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inthefallofasparrow · 4 years

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“I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.”

“This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.”

“But enough is enough.”

“The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.”

“American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.”

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“WHY AM I WRITING THIS

As someone who went through the training, hiring, and socialization of a career in law enforcement, I wanted to give a first-hand account of why I believe police officers are the way they are. Not to excuse their behavior, but to explain it and to indict the structures that perpetuate it.

I believe that if everyone understood how we’re trained and brought up in the profession, it would inform the demands our communities should be making of a new way of community safety. If I tell you how we were made, I hope it will empower you to unmake us.

One of the other reasons I’ve struggled to write this essay is that I don’t want to center the conversation on myself and my big salty boo-hoo feelings about my bad choices. It’s a toxic white impulse to see atrocities and think “How can I make this about me?” So, I hope you’ll take me at my word that this account isn’t meant to highlight me, but rather the hundred thousand of me in every city in the country. It’s about the structure that made me (that I chose to pollute myself with) and it’s my meager contribution to the cause of radical justice.

YES, ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS

I was a police officer in a major metropolitan area in California with a predominantly poor, non-white population (with a large proportion of first-generation immigrants). One night during briefing, our watch commander told us that the city council had requested a new zero tolerance policy. Against murderers, drug dealers, or child predators?

No, against homeless people collecting cans from recycling bins.

See, the city had some kickback deal with the waste management company where waste management got paid by the government for our expected tonnage of recycling. When homeless people “stole” that recycling from the waste management company, they were putting that cheaper contract in peril. So, we were to arrest as many recyclers as we could find.

Even for me, this was a stupid policy and I promptly blew Sarge off. But a few hours later, Sarge called me over to assist him. He was detaining a 70 year old immigrant who spoke no English, who he’d seen picking a coke can out of a trash bin. He ordered me to arrest her for stealing trash. I said, “Sarge, c’mon, she’s an old lady.” He said, “I don’t give a shit. Hook her up, that’s an order.” And… I did. She cried the entire way to the station and all through the booking process. I couldn’t even comfort her because I didn’t speak Spanish. I felt disgusting but I was ordered to make this arrest and I wasn’t willing to lose my job for her.

If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t. I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations.

We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years.

I know what you’re going to ask: did I ever plant drugs? Did I ever plant a gun on someone? Did I ever make a false arrest or file a false report? Believe it or not, the answer is no. Cheating was no fun, I liked to get my stats the “legitimate” way. But I knew officers who kept a little baggie of whatever or maybe a pocket knife that was a little too big in their war bags (yeah, we called our dufflebags “war bags”…). Did I ever tell anybody about it? No I did not. Did I ever confess my suspicions when cocaine suddenly showed up in a gang member’s jacket? No I did not.

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.

And that’s the point of what I’m telling you. Whether you were my sergeant, legally harassing an old woman, me, legally harassing our residents, my fellow trainees bullying the rest of us, or “the bad apples” illegally harassing “shitbags”, we were all in it together. I knew cops that pulled women over to flirt with them. I knew cops who would pepper spray sleeping bags so that homeless people would have to throw them away. I knew cops that intentionally provoked anger in suspects so they could claim they were assaulted. I was particularly good at winding people up verbally until they lashed out so I could fight them. Nobody spoke out. Nobody stood up. Nobody betrayed the code.

None of us protected the people (you) from bad cops.

This is why “All cops are bastards.” Even your uncle, even your cousin, even your mom, even your brother, even your best friend, even your spouse, even me. Because even if they wouldn’t Do The Thing themselves, they will almost never rat out another officer who Does The Thing, much less stop it from happening.

BASTARD 101

I could write an entire book of the awful things I’ve done, seen done, and heard others bragging about doing. But, to me, the bigger question is “How did it get this way?”. While I was a police officer in a city 30 miles from where I lived, many of my fellow officers were from the community and treated their neighbors just as badly as I did. While every cop’s individual biases come into play, it’s the profession itself that is toxic, and it starts from day 1 of training.

Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary bootcamp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty.

I want to highlight this: nearly everyone coming into law enforcement is bombarded with dash cam footage of police officers being ambushed and killed. Over and over and over. Colorless VHS mortality plays, cops screaming for help over their radios, their bodies going limp as a pair of tail lights speed away into a grainy black horizon. In my case, with commentary from an old racist cop who used to brag about assaulting Black Panthers.

To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force:

“I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”

Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity.

When you look at the actions of the officers who killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, or Freddie Gray, remember that they, like me, were trained to recite “I’d rather be judged by 12” as a mantra. Even if Mistakes Were Made™, the city (meaning the taxpayers, meaning you) pays the settlement, not the officer.

Once police training has - through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle - promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you. Occasionally, this is even true: I’ve had encounters turn on me rapidly to the point I legitimately thought I was going to die, only to have other officers come and turn the tables.

One of the most important thought leaders in law enforcement is Col. Dave Grossman, a “killologist” who wrote an essay called “Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs”. Cops are the sheepdogs, bad guys are the wolves, and the citizens are the sheep (!). Col. Grossman makes sure to mention that to a stupid sheep, sheepdogs look more like wolves than sheep, and that’s why they dislike you.

This “they hate you for protecting them and only I love you, only I can protect you” tactic is familiar to students of abuse. It’s what abusers do to coerce their victims into isolation, pulling them away from friends and family and ensnaring them in the abuser’s toxic web. Law enforcement does this too, pitting the officer against civilians. “They don’t understand what you do, they don’t respect your sacrifice, they just want to get away with crimes. You’re only safe with us.”

I think the Wolves vs. Sheepdogs dynamic is one of the most important elements as to why officers behave the way they do. Every single second of my training, I was told that criminals were not a legitimate part of their community, that they were individual bad actors, and that their bad actions were solely the result of their inherent criminality. Any concept of systemic trauma, generational poverty, or white supremacist oppression was either never mentioned or simply dismissed. After all, most people don’t steal, so anyone who does isn’t “most people,” right? To us, anyone committing a crime deserved anything that happened to them because they broke the “social contract.” And yet, it was never even a question as to whether the power structure above them was honoring any sort of contract back.

Understand: Police officers are part of the state monopoly on violence and all police training reinforces this monopoly as a cornerstone of police work, a source of honor and pride. Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have. One of my training officers told me about the time he shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man wielding a big stick. He bragged that he “slept like a baby” that night. Official training teaches you how to be violent effectively and when you’re legally allowed to deploy that violence, but “unofficial training” teaches you to desire violence, to expand the breadth of your violence without getting caught, and to erode your own compassion for desperate people so you can justify punitive violence against them.

HOW TO BE A BASTARD

I have participated in some of these activities personally, others are ones I either witnessed personally or heard officers brag about openly. Very, very occasionally, I knew an officer who was disciplined or fired for one of these things.

Police officers will lie about the law, about what’s illegal, or about what they can legally do to you in order to manipulate you into doing what they want.

Police officers will lie about feeling afraid for their life to justify a use of force after the fact.

Police officers will lie and tell you they’ll file a police report just to get you off their back.

Police officers will lie that your cooperation will “look good for you” in court, or that they will “put in a good word for you with the DA.” The police will never help you look good in court.

Police officers will lie about what they see and hear to access private property to conduct unlawful searches.

Police officers will lie and say your friend already ratted you out, so you might as well rat them back out. This is almost never true.

Police officers will lie and say you’re not in trouble in order to get you to exit a location or otherwise make an arrest more convenient for them.

Police officers will lie and say that they won’t arrest you if you’ll just “be honest with them” so they know what really happened.

Police officers will lie about their ability to seize the property of friends and family members to coerce a confession.

Police officers will write obviously bullshit tickets so that they get time-and-a-half overtime fighting them in court.

Police officers will search places and containers you didn’t consent to and later claim they were open or “smelled like marijuana”.

Police officers will threaten you with a more serious crime they can’t prove in order to convince you to confess to the lesser crime they really want you for.

Police officers will employ zero tolerance on races and ethnicities they dislike and show favor and lenience to members of their own group.

Police officers will use intentionally extra-painful maneuvers and holds during an arrest to provoke “resistance” so they can further assault the suspect.

Some police officers will plant drugs and weapons on you, sometimes to teach you a lesson, sometimes if they kill you somewhere away from public view.

Some police officers will assault you to intimidate you and threaten to arrest you if you tell anyone.

A non-trivial number of police officers will steal from your house or vehicle during a search.

A non-trivial number of police officers commit intimate partner violence and use their status to get away with it.

A non-trivial number of police officers use their position to entice, coerce, or force sexual favors from vulnerable people.

If you take nothing else away from this essay, I want you to tattoo this onto your brain forever: if a police officer is telling you something, it is probably a lie designed to gain your compliance.

Do not talk to cops and never, ever believe them. Do not “try to be helpful” with cops. Do not assume they are trying to catch someone else instead of you. Do not assume what they are doing is “important” or even legal. Under no circumstances assume any police officer is acting in good faith.

Also, and this is important, do not talk to cops.

I just remembered something, do not talk to cops.

Checking my notes real quick, something jumped out at me:

not

fucking

talk

cops.

Ever.

Say, “I don’t answer questions,” and ask if you’re free to leave; if so, leave. If not, tell them you want your lawyer and that, per the Supreme Court, they must terminate questioning. If they don’t, file a complaint and collect some badges for your mantle.

DO THE BASTARDS EVER HELP?

Reading the above, you may be tempted to ask whether cops ever do anything good. And the answer is, sure, sometimes. In fact, most officers I worked with thought they were usually helping the helpless and protecting the safety of innocent people.

During my tenure in law enforcement, I protected women from domestic abusers, arrested cold-blooded murderers and child molesters, and comforted families who lost children to car accidents and other tragedies. I helped connect struggling people in my community with local resources for food, shelter, and counseling. I deescalated situations that could have turned violent and talked a lot of people down from making the biggest mistake of their lives. I worked with plenty of officers who were individually kind, bought food for homeless residents, or otherwise showed care for their community.

The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker. My good deeds were listening to people failed by the system and trying to unite them with any crumbs of resources the structure was currently denying them.

It’s also important to note that well over 90% of the calls for service I handled were reactive, showing up well after a crime had taken place. We would arrive, take a statement, collect evidence (if any), file the report, and onto the next caper. Most “active” crimes we stopped were someone harmless possessing or selling a small amount of drugs. Very, very rarely would we stop something dangerous in progress or stop something from happening entirely. The closest we could usually get was seeing someone running away from the scene of a crime, but the damage was still done.

And consider this: my job as a police officer required me to be a marriage counselor, a mental health crisis professional, a conflict negotiator, a social worker, a child advocate, a traffic safety expert, a sexual assault specialist, and, every once in awhile, a public safety officer authorized to use force, all after only a 1000 hours of training at a police academy. Does the person we send to catch a robber also need to be the person we send to interview a rape victim or document a fender bender? Should one profession be expected to do all that important community care (with very little training) all at the same time?

To put this another way: I made double the salary most social workers made to do a fraction of what they could do to mitigate the causes of crimes and desperation. I can count very few times my monopoly on state violence actually made our citizens safer, and even then, it’s hard to say better-funded social safety nets and dozens of other community care specialists wouldn’t have prevented a problem before it started.

Armed, indoctrinated (and dare I say, traumatized) cops do not make you safer; community mutual aid networks who can unite other people with the resources they need to stay fed, clothed, and housed make you safer. I really want to hammer this home: every cop in your neighborhood is damaged by their training, emboldened by their immunity, and they have a gun and the ability to take your life with near-impunity. This does not make you safer, even if you’re white.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE A BASTARD?

So what do we do about it? Even though I’m an expert on bastardism, I am not a public policy expert nor an expert in organizing a post-police society. So, before I give some suggestions, let me tell you what probably won’t solve the problem of bastard cops:

Increased “bias” training. A quarterly or even monthly training session is not capable of covering over years of trauma-based camaraderie in police forces. I can tell you from experience, we don’t take it seriously, the proctors let us cheat on whatever “tests” there are, and we all made fun of it later over coffee.

Tougher laws. I hope you understand by now, cops do not follow the law and will not hold each other accountable to the law. Tougher laws are all the more reason to circle the wagons and protect your brothers and sisters.

More community policing programs. Yes, there is a marginal effect when a few cops get to know members of the community, but look at the protests of 2020: many of the cops pepper-spraying journalists were probably the nice school cop a month ago.

Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to exploit for cheap labor and it requires the cops to bring that underclass to heel.

Instead of wasting time with minor tweaks, I recommend exploring the following ideas:

No more qualified immunity. Police officers should be personally liable for all decisions they make in the line of duty.

No more civil asset forfeiture. Did you know that every year, citizens like you lose more cash and property to unaccountable civil asset forfeiture than to all burglaries combined? The police can steal your stuff without charging you with a crime and it makes some police departments very rich.

Break the power of police unions. Police unions make it nearly impossible to fire bad cops and incentivize protecting them to protect the power of the union. A police union is not a labor union; police officers are powerful state agents, not exploited workers.

Require malpractice insurance. Doctors must pay for insurance in case they botch a surgery, police officers should do the same for botching a police raid or other use of force. If human decency won’t motivate police to respect human life, perhaps hitting their wallet might.

Defund, demilitarize, and disarm cops. Thousands of police departments own assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, and stuff you’d see in a warzone. Police officers have grants and huge budgets to spend on guns, ammo, body armor, and combat training. 99% of calls for service require no armed response, yet when all you have is a gun, every problem feels like target practice. Cities are not safer when unaccountable bullies have a monopoly on state violence and the equipment to execute that monopoly.

One final idea: consider abolishing the police.

I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental. It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.

I alluded to this above: the vast majority of calls for service I handled were theft reports, burglary reports, domestic arguments that hadn’t escalated into violence, loud parties, (houseless) people loitering, traffic collisions, very minor drug possession, and arguments between neighbors. Mostly the mundane ups and downs of life in the community, with little inherent danger. And, like I mentioned, the vast majority of crimes I responded to (even violent ones) had already happened; my unaccountable license to kill was irrelevant.

What I mainly provided was an “objective” third party with the authority to document property damage, ask people to chill out or disperse, or counsel people not to beat each other up. A trained counselor or conflict resolution specialist would be ten times more effective than someone with a gun strapped to his hip wondering if anyone would try to kill him when he showed up. There are many models for community safety that can be explored if we get away from the idea that the only way to be safe is to have a man with a M4 rifle prowling your neighborhood ready at a moment’s notice to write down your name and birthday after you’ve been robbed and beaten.

You might be asking, “What about the armed robbers, the gangsters, the drug dealers, the serial killers?” And yes, in the city I worked, I regularly broke up gang parties, found gang members carrying guns, and handled homicides. I’ve seen some tragic things, from a reformed gangster shot in the head with his brains oozing out to a fifteen year old boy taking his last breath in his screaming mother’s arms thanks to a gang member’s bullet. I know the wages of violence.

This is where we have to have the courage to ask: why do people rob? Why do they join gangs? Why do they get addicted to drugs or sell them? It’s not because they are inherently evil. I submit to you that these are the results of living in a capitalist system that grinds people down and denies them housing, medical care, human dignity, and a say in their government. These are the results of white supremacy pushing people to the margins, excluding them, disrespecting them, and treating their bodies as disposable.

Equally important to remember: disabled and mentally ill people are frequently killed by police officers not trained to recognize and react to disabilities or mental health crises. Some of the people we picture as “violent offenders” are often people struggling with untreated mental illness, often due to economic hardships. Very frequently, the officers sent to “protect the community” escalate this crisis and ultimately wound or kill the person. Your community was not made safer by police violence; a sick member of your community was killed because it was cheaper than treating them. Are you extremely confident you’ll never get sick one day too?

Wrestle with this for a minute: if all of someone’s material needs were met and all the members of their community were fed, clothed, housed, and dignified, why would they need to join a gang? Why would they need to risk their lives selling drugs or breaking into buildings? If mental healthcare was free and was not stigmatized, how many lives would that save?

Would there still be a few bad actors in the world? Sure, probably. What’s my solution for them, you’re no doubt asking. I’ll tell you what: generational poverty, food insecurity, houselessness, and for-profit medical care are all problems that can be solved in our lifetimes by rejecting the dehumanizing meat grinder of capitalism and white supremacy. Once that’s done, we can work on the edge cases together, with clearer hearts not clouded by a corrupt system.

Police abolition is closely related to the idea of prison abolition and the entire concept of banishing the carceral state, meaning, creating a society focused on reconciliation and restorative justice instead of punishment, pain, and suffering — a system that sees people in crisis as humans, not monsters. People who want to abolish the police typically also want to abolish prisons, and the same questions get asked: “What about the bad guys? Where do we put them?” I bring this up because abolitionists don’t want to simply replace cops with armed social workers or prisons with casual detention centers full of puffy leather couches and Playstations. We imagine a world not divided into good guys and bad guys, but rather a world where people’s needs are met and those in crisis receive care, not dehumanization.

Here’s legendary activist and thinker Angela Y. Davis putting it better than I ever could:

“An abolitionist approach that seeks to answer questions such as these would require us to imagine a constellation of alternative strategies and institutions, with the ultimate aim of removing the prison from the social and ideological landscapes of our society. In other words, we would not be looking for prisonlike substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment-demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.”

(Are Prisons Obsolete, pg. 107)

I’m not telling you I have the blueprint for a beautiful new world. What I’m telling you is that the system we have right now is broken beyond repair and that it’s time to consider new ways of doing community together. Those new ways need to be negotiated by members of those communities, particularly Black, indigenous, disabled, houseless, and citizens of color historically shoved into the margins of society. Instead of letting Fox News fill your head with nightmares about Hispanic gangs, ask the Hispanic community what they need to thrive. Instead of letting racist politicians scaremonger about pro-Black demonstrators, ask the Black community what they need to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. If you truly desire safety, ask not what your most vulnerable can do for the community, ask what the community can do for the most vulnerable.

A WORLD WITH FEWER BASTARDS IS POSSIBLE

If you take only one thing away from this essay, I hope it’s this: do not talk to cops. But if you only take two things away, I hope the second one is that it’s possible to imagine a different world where unarmed black people, indigenous people, poor people, disabled people, and people of color are not routinely gunned down by unaccountable police officers. It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, this requires a leap of faith into community models that might feel unfamiliar, but I ask you:

When you see a man dying in the street begging for breath, don’t you want to leap away from that world?

When you see a mother or a daughter shot to death sleeping in their beds, don’t you want to leap away from that world?

When you see a twelve year old boy executed in a public park for the crime of playing with a toy, jesus fucking christ, can you really just stand there and think “This is normal”?

And to any cops who made it this far down, is this really the world you want to live in? Aren’t you tired of the trauma? Aren’t you tired of the soul sickness inherent to the badge? Aren’t you tired of looking the other way when your partners break the law? Are you really willing to kill the next George Floyd, the next Breonna Taylor, the next Tamir Rice? How confident are you that your next use of force will be something you’re proud of? I’m writing this for you too: it’s wrong what our training did to us, it’s wrong that they hardened our hearts to our communities, and it’s wrong to pretend this is normal.

Look, I wouldn’t have been able to hear any of this for much of my life. You reading this now may not be able to hear this yet either. But do me this one favor: just think about it. Just turn it over in your mind for a couple minutes. “Yes, And” me for a minute. Look around you and think about the kind of world you want to live in. Is it one where an all-powerful stranger with a gun keeps you and your neighbors in line with the fear of death, or can you picture a world where, as a community, we embrace our most vulnerable, meet their needs, heal their wounds, honor their dignity, and make them family instead of desperate outsiders?

If you take only three things away from this essay, I hope the third is this: you and your community don’t need bastards to thrive.”

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#acab #blm #black lives matter #police #medium #read this #read all of it #click on the link or click 'keep reading'#read it all #it's long but important

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radioleary-blog · 6 years

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Hef Tragedy Jam

Hugh Hefner died yesterday. When the news was announced, over fifty women said they were dismayed. No, wait...over fifty women said they were “Miss May”. Fifty more were Miss June, and, well, you get the picture. If you were lucky you got their pictures.

Few of you reading this are old enough to remember that Playboy magazine was about the only place you could see a naked woman, and I say that because there are probably few of you reading this, period. But hey, my column gets more readers than the average suicide note, statistically speaking. Although I’m trying to increase my readership, and the average suicide note is more of a stand-alone project. I bet if George Lucas ever wrote a suicide note, he’d follow it up with three prequel notes. Each successively worse than the last. People would be like, “Why did he have to ruin that original suicide note, which I loved, with those awful prequel-suicide notes? I don’t care why he got depressed, but clearly only a manic depressive could make such a desperate cry for help as introducing Jar-Jar Binks. If I ruined a billion dollar franchise by coming up with an offensive racist caricature like Jar-Jar Binks, I’d probably consider putting a lightsaber in my mouth too.”

I grew up with Playboy magazine, and my early knowledge of female physiology was less from a volume of Grey’s anatomy or sketches by DaVinci, and more from volumes of Playboy magazine. It was like a reference guide, one that you would hold up with one hand. In fact, the first time I had a girlfriend who got naked, I wondered where her staples were. Of course, today, I’m the one who should have his stomach stapled, but that’s another story. Ah, sweet irony!

I’m sure Hugh Hefner went to Heaven, but whatever gleaming Mansion in the sky awaits us, no matter how glorious, for Hugh Hefner it’s going to be a pretty big step down from the Playboy Mansion. It may actually be Seventh Heaven, but Hef has been living on Cloud Nine since 1956. But, hey, he’s already wearing a robe. You know when you see depictions of Heaven, everybody is always wearing white robes? That’s because they were wearing those white robes in the hospital when they died. And they make you wear those awful robes that don’t close in the back because that’s where your wings will come out when you get to Heaven. It’s all part of God’s plan. I bet you’ll still have that plastic wristband on too, St. Peter just scans it at the gate to let you in. <beep> “Cardiac arrest. You’re good. Check in at the registration desk. Have a valid photo ID ready.”

Hugh Hefner was such a consummate pussyhound, I wouldn’t be surprised if he made a deathbed conversion to radical Islam, just to get the 72 virgins in Heaven. God would be like - I mean “Allah” would be like, “Pretty tricky Hef, pretty tricky. But...technically it counts. You old horndog!” Of course, you know what Hugh Hefner calls 72 virgins? A slow Tuesday.

The Playboy Mansion was famous for its out-of-control parties, and the mansion had a natural cave-like grotto on the grounds where everyone would go to snort coke and have sex. I guess Hef was a lot like Bruce Wayne, a millionaire with a mansion and a cave. And didn’t they call Bruce Wayne a millionaire playboy? Hef was a Playboy millionaire. But the difference is, Hef would rather do coke and fuck super-models whereas Batman would rather do-good and fight super-villains. Plus, Batman slides down the Bat-pole, and crazy hot chicks slide down the Hef-pole. In other words, Hef was sane, and Batman was, well, not so much. Batman is basically a billionaire who just wants to hurt people and not get sued for it and pretend he’s a hero. Kind of like Trump.

The grotto cave on the grounds of the Playboy Mansion had a huge, heated Jacuzzi pool, where movie stars, rock and roll gods, and celebrity athletes were eagerly humped by groupies, star-fuckers, and aspiring playmates. Unprotected 1970’s sex was messier than Michael J. Fox eating an ice cream cone, so the pool was probably 60% water, 2% spilled cocaine, and 38% James Caan’s jizz. The lifeguard got syphilis just from giving mouth to mouth resuscitation. At least that was her story. But that was about the same time Grand Funk Railroad was in town, so who can say? I do think ‘grotto’ must be the Italian word for ‘gross’.

I hear some of the more politically correct crowd, or as they’re more commonly known, nitwits, complaining that Playboy exploited women. And I guess it was exploitation, in the same sense that Vogue magazine is exploiting the mostly-naked teenage anorexic girls slash super-models in their magazine. And I say slash because that’s what these girls often try to do to their wrists. Unlike Vogue magazine models, at least the Playboy women didn’t have eating disorders. They’re a lot less likely to stick their fingers down their throats. I’m not saying they’re any less likely to have something down their throats, but not their fingers.

Exploiting women. As if Hugh Hefner was hanging around the Newark bus station looking for a girl down on her luck and fresh off the turnip truck from Topeka. That sounds more like the plot of a 1930’s movie than the way his business empire was run. I think what Hef did was have his photography editors, both men and women, spend endless hours going through duffel bags of mail sent in by thousands of women from all around the country who wanted to pose for Playboy. The staff would narrow it down to probably a few dozen, and then get Hef’s opinion on who was not only the most beautiful, but who had the look that would be right to feature in the magazine. That’s exactly what the editors and publishers do at Elle, and Vogue, and every other magazine that holds up a particular brand of beauty as an ideal.

And I don’t know any women who haven’t worn out the related links on their favorite porn sites jilling off to whatever their particular porn flavor might be, so who exactly are these people that still have a problem with Playboy? Because without Hefner’s decades of battles against governmental and religious censorship, there would be no porn sites. Hef made it possible to look at porn sites without pretending you go there for the articles. Without Playboy, people would still be saying, “Did you read that insightful article on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur? And that recently-found short story by J.D, Salinger?” “Why, yes. I particularly liked the profile of Jazz trumpeters from the post-bop era. And I did notice some delightful porn as well, between the articles, of course.”

The reason Hef could get away with putting in naked chicks is his magazine is because Playboy was a serious, respected literary magazine. The greatest writers of the day were in Playboy:

Ray Bradbury wrote original content for Playboy, and serialized Fahrenheit 451, which was coincidentally the exact temperature of how hot the playmates were.

The Beat writer Jack Kerouac wrote for Playboy, and that cat was cool as hell. Beat, Jack, that is exactly what Playboy readers do.

Ian Fleming published short stories in Playboy, and the James Bond novel “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” was published first in Playboy. We all know James Bond got enormous amounts of pussy. But compared to what Hef was getting, James Bond looks like a bible salesman with erectile disfunction. Or a guy who works in a comic book store. Think about that for a minute; the world’s sexiest pussyhound spy still gets less women than the guy who published the magazine his story is in. And Bond is fictional!

Roald Dahl wrote for them, too. The author of “Willie Wonka” writing for people who wonka their willies, sounds apropo.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote for them all the time, and that dude was cooler than Ice Nine. There’s a reference for ya!

Joseph Heller published a lost chapter of “Catch-22” in Playboy. I think the title Catch-22 might be the number of social diseases you’d get if you had sex in the grotto.

Margaret Atwood, author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” started writing for Playboy in 1991. I would imagine one of her stories was called “The Handmaid’s Tail”.

Hunter S. Thompson. Gabriel García Márquez, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Truman Capote, they all wrote for Playboy. This magazine was the real deal, kids, it was smarter and cooler than absolutely anything you know today. You see, all of these stories were longer than 140 characters. Or even 280.

I actually learned quite a bit about culture from Playboy, between rounds, if you know what I mean. By middle school I could discuss the literary feud between Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer in English class and sound like a friggin’ genius, I just couldn’t tell the teacher where I learned it. “Where did I learn that? Oh, you know. Around. Literary journals, and the like. At that building that has all the books. Yes, exactly, the library! That’s the one! I frequent that establishment, I‘ll have you know.” What was I gonna say? My father’s sock drawer?

The Playboy Interview was legendary, they were deep, involved discussions, frank and uncensored. Here are some of the people they interviewed: Salvador Dali, Patty Hearst, Groucho Marx, Ansel Adams, Stanley Kubrick, The Beatles, Albert Schweitzer, Buckminster Fuller, Orson Welles, Peter Sellers, Abbie Hoffman, Tennessee Williams, Erica Jong, Allen Ginsberg, and Bertrand Russell. Then there are the so famous they’re known by just one name: Fellini, Castro, Brando, Nehru, Sartre, Bowie, Nabokov, Hoffa, Carson, Antonioni, Mastroianni, Gleason, and Sinatra. And Playboy was woke, they interviewed Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alex Haley, Miles Davis, Muhammad Ali, Eldridge Cleaver, Dick Gregory, and Huey Newton. Holy shit, right? Who do you see interviewed today? Kardashians? Ryan Gosling? Taylor Swift, but interrupted by Kanye West? This time we live in today has less culture than a petri dish.

Hef lived so long that most people today have no real idea how influential he was, what an important cultural icon he was, and that he somehow talked Marilyn Monroe into posing naked on the cover of the very first issue of his magazine way the hell back in 1956. That’s a dude with the Kavorka, big-time. And nobody was naked back in 1956. Not in this country. In 1956, people showered wearing a suit and tie, and apart from time shampooing, a smart fedora. They say people were more cultured back then because they went to art museums, bullshit, I think they only went to art museums to see the nudes in the oil paintings. You would too, and you know it, don’t even try to deny it. You’d say you were admiring the Titian, but you were really just admiring the Tit.

Nearly every issue, Playboy featured a very prominent celebrity with a well-established career and respected in her field who actually wanted people to see how beautiful she was without any clothes. Starting with Marilyn Monroe. And she was smoking hot, too, an icon in her absolute prime. Future historians will be more grateful for that photo shoot than they are for the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts. Where do you go from there, Playboy? Well, how about Farrah Fawcett, the biggest sex-symbol of the entire 1970’s! The list of gorgeous, talented, famous, successful women that wanted to pose for Playboy might be hard for you to imagine, as you live in an age where women pose in magazines like Maxim with their clothes on! And men today pay to see that? Wtf? Man, I can see women with their clothes on just about anywhere I go. I can see that in line at the deli counter, I don’t need to pay for it.

Here are just a few, a very few, of the already-famous women who chose to pose with no clothes:

Daryl Hannah. Olivia Munn. Kim Basinger. Charlize Theron. Drew Barrymore. Denise Richards (she had kids with Charlie Sheen, so posing for Playboy was comparatively a relatively sound decision). Shannen Doherty. Belinda Carlisle. Jayne Mansfield. Mariel Hemingway. Margaux Hemingway. Nastassja Kinski. Sharon Stone. Rosanna Arquette. Vanna White. Elle MacPherson. Brigitte Bardot. Uma Thurman. Kate Moss. The list is almost endless. I almost said bottomless, but being Playboy, “bottomless” goes without saying.

Sure, the last decade and a half weren’t great for Hef, but who stays cool past the age of 75? Only Bob Dylan and Picasso. Hef couldn’t let it all go, and at the end it was pretty sad. It was like Sunset Boulevard with viagra. But I’ll miss the Hef of fifty years ago, that man was at the forefront of political movements, cultural progress, gay rights, equal rights, reproductive rights, and the right to take your goddamn clothes off if you feel like it.

This may be the first funeral where you should bring condoms. In lieu of flowers, please give blowjobs. So long, Hef. Thanks for the mammaries.

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thedeadflag · 6 years

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Hey, I'm creating a campaign for a couple of friends, and it's my first time DMing, so I was wondering if you have any tips for me :))) P.S.: I loved this chapter of your fic so much, I really missed your writing :)))

Yay! That sounds like a lot of fun, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun :D

I’ll leave some links below to some great videos/articles with advice (because there’s honestly so much to say that I could go on for ages and ages), but for now…

* Two-Way Communication is Critical

This is arguably the second most important piece of advice, and one that ties into almost every piece of advice I could theoretically offer. Pen and paper roleplaying (whether there’s actual paper or not, of course) is a form of interactive storytelling with player created narratives. It’s not a top-down hierarchy where a DM designs and plots out everything, and the players follow along all wide-eyed and obedient with no agency of their own.

You are all playing a game together, even if your roles are different. Collaboration is key. That requires communication both ways.

This is especially vital when creating a new campaign, regardless of scale, because it’s immensely important to start with the right foundation. What kind of game do your players want to play? What are they looking for in the game, what do they want to get out of it, what interests them about roleplaying, what are their expectations?

From there, you can establish a basic idea of what sort of campaign to set up, what dynamic(s) to focus on, etc., because if you’re designing a campaign purely around what you want, your players might not be able to get on the same page. At the same time, you need to make sure you’ve got what you want in there as well, because you need to have fun as well.

After that, it’s best to approach players about character creation. One major newbie GM/DM mistake is letting players completely create characters in a vacuum. This is less than ideal because without a setting/context, (A) players tend to shift focus and invest in what they can get details on, generally the mechanical aspects of the game. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but you don’t want players branching off in wildly different directions and investing in those possibilities heavily mechanically to where you can’t really find a workable middle ground. Think a character who is out to be the biggest min-max munchkin wizard or cleric, contrasting with a character who is designed to be useless in combat but excellent socially and in skills, contrasting with a character who is built virtually entirely around being one cog in a phalanx wall who is also a vampire that cannot travel during daylight, contrasting with a character who has a lot of skills and feats invested in their profession as a farmer. Lots of directions there, and not necessarily one way to get everyone what they want.

So it’s best to head them off at the pass, introduce them to the working concept of the campaigns as you’re developing it. Brainstorm collectively as a group what kind of place you all would like to have in that world, what kind of adventure seems like it could be fun, and from there, come up with an opening scene for the players to build their characters into. Again, collaboration is great, bounce ideas back and forth with them, have them bounce ideas off each other, find a way for character creation to mesh with all of your goals as a group and then you won’t get caught so easily in the traps of players getting invested in being the single star in their own show rather than an ensemble cast. Get them excited to buy into the group dynamic and the adventure ahead of them.

And when you get into having sessions, talk to players between breaks, after sessions, keep tabs. Ask them what they liked and didn’t, ask them how they felt about the session, what’s exciting to them. Understand that character behaviour and decisions are manifestations of play intrigue and excitement, so use that line of communication to your advantage

Use that feedback and shape your campaign to it. One example of my own I sometimes bring up was a World of Darkness campaign I ran set in the late 1800s. My best friend grew heavily suspicious of an NPC in town that honestly was pretty unimportant and largely a placeholder. After two and a half sessions of him keying in on the NPC and his character investigating him and all sorts of sneaky shenanigans, I decided to flesh the NPC out and work him into the narrative more. I didn’t make him the big bad villain my best friend predicted he was, but I made him worthy of my best friend’s suspicions and paranoia if with a twist or two my best friend didn’t expect. While we never got to fully get through that narrative arc due to schedules conflicting too much to keep on with that campaign, it was an enjoyable narrative turn that rewarded his efforts in-character and his excitement outside of character.

If you have a player that’s excited and invested, play on that. Make the most of that. There’s nothing better as a DM than winding down a session and players spending the next while geeking out about how much fun they’re having and where they think things are heading. An open ear and open lines of communication are more more important than any notion of sticking to a set plan.

Related video (x)

* Do Your Research, But Don’t Buy In Too hard

Not much to say here. Research what you need, but don’t over-prepare. THis is the DM’s version of “Kill your darlings” more or less, because you’re going to have to toss away cool ideas that your players just aren’t biting on. That’s okay. Don’t spend tens of hours writing all this intricate backstory for items, or NPCs, because chances are it’s not going to be as great for the players as it was for you during brainstorming that. Give yourself the tools to create your world, get the basics, have a key pieces that can be malleable and dynamic in their ability to adjust to player actions/decisions, let your player’s characters be the center of your story, and build your world around them as they go. I mean, fi you want to go all out on worldbuilding and lore, then go for it, but just understand that all fo that needs to be supplementary to the campaign. It’s used to set the stage, not steer the ship, that’s the job for the characters

It’s the same for creating characters. Have a backstory, but don’t have 6 pages of backstory. It’s not necessary, it can hamper the ability for their character to grow and experience meaningful development/experiences in your campaign, and that can hinder the group dynamic and the immersion of the group and individual player into the game.

One note-taking bit that some DMs do is create session recaps, or something similar (see here for example/breakdown, maybe watch the full video for some great advice at encouraging roleplaying and engagement, and the importance of notetaking). In one of my old ones, I photoshopped an old newspaper with a variety of stories, some involving their escapades, some involving clues about important NPCs, some providing hooks for upcoming possible narrative plots. That worked well in the campaign I ran around a single city area, but that sort of thing can help increase excitement and indulge your urges for creation without railroading players. Sometimes I’ll start a session asking players to recap collectively what they’ve done recently before providing my recap from the perspective of the world they impacted. That can help with investment, getting them to see how their characters are perceived, the impact and consequences of their decisions, etc. The latter of which is something I write up directly after each session while things are fresh in my mind. All the major involved/affected NPCs have a perspective developed on what happened, and I use that and player commentary/character behaviour to help guide the campaign forward. Cause and effect is a simple and helpful way to think about ongoing conflict in campaigns.

And a recap can help with bookkeeping, so players aren’t constantly interrupting asking if they received X item last session, who X NPC is, etc.

In which case note-taking is important (x)(x). Having a strong platform for notetaking is important too if you’re going digital. Google Docs, Scrivener, notebook.ai, liquid story binder, etc. There’s a boatload of great tools out there, so find one that works well for you whether in-session or post/pre-session

Related video on research: (x at 6:48, but the whole video is excellent)

and the most important advice of all

Have Fun

Seriously. Pen and Paper roleplaying is meant to be fun. If you’re not having fun, change things up in the direction of what IS fun, screwing the consequences and previously well crafted plans.

As said here, Fun > Story > Rules.

Past that, getting your feet wet in one-shots is probably a good way to understand how to do things and give yourself and your players a trial run before kicking off a larger campaign. That way, you can work out some kinks, develop chemistry and learn to read the players, get comfortable with improv, etc.

Those are some basics to really work on accepting and exhibiting, and it will take time so be patient with yourself and your players.

Also, check these videos for some help because they are very good and informative, and provide a lot of A+ quality information on how to run a great campaign and get started

I know that’s a lot of videos, but they all have value. Some address the same things as other videos, but sometimes slightly different perspectives on the same points can help really fill out an understanding of certain topics, issues, concepts, etc. And a lot of those videos linked have other videos on their channels that are really informative and useful, too

Anywho, feel free to hit me up with questions if you’re struggling with anything, I’d be happy to help however I can!

#d&d #pen and paper #roleplaying #dnd #DM tips #dungeon master tips #long post #artyshort

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doktorpeace · 7 years

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in Persona 5 for me it’s July 11th, meaning I’m exactly 3 months into the game. I’m going to assume I’m getting to about the third way point, both previous games lasted 9-10 months and I’ll assume this one will last until January on the end game Calendar. Here’s my thoughts so far, spoilers inside:

Well I’ve spent a clean 44 hours on the game already so there’s that. I haven’t even been fucking around a lot, I completed Madarame’s Palace in just the 3 required visits and I completely cleaned out Kaneshiro’s Palace in just one discounting Makoto’s joining visit and the re-visit to defeat the boss. I’m really digging the story so far, it feels well paced and everything’s progressing at a reasonable, steady rate but the tension keeps building. It also REALLY breaks tradition, but in ways I’m finding refreshing. I’ve already formed my Judgement Confidant in spite of being only a third(ish?) of the way into the game, and I’ve formed a Confidant relationship with someone I know WILL be a party member even when he’s not a party member yet. Though I don’t trust Akechi as far as I could throw him. I’ll have to play farther into the story to write a real feeling piece about it, I’ll probably do that once I complete the game. Igor’s got me scared though, and I really loved and trusted Igor wholly in the last two games. My social stats are progressing well, I’m at rank 4 on Knowledge, 3 on Guts (promoting to 4 soon I think), 3 on Charm, 2 on Kindness, and 2 on Proficiency (also promoting soon). I knew Knowledge and Guts would be the most important ones going in, they always are so I’ve given them a special priority. So far I love this game, it’s really stellar and it’ll be my game of the year for certain. Everything works really well, my sole complaint at this point is that one time I had a shadow not join me after giving two good answers to its questions during a negotiation and I wasn’t told why not, but whatever it’s fine. The dungeons are getting steadily tougher and I really like the variety in design approaches they take. Kaneshiro’s was incredibly long but could be done all at once if you had enough items and good enough pacing, Madarame’s required more involvement and opting into scripted events since you had to get stuff done in the real world as well, and given it was a tutorial dungeon Kamoshida’s was also good. Honestly the level design in the Palaces has all been really good and I’ve liked each more than the last by quite a bit. I even got unlucky with some Onis getting crits and hitting my whole party with Rampage near the beginning of my run through Kaneshiro’s Palace and I still made it through so I was pretty happy with that. The main plot and characters are very much enjoying that the game, while fairly lighthearted so far, takes itself seriously and handles its themes maturely. They don’t make jokes about serious things and they let things have the weight that they should. The Party Member’s social links going on lockdown if you advance them too fast to wait for another moment in the plot is also a great idea since it means they can build in some of the character’s development from the plot into the social link and vice versa. This, combined with how the social links each focus on them growing as a person from the issue that caused them to be socially outcast and ostracized in the first place gives it a more down to earth feel. The party members have noticeable growths of character and mindset in both components of the game’s writing side by side, and it’s good to see them finally address this issue the series had been having. Rather than being like Persona 4 and making each of them a HUGE LIFE CHANGING EVENT THAT HAS A MASSIVE EFFECT ON THEIR PERSONALITY but then that having no bearing on the plot so the whiplash of maturity is really immersion breaking, this game’s focus on a more personal push towards growth and change. Be it making amends for past mistakes like Ryuji, finding a new source of strength with Ann, or pushing forward and grasping his future in spite of his situation like Yusuke, they all have to deal directly with what caused them to become an outcast in the first place, and feel like strong bits of development that don’t completely change them as people. I personally like and relate to Makoto’s being about being more honest with oneself and living for you, and not for the expectations others have for you. This sense of giving situations the gravitas and seriousness they require extends to side social links as well, of which I’ve liked all the ones I’ve found. One that sticks out to me is Kawakami’s social link. She is your teacher and you happen to hire her through a maid service because Ryuji and Mishima are fucking dumbasses who want to see a hot maid do chores for them and the situation you find yourselves in is naturally a little sexually charged, something which the game does not ignore or distract from. It owns up to the awkwardness of the situation it sets up. As the social link progresses (without Ryuji and Mishima there) it even gives the player the option to try and hit on her in a sexual manner, but she turns you down on the grounds that A) You’re her student B) the age gap is gross and C) specifically sites it would make her no better than Kamoshida, who was your first target as the Phantom Thieves in no small part because he sexually harassed and in one case raped a student. The fact that the game doesn’t just walk the walk of saying ‘oh yeah sexually assaulting minors is bad’ which is obvious to anyone of decent moral standing, but further drives the point home and WON’T make an exception for you because you’re the player is very good and not something many games are willing to do. The variety of characters you encounter during social links is also nice, from a washed up politician genuinely trying to improve the world after learning from his mistakes, to the owner of a model weapon shop doing illicit business, to just the guy who runs the Phantom Thieves’ Forum they’ve all got a charm to them and feel well written. One that worried me initially was one where you meet a news reporter in a bar and the bar happens to be run by a drag queen. I was worried cause I had heard this content was transphobic, but seemingly that was a misunderstanding from someone playing the japanese version with less than a perfect understanding of the language. Lala Escargot as she goes by, is voiced by a man in both versions and is referred to with ‘-chan’ and female pronouns, however this is proper etiquette for drag queens while playing their stage persona. Further, Lala Escargot is shown to be of good moral standing and isn’t made out to be a joke, two things I was glad to see happen. This game’s schedule also feels good. Like I said, I’m about a third of the way in and I feel like I’ve been able to make comfortable growth with both social stats and social links, and I was worried about that because the game really railroads you a lot in the first two plot arcs, but it’s working out comfortably. Combat feels really good, while spell animations feel a tiny bit less flashy than previous games I’ve still only seen a handful of them, and the combat animations are all still really good. The balance is great, I feel challenged but not overwhelmed, but it is noticeably getting a lot harder with each main palace. Your Teammate’s in combat abilities they gain from social links are definitely nerfed compared to P4 or P3 Portable, but honestly that’s welcome in my opinion. In the previous games they were flat out overpowered and could carry you through the game. As is they feel like nice bonuses that happen just often enough you don’t forget they’re there, but not so often that they take away any feeling of depth or strategy, particularly in P4 where they were extremely ‘Win More’ mechanics. Particularly the ‘Save the main character from death once per battle’ is reduced to a chance, but can happen more than once per battle if you’re lucky, and requires the relationship be at rank 9 instead of rank 5. A hefty but welcomed nerf that doesn’t eliminate any feeling of danger. Oh also! The fact that your non-party member Confidants confer permanent benefits, some in combat, some out of combat is a GREAT incentive to level them up. I know that I’m focusing on Kawakami’s so hard because it frees up so many phases in the game, not having to waste my own time brewing coffee or doing laundry is a huge boon, plus 1 point in knowledge from lecture (assuming I get the answer right) can be exchanged for two lockpicks and two points in proficiency, or a book read and its bonuses which is a great bonus effect. Eventually she even gives you the ability to go out at night after going dungeon crawling which in and of itself is an ENORMOUS benefit. Finally, as for the party members it’s really cool the variety this party has and their variety of motivations. They’re a very fun group whose personalities work together dynamically an in a fun way, I know I still have 3 party members left to get, so we’ll see how they affect things. I’m just loving how much we get to see them all interact, between how many plot events there are and that there’s at least one text chatlog a day with everyone talking together, it gives you a ton of dialogue with them and time to see their party dynamic. Ryuji’s a good boy. I like him a lot, he reminds me a lot of myself in terms of behavior. His social link has been a little slow, but cute, and his date sequences when you aren’t actively going up ranks are also cool. One big improvement he has over Yosuke in particular is that after being hit on by a couple of gay guys he just expresses distaste for the situation and leaves it at that. He was uncomfortable with it, but he doesn’t hark on it and veer off into being a homophobic shitbag like Yosuke. But Atlas, blease let him be gay in the expansion I know you’re going to make. Let me date the vulgar boy he’s such a cute good boy. Really though his growth as a person is already tangible, he’s gone from feeling like a total outsider with nothing to work for and nothing to lose to being a fairly responsible guy who owns up to his mistakes. He’s still not smart but he’s grown enough that he’s the party member to remind the others to keep it calm and lay low after a major operation, which is a really cool role for him to play. Ann is fucking great, her force of personality and strength as a character is immediate right from the start. I was worried for her, but she’s an explosive character, a lot of facets to her personality and situation are revealed to you quickly and then elaborated on over the course of her social link and when you hang out with her or go on sunday dates together. She’s obviously a kind, strong individual but she questions her own genuinity and strength as a person, and is exploring different ways to broaden her horizons and improve. I was a little worried she’d be a generic spitfire angry girl, but really she’s only super pissed off at injustice and sexual harassment. A big part of her character comes from her staunch hatred and opposition ‘of men who treat women as sexual outlets’ (literally word for word something she says) and it’s a really strong, cool way for her to be. I’m very grateful for the game’s writing for having such a staunch, unmoving stance in opposition of treating women like objects especially in a series like Persona where fans have an extremely gross tendency to do just that. It’s a good lesson and message to put out there. In other cases she’s actually really level headed and willing to admit when she was wrong or when someone’s outplayed her. I like Ann a lot. Yusuke’s a really deep and interesting character who I sadly keep blowing off for Makoto and Ryuji, but I’ll hang out with him more soon. His circumstances are really fucking difficult, first of all he’s an orphan, which sucks. Secondly his adoptive father is abusive, which really sucks. Third off he’s autistic. Seriously, think on his dialogue and tell me I’m wrong. We directly get the line ‘not many people will deal with my eccentricities’ which is as close as Japanese media ever gets to saying ‘yes I’m autistic.’ His dialogue often hints to how people ostracize him for being autistic even though he’s a great guy and I’m sure it’ll come up in his social link in the future. I’m glad the game paints it as a negative thing for society to treat him bad and not that it’s bad he’s autistic, it’d be very easy to slip into that but they haven’t fucked up yet. And finally, he’s fuckin gay dude. Don’t fight me on this one, I know a gay when I see one. He specifically dodges the idea of being attracted to Ann ‘as a member of the opposite sex’ and the way he says it isn’t ‘oh I’m interesting in girls, just not Ann’ it’s much more ‘I’m not interested in girl, and thus not interested in Ann.’ He’s got a lot going against him, but unlike with Kanji nobody acts like it’s weird he isn’t attracted to Ann (though Ryuji will rib the player for saying the same thing) and everybody’s doing their best to be supportive of him. I’m excited to see more of his character and see how he overcomes the ways society is stacked against him. You can even take him on dates and he comments that it looks like you’re lovers. I hope he gets a nice boyfriend. (also atlus please make him a romance option in the expansion as well.) Finally Makoto is the character I’ve most been suspicious of how she fits in. She’s an honor student, lives in a nice house, has a sister in a high paying job, was born into a good family, what’s bad about her life? Well, she’s outcast from the average student because she’s ‘just a robot’ and she has these obscene expectations thrust upon her, yet people still call her useless. She has to constantly wear a face and be who people expect her to be and not who she really is. It’s a more subtle kind of outcasting and she certainly doesn’t face the negatives the other members do like being an orphan or having their best friend hospitalized after a suicide attempt, but she’s got her own set of issues which are playing out alongside these things. The game also doesn’t frame her situation as equally bad, it’s just a very stressful, difficult situation for her and she really needs an outlet and somewhere she can genuinely just be herself. The fact that her rebellion is just having a space to express herself normally in is kind of fucked up, she had a really suffocating life and now she doesn’t and I like that. Her Confidant relationship is also really fun so far, I like Makoto even if she’s not an outcast in as strong or the same kind of way as everyone else. I don’t have a lot to say about Morgana so far. I like him, he’s an enormous step up from Teddie, but I think I’ll only be able to write how I really feel about him once the game is over. All in all I fucking love this game and it’s a huge improvement over all of Atlus’ old products in all the ways I’d hope it would be. I’d still prefer there be a gay romance option in the game, but the fact that you can take guys on dates and that you have a gay party member who isn’t treated as weird for it is great. 10/10, my personal game of the year already.

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sherristockman · 7 years

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Empathy: Caring for Others Is Good for You Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola Empathy, the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, so to speak, and understand their feelings and point of view, is a character trait that may benefit society and individuals in multiple ways. Empathy training has been found to reduce stress levels among medical students facing intense emotional encounters with patients, for example.1 While many parents try to instill empathetic qualities in their children, there’s growing research that empathy has deep neurological roots in humans. One of the first signs that empathy may be ingrained in all of us occurred in 1848, when a foreman named Phineas Gage working on a railroad construction project had an accident, which resulted in an iron rod going through his skull. He survived, but not without marked changes to his personality. His friends, family and physician described him as rude and inconsiderate following the accident.2 The Neurological Side of Empathy The term empathy didn’t come to be for another six decades after Gage’s accident, but what the accident essentially took from the foreman was the ability to feel empathy. In 1994, researchers were able to take measurements from Gage’s skull and use modern neuroimaging techniques to recreate the accident and determine its effects on his brain. “The damage involved both left and right prefrontal cortices in a pattern that, as confirmed by Gage's modern counterparts, causes a defect in rational decision making and the processing of emotion,” researchers concluded.3 Injury was found to have occurred in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), which is one of 10 brain regions now known to be involved in empathy. In his book “Zero Degrees of Empathy,” Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, describes the complex neurological underpinnings of empathy, revealing the many ways our brains help us to care about other people:4 The medial frontal cortex has been linked to social cognition, which allows people to be part of a social group and process information about others5 The inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) may be involved in recognizing emotions on faces6 More activity in the IFG when people look at emotional expressions is linked to higher scores on the empathy quotient scale7 The amygdala is also involved in emotions, including the ability to recognize fear on someone’s face8 Neurons in the caudal anterior cingulate cortex (cACC) “light up” when you’re in pain or when you observe someone else in pain9 Humans also have “mirror neurons,” which, Psychology Today explains, “react to emotions expressed by others and then reproduce them.”10 A deficit in mirror neuron receptors has been suggested as an explanation for narcissism and neurotic behaviors and thinking.11 Despite this knowledge, Medical News Today reported, British clinical psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen says, “We still know very little about individual differences in empathy … We will need elegant experimental research to solve those puzzles.”12 Why It’s Beneficial to Practice Empathy Beyond stress relief, why is it so important to be empathetic? Chad Fowler, CTO of 6Wunderkinder, the maker of Wunderlist mobile app, shared the following reasons why he believes your most important skill is empathy:13 You will be more likely to treat the people you care about the way they wish you would treat them. You will better understand the needs of people around you. You will more clearly understand the perception you create in others with your words and actions. You will understand the unspoken parts of your communication with others. You will better understand the needs of your customers at work. You will have less trouble dealing with interpersonal conflict both at home and at work. You will be able to more accurately predict the actions and reactions of people you interact with. You will learn how to motivate the people around you. You will more effectively convince others of your point of view. You will experience the world in higher resolution as you perceive through not only your perspective but the perspectives of those around you. You will find it easier to deal with the negativity of others if you can better understand their motivations and fears. Yet, people tend to feel most empathetic about those they perceive to be the most vulnerable. In one study, empathetic feels were higher toward a child, a puppy and an adult dog than they were toward an adult man.14 There’s good reason, however, to reframe the way you may compartmentalize empathetic feelings, as they have the potential to do good in an endless number of scenarios. Among dentists and their patients, for example, empathy improved communication and the dentistry experience for both the patient and the practitioner.15 Researchers found that empathy was positively associated with treatment adherence, patient satisfaction and reduced dental anxiety, sentiments that seem to be echoed among medical practitioners. Among adolescents, empathy may even go hand in hand with future success, according to licensed professional counselor Ugo Uche:16 “Teenagers who are empathetic tend to be more purpose driven and they intentionally succeed in their academics not because they are looking to make good grades, but in most subjects their goal is to understand the subject material and to utilize the knowledge as one of their ever-increasing tools … Teenagers who are more empathetic do a much better job in embracing failure, because there is little ego involved in their tasks, and setbacks while disappointing are rarely seen as failures, but rather as a learning experience about an approach that does not work for the task at hand.” Different Types of Empathy Empathy comes in three different varieties, and we each have varying levels of each type, which combine to influence our personal and professional lives. Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D., the Henry R. Kravis professor of leadership and organizational psychology and former director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College, explained each type in brief:17 Cognitive empathy: This type allows you to understand another person’s perspective and imagine what it would be like to walk in their shoes. Personal distress: Sometimes referred to as social empathy, this allows you to literally feel another person’s emotional state. Empathic concern: This describes not only recognizing and feeling in-tune with another person’s emotional state but also showing the appropriate concern or trying to help them as a result. It’s common for one person to be high in one type of empathy and lower in others, with varying effects. Riggio described a study he worked on in which hospice nurses performed better when they possessed empathic concern but worse when they experienced personal distress. “We surmised that if hospice nurses felt their patients' pain (and family members' distress as well), it made them less able to do their job of providing comfort to the patient and family because they had their own emotions that they had to deal with,” Riggio wrote.18 By tuning into your own empathic abilities, you can make mental notes of when perhaps you should show more empathic concern in lieu of personal distress and vice versa. Psychologist Daniel Goleman (who’s behind the theory of emotional intelligence) has stated that possessing all three types of empathy is key for strengthening your relationships.19 You Can Learn To Be More Empathetic Because we’re all hard-wired to feel empathy, you can train yourself to be more empathetic, even when it comes to strangers. Lack of empathy is responsible for many human conflicts, particularly those that occur between people from different nationalities and cultures. A University of Zurich study showed, however, that even a few positive experiences with a stranger increase empathetic brain responses toward them. Participants were divided into two groups (in-group members and out-group members) and received shocks to the back of their hands. Other study participants had the option of paying money so someone else could avoid the painful experience.20 When a person received help from a stranger, they had an increased brain response in empathy toward that person. According to the researchers, “[S]urprisingly few positive learning experiences are sufficient to increase empathy.”21 Beyond making an effort to share positive experiences with the people around you, you can develop your empathy simply by listening intently when people speak. This includes waiting until they’ve finished speaking to formulate your response and respond, as well as considering the speaker’s motivations behind what they’re saying and then responding with follow-up questions to further your understanding of the conversation.22 Other steps you can take to become more empathetic include: Consider an ongoing disagreement you have with a family member, friend or co-worker. Try to imagine the argument from their side and recognize whether they have valid arguments, good intentions or positive motivations you may have previously missed. Read more fiction. Reading literary fiction was shown to enhance a skill known as theory of mind, which is the ability to understand others' mental states and show increased empathy.23 Watch and wonder. Fowler recommends an activity he calls “watch and wonder,” which you can try virtually anywhere:24 “Put down your cell phone. Instead of checking Twitter or reading articles while you wait for the train or are stuck in a traffic jam, look at the people around you and imagine who they might be, what they might be thinking and feeling, and where they are trying to go right now. Are they frustrated? Happy? Singing? Looking at their phones? Do they live here or are they from out of town? Have they had a nice day? Try to actually wonder and care.” If you’re unsure when to really try to tap into your empathic abilities, Guy Winch, Ph.D., suggests prime times include whenever you wish you could understand someone better, when you’re having an unproductive argument with your significant other or when you want to calm your temper or better connect with the emotions of a loved one. Empathy even comes into play when you need to complain effectively. “Empathy comes more naturally to some than it does to others,” Winch says. “However, by taking time to truly paint a picture of what it is like for the other person and imagine ourselves in their place, we will gain valuable insights and forge deeper connections to those around us.”25

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