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borkthemork · 4 years

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Steven’s Black Shirt - Lightning Round

Okay, so we have our Jill Morton’s symbolism sheet here.

Looks pretty fancy but we’re going to focus on the psychological symbolism category today, my guys.

I’m preparing a lot of stuff today for the new decade, so we’re going to do a lightning round. I won’t go into too much detail since most of it is in my main shirt symbolism post, but we will hit each one in a fast pace so we can get everything out of the way.

Power

By definition, we could see this in different ways:

The wanting to do something.

The ability to feel control in a situation.

To exert your physical and mental capabilities.

Sophistication

Having a refined knowledge of the ways of the world cultivated especially through wide experience. -Merriam Webster.

This could be the odd one out, but it fits with the current Steven we’ve got.

He’d been through a lot of experiences relating to war, nuance, trauma, and many other themes throughout his life, so he has a perceived idea that he had grown up a lot. If you think about it, his wanting to show this experience could be found in the creation of Little Homeschool in his attempt to show the newly indicted what they could do to adapt to their new society.

And how he seems pretty attuned to nature, which could be another way to describe “one’s refined knowledge of the ways of the world” in that sense.

But whether this definition fits him on an emotionally aware level is up to discretion.

Sexuality

Ha, nah.

If we’re going to be pedantic here, then we have little to discuss unless we talk about another way we could put this term into good use: the growth of one’s person, and in this case, Steven’s growth into a young adult.

Throughout the show, you can see him going through a lot of questions of who he is, what he wants, and similar questions to it, albeit the show seems to ask this more than our repressed boy of ours.

Even with all the emotional baggage, this epilogue is a story of a boy attempting to find himself now that he’s teetering into a new phase of his life, so it fits.

The Unknown

For the future, the ability to move forward, you have no clue what you will face down that path you’ve decided to tread, and doesn’t that scare you?

Doesn’t the unknown scare you?

The End of a Cycle

People are leaving.

The characters we’ve grown up with are now departing for their own paths.

Steven is watching the end of a cycle.

The end of his status quo.

Death

In Joseph Campbell’s template called The Hero’s Journey, a hero’s death has to come about by a new revelation, a new form of meaning and objective than what they originally intended. The death of one idea will then lead to the true answer, something new the character hasn’t explored but wants to explore since the concept’s been there from the beginning, yet needed a push for it to be unveiled.

Corruption

Other than the obvious theory we have, let’s go to the Merriam Webster.

A departure from the original or from what is pure or correct.

Steven, right now, is going through an existential crisis over what he believed was his solitary purpose and drive to continue: the need to help, to mediate, to be someone useful in the eyes of the surrounding people.

However, this belief, even if it had been internally solidified after years of committing to it, isn’t true. He’s more than a tool to drive others forward, he’s more than just that one role he implanted into himself.

And he must learn this the hard way.

Ominous Forces

I’ll allow you a free space to discuss and talk about what this could mean since I’m not too confident enough to lie out the array of ways we could interpret this.

Emptiness

“You're the one that needs help. You think you've beaten me, but you've never beaten me on your own. You've always been a fusion! You've always had your friends! Because you're nothing without them! You think everyone needs help!”

Depression

“...I think I've said enough.“

#steven universe #suf spoilers #su #suf #steven universe future #steven universe analysis #bork speaks

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entropic-introspection · 3 years

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Final Fantasy XIV: A Quick(ish) Summary As Told By Someone Too Lazy To Recheck Exact Times/Things

1.0- We don't talk about it

A Realm Reborn (ARR)- for some strange reason the world got like, completely blown up 5 years ago, crazy! You are some dumb kid from nowhere in particular, with nothing but the clothes on your back and a weapon that is little more than a chunk of wood, or a book. Possibly just your fists. You have got 50 levels and a shitload of lore to get through until you reach the first expansion.

Essentially: you don't have enough money for chicken nuggets, your fashion game is nonexistent, and every high level player calls you a sprout and exhibits Concern about your every action (they mean well).

Garlemald bad, Ascians bad, Eorzea uhhh trying to be good but kinda racist/capitalist/pirates with a history of colonialism, Coerthas is French Catholic and in the Crusades with the dragons. Hydaelin... good? Confusing, for sure, often referred to as Mother in text. Primals bad and scary, but fortunately you are immune to their mind-fuckery techniques thanks to Crystal Mom and surprisingly good at kicking their asses. Garleans mad that you ""savages"" keep killing Primals, despite having a whole mandate against Primals and Primal summoning. Ascians mad that you keep killing Primals because Ascians are dicks. People die, there is an amnesia plot, some annoying twerp is annoyingly right about a lot of things and also you can't get rid of him, Moogles, possession, fucking Ancient Aliens Allagans (if it's a problem in ARR, it's Ascians or Allagans aight), and hey ho you go and kick Garlean asses until they throw a giant machine at you that they stuffed full of Primal juice. Such devastation-!

Then there is the slightly post ARR stuff, where we're still level 50-ish but not really into the next expansion. So basically, we meet Dragon Dad who slaps Crystal Mom's blessing off of you to build character, Ascians are once again dicks, Who The Hell Names These Things, wow Lysanderoth you're definitely not suspicious at all, and our annoying twerp is dabbling in politics and for some reason you're getting fond of him?? Just in time for...

Heavensward (Lvl 50-60)- Congratulations, you are now an enemy of the state! We return/flee to French Catholic Coerthas/Ishgard, where we get to room with our Dear Friend, Haurchefant.

Don't mind how all the high leveled players have started crying. This expansion is emotionally devastating, has a great storyline, and also features canonical consensual dragon vore as a plot point. You know that tweet that's all "Church bad because they won't let you fuck dragons"? Yes, that's Heavensward. You will still cry. We embark on an epic road trip with the annoying twerp (ft his existential teenage crisis), a famous dragon killer and sadboi, and a famous lady who advocates peace/fucking dragons. Somehow, none of you kill each other. Instead, you murder a weirdly attractive bug-man with good music and a desire for violence, a giant flying whale, and some old dudes. You also beat up the same Ascian from the first bit, again. And again, in his final(?) form. Dragon Dad has come along to watch your progress, and also check on his kids cause he's actually, y'know, the entire progenitor of the dragon race. Wow! His family is very sad, mostly. But he does like you, so hey, he can adopt you and have one kid that turned out ok and happy! Hahahahha there's no therapists in Eorzea :')

Then we get to deal with "Hey we ended your like 500 year+ Crusade and kind of upended your social structures, y'all good?" (no), something something Warriors of Darkness, something something Urianger sus, then ALISAIE JOINS THE PARTY. I love her ok, let me have this. She's the annoying twerp's twin, and she's more inclined to hitting things that politics and philosophy. She's also kind of crushing on you. Also Minfillia kinda fucks off to nowhere, which is weird, b/c she has been Important but also Not Involved with the plot for like. 8 years.

Stormblood (Lvl 60-70)- Return of Lysanderoth! Briefly. Before he fucks you over, again. And a bunch of other people, honestly. But hey, this puts Eorzea in open contention with Garlemald for the first time in years, instead of them hovering in an uneasy cold war. For the first goddamn time in the game, you canonically get your ass kicked. Hard. So hard you decide fuck it! And go overseas to Fantasy Japan/China to visit some nice people you helped out earlier. You get catfished. You meet a weeb. There's some pirates, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There's Ravana take 2, this time in a slightly more 'Forever 21' phase. Wild, young, free, REJOICE.

You attempt to inspire rebellion (since your character doesn't talk much, this is quite difficult). Garleans crack down, and hey look, the dude who kicked your ass is back! Prince Zenos Yae Galvus, as by this point you've hopefully learned, even if you're bad with names like me. He kicks your ass again, but this time we break his helmet, and wait shit is he... kind of hot? Maybe? Fuck?? He pins you to a wall and tells you to find him later, it's all confusing and prompts strange butterflies in stomachs. (Side note: as a lesbian, I am making some assumptions here. Mostly based off of how I reacted to the idea of Tsukuyomi doing the same. Mm.)

Then he promptly fucks off, and to work off that sexual tension you square up and work with local friends on Rebellion! You get help from some neighboring nomads after proving you're cool enough to tame a bird, and this proves enough to free the area from Garlean control (for now). We go back to Eorzea, and prepare to kick Zenos' head in. He's playing hard to get though, so we gotta get through some other folks, learn hard lessons about war/colonization, and feel bad. AND THEN WE KICK HIS- oh no wait. Is he... coming on to us again? Oh jesus man, get a therapist, oh my god, this is awkward for us both. Turns out he's kinda depressed and just wants you. To fight him. To the death. There is some bullshittery and he becomes dragon. Fails to kill you, so he kills himself. (Spoiler: it doesn't stick)

The Garlean Empire is now pissed off at you, and Eorzea in general. Everyone is kung-fu fighting, but oops, Garlemald is preparing to commit ~war crimes~! Someone is doing something weird, which is making your Scion friends fall into comas, which is both very convenient and highly inconvenient, cause all of you are kinda needed right now! Zenos, or something in his body, is causing trouble as well. Look, even when we thought he was dead he was causing trouble.

Shadowbringers (Lvl 70-80): We find out what's been making our friends pass out- someone from another dimension has been trying to yoink you over to them, and like all attempts at using the Rescue spell, it just sometimes leads to hilarious accidents. In this case, some epic lag, so although your friends have only been out of it for a week or two at most, they've been in this other world for 5 whole years in some cases. Turns out, Garlean war crimes are all an Ascian plot (what isn't, by this point), and mysterious Crystal Exarch is hoping you can save this world and your own.

At this point, Yoshi P, the lead developer, pulls out a gun and asks if you've been doing all those side-quests and optional 48 man raids. He worked very hard on those, you know. He put in lots of lore. Then he asks if you remember all those dangling plot hooks from previous expansions. We're addressing a lot of those. And adding more. You are sweating and nodding frantically while scrolling a wiki on your phone.

You get to feel like you're in an Otome game, because there's two dudes being weirdly polite and interested in you, but also real snappish to each other in terms of "fuck off she's mine". Alisaie and Alphinaud off-screen character development. Urianger still sus. Thancred now a dad? Y'shtola still so good. A lot of things happen, and you get progressively sadder as the expansion goes on. You get a nice, great big burst of hope and love, and then SOMEONE is a DICK with a GUN. (It is not Yoshi P.)

Now you just feel bad. Your character feels bad. This is all build up for the A) some motherfucking revelations and B) the utter catharsis of "If you could take one more step... would you?" "What, all by myself?" "THROW WIDE THE GATE"

I have shed legitimate tears over Shadowbringers ok, between the music, story, and pacing it is an Experience. Oh my god tho, all the music from Shadowbringers is so good. La-HEE

#ffxiv #theres some spoilers in there but its all p nondescript #again: i aint checking exact facts here folks this is all in good fun

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one-abuse-survivor · 3 years

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reporting from the milky way again :)

yes, i did get the exams and project out of the way (the main reason i worked on the project so much last weekend was because i had to turn it in until sunday night) but right now were in the process of getting all the grades back and tbh i'm less than happy about it. So far i'm not happy about math, physics and chemistry and there'll be even worse grades in geography, german and music.

and my dad did not realize the extent of my struggles and seems to think that i'm just a rebellious teenager or something

i know that my mom will be around tomorrow afternoon and i am planning to talk with her then but that'd be a one-on-one conversation and i'm not sure if i can handle that at the moment but we'll see. i can tell you how it went afterwards.

and i'm really excited for friday bc it's the last day of school this year and afterwards we have a 7 week break and i'll be able to go out for lunch with a friend whom I haven't seen in two years because they moved to the US.

okay so this is milky way again and i wanted to let you know how trying to talk to my mom went

spoiler alert: it was worse than disappointing

i didn't start talking about my suspicions of being neurodivergent because i wanted to see how helpful she'd be first so i just kinda started with how i struggle with concentrating and not getting distracted at school and my sleep issues and that's about as far as i got before i got a feeling of how pointless this was.

the only thing she did was telling me that others have it worse (since i still have above-average grades), that everyone has this kind of existential crisis at some point during their teenager years, that the sleeping and concentration issues are just teenager issues that everyone has and that everyone feels like their struggles are worse than everyone else's even tho most of the time they actually aren't and finally that she can't help me

i of course quickly got the hell out of the room and went to bed (so i can be by myself in my room in the dark with my door closed). on one hand i'm absolutely furious and on the other hand i am disappointed, sad and dejected and i don't really believe myself anymore. seriously, what if she's right? she's had about 40 years more life experience and she was a teenager too at some point so she'd know this kinda thing, wouldn't she? what if i'm just complaining too much and talking over the ones that are actually struggling and can actually prove it with grades and stuff?

i feel a lot worse than i did one hour ago and i should've just not started talking in the first place and i regret it so much because i know this conversation will haunt me for the next week if not more.

i'm just angry angry angry

at myself, at her, at the way she compared me with literally everyone else at my age, at how i'm not sure of myself and at everything

i haven't felt this bad since last november and that was when things got really really bad (suicidal thoughts and self-harm included) and i'm so so scared of being there again because i'm on a 7 month 2 week streak with self-harm and i don't want to have to break it

sorry that this is just me venting and that this is so long

tl;dr i tried talking to my mom, now i'm angry at myself and her and i'm terrified of myself

Hi again ❤ I'm really sorry your grades aren't as good as you wanted them to be and that your dad keeps acting like your struggles are just a teenage rebellious phase and not taking you seriously :( I hope you have a good time with your friend, at least!

I'm so so sorry talking to your mom went so badly. I hope you're feeling slightly better now, but if not, I'm sending you the biggest virtual hug. I know how hard it can be to believe you're actually struggling at first, especially mentally, and I can't even imagine how horrible it must feel to have those fears "proven" by the very people meant to help you and support you when you reach out for help.

She is not right, nonnie, no matter how much she insists she is. First of all, I think there's at least some truth to the idea that teenagers tend to think the world revolves around themselves, and to feel uncomprehended at times. But I also think that's completely understandable. I mean, you're experiencing what it's like not to be a kid anymore for the very first time; you're facing many grown-up problems and feelings for the first time. And all of that while hormones wreak havoc in your system. How are you not meant to be at least a little bit angsty at times? But you know what? That doesn't mean you don't deserve help and guidance from your parents! It is a part of parenting to guide your kids through their teenage problems and to help them deal with emotions and issues they'd never had to face before. So even if she was right, and all you were going through right now was a typical teen existential crisis, you would still need and deserve her guidance and support. And you would still deserve to see a doctor about your struggles with sleep and concentration even if it turned out it was a teenage thing. There is no scenario where you deserve to suffer and push through your struggles alone just because your problems don't come from a serious enough source.

Second of all, grades are not indicative of how much you're struggling. I got some of the best grades in my school during years where I was going through abuse. I know a person who managed to get into a medicine degree with undiagnosed ADHD (and you have to get some really high grades to study medicine here). I also know a person who passed 3/4ths of her uni subjects and graduated university while in a depression so severe she could barely walk. Your grades do not dictate whether you need help.

And third of all, she might be older than you, and I'm sure she had a lot of learning experiences as a teenager herself, but that doesn't mean she knows you better than you know yourself. No one knows you better than you know yourself. No one has experienced all life experiences and gets to decide what other people are or aren't going through. And most importantly, there's always going to be someone who has it "worse" than everyone in this world, but that doesn't mean everyone else doesn't deserve help to manage their struggles. There's no such thing as not struggling enough to deserve help. Either you're not struggling at all, whatsoever, or you are to some extent—and no matter what that extent is, if you feel like you need help with it, then you need help with it. No one gets to tell you you don't.

From what I know, it's not unheard of for neurodivergent people to get told by their parents that their experiences are universal and therfore "not a big deal", and for it to turn out that their parents have some signs of neurodivergence themselves and just never got diagnosed. I of course don't know if that's the case here, but I want you to know that regardless of her reasons to tell you your experiences are universal—whether she also went through that and never had it acknowledged or she's saying it to gaslight you and make you question yourself—her behaviour is still neglectful. And you deserved so much better than to be made to feel like you're making things up, exaggerating and talking over others when all you did was ask for help with your personal struggles.

Sending a giant hug your way ❤️

#milky way anon #ask #abusive parents #neglectful parents #emotional neglect tw #self harm mention #suicidal mention #suicidal tw #Neglect tw #Abuse tw #Abuse

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magneticmage · 3 years

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I'm in the mood for it (plus it's Disability Pride month) so here are all my disabled ocs;

Under cut for Length

Additional Notes; Please do not judge me too harshly. While I have a few of these disabilities (most notably PTSD, anxiety-depression, and visual impairments) myself and personally know people who have some others, every person and their experiences are unique. I try my best to give these disabilities the space and gravity they deserve in my writing, but it is difficult for ones that I have no personal experience with. In addition, I am still learning and only human. If I have done something wrong or phrased something badly at any point now or in the future, let me know and I will do my best to fix it/do better. Apologies for the abrupt disclaimer but there we go.

Anyways!!!!

On the the List!

RWBY;

Selene Argent=Has PTSD, one prosthetic eye, and some physical scars on face and torso. I'd safely say she counts.

Baldur's Gate;

Sable Shades=Is an albino and was rendered mute at birth. He sunburns extremely easily and is near-sighted. He also often communicates through sign language.

Roan Roarke=Beyond some minor PTSD symptoms (increased anxiety and stress levels) surrounding fires, he's perfectly fine.

Faenerys Elendir=Has PTSD from her time imprisoned particular involving whips and brands as torture implements.

Rune Mistsea=Post-lycanthropy encounter, he is notably more short-tempered around the full moon along with a distinct craving for meat and violence. Otherwise, nothing else of note.

Lucine Mistsea=Beyond a notable paranoia issue when it comes to demons and cambions (but not fellow tieflings), she's fine.

Lyr(e/a/an) Lovemoor=Autistic. Too much light and noise and surrounding activity is draining and makes them short-tempered with occasional blowouts/meltdowns. Has a Thing about certain textures (very much hates slimes and oozes and squishy things for this reason, likes silks and furs and leathers). Has a fascination for all things shiny and glittery (gems and currencies are a special interest). Also often fidgets with their daggers.

Saga Musehart=Was rendered blind due to torture at the hands of prison guards. She also lost a hand (initially) and a forearm (later due to infection) and wears a prosthesis.

Cei Gloomdraft=Autistic or at least neurodivergent of some kind. Might have some ADHD, it's not quite clear yet in the few pieces I've written so far to help develop her.

Mass Effect;

(Solo Shepard Canon)

Annette Shepard=Has some lingering PTSD symptoms from surviving a raid on Mindoir, then thresher maws in Akuze, and then being spaced at the beginning in Mass Effect 2. She also suffers from some survivor's guilt Post-Virmire due to losing Ashley, and then all of Mass Effect 3 puts such a huge burden on her that she's fighting off some severe depression and despair from all the losses. She's got an old war injury in her shoulder that acts up from time to time, occasionally making her biotics misfire a barrier. She's on immuno-suppressant drugs to prevent her body from rejecting her Cerberus-added cybernetic implants and upgrades, and also some antidepressants for depression and anxiety symptoms for said lingering PTSD symptoms. Girl's a walking disaster-fire mentally but she keeps on surviving and she still looks for the good in life as it comes, so there's that.

(Shepard Siblings)

Joanna=Like Roscoe and Riley, she's also on immuno-suppressants to prevent cybernetic implant rejection. Notably, she's the most well-adjusted of the three mentally, although the losses and struggles of ME 3 start to take their toll due to depression. She spends an awkward month on the Normandy adjusting to the new medication while adjusting the amounts needed. In addition, she also goes through a whole existential crisis come the Citadel DLC about if she is really Joanna Shepard or a clone (which Riley, Roscoe, and the Normandy crew snap her out of). Her survivor's guilt is much less pronounced than Riley's though she does start the early stages of a martyr complex (it's a source of frequent and well-humored debate between Riley and Roscoe if it was already there or not) about the of Thane's death. But she does her best and keeps on going.

Roscoe=Definitely mentally ill. He's got some trauma around abandonment that starts to get fully addressed around ME 2 in part due to Jack and Miranda and is mostly resolved around ME 3 though naturally scars remain. It often manifests as anger, depression, and even callousness. Like Joanna's and Riley, he is on immuno-suppressants to prevent the potential rejection of his cybernetics. He's also got an old wound from Torfan in his abdomen that acts up under stronger pressures like before a rainstorm or different gravity levels as well as drastic temperature changes such as cold (he HATES Noveria for that reason in particular though it isn't the only one, man). Beyond all that, he's very strong-willed and gives no fucks to shit.

Riley=Much like Annette except a bit more well-adjusted due to a larger support network and character drive. Has notable flashbacks/triggers around batarians, thresher maws (this one includes panic attacks once the direct danger has passed), and hardsuit complications (they always makes sure that their helmet and everything is in working and optimal order). Has survivor's guilt from their losses on Mindoir and Akuze but between meeting Talitha and Toombs in ME 1, they confront and deal with it, beginning to heal from it. Even on Virmire with the loss of Honora and all the failures of ME 3, they do better at handling it though it still remains to varying degrees. Like Joanna's and Roscoe (and Annette again), they're on immuno-suppressant drugs to prevent issues with their body rejecting the cybernetics, with the additional ones of antidepressants to help manage some of their anxiety-depression symptoms. They also have some degree of chronic pain (maybe some kind of cystic fibrosis?) due to past overuse of their biotics that damaged part of their nervous system and occasionally causes it to misfire for no reason, often causing intense pain. Rarely and only if the pain isn't treated with extensive biotics-free rest periods and numbing agents in the form of more pills, the biotics will manifest and they'll accidentally move shit around, including themself a few times. This is most notable in ME 3 due to the nature of the larger and longer combat sequences with shorter and shorter rest times between. Though they manage as best they can with the help of their crew and family, it is still a struggle and they notably stop joking about retiring when they're dead and seem to consider it more seriously around ME 3 but save the final decision for the end of the Reaper Wars.

(Shepard Family)

Honora Hartford=She had an eating disorder when she was younger that left some lingering issues with her health but overall she's fine up until her death.

Riley's deceased siblings were overall healthy though Payton had Down's Syndrome and Brooklyn had ADHD. Harley had moderate asthma and used an inhaler.

Clover has anemia quite often and takes iron pills daily

The rest of the Shepard cousins don't have any disabilities to much knowledge though I am still fleshing them out.

(Andromeda)

Sara and Scott Ryder have some lingering damage from their cryopod accident and the Kett leader fucking with them, but otherwise they are okay.

Asher has ADHD while Shiloh struggles with a mild form of chronic fatigue. Evander, Rebecca, and Lucas are all able-bodied.

Dragon Age;

(Fereldan Wardens)

Lynera Mahariel=Dunno if this counts, but am putting it here anyways since it affects her overall health. Occasionally suffers from a type of sleep paralysis that is mixed with night-terrors. It doesn't appear to have a rhyme or reason as to when it occurs beyond perhaps stress and it's only every few months. However, it often leaves her completely drained for at least a week afterwards. She also occasionally has insomnia post-terrors as well which she self-medicates with sleeping draughts. She also has crippling period pains that appear to be consistent with ovarian cysts on her left side (though she later has it removed by Catriona once it ruptures due to injury). She also suffers from bouts of depression during Origins but that could be due to the extenuating circumstances she was under at the time.

Isemaya Tabris=When overly stressed, being exposed to strong amounts of concentrated Taint in a short period of time, or sometimes simply for no apparent reason, she suffers from intense migraines that are often treated with herbal painkillers and lying still in a dark and quiet room. Also due to a past injury to her left eye by humans, she has a harder time seeing on that side but is not completely blind.

Catriona Surana=She seems to be autistic due to her ability and predilection to hyperfocus on various studies (often Blight and magic-related but other areas do occur) as well as her obliviousness to social cues (she didn't realize she was liked by her suitors until Cale outright told her and by then she had decided she liked them already). Notably, she adapts a bit better Post-Origins due to Alistair and Leliana's influences but it still happens.

Cale Amell=Had some minor amnesia surrounding the exact events leading to his magic manifestation but later learned it was because he had set his eldest brother Azul on fire and believed he killed him as Raven helpfully supplied (Azul had instead faked his death as Cale discovers around the time of Awakening).

Fion Cousland=Briefly suffers from a minor alcohol addiction but has treatment while he is still in the functional phase courtesy of Catriona. Since then, he heavily monitors his intake and even helps Oghren get treatment for his own. He also occasionally has painful muscle twinges due to an injury that stretches from his temple to his eye and ear down to his neck on the right side. This is most notable in bad weather or when he is sick.

Barran Aeducan=Suffered from a superiority-inferiority complex towards his siblings growing up though it has greatly lessened with time and experience. It is mostly gone by the time of Inquisition though prominent traces still remain.

Tatha Brosca=She is hard of hearing and has manged to cope by learning to lip-read (not always successful, however, especially with languages she is not familiar with) in Origins and a pair of hearing "horns" designed for her by an admiring Smith caste man by Awakening. She often jokes that now she has even more in common with her Bronto companion, Salroka, due to their shared horns.

(Origins)

Vireth Mahariel=Suffers from epilepsy and often treats it with various herbal remedies, though it is not completely effective and large amounts of intense stress on his body make it worse. He also begins to develop cataracts around the time of Act 2 of Dragon Age 2, though the cause is unknown (presumed genetics or simply age at the moment).

Elthorn Tabris=Has a stutter speech impediment.

Alaros Surana=Unknown at the moment as I haven't written too much about him.

The Amell Siblings=Probably doesn't count but Azul gets motion sickness, especially on boats. Raven, Carmine, and Reed are all perfectly healthy and fine, however the latter two are the ones I've written least at the moment. Marigold has asthma that she treats with herbs.

Aelynne Cousland=Nothing comes to mind. She does have some old injuries (mentally and physically) she acquired from the attack on Highever by Arl Howe that color her later interactions with the family during the Fereldan Civil War.

Valda Aeducan=Has a notable visual impairment that is corrected with glasses, albeit there is nothing to be done for her slight colorblindness (she has a hard type distinguishing between greys, greens, and blues).

(Orlesian Wardens)

Dion Caron=Suffers from sleep apnea that is eased by a special breathing herbal-incense infused mask he wears as well as whomever in his group is on watch to check on him periodically to ensure he still breathes (most often this is either Victoire-Ainsley or Garam). He also snores and coughs due to this. Loudly.

Victoire-Ainsley Caron=Nothing of note.

Isenna Andras=She's an albino and so burns and rashes in intense light and heat. She also has a lame leg that cannot be fixed with magic and so wears a reinforced brace to aid her walk. This creates a noticeable limp.

Garam Kader=Alcohol makes him sick and he suffered from intense gender dysphoria before paying a huge sum to have an ex-Tevinter magister turned fellow Warden help him transition.

(Hawkes)

Jasper, Skye, and Violet Hawke are perfectly healthy. Albeit with some diet restrictions due to various allergies.

Gray Hawke=He is diabetic and so often has to monitor his energy levels to ensure his health. It's part of the reason he doesn't actively endanger his life like his siblings (not that he won't, just less often in comparison). He acquires a truly impressive diet regime and treatment plan upon becoming a nobleman of the Amell family, allowing him much more freedom than before.

(Marquises)

Aurore and Marcel de Serault both suffer from mild hemophilia. Marcel also has a lyrium drug addiction he is trying to break (and is actually doing quite well via weaning himself off it) due to a brief stint as a Templar while serving the Chantry.

(Inquisitors)

Armashok Adaar=Poor eyesight that cannot be fully corrected by glasses and later loses an arm due to the Anchor. He also lost a few fingers and some right hand mobility due to pre-nquisition injuries as a mercenary. He also wears a brace on his left shoulder. He wears a prosthetic eye and replacement arm.

Ransley Trevelyan=Like Cullen, he is working on breaking his own lyrium addiction from his time as a Templar and, like the other Inquisitors, loses his arm due to the Anchor. He had it replaced with a prosthetic arm for his shield side.

Paeriel Lavellan=She loses an arm alongside all the other Inquisitors, but takes the loss much harsher due to her archery skills suffering. While she will wear a prosthesis in battle or when hunting, she doesn't wear it in her day-to-day life, instead preferring to make due as needed. She also has anxiety.

Naranka Cadash=She loses her Anchor-wielding arm and gains a crossbow-and-dagger prosthetic one courtesy of her Inner Circle, much to her delight. She also suffers from some damage to her reproductive tract due to past injuries and is uncertain if she could have children.

(Inner Circle)

Kara Adaar=Beyond an intense hatred of slavery due to being kidnapped and almost sold when she was younger before being rescued by her father, she's perfectly healthy. She does require bedrest for her periods though.

Emilyse Trevelyan=She suffers from some PTSD from her abuse at Templar hands in the Circle, though she begins to recover towards the end of Inquisition.

Samrel Lavellan=Has dyslexia and uses reading aids and memory devices.

Pyrmar Cadash=He might have some PTSD from his Carta days due to a notable cave-in that lasted for a few days before his rescue.

#disability mention #trauma mention #amputation mention #eating disorder mention #my ocs stuff #mentions of addiction to drugs and alcohol #gender dysphoria mention

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lesbianfreyja · 5 years

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ive spent my whole life anticipating the next phase. high school. college. graduating, working life. moving out. not exactly waiting for it, but knowing it’s coming. even when i was having a good time there was an underlying feeling of, “oh, but this will end and then i have to worry about grades. about going home to my parents. about whatever.” but now i’m moved out and even though things aren’t all magically good and everything isn’t magically solved, i’m really coming to understand what people meant about searching for meaning or getting through the day. this is IT. i’ve been depressed for 10+ years so i really thought i understood it, feeling small and listless and existentially in crisis. but now i really............get it. and also why people were right when they said that LOVE is what it’s all about! i haven’t wanted to date in a while, and still don’t, but it’s not about romance at all. it’s all about love! any love! all love! human connection! understanding each other and spending time in the presence of those you’re close to! love, baby!!!

#i really have not been able to adequately put this feeling into words and still really am not nailing it #im just hhhhhhhhhhhhh watching sunny and feeling fucking insane for the past week and a half #alex.txt #tbd #anyway fuck rich people by the way

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bubbleblower · 5 years

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Minor Details Ch 9/?

Ao3 Ch1 Ch2 Ch3 Ch4 Ch5 Ch6 Ch7 Ch8 Next

Marinette's existential crisis only overshadowed her natural instinct to help people for a moment. Before she knew it she was over grabbing the boy's hand, helping him up and reaching for the bag he had dropped.

"I'm so sorry, I should have been watching where I was going. I'm just late for school, not that that's an excuse and I-" she cut herself off, noticing that the boy was chuckling.

"It's okay, clumsy girl. No harm done." He smiled, it was wide and tipped up at the corners. /Clumsy girl/ Marinette felt her stomach twist unpleasantly.

"Well, sorry again I've gotta run. Late you know." Marinette panickedly pressed the boy's bag into his chest and turned tail and ran. Leaving the bemused blonde standing on the sidewalk, a small smile on his face.

Luckily she didn't have far to go as she dashed up the steps and into the building, not noticing Alya in her hiding spot.

"Alya?" A voice behind her made her jump about a foot in the air. She flailed and dropped her journal, papers flying everywhere. Adrien winced. "Sorry! I didn't mean to startle you!" He bent down and began collecting the papers. Alya squinted at him, recovering from her shock, and bent down to pick things up.

"Wow, Adrien, you move so quietly. Someone ought to hang a bell around your neck so you can't sneak up on people like that!" She watched his face carefully, smirking a little when his cheeks reddened slightly and nervousness danced at the edge of his expression.

"Ha... Um... Hey, Alya what were you doing hiding in the bushes anyway?" He asked, looking down at the papers he had picked up. A couple things grabbed his attention. His name, bolded, circled and triple underlined and a header: Chat Noir's identity. He gulped audibly as he raised his eyes to meet Alya's.

"Why, I was waiting for you! Chat Noir." She grinned at the absolutely caught look on his face.

Plagg hated leaving Adrien to the fox's mercy, but he had just seen Ladybug run past the bushes into the school and he needed to talk to Tikki as soon as possible. Before Adrien could stumble his way through trying to cover up what Alya had found, Plagg zipped up out of his pocket, winked at her and then dissappeared through the wall of the school chasing that little pink bag to the tune of Adrien frustratedly calling his name.

It didn't take long for him to find an appropriate moment to jump into Marinette's purse. Tikki squeaked at his sudden appearance.

"Sorry to just barge in on you Sugarcube but we've got a problem." Tikki collected herself quickly, her face morphing into an expression of sheer annoyance.

"Oh we definitely have a problem. Just what game is your holder playing? I know he knows who Ladybug is, so why is he trying to confuse her? I thought he wanted her to know who he was?" Plagg held his arms up placatingly.

"Tikki, it's about Hawkmoth." The red bug paused in her rant, her eyes growing wide again at the somber serious tone in Plaggs voice. "Gabriel Agreste is Hawkmoth."

"What?" She whispered. "But thats-"

"My holder's father, yeah. I found the entrance to where he stores the Akumas last night. I couldn't find Nooroo, but I'm sure that just means he keeps her locked away." Tikki's antennae drooped.

"Was there any sign of Duusuu?" Plagg shrugged.

"I'm not sure, but he has his wife encased in a glass coffin below the house. She's laying on a bed of white feathers so it seems likely." The kwamis were silent for a moment, contemplating the horrors of the situation.

"You're going to have to bring Wayzz to the house. He's the only one of us that can sense other kwamis nearby." Tikki said finally breaking the silence.

"I don't know if it will work, he and Master Fu already came to the house once. Granted Wayzz was only out in Adrien's room but he didn't say anything if he felt their presence nearby." Plagg sighed. "I'm gonna talk to them today."

"I'll go with you, if you want. I need to talk to him about Marinette's compromised identity anyway. We can go while our kids are on their date. We wont be in the miracle box so we can always hurry back to them if there's an akuma." Tikki floated over, wrapping her arm around Plagg, he leaned into her side.

"It's not fair, Tikki. Why did I have to be the kwami of bad luck? How am I going to tell my kid about this? He's already depressed. His dad neglects him, witholds emotional contact when he does see him, ties up his free time with a million activities to prevent him from spending time with people who would emotionally bond with him. And occasionally refuses to let him do things even when his schedule allows for it just to demonstrate his absolute control over my kids life. It's abuse, Tikki. And now this guy is the literal supervillain we've been fighting against. The guy who taunted my kid's friend for wanting to throw him a birthday party is the same guy who used dark magic on that same friend to make him hurt my kid and everyone he cares for. And the guy is his father! My kid still holds out hope that their relationship will improve when his dad stops grieving the loss of his mom, but his mom is down there. In Hawkmoth's lair, encased in some sort of weird glass coffin shrine. This is going to break him Tikki. I'm almost sure of it."

Tikki's heart broke watching Plagg's eyes swim with tears. It always seemed to go this way with black cats. Something always happened that her partner couldn't save them from, and despite all his bluster it killed him to watch the kids suffer.

"We'll think of something, stinky sock. He wont be alone. He has you, and me, and my kid, and Trixx and Wayzz and Pollens kids. Not to mention all the new heros that have been tested out lately. Even if we need to give every single other miraculous out to one of his friends, we'll make sure he has the support he needs. You wont have to take care of him alone this time." She hugged him harder.

Marinette had waited by the door to the classroom until the warning bell rang, but there was still no sign of Alya or Adrien. It was strange. Alya was never late unless there was an akuma. The last thing Marinette needed was for her to be sick today. She caught Nino's arm as he walked into the classroom.

"Sup, dudette?" He said, removing a headphone from his ear.

"Hey Nino. Have you seen Alya today? She's almost never late." Nino, nodded.

"Ch'yah she and Adrien were talking out front the school. They said they'd be in soon." Marinette's face blanched. That couldn't be good.

"Thanks Nino!" She took off at a run, unknowingly catching the attention of one Chloe Bourgeois.

Alya had her hands on her hips looking at a sheepish Adrien with a less-than-impressed expression.

"Look, dude, she's my best friend. You need to be upfront with her or you're gonna fuck this up. She's liked you for a long time and she doesn't play games." Adrien nodded.

"I will, I promise. I care about her too Alya."

"Good, and Adrien?" Marinette skidded out the front door looking wildly around for her renegade bff. "If you hurt her, I'll have Anansi rip your arms off."

"Alya!!!" Marinette yelled, appalled, looking for all the world like she wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

"Understood." Adrien laughed. Alya winked at him, kissed Marinette on the cheek and walked into the building. Marinette buried her face in her hands.

"Oh my god I'm gonna kill her" She softly shrieked into her hands. Adrien, who hadn't been doing a good job keeping a straight face, laughed outright at this.

"It's okay Marinette. She just cares about you. I get it."

"She's a menace!" Marientte continued in the same tone. Adrien wrapped his arms around her.

"Would it help if I had Nino threaten you over my virtue?" He snorted. "Ooh better yet, Chloe." Marinette laughed weakly at this, causing Adrien to grin in triumph. She peeked out from behind her fingers, her face bright red and her eyes wide at the familiar contact.

"I can't believe she did that." His grin widened.

"Don't fret, Marinette. Despite threats of bodily dismemberment, I am still looking forward to our date tonight." He didn't know Marinette's face could get redder, but it did. She was just about the color of her suit. She was smiling though, so that was good.

"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?!" An unwelcome voice screeched from the entrance to the school. "A DATE?!? WITH DUPAIN-CHENG?!?! UNNACCEPTABLE!"

Marinette and Adrien turned towards Chloe's furious face just in time to see the akuma land on her sunglasses.

"Tikki!" Marinette whispered to her bag as she ran down the hallway looking for a place to transform. "I thought you were supposed to be the kwami of GOOD luck! What is even happening right now? Did I do something to piss Plagg off? Did he curse me?" She stepped into an empty classroom, locking it behind her."Because if so, I am absolutely ready to apologize for whatever it was. I will full on beg for his forgiveness if needed... I will buy him a literal mountain of cheese if that's what it takes-." She stopped as she opened her bag and noticed 2 sets of eyes staring back at her, one of them a very familiar green.

"A mountain of cheese, you say?" Plagg asked, a grin on his tiny black face. "Sorry Sugar cube, duty calls." He blew a kiss to Tikki, bowed to Marinette and phased quickly through the wall.

Marinette and Tikki looked at eachother for a moment.

"Nevermind, we'll talk later. Spots On, Tikki, hurry."

Marinette and Tikki looked at eachother for a moment.

"Nevermind, we'll talk later. Spots On, Tikki, hurry."

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simplemlmsponsoring · 5 years

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New Post has been published on http://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/copywriting/revisiting-2018-do-what-your-heart-feels-is-right/

Revisiting 2018 – Do What Your Heart Feels is Right

Last day of the year is always special. It’s the last time I sat down to write in 2018. It is also an excellent time to reflect upon things that happened this year and make plans for the year to come.

It’s been a while since I composed a yearly review, but here I am, documenting some of the moments of 2018 that I would like to remember forever. In the first week of December 17, We redesigned ShoutMeLoud and got a new logo and did some great work there. Sharat inked himself with ShoutMeLoud logo which is remarkable:

I started 2018 just after one of the most amazing trips to Antarctica, and for the first time, Delhi winter didn’t feel as freezing as it usually does. Now, unlike other years, 2018 was different.

It was a lot of introspection and self-learning for me. I had to fight a lot of my inner demons which I knew existed for years but never dared to face them.

It was more like trash piling up in one corner of the room that I knew was there, but I never took action.

The first half of the year unearthed many of them, and I realized that I had to accept them before I could fight them.

When I look back, I feel I could have done better in the first half of the year. The only thing I could do was to surrender myself to the whole experience and acknowledge my achievements, realize my mistakes and use the learnings to make better decisions in the future.

2018 was the year when I made the most mistakes, which also makes it the year of great learnings.

I will try to put down my experience below so that you can learn from my mistakes and have a better year ahead.

Also, when I grow old, it would be nice to look back at this phase and smile.

Ok then, here we go:

January and February 2018

Last few months of 2017 were super exciting. I achieved things I never thought I would on personal as well as the financial front.

I kept thinking of early retirement as it felt like I had achieved most of my goals.

I stopped growing for a bit and my perspective changed from being a student of life to someone who thought he knew it all.

I had, unknowingly, started surrounding myself with people who were nice to me, rather than those who were honest in my face. Instead of taking actions, my impulse to seek recognition started increasing.

For me, it was a tough one to digest as I never thought I could be such a person. But it was happening!

The first two months of the year were the toughest and also the slowest for me.

Day-dreaming and running away from accountability, I was making my future difficult.

Sometimes it gets hard to see things when you are in the middle of it all. Don’t you agree?

I was almost in the midst of a mid-life crisis, figuring out what to do next.

It was not productive but the questions I was going through paved the way for time to come.

Me and Sharat did a road trip to Chandigarh to meet Chatty who is a smart young chap and was working on a few projects with us.

March 2018

March started with great pace, and the first significant thing that I did was a trip to Hong Kong with my team.

It was a conference that we attended it as an official media partner.

We also tested a lot of new stuff like:

Podcasts Twitter chat

Podcasts and videos are going to one of the prime targets for 2019.

I also met Gary Illyes, Abhishek, Honey Singh and Fernando at different venues and events in the month of March:

April and May 2018

These two months were pretty busy with managing my finances and restructuring the company.

By the end of April, I moved away from managing the finances of my company which turned out to be a great decision. I also moved my whole blogging business to the newly formed company rather than managing under my name, something that paved the way for better structuring in the times to come.

This is the time when I shared my intention with my team of stepping down from the role of CEO of ShoutDreams and bringing someone knowledgeable to run the company so that I could focus on things that I like.

I could feel the pressure of increasing demand for growing the company and keeping up with writing content.

Honestly, running day-to-day operations was becoming a challenge. I had never felt so much pressure. Even though I knew the right thing to do, I was not sure what to do.

I could feel it in my heart that I was not enjoying what I was doing and that my business and life required some major changes.

The question I kept asking myself repeatedly were:

Do I really need to do this? Do I really need to build the company? What’s next for ShoutMeLoud?

On the one hand, I knew it was an important thing to do considering the way we do business online was shifting. On the other hand, I felt I was getting too business-oriented and was losing my freedom.

I could feel the requirement of having more key players on my team. Maybe a content guy, a video editor, a graphics guy, maybe an app developer. However, I was not enjoying the part where I had to spend time hiring and letting go of people.

The pressure of running the company was taking a toll on my overall performance. Moreover, I was not sure what I wanted from my life anymore. I had not yet confronted my inner demons and was trying to ignore them as much as I could.

To add to my troubles, Shallu (my wife) met with an accident and hurt her back in April 2018. She was bed-ridden for 3 whole months. When this happened, for the first time in many, many, years, I was really scared. Seeing someone you love in pain is heart-wrenching. I’m sure you can resonate with that.

I was struggling with everything. It was not the best place to be, but I can’t deny the importance of that phase in my career.

I realized I should be spending more time working. Honestly, I was starting to enjoy work again, and I knew it was time to make some changes. I rented a space in co-working office called Regus and worked from there for a month.

It was a boring place to be, but I was still happy as I was breaking out of procrastination and getting work done.

I worked from this space for almost a month. I discontinued with it later because it was becoming too corporate – more like a 9-5 job!

One highlight of April was addressing the audience at MindmineSummit.

June 2018

June is usually an action-packed month for me. In June 2018, I traveled to Helsinki to attend the SummerJam by SEMRUSH. SummerJam is a private event by SEMRUSH where they invite some of the best minds from the SEO and marketing industry.

It was great connecting with like-minded people in Helsinki. Here are some pictures from the event.

I also met Victoria, former affiliate manager of SEMRUSH, who currently works with Supermetrics.

If you don’t remember her, here is the video we did together last year about affiliate marketing for businesses.

youtube

Another highilght was this “Blogging birthday cake” sent by my friend, which made my day:

July 2018 – Half cooked Europe trip

After the Summer Jam, I planned to travel to Europe for a month with my family. It was one of our dream trips. From Helsinki, we went to Amsterdam and Prague. The plan was to travel to more places.

However, on the 9th day when I was in Prague, one of my key team member shared his intention of saying goodbye. I already felt I wasn’t doing justice to my role and this news couldn’t have come at a worse time.

We abandoned the rest of the trip and returned to India. I realized how important it was for me to resolve the burning question of the future of the company – putting up the system in place, ensuring everyone gets proper growth and credit for their work. I wish I could have done this more pro-actively a few years back, but as I said, I was no one to complain about how my life was unfolding. More on this later.

August

Half of the year was gone, and I could feel the pressure of not doing anything significant.

It doesn’t matter how well one is doing financially or growing if the ❤ is not in sync with the mind. It’s struggle.

👆🏻was my state of mind, and the first thing I did was change my office space. I found a nice place near my home called Instaoffice where I rented a spot.

It was a dream office and I enjoyed being there from day one.

Instead of planning, I started getting things done.

But I had accumulated a lot of questions in the past few months, and the answers were nowhere to be found. The worst decision one can take is not taking any decision, and I was doing exactly that.

As it is, I was not feeling super pumped up about much I was doing. Existential crisis along with mid-life crisis, it was a pretty awkward place to be in.

In the past 12 months, I lost two key players from my team, and I was failing to put up system and process. I was facing a new issue every day.

At the stage I was, it was not easy for me to open up to anyone and tell them what I was going through. I was feeling lonely, but I didn’t let anything affect my day-to-day activities. It felt like depression but I’m glad it wasn’t.

I was losing the whole perspective of my journey. I was unsure of what would happen next.

But life always has something to offer.

One gets help when he/she least expects, and this is what happened in August.

I opened up to a few close people and told them what I was going through.

“Are you enjoying what you are doing?”

A friend asked me this simple question, and straight away I knew the answer – No!

I was doing a lot of things that I wasn’t enjoying.

For example, working 9-6 thinking that working more was a solution.

Waiting for weekends to live life!

I was trying to live a perfect life which was not me. I was living someone else’s life.

I was not able to write regularly, because my heart was not in sync and nothing makes me better than journaling.

We discussed things, and after a lot of questions and introspection over the new few days, I realized I was doing the exact opposite of what my heart said.

Working 9-6 was not me, and there I was, forcing myself to work more thinking that was the solution.

Rather than looking at my problems with the lens of solving it, I was harsh on myself.

I was being cornered by my ego. I was not ready to accept my shortcomings.

Instead of keeping my blogging journey fun, being thankful for whatever I have, I was focused more on the things that I wasn’t able to accomplish.

Throughout, I knew I don’t enjoy doing some of those things and rather than asking “How” to solve it, I was looking at “Why” I couldn’t do it.

This is where I started following the mantra“Do what, heart says”.

I accepted the situation, and started to take it easy from there.

I started accepting that I’m good with some things and not so good at other things.

Believe it or not, this mere acceptance changed everything for me.

Working more was not a solution and sometimes taking a step back or slowing down is the best thing to do.

I needed a change. A significant shift in my mindset, and I needed to be at a new place.

What do I really want to do?

From here on, I started making every decision based on the question above.

That one simple thing (“Do what your heart says”) changed the course for the rest of my year and probably my life.

It drastically changed everything!

September – The African Safari and Brighton SEO

I had planned my trip to Kenya a long time ago and even though I had to move major mountains in my business, I didn’t cancel this 9-day trip.

Why?

Because I badly needed a change and deep down I always wanted to experience the Great African Safari.

On the 1st of September, I flew to Nairobi, Kenya, and something was waiting for me.

A new beginning!

Kenya reminded me of India 20 years back. Everything was so raw, natural and pure.

The next few days were full of African adventures.

“The Game Drive”, as they call it, had us travel in the jungle on a safari.

Being in the arms of nature was such an enchanting experience. It reminded me of this famous quote which was part of my social media bio for years:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.

For days, I completely forgot who I’m. Something was happening to me. I don’t have words to explain those changes. After months of self-loathing, I was truly free!

This is the same time I started practicing Yoga, and I made a commitment to wake up before sunrise. This was another landmark decision of 2018 for me as it positively impacted my health and overall awareness. I would take this moment to thank Rohit for being my Yoga guru.

At the end of the month, I attended the BrightonSEO. It was the 2nd event for me of the year, and I realized how much I enjoyed attending such events.

Apart from learnings, such events are the best place to meet people who walk the same path as me.

October: DMSS Bali and Lasik eye surgery

After returning from the Brighton SEO, I went straight to Bali to attend DMSS. I was particularly excited about the mastermind which was one of its kind and my first ever. DMSS Bali turned out to be more than a digital marketing event. I have written a detailed experience here.

I met so many amazing people and discovered a lot of stuff about running and managing a remote company. I realized how silly I was by trying to fix things which were not even broken. Another key learning is to surround ourselves with people who are on a similar boat.

Andrea also took me for my first ever surfing experience, and I absolutely loved it.

Lasik Eye surgery

Another highlight of the year was letting go of my eye-glasses. It’s been more 20 years that I have been wearing glasses, and finally, I got the lasik eye surgery done.

so happy that the surgery was successful and now I’m writing this without having anything between my screen and eyes. A huge thanks to Dr. Dariel Mathur.

November: The Change

By November, I was in the doer mode. I was making quick decisions, and my year-long procrastination attitude was long gone.

To make better decisions in life, we need information. If you don’t have the right information, you will end up trying too many times before giving up or keep trying. DMSS Bali has given me the information which I needed to make better decisions, and I realized it was time for me to step up the game.

My experiment with “surrender to the life” had begun again and from the “why is it..

Read more: shoutmeloud.com

#could #first #life #more #started #things #time #which #year #COPYWRITING

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kirstymcneill · 4 years

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Effective Activism in a Time of Coronavirus: what are we learning six months in?

This post first appeared on Global Dashboard on the 8th of July 2020.

Nothing I’ve read has captured our times and our task better than this essay from Western States Center ED Eric K. Ward: “leading in easy times is, well, easy. But these times are not them”. Leading in difficult times is unbelievably hard, but we will all be better at it if we share what we’re learning and invite others to challenge our thinking and contribute their own. In that spirit, here are the four things that I think are emerging as lessons about effective activism in a time of coronavirus.

In a fight between a rewind and a revolution, revolution’s gonna lose

My timeline is still going nuts for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s powerful “Message from the Future”. The bit that gives me pause comes in at the 3 minutes mark, “the world’s leading climate scientists told us we had 12 years left to cut our emissions in half, 12 years to change everything”. It was released, of course, before the coronavirus crisis, but the pandemic has given prominence to a similar rhetoric elsewhere.

Here in the UK, for example, the Build Back Better coalition argue we are in a similarly transformative moment: “let’s not go back to normal … what we do next could change everything”. And the crisis has seen a new lease of life for the slogan “we won’t go back to normal when normal was the problem”, first used in protests in Chile towards the end of 2019 but now turning up everywhere from graffiti in Hong Kong to the fridge doors of activists to university research programmes.

That positioning is understandable – many of our missions face an existential threat from climate change and the need to dismantle white supremacy and racism could hardly be more urgent. But it is precisely because the stakes are so high that we have to focus on winning big rather than talking big.

How should we respond to the evidence that many people are absolutely desperate for a “return to normal” and not sure if they’d like to change very much, never mind “everything”? Roger Harding’s essay here charts that the crisis has seen a big spike in demand for nostalgic television and music, and it may not be an accident that the BBC’s coming of age drama Normal People is the breakout success of lockdown. If what’s happening in popular culture is any guide, people want to look back before they move forward. We need to accept that in a fight between a rewind and a revolution, revolution’s gonna lose.

Likewise, publics may not recognise the two separate worlds that Arundhati Roy charts so beautifully in her “The Pandemic is a Portal” essay. In Roy’s telling, we are faced with “a gateway between one world and the next” and the choice before us is whether we “choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us” or whether we “walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it”.

I wonder how many people see the pandemic in quite this way, with a clear delineation between the old world ‘yesterday’, the crisis ‘today’ and the recovery ‘tomorrow’. Some may also see today’s pandemic as merely what journalist Ros Wynne-Jones called “a grim dress-rehearsal” for the emergencies to come. For that constituency there will be a real premium on immediate strategies for securing recent gains, starting with the list George Graham lays out here.

Fighting campaigns that can deliver immediate and tangible change isn’t a substitute for bolder transformation, but it is a necessary precursor to it, because strategies which confuse a public appetite to build back better with one to build back completely different just aren’t going to attract a big enough base. As one union organiser told me, “there’s no point asking people to trust you to organise a revolution if you can’t get a microwave in the staff canteen”.

‘Don’t mourn, organise’ is the wrong mantra for our times. We need to do both

I’ve written before about the work we’ve been doing to defend aid and development in the UK. It’s good work – innovative, strategic and delivered with discipline. I’m proud of it, and of our success in defying political gravity to maintain support for aid in the face of sustained attacks. We have, however, just suffered a huge defeat, with the Prime Minister choosing to abolish our world-leading development department in the middle of the biggest humanitarian crisis for 100 years and on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the “great generation’s” Make Poverty History campaign.

It isn’t hard to see what is going on here. A ‘new front in the culture war’ is opening and it’s increasingly clear that “retoxification” is not a by-product of the strategy, it is the strategy. At the end of 2019 I felt that identifying models that could galvanise but not polarise was the core strategic campaigning question of the decade, but I now feel it’s a much more insistent one that should dominate our summer.

Professor Tim Bale’s excellent research into the divergent attitudes of voters, activists and political leaders shows where we are headed, at least in the UK. The voters who have ‘lent’ their votes to the government on the basis of values alignment and economic competence are going to start peeling off fast as soon as furlough ends, unemployment climbs and the government’s reputation for economic competence takes a battering. At that point, this research implies, there’s no strategy available to the government other than dialling up the cultural campaign. We can expect to see more, and not less, of “the war on woke” and an increased push from the ‘Britannia Unchained’ generation in the cabinet to do away with regulations and protections.

If that analysis is right, activists have a strategic choice to make and only a matter of weeks to make it: are we here to win a culture war, or to end one?

Of course we need to spend this period re-strategising, including asking ourselves the question campaigners most hate to answer, but need to: if you’re so smart, how come you’re getting beaten so badly? But more than that, we need to give ourselves the time to mourn what we have lost.

We have literal grieving to do – for all the people who have died before their time, the pain compounded by the knowledge that structural racism and poverty have done as much damage as biology here. And we have grieving of the more abstract sort to do too – the kind of coming to terms with loss we all need to do when something we truly value, not just desire, has gone.

The Collective Pyschology Project’s “This Too Shall Pass” report gives us a toolkit for how to grieve but it is actually earlier work by its founder Alex Evans that tells us why activists have to learn to grieve. If we don’t work through denial, anger, bargaining and depression properly, we’ve no hope of getting to acceptance and, therefore, to a place where we can see clearly what our next move should be.

I’ve written elsewhere about the power of Andrew Tenzer’s “The Empathy Delusion” report but his latest research, “The Aspiration Window” should also give activists pause for thought. If we, like our colleagues in communications, also score highly on a sense of personal agency, that can be a tremendous source of resilience and optimism in normal times. It is, however, a recipe for burn-out and guilt in these times. We have to accept we can’t campaign our way out of a pandemic, and we can’t always beat overwhelming political odds.

“Don’t mourn, organise” is the wrong mantra for now. Let’s do both.

Think global, act local has come of age – but we need to buttress it

Many of us have spent many years desperately trying to generate a sense of global citizenship, recognising that global problems need global solutions, but global solutions need global constituencies to push for them. The pandemic has helped illuminate that like nothing else in our lifetime – and events like the Global Citizen #TogetherAtHome concert have given our sense of interconnectedness a public expression.

While some governments have pushed a sense of national exceptionalism (and certainly benefitted in the short term from a ‘rally around the flag’ effect), there’s actually limited evidence that people are identifying particularly fervently with the nation state, despite its prominence in everything from paying our wages to dictating when we can get a haircut.

Instead, counter-intuitively, we seem to be feeling simultaneously more local and more global than ever before. This will be welcome news for community organisers and internationalists alike, but we shouldn’t take it for granted that this feeling will be permanent.

Here in the UK, British Future’s Sunder Katwala’s careful reading of the polls throughout the crisis gives him a cautious optimism – we feel that we are likely to come out of this crisis more connected and kinder than we went into it, but this effect is much more pronounced about people with whom we have direct social contact. The more we know people, the more we trust them, and the street or estate where we live is now full of people we newly know.

Likewise, findings from the team at the Neighbourly Lab suggest a new sense of connection is powerful at a micro-local level, but it will need permanent infrastructure to be instituted quickly if the new neighbourliness is to be maintained. “The Moment We Noticed”, from the Relationships Observatory, makes a similar case, pointing to how “ten million willing citizens have chosen to spend at least 3 hours a week caring for one another” and inviting us to consider what we can do together to sustain new relationships into the future.

Both reports also contain some interesting watch-outs about what might happen when we move from the ‘honeymoon’ to the ‘disillusionment’ phase that is often seen in the aftermath of an emergency, and encourage us to recognise that communitarian feeling is often rather fragile and dependent on a sense that others are doing their bit.

Certainly our thinking when we put together the “#OurOtherNationalDebt” essay collection was that a focus on repaying those who’ve made an outsized contribution (or paid an outsized price) at this particular time was more likely to command sustained public support than anything that felt like a reheat of long-held pre-pandemic positions. Society might have changed a bit but in general it’s still the case that we quite like the people we’ve got to know, but we’re also alert to any signs of free-riding or, worst of all, queue-jumping.

Elsewhere in Europe, the European Council on Foreign Relations call both the idea that there has been a sudden surge in belief in an expanded role for the state and one in nationalism “illusions that could lead European governments to fall foul of public opinion as they plan the recovery”. Instead, they show “that the overwhelming majority of people want more EU cooperation”, but recognise that this is motivated more by a sense of wanting collective insurance than a rejuvenation of a sense of common ideals.

At the same time, the OECD predict that it’s at least possible that global aid flows will be maintained or even increase in coming years, pointing to some successes in securing debt relief, multilateral funding for Gavi and an increase in support for humanitarian efforts.

Part of what is going on here is the public’s sophisticated understanding of the coronavirus – that the experience might be universal, but it is it not uniform. We understand that there are people in precarious employment in every country, parents struggling to put food on the table in every country, children trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide in every country. Lockdown and school closures in particular have been near-universal experiences, but their effects have been far from uniform between countries or inside them. People get that both local neighbourliness and multilateralism can provide particular protections, mitigating catastrophe and smoothing out vulnerabilities a bit.

Support for both local mutual aid efforts and international solidarity efforts is, in other words, conditional. We instinctively feel the local and the global are the right levels to deal with different elements of the pandemic and its effects, but we want to be sure everyone is pulling their weight, and we’re getting enough out of it for what we’re willing to put in.

That means we need to be planning now for campaigning infrastructure that can turn the new neighbourliness into the new normal, while helping people draw connections between their new local involvement and the need for active citizenship at a national and global level.

The Dignity’s Project’s research on the mutual aid movement suggests there are foundations already in place, but activists will need to be careful not to over-interpret the data, with 57% of respondents saying “mutual aid groups like mine have nothing to do with politics”.

So if we want people to move towards more active civic involvement, to make what the New Citizenship Project calls the big shift “from consumer to citizen”, we need to introduce the idea of political activism as something that sits in service of, and not in a separate realm to, people’s individual moral choices and willingness to muck-in locally.

The new National Health Team is one attempt to operate at these three levels – individual, local and political. The coming months are likely to see a flowering of these kinds of efforts, as we increasingly recognise that none of individual behaviour change, local volunteering or traditional advocacy-led campaigning will be enough on their own.

An imperfect message that gets heard is better than a perfect one that doesn’t

The social change sector globally is currently producing a large number of really superb messaging guides around coronavirus and there are some brilliant research projects on the go about attitudes about everything from climate change to regulation to social security. The challenge for our movements is whether we can do enough with the insights once we have them.

Two barriers present themselves. The first is that research which shows how to communicate for one purpose (for example, to shore up support for aid, in the case of our Public Insight 2020 project) will not necessarily be widely adopted by people with a brief to communicate for another important purpose (for example, recruiting donors or promoting an organisation’s brand). That’s not just the case for international issues – the tension plays out around storytelling efforts on domestic poverty too. Organisations with enough marketing budget or media reach to make a dent in public opinion are, almost by definition, also likely to be delivering frontline services under the extraordinary pressure of rising demand and falling income.

Meanwhile, many of the organisations which are nimble enough to internalise the insight lack the reach to make it count. Across our fields we’ve got a lot of money being spent crafting narratives no-one is going to hear. It’s time to get much more serious about thinking about our routes to market when we embark on insight work and we need to be willing to pay for the distribution as well as the design of the messages.

Serious strategic communications efforts cost money – and mobilisation efforts which can actually leverage the latent political power of the people who agree with your message even more so. At Save the Children we’ve introduced a strong organising flavour into our campaigning work (as Tom Baker lays out here) and in the Aid Campaign we’ve focused on building local ‘power postcodes’ groups in the places that matter most. We will be spending the summer thinking about how to scale that work.

While it’s massively welcome that we’ve seen a big uptick in the amount of insight work big NGOs and funders are investing in, it’s all pretty academic if we’re not overlaying it with an understanding of political geography and overlaying that in turn with investment in local power.

We are only six months into the coronavirus crisis and don’t yet know when – or how – it will end. What we do know is that activism is unlikely to be what speeds our exit from the crisis, but it is the single biggest determinant of whether that exit is equitable. This moment demands our best ever work and we won’t do it without plans to deal with the biggest strategic challenges in front of us. This list of four may be incomplete, but it’s where I think we should begin.

#activism #campaigning #polarisation #strategy

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pbpress · 7 years

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The Ten Stage Development of Show-Binge-Watchers : Written by a fellow Binge-watcher

By Malack Al-Haraizeh [Disclaimer: I am writing this article at 4:13AM after finishing the last season of One Tree Hill on Netflix and am currently in a state of emotional distress. Expect some self-indulgence.]

Stage One: The Curiosity Stage

You’re on Netflix, and you see this show. It could be new or old; maybe everyone is talking about it, or maybe you've never heard of it before. Either way, your interest is piqued, and you think: “Let's check this out.” Then, the first 45 minute episode is over in what feels like 5 minutes, and your curiosity is satisfied. But still, you think, “what's a couple more episodes?” You are now moving into...

Stage Two: The Unconsciously Addicted Phase:

Now you're about five or six episodes into the season and haven't taken any breaks, but you don't let yourself believe the addiction is forming, yet. No, you tell yourself that the show is just really great and you have nothing better to do. You aren't consciously aware that you've already been trapped--sucked into a fictional world that'll ruin your reality. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, there’s still...

Stage Three: The Denial Stage.

At this point you are finished with the first season, and it's already taken over a good third of your life. You've stayed up until 4 in the morning on school nights when you have tests the next day, watching episode after episode (me, right now). You claim “they just always leave me on a cliffhanger, I have to watch it.” Your friend asks why you're so addicted to that show and you claim, “not addicted, interested.” You are in denial of the fact that it’s become routine to do your homework in study hall the period before it’s due. You are in denial of the fact that you’re suffering after only having a fitful two hours of sleep every night. You are in denial of the fact that your show finds its way into almost every conversation you have with people. And you are in denial of the fact that your grades are slowly withering away along with your social life. Once you’re over being in denial, we arrive at...

Stage Four: The Acceptance Stage:

It hits you mid-second-season after you've been bawling for two hours over one of your favorite characters. There's no more room for denial after that. When you’re past the denial, you leave your shame and are at...

Stage Five: The Unashamed Addicted Stage:

This is the phase where you are well past the second season and you are addicted and proud. These characters are all you think about in class, you look up the actors on Google, and plan your daily schedule around your binging time. It’s pathetic, and you know it’s pathetic, but you just don’t care anymore. It’s after the last episode of the last season that you enter...

Stage Six: The Post-Show-Depression Stage:

You’re lost. You sit for approximately 8-10 minutes just thinking: how am I supposed to get on with my life now? Will I ever be able to watch another show after that, or will everything be boring in comparison? You search when the next season will be up, and regardless of when it will be, the answer to you is always, ‘not soon enough.’ You sulk and try to vent to your friends, but they just don’t get you. “The world is ending.” “No, your show just ended.” “Um, same thing?” That’s when you start to think more deeply, transitioning into...

Stage Seven: The Existential Crisis Phase:

Does anything really matter anymore? Your favorite character was killed off (left the show, heartbroken, in a coma, etc.) and you're left in state of delirium and sadness. You sit and stare at the wall thinking, “Why?” You may be done with your show, but it is certainly not done with you. You come to that conclusion when you reach...

Stage Eight: The Self-Reflection Stage:

The question now is, “how did I let it get this far?” Thinking back to the beginning you realize that you were sucked in the moment you clicked on the little Netflix symbol in the corner of your screen. There was no stopping it. It's equivalent to trying to stop a moving train: useless and fatal, except this was fatal to your social life. This is when we start to transition into...

Stage Nine: The Faulty Regret Stage:

I guess you really are regretful that you've done this to yourself, and you promise, “never again.” You are at peace now and have learned your lesson. Everything is at equilibrium, and your life is slowly going back to normal again. It was a stupid decision that you will never make again. The ‘faulty’ part comes in when...

Stage Ten: The Cycle Repeats:

Like any other recovering addict, you think you're okay until you see the little Netflix symbol in the corner of your screen, a common trigger among bingers, and think, “Let’s just have a look. It won't be like last time.” But again, you're not strong enough. You can’t be that regretful if you see the signs but decide to go through the cycle again regardless. You see that new show everyone's been talking about and your interest is piqued (sound familiar?). “What's one episode?”

Except, one episode turns to seven, the first season becomes the sixth one, 90s turn to 60s, 8 hours of sleep becomes 3 hours, socially extroverted individual develops into a sleep-deprived, introverted one. It's a vicious, inescapable cycle--a black hole. Only the ones with willpower will make it out unscathed.

See you on the other side.

[Disclaimer #2: Finally finished at 4:57 AM and was going to sleep until I saw the new series, Stranger Things. It looks intriguing and I’m going to check out the first episode after a short intermission. No time like the present, am I right?]

#Malack #culture

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puckerjae-archive · 4 years

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Harry Potter Writing Contest | A Day of Magic

I now sit at my computer, which is an odd piece of technology to think about with all of the magic that’s surrounding me. I wanted to document everything that happened - as probably the most interesting journal entry I’ll ever make. And here are three things I never want to forget:

1 - Even if it was just for today, magic was real. 2 - Noelle Adams will always be the love of my life. 3 - Nothing is impossible.

It was a morning like any other. Or so I thought. I forgot to set my alarm the night before, so I woke with a start when the sun came through the window and hit my face. I nearly fell out of bed and should have noticed then that things were off since there seemed to be a moment where I was levitating before I hit the ground. I didn’t pay any attention to it, however, because I was most definitely running late. So much so that I zoomed around my dorm room with no attention or care, which was normal for me, but what wasn’t normal for me was grabbing a black robe off the hook by my door and placing my wand in the inside pocket. Yes, you read it right folks, a wand. That should have tipped me off, but like I mentioned previously: running late.

It wasn’t until I reached my first class that I realized something was off. The usual bare walls of the World Politics room were lined with bookshelves and the normal, human teacher that normally stood in front and lectured looked translucent for some reason. I was in a state of awe as I approached him and when I moved to touch him, my hand went straight through him. HE WAS A FUCKING GHOST! I ran out of there, unable to comprehend what was happening and that’s when I realized that I’ve been completely blind. As I looked into the classrooms that I passed, people were wand-waving and mixing potions. When I passed the football field people were flying brooms and I realized it wasn’t a football field at all, it was a Quidditch pitch.

One of two things were happening. Either I was finally going insane or this was a dream. In my state of shock, I ran into my brother, Puck, who was sitting on a nearby bench. “What the hell is going on?” I asked him as I sat down next to him. “Is this a dream?” He looked confused, which I could understand and I had a feeling if I went on, he would really think I was crazy. “Pinch me.” Puck was still confused, but he entertained me. And all that happened was that now I felt crazy AND my arm hurt. I didn’t even take the time to acknowledge the exchange, instead I continued my trek towards something - anything that made sense.

As I approached the Switch dorms, I came face to face with everything I seemed to ignore as I ran to class. Fellow Switches who’s faces I recognized were on the roof, playing a form of chicken with their brooms - jumping off the roof and seeing how close to the ground they could get before tilting the nose of their brooms up and flying up towards the sky. Others were dueling, growing plants with their wands, and snacking on candy that looked like they were full of life. It was as if the world was full of magic and although I knew it wasn’t actually full of magic, it felt so real.

Talk about an existential crisis.

I spent a good amount of time just taking it all in. It was as if a wish I made when I was a little boy was finally coming true. The shock and the fear was starting to wear off as I was encompassed with a sense of wonder and awe. Ig magic really was real then I could do magic. On instinct, I reached into my robe and pulled out a wand. I really studied it, taking in the way it curved at the end and how it was mixed with both dark and light wood, kind of like me. I pointed it in front of me and nothing happened. The inspiration came out of nowhere. I tried the first spell that came to mind and then bubbles came out the end of my wand. They were varied in size and floated up towards the sky. I was giddy with excitement.

There was only one person I wanted to share this moment with.

I finally made my way into the Switch dorms and directly to Noelle’s room. I was comfortable enough that I didn’t even knock, I just made my way inside and I didn’t know why I thought I would be met with anything normal. His eyes went to the couch and while it was empty, he could see clouds of smoke rising behind it. I didn’t know what to expect as I rounded the corner, but it wasn’t Noelle sitting with her legs crossed, pouring things into a huge cauldron. “Noe?” I whispered, making myself known but she didn’t seem phased to see me. She didn’t say anything but she smiled and patted the seat next to her. She let me in on the potion she was making, something to calm anxiety and help with depression. I kissed her on the cheek and she welcomed it. I didn’t disturb her with my existential crisis, but it was nice to know that in any universe, she was there for me.

It was a surreal feeling, knowing I was in on something special all the while trying to figure out if this was real or not. The rest of the day consisted of finishing my World Politics class with my ghost of a teacher, Magic Switching 102, Using Scourgify in More Ways Than One (Domestic scenes and magic), and Potions for Aftercare. There was Quidditch practice, which I was able to watch from the sidelines and couldn’t get enough of the way the brooms zoomed over me. Then when it came time to ride my skateboard, realizing there was a broom there instead of a board. I will never forget the way the wind felt against my face as I flew around campus. It was the most free I’ve felt in years. During dinner, the cafe was transformed into a great hall where the tables made whatever you were craving - no words required. For me, it was my Mom’s meatloaf and mashed potatoes. As the night winded down and I was back in my own room, I had a sneaking suspicion that as soon as I fell asleep, it would all be over. And the worst part, I wouldn’t remember any of it.

I now sit at my computer, which is an odd piece of technology to think about with all of the magic that’s surrounding me. I wanted to document everything that happened as probably the most interesting journal entry I’ll ever make. And here are the things I never want to forget:

1 - Even if it was just for today, magic was real. 2 - Noelle Adams will always be the love of my life. 3 - Nothing is impossible.

#gleedsmhpwriting #( hp event )

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aikasjournal · 4 years

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April 26, 2020 - honest things

A literal lazy Sunday. But because we are not in a normal world, there is always a strange feeling to the normal things we used to have, like Sundays.

Weekends now are spent just here in our own homes, looking at the same gadgets, the same loved ones, consuming sad news of higher confirmed cases, never abating just increasing, distracting ourselves by books, social media, bread, cookies, coffee, dogs, Zoom meetings, memes, and more more internet time.

Anyway, I just have a hard time identifying what to think and what to feel these days. It’s like the most difficult question these days, “how are you?” But let me try:

1. I’m still not okay. I cry mostly at night these days. Every day still. I miss papa with every ounce of my being. His memories are so vivid, his essence, his body, his laugh, his voice, the way he stands, sits, and shakes his feet, are on my mind every minute of every day. I have slowly succumbed to it, to allow them to float in my mind without crying, without much resistance. And when I smile or laugh like nothing happened, I immediately pause in my head, checking if it’s okay or a betrayal of sorts. But daytime is usually kinder to my thoughts than night time. The sun is friendlier to the grieving.

2. I cannot fully articulate the weird space of grieving for two big things at the same time: my personal loss and this pandemic. They look almost the same from the outside, both shitty things that we all wish we could wake up from. Like all things we try to understand and go through, I read to inform and equip myself on how to handle these shitty things. It comes as no surprise that both events deal with grief. But there’s only so much grief one or rather I can handle. There’s not much contest actually. Since my father’s health crisis in February, I have gone through the phase of grief head on, no lessons, no experience. Just head on pain, sink or swim. That’s all I ever thought about, all the while trying to accommodate the fact that a lot of people are also prematurely dying of this fucking virus.

Now that my first loss has moved on to a permanent case, I’m slowly catching up to the rubbles of what we currently have right now — an unknown future.

3. There’s not much to do is there? What do we do other than wait and bitch and grieve of our pre-Covid existence.

Because grief is painful, I’ve turned to all types of anecdotes of people who have experienced grief. One of the best I’ve read were FB COO Sheryl Sandberg’s words on losing her husband. This NPR interview is worth reading for sure. It’s a little corny at first glance but she said that the way to build resilience in the face of adversity is to cultivate gratefulness. I know, brand new information right? But damn did that work!

Days after my father’s funeral, I joined an online FB grief group (US based, couldn’t find one in PH), and I started reading about the specific cases of other people’s losses, a lot of them COVID-related too. If you weren’t grieving yourself, it would be very depressing. But for me, it underlined the feeling of “it really could be worse.” As shitty as everything seems at the moment, there is joy in recognizing that we still have our health, some of our loved ones, good friends, food, and other BASIC BASIC stuff that are actually good, even great enough at any given time. I am super grateful to have the basics.

4. After what seemed like eternity, I have regained my ability to be absorbed in a book and finish BOOKS. Over the years, I don’t know if it’s just life or technology, but I have lost the rapture I used to have for books. I could read in bed for weeks on end and I will not care whatever happens to the outside world. That was back in high school to be honest. And now here I am. It took, what looks like, the end of the world for me to reinvigorate this part of myself and I am so happy and proud of myself for it.

I don’t know what happened exactly. When I was in the throes of my grief for papa, all I wanted was to consume words, read everything I could get my hands on about people who suffered the same loss. From the core of my being, I have now fully understood how stories heal. Reading stories about how people, real or fictional, struggle with loss (or any life changing adversity, really) made me feel less alone. I know these are not new information but it bears repetition come the time we are in the frontline experiencing these shitty things.

5. God bless Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper’s conversation on grief. If there’s one other thing I struggled with during this time, it’s the question of my faith. Death forces us to look at life stripped of its noise and trappings. It made all my existential tendencies to reveal itself from hiding, asking me to ask myself “now what?” What do we do with this life again? And why do we need to die? Why should we die? Why should my loved ones die? Why can’t we all be vampires and live forever like no one ever did? Colbert’s response was basically a defense on the less-than-obvious gift of life’s shitty things. Colbert boldly says, “what punishments of God are not gifts.” His response is so beautiful I took it upon myself to transcribe every word from 12 minute mark onwards.

I could go on and on about grief if someone would care to listen actually. There is no doubt in my mind that I’ve felt and learned a lifetime’s worth of lessons and even more questions since my father’s death. To think it hasn’t been a month, and we’ve been quarantined now for a little over a month.

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ek-do-teen · 6 years

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Jalebi Review

I decided to write movie reviews because one of the many advantages of living in Thane is dead cheap movie tickets. So movies become not only weekend getaways, but also a medium to shoo away weekdays’ blues (imagine getting an 80 rupees ticket in a multiplex on a Monday). (So now you know why me seeing a Mahesh Bhatt movie makes sense). So capitalising on this opportunity, here goes the review of an another Mahesh Bhatt rendezvous filled with romance and lust- The last 30 days have been a golden time for Bollywood industry. As a viewer, every week there were so many good movies to chose from that it was a herculean task to choose which movie to watch at a specific time. Bollywood gave way to masterstokes like Andhadhun, Sui Dhagga, Manmarziyaan. This week however the situation has been pretty lukewarm. Jalebi had to compete with FryDay and Tumbbad. (Tumbbad seems promising howsoever) What drew me towards this movie after seeing the trailer was the dichotomy created by the genre and the name of the movie. The name Jalebi creates an environment of pomp, vigour and positivity while the trailer gave me feels of Aashiqi 2- slow & monochromous. Thus I was drawn to the theatre, leaving Tumbbad over Jalebi to solve the mystery. Why name a dark romantic sombre movie as Jalebi? The movie started as expected, the girl’s character was giving tough competition to Aditya Roy Kapoor’s sketch in Aashiqui 2 (A2). She was hearbroken, depressed, ready to take away her life. Just like A2, the character here is a progeny of a rich father who is ready to book her daughter a business class flight ticket to anyhwhere in the world when she says “Dad, I need 24hrs to get over all this”. To this she replies “No Dad”, gives him an edgy look implying I am not a bigadi aulaad, stop pampering me. Ironically, all throughout the movie she could be seen behaving like nothing but that. (She later on decides to go to Delhi by Shatabdi, 1st Class whose price equals Economic class flight ticket, just saying.) Rhea Chakroborthy, who portrays the character of Ayesha looks stunning all throughout the movie. She is a struggling writer. The lustful passion and the honeymoon phase of the relationship culminates into marriage of Dev (Varun Mitra, debutant) and Ayesha. The lady proposes to the guy in front of the mohalla in Old Delhi (Don’t go aww, it’s stupid), gets married off in Pyjamas, detests the same mohalla afterwards, puffs cigarette behind (oops sorry) with open doors in a joint family, gets the whole bottle of whisky and can be seen sipping through it unabashedly, just like..aah, you get that right?! Don’t get me wrong, I am all up for women’s rights, but here the portrayal of character is very polarised. The filmmakers want to focus on the girl as carefree and therefore they show her devoid of common sense, the filmmakers want to show the guy as being head over heels so therefore they show the guy as being devoid of common sense! The dialogues are melodramatic and cliché, makes one recall the era of 2000. But despite all this what keeps one hooked to the movie is – 1. The fact that it is a short movie 2. The setup- the present, past every aspect of the movie is shown through the train journey. After Jab we met, we are seeing such a setup after a long time. 3. Every character on the train journey provides just the apt cue for Ayesha to make her go and recall her past. At the same time, the story of the supporting families isn’t compromised. I think Indian cinemas shows dual nature – emotions and logic where both are inversely proportional to each other. Because that’s too much of a task for the majority. This movie is high on emotions and well, logic takes a back seat thus. There are so many questions that will creep you out all throughout but then as Indian audience we have been taught well to keep the cerebrum shut all throughout our life, except while appearing for CAT, GMAT, IIT entrance exams. The climax of the movie steals the limelight, it makes one think (atleast it made me think)- closure is important, sometimes the “getting over” phase is not about the love you withhold for the other person, it is about unresolved questions, self esteem being broken, et. al. In short it is about YOU and I will give that a 10/10 point on the scale of realism. Therefore the climax makes me turn a blind eye to all the loopholes they have shown in 100 minutes. We should appreciate the production house growth curve though. Their last production was Raaz, Reboot. The music tracks, just like any other Vishesh House production are enthralling. Another tid bit about this movie is (hold your horses) that it is an “inspiration” from a Bengali movie - Praktan(WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THAT). Your life will go absolutely fine if you do not watch this movie. BUT if you have no plans for a weekday and your boss has fucked your day pretty bad, see this movie. No, the ending will not put you into an existential crisis. Fortunately, that’s where this film differs from A2. Also, as a film it starcasts many debutants. Apart from the hero, Varun Mitra, it is a debutant for Degangana Suryavanshi (supporting character) and the director Pushdeep Bhardwaj. The acting is upto the mark. The movie will not disappoint you much. And oh! Why Jalebi? I loved to solve the mystery.

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cipher0quilo-blog · 7 years

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Translucent reality- KHR fanfic

I wrote something... i’m still god damn confuzzled. Disclaimer: KHR is not mine and will never be, the wonderful Akira Amano does. Thank her for creating it. Warning: Bad grammar and spelling... SWEARING... a lot... depends . ----------------------------------------

The soft, stable clicks of the clock's hand led me to question my mental stability everyday. The buzzing of the silence progressively increasing my curiosity.

I may be slightly smarter than the average, slightly more patient than the average but lying on your back all day, having no prospect of progress on anything at all. No action, no movement but eating, sleeping and... and taking a number 2 or 1 in diapers were just... pointlessly irritating.

Annoying, waste of my time, aggravating, mocking, infuriatingly painful... provokingly maddening.

Anything to take me away from this damn crib, from this room would be wonderful, fantastic and god damn magical.

Would be my thoughts everyday.

Well, until I finally thought of practicing how to speak, stand, walk and finally... finally pinch off my diaper and take a good look at my genitals.

Which in turn, led me to think of how stupid I was to spend several months pitying myself and my sorry state. Numb muscles from my arm stretching to slap my forehead in annoyance.

I sighed, exasperated.

"What a hassle"

Oh my god... who was that? Am I going crazy, am I finally insane?

It took me a couple of minutes to realize who said that and capture a pair of stiff, trembling hands flip up quickly. Said hands held up towards the ceiling for 5 long majestic minutes.

I could speak.

Holy honey sugar god of the magical candy land.

I mean... I could swear now... i mean, i could communicate to my mommy dear. Now... now to move onto strengthening my muscles. To check if i was still a male. To slowly rip the diaper.

Of course i was still a male. I mean what sort of god would put a 16 year old male in a female body?

2 months later --------------

A fucking sadist, of course. Would you look at that... down there. There's no ding dong. There's no sausage. No wiener.

Somebody help me. Dear lord, life is precious and insanely beautiful but at times it's equally as disturbing.

It's painful.

Even if i was just reborn as a girl now, it feels like my male genitalia was harshly cut off.

I-i could just ignore it. I guess?

No big deal, right?

I questioned myself. Reassuring myself. Yea... i would be fine...

I'm just gonna go through my life as a girl. Not like losing my penis was a big deal.

Existential crisis, resolved? Yea, probably. I could just have a sex change.

Is there one at this time anyway? I haven't exactly figured out what year and day i was in. If there wasn't one and i'm way back at the past.

I'm gonna have people call me daddy. I swear i will let their existence remind me that i was a guy before. Because there was no way in hell i was gonna go through hormones, puberty, romance and all those magical stuff as girl. I'd be gay.

There's no problems with gays but I'm completely straight. Will always be. Yea... i would.

Now to get back to reading.

Picking up the old looking book and sloppily opening it. I finally realized. That the words were in another language. A language that I vaguely remembered studying at year 7-8. It was in Italian. And I barely remember the language.

Now you may retort back to me by saying that 'isn't' it lucky that you know even a little bit of it to start off on?' Now, my young ducklings, yes it is.

You remember the time i told you that i have patience that's slightly above average? Well my beautiful munchkins. I won't be able to wait that long.

The world i'm in becomes so much more beautiful every time i blink. Note the hatred and sarcasm laced in this thought.

Shit just keeps getting better because all my fucks have already been freed and to be honest, i need an alternative. So i'm gonna throw shit at life. As. much. as. possible.

Where is my mother? I need a change of diapers.

2 more months ---------------------

It took me 2 more months to figure out what date it was. From the books, from the news and from the gossip.

It took me 2 months to notice i was an orphan. I just had my own room because the orphanage was quite spacious. Quiet and old, though brand new and noisy at the same time. Beautiful but ancient.

14 bedrooms and 9 children. I get paranoid each time the clock ticks and somebody walks down the hall, the wooden floorboards creaking eerily.

They nearly scared me shitless when they opened the door to check if i was sleeping. I swear the person responsible for this orphanage was doing this on purpose. Opening the door excruciatingly slow to scare the crap out of me. Which, let me tell you, actually did. I cried so much just to get sweet sweet revenge.

You see, i read books most of the time, Alessia, the person responsible of the orphanage, checked up on me. Gently reminding me to go to sleep worriedly. I would, after an hour or 2 when it was 12 p.m.

Now i would describe Alessia to be a little better than an average looking girl, brown hair and green eyes. I would say she was beautiful in her own way though.

Alessia's troubled expression would meet mine every night. It would harden even more each night.

Finally, she thought of a plan. And well, as you know. It was to scare me. I think she was planning to just scar me 'slightly'.

She didn't know it would loosen my bowels and shit would come rushing out. Her face contorted in disgust as the smell floated around the air. It just wouldn't stop flowing same goes for the tears. Both my ass and my eyes burned.

I remember it so vividly, even the feeling. It scarred me enough to sleep at 10 p.m. and it scared Alessia enough to be careful around the halls. Which just made it worse. Or she was doing this on purpose because she figured out i was crying just to get revenge.

Story time over though, Alessia established before this incident that i was some sort of genius for knowing this much. Alessia barely even knew how to read and write. Though she tried her best to teach me.

January 1st, 1607.

It's so god damn far back and it just gets better from there.

Cecilia Silvano. The start of the name came from my mother but the rest was all Alessia.

I was born in May 16th, 1606. Approximately 6 months old. My parents? I don't have a father she says. I have a mother she said. Typical, i would think. Though i was just kindly accepted in the orphanage because of my mother. She gave birth at the streets with the help of Alessia, fortunate enough to stumble through her. And, i was born at the streets out of some sort of miracle, at the cost of my mother's life.

I really didn't know how to react to that sort of revelation. It wasn't typical, i would think. It was painful to feel but there was nothing to react to . I didn't know her, she didn't take care of me but just the thought of her going through the birth, begging Alessia to accept me and weakly mutter her last name just to give me something to know the me here as... just made living here so much more painful.

Everything wasn't so sappy and harsh in the... 'future'. The place where i used to live. Well, developing countries still go through this but...

Everything was given to me and when i went through that 'questioning my existence in this world' or 'what's the meaning of life' phase , i foolishly thought how there was no point in life when there was people who would wish for food, for clothes... for a family just like mine.

I realized that but i refused to accept the reality in front because somewhere... somewhere, there was just something better. Anime... worlds, you know? There was nothing to reassure me that that was true. So... i didn't want to live.

And i never got through that phase until this revelation. I wanted to live that life again, so desperately. I was in a safe haven. That was utopia. I thought i was strong.

Being exposed to this much pain and the poor ways of living in this time was just too much. I thought i could handle it. But i couldn't...

I sighed exasperatedly. Another existential crisis. Great.

I'm thinking about depressing things again. Jeez, i just promised to myself that i'll live this 2nd chance of mine to the fullest. I would make a change. To help people out there through the pain, you know?

I still do love procrastination. So i'll just do what i can to selfishly live a life i can tell myself was 'good' enough.

That's not the point now though.

I GOT A LOOK OF MYSELF.

And god damn i was good looki- Cute.

Alessia would always comment at how my hair was colored abnormally.

Soft white hair that would glisten when exposed to the sunlight and light blue eyes that scared the living daylights out of Alessia once. She said it was glowing in the dark. I didn't know how to respond... So i told her it was just 'cool'. I had pale skin, my face was just adorable and i was simply contemplating at how beautiful my mother is to be able to make 'me'. Overall, i looked like a fragile doll.

...I have anime hair.

Oh yes i do.

I got dem power.

Next thing i know. I'm actually in an anime.

I will majestically turn into a magical girl and kick ass .

Wearing a white button up shirt and light blue overalls that looked worn out, i trudged down the stairs.

Waking up from a baby crying their heart out was irritating. I heard the source downstairs so i grumpily decided to check what it was.

I heard the soft hums of Alessia's voice. Trying to calm down the baby. I strode towards her uncomfortably. Gently yanking at her dress.

She quickly looked at me with panic stricken eyes and i sighed. "Pull some funny faces, Alessia. The kid'll calm down." I said tiredly.

She quickly complied, trusting my words .

The crying gradually became quieter replaced by soft gurgles and adorable giggling. If i get strong enough i will hold onto this child.

Alessia relaxed. Though her posture was still stiff.

"He was abandoned...", She spoke up, her hands trembling with what you'd think would be anger. She was scared. For herself if this child was someone important or for the child itself.

"Unlikely Alessia. Just relax and do what you do best. Smile and take care of people. Because if you're afraid, the kids will wonder and mirror you. Since they are still children." I softly replied.

She quietly laughed ," I'm older than you but you're smarter. I've experienced more but you're wiser. Why is that..."

" You're not expecting me to answer?" I asked, eyeing her, half lidded. Alessia gently rocked the baby and lulled him(?) to sleep, "... No. Because it may just be a simple reason."

She smiled warmly down to my figure.

I returned the expression though a little stiff.

True... It is. I was given a second chance in life and i'm living through it.

Standing next to this 15 year old women, i nodded.

" Do you know his name?"

She sadly shook her head, her hair bouncing as she carefully adjusted her hold of the baby, "Unfortunately, no. I just saw this child abandoned at the path. I couldn't just leave him if we have this much space in the house."

A frown slowly crept on my face though i would, i say, i was internally smiling, "Are you planning to name him...?"

"Yes... I very much do. I thought you were about to disagree of this idea. There's not much food to give to all the children in the orphanage and now we have to have room for one more. We... we can handle it, i'm sure." She reassured me.

" I mean, i would have, even though i worry that you don't eat much already but you seem to favour this child quite a bit." I responded, amused.

She giggled, "Anyway, do you have any ideas for this child's name?"

I slowly raised a brow. I do. Maybe?

I laughed inside. A smile threatening to split my face as i thought of the name of my sister's favorite anime character.

Giotto Taru, was it?

From the anime Katekyo hitman reborn.

I chuckled, Alessia patiently looking at me with twinkling eyes.

The name's too weird though.

"No. I'm horrible at naming stuff..." I answered, a small pout on my face.

She sniggered, "How cute."

I blushed slightly, "Alessia stop, i dislike compliments like that. I would accept good-looking and handsome but... just no,"

She eyed me weirdly.

A little panic electrocuted my body as nervously spoke up, " So have you thought of a name, yet?"

Alessia held her gaze at me but she finally let go and smiled, "Yes. I've thought of a perfect name."

I smiled. Typical. Always creative, she would've been a brilliant student in school. " Giotto Taru. His name is Giotto Taru. "

Giotto Taru? ...

I choked from my spit and elegantly tripped. I floorpalmed. The floor majestically smothering my face, smelling like a musty toaster.

That's probably just a coincidence... I looked at the child, calming my breathe. "Are you alright? Was it too bad?" She panicked rushing towards me, trying not to wake the baby. Now that i get a good look at him... He does have a little strand of blonde hair.

Definitely a coincidence.

" I-i'm fine... just, why Giotto Taru?" I shakily questioned.

" W-well, when i checked his eyes. It was an abnormal color like your hair. I-it wasn't white but it was light sunset orange. It just looked so mesmerizing and gentle. I felt as if i was sort of accepted? Which is weird because why would a baby accept me. I mean, Giotto means Gentle ruler... s-" Alessia stuttered.

The noise of my body hitting the ground interrupted her panicked speech.

I'm not familiar with the series but i'm familiar with my sister's fan girl rantings.

Maybe this was just a big coincidence. Or I just jinxed myself and shit just got real. I swear if I see life... I will forcefully fill you with my own faeces . -------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry, i had to get off the couch... I'll go back to it don't worry. It's too precious. Hope you enjoyed it, i guess...

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trendingnewsb · 7 years

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Letting Go Is Not Giving up, It's Taking the First Step to Taking Back Control

Letting go can sometimes feel a lot like giving up. You may feel that you are betraying the part of yourself that believes you can still make things work. But by dragging out the inevitable until it’s tattered and torn, you are only betraying yourself. That’s why you need to love yourself more, put yourself first, cut your losses, and move on.

Forgetting an ex is exactly like kicking an addiction.

Turning your back on something that you still want can be one of the most emotionally exhausting endeavors that you can hope to endure. And although you feel that you’re amidst a groundbreaking existential crisis, what you are experiencing is actually purely chemical. During a breakup, your brain generates dopamine in excess. Dopamine [1] is what causes you to obsess and over-analyze your circumstances. You’re literally addicted to your ex. But like all addictions, this too can be kicked to the curb.

Regardless of the good times, it’s time to move forward.

I’m sure your ex was great “if you got to know them.” But you’re a better, stronger person without them and soon all of these bad feelings will be a thing of the past.

The Process of Letting Go

As with any loss, there is a grieving process that you need to go through to get all of the negativity out of your system and avoid a relapse somewhere down the line. Most of us are guilty of reaching out to an ex in a moment of weakness. The healing process is difficult and different for everyone. You may experience these emotions in a different sequence, or revisit some of the steps [2]. The important thing is that you are working through it.

1. Denial

Perhaps you don’t want to believe that it’s really over. You keep checking your phone to see if their name pops up. Maybe tomorrow they’ll change their tune and things will go right back to normal. Although you know that it’s over, you can’t help but entertain scenarios where it somehow works out. Your entire world is turned on its side, completely unbalanced without your “other half.” During this phase you need to refrain from reaching out. Your attempt to fix things could just be adding insult to injury.

2. Anger

It’s finally starting to set in. This is real. It’s really over. You’re starting to overwhelm yourself with bad memories, all of the times that they did you wrong. You start placing blame, resenting them for ruining something beautiful. Or perhaps you’re angry with yourself. You’re struggling with some underlying guilt that maybe you’re the reason that this had to end. Whether or not you feel justified by your animosity, you can’t hang on to that. Whatever they did to you, whatever you did to them, you need to forgive. Forgive them, forgive yourself. We all make mistakes. And if it goes deeper than a simple mistake, where vindictiveness and a lack of respect come into play, all more reason to move on.

3. Bargaining

This is a bit of a relapse period- you were bound to have one. This is the phase where you try to get your ex back by any means possible. You may make promises to change, threaten their well-being or reputation, or inform them that they are hurting others by their decision not to be with you. You’ll negotiate huge life changes in order to facilitate the failing relationship. Some people even take it a step farther by getting friends and family involved, or even spiritual mediums like visits with psychics or prayer. Perhaps this could save your relationship- but the chances aren’t likely. Just be sure you’re not sacrificing your self worth in an effort to get them back. You always need to love yourself more.

4. Depression

At this point, you’ve probably completely convinced yourself that you’ll never find love again. All feels lost, and you don’t feel like yourself anymore. Depression takes on many different forms, rearing its ugly head when we’re at our most vulnerable. You may find it hard to get out of bed, or a lack of motivation to do anything at all. You feel alone in a crowded room. You experience a loss of appetite, inability to sleep; or just the opposite, you sleep too much. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re not pathetic for feeling so low. But you need to pick yourself back up. Use baby steps. Practice some self care. Run yourself a nice bubble bath, create a playlist of all of your favorite songs, grab a batch of your favorite ice cream, put on your favorite chick flick that you can blubber to and just veg out. Give yourself this time to ground yourself so that you can spring up once again, as strong and vibrant as ever.

5. Acceptance

Phew. We made it! I mean, you made it. You’ve avoided all of the trips and traps of falling back into the motions of your inevitably ending relationship. You’ve crashed, you’ve burned, and made some mistakes. But all is well, and you’re still breathing. And every breath you take is yours. Every step you take can lead you in whichever direction you wish. You’re stronger and wiser now, and have a better on grasp on what you’re willing to accept in a relationship from this point on. Take this time to really get to know yourself, and what you want out of life. Realize that you don’t need anyone to complete you; you are already complete. You will find love again, so don’t worry. Fall back in love with yourself. Your radiance will attract suitable partners who will compliment and balance you.

Reference

[1]^Lifehack: How Your Brain Tricks You Into Missing Your Ex[2]^Dr. Christina Hibbert: Dealing With Grief: The 5 Stages of Grief

The post Letting Go Is Not Giving up, It’s Taking the First Step to Taking Back Control appeared first on Lifehack.

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