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didhewinkback · 8 months

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OMFG I just read something old and MANNNN. You got me feeling all types of ways holy shit. The most I’ve ever felt reading a series holy cow. You are so fucking talented. Wowza. Please continue with the blurbs I feel like they are part of my life now.

Also does the fans know about Y/N and Harry’s current relationship? How did they feel when things were first announced after the wedding was called off and their relationship was exposed for the first time?

omg helllloooo you angel on earth !!! this message is soo lovely and kind and idk what i did to deserve it. i am so grateful that you took the time to write me and that you love the story so much!! i appreciate this message more than you knoow.

sorry this took me ages to answer as an apology i essentially wrote you a blurb pls see below

so per harry and erin's teams' agreement, the public never knew a wedding was supposed to take place. anyone who worked it had signed a pretty ironclad nda & all guests in attendance knew to stay silent about it, though some of erin's friends did try to go to deuxmoi at one point months later but that got shut down pretty quick. when the press release about the engagement ending came out, there was obviously endless speculation about it, discourse, tiktoks etc. people had a lot of feelings about harry and erin's relationship, they either absolutely loved the fashion power couple or they absolutely hated it and it was best to avoid any and all discussions on the matter, made easier by the break up being announced when you were on pause and doing your best to ignore any and all celeb news (though you did do some google searches at 3 am when you couldn't sleep but it immediately made you feel terrible so you avoided it like the plague, knowing if you needed to know something, harry would tell you)

as for your relationship, you both kept it realllly low key and private for the first year, wanting the broken off engagement to become old old news before anything got speculated about the two of you, harry was pretty adamant about ensuring no one connected you to the breakup. it was much easier than it sounds, he can really disappear when he needs to and it was important to both of you to protect what you had, shield it from prying eyes. his relationship with erin had been highly publicized and he had no interest in doing that again and you couldn't agree more, you've got no interest in that world or leaning into the public eye, so that first year was quite lovely, going on dates around london, moving in together around his birthday, 8 months into dating officially but conventional timelines never applied to you both. if you ever were spotted out together by fans, any speculation got shut down pretty quickly, people recognized you as his lifelong childhood friend and had no reason to assume otherwise, which worked in your favor when his tour started up again and there was tiktok upon tiktok about how "yes you've been to more shows than usual but jeff's at every show and no one thinks he's dating harry so why would they think it about you??" you avoided it all but roxy loved to take the piss, sending you screenshots every so often when you would show up on her for you page with a text "cannot seem to escape this bitch" to which you would reply "just how many videos of h's concert were you watching to get this on your algorithm?"

its in december 2021, the start of his few months off before the work craziness resumes, a lazy sunday morning. you're lounging on the couch, half heartedly clicking through netflix when you hear him come back into the house from his coffee run, hearing snippets of the phone call he's having getting louder after he kicks his shoes off and makes his way towards you.

"Yeah, I'll talk to her 'nd get back to you." he says, as he turns the corner, still bundled up with his beanie and hoodie pulled over his head, brow furrowed as he listens to the other end while still balancing the coffees and bag of pastries in his hand. "Yeah, for sure. Okay I'll call you back. Love you bro, bye."

He hangs up the phone, placing the treats on the coffee table before taking out his airpods and shuffling over to you. He hovers over where you lay, resting his hands on the back and arm of the couch before leaning in.

"Hi," he murmurs with a soft smile on his face, leaning in to kiss you.

You shudder when you pull away, the frost from outside having seeped into his face. "You're cold," you say with a small frown to which he immediately rolls his eyes and nudges his cold nose down the side of your face, pressing kisses all along your cheeks, forehead, jawline, until you push him away with a giggle. He smacks one final kiss to your head before pulling away, tugging his hoodie off his head and taking his beanie off to shake out his hair.

He leans back to grab the coffee off the table, handing you your cup while throwing the bag of pastries onto your lap before he grabs his own cup, lifting your legs temporarily before settling on the other side of the couch, placing your ankles over his lap. He leans back, resting his head against the back of the couch and closing his eyes for a minute, taking a deep breath. You assume you're the "her" he mentioned on the phone earlier but you opt to give him time, peeling open the pastry bag to see what he picked up.

"Got something weird to talk to y' about." he says, making you pause in your rifling efforts as you look over at him, finding him in the same position, his eyes still closed.

"Oookay."

He squeezes your ankle once, opening his eyes and rolling his head along the back of the couch to look at you.

"There was a pap yesterday. Last night. On our walk. Don't know how but - here." He pulls his phone out of his sweatshirt pocket, quickly unlocking it before handing it over to you.

You feel an uneasy pit in your stomach as you swipe through the photos, though there's nothing bad or damning or embarrassing about them. Objectively, they're quite lovely. The two of you bundled up through the blustery London night, his arm wrapped around your shoulders with yours around his waist, him pulling you into his chest as you laugh, his chin resting against your head, then pressing a kiss to your hair. You both look happy, really, really happy, completely unaware of any eyes on you. You keep scrolling through and - ah. There's the most revealing one, the two of you smiling up at each other before he pulls you into a kiss with his hands cradling your face.

You can feel his eyes on you, intently watching every emotion that passes over your face, thumb rubbing circles along your ankle. It's so weird, is the thing. To see this intimate moment between you two captured by a complete stranger who you had no idea was watching you. You've somehow managed to avoid this happening up until this point, the combination of lawsuits he has against paps in London and being able to blend in with the crowd having worked in your favor for the last year. It's a bizarre feeling, to feel like you got too complacent in your own life, should've been more aware of your surroundings. But also? Fuck that. You're not going to live your life differently because of what other people are doing or thinking. They're the ones with the issue, not you.

"'m so sorry," he says, 'Had no idea -"

"No no no," you say quickly cutting him off, as you hand him his phone back, sitting up and taking his hand when he offers it. "No need to apologize."

"Daily Mail and a few others got a hold of 'em, that was Jeff earlier. He and Sadie wanted to see if we wanted them to run any kind of interference." he says, small frown on his face as he plays with your palm, fingers drawing mindless patterns. "The photos are getting published regardless but like they could try to keep you as a mystery woman or summat -"

You snort, shaking your head as you rest your forehead on his shoulder, his arms wrapping around you and pulling you close. It takes a second of rearranging your legs before you're sat on his lap, his hand rubbing up and down your back. You pull back to look at him, hands coming up to cradle his face. He leans into the touch, turning to plant a kiss to your palm.

"You okay?" you ask quietly.

He nods. "Just don't like getting caught off guard like that. Don't like that people who don't know us will get to -"

"Yeah."

"And I don't want to fuck things up for you. Like your job or -"

"Everyone at work already knew. And those who didn't met you last week. Most people are barely on the internet there, I'm not stressed. " you say, sliding your hands to rest on his shoulders as he nods, brow furrowed in thought.

"'s gonna be intense for a bit. Might be good to hop on a call with Jeff and Sadie, see what boundaries we can set, control what we can control."

"Yeah, that'd be good," you say, your mind whirling as the reality of the situation sets in, photos of you kissing your boyfriend splashed all over the internet. Christ.

"Hey," he says gently. "Talk to me?"

"Sorry," you say, shaking your head. "I'm good. Just - it's a lot. It's definitely gonna be weird, nothing I can't adjust to but still just. Bizarre."

"Yeah." he says, his hand coming up rest at the back of your neck. "You look really fit in the photos if that helps."

You laugh, watching as the smile grows across his face, his thumb catching on your jawline.

"It does, thanks." you say, smiling back at him.

"'m really sorry this can't be easier. Being with me -"

"Shut up." you say, surprising a laugh out of him. "Please. This is nothing. Easy to ignore at the end of the day. All that matters to me is you."

"Same here," he says, taking a deep breath, lips twitching up. "All that matters to me is me."

"You're so stupid, I knew you were gonna say that -" you say, laughing as you slap him on the chest, trying to twist out of his hold but he pulls you back in.

"'s you, 's you. You know 's you darling, come here." he murmurs, smiling when you press your lips to his, gripping your neck a bit tighter as he kisses you back. You know you have to call back his team, figure out some logistics but that can wait. All you want is right here.

---

so yes, the photos get published, the fans freak out. lots claiming they always always knew, many spending their time trying to piece together the relationship timeline, no one connecting it back to erin thankfully. it helps that she is busy with her new billionaire boyfriend, (you almost clicked on their architectural digest tour the other day before deciding against it). but you both really ignore it all, keep going about your lives, nothing really changes because you don't let it. you both still want to keep your relationship out of the public eye as much as you can, it doesn't stop fans or paps from taking your picture when you're out together but its easy to ignore it, just focus on each other, ignore the noise and the crazy corners of the internet.

he rarely talks about you in interviews, confirming you're together, maybe a brief mention or two of his girlfriend but refusing to go beyond that. it's only in his zane lowe interview in late 2024 that he goes into a little more detail when describing his inspiration for his new album, but at that point he's calling you something entirely different :) :) :)

---

#didnt edit this one single bit do not judge me #something old #anon pls let me know what you think its allll 4 u baby #writers block been kicking my butt but this helped !#i missed them <3

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nelll101 · 1 year

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Sword Art Online (ep.1,2,5,8)

Very interesting show so far, I can see why so many people like it so much. I'm eager to watch it through fully on my own time one day so I can decide for myself if it really is just that good like people say lol.

The plot is immediately engaging, it centers around video games and the effects of it and technology has on people's reality/lives. The focus is on mostly Kirito and Asuna but the show shows how the video games affects the other players of the game as a whole. Kirito was one of the first few to get to play the first shipment of the game and has some experience in it already. We find out that when it officially launched and people started playing it, they cannot log out of the game and are stuck in this new reality until they complete all 100 levels. Also if they die in the game, they die in real life. Kirito so far tries to play this "game of life" solo and wants to get out of the game. He meets Asuna who also wants to get out of the game and she is more goal driven and determined than Kirito about it.

In episode 1, which is some foreshadowing to what will be said in episode 8, Kirito tells the guy he met, "Even though it's a virtual world, I feel more alive in here than I ever did in the real one”. Kirito cannot be alone in feeling like that, and we see here for the very first time which the show introduces to you very early that people find a reality in something that isn't reality at all.

In episode 5, we see that the players have created loopholes to gain more XP. Sleep PK abuses the duel system. You can challenge a sleeping person by manipulating that persons finger to click the OK button, and then attack one-sidedly and kill other players by doing so. This shows the lengths people will go to in desperation. Is it the right thing to do? No. But when put into a world that was created upon all things unethical, what makes the actions and choices you take in that world right or wrong? If this world technically isn't the real world, does it matter? Unfortunately by dying in the game, you die in real life so the mixture of what is real and what is not becomes intertwined into something the players become so immersed in, they can't tell the difference.

In episode 8, it shows that the players have become so consumed by the game. Kirito and Asuna agree that they both feel like they’ve been living in this game their whole life and more and more people don’t seem to care about clearing the game and getting back to the real world. I figured thats what would happen since episode 1. I thought, by all the rules of the game, can't they just choose not to fight and instead build another life in that game as if it were their normal life from the beginning? The players are technically able to live a whole different but “normal” life in this game if they don’t try to complete floors and kill bosses. This opportunity can be seen as a blessing or curse. Are they lazy/too afraid or just want to live a life of comfortability? Its an escape of an escape of reality. People enter VR games and “escape” from their own reality but are technically still in it, but in SAO they escape from their reality from two levels, the video game, and their real life. Kirito in the scene of him laying on the grass and taking in the day can be seen as him accepting the new reality he is living in. He starts to take the environment around him, in, and "appreciate" it. The author in the reading talks about reality and uses the example of whoever fakes an illness can just stay in bed and make everyone believe that they are ill. “Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary." Is the simulator sick or not, given that he produces "true" symptoms? Objectively one cannot treat him as being either ill or not ill.” The author is saying that pretending and simulating are different. Simulation ends up threatening what is considered real and imaginary. Is the simulator sick or not means is the simulator in a "reality" if it seems like reality (true symptoms)?.

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sixbanana · 2 years

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hellstenglow · 4 years

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Fiveya Meta: they need to talk

Endure me, I am on a fiveya-train and my thoughts don’t shut up.

After watching the most recent behind the scene videos of TUA season 2 we can conclude that they did make senseless choices in the plot because in some cases they had to. For example in the case of the snow storm created by Harlan in the final episode, that was added to the script because suddenly there have been a snow storm on the outside set the days before the scheduled filming and they couldn’t clean the place enough, in time for the recording. The snow was added.

I also think they could have written some of the characters better and given them real development (*cough* Luther, Ben *cough*). I wasn’t even a fan of the whole “Vanya lost her memory” thing, but I’ve read that Steve Blackman (the showrunner) doesn’t want to diverge from the original content too much (which is a bit silly to say since they did make major changes since season 1, but okay). I guess that’s why Vanya’s amnesia was still there, although they treated it differently. In the comics it was Mom-Grace who helped Vanya to find herself again and her own value, in the show it was Sissy who did it. I thought it was kind of a hint to the comics the fact Sissy resembled Show-Grace a bit (blond, kind and a mom). Did I think it was unnecessary to have a love interest for Vanya right after season 1? I did, but I justified the choice by thinking that the show wanted to give Vanya a taste of what real love (not like Leonard’s manipulative and abusive love) is supposed to be. I also thought it was a way to show how Vanya needs to stop clinging to the first person who gives her affection, attention and treats her with kindness. I hope she’d realize that and work on herself and family in season 3, first and foremost.

Even with the evident flaws I enjoyed season 2, especially because I decided to treat it as a passing by (detour/digression) chapter in a longer story. All Hargreeves siblings in the ‘60s tried hard to make a new life and ignored their actual life (Allison, Luther, Klaus) or had a convenient amnesia (Vanya) or focused on something too much to lose track of what matters (Diego). Everyone except Ben (who was not treated once again as a full character despite the apparent level up the PR promoted) and Five (who once again was running around in panic mode to stop an apocalypse). Remember Vanya saying, “New timeline, new me.” And Five replying “That’s NOT how it works.”? I may give the writers more credits than it is due, but I hope those two lines were some kind of meta messages for the more attentive viewers. Those two lines can explain perfectly season 2 to be honest.

Nobody can know how long a tv show would run, a fact that expose us to uncertainty. It’s always a gamble trusting writers and showrunners to deliver a good story, but all it’s fair game and one has only to accept it. I do not trust any of them, but I cannot help myself and still hope that they will not ruin everything. With all this said, let’s talk about something I think the show has to tackle in next seasons: Five and Vanya are two points of a theme that needs to be addressed and solved. They need to interact, talk and close their open theme together.

This is not a cohesive meta and I probably will lose myself in too many details, but I hope the message I am trying to convey will arrive. This is only my reading of the show and theories, so you can disagree. I just hope you’d find something interesting and maybe help someone to have a different perspective on what’s going on and where (I pray) the show will go. Here the points I will talk about, if you are in for a very verbose essay, please click on the “keep reading” button. Meanwhile I’ll wear my tinfoil crown and sip some margarita.

Five and Vanya are a theme

It was mean to be Ben

Why the Fiveya’s tension in S2 EP 7’s iconic scene is a symptom of something

I dare to hope in fiveya (at least until proven wrong)

1. We have a theme: Five wants to stop the apocalypse and Vanya is the apocalypse

It’s a twisted joke of the universe that the very thing Five is obsessed about in season 1 (the apocalypse) was caused by the person he trusted the most (“I’ve decided you’re the only one I can trust” - Five in S1EP1). The red thread that linked Five and Vanya can’t be more evident, that’s one of the reasons why I started shipping them. The family’s dynamic, the siblings’ relationships and bonds are equally important, they add layers and motivations to the story, but if we strip everything else and look at the core, we all know Five and Vanya are at the centre of it.

It’s not a simple coincidence that Five said “I’m the four horsemen”. At first, it’s just a funny line, because Five is drunk and he described himself as those fearsome figures (because he is the best assassin of the whole world and time. Death incarnated in his humble opinion). You don’t take him seriously when he said that line, you don’t pay attention to it.

However, later it gains a certain degree of truth. Subtly the show tells you that indeed Five is linked deeply to the “apocalypse” (Vanya), as much as the four horsemen (they are the prelude and the bringers of the end) are linked to the apocalypse (in the biblical sense). He lived it. He was trapped there for 45 years. He is obsessed with it. The Apocalypse is his business.

Timid little Vanya is the first person he looked for in the middle of the doomsday’s ruins and arguably his closest friend. On the first day of his return Five only have meaningful talks with Vanya. Five sought her to confide the horror of his memories and share the burden of the truth. He trusted her above everyone else. Then the universe made a laughingstock of him when it was revealed that Vanya caused the Apocalypse. Five didn’t know he was running towards her, despite wanting to go back to his family (her) all his life.

In the first two episodes of season 1 they made clear that Vanya and Five had an intimate bond in their childhood and still cared for each other after so many years, then the show proceeded to separate them until the finale. They tried so hard to keep them far away from each other during season 1 and we all know everything would have been different if they had time to properly talk, process their situation and find a solution together. Of course, the show didn’t give them that chance, otherwise the show would have ended in episode 3 and goodbye drama!

They did not confront each other in the end of season 1, they let Allison take that role because the show built up their connection as sisters and I didn’t dislike the choice. Did it work thematically? No, Allison has no connection with the apocalypse. That’s Five’s business. He didn’t confront Vanya, he let others take the lead in the most crucial moment and with no surprise the apocalypse still happened.

The other apocalypse in season 2 was still connected to Vanya and again Five ignored the cosmic signals and focused on dead ends. Despite knowing perfectly that the butterfly effect can come from any source, he didn’t even think about Vanya’s being the cause of the apocalypse again. Five should have listened Klaus when he suggested that Vanya might have been the cause. Funny how Klaus told him in S1 that he has an addiction and Five aggressively denied it. Funny how saving his family and stopping the apocalypse are always his top priorities, but Five still deny himself (for a reason or another) the time to confront Vanya (the apocalypse).

We have a theme waiting to be resolved: Five wants to stop the apocalypse and Vanya is the cause of the apocalypse. If Five does not confront Vanya the theme will never have a closure. It’s still open right now. It is still there, waiting to be picked up again. There is no resolution.

2. Vanya and Ben’s goodbye

The scene between Vanya and Ben was one of my favourites from season 2 and after pondering for a while I concluded that it couldn’t have been anyone else but Ben the one who helped Vanya in that moment. My theory is that the show will walk backwards the breaking points of Vanya’s life: Ben’s death, Five’s leaving and Reginald’s abuse.

Vanya is not fixed. How could she when she was barely Vanya in this season? “New timeline, new me” she said, but that was just a convenient escapism mechanism. Years and years of mentally and emotionally abuse don’t disappear in one week. The Hargreeves have still a lot to process and resolve, individually and as family. That’s why I hope the show will progress the story in the right direction and actually work on them in season 3. Especially Vanya, who needs to confront her trauma. That’s why the scene with Ben in episode 9 was necessary.

From Vanya’s book:

[…] Our everyday existence was full of evidence that Dad had [...]-pped into treating us like experiments. Not as children, but like animals. And what happened to Ben was the last straw that finally shattered the illusion for the others …

Ben died long time ago and his death was the last straw that shattered the illusion (for the others) that their father cared about them (even in his own messed up way). Everything changed from that moment and each sibling drifted away from one another after that. Ben’s death was the moment Vanya and the rest of her siblings stopped being a family. The definitive step of Vanya’s alienation from her siblings.

There was no place in the group for her. With Five’s absence and Ben gone (he is a caring brother, with Klaus is like that and I can imagine him being kind to Vanya in their childhood too. Although, Ben is not Five and we have seen him being harsh to her in the flashbacks in S1EP10), Vanya was truly lost.

The tearful and important moment between Ben and Vanya was a reverse moment in my opinion. Vanya needed that from Ben, his death heavily influenced the course of her life (everyone’s life) and it was only fitting that Ben should have been the one helping her to start again. It’s symbolic in a sense, but also very factual.

“Sorry that I left without saying goodbye” – Five, S1 EP2

“At least this time I can say goodbye.” – Ben, S2 EP9

I’m using my fiveya-goggles, but we all thought that what Five said in S1EP2 (when Vanya tried to find him at Hargreeves’ mansion) wasn’t just about him leaving her apartment. It’s a very specific line that works on double levels: text and subtext. The subtext of course refers to the day he run out the house and time jumped. I highlighted these two lines from Five and Ben because I think they share the same theme: leaving her without saying goodbye.

Vanya wasn’t on mission with the team when Ben died, and I doubt she even saw his body (or whatever remains were left) when the Umbrella Academy returned. She didn’t even see his manifestation during the Icarus’ fight, too focused in her own power. The scene between them in Vanya’s mind gave both the opportunity to make amend of untold words and missed moments.

Ben is dead, he is the one he cannot return. His departure is permanent, there is nothing they can do about that. However, they can have a closure. Ben needed to be the one first patching to mend Vanya’s relationship with her family, to remind her that she does belong. This sort of second death (finally move on into the Light) has more meaning than the first one, this time Ben completed the mission. He saved someone he loved (he couldn’t stop Klaus from destroying his life with drugs and alcohol) and could trust his siblings to take care of the rest.

I still think Ben didn’t need to die-die, but in a sense it was time for him to move on into the light. He was afraid to go on, but if he could move on so his siblings. It is time for Vanya to move on her own trauma.

(Yeah, I know. I still have problem with the scene because they erased canon in a way and Ben could do a lot more as character. They erased the fact drugs stop their powers like in Klaus’ addiction and Vanya’s pills, so how Vanya was able to use them under LSD? I tried to explain that to myself by the fact “they needed to bs that canon fact in season 1 and ignored it”.

We can also argue that Ben could have prevented the apocalypse in 2019 by doing the same thing, but in their defence S1-Ben didn’t know he could possess a body. Yeah, how did he do that without Klaus’ power help? No idea, that doesn’t make sense to me either. Ahah. I just swam with the flow at that point and accepted it as it is. Call it the power of superpowered siblings’ love. I’ve seen worse plot holes in my life. I can live with this).

3. Pass me the knife, there is some tension here!

From Vanya’s book:

Though prone to arrogance and outbursts, even more than the average preteen, Five was my sole confidante in the years before he disappeared. It almost seemed fitting […] the siblings to leave us, it would be him who [I fully?] […] who fully trusted me.

I said that Vanya’s walking backwards her life’s breaking points. So, after Ben’s death, she needs to address Five’s leaving. Five was her only confidante in the years before he disappeared, as she wrote in her book. Five was very important to young Vanya (and old Vanya needs to remember that) and I bet when he left, that was a scar never healed.

Vanya missed him and hoped for his return, for a while she kept the lights on in the house every night and prepared for him his favourite sandwich. When Five did come back Vanya couldn’t process that fact properly in season 1, all she could think of was that she didn’t want to lose him again. Five on the other hand decided that he would save everyone on his own and for that choice he made a bunch of tragic rookie mistakes.

Miscommunication is their kryptonite and right now Vanya and Five aren’t able to fully communicate at the same level. Reggie did such a good work at parenting that they’re so unfit to deal with their emotions and relationships, that will always be the root of their mistakes.

Same story in season 2, meanwhile Vanya is on the verge to provoke another apocalypse (although indirectly), as usual Five was too obsessed with his own plans and was not even aware of the situation. He knows nobody is insignificant when it’s about altering the timeline, but he always ends to focus on the wrong lead. The show again did incredible summersaults to avoid the two to interact properly and when they interacted things still didn’t work for a reason or another. She didn’t remember her past, he was not entirely sincere with her. She wanted to start anew (having a family with Sissy, easy-peasy), he is trapped again in a run against time to save his family. They are still not at the same page and for the show that is convenient. They still can play with their open theme (my point number 1 in this meta).

I don’t blame Five in S1 for thinking that if the worse happens, they would need to kill her. I think he was in a very delicate state of mind in that moment, he didn’t have time to process the fact Vanya (his favourite sibling and we all know she is his favourite) caused the end of the world. It was disappointing and cynical, but time was ticking fast, and he had been in his “maniacal-panic” mode for almost eight days. I also think he wouldn’t really kill her; he was the one who convinced the others that they needed to take her with them in the time jump. They need to “fix her” (aka help her to never feel alone in the universe and prove her we do love her) or they’re going to make the same mistakes again and again.

Just to be clear I think if Five wasn’t one day from the end of the world and in a rush to stop Vanya, he would had had the same reaction as Old Man Five in S2. His 14-days younger version take it very well “Fair enough” he said and then proceeded to tell Luther how to save Vanya, no mention about killing her whatsoever. Old Man Five had time (10 days more than our current Five) and a direct clue on how to stop the apocalypse (thanks Luther). Nobody was going to kill Vanya.

“Vanya will always be the cause of the apocalypse, unless we fix her.” - Five S1EP10

“Vanya is the bomb. She will always be the bomb.” - Diego S2EP8

Vanya is the bomb and she will always be the bomb unless she heals. A fact that can be added to my number 1 point in this meta, there is an open theme and they need to tackle it. Five and Vanya need to confront each other and resolve it.

This takes me to S2 EP7: the iconic stare-power stand between Five and Vanya. THE TENSION was real, and you could cut it with a butter knife. The first time I screamed at my screen, I felt like Gordon Ramsay in one of those episodes of “Kitchen Nightmare US” when someone finally serves him good food.

Of course, the immediate reading of the scene is that Five needed Vanya to come along and Vanya didn’t want to go because at that point these Hargreeves are still strangers to her (amnesia is so convenient), Sissy and Harlan are the ones she knows and loves in that right moment.

They were still able to cut each other with sharp words and hostile glares though. Five let her have what she wanted, not because he feared her, but because as usual he cares more about her feelings than what he would ever admit. It’s the second time in S2 he let her go, his soft spot and favouritism for Vanya was showing once again! *fakes surprise*

I think the tension shown in this scene is a symptom that Vanya and Five are on the verge of something they will (they have to) confront soon or later. This is the subtext reading I came out with.

Even if you don’t look at it with shipper goggle, you feel there is something going on. They let the viewers feel there is a sensitive something whenever these two have an alone scene together. All their alone scenes have a specific grade of intimacy, they made it clear since the scene in front of Five’s portrait. They care for each other, they love each other (sibling love, platonic love, we-could-have-been-something love etc…) and it’s there. However, Five left and Vanya never truly recovered from that. They didn’t process that fact and I truly believe they can’t move on until they heal that scar.

Basically, S2 EP7 Fiveya’s scene = We have to talk, but this is not the moment because the show is only on its second season! THIS TENSION IS HERE FOR A REASON.

4. Hope is the last thing to die

I shouldn’t trust a show, I’ve been disappointed so many times in the past years and showrunners of popular shows tend to be unoriginal and cowards. However, I am an optimist at heart and until season 3 I dare to hope anyway. If proven wrong, there are always fanfictions who can do better job than canon.

If all was lost they could have eliminated Alluther too from the universe because of certain fans screaming “harcest is incest you weirdos”, but Allison and Luther’s situation still exist and still work on the parameter “will they or not”? I imagine for their shippers it was annoying to have such a regression in season 2, but they didn’t destroy it and they still gave them scenes.

Fiveya had even a more subtle situation than Alluther but they’ve been granted the same level of intimate interaction whenever they have an alone scene together. Until Five (the character) will gain an older body (which he can) the whole thing is suspended. However, I think they wouldn’t have been open about the possibility of Five changing back to an older body and spoke about in season 1 if they didn’t have an idea for that.

I brushed off the line Five said to Old Man Five about being forever trapped in his 13-years-old body. It’s canon that there is a way to gain an adult body for Five, the Commission has the technology and even if it’s not the Commission they can mambo-jambo the thing in a way or another. That would never work. The actor is a growing up teenager and from season 1 to season 2 he has already changed. I imagined he will change even more before season 3 will ever start recording (maybe very late due the COVID-19 situation).

Aidan is a fan favourite and I am one of those who can’t see anyone else playing Five, with this said there are still ways for the show to give us fiveya. Young fiveya flashbacks will be always an option to explore the idea of “they had a crush on each other when they were young” and make other viewers understand that it wasn’t all “sibling” love between them. Endgame in a distant season can always have an epilogue with an adult Five (another actor I mean) having a very non-platonic (let adult Fivey kiss please) moment with Vanya, meanwhile building up the longest slow-burn (kinda, deep down I believe those feelings for each other are there) of the century.

Maybe I am wrong, maybe my tinfoil crow is too tight, and my brain doesn’t breathe. Maybe the show will succumb to easy paths and angry bullies. I don’t know, but until proven wrong I dare to hope.

PS: This is a monster of a meta and it probably doesn’t make sense? I hope someone will get what I’ve tried to say. I hope you survive, brave readers. Here a glass of margarita for you. I’d love to hear what you think

#fiveya #five x vanya #vanya x five #my meta

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marshmallowprotection · 3 years

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Kait Reacts To The AE 11/?

Hi! These reactions are written out every time a Chatroom opens and it’s done over the course of the day. So, you’re watching me react in real time as it is for me. So, Spoilers AHOY. Expect Another post like this tomorrow, there is just too many chats to put it all in one post. So, hey, if you click this, you’re opening yourself to spoilers, you make the choice.

[2:16]

It's a brief chat. Literally. We tell Saeran that we made it out of there and that we're safe. We don't want to give up on him. Jumin has implied that a lot is amiss. His tone is somber like he and Saeran spoke beforehand about what happened and he's just trying to skirt around the subject to save my feelings. I don't like this, I don't like this one bit. All I do is say that I'm not giving up on him and that I will continue to have faith in him on the subject. I know that I can count on myself to not give up.

Even if Saeran thinks this is the end, I won't let this be his end. Not now, and not ever. I'm still curious about what Jumin is planning but I don't know what to think. He wants to... I'm getting ahead of myself.

The visual novel opens up on his sitting with Jaehee and Jumin, and Driver Kim as well. We are talking about how grim it seems. I ask if there is really nothing we can do. Can't we try? Please. I need to save him before it's too late. Jumin wants to tell me the truth, that Saeran will die and that he will carry this burden... but...

Driver Kim, I love you. You know the matters of my heart and see clearly here. I know that neither Jumin nor Jaehee want to scold me or tell me that I'm in over my head but I understand why the two of them don't want me to go back but I can't just leave him.

I beg for it because I know if I don't do something... Saeran's sure to die and I will not allow that. Rika already fucking tried to... that bad ending still has me fucking rattled to the core and I know I can't ever trust Rika. I don't know what the hell she's going to do in this good ending but I sure as hell am not going to let her break him. He's not a toy!

We manage to convince Jumin that we should go back but he warns me that I need to be careful and not get caught. Jaehee is the one that gets to him and says that we need to try if there is a single chance that this is going to work out. She is the one that says that this can work.

We just need to have faith. He relents but only because he knows that I will not stop. He says that we need to avoid detection at all costs and that I need to be protected. Whether or not I can even save Saeran, Jumin wants to respect the final wish that Saeran imparted onto him more than ever and I respect that. I really do.

He makes it clear that if I am caught.

He cannot save me.

I accept that risk.

Yoosung and Zen are together, too. Yoosung has found folks all over MeTube that are saying that the video that Saeyoung made was forced. He says that there is hope because there are people who can see beyond the lies. I know that some people will see the truth. We need to believe in ourselves and never start doubting what we know.

They both try to support one another and... they want to help me so bad. They decide they need to comfort me and stand by me and I love them for that. I know they don't want Saeran to die. I know they want to see the happy ending. They both decide to pray to fate for things to work out the way that they should.

They will keep a brave face for us.

They will have faith.

This rides on my shoulders.

Saeyoung is awake. He texted me. He... I thought he would want to fight with me. But, he decides it is better for him to accept the dying wish of his brother then to do something else. He sees no more hope and I just. I was already upset about my fucking up and to see him try to reassure me after all of this... I knew he wouldn't blame me for what happened. He thanked me again for being the one to love and stand by Saeran. I'm sorry, Saeyoung. I promise. I promise we will be safe in the end. I promise i will save him.

I promise our promise of happiness will stay for all of us. It will not end this way.

I don't even know what to say about this one other than I would trust Jumin Han to run a country. It's not what I expected for the press conference to be but you know what. I think this was hinted at before when we talked about politics and how Jumin could be interconnected to that. I never thought he would have to leave C&R, so this one really surprised me.

And if you call Jumin... I hurt for him. I think what hurt the most was what he said after this in such a sad but resigned voice: Saeran would be elated to know that toy are back safely... what a shame we cannot reach him. Jumin. I know you're trying to spare me here but... it hurts.

Please, you are always taking these burdens... your shoulders are so heavy from this. I'm sorry this happened to you and that you have been hurt by the ones that you thought you could trust the most. I don't say outright what Rika did but...

[5:55]

Zen and Vanderwood. I never expected this kind of conversation to happen out here. They are on the way to butting heads. It looks like Vanderwood has quite literally joined us and they literally jest that they wonder they they'll get their own emoticon.

Well, the Vanderwood stans are eating good these days.

Y'all desire that and I only think they got this much is because so many people push for that to be a route or just show enough interest in Vanderwood that we got to this point so I find that rather interesting. I just don't know how to react to all these characters in the same space after seeing them separated and not interconnected. Zen doesn't forgive Vandy for what they did but I don't blame him given what happened in the first place.

They get it, too. They know what trust is. Zen is scared of the worst right now. We want to have faith but he knows that we have to do something but Jumin has run out of options but he wants to pray. Vanderwood lays it out very clearly, we do not have many options right now.

They try to say put the best case scenario that could happen but I don't know what to think.

I want him to be okay.

I lie to them because Jumin said not to say a word about the plan and I will not. I know they will try to either help me or stop me because this is a dangerous choice but it is my choice to make. This ending is about freedom and choice as well as respecting that. So, I am allowed to do what I can here and I will not hesitate to try all that I can for Saeran. Please, please be okay and I promise it will be okay.

Zen calls. He had a prophetic dream about what I am literally about to go and do but he didn't see the end of the dream. He warns me not to do that because it would stop Saeyoung from working so hard and the plan that Saeran gave himself over for will fail. I tell him that we have to take a risk.

What if I regret not trying to save him? I think it's worth the danger... the risk. Saeran is worth the trouble and he always will be. He says that Seven keeps taking breaks to smoke out his trouble but. He's never smoked before as far as I know.

God, it's that bad, isn't it?

I don't want to imagine what he's feeling right now because I'm feeling it too. Let's pray this is going to work out. I have to try. I have to try and if I don’t, I know that I will always have regret. That’s my choice. They will respect that choice of mine just as Saeran made his choice.

Jumin and Jaehee are talking... she was praying for the best. She wants to be hopeful and Jumin comes to join her, he often doesn't attend church anymore but he did when he was young.

Things are changing and they aren't the people they were before this happened, and Jumin says that he cannot go back to who he was once. He has so much pain in his heart that he will carry for the rest of his life. He has regrets. He wishes he did more. A life that felt planned to the end is not one that he thought would ever change but life, he realizes, is a journey that starts out and ends with theatrics.

He decides that life is just a mess where we are bound by judgment, praise, the order, hierarchy... the obsession is not one that we can escape.

Yet, death is always equal. Meaning all performances are equal in the end. He hit rock bottom and simply said that he felt like everything was taken from him and he nearly saw no point left. It felt like he had to lose all he had to come to this point. He learned something from Saeran and I. His detachment from love and faith in others... to protect himself? That was not what he should have done. He realizes only now that he wants to believe again in love and in what can become of the world.

Love and happiness in it are what make life worth it. They are the driving force, he says, and he wishes to accept that into his heart. He comes to say he understands what his father is chasing now... his mistakes... he simply wanted what all crave. Love. Jaehee says she can't really comment on such things but Jumin is thinking out loud.

And yet, in this moment, Saeran has experienced that love and Jumin doesn't want it to end. He is wanting him to live. To see it through. To be able to be happy, loved, and to love in return. Jumin is only able to breathe a prayer of safety for him in the hours to come.

I pray for his safety as well.

#mod kait #mystic messenger #mysme #saeran choi #mysticmessenger #choi saeran #saeran #kait reacts to the ae #kaitreactstotheae #saeran ae #saeran after ending #saeranafterending #spoilers #spoiler #long post

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listing-to-port · 6 years

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Happy birthday to this (part one)

Listing to port is TWO today; so therefore, as is traditional, here is part one of the list of year two, sorted by vague subject and order of appearance (and aided and abetted this year by the R interface to the tumblr api). The list of year one: part one, part two. Part two of the list of year two. Concerning travel and transportation: Eight road trips; Places which inhabit us; Directions; How to pack light; Seven ships which have passed in the night; Six personal travel dilemmas; Ten fun facts about yellow cars; Ten routes through the forest; Six space stations; Buses; Six last relics of doomed explorers; Things seen from the train; Ways to arrive; Seven walks in the mountains; Seven routes to the land of sleep; Eight seaside memories; Eight ways to get where you need to be; Seven planets for sale; Ways home; Five islands with sinister pasts; Ten reasons that you cannot go up to the castle; Eleven cars in front; Six places one may search to uncover buried hoards; Nine passengers; Eight letters from the road. On cities and architecture: Five icy cities; Five fire exits; Passageways and queries; Five hidden worlds just below London; Five perfumes on the birth of cities; Lost cities; Ten rooms in the rubble of Babel; Cities; Six museums; Five utopias; Five bridges; Seven skyscrapers; Seven rooms in an infinite library; Five fully optimised cities; Five Architectures; Forbidden spaces; Seven cities in motion; Five alternate cities; Landmarks of negative space; Five megacities; Unsettling infrastructure; Seven little-known facts about London; Bits of airports. On food: Six feasts for fat cats; Seven happy biscuits; Six surprising origins of pasta shapes; Six waters; Four recipes for difficult times; Six artistic cocktails; Apples; Sandwiches: a guide; Feasts; Ten reasons why this pie is the best pie; Twenty-six courses in alphabetic order; Eight chocolates; Eight uses for leftover pumpkin flesh; Eight knives; Eight edible libraries. On human adventures and misadventures: Seven things found the morning after; Orange things + dictators; Four little-known love affairs; Ten types of lie; Eight declarations of moderate affection; Eight complicated feelings; Seven types of brexit; Seven measures of belonging; Six social faux pas that we have all made; Dresses; Seven composite feelings; Six snap election outcomes; Where are they now?; Hopeful whispers; An all-purpose phone menu; Six official announcements from the palace; An annotated list of fucks I do not give; Twelve ways you won’t believe what she looks like now; Aches; Eight reasons to go to bed right now; Nine nice surprises; Toddler disasters; Four eminent Victorians whose memory has been sadly neglected by time; Eight awards for moderate achievement; Eight hard battles; Nefarious deeds; Five princesses; Ten traits of highly successful people; Ten reasons why men’s clothes should not have pockets; Damages done; Seven uplifting tales; Seven things millennials are killing; Five epic minor ailments; Nine reasons to stay in tonight; Eight things that can happen when you post to the interwebs, anxiety version; Ten types of people; Six ways pet owners are like their pets; Seven boring joys; Seven concerning traits in a suitor; Seven retired sea captains; Ten shoes; Seven scary but also sexy halloween costumes; Ten sinister biases afflicting English universities; Fifteen fireworks; Seven sense-memories from moments of receiving bad news; Seven unboxing videos, rated; Scenes of dizzy mayhem; Twelve people of interest; Six lapses of memory; Eight bodies that are temples; Seven reasons why you absolutely know that person really well; Formal dances; Seven incarnations of Death; Six romances; Eleven small intersections; Seven wrong first impressions; Seven piratical escapades; Ten mysterious smiles; Nine things about you; Six little-known Christmas facts; Ten pieces of good news from 2017; Starts; Nine unmet promises; Seven unrelated notes made at a conference; Seven great first dates; Seven weightless moments. On matters of art and literature: Five inks; ‘Where's Spot?’: a review; Five rogue letters; Six dangerous libraries; Books; Eight of the strongest female characters; Six well-explained jokes; On writing; Things you may catch from books; Five pens; Six rejected protagonists; Six lost songs; Letters x; Twelve twists; Six clarifications regarding nursery rhymes; Five reasons to poet; Six bookmobiles; Browns; Six stories from other angles; Nine wild books; Ten reasons that you might be a children’s TV character; Six monsters attendant upon writers; Marginalia; Illuminations; Seven hidden maps; Ten types of footnote; Seven children's stories carefully sourced from actual children; Six concepts for serials; Nine gothic misfortunes; Ten Altairian Music Hall hits; Eight characters who you may meet on your quest through the flooded land; Writing implements; Eight inventions; Six lost histories of books in the second-hand bookstore; Seven poems; Sources; Nine ghosts of Christmas; Seven excuses for writing too many words; Seven futile artistic plans occasioned by various periods of holiday with vastly insufficient time to contain them; Twelve shades of blue; Eight bells; Scraps of paper. On science, technology and mathematics: Seven things that are running down your smartphone battery; Seven stars; Things there are 500 of; Five new methods of surveillance; Seven rooms in the lab; Six of the best places to find lunar cheese; Six electric dances; Five problems in chthonic physics; Five alarm clocks; On the logistics inherent in serving up a load of old bollocks; Six hashtags that escaped from the internet, and what became of them next; Eight ways to gamify your life; Seven efficiency savings; Six ways to tell if you are in a simulation; Seven enlightenments; Buckets; Suns; Five ones; Ten eclipse tips; Five giant meteors; Six logistical nightmares; Six killer robot logs; Six things that go click click blorp; Engines; Five apps; Deep space junk; Seven stars that have exerted their malign influence upon you; Remainders; Knots; Units of jollity; Ways to maximise clicks.

#lists #writing #lists of lists #birthday #two

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bethestaryouareradio · 4 years

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Become Color Blind

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Become Color Blind

MIRACLE MOMENT®

“When ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”

Anais Nin

MESSAGE FROM CYNTHIA BRIAN, Founder/Executive Director

“You are so lucky! You have red blood!” my mother chimed when, as children, any of us would injure ourselves and be bleeding. We’d immediately stop crying and be grateful that our red blood meant that we were humans and not some form of alien. We were taught that every person was equal. No one was better or worse than anyone else and that no matter what color our skin, what God we worshipped, what gender we were, where we came from, or what language we spoke, we all deserved the opportunity to succeed and be happy. We were taught to work hard, respect others, and live by the golden rule. “Care, share, and be fair” was a family motto.

The last few weeks have been tragic for humans. Not only is the world struggling to survive a pandemic with Covid-19, but the death of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by an officer sworn to protect and serve us, has struck a deep wound in our global consciousness. Our hearts go out to his family and friends and to all the other people who have endured racist encounters. Fear and pain are prevailing. There is no place for racism and bigotry in our country. We are all human.

Here at Be the Star You Are!®, we are color blind. We welcome everyone-black, brown, yellow, beige, white, and any color in between. Be the Star You Are!® supports all ethnicity’s, genders, cultures, and has no religious or political agendas or affiliations. Our goal is to amplify your inner greatness and help you be the best person possible by improving literacy, increasing positive media messages, and offering tools for living a purposeful life.

Protesting is our right as Americans and peaceful protests are valuable. Looting and rioting is counter-productive and only leads to more violence, hatred, and alienation. It is time that we all stopped to listen and hear what others are saying and feeling. We must empathize and start conversations that can lead to healing. I have always believed that ALL LIVES MATTER. But right now, we need to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER because black men and black women are suffering deeply. Our volunteer Karen Kitchel, shared a video that you may have already watched, but it is worth viewing again. It displays the disparity between a life of privilege and one of racial inequality. Watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BEwiqrXrjw

No one must be shackled. It’s time to break down the walls of differences. We must come together to create positive, systemic change that will provide dignity, respect, opportunities, and resources to all. We can each be a catalyst for change.

Once we learn to communicate and collaborate, we will escape to innovate.

Be the Star You Are!® is proud to have been serving the community, country, and world since 1999 with resources to create a better future.

Become color blind. We all bleed red.

Stay safe. Stay strong.

In solidarity,

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Founder/Executive Director

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THE REAL MEANING OF DIGNITY

by Karen Kitchel

“Dignity has the potential to change the world, but only if people like you help to spread its profound message” concluded Donna Hicks in the Psychology Today article “What Is the Real Meaning of Dignity?”

We are all born with dignity, which is different than respect which must be earned. Every individual has worth as a human being and wants to be treated as someone with value.

Everyone wants to be heard and to feel safe in the world. When we feel included, we gain a sense of hope and possibility. Receiving an apology when someone does us harm is a way to reconnect. “I’m sorry” can be two of the most powerful words anyone can utter.

Building strong relationships can be as easy as asking for opinions, listening to concerns and including others in conversations. Seek out someone you don’t know and take a step in changing the world.

Karen Kitchel penned two chapters in the book, Be the Star You Are! Millennials to Boomers Celebrating Gifts of Positive Voices in a Changing Digital World, and is a dedicated volunteer with BTSYA. She serves meals to the homeless and is a volunteer teacher, writer, job coach, and mentor. www.scatteringkindness.com

THE IMPACT OF ILLITERACY-Young Children

by Stephanie Cogeos

According to a recent study by the U.S. Department of Education, 32 million American adults are illiterate, 21% read below a 5th grade level and 19% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate, meaning they cannot read well enough to manage and perform daily living tasks. This can be avoided when people are aware of these statistics and what lack of literacy skills can cause.

When children do not learn to read and write effectively, it affects them and their families. The psychological effect impacts their progress during their early school years. It can also make math and science just as difficult. About 80% of a child’s brain is developed by age 3 and a key period of development occurs in their language and literacy skills. The quality of early childhood education can be determined by one’s economic status. Half of all children by age 5 living in poverty are not academically or socially ready for school, studies have shown (Center on Children and Families at Brookings). Poverty is a risk factor for illiteracy. By fourth grade, 80% of low-income children read at below grade level. Falling behind during critical years will also affect social skills, health and economic status later in their lives. Low literacy often impacts a person’s health, preventative healthcare actions and taking medications correctly as well as impacting them psychologically. Shame, fear, low self-confidence, low self-esteem are all impacted by how well a person can effectively communicate and read and educate themselves. All these things can have a negative impact on society in general. These things can be avoided.

CONTINUE READING: https://files.secure.website/wscfus/10307163/26270304/the-impact-of-illiteracy.pdf

Volunteer Stephanie Cogeos is our Book Review coordinator. She is now doing research to provide resources for the public to learn about the importance of literacy, positive media messages, and empowering women families, and youth. You can keep up with the resources at this link: http://www.btsya.com/resources.html

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Librarians, teachers, parents, and care-givers rely on these reviews as excellent sources for recommending a good book.

WRITER WEDNESDAYS and SUPER SMART SUNDAYS

As part of our Be the Star You Are! Disaster Relief Outreach program (https://www.bethestaryouare.org/copy-of-operation-hurricane-disaste), Be the Star You Are!® has collaborated with the Authors Guild to showcase the new books launched by many authors from around the country in a variety of genres. We will also be showcasing artists, actors, and musicians, all of whom had had their gigs canceled and are out of work. We believe in supporting creativity and believe that books, art, music, and film provide escape and joy, especially during tough times. For the next few months, make sure you are tuned in to both StarStyle®-Be the Star You Are!® on Wednesdays at 4pm PT for “Writers Wednesdays” LIVE http://www.voiceamerica.com/show/2206/be-the-star-you-are as well as our teen program, Express Yourself!™ airing on Sundays at 3pm PT for “Super Smart Sundays”, https://www.voiceamerica.com/show/2014/express-yourself

Both programs broadcast on the Voice America Network, Empowerment Channel and will be archived on that site as well as iTunes, Stitcher, etc. It’s a giant artistic festival!

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goddessgardener · 4 years

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Become Color BRAVE

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Become Color Blind

MIRACLE MOMENT®

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Be the Star You Are!® is proud to have been serving the community, country, and world since 1999 with resources to create a better future.

Become color blind. We all bleed red.

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THE REAL MEANING OF DIGNITY

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We are all born with dignity, which is different than respect which must be earned. Every individual has worth as a human being and wants to be treated as someone with value.

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by Stephanie Cogeos

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1. AmazonSmile donates .5% of purchases https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-3333882

2. Discounted books at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shops/be_the_star_you_are_charity

3. Giving Assistant: Shop. Earn. Give! Use Giving Assistant to earn cash at 3500+ popular online stores, then donate a percentage to BTSYA:https://givingassistant.org/np#be-the-star-you-are-inc

& buy from your favorite stores.

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5. Shop at over 1300 stores on IGIVE: http://www.iGive.com/BTSYA

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9. Buy “Read, Lead, Succeed” T-shirts and tanks $19.99 at StarStyle® Store: http://www.starstylestore.net/

10. Are you a gamer, lover of new software, or other digital content? Buy all of your favorites at Humble Bundle. http://ow.ly/cYs130iN6n4

PLEASE DONATE!

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Be Color Blind.

Communicate, Collaborate, Innovate!

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Moraga, California 94556

[email protected]

https://www.BetheStarYouAre.org

Be the Star You Are!® PO Box 376, Moraga, Ca. 94556

Get Social with us

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#Keywords: bethestaryouarecharitycolorblind riotsgeorgeFloiyd tolerance lovedignitycovid19radiobooksliteracybookreviewscynthiabrian

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ninetyfivepercentdantomasik · 7 years

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Great Series: My Hero Academia

Characters of Note:

Tsuyu Asui, aka Sue, aka “Froppy”

Katsuki Bakugo, aka Kacchan, aka “King/Lord Explosion Murder”

Toshinori Yagi, aka “All Might”

Chizome Akaguro, aka “Hero Killer Stain”

Here’s a series that’s going places. And you’re going to underestimate it. Trust me. How do I know? I sure as hell underestimated it. I saw the covers, then read a chapter and then dismissed it completely. Every so-called “Quirk” seemed either useless or just boring. From that brief glance the series came off as generic, bland, corny, cheesy, and ultimately unimpressive. Boy do I feel foolish.

From the very first chapter this series proved itself a cut above the rest; offering a clear sense of direction & purpose, interesting character development, excellent action, and a timeless and well-executed moral about being a hero. Definitely one of the strongest pilots I’ve read. Shame that couldn’t have been the chapter I first found of it so I could have given this series the attention it deserved a year ago. The chapter I actually read was in the first volume, but lacked the momentum and background established in the chapters before it, making it come off as very weak.

(It was the Quirk-Enhanced Standard Fitness Exam)

We live in an age of superheroes. Movies, television, books, clothing, amusement parks, video games; they’re friggin’ everywhere. Where do we trace this New Age of Heroes back to? 5 years ago for The Avengers? 10 years to Iron Man and The Dark Knight? 18 years to X-Men and Spiderman? 20+ years ago to the Batman and Superman Animated Series? Hell, this is just my timeline for my age, it keeps going for others. I guess the point that needs to be made is superheroes haven’t just been popular recently, this has been going on for decades. New heroes, new stories, new genres, new breakthroughs; so much has been explored and continues to be explored. How does a series stand out in an ocean of similar products all vying for reader attention? Quality.

So many hero stories put the cart before the horse; the superpowers before the heroes. We judge heroes by how powerful they are, paying much less attention to the person behind the power. What makes each of the characters below great is not their Quirks, but their character. Yes, that sounds redundant. Bear with me.

A fantastic model for not judging a book by its cover, Tsuyu Asui comes off as a trivial, even silly character. Her Quirk is “Frog Girl”; akin to Spiderman, The Lizard, or Squirrel Girl. She can do basically whatever a frog can. Stick to surfaces, stretch out her tongue, leap great distances, move quickly underwater, and regurgitate her stomach. Sounds comical, menial, and in one case unnecessarily gross. Keep laughing, she’s one of the top students in her class and more likely than many to go pro as a hero. She’s level-headed, quick to react, perceptive, and takes initiative. This applies to everything from sudden disasters in real time to smacking perverted classmates in the classroom. Split-second decision making and the ability to flexibly adapt to every situation that presents itself, no matter how unexpected, has revealed her to be a young heroine of great promise. What’s more, being constantly underestimated and disregarded by friend & foe alike provides her with a never-ending supply of openings to act. That adorable froggy face is the last one you’d expect to kick your ass or get the better of you. You see a comic relief hero, a fun idea but not a character you’d ever take seriously without a more standard ability like super strength. The reality of hero situations is that there’s much more to it than power vs power. Outside influences, environmental factors, tactical oversights, motive or lack thereof, state of mind, power scale; any one of these factors can be the difference between victory and defeat. Only the foolish try to settle everything with overwhelming power.

....Which brings us to our next hero, Katsuki Bakugo, better known as Kacchan. A great take on the antihero rival, Kacchan is one of the most explosive personalities you’ll ever meet, to good effect. He starts out as a bully with a particularly powerful and intimidating Quirk (quite fittingly, “Explosions”), but by the end of the pilot had already begun transforming into the conflicting and unstable young man we know and love. Kacchan shoulders the responsibilities of the Rival, the Genius, the Antihero, the Rebel, and the Angry Comic Relief; all in one package. The result is a hot-headed teenager who gets on a lot of people’s nerves with his confidence and attitude, but earns his title of “genius”. His solution to almost everything is battle; same time, he actually has a good head for resolving all of his problems this way. As a student he performs well, albeit with a cocky attitude towards everyone else, and as a hero he can think up new strategies and inventive uses of his Quirk on the fly. No matter what test or challenge they throw at him, he acts decisively and without hesitation. To be honest, he’s found very few challenges that cannot be resolved with some variation on a handful of exploding pain, but he’s definitely someone who belongs in the superhero industry. Even so, his powers are only an extension of his natural combat ability, which allows him to outthink and outmaneuver almost every foe, and turns his exploding blows into a strong argument for the opponent to stay down and accept the loss. His biggest weakness, not surprisingly, is his temper, which has only three settings:

1. Casual Death Threats

2. Focused Anger

3. DIE!!!!

Kacchan is so used to winning and beating anyone who opposes him that he reacts very poorly to people that continue getting up. He disregards strategy and goes straight for the kill, or overkill. And if he gets fooled or cheated by any opponent, he becomes absolutely livid. Which is also hilarious. Gotta love a guy who threatens to set you on fire if you don’t move.

Then there’s the Big Guy. The Symbol of Peace in our time, the #1 Hero in the world, All Might. A big part of my staying away from this series was this guy. He just looks so goofy and unbearably cheesy, a big, smiling mix-up of Thor, Superman, and Captain Falcon. God he seems so stupid. FOOL! What instantly won me over in this series was actually meeting All Might in the pilot. When his facade fades away and you see the man underneath the blustering model of super-manliness, something immediately clicked. From the model of almighty (oh.... that’s where the name comes from), he becomes the epitome of weakness. This guy probably couldn’t take Billy Bat in a schoolyard fight. The truth behind All Might is that he’s barely hanging on. A debilitating wound from an enemy 5 years prior to the series nearly destroyed his respiratory system and necessitated his stomach being removed. Every day he can hold his hero form a little less, every time he pushes himself he shortens his life, and soon he may not be able to transform at all. It’s feeling the weight of how far an injury can take you that really adds depth to All Might. In his normal form, he’s practically a skeleton, prone to coughing up blood every time he laughs or opens his mouth. We judge most heroes by the battles at the peak of their strength, but All Might’s greatest battle is just surviving with his gaunt, emaciated body. It’s devastating to think that someone so iconic of power and durability, with nothing else besides them, could die on a hospital bed a shriveled-up thing. We don’t want Superman to die of cancer, we want him to die in battle giving his all against the greatest foe of his superhero career. Preferably a god or something.

Last but not least we have the Hero Killer Stain. Imagine Slade Wilson with more conviction but less stability. Before he was caught, Stain had murdered 17 heroes and seriously injured dozens more. His Quirk allows him to temporarily paralyze anyone once he’s tasted their blood. A Quirk that only has tactical application if you can get in close, wound your opponent, and lick them. What’s that mean for Stain? Means he’s a tough-ass motherf***er. Since his Quirk can only be used as an endgame, he’s taking on all these professional heroes with nothing but skill and stamina. The guy is a blur of blades and unpredictable movements, setting up multiple attacks with every move he makes while dodging and avoiding his enemies attacks. Unlike others, there’s no hint that he plans out his attacks beforehand, no studying or researching his targets, no strategy besides find ‘em, cut ‘em, and kill ‘em. If such a frightening level of combat skill weren’t enough, his dedication and resolve have shaken many heroes and even villains. Stain was a former hero who dropped out after perceiving what he saw as a perversion of true heroism. Heroes in it for attention, status, wealth, or glory; heroes in it for themselves, not for doing good. He preached this for some time, then decided words alone weren’t enough. Thus began his purge. If anything could be more terrifying for a hero than dying to a crazy villain, it would be dying to a crazy villain who sees you more clearly than you see yourself. That’s the last stone in the temple of Stain, that conviction that lets him clearly see some for heroes worth respecting and others for posers only deserving death. Seeing him escape custody to kill a monster and save a teenage hero who helped bring him down, then stand, broken ribs, punctured lung, burned head, and broken weapons, against pros and amateur heroes alike, ready to take them all on. Seeing him refuse to go down except to a true hero. As his moniker applies, Stain has left a mark on heroes and villains everywhere.

#great series #great characters #my hero academia #all might #tsuyu #froppy #bakugo #kacchan #stain #hero killer #superheroes #die

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thecoroutfitters · 7 years

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Over the years, I’ve given a lot of thought to just how much I should try to avoid modern electronic devices when it comes to prepping. I have also sought, wherever possible, to end or reduce reliance on electricity and anything else that requires a major social or commercial effort.

There are some devices that I feel cannot be done away with, at least in the final stages of a major social collapse and during the first few years after.

In this case, I refer to Arduino computer controllers. These small devices are very easy to customize and can be used to increase your odds of survival.

Arduino is a combination of mini, solid state computers housed on a circuit board, and the programming required to make them work

For preppers looking for low cost and easy methods to achieve certain goals, Arduino can be an ideal means until you are able to build systems that do not rely on solid state electronics.

Modern Challenges That Complicate Disaster Scenarios

Smog, weird colors in waterways and horrible smells coming from the ground all point to high pollution levels – you go deep into the woods, and still won’t be aware that upstream or upwind pollution has found its way into the plants and animals living there.

If a major disaster occurs, you will wind up coming into contact with even more dangerous forms and levels of pollution.

Here are some sources of toxins that are somewhat contained now and may increase the problems in the aftermath of a disaster:

You may not want anything to do with modern electronics, but thieves and other rouges might take advantage of your lack of interest in this area. From radar surveillance to RFID bugs and other devices, criminals can easily figure out where you are, what supplies you have on hand, and how best to get everything of value from you.

Once sewage systems aren’t maintained anymore, clogs and pipe collapses, which will make every city street a disaster zone as the sewage backs up into the streets. It will be impossible to live in any home attached to the community sewer system because backups will occur through the pipes.

Right now there are thousand to millions of barrels of toxic waste sitting in dumps, underground, and in the oceans. These barrels are leaking and causing massive problems that require millions of dollars to clean up. When nobody will control or limit these problems, there will be no such thing as a safe location to live free of these poisons.

Factories, commercial farms and other large scale operations also work with extremely hazardous toxins on a routine basis. These toxins require careful storage and monitoring so the people wouldn’t be exposed to them, but the chemicals may escape their containment, and no one will be available to stop the situation or remedy it. In fact, even if you come across a toxic spill, you won’t have the gear or the skills to restore order.

As different chemicals merge together, there will be an increased risk of fires that push smoke filled with toxins into the air, affecting people for miles around at a moment’s notice. While these explosions do happen right now, they are the exception, not the norm that you will see in a major collapse scenario.

Given the number of nuclear reactors and the number of people required to keep them safe, it is a given that exposure to nuclear radiation will happen in a large scale after disaster. If you don’t have the means to detect the presence of nuclear radiation, you won’t figure out what is going on, let alone get to a safe location underground.

GREEN ENERGY – Click Here to find out how you can build your own energy generator.

What is Arduino?

Basically, Arduino is a combination of mini, solid state computers housed on a circuit board, and the programming required to make them work. The IC chips used to power Arduino are not as complicated as the ones that control your computer, however they can keep up with some tablets and smart phones on the market today.

Arduino systems are also very easy to customize in the sense that you can buy all kinds of add-ons and accessories that are controlled by the main board.

Here are just a few things you can use Arduino for.

Building Robots

Even though these robots may not be very big, they can be used for all kinds of things. For example, if you need to probe an underground tunnel, you can always send in a wireless camera on wheels.

The Arduino controller will act as an interface between the vehicle and the controller that you use to steer it. The Arduino main board can also receive information sent back from the camera so that you see it onscreen.

Chances are you would be truly amazed at how useful small, wheeled vehicles can be in a survival situation.

From mobile cameras used for scoping out an area to testing for land mines and traps, these robots can be true life savers. You can also use these robots to detect unsafe radiation levels, or to help you avoid toxic ground, air, and water.

Hazardous Air Indicators

Have you ever gone out of your local area, only to discover that other locations smell very different? When you returned home, did you notice that smells that bothered you early on have returned? If so, then you can readily understand why hazardous air indicators are so important.

No matter whether you have become accustomed to the smell of smog, waste dumps, natural gas, or other odors, they indicate the presence of gasses that can be dangerous to your health.

During and after crisis, these air toxins are bound to reach levels that will make you much sicker, or even kill you.

Since you can buy several different kinds of air quality sensors to use with an Arduino controller, you could to detect the presence of, or increase in toxic gas levels. From there, you can take appropriate steps such as wear a respirator mask, or employ other means to clean the air circulating in your home.

Detect Electronic Surveillance

As a prepper, you are always going to be concerned about your privacy or the number of people that know about your stockpile, it’s contents, and where it is. More than a few products you are storing away may have hidden RFID chips in them.

While these may be referred to as innocent inventory tags, there is no telling what those chips can do when activated. If you try to buy a pre-manufactured RFID sniffer, it can cost hundreds of dollars and still miss out on some of the more stealthy chips.

There are many frequency detector accessories that can be purchased to use with Arduino controller boards. Not only will you save money on the RFID detector, you will also be able to customize it to detect both older and newer sensor types.

This can also come in very handy if you need to find out if these kinds of chips are hiding around your property, in your vehicle, or in other areas.

Tools and Knowledge You Need for Building

To build complex systems using Arduino, you need very little in the way of tools and skills. The basic tools you will need include:

a computer (even a tablet or smart phone can be used to transfer programming to the Arduino controller);

the actual Arduino controller and accessories (kits that include the main board and accessories run around $30.00 USD);

access to Open Source code for the controller and Add-Ons (this is free and accessed through your computer);

a solder iron (used very rarely);

any attachments that you may want to add to the controller.

For example, if you want to build a robotic camera system, then you might purchase a kit that includes these parts, plus others that can be used to expand on your main application.

Insofar as knowledge required to use and build Arduino systems, you should have at least a basic understanding of electronics.

Even if you don’t know the difference from a resistor or capacitor, however, there are plenty of instruction guides filled with pictures that will tell you exactly what needs to be done.

At the beginning, you will not need to know anything about computer programming because there are many excellent sources of code that can be used with the main controller and any accessories you want to attach to it.

That being said, as you expand into more personalized applications, you may want to learn how to write your own code.

Video first seen on I Like To Make Stuff.

A Caution About Videos and Tutorials

Over the years, I have searched through thousands of videos and tutorials as I worked my way through different DIY tasks. In many cases, I have seen hundreds of videos showing the exact same mistake, yet the “results” shown on the video were astounding.

For me, the most memorable occasion for this is when I decided to build a pen gun. Just about every video and tutorial on this subject showed using a wad of paper to push the spring into position.

What I quickly found out is this would never work for two reasons:

If the wad is big enough and adheres to the walls of the pen enough to hold the spring in place, then the spring will never have enough power to eject it, let alone propel the payload forward.

If you use a wad that is too small, the spring and everything else will come out and fly all over the place. Let’s just say that the vast majority of videos on this topic lead to creating something completely useless.

In other cases, I have found videos that offered contradictory, and often dangerous advice. Unless you actually take the time to build something yourself and test each stage out with care, there is every chance that the advice in these videos will do more harm than good in a time of need.

Now, if you go online and look for videos on Arduino, you will find thousands. While they may give you the basics on how to insert wires and parts into a breadboard, do not assume that the actual wiring details are correct. It is truly best to explore on your own and take the time to check your work carefully.

Even if hundreds of videos show the exact same thing and the exact same results, remember what I learned from the pen gun explorations – no matter how many times something wrong is repeated – it is still wrong and can never be made right.

What to Beware Of

As someone that has worked with building electronic gadgets and programming computers, I tend to be a bit cautious about an interface that combines both.

In particular, I’d hate to plug in my Arduino controller to the USB port on my computer, and not realize that there is a short somewhere in the breadboard attached to the Arduino.

For this reason, I advise taking the following precautions as a beginner, and even later as you become more confident of your skills:

Load programs onto the controller without other accessories attached. This will help reduce the risk of shorts and other mistakes being in an electrical connection with the rest of your computer.

Use an old tablet or old computer for programming. Try to avoid using anything expensive until you are sure it is safe to do so. Today, there are plenty of tablets that cost less than $100.00 that you can add Arduino related apps to.

Never rely on the computer or tablet for powering the Arduino while accessories are attached. Unless you built your own computer and know that the power supply can take the added load, never assume that the computer can handle even a small additional load. After programming, it is best to power the Arduino board with a dedicated power supply. In many cases, this may be as simple as a AAA or 9V battery pack. You can also purchase regulated power supplies that are designed to attach to the Arduino controller board.

Follow Basic Safety Precautions – in most cases, you can do more damage to the Arduino controller and accessories than they can do to you. Never handle the controller or accessories without wearing an anti-static grounding strap. It is also important to avoid touching the circuit board itself or any metal parts. Always handle the controller from around the edges. When you set the controller or other parts down, make sure they are not on a surface that can conduct electricity. Finally, always store the controller and parts in a case that will keep it safe and free of moisture and dust.

Never combine the controller with parts it isn’t designed to work with. During the process of selecting an Arduino controller, you will find several variations on the market. While most sensors and accessories will work with all boards on the market, others will not. Study the data sheets for the accessories carefully so that you know which boards they will and will not work with.

Six Things Every Prepper Should do With Arduino

When it comes to meeting a wide range of survival needs, Arduino can fit into just about any scenario and make things easier.

Here are six things that you should know how to build and operate.

1. Environmental Pollution Detector System

As mentioned earlier, being able to detect air pollutants and toxins is and will be crucial after crisis. If you suffer from breathing problems, you may be amazed at what a few simple sensors will reveal about why you are sick and how best to get on the road to being well again.

Arduino controllers can also be used to power water pH and and other aspects of water quality. Since water is usually at neutral pH (7.0), levels significantly higher or lower can point to the presence of dangerous toxins.

If you find water that has an unusually acidic or alkaline pH, you can use that information to determine how to clean the water.

This meter can also tell you how effective your methods were. Without a question, if you thought boiling water is the “end all” cure all for water quality problems, seeing the pH skew even more in the unwanted direction will reveal problems with that idea; and may just save your life.

In a similar way, you can use other sensors to test soil quality. This will help you choose the best areas to grow food crops as well as help you figure out which additives will make the soil more suitable for your plants.

Video first seen on The Suburban Hippie Experimentalist.

2. Mobile Surveillance Systems

Also mentioned above, there are truly endless ways to use Arduino wheeled robots, cameras, and recording systems for surveillance.

No matter whether you want to know what is happening near a distant fence or even some location within your home these wheeled systems can meet all your needs with ease.

3. RFID Detectors

RFID detectors are absolutely necessary since chips are planted in everything from razor blade packages to children and pets. Knowing where RFIDs are can help you understand all the possible locations where spies can find out where you are and what you are doing.

You can always upgrade the Arduino sensor system for a fairly low price instead of spend hundreds of dollars on pre-fabricated systems that come out in response to newer stealthier RFID technologies.

4. Radios and Receivers

You can build everything from Foxhole radios to transmitter systems, but they may not be as strong as what you can make using an Arduino controller. If you take advantage of the wireless sender and receiver kits, you can also communicate more easily over short distances using much lighter equipment.

Video first seen on David Watts.

5. Alarm and Safety Systems

Why should you sit up day and night worry about if thieves are going to get into your campsite? Have you been hoping a deer was going to come your way? There are literally hundred to thousands of ways that alarm systems can be used to enhance safety and survival goals.

With Arduino, you can build all kinds of systems that will generate invisible beams that will alert you to the presence of something you should know about. When combined with wireless signal systems and cameras, you can have real time intelligence about everything going on around you.

6. Nuclear Radiation Detection System

Although often overlooked, nuclear radiation risks are truly going to be much higher regardless of whether nuclear bombs are deployed. While you can always use a Kierney Fallout meter, it never hurts to have a Geiger counter onhand.

You can purchase an add-on for Arduino controllers that will do this job with ease. Remember, if you don’t want to dedicate a controller just to this task, just unplug the sensor from the Arduino controller and use it for some other task!

In fact, you may even decide to use one board for all your prepping tasks until you decide which ones you want to build as permanent applications.

Even though most of your prepping must involve tangibles like food, water, defense, and transport, it may not be a good idea to ignore all forms of electronic devices.

Arduino controllers and their accessories are highly customizable and can be used to help you navigate through a crisis more easily than expected. As you think about each area of your survival plans, consider that these systems may be of far more value than you realized.

Feel free to share other ways your prepping efforts might benefit from using an Arduino interface. I have built several for my own current and prepper based needs and would love to discuss them with those who are interested in learning.

If you are looking for low budget options to bridge the gap to more expensive devices, or ones that don’t rely on electronic devices, Arduino can fill that gap, and may you didn’t even realize existed in your current plans.

Click the banner below for more!

This article has been written by Carmela Tyrell for Survivopedia.

from Survivopedia Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

#SHTF #TEOTWAWKI #MARTIALLAW #BUGOUT #PREPPERBAG #USAF #USSOCOM #ARMY #NAVY #SurvivalFirestarter #Sur

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celestialaquisitions · 7 years

Text

I need to talk. This sentance has floated around within my head for the last hour and a half now, since the discord call I was in with a close friend ended. And like the opening of a dam in slow motion, the emotions, the thoughts, the fears, the anxieties, and the chaos of what I keep pushed down began to trickle in.

It’s always slow, at first. A discomfort, a restlessness, for me it always disguises it’self as indecisiveness. My distraction is gone, now what do I do? I sit here, I look over my options, I consider.. well, I -could- sleep, but then I’m too worked up. Because of what though, I was just talking with a friend, ah - perhaps it was the subject. I was opening up about the things that have been going on as of late, my mind revisiting old uncomfortable places.

So sleep is, definitely not an option. So what else can I do? This, is when somewhere along the line. I stopped browsing duty finder, I stopped browsing imgur and youtube and my world just sort of.. blacked out for a small while. In that blackout, the trickling of the dam, became a steady flow and stream. Not enough to drown me, but enough to keep me drifting to the point where I couldn’t attach to anything else but what currently swept through my mind.

I have no income and I cannot work, I have no relationship - not anymore, I have a house that I cannot pay for, because I have no means to. I cannot support myself, no matter what I seem to do. Eventually, the thoughts stopped forming words, and instead just started to form feelings instead. Things became less about my mind trying to label and identify, to process what was pouring in and just about trying to steer me towards something, anything other then sinking deeper into the mud as the dam’s stream began to open up into more of a flowing river on top of my head.

I googled, - I can’t actually remember what it is I googled first. Something containing the word ‘suicide’ most likely, because it lead me to the national suicide hotline. With tears in my eyes I read over how to make the chat function work, because with my ex-fiance asleep in the bed behind me I didn’t wish to wake her up by being on the phone.

Eventually I got to the bottom of the page, where it asked for my zip code and it’s still typed in - I just never hit accept and start the conversation. I’ve been on crisis lines eight times in three months, and nothing.. nothing really changes when I call them. Get help, they say, your in a safe place, try and sleep, they say. Reach out to someone in the morning, once you’ve had a chance to calm down.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is call my best friend. Every morning, without failure. I’ve been doing this for almost a year now and even when I’m not fully awake I can type in the numbers on my phones touch screen to unlock it, enter discord, and start a call without having to think. I don’t even have the ability to speak yet, all I can do is squeak and make noises. Usually we end up talking, making jokes, and starting the day pleasantly. The last three weeks, he has instead been talking to me and convincing me to get out of bed. And our topic of conversation has been, ..why should I?

I think about this, and it makes the want to sleep even less then it already is. He has work tommrow, he’s EU, I don’t wish to put those feelings onto him before he goes to work. He doesn’t need that, or me, in this state, on his mind for just.. that day, I think I’ll spare him this time.

So I turn to google again, and through the tears that are even now streaming down my cheeks. I begin voicing the whispers in my head into google search. At first it’s I have no income, I have no job, what do I do if I lose everything? Then it becomes How do I find help, when none of the help I need I can find or obtain. Then it becomes is it considered suicidal thoughts, if you don’t think you’ll actually do it? then it becomes Can anyone help me at all. Then it becomes is anyone listening? then it becomes I don’t know if I can do this anymore.

That’s when I stopped google searching. I turn to youtube, and in my recommended list, is a ted talk titled. ‘Why do we choose suicide’ , I click it because I want to know.

youtube

When the talk ends, I’m still crying. I’m crying because keeping that small bit of hope alive is becoming harder, and harder to do. I’m crying because during the course of the talk, I contemplated talking a walk down the street and just keep walking, and hope that someone would find me and talk to me about things, help make it better. Help -change- something, anything, but I got too scared over the concept of being approached by a stranger.

Somewhere in this conflict of interest, the Auto-play on my youtube kicked in, and the next video to be played was another ted talk, on the same subject. Welcoming the distraction, I watched it anyway.

youtube

By the end of it, I came to realize I am still on a road and don’t even know where it’s going. I don’t know how long it is, I don’t know how many years will just continue to tick by as I just... keep.. walking. All I know is that, much as my best friend keeps telling me, I have been through worse, I have survived worse, and still im here. I come from a very abusive family, who don’t even know they are. Every relationship I have been in up to this point, has been abusive, and the one that just ended - I am figuring out what it was. But even then I can say with confidence, it was better then what has come before it.

I’m twenty nine years old, I have been fighting abuse and depression for as long as I can remember being alive. But even with the issues of I have no job, I have no income, I have no financial independance, I have no realtionship, I could lose the house, I could go back to texas, I could be forced to go back to my abusive family, and never escape the hell I did again, I could loose everything, and anything I hold dear at a moments notice.

These are not fears, these are not anxieties, these are potential possibilities.

Yet, even then. I know I have made progress. While around me, everything outside of my body is absolute chaos, and quite honestly, the fact that I’m writing this, my mind is chaos to. But I’ve still, without a shadow of a doubt, made progress. By writing this, by talking about this, I have also made progress. Progress in what? I don’t know, but I have this sense of -feeling- this knowing, that I am better now, then I was six months ago, two years ago.

There are no illusions of grandure here, nothing in my life has magically changed. I will still sleep at somepoint, and wake up and have the exact same day, just with different variables then the day before. But I’ve made progress. it took the man in the video thirty years to finally be at peace with what lives in his head.

Things do not magically get better, you don’t wake up the next morning free and always will be free of what’s inside you. The process is slow, the process is painful, the process is heavy, gross, and leaves you some nights talking to the internet like I am right now, knowing it’s not going to magically talk back. But because I am choosing to live, for one more day, I’ve taken one step further on the road, one foot in front of the other. Instead of miles, this road is paved in seconds, minutes, hours, days, years.

As long as time passes, progress is being made. Progress that wouldn’t be made, if everything had simply come to a stop. Time unfortunately, is not an ally, or kind to anyone. For the last seven years I have been given somewhat of a chance to breathe, the crushing weight of my life lifted just enough for some of the pain to ease, and the damage visible to be looked over, evaluated, and tended to. But not all of it has, and soon the full weight of it all may very well be placed back on top of me all over again. And I question if I will have the strength, and the ability to endure it now that I’ve, for once in my life, tasted what it was like without all of it on me.

I’m still going to try. I’m still going to fight, because as tired, as exhausted, as beaten, broken, and struggling as I am. I’m still passing time, I’m still making progress. I’m still moving forward and choosing to live just that much more. perhaps it will lead to a better place, perhaps it won’t. I just don’t know. But I can say with confidence that before tonight, I never had the courage to speak out about anything, to anyone, much less over a public forum such as this, and on a subject such as this no less.

I will lose followers, or maybe I wont. People may comment on this, like this, or reblog this, or they won’t. People may frown on the fact this was said at all, that I didn’t tag this right, or that they don’t want to see this on their dash, or that I shouldn’t speak about something so personal where everyone can see it. Everyone can judge it how they see fit.

For once, in my life. These possibilities don’t bother me. Do as you like with my words, it’s okay. The only thought drifting through my mind right now, is the words of a friend who has been unable to even speak to me outside of text because of his own struggles. Yet he’s told me, I inspire him, because I’m still alive. Watching me struggle, painful as it may be, is inspiring him to keep living. So I will put these words where everyone can see them, because I needed to talk. Because I needed to voice what happened tonight as a journal entry of what it’s like living with what I do.

I don’t expect people to understand. And that’s okay, all I ask is take my hand. Walk with me. Not physically, but in seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. Watch one more cat video, grind out one more level, read one more sentence of a page. Whatever it is that you can do, do it. Walk with me, and just maybe, we can make some more progress along the way.

Thank you.

#OOC #personal

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nothingman · 7 years

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A review of Future Sex (2016) by Emily Witt.

Emily Witt’s (2016) book Future Sex chronicles her search for sexual self-realization as a New Yorker in her early 30s migrating to tech-centered San Francisco. The book is based both in interviews and personal experiences, stringing vignettes together into chapters with topics including polyamory, Orgasmic Meditation, Internet porn, and Burning Man. In this review, I highlight her chapter on sex camming.

But first, I will start with a broad overview. A major theme in the book is the kind of existential angst that comes from having too many choices. Witt feels daunted by her sexual freedom as a millennial—the limitless range of sexual partners and practices—first made possible by the sexual revolution, and then by the Internet. She (p. 12) explains:

What if love failed us? Sexual freedom had now extended to people who never wanted to shake off the old institutions, except to the extent of showing solidarity with friends who did. I had not sought so much choice for myself, and when I found myself with total sexual freedom, I was unhappy.

Witt spent her early adult life wanting to find enduring love—and possibly even marriage—viewing this as an escape from the cycle of causal sexual arrangements, occasionally punctuated by periods of monogamy, that has up until now defined her romantic life. But Witt’s desires conflict with the world she inhabits, as Millennial sexual norms privilege freedom over security in relationships. She (pp.11-2) describes why security remains desirable, even as the Internet opens ever more possibilities:

The expansion of sexuality outside of marriage had brought new reasons to trust the traditional controls, reasons such as HIV, the time limits of fertility, the delicacy of feelings. Even as I settled for freedom as an interim state, I planned for my monogamous destiny. My sense of rightness, after the failed experiments of earlier generations, was like the reconstructions of a baroque national monument that was destroyed by a bomb [but] another kind of freedom had arrived: a blinking cursor in empty space.

In questioning these new romantic configurations where freedom prevails, Witt echos what social theorists Anthony Giddens and the late Zygmunt Bauman respectively describe as “pure relationships” and “liquid love.” Both authors suggest that the ideal of unconditional commitment has been supplanted by constant negotiation and the criterion of mutual benefit. And, even in coupling, individuality remains central.

Lacking a secure, committed relationship in the old mold, Witt sets out to explore the possibility of fulfillment (or, at least, self-knowledge) in less conventional situations. As turns out, it is in the chapter on “Live Webcams” that Witt does the most theoretical work to explain why seeking diverse experiences—the project of the book—might aid in her quest for sexual self-realization. In particular, she points to an essay in the book Time Square Red, Times Square Blue by the gay African-American author Samuel D. Delany about the time he spent having anonymous sex in porno theaters. Witt (p. 126) summarizes the essay:

[Delany] describe[d] the benefits of his vast experience in casual sex. The movie theaters had served as laboratories in which he had learned to discern the nuances and spectrum of his sexual desire… His observations about sexual attraction consistently disproved conventional notions of beauty and ugliness. (He discovered, among other proclivities, that he had a thing for Burly Irish-American men, including two who had hairlips.)

She quotes Delany who suggests we must “learn to find our own way of having sex sexy” and concludes:

I don’t see how this can be accomplished without a statistically significant variety of partners… However supportive, the response of a single partner just cannot do that. This is a quintessentially social process…

Unlike Delany, Witt (p. 204) mostly lands back where she started, finding monogamy rewarding but now embracing an ideal of commitment as temporary:

I hope that married partnership would cease to be seen as a totalizing end point and instead become something more modest, perhaps am institutional basis for shared endeavors such as raising children or making art.

But this return to a somewhat conventional notion of romance proves to be the most interesting aspect of the book. Witt’s thinking about the freedom and diversity of experience available to the present generation seems to evolve. Rather than seeing the nearly infinite range of sexual possibilities as daunting, Witt ends up seeing it as an opportunity to experiment until one finds confidence and feels affirmed in their own desires. She (p. 204) says:

I found that… mostly I wanted to live in a world with a wider range of sexual identities. I hoped the primacy and legitimacy of a single sexual model would continue to erode as it has, with increasing acceleration, in the past fifty years.

Though she does not state it so explicitly, I would argue that Witt has uncovered an interesting dialectic between freedom and security. Though freedom to explore may aid us in discovering what we find sexually desirable, exploration may, paradoxically, lead to security in one’s established sexual desires, when new experience continually prove less satisfying and thus reaffirm the appropriateness of those desires.

And, while final chapter wonders off a bit, I think the desirability of embracing this tension between freedom and security is the clear (if unstated) conclusion of the book.

***

Following this theme of sexual exploration as a mechanism of self-realization, I now want to turn to the question of what camming teaches Witt about her own sexuality (and what we can learn about camming in the process). Witt (p. 114) describes her experiences with the popular camsite Chaturbate:

I first saw Chaturbate and the many other live-sex-cam sites available online as porn… as the technological evolution of peep show booths and phone sex lines. Like those, they had a performer and they had a voyeur… Then I spent more time on the site.

As she dives deeper into the site, Witt determines that the resemblances she observed between cam sites and other forms of sex work/performance were only superficial. The diversity and interactivity of cam sites set them apart.

Chaturbate was full of serendipity… the feeling of clicking through the 18+ disclaimer into the opening matrix was the one of turning on MTV in the mid-1990s, when music videos played most of the day and kept viewers captive in the anticipation of a favorite performer or a new discovery. Or maybe, to reach farther back in time, it recalled the earlier days of the Internet—the Internet of strangers rather than “friends.”

Witt’s decision to approach her subject matter through the lens of her own desire—as described in the first section of this review—proves both interesting and problematic in this chapter.

What makes Witt’s approach interesting is that, in bypassing the popular rooms that she largely finds uninteresting, she takes us to the margins of the sites, searching for the unexpected. This includes an Icelandic woman who strips wearing a rubber horse mask and fedora. In a passage representative of her snarky but appreciative style, Witt describes (pp. 112-3):

maybe it was the house that she was in or her high definition camera or a general characteristic of the Icelandic people but even faceless she gleamed with the well-being that emanates wherever per-capita consumption of fish oils is high and citizens benefit from socialized health care.

Witt also describes a college-age women who talked about literature and made $1,500 doing a 24 hour marathon that featured much talking, some nudity, and no sex. A third woman suspended herself from a hook made of ice. And another woman held nude sex ed discussions.

Taking a cue from one of her interviewees, Witt describes the intended use of site—one or two performers broadcasting to many viewers in each room—as “mass intimacy.” But, the most interesting part of the chapter was Witt’s exploration into a culture that has emerged around using Chaturbate to facilitate unpaid, anonymous, 1-on-1 sex.

Assisted by two performers that she interviewed, she “multiperved” or “audio-Skyped with one another while sifting through videos online” (p. 124). Together, logged on to browse the countless pages of men streaming but being watched by no one. She describes (pp. 124-5):

not even the most popular men, instead clicking through to the second and third pages for the real amateurs, the forest of men in desk chairs… It turned out that they waited there for a reason… so that they will find someone who will cam-to-cam with them…

Witt (and her guides) come across a man she finds somewhat attractive, and she chats with him. The man quickly invites her to turn her cam on. She obliges and sets up a password-protected room so only he can see her. While Witt does not seem to find the encounter particularly rewarding, she (p. 125) does offer some insight into the value others find in the experience:

here, where hopes resided in the chance of an electronic encounter between two people, tokens mattered much less. If, on its landing page, Chaturbate was thousands of men watching a few women, a couple pages in, the numbers changed to one or two people using Chaturbate to interact privately with another person.

Witt’s experience highlights a really interesting case of technology being used against the grain. It is a rougish activity for users to seek non-transactional intimate or sexual encounters on sites whose profits come from viewers purchasing tokens. While these sites afford such activity and do not prohibit it, they do not intend or explicitly condone it either. It is, perhaps, due to this lack control that sites likes Chaturbate remind Witt of the earlier Web.

While Witt’s examination of the margins of camming sites is revealing, she also, arguably, fails to represent most of what is going on these sites and is even somewhat dismissive of the more popular performers. Because she focuses on her desires as a thirty-something NYC writer, Witt sometimes displays a hipster bias, where, if something isn’t weird or edgy, it’s not seen as deserving attention.

Witt is also not a joiner. Her desire to experiment as part her own quest for sexual self-realization, drives her visit many places; but, for the most part, Witt does identify or feel a sense of belonging with the people she meets. She seems to participate only at a distance, viewing others as subjects as much as relationships. Witt (p. 172) describes her own relationship to a sex party she attends, saying “I was still thinking of myself as just a visitor, or rather neither here nor there, someone undertaking an abstract inquiry but not yet with true intention.” This distancing is valuable insofar as it brings with it a degree of objectivity (most other things written about Orgasmic Mediation, for example, sound like marketing copy); however, it also means she’s unable to offer an insider perspective through her personal narratives.

What’s missing in the chapter on camming—due to some combination of her hipster bias and lack of personal experience—is an examination of the many dimensions of creative labor that goes into producing evening the most normative-appearing shows. Had Witt tried modeling herself, this would be readily apparent. The seeming ease with which models embody normative desires is part of the work—part of the performance of authenticity.

A most troubling moment is when she uncritically relays one of her interviewee’s characterization of the top performers as “zombie hot girls” (p. 124). This privileging of the weird in porn feeds a kind of whorearchy, where certain forms of sex work/practice are denigrated as a way of validating others.

Witt certainly is not consciously anti-sex work. In the previous chapter, in fact, she offers a great deal of praise for the artistry women porn directors and producers, and she spends a significant time questioning her own beliefs shaped by mainstream feminism and considering more inclusive feminisms that embrace sex workers and porn as a medium. And, quite insightfully, she argues that much fetish porn is a reaction or response to new taboos set up by anti-porn feminists.

Nevertheless, Witt does not seem to extend the interest and regard she has for women-directed studio porn to the women-directed performances of popular cam models. I’m certain they have unique insights and fascinating stories to tell.

***

Regardless of these few criticisms, Witt gets one key thing right: The future of sex cannot be reduced to a story of technological development but must be understood in terms of changing patterns of human relationships. She (p. 210) concludes “America had a lot of respect for the future of objects, and less interest in the future of human arrangements.” For that reason alone, Future Sex probably deserves more attention.

PJ Patella-Rey (@pjrey) is sociologist writing a dissertation sex camming.

via The Society Pages

#IFTTT #Feedly #Nothingman uses feedly

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yespoetry · 6 years

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Joshua Byron: Become Visible

Become Visible

I want to capture your attention. I once wrote a poem where I said “i want to capture someone’s attention”. It was a call for something, anything in me to capture the interest and gaze of someone else, whether digitally or physically. I don’t know if I’ve grown to be this person, or if I always was.

There are many ways of being visible. I can see your body physically or your Instagram digitally. The third visibility is spiritual, to be seen wholly and fully. These are gazes coupled with mind games, and the revealing of longings and of secrets.

Friends are the love of our lives, our soulmates as Charlotte says. I want her to be right, maybe not always for selfless or compassionate reasons. It resonates with the feminist part of me I want to hold on to. It resonates with the escape I need from a gaze of expectancy. The gaze of needing another person to complete myself. The gaze I long for even as it eats me alive.

To dig into my desire for being seen, by crowds, by men, I would have to inevitably think about my childhood. So, I choose to think abstractly about what it means to be seen and to see. I want to be seen because it validates my choices, because it is my own reproductive future instead of a child, because I want to be adored by someone besides myself to know it is true. It is because I have a drive to be known, to be worth something, and art is tied to worth is tied to self is tied to… the ties that bind are heavy, the crown is heavier and always wants more, yet I want more. My crown would be glittery, golden, loveable.

I am told my art is good, I should submit to festivals. This does not translate into likes but it does translate into visibility, so what does it mean to be only physically visible as at a physical film festival or gallery show? Not digitally visible? Is that not success that doesn’t require you to Google me?

I told myself I would mine my feelings, but the naïve thirst I have feels too personal to reveal, even though I’m sure we share this kind of desire. In my own art, I thought talking about men would be enough, would be viral enough. And it is. It is something. But it isn’t all I want, to be visible also encourages participation. I want to be a digital cloud seen over and over, endorsed, shared, clicked on, thought about.

It is not inseparable- romance and the longing to be loved by adoring crowds- something more lasting. It is a cagey acceptance of balance, if only in longings and denial. I once read a Harry Styles fanfic about orgasm denial. I too wanted to be denied pleasure, to be under someone, to be the source of pleasure that is taken and held and kept. The objectified, the pleasure, not the pleasured.

The digital is so corporeal. So poignant. We want, we crave, we eat, we look, we gaze, and the screen becomes our reality. This has been said over and over. But why? Why do we want to be seem as pixels even more than as bodies? Do we see a global self as better than a physical self? As one worth more? If my art does catch on, does this create a better sense of self or a better life worth living? Will I stop if it doesn’t?

Being digital does not relieve me of my bodily anxiety, if anything it only links and latches onto it. Florence lets me feel my body as she sings about the cosmos, but when I have the cosmos at the tip of my hand I feel dread- can anything I do compare to those that “do” something”? I wonder what it will matter when time and space collapse.

Yet I want my Youtube videos to hit 1k views. As we all do, I suppose. Does it give us anything in return to be adored other than an ego? An ego protects, an ego resists, an ego responds out of itself. I cannot always do that.

Is something well received different than something that is unseen? Or from something that you cannot touch? Why do I want to obsessively document my feelings? Of all fucking things to want to obsess over, I fell into the diary world of the thinly veiled autobiography like Joni Mitchell or Nora Ephron, mining my life for material until I am barren.

Fiona Apple became my idol in high school. If someone as messy and difficult as her could be adored, I could too. Imperfect, angry, weird, bizarre, pissed off.

Everyone has a Twitter and Instagram, but do they only hinder me…? I think they are portals to me and to my videos, but what do they actually do… They are merely links to content and art. A Haruki Murakami novel web of traps and tunnels. To rely is to die.

How do we get seen without seeming needy?

I am needy.

I want to make more sense, to be more transportable, to be viral. But I am not easy. I am angry. I am weird pre-1990s, and scared. I am scared I am scared I am scared

just like a spider on the bathroom floor by your feet

Joshua Byron is a nonbinary storyteller based in Bushwick. They have produced over nineteen film works including, most recently, Idle Cosmopolitan. Their films have screened at Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, Indiana University, the Indianapolis LGBT Film Festival, Life Hack, the Wrong Biennial, and Forge Mag Presents. Their writing has appeared in Glo Worm Press, Bushwicky Daily, Water Soup Press, and The Body Is Not An Apology. They love Oprah, rose soap, and melodramas.

#Joshua Byron #special feature #lgbtq #poetry

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onlyryan · 7 years

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Contexts of Game and Play

Things of Beauty: Super Smash Bros. as Spectator Sport

The video discusses the You-tuber Innuendo Studio’s views of sports stating that he has no interest in them as entertainment but instead the systems put in place. A point he brings up with regards to sports versus video games is that we could potentially do anything that isn't explicitly stated in the rules, however with video games we are forced to stay within the constraints of the system. He does go on to use an example of two pro players ‘Digo vs Justin Wong’ where one of them used a skill forcing the other player to block and parry a series of chained skills that was incredibly hard. And though this was not expected, the developers knew it was possible and something the system was designed to do. “What the system was meant to do vs. what the system can’t stop you from doing.” In relation to smash bros. he states there was a mechanic shield dropping that was deliberately implemented, however techniques such as pivoting wave-dashing and desynching were not designed but discovered as ‘accidents’ of the system. Mew2King a professional Smash player goes against Amsa a player from Japan who plays Yoshi - supposedly a character with little viability especially within pro tournaments. The idea is that bringing in a new meta in a sense catches people off guard as people are used to the mainstream ways of a system. When someone does something different (e.g. throws a knuckeball in baseball) its sort of a two way blade in the respect that there is risks to pull it off but its likely the opponent will be considerably unprepared. It wasn’t what Amsa was doing but ‘how’ he was doing it is very unique. “It’s not what you like but why you like it.”

What is ontology? Introduction to the word and the concept

Onto = existence, or being real | Logia = science, or study. The term can be used in both philosophical and a non philosophical way. In a philosophical context it defines the study of existence in general - what is real? The importance of Ontology is the ideas that arise from such a topic that help us to challenge what is and perhaps find what isn’t or what could be, to gather substance out of the concepts that derive from existence and aim to understand the ‘ontological world.’ Two main parts of philosophical ontology - materialism and idealism. Ontological realism is the idea that the human mind and science etc. are exclusive and what exists outside irrespective of what we observe is reality. On the other had ontological idealism prioritizes the human perspective, what we perceive is real, our consciousness. (I feel like things like Virtual reality is something that has been designed and contains the potential to divide and differentiate these two ontological concepts, in a sense we are leaving one realism to escape to another artificial realism that could be so immersive that it becomes idealism). In a non-philosophical context describes what exists in a particular domain, this does not compare and contrast what is more real components or processes in a system. Philosophers in this area tend to categorize the different parts and processes together, they look into the foundations and structures of the context and break it down to see how it affects the components and processes. I think that all aspects of ontology are important to the idea of understanding the ‘what’ but also the ‘why’ things happen and ‘how’ they a determined in a peculiar scenario. Perhaps we could manipulate the core aspects of ontology and make them malleable to the games/experiences we make. I think its fascinating to see how the ontological world can affect an artificial world in the respect that what we apply (socially and whatnot) can be connected to what happens in another. What happens when we move beyond what we know? Fun idea to explore perhaps.

Serenity Now - Crash a Funeral in Winterspring | Serenity Now bombs a World of Warcraft funeral: Negotiating the Morality, Reality and Taste of Online Gaming Practices

I am not surprised by the fact that the Horde guild held a memorial for one of their guild mates who literally passed away. As someone who has played a lot of mmorpgs and spent more time hanging out with people than actually playing the games, its quite easy to get along really well with people despite the fact that they may be on the other side of the world. I felt a few goosebumps by the fact someone actually died at presumably a young age and thought it was nice that they tried to respect their guild mate in a way that was relevant to how they knew her and in a way that the alliance could go to pay their respects. However I guess this is where reality and the digital world clash. People are not going to crash a funeral in real life because they’d ‘get caught in the real world.’ Online there are countless trolls and no rules to stop what happened. To be honest in a PVP zone it was quite likely something was going to happen. The rules don’t cross over from reality to virtual. People will do what they can’t in the real world because they want a thrill, a surge of excitement with no direct consequences. I feel like the only and ‘realistic’ method of them being uninterrupted would be if they did it in a safe zone because they have to abide by the rules of the game where they cannot go and kill other people’s characters. While the guild mates had built rapport, it seems though their rep as a guild wasn’t particularly favorably from a gamer observer point of view. While they posted about it to tell people about what they were doing this had also created opportunity for havoc- and it did. In this sense it would be almost better not to tell people (unless it was a very common zone in game). Socially this event was not acceptable, however nevertheless are there any rules in reality neither real life that was stop people from interrupting in one form or another. The boundaries set by the W.O.W are not designed to stop occurrences like this from happening, in this case- the area was designed for pvp. Therefore morally it is wrong, but from a game system and mechanical point of view it is acceptable. In games we tend to rely on the ‘good will’ of others but there is nothing strict to regulate that, of course actions like profanity are prohibited but it would be hard to argue a person(s) actions in a particular environment meant for another purpose be (illegitimate)? I still remain solidly in the perspective that it would have been nice for the raiders to have been respectful considering someone actually died, however they should have considered the risks in a PvP area at least. Not everyone in the real world and in the virtual world are going to respect others wishes irrespective of the general and expected morale compass, the world has a lot of people who will not abide so it becomes a matter of minimizing risk where we may be highly susceptible. Nevertheless its probably a good idea to encourage positive practices online as they are expressed in the real world.

Set and Setting

These terms define “the context for psychoactive and particularly psychedelic drug experiences.” Set refers to the mental state of one while setting is the physical environment of the experience. Set is further defined by a mental state- mood/emotions, preemptive feelings of which influence the experience while setting the tangible and social environment. It is evident that ‘set’ can be influenced by ‘setting’ say if the person is in a bad mood because something negative had happened that day and its raining it will exaggerate the negativity of the experience, however if the opposite happens and they are comfortably having a good time with lots of happy people around they will have a good experience. There are a lot of factors that may impact on the experience and therefore the importance of context and knowledge prior to an event is essential. This is why communication and knowledge helps us to make informed decisions but also educate us into controlling our emotions/feelings accordingly. Set and setting are but catalysts for experience dependent on each other to form the reality which we so believe.

Year in review

Think ill stop there. Maybe this game may have deeper meaning about keeping afloat in life. You can not stop because when you do stop maintaining momentum you fail (drown). JUST AN IDEA. Maybe how much effort you put in to staying above the water (work and life in general) is how much you got out of it.

Slave of God

This game was super trippy and not suitable for anyone with epilepsy. Feels like your dumped into a game where you’re supposed to ‘feel what you feel’ but not have much control over it. Its set in a club with the music to go with it and I guess its an abstract sort of design to see how people react because a normal setting would be too bland? Could be emulating the feeling of taking too many substances and buzzing out, once your in you can’t do anything but wait until its over. Feels as though you are thrown in to someones shoes and left to run through the extravagant experience. “You’re in a different world when your in the feeling,” things become less focused but instead flash before our eyes as we are not in the mood to pay attention. The visuals of the experience stop us from staring too long. The world is what you make of it.

Cyber Queen

Interactive story telling sort of where you click different parts of the text and it takes you through a particular story line. The story itself was pretty damn weird but the way the story is conveyed is pretty intriguing. There are multiple options a lot of the time and later in the story it seems as though it opens up into more possibilities. Earlier on in the story there is one right path. When the Cyber Queen starts getting involved that is when there are more options in parallel to the grotesque plot.

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist

Was an interesting narrated experience (one that i have not been through before) At first I was somewhat confused but after playing it again things begin to fall into places. The light comedic side of it is nice, and the narration definitely adds a huge element to the experience to make it seem more likely. I enjoyed the fact that different objects were interactive as it opened up different parts to the story and revealed things that were not noticed through the first run. There is actually quite a few different things in the ‘15 minute’ experience that make it certainly feel like more.

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