#Culturally encouraged to ask “Why?” to an annoying extent

[a-very-tired-jew]

"It's not my job to educate you."

How often have you seen this statement?

I've personally lost count, and I'm a scientist that has been active since the anti-GMO, anti-Ag, and anti-Vaxx discourses of the 00s.

I've seen it for years used as a way to completely halt discussions when the speaker is backed into a corner and cannot support their position. I've seen it used as a defense when they try and put forth extremely biased and/or outright incorrect resources and are called out for it. I've seen it used when a person wants to make their opinion and outrageous claims known without defending them whatsoever.

And here's the thing, you're right. It's not your job to educate others.

But you've also entered into a conversation, discussion, or debate where people are backing their opinions with arguments, experiences, and citations. When you use this statement you essentially say you want to enter this conversation with no confrontation to your own personal beliefs, thoughts, and ideals.

That's childish. That's the kid on the playground saying "nuh uh, you didn't get me cause I'm actually on base right now. Yeah, I know it's a stick on the ground, but I said it's base so it's base."

Personally? I hate this statement. In my own circles I've seen it used by the most uneducated ignorant people to justify conspiracies or beliefs that actively harm them and/or others. I've seen my friends with no formal scientific education or experience who fell down the anti-science rabbit hole use it as a way to deflect from their ignorance.

In Leftist spaces I've seen it used to bring discussions to a stop and dismiss another person. "It's not my job to educate you!" while the very same person was just trying to educate the other on the topic being discussed. This is often accompanied with the "Do your own research", which inevitably leads to the person not coming to the same conclusions as the person who uttered the aforementioned phrases. Said person then becomes upset when the other doesn't come to the same conclusions, but again..."it's not my job to educate you (I'm just mad you're not educated in the way I want)".

In a professional setting I have seen it used to justify outright ignorance, conspiracy, and vitriol by people who have no understanding of the subject matter at hand.

People often say they love discussion and debate, but in reality they just like making their opinion known with no opposition.

And this leads me to the point of this wall of text...it's a very culturally goyische thing to do.

The conversations on Cultural Christianity made me think about this and it sort of hit me. We, Jews, are a "contentious" people. We question, argue, and debate to the point where it's a stereotype in media (an accurate one, but a stereotype nonetheless). But what this stereotype leaves out is that discussion and debate is often accompanied by education. We, typically, revel in this type of discourse and love to argue and learn from the argument. Even if none of us come away with a new position.

The joke "2 Jews, 3 opinions" actually highlights how we come to a greater understanding through our "contentiousness". Our discussions are often meant to educate one another and explore trains of thought we didn't previously have. At no point in the Talmud do you ever see someone state "It's not my job to educate you" and only after every avenue of argument has been exhausted do they devolve into sniping at one another about dick size. If you've seen any posts since 10/7 by Jews on here you will often see an active discussion with an attempt to educate if and when people interact.

However, there is the caveat that some people end up sealioning. In these situations it is completely fine to shut down the entire thing as they're simply wanting you to waste your energy until they have a "gotcha" moment. Eventually you will say something that does not necessarily agree with a previous statement and they will pounce on that. In such a situation you just need to leave the conversation entirely. Sealions are bad faith actors and not actually interested in anything outside of their own opinions.

Healthy discussion and debate, which is encouraged in Judaism, does not look like sealioning. It does not look like getting answers you don't like so you keep asking the same thing in a different way until you get what you want. It's like someone arguing with the DM repeatedly to get a spell to do something outside of its defined application and way outside of its possible application even when the DM says no.

Now, you might be saying "but in my non-Jewish household we encourage this kind of thinking!" and that's good. But we are talking about cultural generalities and trends here. If you live in the Midwest or Southern USA you will have encountered a multitude of Culturally Christian people who have their own personal history about how discussion, debate, and education is shut down (sometimes in a violent manner). If you've existed anywhere a hot button topic becomes discussed there is a strong chance you have experienced this statement, either online or in person, and witnessed the complete halt and shift in dialogue it causes. This is by no fault your own or the other persons, but there is a distinct cultural difference in general.

If you're someone who is offended by this, I want you to sincerely ask. Is questioning, discussion, and debate earnestly encouraged in your culture? Is it encouraged towards authority figures? Does it make certain topics taboo? What happens when children question authority figures?

[hannahhook7744]

Got any Tiger Lily x Lampwick as Parents hc ?

Lampwick once dropped Tiger Peony's favorite stuffed animal when she was three in front of her (it was an accident) and she gave him the biggest betrayed look that still haunts him to this day. Tiger Lily has it on camera.

There's a video of Lampwick purposing to Tiger Lily where a three year old Tiger Peony can be heard asking in an annoyed voice. "What's goin' on? Why's mama cryin'?"

When Tiger Peony was three, she kept trying to take a newborn Tulip on adventures. Which gave her parents quite a few heart attacks.

Lampwick and Tiger Lily both thought that Sunflower was going to be their last child. The universe had other plans and a year & nine months later, the twins were born.

The doctor mistakenly told them they had two girls, so they panicked and thought they had a child misplaced when they were given Petunia and Rowan. They were not amused at the mix up.

Lampwick is the fun parent (to an extent, he's not irresponsible) and Tiger Lily is the more strict parent: Lampwick admittedly spoils the kids a bit because he wants them to have all the things he didn't have. He and Tiger Lily also want to protect them from anything similar to what happened to them (aka the kidnapping) as children, which causes their kids to be a bit sheltered.

Tiger Peony used to be a mama's girl but has now grown out of it and is now close with both her parents but is more independent.

Tulip is a daddy's girl.

Sunflower and Petunia love being with Tiger Lily, and Rowan loves being with Lampwick.

Blue Veronica is similar to Tiger Peony in the way she's not too close to one parent over another.

Lampwick and Tiger Lily are both protective to an extent of their children and pets.

Peter used to babysit Tiger Peony when she was little but seeing as he's permanently 12, it didn't really last for long. Especially since he'd take her on adventures.

Little Tulip didn't like Peter and was happy to get a different babysitter.

Lampwick and Tiger Lily raised their kids in a mixed culture household, meaning that the kids grew up on dishes and traditions from both their parents' cultures. They celebrated Christmas with Lampwick's family and Winter Treasure Day with Tiger Lily's family.

Tiger Peony, at age 12, decided that she wanted to be mostly vegetarian. Something the never fairies encouraged: Lampwick and Tiger Lily did their best to be supportive, but were also concerned about it having negative affects on her health and they've done a lot of research to try and find an appropriate middle ground.

Blue Veronica walked the earliest but took the longest to talk. Though it's to be noted that she knew how but just didn't really want to.

Tulip took the longest to walk but learned how to talk the earliest.

Sunflower learned how to walk and talk at an average pace.

Rowan and Petunia are yet to be determined.

And Tiger Peony? She was fast learner, so while she was also technically average for the amount of time it took for her to learn how to talk and walk once she got the hang of it, she was hard to keep up with.

The color orange smoothed Tiger Peony as a baby because it reminded her of her dad's hair and it is now her favorite color though she doesn't know why.

College as young parents was hectic and hard for Lampwick and Tiger Lily but they insist they wouldn't change a thing as they love their children.

Tiger Peony had a Peter Pan doll until she was seven. She also has a stuffed mouse ballerina.

They have two homes: one in Neverland and one in Auradon. The one in Auradon is a vacation home and they're usually there during the summer unless they're visiting elsewhere, like the Encanto.

None of their kids go to Auradon Prep (though Tiger Peony and Tulip and Blue Veronica do end up over there a surprising amount via their own sneakiness).

When the barrier goes down, Lampwick and Tiger Lily both get a tiniest bit... extreme with their overprotectiveness due to both Hook and the Coachmen being free. Luckily, their families manage to calm this a bit.

Depending on how you view Hook as a parent, that might also help them calm down a bit. Like in my au, where he's an average-ish parent who doesn't want his kids to be put into trouble because of his actions and decides to not wreck shit too much.

[btsandvmin]

The BTS boys are obviously aware of shipping. Do you think it bothers them? I’m always curious as to whether they’ve ever talked about it? And whether it makes them uncomfortable.

I mean, they are aware and also encourage it to a certain extent with the fanservice culture that they have when it comes to idols. Of course that doesn’t mean they can’t also have times when they find it too much or annoying with shipping. We also know they joke about being couples and other things pretty freely, so personally I don’t think they are too bothered by it generally speaking.

But they also avoid questions about relationships and at least some members seem to try hard not to be shipped with women and doing things like “polite hands” or not interacting openly despite knowing each other etc.

Basically I think it can bother them at certain times or when it becomes too much in a way where it actually effects them. For example when shippers call their close ones to find information or post sexual content for BTS to see etc. (Why we should stop shipping comments/content in vlives, weverse under their posts etc). But I think it’s a question of certain behavior from shippers bothering them rather than being shipped in general.

I don’t think they have ever talked about shipping, but we have Tae’s comment to a Tae/kooker telling him to dream about JK where he told them to “get out of their imagination”. On the other hand we also have them coming up with and using “ship names” for their combinations and I don’t think they are dumb enough to not understand how some fans view it when they combine their names at this point. We also have things like Jimin posting a fake article about Jin and Namjoon dating on april fool’s and other times when they joke about relationships between them. So yeah, I think they don’t mind it too much as long as it doesn’t go too far and personally affect them in some form. 

As with everything it is difficult to guess their feelings about something with only the limited view we have of BTS, and even more so since it’s not a subject they would likely talk about. But at least if I guess I think they are mostly used to it and fine with it and sometimes even have fun with fanservice. Most shippers are also aware it’s a fantasy, so the bigger problem is those that actually go from being shippers to being believers who have intrusive behavior.

Of course it can also be different from person to person how they feel about it, and how much they might be aware of it or avoid it. It could also change over time. In the end from what little we have seen I think they are aware and accept it, and sometimes will play with it and at other times feel bothered by it depending on what fans do towards them directly. Same as how they might get accused or labeled by many but probably ignore the majority of hate as long as it doesn’t reach them and affect them more closely. For example being asked about plagiarism during a press conference will likely affect them more than a rumor spread on twitter. Every example of how they might feel can depend on how they get exposed to it.

It’s a sensitive subject, especially to fans very much against shipping, but I also don’t think BTS would feed too much into something they definitely hated. Not to mention I think they have a lot more problems that are bigger and makes them more uncomfortable or annoyed than shipping. Thanks for the ask.

[starship-imzadi]

S5 E21 The Perfect Mate

I hate Ferengi.... They always seem to be a stand-in for the worst qualities for the sake of contrast. They act as the most greedy, sexist, and uncouth, people in the room so Starfleet looks sophisticated and progressive in comparison.

Sounds like Brent has a head cold

"not too close to mine" damn. Riker makes it clear he hates the Ferengi too.

Ferengi are never as stupid as they act but they're so annoying no one cares to pretend otherwise.

How did they learn about this cargo?

"have you had chance to see the dolphins yet? This is something you really don't want to miss" Dolphins? Quantum dolphins perhaps??

It's a really odd line....

It's Famke Janssen! You might know her as Jean Grey or the Phoenix in the X-Men film trilogy, in which Patrick Stewart was also cast as professor Charles Xavier.

Riker in the background is checking her out.

prevarication: to deviate from the truth

"I'm a gift" slight red flag. At least Picard and Riker see it.

So they have male metamorphs...but this story is about a female one, why? Don't we already have enough women who change to be what a man wants, without the man reciprocating the same ability to change?

"oh, think you're more empathic than you admit, at least when it comes to women"

"i think you have me at a disadvantage"

Okay, hold, stop for a moment and appreciate the restraint Riker shows here. This woman becomes the most arousing and attractive she can possibly be for whatever man she is with, and Riker turns her down.

"Riker to bridge. If you need me I'll be in holodeck 4" so clearly this is meant as a joke. How dirty that is, is up to your mind. Maybe he's going to a jazz club, maybe he's going fishing. Why the holodeck instead of his quarters?....

Yasss Beverly!! Call out that misogyny! But also, I freaking love that Beverly and Jean Luc share breakfast.

Aww, poor Picard. That might have been a little harsh. But he takes it well. It makes me glad Beverly is in his life. (That scene makes me want a croissant 🥐)

Her Dutch accent is surprising soft considering this was her first TV role and second role as an actor.

"And now, to this day, I’m not comfortable with how fast television and the writing of it changes. So every night or morning before we’d start shooting they’d have new pages for me. And my English wasn’t that good at the time… and I had all these strange things to say (laughs). It was strange for me, and very difficult for me to memorize, but it was probably normal in the world of Star Trek. So I was very nervous about the entire experience, but it was good."

- Famke Janssen startrek.com

"I'm independent, forceful, brilliant, and adventurous. Exactly as you would have me be, captain." This is interesting because Picard's sexuality always seems to be overshadowed by Riker's, and while Riker certainly seems more comfortable with his sexuality, Picard, in equal measure, has his own, different preferences in a companion. The difference is Riker has explained what he wants to a few different people (for example in "The Vengeance Factor" and "The Outcast") but no one asks Picard his preferences, and he is most likely less forthcoming. So here we learn what Picard really wants, but from someone else who can read him, proverbially, like one of his beloved books.

Star Trek's other cultures....have such a distinct flair. They kind of all look the same but I'm not sure which elements are cause for that stylistic consistency.

"every man on the ship will be fighting over her"...so, aside from the obvious message about women conforming to men's desires, there's a fair amount sexism in the depiction of the male reaction to her. Every man might find her attractive but in declaring that every man will be fighting over her suggests men have too little control over their sexual desires. Riker's previous reaction to some extent would seem intended to display just how alluring she is, but he also shows restraint. Plus, "fighting" over her suggests there's a prise to be won, her. So all of these men think "winning" a fight against his peers would be enough to claim her as his own?

Data reaffirming his android-ness

I understand that this scene in ten-forward is meant to display Kamala's ability to adapt to the men around her, but the growling at Worf cracks me up. Also, in the midst of her adapting to the men around her, and their enthusiasm for her, she's an absolute flirt. Does she have no control over her own behavior either? She can read the men around her but are her subsequent actions involuntary?

"a man of deep passion and conviction. So controlled, so disciplined."

From this performance I wouldn't guess that Picard would go on to play the flute...

Fact I forgot about Picard: he took piano lessons as a child

"do you find me unattractive?" surely she would know if he did.

Woah....so the music as Kamala walks towards Picard right before she says "in a day I will bond with a man I've never met" is a variation on the theme played in "The Host" as Beverly looks across ten forward at Odan/Riker.

When she says "please don't leave" it's so heart-wrentchingly earnest.

Their relationship seems very genuine and tender.

I've seen some fans ask if Picard and Kamala slept together and I see no reason to think so, in fact I have reason to think the opposite. They're relationship, though they are attracted to each other, is not about sex. The intimacy they develop is specifically non sexual and that's what makes it important. For so many other men she is a sexual object of desire, and because Picard refuses to see her this way or treat her this way, he is who she wants to be with; not as an emotional, passion driven decision, but as an active, conscious choice. The one event her entire life as been prepared for, her "destiny" is undone because for the first time she has been afforded agency. (Also, until the next morning Picard is oblivious to the fact that she has bonded with him)

There is a sort of parallel between Picard and Beverly with Riker and Troi. Regardless of the shifting winds of romance, they are each good and supportive friends to each other.

I really wish Troi had been in this episode. An interaction between her and Kamala could have been really interesting.

"I like myself when I'm with him." This is actually some of the best advise for relationships: find people that being with, encourages you to be the person you want to be. (Not people who will fix you, people who naturally bring out the qualities you want in yourself.)

[crowleyellestair]

Someday- Din Djarin (The Mandalorian)

Soul mate time!!!

Your soul mates name appears on your body in their handwriting. 

Pedro fics:

Din Djarin

Imagine Why

Names and Feelings

Whiskey series:

Part 1

Part 2

 My next Whiskey part is coming soon!

 Beskar covers body, head and his personality. It is for his religion, but also for his safety. Din couldn’t really imagine a life without his clan finding him, and bringing him into a new life. He buried everything from before, only memories and a name. Well, actually, two names. His own, Din Djarin, and another scrawled on the back of his hand. It’s the name that the force had mysteriously put there. Everyone in the universe has one.

As a kid, Din was excited to find his soul mate. He assumed she lived in a town over or maybe even in a village on the other side of his home world. He had lost hope after his world was attacked, but the name was still there and as bold as ever. He then had to lose that hope after devoting himself to the Mandalorians.

Luckily, since the name was on his hand, he didn’t need to look at it because of the gloves. Din could easily forget about it and focus on the job. Many people he’s come across are obsessed with the idea of a soul mate and let it consume their life.

When Din first started his job as a bounty hunter, he forgot his training in forgetting about his soul mate. He would always worry about the name on his hand being in a puck. Occasionally, his mind would drift, thinking about the woman who he was meant to be with, but never could.

Then the child came along, and he threw all of those thoughts out of the window in favor of keeping the child safe.

The kid had insisted on walking everywhere on the forest planet that the hunter landed on hours ago. Din was annoyed but patient as the green ball kept tripping over trunks and roots that were too big. A sigh had left him as they made it to an opening that housed the village they’d been looking for. He knew that this place was quiet, and no one ever visits. It’s not on many maps, so Din knew they could stay longer than on others. The hope for work was slim, but the cantina was the best place to look. Luckily, it was on the closest side of the village to the ship, so there will be fewer prying eyes.

Din walked to the open entryway only to notice that the boy just kept walking down the main rode. Din rushed to him, picking him up, and bringing him inside.

Like he hoped, it was almost completely empty other than an older gentleman sitting at the bar, conversing with the tender.

“Is there any work here?” The two look up surprised, the tender’s eyes widening. Din set the kid down next to him on the ground and leaned onto the bar. He looked to the old man who started to gently laugh.

“Nothing to the class of a bounty hunter.” The younger boy looked to the man in shock, amazed that the man was conversing with the hunter like he would anyone else. Din knew that because of how shut in the village was, the thought of someone killing for money could be daunting. Din could also tell that the man meant no harm in his playful and sincere banter. The tender took a step towards Din, looking apologetic.

“I’m sorry-.”

“It’s alright. Are you sure that there is nothing here?”

“I’m afraid not-.” The older man took a sip, but interrupted by saying matter-of-factly,

“Our medic needs help getting herbs. There’s a tribe past the forest ridge that has what she needs, but no one here is willing to go with.” The tender looked offended.

“Because they are murderers!”

“They are not. She’s great with communicating, they’ll know what she needs.” The man looked to Din. “If you go now, you could catch her and help.” The tender stopped fiddling with his glass.

“K’bir, what does that mean? Have you been encouraging her to go by herself!?” The tender looked to Din then ran out the door. Din looked to the ground to find his boy was missing. He stalks towards the door to find the kid had waddled his way to the same building the tender ran to.

Din didn’t know the extent of his son’s power, but if he knew to walk there, it might be serious. Din ran to the building picking it up, and hearing a familiar name. As the tender ran into the medic tent, he yelled the same name Din has seen for years. At least the first part. But it’s a large universe, and he knew not to get his hopes up.

He walked in to find a woman in the back, trying to sneak out the other opening, but being held in place by the tender.

She looked out of place there, the two men wearing what seemed to be traditional clothing where she looked like your run of the mill smuggler. A white shirt under an ‘in-fashion’ jacket that only fly-guys wear. Pants that seem to be worn every other day held tight against her and held a plethora of pouches on a belt. Each one had something coming out, whether it be leaves or petals.

“Tor’guna, get your hands off of me. I’m a grown adult, I can handle myself.”

“Just cause that’s not my name on your neck, doesn’t mean I’m not going to watch over you.” She stopped pulling away to stand close. She toward over him, despite being the same height. She pressed a finger into his chest, and sadness fell into his eyes.

“I don’t remember asking you to. Now get off. Those people have done nothing except fall victim to town superstition. Do you want something to sooth you after you somehow burn yourself again, then I suggest you get. Your hands. Off.” He backed off, and she turned to hide her guilty face. Din could see that she felt bad for yelling, but her justification seemed sound. The woman noticed Din standing there and threw on a weary smile. He could tell that it was weary only by embarrassment, and not through fear. It was rare to find people not daunted by him, and it’s always a pleasant surprise.

“Y/n, this is the Mandalorian. He is going to help you go if you insist.” She held her hand out while stepping towards him, waiting for it to be shook.

“Y/n L/n, I’m glad you are coming along. Maybe your testimony can show them that it’s fine for me to go alone.” Din froze in their shake. That’s it. That’s the name he thought he’d never find the host to. Y/n looked down at their still connected hands, laughed and dropped it. Din was so focused on stopping his heart from denting the Beskar from pounding so hard, that he forgot to let go.

He could still feel her heat long after their hands parted. He cleared his throat and nodded.

“Lead the way…Y/n.” She smiles when he uttered her name. It felt so right leaving him. She looked down to find the boy tugging at her pant.

“Hey cutie. I’m gonna borrow your pops for a little bit.” She picked him up with such gentleness that Din’s heart started to melt. Was she always that gentle? Would she be gentle with him? Placing the kid on the bed, the smiled and gave him a little ship figurine. It looked to be an X-Wing, and she made a smile humming noise, mimicking the sound of its engine. She landed it in front of him, and the kid was enthralled. “Tor’guna, please watch over him.” She turned to Din, and winked. “He’s slow, but trustworthy.” With more confidence than a Hutt, she strode out of the tent, and Din quickly followed.

They had gone through trees and Y/n was rambling all the while. Usually Din was direct and would usually ask for a ‘partner’ to be silent, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop the mad ramblings of his soul mate. They weren’t insane ramblings, but they were filled with anger towards the village they had just come from. She spoke of how the tribe they’re headed to were kind and how she was amazed at how the town could gawk at their way of life.

“I mean, imagine just living life your own way, and people not understanding cause they’re small minded?” She turned and looked for a second before giving a soft chuckle. “Sorry, II take that back. I’m sure you get that all the time. You know, I’ve read some of the documented culture and about the six pillars- It’s quite amazing. It takes heart to believe in something so whole heartedly-.”

“Din.” She stopped completely and looked back to him.

“What?”

“Din. I…I’m Din. Djarin. Din Djarin.” Her eyes widened and her hand rose to hold the back of her neck. She repeated his name back to him, and his ears started to ring. The name bounced in his head, reflecting on her tone and articulation. For the first time, Din pulled his gauntlet off in front of someone, shoving his hand towards her. Sure enough, she saw her name on the back of his hand. Her hand grabbed his, her thumb running over the name.

She turned and pulled her hair up, showing Din his own. His handwriting showed his name plastered on the back of her neck.

Y/n turned to show a bright smile as she pushed into him, embracing him in a hug. Din hadn’t hugged anyone in years, but he didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around her. His visor tilted downwards, beskar resting atop her head. He realized that he felt guilty. He has seen and heard of so many meetings. A realization, and embrace then a kiss. He used to imagine how he would try and make it perfect, but he knows he can’t.

“I’m sorry. I can’t-.” As if knowing what he was going to say, she pulled away, bringing his ungloved had to her, and placing a gentle kiss where her name was stamped.

“I wouldn’t ask you to.”

“Someday.” She smiled, and kissed his hand again.

“Someday.”

Tag under cut

@ghostofthebarricade

[wolfpawn]

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 33

Story Summary - Based on an idea I had that I submitted to Imagine Loki. Imagine Loki was raised on Jotunheim as Laufey’s son after the war, but an agreement was then made that he would wed Odin’s daughter so Odin could secure the alliance of Jotunheim through the marriage. Loki, in turn, was raised to be king of Jotunheim, but how he views Asgard is far different from how Odin’s daughter is raised leading to a clash of cultures as well as uncertainty between the pair of betrothed youths.

Chapter Summary - Time is passing and Loki finds himself in interesting positions with regards to his time with Ella.

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Tags - @peppermint-j @damalseer @perpetual-fangirl @tinchentitri @inspired-snowflace @raphaelaisabella @alexakeyloveloki @caffiend-queen @devilbat @nonsensicalobsessions @skulliebythesea @majoringinlife @salempoe @lotus-eyedindiangoddess @rookienumber98 @ivytoh @agarwaeneth @rosierossette

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Loki looked around the throne room, sighing as he tried to get some form of energy to deal with the last of the evening. His father had him, Arden and Helbindi all but exhausted from dealing with different matters that he wished to organise. It was late and he was annoyed to have missed having dinner with Ella.

Since the day she asked him why he was not as open with her, he tried to be more so. It was not perfect and he often was second-guessing himself, wondering if she would be like Angrboða and use his most private thoughts as ammunition to throw back at him as he had been forced to endure after he did what was best for the realm and severed the relationship with Angrboda, the one he thought loved him only to see that his love had not been as reciprocated as he had thought it was. But he tried. She could see it was hard for him and encouraged him without ever trying to force him and he could see it in how she spoke. He appreciated her efforts to understand him when he did not even understand himself.

He could not deny that having her in his rooms most night was pleasant also. She had informed him that his rooms would now be soundproofed in a manner that meant that should she lose her cognitive ability again, none would hear it. He informed her that it did not bother him, yet noted it clearly bothered her, to the extent he could see her fight her own wishes to make noise during any of their couplings. He had thoroughly enjoyed hearing her call out his name in ecstasy, but he knew that she would not do so willingly again. He wondered if it was an expected norm on Asgard to remain silent or a personal choice to her as she seemed to not be the least bit shameful in admitting to certain things pertaining to the act and even her own actions regarding it, be it in research or self-pleasure. All he could think about was going to his rooms to spend time speaking with her. They were preparing to go to Vanaheim in the near future and she was providing him with the majority of the information that would better their chances of a good deal with the Vanir as well as the details that were not overly public with regards certain beings who were better to avoid.

Laufey continued into the night. He had been very worn of late, so with some energy from Norn’s knows where, he decided to use said energy to deal with different matters, leading to him, his brother and Arden having to endure it into the night.

“What news from the West, has there been any more unrest?” Laufey asked.

“None, Sire. Býleistr has made mention that there has been nothing since. Those who were acting out have ceased with such talk, he is satisfied that there will be little to no such talk again.”

“Good,” Laufey nodded.

“He also reports that his first mate has come into heat once more and that he hopes that it will be a successful one,” Arden added.

“That he should be so fortunate,” Laufey agreed. “Though I do not wish misfortune on my son and his second mate, I do not think a child as a result of that mating right now would be a good thing, all things considered.”

Loki did not mean to, but he nodded at his father’s statement, agreeing with him. He did not want to think about it but he did. He was glad Angrboða and Býleistr had not been successful on their first attempt. He knew it would happen with time but that would only be salt in a wound for him. With time to allow himself heal, he would not be so bothered by their attempts to procreate. With the realm becoming more fruitful once more, it was already noted that there was an increase in heats and subsequent pregnancies. It was usually three heats recorded in a single year for the realm with, if lucky, one pregnancy since the Casket returned, there were already three females were pregnant. It would cause a population growth once more, but Jotunheim was a realm that needed more young, unlike so many realms.

“Well, if that is everything…” Helbindi tried to move along the evening.

“Not so fast, Loki, what have you prepared for Vanaheim?” Laufey asked.

Loki groaned internally, Helbindi sighed loudly and Arden showed his dismay in his eyes at Laufey’s question. They would not see their beds for a significant time yet to come that night, and they knew it.

*

When Loki did make his way to his rooms, it was closing in on midnight. He wondered if Ella would be there but it was doubtful. She would never enter his rooms without him being there, she was too honest and respectful of him to go about his personal space without his being there. When he got to his rooms, he was unsurprised but disappointed to see them void of any sign of life since his leaving them that morning. He readied for bed before getting in, looking to where Ella usually slept for a moment before looking to the ceiling, hoping for sleep to come.

*

Sleep did not come. Three hours later, he was still staring to the ceiling above him with no sign of sleep coming to him. He wanted not to be frustrated as that only fed his lack of sleep, but all he could do was be frustrated, resulting in him not sleeping. He wondered if Ella was resting well in her rooms, if she felt odd being by herself. He pondered for a time before his annoyance bothered him enough to rise from his bed and leave his rooms.

Looking at her bedroom door caused him to pause and consider his actions. Part of him saw no issue with what he was doing, he was simply checking something, the other part knew it was entirely wrong to bother someone in their bed at almost three in the morning, yet he opened the door all the same and entered her front rooms. When he got to the bedchambers, he became more apprehensive but before he could do anything, the bedroom door unlocked by seidr and Ella was in front of him. “Loki?” Her voice was heavy from sleep. “Is everything alright?”

“Fine, sorry I woke you.”

“Why are you here?” She looked at him for a moment, rubbing her eyes as she realised there was no reason to be worried. When her seidr had informed her someone had broken the magic seel she had placed on her rooms before going to sleep, she had been worried, seeing it was only a somewhat meek Loki, she saw that there was no reason to fret, she stretched slightly. “What time is it?”

“Three, I think.”

“Why are you up?” He looked at his feet. “You have not slept, have you?”

“No.”

“Did Laufey keep you that long?” She opened the door more so he could enter.

Loki did so. “No, he let us leave a few hours ago.”

“Yet you are still awake.”

“Yet I am still awake,” Loki repeated.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“And do you think talking to me will find the reason?”

“I think I am talking to you because of the reason.”

Ella looked at him confused. “You will need to expand on that if I am to make sense of it.”

“You were not in my room.”

“No, why would I go there without you being there?”

“It felt wrong.”

Ella realised then what the issue was and smiled. “Have you gotten used to company in bed?”

Loki felt somewhat embarrassed. “I fear I may have.”

Ella, knowing this was a significant admission to him, looked him in the eye as she spoke. “It is far too late for any form of intimacy. I am tired and I want to go back to sleep.”

“I know.”

With his confirmation, she took his hand and used her seidr to transport them to his room. Loki looked around in confusion before looking at her. “What, are you really surprised by me any more?” She walked over to the bed and got in at the side she usually did, using her seidr to warm it enough to her liking as she disliked the coldness of bed when she first got into it.

With the sense of something not being right gone, Loki got in his side, looking at Ella’s back for a moment before getting comfortable and feeling himself drift off to sleep contently.

[dolphin-enthusiast]

Yoshikage Kira x Artist!Reader

A/N: Hello yes it is finally here my first ever Jojo fanfic and it’s about this nasty fucker fsksfjs enjoy!!

Based off of this ask

Warnings: major character death and Kira. He’s a warning himself.

~~~

You leaned back in your small chair, admiring your work from another distance. You tilted your head and shifted in your seat, trying to look at your sculpture from a different perspective. Extending the hand that was gripping the chisel tightly, you started taking various measurements. After finally being satisfied you nodded to yourself and went back to your work. All of your life you had been fascinated by sculptures and the world of art. You used to watch lots of documentaries as a child and you would often attempt carving little pieces of wood with a small knife. Your mother would be worried that you might end up hurting yourself, but little you just knew how to handle that knife the way it should be handled. One could say that you had a talent even, but that was far from the truth. In fact you just watched way too many documentaries and copied the ways in which the artists would move their tools. Seeing how passionate you were, at the age of nine your father bought you your first sculpting kit, as well as plenty of clay. Not many children are lucky enough to know exactly what they want to become, but you already had your plans. This is why you attended art school after you finished highschool and specialized yourself in sculpting. Now you were a successful artist, your work being recognized by many critics.

You continue working on your sculpture that resembled a lady with her palms open in front of her, a flower growing out of them. You always put accent on hands whenever you created another sculpture, the majority of your creations even being about them. You weren’t sure why, but you had always found hands enticing. There were so many shapes and sizes of them and you loved their movement and how gracious they can be. Honestly, you just loved human anatomy in general, often sketching various body parts in many positions in your spare time.

Funnily enough, you weren’t fond of your own hands at all. You always thought they looked weird and unappealing, crooked even. You did cherish them for always helping you carry out your artistic work, but that was really it. This is the reason why you almost always wore gloves, even when you weren’t out. You just couldn’t bear seeing your bare hands for too long, that annoying shape of theirs bugging you to no extent. This was a problem that you had since you were little and no words of encouragement or comfort from anyone soothed you, not even from your own parents.

Time passed as you kept working, hours flying by as if they were mere minutes. You decided that it was enough work for today after noticing that the sun was beginning to set. You got up and stretched your tired limbs and started walking towards the bathroom, desperately in need for a refreshing shower. You have to go to bed early tonight because tomorrow you are supposed to leave for Morioh, the location in which your next fan meeting will be held. You weren’t that much of a celebrity yet you still had your fair share of fame, hence why you had plenty of people attend those fan meetings. Your earlier work which consisted of sketches also gained you a fanbase. Speaking of people, one man stood out to you. He would often show up at your art exhibitions and thoroughly admire your hand sculptures. He had a rather strange aura around him and would often be immersed into the details of your works, his blonde locks falling in front of his eyes as he leaned closer to your pieces and scanned them. The man was awfully formal at all times as well. You’re pretty sure everytime you spotted him he would always be wearing a suit. You quickly dismissed your thoughts as you exited your bathroom and got into bed. You shifted a good while after you finally fell asleep, the expectation for tomorrow being too much.

The next day you took the plane early in the morning and by 12 pm you were already in Morioh. The hotel you were staying at was very nice and welcoming. You dropped all of your things in your room and already began getting ready for the first fan event. You were supposed to be staying here for three days, all because you just loved exploring new places and getting accustomed to the culture and people. You even heard there was a popular artist living here.

Almost one hour later you exit your hotel room and in no time you’re hurriedly walking down the lively street heading towards the location of your fan meeting. On your way you passed by many people but three certain individuals caught your attention. You were halfway there when you crossed paths with a group of teens. Two of them looked like actual delinquents, one boy even sporting a neatly styled pompadour. You thought they looked pretty neat honestly. However, the shortest boy in the group was the only one that recognized you and the reason why you initially came face to face with the gang. He seemed down to earth and nice, all shy as he asked you for an autograph. You could hear him excitedly tell his friends about you after they asked him as you parted ways with them, a small smile on your lips. Your smile only grew more when you heard one of them loudly say “Great! Now we officially met a celebrity!”

You finally reached your destination, a mall downtown. You managed to pass by unnoticed by the crowd that was already beginning to form in the small area that you had reserved. Rushing to your seat, you quickly grabbed a pen and noticed people already turning their attention to you. The staff had just arrived as the queue was already forming. Once they checked everything, they announced that the fan meeting may start.

Person after person went up in front of your table and talked to you. They praised your skills, they talked about how you inspired them. It was really overwhelming at some point when you had so many people confessing to you that your work helped them or inspired them, it almost made you feel special in a way. But you are a modest and humble person, so you know better than that.

As you were glancing around you suddenly make out a familiar face. At first you thought you were having visions, but turns out that wasn’t the case. You were in fact looking at the same blonde haired man that frequented your art exhibitions. And he seemed to notice that you were looking at him too because his eyes were fixed on you. You suddenly felt uneasy with the way he was watching you. It didn’t help at all that you couldn’t read his expression. You could feel the anxiety kicking in as you realized that there were three more people before it would be his turn to speak to you. You tried acting as normal as possible with them, trying to hide the fact that you were hella uneasy all of a sudden.

In no time the man was already in front of you and you were now forced to make eye contact with him. His gaze was piercing, icy blue orbs staring dead into your own ones. As always he was dressed sharply in a purple suit with a tie that had a rather intricate design, his hair loosely combed back with a few strands sticking out in the front. You’d say that he was pretty handsome if it weren’t for the fact that he was creeping the hell out of you and you couldn’t figure out exactly why.

“My name is Yoshikage Kira.” He suddenly spoke, the faintest of smiles appearing on his lips. You try to force a smile of your own. “I am a big fan of your work, as you can tell from the fact that I have been to each and every one of your art exhibitions. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen eachother before exactly because of that.” He continues as you take in his mini speech. So he did in fact show up everytime you would present the public with new creations. Maybe he was indeed just that big of a fan as he himself said.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Kira. I’m thoroughly glad that you enjoy my work so much that you took the time and effort to show up at all of my art exhibitions.” You reply politely, being careful to choose your words wisely. The guy looked formal so you didn’t want to seem unpolite. Wait, why did you even care so much? You weren’t at a job interview.

He slowly nodded and extended his hand towards you, small smile still present on his lips. “Please, call me Yoshikage” He humbly said as you reached over the table and grasped his hand. As you shook hands with him you noticed his eyes flick downwards at your own hand. Even if it was for a mere second you did not fail to notice him eyeing your glove. There was certainly something off about this man and you couldn’t put your finger on it.

“I really meant everything I said. I love your work. Your hand sculptures are simply stunning. The way in which every detail is chiseled in and how attentive you are when it comes to sculpting the nails and fingers. I have to admit, I tried buying as many as I could.” He trailed off with admiration. You would be blushing right now if it weren’t for the fact that he was giving you stranger danger vibes.

You thanked him nicely for his kind words as you retracted your hand. Even if you still couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was off you still continued to talk to him. You didn’t even notice how much time passed until you looked behind him and saw the crowd getting rather impatient. Seems like the guy had some kind of a talent for immersing people into discussion to the point where you lose track of time. Kira seemed to notice this too since he turned around slightly and noticed the others staring rather angrily at him, to which he slightly scowled.

He turned back to you and started digging in his jacket’s inner pockets then pulled out a small piece of paper. “I’m terribly sorry for taking so much of your time. Before I go, would you please give me an autograph? I know it sounds silly, but I can’t let this opportunity pass.” He said with a grin while sliding the tiny paper in front of you, hope present in his eyes. You were slightly taken aback but scribbled your signature on the paper nonetheless. The moment you raised your pen he immediately snatched the paper and thanked you then finally left, but not before giving you one last glare over his shoulder. Well, that was truly a ride. Just as you were about to greet the next person you noticed another tiny piece of paper in front of you. Didn’t he already take it with him?

You hesitantly pick up the piece of paper and your worst fears come true. There was a phone number written on it. Quickly shoving the paper in your pocket, you decided that you’d deal with this later and just carry on with the fan meeting for now. You still had some people left to talk to and you didn’t want to make a bad impression.

After the fan meeting was finally over you immediately grabbed all of your stuff and rushed back to your hotel room. You plopped down onto your bed, realization finally downing upon you as you pulled out the crumbled paper from your pocket and unfolded it. Alright so you now officially have a strange guy indirectly asking you out in a rather unorthodox way. Ok cool that’s totally fine. To top it off he was also a fiery fan of your work. He did seem strange, almost intimidating in a way, but he didn’t say anything creepy or harmful towards you. Could it be your anxiety acting up again? Hell if you know. If you were being honest with yourself, he kinda intrigued you. Maybe it was his mysterious aura or the way in which he spoke all smooth and collected. Nonetheless, the fact that he literally left his phone number to you like that was a bit too straightforward, even weird.

You thought it over and decided that you’d call him tomorrow just to ask him whatever the hell was all of this. If anything, your curiosity always got you into trouble since you were little. They say curiosity killed the cat but you just couldn’t physically stop yourself to investigate further anytime something peculiar happened.

You sighed in exhaustion while covering your face with your hands. You were beyond exhausted and couldn’t properly focus on anything. Shifting on your side you reached towards your bedside lamp and turned it off letting darkness take over the room. You closed your eyes and drifted off, finally getting the rest you needed so badly.

The next morning you woke up slightly more refreshed. After taking a shower and picking out a nice outfit you were ready to come down for breakfast when something caught your attention. The piece of paper with Kira’s number was still sitting contently on the bed since last night. You frowned while picking it up and began thinking once again if calling him was really a good idea. Fuck it. You were going to call him. You knew it would just keep nagging you in the back of your head if you wouldn’t do it. You shakily grabbed your phone and started entering the number. Adrenaline shot through your veins as you waited for him to pick up-

“Yoshikage Kira speaking.” You almost had a heart attack when he finally answered, not expecting to hear his voice like that. His voice sounded husky and much more deeper than what you heard yesterday. Shit, did you wake him up? You instantly regretted not checking the time before calling, noticing that it’s 7:45 am.

“H-Hello it’s me from yesterday. You know, you showed up at the fanmeeting and we talked quite a lot and uhh…you left your phone number on the table. I’m guessing that this was intentional, right?” Your throat was dry as you spoke. You had no idea why you were so nervous out of a sudden.

“Oh, indeed. I did leave my number for you. I’m glad you called. I honestly expected you to not do it, but turns out I was wrong.” He spoke calmly. He was completely unfazed. How did this man manage to be so detached all the time you had no idea.

You ended up making small talk with him and at some point he did the unpredictable. He asked if you wanted to meet up for coffee later and you found yourself agreeing. Why? You had no idea yourself. All you knew is that there was something going on with this guy and you were an overly curious person. So there you were, walking down the streets of Morioh, the sun shining bright as you made your way towards the café. When you arrived he was already there, sitting cross legged in his chair as he sipped some coffee from a small cup at a table outside. He was dressed sharply as always. You had to admit, the guy was pretty attractive.

He spots you almost instantly and motions for you to join him at the table as you both give your good mornings. He hands you a menu with a small smile and you thank him politely.

“I’m really happy that you showed up. I was rather blunt with my approach yet you still decided to meet up with me.” He spoke up as he fixed you with his gaze. You would be lying if you’d say his sapphire colored eyes weren’t gorgeous.

“Well I had no plans for today and thought it would be interesting to meet new people.” You shrugged as you scanned the menu with your eyes. Internally you were still nervous but you tried to keep your cool. He nodded at your words, silently agreeing as he sipped his coffee. The waiter soon arrived and took your order, temporarily interrupting your conversation with him. You two ended up talking about many and you found out that he was surprisingly nice to speak to once you met him. Maybe it was indeed just your anxiety acting up yesterday. You noticed that he was very sharp minded and well mannered as well as rather reserved, but all in all he seemed like an interesting person. You found out that he was a salesman and was 33 years old. Not bad.

As you went on about how you created one of your sculptures, you couldn’t help but notice him flicking his eyes down to your hands that were on the table and back to your face from time to time. This was it again, the strangest habit that he had. You started feeling slightly uneasy again, so you found yourself speaking up.

“Hey Yoshikage, can I ask you something?” You ask as you feel the anxiety bubble up again in your gut. He nodded and silently urged you to go on. “Why do you keep staring at my hands sometimes? Is there something wrong with them?”

Silence. For a second you thought that he died. He was completely motionless until you saw his eyes flick towards your face again since he has been staring at the table for a good minute.

“It’s…nothing. Just that I wonder why do you always wear those gloves, even on this warm weather.” He quietly said. He looked like he was holding himself back from saying something more.

“Oh…well I never really liked my hands. Sure, without them I wouldn’t be able to do art which would be awful, but I was never fond of them. I don’t know, I just don’t like the way in which they are shaped.” You tried to explain yourself as you fidgeted with your gloves. You looked up at his face and saw him open his mouth again.

“May I…see them?” He said in a whisper. “I don’t believe they are nearly as bad as you say they are.”

You hesitated but complied and slowly took off your gloves. You have no idea why you agreed to this. Upon seeing your bare hands Kira almost let out a gasp. He gingerly took your right hand in his and examined it closely. You thought you would faint right in that moment.

“I don’t…I don’t understand. How could you hide those beautiful soft hands?” He almost sounded offended. He traced his thumb on the back of your hands feeling every knuckle. “I said it many times and I’m gonna say it again. I thoroughly adore your art. But my dear, no art could ever compare to your hands. They are the most beautiful I have ever seen.” He whispered with adoration in his eyes, not once looking away from your hand. At this point your entire face was hot red and you had difficulties breathing. Was he serious? You were certainly having a breakdown. He suddenly flicked his ice cool eyes up and slightly smirked upon seeing your flushed face. Damn him.

“T-Thank you, Yoshikage. God…I don’t even know what to say. All my life I hid them and disliked them and having someone say this to me for the first time feels overwhelming. But thank you, really.” You found yourself speaking while trying not to stutter too much. He merely just clicked his tongue and suddenly planted a chaste kiss upon the back of your hand. It took all of your power to not pull your hand away in that moment and go limp. You could see his eyes crinkle with amusement at your reaction as he finally released your hand.

It took you a good while to recover after that. As you finally regained composure, you two went on about various subjects and once again time flew by. At some point he excused himself and said that he had to go, but not before confessing that he would like to see you again sometime. He just had to meet up with you again for you had awakened something in him. Something that he hasn’t felt in a long time. Sure it would still make it’s presence felt from time to time, but he would manage to push it down and ignore it. But now it was stronger than ever. And he couldn’t restrain himself anymore. But he would try to. For you and you only.

The next day you two met up again and you noticed that he was acting off. He seemed distracted and would space out often, which you found to be extremely weird. Not to mention that he tried so hard not to stare at your hands too much. And of course that you noticed that too. You two were walking side by side in the park and you stopped and took a seat on a bench. He looked reluctant to join you at first, but took a seat next to you in the end.

“Yoshikage, are you ok? You haven’t been acting like yourself today.” You blurt out, your voice laced with concern. Just that mere hint of concern in your voice made his stomach clench. The fact that you were so pure and were actually worried for him almost made him snap. Almost.

He swallowed hard. “I’m fine. It’s nothing really.” He internally cursed himself for being unable to come up with a better excuse.

“You don’t seem that fine…” You quietly replied and he visibly tensed at your words. “Nonetheless, I just wanted you to know that I will be leaving soon. I have more locations to travel to and more fan meetings to do.” You said sadly. You didn’t want to leave him but you had no choice.

He didn’t answer you. You didn’t dare to look in his direction since you were certain he would be saddened by your sudden news. Suddenly you feel a tight grip on your jaw and found your head being turned to the side. Wasting no time, Kira smashed his lips against yours roughly. You were in shock and didn’t react at first but soon found yourself kissing back, wrapping your arms around his neck. It went on for what seemed like forever until you pulled back while gasping for air. You looked at him and he was panting, his hair messier than before.

“I just…..wanted to do this before you’d leave and I’d never see you again.” He breathlessly said while looking you in the eyes intensely.

“What do you mean you will never see me again? We can keep in touch and I’ll definitely come back soon.” You were utterly confused. He didn’t give you an answer as he looked at his watch.

“I have to go. I apologize for leaving you hanging again but I have matters to attend to.” He got up, kissed your hand again and walked away. The simple gesture still made you blush nonetheless.

As you walked back to your hotel you couldn’t help but feel like you were being watched. Yet you spotted no one regardless of how many times you turned around. It felt like some unseen spirit was following you around the entire time.

Finally you reach your destination and enter the hotel. You don’t see anything odd as you walk through the lobby then into the elevator. You get out the elevator once it reaches the floor in which your room was located and start walking down the hall. Suddenly, you see a shadow at the end of it and stop dead in your tracks. It disappeared just as fast as it appeared. You turn your walk into a jog and finally reach your door and unlock it hurriedly. Just as you grasp the doorknob you hear a familiar voice, making you freeze on the spot.

“Killer Queen had already touched that doorknob.”

It was him. What was he doing here? Did he follow you on your way back? Your mind raced with erratic thoughts as a sharp click was the last thing you heard.

[citialiin]

What is something you’re proud of regarding your style? What do you look for in a thread? What inspires you to write? Do you have a wishlist? Can you share what’s on it? ( *´°`)

ask me about my writing 

What is something you’re proud of regarding your style?      at risk of sounding like an idiot, i really dont know.  im actually really self conscious about my writing, part of why writing on discord felt like such a relief was because i didnt have to deal with the paranoia of people reading my stuff and judging me.  i like to think im (at the minimum) sort of funny and i dont take myself too seriously.  ziggy may have some serious aspects to him, but in the end, he is a glam rock alien with a circle on his forehead.  if i took him too seriously i would run the risk of making him Not Fun anymore. i think im pretty good at improv in that i can usually think of fun things to happen or exciting ways to keep a thread moving.  so maybe im satisfied with my ability to be creative and think of scenarios and how to navigate them!     ….maybe i like my cheesy scifi worldbuilding stuff.  i dont know. but ur the only one who knows the full extent of it lol.  maybe im just glad i was able to remove ziggy from the context of “david bowie with a mullet pretending to be an alien” into a fully fledged character with his own personhood and backstory and character arc.  

What do you look for in a thread?      i look for longevity.  my ideal rps are ongoing stories where starters are initial meetings and all future threads are expanding on that universe and furthering their relationship (whether ziggy becomes your characters friend, enemy, rival, etc).  they need a reason to keep running into each other and i dont like to give things away too easily, so to “earn” your place to more exciting things (like finding out ziggy is an alien), you need to at least have a few back and forths so we can work up to it.  i also like dynamics!!  characters dont always get along!! characters who dont like ziggy are often the most fun to thread with because ziggy can continuously annoy them until they snap at him or his personality becomes endearing enough so they begin to like him (for whatever fucking crazy reason).  I just really think that continuity is fun and i hate when threads get dropped really early on because it sux ): and im way too awkward to talk to people properly. if we thread and you drop it i will probably never talk to you again until you reach out to me because i think you hate me. i am so sorry. im a really nervous person.  kind of like a chihuahua.  i have worms in my brain and they have polished it into a smooth circle, like a river rock.

What inspires you to write?     obvious things: david bowie’s music and valefor’s replies.  serious things: speculative 70s science fiction, pre-raphaelite art of those tall skinny women with long red hair, weird biology/anthropology facts, khmer rock and roll, the science beyond the human obsession with self-expression, celebrity culture and its inherent toxicity.  silly things: cartoons about aliens (invader zim, duck dodgers, symbionic titan, steven pooniverse), cartoons about rockstars (my dad the rockstar, puffy ami yumi), how much i hate doing my homework so i look for any feasible distraction to avoid it.  

Do you have a wishlist? Can you share what’s on it?     i hit a lot of my wishlist stuff with you!  i think for how terrible i write him i think it would be nice to do threads where he is nice to people or encouraging of them and their talents?  some of the things i still want to do are more ppl finding out he’s an alien (and maybe some can be nice, like, they connect with him and share his feelings of isolation, or maybe some can be bad, like, they blackmail him using this fact), or pre-earth threads where he hasn’t been influenced by humans yet and is still trying to figure out who he is and who he wants to be.  even early contact threads are really fun and you can tell him things and he will react earnestly and joyfully because humanity has not turned him into a narcissist yet.  i also want someone to dissect him so hmu if you like alien autopsies.   

[janice-kimberly-blog]

Emotional intelligence interview questions

Emotional intelligence interview questions are getting more frequent within the hiring process, but what proportion weight should they carry?

Hiring managers want to fill a vacancy as soon as possible to stay productive and meet their goals. They often overlook soft skills when writing employment descriptions. Emotional intelligence may be a vital soft skill, alongside communication, problem-solving, teamwork, adaptability, and work ethics.

Recruiters play an important role in identifying the required soft skills for every position and including them within the description. If you get raised eyebrows, persevere! It is often challenging to elucidate the importance of recruitment to non-HR stakeholders. You’ll win them over by explaining that the questions test empathy, and supply a glimpse into the author's CV.

We all know that hiring the proper skills with the incorrect personality spells disaster.

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence, as an element in business success, has been becoming more prominent over the past 20 years. There are many definitions, but the foremost popular is from the researchers who devised the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional IQ test (MSCEIT):

We can break it down further to raise understanding. People high in emotional intelligence have:

Empathy – they will understand other people’s emotions.

Motivation – they will quickly motivate themselves.

Self-awareness – they recognize their own emotions.

Self-regulation – they will control their emotions.

Social skills – they know the acceptable responses to people’s emotions.

When you include EQ questions in your hiring process, collaborative hiring is crucial to stop personal biases from creeping in. A winning hiring team will make sure that the questions are fair which, regardless of the answers, there’s no judgment in personam.

Every member of the team must concur that the elected EQ questions are relative to the role. Also, there’s no right or wrong answer, which questions aren’t complied to catch people out inadvertently.

Interviews are stressful for candidates, and if questions make them feel embarrassed or cornered, you'll upset them. Poorly selected or phrased EQ questions could unintentionally cost you your best candidate.

You want to urge to know the personality, but questions must not ever harm the candidate experience.

Emotional intelligence interview questions and answers

Here are a number of our favorite emotional intelligence questions and answers, also as potential red flags. Remember to follow up with probing questions until you get a full picture. Avoid questions that will be answered with a “yes” or “no.” Use “what happened next?”; “how did that cause you to feel?”; “what was their reaction?” type follow-ups.

1. features a work situation requiring you to vary your behavior? If so, why, and the way did you change?

You’re trying to find situations like learning new systems, changing environments, new responsibilities, or maybe new management. What you would like to ascertain is that if the candidate can combat change without it affecting them personally or impacting productivity.

Red flags: stories of resisting change, inflexibility, and resigning instead of adapting.

2. have you ever ever been challenged by a co-worker, and the way did you handle it?

Emotionally intelligent people will display reflection and empathy for both themselves and their challengers. There’s always a backstory, but people low on EQ could also be unaware. Someone high on EQ will explain the emotions or the high stakes that played a task. they might have tried to resolve the matter amicably or invited a neutral party to intervene. Emotionally intelligent people don’t recoil from identifying and admitting their role.

Red flags: impulsive reactions instead of taking time to reply. Aggression, showing off about “putting them in their place” and even being proud that the person resigned shortly afterward.

3. How does one respond when a manager criticizes your work?

Everyone makes mistakes, so being called out at some point is inevitable. Candidates with high emotional intelligence will open up and supply examples. They’ll also acknowledge errors and tell you what steps they’ve taken to avoid reoccurrence. If they are doing lay a number of the blame elsewhere, it'll usually be considerate.

Red flags: Candidates who’ve never been called out; that’s highly unlikely. Everyone was once a trainee, and every one trainee stumbled occasionally. Ask them to travel back to their first job. they could remember then but might blame somebody else . This might indicate someone who avoids taking responsibility.

4. How does one get over failure?

Here you’re trying to find quite just a mistake; you would like details of a disaster, large or small. We’ve all been there. A late deadline, a legitimate complaint from a customer, oversight on a selected task, and forgetting to hold out an instruction. you would like a situation that left the candidate red-faced without a legitimate excuse.

High EQ knows they’ve slipped up and accepted the results. They’re also willing to place within the time and energy to show things around. In some instances, they could have elected to resign because their failure caused harm to others or the corporate brand.

Red flags: signs of lingering resentment, bad-mouthing colleagues, blaming the merchandise, or running the corporate down, refusing to simply accept accountability, and defending themselves in possible disciplinary processes.

5. What quite workplace behaviors anger or annoy you?

Remember, we don’t choose our colleagues, we’re brought together by our employer. we've habits that we don’t even realize could be annoying. for instance, one person during a team could be particularly neat, while another’s more relaxed in their workspace. High EQ will recognize the difference in priorities and encourage cooperation to seek out a cheerful medium.

Red flags: making fun of the opposite person. Anger, proving some extent or asking to be moved to a different team. These are all signs of a scarcity of emotional understanding and inflexibility.

6. Tell me a few times once you had to be confrontational to realize results. What did you do, and the way was it received?

No one can escape confrontation within the workplace. it'll rear its head somewhere along the road. you would like to understand the background, what was at stake, and why confrontation was the sole option. Was the confrontation planned or spontaneous? A self-aware person would control their emotions, albeit things were unexpected. They’ll think it through while on their feet and work towards a positive outcome, despite the confrontation.

Red flags: aggression and anger. Proudly bringing people to tears. Avoiding confrontation at the least costs, even when it’s necessary. people that avoid conflict are often challenging to figure with because they’ll hide mistakes (their own or others), overlook problems, and are often disengaged.

7. What’s your biggest achievement, and why?

This answer will tell you what matters to the candidate. you'll also gauge their level of ambition. If their achievement is said to be solo-effort, ask them if anyone else could have contributed to their success. If they ask a team accomplishment, ask them what role they played.

Red flags: there aren’t red flags here because you ought to be matching the question to the role. If you’re interviewing a sales consultant and they ask being awarded the “sales consultant of the year” status, it doesn’t imply that they’re a solo-player. Getting a new business may be a hunter sort of job. Conversely, during a design team, each member contributes to the top product.

8. How does one celebrate success?

You must consider the role, the candidate’s age, and also their stage of life when asking this question. it's best not to get to understand the person better when you’re interviewing for mid-management and more senior roles.

Red flags: there aren’t any because we all celebrate differently. you'll get some insight into whether the person will fit the corporate culture, though. Someone who went out and “partied all night” isn’t wrong as long as they received work subsequent day on time, upbeat and productive. Another person may need to take their family out for a meal, and another did nothing but feel good. They’re all right; no one’s wrong.

9. have you ever ever had to be the bearer of bad news? (You also can ask about being promoted to employment that somebody else desperately wanted.)

Both questions mean that the candidate was directly involved in someone else’s disappointment. you would like to ascertain if they had empathy and will understand the opposite persons hurt. Whether it’s letting an employee go or getting promoted, high EQ knows to travel therein there'll be emotional distress, and that they plan for it. They approach things pityingly.

Red flags: arrogance, lack of empathy, or ignorance that somebody else may need to be hurt. Also, becoming overly involved with the emotions of others. Declining a promotion to stay friends or asking somebody else to interrupt the bad news.

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence interview questions must be used with discretion. Unlike skills-based questions, emotional questions read the personality, which can make people feel uncomfortable.

Select questions that will be confirmed in previous job references, and don’t be afraid to probe either the candidate or the referee to urge the complete picture. Answers which will appear positive are often negative once you understand the entire picture. for instance, someone who says they’re popular at work might be a flirt or distract colleagues. Contrariwise, they might genuinely be a people-orientated team player.

Also, keep an in-depth eye on interview visual communication when asking emotional intelligence interview questions. Drill right down to get the facts before you set any weight into the answers. If you’re unsure how valuable the question was within the interview, discard it entirely and don’t use it in the least when weighing up the candidate.

https://www.vcandidates.com/blog?_ga=2.91302745.210960727.1584332600-997434755.1570525075

[dancingsparks]

The Mystery of Potters Bad Mood

Also on Ao3

Potter was grumpy this morning. Well, he was grumpy every morning.  Usually he would get less grumpy as the morning went on until he was almost pleasant by lunch; only almost though. Draco wasn’t sure Potter ever was pleasant. The fact that he could make Draco laugh and they had actually fairly interesting conversations without seriously insulting each other didn’t mean Draco had to like him. No matter he found himself missing the git on days they didn’t spend together. That didn’t happen too often anyway and should therefore have no influence on what Draco thought of Potter.

Potter was grumpy this morning. Well, he was grumpy every morning.  Usually he would get less grumpy as the morning went on until he was almost pleasant by lunch; only almost though. Draco wasn’t sure Potter ever was pleasant. The fact that he could make Draco laugh and they had actually fairly interesting conversations without seriously insulting each other didn’t mean Draco had to like him. No matter he found himself missing the git on days they didn’t spend together. That didn’t happen too often anyway and should therefore have no influence on what Draco thought of Potter.

They both were part of a new project to improve education at Hogwarts. It was divided into two main parts: curriculum and professors. Currently every subject taught at Hogwarts (and many that might be offered soon) was under revision for which multitudes of experts from all over the world were contacted. It was huge and it wasn’t always easy to find common ground when two completely different views on the same subject clashed together. Another topic for debate was the planned classes on mathematic, Latin and Wizarding culture; the last being planned as counterpart to Muggle studies. The idea was to help muggle born adjust in this new world and even offer volunteering students the opportunity to display what they like in their culture and share it with others. But some very loud people were convinced the class would be used to instil archaic ideas about blood superiority in young minds. Their fear was understandable to a degree; Draco himself grew up listening to his father going on and on about it. But after the war it wasn’t ever spoken about anymore; unless someone made these ridiculous claims.  Everybody liked to pretend that everything was fine now and no problems existed. Draco was still sneered at but that was the extent of it, nobody was willing to openly discuss anything clearly so evil. But unless someone very important suddenly changed their mind and had some very persuasive arguments, the class would most likely be offered.

Reforming professors and their methods was in no way easier. Especially older professors often were stubborn and unwilling to have their teachings dictated by someone else. It was a slow progress costing Headmistress McGonagall countless hours and nerves. Draco was one of the teaching assistants. Basically that meant he had to choose a subject he wanted to teach and, if approved by the current teacher and McGonagall, watch lessons, acquire a deeper understanding of the field, correct essays and be generally prepared to do whatever the professor thought necessary to qualify him. Draco had had a hard time electing only subject, being interested in most of the possibilities. But he had figured he could always learn more about anything he wanted regardless of his chosen profession. So he had finally settled on charms, anxious Flitwick would reject his request. But he didn’t and Draco now spent much of his time in the library, nose in a book and mind on complex charms and theories. He absolutely loved it.

Potter was TA in DADA, which surprised exactly no one, seeing as he was the Saviour. But that meant that often Potter would be found sitting right next to Draco, nose in his own book. Draco was of course never distracted by his presence and was always able to focus solely on his studies. He most certainly didn’t devote his time to remembering how Potter frowned at the text when he didn’t understand something or watch as he carded his hand distractedly through that mess he called hair. He therefore never had to hastily turn back to his book and pretend to be reading while desperately hoping he wouldn’t start blushing. Which of course he would, every damn time, if he were to stare at Potter. Which he didn’t.

Recently they were allowed to hold lessons on their own, only discussing the topic with the professor to make sure it fit the curriculum. They didn’t have to team up with other TAs but Draco found that planning lessons with Potter was easier and more fun than doing it alone. They would discuss methods to present the material and explained it to each other to get practise before class. When they could they would also attend each other’s classes and give feedback and encouragement. It was nice. Ignorant onlookers might even think them friends. They would, of course, be wrong, but Draco still enjoyed the company. Nevertheless, he and Potter weren’t friends. They had a purely professional relationship they mutually benefited from. Draco didn’t care about Potter otherwise.

Hence Draco also didn’t wonder about Potters bad mood this morning. After all he was always grumpy. Draco merely critically noted much room for improvement in his teaching so he could report to Potter later. Because that was part of their strictly professional relationship. It was essential that he could tell Potter he had been oddly irritable and moody. It actually went beyond grumpy. Wet kneazles were grumpy, Potter was … something else. The students didn’t even dare ask questions anymore after only getting bitten off answers that either sounded condescending or were plain rude. It was obvious Potter didn’t mean to but he was still behaving like a prick. He also frequently got lost  in his notes; his table was a mess of lose papers and on the blackboard were jumbled notes not even Draco could understand. And after having worked with Potter for about two years now he was intimately acquainted with his handwriting and bothersome habit of writing wherever there was space without any system. Still Draco couldn’t make out what Potter tried to convey on the blackboard. Right in this moment Potter was again describing different kind of shields; that was the third time today and not any more coherent than the last two.

What was going on? There was something very obviously seriously wrong. Maybe it had been bad news? But it must have been extremely awful to have him in such a state. It would have to be one of his close friend-as-good-as-family injured and on the verge of death and if that were the case there is no way Potter would still be here. No, it couldn’t be bad news. Maybe he was in the prophet again for some ridiculous reason and Potter was angry. But Draco had read ‘the prophet’ this morning and there was nothing in it that would explain this behaviour. In fact, there was not one article worth reading, which was precisely why he normally didn’t bother with it. Usually his mornings were spent with Potter and he didn’t need to search ‘the prophet’ for entertainment because Potter provided it. Granted the man was absolutely useless without his coffee so he mostly just sat there inhaling caffeine while Draco told him the latest gossip he had heard from the portraits. It was fun enough and Potter was not required to answer so it worked perfectly. But Potter didn’t appear this morning and Draco was left alone. That Potter abandoned him so unceremoniously to his boredom didn’t sting at all however, because they weren’t friends. Potter didn’t have to notify Draco of his whereabouts and it’s not as if they ever actually planned to have breakfast together. They just regularly had and today they hadn’t; no big deal.

It did mean though, that something must have happened during breakfast. He did arrive almost too late to class as well … Maybe someone needed to discuss something with him and stopped him before he could join Draco at breakfast? But that was ridiculous; everything that was important enough to be discussed this early surely need Potter mentally awake so blocking his way to his caffeine boost – oh. Potter didn’t have any coffee today. That actually made sense and explained so much. He probably slept late and had to hurry to reach class in time. It was so obvious now that he knew what to look for: his hair was messier than usual, his clothes looked rumbled and hastily thrown on and he seemed on the verge of falling asleep. How had Draco not noticed before now?

Draco resolutely wasn’t relieved that Potter didn’t deliberately leave him alone earlier. Because Draco didn’t care about Potter. Right. And he didn’t want to help Potter dealing with his sleepiness for his sake, but in the interest of giving these  students a good education. That would only be possible if their TA was actually awake. Based on that, and only that, Draco decided to get Potter some coffee. He quietly slipped out of the room to ask the house elves in the kitchen for their biggest cup of coffee, on the way trying to convince himself he was annoyed at Potter for letting Draco deal with this. He wasn’t charmed and slightly worried by his inability to take care of himself.

When he stood back in front of the classroom he still hadn’t fully convinced himself of it but was confident he would be able to deliver the coffee with a suitable annoyed expression to cow Potter and make sure he was aware he owed Draco. Entering the room he strode directly to Potters desk, set the cup down, ignored the disbelieving look he got in thanks and went back to his own seat at the back.

Potters lesson got much better with the added caffeine. He slowly woke up and Draco thought some students might have learned something today after all. Draco definitely didn’t feel proud at having improved Potters mood, if anything he felt proud of saving today’s lesson. So when the students left muttering and shoving each other Draco professionally accepted Potters thanks. His eyes looked so big and earnest, so impossibly green. Eyes now cast down, Potter was stammering something about liking Draco and maybe drinking coffee outside of school for once? Draco couldn’t really hear him over the sudden rushing in his ears and could only stare at him, disbelieving. Suddenly presented with the chance of dating Potter he found that he would very much like that, he might even have blushed. But Potter took his lack of an answer apparently as an answer in itself and the smile fell of his face. Already missing the smile and hating the disappointment on Potters face Draco rushed to reassure him that he would love that actually. The smile returned much bigger and brighter and Draco was sure he had made the right choice. Something in his stomach fluttered, his blood was still way too loud in his ears and he was most definitely full on blushing now.

There was no way to deny it anymore: he had a big crush on Harry Potter. And they were going on a date.

Draco smiled back.

[mentalcurls]

6. Laura mi ha detto tutto

Yay! Episode 6! We’re finally getting to the real *Penetrator Chris voice* drama! This time I discuss  🐍 Marti, consent, insecurities, middle aged relatives and of course whether the episode passes the Bechdel test (not to sound like one of those clickbait headlines, but the result may surprise you!).

Bubbles! Pretty iridescent bubbles! (Let’s get excited about the small things since we’re getting into #mainagioia territory)

ok, but Marti in this scene? This is Marti pulling a S2!Gio: he notices something’s wrong with Eva, he tries to cheer her up, he cajoles her into talking to him, lets her deflect and answers her questions even if they’re out of the blue, then lets her talk when she finally confides in him

“Why do you say that?” is what betrays him, he know he knows he knowsss

I really wanna cut off those bangs though. Not even Zac Efron’s hair when it was at its peak HSM1-ishness was this annoying

oh-oh, there was an off screen fight? In which Gio gaslighted the hell out of Eva lying to her about being with his mom not Laura and calling her crazy? LudoBesse, you think by leaving it out of the final cut I wasn’t gonna get mad about it? Fuck off, I’ll have you know I’m royally pissed off about it!

“Stop it, dump him and that’s it. You can’t keep feeling like this” MARTINOOOO 🐍🐍🐍 he even makes it sound like he’s saying it for her! Honestly, this guy. He’d die a thousand painful deaths for Gio (just as bffs, aside from his crush) yet he still convinces Eva he’d kind-of-side with her in an hypothetical break up

I think what Martino does is best described as stirring shit up, then running away to watch that same shit hit the fan from a safe distance

at least he hesitates a second before dropping the “You could ask Laura” bomb

oh Silvia, Silvia. Not even one full orgasm in and already you’re talking like you’re out of a rom-com where the protagonist doesn’t want anything serious, yet with him…

orgasms and sneezing have only one thing in common afaik: they’re both controlled by the autonomic nervous system

Eleonora Sava in this scene is me and I’m her and we’re both telling Silvia off and being pissed at idiotic men who pressure girls into unsafe sexual practices

“He said he never uses it [a condom].” one sentence, three things confirmed: Edoardo always puts the burden of contraception on his female partners, he is very much promiscuous and has had unsafe sex already so he could have or carry any venereal disease yet still has unsafe sex with Silvia, Silvia gets pressured to have sex without a condom and that means the encounter was not completely consensual. Edoardo, for all that I empathized with him in the last episode, is an asshole.

I actually don’t consider him an asshole for not turning his back on Silvia when she waves at him, but I do for all the reasons I mentioned above. I’m so angry, you wouldn’t believe.

without Sana your overeager shows, Silvia, and it doesn’t do you any favors

and what prompts Silvia to put aside her resentment towards Sana? A show of wealth. Cute.

ok, honestly, those few second from Silvia’s POV on the back of the microcar

OUCH, my poor heart. I wasn’t ready to see Eva with her hood pulled up and earphones on, the throwback (flashforward, actually?) to that first clip after the hiatus where Marti is walking much like that and listening to Earl Sweatshirt 😭 except this time the one who’s not answering their beloved is the protagonist, not the love interest

Gio really slips up badly, with that mother-father thing

my heart is honestly breaking for Eva, Giovanni has called her all kind of things for thinking he’s with Laura, paranoid, crazy, out of her mind; yet she’s only amassing more and more proof that he’s lying and since he won’t tell her why, she can’t help but fill in the gaps herself; and at point her own guilt starts messing with her head and whispering that if Gio already cheated once, he might do it twice, what’s to stop him; and her insecurities come up right on the coattails of that to remind her that just because Gio chose her then, it doesn’t mean everyone else did, in fact they didn’t and there must be a reason, so maybe he’s realized she’s not good enough for him either and he’s gone back to the girl everyone sided with, the one everyone loves, including Eva herself because despite everything that’s her best friend, with whom she shared almost everything, that’s the girl who knows her and who Eva knows and loves

and I love Gio for really proving he knows Eva, he likes her as a person enough to have wanted to know and to remember what she likes; then I hate him for smiling, for forcing proximity with her, and for resorting to old tactics and kissing her to calm her down and convince her of his version. Shutting a person up by kissing her is borderline harassment, even if they’d normally consent. If it’s a girl, 99% of the time it’s also a sexist act, because it proves you’re don’t even have enough consideration for the woman to let her finish talking and listen to her arguments. Gio, why do you do this to me (and Eva)? You leave me no choice but to want to punch you.

Margot is so cuuuute I love cats

never knowing what to give guys for their eighteenth is peak italian culture 

when Eva says “Un cazzo” I was 100% expecting someone to at least wiggle their eyebrows, like, c’mon!

Silvia taking every single possible chance to contact Edoardo breaks my heart

Fede would be an amazing hype woman I think, she’s just so supportive of everything that makes her friends feel good about themselves, even when it’s sending nudes to a jerk

���If we don’t tell her the truth, then who?” and that’s Sana in a nutshell, except she doesn’t consider those flimsy, useless little things called feelings: girl, I get it, but saying things in a kind way goes incredible lengths

“Eva, I’ve been at this school for three years” YES! That’s what I’ve been saying: Sana and Silvia (and to an extent Federica) know these people and their hierarchy really really well, for completely opposite reasons - one out of self preservation and near-scientific interest, the other because she’s a wannabe social climber -, but they’ve had the time and ability to find out how things work here; Eva, despite being there for seven months, has been so wrapped up in her own drama she hasn’t been observant at all and she doesn’t understand how the school is “run” and that’s  a big fucking problem for her because she doesn’t form an opinion on whether or not she wants to get in with the cool kids, she just lets these girls (mainly Silvia) she’s known for such a short time drag her into it, and because she’s flailing around she makes trouble for herself. Eva doesn’t give a fuck about the Villa boys, about Incanti or Canegallo or Rodi or whoever else, she doesn’t even care about Laura as far as her popularity goes, so she literally gets into the whole Federico thing just for Silvia, with encouragement from the other girls.

my favourite part of Federico’s 18th birthday party is the presence of his relatives who are so completely out of place among all the kids dancing and will undoubtedly start dancing after a couple of glasses of spumante, the teenagers will end up dancing with them at first to make fun then give them a wide berth, until they realize after two songs they’re too old for this and go home, but still giddy af (seen it happen at all 18ht parties where there were parents/uncles/aunts etc.). In the meantime the boy//girl of the hour gets shitfaced and everyone will have to work to kind of hide how bad from the parents.

13:24 FIRST GLIMPSE OF ALICE

is the girl making the toast to Federico Maria Sorgato?? Isn’t she brunette in the episode Eva speaks to her outside school? Cause she looks pretty blonde her, but maybe it’s the lights.

oh Gio ❤️ I keep finding reasons to be mad at you but I still love you ❤️ you mago dell’amore, you ❤️ that text is so sweet, except not because the purpose of going to the party is still to please Eva, not to do something for them, it’s a concession he makes, not something he shares Eva’s desire to do, so I’m angry again. Well, that didn’t last long

I totally get Laura tbh, if there had been a swing at any of the parties I’ve ever been to, it’d have been mine all night, I love swings

ok, what is it that makes Laura look so bad in this scene? Is it the makeup? The lighting? Both? It’s just so unappealing, her face looks so drawn, all her imperfections show so much 😕 

For a second, for a split second, when she says “Non so” she considers not doing this, but why should she do this for Eva? Payback time, bitch

oh, Canegallo. Enters the room speaking English, all dapper in his suit, then he does the whole worried thing and it’s fine, it’s fine for the most part, he sounds genuine; then he twirls her hair round his finger, has her turn her face and that’s it

and Eva wants it, because it’s comfort, reassurance, it’s a way to forget everything that’s gone to hell for a minute 

and he looks at her to make sure, to check in! So different from that last kiss with Gio we saw. It takes 50 creepiness points away from Canegallo (he still has a lot)

then Alice comes in, just in time, and Federico doesn’t even have to lie to her! It’s all there, all true, so Eva couldn’t even disagree!

Alice is really nice, comforting a girl she doesn’t know at all while a cool party is going on, but her “When you meet the right guy, you’ll know, cause you’ll feel like you can trust him.” is h e a r t b r e a k i n g

Oh Alice. Your solution for heartbreak is getting back to the party, getting drunk and having dub con sex with older guys? Girl. No wonder you like Canegallo.

it’s so significant to me that Eva basically had the same “crying alone the meeting a girl who tries to comfort you” experience Silvia had at the Easter party in ep.1 and the first thing she does when she gets out is to look for, essentially, Silvia; and of course in both occasions she’s had a confrontation with Laura earlier and she goes home alone afterwards

Silvia is really a masochist, isn’t she? She stays right there, next to a passed out Chicco Rodi, looking at Edoardo going on with his life and making out with her former friend Sara

Eva walking home alone reminds me of 9.5 La Grotta except she’s walking with some purpose despite feeling lost, while Marti was literally wandering 

she stops and hesitates when she sees Gio, cause she wasn’t expecting it at all, she isn’t ready, not now

Gio’s “T’ho detto un po’ di cazzate in sto periodo” is so reminiscent of several of Marti’s lines, especially of when he apologizes to the guys and to Emma

ok, so get Gio’s big reveal and Eva’s regret is written all over her face

I’m not even gonna talk about Gio huffing about Eva’s mention of that time he threw up on her while they were kissing. HE THREW UP ON HER WHILE THEY WERE KISSING. I just. Can’t.

and Gio brings up trust and I bet that Eva’s brain was replaying Alice’s words in her mind

“It’s you and me” 💔 (despite everything, I’m under a thousand trains for them)

Bechdel test: this episode doesn’t pass the test. The only times it comes close are when Sana arrives with the microcar and when the girls discuss Margot for a second on the windowsill, but I refuse to call either of those “conversations”.

This post is part of my complete series of meta about Skam Italia season 1.  If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the other episodes, you can find the mastepost linked in the top bar on my blog under SKAMIT: EVA. Cheers!

[pekorosu]

my lecturer for today got real miffed at the class for not responding to her prompts and questions so she went on this huge rant about how we’re all so stubborn and arrogant, comparing us to british students who are more proactive even if they can be annoying, blahblah etcetc. and ofc this isn’t an isolated incident... it’s something i’ve seen a lot of lecturers do, but don’t really understand? like they make it clear that they KNOW this is a problem stemming from our education system, that it’s also cultural to a certain extent. they KNOW that we weren’t brought up to ask questions, but to shut up and listen. but they still expect students who are like, fresh out of spm to behave super proactively? it’s so bizarre. and it’s even more bizarre that they accuse these students of being “stubborn” or “thinking you’re so smart”. honestly teach? i think they’re scared. they don’t want to get the answer wrong. or heck at worst, they’re probably just apathetic. and i’m p much from a totally diff generation among these kids, but even i have the impression that volunteering to answer = making urself stand out = being stuck up. i mean, i don’t think that of ppl who volunteer to answer, but it’s how i feel about MYSELF if i do it, yknow? this mindset definitely came from somewhere and where else if not from school or home? i also noticed that this sort of silent, non-participative behaviour tends to be more prevalent among chinese school students. the ones who respond in class are usually non-chinese, primarily english-speakers or that one kiasu kid. so... i think that says a lot... either about their schooling culture or their lack of confidence in their english skills. i just don’t understand why these lecturers... i mean they should know better, right? they’ve been lecturing for years. i mean, sure, go ahead and encourage students to learn to start being more participative, but why are you yelling at them for behaving in a way that they’ve been conditioned to since they were kids? tak paham...

[rtarara]

On Supergirl and Homophobia

I am seeing a lot of posts saying how calling out what happened at SDCC as homophobic is ‘ridiculous’. I’d like to address first the scope of what homophobia is, then move onto how the incident was driven by homophobia. 

Definitions:

When you hear the term homophobia, it conjures up images of assault or of slurs being thrown out in the open. This is often not the case. Incidences of homophobia can range from the above to smaller instances that make you question whether of not you’re being ‘hysterical’ or ‘dramatic’ for thinking you’re being discriminated against or not. Merriam-Webster defines homophobia as: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals. 

An example that I have in my own life is that my conservative Christian relatives often ‘forget’ to call and invite me to gatherings. Another is that they will avoid any talk saying I’m married. In these cases, it falls under aversion for not wanting to be around us because we’re gay, and discrimination for not treating our marriage as equal to that of my sister or cousins. It would be easy in the silence to say that these things were the result of personality conflicts or something in my own behavior (Was I too touchy? Did I say something that mentioned homosexuality or gay culture when they didn’t want to hear it?), but time, study and the support of allies in my family has helped me to see the behavior for what it is: homophobia. 

The Issue:

In the case of the SDCC video, we see Jeremy Jordan start off singing about the season and joking that hoover was the only thing that rhymed with Vancouver. It was fun and silly. He moved on to sing that Kara Met Lena and they were best friends. This was great. He then, unprompted, turned to the camera and shouted that they were only friends. By changing his focus to the camera, he shifted the address to the people watching and those who shipped Supercorp specifically. This is an audience of predominately young queer women. Melissa Benoist loudly joined in and Jeremy continued that they were not getting together and they were only friends. The rest of the cast present was laughing. 

The cast gleefully mocked and dismissed a group of young queer fans. By addressing them directly, this action was a form of silencing and bullying. Part of his message was to shut up about queer things because they won’t be canon. It was a JOKE to think they could be.

The greater societal context of that is that they won’t be canon, BECAUSE it’s two women. The level of joy in the mockery was really a way of distancing themselves from gay people and othering them. This is an act of homophobia because wlw (supercorp supporters) were singled out for mockery and silencing. It had a profound negative effect on a lot of people. This is a natural human reaction to being mocked, especially for disenfranchised groups because it is devaluing those who are already devalued by society.

During the recap they also failed to mention the canon lesbian storyline, which was one of the bigger ones for the year, lending to the overall impression that gay people were not important or welcome or worthy of any sort of inclusion. 

The interviewer spoke that, “Any show like this naturally has such a fandom that there’s the natural shipping that goes on.” He gestures to Melissa and Katie and says ‘your two characters, you know about this...” They joked about having no idea while Mechand was like ‘I know about this.” Between that and the singing, this shows that the fandom is one that the show is aware of, members of which (young queer girls), they have been seeing online and at various events. They have a context for who they are talking about. 

Jeremy then took over and said that he felt like he was going to get destroyed, Melissa said something along the lines of, “Maybe, yes” and Jeremy gave a joking ‘I’m sorry’ and said “I just debunked Supercorp live.” Melissa said, “That’s pretty brave.” 

Yes, Supercorp is a vocal fandom. It’s a large fandom, but calling it brave to mock a group of wlw publicly because they might be called out on their homophobia speaks to the self-congratulatory martyrdom of those who speak out against gay marriage and then point out how ‘cruel’ gay people are when they get blowback for it. It’s a lousy thing to do and it serves a greater homophobic purpose as setting up wlw as the ones perpetrating bigotry and ‘forcing their beliefs on people’.  

The interviewer asked if they were caught off guard by fans seeing things that might be there or could be there and what they made of it at this point. 

Melissa said that, ‘It was surprising, not what Katie and I expected to say the least.” She looked very uncomfortable at the prospect of a character she plays being perceived as queer, but did not say anything further negatively. 

Katie was very affirming/not at all uncomfortable. She spoke about how she often plays character with that subtext and she thought this time that it wasn’t there, but, “Wow I was wrong, apparently.” She went on to say that they’d talked about it and was adamant about how wonderful it was that people could take away so many things from the art that they created—that anyone could read into and see anything and that was what THEY saw in it, then to take that away. This was wonderful and a great example of being a great ally. Melissa did nod along at this point as Katie tried to elevate the conversation.  

Chris broke in and said, “Sexuality is all about others perceptions of yours.” He tried to cover it by saying, “That was sarcasm.” This was really a particularly vicious jab because what he was implying was that it’s terrible of gay people to see themselves in this characters because they’re straight. It implies that by not seeing them as 100% straight, queer people are invalidating their (the fictional character’s in this case) straight sexuality and that is wrong. He is saying that a queer reading of the text has no value. It is homophobic because it devalues queer people and plays into a heterosexist world view that because something seems straight it CAN’T be queer.  

Jeremy played the, “I went to musical theater school. I know all about other people’s perceptions of sexuality.” As to say that being perceived as gay was a negative experience that he knew a lot about. 

There was a lot to unpack in a relatively short interaction, but I hoped this helped explain to some extent. There is also the fact the wlw representation has historically been treated as a joke, ratings stunt, or way to titillate straight men. Mocking what would be a really healthy ship based on mutual support as some sort of lunacy is incredibly harmful. 

A Few Themes:

1. It wasn’t that supercorp was gay. It was just that those fans are annoying/intense.

There is definitely a section of fans who is too intense and lacks boundaries and manners. I’ve seen this section of fans in a lot of fandoms, both in wlw ships and in sci-fi fandom in general. It does not make it right, but young wlw fans are the ones being singled out AS A GROUP for it. This is really common with minorities and it in no way excuses degrading them because they are girls who like girls. Mocking a group of queer people and making them a punchline is not an appropriate response to this. 

2. Well Eliza says things about Bellarke so it wasn’t just Supercorp.

The possible Supercorp relationship in no way degrades either of the characters or a marginalized group of people (as is the case when Eliza speaks about Bellarke). She has also, to my knowledge, never directly mocked those shippers in song. There is no history of straight ships being mocked or derided. This is an apples to oranges comparison. 

3. They were shitty to Rahul so they deserve it. People are just responding.

There were some very shitty things said to that man and he didn’t deserve it. Some were from Supercorp shippers and some were from people mocking Supercorp shippers (the tweet that he retweeted and called out was mocking the wlw fans by being shitty to him). This is why it was completely acceptable for him to talk about the intensity of the Supergirl fandom and even Supercorp. He didn’t mock anyone and people were not mad at him, they just wished that the hate was less visible and that things had gone down differently.

That doesn’t mean that the cast has a free ticket to mock wlw shippers.

4. It’s just a fanon ship, so they’re sick of being asked about it. They are being too pushy.

Content creators decided to tap into fandom as a revenue stream and way to increase ratings/merchandise sales. I think this shift started around Twilight and the Jacob vs Edward debates. Content creators encourage shipping to promote sales. It’s not altruistic. They almost always leave any mention of queer ships out. Queer people have stopped accepting that because they are less afraid than they used to be. It’s actually pretty brave to ask in the vast flurry of Peeta vs Gale, to declare yourself Team Joanna and ask about that. It isn’t rude to be gay and engage in the same way as straight shippers do. It isn’t rude to see your ships as equally valid. There are those who take it too far in all aspects of shipping, but gay people aren’t terrible for pushing for representation. 

I think it would be more productive to ask why actors were so bothered by the idea of a main character being bisexual that they decided to mock a large swath of their fanbase. 

5. They didn’t mean it. They have done X, Y, Z things for gay people in the past.

Doing something homophobic, doesn’t mean you are strictly a giant homophobe. Everyone is a little homophobic in the way that everyone is a little racist. Growing up in a heterosexist society does a lot of damage. What matters is learning and moving on. I’m going to give Jeremy a chance to show change. Good allies listen when they’re told that they’ve made a mistake. The rest of the cast has not apologized yet, but if they can do so meaningfully and show change as well, then that would be for the best. 

6. People are Overreacting

You don’t get to decide how people feel about being mocked for their sexuality. They are not being awful for posting things like this, calling out bad actions and asking for change. They aren’t even wrong for saying that they no longer wish to watch the show or interact with a certain actor or actress.  

You CAN call out individuals if they are using hateful language themselves, as always, but you can’t lump all the hurt wlw shippers together in one boat and say negative things about them. 

[k-renne]

Ok, I got another idea for floof from An's request haha. What if it was the other way around and Kylo is trying to be domestic for reader after they've moved in together and he attempts to make her favorite foods? Like it's so out of his element but he wants to show her how much he loves her and so he tries it out.

More floof! More floof! I really love these, they’re so much fun to write. Consider it the prequel to the last one, also I kinda went all out lol

It was just a few weeks after you had moved in with Kylo and he had never thought that he could ever be this happy in his life. It was something that he wanted with you since the very beginning of your relationship, being with you just a little bit made him want to spend all of his time with you.

On his commute to work he began reflecting on his time with you, and how it all started. He met you on a business trip, deciding to venture out of the confines of his hotel for once. That’s when he met you, well it was more like he ran into you.

It was your day off and you decided to visit your local art museum, full of great paintings and pictures, it was a fun place to walk around in and while living here you wanted to take advantage of your membership as often as you could. You didn’t mind being by yourself, it gave you more room to think, but you couldn’t help but observe the couples on their date. You always thought that this would be a great place to take someone, unfortunately you never had the chance to.

Kylo admired the artwork, though he felt very out of place here. Dressed in a suit and tie, he didn’t exactly look like the artsy type. More so people tended to  naturally stare at his tall form, he was just intimidating in that way. He just thought he was funny looking, he didn’t fully realize the affect he had on people. He didn’t know exactly why people were afraid of him but he did know it had always been this way, as long as he could remember.

His boss said that he was extremely ‘naturally talented’, encouraged him to delve deeper into his work to an obsessive extent. His nature allowed him to close deals, work long hours, and succeed in this power exchange. He enjoyed the invigorating feeling of closing a deal, it was like winning a battle. He liked to win, but now he couldn’t help but feel that with his job he was becoming increasingly isolated from people. More than he already was.  

That’s why he felt so out of place, everybody here seemed to have somebody, except for him.

You notice the man immediately when he enters the room, he’s so big that it’s impossible to miss. And he’s dressed so nicely, you wondered what type of person would visit a museum in a three piece suit. Maybe he had come from his job. You noticed that he was walking up to look at your favorite painting. This was your opportunity to strike up a conversation, find out more about this man.

“That’s one of my favorite paintings, La Japonaise, a social commentary on France’s appropriation Japanese culture by Monet,” You comment.

Kylo only notices you when you start speaking, deep in thought. Where did you come from? And you were by yourself too, had willingly walked up to him. He looked over to you, almost in awe of you.

You look up to the man, he doesn’t say anything but he has this look on his face. No one had ever looked at you like that before, and was he blushing? Because he’s now openly staring, you take the opportunity to stare back, observe him up close like one of the paintings. His features were striking, he had an amazing profile. The little moles and freckles that dotted his very serious visage made you slightly smile.

Kylo can’t help it, right now he was thinking that this was probably the prettiest girl that he had ever seen. Normally he didn’t care much, he wasn’t sex obsessed or very driven to form relationships. Maybe it was the way that your lips curled into a small smile but for probably the first time in his life Kylo was blushing

You and the stranger stared at each other for a good minute, before you finally decided to introduce yourself. “I’m Y/N,” You put out your hand. He took it gladly, ”I’m Kylo,” He introduced.

“Say Kylo, do you want me to give you a tour? I know this museum pretty well, and afterwards we could get lunch,” You offer. Maybe you were going out on a limb asking him on a date, but you felt like if you didn’t do it know you’d lose your chance forever.

Of course Kylo agreed, and soon one date turned into many more. He didn’t live in the area but he tried to make it there every weekend that he could, video chatting with you regularly and sending you things that he thought you might want. You get a job in the city he lives in and that’s when he invites you to move in with him.

It takes some time for Kylo to get used to living with someone else, even if it was his favorite person. Now he has something to look forward to when he gets home, someone that keeps him from working overtime all the time.

He loves the little things the most, brushing his teeth next to you in the morning, planning dinner together, watching you get ready, and giving you a chaste kiss before you leave. He was so thankful for it all.

This is why he was trying his hardest to cook dinner for you tonight, because although he was very helpful you usually did more of the cooking. He didn’t need to learn how so he never had, but if he thought you would like it, he was going to do it. He was going to make your favorite foods even if it killed him.

This is the circumstance that you find Kylo in when you get home, kitchen counters covered in a mess of dirt pots and bowls. His hair was tied back messily and he was wearing your apron that was too small for him, it was quite the sight.

“Kylo, what are you doing?” You asked, giggling at his flustered jumbling about the kitchen. He had tried to cook before but he had never really done it on his own before.

“Uhh nothing,” He lies, moving in front of the kitchen to try and hide it from you.

“It doesn’t look like nothing, do you need my help?” You ask, worried that he might hurt himself.

“No, just go to your room or something, stay away from the kitchen,” He says, slowly backing you towards the hallway.

“Alright, if you need any help just call me,” You offer. You’ll let him have this one, you could tell he was trying to do something nice for you anyways.

You can’t help but listen in, laughing when he curses and stopping yourself from rushing to him when it sounds like he’s in trouble. It was cute that he was trying to cook without your help, this time you’d leave him be even though he still had a lot to learn. And it was so sweet that you didn’t want to ruin it or discourage him.

“Y/N,” Kylo calls your name, he was finally satisfied with his work. You come, expecting him to be asking for help but you gasp when you see a completely clean kitchen and a nice looking dinner on the table for the two of you.

“Honey! You did such a great job, I’m so proud of you,” You praise.

“Don’t say that until after you finish eating,” He points out.

“I think it looks great, don’t be so hard on yourself,” You chastise him. He pulls up a chair for you to sit down and gives you something to drink. He watches as you take your first bite, anticipating what you might say, good or bad.

“Kylo, this is perfect, just how I like it! Not too salty, perfect temperature, it’s really good,” You compliment. Kylo visibly breathes a sigh of relief, happy that you like what he made.

“You didn’t have to go through the trouble of making all of this either, thank you so much,” You express your gratitude.

“You know I’d give you the moon if I could princess, you make me happy,” He admits. You get up to give him a soft kiss, and he pulls you into his lap.

“Why don’t I feed you dinner Y/N?” He suggests, mischief in his grin. He holds you against him and nuzzles his nose against your cheek, showing his affection.

“Okay, I’ll let you try, but if it gets annoying you better stop,” You warn. Kylo chuckles before sliding over your plate and a fork. It feels kind of silly to have someone else put a fork of food in your mouth. But it’s also another level of intimacy with him and you love leaning against his chest. You finish dinner, full and satisfied.

“Ugh, I don’t want to move,” You groan.

“I’ll carry you, we can go cuddle in bed for a bit,” He hums. You let him carry you to the bed where he plops you down and takes his place besides you, pulling the covers over you and entangling his limbs with yours. God you were really turning him into a sap. 

[anchoredtether]

Title: Bandages

Author/Artist: AnchoredTether

Rating: Explicit [graphic depictions of violence, major character death, dark themes, discussion of suicide, graphic/disturbing imagery]

Series: Vengeful Retribution

Chapter: 4/?

Spoiler-free Summary:  Rokurou thought nothing had changed until he felt something he could only describe as innately human. Velvet swore she felt a warmth, a luxury she was certain she would never feel again after her humanity died. It seemed even daemons could change.

CHAPTER 04 --- BANDAGES

"Why are you so proud of your clan name if you hate your family so?" The thought was at the back of Velvet's mind as she observed how he said the name Rangetsu despite all the negative glimpses she understood about the samurai's family. "I never said I hated them." Rokurou protested. "And besides, wouldn't you be a little bit proud of your last name if you belonged to the world's most renown line of swordsmen?" He gave her a devilish grin. Velvet growled. "I- well… I guess." She shook her head. "But you want to kill your own brother. And he killed your mother. I'm not…I'm not judging, but that's not exactly what a happy loving family looks like. If you don't hate them, then…what is it…you feel towards them?" Rokurou let out a quiet exhale. He wanted to retort that she was asking an emotionally dead daemon about how he felt concerning his relatively emotionless family. "It's…hard to explain to someone who doesn't come from my culture. It's not so much a family, like what you know and have grown up in, as it is a clan. We're not brothers and sisters or sons and daughters - we're comrades. Like soldiers in a battalion, or wolves in a pack. Blood relation doesn't necessarily mean anything." "If you're supposed to be like comrades, why are you killing each other?" "It's just part of our training. Part of being a samurai. We fight all the time. But if one of us ends up killing another while training…" He shrugged his shoulders as if they were talking about something far more trivial. "Then the one who's dead simply wasn't strong enough. That's just how it is. The strong survive and become stronger while the weak perish and die." "That's…terrible." Her voice sounded dead even though she felt horrified inside. He shrugged again. "Not terrible, just….different." "No, it's terrible." Her tone was almost angry now. "Have you never known what it's like to be loved?" She looked as if she were surprised she asked the question, and quickly added, "Or what it's like for someone to even give a damn if you live or die?" He blinked a few times, taken aback by her question. "Attachment and sentiment are weaknesses that will only slow you down in battle. Mercenaries can't afford love. That's just the way it is." "Well I'm going to do what I can to change it!" She said furiously, her golden hues passionate in their fervor. "I care if you die, Rokurou! You're not just an ally to me, or a comrade, or a means to an end. And I'm certainly not tolerating you just because you're repaying your stupid debt!!" She shook her head at the ridiculousness of his promise. "I don't want you to die because you're my friend, Rokurou! And you better remember it!" She playfully, half not-so-playfully punched his shoulder to make sure her point came across to him. He threw his head back in a spirited laugh. "If you say so!" In a more serious tone, he looked down at her with a warmth in his amber hue. "Don't worry about me, Velvet. I'm sure you had a wonderful upbringing with your sister and brother full of love and selflessness, and you simply wish I could have had the same. I don't yearn for something like that because I've never known any better. All I've ever wanted was to be the best swordsman I could be. That's all that has really mattered to me. Everything else is secondary." Velvet lowered her eyes with a thoughtful hum in acknowledgment. There was still plenty about Rokurou she didn't understand and his daemonicy certainly didn't help her get any closer in most cases. Most of the time he couldn't remember his human life, and if he did, he couldn't remember any emotions tied to those memories. When she thought about it, Rokurou seemed lively and full of spirit on the surface, with his care-free attitude and bizarre enthusiasm. But when she saw him more clearly, broke past his comedic facade, Rokurou was empty… as if the curse of his daemonblight tore his very soul from his body. When she thought about it, she would always take her lack of taste and sense over his lack of feeling. Because at the end of the day, Velvet hated the pain she felt…but it made her feel alive. It reminded her that she was more than a monster, that she had to keep on fighting. The pain gave her a reason to live. ][ --- ][ "Uuuhhhhgggghhhwwwwuh." "Looks like the daemon finally rose from its grave." Morgrim said dully. "There ain't no grave can hold my body down." Rokurou said groggily as he made his way to sit across from the malak at the table. "Where the hell are we, anyway?" "We're still in Mierchio-" "Obviously." The cold might not have bothered him as much anymore, but it still cut like daggers into his open wounds. Morgrim looked annoyed at his interruption. "-in an abandoned house on the edge of town. Well, by abandoned I mean of humans. Nathaniel is a malak that lives here and has so kindly allowed us to hole up here by my persuasion of sharing a special curry recipe with him." "Wouldn't happen to be a java curry recipe?" He could smell it wafting - it was the only reason he hauled himself out of bed, which he was already starting to regret. If only if one of his friends who could heal were here - Laphicet, Eizen, Eleanor, or even Magilou - he never thought he'd desperately wish the witch were by his side. This Nathaniel character knew an amateur healing art, but it wasn't anything like what he became accustomed to over the past year. "You have a good nose." Morgrim said. "I take it you can still taste your food?" Rokurou nodded. "Is that a common side effect of daemonblight?" "It would appear so." Rokurou quickly learned he couldn't use his right arm for the time being - he had to eat his curry using his left. Luckily for the swordsman, he was pretty ambidextrous, so it wasn't an issue. Realizing the extent of his injuries was troublesome, however. "How far did your markings spread before you nearly died from that code red daemon?" Morgrim stirred him from his thoughts. Rokurou was silent a moment as he looked at the black burns that marred his body, barely showing between strands of bloodied bandages. "Down to my elbow, and some ways down my shoulder blade. I can't exactly look back there all that well." "It seems your wounds have stimulated the spread of your daemonblight…as if it's trying to heal you." "I noticed that. Well, more like I felt it." It was hard to describe, but he could feel the dark markings crawling down his torso, creeping into the claw marks like a poison infecting his bloodstream. It didn't cause any pain, but he could tell it was turning him less and less human. "Judging the damage done, how long would you reckon it'll take me to heal?" He tilted his head at the cat - no, nekomata - across from him. "I haven't seen anyone survive with wounds that bad." Nathaniel picked up, speaking from the kitchen. "I'd wager it'll take at least a while. I'm honestly surprised you could even get out of bed after only four days." Rokurou nearly choked on his curry. "Four days?? Then how long have I been here?" "This would be day six since you went out into the icefield." Morgrim answered. "Damn." He couldn't remember the last time he had an injury this bad… well, except the day I died. That wasn't exactly an encouraging comparison. "So safe to say at least another week or so?" His tone was utterly defeated. "I would advise longer, but knowing you, you'll probably leave before a week has passed." Rokurou growled. "Stop acting like you know me." "I knew your brother." "That doesn't mean anything." Morgrim gave a soft smirk, and it only made Rokurou more infuriated. ][ --- ][ "I've been wanting to thank you." Velvet said unexpectedly one night on the Van Eltia. She was perched along the railing, looking out at the ocean waves crested in moonlight, while Rokurou walked over to rest his arms against the wood and joined her in watching. He found he couldn't sleep and it seemed Velvet was the same. "For what?" He asked. "For keeping what I am a secret. You didn't have to." "What, for not telling everyone that you were actually a therion instead of just a daemon?" The rest of the crew just recently learned that Velvet was the therion for the earthpulse point at Titania, even though Rokurou knew from the beginning. "What difference would it have made?" He turned his head to look at her. "You only told everyone you were a daemon, so I figured you didn't want anyone to know the therion bit." He shrugged. "I didn't really understand what a therion was anyway." "Neither did I." She looked at him, her gaze serious yet kind. "But as we all journeyed together and learned the truth about therions and Innominat…I'm actually kind of surprised you didn't make some kind of connection and think aloud some kind of epiphany with all of this, revealing what I was." Rokurou gave her a sly grin. "You're giving me more credit than I'm worth. I'm no genius, Velvet." "You're cleverer than you think." She sighed, a sound of slight frustration. She made a half-hearted gesture with her hand. "Will you just accept my gratitude already?" He laughed. "Alright alright! You're welcome. It wasn't that big of a deal though." "It was to me." Her voice was soft, her eyes lost as she stared at her arms folded on top of her knees bent close to her chest. "You also never told anyone about what lies beneath my bandages." "Actually I told Magilou." Velvet perked up a bit, her eyes wide. "You-" "Joking." Rokurou gave a playful tilt of his head before letting out a snicker. "No, I never told anyone. It's your business. You've never told anyone how I got my markings, so technically we're even. I'm simply paying back the favor." "Why does everything have to come back to repaying debts with you?" "Every act of kindness in life is a favor or a debt. There's no in-between." "That's extremely black and white for someone who lives in shades of grey." Rokurou narrowed his eyes at her, although it wasn't threatening albeit more on the lines of curious. "It certainly is." Velvet could see the crimson markings on his face more easily in the darkness of night as they faintly glowed with an ominous light. His daemonic eye shone like a nocturnal predator, and she caught glimpses of its gaze as the wind shifted his bangs. Velvet frowned slightly, her brows furrowing in thought. "There's a lot we've entrusted with each other…" She mused, "And have yet to tell anyone else." Rokurou's gaze softened. He stopped leaning against the rails only to hoist himself to sit on them like a bench, facing out towards the ocean. Velvet was sitting along the rails horizontally so she faced his side. The conversation felt more personal now, as if they were both on the same level. "I vowed to aid you in your quest for revenge the day we met. It was only natural that I come to trust you in time." "But it wasn't for me." Her voice sounded surprised. "I showed you my weakness, my vulnerability…when I barely knew you." She scoffed the words as if reprimanding herself, her lips set in a frustrated scowl. "You were only a means to an end. I wasn't supposed to trust anyone if I was to go through with this. I shouldn't have let you follow me to begin with. And yet -" Rokurou raised a brow at her, patiently waiting for her to wring out her frustrations. She sighed. "I always told myself that I didn't need anyone. That I could avenge Laphi all on my own. That it had to be done by myself, and myself alone. Even if I died in the process, that was fine. So long as he was avenged, and then that way no one else had to suffer. No one else would suffer because of Artorious, and no one would have to suffer because of me. That's how I wanted things to happen." "But that's not how things happened." He offered her a downturned smirk. "It's a good thing you've entrusted an emotionless daemon then - you don't have to worry about me suffering because of you." He turned his head to look out at the ocean, but Velvet kept her gaze set upon him, her words catching in her throat. "I'm sorry." Was all she managed to say. "For what?" He asked again, this time keeping his eyes on the water. "I'm sorry you can't feel." She almost sounded angry. "There are times when I hate the pain in my heart and I wish I didn't have to feel anything, and I envy you and I wish that I could be void of emotions - that everything would be so much easier - but then I remember that those feelings are what remind me that I'm alive, that I'm more than a monster, that I have a purpose and I desire to fulfil it." She bit her lower lip to steady herself and keep her voice from wavering. She could feel tears threatening to make an appearance as her heart ached for the man sitting beside her. "You don't have that." Before Velvet could notice, Rokurou's hand was placed on top of her bandaged one. He still looked out at the sea with a thousand yard stare, but the grip of his hand expressed that he was paying close attention. "We all fight different battles, Velvet." His voice sounded far off, as if it weren't Rokurou speaking anymore. He wasn't his usual sarcastic or cynical self, and his voice had a dark streak of sobriety. "There are plenty of things which I lack. But there are plenty of things I do have…and that makes all the difference. I think the reason why I… why I admire your resolve and strength and passion… is because a part of me recognizes that I was once like you." He turned to look at her now, his amber and crimson hues resolute. "You may have lost your arm, but you have the bandages to cover it up. You may have lost your brother, but you've regained your sisterly love with Laphicet. And you may feel you have lost what makes you human, Velvet… but feeling sorrow for what I am? Proves you haven't." He angled his torso to better face her, taking both of his hands to hold her bandaged hand and arm. "You do well to hide it from the rest of the world, but I know what truly lies beneath these bandages." He held her arm so delicately, as if it would crumble beneath his grasp if he weren't too careful. "You're not a monster, Velvet. You didn't succumb to malevolence. You're a victim of circumstance. You're a veteran of suffering. I brought my curse upon myself. Yours was forced upon you. There is no need to feel sorry for me." She was quiet a moment, desperately wanting to retreat into herself, but at the same time she couldn't pull her arm away from him. She looked up to match his gaze. "You say you brought your curse upon yourself, and that your own malevolence is what turned you into a daemon…but you've also told me that you died…that you…" She wasn't sure how to phrase the words on how he lost half of his head the same way she lost her left arm. "…that the malevolence brought you back. It doesn't add up, Rokurou. Dying wasn't your fault just as much as losing my arm wasn't. Unless you…" Velvet bit her lip, grateful that she stopped voicing that train of thought - that Rokurou died on purpose. He briefly mentioned suicide once so she had no idea the extent of how it affected him. "No, it doesn't really add up." He explained, his voice bordering close to something sad. He was silent, looking down at Velvet's bandages, his thumb idly gracing over the back of her hand. "I died fighting Shigure. I mean, ultimately, he wasn't the cause of my death, but he might as well have been. We were fighting at Mount Killaraus when a blow from Shigure pushed me over the edge of a cliff. If the fall didn't kill me, the fact that half my head deteriorated from lava definitely did the job." At this point Rokurou noticed that Velvet had her right hand covering her mouth, her golden eyes narrowed in a mix of disgust and horror. He gave her an apologetic look, but before he could speak Velvet's voice came through softly muffled. "I'm fine. I'm just…trying to absorb this." He offered her an encouraging smile, and moved both of his hands to hold both of hers. He looked down at their joined hands and part of him was surprised Velvet hadn't slapped him or something. "It was still my malevolence that brought me back to life." He said softly. "In the act of dying, I was filled with hatred towards my brother. That hatred and desire to kill him was so strong it brought me back from the dead." He laughed. "So to answer your question, no, dying wasn't my fault. But coming back from the dead with the sole purpose of killing my brother, definitely was." "Maybe that's why you can't remember or feel anything." Velvet said suddenly. Her hands, which were acting like dead fish until now, gripped Rokurou's as if he were her lifeline. Her eyes shone in the moonlight with the light of an epiphany. "You lost half your brain. It's no wonder you can't remember anything from your human life. It's no wonder you can't feel emotion. You can't recall emotions, you can't remember what it meant to feel alive when you were human because half those memories are gone…" "Hmm…perhaps you're right. I never thought about it like that. It makes sense." "…There's probably no way to fix it either. Just like how I will never get my arm back." "Like I said, you have the bandages to cover it up." Rokurou tightened his grasp on her hands in return. "You haven't lost everything, Velvet. And I don't think any loss could ever truly extinguish your fire." Her head tilted slightly, as if she were trying to examine the samurai from a different angle. "And you may have lost your memory and your emotions…but you still haven't lost this." She released her right hand to place it over Rokurou's chest, directly where his heart lie. She could feel it beating, alive and strong. "You might not be able to feel things like shame and sympathy and nostalgia and envy and love…but you have such heart Rokurou, whether you've come to realize it or not." "…I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. That I can remember, that is." He was incredibly still, so still that Velvet thought he might be holding his breath. His eyes kept shifting ever so slightly, and it wasn't until he drew in closer that she realized where his gaze diverted in distraction. Without thinking Velvet pushed him away with the hand that was still on his chest… …and Rokurou fell overboard. "…SHIT." She lunged in after him, plunging into the turbulent ocean waves. She couldn't feel the temperature of the sea, but she could only imagine it must have been freezing. "WHY THE HELL DID YOU JUMP IN AFTER ME??" Rokurou yelled as he swam against the current towards the Van Eltia. Velvet realized he was mad at her for jumping in after him, not for shoving him off in the first place, and then understood how little she thought this through. "I - I DON'T KNOW, YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY SWIM AGAINST THESE WAVES!" She yelled back, now swimming alongside him towards the ship. "THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST THROW A ROPE TOWARDS ME OR SOMETHING?" "I DON'T KNOW I WASN'T THINKING!!" How could she be so rash? Why didn't she think to grab a lifeline instead of just jumping overboard? The samurai leaning in to kiss her really knocked her off her boat…literally. "WELL IT'D BE EASIER FOR YOU TO SWIM IF YOU DITCHED THE SWORD!" "I AM NEVER ABANDONING MY SWORD!!!!" Velvet growled in frustration. Why was he wearing it in the middle of the night anyway? Did he sleep with the damn thing? "I HAVE AN IDEA." "ENTERTAIN ME." Although she had never swam with her therion arm activated, Velvet figured she could fight against the rolling waves more effectively. The massive crimson claw engulfed her arm, and she said sternly, "GRAB ME." Rokurou raised a brow. "THAT'S ENTERTAINING." "SHUT UP." Even though Velvet should have been mad at him, the anger in her voice was only halfhearted and she was too preoccupied with fighting the ocean to properly snap at him. If the circumstances were different she would have probably struggled with hiding a snicker because, despite their situation, she found his response incredibly inappropriate and simultaneously hilarious. Contrary to his words, Rokurou wrapped his arms around her waist in an innocent manner, and Velvet clutched his torso with her right as her therion arm dug into the water, drawing them closer to the Van Eltia. When they made good distance, nearly reaching the back of the ship, Benwick appeared at the stern and had a line tossed to them. A few crew members, including Eizen, were gathered ready to pull Velvet and Rokurou up to safety. She insisted that he go up first since she could keep up with the strengthening tide, and once Rokurou was pulled up she grabbed the rope and ascended out of the water. Her left arm vaporized in black and crimson smoke to reveal her almost-human arm, and with a gasp Velvet saw her bandages were all but gone, revealing the rawness that she kept hidden from everyone. In a panic, she quickly wrapped the edge of her cape around her arm before she reached the top, and withdrew from the help the pirates offered as she stumbled off to the side, careful to keep her arm facing away from everyone. "What the hell happened, exactly." Eizen did not sound amused, his piercing stare appearing more ominous than usual. Velvet's lips parted to say something, she wasn't sure what, but Rokurou beat her to it. "Sorry, I was- well, am - increeeeedibly wasted, and somehow I tripped or somethin and…" He made a gesture with his hand, complete with a plummeting sound. "I guess I pulled Velvet in with me."

Her brows were furrowed incredulously as he explained. With his hair wet and slicked back, and the strange explanation he gave, almost made him appear like a completely different person. The swordsman wasn't a scant drunk. She knew him well enough to tell, and she would have been able to smell the sake when his lips were dangerously close to hers… She shook her head, regaining her serious composure. "It was a blur." She said with a dismissive gesture of her hand. "Sorry to bother everyone." Not only did Rokurou's lie cover up the fact that it was Velvet's fault for pushing him in, but also hid her blunder of jumping in after him with no means of saving him. "Either way, you two need to get thawed." Eizen said. "I'll go get you two dry clothes." Benwick cut in and dashed off. "Even if you can't feel it Velvet," The malak continued, "I can tell you're hitting the first stages of hypothermia." Suddenly Rokurou was flanked along Velvet's right side, grabbing her bicep still hidden beneath her cloak. "Don't worry, we'll go into the kitchen and get a fire going." "You're wasted, Rokurou. I don't think you should be lighting fires." "Aeh, the salt water sobered me up. We'll be fine." He turned to give Eizen a reassuring look. "It's my fault we got in this mess, so it's only proper I make the amends." The malak sighed. "At least let me start the fire. I don't want you accidentally setting the ship ablaze." ][ --- ][ ][ music ][ When they reached the kitchen, Eizen got working on setting logs into the hearth and starting the arte. Rokurou stated, a little too loudly, "Velvet, can you hold my sword for a sec?" "Whhhat?" Her eyes were wide. She was wondering if he slept with the damn sword only moments ago, and now he was wanting her to hold it?? She clumsily grasped the massive sword with her right hand, and he was making a weird face at her, his eyes doing a strange twitching - then she realized he was trying to wink at her. Clearly Rokurou lacked in the winking skill. Having half his face daemonized only made his attempt look even weirder. "OH." Was all she could say. With her cape still wrapped around her arm, she held the sword horizontally with both arms in a way so that it effectively covered her left arm without it being too suspicious. Rokurou unsuspectingly started to peel off his upper layers, which would have been impossible without taking off the sword first anyway. He was covering for her in more ways than she could possibly repay him. Benwick came in with a dry change of clothes for the both of them, and insisted he worked on making a hot soup to help warm them up. Neither of them could object since they reached the stage where they stopped shivering. "Be glad you can't feel it." Rokurou sighed. "I guess in this instance it's a blessing." Velvet mused. There was a silent agreement between the four of them when Rokurou and Velvet took the dry clothes and went off into separate corners to change, that Benwick and Eizen turned their backs while making the soup. While Velvet was clumsily pulling off her pants and leggings, she heard a soft whistle from Rokurou and a moment later a roll of medical bandages landed near her feet. She quickly snatched the roll as if it were gold, and hastily started wrapping up the abomination that was her left arm. She kept it wrapped to hide it from the world, but in truth it was mostly because she couldn't stand to look at it. Once her arm was properly covered, she made a grunt of annoyance. She spoke just loud enough for him to hear. "I hope you weren't looking to throw that." Granted, her hair was long enough that he wouldn't have even seen her exposed rear, but the thought of him looking at her nude made her flustered. "I'm a swordsman, Vel." He said in an equally quiet tone. "Even when I'm drunk I can hit targets without looking. Usually." She was slightly surprised that she was smiling. She mused on the fact that he just called her 'Vel' - she wasn't sure how she felt about the nickname and what it was supposed to mean. Once they were both clothed, they sat as close to the fire as they possibly could, and to each other. Velvet thought it was strange to see Rokurou wearing normal clothes, but he probably thought the same of her. They sat with their backs facing the fire, both wrapped up in thick blankets, and with the yaksha on her left side, she could only see the blackened side of his face. It was strange to think she came to know him so well that she could now read the emotion in his scarlet eye. "I've never been this cold before." His words were slurred and slower than usual. "If we wanted to warm up faster," Her words came out slowly as well, as if she were in a daze. "It would be better for us to get naked and heat up each other." Rokurou turned his head to fully look at her, his face scrunched up as if he were thinking too hard. "Joking." Velvet jabbed, although the word came out dully. "That only works if one of you doesn't have hypothermia." Eizen broke in. "I'm certainly not going to volunteer." "I was joking, Eizen." She waved her hand at him drunkenly. "I don't think we have it that bad." He let out an amused laugh. "If you say so. The soup is almost ready." ][ --- ][ After they ate a serving of soup (several for Rokurou) and their hair was mostly dry, the two of them were left in the kitchen as Benwick and Eizen returned to bed. Velvet was leaning into Rokurou's chest, his arm wrapped around her, and somehow her right hand found way to join with his left. Normally Velvet would have started reprimanding herself for getting into this kind of position with a man, but she tried to justify it with the hypothermia. It was just the hypothermia speaking, the instinct for want of warmth. "I'm sorry." "For what?" Her voice was tired, and sounded more like a statement than a question. "For trying to kiss you." A silence stretched thickly between them. The attempt to kiss her nearly evaded her mind - she was too preoccupied with surviving. With a sudden stab in her heart, Velvet wondered how long her life was preoccupied with merely surviving and fulfilling her brother's vengeance. When did Rokurou first fall in love with her? How long had she been oblivious? She knew he wouldn't have pulled a stunt like tonight on a whim. She said so herself, Rokurou had heart. He wouldn't have tried to kiss her unless it had meaning. When she saw Stormhowl glinting in the corner from reflected firelight, her eyes watered. Never leave your lifeline in the hands of another. Although Rokurou technically still had his daggers on his person, he treated that sword as if it held his very soul in its sheath. He gave it up to Velvet in order to help her hide the aberrations of her arm. She didn't realize how out of character that was for him until the hypothermia had faded. "Thank you." She said softly, her voice wavering. "For trying to kiss you?" Velvet elbowed his ribs. "No. For…for covering me." In more ways than one. "It's nothing." He said simply. "It's not nothing, it's-" "No, it's nothing." Rokurou said decisively. "Supporting you is no burden to me. In fact, I wish there was more I could do. I don't think I'll ever be able to repay that debt I owe you." "It all comes down to that debt, it would seem." "It's become more than just a debt, Vel." There was that nickname again. She angled her head to look up at him, her heart skipping a beat when she looked into his crimson and amber eyes. When did it become more than just a debt? When exactly did Rokurou change from an indebted samurai to someone who desired to always serve and remain at her side? When was he no longer a mere companion but instead became an invaluable partner? She couldn't imagine facing Artorious without him. She couldn't even think about what she would do with her life after the fact, and imagining it without Rokurou somehow felt…meaningless. She drew up the courage as she straightened her back to properly look at him as she asked, "When…when did it become more than just a debt?" "…When you said you'd care if I die." Rokurou claimed he couldn't feel emotion like he used to, but Velvet could have sworn his eyes were filled with it.  While showing him her bandages when they were still strangers was a vulnerability to her, this was Rokurou's. She had never seen him so vulnerable before - didn't even know he could be. "My whole life I was a number. The sixth son. A hired mercenary. Simply the next swordsman who had survived. I've never had anyone care if I died. Hell…not even I cared if I died." His right arm which was wrapped around her moved to entwine with her left arm, until he laced his fingers with her bandages. "I don't know how you did it Velvet, and I commend you for achieving the impossible…" He exhaled slowly, his lips turning into a sad smile. "…You gave someone who wanted to die a reason to live." Velvet's gaze softened, her lips parting ever so slightly. She saw the pain in his eyes and heard the suffering in his voice, and couldn't help but feel that she was seeing him in a completely different light. She pulled herself close, watching the firelight dance dangerously in his eyes, and hesitating for only the briefest of moments, moved to press her lips against his. She felt the conviction of his reason, and Velvet was moved by the amount of meaning in his kiss. After so many years of darkness, neither of them had ever felt so alive.

[g-hanbax]

Christian Narcissism: A Modern Evangelical Corruption

Tby G-Han Bax

2/24/18

Modern evangelicalism has been trying to focus and maximize in reaching out and discipling people in Christ just as the great commission says, but through this wonderful intent there seems to have been developed superficial contemporary strategies that damages significant christian principles. This one version, or even just a facet, of modern evangelicalism tries to culturally adjust to the contemporary man who values and emphasizes words, romanticizes life, and begs for self affirmation, who only wants compliments and seeks for self worth. 

Approaches can change one’s view of doctrine, to the point that it creates its own doctrine. So I think the Modern Evangelical, in terms of the subject I’m dealing with, has deviated in practice and in doctrinal approach for the past years or even decades. It seems like many churches, preachers, and authors nowadays focus so much on targeting the emotional aspect of an individual, as they try to assess their need. The primary aspect must be the spiritual, reaching it can be from different aspects from even emotion to reason, but my issue is not where the approach is but on how the approach is done -methodology. 

Targeting the emotion is fine, using emotional statements that aren’t supported by christian doctrine and core principles isn’t. The spirit is the goal, everything else will follow once the foundations are built.Touching the spiritual aspect means honestly directing the spiritual course and need of a person in evangelism, not by emotionally playing with the person by feeding their hungry hearts to hear words of encouragement as they continually seek for self-affirmation. This is not exclusive to the evangelical church only but also to other denominations as well. What I mean by this “Modern Evangelical”, most likely, is the contemporary believer who reaches out but at the same time also adjusts to human culture - this is alright, but some go to the extent of pampering the human need by appealing to the emotions because the culture of today is centered on feelings, sensitivity, emotions, and the self. One specific thing that annoys me in this Modern Evangelical mindset is the ideology that hyper-emphasizes God’s love on a person, in which I call—Christian Narcissism. 

Disclaimer: I’m not saying I’m against the evangelical church’s theology, I even attend a conservative evangelical church. My point is that I’m concerned on how some evangelicals use these methodologies, and again this isn’t exclusive to evangelicals only since it’s also used by some Christians from other denominations, but from experience, most are evangelicals and I think it’s a bad fruit from modern evangelicalism.

Love?

Just as short review, what is Love according to scripture?

Though not defined explicitly, we understand it contextually. 

God is love and before the foundations of the world the three persons in the Trinity already expressed love to one another, each giving and receiving. One can’t ontologically be Love if there’s no one to share love to, unless of course there are multiple persons; this justifies the consistency of God’s triune nature to His eternal and s loving nature. The Triune nature of God danced in their nature as Love - to love. (Perichoresis)

I believe “love is a choice and a commitment to seek one’s highest good which often requires sacrifice.” It’s not object specific, it’s a decision and a devotion. It’s not an emotion, but it affects the emotional human aspect.

Describing love can be seen in 1 Corinthians 13. Experiencing love can manifest in 4 types or modes according to the Greeks: Storge, Philia, Eros, and Agape.

The love we experience roots back to the love between the persons of the Godhead. We’re now just experiencing different forms of it, but we all have the same source of it; just as how the trunk of a tree spreads into branches while keeping the same wood. 

Now, how does one recover from one’s christian narcissistic lenses and senses? I offer a two part solution with a practical application below. We must refresh ourselves by these Christian teachings and principles. 

I. GOD’S LOVE FOR THE PERSON

God’s loves us so much, yes, incomprehensibly, but what I mean in here is that people rather distort the love of God as an emotional catalyst for the advantage of faith, comfort, and ministry which I think is being perverted and misleading from the true nature of faith and reason. One aspect of Christian Narcissism is the over valuing of the feelings. The fact makes the feeling, not ‘the feeling makes the fact.’ God’s love is a fact, our feeling from this fact must follow, but other people redefine love first, and then redefine God’s love, and so they make their own facts from their preconditioned feelings.

Christian Narcissism is a modern age Christian mindset that only focuses on God’s love on the self or the human person, and on how God loves an individual so much, neglecting the fact that God is a wrathful God and hates sin; the emphasis of God’s loving nature over His holy, just, and wrathful nature. It is basically the mindset of hyper-emphasizing the love we receive instead of the Lover; the Lover makes the love, let’s look towards Him instead of looking at ourselves as we experience this love. It is also an evangelical approach in trying to bring people to Christ by emotionally trying to overwhelm them by telling them that they are loved and that they must follow Christ because there is love in Christ (comfort). We generally follow Christ because we have come to realize how much we need God, because we have come to love Him for He loved us first, because service is an expression of gratitude for His loving sacrifice, because the Christian faith and following Christ is reasonable, because Jesus Himself truly deserves to be followed and to be served, and because of the truth and the impact of God’s love in us --from Truth comes love and this love from God in us naturally motivates us to follow Christ (changed heart). Some people in Christianity might only be in the Church because of the sense of comfort they receive and not really from genuine faith --that desires and believes in God-- together with the assurance from the abundance of truth Christianity holds (which includes that God is love and caring). There is actually no problem in making man realize that God loves him, but the extreme side of this is dangerous, it can make man think that he no longer needs to repent, no longer needs to change, and no longer needs forgiveness, just because God “loves him for who he is.” Again, I have no issue with God loving us for who we are, essentially, but this realization will take us to change for the better. As the saying goes, “God loves you for who you are, but He doesn’t want you to stay as you are.” For man to face this in introspect, He will no longer be the same again. There are Christians out there who treat Christianity as "only” a religion of love; yes, Christianity promotes love and is centered by love, but to say that Christianity is “only” love is to redefine the whole events of scripture and the whole doctrines of christian theology. Silly it is, to reduce Christianity to “only” love. Yes it is love, but it is also repentance, brokenness, grace, and etc, these things are essential to Christians and to Christianity. 

After realizing that God loves you, you will responsibly change for the better and improve for His glory, which is the true effect of God’s love, because it’s “the Truth that triggers transformation.” Theological statements like the “God loves you”, “I am so loved”, and “I have worth” have become minefields in Christian doctrine, not because they are problems themselves but they can become problems when used in the wrong way, most of the time it’s not these causes but their effects to people that makes these isolated statements problematic. They are true, but to use these incomplete truths as a way to lure people into faith by playing with their emotions is cheating. It is always advised to have proper theology, as well as having formal and proper semantic, when trying to share the word of God. It is not a requirement, but it is an expected effect from human responsibility to act, for coherence and correspondence, and for effectiveness’ sake. When we say “God loves me,” is it about what God is or about what our position is --that we are loved? If it’s about God then great, but if it’s about us, then this is where it fails and is categorized as christian narcissism, which is the purpose of this discourse. This is the importance of asking our intents, even when we say the simplest and commonest of words. 

Yes, God does love man, He even sent His Son to die so that man may live in eternity with Him and FOR HIM. As you noticed, I emphasized “for Him”, it’s because the love of God to man will always reflect back to where it came from --God. God’s love for man is God glorifying, it shows us Who He is: He is loving. Not that it is Godly narcissism, but it is ontological and essential to God. Every glory in reality goes - must and should go - to God, that’s His essence. That’s why when we try to glorify ourselves, we end up becoming sinful because of the root causes of our intent to glorify ourselves comes from the sinful self - it's hungry for pride, and thus, we sin. What teachings in Christianity could help the modern church reform its mindset in terms of Christian Narcissism: God’s love to a person?

1. God Hates Sinners (Hosea 9:15, Psalm 11:5, Psalm 5:5-6, etc.)

To say God loves man is only seeing one side of the coin. The fact of the matter is that God also hates (the sinful) man, for man have sinned and have fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). How is this possible? If God is love, how can He hate? I subscribe to the idea that hate is not the absence of love, it may be a phenomenological opposite of love based on inward character, manifestation, and expression, but it is not the absence of love. Apathy, rather, is the absence of love, one can’t say they love someone yet not show that someone care and affection, or even the presence of interaction, at least. But one can still say they hate someone but still show care and affection, and still interact with them.  

Love and Hate have different essences, natures, and manifestations, they seem to be opposite of each other, but once again, hatred isn’t the ontological absence of love, since it’s apathy. Imagine it like this, in our coordinate system, we have integers: negative numbers, a zero, and positive numbers. Let’s treat positive numbers as love, zero as apathy, and negative as hate just to understand the relation. Now, positive numbers have significance and application in the real world, while both negative and positive numbers although having opposite signs are considered to have “value”, while zero is the “absence of value” in the real world. God could give you all positive numbers (be all loving) and still give you negative ones (show hate), because having the nature of infinite positive value doesn’t imply one can’t display “negativity”, or another quality, as long as we understand the nature of this negativity. Being all loving doesn’t exclude the possibility or presence of hate, it rather excludes being not loving or being apathetic. And so, our goal then is we must trace the root of such hate if it’s consistent with the nature of the lover.

So God, who is love, can still hate, but He can never be apathetic, even to the ones in hell since His punishment is a manifestation of how He reacts and interacts to justice and punishment. God hates because God loves, He hates those who are against and are not of His nature--Holy, because God loves justice and righteousness (Psalm 35:5). So it is justifiable for God to hate for this is “Righteous Hatred” in case we chronologically trace back His “Righteous Anger”. God, as a holy and just God, has every right to hate and punish those who are against Him and His nature.

Love and hate are not contradictory for one to possess, they are rather once again paradoxical. God hates sinners, but the good news is, God also loves sinners. God hates us for being transgressors, but He loves us, why? Because He chooses to. God chose to love us despite our sin, and profoundly, that is basically the essence of love, for love is expressed outwardly through a choice, the freedom of the will to decide to love, and to still love despite being hurt or uncomfortable. God loves sinners for who He is--He is love (1 John 4:8); and He hates sinners for who we are--because of our sin (Romans 3:23). 

Even human language can prove this experience, we tell people whom we love, whenever they do stupid things, that “I hate you for doing that!” We hate them for doing what is bad, because we want them to do what is good. And so this is the contrast, God’s hatred for man for being sinners, ironically, is a result of His holy and loving nature -- Righteous hatred, Gracious Love. So God has the right to hate us and that we don't really have the right to be loved, yet God loves us and it is by grace, a privilege from the Almighty.

Let those who LOVE the LORD HATE evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked (Psalm 97:10).

And with this concept, we get to see the bigger picture, that hatred and love work together when applied correctly, as to having the right perspective. He has a desire to help us and transform us from the inside-out, by teaching and helping us more to love Him and making us hate more of evil and sin. He wants His people to become more like Christ, Himself, by receiving more of His love and by expressing more of His love, all for His glory.

A. Human Application: Hate the sin, Love the sinner. 

After knowing that God could hate because hate isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive to love, then how should we understand 1 John 2:9-17, where we are encouraged not to *hate* people?

Let’s first understand that “hating the sin and not the sinner” is quite a hard concept to realistically extract. It’s like hating malaria and not hating mosquitoes, hating murder and not hating murderers, etc. I personally think acts are essential to and inseparable from their actors, meaning you can’t remove the action from the agent, making them responsible for their deeds. So from that, God couldn’t just independently hate the deed apart from the doer, the deed came to be because of the doer, and so the responsibility is on the agent - the evil came to be because of the evil doer. I understand the purpose of saying the statement above, it’s to encourage care and consider humanity, but it doesn’t seem to stand. The intent is surely to criticize the act while respecting the person-hood of the doer, arranging the semantics to remove the hateful implication that is commonly thought to lead to a hurtful follow up (necessarily does not), a stereotype formed by our cultural landscape. But if that’s the intent, I’d rather stay consistent and accurate to what scripture says, so rather, I promote “hate the sin, love the sinner.” Though, we understand that hating the sin implies a natural hate towards the sinner since act and actor are inseparable, we don’t encourage anyone to *act* on the hate, but rather to love the sinner. Let’s choose to love just as Christ loved us while yet we’re still sinners. 

There is an emotional hate or a “feeling of hate” which is most likely a response to a person, action, event, or situation and on the other hand, there’s also an “act of hate”, this is a choice made to actualize one’s hatred and it manifests through various forms of violence. Our natural or emotional hate is passive by nature, we most likely don’t do things because we hate doing them, but to act on hate is active by nature, once you want to act on it, you do something about it. God doesn’t encourage us to act on our hate especially towards people, but He understands that we have emotional-natural - hateful tendencies, that’s why we are told to hate evil; and make it our nature since it follows after loving the Lord. We can show we hate evil by loving God, but we can’t love God and hate people. So we focus on loving God, hating evil, and loving people -these are things we need to be active about, implied things would then just be passive such as hating the sinner. 

We need to once again understand that hate comes from our natural response and perception of such a thing, against the sense of our being, nature, or character. There is a hate that is natural just as how preys naturally hate their predators. If we take hate as “not liking” or “loathing”, then there must be reasons for applying the emotion or action to a body. For God to a sinner, it is a hatred from conflicting natures, God naturally hates sin because He is holy. In our part, when we hate, since we are not like God, it’s most likely a hatred from personal human reasons; it could be from envy, pride, selfishness, etc., that’s why we aren’t encouraged to hate because it results to the falling from the temptation within ending up actualizing our sin. Jesus even emphasized that to be angry to a brother or a sister is sin, essentially because of our perverse root of such hate is self-based that leads to anger, it is so distorted in the human state that it becomes mental murder, that’s why the extreme ends of hate is indeed murder. But the catch is, for hatred to proceed to anger, one has a choice via self-control. 

Going back to the passage, we read John encouraging believers not to STAY in hate and instead be loving, because that makes sense for one to be a follower of Christ. Hate is used here as a verb; you can act hate towards another through different manifestations and that is not good especially for “loving” people like Christians. Interesting how John says we should love but then later on encourages us not to love the world (the system of the world), goes to show that the precaution to not hate is not because of hate itself but because of our response-handling that affects our character and actions when we hate. God doesn’t want us to bear bad fruit, it doesn’t help us to the point that it affects us and destroys us, our intents to hate aren’t holy. God loved His enemies and encourages us too, enemies are those whom we supposedly “hate by nature”, but our response must be to love them. Christianity has taught me many things in practice: how to do things, view things, and respond to things. If I have a natural tendency and inclination to hate something or someone, who probably hurt me in the past, I must learn to love them just as God did to those who disobeyed His will. We are told to hate evil (its system), but we weren’t commanded to hate people rather to love them. Love is not wrong nor hate, any person can possess love and hate at the same time, these things must be used the right way by properly managing the objects of their vessels. 

God’s hatred is natural while His love is intentional or a choice towards the undeserving from His loving nature; we are commanded not to be hateful (act on our hatred) and that we must be loving, since we have a new nature; hating then a neighbor would be intentional or a choice. “To not make a choice is a choice”, to keep on hating and not show love is a choice.  

Basically, the passage tells us that if we stay on hating, then we aren’t yet loving. For even if one has the nature to hate another, the new person in Christ must be able to control natural emotion and responses and be able to show love and care towards them. If anyone hates anything, there must be something that he loves that’s why he hates it. If we stay hating despite we are expected to be full of love as new creatures with new hearts from a loving God who gave us the ability to love, then maybe we aren’t yet new creatures, we still don’t have new hearts, we don’t have a loving God, and we are still dead in our sins. Yes, one can hate and love at the same time, but one must consider the fact that you aren’t identified by the things you hate but by the things you love. It’s amazing that although God nature-ally hates sinners due conflicting natures, He doesn’t encourage us to hate sinners but to love each other. So, to those who are in Christ: to those whom you hate, you must love. 

2. God’s Love Humbles (Colossians 3:12)

The whole Gospel story doesn’t start with us, or God loving us, but the fundamental idea that God is holy. And because God is holy, then He is just and righteous. But sadly, man is sinful, and God being holy and just can’t tolerate sin. Therefore, man is doomed to eternal wrath. But the turn of events comes here, that God loves us, that He cares, that He died for our sins instead of us, and that He chose to give us grace instead of death. With this in mind, the plot twist is knowing that God loves us, it is indeed a surprising information to take hold of in an experiential journey; it is ontological that God is holy, and it is also human experience and observation that we know that we’re sinners. With these in mind, the original human path should’ve only been damnation, but God revealed to us in His word that it’s not yet the end, there is still a chance, all because He loves us. Point is, after knowing all the privileges we’ve got despite our sinfulness and our worthlessness in the grand scale of the universe, and putting it beside what God has done for us, there is an obvious expected effect to the human soul—humility. 

God’s love won’t make you boast about being saved, but will humble you after understanding your part in this world. It won’t make you say “I am loved because of who I am” but rather “I am loved because of who God is.” It won’t make you say “I have worth that’s why God made and saved me, but rather, “God made and saved me that’s why I have worth.” Our being is dependent to God, we can’t detach and declare independence and then boast about it, claiming that we have done it, that we have given ourselves value apart from God. God’s love keeps a person humble yet at the same time bold enough to share about the love that changed him. God’s love won’t puff a person up and make one arrogant, that God loves him, but it will remind him daily of God’s character and nature, and His grace on how he was saved despite being disobedient. Not that a saved man can’t say that God loves him, but this knowledge is more responded in action than words, words are only expressions of what is truly happening. One must live out the knowledge that God loves him.

In application to evangelism, I know how important words are, especially, in telling someone that God loves him and He sent His Son to save him, but this is at best to be known after the proclamation and realization of God’s holiness and one’s sinfulness. I personally don’t start the gospel by stating that God loves man, God does love man but I try to be careful on what effects it will inflict to the person I’m sharing the gospel to. I believe the gospel starts with God being God but then man chose to act like “man”, but despite conflicting natures, God still chose to love man, so now man responds by striving to live His life for God and to act like God (Christlikeness). I just think directly proclaiming that God loves a person diminishes the weight of the love given after condemnation, not that God wasn’t loving beforehand, just that the presentation must be properly arranged to keep the message in its context - “God’s love redeems!”. I sincerely think certain arrangements of the truths in the gospel can give rise to misrepresentations of christian principles. When we hear “God loves you and wants to have a relationship with you”, it sounds pleasing to the hungry heart, who wouldn’t want to hear that? We are loved by God? If the intent is to make them value God instead of themselves by being loved by such God, then why not just properly construct the message to not make them take the message in the wrong context that would make them christian narcissists? And let’s make sure that these words aren’t to let them just want to be Christians because a God is courting them to a comfortable relationship, God does love us and wants us to have a relationship with Him but in His context; He doesn’t only want to feed our hungry hearts with His act of love but wholly wants to revive our dead hearts with His gift of life. God is holy and just but we are sinners, yet God chose to love us still. I understand that it’s catchy, hearing that we are loved firsthand, the person listening must be pleased to hear it as an introduction of this good news, but isn’t it just trying to appeal to the emotions by saying that a person is loved and that someone wants them? I hope not. I understand too that some people need to hear this, but in trying to stay consistent with the gospel’s message, we are ought to proclaim the truth and the reality of God and man’s condition instead of just appealing to man’s need and emotion. Cause if we take the statement above isolated or emphasized among other points in the gospel story, which is inevitable from listeners, then it will be what christian narcissism is about. The person doing this approach with the wrong intent is just trying to overwhelm the person he’s talking to that they are loved, instead of centrally proclaiming the whole gospel on why he's still loved despite being unlovable. Emphasizing to a person that he is loved will make him look at himself, explaining to him that he’s unlovable yet is still loved will make him look at the Lover. 

Let’s keep in mind that God loving you doesn’t mean that He needs you, but rather it’s you who need Him, and because God loves you, He wants you to love Him because He knows that you need Him. Let’s love God, and I hope we love God, and we can love God because He first loved us. And for me, the best way to express that God loves me is to show love to others and to do everything for God’s glory. In our social life, it is truly life changing to know that someone loves us. In fact, we get excited, we even want others to know about it that we grow arrogant and confident for the privilege and for what we did that made someone like us. But it’s different in God’s case, it truly keeps man low, for we see our sin in His love that we become ashamed of ourselves yet once again His love redeems us as He wipes our guilt and shame, making Him and His love sovereign. After that, we then get the desire to tell others about His great love but this time, there’s no space for our pride and arrogance to arise, for we did nothing that made us gain His love and favor.

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II. THE PERSON’S LOVE FOR THE SELF

Christian Narcissism also extends to the idea of “Self-Love”, which is what narcissism basically is. It proposes that the love for the self is the “greatest love of all” which is actually and biblically wrong. The love for the self is an essential human nature and characteristic, the natural reaction to pain, the desire for food to eat for the satisfaction of the body, the desire to bathe after feeling dirty and then cleaning the self, etc, are forms of loving the self. Therefore, the love for the self is indeed natural. Take note that there is no scriptural command to love the self, since scripture presupposes such idea. 

On the other hand, self-love is advertised in the secular market because there seemingly are people who think that they have lost their self-worth, hate themselves, and do actually hurt themselves. But these acts are not evidence for the absence of self-love, only the presence of self-hate, which is actually not contradictory (see 2. above for the Love-Hate Paradox). Let’s put it this way, obedience is an expression of love, and so if one man wants to hurt himself because of hate, the moment he ‘acts’ upon hurting himself proves that he obeys his desires, which is an evidence of self-love.

However, the modern teaching of self-love has gone to another path, which is the over-value and exaltation of the person, which will lead people to selfishness and self-centeredness. True love is not self-centered, but is expressive towards others. And loving others is best done and expressed when the self is taken care of or loved.

When Jesus said the words “'Love your neighbor as yourself,” I believe He meant it in a way that because human love for the self is natural, our love for others also must be natural, which is grounded on the first thing He said, which is to love God with all our being. If we love ourselves primarily and intuitively, because God loves us and God loves others as well, we must also love others primarily and intuitively (and consciously) as well. Therefore, then, if we love God with our being, then we must love others naturally. Because of the first, the second becomes an inextricable imperative.                

The world has twisted the meaning of self-love, it has become the toxic narcissism that everyone hates. The world focuses on “how much can I receive for myself as I love myself?” But the true understanding of love is about “how much can I give to others as I love myself?” The world’s poster for self-love looks so beautiful, feels so good, it is an individual’s paradise, but it’s everybody else’s hell. Since this self-love can lead to selfishness and self-centeredness, it will end up, extremely, to egocentricity (it’s all about me) or self prioritization (me first). No wonder the word “selfish” has a bad connotation. Self is the essence of sin, though not everything about the self is sin. 

Applications to self love goes beyond the thought of the self, it’s loving others as well. The world’s self-love speaks as someone who says “I desire what I want, therefore I must get it to satisfy myself, despite if it’s bad for me.” While the true meaning of self-love says “If it’s bad for me then I won’t get it, since I love my being, I don’t want to harm myself. I don’t care if I want it or not, I care more on what I need, and I need to live (for God and for others).” 

Self-love may be self-directed but it’s others-impacted. Just like how our parents love us and provide for our needs, not necessarily wants, self-love will remind you of your real and personal needs even to the extent that it gives you perseverance to acquire these things for your life’s sake. Loving God implies loving the life and the body he gave you.

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CONCLUSION

In conclusion, Christian Narcissism is dangerous to the church, since the church is a community, one must not act only for the self but for others and mainly, for God. The idea that God is only love is dangerous in one’s theological perspective, it can blind an individual in seeing the whole picture and concept of God, and may affect one’s daily living. Since God’s loving nature is only one of His ‘whole’ or ‘full’ natures (I’m not denying Divine Simplicity, I’m not saying that God’s loving nature is a part of God but only one of God’s full qualities; nor am I presenting that I’m a Classical Theist, in the other end). We must recognize the totality of God’s nature and characters, since the revealed and apparent ones are helpful for our growth and being especially in our journey to Christ-likeness. One magnificent way to do this is through reading scripture, by studying biblical history on how God acted, interacted, and reacted on particular actions and situations of people from the past, through His words and promises, as well as from other people’s testimonies and experiences. From different angles and stories, you could compile them all and see the same glorious picture.

Christian narcissism takes God’s love to a person and makes the person love himself more. It emotionally empowers hungry hearts by borrowing love concepts from Christ and sticking only to this one angle of Christianity, it’s not biblical. It’s wrong to just emphasize one aspect by just emotionally appealing to human needs and then go on by neglecting the need of repentance. God’s love redeems man, not puff it up to pride. The fact that we got what we don’t deserve isn’t about how great and good we are but on how great and gracious the one who gives. God has every right to hate us but He still chose to love us, and this love isn’t something we proudly parade but something we humbly proclaim. God’s love to man would make man love Him back and other men, genuinely and naturally. We need God, not mainly because we need love but essentially because our being, person-hood, and life is dependent upon Him. So instead of appealing to the emotions that a person needs love, why not just simply appeal to condition, that the person needs Christ Himself?  

Love is a wonderful and powerful thing; people want to receive more of it from another because of the natural hunger of the human soul. To be loved is the best of all experiences. But why do men hunger for love in the first place? Maybe because it misses the love given to him by the One who made him, it’s not just about love - it’s all about Him who is love. Because of sin, love became blurry, not that it’s no longer there but we’ve lost the sense of it, because we rather choose to love our sins than to follow our design, which is to love God. But because of Christ, He revealed and made God’s love apparent to humankind once more, and taught us that the love that created us is also the same love that redeems us. The eternally deep hole in the human heart, which thirsts for love, can only be satisfied through the filling of an eternal love from an eternal God. Oh it’s true, God’s love is the greatest love of all. 

God bless!

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One can skip this part, but as an extension, I just would love to express my thoughts on this matter since it still relates to a man’s love and his expression of it.

The Impact of Human Love in Evangelism

Does our love to others count? Can our love to people convince or convert them to faith? 

My stand on this is that I first question, “is this love from us or from God?” Because the love and care we share to people in witnessing our faith is but an expression of our faith, but it is not really that which will bring them to faith? It may only point them to faith but it is God who will guide them and lead them to faith. Our love and care to them is only a reflection of God’s love to us, and so we become transparent and genuine, and then they see the love of God in our lives. It is not and never our own love and care that will bring them to faith, it is God’s. I point this out to tell the readers the value of ‘arguments’; what I mean by arguments are truth points, conversation starters, academic pursuit of reasoning the faith, case presentation and its logicality, to the extent of 'constructive' and ‘formal' debates. Why? Some Christians would neglect the value of philosophical discussions to the lost, being afraid it will turn into a debate, of course there are limits to that, but do you love them so much that you are willing to discuss and reason, peacefully, with them? Paul did it, Apollos did it, even Jesus had heated arguments back then, but they did it out of love with love; the heat is unavoidable at some points.

Point is, arguments presented with care can show God’s love to people also, not only the show or act of love can make them understand God’s love (a posteriori) but it is also effective to show them through concept the love of God (a priori). Best, to present it in both ways, in word and in action. 

Is there a basis for me to say this?

Yes, of course, First is scripture, the book of Acts to be more specific. And then second is my personal experience:

I was convinced on the truth of Christianity that I came to faith through virtually watching an apologist argue/debate (formally) on my PC screen. 

Always remember, it’s truth with love, not love with truth, so you present what you believe, primarily, with love, because showing love alone is not enough. Always expect to hear someone say, “why would I believe what you’re believing in just because you show me love? Muslims show me love, Buddhists show me love, even atheists show me love. What makes your faith true?” In this question, love alone won’t be the answer, but the fact that Christianity is a reasonable, logical, and rational worldview that has sufficient evidence is the answer that will set it apart from others. And the christian who lives his faith out with love, has a remarkable proof and advantage in presenting what he’s believing in, considering that this truth is not only logical but it is also practical, it works and it transforms lives.

“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.'’

But this point is not a free pass for one to always argue and debate, there are people who are not willing to discuss peacefully and debate formally, there are those who are incredulous despite the facts presented and pushing it so will only make a frustrated evangelist who will at some point look bad and forceful towards others. Always keep the relationship you have with people because you may win an argument but lose the person, always have the goal to win the soul. At desperate instances, win the friendship, lose the fight. In long term friendships, you can continually witness and love, and present the case of truth that Christianity holds. God saves, not you, what you’re only doing is that “you’re giving their minds the permission to believe that the Christian faith is reasonable enough to be believed in faith”. Yes, it is God’s will if one will be saved, but as a responsible agent, do what you should --because God wants you to. 

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God bless, once more!