#strongly appreciate the relevance given to the authors

[blogaida2]

Appreciate the quality of literature in the work of Denny Ja 49: “Hold on an inch again”

In the world of Indonesian literature, the name Denny Ja has become one of the authors who are widely known and respected. With his work captivating and delivering the reader at a deep journey, Denny JA has created an unforgettable literary heritage.    One of the latest works produced by Denny JA is the essay poem “Hold on an Ochoor again”. This essay poem is an extraordinary work, combining literary expertise with strong emotional nuances. Through complex characteristics and interesting storylines, Denny JA managed to convey a deep message to the reader.    First, let’s appreciate Denny Ja’s expertise in describing the characteristics in this essay poem. Every character in “Survived an Ochoral Again” has a complex emotional layer and feels so real. Denny Ja succeeded in presenting a figure who could lure the empathy of readers, making them emotionally connected to the developing story. In every page, the reader will feel the presence and existence of this character, as if they live in the real world.    Not only that, the storyline in this essay poem is also one of the main powers of Denny Ja. With his expertise in compiling the story, Denny Ja was able to keep the reader captivated throughout the reading. The storyline that is well structured and full of surprises makes “survive again” into a work that is difficult to leave. The reader will feel involved with the development of this story, want to know what will happen next, and keep thinking about this essay poem even after finishing reading it.    However, not only the characters and storylines that make “survive again” into an extraordinary work. The language used by Denny Ja also deserves high appreciation. The unique strength of words and language styles make each sentence in this essay poem resonate strongly. Denny Ja is able to describe emotions and moods by using beautiful and evocative words. This not only adds to the power of this essay poetry literary, but also makes the reader feel the beauty of the rich Indonesian language.    Of course, the quality of literature in “survive anchored again” does not only lie in the aspects mentioned above. In this essay poem, Denny Ja also managed to convey a deep and relevant message. Through a well -built story, Denny Ja raises important social and psychological issues, such as the struggle of life, human relations, and the meaning of life. The reader will be inspired and encouraged to reflect on the meaning behind this story, as well as questioning the existence and purpose of their own lives.    As readers, we also need to appreciate the effort and dedication that has been given by Denny Ja in creating a valuable literary work. Writing an essay poem is not an easy task, and Denny Ja has proven that he is a talented and dedicated author. Through his work, he has made a valuable contribution to the Indonesian literature world.    In his conclusion, “Hold on an inch again” is a clear evidence of Denny Ja’s expertise as an author. With a strong character, interesting storyline, beautiful language, and deep message, this essay poem should be appreciated as an extraordinary literary work.

Check in full:

[nayablog2]

Tracing the chosen work of Denny Ja 18: Naga Thousand Faces: A Greet Review

In the world of Indonesian literature, the name Denny Ja is familiar. Author and activist Denny JA has given birth to many works that inspire and inspire. One of his latest works that should be traced is Denny JA 18: Naga Thousand Faces. In this article, we will discuss in depth about this work and reveal the reasons why this work is very evocative. Naga Thousand faces are an essay poem that tells the life journey of a main character named Damar. Damar is a young man who lives in uncertainty and inner conflict. He was trapped in the struggle between the desire to reach his goals and the social pressure he faced. Through the Damar story, Denny JA presents a story that is aroused and enlightened. One of the interesting things in this essay poem is the characterization of its characters. Denny Ja managed to describe every character very well. Each character has its own uniqueness and complexity. Damar, the main character in this story, is described as a figure who struggles to find his identity in a world full of uncertainty. Meanwhile, supporting figures such as Ayu, Damar's childhood friend, and Bima, a mentor who helped Damar navigate his life, was also described very strongly. This strong characterization makes the reader feel connected to every character in the story. In addition to strong characterization, the storyline in a thousand faces is also very interesting. Denny Ja managed to bring the reader into the story line smoothly. Each chapter takes us to a different place and time, making us keep curious to find out the continuation of the story. At the same time, Denny Ja is also able to describe every event with quite detailed, building a charming atmosphere and reviving every scene in the story. In addition, the theme raised in the Naga Thousand Faces is also very relevant to the present. Denny Ja raises social issues such as social pressure, uncertainty, and inner conflicts that we often face in everyday life. Through this essay poem, Denny Ja invites the reader to reflect and question the meaning of life and goals to be achieved. Denny Ja's style of language in this essay poem is also appreciated. The style of language is simple but full of meaning makes the story feel more alive. Denny Ja also uses interesting literary techniques such as metaphors and symbolism to describe the feelings and thoughts of the characters. This makes the story feel deeper and attractive. In the whole, a thousand faces of a thousand faces are a work that arouses the emotions and thoughts of the reader. Denny Ja managed to present a strong story and tell the life journey of his characters very well. Strong characterization, interesting story lines, relevant themes, and distinctive style of language making this essay poem become one of Denny Ja's best works. In closing, a thousand faces are a work that should be traced and read by all Indonesian literary lovers. Through this work, Denny Ja invites us to reflect and question the meaning of life and goals to be achieved. Naga Thousand faces are a story that is aroused and inspiring, and is proof that Denny Ja is one of the best Indonesian writers. 

Check more: Tracing Denny JA's selected work 18: Naga Thousand Faces: A Greeting Review

[princesssarisa]

I'd like some more input about my own writing, if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

In my Beauty and the Beast retelling, I've been fleshing out girl-Beast Liriel's backstory from when she was a princess. I've decided that her father, at least, died when she was too young to remember him, and so her main guardian was a single mother figure, whom I've named Katriel. Their relationship was distant at best, though, because Katriel was a real socialite of a princess and didn't have much time for little Liriel, and as the latter became a teenager, they constantly clashed because Liriel was too independent, not social or charming enough, has too much iof a passion for elemental magic, and was too staunchly a lesbian who rejected every wealthy potential husband she was offered. Still, they did love each other, and Liriel wanted Katriel's approval. Yet when (after other plot developments) Liriel turned herself into a beast and was, in turn, cursed never to be able to change back, Katriel banished her into the wilderness. They never met again, as Katriel died long before the main storyline begins.

The question is, should Katriel be Liriel's mother, or her much-older sister? I haven't decided.

Pros of Mother/Cons of Sister

*The original Beast/Prince in Villeneuve’s version of BatB has a widowed mother.

*Conflict between mothers and teenage daughters is older than recorded history and universally relatable – especially between traditionalist mothers and free-spirited, gender non-conforming daughters.

*Likewise, even though there’s no homophobia in the world of this story, conflict between an LGBT+ daughter and her mother who wants to make her more “feminine” and marry her off to a man (in this case for wealth or status) will always feel relevant. Especially because it ends with the mother throwing her daughter out when she realizes she’ll never conform to expectations.

*Shanna (Beauty) also has a widowed mother and has also sometimes felt inadequate in her eyes. (In their case it’s because she’s a sensitive, imaginative girl while her mother is down-to-earth and tough-minded.) She and Liriel could bond over this, while at the same time, learning just how cold and intolerant Katriel was would make her appreciate how loving and accepting her own mother is despite their differences.

*If Katriel is Liriel’s mother, then the shadow of the dead father can add to their conflict. I imagine him as a jerk who cheated on her throughout their brief marriage; in their daughter’s free spirit and stubbornness, she would see too much of him, and she would reject Liriel's desire to marry for love because her own marriage for love went so sour. I also imagine she might resent Liriel for making her unable to remarry, because no royals or noblemen on the marriage market wanted to raise another man’s child.

*An aloof older sister queen/free-spirited younger sister princess pairing might remind people too much of Frozen’s Elsa and Anna, albeit more dysfunctional.

*A rebellious “spare to the throne” who becomes estranged from their dutiful older sibling might feel too much like a female Prince Harry.

*A woman rejecting her daughter for being trapped in the form of an ugly beast would probably be much more appalling and heartbreaking than her rejecting her sister for the same reason.

Pros of Sister/Cons of Mother

*Conflict between sisters, especially between ladylike sisters and gender non-conforming sisters, is just as time honored as mother/daughter conflicts. They’d essentially be like an age-inverted Amy and Jo March, or like Sansa and Arya Stark, albeit if they had no other siblings and one had to raise the other.

*Shanna has two sisters too, and though they’re not mean the way Beauty's sisters traditionally are (and are younger than Shanna instead of older), Shanna still struggles with seeing them as “perfect” compared to herself. That commonality of “perfect” sisters would give her and Liriel something to bond over.

*Megan Kearney’s BatB webcomic has already given the Beast/Prince an abusive single mother in his backstory.

*The traditionalist mother/free-spirited daughter conflict might remind people too much of Elinor and Merida in Brave: especially because they’re royalty, part of their conflict stems from Liriel resisting an arranged marriage, and one of them is eventually turned into an animal.

*The “shadow of the dead father” aspect of their conflict could be expanded into “shadow of the dead parents.” Katriel-as-Liriel's-sister would have more memories of their parents than Liriel does and have been strongly affected by their father’s cheating and their mother’s misery. Hence “Don’t be wild like Dad and don’t throw your life away for passion like Mom.” Their mother could also have died giving birth to Liriel, which would add to Katriel’s resentment.

*I’d probably succeed better in making Katriel complex and not too evil if she were Liriel's sister instead of her mother. I don’t want her to be all bad, but deeply flawed parents are hard to write without demonizing them, because it’s such a triggering subject. We see this again and again when fandoms vilify even mildly flawed parent characters and refuse to see the nuances the author gave them.

*Seeing Liriel's mother throw her out after she’s cursed might be especially triggering for LGBT+ teen readers, even though she’s not thrown out because she’s LGBT+; her sister throwing her out would still hurt, but wouldn’t be triggering in the same way.

I wouldn't mind taking a vote: should Katriel be Liriel's sister, or her mother?

#my writing #a beast's rose #wlw beauty and the beast #input needed #tw: parental abandonment #lgbt+ fantasy novel

[indiaalphawhiskey]

I respectfully disagree with your last post (as an author). I’ve been in this fandom for 6 years and noticed it’s a little bit toxic when it comes to certain issues that should be normal and obvious to anyone.

I don’t get the “I choose the people I want to take criticism from” part. Ok, so why posting your work on a public page for independent writers where every subscriber will be able to read it and comment on it? Just send it to the people whose opinion matters to you and have a discussion about your work with them. If you post your work on a public page made specifically for independent writers, you are automatically posting it for everyone on that site. And every person has opinions on things and feels invited to express it if that particular thing is public and comments are open (I’m talking about respectful opinions, not slurs and offending someone).

If it was only for you and the people you actually want to get feedback from then wouldn’t it be easier to create an “élite” group where you read your work and then discuss it together? Because your post sends a very negative and exclusionary message to people that are reading your work for the first time or without knowing you as an author. It really seems like you are saying “dear readers, your opinion doesn’t matter to me so unless it’s positive I don’t want to hear it because this fanfic was written for me and this list of people.” Then don’t post it. But why making people feel excluded or bad because they did something normal just because they didn’t know it wasn’t written “for them” as you said in your post. And constructive criticism is just an opinion too as long as it doesn’t contain vulgarities, you don’t have to listen to it. Other’s opinion shouldn’t change the way you feel about your work but you also shouldn’t make them feel uncomfortable and bad for expressing it in a respectful way on a public page.

I know that authors on AO3 aren’t paid and that’s just for fun, but that’s what every page like AO3 is about: putting your work out there for other people to read with the possibility to express their personal opinion in a respectful way (I mean, you CAN disable the comments). Why making it public and then complaining and making other people feel bad for expressing their opinion on it? It’s not a diary or a personal Instagram profile.

So, first off, thank you for saying you respectfully disagree with me. I appreciate that you’re trying to be polite. 

There are many different ways I can answer this ask, because there’s a lot to discuss here, however, I’m exhausted by this conversation and have tackled it many times before, so I’ll link things when I see fit and get straight to the point.

My question for you is this: What is the purpose of you posting negative  (even though well-worded, polite, and tactful) unsolicited comments on a person’s fanfic? Why do you do it?

That’s not a rhetorical question, I really want you to think about the answer, because, for something to be called “constructive criticism” (which is specifically what we’re discussing here, versus the opposite “destructive” criticism) there has to be a point beyond just the fact that “it’s a public forum” and therefore, you feel entitled to express your opinion, whatever it may be. (That reasoning, btw, is called entitlement. No one said you weren’t allowed to have an opinion, but if you’re saying it to the author with no constructive, bettering purpose behind it, then at worst, your intent is to hurt them, which is just mean, no matter how politely you word it, and at best, you’re saying your opinions and preference take precedent over the author’s own.)

There are three reasons that I assume one can have when posting constructive criticism on work/art:

1. You want to help make them be a better writer, both now and in the future. 

I, and other fellow authors, explain why this doesn’t work here and here, and there are more posts about it like this one, if you need to hear it from voices that are not from the Larry fandom (which I assume you do, since you said this is a little bit toxic here particularly.) 

I encourage you to read all those posts, to get a better explanation in context, but the gist of them is this: for something to be truly constructive (synonym: helpful), the source, the timing, and the tact is key. Let me demonstrate: There is a difference between telling a friend while shopping, “I wouldn’t buy that dress, it’s not the most flattering on you,” and saying, while you’re out at a club, “Oh, that dress isn’t the most flattering on you, I wouldn’t wear it again.” -- Both are honest, worded politely, and both will achieve the same outcome: she will not wear the dress again -- but only one of them will cause undue stress, embarrassment, and self-consciousness (under the guise of being helpful), and that is all due to tact and timing. At the store, she can change into something else, and won’t assume you think she looks awful the entire day while you’re out. At the club, the damage is done, there is nothing she can do to change it, and you’ve just ruined her night.

The same goes for writing. I have seen people gracefully and willingly rewrite their entire first drafts based on astute and even harsh comments on their work, by their betas. I have never seen someone take down a fic and edit it based on a piece of constructive criticism given by a stranger on AO3. What I have seen based on that scenario, is people taking that criticism to heart and reflecting on whether or not they ever want to write again, because when they made themselves vulnerable, some people looked at it as an opportunity to ask for what would cater best to their own tastes, instead of appreciating the work as a true product of the author’s personal feelings and experiences. That results in less writers for the fandom, less content, and a whole lot of undue discouragement which is not something we want (nor is it actually constructive).

2. You want to engage the author in a deeper discussion of their work.

This is in direct answer to this part of your ask:

It really seems like you are saying “dear readers, your opinion doesn’t matter to me so unless it’s positive I don’t want to hear it because this fanfic was written for me and this list of people.”

You feel passionate (both positively and negatively) about my work? That’s lovely. I say, start a discussion with me. Ask me questions. Learn why I made those decisions. A discussion starts with an invitation to have a conversation (two ways, you say something, I say something, rinse repeat). It doesn’t start with “I didn’t like” or “This could have been better if”, and it certainly doesn’t start in a public forum, like the comments on AO3, where the writer runs the risk of looking like a defensive asshole. 

But India, you say, what if I don’t have the means to have a private conversation/the writer doesn’t have tumblr/they’ve long since been inactive in the fandom? The answers are, respectively: leave a polite comment asking if they’re willing to discuss, if they are willing to discuss, leave a polite comment asking how to contact them, and if they’re no longer active, find other friends with which to discuss your feelings in private.

But India, that seems like so much work. It is, flat out. But if you really felt that strongly about something I wrote, you would make that effort to understand it. Otherwise, why not just walk away?

3. You don’t know better.

I found this part of your ask extremely interesting:

“But why making people feel excluded or bad because they did something normal just because they didn’t know it wasn’t written “for them” as you said in your post.”

The reason I found it interesting is because it means that there are people who assume that all work that is public was made for them, to suit their tastes, which is, frankly, a bizarre way to consume art. I do not go into The Louvre, look at the Mona Lisa and say “I don’t see the hype, it’s not something I would hang in my living room.” I look at it and think “What does this piece say about Da Vinci and his life? What has this brought to the world? How has this helped people/art/culture?”

(No, I am in no way comparing my talents to Da Vinci, I am not delusional. But, I don’t think my work deserves any less thought than that of a professional artist, simply because I’m an amateur and it’s on the internet and not in a gallery, and you have the superpower of anonymity.) You asked me what the point was in posting my work publicly if I didn’t want to hear every single person’s personal (negative) take on it, and the answer is this: I post what I write publicly, because I hope it helps someone. I hope my thoughts, feelings, experiences, loneliness validate someone, entertain them, help them through a tough time, bring them comfort. I post because I want to invite people to lose themselves alongside me, heal alongside me, dream alongside me. 

(Notice how I said “someone” and not “everyone”. How I said “someone” and not “an élite group that discusses my work”, because yes, I do hope that my work positively impacts someone outside of my betas, my friend group. Does that mean someone can leave negative comments on my work? Yes. But should they? That’s a different question.)

I know my work won’t be a positive experience for every single person, but my goal was never to be relevant to every single person. So, my question is, if I’m not relevant to you personally -- if my work doesn’t touch you personally, heal you personally, entertain you personally, why not just walk away and find something that does? Who does your negative opinion really help? How is it constructive? What is its purpose? Why do you do it?

I will apologize for this, though: I spoke on behalf of all writers, and maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I should have been clear that though many writers feel this way, not all do. There are some, such as, I assume, yourself, who do view negative comments on AO3 as constructive, whether or not they are solicited, and I’m sorry to have spoken on behalf of you. However, I do still stand by this, though: it is much better to be kind than be right, and that definitely goes for comments on fic.

#concrit #writing thoughts #constructive criticism #iaw ask #iaw anonymous #iaw opinion #long post

[freddieofhearts]

Bye bye, dears (for now!)

I know there have been a lot of rumours and some posts about me leaving, so here I am to set the record straight and say a quick ‘au revoir’. This post is long, and I don’t expect everyone to read the whole thing—if you just want information on how to keep in touch, or about access to my removed fics, scroll to the bottom. ⬇️

*

Why are you leaving?

Firstly, of course I’m not leaving Freddie. This is just an ongoing hiatus from the social side of fandom, because while I have some incredible friends here, who have done all they can to support me and have made this experience wonderful in lots of ways—it’s also true that the social space has become more and more toxic for me.

I get a wild amount of hate. Despite never having my ask box enabled on here, people create new accounts just to message me and tell me all the problems in this fandom are my fault, that I’m faking being sick, that I should kill myself, that I’m fat, etc. I also very regularly get hateful comments on AO3.

Obviously I realise that I’m not the only one who receives these cruel attacks, but it’s become increasingly hard to handle them—especially as some people (‘real’ accounts, not faceless anons) do continue to blame me for wider problems in the fandom. It makes me feel consistently sad, anxious, and paranoid, so that I can’t focus on anything Queen-related that I enjoy.

More pressingly, it’s affected my mental health, which is—imperfect at the best of times. As I’ve occasionally alluded to in older posts on this blog, I have a history of anorexia, OCD, PTSD, and some other overlapping issues. Most people who know me in the fandom are also aware that I’m ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ to Covid-19, significantly immunocompromised, and have been isolating at home for eleven months.

The combination of all of these things + the constant toxic messages has really been triggering me, and leading to an uptick in disordered behaviours, which my body cannot sustain. Every new instance of hate from an anon—every time there’s another indication of groups in the fandom wanting to ostracise me further—my reaction is deeply self-punitive and unhealthy. Ultimately I need to be out of this environment for, at least, a protracted period. My therapist, my partner and my close friends in the fandom support this decision.

*

So, what went wrong?

In 2019, I expected to be an absolutely tiny blog in the Queen Tumblr landscape. The fandom was already well-established, and I have never worked to ‘build a following’ on here—I think I’ve linked my own fic a maximum of three or four times!—in fact, more or less the opposite. As I mentioned above: ya girl is nutty as a fruitcake. As a result, I often avoid extremely niche things in daily life which cause severe anxiety for me, Relevant examples here: I never look at my timeline. I never intentionally look at my follower number. Yup, it’s strange, I fully admit it, but it’s best for me to go with these things—usually. In Queen fandom, however, this avoidance both of analytic stats and of most direct engagement led to some problems... My followers grew without me realising, and way more people were reading my blog than I was aware of. I was still in a—“Wow, this fandom is very frustrating, and rife with ableism, racism, etc., so how do we fix this???”—mindset, and I wanted to share my opinions, sure! but I also thought I was sharing them with 15-20 like-minded people.

Now, intent is not impact, and I recognise that I was brusque, didn’t phrase things particularly sensitively, and absolutely did hurt some people by criticising the fandom so freely. I still regret this—and I regret just as much the fact that some assholes have used my criticising the fandom on my own blog as implicit justification for attacking authors. I have said on here many times that I don’t condone that behaviour—but I also think there’s some truth in the presumption that these anonymous malcontents felt my critiques somehow ‘permitted’ them to engage in abuse. For the first few months, though, I genuinely had no idea there was a link at all—and so I was initially slow to condemn this abusive behaviour in public, because I was taking it for granted all authors agreed it was shitty. It took someone directly telling me (shoutout to @a-froger-epic) that people had identified a connection between my posts and the anons, before everything fell into place.

I would like to offer my apologies to the fandom at large for not being more quick on the uptake about this, because I feel that had I realised sooner that these people were taking ‘inspiration’ in some way from me, it might have been easier to put a stop to it. It does seem that there is still a lot of confusion about whether I support them and which of their views I agree with. Let’s be 100% clear on this: I do not support the anonymous commenters on AO3. At times there is some, limited overlap between parts of their views and parts of mine, but even that is less than you may think—I often see anonymous comments from so-called ‘Freddie fans’ that I substantially disagree with.

Perhaps even more importantly: I do not support anyone who sends anonymous hate on Tumblr.

*

What’s all this about ‘overlap’ with the anons?

Let’s do a mini-summary of the myths vs. the truth. There are views I hold which are genuinely unpopular in the fandom—but which I own up to completely, and have never tried to hide in any way. I’ve never needed to use anonymous to share my opinions because I’m completely open about them! What people who don’t know me tend to have ‘heard’ about me, though, is usually a drastic distortion of my real opinions.

What people think I think:

- Freddie should never top.

- It’s okay to send anon hate if someone writes Freddie ‘wrong’.

- It’s more important to correct ‘wrong’ portrayals than to respect other writers.

- It’s inherently wrong to be more interested in band pairings than canon pairings.

- Freddie should be overtly written as a r*pe survivor/victim (and not doing this is wrong).

- Freddie should be overtly written as having an eating disorder (and not doing this is wrong).

- Kink fics are wrong.

What I actually think:

- I believe Freddie did have a strongly defined sexual identity with marked preferences, but I don’t think Jim Hutton lied when he said that Freddie topped. I believe Freddie did top, but this isn’t the time or place to get into my thoughts on why/when/how much. I do believe that my analysis of the sources relevant to this subject is as historically accurate as one can reasonably be in matters of sex (where historical accuracy will always be particularly limited and imperfect)—but I don’t think it’s morally wrong to write Freddie as topping more than he probably did.

- I don’t believe there’s only one ‘right’ version of Freddie (all others being ‘wrong’). I do believe it is possible to be more right or less right—but I’m also conscious of the fact that this scale of value is not one by which everyone measures fanfiction. As a result, then, I don’t think that any perceptions surrounding ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ justify sending anonymous, non-constructive criticism, or outright hate.

- I do believe constructive criticism is a good thing. I welcome and appreciate it myself; I have received it on my fics in Queen fandom, and it has made them better. I have been in writing workshops which included very forceful criticisms, and the value of such feedback has been intimately and immediately part of my life as a writer for years. However: in this case, I have accepted that my opinion differs from the general community preference, and so I no longer offer any constructive criticism (outside private beta-reading). I haven’t changed my view, but I’ve changed my practice to align with community norms.

- I do not think any single, individual writer has a personal responsibility to write about Freddie Mercury in any given way. That ranges from including the more distressing topics to which I’ve devoted attention (such as trauma)—to concentrating on ‘canon’ pairings like Jimercury—to, even, focusing on Freddie at all.

“Now, that doesn’t sound like you, @freddieofhearts,” you might be thinking. And I know it doesn’t; I think something I’ve done a poor job of articulating is the difference between how I view each individual fan—namely, as free to shape their creative experience at will, even in ways that I might find distressing or offensive; even in ways that you might find distressing or offensive—and the way I view the Collective. I think people have interpreted some of my critiques of ‘Queen Fandom’ as meaning something like: “You-in-particular, a specific Queen fan, are doing it wrong and should change everything about how you do it; also you don’t really care about Freddie.”

And—that’s not it. What any given fan, as an individual, does, isn’t a problem. And that can be true alongside—concurrently with—a multivalent critique of how the fandom is lacking in representation of Freddie’s life, with all that that (wonderful, deservedly celebrated, but also profoundly traumatic) life entailed. I still hold that view; I still have myriad problems with ‘the fandom’ (structurally, collectively, historically and presently—from the 1990s to the 2020s). Some of what I want to work on (away from the social life of fandom) is expressing those critiques with greater nuance, in ways that can’t be misinterpreted as shading any particular fanfiction author or subgenre of story.

In brief: I haven’t changed my mind, but I think Tumblr is an untenable environment in which to discuss the things I want to analyse, especially as there is an ever-present danger of hurting someone.

*

Can we keep in touch? Where is the fic?

I will drop by this account periodically to check out posts that friends have sent me, so you can always sent me a private message to ask for my contact details on the other app that I’m using now for fandom friends. Multiple Freddie conversations and projects are going on over there, off-Tumblr, with a much ‘gentler’ environment and no bad actors—I personally love it!

All my fic has been downloaded and saved. I don’t want to deal with constant harassment on AO3, but I’m happy to share a copy with anyone who missed it and wants to read/re-read something. I also saved everyone’s lovely comments and thoughtful con-crit, so none of that has been lost or erased.

Thank you to everyone who welcomed me to the fandom, made me think, taught me, shared with me, sent me into fits of the giggles, collaborated with me creatively, and otherwise made this one hell of a ride! Love you all. ❤️

#au revoir my dears #lil gay bby

[strangertheory]

Will Byers! :)

I meant to answer this Ask an eternity ago, and you have been so incredibly patient with me! (Thank you!!!) 

I think because Will is my favorite character, I started to fuss over my answer too much, and before I knew it we were here: a few months later, and a long while after I offered to answer these specific questions for character Asks. Today, I want to finally answer your Ask for my favorite character: Will Byers.

Will Byers

Favorite thing about them:

Will loves and appreciates his friends so much, and you can tell that he would do absolutely anything for Joyce or Jonathan too. My favorite thing about Will is his love and devotion to others. I think that since Castle Byers symbolically represents a safe place for Will, it also reveals what Will deeply cares about and chooses to protect within that safe place, and one of those things is his friendships. “Castle Byers: All Friends Welcome.” Castle Byers represents Will’s desire to welcome all friends with open arms and unconditional acceptance. While I think that Will would be kindhearted regardless, I think that because Will knows how painful rejection is from facing the bullies at school and his father’s insults, Will puts forth an extra effort to make sure that everyone in his life feels appreciated and loved. Will shares his secret safe-place in the woods with anyone willing to be his friend. Castle Byers is like a secret shrine dedicated to everything Will is passionate about (comics, D&D, art) and is also dedicated to those he loves and to those who love and accept him in return. He has photographs of his friends, drawings on the walls that he made about their D&D campaigns together, and comics that they’ve probably all shared. In spite of his limited means, Will is very generous with what he offers to others: he gave the little girl that was crying in the sandbox his Tonka Truck (even though Joyce cautioned him that they couldn’t afford to get a new one), he’s given Mike dozens of drawings (if Mike’s decorated walls and his binder full of Will’s artworks are any small evidence of this) and Will has given his mom a good number of drawings too that she cherishes. Will wants everyone to feel loved and to be happy, and is grateful to those that are there for him. Undoubtedly some of this stems from his deep insecurities and his lack of self-worth and his desire to be loved and appreciated back, but I think most of it is still rooted in Will’s genuine desire to make sure that other people are happy because their happiness makes him happy too.

Least favorite thing about them:

I appreciate all of the characters for their strengths as well as their flaws because it’s what makes them so very human and relatable. But Will definitely has some traits that I hope, for his own sake, he’ll learn to manage in a healthier way. Will’s weakness is that he often places the wants and needs of others before his own, and he seeks to avoid conflict at all costs. These are arguably admirable traits that are directly related to Will’s love and affection for other people (which I said was my favorite thing about him!), but they can also be self-destructive and unhealthy habits and I think they are, at least in part, the result of Will growing up in a combative and abusive home environment. I admire Will for his selflessness and for his desire to avoid conflict, but I list his excessive selflessness and his excessive desire to keep the peace as two things that make me worry about him. I hope he will learn to balance these two impulses in a healthier way over the next few seasons. I think that learning to deal with these two bad habits in a healthier way will be part of Will’s personal growth over the next two seasons.

Favorite line(s):

“Yea. Crazy together.”

brOTP:

Jonathan and Will, of course! I was sad that we didn’t get more scenes with them together in season 3, but I appreciate every moment in the series that we’ve gotten so far. Jonathan’s effort to reassure Will that it’s ok to be “a freak,” and that being different is preferable to being just like everybody else, was really heartwarming and is probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire series.

OTP:

As you have probably figured out if you have been following my blog for even a few days: I’m convinced that Will and Mike are meant to be together by the end of the series, and I am eager to talk about it some other time in another post.

nOTP:

I cannot bring myself to imagine Will and El ever dating. But I look forward to them hopefully becoming very close, and teaming up platonically!

random headcanon:

Hmmm. So this is actually the part of this post that had me delaying responding to your Ask for so long, because my head-canon for Will is incredibly specific, unconventional, frequently controversial (from what I've noticed when this topic is discussed), and a bit complicated to explain. But I do want to talk about it! And I want to clarify that I actually don’t think of this as a head-canon: I solidly consider it a theory that might account for what is happening to Will, and what also is happening to other characters based on specific evidence within the series so far.

I won’t get into all of the evidence and layers in this post (because there is a lot), but I strongly suspect that Will Byers is being written as a character with dissociative identity disorder and that much of Stranger Things is about alters learning to work together as a System while confronting and resolving trauma that is manifesting itself in internal worlds and dreams various symbolic and fantastical ways (as well as in some very humanly monstrous ways too, unfortunately.) Whether the entire story is taking place within an internal world or whether everything has sprung out of the mind and into the external world is definitely a question I think about a lot, but my current interpretation is that a good amount of the story takes place in a liminal space between our external world / reality and a mental space that the characters are sometimes exploring.

Stranger Things follows characters that are canonically dealing with PTSD, significant levels of memory loss (Will couldn’t remember who Hopper was in season 2 while at the Lab), suddenly shifting from being mentally present in the world to being in a different perceived place (is the Upside Down an internal world?), perceived changes in personality and identity, traumatic visions and experiences (flashbacks? memories?) that often parallel one another in an eerie way, and many other specific details. Add to that Doctor Owens’ preoccupation with Will’s brain scans and Mr. Clarke’s lesson in season 2 in which he discusses Phineas Gage’s changed personality following Gage’s brain injury (which is not an example of DID but is still thematically relevant, and an oddly specific topic to feature in the series) and the clues just continue to add up. Even if this theory isn’t correct I look forward to continuing to discover more about the established rules of the Stranger Things universe and what is going on with Will, El, Hopper, the Numbers, all of these horrible father-figures (notably Dr. Brenner, Lonnie, and Neil) and the mysterious Lab.

(One last important note regarding this theory: please do not base your knowledge of DID on any fictional representation of it in popular media. A lot of misrepresentations of DID exist in Hollywood and pop culture. If you'd like to learn more on this topic, please read about it in medical publications and resources with verifiable authority on the topic.)

unpopular opinion:

I think that the theory I mentioned above is probably my most unpopular opinion/thought regarding what I think Will is dealing with.

songs I associate with them:

The songs that they chose to feature on Will’s official Spotify Playlist are all songs that I associate with Will at this point. I’m so impressed by the attention the creators of Stranger Things devote to the music not only in the show but to the characters’ official playlists. One track that definitely jumps out at me from Will’s official playlist is Afraid by The Neighborhood. The lyrics of the chorus are eerily specific: “When I wake up / I’m afraid / somebody else will take my place / when I wake up / I’m afraid / somebody else will end up being me.”

favorite picture(s) of them:

#will byers #stranger things #stranger things theory

[theorynexus]

We now begin 51, which will likely take us to an entirely different perspective. Thanks, Monty Python!

On a random note, though... 

Man, this is fricking crazy, from a dramatic irony perspective. I do appreciate that Homestuck is written such that that spreads from not only the author’s possession, but to that of the audience via rereads.  As... macabre as this particular example is.

Finally, Dorothy is gone, and all that is left is the Witch (and her little dog too)?

Well, maybe not even that. Certainly, Bec’s powers are muted, and I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised if his instincts are too; on the other hand,they could be strongly contributing to this. This sequence strongly reminds me of the sequence wherein Jade’s destiny to become fused with him was first alluded to. “You eat a weird bug, and don’t even care,” and whatnot.  Certainly, 

Words slough from the busy mind like a useless dead membrane as a more visceral sapience takes over. Something simpler is in charge now, a force untouched by the concerns and burdens of the upright, that farcical yoke the bipedal tow. It now drives you through the midnight brush ...  as you and your new friend must claim the night with piercing howls moonward.

seems reminiscent to me of all of her thoughts of her former existence fading as she is beckoned by the call-- not of a moon, but of another reflection of the light of the sun: the Void-y remains that come with its demise. Obviously her “new friend” in this case would seem to refer both to Bec (who is a part of her, now, thus explaining the uniform motion) and through allusion, to the Alt!Calliope that her other version of herself had already befriended, who would be the one beckoning in the first place. It should also be said that shoes could be taken as a symbol of civilization, in this case, beyond just the obvious symbolism that is being pointed out to the viewer.  Regardless, whether this similarity was intended or not doesn’t actually matter. It’s just that this scene vaguely made me think of that.

What irony, considering this is coming from the one who just bewitched the Seer (which, I would just like to say, is honestly some nice narrative symmetry, considering this is almost exactly like what Doc Scratch did before him [not that I don’t still feel disgust toward him, even if this might turn out in Rose’s favor, in the long run]).                    Oh, yes, and by the way... very nice confirmation of the fact that the Green Sun Black Hole is Void-oriented. I appreciate that coming from an in-story source. (Even if you don’t connect emptiness with Void, which you should, the fact that the Ocean is connected with it is almost indisputable. That’s part of the reason why Rose’s quest was to bring life to the dead ocean by Playing the Rain. It was about using her inner Light to counteract her tendencies toward its equal opposite.)

Which is part of the reason why Alt!Calliope and Jade get along so well, and why there’s a connection between them, I’m sure. (Both of their lifestyles/life histories emphasized thematically their inner Space orientation. [This may also be why Kanaya lived in them middle of a desert, with no one but her Virgin Mother Grub to directly keep he company.])

Yes, way to downplay one of the core Aspects of reality just because it doesn’t necessarily always function in the way that perception would suggest it does. This doesn’t make it illusory, nor does it invalidate the continuum aspect of it:  that it is intrinsically relevant to how life persists and interacts with the world itself demonstrates the importance of this part of Time. It’s like suggesting an iceberg is an illusion just because you can’t see the depths hidden away below the surface (Void hides it from your eyes [read: Light is blocked]).   Gah, you are so bloody irksome and pride-projecting in your demeanor just because you managed to pick something up that the Trolls basically illuminated to the Beta Kids way back when they were all 13.  Congratulations.

Fool. (Oh, and I would argue that time continuing to be relevant conceptually, despite its non-linearity, helps to emphasize its importance as a pillar of reality. That it is an existence persisting independent of its consequent internal signifiers [entropy, {temporal} causality, direction] allows for it to play the very important role of acting as a medium for general interaction and consequence; particularly, it allows for the persistence and simultaneous activity of all possible states of being within its domain [e.g.: reality or the meta-narrative Existence within the context of MSPA, or whatever set of other works which would necessarily include all relevantly connected miscellany] which are additionally allowed for via the logical intermingling it has with the other Aspects.            In other words: Time is one of the two necessary present architectonic forces that undergird the Narrative.   Your suggesting that it is given disproportionate attention and that loneliness is therefore an illusion is just the sort of insulting, crass, and perspective-locked claptrap that I’d expect from someone who’s so enthusiastically embraced a departure from humanity, and who thus has lost mooring in the solid, political existence which sapient, physically-connected beings dwell in by nature.   I suspect that your distraction and loss of perspective will eventually come back to haunt you.  ) Yes, I realize that the Ultimate Self is a timeless construct, but this does not mean time is irrelevant to it or the limited forms it girds itself with when connecting to physicality. (On a random note:  I do appreciate his decision to call Aspects ideas.)

Along with the creepiness with regards to Dirk pushing thoughts into Jade’s head (which is honestly par for the course in Homestuck, and at least he’s mostly trying to remind her of something he believes she already knows, so it’s somwhat benevolent), we get this interesting snippet.  Seems he wants to foreshadow difficulties between Dave, Jade, and Karkat in the future.   I suppose the only logical question is whether Jade will break their hearts in turn.   Love is hard. It’s hard and everybody (with actual experience) understands.

Ha ha, “How much of Homestuck was actually illusion seen in the perspective of the characters involved, a la the kids’ rooms before Gamzee’s Chucklevoodoo curses were disrupted,” ha ha. On a more important note:   I very much appreciate Dirk’s well-arranged metaphors relating to time, to Calliope’s Muse-inspired-powered Spatial-influential music. Dirk is indeed quite bad at distracting hyper-focused people with thoughts he thinks they will reasonably find seem similar to thoughts she might have.

Hey, man, don’t give up. Your breaking from the narrative of trying to help her is making it seem like your nervousness is throwing you off, meaning we won’t know if your attempts to help her had any chance to succeed in general! Way to go, “hero!”

“Time is an illusion,” you say?   Yet here’s your narration, there’s Jade.  Oh!  There she goes, persisting to fly off into the dead sun, just as linear time would demand of her!  What’s wrong?  Couldn’t make the time to properly put your thoughts together or try until you got it right?   Gasp!         My word!  It’s almost like Time is pretty fricking important to the narrative and reality of the story!

HEEHEEHAHAHAHA!!!        Serves you right, getting spooked like that, you incompetent, over-confident knave!

... Now, let’s see how the rest of this goes, now that I have a better handle on my humours.

You’re dealing with the Grim Reaper, inspirer of great woe and terror, as well as happy children drawings and stories everywhere.  Obviously, you were overmatched. Perhaps you should have tried focusing on Jade initially, rather than John?  That might have given you a little bit more time.   I am reminded of a group of trolls who didn’t properly think through their attempts to mock and cajole those they perceived to be the artificers of their downfall.  Perhaps this will turn out as well.

Demiourgos, your pride showeth. Your composure runneth down and streaketh thine face like free-flowing ichor. Hubris, doth it become thee?   Thou reflecteth thine flaws, and by thy own hand. Revealeth thou not the weakness of thine breast with Rage-filled uproar?   A lion in thine face we see, but at this flickering of that glamour, a snake in masquerade is spotted. Foul wretch, I pity thee:  for it is truly painful to behold the disheartening of the ambitious, and the glorious in the midst of downfall. What do you fear?  What compels such panic into one normally so serene?

I suppose I should have known. A mechanist always fears uncontrollable variables.    (I do wonder if his fear is truly warranted, though. Certainly, things aren’t as bad as they could be, but there is much to be depressed about in these outcomes as they have emerged so far, you know?)

And thus, a new star was born?   Well, we’ll see.   I certainly do appreciate the physics of black hole mechanics being involved, though I am not 100% sure that this is accurate to how such an ultra-massive construct would actually work. I know super-massive black holes effect objects differently than normal ones, when they approach the event horizon, so it seems rather reasonable to guess that one the mass of multiple universes would behave a bit differently from either.  I do not know, however.  ... All in all, a pretty great page, I guess.  It was nice to see the Narrator lose control so badly.  A bit sad that the consequences of that were as they were, but I knew that this would likely be the case, regardless. I wonder when John and Terezi will be back in focus~ ... P.S.:  I am pretty sure that subtle interference with the narrative is the normal role of a Muse, and that her Mastery over Jade in particular makes a great deal of sense, given who Jade is. I wonder what has compelled her to speak in such a manner that her voice is actually visible in the text, rather than subtly bending it to her will as presumably has been the case over the course of Homestuck, generally.  Could it be that she did this specifically to teach the Narrator a lesson?  Shall we ever find out?

#Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck Epilogue #Unreliable Narrator #Homestuck Theory #Homestuck Liveblog #Homestuck Aspects #Aspect Theorization #Alt!Calliope #The Narrator #Jade Harley #Green Sun Black Hole #Time Aspect

[hexiva]

Book Reviews

I’m getting back into reading fantasy, getting a bunch of random books out of the library if they look good. I thought I’d post my thoughts on them.

The Tiger at Midnight, by Swati Teerdhala Inspired by the culture of ancient India and Hindu mythology, The Tiger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala features a cat-and-mouse game of deception and thrills between a rebel assassin and the reluctant young soldier tasked to bring her to justice.

Just finished this one. There were definitely times when I thought I was just going to stop and take it back to the library unread. It’s by no means a terrible book, but in many ways it feels too much like every other YA book I’ve read. I really like the concept of the central romance: it’s an enemy romance, which I love, the characters have a pretty equal power dynamic, and there’s no gross abuse stuff to put me off. It also felt like a gender-reversal of the typical YA dynamics - Esha is like the dark, handsome, conflicted romance hero, and Kunal is like the sweet, repressed heroine. I liked that, and I really liked Esha as a character. Kunal was by no means unsympathetic either. But the relationship between the two of them, which was central to the book, felt really under developed. The narrative informs us that they feel something for each other very early on, when they’ve barely spoken, and continues informing us of their feelings, but I kept wondering . . . why? There were a couple of points where there was a line like “It’s strange that I feel so strongly for him given we barely know each other!” and I feel like, when you find yourself writing a line like that, you should sit back and think a bit about why you felt the need to point this out. It felt like there were opportunities for them to be pushed together and bond, and the book didn’t really capitalize on them - or, rather, acted as if they’d already been pushed together. It felt like it was missing a key moment early on in the book where they bond. There’s a reveal halfway through the book (pg 300 out of 500) that they knew each other as children, but it’s too little too late.

5/10. I’m thinking of picking up her next book because I feel like there’s a lot of potential here and I’d like to read a more polished version of this book.

Akata Warrior, by Nnedi Okorafor A year ago, Sunny Nwazue, an American-born girl Nigerian girl, was inducted into the secret Leopard Society. As she began to develop her magical powers, Sunny learned that she had been chosen to lead a dangerous mission to avert an apocalypse, brought about by the terrifying masquerade, Ekwensu. Now, stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny is studying with her mentor Sugar Cream and struggling to unlock the secrets in her strange Nsibidi book.

Awhile back, I was at SDCC, and I walked by a publisher’s booth, and they handed me the first book in this series, for free! They just gave me a whole book for free! I’ve had this happen before at cons, but it’s usually self-published stuff, or spin-off books of dubious quality. But this is a book that’s perfectly relevant to my interests, a YA fantasy novel with an exciting new setting, and they just gave it to me! What a wonderful thing to have happen.

Anyway, I was hooked, and I got the next book in the series out of the library. I loved it. The woman at the publisher’s booth told me this was “Nigerian Harry Potter,” and I definitely got Harry Potter vibes from it. It honestly took me back to my days reading the original HP books in a way none of JK Rowling’s subsequent books (or the movies) have been able to do. That’s not to say it’s a copy, or anything - this series is way more eager to dig into the big, magical mythical stuff that HP mostly only hinted at, and is conversely much more willing to spend time in the real world and discuss real-world issues. It’s . . . really really good.

Also, as a personal bonus for me, there are multiple cool magical creatures which are arthropods - mythical spiders, cool magic wasps, I just love it.

9/10. My mom stopped reading it halfway through saying “As I get older, I’ve had less patience for books that aren’t very good.” But then again, she never liked Harry Potter as much as I did either, so maybe she just doesn’t get our generation.

Click more for reviews of We Hunt the Flame, Bloodwitch, and The Throne of the Crescent Moon

We Hunt the Flame, by Hafsah Faizal Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the king. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways.

I really wanted to like this book. I’ve been reading a lot of Middle-Eastern history and the thought of a fantasy inspired by that is 100% my jam. But this book is just . . . not that good. It’s not offensively bad, it just feels like the first draft of another, better book. I actually did not finish this book. I gave up and took it back to the library.

The main romance feels very predictable, and honestly, it was giving me big Reylo fanfic vibes. The exposition, of which there is massive amounts, is clumsily delivered. It feels like it ought to be the second book in a series, because there are so many past events being explained all the time.

The one thing I kinda liked was the bits of Arabic in the book, and the choice to not exposit the Arabic bits on top of the fantasy bits. And I learned a new Arabic word from this book! That’s a positive.

3/10. Wish they’d spent more time on the editing.

Bloodwitch, by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (and its sequel, Bloodkin) Vance Ehecatl was raised with every luxury he could imagine in a beautiful greenhouse within the powerful empire of Midnight. Vampires are the only guardians Vance has ever known since he was abandoned by his shapeshifter family as a baby quetzal, and he is grateful to them for generously providing for all of his needs. When an act of violence forces Vance from his sheltered home, he is startled to meet Malachi Obsidian, a fellow shapeshifter with conflicting ideas about Midnight and its leader, Mistress Jeshickah.

This is a new book from an author I loved as a child. Atwater-Rhodes published her first book at 14, when I was four, and I came across her books when I was 11ish and first learning to write. Her book Hawksong was the first romance story I really enjoyed, and its sequel Wolfcry was one of the first times I ever encountered a queer romance in a fantasy novel, at a time I was starting to wonder whether I was queer.

This book still caught the same interest I had in her books all those years ago. Bloodwitch is set in the same world as Hawksong, but centuries later. Personally, I would have preferred a book set in the same timeline, but it was still great to return to this world and its conflicts and magic.

With that said, it wasn’t perfect, and this wasn’t one of those times where I returned to an old favorite author and was like “Oh my god, I never appreciated what a genius she was when I was a stupid kid!” I was particularly struck by Vance’s character arc in the first book, which felt uneven. Vance is raised by the villains, and believes they’re the good guys initially. And then, early in the book, one of them kills his friend in cold blood, shouts at him, tries to kill him, and chases him out of their stronghold. And then . . . he goes back to them, and there’s ANOTHER, separate moment where he suddenly realizes they don’t care about him and turns on them. I really didn’t understand why that first moment didn’t shake his loyalty, but the second one did.

I was also kind of disappointed by the lack of queer characters. A lot of my favorite straight authors, when I checked back in on their work in 2019, have included queer representation, and because I knew that Atwater-Rhodes is herself queer, I was really hoping for some of That Gay Shit.

7/10. Give me that gay shit, Atwater-Rhodes, I know you’re holding out on me.

The Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, home to djenn and ghuls, holy warriors and heretics, are at the boiling point of a power struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and the mysterious master thief known as the Falcon Prince. In the midst of this brewing rebellion a series of brutal supernatural murders strikes at the heart of the Kingdoms. It is up to a handful of heroes to learn the truth behind these killings.

This, this was the book I wanted when I picked up We Hunt the Flame. This is the quality content I want in my fantasy novel. I fell in love with the main character, Adoulla, almost immediately, and I was terrified he was going to die. I just love this prissy, hedonistic, idealistic, middle-aged, fat hero so much, and I will RIOT if Ahmed kills him off.

I liked the other older characters in this book a lot too. Ahmed clearly has a knack for making cool characters. Dawoud and Litaz are cranky old ex-adventurers. Adoulla’s love interest is a middle-aged sex worker who really wants him to commit and marry her or fuck off, and I am so rooting for them, I want them to live happily ever after, they deserve that.

The treatment of sex work and sex worker characters in this book is also a major plus. There’s a lot of moral ambiguity in this book, where I’m not sure which character we’re supposed to believe, but the one issue the book takes a firm stance on is DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE TO SEX WORKERS, THEY ARE PEOPLE TOO. This book is written by a man and is not the kind of feminist fantasy I read a lot of (like We Hunt the Flame and The Tiger at Midnight are) so I was pleasantly surprised by this strong pro-sex worker’s rights message.

On the downside, I did feel like the younger characters were less interesting than the older characters. They still felt like colorful, detailed characters drawn with a skillful hand, but they also felt much closer to the kind of characters you usually see front and center in a fantasy novel. What I loved about Adoulla and company is that you don’t often see fantasy heroes who are fat and old and tired. The romance between the two younger heroes is competently drawn and believable but I did find myself wishing the camera would pan away from them and go back to the cool characters.

Other notes:

I found out that Saladin Ahmed is a Marvel Comics writer and is writing a comic about my favorite superhero, Ms Marvel, and I couldn’t be happier with that news.

I was certain, reading this book, that Ahmed plays D&D and that this book was inspired by D&D, and HA, CALLED IT. My nerd-dar is ON POINT.

9/10. Adoulla is my dad now, no take-backsies.

#throne of the crescent moon #saladin ahmed #akata witch #nnedi okorafor #book reviews #hmu if ur a fan of Throne of the Crescent Moon too #@mr ahmed I NEED THE NEXT BOOK #I kno ur busy writing Ms Marvel but PLS

[the-expatriate]

[The (Mobile) Rules of Engagement]

Here are a few things to make note of:

My time zone is GMT+00, so my activity timing may be vastly different to yours. However, rest assured that I will get back to you! If you don’t get a response right away, I’m either lurking/at work/asleep/driving/just wanting to do something else which doesn’t pertain to rping.

I’m very OC Friendly, which is pretty obvious as this too is an OC blog.

I’m also very welcoming to canon and canon divergent rp blogs too!

Have a self-insert that you want to rp with? Send ‘em in! I love those too.

If I end up following, I’ll almost always ask for a rule page and info if I can’t find them. A force of habit really. I’m also more than happy to give the links out for mine upon request and yes. The links do work on your mobile phone! Just use the external internet browser on it. If that doesn’t work? I’ve got you covered. I also take screencaps and will gladly send them to you :)

I no longer RP on Skype, but I do have a Discord which is: OminousDong#6085.

I also am willing to take on IM rps, but there will only ever be three at any given time.

Anon is temporarily enabled but it can and will be switched off at my own discretion.

If there’s something I’m posting (regardless of it being in character or out of) which makes you feel distressed, please don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll rectify my error. Same applies if I’ve ever gotten the wrong end of the stick about something. Do let me know if this is the case, because sadly, I can’t read minds. If you don’t tell me, I won’t know. Simple as.

I dislike confrontation and I just want to try and get along with everyone. It’s who I am and I won’t judge people. However I must stress that the very moment that someone tries to coerce (by either gossiping, or just being plain fucking nasty) me into siding with them against someone else, YOU WILL BE BLOCKED SWIFTLY AND WITHOUT WARNING. I do not appreciate being pulled into arguments and I also do not appreciate being told what I should and shouldn’t do with regards to who I talk to. I’ll make my own decisions and I don’t think I can get any clearer than that.

This blog is Semi-Selective, however I may also rp with someone who isn’t following at my own discretion. I am however also Side-Blog friendly. Essentially, so long as you aren’t a complete arsehole, we’re good.

If you’re looking for something a little more NSFW, there is now a sideblog where in which the threads of that nature live. However, there is a stipulation with it. While I can’t stop people from looking, when it comes to anything smut related, I will not accept any rp requests/asks/submits from anyone who is under the age of 18 and is also not a mutual. You will be blocked on both accounts if that happens as, to be frank, I don’t want to get in trouble.

If you happen to be 18+ AND a mutual, you are more than welcome to ask me for the address.

The furthest I can go with that on this main blog is if anything is implied or the thread goes to a ‘cut-to-black’. Anything more than that, it’s getting moved. Or if it’s an ask that’s been sent, it won’t be answered and I will have to get in touch to move it.

Pari doesn’t get on well with everyone as any real person would. Most of the time she can be pretty amicable but if a fellow muse antagonises her or just rubs her the wrong way, please be aware that she will respond in kind and sometimes can be prone to holding a grudge, but not always. If your muse falls into a category where this has happened, please do not expect her opinions to change overnight. I also acknowledge that yes, she can make mistakes and that she can be extremely abrasive with people for something very trivial. I do not condone what she does, but I strongly suggest that if you have any doubts on muse interaction, please talk to me before interacting. It saves a LOT of problems.

I am not my muse. My muse is not me. I can’t say that enough.

This may be a bit of a dick-move on my part but please. I will certainly try my damn best to match post length and put as much detail as I can into a reply. There will be times where I struggle, but I will talk to you about this. Please try and give me the same courtesy and I’ll work with what I have. If you just send in something with just ‘hi’ on it, it doesn’t give me a lot to work with. The exemption for this is is if it’s related to a meme that’s been reposted.

On the subject of memes, if it’s a symbol/number one, please send in the question that accompanies it. I won’t know what I’m answering otherwise!

Another thing about Reblogging memes. I understand that some folks participate in Reblog Karma, and while I don’t participate in it as such, please don’t take the piss and repost loads of stuff and not try to at least send something in. I’m not a meme archive, get it at the source if that’s what you’d like to do.

I may not be familiar with a verse that your muse is from, but I am more than happy to do research and work from that too, so don’t let that put you off.

If your muse wants to do some serious damage to Pari, so long as it is well thought out, discussed and plotted about properly, it’s acceptable. Feel free to drop a line my way and we can discuss it.

A little request about RP’s where her infertility is concerned. Please do not put the pressure on for her to have a child, even though she actually can’t. The muse has pretty much accepted and has made peace with the fact that she can’t have children by natural means. Her infertility isn’t a be and end all factor, so please do not force the issue.

None of the threads coincide with each other unless discussed by the Muns beforehand.

English isn’t your first language? That’s okay! I’m willing to take that into consideration when it comes to partners.

If you don’t like something, or if there’s something you feel I can improve upon with Pari, please do tell me. As long as it’s constructive, I’m willing to take it on board.

If there is a subject that crops up in an RP that I find particularly triggering, I’ll let you know and we can work something out. Same if it’s something that you find uncomfortable too.

NO GODMODDING. If I find that you are, i’ll be quick to let you know. If it continues, consider it a final warning. If it continues further after that, I’ll drop the rp and will unfollow/block you without prior notice given.

On the subject of shipping. Yep, Pari is multishippable, but that doesn’t exactly mean that she’ll fling herself at your muse for no reason. I don’t take on threads with shipping from the start, and chemistry between the muses is key. If you want to discuss the potential of a ship with my muse, however I am open to do that and please don’t be scared to approach if you feel that there’s a chance they could have chemistry prior to interacting with her.

If you just throw your muse at her and expect her to just throw herself back at them instantly, then you won’t find much luck. Sorry, that’s how we do things here and if that’s not to your taste, you’re free to unfollow and interaction will cease. As mentioned above, discussion is key.

Also on that note: NO FORCED SHIPPING WILL OCCUR ON MY PART! It’s something that I feel very strongly against, so rest assured that I won’t force my muse onto yours.

One final note: Any attempts to threaten my person (The Mun), coerce me into doing whatever you want, blackmail me (emotionally or otherwise), or anything of that measure, will be dealt with in a very serious manner. I will report you. I will get in touch with the relevant authorities and I will make sure that you are dealt with. You have been warned. I’m only highlighting this because this has happened twice for differing reasons. Please don’t do this, and I won’t have to act.

If you’ve managed to get through this huge rule post, thank you and if you can give this a tap, I would appreciate that a lot. Thank you!))

#mobile rules page #please read

[starberry-cupcake]

Hey, you’re entitled to do whatever you’d like with your fic, but I would like to say that a rude comment shouldn’t take away from the work you put into writing something. I would also like to remind you that most people in the les mis fandom are accepting of all interpretations of character because everyone sees them in a unique way (I’m sorry you’ve come across someone who isn’t used to this). I wouldn’t want one person to ruin a rather kind fandom for you, but I understand what you’re saying.

Thank you so much! I really appreciate the support ♥ you’re very kind. 

I’m going to answer this on read more because it’s a long story, my sad pathetic life in the les mis fandom, I was weary of sharing it but, at this point in my life, I think I’ve grown enough to handle it. So, I’ll give it a go. Of course, this is just my personal experience and doesn’t mean everyone agrees, I’m sure most people have a great fandom experience in it and I just didn’t handle anything well.

I’ve been in the fandom for a while, but I think I came into the online tumblr part of it in a rather complicated time, because my experience wasn’t all that good. 

I didn’t have one singular awful experience but I never felt a part of the fandom because there were a lot of groups in which I didn’t quite fit in and never felt very welcomed in general. 

When I started doing the summaries, I didn’t expect them to have positive feedback because of this, I never felt like I was enough for the fandom, if that makes sense. I thought that maybe, since time had passed, the lines were more blurred and the fandom was more chill and that’s why I was able to have such positive conversations with people without animosity. 

To me, it was always a scary fandom to be around, there are a lot of amazing people in it, a lot of great people, a lot of super smart people, but there was also always a lot of...elitism? I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I felt like I was never enough to access the fandom. Like I was always doing something wrong, that I would never know enough and that no matter what I did I was going to be eventually called out for something I did wrong (there was an overlap of peak tumblr social justice movement and online call out culture and peak les mis fandom on tumblr post 2012 movie that made it all more intense). 

I wrote a lot of Les Mis fic, most of which I’ve deleted because I didn’t like it, some of which is still the most personally important stuff I’ve written, regardless of how good or bad it is. There’s probably 2 fics I won’t delete ever, even if I end up disliking the writing, because of what they mean to me personally. 

But the Les Mis fandom is the only one of all the fandoms I’ve written for that I always felt I wasn’t good enough to even try. I got to a point in which I felt very discouraged with this overall sense of never being enough in any part of fandom and pretty much gave up on writing for it altogether. It’s the only fandom I ever chose to stop writing for because I felt I couldn’t live up to the demands of the fandom and I was afraid of the consequences of messing up. 

There are three big layers of issues for me in this, I’ll try to explain myself as best as I can. 

First (and this is true for every fandom, but in this one I felt it the most strongly at the time I was active in it), there was the fact that there were groups of fandom famous people who had accessibility that was difficult to obtain. Recommendation blogs sharing your work, artists drawing for your fics, other fandom famous authors recommending your stuff, that kind of things make fics more visible. I’ve never been the kind of person to promote my stuff too much because I don’t have the confidence for it, but networking in fandom is a part of the job if you want your stuff to be seen, for some folk being in the midst of fame comes easily and others work for it, but the truth is that community helps you have more feedback. 

I was never anywhere close to the fandom famous circles, my fics were recommended like maybe 3 times at best, and I am pretty much incompetent for social interactions, but I was also a bit scared of the whole group. 

I remember at one time there was a teenager who was called out for tracing art and it became a witch hunt to the point that someone made a blog specifically to call this teenager out on tracing and the kid closed their blog after all the aggression (I understand tracing is a problem but this kid was super young and being bullied like that was scary). I remember blogs posting humiliating bingo cards of fic tropes for certain ships and calling out writers for using them. I saw people coming at a friend’s comment section for the smallest things about a certain character’s interpretation. These things made me weary and I felt like trying to access that part of the fandom wasn’t going to be good for my emotional and mental stability. 

It wasn’t that fandom famous people were mean or cruel or unfair, not at all, there was a certain sense of...intensity in everything that happened. Some people found themselves in the circle and didn’t understand the power they had when they called out one person or recommended another. Fanon interpretations or ships became super accepted because some of these folks used them, to the point that your fic or art was invisible if you didn’t have that ship or interpretation in it, to the point that people started thinking some things were brick canon because of tropes born out of these folks. It wasn’t that they were intentionally moving that side of the fandom around but that things were so intense that fandom came and went in the direction these people did, even unintentionally. 

(And I say “part of the fandom” because, at that time, I felt the fandom was fragmented in the historical brick side, the modern au tumblr side, the musical side, and those who were a blend.)

The next issue I had was with what I mentioned of the overlay of tumblr’s social justice peak and the Les Mis modern au fandom peak, which is in part coincidental and in part, I assume, something that comes with the Les Mis territory, with it being a socially and politically compromised piece of work. 

People became incredibly aggressive towards how representation and diversity had to be handled on the Les Mis characterizations. I witnessed people calling others racist for the sole fact of writing Enjolras as a white person. There was a popular discourse about how those who didn’t identify in a certain way should be forbidden to write the characters in that way. There were people calling others toxic and abusive for shipping a certain ship and not another. It got really intense. 

This was around 2013, maybe early 2014, to give you an idea. It made me super weary of fucking up. Every time I added something that I felt could be seen under the social justice microscope, I apologized profusely before and after and begged people to call me out if something was wrong. I never felt, in any other fandom, that I was actually being a horrible person just for potentially making a mistake in characterization. I realized later that this was a very bad thing for my OCD and my obsessive episodes, which had become too strong in 2014, and it prompted a lot of ramifications I won’t talk about but yes, the mixture of Les Mis fandom and tumblr aggression was not good. 

The third and final thing that held me back, which holds me back for all my fics, is language. I’m not an English speaker. I don’t live nor have I ever traveled anywhere where English is spoken regularly. I write in Spanish. However, all my fics are in English because it’s the bridge language for fandom. That’s the language that has the most hosting platforms, the most fandom interaction, the most feedback, where all the online fandom movement is held. It’s my choice to use English for my fic, and it’s my responsibility if I fuck up, but I feel like from the get go I’m at a disadvantage when I feel I can’t quite give the same meaning to words as I would in my language. I always feel that my English writing is sub par in comparison to my native language. But I choose to sacrifice that in order to have more fandom interaction and meet more people. 

All in all, I think this comment hit me hard because with these summaries I felt I was finally having a good relationship with the fandom. That what I said was finally valid, whether right or wrong. That maybe the problems I had were caused by my inability to handle things at the time and by how intense tumblr in general was then and that things now could be different. And in the midst of that, I get this comment and all of this came rushing back to me. This feeling of not being good enough this fandom has always given me. 

That fic in particular is a super short very irrelevant ficlet I wrote for one Halloween almost 4 years ago I think now, a vampire and werewolf au. It isn’t meaningful or important, but I had a universe in my mind I wanted to somewhat explore. I don’t mind deleting it and keeping it as a personal copy just for me, it’s not one of my best works nor is it relevant to the fandom. But the aggression of the comment brought back this whole experience and reminded me why I had stepped out in the first place. 

Anyway, thanks so much for your nice message and your encouragement, it’s nice to see there are good people, accepting people around ♥ sorry for this long answer, but maybe it gives more context for my reaction that may seem very extreme without it. 

#ask #anon #anonymous #luly rambles #I'm hesitant about sharing all this but here we go #Anonymous

[lupine-publishers-sjpbs]

Lupine Publishers | Clinical Leadership Competence in Professional Healthcare Management System: The Role of Self-Esteem, Extraversion and Interpersonal Relationship Among Clinicians in Ondo and Lagos State, Nigeria

Lupine Publishers | Scholarly Journal Of Psychology And Behavioral Sciences

Introduction

Background to the study

Healthcare leadership is a critical and far-reaching concept [1]. The best leaders have been those with vision. The practice of leadership is often more of an art than it is science [2]. Leadership within healthcare practice has been principally the domain of medical doctors. However, healthcare outcomes are a function of the involvements of healthcare workers such as, nurses, social workers and psychologists [3]. Making clinician’s organizational leaders is a huge, intricate and costly task. Is it worth it? Especially given the many competing demands on clinician’s time? They and others will rightly seek evidence of the link between clinical leadership competence and the organization’s performance, in both clinical and financial terms [4]. Proof of a direct correlation will remain elusive, thanks to the inherent complexity of health systems, whose performance is affected by multiple, overlapping tasks in healthcare management. Nonetheless, diverse and growing bodies of researchers have suggested the enormous impact of clinical leadership in healthcare professional practice [5-8].

The Institute of Medicine (2001) reported that healthcare organizations world over, who have incorporated the clinical leadership practices have witnessed tremendous growth. For example, Kaiser Permanente, a large, integrated United States healthcare provider operating in several states in the late 1990s, was struggling with declining clinical and financial performance, and was losing some top clinicians to private practice and rival organizations. A new CEO (a pediatric plastic surgeon) made clinical leadership an explicit driver of improved patient outcomes, defining the role of the clinician as “healer, leader and partner” and revamping Kaiser’s leadership development programmes for doctors [8,9]. However, within five years of adopting this new approach, Colorado had become Kaiser’s highest-performing affiliate on quality of care and a beacon of excellence within the United States healthcare; patient satisfaction grew significantly; staff turnover fell dramatically; and net income rose from a deficit budget to $87million (Institute of Medicine, 2001). Hence, need arises for healthcare providers with a diverse and specific set of competencies [10-12]. However, the question hinges on what set of competencies will produce qualitative clinical leadership competency? Clinical leadership is a readily used term to describe doctors and other health care mavens as leaders within the health service but has thus far been less well defined [13]. Clinical leadership involves influencing and motivating others to deliver clinically effective care by demonstrating clinical excellence, providing support and guidance to colleagues through mentorship, supervision and inspiration [14]. Clinical leadership can also be perceived as positioning clinicians at the core of determining and overseeing clinical services, so as to deliver first-rate outcomes for patients and populations, not as a one-off task or project, but as a core part of clinicians’ professional identity and concern [15,16]. The National Co-coordinating Centre for NHS Service Delivery and Organization suggest that effective clinical leadership is pivotal in ensuring that improvement in healthcare is not only on the agenda of all National Health Scheme organizations but becomes part of their working structure. Transforming healthcare is everyone’s business with the provision of high-quality care being at the heart of everything [17]. Creating a culture of visible commitment to patient safety and quality requires clinical and professional leaders to work together so that health care systems can meet the healthcare challenges of the future [18]. A clinician is a healthcare practitioner such as a psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, occupational therapist or nurse, involved in clinical practice, as distinguished from one specializing in research or that works as primary care giver of a patient in a hospital setting; or clinic setting [19-25]. In other words, a clinician can be viewed as a health care professional that practices at a clinic [26]. While clinical leaders are clinicians who has direct responsibility or influence on patient care at ward, unit or team level which is applicable also to primary care and general practice settings [27]. A clinical leader integrates research evidence into practice, leads efforts to improve patient care, acknowledged as a leader in all situations and is an advocate for transforming the health system and implementing best practice [16].

Although, clinical tradition and training make the idea of clinical leadership conflicting to many clinicians, this perception have been regarded as rather detrimental to clinical leadership approaches [17,28]. The conventional view is that doctors and nurses should look after patients, while administrators look after organizations [29]. Yet several pioneering healthcare institutions have turned this assumption on its head by advocating and achieving outstanding performance [30]. Clinical Leadership is about more than simply appointing people to particular positions [30]. Rather, it is about recognizing the diffuse nature of leadership in health care organizations, and the importance of influence as well as formal authority [31-35]. Clinical leadership is not a new concept and the need to optimize leadership potential across the healthcare professions and the critical importance of this to the delivery of excellence and improved patient outcomes, is now increasingly echoed by clinicians, managers and politician’s world over [36,37]. Report that clinical leadership differs from management responsibility in that, leadership is thought of as undertaking and showing the way by helping to shape and manage clinical services for the better of patients and staff. Whereas a manager might be expected to regularly deal with relatively routine tasks, a clinical leader also uses their expertise and evidence to provide solutions to clinical problems [36].

The perception of leadership being dislocated from everyday medical practice suggests that more must be done to explain the relevance of leadership to all health care practitioners from a variety of backgrounds in order to provide the type of expert leadership they advocate [36]. There has been increasing recognition for the role that clinicians can provide in meeting the demands for a better health care delivery system [38]. To respond effectively within some predetermined health budget clinicians must not merely be at the forefront of treatment but also integrated into health care decision and policy making [39]. Define self-esteem as when one has a good opinion of oneself. Self-esteem is the way people think about themselves and how worth-while, they feel [40]. Assert that when a person's self-esteem is high, he tends to be motivated and performs his job or task better. Task here refers to specific piece of labour/work to be done as a duty required by an authority or delegated responsibility [2,3]. Self-esteem is a state of mind, it is the way you think and feel about yourself having high self-esteem means having feelings of confidence, worthiness, and positive regard for one’s self [40,11]. People with high self-esteem often feel good about themselves, feel a sense of belonging, self-respect and appreciate others [41,15]. People with high self-esteem tend to be successful in life because they feel confident in taking on challenges and risking failure to achieve what they want [42].

Asserted that clinicians with recognizable self-esteem have more energy for positive pursuits because their energy is not wasted on negative emotions [4], feelings of inferiority or working hard to take care of or please others at the expense of their own self-care [43]. Posits that self-esteem is believed to be relevant to the individual’s optional adjustment and functioning. However, an ingrained skepticism emerges among clinicians about the value of spending time on leadership, as opposed to the evident and immediate value of treating patients [1,15,44] suggested high self-esteem indicates a person respect for self and does not consider him or herself superior to others, recognizes self-limitations, and expects to grow and improve. Low self-esteem implies self-rejection or self-contempt, feeling disagreeable about oneself and wishing it were otherwise (Table 1). Rosenberg explained self-concept is not a collection but an organization of parts, pieces, and components and that are hierarchically organized and interrelated in complex ways and [45] describe global self-esteem to be an individual’s positive or negative attitude toward the self as a totality, which is strongly related to overall psychological wellbeing.

Self-esteem has not been shown to predict the quality or duration of relationships among spouses [11]. Yet high self-esteem makes people more willing to speak up in groups and to criticize group's approach [46,47] refer that leadership does not stem directly from self-esteem, but self-esteem may have indirect effects. Furthermore, people with high self-esteem show stronger in-group favoritism, which may increase prejudice and discrimination [48-50]. Extraversion is also one of the personality characteristics that have found in some studies to be more characteristic of leaders compared to non-leaders [7]. Extraversion refers to interest in or behaviour directed toward others or one’s environment rather than oneself [51]. One of the most consistent results in the study of leadership, emotion and personality is that extraversion is having an indirect effect on [52]. Leaders who are gregarious, active and outgoing tend to experience more pleasant emotion than those leaders who are quiet, inactive and introverted this does not portend leadership effectiveness, but this assertion cannot be generalized in that this signify differing results among those in healthcare practice [53]. Individual differences in leadership performance have been linked to differences in personality and relationships especially with leader’s span of control [48]. Research has shown that personality plays an important role in shaping who earns leader status in work groups [54-60] by signaling competence and shaping performance expectations when groups first form [61]. In particular, extraverted members tend to express confidence, dominance, and enthusiasm, and so are attributed with high status and frequently selected for leadership positions [62-65]. Conversely, neurotic members tend to express anxiety, withdrawal, and emotional volatility, earning lower status and rarely emerging as leaders [66].

Clinicians in general, therefore have considerable opportunity to influence patients' attitudes and behaviours in relation to their treatment, rehabilitation, and recovery process [67]. As nursing requires a focus on therapeutic and interpersonal interaction between the clinician and the patient, it is likely that the attitudes and interpersonal practices the clinician brings to this interaction will influence his/her care of the patient [68,61] suggested that it is potentially useful to study the nurse/ doctor, nurse/patient interaction by measuring aspects of this interaction through the use of an instrument that specifically examines nursing approach towards a particular type of patient and improve understanding of interpersonal attitudes and practices which enhance the ability of nurses to provide problem focused care that is appropriate to the patient. A clinical leader is perceived as proficient, well-trained, and knowledgeable health care professional who have the vision to see improvements to services or who is able to address limitations within the health system and share their vision with their fellow practitioners [69]. Extensively, doctors who were able to use influence or change management skills are considered most likely to be successful in turning a vision into reality [70]. However, the issue bothers around which set of competencies will produce qualitative clinical leadership? Hence, this research tends to fill this gap by investigating self-esteem, extraversion along with interpersonal relationship as predictors of clinical leadership among clinicians in Ondo and Lagos State, Nigeria.

Statement of the Problem

In the past few years, the healthcare industry in Nigeria have witnessed strikes like the one recently embarked upon by the Nigerian Medical Association in conjunction with the Nigerian Pharmacological Society (NPS) who embarked on an indefinite strike to press on their 24 point demand with the government of Nigeria chief among these demands, is the demand that medical practitioners should direct the affairs of all healthcare organization in Nigeria as obtainable in other developed countries of the world [17]. Although, these demand and policies are aimed at enhancing the safety of patients and the welfare of medical practitioners to better improve the services of the health sector and the welfare of hospital employees to compete favorably in Africa and the global system [15,26] noted that the clamour would create enormous challenges for those hospitals and healthcare organizations who are not equipped to practice clinical leadership. Some of the challenges identified by this author are: personality characteristics of clinicians and the role in plays within the leadership spectrum, lack of leadership training skills in the curriculum of health workers in the industry, the demands of leaders by developing the right personality needed for leadership and closer monitoring by the regulatory body (Table 2). These developments will make most healthcare organizations in Nigeria lay emphasis on service delivery which is in the best interest of patients.

While the primary focus of regulation for clinicians is on their professional practice, all clinicians, registered or otherwise, work in systems and most within organizations. It is vitally important that clinicians have an influence on these wider organizational systems and thereby improve the patient experience and outcome [71]. Clinicians have an intrinsic leadership role within healthcare service and have a responsibility to contribute to the effective running of the organization in which they work and to its future direction [27]. Therefore, the development of leadership competency as an integral part of a clinician’s training will be a critical factor. Delivering services to patients, service users, care givers and the public is at the heart of the Clinical Leadership Competency Framework. Clinicians work hard to improve services for people [46]. Furthermore, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health has observed that the lack of performance of the country’s health system is attributable to the weakness in leadership role of government in health [72]. In an attempt to address this situation a leadership and governance training workshop was held in August 2010 in Abakaliki, the capital of Ebonyi State southeastern Nigeria. This workshop recommended that no matter how adequate Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health or the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) policy reforms are, such policies may not yield desired results if the hospital employees who are to execute the policy are not adequately trained in leadership practices [73]. The desire for improved healthcare and sustenance of the industry in Nigeria might become short-lived if adequate attention is not given to the factors responsibility for clinical leadership. In the last decade, clinical leadership has been a subject of investigation in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America [74,75]. However, despite the growing body of literature on clinical leadership, only few African studies have explored clinical leadership [17,28,46]. In particular, there are relatively no considerable empirical studies on the influence of self-esteem, interpersonal relationship, and extraversion on clinical leadership among clinicians in Nigeria. To this date, arguably, no Nigerian study has been found to empirically investigate the predictors of clinical leadership.

In view of this gap, this study investigates the influence of self-esteem, extraversion, and interpersonal relationship on clinical leadership among clinicians in Ondo and Lagos State, Nigeria. Exploring clinical leadership from this angle might help proffer lasting solution to clinician’s psychosocial requirement for clinical leadership in Nigeria. In light of these it would be pertinent to ask some relevant question:

Would self-esteem predict     clinical leadership competency?

Would extraversion predict     clinical leadership competency?

Would interpersonal     relationship predict clinical leadership competency?

Would self-esteem, interpersonal     relationship, and extraversion predict clinical leadership competency?

Purpose of Study

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship among self-esteem, extraversion, and the influence of interpersonal relationship on clinical leadership. However, the specific major purpose of this study is to:

Examine the predictive role of     self-esteem on clinical leadership among clinicians in Ondo and Lagos     State.

Determine the predictive role     of extraversion on clinical leadership among clinicians in Ondo and Lagos     State.

Access the predictive role of     interpersonal relationships on clinical leadership among clinicians in     Ondo and Lagos State.

Ascertain the combined     predictive roles of self-esteem, extraversion and interpersonal     relationships on clinical leadership among clinicians in Ondo and Lagos     State.

The quality of interpersonal relationship has been found to predict treatment adherence and outcome across a range of patient diagnoses and treatment settings [57] and may even be considered a curative agent in its own right [11]. In community psychiatry, community mental health teams provide comprehensive care programmes for people with severe mental illness. Although there is a shared caseload in assertive community treatment [38] one named person is usually responsible for keeping in close contact with the patient and coordinating care. Priebe suggests that the relationship between a patient and a clinician takes centre stage of managed care delivery in community mental health services. A study by McKinsey and the London School of Economics, in 2008, involving over 170 general managers and heads of clinical departments in the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS), found that hospitals with the greatest clinician involvement in management scored some 50% higher on key measures of organizational performance than hospitals with low clinical leadership [29]. Among the growing base of academic evidence, a National Health Service study found that in 11 examples of attempted service improvement, organizations with stronger clinical leadership competence were more successful in delivering change (National Co-coordinating Centre for National Health Service Delivery and Organization). National Coordinating Centre for NHS Service Delivery and Organization found an ingrained skepticism among clinicians about the value of spending time on leadership, as opposed to the evident and immediate value of treating patients. Participants explained that playing an organizational-leadership role is not seen as vital either for patient care or their own professional success and therefore seemed irrelevant to the self-esteem and careers of clinicians. Moreover, many participants expressed discomfort with knowing that the impact of clinical leadership is often difficult to prove.

According to Felfe and Schyn extraversion seems to influence the perception of leadership. Felfe and Schyns warn that feedback of followers high in extraversion tend to be biased positively, in contrast to feedback from introverts because of the positive correlation of extraversion with acceptance. According to Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (a measurement instrument of human behaviour based on the studies of Carl Jung), the categorization of extraversion is a reflection of an individual’s preference for interacting with the world [17]. Extroverts are energized by the outer word of people, places and things. Whereas introverts are energized by their inner world of ideas, thoughts and concepts [52], another definition of extraversion, ‘refers to the extent to which individuals are sociable, loquacious, energetic, adventurous and assertive [71]. This risk-taking behaviour of extroverts may be very useful in some fields where taking risks is an essential part of everyday decision-making [8,16]. Despite these contributions in the reviewed studies, there is a dearth in the examination of psycho-social and personality studies on clinical leadership in Nigeria. As a matter of fact, there had never been any empirical study on clinical leadership in Nigeria. In view of this gap in literature, this study therefore explored the joint and independent influence of self-esteem, interpersonal relationship, and extraversion on clinical leadership among clinicians in south-western Nigeria.

Research Hypotheses

a) Self-esteem will independently significantly predict clinical leadership. b) Interpersonal relationship will independently significantly predict clinical leadership. c) Extraversion will independently significantly predict clinical leadership. d) Self-esteem, interpersonal relationship, and extraversion will jointly significantly predict clinical leadership.

Method

Research Design

A cross-sectional survey design was adopted in the study. Moreover, variables of this study were not actively manipulated. The dependent variable is clinical leadership. The predictor variables are self-esteem, interpersonal relationship and extraversion.

Research Setting

Employees in the health industry in Lagos and Ondo states metropolis, Nigeria constitute the population of this study because healthcare workers in Lagos and Ondo State are strategically located in the hub of the most populous nation in Africa. The pluralistic, commercial, and strategic nature of Lagos and Ondo states informed the choice of hospitals used in the study.

Participants

A total of 412 employees across 3 federal and 2 state hospitals, including 4 general hospitals and health centers in Lagos and Ondo metropolis, Nigeria were sampled using accidental sampling technique. The federal and state hospitals, including general hospitals and health centres were also selected. The participants comprised of 212 (51.5%) males and 200 (48.5%) females. The ages ranged from 20 to 59 with a mean of 38.19 years and SD of 9.52. Also, 106 (25.7 %) of the participants were single, 255 (61.9%) were married, 29 (7.0%) were widowed, and 19 (4.6%) were divorced. Their qualification also varied; 5 (1.2%) had WAEC/GCE, 30 (7.3%) had NCE/OND, 137 (33.3%) HND/B.Sc., Masters 207 (50.2%) and PhD 28 (6.8%). Their job position revealed that 161 (39.1%) were of junior cadre and 245 (59.5%) were of senior cadre. In addition, their job tenure ranged from 1 year to 33 years with a mean of 8.58 years and SD of 6.345.

Instrument

Relevant data were gathered through the use of validated questionnaire which comprises of four sections (A-E). Section A: Socio-demographic information. These include age, gender, marital status, job position, job tenure and academic qualification. Section B, The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The Rosenberg self-esteem scale is a widely used self-report instrument for evaluating individual self-esteem, 10-item scale that measures global self-worth by measuring both positive and negative feelings about the self. The scale is uni-dimensional. All items are answered using a 4-point Likert type scale format ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Scoring: Items 2, 5, 6, 8, and 9 are reverse scored. Give “Strongly Disagree” 1 point, “Disagree” 2 points, “Agree” 3 points, and “Strongly Agree” 4 points. The scores are on a continuous scale. Higher scores indicate higher self-esteem. Samples items included: ‘‘I am able to do things as well as most other people’’. Byrne showed that the RSES had adequate internal reliability, and test-retest correlation of 0.61 over a 7-month period in Ontario, Canada. Reported a Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.79 and [12] reported a Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.86, among health workers. and he reported a Cronbach’s Alpha of the Rosenberg scale coefficient of .92 showing good internal consistency using Nigerian Sample.

Section C contains the Relationship Assessment Scale developed by Hendrick (1988) was a 7-item scale designed to measure general relationship satisfaction. Respondents answer each item using a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (low satisfaction) to 5 (high satisfaction). The instrument takes a critical look at a central construct in relationship satisfaction. Eight well-validated self-report measures of relationship satisfaction. Scoring: Items 4 and 7 are reverse-scored. Samples items included ‘‘in general, how satisfied you with your work relationship are’’. ‘‘How good is your relationship with your co-workers compared to most of the other employees’’. Among Nigerian samples, Iheonunekwu, Anyatonwu, & Eze reported a Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.88. In the present study, a Cronbach’s Alpha of .589 was obtained for the scale. Respondents answer each item using a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (low satisfaction) to 5 (high satisfaction).

Section D contains the measures of extraversion from the Big Five Personality Inventory. The instrument used for collection of data for extraversion was the big five personality traits questionnaire, coined by [41]. However, only the section measuring extraversion was used in the study and not the composite sections of the instrument [61]. The instrument measured facets of (and correlated trait adjective) extraversion including gregariousness (sociable), assertiveness (forceful), activity (energetic), excitement-seeking (adventurous), positive emotions (enthusiastic), and warmth (outgoing). Samples items included ‘‘I like to start most conversations’’. ‘‘I talk to a lot of different people at gatherings and events’ and he reported Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients were between 0.66 and 0.87 and the inventory was validated through criterion-related validity with coefficients between 0.65 and 0.76.

Section E contains the Clinical Leadership Competency Framework (CLFC): The Clinical Leadership Competency Framework was created with the agreement of the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. The Clinical Leadership Competency Framework which was created developed and is owned jointly by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (Department of Health, 2001). The scale is a 39 item Likert type scale, divided into 5 distinct but interrelated domains, i.e. Demonstrating Personal Qualities (DPQ), Working with Others (WWO), Managing Services (MS), Improving Services (IS) and Setting Direction (SD). Sample item include: ‘‘I apply my learning to practical work’’, ‘‘I take action to improve performance’’, ‘‘I take responsibility for embedding new approaches into working practices’’. Malcolm, Wright, Barnett & Hendry obtained Cronbach Alpha of 0.78 and [45] obtained Cronbach Alpha of 0. 77. In the present study, Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of .791 was obtained. However, there are no studies yet in Nigeria that has empirically studied the concept of clinical leadership competency.

Procedure

In order to get the clinicians that participated, permission and ethical approval was sought and obtained from the ethical review committee of the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Lagos. In a bid to get clinicians to participate in the study, approval was sought and obtained in form of informed consent before they were selected for the assessment. The respondents were adequately informed about the nature of the study and its benefits. The purpose of the study was explained to the participants as they were also given assurance of confidentiality and anonymity of their identities and responses. In addition, the respondents were told that there was no right or wrong answers, and as such should try to be honest as possible in their responses. The choice of hospitals was arrived at after the researcher sought and obtained permission and was granted by the authorities of these hospitals which included a letter from the Ethic Review Board, Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, in Lagos. Using accidental sampling technique, the researcher administered four hundred and thirty questionnaires to clinicians across various disciplines that consented in such a way that averages of 45 copies of questionnaire were administered per hospital. The reason for using accidental sampling technique and not randomization was because most hospital employees are always busy and their job-schedule (shift rotation) situations in most hospitals and clinics did not allow for a more rigorous sampling technique. So, the only way to get sustainable participants is by using this non-probabilistic method. Although, four hundred and thirty (430) copies of questionnaire were administered but only four hundred and twelve (412) copies of questionnaire were found usable for the analysis. This yielded a response rate of 95.8%.

Inclusion Criteria

Eligibility to participate in the study included all qualified employed resident/consultant clinicians which comprises of Psychiatrists, General Practitioners, Surgeons, Neuro-surgeons, Orthopedics, Ophthalmologists, Pharmacist, Occupational Therapists, Clinical Psychologists, Psychiatric Nurses, Laboratory Analysts, Social workers and Interns (Medicine, Pharmacy and Psychology) who have spent not less than 6 months and who are in direct contact with patient or who provide healthcare for inpatients and outpatients in managed care institutions.

Exclusion Criteria

The respondents that were ineligible or excluded from the study comprised those classified as outliers who included, retired healthcare practitioners, healthcare artisans and those chronologically less than 18 years of age, clinicians with less than six-month experience, laboratory workers, ambulance drivers, administrative staffs, hospital domestic workers and all nonpracticing healthcare professionals.

Data Analysis

In order to determine the extent and direction of associations among the study variables, Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) analysis was conducted. Multiple regression analysis was then used to test hypothesis 1, 2, 3 and 4. Some of the sociodemographic variables were codified. For example, gender was coded male 0, female 1. Marital status was coded single 0, married 1, widow 2 and divorce 3. Job position was coded junior 0, senior 1. All analyses were conducted using SPSS 20.0 Wizard.

Results

Test of relationship among the study variables

The first analysis involved inter-correlations of all the variables of the study. The result Results in Table 1 indicated that age, gender, job position, job tenure and academic qualification had no significant relationship on clinical leadership. However, marital status depicted significant relationship with clinical leadership. Table 1 showed that self-esteem did not have a significant relationship with clinical leadership [r (412) = -.017; p > 0.05]. This implies that self-esteem does not have any relationship with clinical leadership. Interpersonal relationship had significant negative relationship with clinical leadership [r (412) = -.159; p < 0.01]. This indicates that clinicians who reported high interpersonal relationship develop low clinical leadership. Similarly, extraversion had significant negative relationship with clinical leadership [r (412) = -.198; p < 0.01]. This imply that clinicians who reported high extraversion show low clinical leadership competency.

 Test of hypotheses 1, 2, 3 and 4

In order to test hypothesis 1, 2, 3 and 4, multiple regression analysis was conducted. The result is presented in Table 2 Results in Table 2, showed that self-esteem did not significantly predict clinical leadership (β = -.00; t = .006; p > 0.05). This means that self-esteem of clinicians will not determine clinical leadership competence. Therefore, hypothesis 1 was rejected. Interpersonal relationship showed an inverse relationship with clinical leadership (β = -.13; t = -2.74; p < 0.01), it implies that clinicians who reported high on interpersonal relationship showed low clinical leadership competency compared to those who scored low on interpersonal relationship. The result confirmed hypothesis two. Therefore, hypothesis 2 was confirmed. Extraversion inversely predicted clinical leadership (β = -.17; t = -3.69; p < 0.01). This implied that clinicians who reported high on extraversion showed lower clinical leadership competency compared to clinicians who scored low on extraversion. This result did confirmed hypothesis 3. Therefore, the hypothesis was accepted.

Hypothesis 4, which was based on the contribution of all the independent variables (self-esteem, interpersonal relationship, and extraversion) to the prediction of clinical leadership, the outcome of the summary in Table 2 signifies that all the independent variables when pulled together yield a multiple R of 0.239 and R2 of .057 [F = (3, 412) = 8.195, p < 0.01]. This is an indication that all the independent variables contributed 5.7% of the variance in clinical leadership. Meanwhile, other variables not considered in this study therefore accounts for 94.3%.

Discussion

The study examined the influence of self-esteem, interpersonal relationship, and extraversion on clinical leadership among clinicians in Ondo and Lagos State, Nigeria. In hypothesis 1, the result showed that self-esteem did not significantly predict clinical leadership. Therefore, the hypothesis was rejected. The result of this study supported the findings [21] and according to these authors self-efficacy, self-confidence and self-esteem does not directly contribute to leader success. Rather, they suggested that it is the individual’s belief regarding his or her capabilities to successfully perform the leadership task that is the key causal factor. Also, this result corroborates with the findings [45] and these authors stated that laboratory studies have generally failed to find that self-esteem predicts good task or leadership performance with the important exception that high self-esteem facilitates persistence after failure. An explanation for this is that leadership does not stem directly from self-esteem, but self-esteem may have indirect effects [5]. Clinicians with high self-esteem show stronger in-group favoritism that may lead to or increase prejudice and discrimination that are detrimental to healthcare management. Also, self-esteem is heavily invested with feelings about the self, as specific facets of selfesteem include a variety of self-related thoughts whereas, clinicians are trained to work as unit where competence is commended, and personal identity is consigned to the background [70].

In addition, the result revealed that interpersonal relationship significantly negatively predicted clinical leadership. As a result, hypothesis 2 was not confirmed. This implies that clinicians with high interpersonal relationship predict low clinical leadership competence. This is viable because studies and [11,16] have revealed that interpersonal relationship between clinicians and patients are ethically restricted because the association is a therapeutic relationship for example, the relationship between the clinician and client differs from both a social and an intimate relationship in that the clinician maximizes his or her communication skills, understanding of human behaviors, and personal strengths to enhance the client’s growth.

Further reason for the negative correlation between interpersonal relationship and clinical leadership can be tied to the ingrain code of ethics and standards of practice for healthcare quality professionals which stipulates that healthcare professionals must always maintain the highest standards of professional conduct by not permitting relationships interpersonal or otherwise to influence the free and independent exercise of professional judgment on behalf of patients [56]. The results of the current study revealed that extraversion negatively predicted clinical leadership which corroborated with the findings of Redfern [9]. who found a significant negative association between extraversion and clinical leadership? Research on the “dark sides” of extraverted behaviors finds that with experience working together, peers interpret extraverts as poor listeners who are unreceptive to input from others [16]. For example, Opayemi and Balogun determined that when subordinates are proactive (i.e., they voice constructive ideas, take charge to improve work methods, and exercise upward influence), groups with more extroverted leaders are less effective due to heightened competition and conflict.

Conclusion

Based on the findings, the study has empirically demonstrated that clinicians who perceived a diminish sense of self-esteem, low interpersonal relationship and extraversion showed higher tendency to demonstrate clinical leadership competence than their counterparts. Moreover, the results revealed that hospital employees who have high self-esteem showed lower tendency to exhibit clinical leadership competence. The result of this study also showed that all the independent variables (self-esteem, interpersonal relationship, and extraversion) jointly predicted clinical leadership. Conclusively, findings of this study established that self-esteem, interpersonal relationship, and extraversion jointly exert significant influences on clinical leadership competence among clinicians.

Implications of the findings

Findings of the study have some direct practical implications for management and boards of directors in ministries of health in government owned hospitals in Nigeria and Africa. The findings of this study also have practical implications for reviewing and updating Nigerian hospital reforms and training manual, specifically in relations to teaching, training of hospital employees. It is therefore suggested that hospital management should include measure of clinical leadership as part of assessment tools, and academic course during training. Clinical leadership training should also form an important area of concentration in colleges of medicine, and schools of nursing.

Recommendations

Based on the findings of this study, the researcher recommends as follows: Colleges of medicine and various schools of Nursing under the Ministry of Health in Nigeria should take adequate steps to inculcate clinical leadership structures that suit and encourages the cultural and environmental demands of clinical leadership competencies. In other words, clinicians who work in healthcare environments in Nigeria shall acquire career development possibilities and leadership training like those in the United Kingdom (UK), and central Europe who are already reaping the dividends of clinical leadership competency. Since clinicians interact and work directly with patients and hold the interest of the patient the most. The researcher therefore recommends that the Nigeria healthcare reforms and policies should be reviewed, specifying issues relating to enrollment, conscription, and training of clinicians. It is therefore recommended, that hospital management in Nigeria should include measure of clinical leadership competency as part of their training and assessment tools during enrolling in medical colleges, and schools of nursing. This may help hospital employee’s deal with work pressures, physician-nurse relationship, medical team structure and functional responsibility. Healthcare practice needs evidences that are proved by research outcomes. Integration of research evidence into clinical leadership performance is essential for the delivery of high-quality clinical care. Leadership behaviors of doctors, psychologists, nurses, especially, managers and administrators have been identified as important to support research use and evidence-based practice. Yet, minimal evidence exists indicating what constitutes effective clinical leadership competency for this purpose or what kinds of interventions help clinical leaders to successfully influence research-based care. It is recommended that research centred on these areas should be intensified.

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[mililiver]

Reasons Why You Ought To Acquire Clinical Equipment From An ISO Licensed Firm

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[maxwellyjordan]

Academic highlight: The Supreme Court, the Rules Committees, and amicus practice

Scott Dodson is the Associate Dean for Research and the James Edgar Hervey Chair in Litigation at UC Hastings College of the Law.

The basic separation-of-powers model allocates lawmaking power to the legislative branch, enforcement power to the executive branch, and interpretive and adjudicative power to the judicial branch. But, of course, there are areas of the law in which these powers shift or overlap among the branches.

Court rulemaking is one of those areas. With few exceptions, Congress has the sole constitutional authority to make procedural law for the lower federal courts. In practice, though, things are more complicated. Because the judiciary’s expertise in court procedure exceeds the legislature’s, Congress has delegated its authority to make general rules of federal-court practice and procedure to the Supreme Court in a statute called the Rules Enabling Act. The REA prescribes some procedures for court rulemaking and delegates other rulemaking procedures to the Judicial Conference, which is a group of federal judges prescribed by statute.

Under the REA and the rules of the Judicial Conference, lower-court rulemaking goes through the following stages. The Rules Committees (the Standing Committee and the various Advisory Committees), whose memberships are composed primarily of judges and practitioners with firsthand working knowledge of the rules, meet often throughout the year, hold public hearings and take public comments on proposed amendments, commission studies of the rules through the Federal Judicial Center and the Administrative Office, and publish detailed minutes of their meetings. This rulemaking process is open and democratic, led by experts, with consultation from a wide spectrum of practitioners and interest groups.

Rulemaking recommendations proceed from the Rules Committees through the Judicial Conference, to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has the final approval authority under the REA (subject to a veto by Congress). However, by the time rule proposals get to the Supreme Court, there is little left for the justices to contribute. Compared to the Rules Committees, the Supreme Court is neither particularly expert nor particularly interested in lower-court rules. As a result, the Supreme Court has become a rubber stamp — sometimes expressly so — in the rulemaking process.

After the rules go into effect, however, the courts take over and the Rules Committees take a back seat. Federal cases presenting issues of rule interpretation frequently make their way to the Supreme Court for resolution, and the court is solely responsible for providing an authoritative interpretation of those rules.

The Supreme Court, however, is not the best interpreter of lower-court rules. The court may lack a full understanding of and appreciation for relevant information, such as rulemaker intent, the purpose of the rule, how the rule interrelates to other rules, the history of the rule and relevant amendment proposals, the “legislative facts” underlying the rule, and how the rule currently works in practice. Institutionally, the Supreme Court is guided by the parties’ arguments, principles of stare decisis, and the narrow dispute at stake rather than broader questions of the rule and its interrelatedness to other rules or statutes or interests.

The Supreme Court faces similar informational and institutional deficiencies when it interprets a statute or agency rule, but in those cases, the government agents involved in the statute or agency rule often offer assistance to the court via an amicus brief. The expertise and knowledge of the government can help the court to interpret the law correctly and avoid unintended consequences.

But court rules are different because the Rules Committees do not participate in any kind of amicus practice. The Supreme Court’s deficiencies thus remain in many rule-interpretation cases.

These deficiencies have led to some questionable opinions. In Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, for example, the court was asked to interpret the standards for pleading a civil case under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In doing so, the court didn’t really rely on the text of the rule. Nor did it rely on the history of the rule or the policies that animated its drafting. Instead, the court relied on its own vision of pleading policy as a screen to protect defendants from high-cost, low-merit lawsuits. In the process, the court grafted new language onto Rule 8, overruled a prior case that had been taught to generations of lawyers, reinvigorated an antiquated distinction between legal conclusions and factual allegations, and marginalized key tools for protecting defendants in other rules.

The court did all of this without any input from the Rules Committees, which could have provided the court with a wide range of relevant information. The committees could have informed the court about research tending to show that defendants don’t need pleading-stage protection in the vast majority of cases, the efficacy of existing tools for protecting defendants in outlier cases, the historical difficulties of parsing the distinction between legal conclusions and factual allegations that led to the promulgation of Rule 8, and the burdens that heightened pleading standards impose on plaintiffs with meritorious cases.

Cases like Twombly raise this question: Should the committees charged with the front-line work of studying the rules and proposing rules and rule amendments have an opportunity to voice their views when those rules are up for interpretation by the Supreme Court?

In a recent article in the Virginia Law Review titled “Should the Rules Committees Have an Amicus Role?,” I argue that the answer is yes.

One might ask why the solicitor general can’t fill this role. When the United States is not a party, the solicitor general does occasionally file amicus briefs on behalf of the United States in cases involving rule interpretation. However, the solicitor general often has the same deficiencies as the court in these cases. Worse, the solicitor general primarily seeks to advance the interests of the federal government as a litigant, especially for pro-prosecution interpretation of federal criminal rules (because the Department of Justice is often a prosecutor) and pro-defendant interpretation of federal civil rules (because executive-branch officials are often sued in civil cases). And, as an executive-branch officer who serves at the pleasure of the president, the solicitor general often represents the political interests of the executive branch, or, even more narrowly, the president. These political and branch-specific interests can collide with the judiciary’s interest in fair and workable court rules.

Indeed, the solicitor general filed an amicus brief in Twombly supporting the defendants. The brief struck a strongly partisan chord on rule interpretation that the Supreme Court largely adopted, with little resort to the text or history of Rule 8. Notably absent from the brief was any mention of the kinds of useful, true-friend-of-the-court information the Rules Committees could have provided: knowledge of other protections against excessive discovery costs, empirical evidence of the costs of meritless suits or the incidence of discovery abuse, or any understanding of how other rules might operate in tandem with Rule 8.

Of course, if the United States is a party (which it is in most criminal cases and many civil cases), the solicitor general’s office won’t file an amicus brief but instead will file an adversarial merits brief with the primary goal of winning the case, as it did in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, in which the office used its achievement in Twombly to secure a dismissal for the defendants it represented in Iqbal.

In my paper, I argue that amicus participation by the Rules Committees could support better – or at least more transparent — decisionmaking by the Supreme Court.

What might this look like? Two primary possibilities are what I call the weak “consultancy” role and the strong “independent amicus” role.

The weak “consultancy” role would require the solicitor general’s office to consult with the Rules Committees in any amicus brief it files on an issue of rule interpretation or application. After all, the solicitor general usually consults with agencies in agency-rule cases. Currently, however, the norm is that consultation is neither sought by the solicitor general nor provided by the Rules Committees.

That norm should be changed. Consultation would allow the Rules Committees’ knowledge and interests to be voiced by perhaps the most effective and frequent Supreme Court advocate, one who is highly credentialed and respected, is a Supreme Court specialist, has few financial constraints, and boasts an unparalleled win rate. No law would need to be changed to authorize this weak form of Rules Committee participation. The solicitor general and the Rules Committees would only need to normalize the practice of consultation and craft internal rules for its implementation.

This weak consultancy role would be insufficient, of course, when the solicitor general refused to represent the views of the Rules Committees. This might occur if the solicitor general were already representing a member of the executive branch as a party, if the solicitor general refused to file an amicus brief in a private-party case, or if the solicitor general advanced priorities in an amicus brief that did not represent those of the judicial branch.

Those situations might justify giving Rules Committees independent authority to file an amicus brief. Congress would have to authorize this power through statutory amendment, but in similar circumstances Congress has given independent amicus authority to other federal entities, including the Federal Elections Commission, the Senate’s Office of Legal Counsel, and special prosecutors appointed under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

The logistics of an effective amicus role — whether weak or strong — are, admittedly, difficult. The Rules Committees are not designed for adjudicative advocacy, either in resource support or focus. To address some of these concerns, I propose to use the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, which has an Office of the General Counsel that already provides legal counsel and services to the Judicial Conference and helps support the rulemaking process by assigning career staff attorneys to assist the Rules Committees. Adding an amicus role would impose some increased burden on that office, but its involvement is likely to be limited to specific contexts, consist of presenting information already in the hands of the Rules Committees and the Administrative Office, and be achieved through consultation or briefs without oral argument.

Of course, the Rules Committees themselves might resist an amicus role, perhaps to avoid the appearance of partisan advocacy. But the amicus role I envision would be as a true friend of the court, offering neutral expertise on “legislative facts” like discovery expense or judicial-management issues and how the rules work in the lower courts; information about possible changes to rules currently at issue in a case; the historical context of the origins of a rule and whether the bases, policies and justifications for the rule continue in force today; and broader perspectives about the rules that the parties, with their more narrow focus, might otherwise ignore. Conveying this information in an amicus brief surely is no more political or partisan than rulemaking itself. Participation as a true friend of the court would fulfill the prescribed role of the Rules Committees: to study the rules and to provide information and recommendations to the Supreme Court.

The post Academic highlight: The Supreme Court, the Rules Committees, and amicus practice appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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#law #justice

[restoringsanity]

do you think that Islam needs a reform due to hurtful ideology like verse 4:34 ?

Disclaimer: I have to admit that I am biased. I am not truly neutral on this. I am biased against organized religion. I do not hold any religious or spiritual believes, and while I don’t discriminate against religious or spiritual individuals, I’m critical of how religious or spiritual believes are put into practice. I acknowledge the right to religious freedom as part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 18-21) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 2-5), yet I contest that said specific rights supersede the right to bodily integrity [UDHR, 3-11; ICCPR 6-27] in any system. I hold the conviction that any state has the responsibility to maintain a secular position. Alas, I’m no authority on this issue.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

To understand where, why, how, and if Islam is due for reformation, you need precise historical understanding of cultural differences, the process and progress of globalization, human right’s issues and specifically women’s rights issues. There is no way that I could sufficiently explain the specific dynamics of this issue in particular without writing an entire essay on it. This answer is going to be, at most, incomplete.

This is the translation of the verse in question,

Men have authority over women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband’s] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand. — translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali

And here’s an entire Wikipedia article about that specific verse.

An excerpt,

Jonathan A.C. Brown gives the wider scholarly tendency when it comes to the verse:

The vast majority of the ulama across the Sunni schools of law inherited the Prophet’s unease over domestic violence and placed further restrictions on the evident meaning of the ‘Wife Beating Verse’. A leading Meccan scholar from the second generation of Muslims, Ata’ bin Abi Rabah, counseled a husband not to beat his wife even if she ignored him but rather to express his anger in some other way. Darimi, a teacher of both Tirmidhi and Muslim bin Hajjaj as well as a leading early scholar in Iran, collected all the Hadiths showing Muhammad’s disapproval of beating in a chapter entitled 'The Prohibition on Striking Women’. A thirteenth-century scholar from Granada, Ibn Faras, notes that one camp of ulama had staked out a stance forbidding striking a wife altogether, declaring it contrary to the Prophet’s example and denying the authenticity of any Hadiths that seemed to permit beating. Even Ibn Hajar, the pillar of late medieval Sunni Hadith scholarship, concludes that, contrary to what seems to be an explicit command in the Qur'an, the Hadiths of the Prophet leave no doubt that striking one’s wife to discipline her actually falls under the Shariah ruling of 'strongly disliked’ or 'disliked verging on prohibited’.[16]

Seeing as how Brown has made mention of Sharia law, here’s some (limited) historical background to how Sharia law plays a role when implementing human rights (UDHR) into law.

Turkey— which was a secular state with an overwhelmingly Muslim population—signed the Declaration in 1948.[39] However, the same year, Saudi Arabia abstained from the ratification vote on the Declaration, claiming that it violated Sharia law.[40]Pakistan—which had signed the declaration—disagreed and critiqued the Saudi position.[41] Pakistani minister Muhammad Zafarullah Khan strongly argued in favor of including freedom of religion.[42] In 1982, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, said that the Declaration was “a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition” which could not be implemented by Muslims without conflict with Sharia.[43] On 30 June 2000, members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (now the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) officially resolved to support the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam,[44] an alternative document that says people have “freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari'ah”, without any discrimination on grounds of “race, colour, language, sex, religious belief, political affiliation, social status or other considerations”.

Some Muslim diplomats would go on later to help draft other UN human rights treaties. For example, Iraqi diplomat Bedia Afnan’s insistence on wording that recognized gender equality resulted in Article 3 within the ICCPR and ICESCR. Pakistani diplomat Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah also spoke in favor of recognizing women’s rights.[42]

A number of scholars in different fields have expressed concerns with the Declaration’s alleged Western bias. These include Irene Oh, Abdulaziz Sachedina, Riffat Hassan, and Faisal Kutty. Hassan has argued:

What needs to be pointed out to those who uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be the highest, or sole, model, of a charter of equality and liberty for all human beings, is that given the Western origin and orientation of this Declaration, the “universality” of the assumptions on which it is based is – at the very least – problematic and subject to questioning. Furthermore, the alleged incompatibility between the concept of human rights and religion in general, or particular religions such as Islam, needs to be examined in an unbiased way.[45]

Irene Oh argues that one solution is to approach the issue from the perspective of comparative (descriptive) ethics.[46]

Kutty writes: “A strong argument can be made that the current formulation of international human rights constitutes a cultural structure in which western society finds itself easily at home … It is important to acknowledge and appreciate that other societies may have equally valid alternative conceptions of human rights.”[47]

Ironically, a number of Islamic countries that as of 2014 are among the most resistant to UN intervention in domestic affairs, played an invaluable role in the creation of the Declaration, with countries such as Syria and Egypt having been strong proponents of the universality of human rights and the right of countries to self-determination.[48]

(source)

At a glance, it appears the point of contention is that the UDHR has a western bias, as well as a Judeo-Christian bias (in terms of tradition), when viewed against the background of alternative conceptions of human rights respective to the countries in question.

Politically (as well as religiously) speaking, this is a very touchy subject. I certainly am not equipped to even begin to make any final judgement.

I haven’t even gotten close to providing enough context to the issue at hand, but to cut it (undeservedly) short:

Ultimately, whether or not Islam needs to reform isn’t truly an issue in countries where human rights (regardless of conception) have been implemented in national law. To a court, it is not any degree of meaningfully judicially relevant whether or not a person is a practicing Muslim (or other) when it comes to determining whether they were in the right to beat their spouse.

Victims of DV are offered legal remedies, which include the criminal law, as well as obtaining a protection order. The remedies offered can be both of a civil nature (civil orders of protection and other protective services) and of a criminal nature (charging the perpetrator with a criminal offense). People perpetrating DV are subject to criminal prosecution, most often under assault and battery laws. Other common statutes used include, but are not reduced to, harassment, menacing, false imprisonment. Perpetrators of DV can be charged under general statutes, but some states have enacted specific statutes dealing only with DV. Under South Carolina code, the crime of “Criminal domestic violence” states that “it is unlawful to: (1) cause physical harm or injury to a person’s own household member; or (2) offer or attempt to cause physical harm or injury to a person’s own household member with apparent present ability under circumstances reasonably creating fear of imminent peril.” If aggravated circumstances are present, people can be charged with the crime of “Criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature.” Criminal domestic violence is not the only charge possible in South Carolina, people can also be charged under other general statutes.[84][85][86]

(source, specific to the United States)

If you are a citizen of the United States, the reformation of Islam is of a very, very minor concern to you, and it has a very, very minor impact on you personally. Any citizen in your country is subject to your laws, regardless. You may experience emotional or intellectual investment in certain issues, which is fair enough - but how do you propose reformation shall be forced specifically in relevant Eastern countries? If you think Islam has to reform where reformation would be beneficial, how would you go about it?

I think reformation of belief isn’t an outside responsibility. To some degree, it can’t be. Reformation has to manifest and spread from within, something that may (!) be achieved by having meaningful, productive conversations. The same conversations are very difficult to have in tense political climates, which further aggravates the issue to significant degree.

Finally, it deserves mentioning that in the United States (for example) - a country less secular in practice than in theory - human rights are still frequently violated, regardless of progressive religious believes. I’m not trying to misdirect or obfuscate, I’m simply trying to highlight that reformation doesn’t automatically beget progress - it enables it, or perhaps just influences it. Further, reformation isn’t an issue easily determined. What is reformation? Is it a mere change of text? Who is going to make those changes? Is there any way to enforce those changes? What if people don’t submit to those changes?

Ultimately, the issue isn’t religion - it’s people. Perhaps this is a too pragmatic statement to make, but religion (or any belief) doesn’t have any impact when it’s not put into practice, and the way it’s put into practice determines the sort of impact it’s going to have. If the issue is people, we’re unable to deal in absolutes. The environment a person has grown up in is essential to who they become, but the process isn’t utterly deterministic at the same time.

Does Islam need to be reformed? Well, does it? What are we going to achieve by proposing it has to be? Perhaps it may be beneficial, but what does that mean? “Yes” isn’t a satisfying or productive answer to this question. It only ever is if you’re aiming for confirmation, and the only way you would benefit from that is having it reinforce an already existent sense of (moral) superiority.

#politics #religion #I guess I did ask for challenging questions #are y'all already bored of fictional issues? #I mean #I totally get if you are #it's circular discourse anyway

[amoswizzyblogger]

https://amoswizzyblogger.com/stop-revealing-details-of-drugs-used-for-your-treatment-fg-warns-covid-19-survivors/ The Federal Government on Friday, May 15, pleaded with COVID-19 survivors to stop giving details of the drugs used for their treatment to discourage self-medication. The Chairman, Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Mr. Boss Mustapha, made the plea at a press briefing in Abuja, following recent video testimonies of some high profile survivors, talking about the drugs administered on them at the treatment centres.   Mustapha, who is also the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, expressed concern that some of the testimonies disclosing the prescription for treatment of the virus could encourage patients to indulge in self-medication instead of seeking help from health authorities.   He urged all Nigerians that have symptoms of COVID-19 to test for the virus and, if positive, go into the isolation centres for care by experts.   Mustapha said: "The PTF congratulates and appreciates the testimonies of Nigerians who have recovered from COVID-19, which has given us more insights and further strengthens the need to adhere strictly to guidelines issued.   "However, an emerging issue from all these testimonies is the issue of prescription for treatments. We should always remember that the symptoms of COVID-19 mimic some illnesses we already know but treating the symptoms is not the same as treating the virus. For this reason, we strongly discourage self-medication."   He also said that five states in Nigeria were currently participating in the on-going World Health Organization (WHO)-coordinated solidarity trial to find a cure for the pandemic, saying that at the end of this trial, relevant health authorities would make statements on acceptable drugs for treating COVID-19. https://www.instagram.com/p/CAP17hXgaV0/?igshid=1t6mgga5hye7k

[thegreenwolf]

Hi, folks! Sorry for the radio silence; my head hasn’t been in pagan space much lately so I’ve been dealing with a bit of writer’s block in that direction. I’m starting to come out of it a bit, though, and I have a few ideas, this being the first one.

Most essential reading lists for pagans tend to be pagan-specific books, or books that deal with related topics like the history of pre-Christian religions or herbalism. My list is perhaps a little more removed from blatant paganism than that, and might be better termed “Lupa’s Essential Books For Nature-Based Pagans”. Moreover, it’s a list that will likely change over time. But they’re texts I think all pagans would benefit from reading for one reason or another.

The Nature Principle by Richard Louv

Many people, not just pagans, are attracted to nature. But why? In his follow-up to his award-winning Last Child in the Woods, Louv looks at not only why nature is good for us, but concrete ways in which we can reconnect with the natural world, even in urban areas, as a way to combat nature-deficit disorder. (See also Florence Williams' The Nature Fix as a more up-to-date collection of nature-is-good-for-us research for laypeople.)

A Beginner's Guide to the Scientific Method by Stephen S. Carey

Paganism often flirts heavily with pseudoscience, sometimes to dangerous degrees. Everyone should have a solid understanding of the scientific method, to include how a good experiment is put together (as well as how not to conduct research), and how to avoid pitfalls like confirmation bias. Not only will this help you to cut through some of the crap that gets presented as fact within paganism, but it will help you have a more critical eye toward sensational news headlines claiming new cures for cancer or demonizing vaccinations. If you can pick apart a study based on things like sample size and the validity of the results, you're already way ahead of most of the population.

The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins

Okay, put the fact that it's Dawkins aside; this is one of those texts where he's focusing on communicating science instead of tearing religion apart, and he's frankly at his best here. Now, evolution is up there with gravity and a round earth as far as things we know to be true, and hopefully you already have a basic understanding of how it works: It is not survival of the fittest so much as survival of those who fit into the ecosystem most effectively. What this book does is cleverly place us, Homo sapiens, in the context of the grand dance of evolution by tracing on possible path we may have taken all the way back to the last universal ancestor that all living beings on the planet share. Along the way we get to see the origins of everything from our big brains to our opposable thumbs and upright bipedal walking, showing us that we are not the most amazing and superior being that the gods ever created, but rather one among many incredible and diverse life forms that evolution has produced through natural selection and mutation. It is, in fact, the ultimate journey on this planet.

Also, the Walking With Dinosaurs/Beasts/Monsters/Cavemen BBC documentaries are fun, if a bit flawed and dated, ways to look at how evolution has shaped animals over millions of years.

Roadside Geology series by various authors

If you're in the United States, there's a Roadside Geology book for your state! You may not think much about the ground beneath your feet other than as a nice, solid base, but the various stones and formations, as well as hydrological phenomena like rivers and lakes, are all crucial to the sort of life that can thrive in a given place. The Roadside Geology books are a fun way to go look at your local geology in person and learn a little about the land you live on. You can then follow up by picking up some more in-depth reading material for the geology of your area.

Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan

We often assume that plants are relatively sedentary beings with few motivations. Yet they are vibrant and active parts of their ecosystems in ways even we animals can't touch. This book looks at the world of plants through the relationships four of them have with humans, how we have changed them--and how they have changed us. I also strongly recommend following this up with two documentaries: How to Grow a Planet by Iain Stewart (which also happens to be on Netflix as of this writing) and David Attenborough's The Private Life of Plants (which is also in book form.)

Trees, Truffles and Beasts: How Forests Function by Chris Maser, Andrew Claridge and James Trappe

In paganism we tend to look at animals, plants and other beings individually, as stand-alone guides---yet if we want inspiration for just how interconnected we are, there's no better model than an ecosystem. This book explores how just a few of the animal, plant and fungus inhabitants of forests are inextricably bound together. Extrapolate that out to the entire ecosystem, and you begin to see how deeply entwined all beings are in a very real, even visceral sense. If you've only been working with animal or plant spirits, this book may just inspire you to reach out further.

The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms by Amy Stewart

Again in paganism people tend to be fairly short-sighted when it comes to animals. We often look at the most impressive mammals and birds, and then only at the most surface qualities, gleaning what we can for ourselves and our spiritual needs. In order to step out of this self-centered approach to nature spirituality, we need to really appreciate beings for themselves in all their complexity, and what better starting point than the amazing and completely indispensable earthworm? This is a really fun read, but you'll learn a lot along the way, too--and maybe start treating the soil in your yard a little better, too!

There are lots of other books that explore individual species in depth, like Bernd Heinrich's The Mind of the Raven and Of Wolves and Men by Barry Holstun Lopez, but I really recommend you start with the often-overlooked earthworms before moving on to stereotypically charismatic critters like ravens and wolves.

Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown Young

One of the disadvantages of pagans reading only books by pagans about paganism is that we miss out on other awesome and relevant works by people who aren't expressly pagan. Joanna Macy is one of those authors that more pagans really need to know about, especially those who construct group rituals. This is an entire book full of rites for reconnecting to nature and to each other, as well as grieving for global losses and fostering gratitude and hope for a better future. If that doesn't sound like something more pagans could get behind, I don't know what does. Just because it doesn't mention any deities doesn't mean that it's useless.

Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World by Bill Plotkin

This is another one of those "pagan but not" books. I've explored this book in more detail in the past, but my opinion still stands: it is a much better alternative to Maiden, Mother, Crone and Youth, Warrior, Sage. It's based in a developmental approach to ecopsychology (or an ecopsychological approach to developmental psychology?) Growth is not based on your physical age or whether you're capable of popping out babies; rather, Plotkin's eight-stage Wheel looks at your journey as a person and your continuing relationship with your community and ecosystem to determine where you are developmentally. You can even be in more than one stage at once! It's a much more well-rounded way to apply a label to yourself, if you must, and I recommend it for anyone who is sick of the gender-limiting stereotypes of MMC/YWS.

(Honorable mention to Lasara Firefox's Jailbreaking the Goddess as another alternative to MMC for women.)

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken

If you love nature and honor it and you really want to do something to make up for the damage we've done to the planet, there's nothing much more effective than working to reverse climate change. I mean, really, it's a much better offering to nature spirits than pouting food and drink on the ground, or sending a vague ball of energy to wrap around the planet to do....what? What's even more noteworthy about this book is that it's an excellent antidote to the hopelessness and fear that a lot of people feel about climate change. In it you're going to read about people who are already boots on the ground making a difference, to include in the very industries that are causing the most problems. And it ranks the top 100 causes of climate change (you can see this on their website, too.) Pick one of these causes to start working on, with whatever time and other resources you reasonably have available, and not only are you giving something back to nature, but you're also counteracting the paralysis that pessimism breeds.

So there you have it: my current essential reading list for pagans. Sorry I'm not handing you yet another rehash of the Wiccan Sabbats or a bunch of spells. Over the past few years my paganism has become much more firmly rooted in the physical, and my reading list reflects that. After all, what good is a nature-based path if you don't know diddly about nature itself?

#pagan #nature #pagan books #nature spirituality #paganism #mine