#since when are we openly supporting the evil company

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Yascha Mounk

Published: Dec 21, 2024

After Donald Trump won reelection, scores of Americans once again failed to make good on their loudly shared and oft-repeated plan of moving to Canada; but a good number of them did partake in a different, rather less cumbersome, exodus. Complaining that Twitter had been unrecognizably transformed under the ownership of Elon Musk—whom they also blame for supporting Trump—hundreds of thousands of progressives decamped to Bluesky.

Widely touted as a “kinder, gentler” alternative to X, Bluesky aims to emulate the up-to-date news and specialized information-sharing in which Twitter has traditionally excelled. It also promises to cut all the toxicity. In the past weeks, the platform announced plans to quadruple the number of moderators it employs. "We’re trying to go above what the legal requirements are, because we decided that we wanted to be a safe and welcoming space,” Aaron Rodericks, the head of the Trust and Safety Team at Bluesky Social, vowed.

The platform has some features that really do put the user in charge in appealing ways. In traditional social media networks, the executives of profit-driven companies control the algorithm that governs the content which is presented to individual users. Especially on micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, this feature—since well before Musk turned it into X—meant privileging controversial posts that elicit angry debate over milder, more consensual ones. On Bluesky, each user can choose between a great variety of open-source algorithms, which theoretically makes it possible to curate a less rage-inducing experience.

When Bluesky launched, I hoped that it would succeed. But the platform has quickly shown that it is hard for any social network to deliver on its promise of being the place for a kinder or gentler discourse. At its best, Bluesky has become a giant progressive echo chamber, with Blue MAGA accounts freely sharing “misinformation” such as the notion that the vote count in the 2024 election was fraudulent because millions of Democratic votes inexplicably went missing. At its worst, it openly revels in violence—so long as that violence can make a claim, however tenuous, to defend or avenge righteous victims.

In accordance with the platform’s policy of moderating content much more aggressively than X has done under Musk, Bluesky’s moderators have been quick to act when users flout the site’s ideological consensus. In the last weeks, both small accounts with few followers and well-known writers with an established audience have seemingly been banned for such trivial “infractions” as suggesting that the Democratic Party leaving X would be a counterproductive form of “purity politics.” And yet, it was on Bluesky that prominent journalists—including, but not limited to, the infamous Taylor Lorenz—openly rejoiced in the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. As long as progressives perceive the victim of a crime to be morally evil, the moderators on Bluesky appear to believe that threatening violence against them is justifiable.

More recently, Bluesky users with major followings reveled in the prospect of violence against Jesse Singal, a center-left journalist who has ended up in progressive crosshairs because of his reporting about detransitioners and involvement in other heated debates regarding trans issues. Some consisted in crude death threats: “I think Jesse Singal should be beat to death in the streets,” one wrote. But a surprising number explicitly justified calls for violence as being necessary to defend themselves against the ways in which he supposedly put them at risk. “Jesse Singal and assorted grifters want us dead so i similarly want him dead,” another user wrote.1

Though they blatantly violated Bluesky’s restrictive community guidelines, the platform hardly took action against such accounts. It even failed to ban users who shared what they believed to be Singal’s private address or made especially graphic threats against him. Evidently, the people making decisions for the kinder, gentler platform don’t mind actual death threats—as long as they are directed against those who, in their judgment, have it coming to them.

What can possibly explain the descent of a platform populated by progressives who claim to abhor all forms of violence into an echo chamber that revels in violence against anyone who defies its taboos or threatens its ideological conformity?

Some of the dynamic likely has to do with the nature of social media in general, and of microblogging platforms like Twitter and Bluesky in particular. There is also an ideological element—a justification of violence has been interwoven with far-left ideology for well over a century. But as I puzzled over the strange transformation of Bluesky, I was also reminded of a series of interesting social science papers published over the course of the last years. They suggest that the tendency to justify violence by the need to help virtuous victims serves a strategic purpose that is less than benign—and may even have worrying psychological roots.

-

Traditionally, most people have wanted to avoid being seen as a victim.

In “honor” societies, like the aristocratic milieus of early modern Europe, the impression that you could not defend yourself spelled dishonor and invited further attacks. When someone failed to pay you the respect to which you believed to be entitled, you did not claim to be a victim; you challenged them to a duel.

The same aversion to casting yourself as a victim persisted even after feudalism gave way to capitalism, and aristocratic “honor cultures” transformed into bourgeois “dignity cultures.” For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, people who were maltreated in some way would insist that such forms of disrespect did not have the power to undermine the dignity we all have as humans. If the duel is the canonical encapsulation of honor culture, the canonical encapsulations of dignity culture are an adult’s determination to keep a “stiff upper lip” in the face of adversity or a child’s resolve that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words shall never hurt me.”

But as Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have argued in The Rise of Victimhood Culture, we are now entering a new era. Dignity culture is waning rapidly. In its place, we are witnessing the rise of victimhood culture. This new dispensation “differs from both honor and dignity cultures in highlighting rather than downplaying the complainants’ victimhood.” Under these circumstances, people who portray themselves as victims enjoy an elevated moral status. And that, Campbell and Manning write in one of their papers, “only increases the incentive to publicize grievances, and it means aggrieved parties are especially likely to highlight their identity as victims, emphasizing their own suffering and innocence.” (Anyone who has spent time on social media—whether it be Bluesky or Instagram or TikTok—in the decade since Campbell and Manning first wrote that line can’t help but feel that it has proven to be prophetic.)

Ekin Ok and three co-authors from the University of British Columbia pick up on this thread in a 2021 paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Because of the spread of egalitarian values and the paramount importance they give to alleviating suffering, Ok et al argue, contemporary Western democracies have become highly responsive to people who are perceived as victims. Under these circumstances, making a claim to victim status may allow a great variety of people “to pursue an environmental resource extraction strategy that helps them survive, flourish, and achieve their goals.” As a result, “claiming one is a victim has become increasingly advantageous and even fashionable.”

But being a victim may not be enough. Even in contemporary Western societies, the perceived moral status of the victim is likely to influence how much assistance they will receive. As Ok et al demonstrate, for example, respondents are more likely to offer financial assistance to a man who gets shot while volunteering at a charity softball game than they are to a man who gets shot while patronizing a strip club. For “victim-signalling” to have the desired effect, it needs to be accompanied by “virtue-signalling.”

Some people, of course, really are “virtuous victims.” They have suffered genuine injustice. But since managing to establish your status as a virtuous victim is potentially lucrative, it also stands to reason that others will falsely claim to fall into this category. As Ok et al write, some people “intentionally and repeatedly convey their victim status as a manipulative strategy with the explicit aim of altering the behavior of receivers to the signaler’s advantage.”

The authors of the study even have a hypothesis about who is most likely to do that. People with Dark Triad traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, they argue, are especially likely to engage in “self-promotion, emotional callousness, duplicity and [a] tendency to take advantage of others.” Narcissists seek the limelight. Machiavellians are obsessed with gaining and exercising power over others. Psychopaths don’t care about social norms and disregard others’ emotions. People with all three traits are thus likely to be hugely overrepresented in the “subset of the population both adept at and comfortable with using deception and manipulation to attain personal goals.”

In a succession of clever tests, Ok et al provide plausible evidence that their theory is borne out by reality. Their first striking empirical finding is that people with dark personality traits are also more likely to falsely portray themselves as victims. In one of their studies, they ask you to imagine that you are an intern who is asked to work closely on a project with a peer who is competing for the same full-time job. The other intern is friendly to your face but you get a bad vibe from him. He doesn’t take your suggestions seriously, and you suspect that he may be talking badly about you behind your back. How do you respond?

That seems to depend on who you are. Asked to report on the behavior of the other intern, most participants in the experiment shared some negative opinions but refrained from making false or exaggerated statements. Respondents who had scored high on the dark personality triad, by contrast, were more likely to falsely report that the other intern had engaged in discriminatory behaviour such as making “demeaning or derogatory comments.”

The paper’s second striking empirical finding shows that the tendency of people with dark personality traits to falsely claim being a virtuous victim may also give them cover for engaging in bad behavior. In another experiment, they asked respondents to play a simple coin flip game, which was manipulated in such a way that its participants could easily use deception to increase their monetary payoff. It turns out that people who have portrayed themselves as virtuous victims were far more likely than their peers to lie and to cheat.

This helps to explain some of the features about Bluesky and other social media platforms that might otherwise feel puzzling. The kinds of claims to virtuous victimhood that are so common on that forum don’t just create cover for manipulative people to serve their own ends; they also seem to create license for disregarding moral norms—whether these consist in a prohibition of lying about others to ostracize them or (apparently) even calling for them to be killed.

-

When the study by Ok et al first came out, it made some minor waves. My fellow Substacker and recent podcast guest Rob Henderson argued that people with dark personality traits do what they can in any particular social environment to obtain benefits like prestige or material wealth. In current circumstances, he concluded, “those with dark triad traits might find that the best way to extract rewards is by making a public spectacle of their victimhood and virtue.” The psychologist and podcaster Scott Barry Kaufman put a similar conclusion even more starkly: “Some people,” he wrote, just “aren't good-faith actors in this ‘victimhood space.’”

At the time, I found the paper by Ok et al to be intriguing. And I knew that both Henderson and Kaufman usually have a good nose for bullshit. And yet, I have refrained from writing about its findings until now. After all, social psychology suffers from a serious replication crisis. Time and again, findings that are a little too neat or pleasing—from the idea that a child’s ability to resist the temptation of eating a marshmallow predicts later life outcomes to the promise that striking a “power pose” can set you up for success in a job interview—turned out to be dubious or outright false. And isn’t there something a little too neat about the idea that all of those people attesting to their superior virtue are secretly just narcissists and psychopaths trying to manipulate you?

It also seemed to me that a piece of the puzzle was still missing. Some of the people who target others on social media really do portray themselves as virtuous victims. They claim that they are part of the group which the victim of their attacks has supposedly targeted. And many of them clearly have self-serving goals, ranging from increasing their social clout to asking followers to donate cold, hard cash. But others who gang up on, or even threaten violence against, anybody who breaks perceived community norms don’t claim to be victims themselves; rather, they invoke the existence of supposed victims as an excuse to engage in cruel behavior. For all of its strength, there is something about the phenomenon I’ve been trying to make sense of that Ok’s paper can’t quite explain.

But then my research assistant sent me a new paper about the same subject. In a major effort, Timothy C. Bates and five of his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh set out to test whether the finding by Ok et al would replicate. Based on a larger dataset and employing alternative ways to measure key concepts like virtuous victim signalling, they came to an unambiguous conclusion: virtuous victim signalling really does seem to be driven by what they call “narcissistic Machiavellianism.”

More importantly, the paper by Bates et al also adds the missing piece of the puzzle. The “willingness to assert victimhood,” they hypothesize, may also “be amplified by the motive of sadistic pleasure in the downfall of weakened opponents.” In other words, the people who invoke the need to defend victims in order to justify treating others poorly don’t necessarily have a concrete strategic goal in mind; some of them do so because they are looking for a socially sanctioned outlet for their sadistic instincts. In those cases, the cruelty is the point.

To demonstrate that this is indeed the case, Bates et al use a standard battery of questions to measure respondents’ tendencies towards sadism, asking them such questions as whether they would be willing to purposely hurt people if they didn’t like them. They then test whether people with such sadistic tendencies are also more likely to score high on what they call the “victimizer scale,” which asks them to report on such questions as whether they have recently “enjoyed helping cancel someone;” whether they have “joined in on the persecution and condemnation of an individual or group accused of victimizing others;” and whether they have “sought to hurt the reputation of someone accused by others of victimizing.”

Two things are especially notable about this. First, not all sadists claimed that they themselves were virtuous victims. But second, the claim that they were acting on behalf of such victims—whether themselves or others—was the crucial fig leaf they needed to get away with their behavior. This finding, Bates et al argue, supports

the suggestion that sadism may be adapted to exploit strategic opportunities, specifically the legitimization of punishing and inflicting harm on individuals or groups which is created by successful virtuous victim signalling. If individuals high on Machiavellianism and narcissism exploit the resource-release response of nonvictims, sadism appears, as predicted, to exploit the opportunity created by victims in the form of the moral license granted by non-victims, legitimizing attacks on the victimizer by removing moral protection from those accused.

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Many people really do suffer genuine injustices. It is on the whole a good thing that contemporary societies are much more likely to give people who claim to have suffered undeserved misfortune a respectful hearing than they might have gotten in the past. While trying to keep a “stiff upper lip” may have its uses, we certainly wouldn’t want people to fear advocating for a more just society, or coming forward about ways in which they have been maltreated, because doing so might undermine their dignity or bring shame upon them.

But to be sensible and sustainable, every social dispensation—whether it consists in an explicit set of rules or an implicit set of norms—must protect itself against bad actors. When a platform or political subculture allows anyone to portray themselves as victims without any real evidence, bad actors will recognize an opportunity to swoop in. And then these bad actors will quickly weaponize false claims to victimization as an excuse to harass or physically threaten people who supposedly have it coming to them. In a culture of victimhood that has no inbuilt defenses against bad actors, things will—as the recent blowup on Bluesky reminds us—always eventually get out of hand.

Every community, however noble its stated intentions and however progressive its purported values, needs a mechanism for defending itself against the small minority of people who are prone to exploit and manipulate their social environment. If yours doesn’t have one, it’s inviting the sadists, the narcissists and the psychopaths to run the show.

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1 Like many of the things that are said or written about Singal, this claim of course lacks any basis in objective reality.

==

When victimhood is currency, expect counterfeiters.

We must fully depreciate "victimhood" as a form of social currency.

[adelle-ein]

god knows there's a lot of antisemitic microaggressions from "friends" that i'm willing to let slide. genuinely my standards aren't that high. which is obvious based on the people i was friends with pre-oct 7th lol. but like i do have limits and those limits have been crossed by

expressing a desire to join hamas/the houthis

expressing open support for hamas and oct 7th

referring to oct 7th as "legitimate resistance/oppressed rising up/revolution/freedom fighting"

denying oct 7th happened at all

insisting shani louk is alive (she is not, while her family had hope at first they have since found pieces of her she could not have survived losing)

joking about october 7th

joking about the holocaust

saying jews didn't "learn their lesson" from the holocaust

denying the holocaust

denying other jewish genocides

mocking the hostages and their families

wishing death on the hostages

using "zio"

saying israelis need to go back to brooklyn/florida/poland/etc

saying jews were and have always been well-treated in MENA regions

openly fetishizing and lying about mizrahi/sephardic jews

saying antisemitism doesn't exist/is over

saying ashkenazism don't face antisemitism

saying judaism is a dominant world religion

saying zionists/AIPAC/israel are controlling companies/the government/biden/trump/US military/US police/hollywood

mocking hebrew and jewish culture

mocking jewish holidays

treating jewish holidays as inherently evil

saying that israeli government crimes are being done in "our [jews'] names" and we bear the guilt for it

saying "happy [jewish holiday/memorial day] now stop doing genocide!!!"

saying diaspora jews are okay but not israeli ones

saying all israelis need to die/deserve to die/are settlers who therefore deserve to die

saying jews have no culture/stole all culture from muslims/arabs/christians

open insane blood libel conspiracies about (for example) israelis kidnapping blonde palestinian children or digging up graves for organ/skin theft

referring to israeli "blood money"

spreading and endorsing neo-nazis

spreading and endorsing holocaust deniers and other bigots ie norman finkelstein

spreading and endorsing avowed tankies, NK/russia supporters, and deniers of the ukrainian/uyghur/armenian/syrian/etc genocides

spreading rhetoric from other hate groups ie neturei karta

sharing cartoons of octopi, big-nosed evil men, netanyahu and co eating babies, etc

spreading conspiracy theories about spotify or tumblr or what the fuck ever being controlled by """zionist""" CEOs (and even explicitly stating they're jewish when they often aren't)

belittling ANY anti-antisemitism movement as anti-palestinian

using terms like "zionist rats/pigs/filth"

"all zionists should die/kill themselves/aren't human/should be gassed"

"the zionist entity/zionist state"

"hitler loved israel/was a zionist"

"[x] is worse than the holocaust"/"the holocaust is the only genocide that's taken seriously bc it's a genocide of white people"/"get over the holocaust"

being creepy and ogling about the token good jews that meet your insane standards

weighing in on deeply personal intracommunity jewish discussions in horrible ways

telling Good Jews that you’re so sorry about how isolated they’re being by the majority of jews, which are Bad Jews

saying not to donate to palestinian aid groups bc it could make israel money bc israel controls all the aid groups apparently bc they're just so greedy and want so much money

did i mention je-isra-zionists really love money

movements against "zionism in medicine" and other witch hunts against "zionist" (jewish) people in professions

participating in mass harassment movements and callouts against random jews online asking people to stop being antisemitic

openly calling for violence against jews and/or israelis

claims of dual loyalty against diaspora jews

support the american south bc they're victims of their government too (true) but kill all the israelis bc they definitely support every action taken by their government (hm)

jokes and memes. the fucking memes. you're monsters

"but lace, this is hyperbole, surely nobody is actually saying these things " -- these are all literally, exactly, personally things my "friends" and mutuals have said and reblogged/retweeted since october 7th. if you're reading this now there is a 99% chance you are one of them.

and yes i fucking hate the israeli government. what is happening in palestine is evil. i'm a nonzionist jew.

but i know that's not enough. unless you're a token in "jewish" voice for """peace""" willing to say "kill every single israeli and the holocaust wasn't a big deal and 10/7 didn't happen and antisemitism isn't real and i have never been afraid as a jew in my life" you're one of Them. Being pro palestine or even antizionist isn't enough, you have to want your whole family dead and you can't say a fucking word about the way you're treated by your lovely leftist "allies". oh and you better post about it! constantly! 24/7!!!! or you're secretly a zionist who loves dead palestinian babies! probably personally killing them yourself! you filthy ki- er, zionist rat!

so, yeah, if you think i'm one of Them, that's fine. feel free to block me, i'd much prefer if you did. and let me be clear that jews are not exempt from this either. it's reprehensible regardless

i am not your fucking good jew. If you have ever thought of me as one, fuck you. You are not my good goy, either. Fuck your bugs bunny "i wish all my jewish mutuals a happy rosh hashanah." Fuck your "pictures of African Jews worshipping" tokenism and "jews fighting god" memes. Fuck your nazi punches and your Anne Frank headcanons. Fuck all your disgusting pats on the back and keep my fucking name out of your mouth. If you can't stop reblogging blood libel then I don't want to see another goddamn WORD of it.

[crimechannels]

By • Olalekan Fagbade Address alleged misconduct of Police Personnel- Speaker tells IGP The factional Speaker of Rivers House of Assembly, Mr Edison Ehie (PDP-Ahoada 11) has urged the Inspector General of Police to address the alleged misconduct of some officers deployed to Rivers. Ehie made the appeal on Monday while addressing newsmen on an alleged invasion of his Port Harcourt residence. According to him, some men in company of armed police officers, forcefully entered his residence at 11:00 p.m. on Sunday, shooting sporadically in an attempt to kill him and members of his family. He claimed that he had been under attack since Oct. 30 when he openly supported the governor, Siminalaye Fubara, whom some lawmakers attempted to unjustly impeach. “Because we stood behind the governor to say that evil cannot reign over good in the state, I and my family have suddenly come under attacks and threats, especially after my election as the Speaker of the 10th Assembly. Ehie also commended people of the state for the concern shown to him and his family when the news of the attempt on his life went public. He, however, reaffirmed support for Gov. Fubara. But Mr Olatunji Disu, Commissioner of Police in Rivers, dismissed the speaker’s claims, saying the command had begun investigation of an alleged assassination attempt on him. (NAN)

[brsb4hls]

Reblogging for the addition, so many great points, especially about what's missing.

(And yes, Pratchett wrote pretty dark stuff too, but the love for his work and his characters was so tangible and it always had a point.)

I also agree about the botched character transfer from book to show already in season 1, but since the first season at least somewhat kept the core message, it was still enjoyable and I really like the actors, which helped.

The part about the lack of criticsm, well, I think that's mostly fandom dynamics.

It's the same in other fandoms too.

When new content comes out, the people who react the most and loudest are mainly shippers, who are so invested in their ship, that ship content, no matter how terrible, drowns out anything else and leads to unreflected glee (and to unwavering support in the hopes of getting more ship content).

I tried to word that as carefully as possible, I get it and it's a valid way to do fandom.

Everyone creates their own experiences and can cherry pick as much as they want.

But it's still frustrating, because it kills discourse.

Gaiman himself does not seem very interacting, so to speak. I don't think he would seek out anything on his own, so he probably does not see any negativity. His tumblr seems very business-y. It's mostly him promoting himself in a very neutral way, so that should not be what keeps people from voicing critcsm.

I did notice the passive aggression though and yikes! He knew people were joking and still answered with threatening to not make a third season, which did not sound like joking back, more like being miffed.

(I also do not get the impression, that he's actually fandom-supportive, especially due to his reactions to season 1 fan theories and I'm fully convinced the 'leak' was intentional and greenlit by him to 'stick it' to shippers in his own edgy way)

Well, joke's on him, I couldn't care less about another season after that debacle, so I'm free to criticize as much as I want ;)

Good Omens Spoilers:

I'm off work now and can sort my thoughts a bit.

So far I've seen only positive reactions and some posts complaining about criticism (which I have not seen in itself).

I very much feel there's something missing in the discussion.

I'm not gonna spoil people's fun and I certainly will enjoy fan stuff, but I cannot stop being pissed.

And it's not about wether Aziraphale reciprocates Crowley's feelings and if they are a canon romantic couple or not.

That's not the point. The point also isn't dolphins, it is that I feel that Gaiman perverted the original core of Good Omens.

He might have done it for angst and a dramatic build up and he might resolve it if there will be a third season (which cannot be guaranteed, so THAT ending could be what we have to live with), but whatever the reasons, he did it and it leaves a bad taste.

To me the point of Good Omens always was that heaven and hell as a strict and rigid concept were equally horrible.

The 'good place' so to say was always earth.

And being a human on earth was about being accepted with all one's quirks and also making one's own decisions.

If I remember correctly those points are mostly made by Adam (who actually is the main character of the book, it just has so many colourful supports you wouldn't notice).

So Aziraphale and Crowley fit way better on earth, because they're both too unique for a rigid corporate structure.

They already are their own little team even if Aziraphale sometimes displays a holier-than- thou attitude and needs Crowley to remind him what he would loose, if earth were gone.

So they both defy their respective bosses to keep the niche they carved.

The first season of the show manages to keep that core statement despite changing the characters up a bit.

And it ends like in the book, with Aziraphale and Crowley fighting the system and winning, being free.

And now it's all set back and actually made worse by Aziraphale willingly going back, as long as he's in charge.

In the show, Aziraphale was bullied by his superior and now takes his job. He thinks he can change the oppressive system from the inside instead of abolishing it altogether, or staying clear of it, because it is 'toxic'.

And yes, I did notice that tiny bit of blackmail from Metatron regarding Crowley, but after all that happened THAT should have given Aziraphale a clue about what he is getting into again.

He also doesn't seem to suddenly know his best friend of 6000 years anymore.

Crowley never had a problem with being a demon. He had a problem with how hell treated him.

And a problem with how heaven reacted to asking questions, which is a thing he loves, so why would he want to go back?

On earth, Crowley was completely ok with doing minor mischief and performing demonic magic.

And Aziraphale technically knows that, but he tries to drag Crowley along for purely selfish reasons. And on top he seems to think that as a demon Crowley is not good enough anymore.

And that completely goes against the point.

The point that has been made very clear before and made book and parts of the first season so great.

Gaiman let the system win.

(and pull Aziraphale back in after he successfully got out. That's like someone taking back their horrible job at the factory that pays minimum wages and pollutes the environment as long as they're forman).

[fallenhero-rebirth]

Brain update

First, let me say that this isn't about what anybody has done. My reactions are not in proportion to anything that has happened, and might be considered odd, weird and sensitive to people involved.

So let me explain.

I'm an Aspie (what we call ourselves in Sweden), on the autism spectrum. Yeah, might have guessed that from the story I'm writing, Sidestep is not the only one trying to figure out how people work.

Over the years I have built up an arsenal of knowledge and analysis to be able to pretend to be neurotypical, something that I can manage alright most days, but which breaks down once you get to know me better. I'm open with this at my current job, and luckily both my bosses seem to be okay dealing with open communication and just telling me what I need to do.

It was not always like this, and that is one of the reasons why I had a breakdown and needed to get off discord/tumblr.

Back in the late nineties, I had finally got my dream job. I was a product developer in the food industry, part of a rather small department of middle-class academics. I was the new hire, everyone else had worked there for years, and things were going well. Or so I assumed. I got cool projects, got along well with one of the sales people, and well, my boss was weird but bosses always are.

Three years later. Our parent company wanted to sell us off, everyone was starting to get worried about their job. We tried to expand into things were weren't equipped to do (you don't bring spices into a fruit jam line, will be hell to clean) and while I did the projects, I also raised an (in retrospect) too big stink about the fact that we were wasting time developing things we couldn't produce without expanding. My boss (who I had learned was a devout christian) started to get really weird, I got called in and he wondered if I was a member of a cult (I was often wearing a headscarf at the time because pressure on my head is good for stress relief). I also got told off for wearing army boots to work (we had lab shoes in the lab), because (I kid you not) if we had danish visitors to the lab (we didn't have visitors) they could be offended since they had once been occupied by Nazis. Yes, at the time I was an Antifa metalhead/satanist, it was a very volatile time in sweden and nazis were everywhere. Now they're a political party, go figure.

It all came to a head when I was confronted with a folder one of the secretaries of the department had where she had written down every odd and strange thing that I did, and there were a lot of accusations of things I quite frankly blocked out. Around this time I was suffering from bad burnout, had memory loss, my hair was falling out and I lost two bikes because I forgot where I parked them. All because of workplace hostility.

So for the first time ever, I went to the company doctor, who immediately sent me on a one month sick leave, and gave a reference to a therapist. When I went and told my boss, his reaction was "It can't be anything at work," in a dismissive tone. I wrote my resignation right then and there, left the building, snuck back a Saturday to clean out my stuff so I didn't have to meet anyone. Luckily I was backed up by my union, so I got unemployment despite quitting, and the therapist helped me get back on my feet and hook me up with some antidepressants.

Still, I was a wreck for years.

At the time, I had NO idea I was an Aspie. It weren't talked about, the only thing I knew about Autism, was from the various portrayals in movies, and well, in the nineties you can guess. Rainman pretty much was it.

What destroyed me the most was not that people disliked me, I didn't like them either, we didn't have anything in common, and middle-class people always scared me. No, what broke me was the fact that my system failed.

See, I had built up myself over ten years into someone I wanted to be. Smart. Capable. Metalhead. Researcher. Activist. I thought I knew the rules. How to interact.

It turned out I knew nothing. People had been talking behind my back for years, and I didn't know. Getting annoyed by my ticks, and I had no idea. Nobody ever brought anything up to my face until it exploded one day out of the blue. This is why I have ranted about anons on this tumblr. This is why I have been so openly against passive aggressive posts and bullying, especially the anonymous kind, because it destroys people and I don't think the people who does it knows the impact they can have. I hope they don't.

I have never gone back to the lab. I can't. I'm having heart palpitations just thinking about it when I'm writing this. I retrained. Became a machinist. Back to the working class I came from. Eventually started writing.

And this is exactly what these last months have felt like.

I thought I understood things. I was pretty open with being old, an Aspie, not understanding memes, or humor, or tik tok, or certain aspects of people's behavior like jealousy, but the problem with joking about this is that it's so easy to take as just a joke. That I'm just making fun of myself (oh it's that too). I got advice from some of you, which I ignored, because I thought that I could be different. That there was no danger in getting close. That I could be just another voice in the crowd. An occasionally evil avocado. That this couldn't blow up in my face, that everything was cool.

And then it did. And I was wrong. And the talking started, and things were coming out that I had no idea that was going on. That I was being held responsible for. Opinions that were spoken in my name. Events I was supposed to have been aware of and supported. All of a sudden I was omniscient, aware of the true passive aggressive meaning of every reblog, aware of every post in every room in the discord I wasn't even running. Wasn't even a mod on. All of a sudden I had power, and I had used it to hurt people. The people I cared about. Everything I wrote was taken in the worst possible way, twisted into things I never meant, and the more I tried to talk to people, the worse it went.

Look. I know this was at heart a war between people that just doesn't like each other and the things they do/the ways they behave. I'm still not entirely sure who's been involved, and I'm not interested in finding out. I tried to build a supportive space, reblog everyone's art and fics, encourage people to make their own things, get a kofi, get some money, make some friends.

And herein lies my problem.

I thought I understood how to be, and now I don't. I have no idea who hates my guts and who doesn't (well, except some who has very vocally let me know). I can't trust anything. I can't trust anyone. And it sucks. Someone I trusted stabbed be in the back because they were convinced I stabbed them in the back and that sucks more than I can describe. Every time I make a comment on AO3 or twitter it's after psyching myself up for half an hour, and I'm usually a wreck afterwards, because my brain doesn't know if they hate me too, and if I am imposing on them and making their day bad.

So yeah. I need to figure out how to be. How not to have a nausea attack every time I accidentally click open tumblr from pure reflex, looking away from the screen just not to see how may messages I have.

I never wanted to be the aloof author, but maybe I have to be. The question is if I can. I have been told I can't comment on pics or fics, because then I have favorites. And that makes people jealous. And it makes people think I take sides. I have been told I can't be on the discord, because then I will be held responsible for what the mods do there, and everything that's said even when I'm not around. I should apparently have someone manage the tumblr, it's not something that I, an author should do.

I now understand the authors who just stay away and remain distant, because people give themselves the power to write the narrative for you.

Part of me wants to tell people what I've told my current bosses, don't assume, just talk to me. I don't pick up/do passive aggression, I don't understand hints, I have trouble with nuance, I don't listen to gossip, I don't interact enough to know anything that's going on. Just ask before assuming.

Except that right now I can't. I can't talk about any of this. It's too close. It sets me off. It's getting better, sure, I'm on medication again, but the smallest thing still can ruin my entire day. I have no idea how long it will take me to recover and come back to some semblance of normality. I'm not posting this myself (my partner does). Writing is going well, because it lets me not be myself. I need those walls again. The therapy of writing about pain.

I'll rebuild them. I'm not entirely sure who I'll be on the other end of it. We'll see.

I have consciously not spoken about any details because those could be misunderstood, this is not a passive aggressive callout to anybody. I have no hard feelings towards anyone, I am not angry or upset, just confused and sad. I am truly so very, very, very sorry that I've hurt people, both by action and inaction. It was never my intention. I will do my best to do better in the future.

Still working on how to do that.

[thebluelemontree]

I don't know if you've already answered a similar question, if you have I apologize and will look better for it. But do you think Sandor and Sansa would still love each with how much they've both changed? They've almost become new people, but still the same beings.

It’s no problem. I’ve written about that here and probably touched on this in many other posts. 

I wouldn’t frame the question as would they “still love each other with how much they’ve both changed.” It implies that their feelings were already understood as love by them when they were together. What they had was a confusing mess of conflicting emotions that neither were fully capable of understanding or accepting at the time. Each had their reasons for why that was so, which goes to some of the issues that stood between them. While there is chemistry, intimacy, and empathy shown, IMO, it’s better to think of them as possessing the building blocks that can lead to love in the future.  

On the other hand, there was also:

The fact that she’s too young, immature, and unready for a consummated romance with anyone. She needs space and time to grow up and figure out what she wants. Until AFFC, she’s still only comfortable consciously fantasizing about Loras Tyrell, who is non-threatening, conventionally attractive, and uncomplicated. They are still relatively chaste/borderline erotic fantasies. The unkiss takes time for her to consciously accept and embrace as reciprocated erotic desire.  

The fact that he has no idea how to express himself without resorting to the language of violence that he understands best.

The fact that he copes with the unresolved childhood trauma and PTSD in unhealthy ways like his abrasive Hound persona, his overly-cynical worldview, and sometimes abusing alcohol when he’s under stress.

His immaturity and inability to simply ask for and accept the emotional support he wants (which she was perfectly willing to give) without freaking out over being vulnerable with someone. 

The fact that they are on opposite sides of a war where Sansa’s family is in open rebellion against her captors who Sandor owes fealty to. 

The fact that she’s the king’s betrothed. She’s his property. To explicitly act upon any romantic attraction would be considered treason, punishable by torture and death.  

The fact that there is a massive class disparity between them that overshadows the age difference in their world. That’s one reason why neither can put a name to this thing between them. A future queen / high lord’s daughter from an ancient house should not be fraternizing with a non-knight from a house only three generations old. That’s why they struggle even knowing what to call each other because using first names shows too much familiarity and intimacy. This would be true even without any of the other conflicts. Class controls everything in Westeros. 

And yes, he still owes her a big heartfelt apology for his abhorrent behavior during the Blackwater, and he should beg her forgiveness.  

Most of these points I elaborate on in more detail in the links above. If you notice, though, most of these things have either been resolved or are in the process of being resolved. None of these issues were ever insurmountable obstacles. 

The ways in which Sansa and Sandor have evolved even in their separation has been largely positive and complementary of each other. They haven’t grown apart or become incompatibly different at all. If anything, it’s pushed their feelings further along, and it’s clear they are very much on each other’s minds. Since we can see Sansa’s perspective firsthand, she’s only thought about Sandor more since he left.  

Sansa has grown and matured a lot more when we see her in the TWOW sample chapter. Had the five-year gap panned out, she would be legally an adult in Westeros; however, dropping it doesn’t seem to have affected GRRM’s intentions for any of his POVs. She’s in the company of unconventional, sexually mature women in their early twenties who can be role models in navigating adult relationships. The sassy way she takes no shit from a brutally honest Harrold Hardyng shows she has confidence and the ability to go toe-to-toe with Sandor’s gruff personality without getting flustered and running away. After she wipes the floor with him with her wit, she ends up winning Harry over to the point he’s begging for her favor. There is no point in the sample chapter where she voices any anxieties about not feeling ready for marriage, sex, or children. This no longer seems to be an issue for her, so we can assume she feels okay with having an adult relationship at this point.   

Her time as a bastard girl has made her warmer and friendlier. She was always kind, but proprieties and courtesies can also read as aloof and re-enforcing strict class boundaries. Can you imagine Kings Landing!Sansa hugging someone like Lothor Brune, a landless knight, as she does in TWOW? Or preferring the company of a sex-positive widow who enjoys taking lovers or a bastard girl over the “perfect sister” she saw in Margaery Tyrell and her cousins? Hell no. That would never happen. This new Sansa lacks those prejudices and is openly affectionate towards people she was raised to keep at arm’s length. Once she loosened up and stopped reciting courtesies, people actually got to know her and like her for who she is. That’s what Sandor always wanted from her, right? To drop the courtesies and flattering bullshit and just be a real person with him, not a talking parrot. While that criticism was harsh and rudely put, it had a lot of truth to it. It seems to have made Sansa into a happier person and more in touch with her authentic self. Now that she has accepted in Feast that she wanted Sandor like that, what is there to stop her from acting on it later?

The Quiet Isle didn’t exist before Feast. It was written for Sandor to recover and rehabilitate. Not just physically, but he’s getting what constitutes psychological counseling and a treatment plan that deals directly with his worst traits. He appears to meet with the Elder Brother often enough because the latter seems to know quite a bit about Sandor’s backstory, what his issues are, and exactly who Sansa Stark is. The rest of the time, he must observe the no talking rule and do meaningful work as a novice. This man, who once flaunted his contempt for those who couldn’t defend themselves as weak and deserving of death, is put to work digging graves for the innocent victims of violence. All day long, he has to look at the faces of men, women, and children killed by evil men with that philosophy. One brother even yells at him for carelessly tossing dirt around with the shovel, and he silently takes it. No smart ass backtalk. In the evening, he has to serve food and clear plates for men he would have once mocked. They’re men of faith, they’ve renounced violence, and Sandor sits lower in status than them. To Sandor’s credit, he humbly submits to all this in a show of respect and humility. It’s like he wants to learn these lessons they are offering and is allowing himself to be schooled. Now Sandor may always be Sandor on some level (if Stranger kicking down the stable doors and refusing to be gelded is any indication). Still, it does look like he’s become a gentler, healthier, and sober version of himself. The only part of Sandor that Sansa rejected was the Hound, and it’s both stated in the text and by George himself that the Hound is dead. Period. And yeah, it seems like Sandor is in a place where he is unlikely to backslide into old behavior, and he can make that heartfelt and necessary apology to Sansa. I don't think Sandor could ever be okay with moving their relationship forward without making amends first. It wouldn't sit right with his sense of remorse and personal responsibility, which is a good thing. 

All these changes are for the better for them as individuals and as a possible future couple. Contrary to your ask, I would say a positive, fully-fledged romance with "HEA" potential wouldn’t be possible or believable without all the growth and changes they've undergone. When they reunite, they can do so on more equal footing. 

Not that there aren’t more conflicts to overcome. They both are currently wanted fugitives for murders they didn’t commit, so they both need to clear their names and reclaim their true identities. There is still the matter of Sansa’s marital status as Tyrion isn’t dead but their marriage was also unconsummated. She could try to have her marriage officially annulled by the Faith somehow, but to do that, she’ll have to take the risk of revealing her true identity. Again, these don’t seem like plots that won’t be resolved anyway at some point. What about that class divide though? Well, the Starks aren’t like Tywin or Cersei, and they actually value things like faithful service. No reason why Sandor couldn’t be awarded a lordship and lands in gratitude for saving the lives of both Arya and Sansa. I’m just sayin’.  

[eujazmine]

all gifs from christianscody !

JAZMINE HARPER - TV TROPES

manipulative bastard

The Manipulative Bastard is the master manipulator of people, in essence, a character who manipulates others through their emotions, perspectives, psychologies and any other way they can get them dancing to their tune. This is the guy or gal who gets off on playing head/mind games—clever and dangerous and lacking comedic overtones (usually). She always has a plan ready, but rather than do any work, the Manipulative Bastard prefers to play on other characters' emotions and mental states and then watch the victims destroy themselves as they waste their energy on fighting against fake dangers or their friends.

are we surprised? with a lack of loyalty to others, including her own family, jazmine will gladly step on others and use their weaknesses to her advantage to get what she wants. she’s been a manipulative bastard since she was a child, ever since she first discovered how much her mist control could control the perceptions of others. observant and resourceful, jazmine has no qualms using her talents to gain unauthorized information about others and using it for her personal gain. she views people as her pawns, and her selfish way of thinking gives her little guilt about physically or mentally forcing others into submission. this is a trait she’s picked up from her own father, which we will delve into in the next trope.

daddy’s little villain

mention of emotional abuse tw

She's the daughter of an Evil Overlord, who shares her parent's ambition, cunning, and cruelty. She could be anything from a simple Spoiled Brat to an Overlord in waiting. She's also likely to be a Princess (since even villainy is improved with that), although she will still prefer wearing black or dark colors over pink. 

jazmine’s mortal father can largely be thanked for the way she is now. from as young as she can remember, he was training jazmine to be a powerful force in both the demigod and mortal world. while he raised her to think she could accomplish anything she worked toward, she was mostly a pawn to satisfy his thirst for power. he didn’t care much for her as a daughter; mostly for what she could do for him. she started to recognize this during her formative middle school years, consequently turning her childhood role model into her worst enemy. when she started rebelling against him and acting out, he sent her away full-time to a camp on the other side of the globe. since then, the issues only progressed, eventually leading to a falling out in which she hasn’t seen or spoken to her mortal family in many years. 

this upbringing has fueled her desire to constantly be the best in her fields of expertise, which is partly why she quested for years in hopes of some type of recognition. with the heavily hidden hope that she could one day rub in his face that she had succeeded without him, all her life she has fought to try to ‘prove her worth’ to others despite being the daughter of a minor goddess (or titan). because her father only loved what she could do for him, she places everyone in two categories: the puppets, and the puppeteers. 

and she will never be the puppet again.

broken ace

He's tall, charming, strikingly good-looking, well-spoken in five languages, and classically trained in even more instruments. But inside, he's an ugly, writhing mass of self-hatred and Parental Issues. Expect him to have at least one bizarre trait or ability that should not be overlooked, as well as an unhealthy attitude about love, life, and humanity in general. He most likely doesn't have anyone that loves or respects him for what he really is. This may be justified. This character is usually male, but not always. Also, he may just be a perfectionist crumbling under his own standards. The chief difference between the Broken Ace and the usually female Stepford Smiler is that the Stepford Smiler wants to appear normal at all costs, often to the point of hurting herself emotionally (or because she's sociopathic). This guy has the same setup, but is more talented and wants to be the best, loved by all, and accepted.

although the timeline wasn’t as accelerated as she had hoped when she was a child, jazmine was making waves in the world of deities before her last quest against zeus had occurred. now, as a semi-retired quester, she is captain of the football team and starting to make a name for herself in the mortal fields of business and sports. despite the air of nonchalant superiority that she constantly tries to present, she is in a constant state of despair. right when she starts to undergo some development in her relationships with others, they leave, and she is constantly failing her own impossibly high standards. she’s crumbling, and at any point she is ready to run away again.

ice queen

Much like a Tomboy, the Ice Queen is a major character archetype which is somewhat hard to define. Her signature characteristic is that she is cold; the ambiguity comes from what "cold" means. She has a cold heart, a frosty demeanor and very often a resting bitch face; she attracts but will never be wooed. The Ice Queen is considered dangerous to love because she will not (or cannot) love back. She's not much for friendship either, preferring to be alone. Situations where an Ice Queen "thaws" and learns to enjoy the company of others are so common that they have their own trope.

she’s cold and takes no shit. she holds people at a distance, even those that could potentially be considered friends. she doesn’t believe in unconditional love, and she believes that most affection direct toward her is generally a ruse to get her guard down. she’s unnecessarily rude to others, almost relishing in the negative reactions at times, but to her, she’s just keeping it real.

the trickster

A trickster is a character who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. The Trickster openly questions and mocks authority, encourages impulse and enthusiasm, seeks out new ideas and experiences, destroys convention and complacency, and promotes chaos and unrest. At the same time, the trickster brings new knowledge, wisdom and many An Aesop. Even when punished horribly for his effrontery, his indomitable spirit (or plain sheer foolishness) keeps him coming back for more. Tricksters can be anything from gods of chaos, bedeviling heroes for a few laughs, to master manipulators who use cruel ploys and sadistic choices. They can also be heroes (or more likely Anti-Heroes) who make up for a lack of strength or bravery with manipulation, planning, or just plain cheating. The trickster is often a Master of Disguise and may have magical or super-powers. They're often found Walking the Earth.

although this description was much more relevant when she was younger, jazmine has a penchant for drama and chaos. she genuinely has fun engaging in pranks and tricks, and she gladly lifts a symbolic middle finger to authority in any chance that she gets. in middle school, she was nearly expelled from a mortal school because of all her tricks, and she spent a sizable portion of her adult years before eonia traveling and engaging in casual mayhem. when she isn’t getting revenge or fulfilling a paid request, she generally has fun toying with others.

deadpan snarker

A character prone to gnomic, sarcastic, sometimes bitter, occasionally whimsical asides. The Deadpan Snarker exists to deflate pomposity, point out the unlikelihood of certain plans, and deliver funny lines. Typically the most cynical supporting character. In most cases, it is implied that the snarker would make a good leader, strategist, or consultant given their ability to instantly see the flaws in a constructed plan. More often than not, their innate snarkiness is the only thing preventing the other characters from comprehending this for themselves. In other cases, the Deadpan Snarker resorts to sarcasm because they're the Only Sane Man. Tends to be shot a Death Glare when they go too far (and probably isn't without one of their own, either). Note that due to the definition evolving, the "Deadpan" part of the title has gradually become The Artifact and a deadpan delivery is no longer a necessary part of the trope.

jazmine is no stranger to delivering biting remarks coupled with foul language. she’s quick to point out flaws, opting for the brutally honest approach more times than not. she’s aware that her language can hurt others, but she finds it easier to escape the frivolities and get to the point. depending on the person, she exaggerates this trope by trying to draw out a bad response from them, mostly for her own entertainment. people already view her as heinous, so why not embrace the reputation, right?

survivor guilt

death mention tw

You might be the Last Of Your Kind or someone else made a Heroic Sacrifice for you or you lived through a Restricted Rescue Operation, but whatever the reason, you're going to feel a massive sense of guilt. 

although the quest with adelphie and celeste was technically a success, with the trident successfully being returned back to poseidon, the team had faced major losses. adelphie had lost her life, and celeste had suffered debilitating injuries. physically, jazmine suffered the least, and it’s a guilt that she continues to carry.

aloof big sister

to the majority of the hecate family, especially @rostameu

He's smarter, stronger, faster, more talented, and more refined than the hero, and — just to add insult to injury — he's probably sexier, too. His only problem seems to be moving his face out of that expression of bored, dignified disdain. And he just happens to be the elder brother of one of the main cast, which often gives them a raging inferiority complex. Will most likely double as the Ineffectual Loner and Noble Demon, thereby running the risk of becoming an Ensemble Darkhorse. May or may not be evil, strictly speaking, but is almost guaranteed to fight against the protagonists at one point, and spout off Cryptic Conversation to prove how much better informed he is. May or may not be a Stealth Mentor and/or consider his younger siblings annoying. Often an integral part of a mysterious organisation, and may be the Enigmatic Minion or even a Hero Antagonist in that case.

OKAY, so the running joke with jazmine is that she dislikes her siblings, which is very true tbh. i’m not going to speak for rostam and say most of that stuff actually applies, but jazmine is very cold toward her younger brother and views herself as much better in every way. with loner tendencies, disdain toward her brother, and shady side hustles, she matches this trope very well, and it was only fitting to add a trope about disliking siblings to jazmine’s task. and yes, she’s technically one of the youngest right now but hush.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 16, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, news broke that a number of pro-Trump House Republicans, including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), are organizing the “America First Caucus,” which calls for “a degree of ideological flexibility, a certain intellectual boldness… to follow in President Trump’s footsteps, and potentially step on some toes and sacrifice sacred cows for the good of the American nation.”

The seven-page document outlining their ideas, obtained by Punchbowl News, is a list of the grievances popular in right-wing media. It calls for regulation of “Big Tech,” which right-wing commentators claim is biased against them; an end to coronavirus lockdowns, which the authors say “have ruined many businesses to bankruptcy such that many Americans are left unemployed and potentially destitute”; opposition to “wasteful social justice programs like the Green New Deal”; support for oil and gas; and rejection of “globalist institutions.”

And, with extraordinary clarity, it shows the ideology that underpins these positions, an ideology eerily reminiscent of that of the elite slaveholders of the 1850s American South.

“America was founded on the basis of individual and state sovereignty,” the document says, but that federalism has been undermined by decadent and corrupt bureaucrats in Washington. The authors propose to get rid of regulation and the regulatory state, thus restoring individual freedom. This is the exact argument that animated elite slaveholders, who vowed to keep the national government small so it could not intrude on their institution of human enslavement.

The authors of the America First Caucus platform lay out very clearly the racial argument behind the political one. America, the authors write, is based on “a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,” and “mass immigration” must be stopped. “Anglo-Saxon” is an old-fashioned historical description that has become a dog whistle for white supremacy. Scholars who study the Medieval world note that visions of a historical “white” England are fantasies, myths that are set in an imaginary past.

This was a myth welcome to pre-Civil War white southerners who fancied themselves the modern version of ancient English lords and used the concept of “Anglo-Saxon” superiority to justify spreading west over Indigenous and Mexican peoples. It was a myth welcome in the 1920s to members of the Ku Klux Klan, who claimed that “only as we follow in the pathway of the principles of our Anglo-Saxon father and express in our life the spirit and genius of their ideals may we hope to maintain the supremacy of the race, and to perpetuate our inheritance of liberty.” And it is a myth that appeals to modern-day white supremacists, who imitate what they think are ancient crests for their clothing, weapons, and organizations.

Emphasizing their white nationalism, the members of the America First Caucus call for “the architectural, engineering and aesthetic value that befits the progeny of European architecture… stunningly, classically, beautiful, befitting a world power and source of freedom.” They also condemn the current education system, calling it “progressive indoctrination” and saying it works “to actively undermine pride in America’s great history and is actively hostile to the civic and cultural assimilation necessary for a strong nation.” They conclude that “The future of America’s position in the world depends on addressing the crisis in education, at both the primary and secondary level.” They envision a world in which people who think as they do control the nation.

Indeed, the document embraces the Big Lie that Biden did not, in fact win the 2020 election. Despite the fact that all evidence proves that the 2020 election was one of the cleanest in our history and that President Joe Biden won, fair and square, the America First Caucus Policy Platform insists that the 2020 election was characterized by “massive voter fraud” and calls for limiting the vote.  

Behind all this, of course, is the idea that a Democratic victory in an election is, by definition, impossible.

This extraordinary document makes it clear that Republican leaders are reaping what they began to sow during the Nixon administration, when party operatives nailed together a coalition by artificially dividing the nation between hardworking white taxpayers on the one hand and, on the other, people of color and feminist women whose demand for equality, the argument went, was code for government handouts. In the years since 1970, Republicans have called for deregulation and tax cuts that help the wealthy, arguing that such cuts advance individual liberty. All the while, they have relied on racism and sexism to rally voters with the argument that Black and Brown voters and feminist women—“feminazis,” in radio host Rush Limbaugh’s world—wanted big government so it would give them handouts.

It was a political equation that worked with a wink and a nod until former president Trump put the racism and sexism openly on the table and encouraged his supporters to turn against their opponents. They have now embraced open white supremacy.

The platform of the America First Caucus appears to have woken up some of the business Republicans—who want tax cuts and deregulation, but not the mindless white nationalism of the Trump supporters—to what has taken over their party. Today House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) took to Twitter to say that “America is built on the idea that we are all created equal and success is earned through honest, hard work. It isn’t built on identity, race, or religion. The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln & the party of more opportunity for all Americans—not nativist dog whistles.”

Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), the third most powerful Republican leader in the House, tweeted, “Republicans believe in equal opportunity, freedom, and justice for all. We teach our children the values of tolerance, decency and moral courage. Racism, nativism, and anti-Semitism are evil. History teaches us all we have an obligation to confront & reject such malicious hate.”

In an op-ed in the Washington Post today, former President George W. Bush defended immigration in our past, present, and future as “a great and defining asset of the United States.” “New Americans are just as much a force for good now, with their energy, idealism and love of country, as they have always been,” he wrote as he described his new book, made up of portraits he has painted of Americans who came originally from other nations.

Will the business Republicans’ newfound inclusiveness manage to reclaim their party? It’s not at all clear that what conservative commentator Tom Nichols calls “an extremely dangerous authoritarian party” will not win out.

Republicans in the Arizona state Senate today put teeth into the Big Lie when they announced they have hired a private company connected with Trump to recount the ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona, in the 2020 election. They claim they want to “restore integrity to the election process,” although the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, dominated by Republicans, voted unanimously to certify Biden’s win and both state and federal judges have verified that the existing count is valid. County officials have distanced themselves from this recount.

At the same time, though, news is not good for Trump’s supporters. Yesterday, the Treasury Department dropped the bombshell that Trump’s 2016 campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with Russian intelligence to swing the 2016 election, while House Republicans accused the intelligence community of spying on them. Today the Department of Justice launched a civil suit against Trump adviser Roger Stone, saying that he and his wife “intended to defraud the United States” by hiding income and that they owe nearly $2 million in back taxes. It is not unimportant that Manafort and Stone began their political consulting careers under Richard Nixon.

Perhaps most notably in this era of social media, McCarthy’s tweet recalling the Republican Party’s older, inclusive days got what is called “ratioed” on Twitter, with significantly more people disparaging the tweet than liking it. The Republicans are “the party of the Confederacy, white supremacy, Black voter suppression, Kremlin collusion, and violent insurrection,” one person wrote. “The party of Abraham Lincoln has become the party of Jefferson Davis.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[fountainpenguin]

How much of Anti-Bryndin and H.P.’s friendship was a lie (on AB’s side)?

Anti-Bryndin’s mother, Anti-Ember, led the Anti-Fairies through the War of the Sealing Divide with an iron wand. She became infamous and was widely feared, definitely solidifying the image of scary Anti-Fairies in the eyes of the Fairy public.

Anti-Bryndin deliberately painted himself as the opposite of this, trying to cast himself as the gentle and kindhearted son of a tyrant in the hopes of repairing relations. Up until, y’know... Iris Needlebark initiated humans into the Amity program and Fairy World lay claim to the human godkids... in a society that already prevented Anti-Fairies from graduating with godparenting degrees. That’s the point where Anti-Bryndin snaps and goes full tyrant like his mom, which eventually leads to Anti-Cosmo overthrowing him.

[Cnt’d below the cut]

But before that point, Anti-Bryndin portrayed himself as gentle and H.P. bought into this narrative. When they first met, H.P. was a struggling single father of 9 (10 counting Graham) who just left the torments of the Eros Nest and was catapulted into the world of ambassadors and holotypes. He didn’t seem like a threat at the time. The word was that the Pixie race would “grow exponentially” and Anti-Bryndin wanted in on that... especially since, as you recall, Anti-Fairy World is a very young nation in the Origin of the Pixies timeline. H.P. is older than Anti-Fairy World is (both nations were classified as “Fairy World” until H.P. was 29).

Imagine you’re High Count of a scorned nation trying to build itself after a war, your species openly discriminated against to the point where you’re barely allowed to cross the border, let alone visit any Fairy World shops. Your nation’s three Bridges to Earth (once sacred landmarks) were all shattered by Fairies. Those Bridges can only be restored by the Fairy Elder, who has the von Strangle family for her personal guards. Your best chance to get those Bridges back - to get your RIGHTS back - is to sway the Supreme Fairy Council to vote in your people’s favor. Of course you’re going to try swaying the newbie.

Anti-Bryndin’s interest in H.P. was immediately piqued when H.P. voted in favor of rebuilding the Anti-Fairy Bridges before Anti-Bryndin even asked to, as seen in the chapter “Cotton Candy Oatmeal”-

"Very well," said the Pink Robe. "All in favor of granting the Anti-Fairies another direct Bridge between the cloudlands and Earth, raise your right hand."

All three of the Anti-Fairy Robes did so. So did the Purple Robe at the Fairy Council table. So did Anti-Bryndin, Anti-Elina, and Anti-Phillip. A few ambassadors along our table likewise signaled assent, and after thinking about it for a second, I did too. Surprised heads turned towards me. A few soft mutters broke out, then died away. Anti-Bryndin fixed his red-orange stare on me like a crockeroo sizing up its next victim to prank. He stayed watching me even as I brought my attention back to the Council members.

H.P.’s vote was a signal to Anti-Bryndin that he was less likely to discriminate against Anti-Fairies and could be a useful ally. After this point, Anti-Bryndin 100% tried to act chummy with H.P. in the hopes of swaying him, hence the high amount of attention he paid H.P. alongside the constant showering in gifts throughout the next several chapters.

Anti-Bryndin entered this friendship deliberately intending to use H.P. to sway the Council votes, win rights for the Anti-Fairies, and win personal favors from a fellow ambassador. Everything he did after that point was single-minded: “Win the Head Pixie over, no matter the cost.” At all times, no matter what else was going on, Anti-Bryndin was listening to every word that left H.P.’s mouth and adjusting his actions to fit H.P.’s comfort level. H.P. likes massages? Bam, he gets massages. H.P. finds it amusing to watch young Anti-Cosmo be bossed around? Bam, Anti-Bryndin will make a special effort to bully him in front of the Head Pixie. You’ll get to see more evidence of HOW well Anti-Bryndin was listening once we reach the war... Oof. Calculating man, that Anti-Bryndin.

But the relationship wasn’t wholly one-sided. During “What Karma Is,” Anti-Bryndin was legitimately caught off guard by the reveal that H.P.’s energy levels were “at equilibrium” according to Anti-Fairy culture. That made him a bit more paranoid of the way he treated H.P., not wanting that to come back to bite him... although he very much continued to play his cards. “From Straw to Gold”? That meant nothing to him. “The Phoenix and the Courgette”? Nah.

Anti-Bryndin was very good at playing H.P.... except for a few instances when Fairy and Anti-Fairy culture collided. In “Phoenix,” for instance, he encouraged H.P. to clean his wings (a super casual, polite gesture in Fairy culture, socially akin to helping someone load their grocery bags or holding open a door for someone), but squirmed the whole time because in Anti-Fairy culture, the set-up was extremely uncomfortable (socially sexual). That was a moment his concentration started to break, and shows he was determined to keep up the act of friendship even when it stressed him.

Forgetting to meet up on time with H.P. in “Senseless” is when things went downhill for Anti-Bryndin’s plans... Even a careful, calculating man can make mistakes, and H.P. never quite recovered his trust in the High Count after that. That blow to the friendship is something H.P. clung to for centuries, which led to him pushing Anti-Bryndin’s comfort level in pursuit of his own gain in “Off.”

By that point, Anti-Bryndin found himself in a very bad position. He had underestimated how quickly pixies reproduce and as their population grew exponentially, Anti-Bryndin struggled to maintain friendly relations with H.P. The tables were turning and H.P. needed a guide to the world of ambassadors less and less. If he didn’t need a guide and couldn’t trust Anti-Bryndin’s intentions, why continue the friendship?

Anti-Bryndin repeatedly appealed between “Off” and the start of the war, trying to win H.P. back over with hit-or-miss success... but H.P. (mostly) blocked him out, determined not to fall for those tricks again. H.P. still values Anti-Fairy culture and continues to vote favorably towards Anti-Fairies rights in politics (eventually playing into his decision to refer to himself as “evil” when the canon series rolls around... If the Anti-Fairies are evil, then just call him evil too, because he supports their rights. Deal with it.)

... There’s a very, very valid reason H.P. is so attached to Anti-Cosmo, even though they tease and torment each other regularly. Anti-Bryndin took advantage of H.P. and he was good at it. But because Anti-Cosmo is young, H.P. holds the power in that dynamic. Anti-Cosmo is clever, but he lacks Anti-Bryndin’s charisma and takes everything personally.

Anti-Bryndin was easily able to “seduce” H.P., you could call it, while feeling nothing himself beyond a mild “I can trust the Head Pixie to have my back” sort of relationship. Anti-Cosmo would never succeed in seductive tactics because he’s not convincing in the slightest if he isn’t legitimately interested in wooing you... and H.P. likes that about him. He feels like Anti-Cosmo doesn’t have a dishonest bone in his body (whether or not that’s actually the case) and feels that Anti-Cosmo genuinely likes him. Who cares how annoying (or publicly hated) your best friend is as long as they genuinely appreciate your company?

[noona-kisses]

Search Query: WWW (Series Review)

Search Query: WWW popped onto my radar when it was announced last year because it was a Noona Romance -my favorite kind of K-drama. Sadly, I didn’t get to watch it then because I was busy with my job at a Korean hagwon, applying for jobs in Japan and preparing to move, and then later actually moving. I was able to watch it recently, though, and I really wanted to put my thoughts about it down, because I have many. Future reviews of dramas will probably follow a 2 episode per post format; basically following the weekly airing styles. This one, however, will be a basic overview of the series and my thoughts on the ups and downs of it. I’m ready and willing to have discussions, because I have A LOT of thoughts on this drama and I’m always interested to see how other people interpreted things.

So let’s get it started!

Synopsis:

Bae Ta Mi is a 38-year-old director at one of Korea’s two biggest web portal sites, UNICON. Due to UNICON’s corrupt Korean infrastructure, Ta Mi ends up fired from her position and beginning at new job at UNICON’s main competitor, BARRO, with only one goal: to destroy UNICON. Along the way she ends up meeting Park Mo Gun (often written in subtitles as “Morgan”), the 28-year-old CEO of the gaming music production company Millim Sound and begins a complicated relationship with him.

What I Liked:

Female Representation: 

I didn’t want my synopsis to be too long, so I purposely said nothing about our other characters, but let me make this clear: I was LIVING for the relationships between our three female leads. Bae Ta Mi, Song Ga Gyeong, and Cha Hyeon are all women who, by society’s standards, are unlikable. Ta Mi appears cold to people who don’t know her and she’s not afraid to speak her mind, and she’s extremely confident in her own abilities. Ga Gyeong is clever and cunning, as well as ambitious, and she’ll do anything to achieve her goals. Hyeon is physically strong and opinionated, and she is definitely not afraid to make those opinions known. And these descriptions can’t even begin to really depict what the characters are like onscreen. 

All three of them are completely different from the women we see in the typical K-drama. These women don’t need a man to save them, and they definitely won’t let a man distract them from what they want. They also refuse to bow down under pressure. Add to this that all of them are in positions of power in their companies (Ga Gyeong is second only to the CEO, and Ta Mi and Hyeon are both directors) and are the ones calling the shots, and you’ve got some incredibly powerful females. Even our female baddies (Ga Gyeong’s mother-in-law and UNICON’s CEO) are women. The women in this show are powerful, diversely written (some side characters are very uncertain, or man-obsessed, or smart) and the impact this makes can’t be denied. As a 30-year-old woman, I was rooting for all three women and was so happy to see characters that I could really relate to.

Complicated Female Relationships: 

Often in dramas I see the relationship between females falling into two categories: endlessly supportive and close besties, or bitter enemies. I absolutely love that this drama went beyond that. It was a clear depiction that friendship can be a maze, and one wrong turn can get you stuck. For example, a flashback and Ta Mi’s own words tell us that her and Ga Gyeong used to be very close and friendly, until Ga Gyeong got married and promoted at work. By the time we really meet them, they’re at each other’s throats. We know, as viewers, that it’s because of complicated reasons (Ga Gyeong is under A LOT of pressure from her mother-in-law and parents to do things Ta Mi doesn’t agree with), but the characters don’t know that, and that’s the point -in real life, you don’t know anything unless the other person tells you. Similarly, Hyeon hates Ta Mi because she thinks she’s sneaky, and basically the root of all of UNICON’s evil. It’s not until she begins to work closely with Ta Mi that she can really see what she’s like, and that she’s more complex than Hyeon originally thought. 

Conversely, Hyeon adores Ga Gyeong and still thinks of her as the kind, helpful and honest girl she used to be in high school because that’s what Ga Gyeong shows her. Hyeon rarely sees the side that Ta Mi saw for so long, and it puts a small kink in the relationship when Hyeon realizes Ga Gyeong might not be as good as Hyeon thinks she is. Our trio fight, bicker, and threaten each other even as they protect and save one another at the same time. They aren’t all BFFs by the drama’s end, despite the awesome final scene -but they understand each other more, and I really appreciate that the writers kept that complexity until the end.

Modern Issues: 

I really, really love some of the issues the drama talks about. The debate about deleting keywords from the ranking (celebrity vs. civilian, rumor vs. private life) was interesting to watch because I honestly never thought about that before. Western portals don’t use keywords the way the show does, but doesn’t Google still use a dropdown menu of the most searched words? Doesn’t Twitter show the top trending hashtags? Being placed on there could seriously negatively affect a person’s life, and I love that the show tried to create a discussion over whether it was ethical to delete keywords, and how the decision can affect those involved (i.e., actor Ha Min Kyu wanting to die because people are criticizing his former host bar job and Ta Mi almost crumbling under the weight of knowing she pushed for the decision that caused his attempt).

As a woman who is hesitant on marriage, I was also loudly cheering when Ta Mi called Mo Gun out on his assumption that her wanting to live together but not marry was weird. She tells him that society considers his view (getting married) normal, and that he will never have to explain why he wants to get married because no one questions it since it’s expected, while she is always going to have to explain why she doesn’t want to get married because society considers her the odd one. This is especially relevant to Korea, where women are still expected to get married and have kids in their twenties, and any woman who doesn’t want to get married is considered strange.

The drama also talks about the issue of familial obligations through Ga Gyeong and her husband, Jin Woo. Her parents basically expected her to marry well and obey her husband’s family to help their own company out, while Jin Woo’s mother expects him to help her keep Ga Gyeong on a leash and connected to her. Ga Gyeong and Jin Woo both hate their parents, and by the end of the drama both of them are refusing to do what they’re told -which, again, goes against a piece of Korean culture that is still strong to this day. Children are expected to take care of their parents in their old age and to respect them and their decisions. Ga Gyeong and Jin Woo together basically make the point that there is a limit to what children should be expected to do for their parents. Yes, it’s told through the chaebol lens, but the lesson is still important to working class families also.

The drama also has one big issue that’s discussed, beginning to end, through the interactions and relationships of our characters: communication. In today’s world, communication is becoming more and more difficult, even as more forms of communication are being created. And lack of communication causes problems. If Ga Gyeong had been open with Ta Mi about the reasons she was making certain decisions, Ta Mi never would have thought so ill of her. If Jin Woo had been more open about his own feelings and wants with Ga Gyeong, he might have been able to show her how much he cared before she left. Hell, they might even have been able to do something before divorce became a necessity. But there are scenes within the show that also stress how important communication is, most notably when Alex is head-hunted by UNICON. Ta Mi reservedly tells him she’ll support him no matter what, even though she knows they can’t afford to lose him, and it’s not until Brian (BARRO’s CEO) says she needs to tell Alex this, that she does -and realizes he didn’t want to leave, but he felt like he wasn’t needed anymore. 

Ta Mi and Mo Gun’s argument about marriage is also an example. They never sat down and really TALKED about it. He just kept saying “It’s okay, I can wait” and Ta Mi never REALLY pushed him to discuss and think about the topic as hard as she needed to. It became a recurring issue in their relationship and was pretty much the main reason they had so many problems. It’s an issue that doesn’t have an easy ending, but if both parties FULLY understand it, then it’s easier to be in the relationship.  Another example is Hyeon’s early judgement of Ta Mi. Hyeon never really talked to her. They would argue and debate during meetings at times, but they never really discussed their personal beliefs about their work and why they thought that way. If they had communicated more openly before, Hyeon probably wouldn’t have been as harsh to Ta Mi in the beginning. There are tons of examples throughout the example of why people need to communicate, and I’m thrilled a drama attempted to create a discussion about it.

Men Supporting Women: 

In this drama, the women are in charge. Sure, Jin Woo’s family is the one Ga Gyeong is stuck doing the bidding of, and Brian is BARRO’s CEO and the Korean president and all those higher in power in government are male -but it’s the women who are the ones with the real power. It’s Ga Gyeong’s mother-in-law who basically rules KU Group with an iron fist. Ta Mi and Hyeon are the ones who put BARRO on the track to beating UNICON. Ga Gyeong is the one who fights back against the dirty dealings in UNICON. And in the wake of these women are the men supporting them. Jin Woo gently offers shelter and aid as Ga Gyeong fights his mother, and even speaks up against his mom when she tries to have him bring Ga Gyeong back into the fold; Brian gives advice but otherwise lets Ta Mi and Hyeon do what they think is best for the company; Mo Gun acts as Ta Mi’s shield and comfort when things go wrong, but he cheers for her all the way. 

I love seeing how much the good men in this show support the women in their lives, and how they show that support. One of the greatest scenes is when Ta Mi and Hyeon make to block the acting CEO of BARRO (Kevin) from walking into the building to sign a harmful regulation. Brian walks in to take his position back and help stop it, but after that the entire scene focuses on Ga Gyeong walking to take her place as UNICON’s new CEO and Ta Mi and Hyeon strutting through the building in pride at standing up for what they knew was right. Brian quickly becomes a background piece as the screen is filled with our three heroines. If more men in reality were like the supporting men in this drama, I know women would be better off.

Music: 

This OST is BOMB. I loved every piece of music I heard, from the instrumentals to the voiced ones. Mamamoo’s “Wow” is a power pop song that makes me stand straight every time I hear it, and Elaine’s “Search” always gave me a thrill because I knew amazing things would happen when I heard it. The music can really make or break a drama (I’ve watched some dramas that made me roll my eyes HARD at the song choices), and this one chose its pieces well. The songs fit the scenes and I will most definitely buy the OST in the near future.

What I Didn’t Like:

Ta Mi & Mo Gun’s Relationship: 

I’m going to say it: by the drama’s end, the lead romance was easily my least favorite part of the show. Don’t get me wrong, it started off okay and I loved it at first. Their first meeting, how quickly they connected, the small jokes they had -it was adorable, and I honestly squealed a little bit. And then they broke up. Then they got together. Then they broke up again. Then together again. When a couple has a dramatic breakup three or four times in 16 episodes, there is a SERIOUS problem that needs to be addressed, not to mention that final breakup loses its edge because a viewer is left going ���I’ve already seen that before.” I understood why Ta Mi kept pushing him away, but I really, really disliked the fact that she was so wishy-washy about it. One push away before a big finale breakup and reunion, fine. But two or three? No, that’s when you know the relationship shouldn’t be happening in the first place. 

I also disliked the relationship because of how Ta Mi acted/looked with him after the first few episodes. She always looked tired and withdrawn around him. A relationship isn’t supposed to make you feel or act that way. I don’t think it’s the actress’s fault (I put full blame on the director here), but as characters in a show I should see that the relationship does energize her -but even some of their more active scenes (like the piggyback vacuuming scene) shows her as lethargic and almost uninterested. 

But, again, it was the constant breakups that annoyed me the most. As I mentioned above, one of their biggest issues was about marriage: Mo Gun wanting it, Ta Mi not wanting it. In real life, this is an issue that’s a deal breaker with two people. A GOOD writing of this problem is done one of two ways: either the couple agreeing to date and see what happens because they care about each other after talking about it, or the couple staying apart because they can’t deal with the uncertainty. Either way, the couple communicates their wants for the future, discuss possibilities, and then sticks to whatever decision they make. And like I said, one breakup over this is fine. But these two continued to break up over this over and over again and it drove me insane. I got SO tired of their relationship by the second breakup I was tempted to start skipping through their scenes together. That’s a pretty good indicator that the romance needs work.

Lack of Flow: 

In any kind of writing, whether it be for a novel or a screenplay, there has to be a good flow. Each scene should glide effortlessly into the next one, and storylines should work together as a cohesive unit, not push the viewer out of the story. Honestly, I feel like this drama would have been pretty damn perfect if the romances for Hyeon and Ta Mi had been tossed out, and we had only focused on the women and their work the entire time. I feel this way not because I hate romance (I love it to death and Hyeon and Ji Hwan were adorable together) but because every time the show went from our heroines fighting in the business world to them giggling with their beaus, I felt like I was watching a different drama. The tone of the drama, and the women themselves, changed dramatically anytime the story shifted to focus on the romance.

In addition, I also felt that the romance was shoe-horned in. I told a friend of mine, “I’m convinced the writers wanted to make the women lesbians and kept forgetting the men even existed.” I still stand by that, because I swooned more during some of the women’s scenes together (Hyeon moving Ga Gyeong out of harm’s way, Hyeon drunk and sharing Ta Mi’s bed, Ta Mi giving Ah Ra her expensive purse) than I did during any of the scenes with Hyeon/Ji Hwan and Ta Mi/Mo Gun. The romantic scenes with them (especially with Hyeon and Ji Hwan) often felt like the writers went, “Oh, yeah, we have to do something with those men” and then wrote them in. This drama isn’t the worst case of incohesive writing I’ve seen (“Strong Woman Do Bong Soon” takes that prize with its identity crisis), but it was bad enough that I had to reorient my brain when we went from business to romance.

Final Episode: 

Hear me out: I loved everything about the first part of the episode with the reading of the ethics guidelines, Ga Gyeong destroying KU Group, and the final scene with the car. My issue is definitely not with that. My issue is that over half of the episode is dedicated, yet again, to Mo Gun and Tami’s rocky relationship. I had to sit through almost forty minutes of a woman moping over the man she pushed away and their inevitable reunion. I wanted more of an emphasis on the OTHER side of the story. Where was Ga Gyeong those three months she was gone? What made In Kyung decide to actually help her? How was UNICON faring after Ga Gyeong stepped down? How did the politicians really deal with the revelation Ga Gyeong put out there? 

I really wanted to see how our heroines’ actions up to that point affected their lives and the lives of those around them, as well as their relationships to each other. I wanted them to get their payoff for all their work and the fights they went through. Instead, I got a pretty rushed finish to that one and then sat through half an episode of Ta Mi running from her feelings. I feel cheated, almost, and that’s not a feeling I want to leave a drama with. Even though that final scene in the car was GLORIOUS, I wish the drama had done more for this women in the finale than just keep their romantic relationships alive. Or, if they were determined to have romance, focus on Ga Gyeong and Jin Woo, the ONLY couple I cared about in the entire show.

Overall:

Despite my heavy criticisms at the end there, I really did enjoy this drama. I cried, laughed, and cheered with these women. By the end, I felt I had made three new friends and found some awesome role models for myself. Ta Mi, Hyeon, and Ga Gyeong alone are enough to give this drama a high rating, but I’m giving it a 7/10 because despite its faults I did enjoy the ride and for once a drama made me care about the shady business side of its story -that’s extremely difficult to do.

So if you love strongly written female characters who are more like someone you’d find in real life than a make-believe fair princess and who will readily take their lives and their fates in their own hands, you definitely need to check this drama out. I adored it and will watch it again whenever I need a reminder that women are badass and shouldn’t hide it.

[k-llama-llama]

The Fall P.1

Monsta X AU: 8th member

Zoey x Monsta X

Monsta X deals with some unwelcome visitors.

A/N: I’m an evil person and I’m sorry.

Requests are CLOSED…but your feedback is still super important to me.

Masterlist and other Follow Me links in bio!

Zoey balanced the final business card in her tower of cards, raising her hands in success when it didn’t fall over.

“It’s official, I’m a prodigy.” She announced.

“It took you an hour to do that.” Minhyuk reminded her. “Don’t get too excited.”

“Well I’m sorry, I chose to pass the time doing something productive instead of staring out the window.”

“Children.” Shownu warned tiredly. 

Zoey rolled her eyes. “We’re all bored, Nunu, can we just go home.”

He raised his eyebrows at the nickname. “We have a meeting at two.”

“You said it was at noon.” Kihyun whined. “So we’ve been here since eleven-thirty.”

“And you won’t even let up go get food.” Hyungwon complained. “Fooooood.”

“Food after the meeting.” Shownu promised. “I’m buying.”

“Funny.” Zoey blew her cards down. “You thought you had a choice.”

The door to the meeting room opened and they all sat up straight, expecting their manager to walk in. Instead, it was the new receptionist from the lobby.

“Can we help you?” Jooheon asked kindly.

“Ah, yes. There are some people here to see you.” She said quietly.

“People?” Changkyun asked. “Are the managers here early?”

“No, your parents.” She corrected him.

“My parents?” He asked incredulously.

“Sorry, not yours.” The woman seemed nervous. “Ah, miss Zoey, it’s your parents.”

Zoey’s eyes went wide.

Wonho stiffened next to her. “I thought we had it on file that they were not to contact her. Or did you not read it.”

“Oppa.” Zoey warned him not to be mean to the woman.

“I did...read it, I mean.” The woman knotted her hands together and looked down. “But, ahhh, your father was creating a bit of a scene and we wanted to ask you before we called the police to have them escorted off the premises.”

“Call them.” Shownu and Kihyun said together.

“Wait.” Zoey looked up. “Send them up.”

“What?” Jooheon demanded. “You want to talk to them?”

She snorted. “No. But I might as well so that they’ll leave me alone for another three years. You can tell them to come up.”

The woman disappeared quickly, likely trying to escape Wonho’s glare.

Zoey rested her head on the table and started rebuilding her castle of cards.

“Why are you acting so calm?” Jooheon asked. “Your parents are on their way up.”

“When was even the last time you saw them?” Hyungwon asked. “Shouldn’t you be stressed?”

“The last time I saw them, oh tall one.” Zoey carefully leaned the cards against each other. “Was out first Christmas as a group, when they kicked me out of the house.”

“And you aren’t at all worried that this is the first time you’ve seen them since?” Changkyun asked.

Zoey shook her head. “I’m over it. I’ll let them say whatever it is they want to say, and then I don’t have to see them again.”

There was a knock on the door, and they looked up as the receptionist peeked back in. “Your parents.”

“Let them in.”

She stepped aside and let Zoey’s parents step into the room.

They hadn’t changed in the three years since she’d last seen them. They still looked as severe as ever, though there was a slight nervousness to them now that Zoey had never seen before. It slowly dawned on her that they didn’t know what to expect anymore. She’d grown without them for the past few years, and they had no idea if she would listen to them anymore.

“Mom. Dad.” She nodded. “How nice of you to visit.”

“Soo-ji.” Her father nodded.

“We were going to be in town, and we haven’t seen you in a while.” Her mother added. “Could we...could we maybe speak alone.”

“No.” Zoey said simply. “But you can sit.”

They carefully took the seats at the end of the table, close to Hyungwon and Minhyuk, both of whom looked mildly disgusted.

“What can I do for you, oh darling parents?” Zoey never looked away from her card house.

Her father nodded to her mother, who began speaking. “We’ve seen you in the news a lot recently, and we started to realize that we’ve missed a lot of your life.”

“Translation,” Zoey smirked. “I finally accomplished something so now I’m worth your time.”

“Soo-Ji!” Her father snapped.

“Don’t yell at her!” Shownu snapped right back. 

“He’s serious.” Kihyun glared at her father. “We’ll call security.”

“On your own parents?” Her father asked incredulously.

Zoey shrugged. “Can you guys just get to the point. We have a meeting to go to.” She said the words that her parents had said to her a thousand times, over every birthday and holiday, as an excuse as to why they couldn’t spend any time with her. Her mother seemed to wince.

“You have a boyfriend now.” Her father said. “We saw it in the news.”

“I do.” She gave a tight-lipped smile. “His name is Seungcheol, not that it’s any of your business.”

“And is he...a nice boy?” Her mother asked hopefully.

Zoey shrugged. “Wonho gave him the okay. And I like him. So there are all the opinions that matter.”

“You’re all going on a world tour soon, you must be excited.” Her mother appealed hopefully to the boys.

“We are.” Kihyun said. “Have you ever been to one of our concerts?”

There was silence, as everyone knew the answer.

“Look, Mom, Dad, I don’t mean to be rude. But we all know you’re trying to half-ass giving a crap about my life because I’m less of an embarrassment now. So please tell me whatever it is you came here to tell me, and leave before you make things worse.”

“We were hoping that you could help us out.” Her father said finally.

“How?” Wonho glared at them. “Why would you ever think she would do something to help you?”

“Oppa.” Zoey warned. “What do you need help with?”

“We’re...ah.” Her mother looked at her clasped hands. “Money is a little tight right now.”

“You’re asking her for money?” Jooheon snorted. “You have got to be kidding.”

Zoey tilted her head. “I thought you rented out my room. How could money possibly be an issue?”

“You know, a good daughter would support her parents when they ask.” Her father gave her a dirty look.

“A good father would support his daughter without her having to ask.” Zoey retorted. “So tell me what you really need to money for.”

“Your father’s company is having a business conference. In Cancun.” Her mother told her.

“A vacation?” Zoey rolled her eyes. “You want me to pay for your vacation so you can look better at work?”

“It is a work trip.” Her father said, sounding strained.

“If it’s that important, I’m sure your company will help you.” Zoey replied. “I’m not giving you any money.”

“What are you going to do with it then, it’s not like you have anyone else.” Her mother abandoned all pretence of civility, glaring at her openly.

Shownu went to stand up, but Zoey held up a hand to stop him. “My family, mom, is right here. And funnily enough, they don’t ask me for money.”

“If you let us walk out the door, we won’t be coming back.” Her father warned. 

“Good. I wouldn’t want you to.”

“You’re an ungrateful little brat, you know that?”

“I’m getting security.” Minhyuk shot to his feet.

“Minhyuk.” Zoey called to him. “Wait.”

She turned to her parents. “You can walk out of here on your own, or we can have you escorted out. Your choice.”

Her mother stood grabbing her purse. “We’re leaving.” She pulled her husband to her feet. “I hope you’re happy.”

“I’m doing alright.” Zoey smiled. “Have a good life, parents. See you in another three years?”

“Not likely.” Her father stormed out of the room, her mother close behind him.

Zoey let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “I need some air.”

“Zo!” Wonho reached for her. “Are you okay.”

“I need some air.” She repeated.

She stood and left the room, heading for the stairwell and assuming her parents had taken the elevator. At the top of the stairs, she paused, leaning her head against the wall.

Her parents were gone. She’s held it together in front of them, but it was hard for her to process the finality of what had just happened.

The last thing she remembered was the feeling of hands shoving her back, before she tumbled down the stairs.

And everything went black.

[kihyunswrath]

Anyway it’s not “too much” to hope that Wonho publicly contacts Monsta X or does something together with them, or even gets reinstated.

We are not “lucky” to have him exist somewhere in the industry in general, especially before we know what plans his agency even has for him, if any. No, that was expected to happen, it was an extremely generic, standard procedure, not a luxurious bonus. Starship and Highline were handling everything just ok. 5/10. If they had given him anything less, that would have been downright evil, because he had done absolutely nothing wrong. No, he had done quite the fucking contrary, profit-wise. Should he, or we, really be thankful that he got some kind of a new contract in a tiny made-up company no one has ever heard of because of course all Korean corporations could have also just... let him stay unemployed until he dies? Like what’s with y’all pretending this is somehow overly exceeding expectations, when to me this feels like a very beginner level decency, something I would do for a random NPC in a game, but something I’d feel fucking ashamed to do to someone who used to be one of my most successful, hard-working, motivated and kindest employee? How fucking low were you placing the bar? Y’all really need to get out of that weird submissive American I-should-thank-my-corporation-for-firing-me headspace.

If Starship had actually done their job like they should have been, 1) none of this would have happened in the first place, but also 2) Monsta X members and Wonho could talk about their situation and mention one another, not just in a year or two, but right fucking now, as we speak. They could meet each other in public, they could reply to each others’ posts/comments/videos and they could openly make plans together, collabs-related (if they want those) or otherwise.

Starship doesn’t need to rehire him for any reason for sure, even if that would be a much wiser move than all that whatever whatever they’ve been doing instead. And sure, Starship doesn’t owe him anything, because it’s not like it’s any company’s responsibility to hire a specific person to work for them, or to hire anybody at all. Wonho is no longer under them and they’re obviously not responsible for his career anymore. But it’s still not “too much” or even totally unreasonable to hope for him to be reinstated, or to do things together with Monsta X members, because 1) he very clearly wanted to stay with them, 2) he was unfairly removed because of false allegations that were NOT career-related, 3) all parties would benefit from it financially and 4) there are hundreds of thousands of Monbebes out there who would support their union in whatever form possible. It might not be what Starship/Highline/Monsta X/Wonho have had in mind, they might not be planning it, they might not even want to. But it’s not too much to ask for, it’s not out of the scope of possible, normal and totally fine things to happen.

And do you know what’s also true? He hasn’t done anything yet aside from opening social media accounts and saying a couple of words to his fans through his fancafe. He could have done that as a private person too, by just opening an instagram account or something. So don’t you think it’s a little bit fucking early to thank Starship or Highline for what they have not yet done? I mean, the very least we could do as fans was to not start thanking every fucking capitalist company that exists for reconsidering him in general (but not yet enough so that he can, like, type a thumbs-up emoji under his old group members’ selfies, apparently), when they find out those painfully obvious, made-up lies about him were indeed... lies? The very least we could do was to not start saying we are lucky that this industry took him back, way before he has anything but a fucking header in his new online platforms?

And before any of you rushes to say it, obviously we are lucky to have Wonho in our lives in general. We are lucky that he wanted to continue his career. We are lucky that he didn’t just tell us all to fuck off, because that would have been his right. We can’t ask him to do anything for us since continuing to be a singer, idol and a celebrity should be his 100% independent and voluntary choice. But oh yes we can ask and hope that Starship gives him more opportunities, because it’s not like it’s a fucking burden for them or anything. It isn’t even a threat to them, because a couple of thousand of antis being whiny in a news article or two is something they’d have to face anyway as a well known company. They need to get the hell over the fact that not every internet troll is going to love their actions unconditionally. It isn’t an outlandishly big service to Wonho either. It’d just be them continuing to make even more money out of a person who used to be their biggest moneymaker once. It���s simply something they might just as well do. A normal business activity, if you will.

“False” hope can end up in disappointment for sure, and this situation we have right here is unarguably much better than what we had before. Wonho is doing ok I assume, and he has chances, and that’s not nothing. I know how realistically spoken we don’t have much of a chance of Monsta X and Wonho ever returning together for real, or even collaborating much. I also do know that him returning to a subsidiary agency as an official solo artist hasn’t happened too often in this industry. Over the 10+ years I’ve been a kpop fan, I’ve come to learn that if you ask for one improvement you will have to face disappointment twice. I know all that. But you all need to understand that just because it’s not very likely, or because Wonho isn’t like, horribly suffering right now, doesn’t mean asking for more is unreasonable or out-of-question. Y’all who say this is somehow spectacularly considerate of Starship or some shit just demonstrate how low standards we have set for these companies. They can show just the smallest amount of decency once a year and y’all rush to worship them for it and then turn around and tell other fans that they should never ask for more, because apparently Starship could have been a total asshole too. Level the hell up with your discourse, or we can’t ever get anything real done.

[dirtyhaikyuuconfessions]

Any cpop recommendations? :o

bRUH DO I HAVE CPOP RECS

I don’t really know how much exposure you’ve had to cpop so I’m just going to list a bunch of people/groups I’m into and hopefully you’ll find your shtick?

Hua Chenyu 华晨宇 A god among men. Literally has the most amazing voice ever. He became popular after appearing on and winning 2013′s Super Boy and actually became a mentor for other wannabe singers on another singing competition show. (That’s how I discovered him, lol.) I would buy all three of his albums if iTunes wasn’t rude and didn’t have them available on my iTunes Store.

Jolin Tsai 蔡依林 A queen. She’s actually pretty well-known in c-ent, so if you’ve been into cpop for even just a little, you’ve probably heard of her name. I’ve only really listened to her more recent stuff since I just got into her music, but it slaps. She also openly supports LGBT+ people, so fuck yeah. We stan a woke queen.

Wu Jiacheng 伍嘉成 A more obscure artist on the list, Wu Jiacheng is a member from XNINE who recently released an EP. His style is more funk so it might not be your cup of tea, but I absolutely love it. He also adores cats. The title of one of his songs literally translates to A Docile Cat. Please check him out and the rest of XNINE (if Wajijiwa would stop splitting them up) on 玉儿 YUER’s YouTube.

Li Ronghao 李荣浩 A sweet, sweet man. There’s not one evil bone in his body. His music’s pretty soothing and soulful. I need to listen to more of his music, tbh. He recently got engaged though!! Congrats, my dude!

If you’re into kpop, try checking out: Zhang Yixing 张艺兴 and Kris Wu 吴亦凡.

Fun mentions: G.E.M., Eric Chou 周兴哲, Chris Lee 李宇春, JJ Lin 林俊杰.

I’m just gonna plug XNINE because I remember watching the show they were created from four years ago. Not a lot of people know who they are, sadly. Some of the members are becoming more popular now, like Wu Jiacheng when CYZJ aired and Xiao Zhan now as the Untamed is airing, but Wajijiwa still loves to keep Guo Zifan locked up in the fucking basement. They don’t have that much music so you don’t have a lot of catching up to do.

Disclaimer: Fun fact about the cpop industry, idol cpop groups have seriously flopped until last year with iQiyi’s rendition of Mnet’s Produce 101 show! So basically any cpop group you plan to stan will likely not have many songs out or their members won’t even be singing but will be acting instead. It’s a fun time. Keep that in mind as you check out any of the following cpop groups below.

NINE PERCENT The group that was formed out of Idol Producer (iQiyi’s Produce 101). They’re all very lovable boys and each one has at least one single out that you can listen to! They only have one EP out though because their company hates them and can’t align their schedules to do activities together. All of cpop stan twitter has heard about them. Their music is pretty good. Their leader Cai Xukun 蔡徐坤 has come out with many songs and three of the members are also part of the group NEX7. 

UNINE The group that formed out of Idol Producer Season 2! (Technically it’s called Qing Chun You NI because iQiyi got slammed with copyright violations from Mnet, ha.) iQiyi is doing a WAY better job of keeping them together as a group so definitely check them out! They just debuted this past May and already have an EP out. 

Other groups from produce-like shows: R1SE, Rocket Girls, BlackACE, New Storm.

TFBoys I don’t listen to their music but they’re like the og boy group. They debuted when the members were super young and now they’re all grown up and going to college! So cute. They’re like the only idol-ish cpop group that’s managed to survive all these years and get some international recognition, so that’s why I included them on the list.

WayV 威神V Technically just NCT China, but I’m still gonna promote them as if they’re cpop (when I kind of just consider them Chinese kpop. There’s a slight variation in my book. Just trust me). I really like their EP and all of the boys are super cute. They’re still not too popular IN CHINA in comparison to the other groups above, but they’re well-known abroad. So, you get to deal with their international fans (and all their nonsense) a lot but not with their c-fans.

UNIQ Half-Korean, half-Chinese group, UNIQ was formed back in 2014 but due to China banning hallyu, they couldn’t do many promotions in Korea and their careers never took off. They released one album and countless other songs. All five of the members are decently ranging to very popular in their respective native countries (Seungyoun with PDX101, Yixuan with AFO, Wenhan with QCYN, Yibo with the Untamed and other dramas, Sungjoo with his dramas), they just haven’t really been ~together~ as a group. Hopefully they’ll be together again, but even so, it’s worth it just to follow the members individually because they’re all so sweet and talented and crackheads.

I hope this list is helpful! Sorry it’s so long. ;-; I don’t really get to talk about cpop outside of our baby cpop community on twitter. Let me know if you like any of the artists/groups!!

[fisabilillah-inthewayofallah]

Dividing line between hypocrisy and courtesy

Question

1. I would like to know the dividing line between hypocrisy and courtesy, because in many cases I feel that there is some two-facedness in people’s behaviour and dealings, based on their interests and whims and desires, and it is said that it is just courtesy. Is this true? 2. Is it possible for true friendship to be mixed with a little hypocrisy? I have a friend who does not love me as I thought she did. She held a special place in my heart that was shared by no one else, but recently I found out that my status with her is zero, and her behaviour with me for many years was superficial. I thought, and everyone was certain about that, that our friendship was strong, and until now I do not know how to end this friendship after finding out what is really going on. 3. Can the way this friend behaved be regarded as hypocrisy? 4. What is the punishment for hypocrisy in friendship?

Answer

Praise be to Allaah.

Some people often confuse the meanings of hypocrisy, politeness and flattery, and the reason for that is the failure to understand the true meanings of brotherhood and sincere friendship. In their minds they do not separate truth and falsehood, good conduct and bad.  

Firstly:

The word hypocrisy usually indicates pure evil. Hypocrisy is never something praiseworthy in any way whatsoever. The psychologists have defined it as showing a good face in order to achieve something bad and harmful.

So the hypocrite is never seeking something good, rather he is seeking to harm people and betray them and bring evil to them, and he achieves that by showing a good face and appearing to be loving and friendly.

Allaah says, warning against keeping company with hypocrites (interpretation of the meaning):

“O you who believe! Take not as (your) Bitaanah (advisors, consultants, protectors, helpers, friends) those outside your religion (pagans, Jews, Christians, and hypocrites) since they will not fail to do their best to corrupt you. They desire to harm you severely. Hatred has already appeared from their mouths, but what their breasts conceal is far worse. Indeed We have made plain to you the Ayaat (proofs, evidences, verses) if you understand.

119. Lo! You are the ones who love them but they love you not, and you believe in all the Scriptures [i.e. you believe in the Tawraat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel), while they disbelieve in your Book, the Qur’aan]. And when they meet you, they say, ‘We believe.’ But when they are alone, they bite the tips of their fingers at you in rage. Say: ‘Perish in your rage. Certainly, Allaah knows what is in the breasts (all the secrets)’”

[Aal ‘Imraan 3:118-119]

The same applies to everyone who presents a friendly face to people and appears loving, when in fact he is seeking to harm them and do something bad to them.

Secondly:

As for the one who is polite, he does not wish ill to anyone and he is not trying to harm anyone either outwardly or inwardly, but he may show a friendly, cheerful and kind face in order to soften the heart of one who has a bad attitude, or so as to ward off his harm from himself or others, but without agreeing with him in his falsehood or supporting him in any way, either by words or actions.  

Ibn Muflih al-Hanbali (may Allaah have mercy on him) said:

It was said to Ibn ‘Aqeel in al-Funoon: I hear the command of Allaah (interpretation of the meaning): “Repel (the evil) with one which is better (i.e. Allaah orders the faithful believers to be patient at the time of anger, and to excuse those who treat them badly) then verily he, between whom and you there was enmity, (will become) as though he was a close friend” [Fussilat 41:34], but I hear people regard those who show something other than what they feel as hypocrites. How can I obey Allaah and rid myself of hypocrisy?

Ibn ‘Aqeel said: Hypocrisy means showing a good face whilst concealing bad intentions, and harbouring ill will whilst appearing good in order to cause harm. What the verse refers to is showing a good attitude in response to a bad one for the purpose of changing it to a good one.  

From this it may be understood that hypocrisy means concealing ill will whilst making a show of goodwill in order to cause harm and evil. The one who shows a good attitude in response to bad treatment in order to remove evil is not a hypocrite, rather he is trying to put things right. Have you not heard the words of Allaah “then verily he, between whom and you there was enmity, (will become) as though he was a close friend”? This is done in order to soften hearts, ward off enmity, extinguish the flames of hatred, create love and correct beliefs. This is how one makes friends and wins hearts.

Al-Adaab al-Shar’iyyah (1/50, 51).

Hence politeness is part of a good attitude, and the scholars said a great deal about it.

Ibn Battaal (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: Politeness is part of the attitude of the believers, and it is lowering the wing of humility to people, speaking gently, and not speaking harshly to them, which are among the best means of creating harmony.  

Fath al-Baari (10/528).

In his Saheeh, al-Bukhaari included a chapter entitled “Chapter on politeness with people” in which he said:

It was narrated from Abu’l-Darda’: We smile at people when our hearts are cursing them.  

He also included the hadeeth of ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her) concerning this topic:

A man asked permission to enter upon the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and he said: “Let him in, what a bad son – or brother – of the clan he is.” When he entered he spoke kindly to him. I said to him: O Messenger of Allaah, you said what you said then you spoke kindly to him? He said: “O ‘Aa’ishah, the worst of people in status before Allaah is the one whom people leave alone for fear of his foul mouth.”

Ibn Muflih al-Hanbali (may Allaah have mercy on him) said:

This attitude of Abu’l-Darda’ does not mean approving of something haraam; rather it is politeness that may achieve some purpose. This is what is meant by the report narrated in al-Saheehayn and elsewhere from ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her): “O ‘Aa’ishah, the worst of people in status before Allaah is the one whom people leave alone for fear of his foul mouth.”

It says in Sharh Muslim and elsewhere: Being polite to one whose foul mouth you fear. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) did not praise him to his face or in his absence, rather he sought to soften his heart by giving him some worldly thing and speaking gently to him.  

Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr quoted the words of Abu’l-Darda’ with regard to the virtues of good manners.

Al-Adaab al-Shar’iyyah (1/50).

The scholars wrote chapters on politeness, and Ibn Abi’l-Dunya wrote an essay entitled Politeness towards people, in which he said (p, 48, 50):

It was narrated that Humayd ibn Hilaal said: I met some people who regarded politeness as an act of charity towards one another.

It was narrated that al-Hasan said: Being friendly towards people is half of reason. End quote.

Hanbal said that he heard Abu ‘Abd-Allaah – i.e., Ahmad ibn Hanbal – say:

People need politeness and kindness, and enjoining what is good without harshness, except a man who does evil openly, who must be told and stopped.  

Al-Adaab al-Shar’iyyah (1/191).

Shaykh Ibn Baaz (may Allaah have mercy on him) said:

In some cases politeness dictates that we should not say the truth. Is this regarded as a kind of lying?

He replied:

That depends. If the politeness will result in rights being denied or falsehood being approved, then this politeness is not permissible. But if the politeness will not result in any falsehood, and it is just kind words that are general in meaning, and it does not involve testifying falsely in anyone’s favour or denying anyone’s rights, then I do not think there is anything wrong with it.

Majmoo’ Fataawa al-Shaykh Ibn Baaz (5/280).

Thirdly:

It is also important to differentiate between praiseworthy politeness and blameworthy flattery. People mix them up because they are confused about proper manners and attitudes nowadays.

Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar (may Allaah have mercy on him) said:  

Some of them think that politeness is flattery, but they are mistaken, because politeness is recommended but flattery is haraam. The difference is that flattery refers to the one who shows one thing whilst concealing another. The scholars explained it as mixing with the evildoer and showing approval of what he is doing without denouncing it, and politeness is showing kindness to the ignorant whilst teaching him, and to the evildoer whilst denouncing his action, and not being harsh towards him when he is not committing evil openly, and rebuking him gently in word and deed, especially if his heart needs to be softened and so on.

Fath al-Baari (10/528).

Fourthly:

Many friends – and this happens a lot among women – misunderstand the true nature of their friendship, and they tend to go to extremes and develop strong feelings when the other person does not feel the same way; rather the other side does not intend to form such a strong friendship, rather the aim is just an ordinary friendship as dictated by circumstances. In that case the one who felt the deeper attachment may feel pain such as could not be borne by mountains. We need to guide this friendship that could captivate our hearts because of people we love, so that we will not be surprised one day and start imagining that everything has started to collapse around us when a friendship was never like that in the first place.

‘Umar ibn al-Khattaab (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: Your love should not reach the point of infatuation and your hatred should not reach the point of destruction.  

At the same time we need to deepen our understanding of brotherhood, which dictates loyalty, honesty and sincerity, where there is no room for excessive politeness and courtesy.  In the past they said: When friendship is sincere there will be no pretence.

Undoubtedly such flattery is blameworthy and has no place in brotherhood and true friendship. If there is some occasional flattery among friends, it should be only what is dictated by circumstances, so as to ward off fitnah or preserve love. But if flattery is the basis of that friendship, then it is a distortion of all the meanings of true brotherhood.

‘Ali (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: The worst of friends is the one who tries too hard to flatter you and the one who expects too much courtesy from you and the one who makes you feel the need to justify yourself constantly.

It was said to one of them: Who should we make friends with? He said: The one who removes from you the burden of pretence and with whom you feel no reservations.

Ja’far ibn Muhammad al-Saadiq (may Allaah be pleased with him) used to say: The most burdensome of my brothers to me is the one who flatters me too much and I feel reserved with him. Ihya’ ‘Uloom al-Deen (2/181).

And Allaah knows best.

[paperclipninja]

Younger post-ep ramble 6x01

The waiting, the anticipation, the trying not to pass out every time the Younger team posted some ridiculously next-level pic or gif or clip...it was all leading to this, the season 6 premiere! The sheer joy and elation I feel from seeing new footage and new moments for these characters takes me by surprise every single time. I am perpetually thirsty for this show and there is not much I delight in more than drinking it all in as it unfolds. “Big Day” most certainly did not disappoint, it was a fast paced sensory overload and didn’t hold back in setting a whole lot in motion straight out of the gate.

What is interesting to me is that so much of this first ep had been included in the official trailer and other promos, so in a way I felt like I’d seen lots of it but also it was all new because I didn’t have the full context of any of the bits. Take the opening scene, for example - we had seen part of it in the First Look table read, part in the trailer, part in other promos, yet there I was trying not to catch on fire in those first two minutes because it was h.o.t. I am a sucker for a coming-up-behind-the-person-while-they-get-ready-in-the-mirror scenario and this season opener raised it a notch by putting Charles in a pair of boxer briefs, you know, to emphasise the morning situation (and the abs situation lbh) while giving us the dual angle of the mirror and the foreground just to make sure we could see all that was happening (noted and appreciated). My brain is still not computing Liza and Charles as an actual out-in-the-open couple so the whole ‘I know why your neck is sore’, ‘as long as you’re in [the bed] when she gets home’ (this talking in the third person thing they’ve had going on since that fountain scene in the finale = YES), chatting about the day ahead, intermittent kisses, arms wrapped around each other...I’m sorry, what were we talking about? Oh yes, very good scene, 5/5 would recommend.

I am thrilled at the way Liza just dropped the ‘love you’ so naturally, it was exactly the right way for that to happen considering how long these characters have been doing their dance. Dare I say that I loved it even more when Liza told Kelsey she loves her in the office and Kelsey said ‘aw, you didn’t even run away’. Lol. Such a great tie in and I am really feeling the Kelsey/Liza dynamic in this ep right from the get-go. From the moment they’re walking up to the office together, the support they’re showing for one another is so evident and adding Lauren into the work mix is going to be fab. Lauren may have only been in the ep for about a minute but as always she makes such an impression, me and my English degree feel seen. I cannot WAIT to see her relationship with Diana grow and also, did I miss Zommy being a thing? Is this Zaddy but flipped? 

As always Liza has her relentless belief in Kelsey, but it is so nice to see Kelsey stepping up to reassure Liza that they will make sure the company is stronger than ever and showing that she respects Liza’s relationship and is also supporting her in her new role. I really hope this continues throughout the season and I appreciate that the writers may be responding to the somewhat lopsided friendship we were seeing last season. I enjoyed both conversations about clearing desks way more than I probably should have and I am as happy as Liza that she finally has an office with an actual door that closes (p.s. here’s hoping these very specific references are alluding to future door shutting and clearing desks because I am trash and I know you’re all thinking it).  

Of course we couldn’t have Liza getting too settled before Quinn appeared to drop the bomb that Page Six are running the blind item with her age printed as 28 and that the entire Charles stepping down so there would be no more lies/celebrating Liza rally was only ever really going to be on Quinn’s terms. I was SO hoping that Quinn and Liza could become friends. I saw such potential in the finale, however I also see that this stays consistent with the ruthless business woman we were presented with, who is only in it for herself. The way Quinn says ‘let’s not make this a pity party about ageism’ with such contempt is a stark contrast to the ‘ageism is wrong’ mantra from the last time we saw the character and I actually gasped. Laura Benanti is going to play this evil turn so well that I am now officially excited to see Quinn’s true colours, I love a deliciously dodgy character (shout out to C.Sussman the real MVP). I do wonder if the whole glass cliff phenomenon we learn about during this ep is actually going to end up being Quinn’s M.O, especially after the finance meeting when she told Kelsey to enjoy making cuts before going to get on a plane *insert shrug emoji*. The justification for keeping the age thing on the DL was legit, Kelsey’s ewww at the idea of banging the boss was so in character and props to Liza being all ‘excuse you and your ewww’, but just in case we needed convincing that people would assume the 28 year old in the story was Kelsey, enter Diana. 

It had all started so well, the day that is. I really liked how Diana was supporting Kelsey as the boss when she first arrived at work and Kelsey saying she wanted to talk to Diana about hiring Lauren, a glimpse at the way these women are going to work together. But let’s put all that on hold while we recount the shattering of my heart into a million pieces. First of all, Diana’s immediate assumption that Kelsey ‘bottomed her way to the very top’ (that was brutal and I think all our jaws were with Quinn’s in hitting the floor in that moment), followed of course by Liza running after her, Diana not wanting to hear any excuses for Kelsey and the great office reveal as Liza tells a room full of colleagues, who may or may not have all started that day because who are all these people and what do they do, that she is the 28 year old associate having an affair with the publisher. It was momentarily comical until Liza turned to see Diana’s expression. My heart hurts even thinking about the scene that follows as Diana reassures Liza that it’s a story as old as time, the assistant sleeping with the boss, but as Liza continues to try and explain you can actually see Diana shutting down. Miriam Shor deserves every freaking award for the way she conveyed so much just with her eyes. 

Diana meeting with Redmond (what a treat having him in the premiere too!) absolutely epitomized how much value this show can get out of a short scene that’s well written and wonderfully acted. The entire exchange, from Redmond wanting the goss on the regime change (I love that he wasn’t even available but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get some dirt and asking whether Kelsey’s feet touch the floor in Charles’ chair, all the LOLs), to Diana asking him to put the word out she’s looking for a new job (one of my fave lines of the ep, ‘oh Redmond, if I wanted it kept quiet I would’ve never come to you’) was an utter joy to watch. Despite the brevity, this scene captured the real feel of Younger for me, the setting, the conversation, something about it just oozed that essence that has been running through the entire series, almost like a familiarity that re-orientated me amidst all the newness I was trying to get my head around.

There was something so domestic, in the best possible way, about Enzo opening the door to Kelsey and Liza and I adore that they went to Diana’s apartment in the hope of finding her. Kelsey being warned by Zane not to lose Diana was a really surprising but lovely moment, I enjoyed their scene a lot; Kelsey admitting how hard the job is, Zane being open about trying to figure out his next move (we now know he’s not at Chicky...lol the comment about his dicky), I see the set up and it’ll be interesting to see how their relationship will play out this season. So for now Zane is being a friend to Kelsey and it was thanks to this that she and Liza were able to find Diana at Marie’s Crisis and we were blessed with the most surreal Younger experience to date, a rendition of 9 to 5 which we’d already seen prior to the ep but I will happily watch as many times as is offered. And while the Dolly tribute was an absolute treat, the part of this scene that lingered with me was prior to that, when Kelsey and Liza first find Diana and Kelsey tells her how much she respects and values her (my Kelsey love in this moment is possibly the realest it’s ever been). 

As Diana explains that the problem is she’s not a millennial, my fragile heart actually broke. I understand on the one hand that Liza revealing her age in this moment may have been too much on top of the Charles news, but the other part of me wanted and needed her to take Diana, sit her down and tell her the whole damn truth. I said it at the end of last season but at this point, Diana not knowing about Liza’s age feels cruel. I understand Liza not being able to declare her real age publicly but there’s absolutely no reason she couldn’t tell Diana. I am hoping that she will find out in the very near future because I feel like Diana Trout and Liza Miller both openly in their 40′s will be next level and I need this friendship please and thank you.

You know another friendship between people in their 40′s I love? Bob and Charles. So imagine my delight when this scene started and we have Bob’s tiny mind being blown as he discovers that the woman Charles has been speaking to him about for the past 4 years is actually Liza, ‘the yodelling mom’. So we have Bob giving Charles some real talk and the mirroring of Charles starting over to Liza way back in season 1 is duly noted, but if you look up Swoon-worthy in any dictionary you will in fact see a clip of Charles saying ‘I can’t explain it, when I’m with her I feel...free’ playing on a continuous loop. This show and these lines I swear, RIP: Me.

As I’m sure you have gathered, this ramble is not following the chronology of the episode, so I want to jump back to a scene that I have been waiting for with a ridiculous amount of excitement and that is the Maggie and Charles meeting. I cannot explain why, but my desire to see these two meet has been strong and unrelenting and the fact Charles wandered into the lounge with his shirt open and completely unaware Maggie was there was everything I didn’t know I wanted. I appreciated Maggie’s appreciation of the male form but boy she sure didn’t waste any time getting her grill on. I do love how ferociously protective of Liza Maggie is and I get that there is clearly the need to set in motion a potentially ominous foreshadowing, but truthfully, this scene felt too rushed to me. Like, what happened after Maggie said ‘no-one ever does it on purpose’? Did they sit there awkwardly in silence? Did Charles ask Maggie if she wanted to do the quiz in the newspaper when he got to that part in his cover to cover read? I wanted more but I also felt a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a little more lightness in their first meeting. I have no doubt we will see more of them interacting, so hopefully we will still get Maggie and Charles bonding and becoming friends.

Maggie’s friendship with Josh is still one I really enjoy and the conversation about getting a paternity test was a nice way to bring Josh, Maggie and Liza together, bonus points to the use of the phone assistant to create that great ‘things to do in Wililamsburg’ moment. I have to say, Josh and Clare’s conversation when she was getting him up to speed and he felt the baby kick was lovely. His joy and disbelief was palpable. I found the whole scene to be really beautiful and I am one of the people who was always a fan of Clare, I really liked her and Josh together and I still feel like they have a really great, natural chemistry. I also felt like Josh being the dad was never really a question because I simply cannot see the point in bringing back pregnant Clare if he wasn’t, but Kelsey’s ‘holy shit’ reaction was great as was the conversation that followed between him and Liza. 

I really enjoyed their banter about Liza being a baby whisperer and her reassurance that ‘I got you’, I desperately want to see this relationship as a true friendship because the potential is there. But I gotta say, I’m a bit conflicted about Josh bringing up the fact that they broke up because Liza didn’t want him to give up having a kid and suggesting that they could be together if she wasn’t with someone else. I appreciate that it is realistic that this news would make both Josh and Liza reflect on their relationship given that having a baby was a significant reason for them breaking up, but bringing it up then and the implication that if Liza was single now they could be together just sort of ruined the moment for me. And it’s nothing to do with me wanting Liza with Charles, regardless of who she ends up with or without, for me this is how trying to keep love triangles alive in tv shows starts disrupting character and story growth and progression. 

I wanted to hear Josh talk about feeling the baby kick and for Liza to tell him some funny anecdote about when she was pregnant and was kicked in the bladder and peed herself in the supermarket. I realised I was feeling a bit resentful that I got pulled from this moment of enjoying the current place their relationship is at and back into this whole ‘look what we could have been’ because it feels tiresome and stagnant, but I’m sure there are many fans who feel differently. I liked the echo of Josh’s ‘timing’ by Liza. I felt like hers had a different meaning, that timing was bigger than just their singledom and parenthood aligning. I still overall really enjoyed their interaction, and I am looking forward to seeing how this relationship moves forward this season.

Liza bringing Diana coffee was the perfect way to show that things will be ok between them (until the age reveal that is...and yes Diana, I agree re: Liza’s outfit) and I’m quite sure that necklace Diana is wearing can be seen from space. I do like it when it feels like the balance has been restored and this was only made better by the phone call from Maggie to share the new bed arrival news. I feel like Maggie might be warming up to Charles after this.

Full disclaimer: this part will contain gushing. I tell you, this end scene of the ep was just too much. The expression on Charles’ face when he opened the door to Liza, ugh GUSH, such pure delight to see her and her joy in receiving the gift that she thought was nothing more than a joke, GUSH. Seeing these two so candid and giddy is everything. How far our Liza has come, from when we first met her and she was worried she’d forgotten how to have sex to now unabashedly telling the man she’s with that she thought she’d spend her lunch time thanking him in person (there are so many dirty puns I wanna use here but I shall refrain). I love their continued openness as she acknowledges missing Charles at work and he misses being there, but the way Charles’ reciprocation of Liza’s ‘love you’ from the start of the ep is delivered, I may have actually melted. As in, I am now liquid goo. Liza’s reaction as she asks ‘did you just tell me you love me?’ is divine and while we’ve heard the ‘I’ve pretty much had feelings for you for 16 years’ in numerous promos, Charles’ ‘long enough to know’ was what led to any remnants of my heart not shattered by the Diana ordeal to explode.

Zane’s interruption is only acceptable because Liza’s ‘hello’ is so damn hilarious and I love that they are two grown ass adults who were busted making out. And while I know that we are left with a lingering sense that Charles and Zane are up to something potentially secretive/shady as Liza leaves, I am HERE for Charles and Zane working together. I love the idea of Charles and Zane vs. Liza and Kelsey. I have no idea if that is where this is going, but I do know this smells of a set up for some serious DRAH-MAH and ngl, I am in 100%.

So all in all, what a cracking start to season 6. SO much going on, I think we’re in for a wild one. 

[rsercin-blog]

     VERSE : II ————  MYSTIC MESSENGER. ( story mix with head canon + divergence + original game )

ok, this will be my first time to write this whole thing. so, i might edit more or less whether it was a mistake or not to make things clear. ( coughs briefly bringing her bf bc it was mentioned @frozcnreality​ ) you have to read her main verse written here, since it will be closely tide to mystic messenger && her main story. her flee from the island she used to live before the game happened two years ago ! mei’s age is ( international : 19 , korean : 20 ) in this verse.

mei’s escaped from this island of hell wasn’t technically easy, as much to her leader’s dismay to betray her loyalty towards him, she perfectly knows without sehun’s convincing && all the jazz they’ve spent together; she would’ve stayed in her place, hesitating.

let’s get to point that she && sehun living in his aunt’s place for once && for while, she knew getting a job right now is far too risky, as a former executive assassin being shown in public. she could’ve rented an apartment to stay at if she were able to live a proper life like a human being.

let’s start her role as a mc as we all aware her reasons to act a certain way : she’s NOT a good person in a mentally && physically way. she’s not a savior nor a heroine that will cure someone’s heart in 11 day. mei might be cheery, childish && carefree while she still retains some of her darker personality. her charms will fool you.

mei is selfish, greedy && brash on the inside. she’s manipulative, clever to the point to play dingle-dangle at rfa’s heart like the original mc in the game.

she said to herself that she was behaving in purpose, because she perfectly knows who she is what she can or cannot do.

se////ven ( on casual && deep story only ) might’ve looked through deeper on her record history if he’s aware how selfish && greedy the girl is, that she’s far too dangerous but literally, foolishly assures everyone that she’s clean && a good person. while she knew se///ven’s job considered abnormally illegal, judging how he works ( through chats ) by a blink of eye because she knew plenty of hackers back in her old place.  

to fall in love was far off her mind, she’s afraid she’ll bring misfortune to them. however, it is her dream to enjoy the moments with her loved one, accepting who && what she was. 

her act this way despite not having interactions with outsiders much, she yearns for love, she’s afraid of being alone. like it was said: she’s was serial killer who doesn’t deserve a happy ending, believing her fate was cursed. her greedy side let her try so hard to get something good, to enjoy her happy moments with her beloved. yes, she’s clingy, she’s acting like a proper ideal girlfriend just to earn their heart, their love, their affection, because that’s the way to cast aside her loneliness && remain unforgotten.

her foster parents eventually left her in preacher’s hand who was once treated like a normal person, they loved && cherished her. && then, she lost everything, that’s why she turned like that.

therefore if her loved one will accept her && believing in her, she will do whatever she can to make them happy, she will protect them even by her power because of her precious little darling living && breathing healthy, that’s all. they say evil cannot be redeemed, && if it does; it’ll be out of character.

she can be quite possessives at point, if an opposite gender laid their eyes on her beloved, she will shoot them a warning, yet deathly glare. if things getting out of hands; she would’ve kill && murder, however her only reason not to because of her loved one, there’s a huge chance of risk to involve in her dark crimes if it happens. she’s strong enough to stand with her chin raised up.

so, how’s the story originally planned to begin with ? ( i never intend to make her naive in the first bc sae///ran made mc sounds like a dumb child. )

CASUAL/ANOTHER/DEEP STORY: there’s a chance that un///known && mei met on a living sidewalk streets where she accidentally dropped her phone somewhere, where he, that troublesome man took the chance to implant a special program in her device. ( here’s a lil ref i took from )

on prologue bad end: she plays trumpet card in her hand, mei knew that unknown guy was playing as well, && she knows when will it be the right time to point out his lie. even in the end she’ll end up as his assistant; she’ll eventually hold off without doing any combat movement. they both doesn't hold any feelings for each other && both have something that they take from the situation. mei does not hold such grudge against un///known, because she started learning about him bit by bit. even small details were a huge surprise for her. with time, she started changing her act around him which surprised her as well.

on v’s route, mei doesn’t hold any romantic feelings towards v. yes, she does enjoy his company, their conversations, their support, && it started meaning more to her && thanks to his stubborn && ridiculous nature, she’s making him talk a bit more. shaking his mind off about rika aside && letting him live freely his own. of course, leaving ray behind left mei’s heart pang in pain with guilt because of the promise she vowed. 

 if se///ven openly talks about her sensitive topic, which makes several of their conversations go awkward or deep or, at some point, dark. mei may lash out her anger to him just to show how much her past contains a lot of trauma in her head.

honestly, she might be in good terms with rfa. but that doesn’t mean she can fully trust them.

does that mean she’ll be a good person in the NORMAL/GOOD ending ? yes && no.

( tba. )