. You used to call in all the time to give us some updates on Vivik. I know he was going through a difficult time a while ago. Hope things are much better for him now, hope he’s thriving and getting stronger in the Lord. Hope your daughter is doing well. You’ve been on my mind a lot and I just wanted to let you know that I love you and I’m praying for your family and please call in soon and give us an update on how you, Vivik and your daughter are doing. God bless you. Take care. And thanks to Brian and the Hardin family for everything you do for us. Bye.

Good morning. Hey this is Annette Allison from Oklahoma City. This message is for Running Desperately to Jesus. Sister, I think I know exactly how you feel. You know, I’ve had some pretty bad relationships in my past and taken advantage of many times by supervisors and bosses and coworkers because I tried to be nice. And I understand that sometimes being nice, it’s kind of hard to say no and…but then people kind of take advantage of you and then you like resent them when you did what you set out to do, which is kind of funny. But, you know, I understand and my life at one time I was angry and bitter, and I had no happiness whatsoever, nothing brought me happiness. And I understand. And the Lord was convicting my heart and I had been in the Daily Audio Bible for about a year and a half and I just asked Him to bring joy in my life. But I think the thing that I have learned over the years is that happiness and joy is a choice. Okay? And maybe that is something that you need to hear, that it is a choice and it’s not something that just magically happens in your heart. You have to work at it, you have to find the joy in work and the joy in anything. And I think Ecclesiastes may help you out. Read that. And just ask for the Lord to…to bring joy into your life and to practice it. Practice smiling. Practice being nice. Practice being polite. And do it with a smile even if you don’t feel like it because those are muscles that we need to work out and if we don’t work about it ain’t gonna work.

Hey Daily Audio Bible Family, this is Fashionably Late Vinnie calling you from the flatlands of Ohio in the USA. I first want to say thanks to Brian for putting this button in the app where we can just tap in and share our prayer requests. It’s just so much easier to hear you guys now if you have access to that button. It’s like you guys are in my living room and we’re sharing prayer requests. I can just hear you all so much better and I feel so much closer to all. So, thank you Brian for developing that and putting that in there for us. Thing two as per my nickname, Fashionably Late. I am very fashionably late with the podcast. I just finished September 27th and it is actually November 17th today. So, a couple weeks for me, a couple months ago for all of you we went through the song of Solomon and that can be a bittersweet read if you are single like me. And I had a hard time at first but I appreciate Brian’s perspective that it can be a poem between two lovers. It can also be a poem between God and us, Him calling out to us, searching for us to be in relationship with us. So, if you are single and this season of life, I just want to encourage you. God is calling out to you. God has something for you in this season of your life. So, spend time with him like you would spend time with the people you love. Go on a walk with him this week and take a moment to listen to share your heart and just let him call out to you, let him call you into whatever he has for you in the season because there’s a purpose for it. All right. God bless you all. Ciao.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is Melissa and I am also from Ohio and I wanted to pray right now for Summer from Ohio who called in the other day. It was…today is November 16th, I think. And summer, I just…I just love you. I do. I love that you said you were spent because it sounds like it. It does. And that tugged at my heart so much because I know. I don’t know but I know being spent. And I am also a mom and I am also walking a rocky path. So, I just want to pray for you right now Summer from Ohio. I am here in Ohio with you and I’m just can lift you up to God. Lord God I just lift Summer up to You and so much of what her is on her heart and I just pray Lord I just pray that You would give her strong shoes, strong shoes Lord to walk this path that she would be an example. And Lord God just bring into her life people that would pour into her their love and support and encouragement. In Jesus’ strong and holy name. Amen.

Good morning it is November 18th, and this is Denise who is originally from California, now lives in Charlotte North Carolina but travels a lot for her job so has already made it on a Monday morning to Orlando for a business trip. So, the sound that you hear in the background is the Orlando airport, but I had to stop and find a quiet a place as possible to lift up the people whose prayers were played on November 17th. Isabel in Australia for the fires in Australia, I just want to lift up your country and bring the healing rain from the Lord. And Asia from Chicago your tears for JJ the homeless man and all homeless in Chicago, you had me crying in seat 13C. So, sister I prayed with you and I pray with you now for healing and the protection and all of the complex things that go into homelessness, let those just be parted like the waters to get to the other side. Summer from Ohio, I heard your tears and I heard your pain and I heard everything that you had to say, and I lift those up. And for Jason who was suicidal who you say that doesn’t hear you. Lord I just ask that You open Jason’s ears up right now, You open his ears up so that You open his heart up and You send the right person the right messenger that there is another way and that he is made in God’s image and that he is destined to help other people when he gets on the other side of his own pain. And then Desperately Running for Jesus, I don’t have a response. Suffice to say that I know it is never too late because Moses’ ministry started very late in his life and Sarah had a baby very late in her life and there’s a whole list of people in the Bible who did things late. And, so, whatever God is working on you I know it is for good because He works for good and His blessings can’t be reversed. Amen.

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/full-moon-september-2019-fight-or-flight/

Full Moon September 2019 ~ Fight Or Flight?

Full Moon September 2019 ~ Fight Or Flight?

By Darkstar Astrology

Full Moon September 14 2019 falls at 21º Pisces Decan 3. Full Moon is conjunct Neptune, opposite Mars & square Jupiter. Full Moon healing crystal is the Tiger’s Eye. Fixed Star is Markab in Pegasus the Winged Horse. Tarot card is the 10 of cups.

FULL MOON MEANING

Full moons tend to make us purge and release things from our lives, so we need to make sure that we are in control of this and no one is forcing our hand! Sometimes we can let go of things that we regret later, due to heightened emotions and the full moon’s penchant for saying ‘F*** You!’

The bright light of the sun throws a spotlight on our subconscious and our shadow. This can feel uncomfortable as the Sun literally blasts out the demons who have nowhere to hide. Often the full moon is a time when we reap what we sowed at the new moon,.. for good or for ill.

The veils between the worlds are thinnest around a full moon, so be very careful what you invite in. Instead, the full moon is best used to purge things out, and banish entities/bad habits back to the underworld from whence they came. Make sure you close the door firmly afterwards! This is a good time for exorcism, but make sure you are completely grounded and fully in control of the process. If in doubt, lie low and protect yourself.

Full Moon September 2019 Astrology

Full Moon September In Pisces Decan 3

The wild mood-changes in this decan are bound to keep us on our toes. Because of fluctuating emotions, we might well find it hard to keep hold of relationships at this time or stick to any project. We are apt to lash out for no apparent reason, so this decan is typical of the temperament that is often described being “artistic ” Interestingly in my research, I actually found very few actual artists with their Moon in this decan, but there are certainly those who have a finger on the pulse of what is popular in the collective.

This decan is very sensitive to what its peers (or the public) perceive them to be. If they can’t be loved then Pisces decan 3 might go out of their way to be unpopular and delight in being controversial. Moon in Pisces 3 loves being the subject of gossip, and they seem to lap-up any attention, even if it is negative. Bad press doesn’t exist as long as this person is being talked about; So at this time, we will see many prominent people feeding off drama in the collective. The Moon here can be quite “bratty” also. Infantile rages can emerge due to unresolved childhood trauma.

Fixed Star Markab

Moon on Markab ~ “Injuries from enemies and domestic matters, fairly good health but many accidents”. [6] ” To be emotionally consistent, to be unchanging in one’s devotion. To see to serve in a practical manner, the needs of others.” [7] Manilus writing in the 1st century says “It will bring forth people endowed with a swiftness of movement and limbs alert to perform every task… proudly mounted on its back he will wage war from on high; horseman and soldier in one. Another will possess the ability to rob the racecourse of its true length such is his speed…and make the ground vanish before him… will know the herbs which bring aid to an animal’s limbs and those which grow for the use of man.” So there is swiftness in the body and mind.

Full Moon Pisces Decan 3 ~ Tarot Card

The tarot card associated with this card is the 10 of cups. The Cinderella effect of the meaning of the decan as a whole is very marked with this card since “It suggests emotional fulfilment, settling down and starting a family. You have found the love you have searched for… You may have a picture painted in your head of the ideal partner and life for you.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this as we all have our own idea of what we are looking for, and a dream we would dearly love to come true.”

Painting a picture is appropriate as this is such an imaginative decan. Karmically for artists “ The Ten of Cups suggests exceptional work. Your creations will be truly inspiring and might even be your best  yet” Like high flying Pegasus “It is all taking off for you now and you may even get some global recognition.” ~ teachmetarot.

The 3rd Face Of Pisces

“A sad man full of evil thoughts, thinking of deception and treachery, and before him is a woman with a donkey climbing atop her, and in her hand is a bird. This is the face of advancement, and lying with women with a great appetite, and of quiet and seeking rest” ~ Picatrix

Artwork ‘3rd Face Of Pisces” kindly supplied by J Swofford at: abnormalimage.com and JswoffordArtandPhoto

Full Moon September Healing Crystal ~ Tiger’s Eye

Tiger’s Eye is a remarkable ally for the mind, balancing emotional extremes and allowing scattered thoughts, feelings and information to come together in a way that makes sense. It brings focus and stability, enabling one to make decisions from a place of reason rather than emotion. Tiger’s Eye is ideal for those who are spaced out and uncommitted to find purpose; for those who find it difficult to remain optimistic, it stimulates hope and confidence for the future. [1][2]

A popular good luck stone, Tiger’s Eye/Cat’s Eye was used to ward off the evil eye, and to reflect back any malice or threats without absorbing any negative energy. It was used a great deal in voodoo rituals. Holding a Tiger’s Eye was also used to discern if someone else was reliable or not. Traditionally it was believed by the end of the day, any deception would be revealed. [3][4]

Right Use Of Power

It engenders peacefulness and beauty, and connects with the spiritual power of the sun as nourishment for the soul. Tiger’s Eye enables the ability to remember dreams and to use dreamtime for spiritual advancement, sparking imagination, intuition, and opening up psychic talents in earthy people through Third Eye activity. [5]

Tiger’s Eye is highly beneficial for resolving dilemmas and internal battles, especially those caused by jealousy, will fulness and pride. It teaches integrity and right use of power, bringing an awareness of one’s needs, as opposed to mere “wants,” as well as understanding the needs of others. It is excellent for healing issues of self-criticism and worth, and unblocks creativity so one may recognize one’s talents and abilities, as well as one’s faults that need to be overcome. It is highly supportive for an addictive personality, increasing personal will to affect positive change, and anchors that change into the physical body. [1][2].

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Eurovision 2019 Opinions

Well, the 26 countries that will be participating in the final are official now, so here’s my in depth thoughts about each entry, ranked from least favorite to favorite along with explanations and a 10 pt rating system. honestly i thought this year was solidly mediocre. a few i really like, about 3 i can’t stand, and the rest are all smack dab in the middle of “decent”. of course, these are just my opinions and I totally get that people will disagree with them. i don’t really care. yeah there’s a few i’ll judge you for, but frankly my opinion shouldn’t matter to you. i’m just posting it for my own record and for anyone who might be curious

26. Slovenia (0/10) I know a lot of people like this entry, but frankly, I cannot stand it. It’s boring. It’s awkward. It’s uncomfortable. If I wanted to watch an m/f couple - or, you know what, any couple - stand really close to each other and mumble for three minutes, I - I don’t actually know where I’d go, because I can’t conceptualize myself ever wanting to see that.

25. Denmark (0/10) Again, why? This entry annoys me a lot, and the only reason I didn’t put it last was because I appreciate the use of more than one language. It’s my least favorite parts of all kids shows combined coupled with a message that honestly I disagree with. It feels a bit like she’s judging me for being upset at injustice in the world when I should just shut up and be happy about what I have. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe it’s acceptable to ignore atrocities just because my life is filled with good things. I could imagine this song being the welcoming number in a musical staged in one of those “everything is perfect on the outside but inside it’s the creepiest shit you’ve ever seen” towns that’s used to hypnotize the protagonist into not noticing the creepy shit

24. Estonia (1/10) I don’t honestly dislike this song, but it does bore me. He’s a mediocre singer with a mediocre song. Also I can’t get past the fact that he rhymes “this” with “this”. It distracts me and ruins the whole thing.

23. Czech Republic (2/10) I really didn’t like this one at first. It was irritating and the lyrics were weird. However, I surprisingly enjoyed the live performance. The lead singer has some charisma on stage. Good for him.

22. San Marino (3/10) No idea how he got to the final (I know it’s bc he’s a meme, but still), but I don’t hate the song. I don’t think it should win, but honestly, I think it’s fun. His voice is ridiculous, but I can stand it for three minutes.

21. UK (4/10) I definitely feel like this is the kind of generic song I’ve heard many times before, but he does a good job with it, and ultimately it’s alright. His hair makes me think of Finn Shelby from Peaky Blinders, but that’s neither here nor there.

20. North Macedonia (4/10) Honestly, I feel like I should like this song more than I do. She has a good voice, and the song has a good message. Unfortunately, it’s just never clicked with me, and I often find myself tuning out while listening to it.

19. Israel (5/10) I like his voice. He sells the emotion. Not a gripping song, by any means, but not bad. Some of the rhymes feel a little forced, like the lyrics were written specifically so that they would rhyme, rather than because they have meaning.

18. Germany (5/10) This one gets stuck in my head sometimes, but I’m okay with that. Tbh, I quite like it. Plus, the whole “sisters (but I’d say girls in general) are taught to tear each other down but need to build each other up instead” theme is one I wholeheartedly support. I spent too many years hating everything associated with girls because society told me to.

17. Malta (5/10) I go back and forth on this one a lot. Parts of it I like, parts of it I don’t. It feels a bit different to me, but not like, in a revolutionary way. The singer is strong, and it definitely gets the award for most colorful performance, literally!

16. Serbia (5/10) I feel like I’ve heard this entry before, too, but specifically at Eurovision. Still, she does a good job with it, and I like her armor-inspired jewelry. Plus, it’s not in English!

15. Belarus (5/10) Another one I go back and forth on. I find this is very good study music - energetic and repetitive enough not to be distracting. I don’t love it (I’m even hesitant to say I like it lmao), but people really ought to stop hating on her so much. She’s sixteen. Let her have her fun.

14. Albania (6/10) I really liked Albania’s entry this year tbh. I didn’t feel she sang as strong in the semi-final as she did in the music video, but otherwise I thought it was a very powerful song. The staging was pretty cool, too!

13. Azerbaijan (6/10) I loved everything about this except the refrain. The “shut up about it” bit starts to get on my nerves by about the second refrain. But the verses sounded cool and the staging was awesome!

12. Sweden (6/10) Not the most exciting song in the world, but he sounds good, the ladies sound great, and there’s nothing I dislike about the song or staging.

11. Cyprus (6/10) Not as good as the music video, sadly, but still catchy and fun. I didn’t really like it the first time I heard it, but it’s grown on me since. I felt bad for her being put on the spot with that one “are you mad about Cyprus losing last year” question.

10. Greece (6/10) Definitely grew on me. I tuned out of it the first time I heard it. Prior to the semi finals I thought it was alright. But she really gave us the lesbian dream, huh? Ladies with neat clothes and swords, plus a garden? What more can you ask for lmao

9. France (7/10) Feels kinda standard to me, but not in the worst way possible. Sometimes I get really into it, other times it’s just a nice song. I’ve been liking it a little bit more each time I hear it, though.

8. Netherlands (7/10) The favorite to win, and I’d be okay if it did. Not my favorite this year, but a solidly good song. I have to be in the right mood to want to listen to it, but when I am? Fucking amazing. Also, considering he never left the piano (and didn’t light it on fire), he gave a pretty good performance.

7. Spain (8/10) This song is so much fun, and it’s definitely going to end the competition on a high note. I’m also really curious to see the full version to know more about the life-size dollhouse and animatronic thing they’ve got going

6. Switzerland (8/10) I loved the music video more than the live performance, but regardless I thought this song was also really fun and, idk, snazzy? Love dancing to it while I fold laundry.

5. Australia (9/10) Australia’s staging was everything! I had them in the upper middle rankings until the semi-final, but honestly that looked cool as all fuck!! Her song is weird, but in a way that I can dig. Plus seeing her soar around like Glinda in space with two fellow witches is one of the highlights of Eurovision this year

4. Russia (10/10) Sergey is back and just like in 2016, I absolutely love him and his performance. I’ll admit, the shower thing was a bit weird, but the song sounded great live! Plus, he had a leg-up for me by going with fairy tale imagery in the music video.

3. Norway (10/10) Initially, I only liked the joiking. The other two singers have grown on me, though. This song is fun, the staging is cool, the singers are great, and then it gets quiet and the joik part comes in, and it’s so fucking cool!! Love it, love it, love it!

2. Italy (10/10) My favorite for a long time, only bumped out because I made the fortuitous mistake of watching Iceland’s interviews. I love the song. I love the message. The thing that impressed me most, though, was that this song is about something that isn’t even remotely close to anything that’s happened in my life. I do not relate to it at all. But despite having no personal connection to the topic, I could feel the emotion in it. For a brief three minutes, I could feel something that isn’t my reality but is the reality of many other people. And an artist who can do that is powerful indeed.

1. Iceland (10/10) If you couldn’t tell from the everything about my blog, I have firmly joined the camp of Hatari stans. It may surprise you, but I didn’t really like this song the first time I heard it. Then, I found out the meaning behind it and gave it another chance. Lo and behold, I liked it! It rose in my rankings from lower-middle to the number one spot between listening to it multiple times and watching all the Hatari content I could get my hands on. I totally understand the music being too far for some people, but as a metalhead during the not-Eurovision parts of the year, Hatari isn’t too far of a leap for me. I love the song. I love the staging. I love the costumes. I love the message. I love the band. I love how they interact with each other and everyone else. I love the bits on Iceland Music News. I love their trolling and sarcasm in the interviews. I love the anti-capitalism. I love their websites (seriously, check them out. they put a lot of effort into them). I love the way they approach issues that are important to them. I love the fact that they aren’t afraid of the tough subjects. I especially love that they aren’t trying to walk the popularity line (you see it all the time - for example, queerbaiting, where a tv show wants to appeal to all sides of an issue, so they make characters nearly lgbtqia+ but then throw in enough straightness to please conservatives). Hatari picks their side in each issue instead of trying to cater to everyone, and I respect that a lot. My reactions and emotions aren’t usually prominent or even necessarily visible, but there’s a chance I might actually cheer if they win.

Finally, the honorable mentions, aka countries that didn’t make it to the final but that I would’ve loved to see:

Hungary (in my original top 10) - loved him last time, loved him this time. Beautiful song, beautiful voice, beautiful staging

Georgia - my hopes weren’t high but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love it. There’s nothing quite like a good dramatic song, and this was as dramatic as they come

Portugal/Poland - the two most people were really miffed about in the first semi-final; I think they’d’ve been alright in the semi-final, but both depend entirely on my mood. sometimes I love, sometimes I hate

Croatia - the song was ‘meh’, the singer was fantastic, and the staging was Eurovision in all the right ways

Armenia - one of my early favorites. could’ve used some other people on stage, but otherwise I thought she did wonderfully

Romania - what can I say that hasn’t been said already? she brought everything! that was an experience and an amazing one at that. so disappointed she didn’t make it

and of course,

Ukraine - catchy, badass, wacky, and wlw? sign me the fuck up. So sad to hear what happened to her. I know people are saying this is why politics should be kept out of music, but that’s ridiculous. The real issue is when the issue/message isn’t coming from the artist. It should always be up to the artist’s discretion what they do or do not promote. Propaganda and censorship go hand in hand, which is why I am so bothered by the blanket statements I hear thrown around about Ukraine’s fiasco this year

And that’s all! I think I’ll be happy with anyone scoring a 7 or higher for me winning on Saturday. I wouldn’t be upset about a 6 winning either, I suppose.

Anyways, off to bed so I can make my snacks tomorrow lmao!