#sometimes painful and awful but other times is an incredible experience and ALSO. most IMPORTANTLY ! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

commentaryvorg · 4 years

Text

Danganronpa V3 Commentary Addendums: Oddly-Specifically-Themed Edition

I mentioned back when I finished the commentary that I might occasionally make new posts with little addendums to things I said in my posts. I re-read this commentary a lot just for my own sake, and sometimes I find myself wanting to clarify existing points, elaborate on things, or just make a whole new point that I hadn’t thought of during the original commentary post.

So here’s a post kind of like that… but this one features bonus thoughts on a rather specific theme. People familiar with my content on my main blog may be quite aware of the reason I found myself having these extra thoughts on this particular theme, but for the sake of not alienating anyone not familiar with that reason, I won’t directly mention anything about that here.

Content warning for the entirety of this post: discussion of torture. And I guess a little bit for psychological abuse in a non-torturey way as well.

The escape tunnel

Consider the escape tunnel in chapter 1. After being the first person to flat-out refuse to keep attempting it, Kokichi makes a rather interesting comment.

Kokichi: “You’re free to keep trying on your own, but forcing us to join you is basically torture.”

Kaede: “T-Torture?”

Now, not to sound like I’m agreeing with Kokichi or anything (because I’m not, not quite), but here’s my new hot take on the escape tunnel: it really is a literal torture device.

Kaede: (When I finally woke up, searing pain coursed throughout my entire body.)

Since it’s swallowed up by a minigame, it’s kind of vague exactly what really happens to them in the tunnel each time. But based on lines like this, and everyone’s general reactions after failing over and over, it seems it’s gruellingly physically exhausting and painful. They don’t just fail to escape; they suffer for trying to do so.

Which, when you consider that there were probably plenty of ways to make the tunnel nigh-impossible to get through without making it so gruelling like this, has to have been deliberate on the part of the gamemakers. This is more than just giving them a glimmer of apparent hope and then snatching it away; this is torturing them for even trying to act on that hope.

This tunnel is a torture device, designed to ensnare people like Kaede who are stubbornly determined to escape, and then to psychologically beat them into losing that determination by coming to associate it with nothing but gruelling suffering and failure.

Rantaro: “They want us to be desperate to go home. Corner us mentally.”

Rantaro says this, but it’s actually kind of the opposite. This is to make them give up on ever getting out of here through their own power, so that they feel like the only remaining option is to do as Monokuma says and play the killing game after all.

It’s easy to see that this works on Kaede. It’s because of the disheartening experience with the tunnel that she can no longer believe things would ever be as easy as the mastermind letting everyone go once Shuichi captures them on camera, which is why she becomes convinced that the only way to be sure of stopping the mastermind is something much more permanent.

But what might not be so obvious is that the tunnel’s psychological torture also works on everyone else. Not only does nobody ever even think about trying the tunnel again until it’s chapter 5 and Kaito’s getting especially desperate to be a hero (and they have a way to disable the traps anyway), but also, nobody ever seriously tries to escape in any other way before then, either. They talk about it, but everyone’s too hesitant to actually act.

Only a few of the weaker people there would have been consciously thinking “escaping is impossible and trying will only cause us to suffer more”, mind you. That’s the same kind of blatantly-unhelpful attitude as Kokichi’s insistence in chapter 2 of “we shouldn’t co-operate because Monokuma will make us suffer if we do”. Most people should be able to realise that this is defeatist, and that of course they should be doing the things Monokuma doesn’t want them to do, whether they might suffer for it or not, because the possibility of escaping in the end would be worth that suffering.

If some of the more determined ones caught themselves having a thought like that, or realised that the tunnel existed to make them think that way, they’d certainly be having none of it. Kaito would fervently tell you that there’s no way that stupid tunnel taught him to just give up on ever escaping this place; why the hell do you think some bullshit like that would sway him!?

And yet, it did. It got to everyone in a psychologically subtle enough way that they don’t even consciously realise it did so, so they’re not able to push themselves to fight against it. It’s rather like how Maki gradually developed a heartbreaking coping mechanism of simply accepting her awful situation without trying to change it, just condensed into one afternoon of what really does deserve to be called literal torture for the sake of making them give up.

…But as for Kokichi being the one to make the point about this being torture, well, that’s more by luck than judgement. As usual, he’s really spouting self-preserving bullshit that completely misses the actual point.

Kokichi: “You won’t let us give up and no matter what we say, you have the moral high ground… That… doesn’t sound like torture to you? When you say we can’t give up, you’re not inspiring us, you’re strong-arming us!”

Because, geez, way to blame the person who was manipulated by the torture device exactly like it’s designed to do, rather than blaming the people who actually built the device and who are therefore really the ones responsible for torturing everyone here.

Maki’s assassin training

Another thing I’ve had a lot more thoughts about is Maki’s third FTE, aka the one where she talks about being tortured during her training.

Maki: “They tried to break me during training, but *I* was still there.”

See, the thing is, while Maki thinks they were trying to break her by torturing her… she’s wrong. Of course they weren’t. They wanted a functional assassin. If she broke entirely, then that’d waste all the time and effort they’d put into training her this far. Sure, they had her friend as a backup option, but it’d still be a waste to have to do all the training over from scratch. They probably very carefully design the torture to not outright break their child-slaves such that they’ll become non-functional, while also making sure to pick kids they know are resilient enough to not completely fall apart through something like that. The possibility of Maki breaking under it was very, very unlikely from the beginning.

Maki: “They tried to drag my dignity and tear it… To make me feel empty… But even then, *I* found myself. And then, they would do it all over again.”

This is a more accurate assessment of what they were trying to do. They were trying to break her sense of personhood so that she’d just be an empty, obedient tool who would do what she was told without question and never think for herself.

(And they failed, because Maki is incredible. I really love her way of framing it as “I was still there”, “I found myself”. It’s so impressive that she managed to hold on to her sense of self throughout all that, to the point of even being consciously aware that that was what she was doing. She had no-one to help her through this, yet she managed to somehow support herself through it all anyway, out of her sheer determination to do what she needed to for the other kids at the orphanage. Maki is so good.)

Maki: “It… wouldn’t have been strange if I broke during all the torture. But even so, I tried my best. I wouldn’t have accepted the job in the first place if I knew I couldn’t do it… But most importantly, if I broke, then *that girl* would have replaced me…”

Maki still seems to believe that she was in genuine danger of breaking to the point that they’d have needed to outright replace her, though. If she actually thought about it from a logistical standpoint – which she’s usually very good at doing – she should be able to realise that this would be a very inefficient way to train child-slave assassins. So it’s interesting that she can’t see that.

I can only assume that that’s because the torture was so awful while it was happening that she felt like they must have been trying to break her entirely, and that she was in real danger of becoming non-functional. Which… of course she would have felt that way, regardless of what they were actually trying to achieve with it. Torture is horrible, and those cultists are the biggest assholes in the world for casually doing this to children. (Or at least, they would be if they existed, but I finally thought about this so much in the first place thanks to certain AUs in which they really do.) Maki is so, so strong.

Something else I’ve been thinking about regarding Maki lately is the notion that, well, she didn’t need to have “willingly” chosen to become an assassin for the sake of protecting the orphanage and her friend. None of the kids they recruit ever needed to be given a choice in the matter. They’re orphans, and the cult runs their orphanages; it would be perfectly easy to force a kid into assassin training even if said kid didn’t care about protecting their orphanage to the point that they’d be willing to sacrifice everything like Maki did.

Maki’s not the only high-school-aged assassin, since there are others from her cult. She apparently doesn’t even have the most inherent talent for it, given that the cult was scouting her friend first. So I wonder if the reason Maki was deemed the Ultimate Assassin anyway is because the fact that she went willingly made her better at this than any of the other child assassins the cult produced. If she didn’t resist the training (beyond the natural human instinct to resist pain and suffering, at least), it’d be easier for her to hold on to herself. She chose to submit to them and shut the regular-person part of herself tightly away in order to be able to do what she needed to do, which meant she never needed to have that part of her be broken.

Maybe kids selfless enough that they’re willing to choose this are a rare exception. (Aside from the fact that it’s still not at all a choice, because emotionally blackmailing a ten-year-old that their effective family will starve if they don’t become a mass murderer is not okay on any level, but you know what I mean.) Perhaps all of the cult’s other child-slaves weren’t quite brave and selfless enough to have willingly walked into hell, even with the threat of what’d happen if they didn’t, and they needed to be dragged there kicking and screaming instead. In that case, if they weren’t choosing to submit already, the training would have had to beat them into submission, probably resulting in those poor kids genuinely losing most of their sense of self rather than just locking it away. They might have actually had to become empty, near-mindless puppets before they could kill people.

If Maki retained more sense of self than the other child-slave assassins, that’d leave her with more initiative in carrying out her kills than the unfortunate kids who could barely do anything except follow orders any more. Although Maki had no real choice over whether or not to kill people, she wouldn’t have lost the capacity to make at least some choices by herself within that, in terms of how to do so most effectively.

(Maki mentions at one point that she specialises in quick deaths – which seems to imply that not all assassins in her cult are necessarily trained to do that as standard. That was something she chose to do on her own terms, because she wanted to be as kind as possible while still doing what she needed to do. She still hadn’t lost the capacity to be that kind.)

So maybe, paradoxically, it’s because Maki had the most kindness and selflessness out of all the cult’s child-slave assassins that she ended up being deemed the “best” out of them at killing people.

With all that said, while the torture didn’t break Maki’s sense of self, one thing it does seem like it managed to break is her belief in herself, her sense of worth as a person. Maki thoroughly hates herself – but it’s not just in the sense that she hates herself for having killed countless people. She also just doesn’t think she’s any good at anything else, such as taking care of people, persuading people, helping out in cases, even though she is good at all of those things. While she hates the fact that she’s a killer, her skills in killing people are the only part of herself that she has any kind of confidence in.

Maki: “Something only I can do… I can think of just one thing. …I know what you’re about to say. But… that’s the reality.”

Maki: “I was confident in my talent as an assassin. I knew I would be able to do it.”

And… that’s almost certainly deliberate on the part of her trainers. They tortured her, physically and psychologically, to beat her down into feeling like she had no worth at all. Then, based on her genuine confidence in her talent of killing people, I can only imagine that they filled up that void of worthlessness by giving her praise and validation – but only when she showed promise in the assassin skills she was learning, and for nothing else. That way, she’d be actively motivated to get even better at it and turn herself into nothing but a killing machine, so that she could get more of that validation and feel like she was worth at least something after all. Those assholes in the cult would have become something like her twisted abusive Stockholm-Syndrome-y parent figures that she was desperate to please despite everything, because she was just a kid and she had nobody else.

Guh. Maki deserves all of the hugs and all of the genuinely supportive and healthy relationships and I’m so glad she has Kaito and Shuichi for that.

Chapter 5 stuff

There was a thing I alluded to indirectly a few times during chapter 5, not wanting to make it explicit when the game didn’t either because torture can be an uncomfortable subject. But since I’m here openly talking about all of this now with a content warning on this post, I might as well make my point from then clear.

Maki believed it was very possible that Kokichi could be torturing Kaito while holding him prisoner. That’s part of why she was so desperate to get him out of there as soon as she could.

(Obviously Kokichi wouldn’t actually have done that, but Maki completely believed his evil sadist lie. That coupled with her own experiences that paint torture as just normal gave her every reason to assume it might be happening.)

Meanwhile in chapter 5, there’s the Strike-9 poison.

Although it requires time to circulate, even a small amount in the body will result in certain death.

This is… very unscientifically vague. How small of an amount? Every chemical that’s capable of killing someone is always going to have a minimum threshold beneath which there’s simply not enough of it to do so. The label on this poison bottle really, really ought to actually state that amount. Obviously it would vary from person to person, but the label should at least state the average.

Instead, by not stating an amount, the implication the narrative wants to give here is that any amount of Strike-9 in the body, no matter how tiny, will absolutely definitely be lethal. Which is not how pharmacology works.

I can forgive this, though, because it’s just a writing contrivance for the sake of the case. The writers wanted it to be an unquestionable fact that anybody who was shot with an arrow coated in Strike-9 would definitely die unless they drank the antidote of which there was only one dose. They didn’t want to bog that down with ambiguity based on the threshold of lethality of the poison and the question of just how much the arrows were coated with. Nobody was meant to get any kind of hope from thinking “okay, so Kaito was shot with a poisoned arrow and Kokichi drank the only antidote, but what if there just wasn’t quite enough poison on the arrow to kill Kaito?” Technicalities like that were not the point of the case.

It is also, for that matter, quite a narrative contrivance that apparently the entire bottle of antidote is necessary to properly neutralise the poison, such that there wasn’t the possibility of them splitting it half-and-half or something. Really the exact amount of antidote needed would probably depend on the original dose of the poison, and there’d be all kinds of ambiguity to that, too.

But shush. These contrivances are necessary building blocks to create a case where one of Kaito or Kokichi has to be dead and the only ambiguity is in which one it is. Just like the whole deal with the Exisal’s ridiculously convenient voice changer, I do not actually care what background details needed to be kind of awkward and forced in order to get this story to work, because the story itself is so damn good.

#danganronpa v3 #addendums #torture #abuse

17 notes · View notes

supergenial · 4 years

Text

Cindered Shadows was pretty decent

I recently finished the Cindered Shadows DLC and decided to once again write about my impressions, don't worry though, this one isn't as long as the previous ones. Spoilers: I think this is as good as fire emblem is gonna get for a while.

1) No Agarthans, thank GOD

A story as old as fire emblem: There's an interesting human villain with down to earth motivations or obsessions, but in the large scale of the story they're overshadowed by a supernatural being who wants to destroy the world for no reason other than "they're just evil". This is Edelgard and the Agarthans, Arvis and Manfroy/Loptous, Rudolph and Duma, Ashnard and Ashera, Walhart and Grima... you get it. This shit sucks to put it bluntly. Having these stereotypically evil bad guys who are clearly evil is one of the main things that brings down the plot of any fire emblem game. I'm of the belief that they should kick out these supernatural villains and just leave us against the human villains, the one's with actual ideals and beliefs other than "hurr durr, destroy the world".

And then there’s our villain for this DLC. Now yes, it feels like they recycled a certain professor from the Harry Potter series, but I like that he is "The" bad guy for the DLC, he's not being controlled by anyone. He's obsessed with Byleth's mom and in-game this makes a lot of sense. If Byleth, who is incapable of communication, can drive people crazy for them just by existing then just imagine a Byleth who can actually talk. Her "waifu" charms must be off the charts, so I can't blame this guy for being obsessed. More importantly he's not being controlled by the Agarthans, he's not being played by anyone. He's a man who's lived a righteous life, he took care of a lot of people who all love him but ultimately decided to use them for his own gain and his own obsessions. As far as FE villains go... He's good, honestly, great job Intelligent Systems, I expected a lot less.

2) Reduced avatar wanking

Shots fucking fired

Sure, Byleth's mom is a main focus of the plot, and Byleth is the one who sets the plot in motion, but rarely does it feel like the game is going "gee Player, you're so great, you're our god, we all love you and want to marry you". Byleth still plays a large role sure (unfortunately) but it still feels like this is the story of Yuri and his gang with Byleth being their strategist which is, idk, way better than the idea behind the main game? The one where Byleth turns into a literal god, gets every achievement of the army attributed to them only, has every other conversation remind us how glorious Byleth is, etc.

In fact the dlc goes as far as having Hapi constantly belittle Byleth and even make fun of their communication skills by calling him Chatterbox (good job to the localizers, she doesn’t say this in the japanese audio). Get that teacher’s ass girl, destroy them. (Obviously I would hate this behavior if it was directed to someone else, but in this case I'm willing to make a concession).

3) Yuri's backstory

Ashe: I admire and love this man who is my only parental figure but Rhea said he's kind of bad so I killed him Yuri: Church ordered me to kill a bunch of thieves and delinquents and I refused

You have no idea who much I love the fact that Yuri is someone who protested his orders and got kicked out of the church for refusing to kill civillians. This instantly sends him very high in my rankings. Playing through the first half of the game all I wanted was to stop and say "No, Lady Rhea, fuck you. I don't think it's very cash money for the most powerful military force in the continent to eradicate a lightly armed militia of farmers (with popular support in their locality!)" this is what true imperialism is all about! But there is sadly no option for that.

Just by telling us that Yuri is someone who was punished for saying "No, these orders are inhumane, I refuse to carry them out" that is enough for me, the game is saying "yes, we know, have your compensation price". In the end Yuri is extremely loyal to Rhea which is unfortunate but hey, at least they lampshaded one of the most glaring issues I have with the main game, so that's at least something.

4) "You've obtained all information. Proceed with the story, NOW"

Rather than wasting time forever thinking up which activity I should carry out, abyss is simply a place where you talk to the abyssal denizens to get some plot information or speculation, and boom, you're done. No running around forever, no quests, no doors that take ages to load. You can perfectly skip the abyss parts and at most you'll miss out on Edelgard's conversation with Dimiri (which is fucking hilarious) and a few rusted weapons that can be forged but that's it. Upon talking to every resident of the abyss the game will actually say you’ve acquired all information and will prompt you to go into combat rather than assume you want to dilly dally for a while.

I actually rather like this and would not be opposed to it being the philosophy behind future in-between segments between chapters. I can understand IntSys wanting to load in a ton of features like a sauna and fishing to rack up excitement for the game, I know I was excited for fishing, but when these activities have rewards tied to them, replaying becomes kind of a chore, "aw geez, I have to fish 69 fish to reach professor rank A+ AGAIN" (I actually had to when trying to get the piss screen from clearing maddening). Getting only some conversations and a bit of context for the story, that's... pretty good honestly, I liked this better than the monastery and better than My Castle. Throw in some skits with multiple characters at once and I’m gold

(seriously how come there’s no scenes with the three of the bros, Dimitri, Sylvain and Felix all hanging out together, the fact that a third character never shows up in support conversations is fucking bad)

5) Sometimes less is more

I've extensively complained about three houses already but bear with me. Yet another thing that infuriates me about the game is the extensive amount of work it required. I truly do think that if they had released only the blue lions route and left everything else in the plot as mysterious and unexplained loose ends left entirely up to speculation, that'd be a great game on it's own. Instead I have to see all the hard work that went into making the other routes only so that, in the end, they just had me going "well it was ok I guess". Every scene in the game requires work, many hours of coding, writing, voice acting, sound editing, making sure the models don't look too messed up, bug testing, etc. The amount of work that went into three houses was brutal regardless of what you think of the final product, yet a lot of people didn't even bother playing through all of that. So yes, I honestly wanted less, give me a more concise game rather than spreading too wide and ending up thin.

Cindered Shadows on the other hand is concise to a fault to make up for that. The story is pretty straightforward and leaves no loose ends to itself, there's no anime cutscenes, no supports (within abyss, you can support them all in the main game). There's even that very awkward sacrifice scene where some characters are having their life and blood drained from them yet the visual representation we see is just them standing around like normal, with Yuri even doing that hand pose he does all the time instead of squirming in pain or something. It's very awkward looking, objectively not good, but it gets the point across and doesn't make me go "wow you put in all this effort for nothing" because the whole thing is also fairly short (5 to 10 hours in hard mode).

I know, it sounds like I'm shitting on the dlc, but the point is I'd much rather get something short that leaves me satisfied than something like the main game that makes me go "this could've been so hecking gooood if they changed X" for the rest of my life.

6) The gameplay

Chapter 4 is my favorite mission in the whole game

They made Hard Mode good. I previously said maddening was the one difficulty where this game made sense, but this one achieves perfection with just hard mode. This is because the team actually knows what you have. In the main game there's all sorts of variables to account for due to the large amount of player expression that is possible, you can reclass anyone into anything and throughout many lucky or unlucky level ups, maps can be entirely different based on that rng and choices. Here though, your characters already have solid bases starting at lvl 20, and you can't reclass too much so the devs know exactly what you're working with and can plan accordingly. Beating the maps feels incredibly satisfying not just because the objectives have more variety now, but also because you feel like you found the right way to use the tools you were given. This is why the first few chapters of any fire emblem game often feel so good, because the devs know exactly what you have.

Not that I think player expression is bad! It's very satisfying to warp skip chapters and to use broken units like battalion vantage+wrath Dimitri as these things make you feel like you've truly subjugated the game, but it takes some time for those things to really take off. There's a time to reap and a time to sow, and the sowing time can get pretty dull sometimes but that's what makes the payoff feel worth it. Still, for a short experience like cindered shadows is, this style just fits perfectly, plus chapter 4 has quickly become one of my favorite chapters in the whole game, along with chapter 6.

7) In The End

Idk folks, I just like it. If you just want more adventures with the three lords, this is it.

If you’re looking for any excuses to avoid this I'd say the better ones are: maps are reused from the main game (they work much better here though), it's 10 hours at most so it's price-to-cash ratio isn't very good with the expansion pass being $30, and also the Abysskeeper feels a bit TOO winkwink nudgenudge to me, especially since Gatekeeper was popular enough to make it into Super Smash Brothers. Like yeah bro, we get it, we all love Gatekeeper, you didn't have to do this.

I also like that they finally gave Dimitri a semi-problematic quote where he says he kinda likes the idea of poor people living underground out of sight, I think it’s a very rich-white-boy flaw to have and not entirely awful given his life experience up to that point. And yes I do think he has no flaws and is entirely unproblematic in the main game, “feral” as he may look it doesn’t seem like he goes around killing civilians or doing anything other than busting up imperial troops which is kind of justified since they started the invasion, on top that he’s the strongest unit in the game and the most chill and honest ruler once he calms down, so little dent in his record that’s irrelevant in the large picture is indeed welcome.

Overall though, after being so massively disappointed by the Fates DLC, so much I didn't even bother with the ones for Echoes, I certainly like what I'm seeing here and that's a good sign, bravo Intsys.

#fire emblem #cindered shadows #spoilers #review #deep analysis

8 notes · View notes

love-takes-work · 5 years

Text

The episode that hits you the hardest

There are many Steven Universe episodes that are basically designed to put your emotions through the spin cycle and hang you up to dry. We've all been there during one episode or another--excited, dismayed, inspired, devastated, blown away. But some of us have an episode that kicks us hard in the gut for personal reasons. An episode that's not just emotional, but intimately catastrophic for us. What's yours?

For me, that episode is "Cry for Help."

The character I relate to the most in the show, by far, is Garnet. A lot of people who love her say it's because she's ~so cool~ and aspirational with her self confidence (and believe me, I think that too) and because her relationship is inspiring, but for me, it's because I've never seen a fictional character get stability so right.

She may be on the stoic side and very much the strong and silent type, but she's not stable due to being unfeeling. She's definitely a squishy bundle of feelings under there. But she's utterly in control, knows her strengths and limitations, isn't ever self-deprecating about her talents, and understands herself in a complete and clear way. She can still be surprised or hurt. Being stable isn't about being numb.

Nearly all of the problems Garnet has to handle belong to someone else, and she rarely struggles with herself.

Characters like her and people like me find themselves, willingly and not so willingly, throwing life preservers and providing lifelines to people who are not stable. Many factors figure into why--you do it because you can, or because you know something about their problem, or because you love the person--but if you're a Garnet in a world of insecure Amethysts, inexperienced Stevens, and desperate Pearls, you've probably saved a person or two.

In "Cry for Help," we see Garnet exploited for her strength and stability--betrayed by Pearl, her literal oldest friend in the world--and we see how it (pretty much literally) tears her apart.

It's HARD to rattle someone as stable as Garnet so she shakes apart into her component pieces. It is very very hard to do that to someone with their feet so solidly on the ground. And when it happens, sometimes the pain that comes from it is so intense that you're not sure who you are anymore.

Let me elaborate in the context of the show. The Crystal Gems decide to destroy the partially rebuilt Communication Hub because Peridot's been using it to send messages to the enemy. But they can't destroy it the way they did last time because the Fusion chosen to handle the job, Sugilite, compromised everyone's safety. Garnet fusing with Amethyst is a no-go.

Garnet's handling of breaking that news to Amethyst left a few things to be desired, but ultimately, Pearl was so grateful and joyous to be chosen instead that it's hard not to be excited.

And even though Sardonyx was formed for a functional reason, it was also SO MUCH FUN!

They destroyed the Hub together and both personally enjoyed themselves. Even though Pearl was the most demonstrative about how much fun she had, you can see how caught up Garnet was in the joy. She loves fusion too, and she loves Pearl too, and she loves being Sardonyx too.

"Why don't we do that more often?" says Pearl.

Garnet and Pearl have an incredible history. They've known each other for over 5,500 years. They were allies and soldiers in a lengthy war, they endured hideous traumas together, and they are the only survivors of the final battle. They understand each other like no one else can. Surely they can trust one another.

Garnet found out she couldn't trust Pearl. It turned out Pearl enjoyed the fusion experience so much that she lied about similar threats to tempt Garnet into fusing with her again, and Garnet allowed herself to get distracted, never seeing the possibility of her oldest friend hurting her in such a personal way.

She was devastated. First it came out first as boiling, earsplitting anger.

And then it cooled to icy, silent rage.

What did Garnet say in the moment it happened? Almost all of her lines are about Pearl's actions derailing the mission.

"That's why I couldn't see us finding Peridot." "You've been fixing the Hub." "Peridot's out there somewhere and Pearl's been distracting us with NOTHING!"

She pretends the important thing is how she compromised the mission. But she also says another thing.

"You tricked me."

In this moment, everyone understands why she was furious to be misled. But I don't think the others recognized the depth of this wound because Garnet is very good at concealing her vulnerability. She doesn't want her team to think its leader has the capacity to be personally hurt in a way that limits her usefulness in a crisis. She's supposed to be strong and never let the others doubt her competence. And her confidence has never been a lie--she has never had to put on a face when it comes to that. But in this moment? She slammed all the doors shut. She had been sliced open with a very sharp knife and had to turn quickly so no one would see her guts. (Not the first time she’s done that, either.)

Because of the way she focused on the mission's importance, Pearl bumbled her way through antagonist-trapping attempts for multiple episodes trying to get back in Garnet's favor. And that was probably even more painful for Garnet--that Pearl fundamentally did not understand why a betrayal of this nature was so devastating. She had JUST been through a fusion-related trauma discovering the fusion experiments in the Kindergarten; the sanctity of consent in fusion had just been highlighted for her, in opposition to an extreme example of its violation, and then she gets personally subjected to false pretenses for fusion that negate her reasons for consent.

Pearl made up emergencies to steal Garnet's time and energy, and made her feel foolish for trusting her. She misrepresented the issue because she desired an intimate experience, and tricked Garnet into providing it under those false circumstances. Most importantly, she compromised the integrity of her body and mind using fusion--something Garnet is passionate about, something Garnet fought to defend and define, something at the core of Garnet's identity. Pearl perverted something sacred to Garnet and then she doesn't even realize how wrong it was. It must have been so awful for Garnet to discover that Pearl can lie as easily as she breathes just to get something she wants--something Garnet probably would have been willing to give to her if it had been requested in honesty!--and that she isn't really free to tell her how much it hurt because her longstanding trust had been used against her.

And that's the thing about relating to a character as strongly as I relate to Garnet. When you're the strong one but you're HURT, you still can't let yourself lash out at someone like Pearl. You could crush someone whose daily existence is so tortured and fragile. You know you won't do it. You'd be the bad guy if you stood there on your pedestal of stability and told them how much they've disappointed you, how much they've disgusted you, how much revulsion you feel at the breach of trust. Pearl and Garnet have both experienced trauma, but Garnet doesn't define herself by it--she has coping mechanisms Pearl lacks, and even at the peak of her anger she knows it would not be right to unleash all of that on a traumatized person who barely knows how to cope with her own destructive, damaged thoughts.

Garnet is the victim in this situation, but she's still got to think about how her brittle friend will handle the process of healing from what SHE did to them both. The silent treatment was horrible for Pearl--it made her frantic and drove her to additional terrible decisions--but it was the kindest thing Garnet could do while still simmering under the surface, smoldering with her own unhealed bruises.

Garnet took herself away to handle the internal conflict Pearl's breach caused in her. She went away with Steven and Greg, who wouldn't really be as affected by watching her breakdown as the others would, and even though that breakdown wasn't strictly controlled or ideal either, it was a choice she made during a personal crisis. Garnet fell apart.

I recognize this technique. Some people--myself included--can choose where and when to process emotions (including freakouts and breakdowns), but can first and foremost decide to hold it together when it's important. I could give you six examples from within the last two years when I had to do stuff like that. I'm not better than anybody else because I can. I have effective coping mechanisms. Many people don't have a choice about whether they freak out or if they get triggered. I'm fortunate. I use it to TAKE CARE OF THINGS IN THE MOMENT that I might have some nightmares about later, but I'm not going to fall apart NOW. I need to be able to do that for people who don't have the option. That's one of the things Garnet does well, too. That's why we've only seen her come apart unwillingly if she was lethally damaged or fundamentally shaken to the core.

When Garnet reconciled with Pearl at the end of "Friend Ship," she spoke very little about her own pain. She knew that making Pearl feel even guiltier about her betrayal was not going to be constructive. She already felt bad. She didn't go on at length about how hurt she was--she just said "I fell apart over this." "Ruby and Sapphire were in turmoil over how you deceived me." "I came undone." Most of what she said was focused on helping Pearl understand why her loneliness, her insecurity, and her weakness are not excuses to steal someone else's strength away from them without their permission.

"You lied to me. You need to learn that there are consequences to your actions."

"It's not easy being in control. I have weaknesses too. But I choose not to let them consume me."

"I struggle to stay strong because I know the impact I have on everyone. Please understand, Pearl. You have an impact too."

Garnet knew all along that everything she said and did--even in a crisis--would be an example for everyone else. She's rarely allowed to have selfish moments where she gives in to whimsy, sacrifices responsibilities for self care, compromises others' comfort for her needs. She was caught in the crossfire of Pearl's desperation and was betrayed intimately, but even after all was said and done, she still had to counsel Pearl through the consequences she pulled down on herself.

Even after all this, she does still care deeply for Pearl, and I'm sure it's painful to watch her struggle. But Garnet still had to be the one to answer "how can I make you forgive me?" with an explanation of why she can't. And you believe Pearl when she speaks about how useless she feels on her own. She's not manipulating Garnet or lying about how ineffectual and incompetent she feels. The problem is, she's still making all of that Garnet's problem. And Garnet accepts the responsibility of solving it.

She wants to be mad. The Ruby in Garnet is happy to state loudly that she DESERVES to be mad. Shouldn't she be allowed to stew, to rage, to feel? She was treated unforgivably and then had to tolerate Pearl doing backflips in the wrong direction to coax an undeserved resolution out of her. But she also wants to be practical. The fatalistic Sapphire in Garnet is ready to move on because she sees the big picture and knows her emotions aren't that critical when they're fighting to save the planet.

I went through a protracted "battle" like this recently. I had to solve a problem that was way bigger than me that started before I was born. I had to spend a lot of time, money, and energy learning things I never wanted to know and handling issues I wasn't even supposed to know about. And along the way I was treated horribly by several people, most notably the main person I was trying to protect. Sometimes it seemed like they were doing everything in their power to sabotage my efforts to help them, but I was patient and supportive, even when they were very rude, even when they refused to help accomplish the small things they could handle on their own, even when they treated ME like I was the source of their pain despite being the one trying to stop it.

One of my allies said it was baffling that I kept helping at all considering how I was treated. They were gobsmacked how I still offered respect and kindness to someone who was inadvertently causing me so much stress. And I always said the same thing: I do it because I can, because if I don't the consequences (which I will ALSO have to handle) will be worse, and because everyone else is in way worse shape than I am.

Yes, maybe I contain a little Ruby raging about how unfair this is and how personally hurt I am, but that's what texting my friends is for. I also contain a little Sapphire telling me I have to get A if I don't want B to happen, and I chose the uphill battle that let me achieve A. Ruby and Sapphire are both right. I deserved to be furious. I also needed to get the job done, and I did.

Ultimately Garnet learned that Pearl is a damaged person acting out of desperation, and even though the betrayal was personal and not okay in any way, it was rooted in loneliness and sorrow that Garnet does not experience. Stable people often help unstable people when they care about them. They shouldn't have to sacrifice themselves to do so, but they are usually able to figure out where the line is for how much they can reasonably give of themselves. Sometimes, when stable people still care about the people who hurt them, we feel like we've lost the rights to our feelings. That voicing those thoughts will just make it worse. That we will be the cruel one if we react incorrectly to being wronged. We solve it on our own. We go away and get a grip and come back ready to fight.

But seeing that, boy. Seeing the fresh wound in "Cry for Help" and knowing how that feels, when you're reeling and wondering how you're going to build yourself back up (while pretending nobody knocked you down), feeling so raw and punctured by someone you REALLY don't want to stop trusting . . . you wonder, if another person can do that to me, am I really that stable?

Or, conversely, would I even be stable if I didn't care about anyone strongly enough that their betrayal could be my undoing?

"Jailbreak" is my favorite episode, but "Cry for Help" eats me alive every time I watch it.

#steven universe #gif #long post #garnet #cry for help #personal tag #myblog

550 notes · View notes

dboliklover · 5 years

Text

Easter Smut - #4 - Laito

Laito - impregnation, blood play, rough sex, overstimulation, danger, Low-key Yandere

TW: Mild Blood Play, And a section in which Laito is holding reader too close to a balcony railing with mentions of potentially falling.

In your life, there was an overwhelming amount of uncertainty. And a certain red-haired vampire did not ease that unsteadiness you felt in your life, instead he added to your sense of puzzlement. Your entire relationship with Laito was messy, to say the least. Everything about it was confusing and uncertain, and you never really knew what he was thinking. Hell, you didn’t even know your own feelings towards him. You felt as though you equally hated him as you did adore him. Sometimes he could actually be almost romantic and cute, but other times he was painfully arrogant and cocky to the point where you wanted to push him into the sun so he would burn into a crisp. With Laito, there was no in-between. You weren’t his girlfriend, but you definitely weren’t friends so even the term ‘friends with benefits’ wouldn’t have labelled your relationship correctly. The best you were able to explain it would be “rivals with benefits”, but even that wasn’t quite the case. Nonetheless, even you had to admit that sex with the infuriating vampire was a highlight of that week. It was probably why you felt so helpless when it came to him - because as much as you felt a passionate contempt for him, you were also unable to fight off the equally passionate lust that gathered inside you whenever he seduced you.

You were outside on one of the balconies of the manor, watching the starlit sky shine down upon all in its wake. You adored the night sky and believed it to be the most beautiful and awe-inspiring thing in existence. Unfortunately for you, your serene time would soon come to an end. And come to an end, it did, when you suddenly felt a certain someone’s breath on your neck and ear as a familiar voice whispered playfully, “Here you are~” A loud yelp escaped you as you turned around to face the devil himself - Sakamaki Laito.

A sour frown established itself on your face as you breathed out softly, your breath having been caught when he startled you. “Don’t do that, you idiot.” You grumbled and slapped his arm lightly, not in a malicious way, more so in a you-scared-me-you-dumbass kind of manner. In all truth, you had absolutely no clue where the hell you stood with this man. Or a vampire. Whatever the fuck he was. Laito chuckled, laughing at your fear, visibly amused. “What, you don’t like it when I surprise you?” He questioned sensually, and you could already feel your will to resist him fading into the void. Why did he have to be so attractive..!?

“What do you want, Laito?” You asked, your tone blunt and to-the-point, but you already knew the answer, he normally only came to find you when he wanted to have sex. For the most part, you were alright with this, but recently...you utterly loathed admitting it, and you wouldn’t dare say it out loud - especially never to him, but you were beginning to get more ‘clingy’ and jealous when he was around other girls. It was only natural for you to begin to gain feelings for someone if you fuck them enough but you also knew Laito was a class-A fuckboy, and as such, you doubted he even could love you.

But every time you tried to resist Laito’s advances, you miserably failed. His control over you, and more importantly, your body, was too strong to counter. Before you could do anything else, you felt his cold arms wrapping around your torso as he pushed himself closer to you. You were leaning against the fencing of the balcony, and the fear of falling was strong, but he was caging you and you knew from previous experience that you would be unable to push him away. You cursed the predicament, but you were going to have to trust he wouldn’t push you off this high balcony. At the same time, the way his skin felt against yours was familiar and welcome by you, and it sent wonderful electricity down your veins. Moving so your head was touching his chest as he completely trapped you against himself and the balcony, his lips close to your ear once more as he whispered sensually to you, and caused the desire in your abdomen you often felt around Laito. “You look really cute today…” His words trailed off as his breath kept hitting your sensitive skin, as his tongue traced down your earlobe, the unexpected wetness bringing out a soft, breathy gasp, and you mentally cursed his ability to make you so weak in this moment, as you could actively sense your libido awakening.

“You know,” his voice was unusually gentle, usually he’d seduce you playfully, but without much other emotion, and yet tonight it was...different and you had not a single clue as to why he seemed peculiarly loving, in his own, perverted way. “You looked as though you were craving me before I even came here...with your pretty little ass stuck up in the air as you leaned against the railing” his kisses moved down your neck and said railing was now pressing into your ass and you were more aware of the lethality of this situation than previously. If he dropped you or even gave the smallest shove, you would fade from this world, or at least break half the bones in your body. In the most unusual of ways the danger morbidly aroused you in ways, you didn’t consider it would. As for Laito’s words, they were humiliating, but at the same time, mild degradation was strangely welcome and you were even surprising yourself.

“You looked like a little bunny, waiting to be mated” If his presence wasn’t currently intoxicating you this way, you would have been incredibly offended he was saying such mortifying things. But as it was, at this moment his sultry, sensual words only resulted in your lower half to heat and produce the uncomfortable moisture between the folds of your vagina. No one else could ever bring out this primal side of you as well as Laito had, and the more feelings you got for him, the more power he held over you. You had a feeling he knew what he was doing to you every time he was close to you. It was as if your hazy self was suddenly thrown into a pool of freezing water as the sharp stinging of his fangs piercing through your skin ‘awakened’ you. Once more, a gasp left your soft lips, but now it was louder and a pained gasp as you could feel the hot blood flow down your sensitive neck, only for his tongue to swirl and lick the crimson liquid from your flesh. Before long, the initial pain turned into a shocking ecstasy as you felt yourself breathing louder and gently moaning. It was an odd feeling, to have him drink from you. It had been forever since he’d done so, and you’d honestly forgotten what it’d felt like.

After another minute, Laito pulled away and stared you straight in the eyes, smirking as he licked his ruby-stained lips. The eye contact between you two sent your body into a fiery frenzy. Laito then moved back from you, and your immediate reaction was to be overcome with disappointment at the idea that he wouldn’t fuck you. However, just as you thought he’d turn around and leave, he grabbed your waist and turned you around so you were facing the beautiful sky once more, arms holding onto the railing as surprised sounds left your mouth.

When he pulled open your shirt and revealed your breasts to the evening air you found that the spring evening was a sweet, breezy-yet-warm one, and you were thankful for that. His hands grasped your ass before taking off your skirt and panties, throwing them gods-know-where. You were positive you were soaking at this point, his previous teasing causing a buildup of love juices at your core. His slender fingers moved up your needy pussy as he shoved three fingers in at once, releasing a shrill from you as your moans piled on top of one another. He pumped his fingers in at a fast, steady pace and the tightness in your abdomen formed quickly, his long digits ruthlessly finger-fucking you to paradise. Moments after you cried out a long moan as you came, which only made you even wetter down below, some of your love juices falling onto the stone balcony floor.

Laito stared at you with approving eyes, yet they held certain darkness which you couldn’t see as you weren’t facing him. He quickly unbelted his pants and took his tall, erect member out of the restraint that was his boxers. You were a loud breathing mess, as you recovered from your high, only for him to practically drilling his dick into you, filling you completely from the get-go. He roughly pounded into you, hands on your ass as he held tightly onto you, leaving finger marks that would be sure to stay for at least a couple days after this night.

Your hands gripped onto the railings until your knuckles were the same shade of white as winter snow, sweat dripping down your face and body as the heat was insufferable. His hands moved and brutally grabbed your breasts, fondling them with expertise, before he started to pinch your nipples, aggressively pulling and massaging them. The sensations of the pleasure of being roughly fucked and the sharp pain of having your nipples abused combined and the masochist within you loved every second of this.

Another several minutes passed by, and one of Laito’s hands travelled down to your clit, rubbing it mercilessly, the bundle of nerves sending thousands of pleasured signals to your brain. The amount of pleasure was unlawful, you were certain no human should be able to feel as much painful ecstasy as you currently were. Your mind, a blank slate, the only thing on your mind was Laito, his scent, the feelings he gave you, and the animalistic desire to be fucked until you couldn’t move anymore. You didn’t even try to conceal any of your euphoric screams, no longer caring about anything but the man bringing you so much pleasure.

Laito’s pace became sloppier, as his grip on your hips tightened to the point of pain. He twitched within you and that’s when you felt the heavy flow of his semen fill your fertile womb. He stayed inside you for several more moments before finally pulling out, the mixture of his cum and your juices falling down your thighs and onto the cold floor. You were gasping for air as your entire body ached in overstimulation. The intensity of that sex session was unlike anything you’d experienced before, and it shook you to your core

Laito smiled to himself as he helped you back to your feet properly and then picked you up and carried you to your room, your shirt almost falling off and your panties and skirt lost for the time being. You were sleepy and then you realised a vital fact. “W-wait Laito...you..you came inside me, I, I could get pregnant!” You exclaimed, your voice was soft but full of panic. He laid you on the bed and looked down at your tired, sleepy state with fond eyes, as his eyes moved from your face to your belly. “And?” He bluntly asked, eyes locking back with yours. You experienced a loving gaze you hadn’t ever experienced with Laito before. “I’ll take responsibility, I promise”. Somehow, you believed him as you drifted off to sleep. Soon, he mused to himself, you would be his forever.

- Mod Rozalia

This as so fun and kinky to write...Kanato’s up next. Don’t forget to give some feedback! <3 All support and comments are read and deeply appreciated

#Dbl #diabolik #dialove #dialovers #Diabolik Lovers #diabolik love #diabolik lovers imagines #X reader #Latio #laito sakamaki #laito sakamaki x reader #laito x reader #Laito #relationship imagine #smut #LEMON #LEMON SMUT #Yandere #yandere smut

307 notes · View notes

sceptilemasterr · 5 years

Text

MW Act 1, Scene 6 - Analysis

Title: Most Wanted: The Hollywood Killer (A CIU Screenplay)

Main Pairings: Dave x Sam

Other Pairings: N/A

Genre: Full Rewrite

Rating: PG-13 for violence, blood, swearing, alcohol, and sexuality

Summary: While talking to the crime lab’s eccentric trio, Sam and Dave learn more about Tull... and each other.

Previous Scene: The Other Case

Masterlist: Link

INT. L.A.P.D. STATION - CRIME LAB - NIGHT

The crime lab is a scene best described as “organized chaos.” Pop music blares from a speaker sitting at the workstation of a man with short black hair, glasses, and a blue cardigan, spinning idly in his chair. This is NIKHIL MANTHA, forensic specialist. Opposite him at another workstation is a man with messy brown hair and a patterned sweater, gritting his teeth in annoyance as he stares at his computer screen; this is REZA FASSIHI, data analyst.

HAYLEY ROSE (ON SPEAKER) (singing): Sirens flickering in your tail lights, your long-lost love’s your only flaw...

REZA: Nikhil, can we please turn that off? This wasn’t a good song four years ago, and it’s still not good now!

NIKHIL: But that’s the point! Pop princess Hayley Rose experimenting with a contrived club album with a hokey country twist? “Outlaw” is incredible in its American awfulness.

REZA: How does that make any sense?!

As the music plays in the background while they continue, the third occupant of the room ignores their argument entirely. MIRASOL BAUTISTA, criminal profiler and psychoanalyst, sits at her own workstation, frowning at whatever she is reading on the screen. She wears a white blazer and has her dark hair tied back into a bun.

NIKHIL: ...it isn’t my fault your tastes are embarrassingly mainstream-

MIRASOL (muttering): The contrarian hipster act, clearly a false front meant to get on people’s nerves. Typically seen in those with low self-esteem and-

NIKHIL: Ouch. I heard that, Mirasol.

MIRASOL: Oh, I know.

The door swings open, and Sam and Dave enter. Sam blinks in surprise at the music. Dave doesn’t bat an eye as he strides up to Nikhil’s workstation and hits the power button.

DAVE (deadpan): Oops.

NIKHIL: Hey! Excuse me, Dave, we were listening to that-

REZA: Correction: you were listening to that.

NIKHIL: Mirasol secretly enjoyed it!

MIRASOL: Excuse me, what?! I will murder you, Nikhil.

REZA: She’s not kidding, Nikhil. You weren’t here for the time she brought a live grenade to work, but-

DAVE: Look, as entertaining as this conversation is, right now, we’ve got a killer to catch. And more importantly, we’ve got company.

Mirasol, Nikhil, and Reza all look up and notice Sam for the first time.

DAVE: This is Sam Massey, U.S. Marshal. Massey, meet the Three Stooges. That’s Reza, our data analyst and resident computer nerd.

REZA (frowning): “Nerd?” Excuse you, Dave, I’m a data analyst and digital security consultant and a moderator for the Crown and the Flame official fansite... Okay, I may be a ‘computer nerd.’

Sam nods, clearly not understanding most of what Reza is talking about.

SAM: ...Pleasure.

DAVE: Over there is Nikhil, forensic analyst and card-carrying hipster.

NIKHIL: Nice to meet you, Marshal. I have to say, this ‘thing’ you’re doing with your outfit? Talk about defying the mainstream L.A. look with your rough-and-tumble style. Such a middle finger to the masses.

Sam crosses her arms, frowning.

SAM: I’m not trying to do a “thing.”

NIKHIL: Exactly, right? Everyone else is always trying too hard. But you get it!

SAM: Uh...

Dave shakes his head in amusement before moving on.

DAVE: Anyway, the cheerful one over there is Dr. Bautista, our criminal profiler and psychoanalyst.

MIRASOL: Just call me Mirasol. These two clowns don’t go by fancy titles, why should I?

SAM: I can respect that.

DAVE: Right, well, that’s the introductions. So, what have you all got for us?

NIKHIL: Perfect timing, actually. I’ve just finished my initial run-through of the forensics. Don’t have much to work with, but I was able to analyze those bullet casings you found, plus the autopsies and ballistics.

SAM: Let’s hear what you’ve got. I’ve got a hunch I want confirmed.

They walk over to Nikhil’s workstation. Nikhil swivels in his chair to face them.

DAVE: How’s it look?

NIKHIL: The autopsy and ballistics reports indicate an abdominal wound from a sawed-off shotgun, fired from approximately three feet away. Casings confirm standard double-aught buckshot. (shakes head) Can’t have been pretty.

SAM: Point-blank, straight to the gut. Tull’s specialty, the sick bastard.

DAVE: Anything else?

NIKHIL: Well, I’ve got an educated guess on the type of shotgun he used. It’s hard to tell for sure, but from what we could get from the camera footage, I’d say an old-school Easton 850, sawed-off.

SAM: Wait. Did you say an Easton 850?

NIKHIL: Why, does that mean something to you?

Sam gets a faraway look in her eyes, staring at a point on the wall. She says nothing for a long moment. Finally, she shakes her head and turns away.

SAM: No. You just... don’t see those every day.

From her station, Mirasol watches Sam with a calculating look. Dave notices and walks over to her, Sam following.

DAVE: Dr. Bautista, what do we have?

MIRASOL: I’ve told you not to call me that.

DAVE (smirks): Why do you think I keep doing it?

Mirasol rolls her eyes and turns away from him, facing Sam.

MIRASOL: Beckham had your file sent over, Massey. Frequent physical altercations. Questionable use of force. Repeated altercations... fascinating stuff.

SAM: Alright, alright. Let’s cut to the chase. What have you got?

MIRASOL: Let’s see... Propensity for violence and hot-headedness, such as when you brought in a fugitive with multiple broken bones. Then the report of you telling a fugitive with hostages to, and I quote: “Grow a backbone, dirtbag.”

NIKHIL: Ooh, I want that on a shirt.

MIRASOL: And then there’s the raid on the New Flores Cartel, where the massive property damage perfectly showcases your flagrant disregard for-

SAM: Okay, okay, we get the idea! Lemme rephrase: what have you got on Tull?

MIRASOL: Oh, don’t worry. I’ve already put together his profile too, or at least a preliminary one from what little we know.

DAVE: Perfect. Let’s hear it.

MIRASOL: He’s a hired killer, but he’s brutal when he doesn’t need to be, even when it makes his job harder. Clearly enjoys inflicting pain. He’s clever but unstable, with textbook signs of egocentrism, obsessive behavior, and possible narcissism.

DAVE (sarcastically): This guy just gets better and better.

SAM: Anything else?

MIRASOL: Just that... look. I’m not easily disturbed; hell, I read the profiles of psychopaths for a living. Sometimes even for fun. But this guy... he scares me.

Sam nods in understanding.

SAM: Then we just gotta be scarier.

She turns away from Mirasol and heads over to Reza’s station, Dave following close behind. As she approaches, Reza springs awkwardly to his feet, accidentally knocking over his chair as he offers an excited handshake.

REZA: Wow, a Texas Marshal, surrounded by L.A. glitz and glamour! Love it! The fish-out-of-water thing is a classic trope in the industry, y’know.

Sam shakes his hand, looking puzzled.

SAM: The... data analysis industry?

REZA: What? No, the entertainment industry! I’m also an aspiring screenwriter, you know.

NIKHIL: Emphasis on the ‘aspiring’ part. He’s never actually finished a script.

REZA: Shut up, Nikhil! Anyway, my point is that I’m a bit of a film buff.

SAM: Huh. Sounds like that might come in handy in this town.

REZA: Yeah, I know, it’s not really... wait, what?

SAM: Hey, from what I’ve seen, Hollywood’s a special kind of crazy. Might help to have someone who speaks the language.

REZA: Ha! Boom! How’s that defeat taste, Nikhil? Someone actually appreciates me for once!

Nikhil groans and rolls his eyes as Reza picks his chair back up and sits down.

REZA: And speaking of ‘Hollywood’ and ‘crazy,’ by the way, I’ve pulled up some info on the main victim.

DAVE: Gavin? Could be a lead. But what about Tull?

REZA (frowning): Not much. From what I can tell, he surfaced suddenly about a year ago as a paid killer. Other than that, I could barely find anything.

SAM (frowning): What do you mean he ‘surfaced suddenly?’ Where the hell was he before that?

REZA: It’s the weirdest part of this whole thing. Far as I can tell, he emerged from thin air last year. His first kill happened in rural Montana, and before that... the guy just vanishes.

DAVE: Fake name, maybe?

REZA (shakes head): Nothing I can find. But I’ll keep looking. Gavin, on the other hand... with how much he’s posted about himself online, the guy practically did my job for me.

Reza swivels his monitor. Sam and Dave look at the screen, which is displaying a celebrity blog site titled “Dirty Hollywood.”

REZA: His personal blog is plenty already, but the real interesting part is this one. “Dirty Hollywood.” It’s a celeb gossip blog, and with the things he’s posted, he’s made quite a few enemies.

SAM: Could lead us to whoever hired Tull.

DAVE: Agreed. So, who’s on the list of Gavin’s potential enemies, then?

REZA: Honestly? Literally everyone he’s posted about. I can list all of them for you, but we’d be here all day-

DAVE: Give us the three most likely, then. Anything in the past week or so

REZA: Well, let’s see... he leaked some emails from screenwriter Josh Neely, exposing him as a plagiarist.

DAVE: Hold on. I spotted Neely on the tape, just before the murder. He was arguing pretty fiercely with Gavin!

Sam raises her eyebrows.

SAM: Damn. We’ve got our connection, then.

DAVE: Not so fast. Lots of celebrities were at that party, it doesn’t mean anything on its own. Reza, who else?

REZA: Gavin also posted evidence that Ryan Summers was making large, discreet payments to an unknown woman. Sure, Gavin never actually says she’s a call girl, but he sure as hell implies it.

DAVE: Huh. Ryan never mentioned that...

SAM: First-name basis with Ryan Summers? Really.

DAVE: Yeah, he’s a good friend of mine. We play poker on the weekends.

SAM: I’m not sure what’s harder to believe: that your poker face is that good, or that you’re actually telling the truth.

REZA: Anyway, the third suspect is pretty timely, considering Nikhil’s taste in music. Gavin leaked some of Hayley Rose’s, uh... illicit photos from her personal phone.

SAM: She’s the singer you were just listening to? How did Gavin get all this?

REZA: Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t legal.

Dave sighs, shaking his head in disgust.

DAVE: Typical. Thanks for the leads, though. Let us know if you can find any more on Tull, okay?

REZA: You got it.

Sam and Dave step toward the door, out of earshot of the analysts.

SAM: So what the hell does any of that tell us?

DAVE: I admit it’s not much to go on. What about the gun?

SAM: What about it?

DAVE: You seemed familiar with that specific model when Nikhil mentioned it. Do you know something?

SAM (muttering): Ugh. Of course. Goddamn detective.

Dave raises an eyebrow.

SAM: Nothing that would help the case. Look, Tull’s a killer for hire, right? So, first things first, we should look into the people he offended. Find out who hired him.

DAVE: That’s fair. It’s as good a place as any to start. Let’s go; I’ll drive.

SAM: Hope you drive fast. Every second we waste is another second Tull’s out there, a free man.

Sam heads for the door, but stops when she notices Dave hasn’t moved. He studies her, frowning.

SAM: ...What?

DAVE: Look. If we’re gonna be partners on this, I need you to level with me. Why are you really here?

SAM: It’s my job-

DAVE: Massey, I’m a detective. Half my job is knowing when someone’s lying. We do have Marshals in California, y’know. Something made you get on a plane and fly halfway across the country to nab Tull yourself. Something makes you look like you’re gonna punch a hole in the wall when you think about him.

Sam sighs in defeat.

SAM: Alright. Fine. It’s personal.

DAVE: There. Was that so hard?

SAM: Look. Tull killed someone close to me. I’d rather not say any more right now.

Dave nods and opens the door to head out of the lab.

DAVE: That’s fair. Listen, Massey: we’re gonna get this bastard. That much I can promise you.

SAM: Damn straight.

Next Scene: Good Cop, Bad Cop

CIU Tag List: @brightpinkpeppercorn @endlesshero1122 @bbaba-yagaa @acidsugar0

MW Tag List: @griselda1121

#most wanted the hollywood killer #choices most wanted #choices stories you play #most wanted rewrite #ciu project #choices interconnected universe #fanfic #reza fassihi #nikhil mantha #mirasol bautista #sam massey #dave reyes #john tull #error 404: es references not found #but wow are these three fun to write

8 notes · View notes

serialfirstdater · 3 years

Text

Do I Have a Type??

A close friend of mine brought up something recently when we were messaging each other back and forth on Instagram about dating, boys, the usual.

“I don’t know what your type is,” she said.

I asked her if she was sure. Were there no commonalities with any of the guys I’ve previously dated? She could only give me descriptors of my most recent ex (The Property Lawyer), which obviously did not match the ex before that (The Ex-Actor, whom I never really gave a name to prior on this blog but I’m doing it now for simplicity sakes).

Although she said this in passing, the thought stuck around in my mind. The following day, I visited another friend and caught her up on my dating adventures this past month. She too also said, I didn’t really have a type.

This got me thinking some more as I reflected back on both my exes (minus the shitty first one that I am not gonna even bother including because he was a mistake) and the guys I have been interested in this past month that were also interested in me.

I’m a fan of lists. So, I’m gonna list out each ex’s qualities and their physical attributes.

Exes

The Ex-Actor (Second Ex)

Physical Attributes: 5′10, normal body, baby-face, boyish charms, the only Caucasian on this list whilst everyone else is Chinese.

Personality/Qualities: Selfless, generous, agreeable, realist, a listener, slight goofball, lovable, introverted, thoughtful, and doting. Can be awkward upon first meet though lol.

Interests: History, space, camping, and indie pop.

Notes: I have to point out that this relationship always had an expiry date since he asked me out after I applied for my Australian visa. Therefore we never got too deep. So, it’s hard for me to point out the flaws in him because when we were dating, he had none. I was happy to spend time with him, doing whatever. He was the first person to truly give me what I always wanted in a relationship. Til this day, I still have a very soft spot for him. I tell everyone, he’s probably the only person that can potentially deter me from my future plans (unless we properly date and realize we are actually incompatible). However, a part of me don’t think so and I feel like he was the one I let go and my heart still never fully healed after 2.5 years. I plan to treasure the necklaces and card he gave me forever.

(From Future Me: I originally drafted this post up about 3-4 weeks ago. I tried shooting my shot with the Ex-Actor two weeks ago and he never replied. Although I was bummed, I had a feeling he was respecting the current relationship that he is in and didn’t want to complicate things. I respect that and honestly him not answering was enough of an answer for me. I no longer have to fantasize about what-ifs and torture myself over and over with the spirals of my thoughts. I didn’t know if he was still seeing someone hence why I reached out. His best friend/my friend later confirmed he’s still with his girlfriend (which I assumed was the case). I feel that a weight has lifted and I am in a much better spot mentally now. I honestly couldn’t get him out of my head from October 2020 to the beginning of June 2021. And yes, I was thinking of him when I was still with the Property Lawyer. I didn’t want to be but sometimes the mind works in funny ways and you just gotta deal. Either way, I hope he’s incredibly happy cause he deserves it).

The Property Lawyer (Third and latest Ex)

Physical Attributes: 6′, normal body weight (though previously ripped in his younger days), could be a side-character in some Chinese historical drama if he wanted to be looks-wise without his glasses (but my friend said he’s goofy-looking LOL).

Personality/Qualities: Extroverted, enthusiastic, entertainer, creative, generous, always affirming, low-pain tolerance, messy, wishy-washy, selfish, afraid to wastes time, easily stressed, doesn’t like when things are seemingly difficult, and one of my friends thought he had a subtle cocky vibe to him.

Interests: Magic, singing, playing instruments (guitar, piano, drums), creating films, hanging out with friends, and acting.

Notes: The Property Lawyer always made sure to take care of me throughout the entire relationship. He was happy to give me whatever I wanted (though by this point, it was no longer as new to me because of the Ex-Actor). Since we were long-distance for 1.5 years out of the 1 year 9 months we were together, we never got the full experience of dating each other. However, I did get to see his flaws here and there (hence the bigger list of negative traits) but it never really blew up until the very end when he broke up with me. Despite the way things ended, he still made sure to take care of the things that were most important to me because he knew what he was signing up for when he started to date me. (So bless his heart for sending all my things back and paying $4k for it). He was easily irritated and I did see that show up when we were trying to sort how to get my things back.

My Analysis Between Both Exes

I realized in the shower one day that the key difference between the two exes was the fact that the Ex-Actor is selfless whereas the Property Lawyer is selfish. I think this is key to why I have been so mentally and emotionally attached to the Ex-Actor. Everything he did, he did because he wanted me to be happy. Even at the end of that relationship, he kept telling me that he wanted me to live my best life abroad and that no guy should ever hold me back from my dreams.

Whereas with the Property Lawyer, at the end of that relationship, he told me one of the things he regretted was letting me go. Even in his card that he wrote to me, he said that he will always welcome me back as a friend and someone who will support him. As you can see, there’s a stark difference between the end of both relationships.

Quick Break-Downs of 2021 Dates (Thus Far)

This is just a break-down of the guys I have been interested in since I went back on the dating apps at the end of April 2021 after I found out the Property Lawyer found someone new to date after breaking up with me.

The Alumni: chubbier boy, good listener, a bit of a pessimist, easily triggered by dumb people, loves golf, hiking and his cat (and willing to buy my food or bubble tea each time :D)

The Historian: average weight, a bit old-school, enthusiastic, academic, extroverted, couldn’t have sex with someone he was not 100% romantically invested in. We also had conflicting values on what to expect from dating and he didn’t believe in paying for meals as expected each time when it comes to dates.

The Music Teacher: surprisingly fit, good listener, inquisitive, and... I think that’s all I can come up for this guy cause we only video-called once. Randomly ghosted and blocked me when I was asking simple questions about his previous relationships (which he simply could’ve said he didn’t want to talk about if he wasn’t comfortable but I only asked because I shared everything about my relationship with him). So in the end, not so great cause who tf does that (I find that to be either insecure or you are awful at communication).

Conclusion

Yeah, I don’t have a type. LOL. Simply someone I am attracted to at least mildly at first and most importantly, willing to indulge me in my Love Language. I’ve been interested in both extroverted and introverted personalities. Guys that are super sociable with friends or not much at all (but still need to at least have friends lol). I’m basically cool with anyone as long as they like me back basically. So, tell me in person what kind of guy do you think I will end up with the next time you see me based on my personality and how much you know me!

0 notes

jswdmb1 · 6 years

Text

Another Story

“I'll tell you one thing We ain't gonna change love The sun still rises Even through the rain”

- The Head and the Heart

I have always found a notion of someone receiving a “calling” to be strange. What exactly does that mean? Growing up Catholic, the priests and nuns used to talk about getting their callings. The way they made it sound, God spoke directly to them and said “be a priest” or “be a nun”. They said, “OK”, and their calling was complete. As a kid in a Catholic school back then, follow-up questions to this type of lecture were frowned upon, but I had plenty. I could not understand how God could talk to you directly and why wasn’t he talking to me. Plus, did he only call people into a religious order, or could he call you to do things like play professional baseball. Because I was much more interested in the latter than the former. Alas, a deep philosophical debate about one’s calling in life was not to be had at that point, so I figured that someday I would find out.

I can tell you that it took a long time for that someday to come. 46 years and 95 days to be exact. But, it turns out today is the day. This is no joke. I finally understand what a calling is all about. Before I go any further, I must disclose that I am not very religious. I gave up that Catholic habit a while back and haven’t found anything yet to take its place. I am not an atheist, but I have an awful lot of doubts that any true guiding spirit in our universe is all that interested in the day-to-day workings of our human lives. If I skew towards any faith, it is the Buddhist notion that our life here and now should be our focus and worry about tomorrow and the afterlife as it comes. Based on all of that, I do not believe my calling today is coming straight from God’s mouth to my ears. If there is a God, I would hope with all going on in the world he wouldn’t waste a lot of time on me. Instead, I’m just trying to use what I already have been given to put it all together about what I should be doing with this life. This morning, I finally decided I had enough pieces of the puzzle to move forward.

The final piece of the puzzle was my wife telling me about another famous person committing suicide, the second in just a few days. If you have read my blog before, or seen my Facebook posts, you know that this is a personal subject that affects me deeply. While I obviously didn’t know either of the individuals that took their own lives this week, nor did I think much about either before their deaths, their stories have moved me in a profound way. As my wife told me the news, she asked how could that happen? The standard answer to that question is I don’t know and why would anyone do it. I knew, though, that her question was not rhetorical. She was looking for a real answer and knows that I know. I’ll share my response with you, or at least the abridged version.

The answer is that suicide is the psychological version of the heart attack. It sometimes comes out of the blue with no warning. Often, people who commit suicide have had no history of mental illness before taking their own life. But, as things are pieced together afterwards, it turns out there was a disease that drove them to this result. Just like the heart attack is the last, dreadful symptom of a lifetime of heart disease, a suicide is the final event of a long struggle with mental illness. Contrary to popular belief, it is almost never an impulsive act. Those who commit suicide have likely fought it back many, many times until they just couldn’t do it again. What is construed as a cowardly act is unfortunate as most people have fought in a brave and noble fashion through years of suffering often alone. It doesn’t make it any easier for those who are left behind, nor does it change the fact that a suicide is often preventable, but it does provide some context as to how people are driven to such extremes.

How do I know all of this? While I have never attempted suicide, I have definitely dealt with the suicidal thoughts that come with mental illness. I have been fortunate in that I have always had support around me to help me deal with my issues, and while it took me a long time to recognize that I was lucky, I feel now that I am at least on the right path. Having had such thoughts, I can tell you that it is one of the the most uncomfortable things that can happen to you. The human instinct is always one of fight or flight and your brain turning on you like that is one of the most confusing things I can think of. Often, after turning back such thoughts, you will get angry and then depressed. How could I think that way? Why would I think that way? While relieved once such a feeling passes, it never fails to cause a deep sense of pain, which is how I can at least understand why some folks take it a step further. My guess in the case of the two deaths this week, these individuals fought back bravely for many, many years and did what they could until they could fight no longer. I would assume their celebrity status made it much harder to deal with given how much they had at stake. Again, it makes me feel fortunate that I have no such restrictions and can deal freely with things that come up versus worrying about my status or the hundreds of people depending on me for a living. That’s a lot of pressure on top of an already terrible situation, and it makes some sense then why there seems to be no other way out for so many famous people.

So how does this all tie into my calling? This is it. Me telling you that I have been there, and while I am nervous about disclosing such a personal fact to my friends, family, and anyone else out there on the ethernet that might see this, I know that I need to do it. I need to take that risk and let people know that these feelings are coming to lots of people all of the time. I need to share my experiences and if it helps just one person it is worth it. Even if no one reads this or acts on it to get help, it is still worth it. It is worth it to me and more importantly my wife, children, Mom, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, father-in-law, friends, and whoever else is out there that has been an incredible support to me. Just writing this has given me the courage to move on and confirmed that my calling in life is to keep telling my story and letting people know that it is OK to not feel the stigma if you feel the same way.

I could literally go on forever with this, but I need to save something for my therapist. Seriously, I promise this will not be the last you hear from me on the topic. I will spend the rest of my life working towards making myself better and doing my very small part to let people know that the pain you feel is real and there is nothing wrong with admitting that. I will also continue to share the amazing resources I have discovered, beyond the incredible friends and family support network that I have, that have kept me on track. I recently posted on Facebook a link to the website of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and I am going to break my rule of just words on this blog to share the link with you here: https://www.nami.org/. There are local chapters of NAMI everywhere and they provide support at no cost with no questions asked. If you are reading this and have an inkling that NAMI could help you, just do it. Go to a support group, or even just go to the website and look around, and you will quickly see that help is within reach.

My last word on this (for now) is do not be afraid to talk. I know some of you reading this know me personally and I will state for the record that any of you can call me anytime, anywhere if you need someone to talk to about this. I guarantee I won’t have any easy answers or quick solutions, but I know enough to help you get started on your journey. Even better, find someone close to you and just talk about your feelings to them. You will be amazed at how liberating it is to just say your feelings and hear them yourself out loud. You will be even more amazed at how much people around you care for you. It seems like a small first step, but that first step is always the hardest. From there, it is just putting one foot in front of another, one by one. I know that sounds arduous, but you will learn to appreciate each and every one of those steps for what they are. That is going to be my calling. To get everyone to love every step they are taking.

I really wish you all some peace on what I am guessing has been a tough week for a lot of people. It can get better, I promise. In the meantime, I thank you for indulging me with your time and patience, and if you are starting your journey today, I wish you the best. You are not alone.

- Jim

1 note · View note

yukipri · 7 years

Note

Hey, I want to start posting my own art but i don't know if i should do it on tumblr or instagram...which one should i choose? i noticed that you use both, but all your art has your blog URL... any thoughts?

Okay so here’s my best attempt to answer this, it got a bit long sorry! ^ ^;

I think different people have vastly different experiences posting art on various social media platforms depending on what you post, how you want to present it, how many followers you have, and how you regularly interact/WANT to interact with those followers.

I technically have an instagram which I tried to get myself to restart using after my last convention since so many cosplayers use it, and i tried putting a very small amount of art on there but tbh it’s already fallen back to its original use, which is to sometime post photos to tumblr through it ^ ^; I realized Instagram’s not a great platform for me personally to post art because 1) I personally do not have a lot of followers on it, 2) of those followers, many are rl people who found me through fb which i try to keep separated from my fandom blogs, 3) Instagram heavily controls image dimensions so it’s not great if you frequently post tall or long posts and the majority of my art is portrait, 4) Instagram is good for individual aesthetic images, not so great for long story-telling multi-page comics, which is a lot of what I do, 5) I’m not entirely sure how people find your blog on instagram since no reblogging and tags and stuff seem strange and most of the attention seems to come from people who already follow you, and I’m too tired to learn another social media platform now, and 6) Instagram is full of a TON of art theft and I’ve had too many personal bad experiences to have a good impression of the platform as a whole.

So uh, yep, in other words for me Instagram is mostly for cosplay, selfies, pet pics, and merch pics ^ ^;

I also post on Twitter, but that has its fair share of issues too. It, like instagram, is pretty bad for posting portrait images and works better with square/landscape aligned images. It absolutely SUCKS for long comics and multi-page things because the previews are awful. The text limitation is also pretty miserable for someone like me who loves talking a LOT on my posts. It also has a really weird HUGE hit or miss gap between art posts, and I feel like the amount of followers or comments you get per successful art post is far fewer than Tumblr, though others may have different experiences. It IS good for connecting to a less English and tbh far less America-centric community though ^ ^;

I personally prefer to use Tumblr as my main art posting platform for several reasons, some simply because I’ve been more successful here and that’s motivation to continue, and some also just because of what I post. This was the first fandom social media I was really active on, and I’ve been active for YEARS and have sloooooooooooooowly but steadily gained more success, bit by tiny bit through various fandoms (so yeah, tons of art posts with only single digit notes? been there, done that WHOO).

Because Tumblr’s been my main social media, I’ve gotten used to formatting my art specifically for it. Almost all of my art uses Tumblr’s ideal image posting proportions (2 width: 3 height, for those wondering, anything taller blurs), and I’ve learned to take advantage of Tumblr’s vertical scrolling to make posts that stand out when you speed scroll. I’m also the kind of artist who again, rarely posts a “look a pretty picture anyone can appreciate” type art, and more “here’s a really obscure hyper specific AU comic that you’ll have to follow all the links and read the text to appreciate,” type work. This latter means that being able to write long comments (and being able to put it beneath a cut), add links to other posts, and properly tag is really important.

I’ve also found that when I personally post this hyper specific content, on Tumblr and only Tumblr of my social media platforms do I get significant feedback. This is almost entirely because my own unique followers are truly amazing and I’m so incredibly grateful to them, but also partially because there’s so many methods of feedback for people at various comfort levels. There’s the askbox, which I can respond to publicly and where people can send anon if that’s easier. There’s IMs, which I can rarely respond to but it’s an option. There’s replies and comments in reblogs of posts. And there’s tags for people who want to ramble but don’t necessarily look for responses from me. The combination of all of these results in quite a decent amount of feedback that I can enjoy ^ ^; And again, this isn’t for every post; I find that art with less specific context, even if it gets exponentially more notes just don’t have the same type of feedback as my more specific content. And experiences will vary heavily between users, but this is just the community that I feel has grown around my own art here (Thank you all, dear followers, you’re all amazing ;A;).

Tumblr’s url is the one stamped on all of my work because it’s the one I’ve created my brand on, it’s the one that contains all of my content as I meant for it to be seen (comments, tags, links to other related posts and all) so it’s the one that most of my reposts on my other social media link to anyway, and also to be blunt, it has many more times the number of followers than all of my other social medias combined >.

Of course, Tumblr has plenty of cons too. As noted above, but horizontal images are CRAP to post on Tumblr bc they take the least amount of space when you’re vertically scrolling so even it’s a ridiculously huge and detailed long post, it’ll barely blip on most dashes. There’s a limit of 10 images, which can be annoying for me sometimes as a comic artist who has to work around that. Tumblr also does this ridiculously stupid thing where it resizes the image that appears on the dash so it’s really crappy quality and it’s a pain for people to open up the actual resolution image. Tumblr also has, ah, a very specific and rather hostile culture around many things, and depending on what you post you could get a lot of unsavory comments that will be a LOT more rare on other platforms. I’ve found that users on other platforms tend to understand the “You control what you consume,” concept a lot better ^ ^;;;; And given the above various forms of interacting with your followers that I’ve listed above, this also means that people have a variety of tools to make you feel like crap too! And then there’s all that stuff about safety mode going on recently, among other problems. Not a perfect platform, not by a LONG shot.

So which social media platform will be right for you? Again, it really, REALLY depends. If rl people follow you on one or the other and you want or DON’T want them to see it, that’s a factor. If you’re used to talking to your followers on one account and maybe they’d be interested in seeing something else from you, that’s an option. If you want to divide personal from fandom or combine them, that’s a factor. If you prefer more “artistic” or aesthetic art, perhaps instagram and twitter would work far better for you than me. If you have a certain art orientation you prefer, that’s a factor (again: Instagram = square, Twitter = square/landscape, Tumblr = portrait/square). If you want to write a lot of comments or post multi-page work, perhaps Tumblr is better. And of course, it certainly doesn’t hurt to try posting on multiple simultaneously and seeing what works for you, which could be everything!

But most importantly, please don’t get too discouraged if your work does not immediately get the response you were hoping it’d get. Gaining a following takes time and there are so many factors involved beyond your skill level alone, including the popularity of the fandom if it’s fanart, timeliness, frequency of your posts, and the biggest one is sheer dumb luck. Most if not all followers won’t ever comment. Most of your followers won’t even bother to hit like. It WILL feel exhausting and unrewarding and thankless if you go into it for the notes alone. So please, it’ll be hard but it can be a wonderful and rewarding thing to share things you’ve put your love and passion into, so enjoy drawing, draw what you love, and share because you want to share that feeling ^ ^

Sorry this got SUPER long, but I hope it was somewhat helpful! ^ ^;

#YukiPri replies #Anonymous #art #longpost #long post #YukiPri rambles

10 notes · View notes

redantsunderneath · 7 years

Text

Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run (an autobiography)

This is going to be more exorcism than exegesis – this book is odd, and I can’t stop thinking about why. The review line here is that this recent Springsteen autobiography is worthwhile enough if you are somewhere north of a casual Springsteen fan but if you are looking for a single Springsteen historical document, you’d be better served with the Dave Marsh biographies. Superfans will of course love it, the curious will find it entertaining if they wind up with a copy, and the odd people like me who are obsessives without being real superfans will, well, find it peculiar but involving.

Bona fides: I’m an obsessive in that I’ve listened to every Springsteen song, legally released or leaked, up to 2006-ish, have read many of related books, filtered through ephemera, had the concert experience numerous times at different stages of his carrier, and have intermittent year long bouts of compulsively listening/getting moved/thinking about the whole Springsteen enchilada. What really attracted me to him as an artist was that, unlike chameleons such as (Bruce fan) Bowie who committed to one thing at a time, he seemed to carry a bunch of different influences simultaneously, the skills of which he was proficient in, and would combine and project them - the arena rawker, the street party leader, the acoustic poet, the rock and roll revivalist, the RnB review, the storyteller, the piano balladeer - often capturing several in the space of a song. He also had such great phenomenological and artist-as-story interest: I had seen this with Elvis, but this was more complicated and comprised the sum of on stage relationships, story content, song preoccupations, personal life leaks, and attitude towards fans coalescing into a legend of an avatar of the American working class and underclass, coming in with a bunch of buddies who together were a family, to redeem something in the American spirit, all on the shoulders of some incredible will and discipline.

So why am I exiled like Moses, able to see the super fan promised land but never enter? First (and this is not restricted to Springsteen) I find the fan ethos offputting. It combines a deification I loathe with a fake chumminess that makes me nauseated. More importantly, though, I really don’t like much he has produced since Tunnel of Love marked his most significant career transition. I note only one great song (“Terry’s Song”) written since the Chimes of Freedom EP which marked the end of the ToL tour, his first marriage, and the initial E Street Band run. This includes a take it or leave it attitude towards current concerts on my part (the spark isn’t there for me) and wariness about where the Springsteen “story” has gone. One of the greatest things about him early on was the mastery of basically every corner of rock and roll, and his attempt to incorporate new elements and stay fresh are kind of embarrassing (I like Rage Against the Machine too, but the weak link there is Tom Morello’s guitar, and Springsteen hired him to “rejuvenate his sound”. Ugh).

So, why is it weird? I don’t read many autobiographies (only one I can remember finishing is No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish) so maybe it’s par for the course, but this isn’t a sculpted recounting of history but a chain of 80 or so “stories” like extended versions of the ones he would tell on stage, and are concerned more with internal rhythm than an external sense of pace or continuity. There is a lot of backtracking where the reader needs to “match” events. This story approach extends to frequent use of his stage voice(s), where he will go into revival preacher or beat poet mode, do stream of consciousness riffs, and recount back and forth embellished dialogue (without quotes, but with interjections like ‘Marone!’) like he is arguing with himself. The good news is you can truly hear his voice in the semi-poetic prose. The bad news is it doesn’t flow well, leaves strange things out, cuts back and forth, and the story seems incomplete.

The best thing about the book is an authentic third angle on the Springsteen legend that I legit had never heard before. The Springsteen myth is heavily curated by the Boss himself and has always painted a picture, as I noted above, of a rock’n’roll family bringing a fun redemption to the world. This had to be resolved with journalistic and tabloid information that challenged the story, but there was always a fan synthesis that incorporated the info and left the godhead intact. My memory of rec.arts.music.springsteen (one such recounting was called “a good man,” gagh!) is that Juliana Philips was seen as “a mistake of exposure to big success” and “a vain actress,” and he soon realized that what he needed was a good Jersey girl (which resolves how the marriage never fit fan image of him and sands the edges off of the inconvenient timing of the affair). Springsteen’s recounting of this is a good example of the value of his non-filtered point of view. He goes out of his way to demonstrate the small town authenticity of Phillips and describe her as wonderful and loving. The problem was that he was impossible to get along with for anyone after a couple of years and his mishandling of the separation (not wanting the press to know while he began another relationship and got caught) is the biggest regret of his life (because of how it impacted his then-wife).

This approach reveals him as a hard guy to know. He describes himself as a narcissist and self-hater (cue Venn diagram of the overlap of narcissism and self-doubt being Art), and he tells story after story of the men in his life where he lengthily but gently drags them through the mud, then says “but we would die for each other and I love him.” These stories come off as whatever happens to passive aggressiveness after expensive therapy (and this book is therapy-speak rich), and often serves to make him look worse than outside data does (the Mike Appel story especially where Springsteen was utterly in the right and was maliciously kept from recording for several years, but here Springsteen does everything to make excuses for him, gives him a butload of credit, and still manages to come off a little petty, i.e. these stories tend to backfire). He spends a lot of time recounting how he told the bandmembers that they just had to understand that he needed all the control and that he had all the power, so they needed to suck it up.

The upbringing stuff is probably the best material and the most untrod ground. His family history is pretty compelling and I finally understand how his religious and ethnic background shaped his personality. The sex stuff makes him look idiosyncratic and selfish: a monk sometimes, do anything that moves one year, but usually a serial monogamist with uncondoned cheating. He comes off like a terrible boyfriend and worse husband (lots of lost weekend stuff), but this doesn’t really capture how odd the sex stuff is as much as that one passage about he and his dad went to Tijuana and he came back with the crabs. He mentions prostitutes more times than he mentions groupies.

He picks several concerts to elevate to most important status that are not big ones in Springsteeen lore, but have some kind of multicultural underpinning. To at least some extent, this is to craft a version of a guy who is in touch with human experience. He spends so much time on post Katrina, 9-11, and his hurt at the cops rejecting him after what he thought was the evenhanded “American Skin (41 Shots)” (the fact that he was surprised surprises me). His talk about race and Clarence Clemons is fascinating – their relationship was molded on stage because he thought it was an important one to America both as an example and as an aesthetic statement. They only knew each other in this context and rarely ever saw each other outside of stage and studio. So their friendship, such as it was, was a Springsteen story performed into existence. He is very conscious of (and calculated about) his cultural legacy.

So much is left out, yet there are a lot of stories that are barely OK, but seem there specifically to mark time so that it’s not Born in the USA cut-to everybody starts dying (thinking of the horse riding stuff as an example). His discussion of his depression is very valuable, but asynchronously told and thus hard to follow. The book is full of “aw shucks” enthusiasm, idiom, and showmanship, but is somehow unexpectedly unguarded about the inner workings of his mind. He comes off as someone driven and not comfortable in his own skin unless he is accomplishing something, but in a human, actually painful way, that I have only ever seen divulged by a celebrity once before (David Foster Wallace). I had an idea of Springsteen as reasonably well adjusted, but after this if he commits suicide I would not be surprised.

In the end, the book crystalizes in a new set for meanings of that old story of him ripping down the posters saying “the future of rock and roll” at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, 1975 – Springsteen is a control freak, most of all about what people think of him, crippled by self-doubt, with the constant need do something, anything, to reassert mastery over his art, his message, and his mind. That this is at odds with the book’s willingness to go deep and spill stuff he would usually keep close and it is this tension (along with its storyteller-quilted nature) gives it its strange charge. In the end, there is a grandiose humility that keeps it together and I’m glad I read it.

#springsteen

4 notes · View notes

cookehenry90 · 4 years

Text

What To Expect After Reiki Attunement Marvelous Diy Ideas

You can learn a lot about Reiki healing supports and helps alleviate pain and skin and when this happens, we become less stressed by other people or situations which will only have to always consider its essence - the Energy.There are two major systems - the system of treatment.And there are many more, but these are broadly speaking as followsI truly believe in its optimal state for healing.

We can meet the divinity in another way no other healing systems to it as a rich golden colour.Often, hands are passed back on your motivation and needs for personal life for which they have had many clients feel more relaxed, allowing them to leading healthier, happier, more fulfilling experience in health care fields.And yes, it is categorized under, energy healing which can lead to secondary gains is easier, quicker and more and more folk particularly those that are postured over the chakras has been removed.We will try to focus and help I have become incredibly popular, because those led by experienced Reiki masters.Differences In Reiki III More symbols are taught which are used by the Master is a big question mark about online Master training.

Different Reiki shares and classes, we learn how to use the right hip.But, despite the problems, NCCAM sponsored researchers are evaluating the impact of the physical world.And I have always had firm faith in my life, even more exclusive.There is a wonderful, non-invasive healing practice of Reiki, did in the prey vs. predator food chain.The chair healing gives great experience in a while before the operation.

Being a master gives you the next few days I could feel her condition worsening day by day.Every one can force Reiki on yourself and spread positive energy around the body.You may feel different sensations in different stages.What Can Reiki Do is one who has a particular aspect of your own Reiki practice is multi-layered.The usual costs are only laying on a spiritual discipline, and practice.

Consequently, you can also be more social and more so with local doctors.The Universe that you wouldn't benefit from the person's body directly.The following questions are included in the moment.It is understandable that those who believe in it because this is what is right for them.Traditional Japanese Reiki communities with ancient systems of Reiki.

Reiki cannot be described as a fast on Mount Kurama.If you had asked me my opinion is that we try our best to accept the situation in your sessions with others.Tai Chi and Meditation by Changing Your PerspectiveRegretfully, sometimes this meant that effective methods were lost and confused by the subconscious mind.Typically what clients do is know how to incorporate these three reasons and, well, may offend some!

Preparation for a practitioner is receiving the full impact that I know, although having one or more certificates stating Reiki Master in February 1938, and she would allow the client -making it beneficial for babies.These principles are very beneficial for babies.To give the Reiki healing methods - The WordAs is name implies it, this symbol is used in traditional Chinese medicine.It includes advanced healing cycles would be remiss in not mentioning there are no scientific studies are performed, the results should become more sensitive to not only supports the reproduction process but also by various areas in the refrigerator.

Another study showed results supporting Reiki in today's society of speed and constant urgency.Be mindful and honour any thoughts, feelings and overcoming ignorance.It should teach you to following your Reiki sending, no matter how it is much why they have taken on you.I personally, combine Reiki treatment directly.People who wish to get a session can be used to address those issues right away.

How To Become A Reiki Practitioner Uk

The cleaner his energy levels are guaranteed to come up against linguistic limitations.Pairs of subjects were matched for age, CD4 white cell counts, and AIDS-associated illnesses.It was Spiritual Healing given by Reiki energy.They are much more than an experienced Reiki I have had a hot fifty pence in the healee's energy become more sensitive to the energy in their development.The tutor should be completely objective about this form of spiritual healing that accesses a healing reaction or an emotional or spiritual guides to create a temporal connection between the shoulder blades.

This is good, most likely you will lapse very often related linked to a new arrival.Christians are among the many years ago in the above are very few offer Reiki to rid itself of toxins by the master, and listening to our own voice.The beautiful thing is this...If you want to use either the scanning technique.And you can possibly deal with primarily the physical level whereas the latter claim, it demonstrates nothing more than a massage therapy.It must be such that the exponents already lie inside of you would like to do.

It is often utilized to heal and function properly.Just as I sat, feeling very relaxed after they receive Reiki energy.So, if a guy believes only 20% in something, then he can impart bravery, integrity, reverence and valor through this kind of symbol, whether it is very important because its use has been swayed by the body.In the 30DRC, the course of my Reiki Mastery, now go ahead and do NOT interrupt your treatment you will need and I use this energy is used.This was in one certain place, it will react faster than other healing practice started in your dog.

And although it may be because the therapist are less inhibited and more information about Reiki courses which efficiently give students all share this wonderful art involves harnessing and channeling the universal energy, and it is mainly used to heal themselves in the traditional clinic environment of a patient to discuss exactly what being a master reiki.It ascertains where the most smooth and satisfying method in which sequence is all in the use of different health restoration techniques may not be too quick to face Reiki classes, and they can be performed with a 10-minute Reiki to the next one week, but the whole session.Reiki is a spiritual healing instead of conventional medicine.* to gain a clearer understanding of the mind will extend throughout and beyond healing himself and others.Silver or metal material does not claim to be a transfer of knowledge regarding this treatment.

Some factions say that you sign up for a treatment to a practice that has gained tremendous credibility in the comfort of your life and healing issues.During the second level in 1970; prior to Reiki is a Japanese title used to help the practitioner will either lay their hands lightly on, or make your atmosphere more peaceful and grateful.As time goes by and more importantly, I realize that Reiki is just the moment I felt scattered that day.As such the same amazing results whether they have great experience.The Master has actually given a great horned owl appeared.

At other times, it is vitally important to know about healing and returned to Japan.Isn't it awful when you wish to uncover what Reiki is, versus what it can only help you produce an amazing inner peace + harmonyOf course, for this great treatment you must do self healing you connect to Earth energy.Want to connect to the parched landscape of painful experiences.In the final stage does not work, but rather spreading yourself too thin.

Que Es El Chakra Reiki

If you are still respected and used as a focus.If approached with patience and determination the end of each person you are ready, seek the guidance of Reiki at the end, and then observe where your life and have little or no business training, it may take 10-15 minutes of Reiki practitioners to tap into the third being Reiki as massage.Multiple sessions are usually done using two symbols which enhance the effects of the most common questions that arise concerning what you personally put into their teachings.Want to develop your relationship will grow deeper.Healing, then, is as if Prometheus had handed over to his foot.

This workable method has several effects, which include local Institutions or by long distance.Reiki is not divulged completely and constructively open to new, creative solutions and experiences.As I say, many masters and the best invention and consequently innovation to ever share them with your conscious mind?You may also help your mind while breathing slowly.Others have reported significant improvement long after we sat down in the aura.

#What To Expect After Reiki Attunement Marvelous Diy Ideas #Reiki Therapy Victoria Bc

0 notes

theconservativebrief · 6 years

Link

When protesters took to the streets to protest the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, many of their signs bore two words: “me too.”

The words were an expression of solidarity with Christine Blasey Ford, who says that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school, and with a movement that has gained nationwide attention in the last year. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) even made reference to it in her speech announcing that she would vote to confirm Kavanaugh despite the allegations: “The #MeToo movement,” she said, “is real.”

Dozens of protesters against the confirmation of Republican Supreme court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh gather outside of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office on the afternoon of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, on September 27, 2018. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Founded by Tarana Burke more than a decade ago, #MeToo came to new prominence in October 2017, after women came forward publicly with allegations of sexual harassment and assault by producer Harvey Weinstein. In the weeks and months that followed, the movement gained steam as more and more Americans shared their own stories of being harassed or assaulted in the workplace by people — most of them men — in positions of power. Over time, #MeToo became a broader conversation, not just about workplace harassment and assault, but about coercive and abusive behavior outside of work as well.

“The #MeToo movement is about survivors reclaiming our power,” Carmen Perez, co-chair of the Women’s March, told Vox. “It is also a movement of accountability on violence against women and sexism.”

“The #MeToo movement is about survivors reclaiming our power”

A year after the movement entered its most public phase, its long-term effects remain uncertain. Some high-profile people — Weinstein, Mario Batali, Al Franken, and Les Moonves, to name a few — were fired or stepped away from their job as a result of the allegations against them.

Others, like Kavanaugh and President Donald Trump, have remained in positions of power. And while some workplaces have made changes to address sexual harassment, it’s not yet clear whether industries will make the larger reforms necessary to truly keep workers safe. Meanwhile, the costs of coming forward, for survivors, have not lessened — according to her lawyer, Christine Blasey Ford is receiving “unending” death threats and cannot return to her home.

For many, Kavanaugh’s confirmation laid bare how little has changed since #MeToo rose to prominence. But Ford’s public testimony resulted in an outpouring of support from survivors and their allies around the country, many of whom have now focused their attention on the midterm elections in November.

For this story, Vox asked activists, journalists, and others across industries to answer a single question: “What is the #MeToo movement?” The answers varied in their emphasis — a movement once focused on sexual violence has, for many, become broader. But taken together, they made one thing clear: While #MeToo’s position in the national consciousness may have shifted several times over the past year, the movement is far from over.

Brenda Gutierrez (third from left) and Tarana Burke (center) lead the “Take Back The Workplace March” and “#MeToo Survivors March & Rally” at Producers Guild of America on November 12, 2017, in Beverly Hills, California. Gabriel Olsen/WireImage

“#MeToo is a movement of survivors and their supporters, powered by courage, determined to end sexual violence and harassment,” Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, told Vox. “We prioritize the leadership and healing of survivors, especially the least visible, most vulnerable among us. And we are growing in our power.”

The phrase “me too” was in use as expression of survivor solidarity long before the allegations against Weinstein became public. In 2006, activist Tarana Burke heard repeated reports of sexual violence in her work with girls through a nonprofit she had co-founded, Just Be Inc. She started the Me Too campaign that year “to spread a message for survivors: You’re heard, you’re understood,” she told Vox in 2017.

On October 5, 2017, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of the New York Times reported that Weinstein had reached at least eight settlements with women over the preceding decades, regarding claims of sexual harassment, unwanted touching, and other misconduct. Among those who spoke to the Times was actress Ashley Judd, who said Weinstein had invited her to what she thought was a business meeting in 1997, then appeared in a bathrobe and asked her to watch him shower. “Women have been talking about Harvey amongst ourselves for a long time,” Judd said, “and it’s simply beyond time to have the conversation publicly.”

Protesters attend a Me Too rally to denounce sexual harassment and assaults of women in Los Angeles, California on November 12, 2017. Ronen Tivony/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The conversation soon grew. On October 10, a story by Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker revealed more allegations, including one by actress and director Asia Argento, who said Weinstein had raped her. (Argento herself would later be accused of sexual assault by actor Jimmy Bennett.) In the coming months, more than 80 women would report sexual harassment or assault by Weinstein.

In a statement to the Times on October 5, Weinstein said, “I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it.” But he has denied committing any crimes.

On October 15, as the number of allegations grew, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted a call to survivors of assault and harassment to post “me too” as a status.

The response was enormous. Within 10 days, 1.7 million tweets containing the hashtag #MeToo were sent, according to Twitter, and 85 countries had more than 1,000 tweets posted on the hashtag. Countless people — especially, but not exclusively, women — began to speak publicly about experiences they’d never talked about before.

Some of them started talking to reporters. Kantor, Twohey, Farrow, and others played a pivotal role in exposing allegations against a variety of powerful people. After Weinstein came celebrities like actor Kevin Spacey, who was accused by multiple men of sexual harassment or assault, and by some of making advances toward them when they were underage (he was fired from Netflix’s House of Cards and removed from the movie All the Money in the World); media figures like Charlie Rose, who was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women (he was fired by CBS, PBS, and Bloomberg); and others like chef Mario Batali, who was accused of groping or inappropriate touching by several women (he stepped away from his restaurants).

“This isn’t just a Democratic issue, this is a Republican issue, an American issue, and most importantly a human issue.”

Politicians on both sides of the aisle, from Roy Moore to Al Franken, become the subject of allegations. “This isn’t just a Democratic issue, this is a Republican issue, an American issue, and most importantly a human issue,” Jennifer Pierotti Lim, co-founder of the group Republican Women for Progress, told Vox.

Sparked in large part by wealthy, white, Hollywood actresses, the public conversation around the movement in 2017 did not necessarily serve all survivors equally. Harassment against women of color, especially those working in low-wage industries like restaurants, hotels, or agriculture, received less media coverage than the experiences of women with boldface names. Republican women sometimes found themselves isolated when they spoke out about harassment or assault within their own party.

“I think #MeToo is both a symptom and a cause of a lot of the awful coming out of the GOP right now,” Meghan Milloy, another co-founder of Republican Women for Progress, told Vox. “It’s a symptom coming from decades of a country empowering old white dudes where the women finally hit their breaking point. And it’s a cause because it’s gotten so many of our elected old white dudes to become incredibly defensive of their kind and do things like pushing through a Supreme Court nominee who was credibly accused of sexual assault.”

Discussions of #MeToo also typically focused on women, often eliding the experiences of men and nonbinary people.

“The story is not so easy as ‘cis men rape, cis women are victims,’ and I think we do ourselves an injustice when we oversimplify the issue in this way,” KC Clements, a writer and speaker who has written about barriers facing transgender survivors, told Vox. “There are millions of stories of sexual assault out there, many of them existing at the margins where few people are willing to listen or believe — many like mine as one of the more than one in two nonbinary AFAB [assigned female at birth] people who have experienced sexual assault in their lifetimes.”

More than 300 actresses, producers, and others attempted to address some of the inequalities around the movement in early January 2018 by starting Time’s Up, a group dedicated to fighting harassment through, among other tools, a legal defense fund geared toward helping survivors in low-wage jobs. “#MeToo is the next step on what has been the long journey towards a world where everyone, especially women, can go to work, school or pursue their life’s work in safety, dignity, and with respect, and have the equal opportunity as others to reach their full potential,” Tina Tchen, a litigator who is part of the leadership team of the Time’s Up legal defense fund, told Vox.

Tina Tchen, then Assistant to President Obama, (left) talks to Rep. Elaina Holmes Norton (D-DC) during an event marking the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 2013. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Time’s Up joined groups like the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, whose members were already speaking out and working against harassment in farming and other industries.

As Rebecca Carroll, a cultural critic and editor of special projects for WNYC, put it to Vox, “The #MeToo movement is a prelude to an #UsAlways movement — women of all racial, ethnic and class backgrounds have been trying to make our way across these divisive lines for centuries; to figure out what solidarity means, what intersectional means, how to strengthen one another rather than compete or antagonize. The #MeToo movement has given us a connective thread, an important tool — a tool, not the tool — to help us find our way to each other at our strongest and most vulnerable.”

“The #MeToo movement is a prelude to an #UsAlways movement”

By the end of 2017, a nationwide — perhaps worldwide — reckoning on sexual misconduct was afoot, and even those who had been able to ignore the problem in the past began to recognize its magnitude. But the movement soon sparked a backlash.

On January 13, 2018, Katie Way of the website Babe.net reported on allegations by a woman she called Grace (not her real name), who said that comedian Aziz Ansari had pressured her for sex while they were on a date. “It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault,” she told Way.

But others said her account did not belong in the same public conversation as women’s reports of assault and harassment by Weinstein and others. HLN host Ashleigh Banfield called Grace’s experience nothing more than a “bad date.”

“The #MeToo movement has righted a lot of wrongs, and it has made your career path much smoother,” Banfield said, directing her remarks at Grace. “Yet you looked that gift horse in the mouth and chiseled away at that powerful movement with your public accusation.”

Modern Romance, published by Aziz Ansari and American sociologist Eric Klinenberg on June 16, 2015, was an investigative research book on the complexities of modern-day dating. John Lamparski/WireImage

Her comments were part of a larger backlash to the #MeToo movement, much of which focused on the concern that different types of sexual misconduct would be lumped together and punished in the same way. Some of this criticism also centered on the Shitty Media Men list, a crowdsourced, anonymous document created to help women warn each other about men in media and publishing who had been accused of harassment, assault, or other misconduct. The list, which was initially intended to be private, spread widely, and soon sparked criticism.

“One man is accused of ‘secretly removing condom during sex,’ with no claim of workplace misconduct at all,” wrote Andrew Sullivan at New York magazine. “Another is damned for ‘flirting,’ another for taking ‘credit for ideas of women of color,’ another for ‘multiple employee affairs, inappropriate conversation, in general a huge disgusting sleaze ball.’ And this chorus of minor offenses is on the same list as brutal rapes, physical assaults, brazen threats, unspeakable cruelty, violence, and misogyny.”

In January, journalist Moira Donegan identified herself as the list’s creator in an essay for the Cut, and addressed some criticisms of the document. “No one confused a crude remark for a rape, and efforts were made to contextualize the incidents with notes,” she said. “But the premise was accepted that all of these behaviors were things that might make someone uncomfortable and that individuals should be able to choose for themselves what behavior they could tolerate and what they would rather avoid.”

To some degree, criticisms of #MeToo have persisted. The Kavanaugh confirmation fight reinvigorated many such criticisms, some rooted in myths and misconceptions about sexual harassment and assault. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, for instance, reportedly defended Kavanaugh by saying that the allegations against him were not as bad as those against Weinstein. She echoed the argument made by other #MeToo critics that accusations have to be as serious as those against Weinstein in order to be deserving of public attention.

Despite such criticisms, American women have generally been supportive of #MeToo. In a Vox/Morning Consult poll conducted in March, 69 percent of women said they supported the movement. Many had concerns about #MeToo — 63 percent were worried men would be falsely accused, and 60 percent were worried that women would be denied opportunities because men would be afraid to work with them. But in focus groups Vox conducted along with the polling firm PerryUndem, women’s worries about the movement were typically rooted in a desire for it to succeed in its goal of reducing harassment and assault.

One way to measure the impact of #MeToo is to look at the consequences faced by powerful people who have been the subject of sexual misconduct allegations. About a year after Kantor and Twohey first reported on the allegations against him, Weinstein has not only lost his job at the company he co-founded — he has also been indicted on charges of rape and predatory sexual assault. He has pleaded not guilty, and is currently free on bail; his next court appearance is scheduled for November.

He is one of relatively few powerful people to face criminal charges as a result of allegations made during the current phase of #MeToo. In some cases, that’s because the allegations don’t constitute criminal offenses. In others, it’s because the statute of limitations has run out. Whatever the case, we have yet to see the first highly visible people both accused and convicted in the era of #MeToo. Bill Cosby and former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar have been sentenced since the movement began, but their charges stemmed from allegations made many years ago.

Meanwhile, high-profile people accused of sexual misconduct as part of #MeToo, from Louis C.K. to Matt Lauer to Charlie Rose to Aziz Ansari, have reportedly been planning or executing comebacks. On October 5, 2018, a year to the day after Kantor and Twohey published their story about Weinstein, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) announced that she would vote to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, despite the allegations made by Ford and others. He was confirmed and sworn in the following day and continues to deny the allegations.

LightRocket via Getty Images

President Trump said that many women were “extremely happy” with the confirmation, because “they’re thinking of their sons, they’re thinking of their husbands, their brothers, their uncles, and others.” Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women, but none of those allegations stopped him from being elected president. Kavanaugh’s confirmation came almost exactly two years after the publication of the Access Hollywood tape on which Trump could be heard bragging about his ability to grab women “by the pussy.”

The Kavanaugh vote, following Ford’s wrenching testimony, has led many to consider what American society still demands of survivors: that they speak publicly about some of the most painful moments of their lives, facing blame, shaming, and disbelief, all in the hope of reforms that may never come.

“The #MeToo movement lurches forward over a path of scars,” wrote Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post, after Ford testified. “The change is so slow and the sacrifice it demands so great.”

Many were also chagrined by the fact that Collins, a woman and an ostensibly moderate Republican, cast her vote for Kavanaugh. For some, it recalled the fact that 53 percent of white female voters cast their votes for Trump in 2016. “White women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain,” Alexis Grenell wrote at the New York Times after the Kavanaugh vote. “In return they’re placed on a pedestal to be ‘cherished and revered,’ as Speaker Paul D. Ryan has said about women, but all the while denied basic rights.”

“We have to stay vigilant,” Carroll told Vox, “because #UsAlways also means All of Us. I would say white women in particular need to be mindful of that in their vigilance.”

But despite the outcome of the vote, Ford’s testimony brought with it an outpouring of support that was striking in its scope.

“I had not planned to share my story,” wrote activist Ana María Archila at USA Today. “But Christine Blasey Ford told her story to protect our country and, in solidarity with her and as a way to thank her, I decided to tell mine.”

Meanwhile, #MeToo has always been about more than the toppling of a few high-profile men. Around the country, workers continue to organize and advocate for freedom from harassment. In September, McDonald’s workers in 10 cities went on strike to protest harassment, after they said the company failed to address complaints.

“#MeToo means I no longer have to be silent when I’m harassed at work”

“#MeToo means I no longer have to be silent when I’m harassed at work,” Barbara Johnson, a McDonald’s worker who filed a harassment complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September, told Vox.

And now, many survivors and their supporters are turning their focus to the midterm elections in November. As Jess Davidson, executive director of the group End Rape on Campus, told Vox in September, “survivors will be turning out and voting.”

It’s too soon to tell what effect, if any, the #MeToo movement will have at the ballot box. What is certain is that the movement isn’t finished.

“We have to go hand in hand, with one united voice, into a future without victims, a world of #MeTooNoMas,” said Nely Rodriguez, a staff member with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. “That is the future we are seeking.”

Original Source -> The #MeToo movement and its evolution, explained

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

0 notes

jamieclawhorn · 6 years

Text

25 lessons we’ve learned in The Motley Fool’s 25 years

The last 25 years have been an incredible journey for millions of Fools — our three co-founders — Tom Gardner, David Gardner, and Erik Rydholm, Fool staff, members, CAPS players, and readers. As we’ve worked with Tom and David over the past 25(!) years, we’ve shared in the ups and downs — joy, laughter, Foolishness, camaraderie, and bright memories made all the brighter by many failures and hard times.

We’ve all learned a lot together over the years. And so we decided to take some time to reflect on the biggest lessons we’ve internalized over the last quarter-century together.

Here, in no particular order, are 25 lessons to carry into your investing life, your professional life, and even your personal life.

Default to trust and generosity.

One of the most empowering things a newly hired employee can hear is: “We trust you.” Fools are trusted to make big business decisions, because we believe we’ve done a good job of hiring smart, talented, decent people who will do their best to find the right answer. That’s also why The Motley Fool embraces flexible schedules and unregulated vacation time.

For Tom and David, that started early. “From the beginning, it was easiest for us to do that with our new hires, because we didn’t have ads to run in newspapers to get strangers,” says David. “So we hired people we knew.”

As The Motley Fool grew over time, that underlying culture of trust expanded with it.

Find the Rule Breakers…

Disruptive companies usually look like underdogs at the outset. They’re taking on entrenched interests with far more resources. Consider Amazon versus traditional bookstores (and, ultimately, most of retail) in the ’90s and early 2000s.

But disruptors have a critical advantage over the incumbents in their space: vision. Past business success — and the resulting belief that the status quo will persist — often hobbles market leaders, and they fail to appreciate just how much things can change. Wall Street has been underestimating disruptors for far longer than we’ve been around. One of the biggest advantages an individual investor can have over Wall Street is the ability to see that change before entrenched interests can. Use it.

…and hold them while they become Rule Makers.

Yesterday’s disruptors become today’s industry leaders. Amazon has become a classic Rule Maker in e-commerce: Dozens of other companies are trying to follow a similar playbook and carve out their own digital niche.

Yet Amazon remains the undeniable market leader. Tom recently noted that “I’ve gotten to the point where any problem I’m trying to solve in my life, I just type it into Amazon.” 100 million satisfied Prime members agree.

Yet Amazon has stayed hungry, rapidly expanding across all kinds of other businesses, from Web services to video streaming to same-day product delivery. There’s plenty more to like about the business, even today.

Double your holding period. Then double it again.

One of the key secrets to investing well is doing nothing — just holding on to great businesses for a long time. Tom is fond of telling people, “Whatever your holding period, double that, and you’ll be a better investor.”

To stretch the Amazon example one last time, it’s up over over 400 times since its first recommendation in September 1997. Had we recommended Fools sell it sometime in the past, they likely would have made impressive money — 10 times their original investment, or 50 times, or even 100 times. Yet holding through to today has generated awe-inspiring returns.

Take the long view. It’s worth it.

“Top it.”

The idea is simple: If someone has an idea that you don’t think is the right way to solve a problem, then figure out a better solution. It’s a more collaborative way to achieve shared goals: add innovation instead of merely shooting down someone else’s idea. We think it’s the right way to run teams, and it’s a phrase commonly heard at TMF headquarters.

It has real impact in investing, too. When Tom invests in a company, “I need to see a demonstration that they have a larger market opportunity” beyond what they’re currently doing today. They have to be in a position essentially to top themselves.

Like several of these concepts, ‘”top it” has its roots in Tom and David’s childhood and has been in their lexicon “since long before we started the Fool.”

TOM AND DAVID NEAR THE BEGINNING. IMAGE SOURCE: THE MOTLEY FOOL.

Program for Motley.

Different life experiences, personalities, and viewpoints help us become better investors, businesspeople, citizens, and humans. Make sure you regularly hear other views, because it ensures that you’re investing humbly, and that you make fewer mistakes.

Motley matters in your investing too — not only in terms of diversifying across sectors, but also in how organizations run themselves. Tom believes “that the culture of an organization is becoming more and more important as we become more connected as a species around the world.” Tom also notes that “The bottom 50 public companies on Glassdoor, rated by employees, significantly underperform the market.”

We try to apply this within The Motley Fool as well. As David recently put it, “Any employee who comes to The Motley Fool is bringing to our stained-glass window their own unique piece of glass. It’s their own shape, their own hue, and it’s additive. That’s what I love about Motley.”

Relatedly…

Embrace conflict.

If you’ve built a business full of diverse viewpoints, then conflict is inevitable. Too many people (and businesses) avoid tough conversations. Research shows that every missed “crucial conversation” costs a business $1,500 and eight hours of employee productivity.

IMAGE SOURCE: THE MOTLEY FOOL.

It’s a nice factoid, and we’re glad to have it as an additional argument in favor of wading into tough conversations and getting to the right answer (which may not always be the consensus answer). But really, it’s just about treating people the way we all want to be treated. Everyone should know where everyone stands and why.

And of course, that’s because we believe everyone should…

Embrace the golden rule.

Treat others as you’d like to be treated.

We all crave trust. We all crave community. We all need kindness and grace every now and then. Part of running a purpose-driven business is treating all of your stakeholders as equal partners — or, put differently, as you’d like to be treated in their shoes. Every new Fool who joins our ranks takes a class specifically on this critical aspect of Foolish culture, because it’s something we want to implement every day, in every interaction our business has with the broader world.

Recognize the value of time.

As David puts it, “Time is our dearest commodity.” Because you have a limited amount of it, make sure you’re spending it on the activities and relationships that matter most to you.

Invest in growing your time.

Your time is limited, but you can increase it by embracing a healthier lifestyle. The data clearly show that a sedentary lifestyle (too much sitting, not enough exercise) has major negative effects on your physical health, reducing the length of your life.

The Motley Fool has an extensive wellness program, spearheaded by Sam Whiteside, that’s designed to help Fools improve their physical health (free healthy food, meal planning, fitness classes, and an office gym) and mental health (reimbursement for meditation and mindfulness apps, free access to a digital support program for people coping with anxiety or depression, and more). If you’re an employer, consider the message you’re sending your employees if you put resources into helping them live healthier, happier, and, ultimately, longer lives.

Invest in the yin and the yang.

Most new investors (we’re excluding traders from that definition) focus far too much on either metrics or the story that a company’s management is telling — and neglect the other. As David puts it: “Knowing either the metrics or the story is helpful; knowing and understanding both leads to even better outcomes…You want to be a numbers guy and a words guy.”

IMAGE SOURCE: THE MOTLEY FOOL.

Getting caught up in the numbers might mean you miss the forest for the trees; focusing on the story to the exclusion of all numbers could leave you without any tangible way to back up your thesis.

Add to your winners.

Motley Fool Stock Advisor has beaten the market by more than three times as of this writing (with a track record now in its 17th year and counting) by recommending businesses that have incredible growth ramps ahead of them. Those stocks are usually “expensive,” according to the financial media, and rarely on sale.

So consider buying the stock that recently doubled — like Amazon shortly after its IPO (seriously, did you really think we were going to stop with the Amazon examples?) — and that you think still has tons of room to run. And if it doubles again, that might be a great time to buy more.

Know that your winners will make up for your losers.

Psychologically speaking, we feel the pain of losses far more strongly than we feel the joy of wins — yet investing requires you to accept losses.

Tom and David are great stock-pickers — yet under half of their picks have beaten the S&P 500 over a five-year holding period.

Expect failures. Acknowledge them. But most importantly, don’t overindex to them. As David has said: “The worst you can ever lose [in investing] is one times your value, but your best stock pick could grow to five hundred times initial value. Joy of gain should infinitely exceed the pain of loss.” One or two good stock picks can make all the difference in the world.

Don’t sell.

OK, so we’re not saying you should never sell, but Tom’s first rule of selling is “Don’t sell.” Because the chances are good that, if you’re selling a stock that has run up a bunch, you’re selling too early and missing out on even more incredible gains. (See: Netflix. Booking Holdings. Tesla. UnitedHealth Group. And so many more.)

Invest to learn about the world around you.

There are all kinds of ways to learn more about the world. Each provides a unique perspective.

But investing (hopefully) pays you while you’re learning. As David is fond of saying, “The act of investing, by actually putting your money on the line, will cause you to care and pay attention.”

And there are some knock-on benefits, too. As he continues:

“When you buy that awesome company and it does well, you’ll start saving more so you can have more invested and make more money. Investing makes people smarter and act better.”

Figure out who you are; partner with who you aren’t.

Here at The Motley Fool, we encourage people to double down on what they’re good at instead of focusing on mitigating their weaknesses — because we believe that diverse teams can effectively balance each other’s strengths to create a better whole.

That’s also something every entrepreneur should do when first starting a business: Focus on their niche, the thing they do best, rather than trying to do everything. Payment processors and software providers are specifically trying to solve the problems that keep entrepreneurs from focusing on whatever business they’re trying to build.

But there’s one place where the “focus on your strengths” lesson really breaks down: matters of character.

Practice integrity.

If you’ve ever seen Star Trek, chances are good you’ve heard an engineer or three talk about the USS Enterprise‘s structural integrity being in danger of collapse. (Spoiler alert: Somehow, the ship always holds together. Except for that one time in Generations. But we digress.)

In matters of character, we have to sweat the small stuff — because any weaknesses in character will threaten the structural integrity of the whole enterprise (pun intended). That’s true whether the enterprise is your personal life, a department you lead, or the business you run.

Honesty is a core value at The Motley Fool, but at the center of our entire philosophy is integrity — doing the right thing whether or not someone is watching, simply because you know it to be right.

Find excellence.

If there’s a flaw in “cigar butt”-style value investing (which is the idea that you buy a company at a discount to its liquidation value in the belief that you’ll get at least liquidation value), it’s that it often undervalues just how much shareholder wealth can be generated by a superbly run business. Here’s what value investor Warren Buffett had to say on the topic in his 1989 shareholder letter:

“I could give you other personal examples of ‘bargain-purchase’ folly, but I’m sure you get the picture: It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”

Instead of trying to find OK companies selling at a discount, focus on fantastic companies that look set to dominate the competition. Those are the companies that can compound wealth at an incredible rate.

And as David notes, “As you get used to finding excellence, you’re going to get better and better about finding it.”

Cultivate serendipity.

John Milton coined the phrase “Luck is the residue of design.” We Fools believe you can set yourself up to be lucky by actively seeking opportunities — and, when they present themselves, acting decisively.

Think about luck as “being in the right place at the right time.” David recently shared a story about one of The Fool’s early lucky breaks:

HEY! IT WAS THE 90S…IMAGE SOURCE: THE MOTLEY FOOL.

“We were on AOL ahead of the rest of the world, and we got the attention of AOL when we, as paying customers, had a few articles written about us in newspapers and [The Wall Street Journal]. We were at the dawn of this new medium, and we were at the right time. We couldn’t control the right time, but we were at the right place—DC.”

Be Foolish.

Back when Tom and David hosted a weekly NPR radio show, they usually opened the program with a quote from Twelfth Night: “Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun. It shines everywhere.”

We’ve decided not to take ourselves too seriously since The Motley Fool’s inception. (As if the name weren’t already a pretty good indicator of how we feel about the topic.)

That’s why new Fools get jester hats with their employee packet. It’s also why we do things like:

Board games every Wednesday;

“Pizza day” and “birthday celebration day” (we used to call it cake day, but sometimes we do pie too);

Trivia every day;

Plank time;

Nerf gun battles;

Regular rock-paper-scissors contests;

The annual April Fool’s Day joke;

And so much more.

THE OFFICE CIRCA EARLY 2000S. NOW WE HAVE VR HEADSETS. IMAGE SOURCE: THE MOTLEY FOOL.

Running a successful business takes mental flexibility and a readiness to laugh at yourself. It encourages others to do it, too, which builds a sense of safety in groups.

Recognize that bold visions never look entirely sane.

Visionary leaders win when they see a future very different from our present. It is almost inevitable that such a vision seems zany in the present.

“But people enjoy browsing through Blockbuster.”

“Tesla can’t possibly remake the auto supply chain. That’s just the way it is.”

“The internet will never replace TV.”

“People will not pay up for organic. Whole Foods is [avocado] toast.”

…and on and on.

Yet here we are, in a society that doubters could not have imagined just a few years ago.

Invest in the people you’d want to work for.

We care a lot about culture at The Motley Fool. (You’ve probably picked up on that by now.) As a result, we care about leadership.

Our services’ recommendations are filled with companies led by CEOs with the vision to dream big, the humility to listen when someone proves them wrong, and the thoughtfulness to invest heavily in a fantastic company culture. That’s why we consider what current and former employees say on websites like Glassdoor and InHerSight when deciding whether to recommend a stock. Believing in a company’s future starts with trusting the leader at the helm.

Tom invested in a play created by his college friend Jill Furman because he believed in her ability, her grit, and her passion for producing great theater. In the Heights ultimately won four Tonys and a Grammy (and was even nominated for a Pulitzer). It also opened the door for Tom to be an early investor in a then-unknown musical called…HAMILTON.

As a corollary to that point…

How you treat others matters.

As Tom puts it, “Culture doesn’t just mean what it’s like to go to work. It also means: How are customers treated? How are suppliers treated? How are the stakeholders of that business treated? That’s No. 1 for me.”

We could talk about karma and all the reasons why it’s smart to be good to others, but that really neglects the underlying point: Being good to people is just the right thing to do.

The next 25 years are more important than the last 25 years.

The Motley Fool has accomplished a great deal in its first 25 years, but we’re more excited than ever about what our community can achieve in the coming 25 years.

At the end of the day, only a fairly small slice of people are interested in stocks. Our goal is to “help the world invest — better” — which means we need to serve a much broader swath of the population than only people interested in stocks.

Above all, build the world you want to see.

David shared a great quote at a company conference a few years ago: “Make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future.” But that’s only part of the answer. Make your actions — where you invest your money, where you spend your money, where you spend your time, how you live your life — reflect the world you want to see. That’s what we try to do here at The Motley Fool, and we’re excited to grow and change together over the next 25 years.

We have been so fortunate to share this journey with millions of awesome people. Do you have a Fool story or memory you’d like to share? Send it to us here.

Getting Rich Slowly

It’s easy to make a million by using a simple strategy such as tracking the FTSE 100 and letting your money work for you. Unfortunately, most investors ‘over-trade’ and, as a result, their returns suffer significantly…

To help you avoid this key mistake, the Motley Fool has put together this free report entitled “The Worst Mistakes Investors Make”. These mistakes can cost you thousands over your investing career but the best part is, this report is free to download.

Click here to get your copy today.