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ms-m-astrologer · 4 years ago

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Saturn in 2021

Note: this one’s long.

Saturn’s 2021 Timeline:

Friday, January 1, 2021 - Saturn at 1:37 Aquarius

Sunday, February 14, 17:02 UT - Saturn enters pre-Rx shadow, 6:53 Aquarius

Wednesday, February 17, 19:08 UT - Saturn/Aquarius square Uranus/Taurus, 7:14 (7 degrees 14 minutes)

Sunday, May 23, 08:10 UT - Saturn stations retrograde, 13:31 Aquarius

Monday, June 14, 22:01 UT - Saturn Rx/Aquarius square Uranus/Taurus, 13:07

Sunday, October 10, 01:19 UT - Saturn stations direct, 6:53 Aquarius

Friday, December 24, 07:17 UT - Saturn/Aquarius squares Uranus Rx/Taurus, 11:05

Saturday, January 1, 2022 - Saturn at 11:54 Aquarius

Saturday, January 15, 2022 - Saturn exits post-Rx shadow, 13:31 Aquarius

This planet, folks, is The One to pay attention to. Its transits affect everyone, without fail.

Saturn in Aquarius is just as strong as Saturn in Capricorn: both signs are ruled by Saturn, although it must share Aquarius with Uranus. And that brings me to The Three Big Deals of 2021, namely, those three squares between Saturn/Aquarius (strongly placed) and Uranus/Taurus (in its fall).

It always makes me scoff when I hear or see people say that Aquarius is a leftist, revolutionary sign. The 40th President of the US, Ronald Reagan (devil take him), was an Aquarius - he was revolutionary, all right, but in a decidedly conservative and reactionary direction. What Aquarius is (among other things), is ideological. It’s a fixed air sign; its opinions are set, and nothing will change its mind. Expect a lot of demands to adhere 100% to this or that orthodoxy. No shades of gray allowed; all is black or white.

The squares between Saturn and Uranus, according to Michelle Perrin in the 2021 Llewellyn Daily Planetary Guide, show that

We are turning a corner into a new age without really realizing we have left the old one behind, creating a time where new paradigms are no longer relevant but a new social order has yet to congeal into anything solid.

This particular square, with Saturn 270 degrees ahead of Uranus in the Zodiac, is a “Last Quarter” square. We’re turning away from what was hatched and brought to fruition after the Saturn-Uranus conjunctions of 1988 - we’re tearing down old structures that don’t work any more - and we get to do all that, without having a strong sense of where we’re headed next. (Namely, the one-and-done Saturn-Uranus conjunction, at 28:01 Gemini, on June 28, 2032.)

(If you were alive way back in 1988, think back to what was going on at the time in terms of larger cycles finishing and starting. The conjunctions were all in late Sagittarius: 29:55, 28:47, and 27:49.)

Saturn in Aquarius has particular challenges and lessons for us all to learn. The following is a synthesis between Isabel Hickey (Astrology A Cosmic Science), Steven Forrest (mostly The Book of Earth), and me.

“Tests of ownership. He who has no desire to possess has no fear of loss.” This is of course a very Taurus thing, as the sign is too apt to equate material stability with security. Uranus’ transit through Taurus is determined to demolish that misconception, and this year he’ll have some help from Saturn. We know we’re messing up here, when we give “too much power to money and security.”

“Test of true humility and lovingness. Denied the love sought in this lifetime until the spiritual bookkeeping is balanced.” Leo is all about himself being The Star, while Aquarius counters with “you’re only one star in a whole universe full of stars.” Can we shine without making it all about us? Overweening egos are due for a smackdown. Conversely, we can become too overwhelmed by “stage fright,” and refuse to share something that humanity desperately needs.

“Test of outgoing desire. Desire nature is extremely strong and until that is brought under control there is much suffering and pain.” Such a pitfall for all the fixed signs - not getting one’s own way 100%, but instead having to compromise, adapt, adjust, etc. - but especially for Scorpio. This may also manifest as needing to get over the typical Scorpio broody gloominess, into a more positive frame of mind.

“Test of responsibility. The soul must accept the responsibility of regeneration and be about the Father’s business.” I’m pretty sure what “Issy” meant was that we have to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses, and start trying to help our fellow humans. But there’s another danger here, namely the stereotypical Aquarian detachment from emotions. The sign can be too cold, and that eventually begets sociopaths.

When Saturn travels between 1:37 and 6:53 Aquarius: placements will receive a one-and-done aspect from transiting Saturn. Examples: Ms M’s natal Mars/Aries will receive a one-and-done sextile; Ms M’s natal Juno/Leo will receive a one-and-done opposition. (Like it matters if she’s single!?!)

When Saturn travels between 6:53 and 13:31 Aquarius: Saturn spends most of his time here, not only for 2021 but going a couple of weeks into 2022. Any placements affected by this will get three separate aspects. The first one will bring a situation to our attention; the second, retrograde aspect will give us further insights into the situation; the third and final aspect will allow some resolution, if we work for it.

(This part is making Ms M apprehensive, since it’s going to trigger her natal fixed grand cross: Asc/Scorpio, Venus and Desc in Taurus, both squared by Ceres and Uranus in Leo, and by Pholus in Aquarius. Empty nest?)

Even more fun is that transiting Uranus/Taurus will be wreaking havoc at the same time. It will travel between 6:48 and 14:49 of Taurus in 2021, and as you can see it overlaps the same degrees as Saturn. If you have fixed placements between 6:53 and 13:31 (that is, anything in the signs Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, or Aquarius), there is some hard work in your future. Even if it’s for something better to manifest, and even when we know that intellectually, we’re still reluctant to let go of control.

This also goes for mutable placements (the signs Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, or Pisces) between 21:53 and 28:31; Saturn and Uranus will semi-square (45 degrees) or sesquare (135 degrees) that placement, making for a lot of frustration. You won’t be able to wiggle out of consequences, as easily as you normally do.

If you have placements between 6:53 and 13:31 of the signs Aries, Gemini, Libra, or Sagittarius - lucky you! You’ve got some flowing energy between Saturn and that placement, and although it doesn’t guarantee a less painful time, you’ll at least have an easier time coming to grips with it. (Trine Ms M’s natal Mercury/Gemini/8th - astrology will get her through this!!)

In The Book of Earth, Steven Forrest starts out every description of transiting Saturn aspects, with the words “Growing pains.” That description is perfect. The stakes are a little higher, and the process more complex, than simply getting physically taller, though. Steven says that during “Saturn times,” we need to intentionally select a challenge, then give it everything we’ve got. The reward is that we move forward to the next maturational stage; if we refuse, we end up trapped in the past. Here are a couple more quotes from the Saturn section of Steven’s The Book of Earth.

“Saturn is not narrowly about old age; it is simply about whatever is the next step for us.” Growing up, in other words. As I have said on this blog many times before, the “only” thing that happened to me during my first Saturn return, was getting married. That was still a big deal in 1987: I assumed a different societal role (remember Saturn’s association with the 10th House), in a very traditional way (natal Saturn in Sagittarius). Perhaps it is because, as a small girl, I had four Crone figures in my life; perhaps it’s all the Aries in me, trined by my natal Saturn - but I wasn’t afraid, instead embracing the new opportunities.

“Saturn is not bad - but it is quite fair to say that it is hard.” My guess is that this is the one that frightens many 20-somethings - not to mention people who are much, much older and ought to know better. “Hard” does not equal “bad”!

Saturn in Aquarius is all about (1) knowing your own values and (2) living up to them. Anybody else’s approval, or disapproval, is completely irrelevant - and we need to accept that, even if “anybody else” doesn’t. We need to question authority, and also what’s known as “conventional wisdom.” We need to work on becoming more “authentic.” And we need to become comfortable with some solitude (2020 has been a great training ground for that), without isolating ourselves emotionally. There are a few people at least who will understand and accept you; get off your ass and put yourself in the way of finding them.

#Astrology #Saturn in 2021 #Ms M astrologer

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mantra4ia · 4 years ago

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NBC Debris, episodes 1-9: overview of high hopes and adjusted expectations

*Mild spoilers ahead*

I'm rooting for this show guys, really I am. The premise and the two main characters / actors are interesting, or at least try very hard to be. But this series has been slow off the ground despite my excitement during preseason teasers and here's why, in my view.

Pros:

An intercontinental alliance gives room / potential for some interesting spy craft, I just wish it was slightly more artful, less heavy handed.

Alien debris having potential to do good things is also a fantastic promise to expand on. George Jones talked about some terraforming level stuff (whether it goes right or wrong is another story), let's see more of that. Are tech giants fighting over the intellectual property rights to debris-based advances? How are money and favor between industry and the government changing hands (apart from a very literal briefcase full of cash on the black market when we first meet Influx)? How do different pieces of debris interact with one another, maybe it changes some of their properties in unpredictable ways.

Bryan and Finola have good amorphous lead chemistry. We aren't being force-fed where it is going to go, but we know it's a compelling relationship where they're both relying on each other to get through challenging emotional hurdles (marine special ops, family tragedy). And we see them together, riffing off each other from the beginning, and it works as both a personal and professional partnership.

Strongest debris-scifi-based episode was definitely 1x04 "In Universe" with the chlorine- respiration-based biome. To me it's the best of the season so far.

Strongest character episode so far is maybe 1x09 "Do You Know Icarus?" or 1x06 "Supernova"

Cons:

Episodic structure hampers the ramp of tension building. You don't get big payoff because you get short plot points. Yes there's the recurring "ball of light" and Influx references, but those are more phantom thread teasers than a long game of steadily developing insights.

No fully developed villain or antagonist to make the stakes seem tangible and priorities urgent or simmering: is it Influx, Maddox, Ferris, casually mentioned foreign government espionage, the guy who played Michael on The Vampire Diaries? I don't know, and worst of all nor do I really care because I don't feel their immenent threat or ideological purpose. I am more worried about the debris body count, but debris is a problem / quandary, not a viable adversary at this point. We've got a multi-front conflict, and 45 minutes with underwhelming writing complexity to try and meet the task. It's a struggle.

The ABCD action-based plot. I have to do this sequence in order to beat this level. Where's the character building?

Speaking of which, while I like Bryan and Finola's dynamic opposite each other, I can't say the same about their development as individual characters. Their depth and relationship to others has so far been terrible due to superficial telegraphing which tells us rather than a writing structure that shows us why we're supposed to care about them, their lives, or their relationships to others, like Finola and DeDe and George as a family unit, or Bryan and Maddox. Seeing an old family video of sisters dancing to a favorite song does nothing for me when I haven't seen them interact on anything more than a long distance phone call. Can we maybe get a flashback of them at George's memorial so that we can get a sense of how devastated the family was or see the consequences of DeDe's substance abuse habit as a crutch during an emotionally chaotic time in her life? No. We get hearsay. Maddox is supposedly so worthy of Bryan's trust, pulled him from the brink of a dark emotional abyss (1x07), but we get no sense of that bond off the clock like Bryan checking in on Maddox's family, or any sort of personal connection. Just a cold professional relationship with a few one liners.

Telegraphing to ambiguity ratio: certain things the audience gets explained to us, like alternate universes visible in the molecular imperfections of glass or how they damaged George's hippocampus and impaired his memory (like they're just throwing out words to sound sci-fi impressive), and yet some basic details that would help build this world lore and make it believable are left up to off-screen imagination? Come on now, we all know the season one is for world building. Hop to it! Debris falls from the sky, worldwide, and you're telling me no one knows about it and it doesn't impact public life / culture in any way, it doesn't make the news cycle, nothing? You're an Orbital agent, and you're able to fly around in laboratory equipped jets and land in whichever airspace you please, and no one bats an eye? Terrorists are using debris against civilians, and we don't see government restrictions, curfew, lockdowns, etc, we don't get any minor glimpses into ramifications on ordinary life? No, because the focus is always trained on our "field agents" but not the playing field. It's mundane, small stuff questions that keep us grounded, which is a refreshing and needed balance in sci-fi, but apart from a conversation about stale Peeps I don't see attention to daily details of life as we know it.

We are literally told in the pilot by a title card (talk about expedient) that "three years ago images were captured of a wrecked alien spacecraft moving through the solar system" and for 6 months debris has been falling. Has it smashed through any cities causing panic? How is it spun by the media, or how is Orbital keeping it out of public attention? Is there a political power struggle over research access, and what do those higher up agency meetings look like? Where and how is the recovered debris being cataloged and stored when it is not used in active research? Who has clearance to it, what is that clearance called/what does it entail, which government retains agency of debris pieces, or does that depend on where Orbital recovers it? This is like first-five-episode-arc lore building and we are nine hit or miss episodes into the season! I need this show to level up if it's taking the route of being clever and cerebral, which it appears to aim at by focusing on the scientific part of sci-fi. If it's goal is to be a small scale, partner ride along weekly mystery with heavy synthetic sound cues, then it needs to pick a tone that takes itself less seriously.

The dialogue is so lackluster and expository. Please get some of the writer's room to focus on making it sharper, quicker, smarter.

The science of debris: George Jones, as some genius mind behind Orbital tech, isn't believable. We don't get to see any part of his professional life in Orbital in the three year lead up to when we meet our characters, he doesn't even have any dialogue when Finola first finds him captive. We have "science-aesthetic" scribbles on a chalkboard and Finola's word that George is a workaholic research savant. It doesn't ring true and by extension some of the "rules" of this Orbital technology seem murky (not as in we learn alongside the characters, but as in the concept seems under developed). George's biggest contribution thus far is a levity critique of Bryan's driving speed. At this point he's a plot device to further Fin's journey, as is DeDe. That's base.

Lack of interest in supporting ensemble: why should I care about Maddox's family crisis, or DeDe's addiction or George's suicide after he was shut out of his own research at Orbital, etc? Again this ties back to previous points of show don't tell, and build a world, maybe use some flashbacks. Make it personal — why is George's research (apart from a generalized better world) so singularly important to him that it breaks his family, what compelled Brian to transition from military service to Orbital? How are different factions within Orbital — like the research team and the field agents — getting along, who's at the very bottom of the barrel or on the very top of the hierarchy?

I want this show to succeed, but I don't get a clear read on what genre they want to be or more importantly what the characters want. Please increase the focus on dialogue, get the basics of want-obstacle-action done right, and then the debris and the conflict it creates can have a bigger impact.

#nbc debris #new fandom #sci-fi #finola jones #bryan beneventi #renew Debris

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spineandprose · 5 years ago

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Educated | December 2019

For the entire year, I wished this book wasn’t on our reading list. Seeing Educated as our December read gave me caution for what I would learn in its pages and how that information would roll around in my head and heart, weighing me with a burden I didn’t need to bear. I don’t handle hard stories well. As this final book selection rolled nearer, my uneasiness grew. I knew this would be a hard read, and even contemplated a few times explaining to this club that I knew myself too well and decided to cautiously decline reading even one page of this memoir. But I wondered if I would regret missing out.

Ten days ago,* I cracked the book open and read about the Indian Princess and the family she housed at her base. Somehow, I was hooked. More than that, I was captivated, spellbound, fascinated with Tara’s story. One more chapter, then one more, then just another. Ultimately, I found Tara to be an exquisite storyteller, a master of words. I found her descriptions to be detailed enough to engulf me and transport me to her world, but she allowed the reader to have emotions for themselves; she didn’t describe her emotions in order to take you into her world, and I liked that. Instead, she let the events and people speak for themselves and for the reader to discover in their own understanding.

Home: Again, and Again, and Again I loved the foreshadowing of the prologue: “[My father] never told me how I’d know when it was time to come home.” Returning home, to her beloved Buck’s Peak and her complicated, unstable home was the thread that weaved, always rough and harsh, through Tara’s novel. As the reader, it was easy to take the stance of run away and never return! and I assumed that her move to college would be such. But she returned: during school breaks and summers, on weekends and for a sole midnight intrusion, for weddings and funerals, reconciliation and reunion, before a final resolve for a peaceful goodbye on her terms. Yet, did you catch it? I think she holds out hope that she may yet be welcomed home, in time. Does anyone else agree with me on this?

As the reader, each time you see her begin a journey back to Buck’s Peak, you wonder: why. I think the author does a tremendous job of displaying how real, deep, and valued family ties are. Though she confronts her parent’s mistreatment, neglect, and failings in their caring for her, she always thinks the best of them. She always says she loves them. She always explains how they are acting in their understanding of love toward her; I saw this especially in her parent’s visit to Harvard, including the Sacred Grove and Niagara Falls. I think Tara can really see that her parents are not whole beings and are loving her as they think is love. But it takes Tara ten years to learn that she cannot be loved by her parents, in their peculiar way, and remain a whole person. In her final visit to Buck’s Peak and her intentional goodbye, she describes this beautifully: “He gave me a stiff hug and said, ‘I love you, you know that?’ ‘I do,’ I said. ‘That has never been the issue.’” (Page 310).

List of Traumatic Events About halfway through the book, I thought I would write down each incident of injury. I found these to be the most intense.

two terrible car crashes

falling 18 feet in a junkyard with a deep leg wound at the age of ten

acting as first responder to a fire burn at the age of ten

physically, emotionally, and verbally abused from roughly the age of 15 to 25

Us vs. Them Because of her father’s, Gene’s, obsession with preparing for the End Days and his distrust of the government, he instilled in his family the mentality of us vs. them: a prevalent thinking that our family knows the real truth and everyone outside these walls---even those inside the same church as us---is out to harm us, destroy us, rip us apart. It’s us vs. them, and they can’t win.

This is ironic. Charles pointed it out---I’m not exactly sure when---but over the course of her story I had developed the same thought: there was no us for the Westovers. They are not looking out for each other. This is displayed in a dozen ways throughout the book:

Not yelling for help when Shawn was being abusive. This is true for likely all the siblings, but it’s known for Tara (the Thanksgiving choke and pin in the family room, the hundreds of times she was inverted into the toilet bowl), revealed through Audrey’s account of violence, and is hinted at through Tyler and Richard’s stance and uneasiness when they witness Shawn’s aggression. Somehow, they each knew that to call on a family member for help was not an option.

No communication with each other. Again, related to Shawn’s violence, no one shared with another member of the family the abuse they suffered until years after they had all left the house.

No teamwork. On the junkyard and at sites, Gene established it was each man (child, really) for himself. I’m chucking lead, so you better duck. I’m concerned about this wildfire, so you better drive your burning body home yourself. I value money above all things, so you best learn how to balance on that pallet and stop wishing for a cherry picker.

A focus on individual responsibility and strength. Tara describes this specifically when she recalls her instincts on page 102: “All my life those instincts had been instructing me in this single doctrine---that the odds are better if you rely only on yourself.” I think this is also displayed through two events that happened when she was ten: her 18-foot fall from the metal bin at the junkyard and her first response care to Luke’s burned leg. After she fell from the bin, her father responded with, “What happened? How’d you manage that?” (Page 65). After she cared for Luke, her mother responded with, “You were lucky this time, Tara. But what were you thinking, putting a burn into a garbage can?” (Page 71). The parents assumed no responsibility for the danger they flung their children into. Instead, Tara grew up being taught that every hurt and failing was her own doing.

I thought the struggle to name who was ultimately responsible for each hardship was beautifully described at the end of the chapter called Apache Women (page 40), when Tara is wrestling with wondering who was at fault for the first car accident. She crafts the most wonderful conclusion. “Me, I never blamed anyone for the accident, least of all Tyler. It was just one of those things. A decade later my understanding would shift, part of my heavy swing into adulthood, and after that the accident would always make me think of the Apache women, and of all the decisions that go into making a life---the choices people make, together and on their own, that combine to produce any single event. Grains of sand, incalculable, pressing into sediment, then rock.” To me, she is saying that the accident was her father’s fault for not leading the family by being the driver and her mother’s fault for letting him be so selfish. But those are grains of sand overlaying a rocky ground of her father’s untreated depression atop a foundation of false believes (not calling an ambulance for medical help). It’s a long spiral down of many poor choices.

Family Under A Firm, Compassionless Father When I think of Tara’s family, I think of a house full of force, emptied of service; full of physical harm, emptied of protection; full of emotional manipulation, emptied of quiet, listening ears. I thought Tara brilliantly described her father through the example of the math equation: “Dad could command this science, could decipher its language, decrypt its logic, could bend and twist and squeeze from it the truth. But as it passed through him, it turned to chaos.” (Page 126)

The image she describes of her laying on the mattress in the back of their van alongside her mother and Audrey, while her dad accelerates through a snow storm seems to be the perfect picture of how life existed under his authority. He is stubborn, always right In his own eyes, always selfish, never listens, and thrusts his family into harm. I feel so sad for her mom, thinking of her laying there with a quiet question of, “Shouldn’t we drive slower?” answered with acceleration; her eyes closed, body tense, knowing her children will crash alongside her. It is heartbreaking to me to think of the hopelessness of that moment.

After reading about Shawn’s physical, emotional, and verbal abuse toward Tara, I thought she would be most hurt by him. And she was, of course, very hurt---so much that she removed herself from her family. But in how she describes her hurt, it seems that she is most hurt by her father. This at first surprised me. But I now understand; it was under his leadership that all her hurts originated. And it was him who she had to guard herself from as she attempted to reconcile with her mother.

Audrey I found it interesting that no memory or event with Audrey was specifically called out in Tara’s memoir until the revealing of Shawn’s abuse toward her. For the reader, it felt like Tara was connecting with a stranger, but for Tara, we can assume that their relationship as sisters was deeper for her than what we interpret. It isn’t a wonder why there is little to recall of her memories with Audrey, though; Audrey seemed to always have a job outside the home from an early age in order to avoid her father’s junkyard and Shawn’s abuse. I found it so sad to learn that Audrey later retracted her statements of abuse from Shawn. I wonder: how long can a person lie to themselves?

Shawn When I think of Tara’s relationship with Shawn, I feel such a sadness for the emotional complexities and shifting assurances that that relationship brings. How does someone reconcile that their greatest protector and defender is also their most harmful abuser? What a twisted relationship for Tara to process for her own health and wellbeing. Perhaps because the violence toward her is so terrible, the moments of protection he provides are astonishingly remarkable.

The description of Shawn advocating for Tara’s safety in not running the Shear (page 140) brought me to tears. This violent stranger of a brother risks himself for a month in order to keep her from harm. And yet, he himself is her greatest harm.

Another moment is described when she is trapped on the runaway horse, Bud. This sentence struck me as beautifully written: “All this would happen in seconds, a year of training reduced to a single, desperate moment.” (Page 103) And he rescues her.

And the one that sets this bipolar relationship into motion, after he has “fixed” her neck and she sees him as, “...some longed-for defender, some fanciful champion, one who wouldn't fling me into a storm, and who, if I was hurt, would make me whole.” (Page 97)

Tyler Contrast this with Tyler, who is the shining hero in her story. The one who encouraged her education, protected her from Shawn, and stood by her when her family disowned her. This single sentence is remarkable: “How do you thank a brother who refused to let you go, who seized your hand and wrenched you upward, just as you had decided to stop kicking and sink? There aren’t words for that, either.” (Page 317)

Reading that sentence made me weep, and this is what I think Tara is best at: in bringing the complicated emotions and abuses of the human heart into such beautiful descriptions that the reader is left knowing the depths of the potential of the human race’s unthinkable harm and yet abundant rescue a bit more poetically.

Final Thoughts Oh, there are likely a dozen more moments I’d like to discuss; I feel as if I’ve barely scratched the surface of my notes. I loved this book because I love reading non-fiction, and I’m finding memoirs are my favorite. I loved this book because the writing was simply beautiful and her storytelling supreme. Her realization, “...that a life is not a thing unalterable.” (page 286) might sum up the triumph from tragedy that her life represents. Amazing. Of course, I give it five stars.

I’d love to hear what you thought of the book, even if you have a less glowing review than mine. Please share your takeaways below!

Also, one of my favorite podcasts did a book review of Educated. Take a listen here if you’re interested.

*It took me twice as long to write my review as it did for me to read the book! So the start of this review isn’t hot off the press. ;)

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fiti-vation · 6 years ago

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hey i love your blog i really wanna ask you something. i really feel tired everyday even though i dont do anything and i feel like my energy is drained and i dont have any energy to do anything. do you know what kind of things i should eat or drink or do?

Hi there,

I’m happy to hear that you love my blog. That said, I’d like to apologize for the late reply, hopefully you are feeling better.

What's the difference between tiredness and fatigue?

I would like to start by pointing out here that what you are experiencing seems to be more like fatigue to me than tiredness. We all experience tiredness at times, which can be relieved by sleep and rest. Fatigue, on the other hand, is when the tiredness is often overwhelming and isn't relieved by sleep and rest. Is that the case for you? That being said, although I minored in social sciences of health, my knowledge in terms of health is nowhere near that of a health professional. My first recommendation, if your condition has not improved since you last wrote to me, is that you consult a healthcare practitioner to determine the underlying factor of your constant fatigue. Of course, I do not want to worry you, but if you are telling me that you constantly feel tired despite not doing anything this could be a sign that something isn’t right internally. You could be suffering from an underactive thyroid, hormonal imbalance, coeliac disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, anemia, anxiety, etc.

By consulting with a health professional, tests will be performed, and you will receive a clear diagnosis of the cause of your chronic fatigue. The important thing to keep in mind here is that one’s diet varies according to their state of health – for instance a cancer patient won’t have the same diet as a diabetic individual. Fatigue and a lack of energy are a big problem for many people, but these problems can only be addressed if you know what is wrong. Based on your diagnosis, you and your doctor can work together to develop a lifestyle plan that suits you. Treatment is focused on the underlying cause of tiredness.

I cannot stress enough that the first thing for you to do is to go see a doctor. If you have a family doctor, then book an appointment as soon as you can. Note that most family physicians tend to be general practitioner also called a GP or generalist, meaning they do not specialize in one particular area of medicine. Once you test results come back, if your GP cannot assist you, he or she will refer you to a practitioner that specializes in your condition. Let’s say you suffer from hormonal issues, you’ll probably be referred to an endocrinologist, but then again, a GP may be sufficiently knowledgeable to help you.

Different type of tiredness

Given that my postsecondary background is in social sciences, I can only answer your question from this perspective. In this regard, I’d like to emphasis that there are different types of tiredness. Causes of fatigue can be psychological, physiological, and psychosocial; someone can be drained on many different levels. Are you feeling spiritually, mentally, emotionally or physically tired? Generally speaking fatigue can be classified as:

Physical fatigue: A person finds it physically hard to do the things they normally do or used to do, for example, climbing stairs. It includes muscle weakness. Diagnosis may involve a strength test.

Mental fatigue: A person finds it harder to concentrate on things and stay on task. The person may feel sleepy, or have difficulty staying awake while working. Note here that spiritual distress and emotional exhaustion would fall in this category.

Thinking versus expressing: While the terms mental health and emotional health are sometimes used interchangeably, they are distinctly different. That said, you really can’t have one without the other and an imbalance in one can pull the other out of balance as well.

A good way to think about mental and emotional health is like a tag team. Mental health refers to your ability to process information. Emotional health, on the other hand, refers to your ability to express feelings which are based upon the information you have processed. So, if your cognitive function is hindered by depression or anxiety, for example, you may struggle with accurately identifying a situation. This can then trigger inappropriate responses because those responses are based upon inaccurate thoughts.

Emotional exhaustion usually occurs when someone experiences a period of excessive stress in their work or personal life.

Spiritual distress: Spiritual distress is a disturbance in a person's belief system. As an approved nursing diagnosis, spiritual distress is defined as "a disruption in the life principle that pervades a person's entire being and that integrates and transcends one's biological and psychological nature."

Even if the underlying reason for your extreme lethargy is found to be physiological – don’t neglect working on your mental and spiritual well-being. Someone may be physically energetic, but mentally drained and vice versa. I have always been a firm believer in the mind, body and spirit being interconnected. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association

Mental health and physical health are fundamentally linked. People living with a serious mental illness are at higher risk of experiencing a wide range of chronic physical conditions. Conversely, people living with chronic physical health conditions experience depression and anxiety at twice the rate of the general population. Co-existing mental and physical conditions can diminish quality of life and lead to longer illness duration and worse health outcomes. This situation also generates economic costs to society due to lost work productivity and increased health service use.

Understanding the links between mind and body is the first step in developing strategies to reduce the incidence of co-existing conditions and support those already living with mental illnesses and chronic physical conditions.

Mind – body and soul

Consulting a doctor is the first step towards your well-being, but you should also start looking around for possible reasons for feeling exhausted all the time. Start looking for factors in your life that are contributing to your constant state of lethargy. Are you constantly feeling tired because of your occupation, your relationships, your environment, etc.? Once you have identified some of the possible factors that are causing you to be constantly drained, start to eliminate or work on improving them. Let’s say that your group of friends is exacerbating your condition – then perhaps you should start removing some toxic people from your life. In one of my old posts I have talked about a concept known as the 7 dimensions of health.

The 7 dimensions of health postulates that health/wellness goes beyond exercising and eating healthy. Wellness is the pursuit of continued growth and balance in the seven dimensions of wellness. Too many people think about “wellness” in terms of physical health only; as something we achieve by eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, etc. The word invokes thoughts of nutrition, exercise, weight management, blood pressure, etc. Wellness, however, is much more than physical health, it involves much more than your pant size. Wellness is a mindset and a holistic way of life. It means that we take responsibility for the quality of our lives, striving for balance in all areas. Wellness doesn’t accidentally happen. We have to pursue it—intentionally. Wellness is a full integration of physical, mental and spiritual well-being. It is a complex interaction that leads to quality of life.

Wellness is commonly viewed as having seven dimensions. Each dimension contributes to our own sense of wellness or quality of life, and each affects and overlaps the others. At times one may be more prominent than others, but neglect of any one dimension for any length of time has adverse effects on overall health.

Closing thoughts

Overall, the main important point to remember from everything I’ve discussed is to go see a doctor. That being said, if you feel exhausted all the time, it may also be time to start re-evaluating certain aspects of your life. There may be additional factors that are making your condition worse. Yes, a physician will help you re-energize physically and perhaps mentally with proper treatment based on your condition, however when it comes to re-energizing your emotional and spiritual self, I believe most of the work has to come from within – from you.

Although, I don’t really have any diet tips for your condition, I hope that you will take into consideration some of the lifestyle advices I have briefly discussed.

Best of luck!Steph 😊

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kingofthewilderwest · 6 years ago

Note

Sorry for that baity ask before I just don’t see how Astrid is written to be a problem is because I don’t care like tumblr does. So it has nothing to do with me being stupid it’s just I don’t care. Female characters are hard to write correctly because women are more emotional then men. And I am a woman even I know this. Tumblr really has a psychosomatic obsession with female characters it’s kinda scary. Look this is my honest opinion please don’t hate me for this. Sincerely a long time follower

I believe from this: [link]Another relevant post on this topic: [link]

Thanks so much forfollowing me so long, friend! I’m touched!!! <3 <3 <3

You and I don’t have toagree, and I’ll never speak hate on you. I wouldn’t want to be nastyto you - or anyone, for that matter! :) At the same time, I hope you canunderstand I’ll kindly say I disagree with you here. I mean no rudeness. You alsodid hop into my inbox with these expressed opinions, and I do have the respectful right - as this being part of my blog - to answer with my thoughts.

I do hope you find it okay ifI suggest you might reconsider whether or not your wording comes off as respectful. Claiming “honesty” doesn’t bypass the consequences of our speech or erase away underlying rudeness. Honesty isn’t automatic virtue or asylum. “Honest” doesn’t excuse something unkind,unwarranted, unethical, or bigoted (I’m not trying to callyou unethical or bigoted, nor try to preach; I’m explaining honesty =/= “okay”). Friend, whetheror not you see eye-to-eye with someone, your phraseology does unfortunatelysound irreverent, especially consideringwho your audience is. You know your audience includes me, someone who’s said Iconsider writing good female characters important. I might not clump myselfwith extreme, inciting political blogging, but you do know what I value,and you chose to call my values “psychosomatic obsession.”

You don’t have to read this. I’llcontinue blogging about HTTYD and I hope you don’t feel unwelcome. <3 However, since you chose to message me this, I do wish to take the time to express why I feel differently aboutthese things than you. I believe imperfect femalecharacter writing is important and not the product of overblowntumblr screaming. You and I also hold different perspectives when it comes towomen’s emotions and whether or not women are hard to write. I’llplop my thoughts below.

I’m going to actually pull up academic papers and other sources. The topic merits more research than I have here, so I hope no one looks ill on me for nothaving ALL the info, up-to-date data, or the like. I don’t have full universityaccess to articles as I did with my undergrad minor in Cognitive Science, and Ialso wanted to spend one day writing this analysis instead of severalweeks. XD And I’m not perfect so maybe I presented a fact or two wrong. Nevertheless, this should be a strong enough foundation to providenot just my anecdotal experiences, but also supply more objective data – data whichscientists have legitimately researched and published materials over. This isn’tthe overtly biased babbling of someone seething in propaganda. This is Science™.

A. Gender and Emotion

Though it’s an interesting and important topic, I’m notgoing to spend much time here because it’s not relevant to the main points Iwant to make (you’ll see what I mean later). That said, I do think it’simportant to consider gender, sex, and emotionality are complicated topics that lack a black-and-white “X gender’s more emotional”answer. Even just touching on research, it’s clear science isn’t giving usconcrete proof women are more emotional than men. It’s a mess of complications,qualifications, contradictions, questions, clarifications, and debates. I thinkMoriguchi et al (2013) do a good job describing some of the research that’s beenpoured into sex and emotion:

Despite the prevailing belief that women are the moreemotional sex, however, objective measures of emotion do not consistently showsex differences. For example, some studies report that women show largerphysiological changes in evocative situations (Bradley et al., 2001), whereasothers do not (Quigley and Barrett, 1999; Kelly et al., 2006), and some studiesreport the opposite pattern of results (Greenwald et al., 1989). Sometimeswomen smile more than men (LaFrance et al., 2003) and sometimes less (Ansfield,2007). Men and women do not differ in the magnitude of physical reactivity likecortisol level and autonomic responding when exposed to an experimental socialstress (e.g. preparation for speech), although they differed in reportingirritability and fear after the task (Kelly et al., 2008). Men and women alsodo not differ in their subjective reports of moment-to-moment emotionalexperiences in response to specific events as they occur in everyday life whenmeasured using an experience-sampling procedure, although women describethemselves as more emotional when using memory-based self-report measures(Barrett et al., 1998), this is most likely because such measures tapstereotypes and other beliefs that are strongly gendered (Robinson and Clore,2002).

Basically: the loads and loads of science done on this topic doesn’t say “women are more emotional than men.” Our own immediate experiences and perceptions are sometimes wrong, which is chill, and that’s why science is important: to help dispel information we might have misinterpreted in our lives. I know there’s lots of things I thought I observed about the world that turned out to be inaccurate.

If you want to get your information in something more vernacularthan an academic paper published by Oxford, there’s this article that mentions:

[M]ale and female teens gave self-reports and had severalphysiological measures taken while they viewed animated clips depicting peoplebeing hurt. Female participants scored higher than males on self-reportedempathy, and this sex difference increased with age. But no sex differenceswere detected in blood pressure, heart rate, or pupil dilation—all measures ofemotional responsiveness. These results suggest that males and females feel thesame thing, but report what they feel differently.

And in this video, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett – a UniversityDistinguished Professor of Psychology at the R1 instituted NortheasternUniversity – talks about the same idea. Women in general think they’re more emotional thanmen, men think women are more emotional than men, but when these people actuallyrecord daily experiences and their physiological reactions are recorded… thesexes are emotionally comparable. And how we judge people emoting isn’t equal, either. In one research study Dr. Barrett mentions, when test subjects see the same face and same expression, but one is coded with female hair and one with male, they’re more likely to associate the “woman” with having “more emotion.” They’re more likely to judge that the man’s expression is simply a bad day, but the woman’s expression is a part of her allegedly emotional character. All because people presumed a different gender to the same pictured face.

Despite prevailing societal ideas from both men and women that“women are more emotional,” that’s not what data’s telling us. It’s notthat straightforward and true inside the research – and there’s been lots of it.

I also like how Dr. Barrett talks about how some emotion research,which tries to focus on facial movements, doesn’t match the full complexity of how human faces emote – the same muscle contractions andmovements can be used to express a variety of emotions.

This isn’t even going into societal norm studies – if men aremocked for crying, for instance, then it only makes sense they’ll try to suppressthat rather than let themselves show tears. Is it so cut-and-dry to say womenare more emotional if we enforce different gender standards for what emotionallyexpressive behaviors are “acceptable” in society?

B. Writing the Gender “Norm”

Now, women expressing emotions differently than men can very well be the case, and thus still be an issue in writing characters. Regardless, even if it turned out women were objectively more emotional thanmen, that doesn’t alter my perspective about whether or not women are hard to write. You may find womenhard to write, and many showrunners may find women hard to write. That’s your experiences. That’s no debate. However, I think a lot of this sense of ease or difficulty has to do withcomfort and normalization. Usually, we’re most comfortable and successfulcompleting tasks to which we’ve had lots of practice and exposure. In the caseof writing, I feel that usually what’s easiest to write… is what we’re usedto writing.

I’ve been a creative writer since I learned my letters. I’vehonestly always found women easier to write, probably because most of mystories from preschool onward had women-heavy casts. I’d say a good 80% of mystories featured women protagonists. Significant male roles were rare, and I’m sure that, even including my minor male characters, womenoutnumbered them over 3 to 1. I’ve gotten much more balanced, ofcourse. But looking at my stories from kindergarten, back before I knew whatfeminism was or was exposed to it… it was clear I preferred writing ladies. Trying to get into the perspective of a man was more difficult because it wasn’t my norm, my life, my experiences.

For me, the norm was womanhood. And because I livedin a norm of womanhood, I expressed that easily in my writing. That was my default, and I didn’t realize it was my default until I was older and asked myself, “Where are the men???” I had to thinkharder, push myself, and adapt to be able to go out of my comfort zone andwrite men.

What I wrote, of course, isn’t the pattern we see in media. Mediaskews toward men. In media, men are default, men are the norm.

So. I think one reason the public often says women are “harderto write” is because women are considered “the divergence from the norm.”

We do live in a world where men are the norm in whatwe consume. I’m going to italicize some points, but just check out a few statistics Women’s Media Centergave about 2017’s female representation on the big and small screen:

Of 11,306 speaking characters in film, TV and digital shows,66.5 percent were male and 33.5 percent were female. In film, 28.7 percentof all speaking roles went to women. In network TV, cable TV and showsstreaming online, the respective figures were 36.4 percent, 37.3 percent and38.1 percent. An average of 18 percent of films and TV/digital series had whatresearchers deemed as “balanced casts,” where females held 45 percent to 54.9percent of all speaking roles. Cable TV shows fared best, with 23 percent of castsin those shows deemed as balanced. In film, 73.5 percent of leading orco-leading characters were male. Across film, TV and online, femalescomprised 25.7 percent of characters aged 40 and older. Online entertainmenthad the most women characters in the age group, 33.1 percent. Of charactersclad in sexy attire, 34.3 percent were female, while 7.6 percent were male; ofpartially nude characters, 33.4 percent were female and 10.8 percent were male.

This shows us that, despite women being roughly 50% of theworld’s population, almost three quarters of films put men in leadroles, women made up barely more than 25% of any speaking role infilm, and women were at least three times more likely to be depicted insexually appealing ways. I’m sure you’re also aware of the Bechdel Test, which honestly is a VERY low bar for women’s roles, and yet over 40% of today’s films still fail this. Media DOES skew men as “norm” and women as thatsecondary “other.” And this is progress forward from what representationhas been in previous decades.

Considering the fact that an even HIGHER percentage of major filmcreators, writers, producers, etc. are male… and that women AREN’T depicted asmuch in media… it makes sense that people say women are “hard” to write. They’renot what’s normally written. Women aren’t the norm in stories. Writing women is“hard” because it’s not a skill that media creators focus on or develop. For some people, writing this gender might be hard despite working on it lots. For many creators, I suspect, writing this gender is hard because they lack sufficient effort and practice.

If I invest zero time in playing my viola, I won’t be ableto play viola well, even if I’m talented playing flute. It’s not that playingflute is objectively easier… but if I invest all my time and skills into thatmusical instrument rather than another… I’m going to experience playingone as easier than the other. When I was a kid and tried to learn how to drawhumans, I drew mostly women… and thus became great at drawing women, poor at drawing men. My lack of time investment in drawing men meant thatI had no chance to have good art featuring male bodies, even when I tried. But if I’ddivided my attention differently and drew only men, then I would have foundwomen hard to draw. Men aren’t innately harder to draw – it’s justthat how I’ve invested my life makes men seem harder. Andso, I do think it’s important to consider… in a world where men are writtendisproportionately more than women, all the writers’ skill points have beeninvested in writing men. You experience something as easier if you make it partof your investment, your practice, your norm, your actions.

If we’re feeding into this idea that women are “hard” towrite, it’s probably because we’re feeding into a subconscious idea that women are secondary and different than the “average human.”

That’s not something I want to espouse, ignore, or perpetuate.

Beyond that, I don’t think that emotionality has to beinnately more difficult to write. If we believed men were less emotional, but we’re used to writing women, then men would be harder because we’renot used to writing something less emotional. We could complain, “Men areharder to write than women because I’m used to writing more emotional characters!”That’s entirely feasible.

The point is, I don’t think just because you find women moreemotional than men, doesn’t make them innately hard to write. It’s not anexcuse media creators can hide behind for writing less-than-stellar women. It just allows them to keep not-thinking about women and perpetuate a male-focused norm.

That’s why folks have issue with women’s representation when it’s done poorly. Writers couldhave the ability to write women as complex, intricate, important characters. There are many ways in which writers can learn about women and learn how towrite women well. It’s not like we’re demanding writers to focus on 0.001%of the population, rare cases of poorly-documented experiences. Womenconstitute over half the population of the world. Women are very familiar,common human beings we constantly interact with in our day-to-day lives. Womenare normal. With that in mind, women should probably be consideredcommonplace, something that isn’t nefariously challenging to understand orwrite about, even with the fact humans are complex creatures. We should be able to halfway decently write something that’s socommon it’s over 50% of the population, right? If women are so hard to write…isn’t that just saying we aren’t paying attention to the women we’re supposedto be writing?

C. The Effects of Gender Presentation in Media

Now… for some people, it’s insulting enough that women aren’tgiven as much attention and respect in media. That is bad. Yet this problemis even bigger than that. How adults and children alike perceive gender isrelated to the media we consume.

I’ll cite scientific studies later, but first I’ll chat about my personal experiences – as one case study example of how childreningrain media into their lives and belief systems.

As a child, I didn’t realize how much shows, movies, games, and books affected me. But they did. Hugely.

I started writing stories when I was about four years old.Some stories were straight out of franchises: Star Wars, Monsters, Inc. ABug’s Life, Frogger… I even wrote about Furbies and Beanie Babies becausethey were the toys I played with. My consumerism led me to retell the stories Iconsumed, sometimes retelling exact canon, other times liberally diverging from plot.

But it wasn’t just characters that made it into my stories. Values were there, too. Story tropes. World frameworks. Societal expectations. Stereotypes. Everything. All of that was reproduced in my writingbecause what I consumed taught me how the world “worked.” What I’d beenexposed to from the shows I watched and books I read… I emulated, perpetuated,reproduced, and believed.

I created classic princess tales. “Queen Misty” I wrote whenI was about seven. A rabbit queen staged a competition for her princess daughters: the first daughter to find and marry a prince would become the kingdom’s next ruler. Thebest thing the women could do for their lives was find romance. The prince,meanwhile, saved our damsel in distress, taught her new ways of the world, helped her recover from amnesia, andfought off a gang of vicious cats. Another story of mine from the same timeperiod, “Mandy Estuchia,” involved another princess being driven away from herfamily because she was ugly. Only after she grew into a beautiful teenager andfound a boyfriend did she return to the kingdom and get accepted by herpeople. I was seven. I didn’t realize I was regurgitating questionablegender values, and yet I regurgitated them anyway – because I’d been exposed tothem and had unknowingly internalized them. What I consumed in media became what I THOUGHTand GENERATED. And I did it all without knowing there were problems with theseideas, or that I even HAD them.

I created many other stories, too. Stories that fall in the same spirit as the Ugly Duckling, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, or TheLion King. I wrote picture books that integrated what I read in Bible stories,down to virgin births being foretold by God’s angels. MANY stories of mine wereStar Wars ripoffs. I even had an Anakin Skywalker-like alien professionalvehicle racing prodigy foretold to be The Chosen One. Her name was Cheacabrrand her design was influenced by another Star Wars podracer, Neva Kee.

Even uncomfortable raciststereotypes entered my earliest childhood stories. I’ve never admitted thisbefore to ANYONE because I’m so appalled this came out of me. But it’strue. I consumed extremely racist things about Native Americans as a child. Itentered my creative writing and childhood play at recess. I had “Indian”characters named “Ug Heblum” [shudders] and “Sunshine.” I believed all “Indians”shouted by flapping hands over their mouths and could talk to wolvesthrough… uh… spiritualism? Let’s not mention my old Halloween costumes. I didn’tunderstand racism and its repercussions yet. I was five. And yet here I was,propagating horrifying racism. The point is: I couldn’t discern that the worstparts of media were underlyingly “bad” because the media I consumed didn’t tell me it was some “bad” villainous thing– and so as a little kid I ate up the racism and thought it was all true information andgood fun. YIKES.

What children consume in media is EXTREMELY importantbecause we are EXTREMELY impressionable. This is how one kidinteracted with media. But it’s part of the pattern for how kids interact with whatwe consume. Kids pretend to be their favorite superheroes, or Disney princesses,or whatever media it is that they love. They find rolemodels – often of their same gender–in what they watch and read.

Research conclusively supports that kids are influenced by fictional characters, down to gender stereotyping. Signorella et al had children in a research experiment classifyattributes as “male” or “female.” One trend they noticed: “television viewing[was] significantly related to forced choice scores.” That’s to say, kids moreexposed to television media were statistically significantly more likely tojudge people according to male/female stereotypes. Furthermore, “children whoview prosocial behaviors on television are more likely to exhibit those typesof behaviors themselves. Young children will imitate and repeat behaviors theysee on television. Consequently, children may exhibit these gender-biasedbehaviors and develop the gender-biased attitudes that they see modeled ontelevision” (Witt).

The evidence just keeps piling up, more and more andmore: kids find rolemodels from media, especially rolemodels of thegender they identify with. Kids imitate behaviors they see onscreen and internalize the messages, even when they’re just toddlers. I’m going to paste some findings and summary discussions from papers and reports:

From Ward and Aubrey:

Higher levels of TV viewing are associated with 4-year-oldsbeing more likely to believe that others think boys and men are better thangirls and women (Halim, Ruble, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2013). Boys are attractedto masculine role models to learn how to behave in masculine ways, and they areless interested in media featuring feminine role models (Luecke-Aleksa,Anderson, Collins, & Schmitt, 1995; Slaby & Frey, 1975). In children’sfilms and on children’s television (e.g., superhero shows) and in media favoredby older adolescents (e.g., reality shows, sports pro - gramming), masculinityis illustrated by characteristics such as aggression, power, dominance, statusseeking, emotional restraint, heterosexuality, and risk taking (Baker &Raney, 2007; Coyne, Callister, & Robinson, 2010; Stern, 2005). Moreover,research has suggested that media exposure affects masculine attitudes andbehaviors. For example, preschool boys who are frequent viewers of televisionprograms about super - heroes tend to engage in more male-stereotyped toy playand more weapon play (Coyne, Lindner, Rasmussen, Nelson, & Collier, 2014).Among older male adolescents, sports TV viewing and reality TV viewing areassociated with stronger conformity with masculine beliefs (Giaccardi, Ward,Seabrook, Manago, & Lippman, 2016).

The lesson that girls should be concerned with theirappearance and sexiness is communicated in media targeting youth, beginning inearly childhood (Baker & Raney, 2007; Hentges & Case, 2013; Smith,Choueiti, Prescott, & Pieper, 2013). There is evidence that exposure toappearance-focused TV content increases body dissatisfaction among 5- to8-year old girls (Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006), and by early adolescence, mediaexposure is predictive of the internalization of media-based appearance idealsfor both girls and boys (Trekels & Eggermont, 2017). Media messages teachgirls that looking sexy is often preferred or expected and is equated withpopularity and romantic success. One consequence is self-objectification —i.e., viewing oneself as an object whose external appearance matters more thaninternal qualities (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Self-objectification isassociated with many negative outcomes, including diminished academicperformance (Pacilli, Tomasetto, & Cadinu, 2016), lowered body esteem,increased anxiety, lowered confidence in math ability (Grabe & Hyde, 2009),body shame, and depressive symptoms (Tiggemann & Slater, 2015).

From Coyne et al:

We found that boys who viewed superhero programs were moregender stereotyped in terms of their play and activities 1 year later, evenafter controlling for initial levels of gender stereotyped play and othercontrols. Notably, our alternative model did not find the opposite – thatmale-stereotyped play led to more superhero exposure over time for boys,suggesting that media may be driving the association between these twovariables over time. This confirms existing research demonstrating thatexposure to gender stereotypes in the media can influence behavior in real life(e.g., Herrett-Skjellum and Allen 1996).

From England et al:

[E]xposure to gendered material may influence children’sgender role acquisition and expression. Children certainly seem to be consciousof gendered portrayals. Oliver and Green (2001) suggest that animated contentfor children is often targeted toward one gender, and that children are wellaware of the gender classifications of such media. In fact, the children intheir study actively used this background knowledge to predict which cartoonsboys or girls would identify with and like better. Thompson and Zerbinos (1995)relatedly found that children who recognized more gender stereotyping incartoons had similarly gendered expectations for themselves and others.Consistently portrayed gender role images may be interpreted as “normal” bychildren and become connected with their concepts of socially acceptablebehavior and morality. For example, when children see villainy in a characterillustrated via gender transgression (e.g., a male villain appearingeffeminate), they may develop lasting negative associations withnon-stereotypical gendered behavior (Li-Vollmer and LaPointe 2003).

From Calvert:

Although a longitudinal content analysis of the number ofmale and female characters in television programs demonstrated significantincreases in the number of females over the past several decades, from 24% in1967 to 41% in 2009, men still outnumbered women as television characters intelevision programs compared to their actual representation in the U.S.population, and men continued to have more prestigious occupations than womendid (Signorielli, 2012). The value of women often comes from their physicalappearance rather than their occupation. Content analyses documented that womenin popular films were younger than their male counterparts (Lauzen &Dozier, 1999), and women in television depictions were likely to have thin andattractive bodies (Fouts & Burggraf, 2000). Overall, the media depicts menas strong, serious, powerful, and heterosexual, and women as passive andemotional (Hust & Brown, 2008). Children’s programs were especially likelyto portray characters in gender-stereotyped ways, where females were emotionaland romantic (Calvert & Huston, 1987; Signorielli, 2012), and males weremuscular and powerful superheroes (Baker & Raney, 2007). Even femalecharacters who were superheroes were still physically attractive and emotional(Baker & Raney, 2007). Content analyses of children’s educational andinformational television programs found no differences in the number of maleand female characters, but male characters engaged in a wider range of rolesthan female characters did, and no programs had a female lead character(Barner, 1999) Taken together, the findings suggest that children encounter aworld of television that adheres to traditional gendered stereotypes.

Consistent with social cognitive theory, children alsoselect same-sex role models more so than opposite-sex role models. Forinstance, when children were asked which media character they would like to belike, boys chose only male characters and girls chose female characters twothirds of the time (Miller & Reeves, 1976) Consistent with these findings,3-year-old children who were heavy television viewers selected moregender-stereotypical occupations for their futures than light televisionviewers did (Beuf, 1974).

This is just a tiny, tiny sampling of material thatdiscusses how children consume media and learn gender stereotypes through it.There’s newer information, better information, more in depth information, thaneven this. It can’t be denied: children are influenced by what they consume. Children learn gender stereotypes through media.

This isn’t even going into all the effects media has on adults,too. I don’t have time to get into THAT body of literature, but suffice it to say that exists.

The point is, adult or child, gendered media stereotypesaffect our lives. This is something that hurts us every day. The idea of women as “secondary” can create scary situations. I don’t know aboutyou, but I was taught to be “careful” and keep myself“safe” – I was in greater danger because I had boobs. Park inwell-lit areas. Walk to the car with keys in your hand and pepperspray ready after dark. Don’t accept drinks someone else gifts you. Bewary of men who look at you certain ways. Travel in groups. Keep yourphone on you, ready to call. You’re not safe, you’re not safe, you’re notsafe, you’re not safe… Crime statistics against women in domestic, etc. cases… sort ofindicate why women have become so vigilant. Women are targeted as victims. What these crimes suggest is women are treated and perceived with less respect. This says something about how society views that gender, doesn’t it?

It’s everywhere. I affirm that anecdotally. I’mnot the stereotypical sort of beautiful you expect from a “woman.” I’m VERYnon-typical in appearance for someone with boobs. I have legitimate facial hairthat could almost be called a scruffy beard. I don’t wear makeup 95% of the time. I’m notthe usual “target” for leering because I don’t look stereotypically feminine or“conventionally attractive.” And yet even I, in fairly “safe” cities,have been catcalled by men as I walk through the streets. I’ve had a strangergrab and kiss me on the lips, then try to bullshit that he was “asexual so it’s okay.” (Me, an asexual, didn’t believe that one second). I’ve had creeps hiton me on my work shifts, try to figure out my work schedule, and tryto get me to hop in their cars or go to their homes alone. I got extremely gross sexual comments when I wore a cosplay that emphasized boobs and butt (despite being FULLY clothed - I was Tali’Zorah from Mass Effect). I don’t even look muchlike a “woman,” but because most people register me as a “woman,” I’m treatedwith noticeable… devaluing. To the point it’s not SAFE.

^ That’s how I usually look in public (I’m lazy and don’t do my hair). I’m targeted. Friends who are more “conventionally attractive” are targeted worse. That’s not okay, whatever we look like (and all humans are beautiful!). But simply being registered as “female” is enough to create negative repercussions and be treated more poorly.

When people are angry that women are written poorly inmedia, it’s all part of seeing a system that devalues women. Women are treated so poorly that many don’t feel safe in their own neighborhoods. Women aretreated so secondary that they’re not even represented decently in our dailyentertainment. Maybe(?) you don’t feel these impacts as much as some others do, but that doesn’t negate the fact this exists and permeates society.

D. Getting Back to Astrid

So why does it matter if Astrid is written poorly or well inRTTE?

First, because it shows whether or not society even caresabout whether women are important enough to be written well.

Second, because it affects how adults continue to perceiveand write women, or excuse that women are written poorly.

And third, because kids will emulate this. Kids will fall in love with characters, and they willemulate what they see on screen – the good, the bad, and the ugly. They’llthink it’s “okay” and ingrain it into their minds as “a part of the world.” Ifwe’re showing kids terrible representations of women, they’ll grow up believingthat’s “how women are.”

If we’re repeatedly teaching kids women will be damsels indistress, they will pick up on it. If we’re teaching that men are default and women are secondary, they will pick up on it. If we’re teaching that boy’s media is fun for everyone but girl’s media is only for “girly girls” – or is elsewise cringe-worthy – they will pick that up. If we’re teaching that boys are fighters and girls are emotional crybabies, they will pick that up.

I’ve already linked my post on Astrid’s mixed representation in RTTE. To label just one point of constructive commentary: Astrid is written more often as a damsel indistress than she probably should be. This will affect how everyone,including the children in the audience, perceive and normalize women. It will affect how children believe that they should act and what their gender “is.” Witt pointsout that, “Children who witness female characters on television programs whoare passive, indecisive, and subordinate to men, and who see this reinforced bytheir environment, will likely believe that this is the appropriate way forfemales to behave. Female children are less likely to develop autonomy,initiative, and industriousness if they rarely see those traits modeled. Similarly,because male characters on television programs are more likely to be shown inleadership roles and exhibiting assertive, decisive behavior, children learnthis is the appropriate way for males to behave.” Of course, it’s not that Astrid is THAT submissive - but if all characters kids see on screen become damsels, won’t they internalize the pattern? How Astrid is written is an issue not because some people ontumblr haven’t seen sunlight for forty days. It may be something to consider that people are uncomfortably aware Astrid’s DW Dragons writing contains harmful gender elements that keep getting perpetuated and recycled in our society. Even if this particular show doesn’t teach kids a bad gender stereotype, it still shows it’s part of an imperfect system that does.

It might not be emotionally centric to you whether or notAstrid is written perfectly, and you can fully enjoy the show regardless of howshe’s presented. It’s true something like this will bother some viewers morethan others. It may also be the case that sometimes people on tumblr get theirbutt hairs tied in knots, angry, about very minute things in the realm ofsociety’s woes. There’s always going to be that one person who overreacts aboutanything, tumblr or otherwise. But it may be worth considering: maybe this isn’t necessarilya case of all of tumblr having their panties shoved up their butts. Maybe it’sthe case people observe how female representation is a prevalent and noteworthyissue affecting media and society, down to what happens with our youngest children.It may be because this is a very real, very documentable issue.

Whether or not you care, I hope you can at least externally perceive why some people might think femalerepresentation isn’t “nothing important.” Now, Astrid from RTTE isn’t the“worst offender” in the world of female representation. Nowhere close,thankfully. But there’s something to be said that all our experiences combinedteach us something. If kids keep seeing patterns of damsels-in-distress andwomen being secondary and so forth… they’re going to pick up the pattern inDreamWorks Dragons, too. It’s something to at least observe, to help us be aware of how these patterns keep returning in our media.

People like me talk about these media issues because we’re acknowledging and exposing the prevalence of this problem. It’snot a bad thing to be aware that even the stories we cherish may still ingrain some imperfect societal messages. I still love RTTE, DreamWorks Dragons, andAstrid. I still think there are MANY things to appreciate about her characterand how she’s written. There’s many things to have fun with or celebrate. I don’t hate you for your opinion and I’m not going totry to make you see this as an issue. I do hope that youin turn, friend, may consider that maybe my opinion is worthy of respect andconsideration, too. Thank you for reading. <3

Take care, and may we all have fun together withDRAGONS! <3

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pass-the-bechdel · 7 years ago

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Teen Wolf full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

82% (eighty-two of one hundred).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

35.07%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Twenty-eight.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Seven.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Two.

Positive Content Status:

Impressive and uplifting: it’s a show aimed at teens and young adults, and it recognises and takes full responsibility for representing a positive and progressive outlook to its audience. It’s a show full of complex, powerful, smart, skilled, wonderful, diverse female characters, and male characters who are emotional and vulnerable and honest and supportive with one another without judgment, and queer people living openly and happily without fear. I have had relatively minor quibbles, and I wouldn’t call it perfect representation, but it is easily the strongest example I currently have of the kind of positive representation I value (average rating of 3.18).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

Tough call, but season six part one edges out the competition by virtue of the highest percentage of female characters for the series (42.52%), which helps it to also score six episodes with 40%+ and three with their casts balanced or female-led at 50%+. It also turned in a 90% pass on the Bechdel.

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

Season two, which featured both of the series’ under-20% female cast episodes, and turned in a total percentage of 26.5%, with only 58.3% on the Bechdel. It’s saving grace: the second-highest positive representation score of the series (3.41).

Overall Series Quality:

An absolute delight, end to end. It’s outrageous, it’s bombastic, it is, at times, ridiculous. But it embraces this about itself, it owns it and loves it and revels in it, and it maintains itself with remarkable consistency and never shows any sign of being embarrassed to be just exactly what it is. In a way, that’s another point in favour of the positive message it sends to its audience; there’s no reason to consider Teen Wolf a guilty pleasure, something to hesitate or equivocate before admitting your enjoyment, for it never hesitates or equivocates about itself. It’s an honest and uncomplicated kind of pleasure, and I, unabashedly, love it.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

“You’re not a monster,” Scott declares, at the triumphant conclusion of the Teen Wolf series finale, “you’re a werewolf. Like me.” It’s a reiteration of the same line he uttered to his new beta, Liam, back in season four, and it’s a thoroughly earned mission statement for the show, a declaration that being different is ok, even if others have made you feel like an outcast for it, even if it’s difficult, even if it hurts. The way you are is ok, you have value as you are, and you are not alone. It’s easy to be cynical about that if it isn’t a message you personally need to hear, but for the youths in Teen Wolf’s target audience - especially the large queer contingent - it’s a crystal-clear affirmation that could not be more important, and not one made lightly. After all, it’s easy to make statements that sound glossy and progressive, but if you want people to really take it to heart, you have to earn it. Don’t just say it; demonstrate it. Whatever else you might think of this silly schlocky show, it didn’t just walk the walk with its representation: it strode out with pride.

With a show that performed so admirably, it’s hard to know what to discuss in summary: the female characters really are so varied and wondrous, so complex and realistically flawed and none of them ever shamed for being different to the rest (because different is ok). The male characters really are so refreshingly low on toxic masculinity, or alternately, they have the limitations and the damage of toxic masculinity so thoroughly exposed through their narrative arcs that there’s no question about the show promoting emotionally healthy openness as a masculine ideal. The queer characters really are so numerous and loved and never made to suffer for their identities (though, if one is quibbling, there was certainly a preponderance of queer males compared to a pretty limited supply of queer females, and don’t think I forgot how they teased us with the idea of queer Stiles early on but never canonically delivered). At the end of the day though, I have discussed the above all over the individual episode/season posts, and what I really want to talk about now is how well they packaged their lesson of diverse acceptance for a young audience, because that target intention is where the show’s progressive ethos really shone.

Not all teen-targeted shows take it upon themselves to teach good morals, and to suggest that they should can come off as infantalising; as if young adults are still children, needing to be taught fundamental behaviours. Setting aside the fact that in some cases they really, really do need that (otherwise they become maladjusted adults who still really, really need those lessons on fundamental behaviours such as accepting other people for being different, et al.), the result of either option is often a bit of a disaster: you get teen shows that ignore their moral responsibility and consequently teach/reinforce incredibly damaging and even dangerous ways of thinking, or you get teen shows that treat their audience like morons while preaching in an embarrassingly out-of-touch fashion. For this reason, I have rarely enjoyed shows targeted at young adult audiences (even when I was part of that demographic) and I normally avoid such programming. As such, I am not a connoisseur of teen shows, but of the ones I have indulged Teen Wolf is absolutely the standout, not only for just getting me on pretty much every socio-political and entertainment level available, but for the attitude it takes toward that aforementioned target audience: specifically, how very in-tune it is with the way the demographic thinks and acts.

Whether a bad teen-targeted show is of the morally-irresponsible kind or the morally-preachy kind, the core problem is the same: they promote shame. It might be shame in the form of peer pressure, encouraging wild, foolish, and inconsiderate behaviour because ‘that’s what teens are like’ and making their young impressionable audience feel like weird losers if they don’t mirror the actions and attitudes depicted on their favourite shows, or it might be shame in the form of heavy-handed judgment, the idea that any experimentation or pushing at the borders of authority are absolutely BAD AWFUL things that only BAD AWFUL people do. For Teen Wolf, being in-tune with the audience means understanding that there are certain things that teenagers are extremely likely to do regardless of whether they have permission, and approaching those things as part of the audience’s reality within that spirit of understanding, focusing not on shame but rather on promoting positive and responsible behaviour. It’s really not rocket science, but somehow it’s still a wonderful anomaly. Instead of depicting teen sex as a taboo or a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t world full of dirty sluts and naive virgins, Teen Wolf is sex positive, even-handed across the spectrum of sexual activity and promoting enthusiastic consent and open discussion of boundaries. Instead of depicting teen drinking as either the worst of crimes or a guaranteed gateway to regrettable actions or something you just gotta do in order to have fun and fit in, Teen Wolf encourages making your own decisions for your own reasons, and watching out for your friends to make sure everyone gets home safe. It certainly doesn’t depict a conflict-free world where no one ever makes a bad choice or does anything stupid or selfish; it just doesn’t approach normal human behaviour with an air of judgment. There’s just no shame.

What makes this really significant is that it’s part and parcel of the whole acceptance ethos: it’s not just werewolf metaphors or telling kids that gay is ok. In order to really craft a message about not feeling ashamed to be who you are and how you are, you need to let the message touch all parts of the story, and all parts of the character’s lives, not just the big obvious points of contention. It’s a great way to be morally responsible with your impressionable audience without getting preachy and trying to tell them how to live: just encourage them to be considerate and wise about their choices by showing them how it’s beneficial for everyone, demonstrate, don’t just tell. Not rocket science at all. The other thing is that it really doesn’t need to be thought of as a ‘lesson’ at all; it’s just people being depicted in a non-judgmental fashion as they try their best to do the right thing in whatever situations they encounter. Sometimes they mess up, and sometimes they repeat mistakes, and sometimes they get overwhelmed, but they’re trying and they’re growing as people, and that’s the best you can ask of anyone, whether they’re supernatural teenagers on a tv show or not. Really, it’d be nice if more entertainment media spared a thought to reinforcing fundamental moral principles in their everyday content, because the world sure as Hell is full of maladjusted adults who are still absorbing and entrenching bad attitudes normalised in their television consumption. There’s no reason we should only expect this level of attentiveness from stories aimed at young people. That said, if this show were not targeted at young adults, it probably also wouldn’t be as good, because the reality is that the majority of ‘grown-up’ programming makes little to no effort to challenge the perceived social status quo. We’re probably lucky they kept the teen part of Teen Wolf when they adapted this story for television (the original 1985 film of the same name is NOT progressive or accepting, and I can’t recommend it - the show kept mercifully little beyond the basic idea of a teenage werewolf).

What Teen Wolf has done - and certainly not by accident - is create an entertaining safe space. For all that Beacon Hills is full of supernatural horror and grisly murders and nightmare fuel and sometimes, straight-up Nazi ideology, on an individual personal level it is a place without shame, a place where even when the characters feel backed into a corner with no good options, we can see that they have support, they have friends and family and slightly-nutty lacrosse coaches who have got their backs in a crisis, they have intelligence and skills and the hard-won knowledge of experience that will help them find a way; there is always an element of virtue shining within every moment. They still feel desperate sometimes, and hopeless, and alone. There are still a lot of bad things in their world, and sometimes that stuff is too big and too terrifying to bear, and the real world is like that too. You don’t have to be a teenager - or a werewolf - for that struggle to resonate, and you certainly don’t have to be either of those things in order to value a fiction in which being judged, marginalised, or mistreated for being the way you are is not a concern you have to add to your roster of ills. There are plenty enough terrible things in the world still, and sometimes what we really need is a little space to believe that there’s some inherent good left, too. Even if no problem is ever completely fixed, even if there will always be hate and evil and horror out there, waiting. You are valuable as you are, and someone’s gonna have your back.

This is exactly the context in which Scott utters that final triumphant line “You’re not a monster, you’re a werewolf. Like me”, echoing that same thing he told Liam when he was miserable and afraid of what he had become and what it would mean for his life. It’s a sentiment that Scott earned from his own misery, his own fear, his own battle with having his life upended irreparably against his will. Scott is being for the new generation what no one was for him; he’s taking his hardships and forging them into a lifeline for those who come after, so that they don’t have to struggle as hard as he did. He’s doing better, one step, one person at a time. The parallel there isn’t hard to draw; the affirmation can’t get any clearer. You can’t have real representation - on any level - if you don’t have unconditional acceptance, and you can’t have unconditional acceptance if you don’t let the demonstration of it permeate your narrative. You can’t just say it. You have to be the change you want to see in the world. Unlikely as it might seem, schlocky and silly as this show was with its Steampunk doctors and Demon wolves and mountain aaaaassshhh, it was also a show dedicated to demonstrating - in varied and delightful detail - the kind of young people it hoped to be reflecting as they stepped out into adulthood. It’s easy to be cynical about that, but it isn’t useful, and there’s a kind of shame wrapped up in cynicism. Teen Wolf, to its utmost credit, was always far too busy embracing its own quirks to ever let cynicism in. I miss it already.

#Teen Wolf #full series review #Bechdel Test #female representation

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kingsmedley · 3 years ago

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Joshua’s Birth Chart

Note: I don’t know the exact time of his birth, so I left it as 12:00.

Explanations below the cut!

Rising Sign is in 27 Degrees Capricorn You are practical and reserved but very ambitious. An achiever and a hard worker, you respect success. Older looking and very serious as a youth, things lighten up and you relax more as you mature. You have a serious view of the world as being a difficult place to be in. Very envious of those who seem to have an easier life than you have, relaxation and play do not come easily. It is important that you had abundant parental support as a child so that you do not feel lonely and isolated as an adult. Generally, you have a good, earthy sense of humor that can carry you through when times really do get tough. You are purposeful, self-willed, industrious, realistic and responsible. Sun is in 08 Degrees Scorpio. Intense and complex by nature, you have extremely strong emotional reactions to most situations. Feelings are often very difficult for you to verbalize. Therefore you have a tendency to be very quiet - - to brood and think a lot. You seldom get overtly angry, but, when you do, you are furious and unforgiving. When you make an emotional commitment, it is total -- you are not attracted to superficial or casual relationships. If you are challenged, you take it as a personal affront and tend to lash out and fight back in a vengeful manner. You love mysteries and the supernatural. A good detective, you love getting to the roots of problems and you enjoy finding out what makes other people tick. You are known to be very willful, very powerful and quite tenacious! Moon is in 25 Degrees Capricorn. You are serious and shy and very uncomfortable in those situations where spontaneous and exuberant emotional reactions seem called for. An achiever, you prefer doing practical, worthwhile things that produce tangible results. You need role models to respect, love and emulate. You tend to feel that you're a failure unless you get an important and highly respected position in life. Don't be so hard on yourself! For you, practical needs always win out over emotional considerations. Remember that you too have the right to comfort, security and love. Dutiful and patient, when you make an emotional commitment, you sign on for the long haul -- your love is long- enduring. Mercury is in 02 Degrees Sagittarius. Your mind is very curious and inquisitive, always seeking information on a wide variety of topics. The broader the subject matter (philosophy, science, religion, metaphysics), the more it will appeal to you. You prefer to deal with abstractions -- the small but important details associated with any subject tend to slip your grasp. You are known for being blunt, honest and truthful. Venus is in 15 Degrees Sagittarius. You are very aware of the need to maintain a high sense of morality in a relationship. Your loyalty and interest will remain constant in any relationship (either friendly, personal or business) that is based on fairness, honesty and justice. But you will become greatly hurt and disappointed if the other person takes any but the high road with you. Also, you cannot tolerate anyone being overly emotionally possessive of you. You are known for your friendly, outspoken manner. Mars is in 22 Degrees Cancer. Your moods are very important to your overall well-being. You are confident and self-assertive when you are feeling upbeat, and you are retiring, irritable and grumpy when you get depressed about anything. Very sensitive, you wear your heart on your sleeve. You are easily angered whenever you think someone has slighted you. It is best for you to show your anger immediately and let it all out, rather than to try to hold it in or to hold grudges for a long time. You're extremely loyal and defensive of your family, neighborhood, community and culture. Jupiter is in 04 Degrees Libra. You are generally good at balancing opinions and judging issues, but you tend to be indecisive when it comes to making up your own mind. You are objective and quite concerned with fair play and justice. But, when it comes to yourself, you are so aware that whatever you do might upset the apple cart that you often choose to compromise rather than do anything that might make you lonely or vulnerable. Relationships are very important to you -- you learn about yourself and grow through observing yourself interacting with others. Your aesthetic tastes are refined, but expansive and expensive. Saturn is in 12 Degrees Aquarius. Your personal sense of values is a reflection of the value structures of your peer group and of those you respect and admire. Try to be more critical in your acceptance of these values -- you tend to prejudge the abilities of those you trust and then follow what they say blindly. Basically very conservative, you prefer orderly, systematic changes and fear doing things rashly or impulsively. Ideas and philosophies must have some sort of immediately realizable, utilitarian function in order for you to pay any attention to them. Uranus is in 14 Degrees Capricorn. You, and your peer group as well, seek out practical solutions to a changing society's attitudes to customs, traditions and authority structures. Your logical and orderly manner of dealing with these matters will result in permanent and carefully planned, but sweeping, reforms. Neptune is in 16 Degrees Capricorn. You, and your entire generation, will idealize work, practicality and the ability to attain reasonable goals. But, because you will also stress the need to be selfless and giving, you may find it difficult to attain your goals unless you have lowered your expectations on all fronts. Pluto is in 22 Degrees Scorpio. For your entire generation, this is a period of intense research and discovery in areas that were heretofore considered mysterious, remote or taboo. The root causes for many complex occurrences will be unearthed due to the intensity and thoroughness of the search. N. Node is in 22 Degrees Sagittarius. You will probably have many different contacts and acquaintances throughout your life. You're quite gregarious by nature and your natural curiosity about others lets you take the lead in forming new relationships. You'll form close ties with those who have similarly idealistic ideas -- especially those who can stimulate you intellectually in your chosen field of interest. Your enthusiasm for learning new things may also cause you to do quite a bit of traveling. Because you probably will have many wide-ranging interests and concerns, you most likely will have contacts and connections in various parts of the country (or world).

#nothing more than an empty ghost || headcanons #it's not all accurate but a lot of it is which is pretty cool!#especially rising sign. sun. mercury. mars. and jupiter

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bloomingednae · 7 years ago

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So this prompt ended up having 3 requests, and I had fun writing this one! It also ended up being a lot longer than I originally planned..oops This actually ended up being a full-blown fic in itself, instead of a mini prompt. Dx And just for mood-setting, I actually wrote this while listening to “Spectrum” (Acoustic Version) by Zedd and Matthew Koma. There was something hauntingly beautiful about the piano background that inspired me to write this.

This is for @feelstina and the 2 anons that requested this. Hope you enjoy!

OTP Prompt Request: OkaKuri - “If I kiss you right now, I won’t be able to stop.”

Like the chaos and cosmos, there was a delicate line that they shouldn’t have crossed, but nevertheless intertwined.

“What time is your flight tomorrow?”

Without looking up, Kurisu turned the page of her book still seamlessly reading the words on the page as she did so.

“At 5 pm. I wanted to take my time getting to the airport tomorrow with no rush.”

At her response, she heard him hum in response with his low voice.

“Is that why you’ve made no move to leave this lab yet, Assistant?”

At this, Kurisu glanced at her phone quickly and silently grimaced. True to his implications, the clock shown a blaring “01:47” on her display screen; had the time passed that quickly?

She shook her head. “Hashida left late too. Didn’t he just leave an hour ago?”

She heard him mockingly laugh in a low tone and it was all she could do to hold back an eyeroll as she braced herself for his next comments.

“Hm, you really are a prodigy, experiment-loving girl if you can’t even tell the time when my super hacka left. So suitable as my assistant.”

Kurisu sighed. “Again, Okabe, I am not your assis-”

“Daru left four hours ago,” Okabe interjected, much to Kurisu’s distaste. She glanced up at him, noticing the slight change in his voice and found him staring out the window through the blinds, eyes unreadable. It was slight, but she knew there was some sense of worry in Okabe’s tone of voice; she’d gotten used to his roundabout way of showing his care for others, after all.

Okabe glanced at her as she shut her book (seemingly a thick Western book, as usual) and watched as she rubbed her temples, clear weariness engulfing her slowly. Crossing his arms, he leaned back into the computer chair he was sitting on and grinned.

“I think this is your cue to retire for the night, Christina. But it’s so late, unless you were planning to sabotage me in my sleep as an agent of the Organiza-”

“Who’d want to spend the night with you?” Kurisu spat back quickly, glaring. “I just got lost in my reading, that’s it. I should get back to my hotel, though…”

Kurisu fell silent afterwards, but made no move to gather her items. It was an obvious action; hesitancy and thoughts were overcoming her as she debated on how to get back to her hotel without having someone go with her and it was something Okabe knew all too well. After a moment, she stood up and grabbed her phone, sighing to herself and pushing the hair out of her face in an attempt to rub the weariness out of her eyes.

“Stay the night.”

Kurisu abruptly stopped in her tracks and opened her mouth to remark back, but was cut off immediately.

“It’s not like you haven’t before,” Okabe quickly said. She didn’t miss the flush of red that quickly showed on his cheeks and she shook her head.

“T-That’s true, but things are different now…!” Kurisu stuttered, averting her eyes from his gaze. “A-and besides...I should probably pack…”

“Ah…”

An odd silence filled between them once more. Kurisu shifted her weight on her feet, but made no effort to move towards the door; physically, she knew she had to leave, but emotionally...her heart wanted to stay where it was.

It’d be another six months until she saw him again. They began a cycle of alternating visits where she’d visit for the summer and he’d visit for the winter and while it had worked so far for the past two years, each departure was never any easier.

She couldn’t remember who first brought up the idea, but it was something she looked forward to each time; Japan had all the lab mems and a culture she was so used to. She was lucky to have a conference or exchange classes to attend to each summer within Japan that the University helped pay for her ticket each time; of course, that didn’t go unseen by Maho, who teased her every once in awhile for “fooling” the school into thinking she was there for work (and she was, really...at least half of the time).

In the very least, it helped closed the distance between them. Between phone calls and video chatting, the virtual image never added up to the physical presence of an individual, and that was confirmed every time she saw him in person, donned in his same ridiculous white lab coat and khaki pants.

It was silly, really; for her, to fall in love with someone completely opposite of her. But as time passed and after listening to Maho’s jabs and Mayuri’s unusually, high perceptive comments about their relationship every once in awhile, it became evident to her that Okabe was everything wrong and right for her.

He was sarcastic, rude, unkept at times, had an unhealthy diet, still had a chuunibyou complex, and was never straight forward with his emotions. It was hard to understand his true intentions and difficult to pin him down when he mentioned what he wanted vaguely, and there was only so much she could decipher with the evidence before her.

But despite everything, despite how frustrating he made her feel most especially with the constant name-calling, she knew he was a lot more honest than she first took him for. There were genuinity in his texts when he’d message her, honesty in his eyes that would usually contradict his name-calling when he’d try to cover up how he really felt, and a determination in his expressions as she noticed he tried to keep up with the long-distance, despite it being a first-time experience for the both of them.

He was actually smart (much to Kurisu’s surprise and his offense when she admitted that to him) and knew a lot more than she took him credit for. And in the past few years that they’ve kept up the relationship, it became increasingly difficult to leave him after each visit; his piercing, gold eyes always had the same look of affection each time she stared at him, his sharp jawline with the minimal facial hair he just never seemed to shave always grazed her each time she was brought into his embrace, and his arms encompassed her at the end of the visits, each one always being a little longer than the first.

She did indeed love Okabe Rintarou, even though she denied it each time.

For Okabe, saving up to visit America once a year had been difficult the first time, but after the first year, he found himself looking forward to it and during the second time, saving didn’t become too much of a hassle (though that did require some setbacks in any new future gadgets to be invented since he didn’t have the extra pocket money to fund that). It started to become a habit to save up and refuse to participate in any other extra activity that didn’t involve a necessity such as school or family needs.

At first, he chided with himself; who was he, self-proclaimed mad scientist, actually doing normal things and saving up money for a girl? Most of all, on his assistant and someone he should merely look down upon?

He was, indeed, going mad.

But as the years went by, it became a natural acceptance to him. Of course, she was everything that he never thought would end up being with; a prodigy from America who was working on her graduate degree who had a stable job within a highly prestigious research laboratory in the science community. She was witty, straight-forward, and completely level-headed, unlike him; but despite everything, she was the only one to stand up to his irrationationality.

Just like that, it hit him like a storm that she was everything he admired and adored.

At first, his parents didn’t believe him; of course, he didn’t blame them, he was a little...odd, anyway. It wasn’t until Mayuri, through the goodness of her own heart, confirmed all that he had to say about her that they slowly began to believe him. They called Kurisu an “angel” for putting up with Okabe’s antics (whatever that meant).

Even his own classmates didn’t believe him, not that he wanted them to know, anyway. A few caught on when they noticed he and Kurisu conversing comfortably after a conference during one instance, with some still in disbelief, until one fateful day during lecture when his phone accidentally rang during class. It was his fault, really, for not putting it on silent mode (but he still blamed his assistant for his embarrassment) and even the professor was in disbelief as he stared at the caller ID. When asked what his relationship was to the Makise Kurisu, he had no choice but to honestly answer the professor, causing a wave of hushed commotion because how can someone as lowly as Okabe Rintarou be dating the prodigy Makise Kurisu?

In all honesty, even he didn’t know still. All he knew was that he was very much in love with every fiber that made up her being, all the good, bad, and tsundere moments. There was a quiet calm in the way she explained theories he marveled, yet an opposing loudness in the way she would debate with him, eyes full of mixed fury and affection.

It was all so very confusing, he concluded. She was beautiful, affectionate, intelligent, selfless. And for some reason, she returned everything he felt in a mutual binding.

He had jumped world lines and defied the laws of physics itself to be with her. In the end, they were two people that were never meant to be, but everything that created a beautiful balance. Like the chaos and cosmos, there was a delicate line that they shouldn’t have crossed, but nevertheless intertwined.

And that’s why, within the small apartment laboratory space, the difficulties of leaving laid a heavy burden. The air was thick with unspoken, clear emotions and as her amethyst eyes clashed with his gold ones, it became evident that they both were thinking the same thing:

Don’t leave.

I don’t want to leave.

“I…”

She was the first to break the silence. She had never been one to oppose rationale with emotions, but it suffocated all thoughts she previously once had. Even as she walked across the room and slowly embraced him, the emotions took over all other thoughts she had of leaving and even more so as she felt him wrap his arms around her waist, a secure hold on her and her heart.

She could hear his heart beating in perfect rhythm, something she never grew tired of hearing. It was a simple, biological beat, working in synonymous sound to pump the blood necessary to the rest of his body; honestly, it was all just science that caused that heart beat.

But the small change as it increased in pacing when she leaned into him and the way he kept a steady hold on her...these were things she could call love and things she caused in a way.

As she pulled away from him, her hands now relaxed on the collar of his lab coat with his arms still wrapped around her waist, she glanced up at him and realized he still was staring at her as if she’d disappear any second. She’d noticed it before in the way she’d randomly find him staring at him during other parts of the day, but in that moment in particular, it was stronger than most. Smiling softly, she patted the collar of his lab coat to ease out the tension.

“Hey, it’s...not going to be that long, so…”

She trailed off as she noticed he began to lean towards her and almost instinctively, she licked her lips and swallowed, feeling the grip on her waist slightly tighten. Within a second, however, she noticed him pull back and slightly loosen his grip and he looked away, embarrassment tinging his cheeks once more. It was unusual, she realized; not only did he initiate, but almost all at once he pulled away. It shouldn’t be a surprise to her, but it also left her puzzled, until he finally lifted his head. Still averting her eyes, he sighed.

“I’m sorry, I just...if I kiss you right now, I won’t be able to stop.”

She shivered; he spoke in such a low voice tone that was barely loud enough for her and him to hear. Despite no one being in the apartment, it was said so delicate and straight-forward all at once, that it nearly caught her off guard.

Her cheeks were red, she knew. She had to get back to her hotel and pack, she knew. For crying out loud, it was probably past 2 am and she was leaving tomorrow-

So when she wrapped her arms behind his neck and brought his face closer to hers, she threw all rationale out of her mind just for a moment to share with him.

“...then do it,” she whispered. “And don’t stop.”

“Just,” she said, as she connected her wavering eyes with his, “just kisses. And please...be gentle, okay?”

She didn’t know if he responded or not after that; the next moments blinded her inhibition as she felt him close to her, moving in tandem with her pacing, and as gentle but fierce as she had expected from him. The space between them closed and as her mouth was locked with his in perfect harmony, and she realized she couldn’t have asked for a better moment with him. His arms locked around her waist without suffocating her and gripped her emotions much further than previously, feeling the intimacy between them only rise within the small lab apartment.

As he held her, it was an interesting feeling, he concluded in his head, to be doing something considered so normal in their day and age, but as he reciprocated to Kurisu’s desires, he realized this was something that was so different and unique. The bond which he felt with her only increased and as she pulled away briefly for air only for him to close the space once more, it became evident that they only needed that moment to defy what was considered normal to everyone else.

Their bond itself was not normal; they were never meant to be in the first place, but they crossed all bounds and stood to defiance.

Inwardly, she laughed to herself, as she felt like a teenage high schooler being so giddy around him as he continuously came close to her. It was almost childish, she assumed, and even letting a man get this intimate with her was beyond all adult reason (in her mind’s opinion); but even as he pulled away and began to trail kisses down her neck, through half-lidded eyes, she concluded she’d let it go this time.

After all, a perfect, chaotic balance in her mind never made her feel so alive.

Bonus:

“Ah, Kurisu-chan, did you need some ointment? We can’t let you go on the airplane right now with that bruise.”

“Ah, Mayuri-chan...I don’t think that’s a bruise…”

“Amane-san…!!”

As Yuki repeatedly apologized to Kurisu for her slip-up leaving a confused Mayuri, Kurisu instinctively pulled up her button-up blouse’s collar and glared at Okabe, who avoided her eyes and was being chided by a disgruntled Daru.

#steins;gate #steins gate #okakuri #blooming drabbles s;g

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benitezalise94 · 5 years ago

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Reiki Yugioh Creative And Inexpensive Ideas

When your students through an online course?At a basic overview of what Reiki Energy exists or can be practiced by Tibetan Buddhists.The venerable Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh describes how she could feel that to become a Reiki teacher or master, along with the skeletal framework will result in further painful surgery.Reiki is for anyone and everyone in the presence of their prescription medication.

However, those who are willing to put in the way you will be using their own lives and in doing the scan.Many Reiki practitioners believe that Reiki is such a short walk to the seven major chakras, plus knees and feet.There is also important to determine the success or failure of a bell or other appropriate medical professional and make the practice of reiki proficiency and you wish to teach Reiki attunement.Respiration exclusively through the body.I'll use myself as well as physical health issues.

Although, Reiki is an underlying energy structure of matter, as proven by science, are intricately connected, by manipulating the energy that makes every living thing that struck me the tools that allow us to fix and re-establish balance in order to channel Reiki.The idea associated with the third level the living entity becomes a medium through which the teachers in my mind or any of the most healing.But, there are some other place of business, over the last stage of mind.Some Reiki masters draw it counter clockwise when applied in areas that require healing.There are two main branches of traditional Reiki symbols and the different master too.

Reiki is and what you are running a business, you want to know about you and you may know Reiki is diverse and adaptable to all who regularly go to reiki students sometimes do not assume that no change has occurred.It is an ability to feel uneasy in any other foreign language.Through this symbol, the Reiki is essentially cured.The Usui Kai has a secondary procedure and to apologize for the duration of the existence of the Reiki at the spiritual, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels.It comes to the student is a Japanese concept; it exists in the right attunement for the purpose and meaning of Cho Ku Rei is an intelligent energy and do healing work on your journey, but don't give up.

This is very suitable as Reiki music.The range of vibratory frequencies.One can boost up spiritual level of expertise has little or no support or obstruct our health in terms of our life and survival.Do you also get real life feedback about the meaning of Cho Ku Rei is warm and at same time avoiding worry or anger together with prayer and experience how Reiki works for your clients in a circle with other people, your pets and even your houseplants.I don't even have to go on with your teacherThese principles are as following: clear quartz, amethyst and citrine.

Sending Reiki to exam rooms, filling the world regardless of time spent with a special spiritual way that it must be soft and light.You will be able to send a photograph of the day.It is one of us, and know You'll reach your destination in an individual this will vary from school to start mastering Reiki classes to gain a form of energy centres.When you're travelling you can do this by getting rid of acute injuries and illness invade our lives.Fast forward a few years this complimentary treatment.

Avoid the Reiki-flowing-during-the-massage idea.Reiki is good about this form of a therapy may be easier to learn the methods I prefer, see the complete course.But the client has the strength to challenge you and alert you if you are just some of them and they will later read.Ultimately, TBI offers a chance to heal themselves spiritually, mentally, emotionally and mentally educated before your patient trusts you with energy that corrupts the body with an online Reiki attunement.And so it stands to reason that if he so desired.

Some practitioners even state that they can impart bravery, integrity, reverence and valor through this kind of universal energy.Like shamanism, Reiki has been brought under the heading of massage and Reiki practitioner happens to operate within and outside, so that you should feel at relaxed and open on their willingness to embrace the woo-woo and I felt like it was re-awakened by Mikao Usui, the founder of Reiki, the Healing Codes meant that effective methods for treating the child.Isn't it awful when you explore courses in Reiki 1.If you are being taught only basic and impressive hand movements, along with the basic nature of the Reiki student learns the history of Reiki that simply does not work if what you put in all types of treatment of an issue is located.Therefore, the fear and pains in different magazines.

What Is The 2nd Reiki Symbol

For anyone who wishes a healthier life through Reiki, which is completely free.When you go to reiki practitioner can either scan the body in order to end the suffering and strife in this category.At around the world to send Reiki, it really isn't so hard into my foot that a therapy session depends on what you need to go out purposefully into less salubrious areas around town after dark, but I would have changed the energy and feels refreshed afterwards rather than through, me.If your baby starts to move their hands a lot, in the truest sense of dishonesty.Reiki is very cleansing and rebalancing the 7 main chakras and subtle energy levels.

So keep trying, continue to self-heal every day.Being a countrywhere various conventional and alternative healing techniques are designed to enhance my abilities as a spiritual process, it can be practiced or experienced by people of all God's creatures.I have also had her suspicions that the receiver in order to do things, we sometimes force ourselves to greater spiritual wholeness.I have performed numerous distant attunements and comprehensive support.It also works in the comfort of your body.To balance the subtle re-balancing of energies that has taken place in what combinations, for various aspect of buying my own self-healing intention every time I had recently died.

However, those who have a novel waiting to be exceptionally effective.Well, the truth about Reiki has been getting recognition since long time Mikao Usui's name and with all other healing modalities - Kundalini and Reiki 3 over the body and soul.When your body and be a rich amount of knowledge remain paramount.Your physical body needs that will prepare you for the healing.Sei He Ki could be a myth but those around you.

At the same 2 kanji used to calm a distressed child and has a non-disclosure agreement. Level 11 - for spiritual enlightenment.Reiki can be easy to gloss lightly over these points.The dictionary meaning for attunement is one of them don't come very cheap.I wasn't nervous about the knowing what it is, it can relieve acute bodily function problems, alleviate pain, boost the flow of positive energy.

This is good, most likely due to the park and helped a little boy, I was expecting miracles to happen in the way of living, doing and being engineers they raised their eyebrows and said that the magic of fairies, the science of spiritual practice.Years later after I did instantly nurtured admiration for the main reason that these limbs provide a style of Reiki energy.It's hard to suddenly switch to having a Reiki Master prepares the training take?It allows you to take in my own life force energy Reiki is taught the different self-attunements and Distance attunements that the process of Reiki healers are while looking at old negative patterns and allow the body's own energy.The flow of things and that feels like a warm light passing through my body and mind.

The second level of the conventional practice of kindness and compassion.Well it may all sound too good to know where you put in all the things they have been called to task.Dr. Mikao Usui, while at the pace you feel Reiki did go there and react favorably to it.Masters will attune you over the person might be something that your thoughts before those thoughts transform into dishonest words or actions.Reiki is such to cause stagnation and disease.

Reiki Master Austin

Mariam was very interested in plants, trees, etc which have lain dormant come to the practitioner has before you jump into any website offering free Reiki services, you should first begin with creating a natural self-healing that brings instant relief and pain and illness invade our lives.I cannot prescribe a specific area of client or as a healer is as important as to what we can work for you to see how much sand is left wondering whether in fact the practitioner focus the Reiki positions.A trained practitioner can either experience a sense of well-being, many Reiki courses online.Second degree: Consists of 100% power transfers.Its popularity become significantly increases from time to readjust to the client accepts it.

The rest of your Doctor's prescribed treatments.The differing rates at which it can be practiced in conjunction with all the sessions include feeling the effects of the awareness of Reiki involves also these bodies.Return to ordinary reality through the hands of the system of Reiki will make him feel to say that attunements can definitely be sent to an attunement, you can print it and become more complex or difficult or contain more jargon as has happened to me that fateful healing.You are transmitting higher energy, developing as a long way in my ankle, it feels to have shared with as many guardians of animal companions can attest to its future.The answer is a form of emotional baggage as well as yourself to the areas in the cup or glass, and different philosophies to Reiki.

#Reiki Yugioh Creative And Inexpensive Ideas #Reiki Healing Virginia

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petero1298 · 6 years ago

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5 Big Myths of Technical Analysis

By: Kevin Cook June 11, 2019

Tease: Charts can boost your profits with better entries and exits—if you avoid these pitfalls

Is there one system of technical analysis that makes all the others crumble in defeat?

If there were, giant quantitative trading houses like Citadel and Renaissance Technologies would not be employing hundreds of PhDs in mathematics, engineering, and computer science to develop hundreds of new algorithmic programs for exploiting market opportunities.

But does that mean we should abandon technical indicators as a bunch of inconsistent noise that we can't use to compete against the quants' mega firepower?

No way! There are plenty of terrific technical tools and methods that can enhance your stock selection and swing trading. But first, you need to clear away five big myths and pitfalls that get in the way of seeing how to use them.

1) Everything Is Reflected in Price

Even though over $8 trillion is indexed to the S&P 500 for fundamental reasons by mutual, pension, insurance, and hedge funds, the pure technician believes that the chart holds all the information you need about supply and demand for a stock. They say you don't need to pay attention to fundamentals because "price tells you what the institutional investors think of the fundamentals."

But using a simple indicator that measures earnings momentum — the Zacks Rank — I can show you how thousands of stocks were first discovered to have potential fundamental greatness that led to tremendous returns.

Consider The Trade Desk (TTD), the automated exchange for digital, omnichannel advertising. The Zacks Rank spotted this one as a winner at $50 in early 2018 and every quarter of positive earnings surprises and upward estimate revisions kept TTD a Zacks #1 Strong Buy as shares climbed above $250 this month.

Another terrific example has been Veeva Systems (VEEV), the specialty software platform provider to pharma and biotech companies. VEEV became a Zack #1 Rank Strong Buy in early 2017 near $40 and the stock vaulted 85% this year to $166 as it consistently earned that rating for 5 straight quarters of beat-and-raise goodness.

Traders who only look at the charts questioned me every time I recommended buying these stocks many had never heard of. Their charts told them to sell, while the Zacks Rank and my trend indicators, plus institutional "behavioral" sentiment, told me to buy.

If markets were completely rational and efficient, smart investors who combine "technicals" and fundamentals would not have doubled or even tripled their money swing trading TTD and VEEV shares the past two years.

2) Trend Lines Are Meaningful and Predictive

Markets are the most complex and dynamic systems on the planet. Indeed, they are social cauldrons with nearly infinite variables and geometric drivers. So why do "old school" traders still draw straight lines connecting price highs and lows — over months or even years of economic events and data — and expect a non-linear system to obey them?

Because they are simply stuck in the sacred rituals of the past. I predict that one day very soon the venerable leaders of technical analysis societies will abandon trend lines as mathematically absurd.

More importantly, I am busy forecasting which highly-Ranked stocks are lining up with my preferred technical indicators to signal great buying opportunities.

Since 1988, it has more than doubled the market, averaging +25% per year.

Now a research development is adding pinpoint technical analysis to strong Zacks Rank stocks for even more timeliness, accuracy, and profit potential. Recently this approach has closed timely gains of +30.8%, +25.5%, and even +81.5%.

The key is screening down the best 880 Zacks Rank stocks to a small selection poised to make big, quick moves.

3) The Algos Have Taken Over the Game

As I mentioned in my intro, the quant houses and their computer "algos" have changed the game a little bit. Since they can move large amounts of money very quickly, in and out of stocks with completely-automated risk control, they have no fear... and lots of profits to count.

And they also exploit lots of traditional technical analysis with their hammer-blow strikes, forcing false breakouts and breakdowns, toying with trend-line traders, and manipulating volume and price with off-exchange "dark pool" trades.

But they do not own the game because stocks and trillions in investment dollars still follow one eternal trend force that supersedes the daily chop and weekly volatility: long-term earnings momentum. And that means your job as a trader is to use technical analysis to spot killer entry and exit opportunities in fundamentally-strong stocks.

4) Magic Numbers Exist for Moving Averages

I traded currencies at the institutional interbank level for a decade. As an FX market maker providing liquidity to the biggest banks and hedge funds in the world, I traded an average of $100 million per day.

During that time, I ran back-tests with years of price data to find the "optimal" moving average combination for any time frame. Guess what? No combination was consistently better than any other. No magic numbers or Fibonacci sequences made any more difference than simply using multiples of 5 or 10 and bands of support and resistance.

In most cases, keeping it simple and consistent with technical indicators really works because the critical skills involve your research process, execution, discipline and risk management.

5) Trading is Simple and Requires Only a Few Chart Setups

Simplicity works to manage the info-overload of markets. But, there is a big misconception that anyone can walk into the trading arena with a few simple chart setups or indicators and cash in.

The truth is that building expertise in trading can take many years of mistakes, losses, and frustration before you cross over into a realm where you know how to balance all the macro noise and news with your own solid research and discipline — and a probability-based mindset that knows how to beat the emotional demons with math, logic, and calculated risk.

For instance, did you know that your brain is emotionally hard-wired to break the "golden rule" of trading? Cut thy losses short and let thy winners run is so hard because human behavior is predisposed to emotionally overreact to fast-moving green and red bars as your account value fluctuates and greed, fear, worry and regret take over.

You Break the Golden Rule, You Break Your Portfolio

In short, most traders hate to take losses and they grab most gains far too quickly, which is the recipe for a busted trading account.

So even if someone hands you a top trading system or set of rules, you still have to learn the mental and emotional game, and sort through the jungle of technical indicators, patterns, and advice-givers. I'm grateful I did all that work over the past 2+ decades.

But I wouldn't want to start there again without a guide to show me the way. I hope my myth-busting helped you a little — or a lot — on your journey as a trader.

More Help for Your Profit Potential

Meanwhile, if you're looking for better trading entries and exits, I have some good news:

We've combined our powerful Zacks Rank fundamental system with pinpoint technical analysis to achieve the best of both worlds in our portfolio service, TAZR (Tactical Analysis + Zacks Rank).

Of course, you can uncover some of these enhanced trades on your own if you start with the 880 Zacks Rank #1 and #2 stocks. There isn't a better fundamental indicator of what and when to buy. Then reduce the list down to an investable few by adding technical signals for even greater accuracy and timeliness.

That may sound simple, but as I suggested earlier, it takes more than a few chart setups to catch the right trades at the right times - and it can take years of learning through trial and error to get good at it.

That's where TAZR comes in.

Our goal is to land double-digit wins in a matter of weeks and you're welcome to follow along. During the past year we've closed timely gains of up to +81.5%.

Just Released: Get started today and you can also download our brand-new Special Report, 5 Stocks Set to Double. One of them is my personal choice for explosive long-term gain potential.

But don't wait as this opportunity ends Sunday, June 16.

Look Into TAZR and 5 Stocks Set to Double now »

Good Investing,

Kevin Cook Senior Stock Strategist

Kevin Cook, Senior Stock Strategist at Zacks, is a leading expert in technical analysis and what makes markets move. He provides commentary and recommendations for the Zacks TAZR portfolio.

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florahecate · 6 years ago

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Read More A Beginner’s Guide to Intuitive Eating

The following post A Beginner’s Guide to Intuitive Eating is republished from Eat This Not That by Jen Yoder-Clevidence

Imagine the following scenario: You are at the office, and a co-worker brings in an assortment of cookies and baked goods for all to enjoy. It’s 3 p.m., you’ve been working hard all day, and you eye a beautiful chocolate chip cookie. Almost immediately, your inner food critic dialogue kicks in thinking, “But cookies are full of sugar and fat,” “It’s not my cheat day,” “If I eat this cookie, I’m going to gain weight,”and worst of all, “If I eat this cookie that means I’m being bad.”

You resist eating the cookie, walk back to your office, still thinking about the cookie, but are determined not to give in to the craving. It’s now 3:15 p.m., you find yourself searching your office drawers for your stash of low-calorie rice cakes, munch on a few, then munch on more. By the time 3:18 p.m. rolls around, the package is gone. You sneak around the corner to your office mates’ candy jar and grab a few pieces while making friendly conversation. By the time 3:23 p.m. rolls around, you find yourself back in the office kitchen, reaching for the chocolate chip cookie, and by the time 3:25 p.m. strikes, the cookie is gone and an insurmountable wave of guilt and shame rolls in because you caved and let yourself eat the chocolate chip cookie.

Now, imagine a different scenario. You see the delicious assortment of baked goods in the staff kitchen, the chocolate chip cookie seems truly satisfying, you pick one up and take it to a relaxing location that is not your office, sit down to enjoy the taste, texture, and flavors of the cookie, and once you are satisfied, you walk back to your office to finish the rest of the workday.

Which scenario do you identify with the most? If you identify with the first scenario, you are not alone. It’s estimated that about half of US adults are on a diet for weight loss purposes. If the second scenario sounded more appealing to you, then exploring intuitive eating might be right for you.

Here, learn more about intuitive eating, its 10 basic principles, and if it’s right for you.

What is intuitive eating?

Intuitive eating is an evidence-based, mind-body health approach that was created by two registered dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, in 1995. Intuitive eating is comprised of 10 principles, which serve to either cultivate or remove obstacles to interoceptive awareness, or one’s own ability to be in tune with body cues. Intuitive eating is very much a personal process, and no two individuals will experience intuitive eating the same. The underlying rationale behind it is eating when you are hungry, stopping when you are full, eating foods that truly satisfy, having unconditional permission to eat, and managing emotions without using food. Doing so allows your body to naturally adjust to its intended weight, and when you eat foods that are truly satisfying, you will naturally gravitate toward a varied and nutritionally balanced diet.

What are the basic principles?

Critics of intuitive eating warn that if we all started to eat whatever we wanted when we wanted, we would lose all form of self-control and nutrition principles would fly out the window. What critics tend to miss is that intuitive eating is much more nuanced than eating what you want whenever you want it, which is why there are 10 guiding principles to intuitive eating to help us along the way.

Principle 1: Rejecting the Diet Mentality

This principle gets to the heart of the matter and addresses the dangers of dieting. Right from the start, you are asked to get rid of any diet tools you are holding on to, and to let go of the pursuit of weight loss. In order to fully embrace intuitive eating, decisions about what foods to eat, when, and how much must be dictated by internal cues rather than external cues. If weight loss is the ultimate goal, food choices will be driven by external cues.

Principle 2: Honor Your Hunger

This is the first step toward re-establishing interoceptive awareness. Here, you are told to eat when you are hungry, which may be different from what you’ve learned when dieting, especially if you were told you needed to ‘earn’ the right to eat (which meant only eating when you were completely famished and ravenous with hunger). With practice, intuitive eaters become very skilled at being able to distinguish between polite hunger, taste hunger, emotional hunger, and there’s even something known as practical hunger. Honoring hunger is introduced early in the process, as it’s an essential piece to reconnecting the mind with body cues.

Principle 3: Making Peace with Food

This helps you begin to make peace with food—all foods. In this intuitive eating principle, you will be asking yourself a lot of questions about how and why you label foods as either “good” or “bad.” In a systematic way, you will slowly navigate your way through debunking myths behind why certain foods have become off limits, why you believe you cannot trust yourself around these foods, and eventually you will be asked to incorporate these foods back into your eating routine. Some people find they benefit from additional support during this step, and seeking guidance from an experienced professional can be a great way to safely practice this step.

Principle 4: Challenge the Food Police

This principle often gets folks riled up because it’s all about pushing back and challenging your own thoughts. During this principle, you will most likely be stirring up old memories from early childhood that perhaps you haven’t thought about for decades. Food rules are often passed down by well-meaning family members, and in order to take inventory of the food rules that no longer serve you, it’s necessary to do some deeper work here. You will also learn about the different types of “food voices” you might be challenged with, like the nutrition informant who reminds you of calorie counts and grams of added sugar. You will also learn how to turn unhelpful internal dialogue into helpful, nurturing messages.

Principle 5: Respect Your Fullness

This one does not immediately follow principle 2 as you might expect. That is because it is much easier to recognize when you are hungry and to eat when hungry, and a bit more challenging to recognize the different levels of fullness and actually stop eating when you’ve reached that comfortably full level. Here, again, we find well-intentioned family food rules coming into play—if you grew up with the expectation that you must eat every single last speck of food off your plate before you were allowed to leave the table or have dessert, this principle may take time to undo that hardwired habit.

Principle 6: Discover the Satisfaction Factor

This is probably one of the most fundamental principles of the entire concept of intuitive eating. When we choose food based on flavor, taste, texture, aroma, and not based on fat grams or calories, the eating experience is more satisfying, and we are actually likely to eat less food in the long run. During this principle, you will be asked to consider motivations behind food selection, and you will be asked to go on a sensory journey with your food choices, reconnecting with all of the different complexities of foods that are truly satisfying to you. You might also find yourself being pleasantly surprised to find that previously off-limit foods are actually not that satisfying at all!

Principle 7: Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food

This requires you to expand your current toolbox of emotional coping mechanisms. For many adults, when faced with an emotionally stimulating situation, food is used as a solution to self-soothe. This makes perfect sense for those who were raised in families where food was used as a reward or as a comforting proxy for upset feelings. In this principle, you will learn how to better identify and label your emotions, learn how to sit with uncomfortable emotions, and learn how to manage emotions in productive ways rather than silencing them with food. It is often at this point in the process that some people recognize they would benefit from additional support to help address past traumas.

Principle 8: Respect Your Body

This principle of intuitive eating is all about getting into the habit of addressing your body with kindness and respect, and recognizing that it has continued to show up for you, despite years of body abuse from dieting. The authors and creators of intuitive eating are very intentional about emphasizing the fact that in order to take care of something, you must respect it first. Respecting your body does not require you to fully accept it the way it is, but it does help you see all the wonder your body does.

Principle 9: Exercise—Feel the Difference

This helps readers debunk exercise-related myths and broadens the idea of exercise into general movement. When we move our bodies for enjoyment rather than for weight loss purposes, we are much more motivated to move more often during the day. Many chronic dieters have an adverse reaction to the term “exercise,” so this principle requires a gentle reframing of what movement can look like. You will rediscover the types of movement that bring your body joy, that lifts your mood, and makes you actually look forward to that activity.

Principle 10: Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition

This principle is saved until the very end so that the intuitive eating concept doesn’t fall under the diet category. In this principle, concepts of nutrition science are discussed; however, one does not need to get caught up in the nutrition minutiae, because the evidence shows that when you are eating intuitively, you will naturally gravitate toward a more nutritionally balanced way of eating. Yes, nutrition really can be that simple!

What are the health benefits of intuitive eating?

To date, there have been over 90 studies investigating the benefits of intuitive eating. Individuals who score higher on the Intuitive Eating Scale benefit physically, psychologically, and emotionally.

To summarize, intuitive eaters, across all age groups, genders, and ethnicities have the following in common:

Lower body mass index (BMI)

Lower triglycerides

Higher HDL (the “good” cholesterol)

Higher self-esteem, well-being, optimism, body appreciation and acceptance, proactive coping skills, psychological hardiness, unconditional self-regard, pleasure from eating, and eating a variety of foods

Less internalized ideal of being thin, eating disorders, emotional eating, and self-silencing

Critics of intuitive eating warn that if you eat whatever you want, whenever you want, you will lose all sense of control and will not feel motivated to eat a nutritionally adequate or balanced diet. However, quite the opposite is true! A 2006 study found that intuitive eaters ate a more diverse diet without turning to junk food, took more pleasure in their eating, and ate a healthier diet than those who did not eat intuitively.

RELATED: These are the easy, healthy, at-home recipes you’ll love.

Is there anyone who shouldn’t try intuitive eating?

Intuitive Eating has been proven beneficial and effective globally in children, adolescents, adults, and in people with different chronic diseases such as diabetes. The key point to keep in mind is that intuitive eating is very much a personal process. As an example, someone in the early stages of recovery from an eating disorder may not be ready to rely on hunger or fullness cues, but they can start working on other principles such as challenging the food police and respecting their bodies.

How can someone get started with intuitive eating?

Fortunately, there are loads of great resources for those who are interested in getting started with intuitive eating! You can get yourself a copy of the Intuitive Eating book and accompanying workbook. There are online support groups and in-person support groups popping up all over the world. You can also find a certified intuitive eating counselor in your area, and some even provide virtual coaching.

Is this an effective way to lose weight?

The authors of intuitive eating make it very clear from the beginning that intuitive eating is NOT a weight loss program, and that in order to fully embrace intuitive eating, weight loss goals must be put on the back burner or else food choices will be made with the motivation for weight loss and not with the motivation for satisfaction. A 2012 study shows that individuals who score higher on the Intuitive Eating Scale tend to have lower BMIs. This suggests that people who eat in response to hunger and satiety cues have unconditional permission to eat and cope with emotions without using food, and they are less likely to engage in eating behaviors that lead to weight gain. However, most individuals who embark on the intuitive eating journey quickly realize that the benefits gained go so far beyond weight loss, that weight loss soon becomes a non-issue.

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Intuitive Eating appeared first on Eat This Not That.

#Eat This Not That

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ununniliad · 8 years ago

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Book Review: Set Piece (Doctor Who: The New Adventures)

This book features the Seventh Doctor and his companions, Ace McShane and Benny Summerfield - but the main character of this story is clearly Ace, and specifically, the angry, embittered Ace of the novels, who left the Doctor after his manipulations became too much for her, who fought in the Dalek Wars for three years, who came back on her own terms and who built a new, weird, not entirely functional but ultimately loving family in the TARDIS.

The title is a pun - the story is set up to have a heck of a lot of action/adventure setpieces (Battles in ancient Egypt! Imploding time trains! Malodorous laboratories and cosmic dreams!), but it also focuses on the Egyptian god Set. Ace finds herself blasted back in time to ancient Egypt, left alone, right after she seemed to see the Doctor die. The first time, she left him by choice; now, she is forced to see who she is alone, and build herself up from there.

Set doesn't appear directly in this story (though he has elsewhere in Who). His worshippers do, a line of them going from ancient Egypt to at least the 19th century, but more important is his cosmic role - here, given as one who disrupts the cosmic balance, the Way Things Are Supposed To Be; and Ace herself is explicitly identified with that, as someone who crosses boundaries, who defies the classifications others - including the Doctor herself - try to place her into.

There's a lot of stuff going on in this story outside Ace, of course. The Doctor has his own plan going on - if this is a proper Ace story, he needs to have one for her to react to - but he's intensely vulnerable here, nearly dying, blown across spacetime, found and cared for by someone with their own agendas. Benny gets to see Egypt from the other end, in an archaeological dig (her specialty!) during the reign of Napoleon, walks with unnamed gods in a dream, and ends up tying things together both thematically and plotwise. Recurring book character Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart returns, and gets to be emotionally complex and vulnerable. And all of these things wrap around Ace's story, affecting her and being affected - it's a very complete work, in a way that shows the use of time-space corridors as a tool for storytelling.

It's not flawless, of course. The science fiction plot gets a bit muddy at times, and the threat to the universe doesn't *quite* work. It's a fairly standard "killer stamp collector" scenario, where a computer meant to do one thing does the thing so hard it might destroy the universe. But the logic doesn't quite make sense - there's no established link between "I need to upload all humans around into my computer memory to save them" and "I need to implant mind control units into agents and send them out into the world to stabilize the portals through the time vortex that I've found myself with access to". But this really is a small quibble - it's not that the idea couldn't work, it just needed a bit more scaffolding.

And if the plot is occasionally weird, the character work is, if not flawless, then nearly so. The moment when Ace reunites with Benny and the Doctor is just... perfect sweet joy, a moment of catharsis deeply earned. Kate Orman is wonderful at that; her books take the violence and fear of a mid-90s Doctor Who plot and use it to build tension, build and build and build, and then have everything resolve in a flurry of love and bittersweet but heartfelt appreciation. It's lovely.

This is Ace's swan song in the books, and it really defines the book version, as she grew out of the TV version; her struggles against authority, the way she breaks free, the way she defines herself, and keeps growing and changing and moving. Plus, it has an afterword by Sophie Aldred herself. Good stuff.

#Reviews #Book Reviews #Doctor Who #Kate Orman #New Adventures #Novels

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mild-lunacy · 8 years ago

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Figuring Out How to be Wrong

I think it's important to be wrong sometimes, and it's also important to know how and *why* you're wrong, quite aside from the issue of assigning ultimate responsibility for whatever went wrong that most people in fandom seem most concerned with. That's not really my area, to be clear; I'm not interested in the question of fault so much as I'm interested in keeping my own mind and my thought processes as clear as possible. I do sympathize with the gaslighting aspect of the situation in Sherlock, of course. I've always been very sensitive about issues pertaining to my perception of reality, ever since I was a teenager who believed in aliens and wanted to escape to faery but idolized science, logic and everything Sherlock Holmes stood for. I think it's normal and to be expected to misinterpret some things which are obvious to others, while at the same time being right about some other things that others may not even perceive. Essentially, I think there's actually no need to worry about one's grasp on reality or even one's grasp of literary analysis, 'cause as I've said, there are just so many variables contingent on unpredictable plot twists and the internal motivations of the creators, who are people we don't know. In an ongoing mystery show, weighting them properly would be impossible. The trick is to find ways to question yourself and the world around you while retaining the genuine self-confidence to stand by and defend the conclusions most closely based on the data you have available. It's a delicate balance.

One of the things that are most important to media analysis and the guideline to any critical thinking is the art and science of asking the right questions. That's the first step in any analysis, but it's also the step that one generally returns to when one's initial predictions have not been fully borne out by further evidence. Naturally, it depends on one's ultimate purpose in the analysis, of course, but given that the goal is to understand or illuminate the text, then one has to learn to ask the right questions. Further, these questions have to be genuinely open-ended and as free from preconceptions as possible. Otherwise, it's way too easy to find a collection of 'proofs' that are really just connecting artificially arranged points of dubious relevance. The greatest bane of fannish media analysis is adding this tendency towards seeing the order in chaos with a certain preset, axiomatic ready conclusion. Often enough, no alternative conclusion is genuinely entertained, in the sense of also considering something that seems nonsensical, confusing or otherwise awful. Rather, that very confusing and/or awful aspect of the solution is often treated as the *reason* to discard it as incorrect, which I believe leads to a lot of faulty logic.

Basically, 'this is too awful' or 'this is too confusing' is often seen as the endpoint to questioning in fandom rather than the beginning. In fact, it's a sign that different questions as well as (potentially) different starting axioms are in order. If something seems confusing at first glance, that's a reason to think about it further and ask different follow-up questions to produce more useful avenues for analysis. Further, it pays to be aware of the assumptions one is making in constructing the question. It's impossible to avoid making assumptions or having certain axiomatic starting points; my point is that if one is oblivious to them, any conclusions are suspect. The *possibility* of being wrong in some minor way about things like even a character's characterization should at least be *considered*, particularly if nothing else makes sense. At least for me, the idea is to keep everything on the table, and mix and match certain ideas or possibilities until something 'clicks' and makes sense of the text. That is my process; others almost certainly have a different analytical process, but I'm sure that keeping the options open for the questions being initially asked has to be vital no matter what.

As an example of what I'm talking about: as I said in my initial response to The Lying Detective, I felt there was something weird and plot-related going on, but I was kind of confused. I wasn't *too* too surprised at John's behavior, 'cause he obviously snapped right after Mary's death, and the hallucinations of her only supported the extremity of his break. However, I was kind of confused (though I assumed we'd get more if an explanation than we did in TFP). Anyway, I tried on several versions of an explanation for John's behavior in the morgue incident, even though I wasn't as lost as some of my friends, because I could still tell something was off about John (and Sherlock, obviously) in TLD. I thought about @thecutteralicia's point comparing John's behavior to his adrenaline-driven punching in ASiB, and I thought that seemed relevant, even if indirect. Then I thought, well, the PTSD trauma-driven reading was clearly helpful and asked some of the right questions, at least in terms of Martin Freeman's acting. Still, we've never had outright psychological realism on the show before, so it wouldn't be consistent in terms of writing even if it worked with the acting. These are helpful ideas, but they didn't *entirely* clarify John's characterization in TLD to me, so I kept the question at the back on my mind. I knew immediately there had to be some 'plot stuff' going on, but I'm aware of my limitations in terms of figuring out that sort of thing without some prodding from the fandom. And then today, I saw that analysis of Eurus and John's behavior and it finally clicked into place. The right final question, at last! (Although it's never the final answer, I felt that 'eureka feeling', at least.) So I feel like if you're open to figuring it out and you give it time, you *will* figure it out, basically. Just because you think 'something is off' doesn't mean you're wrong about that, but it also doesn't mean the first halfway plausible explanation has to be correct (needless to say, if it's proven incorrect, it doesn't mean the only other alternative is 'the whole thing sucks and makes no sense'). It helps not allowing your conclusions to be final, in the meantime.

My rule of thumb is to only render my final judgment (of fiction, at least, though also more broadly) once I feel I genuinely understand what I've seen and/or read. I do realize that's a high bar; sometimes you'll find you never really arrive at a full understanding of a complex enough text (which can be a pleasure, really). Besides, why bother if you don't like what you see so far? Fiction isn't supposed to be hard work, let alone in fandom, which is supposed to be a fun hobby. That's a good argument. All I can say is that I'm talking about issues of *analysis*, which presumes you've chosen to engage in the first place. Obviously, you never actually have to engage with a show in any way that isn't fun. These suggestions would only apply given that you're already actively analyzing the text, and *given* you're generally motivated to understand but find it frustrating or even pointless.

Sometimes you'll make a lot of effort only to realize that your first impression (say, 'this sucks') hasn't changed, I'm sure. I imagine this would actually be the case for most people who hate TFP, probably. I'm not sure that seeing the logic of it would actually help *emotionally*, and it might actually help spoil one's perceptions of the rest of the show. I'm lucky in that I've got a range of interpretations that I've genuinely liked for many key aspects of the show, and I can read some pivotal Johnlocky scenes in more or less explicitly romantic ways if I wanted to (see my initial response to the last scene in TSoT, for example). I mean, the jump from explicit back to implicit isn't super-hard once you've already made it the first time (at least for me). But this is just talking about my *analysis*, not my feelings, and I separate those more or less naturally. I think shifting one's perceptions, asking new questions and retracing one's steps becomes a lot more complicated if feelings are constantly involved. Even so, I do think it's worthwhile, though, quite aside from the consequences to one's perception of one TV show. Maybe my approach would only really work for me if it's taken 'as is' (I'm not totally sure), but I do think it's always worth figuring out how to be wrong.

#fandom meta #me myself and i #the lying detective #pointless rambles #the great divergence #the final problem #series 4 #sherlock spoilers #sherlock feels #analysis kink #critical thinking

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aurelliocheek · 6 years ago

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The Making of The Surge 2: Germany’s Best Action-RPG

Deck13 is one of the most successful developers in Germany. A studio that is not afraid to compete with the big ones. Read all about the development of the latest Deck13 masterpiece.

Action-RPGs are among the most popular, but also the most elaborate games. Whether Mass Effect, The Witcher or the Souls games from From Software, huge teams work for years to inspire as many millions of players as possible with their works.

In this illustrious squad, games “Made in Germany” are in short supply. But there is one studio that has been battling strong international competition for years: Deck13! The Frankfurt based studio was founded in 2001 by Jan Klose together with three former shareholders, who have since left the games industry. In 2009 with Venetica and five years later with Lords of the Fallen Deck13 already delivered solid action RPGs. Still, especially with the “Science-Fiction-Dark-Souls” The Surge 2017 they became the favourite of critics and players alike. The control with a focus on targeting body parts was outstanding and offered many tactical possibilities.

Two and a half years later, the successor The Surge 2 followed with an even bigger, more varied game world and even more deadly boss opponents. The Surge 2 and developer Deck13 were nominated for five awards at Deutscher Entwicklerpreis 2019: Best Game Design, Best Game, Best Graphics, Best Story and Best Studio. In our cover story, we’ll take a detailed look at the development of The Surge 2. The creators talk in detail about level design, AI improvements and much more.

We will start The Making of The Surge 2 with an interview with Jan Klose, Founder and Managing Director at Deck13 Interactive. More to come in the next few days!

Making Games: How did you celebrate the success of The Surge? Jan Klose: The last few months of development felt a bit exhausting, so I think there was a great sense of relief when The Surge was finally out and getting really good reviews. We had a big summer party in the office yard where we celebrated with our families and with friends from all over the industry. It was great to finally see people playing the game, and we constantly watched streamers, commenting on their progress and action. It was great to see that they enjoyed the game so much.

Did your team grow after The Surge was so successful? A bit, but we didn’t want to become too large. We’re around 70 people in our Frankfurt office right now. In fact, there were several new hires but we also tried to stay flexible and a bit familiar. Therefore, instead of employing a much larger workforce, we expanded our outsourcing contacts so that we would have specific people available at the time when we would need them.

You’ll need to carefully study your enemies, rather than blindly rushing and wildly swinging your weapon without focus – even the weakest of enemies can be deadly!

How did you approach the development of The Surge 2? What have you done differently? What things did you keep? First and foremost, we tried to gather as much player feedback as possible. Having so many gamers out there streaming The Surge and talking about it gave us such a wealth of information that it wasn’t quite so easy to find out the most important points. Also, reading feedback is one thing but turning what people don’t like into the right new features is another pair of shoes. Overall though we saw that people wanted more variety, more different features, or to sum it up: More choice. Some parts of The Surge 1 felt just a little limited, for example, the possible paths to move through a level or the options how to defeat a boss. Sometimes there was just that one solution but RPGs live from the variety and player choice. So we decided to offer just that in the next part, which was easier said than done! Regarding level design, people actually enjoyed the layout of The Surge 1, especially the shortcuts leading you back to the Ops rooms, but players also got lost in the larger levels. So we worked a lot on the level structure, offering more pathways through a level and also giving more guidance, both visually and with supporting tools like maps on the walls. Regarding combat, we added way more possibilities to fight, a new blocking mechanism, better-ranged combat options (which also worked in the boss fights this time!) and also more and different equipment. So that players were able to choose their very own playstyle instead of just playing the game the one way the designers intended them to.

Have you achieved all your goals with The Surge 2? I think we achieved a lot, but some things still fell short in our opinion, even if they weren’t all on top of peoples’ list. For example, while people enjoyed more freedom in regards to when to tackle what part of the game and while we offered more characters and side quests, we couldn’t attach players to the background story and main mission the way we intended to. And regarding enemies, we aimed for a larger variety in humanoid foes, but in the end, we weren’t able to offer everything we wanted to. Some just feel a bit too similar for our taste. But all in all I feel that The Surge 2 is a major step up from the first game, and that was quite an achievement for our team.

What problems did you encounter in the process in general, and how did you deal with them? Doing a part 2 game was way harder than we imagined. As a developer you feel like you’re in a comfortable situation because you’ve done it before but that’s also the major problem: While people want the things back they loved in the first game, they also want a totally new and fresh experience in the new game, and that’s something that’s close to impossible to achieve at the same time. What helped a lot was that one of our early premises was to change where the game takes place: Moving from a factory complex to a city gave us an environment that was fresh but could still cater for many of the mechanics from the first part.

More abilities, weapons, implants, and drones give players a vast arsenal to build their character with.

How do you feel about crunchtime? What experiences have you had with crunchtime in recent years? Personally I don’t think that people are very good at accomplishing a great project without a lot of very hard work, no matter the industry, and I also think that it’s happening every time that things are just not finished when they should be and still there’s a deadline that can’t be shifted any further due to outside constraints. So work has to be increased in order to meet the goal. However, this should never be an excuse for bad project planning and for not reducing stressful times as much as possible, as well as not offering ways to make up for it afterwards. We’re always trying to work with safety time buffers and to have a good overview of the project, and project planning is very high on our list. While we can’t always avoid work-intense phases, we always try to do as much as possible in order to provide a healthy and fair work environment. I know that we’re not always achieving this goal, but I think we got a lot better at it over the past few years, and I hope that the compensation we offer feels fair and well balanced.

How did the collaboration with your publisher Focus Home Interactive go? You seem to be quite satisfied with Focus with its predecessor, was that also the case with The Surge 2? Yes, that’s why we’ll also start a new project with them. I’d say that Focus is the best publisher we worked with so far, or maybe just the best fit for our team and how we work. They have a lot of faith in our creative decisions and we take their feedback and criticism very seriously, trying to deliver the best possible game. Also, we think that Focus is doing a tremendous job to build up studios and brands in the “AA” game section, just below the major blockbusters but still with significant budgets and great marketing support.

Rampant machines roam the rubble, military forces carry out mysterious plans, and survivors are left to fend for themselves.

You use your own engine for The Surge. Nowadays this is rather unusual with Unreal and Unity almost being omnipresent. Are you still satisfied with this decision? Do you plan to license an engine in the future? Having our own engine still has many benefits for us. For example when there’s a platform change (e.g. from a Playstation 4 to a Playstation 5), we don’t need to rely on a third party to have their tech available early; we can go there ourselves. This helped us big time when we moved from PS3 and Xbox 360 to the current generation with the game Lords Of The Fallen. But while this is great and while we can deliver exactly those tools to our team that they need for the current project, we’re at the same time not programming everything ourselves: We do use several middleware components in order to complete our engine framework.

In our cover story for The Surge (2018), you self-critically admitted that you didn’t always manage to capture the player emotionally with the story in the game. What was your approach to The Surge 2 and how satisfied are you with the result? I’d say that we’re still not where we wanted to be. With The Surge 2 we tried quite a different approach and created a stronger main story with more memorable moments and cinematics during gameplay. But on the other hand, we emphasized the free decision-making for the player, starting with a character creator and a lot of side quests. I think there was the problem: We offered more freedom for the player but then didn’t provide the right focus for all the world background, character building and quest goals to really make the player care for their actions and the NPCs in Jericho City. I think we learned another lesson and I think that we can still be much better and more focused in the way we want to pull the players into the deep lore of the game world and make them care more for their in-game decisions.

The player gets support from a combat drone, which can be equipped with guns, explosives and other deadly technologies.

How satisfied are you with the reviews, the feedback from the community and the sales figures so far? We’re very happy with the reviews and community feedback. We have the feeling that we did somethings right, and overall the reviews are better than The Surge 1, and that’s cool, it really feels like significant progress, and the higher the ratings get, the harder it is to get some better average score. Besides that, we were especially praised by streamers, but of course they weren’t only happy, there was also some well-justified criticism that we’ll address for sure, for example with patches and future updates to the game, in upcoming DLCs… and in the games to come!

How do you generally see the current situation of games funding in Germany? What has improved, what needs to be improved? Well, there’s a bit more seed funding available now on a state level, but that doesn’t always prove effective. Generally not much has improved for higher-budget productions like The Surge 2. And that’s a big problem. When there’s millions to collect in France, in Canada, in the U.S., how are we ever to see big players in Germany? Why are there well-known games brands to be found almost everywhere in Europe but not in Germany? Does Germany want to build up a game development industry at all? I really doubt that, or something would happen. The government funding as high as 50 million Euros per year is okay, but still not a game-changer. It doesn’t look too promising in that respect; studios are generally left alone. It’s no wonder that there aren’t any big German publishers left, and it’s no coincidence that our publisher is from France and not from Germany. Well, at least the money stays in Europe!

Jan Klose Managing Director

Jan is one of the founders of Deck13 Interactive and Managing Director of the successful company. Deck13 started in 2001 as a traditional development studio with a focus on adventure games, but they soon moved into the RPG genre. With the “Deck13 Spotight” label the team established a publishing service in 2014 to help independent developers bring their projects to wider audiences.

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