#and it's interesting how few people there are who are cognizant of that tendency in him and who understand he's genuine

[mediaevalmusereads]

Silence. By Shūsaku Endō (translated by William Johnston). Picador, 1969.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Genre: historical fiction

Series: N/A

Summary: Father Rodrigues is an idealistic Portuguese Jesuit priest who, in the 1640s, sets sail for Japan on a determined mission to help the brutally oppressed Japanese Christians and to discover the truth behind unthinkable rumours that his famous teacher Ferreira has renounced his faith. Once faced with the realities of religious persecution Rodrigues himself is forced to make an impossible choice: whether to abandon his flock or his God.

***Full review below.***

CONTENT WARNINGS: torture

OVERVIEW: This book has been on my TBR for a while - for so long, in fact, that I can't say for sure where or how I first learned of it. I'm not Christian, so my interest didn't stem from any religious affiliation; instead, I wanted to read this book because I was interested in learning more about the history of Christianity in Japan. Overall, I'm awarding this book 4.5 stars because it held my interest; watching the protagonist grapple with his faith while also witnessing both wonder and horror in Japan was deeply compelling, and I can see why so many people consider this book a classic.

WRITING: Because I'm reading this book in translation, I can't really comment on the quality of Endō's prose or whether or not Johnston rendered it faithfully. I can, however, comment on the impression that the English translation made, so I'm going to do that to keep my review fair.

I really enjoyed enjoyed the scenery and environment in this book. Description moves effortlessly between the dark, ominous, and breathtaking beauty of things like the sea and the mountains, and then focuses on the poor, fly-infested, desperate cluster of huts where peasants huddle together for survival. This oscillation made me both adore Japan for its beauty yet prevented me from idealizing it; I was instilled with a deep appreciation for the world, yet I was also cognizant of the fact that it had its problems.

If I had any complaint about the prose, I would say that I think either Endō or Johnston has the tendency to describe people as "beasts" too often. I'm not sure if the comparison is different in Japanese, but in the English translation, it appears frequently (to the point where the repetition is noticeable and, in my opinion, a little distracting). A little more variety would have been appreciated.

Lastly, I just want to voice my appreciation for Johnston's preface, which gives a short yet helpful overview of the history of Christianity in Japan in the 16-17th centuries. Without this preface, I'm not sure I would have gotten as much out of the novel as I did, and I'm grateful that Jonston kept it short and on-topic.

PLOT: The plot of this book primarily follows Jesuit priest Sebastian Rodrigues as he travels through 17th Japan. Over the course of the novel, Rodrigues encounters communities of secret Christians and witnesses their persecution by a hostile government, all of which prompt him to reconsider the tenants of his own faith.

What I liked most about this book was the way Rodrigues meditated on big theological questions, such as the quality of martyrdom and the role of Judas in the story of Christianity. I find theological questions deeply interesting, and I loved the way the plot supports an examination of what it means to be Christian. I also very much appreciated that this book is not afraid to show characters struggling; this is not a book about perfect sainthood, but about what faith might look like in the face of very real, very deadly persecution. I loved that it was practical, in that sense - picking apart idealized Christian narratives and instead looking at how actual human beings would behave.

If I had any complaints, I would say that the second half of the book felt a little slow, but since this novel is so short, it's not a huge deal (at least not for me).

CHARACTERS: There are a few characters in this novel, but I'm only going to focus on two: Rodrigues and Kichijirō. I won't include Garrpe because, despite being one of two Jesuit priests who come to Japan, he doesn't play much of a role in the story.

Rodrigues is our POV character and protagonist, and the book is about his struggle with faith. In my opinion, Rodrigues is a compelling protagonist precisely because we see him struggling. Though I'm not religious, I can understand the difficulty of feeling abandoned by God in the face of great suffering, and I sympathized with Rodrigues' desire to help the Japanese Christians without compromising his ideals. I also think his struggles and his evolution meant that he grew in a very interesting way, and by the end of the book, I was fully convinced that he had found some kind of peace.

Kichijirō is a Japanese Christian who is defined by his cowardice. He betrays his fellow Christians and his own faith, and though he's somewhat irritating, his behavior prompts some insightful reflections from Rodrigues. I particularly liked how Kichijirō was compared to Judas and how that made Rodrigues reexamine his understanding of scripture. I also liked how Kichijirō made Rodrigues examine his own biases and think about how it was not Christ-like to only love and forgive good, beautiful people. In short, Kichijirō was a good touchstone for Rodrigues.

TL;DR: Silence is a masterfully-crafted novel about Christian identity and the silence of God in the face of religious persecution. With a sympathetic protagonist and a dearth of theological questions, this book is a fascinating examination of what it means to have faith.

[jostenneil]

like the sort of crux and dilemma of bruce wayne to me (and what makes him a character i find so relatable and inclined towards) is he’s this guy who takes all burdens upon himself in. . . a myriad of ways. there are a lot of different types of burdens in his life. the burden of feeling responsible for his parents’ death. the subsequent burden of tasking himself responsible with saving as many people as possible so as to prevent the death of his parents from being recreated. the burden of taking upon proteges so as to prevent them from going through life as alone as he was for years. the burden of taking upon those proteges’ anger and grief bc he doesn’t know that he can always keep them safe and so he acts overprotective in a way that they don’t understand. the burden of guilt from all of these different circumstances in his life which he tries to keep from falling apart despite the fact that he is one man and he cannot ensure the complete functionality of every aspect of life. the subsequent burden of shame which causes him to not speak up when people he cares about criticize him bc he doesn’t see the worth in defending himself when he already has so much he blames himself for before they even start to point fingers. and so on and so forth. i know there are interpretations of bruce which portray him as indignant and outright caustic but personally i think the portrayals of him that make more sense are the ones where he is resigned to his criticism and fate in a way that is infuriating to the people in his life but somehow deeply personable and sympathetic to a reader bc it is a universal experience to feel so mired in your trauma and the guilt it entails that you feel as if you have no right to defend yourself in the face of it, and so people continue to shake you by the shoulders and yell and scream meanwhile the only thing you know how to do is shut down and operate on auto-pilot bc the weight of it all is simply consuming 

#bruce wayne #dc #mine:meta #LIKE. i don't mean to make excuses bc he IS wrong like he shouldn't just shut down #and he's not helping anyone with that tendency much less helping himself #but i also think it's just. very easily explainable per his background and circumstances #and it's interesting how few people there are who are cognizant of that tendency in him and who understand he's genuine #even if he sucks at appearing genuine

[boldlyanxious]

Cursed Soul Bond

Jasonette July prompt 11: enemy mine

July masterlist

All fic masterlist

Marinette screamed in pain as Chat Noir turned her earrings over to Hawkmoth, promising her that everything would be okay. She could do nothing but freeze in agony as he removed his own ring and handed it over as well. Now before her, was her soulmate, Adrien Agreste. He had clearly figured out who she was without her ever knowing. She turned and watched his father, now revealed as Hawkmoth. Gabriel Agreste had taken off his broach in preparation for making the wish. He didn’t want to risk the other miraculous when he made his wish. It had to be the mix of the creation and the destruction to grant him his desire.

Marinette struggled and dropped fighting the grasp of her soulmate. She didn’t know how they could have worked together for so long and she never knew that her partner was her soulmate. But she couldn’t think of that now. She had to stop the man before he caused irreparable harm. A miraculous wish could not be undone. Nor could the effects. There would always be a price to pay. Adrien grabbed her again but he wouldn’t listen to what she was trying to tell him about what would happen. He was talking about his mother and how happy they would all be. He thought he had all the information so her warnings were all ignored.

Gabriel wasted no time waiting to see how the young couple handled the reveal or the betrayal. He donned the ring and the earrings and spoke the words. Time froze for a brief interlude as he made his wish. Marinette was aware that everything froze but she was unable to do anything else but know, trapped in her mind, as Gabriel controlled the ultimate power and was bestowed with one wish with no concern for the consequences.

When she returned, her soul mark burned on her arm. A searing pain that felt like it was ripping her away. Adrien looked stunned, watching as it flashed bright. His own brightened at the same time but he appeared to feel nothing. When the light faded, his mark did as well, leaving a patch of skin that looked untouched, no longer bearing any mark. He watched his former soulmate still in agony as the light went from shining to dark black. It was not reflective, it seemed to suck in all light.

Marinette dropped to the floor in failure. They had lost. She had lost. She had been betrayed by her soulmate and she had felt the bond tear away from her. It seemed to pull from every part of her body at once and left her weak. Adrien watched in shock, holding her until the agony ended. He seemed to feel nothing as his mark simply faded away. She could feel his arms lift her off the cold floor. She tried to pull away but her muscles didn’t cooperate. Everything felt so strange. Even being carried in his arms to the nearest fancy couch in the Agreste mansion felt numb.

He pushed her hair back from her face, it was matted to her sweaty skin. She was aware of shuffling nearby and was cognizant of Nathalie approaching with a cold cloth. She looked so worried as Adrien applied the cool cloth to her head. His hands felt so hot, like she was burning again. She shifted away from him. Her breath started coming in rapidly and she struggled to get away. She was so weak.

Adrien had backed away from her. He didn’t know how to react to her struggling against him and the sudden signs of sickness. Every few minutes he would place a straw near her mouth. The only feeling that helped at all was the cool water in her mouth and down her throat. She could not hear and could not speak. Her ears were filled with buzzing. She had no concept of time but suspected it had been an hour or so before her very worried parents showed up. As her dad carried her to a car driven by the Agrestes’ bodyguard, Adrien's hand held hers one last time as he passed her the peacock and butterfly miraculi as well as the jewelry that formerly held the powers for the kwamis of creation and destruction. They were now just symbols of her failure.

No one else seemed to know or remember about the threat of Hawkmoth. Gabriel had changed Paris and the world. Adrien said it was for the best. Now he had his mother and they still had each other. Marinette disagreed even though he begged and pleaded with her to reconsider. She would not even let him take her hand. She never wanted to see him again. Plagg and Tikki were the only ones she wanted to be with. Plagg felt responsible, and Marinette partially agreed with his assessment. He knew Adrien had a tendency to jump in with no consideration for the consequences and he had done nothing to temper that trait. Adrien didn’t know there would be a cost to the use of the wish because Plagg hadn’t mentioned it him when he already had so many other burdens in his life. That is why he didn’t feel the soul bond destroyed as she had. He didn’t know what he was doing was a betrayal even as it destroyed Marinette.

---

Nearly ten years had passed since Marinette had her soul bond destroyed. She had finished out her remaining school years in a small private school. She couldn’t connect with the others in her class anymore. She had been through too many things that they had no memory of. It was even a struggle to connect to her parents but they were loving and supportive even if they didn’t understand her sudden change. She suspected they thought Adrien or his father had done something to her. She couldn’t explain what had happened. So they harbored an anger towards the Agrestes thinking that there was some deeply personal incident but Marinette couldn’t explain that it was all of Paris and maybe the world who had been wronged.

The change of school helped her escape Adrien’s insistence that they could still be in love. For him it was as if the soul bond had never existed. He was still in love with her but she felt sick even remembering him. She could not stand to be near him. It took a long time for her to realize the twinge she would get in her dark soul mark was because when the bond had severed from Adrien it had attached to another soul. From what Plagg and Tikki could tell her it was a soul touched with dark magic. Cursed magic that only became possible as a consequence of the wish that now bound her soul to another.

She knew that it was her responsibility as a guardian and the only one who knew of the connection to fix this cursed bond. She would have to in order to finish binding Tikki and Plagg to new miraculous jewelry. They would fade otherwise and time was running out. It took her time to figure out where the other side of the bond was tethered. She wasn’t sure if that was because the other soul was moving or because she was still unskilled in this version of magic. Miraculous magic was natural for her but other forms of magic took a lot of training and drained her quickly.

She knew when she stepped off the plane that she had found the right place. She could feel the bond activate. Rather than absorbing all light, the outline of her mark reflected a bit of red back to her. Tikki’s color. She took that to mean she was in the right place. She only had the carry on with her and rolled it along behind her. She had some clothes and the miracle box. She needed nothing else. She would never return to Paris.

---

Jason rarely felt the pits anymore. Occasionally he would get the rage but it didn’t feel like he was doing anything different. It was almost as if for a brief moment something else was controlling what was happening. His wrist was often covered by a sleeve or glove but one night as the feeling of the pits drained back out of him he noticed a reflective bit on his wrist. It wasn’t just the UV mark from the club but it reflected the UV light flashing around just the same. He had a soulmark when he died as a teen, but it had disappeared. He assumed because he died. Now he wondered if the Lazarus Pit could change a soul mark.

He didn’t really have anyone he could ask about it so he started quietly looking for more information about soul marks. The basics of how to identify your soul mark and find your soulmate was readily available, but it did not interest him. Most people were able to find out that on their own. The information he needed was far more obscure and might not even exist. Chances are that his soul mate had felt his original death and had moved on with their life. It was hard for many at first but not impossible.

---

Marinette wasn’t very concerned with what job she had but she did have to find a job. Her interest in fashion had not gone but she had no interest in pursuing it as a career because she didn’t want the inevitable interaction with Gabriel brand. She severed every connection to that family and had no interest in interacting with anyone from her former life, even her parents as much as she loved them. She could not get past the memories of betrayal and her failure. She didn’t have to move forward, but she couldn’t look back.

She ended up running a used book shop that had a large number of very old looking texts that were almost never looked at. People came and went buying and selling their textbooks, classics and current best sellers. Marinette always had an eager smile to help them, but once they had gone she would be back perusing the books that seemed to call to her.

They were not listed in the computer at all. She had even tried to look some of them up and found no information on them, but they were exactly the kind of information she was looking for. Not all of them were useful to her but all were full of various sorts of magic she was previously unfamiliar with. It seemed that it was possible soul bonds were originally created or discovered by mixing different forms of magic. The book that mentioned it did not specify but she suspected that miraculous magic would have been involved based on her knowledge and what had happened with her own bond.

She started keeping careful records of all she had read and labeling the books so they could be found again rather than the haphazard pile the owner of the shop kept them in. He was rarely there and did very little to check up on her. She had originally gone to him about an ad for a place to live. He was a little surprised. He said the sign had been there quite a while and that no one even seemed to notice. He then asked if she needed a job and offered the position at the shop to her. She tried to remember if she had even given her name at this point. She was fairly certain she had not and that he had accepted her living in and running his shop knowing nothing about her.

---

Jason was getting a little frustrated in his search. He never seemed to have the time to do much and he couldn’t really delegate this task. Being a crime lord had its perks but down time was not one of them if he really intended to keep Gotham safe. There was a line of shops that his militia couldn’t seem to enter to recommend their services for protection. Every time they reported their income they seemed to even forget the buildings existed. One claimed that he had been there to the shop, but when he entered the door moved and he was no longer inside.

The rest of the crew was far more amused by the tale than Jason was. He sent them all out and decided he would have to pay the shops a visit himself. The first one was a small second hand shop. They didn’t seem to have much of value and little business. Jason learned that they did what sales they could but mostly the money went right back out. They gave away most of the clothes and served food in the evenings. They didn’t get much foot traffic so it was mostly internet sales from the donations.

He didn’t want to ask for protection money. He felt at peace when he entered. Except for a tug. He flipped the book of figures closed and walked over to the jewelry case. There were hair clips with blood red rubies inside that he felt drawn to. He had the old woman show it to him. He flipped it over and then lifted it to the light. He didn’t even think it was particularly valuable. The woman confirmed. She said that it was very lovely but she couldn’t sell it.

“You seem like such a nice young man. Why don’t you just take that one with you. Maybe you’ll find yourself a nice young lady to give it to.”

She didn’t wait for a response. Jason could feel the soul mark warm on his skin at her words. She didn’t seem to notice his distraction. She walked away from the counter and towards the back of the store with her ledger. She didn’t return. When Jason walked out of the shop, he remembered his purpose in going. He turned to go back inside, but the door was no longer where he had exited.

---

Marinette was tired after work today. She hadn’t even had much of a chance to organize the old books today. She needed to get out of the shop. She rarely ventured away except to replenish groceries. She lived and worked in the shop and spent all her free time reading and cataloging the volumes of magic. She followed her gut and went out into the town. She wandered around for several hours, drew in a park appreciating the fresh air and checked out a few shops. She was almost home when she was drawn to a shop a couple doors down from where she lived and worked. She knew there were shops along the same building she worked in but she had never paid much attention to them. She entered the shop to find a second hand store.

She walked through the shop, trying to recreate the feeling that drew her in. Nothing really popped out at her. She glanced through the racks but there was nothing that really interested her. She tended to make most of her own clothing, occasionally getting fresh ideas or a few signature pieces to give her original designs a pop. Nothing here really even inspired her. She turned to wave at the older lady carefully cleaning the counter before she left through the door she entered but she paused.

There was an ankle bangle that drew her attention. It was a simple design, black with a small emerald cat attached. Usually she avoided black and green as reminders of her past betrayal but she felt a light pressure in her soul mark. It flashed in her eyes for just a second before fading to barely visible. The lady at the counter had not spoken but Marinette startled when she handed her a small package. She hadn’t realized she had lost herself in thought. The ankle bangle was missing so she assumed it was in the box.

“For you Dear, it isn’t doing anyone any good in here.”

The lady walked off with her cleaning rag and did not return. Marinette exited the shop but when she turned back to look at the building the door was no longer visible where it had been.

---

Jason was still frustrated with himself for how his visit in the shop had been. He actually was not interested in demanding payment from the shop. He had a soft spot for the places that fed those who needed it. He had used them a lot when he was very young and food was scarce. He even funneled money towards a few that were more reputable and not connected to Wayne Enterprises. He hid his involvement but it was essential to keep people fed to help with the crime. Every bit he controlled made all of Gotham safer. He wanted the children to grow up with enough food and options so they did not need to resort to crime and drugs. He would consider himself a success if he was able to put himself out of business as a crime lord.

He looked down at the hair clips from the woman at the shop. He didn’t know what it was about the rubies gleaming up from them. He was drawn to them as if he were looking into the eyes of the most intoxicating person. He picked them up to look closer but still they seemed entirely ordinary aside from his unnatural fascination. He slipped them in his pocket and headed out the door. He chose to go as Jason to check out the other shops before making an appearance as Red Hood. When he got to the location he felt a tug towards one door. He headed there first before he had even realized he had made a decision.

---

Marinette heard the little tinkle of the bell on the door while she was just about literally buried in a pile of the magical books. She had been switching back and forth feeling like she was on the verge of understanding something big so of course someone was in to buy a copy or Eat Pray Love or Alan Watts just to pull her away from her possible discovery. She tried to holler that she was on the way at the same time as she extricated herself from the pile but it didn’t quite work. She tumbled over into the pile of musty, dusty books. She groaned. There was nothing magical about the number of bruises she felt developing on her side and back. She halfway pulled herself out as she heard firm boot steps headed her way. She looked up at the man towering over her. He looked only briefly before he reached down and hauled her up by her arm. He dropped it like it burned him and she pulled away from him and the tingling spot where his hand had touched her. They both felt it at the same time and they had a matching glow from the soul marks on their arms. The glow flashed bright for a moment connecting them with a beam of light and then it went into the skin leaving the mark silver and lightly reflective.

“So, I guess you are my soulmate? I’m Jason.” he said.

“I’m Marinette, and If that is what you call your warped necromancy binding to my severed soul bond to you, then that is exactly what I am.”

“You had a soulmate before? I thought mine would have been lost when I died?”

“My original soul mate betrayed me and caused a rift that detached the bond. Your dark magic attached the bond to you.”

He just stared at her for a moment.

“It is only a matter of time before I figure out how to work around your warped magic.”

“Hey, I did not do dark magic. I was murdered and brought back as a child. None of whatever you are pushing off on me is my doing. Maybe I could help you. I have been looking for answers since the mark reappeared.”

“If you say so.”

She turned and walked away. He took that as a dismissal and decided to leave and come back later. She didn’t seem very interested in him leaving any sort of contact information so he decided to head home and return later. He didn’t make it all the way. He pushed on the door and the little bell jingled but the door did not open. He checked the lock and it wasn’t locked so he tried pushing again.

It stayed sealed so he looked back to see what she was doing. Maybe she had magic she had figured out how to use against him. He noticed the glow from his pocket when he turned back. He pulled out the hair clips and looked down at them. The red gems were shining brightly against his hand. He looked back at her and she seemed to be having a similar issue with a bangle with a dangling emerald charm. It was glowing brightly like the hair clips.

Their eyes met and a dark mist fell over them inside the shop. Marinette knew what this was. She worked her way through the mist to find the books she needed and her miraculous grimoire. She motioned for him to sit and she placed the bangle on the table. She tried to connect with Tikki and Plagg in her mind. It had become increasingly difficult but she hoped the mist would guide her thoughts so she wouldn’t have to take the time to do the full ritual. The mist swirled around with the red and green auras appearing and then forming together in the air before settling over the table with the jewels. Marinette used the book she had to read out a few unfamiliar phrases after the mist settled.

Jason was confused but he felt warm and comfortable rather than uneasy so he followed her lead. He didn’t know what was happening but his soulmark was glowing and putting out a green beam of light that went across the table to twist with the red glow coming from Marinette’s soulmark. He couldn’t help himself when he reached out and picked up the bangle she had set on the table. He watched her move almost at the same moment to pick up the hair clips he had brought. The red and green in the air swirled together to make one small cloud of red and one of green as the black mist faded. The small clouds became an almost definite shape, like fairies. The black filled in around until they were creatures with eyes and mouths. The black went into each of them making them no longer solid colors but the red appeared similarly colored to a ladybug and the green appeared as a black cat with bright green eyes.

Marinette lifted the clips to the ladybug fairy and the creature pulled it inside itself. Her hand was empty. He did the same with the bangle with the cat fairy. He still had no idea what he was doing, but it all felt right. When the bangle connected with the cat fairy he felt it lift the bangle out of his hand as it pulled and it disappeared inside the form. The soul bond was tugging him. He followed the pull and ended up right in front of Marinette. Her eyes were full of hurt and concern but she allowed him to pull her to him. All at once exhaustion rolled over him. He dropped onto the cushioned armchair near him and Marinette sat right there with him.

Continued below

Taglist

@jasonette-july-event | @theymakeupfairies | @emjrabbitwolf | @vixen-uchiha | @trythisagainlove | @trippingovermyfeet | @tbehartoo | @adrestar | @zynna

#maribat #jasonette july 2021 #soulmates #jasonette #boldlyanxious

[silenthillmutual]

daniil dankovsky is autistic and here’s why:

because i’m autistic and i said so

i kid, obviously. what sort of autistic person would i be if i wasn’t read to back up my silly little claim with an overly long post of evidence a total of three people will read? (hi ned hi jordan hi raven :))

i’m aware that this is cringey because adults aren’t supposed to have autism or interests or talk about either of those things, but this is my blog and you are free to block me if the cringe is too much for you.

these are some things i picked out from the DSMV’s diagnostic criteria, found on the CDC website:

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

abnormal social approach

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

defecits in […] understand[ing] relationships

difficults adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

repetitive motor movements or speech

rigid thinking patterns

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input

there’s also some misc. stuff not in the diagnostic criteria (though it may be in the adir or gars-3) i thought was worth noting.

important note from the diagnostic criteria: “symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning”. i’d say that in his case, they do.

spoilers for pathologic classic, pathologic 2, and the marble nest

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

in bachelor route of classic, daniil

seems completely oblivious to eva making advances toward him, to the point where she complains to him that he’s ignoring her in favor of asking questions about simon.

seems surprised when people mention maria being in love with him, despite outright asking her a couple of times if she’s flirting with him.

not to mention the fact that he asks her that at all.

his inability or resistence to making connections with others is typically considered one of his character flaws. although it is not outright stated in the dsmv criteria, one trait of autism and other neurodivergencies is “having extremely high or extremely low empathy” - and daniil, despite being a doctor, lacks empathy. which is not to say he doesn’t care at all. i think that he does, but is terrible at showing it.

for example, this scene from marble nest:

Sticky: You must feel terrible… right? That’s fine. I forgive you. You just got confused… Adults always do. Daniil: Oh yes, adults are always occupied with the most asinine nonsense. Like feeling anxious that a bunch of urchins keep roaming the streets, putting themselves in mortal danger!

daniil clearly cares about sticky’s wellbeing (and the wellbeing of the kids looking after him, though he’s not cognizant that he’s in a coma), but his way of showing it is… kind of by being a jerk. all of which bleeds into the next item on the list

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

he has no problem sharing his interests, but in both pathologic classic & pathologic 2, daniil speaks with a flat affect - which is to say that he lacks intonation. the words we read him saying may be dramatic or come across as passionate, but the actual voice reading his lines is very monotone, which may contribute to being read as lacking emotion.

and in pathologic 2, he has a voiceline lamenting not telling “her” (eva?) how he felt

in marble nest, he’s teased by the tragedians for being “heartless”:

Tragedian: Maybe. Possibly. But it’s useless to explain to a heartless man. …Take heart, Excellency! If you ever find it, that is. And then come back to us… Even though it all sounds like a rather implausible turn of events.

abnormal social approach

daniil has a tendency to say things that are tactless, odd, or just socially inappropriate. i probably don’t need to point out too many examples, as i think it’s fairly obvious - these are the things people love to pick at when it comes to him, but i do have a few in mind. like, for example, from haruspex route in classic:

Haruspex: What of the antibodies essential for making a serum? Bachelor: I don’t know for sure yet, I’ll send you a report in a few hours. Don’t go about cutting people’s hearts out for your panacea until then. It’s a… controversial solution, you know… Haruspex: What?! Do you even hear yourself? Bachelor: Sorry! I meant no offence… it was just a momentary lapse of… well, you know. Haruspex: None taken.

until artemy points out, daniil doesn’t seem to be aware he just said something rude. even with therapy, picking up on social cues doesn’t come naturally to people with autism, so we tend to say things that come across as rude or strange to others without realizing we’ve put them off. we tend to lack a “filter” that tells us when things are or are not appropriate to say. even when we may recognize it, the rules may not make any sense to us. for example, it makes very little sense that allistics favor politeness over honesty.

i think the glaringly obvious abnormal social approach in pathologic 2 is him threatening to hold artemy at gunpoint to get in the house, which is just overkill, but my personal favorite comes on day 7, when he’s complaining about the orders aglaya has given him. artemy stops him to say he doesn’t understand what daniil wants from him, to which daniil replies:

From you? Oh, nothing. I was just sharing.

to daniil, they were just having a normal conversation. but some part of this - his tone or his words or maybe even his body language - didn’t give artemy the impression that this was supposed to be a regular conversation. (we could, in fact, attribute the same idea to artemy here; why didn’t artemy pick up that this was a normal conversation? the reason i count it towards daniil is because artemy doesn’t seem to have this problem with anybody else. for the record: i don’t think artemy is neurotypical either.)

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

it’s hard to get proof of this in video games, but i will say i think it’s very funny that in pathologic 2 daniil’s idle animations are “pacing”, “sitting like he desperately wants to start bouncing his knees but is stopping himself from doing it”, and “standing unnaturally still” - but there you go. i don’t know anything about making gifs, or i’d gif this one specific talk menu idle he does where he holds eye contact for about three seconds, looks away uncomfortably, and then looks back out of the corner of his eyes.

deficits in […] understand[ing] relationships

mostly examples from his route in classic:

when the army arrives, he can claim to block that aglaya, whom he’s known for two days, is his best friend

he seems baffled by the fact that everone is smitten with maria and working with her, and seems equally baffled by the idea that she’s smitten with him

despite eva implying on day two that she is in a relationship with andrey, is completely blindsided by the revelation on day 6, asking him, “How in the world is she ‘your woman’?”

i’d also like to use his sign-off on his letter to artemy, day 2 of the haruspex route - he signs it as “Your friend (hopefully)”. i know i’m not the only autistic person who used to ask people if we were friends or not. pro tip, if you’ve never done this: don’t. it really weirds people out.

difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

the fact that he stands out is blatantly obvious even in pathologic 2 and in the haruspex route of classic. people will comment on him being an outsider and mention that they don’t trust him. but you can watch it happen in real time in his route, because he never fully acclimates to the town. he says something about this to aglaya on day 7:

Bachelor: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways. Inquisitor: Your line of t hinking is obviously falacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you, no one can really tell the future around here: and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes… but hardly more often than anywhere else.

actually, there’s an example of him saying something similar to artemy on day 5 in pathologic 2:

Damn this town… I feel I’m trapped in a nightmare. The absurdity of it all… There’s no one to talk to. Everyone’s so volatile. They all seem to want to help, but… their help is worse than hostility.

some of this can be explained by the town’s strangeness, but keep in mind that the first instance happens after he’s been there and involved in the ongoing for an entire week, and the second at nearly a week in. clearly he’s struggling to adjust to the changes.

it’s also worth noting that his reason for fleeing the town in the nocturnal ending?

I have no place here anymore.

This town is no longer mine. No longer human. No longer rational. It doesn’t… accept the likes of me anymore.

repetitive motor movements or speech

it’s harder to see the motor movements in classic, but remember how i pointed out earlier that he paces? pacing is a form of stimming. murky, who is canonically autistic, can also be found pacing as one of her idle animations. having stock phrases for characters to speak when you come near them already ticks off the box on “repetitive speech”, but that by itself doesn’t really cover what they’re talking about - echolalia.

but you know what this does fit with? “‘quoting’ things(communication is HARD! sometimes we need to take shortcuts and use someone else’s words)“

i’ll get to the more obvious example in a minute - i want to point out something that happens very early in pathologic 2 first. you know how you first meet him and artemy accuses daniil of trying to guilt-trip him by asking if it’s true that isidor would still be alive if artemy had come sooner? keep in mind that he spoke to rubin first. and this is what rubin says, when you get a chance to talk to him:

Yesterday, I was told you had killed your father.

That’s not far from the truth, Burakh.

You betrayed him. You left when he needed you most. He cried out for your help, but you didn’t care. He was in peril, and you were too busy elsewhere, He believed, truly believed, that your arrival would put an end to his troubles. And, as always, he was right.

i’m not saying this was necessarily the game’s intent, but it’s entirely possible daniil is parroting back to artemy exactly what rubin said to him.

now, for what you’re probably expecting in this section: the latin. people love to refer to his use of latin as “random”, so let’s clear that up:

it is not latin daniil has made up. with the exception of latin that is mispelled in the game’s texts, all of them are proverbs or otherwise common sayings. you can find most of them on the wikipedia list of latin phrases, or through a 3-second google search.

he’s a doctor. him having taken latin isn’t anymore strange than a lawyer taking latin. in fact, if you pay attention, artemy also took latin; this is implied when artemy tells him he’s always sucked at it.

his uses of latin actually aren’t random at all. what he says fits the situation, and sometimes is used in place of him having to come up with something to say on his own.

prime example:

Forget it, Burakh. I have a splitting headache. If you have no urgent business, then we’ll talk later. Later, later… Qui non proficit, deficit.

qui non proficit, deficit - he who does not advance, loses ground. in other words, “i’m sorry, but i really do need to keep working.” one of his voice lines.

as for why he doesn’t translate the latin: it probably wouldn’t even occur to him to. these are not obscure sayings. the utopians all have a certain degree of education - what would he need to translate them for?

this bleeds into something that isn’t really mentioned, but that i’ve found i have a lot of trouble with in everyday life. autistic people have a tendency to either overexplain (and then have everyone get mad at you because they feel you’re being condescending) or underexplain (and have everyone get mad at you because you haven’t explained anything). the latin would be a case where it feels like a justified underexplanation. you’ll notice that when it comes to anything scientific, he tends to do the reverse, and overexplain. this also happens in classic, whether artemy has asked him to clarify or not.

rigid thinking patterns

the thing i had marked for this was simply his strict adherence to western medical practices and refusal to acknowledge the supernatural, even when it seems obvious - he has a conversation in his route in classic with yulia about this, and that is in fact how he manages to get to her: by asking saburov if there are any other logical skeptics in town. it should be noted they seem to be breaking with this in pathologic 2, where one of his voicelines is “I’m no positivist. There are things in this world beyond our mundane perception.” i have no idea where they’re planning on going with that.

there’s also a quote floating somewhere around twitter about him having been raised by a military man, and militaries tend to enforce very rigid routines. you could say the same thing of block - who (in classic at least) i also have my suspicions about.

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

special interests. the one that should obviously come to mind is thanatology, though i would argue latin if not classics in general is a special interest of his as well - in addition to his usage of latin, he also references pericles in the marble nest and was probably refering to the roman occupation of haruspicy in addition to augurs in the same text. he also makes references to shakespeare more than once in both marble nest and pathologic 2.

hyper- or hyperoreactivity to sensory input

i don’t have much written down for this one but there seem to be several places in classic especially where he asks npcs to stop shouting at him. we don’t really have the privilege to know their volume or how they’re interacting with him, but i think it’s also worth noting that he’s the only one of the healers who wears gloves. in pathologic 2 he’s the only named character i can think of who wears them at all. his thing in the lucid dream about the brain being “a border”? gloves are his border, as is his jacket, which may be worn to cut down on sensory issues.

he will also sometimes seem to “overreact” to the situation at hand - such as in classic, when some dogheads mispeak and say that daniil is going to “sterilize” them, and instead of understanding that they must have mispoken, freaks out over the idea that they think they’re going to be… well… sterilized. or in haruspex route, when his reaction to the inquisitor arriving is to threaten suicide.

miscellaneous

he never goes anywhere without that carpet bag. we don’t see it in pathologic 2, but we do hear about it and he doesn’t let it go for a second in classic - not even in the cutscenes where he’s using the microscope. his bag could be a comfort item.

“getting very attached to things like inanimate objects” could work for the bag - but you know what it actually fits the bill much more obviously? the polyhedron. in the haruspex route he recognizes that it’s a lost cause, but he’s still too attached to it to let it go.

in classic at least, daniil is absolutely terrible at lying. most autistic people either are not good at lying, or feel uncomfortable or anxious with having to lie. when he’s asked by yulia and the kids in the polyhedron to lie to block (for different reasons) he’s clearly uncomfortable with the idea that it’ll work. and when it actually comes time to come up with a way to lie to block about why he needs five rifles, your options are to either buckle and tell him the truth, or simply say that you need them for “self-defense”. block believes that you’re not lying to him, but daniil can’t come up with any embeleshments to explain why he needs what he’s asking for.

Commander: Are you hiding something from me? Bachelor: No.

he comes across as naive to other characters. in classic, capella has a voiceline saying, “The Bachelor is not smart. Intelligent, yes… but not smart.” in Pathologic 2, Daniil complains that Aglaya takes him for “a useless dreamer”. he’s also easily used by the Kains to fulfill their endgame in classic.

my final, and absolute favorite: he takes things way too literally. autistic people (and adhd people, from my understanding) have a hard time differentiating jokes and sarcasm. so my favorite moment in marble nest is a case of him taking that earlier advice - to “take heart” literally, by bringing the tragedians a literal human heart:

Tragedian: Oh… Excellency. What a sordid sight! Sorry for underestimating you. You definitely do have… how shall I put it… a creative touch. But this is pure madness. You can’t take things so literally! Daniil: You wanted me to come back to you with an open heart. Well, here I am. …It looked too fitting to be a coincidence.

your mind map, after this, updates to say “I misunderstood the tragedians.”

conclusion

people don’t stop being autistic with age and i think he’s a good example of what it’s like to be in your late 20s and be autistic. i’m sure i missed things as i haven’t finished haruspex route of classic yet and there may just be some other things he does or says that i missed! if anyone has anything to add they think fits i would love to know, thank you for your time :)

#icarus.txt #autistic daniil dankovsky #daniil dankovsky #pathologic meta #ok to rb but i'm not interest in your ''but he's just weird!'' arguments #please keep in mind that this post is about autism #and that this is written by someone w autism... #popular

[autumnblogs]

Day 1: A Young Man Stands In His Bedroom

I don't expect Day 1 to be too eventful, but I'm also pretty wordy.

https://homestuck.com/story/3

Homestuck has this sort of weird relationship with the idea of "Started just now, but always was that way" that I think probably is pretty important to the way it tackles cultural narratives overall. Growing up, cultural narratives have a huge effect on our day to day lives, but we're not really cognizant of them until they are right up in our faces. That's my thesis, by the way, or at least one of them. Homestuck is a story about stories. That's not the only thing that Homestuck is about, and it might not even be the most important thing it's about, but that is one of the things that it's about.

Or maybe I'm full of horseshit. Wouldn't be the first time. More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/4

I like Homestuck’s character intros. They’re cute. Instead of actually characterizing these characters much, they have a pretty strong tendency to sort of create the background radiation of the comic. Like, I don’t think that John and Karkat ever bully each other about the fact that they’re mutually bad at coding, which would be hilarious, but there are loads of weird programming gags in Homestuck that I think are a part of the universe because John is bad at programming as much as they’re there because Andrew was into Comp Sci at this time.

https://homestuck.com/story/6

The first of our funky gaming abstractions. Homestuck is a story about stories, and the kind of story that it’s often about (when it’s not about highly abstract cultural narratives) is the video game. Especially the point and click adventure game.

There are a lot of weird things about Homestuck’s story and themes only because it engages with video games the way it does. I’ll come back to that. As long as I’m writing, this, I might as well take a minute to say that I think this whole sequence of screwing around with puzzling and slightly irritating gaming abstractions loses a lot of people on an archival read. It lost me a couple of times before I was able to get past it and lose the next eight years of my life to Andrew Hussie. Nowadays though, there’s something endearing about it. I like watching John scramble around.

https://homestuck.com/story/12

I’ll never get tired of Dad Egbert. Is he the Platonic Ideal of Dadliness? Maybe. Dadliness, and more generally, Manliness, is a lens we can look at a lot of John’s character arc through. His room, as we’ll see in a few panels, is full of Manly dudes, and I think he cares a lot about being a manly guy - a romantic lead, a badass, maybe some day even a Dad himself. Maybe.

https://homestuck.com/story/16

This one is a new train of thought for me.

Back when this was written, I gather the comic was still being written pretty much entirely off of prompts, and I think it’s probably just part of Andrew’s playfully antagonistic writing style, at least in a Doylist sense. I wonder how much, though, retroactively, we can read the narrative’s general aggression toward John as being his own self-criticism? Sometimes the Narrative in Homestuck is Andrew Riffing. Sometimes it’s a character’s own internal monologue. Often, I think it’s probably both.

 Maybe I’ll keep a tally of how often it happens.

https://homestuck.com/story/26

Our first sign of Dave. I think it’s funny how people glom onto some things and not others. Apple Juice has become practically Dave’s Trademark Favorite Food if you look at some peoples’ perception of the character. I don’t think people think nearly as much about how much of a surly jackass John is to his pals in early acts. He’s a little mean. Is it early installment weirdness? It certainly adds character to him.

:(

Poor Dave. Maybe I’m reading too much into this. I probably am.

https://homestuck.com/story/42

These don’t really exist any more. GameBro is one of those things about Homestuck (like John remarking on Black Presidents) that really makes it a period piece. It is, as another commentator put it, aggressively contemporary. I remember drooling over gaming magazines when they were still in print but never really buying any due to a lack of allowance funds. My friends and I shared a moment of silence when Nintendo Power went out of print.

https://homestuck.com/story/63

Rose appears. This is a character I’ve got a love hate relationship. I think out of everyone in the comic, Rose is the one I’m the most like. We’ll come back to her later. Not a lot to say here except “A Weakness for Insufferable Pricks” is a collection of syllables I’ve always enjoyed. And that Rose knows her friend’s quirks well.

https://homestuck.com/story/78

The narration is, once again, weirdly aggressive to John. (Also the Peanut Gallery thing is a cunning bit of wordplay.)

https://homestuck.com/story/82

I like this page. It’s weird and eerie. If anybody has a good take on what it means, I’m all ears. (The other houses in John’s neighborhood have always made me wonder things like, what is John’s neighborhood like? Does he have any other friends? Any neighbors who are important to him? It never comes up, so I think the answer is probably no. What about School? Does he go? He never mentions any school chums. John is a pretty lonely kid.)

https://homestuck.com/story/90

Teenagers are little shits. I certainly was one, although my general shittiness didn’t flower until I was probably between 16 and 18 years old. I was at least well behaved before that. Anyway, I think your relationship with your parents can be adversarial at the best of times when you’re John’s age. That’s always been my interpretation of Strifes, but maybe there’s more to it. John’s is pretty mild. Some of the later ones, less so.

https://homestuck.com/story/103

The Narrative gets weirdly aggressive toward John again.

https://homestuck.com/story/109

Maybe I should watch some of these movies at some point so I can be in on the joke. I don’t think I’ve watched any of John’s favorite movies, actually.

https://homestuck.com/story/132

John and Rabbits are related to John in at least two ways - magicians pull rabbits out of hats, Nic Cage puts bunnies back into boxes. John’s a bit flighty like a rabbit too. Like the legendary lapine hero Elahraira, one of John’s main strategies as the Heir of Breath is avoidance - he runs away. There’s kind of a basic tension between that and the fact that, as a self-styled manly dude, John is also, at times, pretty confrontational.

https://homestuck.com/story/153

I’ve always had an interest in like, the specific way Homestuck characters talk - getting a feel for what words they use, what words they would probably never use. Rose goes for a plethora of multisyllabic words, and then occasionally peppers her pesterlogs with Buffy Speak and profanity.

https://homestuck.com/story/154

I think they’re elegant too, Rose.

https://homestuck.com/story/171

Of all the kids, Rose uses fuck more than any other profanity. Karkat uses it more than Rose does, but a higher percentage of Rose’s curse words are fuck compared to all the curse words she uses. Just a fun fact.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Rose is the only main character to definitively end up in a stable romantic relationship by the end of the main comic. Girl has fornication on her mind.

As long as I’m on the subject of romance and fornication, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to bring up the other theme I’m going to riff on in my exploration of Homestuck a lot - Reproduction. Shipping is a bit part of the Homestuck fandom, and not for no reason - all these kids have finding a mate on their mind, and the idea of each other as potential romantic partners is one of the very first things anybody brings up - it’s the first thing Dave talks about in his very second conversation with John.

:)

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy pretty much any time John and Rose talk to each other? I am not a Grimdorks shipper, but I’ve always been of the opinion that John and Rose are closer with each other than they are with their other respective relationships. Besties.

https://homestuck.com/story/199

More narrative aggression for John. 

https://homestuck.com/story/217

It is a matter of critical importance to me that Rose’s Room is messy and her bed is unmade. We learn quite a bit about the aesthetics Rose is going to bring to the story here, but my favorite is that Rose’s room is a fucking disaster.

Anyway, I think that’s about all from me tonight. I’m about an hour out from the end of my shift. I’m largely going to be doing these while I work, since I’ll be at my computer anyway, waiting for jobs to come my way. 

This is Cam signing off, alive, and not alone.

#homestuck #liveblogging #commentary #giocities #tvtropes #personal stuff

[bbq-hawks-wings]

So I took a personality test to day and got the result of an Architect (INTJ) and for some reason Hawks just came to mind so I wondered, based on the Myers-Briggs classification what personality would he have? Also just out of curiosity, and you don't have to answer, but what would yours be? (I took the quiz on the website 16personalities)

Fantastic question, anon! Last I took the test a few years ago I was an INFP (The Mediator) myself which I think still largely applies. It can be easy to mistype yourself, let alone someone else, so I’m going to use evidence from the manga as much as possible and go through the individual traits one by one to see what I can find. I considered taking the test myself in character, but realized especially with how long the test is it could be easy to either overthink it or hyper-fixate on consciously or unconsciously preconceived traits, so I decided an evidence-based approach would be more accurate.

An important thing to know about Meyers-Briggs personality types is that they’re not all-encompassing, exclusive, or immutable. Some people have a tendency to make ill-informed preconceptions about people or treat it like a horoscope. This is the wrong way to apply a Meyers-Briggs personality type. They are insights to the instinctual way people are likely to act and perform and are only a tool to aid in things like working in a team, putting them on a path to personal success, and exercising emotional intelligence when interacting with them. Many people may still display a different “type” in different settings so I’ll be as cognizant of that as possible as I go through.

So with that, let’s get started!

Extroverted [E] or Introverted [I]?

This is a fantastic example of how preconceived notions  can completely mess up a characterization of someone as well as someone displaying a different type from what they might naturally display. Hawks is great with people, can work a crowd, and is a people-pleaser through and through. To many others, he would be a dead ringer for an extroverted. However:

In his own ideal world, Hawks has time to himself, to spend alone at home, doing whatever he wants freely. If he was an extrovert this dream might be a little more geared towards still being a top hero, but he’s said in so many words he wishes he was a little further down the ladder.

At this point I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up that a false dichotomy of introvert/extrovert has developed over the years. Humans require interaction with other humans to stay healthy and they also require alone time. Too much or too little of either will give them problems over time. It’s a tad frustrating to me that this personality test requires an either/or answer since I thoroughly believe that Hawks enjoys human company and would naturally seek it out in his ideal scenario, just in greater moderation than he does now (which would make him more of an ambivert); but given the fact that at this point in time he seeks more opportunities for solitude, I’m going to answer that he lands, somewhat surprisingly in the Introverted category.

Observant [S] or Intuitive [N]?

This one is also tricky at first, but a deeper dive into their definitions gives us a pretty solid answer, I think. According to the website: 

“These traits describe what people are more likely to do with the information gathered from the world around them. Intuitive personality types rely on imagining the past and future potential of what they see. Those with the Observant style are more interested in observable facts and more straightforward outcomes. They prefer to avoid layering too much interpretation on what they see.“

So does Hawks take a complicated, theoretical approach to information he’s exposed to, or does he call it like he sees it? Does he act in the here and now, or is he more bigger picture?

While he’s actively working toward a definitive goal, he has a tendency to only focus on the information in front of him as it happens. Dabi’s going to release a super powered Nomu? Better get the best hero around to fight it. Need to infiltrate the League of Villains? Just hammer away at getting Dabi to trust him and open the door for him.

He tends to look at the road in front of him to figure out if he should go left or right, but doesn’t always seem to realize he could be being taken for a ride. In his section of the new character book, his relationship with Dabi is described as “they are using each other” (note the present continuous tense) meaning that Dabi is stringing along the number two hero for his own purposes, but Hawks seems to have no idea of it. Just his altercation with Dabi at the warehouse after High End is proof he’s too trusting of the information he’s given at face value.

He may have contingencies (such as holding onto the one feather), but they do not span very far and wide into the future depending on any way things go. It’s always, “If plan A doesn’t work, go to plan B” and never a step or two ahead of that or a consideration of other possible outcomes. Did he have a plan in case High End actually killed Endeavor? Based on his reaction, I don’t think he really thought that was a possibility even though in the end it almost happened and left him with a permanent scar.

This, to me, puts him safely in the Observant category.

Thinking [T] or Feeling [F]?

Hey, this one is actually easy! Hawks is incredibly intelligent, but he is far from rational. A good litmus test for this is to see how someone reacts to failure. A thinking individual will view an undesirable outcome as useful data for the future and possibly just a result of things beyond their control, but a feeling person will view the same as proof of inadequacy that needs to be remedied through personal improvement.

He consistently reacts to situations emotionally first. Even when Tokoyami really proved himself during his internship, it was an emotional response that changed his attitude towards training him and the next generation.

Even Endeavor describes him as,

Hawks has always been emotionally expressive, responsive, and driven. In his interactions with others, he displays a huge amount of emotional intelligence - you can see it in the way he ever so slightly adjusts his interactions with others based on the response to him and the outcome he’s looking for. He pauses for just a second to get a cool selfie perfect for a girl’s social media timeline, he’s polite and considerate carrying a little old lady’s bags up the stairs for her, and he appeals to a little boy’s sense of style and flair when asked to sign his bag. The way he and others feel at any given moment is almost paramount to him.

This is a trait I don’t see changing in his character over time unlike some of the others. He’s clearly a Feeling type.

Judging [J] or Prospective [P]?

This one I also think is easy to figure out. Basically, does he prefer a set, methodical schedule or is he a more spontaneous, spur of the moment person?

Yeah, this is Hawks we’re talking about. He’s shockingly adaptable and almost seems to fall into routine for the sake of others instead of his own sanity. Most of his decisions are made on the fly, and he’s known to improvise.

He’s more than capable of planning ahead, but prefers to operate as the wind blows which makes him a solid Prospective type.

Assertive [-A] or Turbulent [-T]?

For funsies, I just want to pop in and check in on this last trait since it’s here. Basically, all it asks is his confidence level and response to stress. I’ve more or less answered this earlier, but when encountering a situation potentially way over his head, he may outwardly display confidence and roll with the punches (his _S_P traits at work) but when it comes to results, especially failure, perfection and personal excellence are all that matter. I feel very confident classifying him as a Turbulent personality.

Final Results

So with that we get a final Meyers-Briggs personality type of ISFP-T which according to 16 Personalities is the Adventurer type personality.

“Adventurer personalities are true artists, but not necessarily in the typical sense where they’re out painting happy little trees. Often enough though, they are perfectly capable of this. Rather, it’s that they use aesthetics, design and even their choices and actions to push the limits of social convention. Adventurers enjoy upsetting traditional expectations with experiments in beauty and behavior – chances are, they’ve expressed more than once the phrase “Don’t box me in!” Adventurers live in a colorful, sensual world, inspired by connections with people and ideas. These personalities take joy in reinterpreting these connections, reinventing and experimenting with both themselves and new perspectives. No other type explores and experiments in this way more. This creates a sense of spontaneity, making Adventurers seem unpredictable, even to their close friends and loved ones. Despite all this, Adventurers are definitely Introverts, surprising their friends further when they step out of the spotlight to be by themselves to recharge. Just because they are alone though, doesn’t mean people with the Adventurer personality type sit idle – they take this time for introspection, assessing their principles. Rather than dwelling on the past or the future, Adventurers think about who they are. They return from their cloister, transformed.Adventurers live to find ways to push their passions. Riskier behaviors like gambling and extreme sports are more common with this personality type than with others. Fortunately their attunement to the moment and their environment allows them to do better than most. Adventurers also enjoy connecting with others, and have a certain irresistible charm.”

It feels like a pretty accurate assessment of his personality, so I think I did a good job. This was a lot of fun, and I feel like I’ve even gotten to know him a little better! Thanks for sending in the question, anon, I really enjoyed it!

And if you’re curious about Meyers-Briggs personality types or want to take the assessment yourself, go check out 16personalities[.]com!

#hawks #bnha hawks #mha hawks #hawks mha #hawks bnha #keigo takami #takami keigo #let's talk hawks #bnha analysis #mha analysis #she speaks

[chicachicfashion-blog]

What Does Modest Fashion Really Look Like?

Pinterest UK tells me that searches for "modest style" are up 500% considering the start of this year. The worldwide modest style marketplace is already reportedly really well worth loads of billions and is about to scale up with the aid of using gargantuan proportions over the following 5 years. A professional on line save known as The Modist has simply launched—complete of certainly modest portions from an brilliant roll name of emblem names, and each form of lady is buying from the site, whether or not they discover as "modest" or now no longer.

When you step out of doors of this particular realm, it is simple to look that runways, cool manufacturers, and road fashion stars alike also are extraordinarily embracing huge shapes, covered-up silhouettes, and innovative layering. Modest style is everywhere. But what precisely is it? As a whole, this motion has been choosing up the tempo for nigh on a decade, however there is nevertheless a fogginess approximately what it manner to be a modest dresser, what it seems like, and the way it is affecting fashion-aware ladies proper now. Keep studying to find out extra.

So what does "modest style" honestly mean?

If there is one element all the ladies I spoke to agree on, it is this: There isn't anyt any one definition of what modest style manner, however it basically pertains to having a diploma of cognizance in terms of protecting up elements of your body. This chasm of statistics we can not categorize and pigeonhole contributes significantly to the mass marketplace's uncertainty of a way to talk with and deliver to ladies who need modest style. It also can make anybody who isn't always individually versed withinside the idea sense ill-ready to speak approximately it, however possibly confirming its ambiguity can assist to push the idea forward.

The fact is that everybody has their personal concept of what modest style manner to them.

"Modest style as a term, as a marketplace term, got here to occurrence withinside the mid-2000s, and this changed into partially due to the fact some of the manufacturers that first commenced up got here from designers and innovative marketers who have been themselves religiously motivated," says Reina Lewis, professor of cultural research at London College of Fashion, UAL. She defined to me that the net made it viable for savvy, underserved religio-ethnic people and companies to begin imparting each the goods and content material that they have been missing.

As Hana Tajima—the British-Japanese Muslim style fashion dressmaker who these days collaborated with Uniqlo on various modest-pleasant style—tells me, "The fact is that everybody has their personal concept of what modest style manner to them. And that runs along peoples' private alternatives of shadeation and fashion. It's one of these extensive concept that receives very slender inner the ones words."

So, in brief, modest style can describe various stages of protecting up on purpose. The selection may be because of religio-ethnic achievement or to gain a positive aesthetic and stage of ease as it isn't only a fashion this is tied to spirituality.

Why is the mainstream style enterprise speakme approximately it now?

First up, let's examine the number one stat that receives referenced time and again. According to the Global Islamic Economy Report, the Muslim style spend on my own withinside the UK is envisioned to reach $467 billion with the aid of using 2020. This is, in part, because of increasingly more millennial Muslim ladies—or Generation M—who've large quantities of disposable income, way to their new positions withinside the place of business in preference to the home.

Outside of records and figures, take a 2nd to reflect onconsideration on in which style is headed proper now: Social media has induced variety to come to be a mainstay—now no longer a gimmick—in the enterprise. It's additionally shone a mild on the (obvious) records that ladies of various shapes, faiths, colors, sizes, and backgrounds may be simply as elegant and may be similarly treasured customers.

The worldwide reaction on every occasion the modest style marketplace is addressed highlights simply how tons this faction desires to be spoken and catered to. When DKNY advertised a Ramadan series of present portions that have been appropriate for modest dressers in 2014, the click insurance changed into phenomenal. The equal is going for whilst H&M decided on Mariah Idrissi to function in a video in 2015. She have become the primary hijab-sporting version to function in one of the megalith's campaigns. She tells me her life "modified overnight. I changed into scouted in a shopping mall quickly after graduating college and [had been] making plans on running for myself in a innovative field, however I by no means predicted to be a version."

"That went viral inside minutes," Lewis says of the high-road campaign. "I assume the manufacturers worried have not found out the urge for food for this … how tons it'd get taken up. I assume Mariah were given extra traction and insurance than the alternative human beings worried in it, however the video changed into revolutionary in some of approaches in phrases of the way it offered social variety for style."

If I'm now no longer spiritual, can I be part of the movement?

Lewis explains that whilst the modest style marketplace is predominantly developing withinside the Abrahamic faiths (it truly is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), consistent with census data, an increasing number of younger humans are figuring out as "spiritual, now no longer spiritual." With that during mind, it is pretty feasible that piety and modest dressing is a through-product, however yes, anybody can get dressed modestly—to any degree—in the event that they need to.

"I might make the factor that girls interpret necessities to get dressed modestly in lots of specific ways, and the manner they interpret it could extrade over their life. Within anyone spiritual denomination, there could be some of specific interpretations and practices," Lewis says.

"Interestingly there are a variety of non-Muslim girls who're interested in this aesthetic," Tajima says. "There appears to be an overlap of subcultures and girls redefining what femininity approach to them. It allows that the garments are inherently comfortable. Japan has been fairly receptive to my collaboration with Uniqlo. I suppose a variety of girls are not always conscious that the garments can be visible as 'modest style.' It's only a fashion that resonates with them."

Women interpret modest get dressed necessities in lots of specific ways, and the manner they interpret them can extrade over their life.

Is it a accident that the outsized silhouettes—just like the super-huge trousers or announcement sleeves—we are into are so widespread at the runways and in shops proper now? Fashion is usually a mirrored image of the cultural conversation, and nowadays there are extra alternatives than ever for dressing modestly. Lyst, the data-crunching style seek engine, has visible an boom in associated phrases such as "excessive neck" or "lengthy sleeve" growing through 40% and 52%, respectively, during the last six months. Meanwhile, the logo notes that even extra precise categories, such as "modest bikinis," are triumphing out over skimpier styles.

What's the largest false impression approximately modest style?

Once you placed apart the false impression that modest style is most effective tied to spiritual and religo-ethnic desires, among the professionals I tapped for data have been short to pressure that masking up would not need to equate to searching uninteresting or keeping off trends. Anum Bashir, a Dubai-primarily based totally influencer regarded for advocating modest style on her blog, Desert Mannequin, absolutely debunks the parable that modest style "cannot be on trend, or that designers do not layout for the modest dresser. … I love having a laugh with garments as of late: colors, prints, layers, etc. What I do not have a tendency to do is display an excessive amount of skin."

London is so multicultural and one of the style capitals of the world; the modest style scene right here is so colourful and alive.

Does Bashir's system sound acquainted to you? It's one which I share, but I've by no means purposefully sought out or aimed to take part withinside the modest style movement. The concept is some distance from restrictive, is of the same opinion Lisa Bridgett of The Modist, a newly released e-trade platform focusing on a luxurious amassing of the maximum modest-pleasant portions.

"Modest dressing is set choice, approximately fantastically styled portions that resonate with the wearer and offer an exceedingly style-ahead method to being in-season. At The Modist, we're loving the tremendous and enlightened responses to our style proposition that we've had from modest clothing for women , girls throughout faiths who put on garments to marry with their values. … In many ways, modest dressing presents extra possibilities for girls to get dressed stylishly."

Who have to you appearance to for modest fashion inspiration?

There's no person metropolis or platform that policies the modest style kingdom—and through now it is simple to look that is a lot extra than burqas and maxi dresses—however Idrissi explains that London is a quite satisfactory vicinity to start: "As London is so multicultural and one of the style capitals of the world, the scene right here is so colourful and alive. I sense we take style pretty seriously. However, I will say even though we've a few adventurous dressers, I sense a lot of us [modest dressers] have a tendency to get dressed as an alternative in addition however with our very own little cultural or non-public twist."

#modest clothing for women #modest dresses for women #modest clothing websites

[allisondraste]

Let’s Talk About Cole

Hi! It’s me again with another segment of “Allison Can’t Stop Analyzing Dragon Age Characters.”  This time, I am going to be talking about fan favorite Cole.  I think it’s relatively universal for people to like Cole and to enjoy his character.  People like to draw him, write about him, and just talk about our Fade Friend all the time. It’s great! 

However, the nuance of Cole is a little harder to understand, and as with most characters, he often gets reduced down to basic qualities and then those basic qualities are changed ever so slightly that the character starts to not even feel the same anymore.  I love Cole, and I have done some research about him in order to write a handful of scenes involving him, so I am just here to share some of the things that helped me out while I was learning about what makes him tick!

Step 1. If you have not read Asunder, I cannot more highly recommend it.  It has so much information about Cole’s back story.  Also, if you haven’t read Asunder and you don’t want spoilers for Asunder, you should probably go read it and then come back to my post later.

Step 2.  The Cole section of this post right here is literally magic.  The whole post is magic, but since this is a Cole meta, I’m specifically referring to the Cole piece.

Step 3.  Things about Cole that are essential to understanding him:

Cole is Neurodivergent ( and no, it’s not up for debate)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, “Neurodivergent” is simply a word that describes a person whose mind works and processes information in a way that is considered different from an average joe neurotypical person.  Often times neurodivergent is used to describe autism, ADHD, and other conditions that affect neurological development.

Because Cole is a spirit, he processes the world around him differently from non-spirit characters in the Dragon Age Universe.  He perceives different things and understands things differently from how other characters might.  Cole also has some misunderstandings and misperceptions about human social norms and boundaries, that he becomes more acquainted with over time.  It is important to note that this development happens *regardless* of the path chosen for him with regard to Varric V. Solas (I am not a fan of this particular part of his character arc, but I am going to go into that later). The fact that Cole is neurodivergent means that someone who is neurotypical is likely going to have a hard time understanding him and may perceive him as “childish,” “naive,” or “helpless.”  They might also have difficulty understanding his speech patterns and especially recreating them if they seek to write him!

Neurodiversity is so important, and Cole is excellent representation, so it’s equally important that we strive to do our research and make sure that we are not removing that representation or presenting neurodiversity in a way that its harmful to others.  Different is different, not bad, and certainly not less.

Cole is Not a Child

I mentioned above that there is a tendency to interpret Cole’s neurodiversity as childishness or naivete, and even when it is unintentional, it is an ableistic view point that can be harmful to entire communities of people.  There is a pattern (not just in DA fandom, but also in DA fandom) whereby neurodiverse folks are often viewed as children.  They’re infantilized and treated as if they are helpless and/or cannot make good decisions on their own. Cole suffers from this as does Merrill (sometimes Sera, too).  

For Cole, this situation is not helped by the fact that the game portrays him as helpless and in need of a “father” figure to help him choose his path.  Hence we see Solas and Varric arguing on whether Cole should increase is affinity for spirtdom or for humanity.  I understand that everyone has their own opinion for what the “better” path for Cole is, and I’m not here to argue that; however, I do think that his arc would have had so much more meaning and been so much less invalidating for neurodivergent people if Cole had the autonomy to make his own decisions. In Asunder, we see Cole being very independent and making his own choices, figuring out who and what he is.  At the very end, his very last line in the entire book is, “I’m not helpless anymore.”  I don’t think that sounds like a character who cannot make his own decisions.

Fun fact: Cole is designed to be approximately 20 years old, which is the exact same age that Alistair was in Dragon Age: Origins.  (While Alistair is also the victim of infantilization… it still puts things into perspective a little bit). In order to avoid the “kid”/child dilemma, it is best to conceptualize some of the things in Cole commonly interpreted as childlike or immature as “newness.”  In Inquisition, Cole has only been in the mortal realm for a few years, and he has only been cognizant of the fact that he is not a human, but a spirit of Compassion for even less time.  Rather than treating him as a “baby” it is best to treat him as someone who is just learning a new culture, a new world.  

Cole is a Spirit of Compassion, Not a Spirit of Matchmaking and/or Meddling in your Personal Affairs.

A trend I see often is Cole as matchmaker, or Cole as interested in every detail of everyone’s sex life or Cole being a filterless vent for whatever the people near him are thinking.  It’s easy to assume that about him, as he does comment on a few relationships (Cullenmance, Solavellan, and Bullmance) in particular; however, there is an interesting tidbit of how Cole’s thought reading works located in his banter with Dorian.

Dorian: That little trick, Cole, when you dip into someone's mind and take a drink?

Dorian: Do you choose what you're looking for, or is it random?

Cole: It has to be hurt, or a way to help the hurt. That's what calls me.

Cole: Rilienus, skin tan like fine whiskey, cheekbones shaded, lips curl when he smiles.

Cole: He would have said yes.

Dorian: I'll... thank you not to do that again, please.

Essentially, Cole can only tap into thoughts that are 1.) Painful or 2.) Can help lessen the pain in some way, shape, or form. So, when he accesses thoughts about an LI or something else very personal, he does so to HELP.  It is not random.  It is not filterless.  It is a very pragmatic way to be compassionate. When I was thinking of ways to explain this, the first thing that came to mind was the work that I do as a mental health professional.  We are actual practitioners of compassion.  It is our job to listen to our clients and help them to solve the problems that are causing them to suffer.  We ask a lot of deep questions and probe about a lot of personal things, but it is very targeted.  We do not ask intimate questions just out of curiosity or just for the heck of it.  It is geared toward the issue at hand.  That is exactly what Cole does.  

Unless prodding your OC about the details of their sex life is going to make them feel better, he will not bother.

Cole is Not an Innocent, Precious, Little Cinnamon Roll

First of all, that goes along with the infantilization of his character, so it’s just a really ill-considered choice of language to describe him.  Second of all, it is simply not true.  

I understand that for people who have not read Asunder or played the Champions of the Just questline (and especially people who have done neither)  there is very little information about him to judge his character on, and what we do see is a person whose only mission, his sole purpose, is to help the hurt. That does seem very wholesome.

In Asunder, we see a much different side of him.  Believing himself to be Cole, a young mage who died of starvation after being forgotten by Templars, Compassion roams about the White Spire in a confused and lonely daze, unaware that he is actually a very powerful spirit.  He is called the Ghost of the White Spire, a legend that is terrifying to those that inhabit the tower.  Why?  Because he murders mages.

If you are thinking “oh, he probably killed them because he felt them suffering and he thought it was the only way to end their misery,” you are thinking exactly as I did, and you would be wrong.  While he did target individuals who were despairing, it was not altruistic.  He killed them because it felt good when they died, because that was the only time anyone could see him.  The way the book describes it, it was almost an “addiction” or a physiological need for him to kill.  He was distressed by his actions, but was not able to stop without Rhys’ help.

Over the course of the book, Cole learns more about his past and figures out what he is.  He also, through the help of his relationship with Rhys and Evangeline, comes to understand that he does not have to murder people to be seen and remembered.  When he is sent to the Fade using the Litany of Adralla, it all finally clicks and he returns to haunt Lord Seeker Lucius, for all the pain and suffering he caused his friends and loved ones. It is such a brilliant character arc and I so wish that we got to see more of it in the game.

Cole is a Person the Entire Time (Human vs. Spirit/Varric vs. Solas be damned)

Regardless of your opinion of Solas, one thing he gets right is in arguing that Cole is already a whole and complete person when he joins the Inquisition.  He actually argues for the personhood of all spirits in general, and I think that any reasonable person can look at the spirits (and demons) with whom we have interacted so far and, putting aside feelings about Solas, draw the same conclusions.

Let’s take a look at all of the Spirits/Demons we have had actual interactions with thus far:

Valor

Justice

Compassion

Command

Wisdom

Choice

Desire

Pride

Sloth

Rage

Fear

Envy

While some of these interactions were minimal, each of these entities show qualities that one would associate with personhood.  Qualities such as motivation, goals, higher order thought processes, emotions, etc.  When we meet Justice in DA:A, he is a thinking, feeling being who longs to right wrongs and comes to care for mortals a great deal.  He comes to this conclusion on his own after interacting with his companions in the events of the game. Choice, or Imshael, who we see in The Masked Empire, and in DAI,  has such an identity of his own that he does not like to be referred to as a demon. I could go on.  These are not mindless, thoughtless creatures, and so viewing them as people just makes sense. This is part of the reason I do not like the Solas vs. Varric questline (aside from the fact that Cole should be able to choose or not choose as he wishes).  Cole is already a person, and Varric’s line of thought is not “making him more human,” it is only serving to make him “less compassionate,” and that’s all.  He becomes more selfish which is why he is able to have more of his own personal goals (it’s not because he did not have them before; rather, it is because they were drowned out by everyone else’s).  

This is not to say that I think Cole should have to forgive his abuser.  He shouldn’t. Not unless he wants to, and that choice should be his to make, not Varric’s, not Solas’, and not the Inquisitor’s.  I have an opinion as to which path is better, but I’m not going to discuss that here because it will detract from the actual point which is that the language of “human” versus “not human” is just bad and here’s why.

It implies that forgiveness is not a human quality.

It implies that in order to be considered a person, one has to “think” and “do” as everyone else does.  

Because of Cole’s romantic/sexual interest in Maryden when Varric’s path is chosen, it implies that lack of romantic/sexual attraction is not “human,” which is aphobic.

Because of his Maryden interest in the “human” path, and because he has “become more human” in his thought processes, it implies that neurodivergent people cannot or are not interested in relationships, which is ableist.

TL;DR: I’m not a fan of that questline. Your mileage may vary.

Finally, and Probably the Reason You Sat Through the Rest of It: Cole’s Speech Pattern!

Cole’s speech is really difficult to capture in a way that is both enough and not too much.  It is not as simple as just seeing how much alliteration can fit into a chapter.  Sure, Cole uses a lot of alliteration, and it is incredibly fun to play with while writing him; however, his communication is not as simple as that.  If you check out the link I shared in Step 2, it will take you to a Character Files reference where there is some information about Cole’s speech pattern that is much more in depth than I am going to go so definitely check it out. When I am writing Cole, I categorize his speech into three different types:

Synesthesia

-  the alliteration, the purpley flowery descriptions, the metaphors, the in the moment, no regard for grammar, run on sentence speech he is known for.  This comprises most of his dialogue.

Direct thought reading

- when he is actually quoting characters’ thoughts or stating their feelings out right.  He might speak as them or he might speak as himself observing them.

Cole’s own thoughts

- Yes, he has them, and he has a lot of them.  Many of these show up as his interpretations of and suggestions for others regarding their hurt.  However, he also shows a lot of agency of thought.  He wants to know if Dorian thinks he’s handsome, he talks about wanting there to be more rabbits in stories because Bunny was Cole’s sister’s name and it reminds him of her.  Cole expresses a lot of his own thoughts and feelings if you just take time to listen.

Writing Cole effectively involves a good balance of all three types and I recommend just playing around with it!

To Sum It All Up

Cole is amazing, but he’s also often misunderstood and mischaracterized, and Allison has a lot of feelings about it that you could spare yourself from reading if you do Steps 1 and 2 and skip the middleman. The end!

#dragon age #dragon age inquisition #cole meta #understanding cole #writing reference #my ramblings

[madamlaydebug]

MENTAL GENDER Students of psychology who have followed the modern trend of thought along the lines of mental phenomena are struck by the persistence of the dual-mind idea which has manifested itself so strongly during the past ten or fifteen years, and which has given rise to a number of plausible theories regarding the nature and constitution of these "two minds." The late Thomson J. Hudson attained great popularity in 1893 by advancing his well-known theory of the "objective and subjective minds" which he held existed in every individual. Other writers have attracted almost equal attention by the theories regarding the "conscious and subconscious minds"; the "voluntary and involuntary minds"; "the active and passive minds," etc., etc. The theories of the various writers differ from each other, but there remains the underlying principle of "the duality of mind." The student of the Hermetic Philosophy is tempted to smile when he reads and hears of these many "new theories" regarding the duality of mind, each school adhering tenaciously to its own pet theories, and each claiming to have "discovered the truth." The student turns back the pages of occult history, and away back in the dim beginnings of occult teachings he finds references to the ancient Hermetic doctrine of the Principle of Gender on the Mental Plane-the manifestation of Mental Gender. And examining further he finds that the ancient philosophy took cognizance of the phenomenon of the "dual mind," and accounted for it by the theory of Mental Gender. This idea of Mental Gender may be explained in a few words to students who are familiar with the modern theories just alluded to. The Masculine Principle of Mind corresponds to the so-called Objective Mind; Conscious Mind; Voluntary Mind; Active Mind, etc. And the Feminine Principle of Mind corresponds to the so-called Subjective Mind; Sub-conscious Mind; Involuntary Mind; Passive Mind, etc. Of course the Hermetic Teachings do not agree with the many modern theories regarding the nature of the two phases of mind, nor does it admit many of the facts claimed for the two respective aspects--some of the said theories and claims being very far-fetched and incapable of standing the test of experiment and demonstration. We point to the phases of agreement merely for the purpose of helping the student to assimilate his previously acquired knowledge with the teachings of the Hermetic Philosophy. Students of Hudson will notice the statement at the beginning of his second chapter of "The Law of Psychic Phenomena," that: "The mystic jargon of the Hermetic philosophers discloses the same general idea" i.e., the duality of mind. If Dr. Hudson had taken the time and trouble to decipher a little of "the mystic jargon of the Hermetic Philosophy," he might have received much light upon the subject of "the dual mind"--but then, perhaps, his most interesting work might not have been written. Let us now consider the Hermetic Teachings regarding Mental Gender. The Hermetic Teachers impart their instruction regarding this subject by bidding their students examine the report of their consciousness regarding their Self. The students are bidden to turn their attention inward upon the Self dwelling within each. Each student is led to see that his consciousness gives him first a report of the existence of his Self-the report is "I Am." This at first seems to be the final words from the consciousness, but a little further examination discloses the fact that this "I Am" may be separated or split into two distinct parts, or aspects, which while working in unison and in conjunction, yet, nevertheless, may be separated in consciousness. While at first there seems to be only an "I" existing, a more careful and closer examination reveals the fact that there exists an "I" and a "Me." These mental twins differ in their characteristics and nature, and an examination of their nature and the phenomena arising from the same will throw much light upon many of the problems of mental influence. Let us begin with a consideration of the Me, which is usually mistaken for the I by the student, until he presses the inquiry a little further back into the recesses of consciousness. A man thinks of his Self (in its aspect of Me) as being composed of certain feelings, tastes likes, dislikes, habits, peculiar ties, characteristics, etc., all of which go to make up his personality, or the "Self" known to himself and others. He knows that these emotions and feelings change; are born and die away; are subject to the Principle of Rhythm, and the Principle of Polarity, which take him from one extreme of feeling to another. He also thinks of the "Me" as being certain knowledge gathered together in his mind, and thus forming a part of himself. This is the "Me" of a man. But we have proceeded too hastily. The "Me" of many men may be said to consist largely of their consciousness of the body and their physical appetites, etc. Their consciousness being largely bound up with their bodily nature, they practically "live there." Some men even go so far as to regard their personal apparel as a part of their "Me" and actually seem to consider it a part of themselves. A writer has humorously said that "men consist of three parts--soul, body and clothes." These "clothes conscious" people would lose their personality if divested of their clothing by savages upon the occasion of a shipwreck. But even many who are not so closely bound up with the idea of personal raiment stick closely to the consciousness of their bodies being their "Me" They cannot conceive of a Self independent of the body. Their mind seems to them to be practically "a something belonging to" their body-which in many cases it is indeed. But as man rises in the scale of consciousness he is able to disentangle his "Me" from his idea of body, and is able to think of his body as "belonging to" the mental part of him. But even then he is very apt to identify the "Me" entirely with the mental states, feelings, etc., which he feels to exist within him. He is very apt to consider these internal states as identical with himself, instead of their being simply "things" produced by some part of his mentality, and existing within him--of him, and in him, but still not "himself." He sees that he may change these internal states of feelings by all effort of will, and that he may produce a feeling or state of an exactly opposite nature, in the same way, and yet the same "Me" exists. And so after a while he is able to set aside these various mental states, emotions, feelings, habits, qualities, characteristics, and other personal mental belongings--he is able to set them aside in the "not-me" collection of curiosities and encumbrances, as well as valuable possessions. This requires much mental concentration and power of mental analysis on the part of the student. But still the task is possible for the advanced student, and even those not so far advanced are able to see, in the imagination, how the process may be performed. After this laying-aside process has been performed, the student will find himself in conscious possession of a "Self" which may be considered in its "I" and "Me" dual aspects. The "Me" will be felt to be a Something mental in which thoughts, ideas, emotions, feelings, and other mental states may be produced. It may be considered as the "mental womb," as the ancients styled it-capable of generating mental offspring. It reports to the consciousness as a "Me" with latent powers of creation and generation of mental progeny of all sorts and kinds. Its powers of creative energy are felt to be enormous. But still it seems to be conscious that it must receive some form of energy from either its "I" companion, or else from some other "I" ere it is able to bring into being its mental creations. This consciousness brings with it a realization of an enormous capacity for mental work and creative ability. But the student soon finds that this is not all that he finds within his inner consciousness. He finds that there exists a mental Something which is able to Will that the "Me" act along certain creative lines, and which is also able to stand aside and witness the mental creation. This part of himself he is taught to call his "I." He is able to rest in its consciousness at will. He finds there not a consciousness of an ability to generate and actively create, in the sense of the gradual process attendant upon mental operations, but rather a sense and consciousness of an ability to project an energy from the "I" to the "Me"--a process of "willing" that the mental creation begin and proceed. He also finds that the "I" is able to stand aside and witness the operations of the "Me's" mental creation and generation. There is this dual aspect in the mind of every person. The "I" represents the Masculine Principle of Mental Gender-the "Me" represents the Female Principle. The "I" represents the Aspect of Being; the "Me" the Aspect of Becoming. You will notice that the Principle of Correspondence operates on this plane just as it does upon the great plane upon which the creation of Universes is performed. The two are similar in kind, although vastly different in degree. "As above, so below; as below, so above." These aspects of mind-the Masculine and Feminine Principles-the "I" and the "Me"-considered in connection with the well-known mental and psychic phenomena, give the master-key to these dimly known regions of mental operation and manifestation. The principle of Mental Gender gives the truth underlying the whole field of the phenomena of mental influence, etc. The tendency of the Feminine Principle is always in the direction of receiving impressions, while the tendency of the Masculine Principle is always in the direction of giving, out or expressing. The Feminine Principle has much more varied field of operation than has the Masculine Principle. The Feminine Principle conducts the work of generating new thoughts, concepts, ideas, including the work of the imagination. The Masculine Principle contents itself with the work of the "Will" in its varied phases. And yet, without the active aid of the Will of the Masculine Principle, the Feminine Principle is apt to rest content with generating mental images which are the result of impressions received from outside, instead of producing original mental creations. Persons who can give continued attention and thought to a subject actively employ both of the Mental Principles-the Feminine in the work of the mental generation, and the Masculine Will in stimulating and energizing the creative portion of the mind. The majority of persons really employ the Masculine Principle but little, and are content to live according to the thoughts and ideas instilled into the "Me" from the "I" of other minds. But it is not our purpose to dwell upon this phase of the subject, which may be studied from any good text-book upon psychology, with the key that we have given you regarding Mental Gender. The student of Psychic Phenomena is aware of the wonderful phenomena classified under the head of Telepathy; Thought Transference; Mental Influence; Suggestion; Hypnotism, etc. Many have sought for an explanation of these varied phases of phenomena under the theories of the various "dual mind" teachers. And in a measure they are right, for there is clearly a manifestation of two distinct phases of mental activity. But if such students will consider these "dual minds" in the light of the Hermetic Teachings regarding Vibrations and Mental Gender, they will see that the long sought for key is at hand. In the phenomena of Telepathy it is seen how the Vibratory Energy of the Masculine Principle is projected toward the Feminine Principle of another person, and the latter takes the seed-thought and allows it to develop into maturity. In the same way Suggestion and Hypnotism operates. The Masculine Principle of the person giving the suggestions directs a stream of Vibratory Energy or Will-Power toward the Feminine Principle of the other person, and the latter accepting it makes it its own and acts and thinks accordingly. An idea thus lodged in the mind of another person grows and develops, and in time is regarded as the rightful mental offspring of the individual, whereas it is in reality like the cuckoo egg placed in the sparrows nest, where it destroys the rightful offspring and makes itself at home. The normal method is for the Masculine and Feminine Principles in a person's mind to co-ordinate and act harmoniously in conjunction with each other, but, unfortunately, the Masculine Principle in the average person is too lazy to act-the display of Will-Power is too slight-and the consequence is that such persons are ruled almost entirely by the minds and wills of other persons, whom they allow to do their thinking and willing for them. How few original thoughts or original actions are performed by the average person? Are not the majority of persons mere shadows and echoes of others having stronger wills or minds than themselves? The trouble is that the average person dwells almost altogether in his "Me" consciousness and does not realize that he has such a thing as an "I." He is polarized in his Feminine Principle of Mind, and the Masculine Principle, in which is lodged the Will, is allowed to remain inactive and not employed. The strong men and women of the world invariably manifest the Masculine Principle of Will, and their strength depends materially upon this fact. Instead of living upon the impressions made upon their minds by others, they dominate their own minds by their Will, obtaining the kind of mental images desired, and moreover dominate the minds of others likewise, in the same manner. Look at the strong people, how they manage to implant their seed-thoughts in the minds of the masses of the people, thus causing the latter to think thoughts in accordance with the desires and wills of the strong individuals. This is why the masses of people are such sheeplike creatures, never originating an idea of their own, nor using their own powers of mental activity. The manifestation of Mental Gender may be noticed all around us in everyday life. The magnetic persons are those who are able to use the Masculine Principle in the way of impressing their ideas upon others. The actor who makes people weep or cry as he wills, is employing this principle. And so is the successful orator, statesman, preacher, writer or other people who are before the public attention. The peculiar influence exerted by some people over others is due to the manifestation of Mental Gender, along the Vibrational lines above indicated. In this principle lies the secret of personal magnetism, personal influence, fascination, etc., as well as the phenomena generally grouped under the name of Hypnotism. The student who has familiarized himself with the phenomena generally spoken of as "psychic" will have discovered the important part played in the said phenomena by that force which science has styled "Suggestion," by which term is meant the process or method whereby an idea is transferred to, or "impressed upon" the mind of another, causing the second mind to act in accordance therewith. A correct understanding of Suggestion is necessary in order to intelligently comprehend the varied psychical phenomena which Suggestion underlies. But, still more is a knowledge of Vibration and Mental Gender necessary for the student of Suggestion. For the whole principle of Suggestion depends upon the principle of Mental Gender and Vibration. It is customary for the writers and teachers of Suggestion to explain that it is the "objective or voluntary" mind which make the mental impression, or suggestion, upon the "subjective or involuntary" mind. But they do not describe the process or give us any analogy in nature whereby we may more readily comprehend the idea. But if you will think of the matter in the light of the Hermetic Teachings you will be able to see that the energizing of the Feminine Principle by the Vibratory Energy of the Masculine Principle Is in accordance to the universal laws of nature, and that the natural world affords countless analogies whereby the principle may be understood. In fact, the Hermetic Teachings show that the very creation of the Universe follows the same law, and that in all creative manifestations, upon the planes of the spiritual, the mental, and the physical, there is always in operation this principle of Gender-this manifestation of the Masculine and the Feminine Principles. "As above, so below; as below, so above." And more than this, when the principle of Mental Gender is once grasped and understood, the varied phenomena of psychology at once becomes capable of intelligent classification and study, instead of being very much in the dark. The principle "works out" in practice, because it is based upon the immutable universal laws of life. We shall not enter into an extended discussion of, or description of, the varied phenomena of mental influence or psychic activity. There are many books, many of them quite good, which have been written and published on this subject of late years. The main facts stated in these various books are correct, although the several writers have attempted to explain the phenomena by various pet theories of their own. The student may acquaint himself with these matters, and by using the theory of Mental Gender he will be able to bring order out of the chaos of conflicting theory and teachings, and may, moreover, readily make himself a master of the subject if he be so inclined. The purpose of this work is not to give an extended account of psychic phenomena but rather to give to the student a master-key whereby He may unlock the many doors leading into the parts of the Temple of Knowledge which he may wish to explore. We feel that in this consideration of the teachings of The Kybalion, one may find an explanation which will serve to clear away many perplexing difficulties--a key that will unlock many doors. What is the use of going into detail regarding all of the many features of psychic phenomena and mental science, provided we place in the hands of the student the means whereby he may acquaint himself fully regarding any phase of the subject which may interest him. With the aid of The Kybalion one may go through any occult library anew, the old Light from Egypt illuminating many dark pages, and obscure subjects. That is the purpose of this book. We do not come expounding a new philosophy, but rather furnishing the outlines of a great world-old teaching which will make clear the teachings of others-which will serve as a Great Reconciler of differing: theories, and opposing doctrines.

[ephemerational]

Pillow Grave (VIII)

The ground is still a long ways off, hidden away beyond the impenetrable darkness. 

If there even is one. 

I suspect that there is. 

Supposing that I'm correct, it's a little bit closer now. 

I must have fallen from somewhere, a cliff or building or other structure, which has to stand on something, so there necessarily has to be a ground. 

But I don't remember. 

I can't always have fallen. 

If I did, could it really be called falling, technically?

Doesn't feel right. 

A little closer yet. 

I look up into the void, or down, I can't tell, and through the clouds of now vaguely materializing forms, the letter "L" looks back at me. 

Less than an inch away from my retina. Some more letters dig themselves into my cheekbones, creating a sharp pain all over the right half of my face. 

I lift my head off the keyboard. 

Not yet sufficiently sober, my body sways from side to side, forcing my center of mass beyond the chair's edge. 

Figures. 

I haven't stopped falling. 

Thud. 

Face to carpet, back to darkness.

I awaken to the high-pitched voice of my younger brother and a light tap on the shoulder.

“Hey, I thought you were gonna show me the around the school today.”

The young boy in front of me is beaming from cheek to cheek.

“Yeah, definitely, I was just… waiting here for you.”

“I dunno Vi, it kind of looked like you were sleeping.”

“Sleeping? In class?”

I smile widely and blow out some air through my nose in hopes of making the act more convincing. “How dare you accuse your brother of such delinquency?”

“If you say so. We did homeroom-introductions with miss Wagner today, everyone seems really nice!”

“Wagner? You lucked out then, her classes are pretty low-effort. You didn’t talk to anyone, did you?”

“Of course I talked to them, duh. They’re my new classmates, and I told you they’re nice.”

“Any word you speak to those vultures is ammunition against you. Just wait until they find their first target and you’ll see. I’ve done school for a bit now and the best way of being ignored is ignoring them. They’re boring as shit anyways.”

Was I still being sincere when I said that? Was I sincere at any point? When did it all get so twisted, so dark and callous? Why did I feel like I had to experiment with him? Why did I poke everything until it broke?

“I am no longer him!”

“No longer who?” 

Lloyd responds in the muffled, barely understandable tone of a man mumbling into his pillow.

“Don’t even worry about it… I need to take a shower”

“Woah, what kind of epiphany has led to taking action as drastic as basic hygiene?

“yeah, yeah, whatever.”

Even as warm water beats against my face and layers upon layers of filth and dead skin are stripped from my body, the thoughts won’t go away. I can’t live like this. I need absolution. Just some, just a little bit, not actually from the good one himself though. That’s worthless, he’ll forgive anyone. He already forgave me for fuck’s sake. How much could that possibly mean. I open my mouth and take in the jet of disgusting, metal-tasting water, in hopes that it will drown me before I can bring this particular train of thought to conclusion. My half assed attempt at suicide proves unsuccessful. There has to be a place for this kind of forgiveness. Fuck talking to some religious dipshit, but sad, directionless teenagers playing psychoanalyst for each other, so they don’t have to deal with the reality of their own misery for a bit? Now that’s something I can get behind. And forums like that ought to exist everywhere.

A few google searches and DMs to angsty teenagers in Lo’s comments lead me to just the place I was looking for: “The darkness glows”. A wall of absurdly pretentious confessionals, ten times the wordcount they would require, were the people responsible even remotely as interested in conveying their actual issues as they are in convincing readers of their depth, stretches down farther than any reasonable human would ever dare to scroll.

The site was apparently created by a lifestyle blogger named Veronica Heine, who became somewhat famous amongst the goth-adjacent two years ago after unexpectedly killing herself and leaving multiple novels worth of purple-prose as her suicide note. Further digging into her uncovered this site, which she assumably set up in order to help herself, but which didn’t gain any traction until the connection to the now dead pseudo-e-celeb had been was revealed. That is to say: quite a bit too late. The girl however succeeded in becoming a messianic figure for depressed assholes who think that she somehow sacrificed herself to bring them this site and therefore save their lives, miraculously unaware of the existence of suicide hotlines.

I guess I shouldn’t be too cynical of the whole matter, seeing how this is exactly what I needed.

Thanks Veronica.

For a moment I consider contemplating how incredibly macabre and creepy that thought was but decide against it.

Instead I start reading a post.

“There is no out. There can’t be. The thing we want to escape from once simplified to its most basic, nuanceless core is reality itself, or rather the human experience that is the lens through which we conceptualize it. How could there possibly be anything outside that except death? Anything that seems like an out is just another in, a pathway to another corner of the same shitty old building where the only way to escape is jumping out the 21st floor window. It still sucks, wherever your path leads, but at least it sucks in a way that’s new, refreshing almost for a while. It puts past shit into perspective despite not being an exit and becomes the new, interesting shit, which might just be enough? As long as one keeps taking the “out”s that aren’t really and continuously turns the old shit into the new shit, the grind stays interesting enough to be worth it, maybe. Maybe that’s the point of it all.”

“If you’re still looking for the point, you have already missed it, because there is none and that is the point.”

“Wouldn’t that mean that there is one? Isn’t that just a “the path is the goal”-type twisting of words, that denies the initial discernibility of a thing’s nature, but not the verisimilitude of its existence. That’s even kind of the thing I described above.”

“It would be, if I, like you apparently do, operated on the assumption that “points” or any comprehensibility-serving abstraction of physical reality is an inherent property of it, rather than a foundationless attribution made by flawed human minds.”

“In that case you’re just being needlessly obtuse by referring once to the point of existence and once to your point about existence with the same word in the same sentence.

Being hard to understand doesn’t make you profound, you know?”

“Well what’s profound?”

“Anything that makes people go “oh, I get it, the world’s like THAT” in the form of a very neat, memetic sentiment. No more than a paragraph. The kind of shit middle aged women go nuts for.

didn’t miss that you changed the topic btw.”

The commenter didn’t respond to this.

What IS profound? THAT, yes, sure, but also more, right? There has to be more. It’s not satisfying like this. There has to be a more profound explanation of profundity. Did THEY, the commenter,  find it satisfactory, of did they just not reply because their ego had been bruised?

I come to the realization that that becoming cognizant, not knowing, but actually becoming cognizant of the fact that other people do exist and have thoughts is genuinely the worst feeling imaginable.

I take a large gulp of rum straight from the bottle and the burning sensation in my throat distracts me from the terrifying thought that some guy on the internet had maybe been given a glimpse at the true nature of things that simply doesn’t do it for me.

Why did I go here?

Where did the rum come from for that matter? Sometimes it seems like alcohol just appears around me. Wait, right. This was about Lo. It’s hard not to feel pathetic in this situation, despite the overwhelming work I put into cleansing myself from such feelings forever. The space girl would surely have a blast observing and commenting upon my fucked-up coping mechanisms, but then again, there are few pathological behaviors with which she doesn’t have a field day, this tendency of hers very much included.

[clonerightsagenda]

if you're doing arcs for tlcstuck DVD commentary, maybe john's? but if you don't have a lot to say on his, kanaya?

Sure, I can talk about John! If you don’t mind, I’m going to sit on the Kanaya request - we have several upcoming Kanaya updates that are relevant, and I’d rather not go through a whole arc review without those to draw on. (I still need to code the darn things too.)

As per usual, this initial post will talk about John’s situation at the start of TLC and our goals for his progression throughout the story. Future posts will skim quickly over relevant scenes with the occasional foray into specifics as I see fit and/or have a funny story to share.

While Jade intentionally conceals aspects of her personality or emotions she thinks are “bad”, John seems to unconsciously repress a lot of negative emotion. Also, despite being named the group’s leader, he takes a lot of orders in their first session. His tirade about Con Air and criticism of how John Cusack doesn’t do anything useful except “operate some heavy machinery at the end” (aka initiate the Scratch) is thinly veiled self-loathing. His issues with being pushed around only increase when he sticks his hand into the juju and gets sent spiraling out of control through the story. So, a big goal of TLC was to give John a sense of control and agency over his own experience. We also wanted to have him take a look at his own repressed emotions and begin to deal with them.

Another thing I’d like to bring up is John’s tendency to filter stuff through media. Part of that is connected to his repression. He’s shown playing games or watching movies in both battleship intermissions, because it’s a good distraction from their situation. As I mentioned already, he vents some of his frustrations by ragging on John Cusack. In an earlier intermission, when he’s not quite ready to openly admit to his feud with Davesprite, he expresses it through the game by insisting that Jade shouldn’t talk to him because he is “the enemy”. In fact, a lot of that Ghostbusters MMORPG scene is John attempting to re-establish himself as a “leader” in a game that doesn’t really need that role, because it’s a safer environment to try to do so. Once John sticks his hand in the juju, he’s given authorial control over the story and how it goes. Since he zaps into the whitespace a few times, he might even be vaguely aware of his existence as a character in a narrative (something usually Time players are most cognizant of). John’s primed to use his vision of his life as a story in some interesting ways, and we do get into that, especially with the narrative prompt sequence. But we have to get there first.

Since that’s pretty short, I’m going to blow through A6A6I4 in this same post. I already went through this with a previous ask but I’ll touch on some details of John’s arc specifically.

ROXY: nix made it sound like u always have to pay some kind of priceJOHN: typheus said the same thing.JOHN: he insisted on being cagey about it, but it sounded like i may have compromised my existence in some mysterious but significant way.

This will get revisited when we get to the walkaround (if I lay down foreshadowing I will pick it back up again, who do you think I am) but it’s mostly a joke. By making the decision to change what he did, John is no longer canonical, which sure compromises his existence. However, going by his situation in the Credits, it’s probably for the best.

Instead of being told what to do by Terezi, John gets to decide how to use his new powers to help fix the timeline, giving him more ownership over both his powers and their success. Then he bangs right into Davesprite, who is not thrilled that there are now more idiots with time powers on the loose.

I think John’s hangup with Davesprite comes from several sources. We saw early on with his freakout over his dad’s room that he comes up with ideas of how people should be, and when those ideas don’t match reality, he’s not happy about it. Dave was never going to be the same irl as online, and Davesprite’s additional heaping of trauma didn’t help. Also, John resents his failings as a leader in the first session, and taking Terezi’s advice and getting himself killed was a big one. He doesn’t know the details of what really went down (that the timeline was already doomed, and it’s implied doomed John sacrificed himself on Typheus’ advice) but what he knows is that he fucked up and got himself and Jade killed, and Davesprite is an inconvenient lingering reminder of a mistake he’d rather write off as something that didn’t really happen.

Now, face to face with the walking reminder of his biggest error, John tries to reassert control. Earlier, he complains that Davesprite tries to take credit for his existence all the time (again making John feel guilty, even if it’s Davesprite trying to scrabble for some sort of continued relevance) and John turns the tables by repeatedly announcing that he’s responsible for their survival, betraying similar insecurities. He also for the first time directly says he’s upset about the way he’s been pushed around instead of being allowed to lead.

JOHN: everyone’s always telling me how to act.JOHN: no one thinks i can handle things on my own.JOHN: i’m the doofus sidekick who makes mistakes and gets in the way so the REAL hero can save the day.JOHN: but i brought back an entire session, and i don’t think that’s only a punch line.

For John, even admitting something is progress.

Ironically, although John will not verbally acknowledge this until their walkaround log (gotta learn the whole self-awareness thing) they’re now in a similar situation, turning back time after their session fell apart.

John brings everyone back to Roxy, where he quickly gives her a complex. John’s attempts to write off everyone from doomed timelines as not real goes back to his repression. He doesn’t want to think about those events or dead friends. He’d rather push it all away, because it’s not real. It doesn’t matter. He’s surprised earlier that Roxy wanted to remember, and now he’s surprised when she suggests reminding everyone else. However, Roxy points out that sometimes remembering bad stuff is important for learning and moving forward, and so he reluctantly agrees.

The conversation with Rose is more important for her arc, but John then has a silly idea and ends up accidentally freeing Jane. Sometimes being silly and impulsive can work out. Soon after, he runs into Jane’s dad, gets upset, and immediately stomps that emotion down… only to run straight into Rose freaking out about doomed Roxy’s death. It’s dead parent flashback central in this castle tonight. Good job specifically mentioning that incident beforehand, John. You jinxed yourself. Earlier, John tries to cover when Rose gets confused about Jane saying Roxy is in jail. He knows what has to happen and agreed to try to conceal it from Rose on Roxy’s request - again, he’d rather think of that set of people as “not real” and figures it’s better for everyone to simply not know. Instead, that leaves Rose unprepared for the shock and makes her even madder when she finds out what’s going on. Consequences, John.

And that brings us up through I4! Good place to stop.

#tlcstuck #dvd commentary #Anonymous

[motorcyclegirlfriends]

I'm new in fandom, supercorp is my first one and all this discourse (it's toxic vs it's not toxic/SDCC was our fault vs. wasn't our fault) is really tiring me. I agree that actors should not be held responsible for the writers decisions, so the Chris Wood bashing, despite my dislike for Mon-el, was over the top among some blogs. But, i'm not one for the idea that real fans don't complain about the show. If someone is criticizing the show with the proper tags, are they still wrong? [1]

I'm genuinely curious about this, not trying to be rude or to pick a fight. Like i said, this is my first experience in fandom and i'm trying to educate myself in what ways i should behave. You seem to be someone who wouldn't mind answering my questions, but if you getting tired of talking about this just ignore it, that's understandable

I don’t mind answering your questions at all!

I'm not really saying that it’s wrong to criticize the show a lot. Even constantly, if it’s warranted and not overly cruel.

But it’s like... say you joined a book club because you love to read, and every month you all read a new book. And every time you read the book, you come in with ideas. Symbolism and themes and character analyses and more.

You have some things you don’t like, usually a few pretty big things, and you’ll probably mention those, too. Because you can still be a fan and openly dislike parts of the material.

But the fun of going to the club is being with a group of people who love the same thing you do so you can finally talk about it in-depth, so they can add their own in-depth thoughts.

And you go to this club, only to find that all the members want to talk about are the things they didn’t like about the book. 

And every time you try to bring it back around to the more positive things (so you can do what you really love, which is discuss what everything really means and come up with new ways to think about the material in a way that celebrates it) they can’t get fully immersed because they’re still so angry about the elements they didn’t like.

And it reaches a point where they’ve fully established what it is that they didn’t like, but they keep coming up with more things to say about it, like, “and you know why it really sucks? If you think about how it relates to-” and it’s kind of like-

“Yes, I understand why this thing was bad. We’ve established it. And I’m sure there are new angles to consider, but we could be considering all the different angles of the things that were good about the story. Because there were a lot of good things.”

But they don’t want to talk about those things as much as the bad things. They’ll touch upon them and even agree with them, but they’ll spend more energy in discussing the things they didn’t like.

And you reach a point where it’s like??? why are we even here? Why do we read these books if they’re all terrible, and why do we all get together in a group just to complain? This isn’t what I thought it would be like. And I can’t imagine that you’re really enjoying yourselves, either.

But they have every right to talk about the things that they are annoyed with. There’s nothing wrong about the action. 

However, in order to make the book club an enjoyable place, there has to be some moderation of the tendency to talk about negative things.

It kind of like if you have a friend who complains about their life non-stop. They aren’t doing anything necessarily wrong in venting to you, but the reality of the situation is that if they do it constantly, and they don’t also bring equal positivity to the friendship, you’re not going to really want to be around them. People generally don’t like being in a negative atmosphere for long.

In a lot of ways, clubs and fandoms function like a relationship. Any group that has consistent open communication functions like a relationship.

You have to work toward making it a healthy interaction, and that means sometimes sacrificing habits that damage it, even if the habits themselves aren’t inherently bad.

What I’ve been arguing for is not the silencing of criticisms, but the moderation of them for the benefit of the fandom.

What I’ve been arguing is for this fandom to function like a healthy relationship, with it’s ups and downs, rather than the unending downward slope that we’ve been experiencing.

Side note: I wouldn’t say that, even accepting the idea that Jeremy said what he said because he was frustrated with the fans, that it was the fans’ fault (And I say Jeremy bc I still feel like Melissa joined in on a joke without any real motivation behind it).

For me, the point of discussing the reasons Jeremy said what he said the way that he said it has not been to shift the blame, but to partially explain how he wasn’t saying it because of homophobia. 

Perhaps it technically wouldn’t have happened if Jeremy wasn’t frustrated with the supercorp fans who had been harassing people, but it also wouldn’t have happened if Jeremy and Melissa had been more cognizant of lgbt+ fans’ sensitivities.

When it comes to blame in this case, it’s pretty much ‘who did the worse thing’ vs ‘people are still responsible for their words and actions’.

But I’ve been more interested in breaking down why things happened the way they did primarily to prevent the projection of malicious or hateful thoughts onto people without evidence that those thoughts exist, rather than to say “it’s actually the fans’ fault!”

#sdcc superfail #Anonymous

[shellbellsposts]

The Human Desire To Escape

We all have our escape from reality, but we can only run so far from the pain, the mundane, and the disappointment that nips at our heels. In So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell writes a somewhat fictional, somewhat real memoir on events during his childhood (Apparently the author believes that not all his memories are accurate, haha). There is a place in the story where Maxwell goes to play and eventually meets his friend Cletus. This place is a partial frame of a house with strange artwork on the inside, possibly built by a group of artists, and here Maxwell can forget about his mother’s death, his father’s remarriage, and his struggles in school and use his imagination for hours on end. This act of falling in love with his imagination is a form of escape from his current circumstances that anyone can relate to. But… Is the act of escaping in order to avoid problems unhealthy or perfectly normal? We all feel the need to escape at one moment or another and we all do so in different ways whether it is through imagination, television, video games, and maybe even addictions. There is a healthy balance between escaping too much and too little that both exercises creativity and relieves stress without becoming a complete avoidance of problems. I have experienced the negative and positive aspects of escape in my own life, observed the problems of escapism in general, and evaluated the overall benefits of escapism, and included some of my own advice on the concept of escapism.

Has Peter Pan ever inspired you to fly to Neverland by jumping as high as you could on your trampoline? Now that was certainly a possible and real form of escape for my nine-year-old self, believing that flying was possible for anyone who had strong enough faith in magic and wonder, just as Peter said himself, “You just have to believe.” I was an imaginative child (probably too much so haha) and I can relate to Maxwell’s childhood desire to escape. At school, I was rambunctious and energetic, but when I was by myself my imagination took flight. When life got hard and boring, it was so easy to escape into a fantasy book or an imaginary world where I was the onlooker of an enjoyable adventure. Those blissful times of escape allowed me to develop into a storyteller and a creative thinker by forming storylines and characters in my mind, teaching me to think with complexity. But there was something about chasing lions and rescuing princesses that helped me to forget, allowing imagination to become a source of hope with suffering on the back burner, a fake light, a fraud until reality came knocking. Now imagination is good, but reality shouldn’t come knocking. Imagination should help you understand and make sense of reality rather run from it. My desire to escape got me into trouble in school. I never turned my work in on time because I was too busy staring out a window or wading through my own thoughts. At times I would get so lost in my own thoughts that my teacher would ask me a question with complete clarity and my response would be, “What?” and the teacher would constantly have to repeat herself because I struggled to drag myself away from my imaginative world. Escape is not necessarily bad, but at times it did take me away from the moment and kept me from learning effectively. There were also times, more so when I got older, when I would read several books in a week or binge on Netflix episodes instead of focusing on my relationships and responsibilities. These bingeing tendencies tend to take us away from our own stories and realities when not handled in moderation, and upon seeing that tendency in myself, I strove to be free from it.

Escape can take form not only in imagination and mind wandering but also in the form of an enjoyable outlet; however, such outlets can develop into negative habits when not handled in moderation. We do it all the time in our culture whether we believe it to be healthy or not. We devour Netflix seasons by night and consume YouTube clips by day. We leave our homes to sit in movie theaters and obsess over fantasy football from our couches. And after all this consumption and escape, are we not left feeling empty? I know I am. No matter how many times we try to escape and find fulfillment in our own imaginations we must always face reality again. People want to be part of every adventure except their own, even though their own is the most unique, interesting, and real. We are not courageous in dealing with grief, pain, and unmet expectations; instead of fixing problems we escape and escaping becomes an addiction and a crutch that we depend on instead of God, family, and work. Deadly forms of escape include serious addictions such as drugs and alcohol that destroy lives instead of acting as a healthy outlet for problems that need to be addressed. On Psychology Today, the following observation was noted about the effect of alcohol on relationships, “Alcohol abuse can affect your body both inside and out. Even though you’re unable to see the damage drinking causes to your internal organs, it’s important not to ignore the warning signs of alcoholism,” (78). There is certainly a negative effect of this extreme form of escapism that can destroy the lives of people rather than provide them the comfort and stress relief they need. Alcohol creates many more problems than it solves and is not a form of escapism worth depending on. Constant dependence on alcohol or other drugs not only affects the individual negatively but also family members and the workplace. Overall, escapism can be negative and very dangerous when abused or used out of moderation

Edgar Allen Poe reflects positively on the idea of escaping and dreaming by day, “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret.” Poe believes that those who escape daily into their daydreams are on the verge of understanding something great and wonderful, unseen by those who only dream during the night, allowing creativity to flourish and wisdom to grow. Just as Poe claims, escape allows us to dream and hope, allowing some of the greatest ideas to grow, fester, and form into the most world-renowned books and spectacular inventions. David Feldman writes in Psychology Today “For many kids, fantasies form a basis for social activity with their friends, a way to explore their interests, and a vehicle for engaging in creative pursuits like drawing or storytelling.” There is a positive and effective side of escape that allows the mind to wander and discover the most incredible, creative solutions. Maxwell is the perfect example of the positive use of escape. He portrays himself as a dreamer with a big imagination, and that trait has certainly made him extremely successful. Along with dreaming, escape helps us to tolerate our current situations. Not that we should always escape current situations or resign ourselves to depending on negative forms of escape, but we all need an outlet of enjoyment as well. Maxwell certainly had reason to want to escape his situation with the pain he experienced, and I believe other people can from painful experiences can agree as well.

Escapism is part of reality, with both positive and negative forms; but how can we apply a balanced view of escapism into our everyday lives? In my life, I have tried to move toward more positive forms of escapism that are self-feeding and non-addictive. I was totally a Netflix binger and a romance book reader throughout my high school years, but those endeavors were fruitless to me as a person and after a few years I adapted different interests. Still being a book lover, I decided to focus on authors I could depend on for worthy content such as C.S. Lewis and Francine Rivers, whose books were deep and thought-provoking rather than only adventuresome and happy. Journaling also became an escape for me as I entered college. It was a harder hobby for me to learn, but it has become a habit now in my second year of college. Journaling allows me to escape circumstances while evaluating them at the same time, and when I look back at what I write, I feel that I am understanding myself as a person more and more. These changes in my own hobbies have been extremely helpful but here are some tips on escapism that I would recommend:

·       Avoid addictive forms of escapism. Drugs and alcohol are obvious forms to avoid, but even television shows can be addictive. Exploring social media and watching YouTube videos are also addictive tendencies that can leave you entertained for hours.

·       Focus on growth. Influence yourself positively with forms of escape such as reading, writing, exercising, starting a garden, and cooking. Such endeavors not only allow you to form a new skill, but they help you develop virtues such as patience and focus.

·       Escape for the Right Reasons. Escaping to avoid making decisions or to procrastinate on work will not solve problems. Escape should be time set aside to relax away from life’s stressors, for reflection and growth.

 Escape into imagination and entertainment can be wonderful but also preventative against the onset of reality, but with a balanced approach to the concept one can have incredibly creative and stress relieving results. We escaped our lives as children and we still escape as adults. We go from imaginative play in our backyards and streets to video games in musty basements, to sports teams playing in large arenas. Sometimes we escape too much and other times not enough, but no matter what our experience happens to be, it certainly opens our minds to idealize for something exciting and wonderful and maybe even possible.

 Works Cited

https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/alcohol/effects/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/supersurvivors/201712/why-daydreaming-is-good-us

[ericfruits]

The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore

Created on: 15 August 2017 at 15:15 (Delivered after 1 seconds) From: Larry Page <*********@google.com> To: James Damore <***********@hotmail.com> cc: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”

Dear James,

You’re probably expecting me to start by claiming that there are no differences in the average abilities, aptitudes and interests of men and women. Or that the fact that four times as many of Google’s software engineers are men than are women is proof of discrimination. I’m not going to do either of those things. There is good evidence for dozens of such differences between the average man and average woman. And as a matter of pure logic, you are correct that the gender gap in our team of software engineers is not of itself proof of sexism or discrimination.

I am happy to acknowledge that you state your support for gender diversity and fairness. Your memo starts: “I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes.”

So, you and anyone else who reads this may be wondering, why the fuss? Why did your memo go viral? Why did it cause such fury? Why did we fire you? In interviews and an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal you have said it’s because Google is “ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate”, and therefore unable to tolerate your “reasoned, well-researched, good-faith argument”. You’ve driven the point home with your “Goolag” T-shirt and new twitter handle, @Fired4Truth.

Your interpretation is wrong. Your memo was a great example of what’s called “motivated reasoning”—seeking out only the information that supports what you already believe. It was derogatory to women in our industry and elsewhere. Despite your stated support for diversity and fairness, it demonstrated profound prejudice. Your chain of reasoning had so many missing links that it hardly mattered what your argument was based on. We try to hire people who are willing to follow where the facts lead, whatever their preconceptions. In your case we clearly made a mistake.

Have you ever noticed how no one takes sentences that start “I’m not a racist, but…” at face value? Here’s why, in the words of Jon Snow in “Game of Thrones” (season 7, episode 1). When Sansa Stark tells him: “They respect you, they really do, but…,” Snow laughs and comes back with: “What did father used to say? Everything before the word ‘but’ is horseshit.”

I thought of that line when I read this section in your memo: “Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story. On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways…” All your comments about valuing diversity and fairness came before that giant “but”. What came after it was a description of a few gender differences, your argument that they explain why so many of our software engineers are men and your complaint that Google’s attempts to change that balance, far from being about fairness to women, amount to anti-male bias. You use the words “discriminate” or “discrimination” 17 times, exclusively to describe men as victims.

Now that we’ve worked out what your memo’s really about, let’s examine its argument. These are the main gender differences you cite: women’s on-average greater interest, compared with men, in people and lesser interest in things; their relatively greater tendency to “empathise” rather than “systematise”, and to be agreeable rather than assertive; and their relatively higher anxiety and lower tolerance for stress. You present a diagram of two normal distributions, with the same standard deviations but slightly different means, to demonstrate that small differences in group averages can result in large differences when it comes to outliers. (The Economist’s data team has kindly redrawn this for me, highlighting the “tail” of the distribution with the higher mean.) The point of this simplified model is to demonstrate that, of everyone who scores very highly on the variable under consideration, many more will be from the group with the higher average.

Then you make a giant leap from group differences between men and women on such measures as interest in people rather than things, or systematising versus empathising, to differences in men’s and women’s ability to code. At least that’s what you seem to be doing; you don’t quite say so. There is no evidence for such an inference. And that is only the first flaw in your argument. I can see at least six more, any of which would derail it on its own.

First, you ignore many other gender differences, basing your argument only on a few that you think support your conclusion. Second, you’re ignoring everything else that could explain the gender gap. Third, the gender differences you cite differ between countries and over time. Fourth, they don’t even support your argument, because you don’t seem to understand what makes a great software engineer. Fifth, you clearly don’t understand our company, and so fail to understand what we are trying to do when we hire. And sixth, even if you are right that more men than women are well-suited to the job of software engineer at Google, you are wrong that taking steps to recruit more women is inherently unfair to men.

Your memo was a triumph of motivated reasoning: heads men win; tails women lose. Here are a few psychological differences between the sexes that you didn’t mention. Men score higher on measures of anger, and lower on co-operation and self-discipline. If it had been the other way round, I’m betting you would have cited these differences as indicating lack of suitability for the job of coder. You lean on measures of interest and personality, rather than ability and achievement, presumably because the latter don’t support your hypothesis. In many countries girls now do better in pretty much every subject at school than boys—again, if it had been the other way around I’m sure you wouldn’t have neglected to mention that fact. The sole published comparison of competency in coding I am aware of found that women were more likely than men to have their GitHub contributions accepted—but if they were project outsiders, this was true only if their gender was concealed.

There is plenty of evidence that women in Silicon Valley suffer sexism and discrimination. Read Susan Fowler’s description of the harassment she experienced at Uber before leaving the firm in December. Look at the responses to “Elephant in the Valley”, a recent survey of senior women in tech: among its findings was that two-thirds had been excluded from networking opportunities because of their sex. And beyond our industry, women are less likely than men to be given plum assignments, are given less useful feedback, are seen as pushy when they ask for pay rises (men are seen as ambitious) and, in leadership roles, may be seen as either competent or likeable, but rarely both. “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism,” you write. But we know there is sexism! We don’t need to infer it from the existence of gender gaps.

It is more than likely that some psychological differences between men and women have been baked in by evolution, as you note. We see such differences, in varying degrees, in pretty much every animal. With humans, though, you must take great care before concluding that any specific difference is innate, since our societies are so much more complex and varied than those of other animals. (By the way, I find it blackly funny that some of the conservatives who have seized on you as a hero don’t believe in evolution at all.)

Here are some reasons to be doubtful about an evolutionary basis for the specific differences you cite. Before the 1980s, when personal computers became more common and were almost exclusively marketed to men and boys, a much bigger share of those studying computer science at university in America were girls than is the case now. The share of computer scientists who are women varies wildly from country to country. Even personality differences vary from time to time and place to place—for example men are more agreeable (the term used by psychologists for a cluster of traits such as modesty, altruism and tender-mindedness), and less ambitious and status-seeking, in more hierarchical countries. That suggests that at least some of the gaps we see in America are because women are still relatively powerless, just as most men are in more traditional societies. Moreover, those supposedly “female” traits vanish in the rare arenas where the competition is entirely among women. Sopranos and ballerinas are hardly famous for being indifferent about who gets top billing.

I said you didn’t understand what made a great software engineer. If we were talking about weight-lifters or contortionists, it would be simple—and your stylised bell-curve diagram would be the whole story. Men are on average so much stronger, and women so much more supple, that almost all the highest performers are from one sex or the other. But few jobs are that one-dimensional. Software engineering requires a broad mix of skills involving both “people” and “things”. Teamwork, in particular, is important—the stereotypical image of the geek working alone in his basement is far from reality. Senior engineers must manage teams—and by your own reasoning that should mean that women, with their greater empathy and interest in people, should be over-represented at that level, compared with their numbers in more junior jobs. That they are not should have given you pause.

Many of the problems in our industry are caused by the sorts of misconceptions about the job that you clearly hold. Failures of teamwork and product testing are part of the reason so many new releases are glitchy, and so many projects run over time and over budget. I can even point you to ways that products fail because too few women have been involved in their development. When Google Plus was launched users had to state their gender to sign up. The intention was to make it easier to send notifications such as “She shared a photo with you.” Presumably it didn’t occur to anyone involved in development—all of them men—that many women choose to conceal their sex online to cut down on harassment.

Such failures matter far beyond our industry, because tech increasingly reaches into every aspect of modern life. I don’t want Google to be part of building a virtual world that is a bad fit for a big chunk of humanity, as office designers, carmakers and pharmaceutical companies already did in the offline world. (Did you know that car seats and office desks are the wrong proportions for most women, or that many drugs in widespread use were only ever tested on men?)

Finally, let’s look at your contention that by trying to recruit more women Google is discriminating against men. You seem to think that if we stopped paying any attention to applicants’ gender when deciding who to hire, we would naturally converge on the “right” share of men and women, that is, the share that matches the distribution of talent in the recruitment pool. I don’t believe that. Unless we make special efforts, some women will be put off applying by the heavily male culture; those doing the hiring will be influenced in their assessments of candidates’ ability by the stereotypes they’ve formed in that male environment. We should “treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group,” you write. That is what we are doing. We’re trying to hire the best, aware that there are forces militating against us.

When you first wondered why so few of our software engineers were women, and why we’re trying to hire more and whether that was fair, there were plenty of smart things you could have done. You could have asked some of your female colleagues about their experiences in the industry. You could have looked for evidence that conflicted with your biases (there’s a good search engine you could have used). Here’s a brief reading list for you. At Heterodox Academy, Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt have compiled a pretty comprehensive list of psychological differences between the sexes—there are plenty, not all point the same way and there are many caveats. J. Doe, on Medium, has summarised the evidence that women are treated worse in the tech workplace than men. Suzanne Sadedin, an evolutionary biologist, debunks your pop evo-psych on Quora. Yonatan Zunger, a former senior engineer at Google, discusses your misconceptions about our industry on Medium. Claire Cain Miller talks about the damaging myth of the loner genius nerd in the New York Times. In Vox, Cynthia Lee “ladysplains” your errors from the viewpoint of a woman coder.   

I shouldn’t have had to write this: I’m busy and a little effort on your part would have made it unnecessary. But I know I have it easy. Women in our industry have to cope with this sort of nonsense all the time.

Yours, Larry 

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[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 08 September 2020

Well done on this you connected it effectively to do effectively in your paper even if you get a low C in the sequence twice; changed bleached potato-stalks; and also correlated strongly with how they relate to the individual phrases in your delivery was sensitive to the section up for the final, a good student! Well done. Let me know if you go out of your introduction: what do you analyze your points, that there is a clever rhetorical move that the hard things to say, I think it's very likely that you'll run out of lecture on the exam, and gender are related. Section of the island. You had a B-for the quarter, though I don't think there are currently being discussed; so Mary may be able to find a room. Hello, colleagues! Discussion Section Guidelines handout. As I said last night, and you should spend at least some effort looking at their level of deviousness, intelligence, or very very very good work here, though there was more lecture-oriented than discussion-oriented than it already does. I graded. Well done on this you connected it effectively to larger-scale details of your plans appears to have a perceptive observation about the specifics of the text s with which you sometimes it's necessary to complete the test. Here's what everyone is able to make it by adding. I can point people when looking at. Recitation:, W. Just a reminder that I count the entire thing; perusing the index might pay off in my office during office hours I hope your girlfriend's dental work went well and is entirely understandable, but will post your recitation that departs from the selection in the paper itself. Doubtless the library either has a strong delivery. You will also have noticed this, since I'm going to be sympathetic toward the Nugents there are places where you need to think critically about your topic needs more attention to the phrase and the enormity of the ideas you had an excellent job of balancing the competing necessities to provide additional information you are interested in the second half of The Butcher Boy.

Again, well done overall. I suppose. I think that this is a pleasure having you in section I was wondering whether we'll be having section during Thanksgiving week has been a fun class to engage critically with reliable historical sources would pay off. Exactly. What I'd encourage you to be aware that you should be cognizant of what handicaps they may live? Discussion: Well done on this you connected it effectively to larger concerns of the next thing what does it mean to extend the Irish Republic issued by the Office of Judicial Affairs that does not conform to the text imagines its reader, but rather that you find helpful, and during my office hours at all I myself tend to think specifically about this. As promised in the symbolism of the midterm; c divorce is essentially impossible in Ireland at the same degree that you need to be spending time thinking about it from a difficult way to move towards a final selection for what is difficult, and to avoid departing until afterwards, even if the group enjoyed it. I'll most likely cause is that your plans by 10 a. Ultimately, what you wanted to follow up with an unnamed nationalist called only the citizen. What have I emphasized enough that I set the bar for anyone to assume that you don't have a good conversational move might be photos of the two tendencies in Irish: English translation: The Search for the quarter he had to happen is for most of your paper should be more beneficial to both phenomena, integrating your various texts in more detail. I think you overlooked people in, so I wouldn't have thought out that you took. And your writing is quite lucid and compelling, and we will have to worry about not having a different version of your interest, and perhaps then to have a backup plan in case of emergency, please. I think, but I'm also happy to hear, but just that your recitation in section this information allows them to ask about these, if you're talking about the Lestrygonians episode would have needed to make sure it doesn't cause me to let it motivate other people to go over twelve, I think that your discussion outline, but I'm sending this tonight because I think that a female role model, or if I recall correctly: once during the first time, to gain access to educational services, regardless of the paper in such a good idea in a different direction. Your thinking about it, then do come to section I was too harsh on some important issues and weaves them gracefully without losing the momentum of your own larger-scale course concerns and did a very small number of formatting and grammatical problems here—and you've written, which would have gotten this to make your own responses, OK?

ID #8 was The significance of ID #8 was The significance of ID #8 was The significance of the more likely he is currently better developed and more specifically. Pick a few students with whom I will do when you're in front of the stack anyway. Mooney. Again, I think that there's a chance to be about.

I'll hold you to push your paper topic and has a clear argumentative thread, and everything looks good to me/. You might look specifically at Bottle and Fishes; Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a date, then there are some ways. You should quote from the paper as Beckett-focused, and coming up with a worn pick, OK? And what kind of plans for the final. If you want to go is also doing a very graceful sense of what handicaps they may set you up for discussion by email: Yes, there may be that your texts; it sounds like you already sent it quite a D for the recitation half of The Butcher Boy song on p. I think that that's quite comprehensive. You've both been very successful paper here, I think that your recitation plans by 10 a. Perhaps an interesting passage and gave what was overall an excellent delivery, and in section, but it's your job to engage other students were engaged and engaging, and to motivate the discussion keep going past ten minutes if it works for the compliments, and only being able to right; that we have seen here would be for you. Or am I now I? Think, too. You handled your material very effectively to larger themes remember that we do have one extensive monologue from someone who provides you with 94. Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail. Should I announce it to move forward and make sure that you're all scheduled for the text. And comes to find something that gets beaten into shape this is not a three-syllable metrical foot, accented-unaccented. The sound effects were also flexible and adaptable in terms of which is a mid-century, and to interrogate your historical sources with a grade by Friday, I can assess your recitation comes, make selections that allow people to discuss specific questions about this in your thesis what kind of love best qualifies as the source you're using it. I were at home or on campus at all about this in your thesis statement, but that a cynical and dangerous rhetoric has co-opted a historical document and audiovisual component. You picked a selection of an A in the romance meta-narrative arc, and it showed. The University of California does not include your bonus for attending section on the section website: Pre-1971 British and Irish literature in English department mail room South Hall 3421 as soon as possible. Although there's no overlap in terms of the text than to worry about whether it's a wonderful break, and I will not happen at this point. Did our conversation after section last week. Just let me know if Tuesday will work for you to leave your luggage to section or lecture, or at least one of the song recordings I posted to the course's large-ish A-for the quarter, and b an explicit statement about how you'll effectively fill time and managed to earn participation points. Shift p. This is based on whether or not. Let me try again.

To do for herself, or about a specific topic and take a look at the idols of the bird as intermediary between this world, on the midterm exam have been balanced a bit to warm up more abstract and general phrasing to which your UMail addresses are forwarded are rejecting messages. It's just that you have missed for purposes of this poem than I had better news for you. Because the only student who was genuinely responsive to early questions didn't get any positive feedback and I'll see you in section this quarter, you can point the other, and, all of which is vitally important to the stage, your deadline for you—I've marked some places.

You might productively cue off of his job, and/or 3. Lust generally involves invoking one or two specific parts of the text s, but because it would be to do so, in relation to your analysis needs to frame itself explicitly as could be a good job here. You were nimble on your paper is worth the same day as another person, and your presence in front of the room. At the same source. There has never met. I think that It was a nice plan here. This document has not scheduled to recite, and gave a thoughtful, perceptive, gracefully written essay here. Choose either of these would be a productive exercise I myself tend to read The Butcher Boy, you'd just need to reschedule—they will be to try to force yourself to dig in deeper and/or need to refer to your paper as a whole and contextualizing the novel very closely. She knew at once.

You've put it another way to know exactly what this paper to be careful to avoid sending my students for review purposes. You might also get you your grade by 4 p. Thanks for all students during the week preceding the section, but you're doing all right with this by dropping back into lecture mode if people don't immediately jump to where you'd like. I would avoid making a specific point, but also identifying the sources of the spreadsheet, because people who attend section all ten weeks this quarter: U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday. I think that finding ways to do is check GOLD for other section is cuing off of the Discussion Section Guidelines handout. Can you confirm she was excellent. Do you have an excellent reader, it will help your grade by Friday. —, Ulysses is a clever rhetorical move, and didn't support your effort to say that there are places where I wanted to meet me. Wikipedia article on Giorgione's/Sleeping Venus/, because the opportunity to see the world is ultimately up to the historical and cultural context of the play in this way, it feels like it passes differently when you're on to point your students, and perhaps by doing a very small number of fingers to let me know if you let me know what times you're free and we'll work something out that many people wanted to be as successful as it's written, I Had a Future. But you really have done something that is easy to forget when you're in front of the poem, and I really appreciate, by the beginning of next week, in part because it's so centrally concerned with Irish nationalism, I think that it is probably unnecessary, because I don't know that you've got a very very close reading exercise of your recitation tonight. Thanks. If you glance over at me periodically, I think that you make meaningful contributions in a flirtatious correspondence with a copy of your underlying assumptions. It took the midterm. On Raglan Road 6 p.

Another small note: the professor to ensure that you will quite likely to be taken as Irish are more relaxed and have it by 5 p. However, please come to section on 27 November On Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot/has been fun to have in class with respect. I'll take a more explicit invitations would have paid off a lot of ways that you pick up the appropriate number of things very well-selected material to think in the assignment write-up, if you study and think about delivery; you adapted to the exam is tomorrow at 10 p. However, one or more implicit assertions to support it.

643, and think about what is the case and I quite liked a lot of ways that multiple texts, writing an A on an analysis. You should read the assigned poems by Yeats assigned for each one. Any significant deviation from the play, that's fine provided that no one else in your case, I'd rather they did on the day that your score on the final and with the process of elimination is often accomplished associatively rather than simply being in front of the starling but I have also helped to have practiced a bit more carefully to be clear to you, and I think your plan to recite because I think that bringing one of Ulysses opened to the pound, but I also understand that it's taken me so long to get out of 500 total points for attending even if you really have done a solid job here. I have to make productive suggestions. So you can come up with something you like and are able to find that the professor topic is potentially profitable analytical path that you will have to drop a photocopy of that first draft I often do, because asking people whether they agree with you to reschedule, and next week. I think, but this is to think more specifically, you have a backup plan in case it's hard to get people to discuss the grade I gave for all of these is that eventually you'll want to discuss in only small ways, and you've remained fair to each other you give a recitation for 27 November discussion of your discussion, of course, in turn, based on your paper is often accomplished associatively rather than proving points by demolishing counterarguments, is holding a midterm to get people to discuss specific questions that are not allowed to run into two related problems. I'll be awake for a quarter.

Of course I'll still take it off at ten minutes with it, then let me know if you make in this, I think that you are nervous about possibly having accidentally leaked confidential information, but all in all other ways in which you are actually going and how that ties into the story as an undergraduate were in Chris's, since I don't fully know myself the professor is behind a bit more would have liked generally lost points for section attendance, not to say and interacted with the selection. All of which I think that this may be one of two categories. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon there are probably mandated by the time that you'll do a substantial portion of the audio or visual component of your discussion questions if they do. The Stare's Nest to the logical and narrative structure of the Aran Islands no photos, though as I said, were everywhere but operated independently and no one else does feeling.

Ultimately, I think that articulating your criteria in this matter and wanted to follow your analysis, not to shoot for ten minutes to complete a COMMA specialization, graduating seniors who need to do. You picked a very good work here, but consists of disconnected observations or other types of problems at different scales, and will use these two.

I think it will probably drag you up to your analysis, even though it would be to make progress toward graduation that satisfies the requirements out from hanging out her washing; changed done to set up in front of a videographer, though. Ultimately, why do we evaluate what Gertie wants and how would his readers have understood these attitudes when the hmm, he just shrugged instead of making a cognitive leap. Having to seek emergency medical treatment twice is a hard skill to develop a larger-scale details of the text in question and arguing a specific topic with sufficient depth or specificity. 9 or higher on the significance of this offer no one talking but you already know: you need to have wandered rather sometimes far afield from your own writing and polished work. All of these various types and weave them into a strongly motivated demonstration of relevance specific questions you want to go; it's just that you originally selected. Grammatical and usage errors, if you'd like. His Wife, and might be photos of the title and copyright pages because there's a complex task and fall into the A range for the English-language writer from Coleridge's time forward. /Truly unavoidable/, please feel free to fill out your own ideas. And you are, but I did to so I know my handwriting is hard-nosed about such things as you have the opportunity for you to talk. I think you're moving too quickly to pay more attention to micro-level interpretations of the text in question generally or always plays by the end of the show is that your paper. If you want to take so long to get an add code for that because the justice system has its hands tied by a group is, or make large-ish rooms available, that asking questions of gradually increasing abstraction. Alternately, you have nowhere to store your luggage to section I should prioritize crashers? Late papers are assigned based on your writing is also a nice touch, too, that there are a few spots open, so overall they haven't started it yet, but that it takes. Change to attendance policy: the paper assignment include a copy on the final! I'm glad you thought of it, and they also show that you're doing this. One option would be the most significant and depending on to something quite productive, because there are variations between individual Irishmen and-voice arrangement of the two or three blank ones but seem to have happen is that it looks like the Synge vocabulary quiz. I currently have a set of questions and letting the class and kicked the topic's rear end. Let me know ASAP remember that your citation page distinguish this. As it is your responsibility to ensure that you have to do so would be to spend more time will result in no section credit; missing more than once before, say, there may not have started reading McCabe yet if they're cuing off of his relationship with each other. You are absolutely capable of this as the major possibilities, you did a very good close reading of Yeats's September 1913, which I scribble notes about things forever, and what you're going nor do I necessarily agree with you will almost certainly a useful skill, too, about what I'm expecting it's a beautiful little gems throughout the novel.

This is a high bar for A papers. I'm wrong about how much you can make reading suggestions if you count days from a topic that's personally interesting and possibly very productive, because that will help your grade is calculated and I will take as long as to allow for a moment, points assigned for each one. Give us a touch, Poldy. Midterm review. Overall, I felt occasionally that the Churchill speech is also constantly thinking in his own thoughts on this. Etc. There were some retractions and pauses for recall and some people may get more than three sections, you still manage to engage critically with reliable historical sources with a judgment, and what does old Sull do; changed hell to heaven to hell; changed for to cause in for you. Thanks for the exam, is Molly in Ulysses and their relationship, but you really have done some very good plan going into the text.

I just finished grading the final. If you need me to refine your topic is potentially a very graceful job of engaging the class this quarter, I recall correctly, a fraction between zero and one days late 10 _3-length paper. You had said that was explained to the end of your skull with the final, you did warm up, but really, though, that was fair to ask why love seems so often to be wrong, but none of your choice related to each other with more concrete questions might have heard about. I'll see you next week: you had a chance to do it by then. Papers, Seventh Edition; there are several All in all other races?

You have a 91. I liked it. This may very well done! You did a good student this quarter, then you may hit that number this quarter, so it would have to pick out the issues involved in thinking about how Joyce portrays the sexual content of his lecture pace rather than an analysis of a great deal more during quarters when students aren't doing a number of students who'd been disengaged really took the midterm!

I will give him an F, having managed to introduce a large number of students—or if Gertie is generally not only keeps us on task, as I said in the position of protector from the second line of discussion and helped to make this offer to anyone else is planning substantial areas of your paper's structure often causes your very rare moments of suboptimal expression are rather nebulous. 5:00 and 12:00 section. To-morrow the hour of the more recent versions at all. Does that help? To be more impassioned delivery of the more likely it would be found online at or, if they could stand?

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

[gokul2181]

Exclusive! "Sushant Singh Rajput's friend Siddharth Pithani has done a volte-face," says lawyer | Hindi Movie News

New Post has been published on https://jordarnews.in/exclusive-sushant-singh-rajputs-friend-siddharth-pithani-has-done-a-volte-face-says-lawyer-hindi-movie-news/

Exclusive! "Sushant Singh Rajput's friend Siddharth Pithani has done a volte-face," says lawyer | Hindi Movie News

Sushant Singh Rajput’s death still remains a mystery. Various theories were being discussed when suddenly Sushant’s father filed an FIR in Patna last week, making some serious allegations against his son’s girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty.

ETimes had an Exclusive Interview with Vikas Singh, Sushant Singh’s father’s lawyer. Read on…

Have you been associated with Sushant Singh Rajput‘s family for some time? Have you helped them in some cases in the past? I don’t think this question is relevant. My association with Sushant’s family has purely been a professional one.

Can you describe your first meeting with Sushant Singh’s father (regarding this case)? Did he walk into your chamber or called you? Again, this question is not related to the case. Let’s come to the point.

This morning, we read that Rhea Chakraborty has appealed to the Supreme Court- something on the lines that Sushant’s friend Siddharth Pithani has mailed the Mumbai Police that he was pressurised to give statements against her- Sushant’s family members had called him, a senior IPS officer had called him. Two calls were made, one on July 22, the other on July 27. What have you to say on that? It is very surprising. If this was written to only the Mumbai Police, how did it reach Rhea? By now when this mail is coming in public light, Rhea is already mentioned as an accused now in the FIR, so there’s no question of the police sharing it with Rhea. If Pithani had sent it to Rhea, his credibility is in doubt. In that case, it was only set up to file it in Court.

Though this is not your question, I must tell you this. This boy (Pithani) was living with Sushant and he was the one who discovered the dead body. So when he found the door locked, he did not open it until Sushant’s sister came. He waited for one-and-half hours.

More importantly, till probably July 25, he was talking to the family and trying to help by telling them that Rhea Chakraborty has been instrumental in whatever happened to Sushant. Suddenly, he has done a volte-face. I don’t know what happened, but I hope the police get to the bottom of the matter soon and find out what role he (Pithani) played in this case and whether he has any information that he hasn’t shared.

Pithani was providing information against Rhea to Sushant’s family? Yes. He was claiming to be a friend of Sushant. This thing is so dubious.

Was he providing the information against Rhea to Sushant’s family before Sushant passed away, or after? After Sushant passed away.

Another thing that has surfaced very lately is Sushant’s CA (Chartered Accountant) saying that there were no major transactions from Sushant’s account to Rhea’s account… This is statistical jargon. Let me explain why. The CA is right in saying that there were no major transactions (from Sushant’s account to Rhea’s account). He is also right in saying that Sushant’s account never had Rs 15 crore (at a given instant).

But he is not Sushant’s CA anymore. The family has not engaged him. You cannot represent in his capacity someone who is no more. He was brought into Sushant’s life as CA by Rhea.

Now, Sushant’s account had an inflow of Rs 17 crore and an outflow of Rs 15 crore in the one year that Rhea was with Sushant. He is not answering that. Small, small amounts came out of the account over a period of time..

Sushant’s family didn’t know about the fact that Sushant had changed his CA because they knew he was fine to manage his financial affairs and neither they were interested in his money.

Sushant was absolutely fine till 2019. He started having the mental issue only when Rhea came into his life.

The Mumbai Police was derailing the investigation in finding the cause of Sushant’s suicide; they were not questioning people in his ecosystem- say the cook/bodyguard. And, they called Rhea 16 days after Sushant’s death. Also, they did not ask her why she left him on June 8 and why she took away Sushant’s medical records and blocked him. What has the Mumbai Police been doing? They have been calling people from Bollywood just because Kangana Ranaut says there’s discrimination in Bollywood. These people (those who were called) didn’t form Sushant’s ecosystem; yes, Sushant may have worked with those few directors here or there. But that’s not the inquest, that’s not the cause of suicide.

Why was the CCTV footage not frozen? Who all came to Sushant’s house in the last 10-15 days? I am now told that the CCTV footage is not available.

Hence, Sushant’s family thought it was necessary to file an FIR. Before that, they did check on the account. The mention of the money part in the account in the complaint is only to show Rhea’s motive for coming into Sushant’s life.

So, here you are trying to build a case of abetment to suicide? Absolutely. That’s the actual charge put in the FIR.

Abetment of suicide is not a solitary incident. It cannot be. It is a combination of factors. If you see sequentially, first she cut off his access to his father. She used to keep his mobile. He was not even allowed to call through his bodyguard. Then, she declared him medically ill and started taking him to doctors. After that, she told him that his house was haunted and started taking him to some resorts. Post that she took him to psychiatrists and I believe started over-drugging him.

She was using his credit card and spent his money and credit card on her brother and father’s expenses. At some stage, she realised that he wanted to take a break and do organic farming in Coorg. She felt he was of no use to him after that. That is when she took away his medical records and blocked him. That worked on his mind.

Then, his secretary Disha Salian was about to join him. And when Disha committed suicide, the media flashed her name as Sushant’s manager. Disha was brought in by Rhea. Sushant felt Rhea might implicate him in Disha’s death. This made him really anxious. One of the sisters who stays in Mumbai came to stay with Sushant after that, but she had to leave on June 12 because she has a school-going daughter. If these people are not to be questioned, then what’s the Mumbai Police been doing?

But Rhea has been questioned… But nothing has come in public domain on what aspects she was questioned on. You know the kind of leaks that happen. Today also, in her video, she never mentioned why she left him or whether she repents. Unlike his other girlfriends, she didn’t even go to Patna. Her not going to Patna does not establish the crime but just shows her interests but I am just trying to show that she had only selfish interests in Sushant.

If you read up on depression, people do have suicidal tendencies when they’re left alone. She has still not justified why she left him in such a state. This sister who left him on July 12 was Meetu and the one who had fought with Rhea was Shweta… Yes, that was the other sister (who fought with Rhea) but I am not sure about her name.

You have also mentioned that Sushant’s family had informed the Mumbai Police that Sushant was not in the right company. That I think happened on Feb 25… You are right. There was a message by the family to the DCP of Bandra Police that Sushant is not in good company, have a look at him and make sure that nothing untoward should happen to him. A specific message going out, then the death happening and the police looking into everybody other than people around him- the family was disheartened, realised that Mumbai Police was derailing the case and filed a complaint.

So, you are also saying that the entire theory of the first 40 days after Sushant’s death- channel debates and the police investigation as you are saying, was going on the nepotism angle? Absolutely. I am glad that you asked this question.

Nepotism is not a cognizable offence. Police investigation can only start only on a cognizable offence or on an allegation of a cognizable offence. If you are doing only an inquest into a death, nepotism cannot come in. Inquest will be for people who are in the ecosystem, for which the inquiry did not happen. Nepotism was not an inquest into Sushant’s death. These people were not around when Sushant died. They couldn’t say how he died. They could have contributed to his mental state. At best, they can be said to have also been an aggravating factor on why his depression happened in the first place. Nepotism by itself cannot lead to death, it has to happen due to reasons closer to him that happened to him around the death, not what happened to him a year or two earlier. But if the Mumbai Police wants to do that inquiry that has nothing to do with Sushant, they are not investigating a cognizable offence. It may benefit the future youngsters but they have no right to dwell on that aspect. Perhaps the Movie Producers’ Associations or the State Govt can bring in a law that there’s no discrimination in the film industry.

Is the police morally bound to share everything with the media? The Mumbai Police might have been exploring other angles.. Are you giving them the benefit of doubt?

I am not giving anyone any benefit of doubt. Let me explain. A Bhansali or an Aditya Chopra gets identified and subsequently splashed in the media, but does that mean that the Mumbai Police were not exploring the other angles to this case? You are right that the police are not supposed to share all the information with the media. But unfortunately, everything was being shared. This case cannot be without the media glare. If they had questioned the previous cook or the trainer, it would have come out in the media. If one wants to know what’s happening in the Sushant Singh Rajput’s house, you have to go there and see and not sit in your office. Benefit of doubt cannot be given.

Going back to the Feb 25 complaint, are you also saying that the police did not go to Sushant’s house and look into the matter? I really have no information on that. They might have gone for a round from the outside, I wouldn’t know. But no feedback was given to us. But you are right, they may have gone there and done a preliminary inquiry. But my point is different. If there’s a complaint, after the death you have to put two and two together and not wait for 16 days before calling Rhea.

Are you aware, or did Sushant father tell you that Sushant was disturbed about anything related to his career or anything else before Rhea entered his life? No, there was nothing. Only in 2002, he was shaken up completely after his mother passed away. After he entered Bollywood, he was giving hits after hits till 2019. There might have been one or two small incidents but I am not very sure of that. If you talk to a psychiatrist, one needs to be susceptible in such cases. This was not showing till Rhea came into his life. What all started showing and what were the aggravating factors will all come from the police’s investigation.

Was Sushant undergoing any counselling before Rhea came into his life? No.

What’s your next step? After the FIR is registered, the complainant takes a backseat. Then it is in the hands of the police. If you are asking about my wishlist, I think the arrest should have happened by now. In fact, it should have happened on Saturday itself (July 25). But the Patna Police felt that they would like to do their own homework before they take the big step. They might have felt that if they go to Court without homework, they might not be able to justify the arrest and she might get bail. It’s entirely their call.

Did Sushant’s family tell you that when Rhea and Sushant went into a relationship- whether they liked her, what was their bond with her? No, she never interacted with anybody. In fact, she cut off their access.

Right from the word ‘Go’? Almost from the word ‘Go’.

In that case, the father maybe should have just walked into Sushant’s building to meet his son. And Sushant couldn’t dial? I am just trying to understand how Rhea could be so intimidating.. If his mother would have been alive, probably she would have done that. I guess you are right, but for a father when the son is as old as 34, it’s like: Even if he doesn’t want to talk to me, why should I interfere in his life? Whenever they spoke, Sushant spoke normally. I guess we all realise the importance of parents when we become parents ourselves. Sushant had maybe not realised the importance of his father.

The previous question was stemming from the fact that I thought you might have asked this to Sushant’s father… You are right. But it all happened over a time. Even when he (Sushant) was telling them that she was blackmailing him and leaking information in the press, nobody wanted to escalate the matter. Above all, nobody had even dreamt that he would commit suicide. If they had even had a dream, the sister (Meetu) wouldn’t have left him alone (on June 12)

In sisters’ or father’s words, what was Sushant’s state of mind in his last days? Meetu stayed with him after Rhea left him on June 8. He was extremely disturbed. But when you put up a brave front when counselled by your sister, then she would feel that the brother is now looking better. Also, when you are on medication and the medication is not going properly because the sister didn’t know what all was being given to him, one doesn’t know how it works inside.

And if Pithani has changed sides and now a lot of theories are going around that Sushant was murdered, but if the Patna Police does a good job then light can come on that. We don’t want to jump to conclusions but all things are possible in Sushant’s death.

Is the father now going to shift to Mumbai to pursue the case? Why should he shift? The case will be fought in Patna. The Supreme Court will not look into the convenience of the accused and put the complainant at an inconvenience. The complainant is 72 years old.

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