#because it feels like SUCH a lead balloon of a response even though in theory it's actually a thumbs-up

[aeide-thea]

unfortunate that i have such a strong rsd* response to terse replies even when objectively their semantic content is positive and contextually there's evidence to suggest the person generally likes me/enjoys talking to me 😔

⸻ * note that as ever, what i really mean by this is 'repeated social disapproval' culminating in a learned trauma response, which you could probably file under c-ptsd if you liked that language—i don't really buy that it's an ~innate characteristic of adhd~ the way i understand the tiktok+ crowd tends to argue, since i'm pretty sure i didn't experience it as a preschooler

[selkiewife]

I know i’m late on this but I wanted to talk about The Dragon Demands videos based on the Game of Thrones Season 8 blue ray commentary and the original archived scripts for Game of Thrones, Season 8.

Basically, YouTuber, The Dragon Demands went to the Writer’s Guild Library where he was able to see the archived scripts of Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Both the archive scripts and commentary on the blue ray confirms that most of the destruction in King’s Landing was originally supposed to be caused by the caches of wild fire left by Aerys being accidentally set off by Drogon and not because Daenerys herself “went mad.” The script says that civilians being used as human shields are caught in the crossfire as Daenerys is targeting Lannister soldiers in a strategical maneuver right before she heads to the Red Keep to enact revenge on Cersei. However, Daenerys is never described as specifically targeting innocent civilians needlessly.

My thoughts under the cut:

I have to say, that this makes me feel slightly better in a strange way. I mean, it doesn’t erase the bad writing, the ridiculous way the war against the white walkers ended, the misogyny, the inconsistency, etc etc ETC... but this crucial plot point was the one I just couldn’t let go of because it was just baffling to me. With other controversial plot points, I would disagree with them, but I could at least understand what they were going for and what the motivations of the characters were. But Daenerys turning on innocent civilians was truly baffling to me because it comes out of nowhere, is entirely out of character, her motivations are incredibly unclear, and was not set up at all. But with all the fandom discourse, I had really started to think that maybe I am lacking comprehension skills or something. But no, there is actually a reason it made no sense. The “madness” plot line was added later. Emilia Clarke was never given the opportunity to portray Daenerys as mentally unstable. Emilia was portraying grief and revenge on Cersei (as the original script and directors told her to do) in contrast to D&D’s final editing which was portraying the “mad queen.” No wonder it came across as completely false and bewildering- before we even get into the discussion of whether or not this is in character or not.

I think this is definitely more than just a theory that the script was changed pretty late in development because of all the evidence- it is confirmed by Emilia’s commentary, the Visual Effects team member’s commentary, and also the original concept art. But even if there wasn’t all that evidence, there is also the fact that the original ending makes so many other confusing things in Season 8 suddenly make SENSE.

For example, when Jon confronts Daenerys in the throne room and he talks about the women and children that were burned, Daenerys responds with “She used their innocence as a weapon against me.” Which makes total sense for Daenerys to say if she thinks she is talking about civilians that were used as human shields that died in the crossfire. But it doesn’t make any sense if she carpet bombed the city- although it does make her seem delusional, which is probably why Dave and Dan kept those lines in- hoping it would make her appear “mad,” since Emilia was never actually given the opportunity to portray Daenerys as mentally unstable.

There is also the scene where Jon asks Tyrion, “Was it right?” to assassinate Daenerys and Tyrion responds, “Ask me again in ten years.” There is really no reason for them to have that dialogue if Daenerys really did target and massacre innocent civilians. That is the kind of dialogue they would have if they were discussing someone who had done something more morally ambiguous.

Then there are the lines that are out of place in the final version but that would have made complete sense in the original wild fire version, such as Jon saying “now and always” as he stabs Daenerys. “Now and always” as any Theon fan will tell you, is a phrase that belongs to Theon and Robb and what they said to each other when Theon was pledging loyalty to Robb. Having Jon say this to Dany as he is killing Daenerys represents the ultimate betrayal but also calls back to Theon’s struggle and how difficult it is to chose between loyalties- between families. In this case, Jon is choosing the Starks over the Targaryens. Kit Harrington even says that this is motivation in an interview he gave with winteriscoming.net. But given the fact that in the final edit, Daenerys massacred innocent children and civilians on purpose, Kit’s motivation for Jon seems like a relic of an earlier script:

Kit Harrington: “Jon essentially sees it as Daenerys or Sansa and Arya, and that makes his mind up for him. He choose blood over, well, his other blood. But he chooses the people he has grown up with, the people his roots are with, the North. That’s where his loyalties lie in the end. That’s when he puts the knife in.”

And Yara Greyjoy’s lines. She surprisingly remains completely loyal to Daenerys, despite the fact that she massacred the entire city for no reason:

Yara Greyjoy: I swore to follow Daenerys Targaryen.

Sansa Stark: You swore to follow a tyrant.

Yara Greyjoy: She freed us from a tyrant. Cersei is gone because of her, and Jon Snow put a knife in her heart. Let the Unsullied give him what he deserves.

This kind of conversation only seems plausible if they are discussing Daenerys taking out Cersei after she had surrendered and killing human shields in the process, something I can see Yara completely defending- since she was always in favor of attacking King’s Landing as seen during her war counsel scenes in Season 7.

There is also the Emilia Clarke quote in the behind the scenes video HBO put out after the episode where she explains that Dany was targeting Cersei herself:

Emilia Clarke: “It’s just... grief. It’s hurt. And she has this ability to make that hurt a little bit less just for a minute. And here she is, sitting on this ridge and there’s the emotion and there’s the feeling and the feeling is to fucking kill her.”

Note that she does not say “the feeling is to fucking massacre the city,” or “the feeling is to target innocent civilians.” She says “the feeling is to kill her” as in Cersei Lannister- who is responsible for the death of her dragon and Missandei- and who massacred countless innocents herself when she blew up the goddamn sept lol.

Not to mention all of the set up lines between Cersei, Tyrion, and Varys about Cersei using “human shields” which never came to fruition in the final edit, now make complete sense:

Cersei: Keep the gates open. If she wants to take the castle she’ll have to murder thousands of innocents first.

Varys: Tens of thousands of innocents will die. That is why Cersei is bringing them into the Red Keep

And yet, lol, we never actually SEE Daenerys attacking the Red Keep. We never see innocent civilians inside the Red Keep. We only see civilians being massacred in the streets.

I also remember people who had seen the post Season 8 Game of Thrones Live Concert saying that Ramin switched to footage of the other wildfire scenes in past Game of Thrones seasons during his Bells sequence, instead of showing the massacre of innocent civilians by dragon fire. I use to think he did that because Daenerys was his favorite character. But given what we now know about the original ending, he probably chose to show the wildfire scenes because that was what he had specifically written music for before it was changed- the destruction of Kings Landing by wildfire.

I really wish they had kept the original script the way it was. It still would have been an incredibly controversial ending. Daenerys still goes after soldiers and a Queen who is surrendering- and that action unintentionally leads to the destruction of the entire city. Jon Snow still assassinates his lover and betrays one part of his family for the other. But, it would have at least made logical sense. People would have gone back and forth over whether it was in character or whether it was a good ending. But it would have been something people would be able to actually debate on an intellectual level- the way we debate Daenerys crucifying the slavers (who themselves crucified children) or Jon Snow executing Olly... It is a very grey and tragic ending with a lot of moral questions. It still might have gone over like a lead balloon. But... the ending we have is so much worst because it’s nonsensical.

The only reason I can think that they changed it was to make Jon and Tyrion appear less morally grey for plotting Daenerys’ assassination. They probably knew that the ending would be very problematic and were trying to smooth that over by turning Daenerys into a super villain. Yet they did this too late in the process after already showing Daenerys to be heroic in fighting with the north and then having Emilia Clarke finish her filming still believing she was playing a complex and at times ruthless character but not “mad” or “evil.” And then, there is also the intensely problematic issue with them conflating mental illness with mass murdering super villain. Even if it had been clear throughout the entire season that Daenerys was losing her grip on reality and becoming more and more mentally unstable, it still would have been incredibly controversial and I am not entirely sure it would have made the men look any better anyway.

Even though it is tragic af, at least with the original wildfire ending, all of the characters are incredibly complex and morally grey and you can understand the motivations for everything they do, even if you don’t agree with them. For example, if Daenerys attacks Cersei after she surrendered, it is wrong, but it is also completely understandable. And in my opinion, it’s even more understandable when you remember that Cersei cannot be trusted. She can’t be trusted to send her armies to the north- why should Daenerys trust her to surrender in good faith? This kind of ending would also have said something very powerful about unintended consequences. Even though Daenerys did not intend for so many people to die needlessly, they did because war is horrific. And that message becomes even more powerful if her motivations are understandable. But yeah, this kind of ending would have still been hated and debated but... at least the debates would have been more about the story itself rather than everyone trying (and failing) to make sense of what the story even is.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Do you think we’ll ever get a S5?

Hi Nonny!

So, I’ve gotten this question asked in a variety of ways but generally boil down to this exact question, so I’m going to tackle this one first, and answer any others in regards to the actors separately because they’re a whole other can of worms.

I have answered variations of this question in the past, so you can read these if you want, but today’s answer is my most recent opinion:

Do I think there’s Going to be an S5?

Will There be a Season 5? 

Is there Ever Going to be an S5? 

Is it True S5 will Happen (Plus some Mofftiss Shitposting)? 

Will There Be S5 and Will Johnlock Happen? 

What Do You Think it’s Gonna Be About? 

Do You Think it’s On Hiatus Right Now? 

What Do I Think is Going On in S4 and Will There Be An S5

Will Johnlock Ever Become Canon?

Will they ever make a new season?

So you can check those out after reading this post.

In the spirit of my blog, I have two answers for you, and the “honest” answer is the one you won’t like.

That said, do you want my honest opinion or my tinhat opinion?

Tinhat opinion: Yes, because the story is incomplete; too many plot holes and S4′s sloppiness and complete 180 from the original plot is so bizarre (([THIS POST TOO])). Too many fucked up things that make me WANT to believe that it’s clever trick and all will be explained when S5 is finally done. There’s evidence that it was commissioned before S4, but I’ve had this theory very well debunked for me on this post here, and my opinions have changed a lot since that post.

Which segues into this: note I say “want to believe” up above there, though. Important wording here, because I feel like my faith in Mofftiss has essentially disappeared because of S4, since I really do enjoy theorizing and speculating and the evidence was RIGHT THERE. But what changed my mind was mainly the reactions and body language of the actors and my annoyance at the arrogance of Mofftiss acting like S4 was brilliant when no one else agrees with them.

This is where my honest opinion comes in, and this is me speaking without bias and with a heavy heart, and are MY OPINIONS, so you can take it or leave it, I don’t care. I’m not here to deflate anyone’s balloons, but Occam’s razor and all.

Honest opinion: No, at least not in the next couple years. Mofftiss kind of disregarded a large chunk of the fandom and got too cocky (Mofftiss: TFP is the best episode of the series! // Also Mofftiss: Yeah, but we’re not going to pitch it for an Emmy nomination) (Mofftiss: we can make anything and everyone will love it! // General Audience Critics: You THOUGHT so, what is this?) and the general disinterest of all the actors surrounding S5 is very telling to me (see the Buzzfeed “Ben With Puppies” interview, this interview with Martin Freeman, and this recounting of Setlock S4). Occasionally it’s brought up with Martin or Ben and they basically say “we’re on a pause”. I think Martin definitely felt really shafted the last season in favour for his ex (who is a whole other barrel of monkeys I have a lot of opinions on), with what they did to John’s character, and I don’t think he has any interest in continuing on any time soon. And Ben’s Buzzfeed “Interview with Puppies” is super telling to me, honestly (timestamp 1:34 if you want to see the part about ‘Sherlock’) – he was NOT “tee hee, I’m being sneaky” (sorry, I HONESTLY don’t know how people are seeing that response as such…), he was “ah, nope, not touching that one because what I wanted to happen and was told would happen isn’t anymore and we’ve been essentially silenced to talk about it.”

Plus Mofftiss seem convinced that this new Dracula project is their next big thing and even they seem to have lost interest in Sherlock all because they didn’t get the praise for S4 that they’ve gotten in the past. I’ve also read a long while ago that Ben is busy with his production company and Marvel for the foreseeable future AND Mofftiss have ANOTHER project after Dracula, and it’s not Sherlock (unconfirmed on this second point, it was just a mention on someone’s blog and I can’t find any articles on the other project they’re doing after Dracula).

And since I mentioned it: No, I don’t think Dracula is a “secret Sherlock thing” or “will have clues to Sherlock in it”. Yes, of course it’s going to have Sherlock Easter eggs in it – almost every showrunner has Easter eggs to their or their actors’ previous works in literally everything – but those E-Eggs will have NOTHING to do with the narrative or future of Sherlock. So, at the very least because I’m worried about everyone’s mental health, it’s already looking like Dracula’s going to be another queerbaiting mess, so please totally enjoy the show if you want, but don’t look too much into it or any E-eggs that the show has. It’s not a secret Sherlock project.

And let’s not forget the general disdain Mofftiss seems to have for their fanbase, essentially selling out because who cares about making sense, all because we criticized S4 because it didn’t make sense and called them out for their queerbaiting without an explanation of S4 [THIS ARTICLE TOO], especially after… Gatiss I think… admitted to using homoerotic subtext in the series to draw in viewership.

Even if they were doing this all to pull the ACD thing on us (essentially kill off Sherlock in a literal sense), it’s a shit way they’re going about it. To me, it feels like S4 was “revenge” for the fandom figuring out their plot before they got a chance to reveal it, because they were annoyed we figured out TAB. That, and I think certain… people… manipulated their way into having input into what they wanted and usurped Ben and Martin out of either spite or a need to be relevant. *shrugs*. But this is getting too biased, so I’ll leave it there for now.

I have mixed feelings about S4, S5, and what I want. I’ve various theories in my ‘s5 and beyond’ and ‘s4 and beyond’ tags if you’re interested in further rabbit-holing. 

Listen I GET wanting to hold onto hope. Hell, I still do. But sometimes we all need to step back and look at the facts from an unbiased point of view, off of the Tumblr-sphere. I’m still a fan, as we all are, and being a fan means that you also are allowed to question things that make no sense. I really wish people would stop gatekeeping just because we all have different opinions. It’s okay to love something but know that there’s SO many problems with it (ie. Disney).

I say let it rest, and leave the fix-its to the fandom. I’m going to watch it if it ever happens, and of course I’ll start speculating again, but right now, I don’t think is the time for S5 because Mofftiss clearly have their interests elsewhere, but keep dangling the promise of more Sherlock to stay relevant.

So, TL;DR: I think if we get S5, it will be a long time from now, and I fear it will follow the plot of S4, because, like Disney with FinnPoe, Mofftiss are coming off as  “passive progressive” cowards (I saw that term in a YouTube review of TRoS, and I thought it was perfect to describe them: We’ll put social issues and gays in our shows, but can’t make the leads gay for each other).

[sirius-archive]

Chaos Theory Pt. 2

Pairing: Cedric x Reader

Warnings: Swearing, alcoholism and drug usage (mentioned), low key violence?

Word Count: 4644

A/N: okie dokie chapter two here we go! first, i want to thank everyone who has commented/reblogged/messaged me about Chaos Theory and if you’d like to be tagged, let me know via my inbox. To all my friends in AO3 town, thank you also for your support. Another note: I will be away over the next two weeks so I won’t be able to post the next chapter of Chaos Theory until then. However, when I do get back, I’ll post the next two chapters.  

Chapter Two:

There is something pleasantly sweet about Cedric Diggory’s smile.

It’s gentle and unassuming; a perfect display of pearly-white teeth framed by soft, kissable lips. Sometimes, it reaches his eyes and gives off a warm radiance that you could bask in for an eternity. Sometimes, it tickles the corners of his lips in a subtle display of sincerity. But it always, always, has an effect on you that you can’t exactly describe.

You’re not sure if it’s because you’re drunk on adrenaline from the Quidditch World Cup or you’re just being sentimental, but you feel as though you’ve drowned a cauldron of amortentia and the potion bubbles frantically inside your stomach whenever Cedric so much as glances your way.

Your eyes can’t help but drift over to him like you’re a compass and he’s true north. At the moment, he’s laughing and chatting animatedly with the rest of your friends, but there are secret moments shared between the two of you where your gazes clash and linger with a sense of longing. You can’t help but wonder if it will always be like this; stealing glances at each other from across the room but neither of you taking the first step.

You hope that one day, you’ll be brave enough to break the pattern.

You decide to try and distract yourself by trying to soak up the moment. Most of the Weasley clan bar Mr. Weasley are gathered around a large fire and joined by Fred and George’s friend, Lee Jordan. The host, Cedric, sits between Bill Weasley and Harry, who looks a little tense around the shoulders. You’re about to get up and join them but your brother, Luke, playfully jabs you with his elbow and nods in the direction of your gaze.

“Like something you see over there?” His voice is teasing and condescending and the knowing smirk that goes with it jolts the itch on the inside of your wrist to life. You resist the temptation to scratch it, instead choosing to narrow your eyes on your brother.

“No. I was simply…observing the campfire.”

“Were you now?”

“Yes.”

Luke shakes his head, amused by your obvious attempt at a lie, “You’re lying.”

The irritation begs to be scratch, practically pleading for you to peel the skin back and plunge your nails into the flesh.

“No I’m not.”

Luke sighs in mock disappointment, “You truly are a terrible liar. I thought I taught you better…” 

You work your jaw, “Might I remind you that you crashed our party because all of your friends are drunk and high, and you didn’t want to spend the night alone?”

Luke shrugs, his grin lopsided, “What can I say? They’re all lightweights...amateurs. And don’t change the subject.”

He wags a finger at you in the same way a scolding parent might, and you bat it away with a sigh. You roll your eyes at him and throw your arms up in surrender. Luke pumps a fist into the air and grins triumphantly.

“Why are you serpents always so perceptive?” You grumble, scowling at your brother.

“It’s a curse,” he chortles and shrugs, “Besides, that’s what future lawyers like me do; we perceive things and stick our noses where they don’t belong.”

You give a very loud snort, “That’s presuming you’re actually smarter than you look.”

Luke clutches his chest in mock offence, “That’s a low blow, even for you.”

You shrug through nonchalance, though you can feel Cedric’s eyes on you again and you have to fight every single cell in your mortal body not to look or you might as well turn into a pillar of salt.

“He’s looking at you right now, y’know,” Luke playfully nudges your shoulder with his own, “What are you going to say to him?”

“I...” you pause, realizing you’re at a loss for words, “...I don’t know–? I mean, what can I say, really. He’s him and I’m me and we both have responsibilities...especially since this is his last year and–”

“–wait, what are you talking about?” Luke interjects, brows knitted together in confusion.

You give him a quizzical look “It’s Cedric’s last year...”

Luke studies you for a long time, a familiar expression filling out his features. It’s the same look he wears when he’s piecing a puzzle together, or if he’s deciding whether something is genuine. You can almost see the wheels and cogs hissing and turning in his head, like you’ve peeled back his scalp and peered into his skull, watching the electrical currents scuttle along the network of synapses in his brain.

“Who–who did you think I was talking about?” You ask, slowly, in a voice filled with caution. Luke’s lips quirk into a smile, flashing a row of pearly-white teeth.

“Well–”

“-Luke, buddy, where’ve you been?” A slurred voice booms through the air, it’s owner emerging from the shadows shortly after. Caleb Jin stumbles into view, a crooked smile spread across his lips, “We’ve been looking everywhere for bro...”

He stops, realizing that Luke isn’t alone. For the first time since he’s arrived, he’s noticed you and your friends, and he gives a teasing, sarcastic salute.

“Ah, finally nice to meet the pretty one,” he winks and tries to smirk. It’s as appealing as a limp piece of celery. “Now all I have to do is meet the other three and I’ve met the whole set…”

“He must be pretty wasted if he’s referring to Hermione, Ron, Harry and I like we’re collectable chocolate frog cards,” you note, watching as Caleb begins to unbuckle his belt.

Luke winces, “Yeah…though I’m 66.6% sure he’s being serious.”

“What?” you bleat and Luke shakes his head.  

“I’d...better make sure he gets back to his tent safely...” he murmurs, rising from his seat, “I’ll see you in the morning, yeah?”

You nod at your older brother and watch as he waves goodnight to everyone and saunters up to Jacob, slinging an arm across Caleb’s shoulders to support him.

“Bye, pretty one,” Caleb waves at you hopefully. You wave back and hear him cheering in the distance.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” you announce as you turn back to your friends, “Thanks for tonight…”

“Already?” Harry asks, somewhat disappointed in your decision to leave, “It’s barely ten o’clock.”

“Still, I better go. We’ve got a long trip tomorrow.”

“I think I’ll come, too,” says Hermione, climbing to her feet and walking toward you.

“Oh, come off it, Hermione, you’re probably going to go and read or do nerdy stuff like study,” Fred flaps a hand at her dismissively.

“And what’s wrong with that?” she snaps, hands planted on her hips.

“We should take you back to bed as well, Gin,” Bill interrupts, rising from his spot in the grass. Ginny folds her arms across her chest indignantly.

“But I’m not tired!” she moans, and Bill narrows his eyes on her.

“It’s late, Ginny. We’ve all got to get up early to make it back home in time for breakfast.”

Ginny turns to Charlie, pleading him with an imploring look. Charlie grimaces, as though he’s fighting the urge to concede to her wishes, “Bill’s right, Gin.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the fun brother,” Ginny grumbles as she stands, pushing her hair off her glowering face.

“Hey!” Fred and George exclaim in unison and Ginny waves a hand at them.  

“I’ll walk you guys back,” Cedric springs to his feet.

“No need,” you blurt, your hurried response embarrassingly shrill.

“Oh, but I insist.” Cedric smiles, and the way it curls transfigures your spine into a strand of spaghetti. Your mouth flaps open to protest, but Hermione interjects before you can say anything more.

“That would be nice,” she smiles graciously, but the way it pinches the corners of her lips suggests that she’s scheming. You narrow your eyes on her suspiciously, and she shrugs innocently. Ginny stomps over to you and Hermione and Cedric leads you away from the campfire.

“It’s been a really lovely night,” Hermione smiles as the three of you stroll toward the Weasleys’ tent.

“It has,” Cedric agrees with another gracious smile (Curse him), “The game was thrilling and the company…” He glances shyly at you, “…well, I don’t think I would have enjoyed it very much without you.”

You notice Hermione and Ginny exchange a look and by the way Hermione’s shoulders tremble, you suspect they’re stifling giggles.

“Well I’m certainly glad I came,” you say, fighting back the warmth in your cheeks.

Cedric’s eyes linger on you for a moment, dancing between your eyes and your lips, “As am I.”

Does he want to–?

“Well it’s certainly made me realize why the boys love Quidditch so much,” Hermione admits, and you can hear a faint teasing tone in her voice, “It’s all rather thrilling, isn’t it?”

“Thrilling indeed,” Cedric remarks, “Never thought the Weasley Twins would predict the outcome of the game.”

“They’re smarter than they look,” you joke, “Though I think they learned their lesson.”

Cedric raises a brow, “And that is?”

“Never make deals with the devil.”

“Or someone just as trustworthy as they are,” Hermione adds, “Which is not trustworthy at all.”

A gentle laugh trickles from Cedric’s lips and curls in the air, “I suppose they had that coming.”

The conversation soon steers toward the upcoming year. You and Ginny exchanged a pained look, but before you can change the subject, Hermione has launched into a lecture about what she’s anticipating the most.

As she rambles, Cedric’s hand grazes against yours, long fingers reaching out tentatively to tickle the skin of your hand. Your heart floats in your chest as though someone had untied the arteries and veins attached to it and set it free. You imagine it drifting around like a helium balloon after it’s string have been snipped; lighter than air, ascending into the milky white clouds of heaven.

Eventually, you arrive at the tent. Ginny bids Cedric a curt ‘goodnight’ before marching into the tent. Hermione turns to you wearing a smile of her own.

“Well, Good night,” she smirks suggestively, her eyes flicking toward you and Cedric before she disappears into the tent. You and Cedric loiter in the awkward silence, wondering who will break it first.

“I really did mean it when I said that I was happy you came,” Cedric finally says, smiling, and you realize with a delighted thrill that it was more than just a compliment. It was genuine.  

You chew your bottom lip, biting down on a goofy grin, “And I had no reason to doubt you.”

Cedric studies you for a long moment like he’s trying to draw the edges of your face on the canvas in his mind. His tongue darts out to slide across the cushion of his bottom lip and you wonder if he knows how handsome he is when he does that or if he can hear the blood rushing through your veins at the sight of it.

“You know, it’s nice to see you smiling again,” he finally says.

A wave of embarrassment drenches you in an uncomfortable warmth that burns beneath your cheeks as you recall the last time you saw Cedric. You remember the heat of the day; the air hot and sticky and sweetly perfumed with the scent of salt and butterbeer. Imaginary tears ghost over the rosy-pink skin of your cheeks and stain your lips with salt. Your hand moves to wipe tears that aren’t there.

“Yes I–I never did thank you for…what you said. So…thank you.” You stumble for words, your cheeks practically aching from all the bashful smiles.

“No need to thank me,” he smiles, “I’m just glad that you’re doing better.”

More awkward silence, filled only with the distant, drunken cheers of the Irish wafting over the campsite like a bad smell. You and Cedric shift awkwardly in the moment, eyes darting everywhere in a shy dance of will I? should I? before you shatter the moment with a quick nod.

“I should probably start writing my article,” you blurt, tucking a stray ribbon of hair behind your ear.

“Already?” Cedric asks, brows raised, “Talk about commitment…”

“What can I say?” you shrug, smiling, “Sleep when you’re dead, right?”

“I wish my teammates were as passionate about Quidditch as you are about writing,” Cedric says, eyes roving over you in awe. “Well, I guess this is goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”  

You turn quickly and move to retreat into your tent but your feet stop in their tracks, hesitating outside the folds. And, before you realise what you’re doing before you can even talk yourself out of it, you’re spinning on your heel and turning toward Cedric, reaching up and planting a tender kiss on his cheek. It’s decidedly chaste since it doesn’t seem appropriate to snog Cedric yet, but the warmth of his smooth skin against your lips is rather intoxicating, and there is a moment where you want to move a few inches over to kiss his lips but you don’t.

It leaves more of an impression than you expected, and you watch as a bright pink hue stains the exact spot where your lips had made contact with his cheek, the colour blossoming like wildflowers in the spring. It’s an adorable boyish look, and you admire for the millionth time how handsome he is, even in the low light. Even when bashful and unprepared and surprised.

Cedric beams, and it looks like he’s swallowed the sun. “Well, er – see you in the morning?”

You nod, biting your lip as Cedric begins to walk backwards as though he can’t peel his eyes away from you, his expression fixed as though he’s in a trance.  He stumbles unceremoniously into a tent and issues out a string of mumbled apologies, making you giggle.

Yeah, you think, your fingers moving to brush across your lips, the warmth of his cheek still ghosting over them, excitement bubbling up inside of you and bursting like a balloon filled with liquid sunlight, See you in the morning.

***

You’re not sure when you fell asleep exactly. Between working on your article for the school newsletter and the almost dreamlike night you had experienced with Cedric, it was a wonder you even slept at all. But your sleep is broken by two trembling hands shaking you awake, and you emerge from the cloudy greyness of sleep to find Hermione’s face looming over you.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“We have to get Mr Weasley,” Hermione whispers, her voice low, “We have to get out of here!”

“Why?” you ask, but then a scream pierces the air like the high-pitched shriek of shattering glass, and the heavy thrum of what sounds like a crowd of people tripping over themselves fills your ears.

Hermione gestures toward the tent’s folds, “Have a look for yourself.”

Yanking your nightgown off the bedpost, you wrap it around your pyjamas and poke your head out of the tent, your eyes widening in horror.

The campsite has been thrust into a world of pandemonium. Screams of terror cloud the air like a fog as stampede witches and wizards clamber past, retreating into the surrounding forest for safety. A large crowd of hooded wizards chases them into the wood, laughing and hooting as various bursts of light streak through the air like bullets. The air is thick and heavy with smoke and dust, rubble smouldering and tents burning.

Perhaps the worst part of it all is the four figures twisting and turning mid-air as though suspended by imaginary strings. The hooded wizards are puppeteering them into grotesque positions. Two of the figures are children.

Somehow, you don’t think you’re going to see Cedric in the morning.  

You clamp a hand over your mouth as you watch the scene unfold.  

“How cruel do you have to be to prey on children,” Ginny mutters darkly, gripping her wand tightly, “We have to help them.”

“No,” you snip, grasping Ginny’s wrist and yanking her back, “Us three against a crowd of wizards? Ginny, we’ll die. We have to be strategic about this…”

You release your grasp on Ginny and she turns to Hermione, whose brows are furrowed in thought. “(Y/N)’s right. The proper authorities will be here soon. They’re trained to do this sort of stuff.”

Fire rages in the dark depths of her chocolate-brown eyes and she forces out a sharp huff as though she were breathing plumes of smoke, “Well we can’t just let them torture those muggles!”

“There’s nothing else we can do,” Hermione says, composedly, “If we try to help them, we will all die.”

Ginny’s mouth twists into a thin frown like she wants to argue the point but doesn’t. Instead, she concedes with a curt nod of her head. Guilt twinges in your chest.  

“For what it’s worth, you really are a force to be reckoned with,” you remark, giving her a half-hearted smile. Ginny beams proudly, “Just…remember to choose your battles wisely.”

Ginny perks up at that, straightening her spine and squaring her shoulders. Hermione glances at you furtively, a warm smile tugging the corners of her lips. The touching scene is interrupted by Mr Weasley as he bursts through the tent’s entrance, eyes wide and voice tainted with an unnerving tone of panic.

“Good, you’re up,” He notes, eyes darting between the three of you, “We need to leave. Now.”

The three of you follow Mr Weasley out of the tent and spot Ron and Harry standing close by, both of them just as horrified as you are. You rush up to Harry, and a warm feeling of relief sinks into your skin.

“Bil, Charlie. Take them into the forest and wait for me there. I’m going to see what I can do to help.”

Bill and Charlie nod as Mr Weasley hurries off. They lead the group of you toward the forest, and as you reach the fringe of the woods, you and the others turn back to watch the scene. A group of Ministry members have their wands drawn out and directed at the group, attempt to diffuse the situation with words, though it doesn’t seem like they’re achieving much at all.

You bite your lip, eyes scanning the crowds for Luke, praying to every known god that he is safe. You don’t think you could lose him, too.

“We should keep moving...” Ron murmurs to you and you nod. Hermione gently pats your shoulder, massaging into the tense muscles.

“He’s going to be okay,” she whispers, as though she had read your thoughts, “I saw one of his mates earlier. He’s probably with them...”

“Yeah, you’re right. He’ll be fine. He can take care of himself,” you say, trying to convince yourself that it’s true. Hermione takes your hand and leads you into the Forrest.

The four of you walk in a tense silence, listening to the worried murmurs and distant screams filling the air around you. The shadows of the night cloud around you like ravenous demons as you walk further into the woods, but you keep your hand in Hermione’s as she leads you deeper and deeper.

Your thoughts sprint through the events of the night, anxiety churning inside of you and awakening the itch on your wrist. What if Luke got hurt in all the commotion? Where is Cedric? Is Mr Weasley going to be okay?

Hermione squeezes your hand, as though she can read your thoughts. Behind you, Ron yelps in pain. You stop abruptly, Harry very nearly crashing into you.  

“Ah, shit.” He mumbles and you squint at the forest floor, only just making out Ron’s lanky figure.

“What happened?” Hermione asks, anxiously, blinking through the darkness, “Where are you? Oh, this is stupid, Lumos.”

A narrow beam of light pours from the tip of her wand, lighting up the winding path. Ron lies, sprawled, on the floor, dry leaves and dirt sprinkled in his hair. You swallow the urge to laugh and help him to his feet.

“I tripped on a tree root,” Ron mutters, angrily. He dusts the dirt from his knees and Hermione picks the twigs from his hair.

“Well, with feet that size I suppose it’d be hard not to,” an oily voice drawls from behind you and rage surges through your veins like rivers of lava.

Draco Malfoy leans against a tree, his demeanour visibly taunting. He’s calm and composed, radiating the same, ugly energy that usually reeks off of him. You narrow your eyes on him and speak without thinking.

“Well you know what they say about wizards with big feet,” you glance at his feet and raise a brow, “And yours look kind of small.”

Ron snorts.

Draco’s nostrils flare.

In all honesty, you have no idea how big Draco’s feet are, but you’re satisfied with the look of offence and disdain that crosses Draco’s face.

“What’s that?” Draco cups his ear, “I can’t hear you from all the way down there.”

Ron steps forward protectively, “Fuck off, Malfoy.”

“Language, Weasley,” Malfoy drawls, his pale eyes glittering maliciously, “Or do you have to eat slugs again for you to finally learn your lesson?”

“What do you want?” Harry snarls.

“I’m just trying to find a good seat,” Malfoy shrugs, lazily, “Though you’ll probably want to hide the mudblood.”

“Shut your mouth, Malfoy!” Ron shouts, “Or I’ll have to do it for you.”

“That is the second time you’ve threatened to do so today,” Malfoy sneers, “Yet here I am.”

“Oh this is so pathetic,” Hermione snaps, “Let’s go.”

“The only thing that is pathetic here is you, Granger,” Draco spits, eyes narrowing like a snake eying its prey, “If you ask me, you should be out there with the muggles they’re torturing.”  

“Oh, shut up,” Harry snaps, “You’re only saying that because you feel threatened by her superiority.”

A cold, metallic laugh splits through the air, lacking amusement and warmth, “Please Potter, who are you trying to impress with these two charity cases? Your parents? Because we all know how that’s going to work out.”

“Alright, this has gone far enough,” Hermione says, composedly, “Let’s go.”

“What’s going on here?” says a familiar voice, and relief fills you up like sea water.

Luke steps into the light of Hermione’s wand, and you launch yourself into his arms. He returns the hug, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you closer, breathing into your hair. You hold him close, clinging onto him like you might crumble. He’s okay. Everything will be okay. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” you murmur, eyes wet with unshed tears, “I can’t lose you, too.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do without me,” Luke teases, untangling himself from your embrace. His smile is loose but genuine.

Draco straightens, his casual demeanour shifting immediately. He’s nothing but talk, especially when a teacher or someone with authority arrives. And Luke is that person right now; a Slytherin prefect with an impeccable reputation.

“Draco,” Luke regards him with a simple nod, “I’ll see you at school.”

Draco nods wordlessly. As Luke and your friends move to walk deeper into the woods, you turn to Draco and stare at him curiously.

“What made you so cold and dead on the inside, Draco?” you ask, and Draco’s face falls. For once, he can’t come back with a retort, and you leave him staring into the darkness, completely speechless.

***

The walk home from the Quidditch World Cup somehow feels longer than the journey there.

You all walk in silence, too tired to even string a proper sentence together. You sluggishly trail down the road, exhaustion slowing you down as though it had hooked a rope around your waist and was yanking you back. You rub your eyes, stomach growling, limbs heavy as your mind sprints through the events of the long, chaotic night.

Through all of it, the Dark Mark still haunts your thoughts like it’s still looming over you like some sort of cruel god of pandemonium. The return of the Death Eaters has everyone on edge, as though their all denying a simple yet terrifying truth.

Fortunately, you had caught up with Cedric before you left. He promised to send an owl as soon as he arrived home. You would have liked to chat with him for longer if it weren’t for Fred and George, who tried to lure him into buying one of their ‘experimental candies.’ 

Harry gravitates toward you, his expression unreadable, “You alright?”

“Yeah,” you sigh through the lie, “Just tired. You?”

“Yeah,” Harry shrugs, “So…how did you meet Cedric…?”

The sound of his name jolts through you, and you suddenly feel more awake. “Oh, well, we met last year and we just…clicked.”

“Clicked, huh?” Harry echoes, though his voice has a slight edge to it, “That’s…good.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Nice of him to walk you back to the tent, too.”

Your brows knit together as you study Harry’s expression, “Where are you going with this?”

“Nowhere,” Harry snaps, his voice cracking sharply like a whip, “I’m just saying it was nice of him to walk you back…”

“Well, he didn’t just walk me back.”

“I know–”

“¬–and why bring this up after the night we’ve just had?”

“Because–”

“–Because what?”

“You’re not giving me a chance to answer!”

“Well if you’d just hurry up and spit it out–”

“Would you two shut it? We’re nearly there!” Ginny interrupts, pointing into the distance. Ron and Hermione stare at you like they’re cataloguing your every move. They tear their eyes away and exchange a glance.

If you were less tired, you would have questioned them. Instead, you ignore them and turn back to Harry. He isn’t paying attention anymore, his mouth twisted into a frown as he glares at the Burrow. You can tell by his expression that he doesn’t want to talk anymore, and you cross your arms, deciding it’s better not to.

Picking up your pace, you catch up with Fred and George and the three of you chat lightly as you slowly approach the Burrow. It’s faint, but you think you hear a grumbled protest from behind you, and you glance over your shoulder to find Ron, Hermione and Harry arguing quietly amongst themselves.

What are they up to?

Your thoughts are interrupted by a relieved Mrs Weasley, who rushes up to the group of you and throws herself into Mr Weasley’s arms.

“Oh thank goodness you’re alright,” she mutters, squeezing him tight. A copy of this morning’s Daily Prophet falls from her grasp, slightly screwed from where she had been gripping it. You pick it up and flatten it out while Mrs Weasley pulls her children into a bear hug.

SCENES OF TERROR AT THE QUIDDITCH WORLD CUP the headline reads in large, bold letters. An image of the Dark Mark floats beside it, and a twinge of fear plucks the centre of your chest as the memory of last night flashes in front of your eyes. Shudders rattle your spine.

“This isn’t good…” you murmur.

“Well, obviously,” Harry grumbles from behind you, his tone dripping with sardonic venom, and you jump, slightly startled. He stands behind you, reading over your shoulder, and he’s close enough for you to feel the warmth of his breath fanning across the nape of your neck. A different type of chill shoots through you like electricity.  

“Lets – er – go in and have breakfast…” Ron suggests, glancing uneasily at Hermione. Harry grits his jaw and shakes his head, snatching the Daily Prophet out of your grip. He marches inside with Ron on his heel, but Hermione lingers behind.

“What has gotten into him?” you snip, and Hermione gives you a strange look, as though she knows more than what she’s letting on.

“We’re all just a little bit tired and hungry,” she sighs, patting a reassuring hand on your shoulder, “But don’t worry about it for now. Come on, let’s have something to eat.”

Don’t worry about it for now, you mentally repeat as you follow her inside, that’s easier said than done.

***

Chapter three will be released soon. 

[thesilverwitch]

SILVERWITCH MAGIC THEORY

You stop explaining yourself when you realize people only understand from their level of perception—but perhaps you may be open to my perception and perhaps it will help you on your journey through life.

The Cosmic Calendar is a method to visualize the chronology of the universe, scaling its current age of 13.8 billion years to a single year in order to help intuit it for pedagogical purposes in science education or popular science. In this visualization, the Big Bang took place at the beginning of January 1 at midnight, and the current moment maps onto the end of December 31 just before midnight. At this scale, there are 437.5 years per second, 1.575 million years per hour, and 37.8 million years per day.

Humans, in the entire span of existence, have only been around for one day of the cosmic year calendar. Humans didn't even start cave painting until the last 60 seconds of the cosmic year calendar, a mere 30,000 years ago. Scientific practice didn't occur until the last second. The last second. Everyday we discover something new about our reality through the practice of science—and we've only been doing it for one second.

Collective reality and personal reality are concepts affected by perception. For a very basic example of the collective, humans once believed the Earth was flat, now we know the Earth is round. Our reality today is simply different than the reality of our beginning. Reality changes according to what we perceive and know.

On a more immediate, personal scale, a patient takes a placebo pill and suddenly they are cured. Was it because, in their reality, they believed or knew that the pill would cure them? Or was it because they were never really ill in the first place? Either way, the placebo pill altered that individuals reality. In a very basic sense, perception equals reality.

As I mentioned before, we are only in the first second of scientific study. There are still elements to be discovered, cures to be found, tools to be invented that can read and measure energies we never knew existed in a scientific sense. We've only explored 5% of the ocean and only 1% of the ocean floor. We are constantly discovering new species of plants and animals. We've discovered a planet so large that it technically shouldn't exist according to our current laws of physics. Humanity still fights wars in the name of religion resulting in needless casualties. We still kill animals who feel the same pain and fear we do when we are just animals ourselves—taking our very first steps on two legs.

For some pre-mind metaphysical prep, let's talk about the 21 grams experiment. In 1901, Duncan MacDougall, a physician from Haverhill, Massachusetts, who wished to scientifically determine if a soul had weight, identified six patients in nursing homes whose death was imminent. Four were suffering from tuberculosis, one from diabetes, and one from unspecified causes. MacDougall specifically chose people who were suffering from conditions that caused physical exhaustion, as he needed the patients to remain still when they died to measure them accurately. When the patients looked like they were close to death, their entire bed was placed on an industrial sized scale that was sensitive within two tenths of an ounce (5.6 grams). On the belief that humans have souls and that animals do not, MacDougall later measured the changes in weight from fifteen dogs after death. MacDougall said he wished to use dogs that were sick or dying for his experiment, though was unable to find any. It is therefore presumed he poisoned healthy dogs.

One of the patients lost weight but then put the weight back on, and two of the other patients registered a loss of weight at death but a few minutes later lost even more weight. One of the patients lost "three-fourths of an ounce" (21.3 grams) in weight, coinciding with the time of death. MacDougall disregarded the results of another patient on the grounds the scales were "not finely adjusted", and discounted the results of another as the patient died while the equipment was still being calibrated. MacDougall reported that none of the dogs lost any weight after death.

While MacDougall believed the results from his experiment showed the human soul might have weight, his report, which was not published until 1907, stated the experiment would have to be repeated many times before any conclusion could be obtained. Despite its rejection within the scientific community, MacDougall's experiment popularized the idea that the soul has weight, and specifically that it weighs 21 grams. If he had not been so rejected by the scientific community and was instead encouraged and supported, what might have he gone on to discover? How would his possible discoveries have affected society? Who would we be now? What would life be like?

With all of that said, we are still in our very beginning and there is still so much to know—it would be foolish to believe that we can't willfully change our reality any further than it already has. Ultimately, it would be childish to assume anything. So how does magic work? What is magic? No one really knows, yet. The majority of the population doesn't know or believe it exists, much like an astronomer from the 17th century didn't know Pluto existed. I won't sit here and tell you facts because there are none, yet—but there are very convincing theories just waiting to be tested to their full extent in a distant future when controlled experiments for metaphysics can be properly conducted without biased criticism and with scientific tools not yet invented.

Let's start with the Chaos Theory. Chaos is the science of surprises, of the nonlinear and the unpredictable. It teaches us to expect the unexpected. While most traditional science deals with supposedly predictable phenomena like gravity, electricity, or chemical reactions, Chaos Theory deals with nonlinear things that are effectively impossible to predict or control, like turbulence, long-range weather, the stock market, our brain states, and so on. These phenomena are often described by fractal mathematics, which captures the infinite complexity of nature. Many natural objects exhibit fractal properties, including landscapes, clouds, trees, organs, rivers etc, and many of the systems in which we live exhibit complex, chaotic behavior. Recognizing the chaotic, fractal nature of our world can give us new insight, power, and wisdom. For example, by understanding the complex, chaotic dynamics of the atmosphere, a balloon pilot can “steer” a balloon to a desired location. By understanding that our ecosystems, our social systems, and our economic systems are interconnected, we can hope to avoid actions which may end up being detrimental to our long-term well-being.

Principles of Chaos

The Butterfly Effect: This effect grants the power to cause a hurricane in China to a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico. It may take a very long time, but the connection is real. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened. A more rigorous way to express this is that small changes in the initial conditions lead to drastic changes in the results. Our lives are an ongoing demonstration of this principle. Who knows what the long-term effects of teaching millions of children about chaos and fractals will be?

Unpredictability: Because we can never know all the initial conditions of a complex system in sufficient (i.e. perfect) detail, we cannot hope to predict the ultimate fate of a complex system. Even slight errors in measuring the state of a system will be amplified dramatically, rendering any prediction useless. Since it is impossible to measure the effects of all the butterflies (etc) in the World, accurate long-range weather prediction will always remain impossible.

Order / Disorder: Chaos is not simply disorder. Chaos explores the transitions between order and disorder, which often occur in surprising ways.

Mixing: Turbulence ensures that two adjacent points in a complex system will eventually end up in very different positions after some time has elapsed. Examples: Two neighboring water molecules may end up in different parts of the ocean or even in different oceans. A group of helium balloons that launch together will eventually land in drastically different places. Mixing is thorough because turbulence occurs at all scales. It is also nonlinear: fluids cannot be unmixed.

Feedback: Systems often become chaotic when there is feedback present. A good example is the behavior of the stock market. As the value of a stock rises or falls, people are inclined to buy or sell that stock. This in turn further affects the price of the stock, causing it to rise or fall chaotically.

Fractals: A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the pictures of Chaos. Geometrically, they exist in between our familiar dimensions. Fractal patterns are extremely familiar, since nature is full of fractals. For instance: trees, rivers, coastlines, mountains, clouds, seashells, hurricanes, etc.

Now that you know the basics of Chaos theory, let's delve into chaos magic. What is chaos magic? Because of the tumultuous nature of chaos, it can mean different things to different people. But according to Phil Hine's Condensed Chaos (the book to read about chaos magic if you want to delve further into the subject), chaos magic is a form of practice that helps you change your circumstances so that you can throw off societal structures, achieve freedom, and "strive to live according to a developing sense of personal responsibility."

Chaos magic relies on using focused energy to disrupt the Universe. Much of the science of chaos magic involves the practitioner using a properly executed release of energy to affect the turbulence that naturally occurs in the physical world. To oversimplify the concept: since most of life is irregular and chaotic, if you put a specific, focused energy out into the world, you'll be able to influence that chaos and affect the world around you.

The biggest difference between chaos magic and more traditional left-hand/right-hand path magic is that with chaos, there's no set boundaries for what you can and can't do. With other forms of magic, you're thrust into a more strict set of guidelines for how you have to practice. Much of traditional magic is made up of an endless amount of ritual that you can get into if you want, but just by taking on the mantle of a chaos practitioner, you're saying that none of that ritual is important unless it needs to be in the moment.

You don't have to love math or freak out about patterns like a lot of people do who get into chaos, but it doesn't hurt. If you're going to be practicing chaos magic, you should at least be cognizant of things like synchronicity, semiotics, fractals, and mathematical coincidences. Practitioners of chaos magic may use charts and equations as ways to think about chaos, probability, and what is possible.

To achieve maximization of all these factors the magician may in practice need wands, robes, visualizations, symbolic systems, sigils, old languages, rituals, deities, and other means of egress from normal states of mind, even though in theory a supreme exponent of magic could achieve it all whilst sitting quietly in a chair, rather like a mathematician working without pencil or paper, waste paper basket, blackboard, geometry instruments, books of reference, or a computer. In summary, chaos magic is the liberating practice of expressing your will (focusing your energy, your desires, releasing them to the Universe. Exempli gratia: cause and effect.) through any means possible and/or desired to alter the chaotic Universe in your favor through the Chaos theory. You are the butterfly flapping its wings and causing a powerful hurricane.

Popular Chaos practitioner quote: “Nothing is true, all is permitted.” It means, “Nothing is certain, all is possible.”

Nothing is certain, but all is possible. Let that soak in. You know how I said before that we now know the Earth is round? What if it's not and NASA is a lie? I'm not saying it's not (I firmly believe in NASA), but what if the Earth is flat? What if there is life after death; what if there isn't? What if you get reincarnated as a cockroach; what if you don't? What if we do have souls; what if we don't? What if magic really exists; what if it doesn't? What if one day you believe in God and the next day you believe in Ra, the Egyptian sun god? What if one day, you become an Atheist? What if all of the Multiverse theories are true, causing an infinite loop of possibilities and what if we can tap into those alternate realities; what if we can’t? Whatever you believe has the possibility of being false. That realization may seem negative but it opens up the possibility that all is possible. In the end, reality is what you choose to believe.  

[fariyaaah]

UNITY IN THE COMMUNITY - my reflective thoughts

A true community is not just about being geographically close to someone or part of the same social web network. It’s about feeling connected and responsible for what happens. Humanity is our ultimate community, and everyone plays a crucial role’. (QuoteReel).

What comes to my mind when I read the word ‘community’? Well, if you had to break the word up, it would literally give you come and unity and this is a great reflection of what a community is. When people that share commonalities come in unity. Prior to this block, however, my idea of being in a rural community was based solely on the geographical aspect of it. My interpretation of the community concept was therefore totally locational.

Personally, I was dreading this block, mainly because I had no idea what an occupational therapist could do in a communal setting other than home visits and the usual clinical treatment. This cluelessness brought about many negative feelings and fear of failure before even entering the community of Inanda. Speaking of which, I was fearful of going into a community with such high crime rates and heinously known as the ‘Designated Rape Zone’ of KZN. (For more information on what the Inanda community is and has to offer, please click the following link: https://www.sa-venues.com/attractionskzn/inanda-township.php)

Fearful feelings like this are naturally common for a female young girl in a community-based settings. In addition to this, I had also heard notorious tales from previous students about the community block being mentally and physically taxing due to the workload. However, I had decided that how this block turns out should be based on my own lived experience of the block, and not based on how others have experienced it. Thus, I began the block. When driving through the community for the first time, all I noticed was the unemployment and severe poverty. The widespread of youth wandering around, a significant number of pubs and tavern as well as the aftermath of the recent political unrest gave me an idea about the potential cases I could be dealing with. Upon arrival at the clinic, I learnt about the disregard for Occupational Therapists, gaps in the healthcare system, as well as the issues that PHC face. In addition to this, the clinic was intrenched with the apathy of the healthcare workers. However, I started off with the advocation for OTs through the means of health promotion speeches. The response that I got due to these speeches were truly magical. I was in awe of how many people needed OT’s but wasn’t even aware that they did need therapy. It made me question ways of how to bring our profession into PHC to allow for a bigger scope of practice as well as help more people. One of the ways in which I decided to then integrate OT into the clinic was making my presence and what I do there known to the other healthcare workers through introduction and education.

As a means of extending our services further into the community, I also attended various HIV conference talks as well as did an interview with an RJ to explain who we are and the work we do at the Inanda Wilderness Park. It was through this that I learnt that the big changes in the community occur through small changes we make. These small changes are then explored during these talks. Furthermore, these talks have given me the chance to bear witness to the 'togetherness' of the community. People without HIV were showing up to support their fellow peers with HIV, and in this is truly a beautiful humanistic concept that stuck out for me in a poverty stricken community with a poor socio-economic background.

The clinic was not our only means of service in the community. I also visited the creche and the primary school. Here I was saddened to see just how many children who require extra attention and deep intervention are lost in the schooling system due to big classes and increased burden on the teachers of these institutions. A personal anecdote would be that I had conducted therapy for an eleven-year-old boy, who could not recite or write the alphabets. When queried with the teachers, it was stated that he had been struggling first grade and the school could not afford to fail him due to the high rate of admissions and was therefore condoned every year since then. To me this raised the question as to whether the child had to be condoned due to the teachers having an increased burden of other children of greater numbers, or was no one willing to actually work with this child? On a positive note, though, I did enjoy running groups in these institutes as I saw all the intervention theory I had learnt in pediatric lectures come to life. Despite not being on my pediatric block, I discovered a newfound passion for paeds when I saw the difference I was making in their lives. Just a simple balloon activity was the highlight of their whole days and it taught me that intervention does not necessarily have to be expensive and fancy, it just needs to appeal to the client group.

Excluding PHC and educational institutes, I also explored the concept of home visits. Honestly this was the most dreaded part of my block. The idea of visiting someone’s home, conducting intervention based on their context has been a concept that I had only learnt about in the theory role of OT. It was nothing that my 4 years in a hospital setting had prepared me for. The chance of contracting COVID-19 also exacerbated my reluctance to go on these home visits. My mindset was changed the minute I entered my first home to conduct assessments and intervention. I was thrown into the harsh realities of the lived experience of these community members, and how leading a life that seems so impossible to me is the reality to them. These life changing home visits not only naturally made me appreciate the opportunity and honor that I get to be able to make a difference in their lives but as well as made me aware of my own positionality and how this can impact the way I carry out my intervention. I had a client that had not being going to school for a year due to her wheelchair being broken. The client’s family had no idea of the process to obtain a new wheelchair and therefore getting this client a wheelchair became my responsibility. Due to her poor living conditions, I also collaborated with the social worker to assess the possibility of RDP housing. As Diane van Furstenberg once said; ‘I have always believed that when you have a voice, you have an obligation to use that voice to empower others. Following this, I have used my own voice to empower not only this client, but her entire family in improving their quality of life. Learning to do this has not only me grow as a person but has sharpened my skills as a healthcare professional in collaborating with others to effectively make a difference in my client’s life as opposed to previously referring them elsewhere or putting in recommendations that may or may not be overseen. Home visits provided me with the opportunity to provide holistic treatment for my clients, and this is a concept that has been imbibed in me since first year, but not something that I have actually practiced. Naturally, I owe my gratitude to this community module. In this block, I have truly learnt the meaning of what it means to advocate, for not only our clients but for who we are as a profession.

Being on this block has also taught me how to question and challenge things or concepts that I don’t agree with, be it theory notes taught or injustice in the community. Advocacy, intervention relevant to client context, holistic intervention, positionality, being a humanistic OT with a passion for feminism as well as standing up for injustices and challenging both the theoretical and practical systems are all skills that have not only helped me develop both professionally and personally, but these are also skills that are commendable to take forward as I begin working as an OT in the real world. I truly look forward to working not only in the community, but with the community to contribute to it's development.

📷

REFERENCES:

Community Quotes | Text & Image Quotes | QuoteReel [Internet]. QuoteReel. 2021 [cited 27 August 2021]. Available from: http://quotereel.com/community-quotes/

Inanda Township. (2010). Retrieved 27 August 2021, from https://www.sa-venues.com/attractionskzn/inanda-township.php

van Furstenberg, D. (2018). Retrieved 27 August 2021, from https://za.pinterest.com/pin/473018767111194151/

Dhillon, S., & Wilkins, S. (2010). Advocacy in Occupational Therapy: Exploring Clinicians' Reasons and Experiences of Advocacy - Shaminder K. Dhillon, Seanne Wilkins, Mary C. Law, Debra A. Stewart, Mary Tremblay, 2010. Retrieved 27 August 2021, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2182/cjot.2010.77.4.6

[burberrycanary]

Like Me Reckless: Fear, Denial & Protective Coloring

This excessively long meta is dedicated to @village-skeptic.

So, true fact, the kiss from 2.03 in the Red and Black’s office was fantastic:

But the conversation between Betty and Jughead right before this included several puzzling lines of dialogue. The real doozy was Jughead’s baffling assertion that Betty likes him being reckless. My mind has been boggling at that one ever since. But that was just one of several off moments from Jughead in that conversation.

So let’s take this one piece at a time. 

A little humor about fear and violence to get started

Jughead: “You cannot be here at night unless you are armed.”

The “unless you are armed” part of this line is strange. Betty isn’t likely to be carrying any sort of weapon. (Unlike *cough* Archie.) What would make sense for Jughead to say is either, “You cannot be here at night,” full stop, or, “You cannot be here at night alone.”

Jughead has advised Betty before and helped her think through her next move, but he doesn’t really have a precedent in their relationship for telling Betty what she can and can’t do. That isn’t how their dynamic works.

So I read this as Jughead reaching for a joke or at least his familiar sarcasm as a response to being worried for Betty’s safety while not feeling comfortable just coming out and saying so. Safety has become a psychologically stressful thing for Jughead to consider too closely. 

He can’t come up with a joke or anything clever on the fly though. He can’t even land the sarcasm, really. What I hear him actual manage is a flat sort of deadpan delivery.

Betty is always going to bulldoze ahead. That’s who she is. She hardly ever backs down even when she’s been warned that an action is dangerous. Jughead has every reason to be acutely aware of Betty’s tendencies to be reckless given the fallout from her recent exposé on Riverdale turning the Serpents into scapegoats.

Given that asking Betty to stop tends not to work so long as she thinks she’s in the right (and even sometimes when she knows she’s not) Jughead would have to admit a lot more than he’s willing to—either to himself or to Betty—about how dangerous his present situation is in order for his concern to be communicated effectively here.  

Betty: “Well, I am.” Betty pulls off her joke in response about being armed with a coffee pot with more aplomb. Her delivery is funny and, come on, just look at this face:

Her giggle tries to shift the tone to something lighter. (Good luck with that, sweetie. Still, A for effort.)

At the same time, however, she ends up brushing off his concern for her safety and the underlying attempt to ask her to not do something. As Jughead becomes more aware of the danger around him, this will likely become an increasing point of conflict.

Jughead: “Ok, honestly, Betts. I hit pay dirt.” The “honestly” here is another strange word choice. A more logical transition from them joking around about basic physical safety would be “seriously.” Whether consciously or subconsciously, Jughead is thinking about his lack of honesty with Betty. And here this awareness is creeping into his choice of language.

The core of their recent, intense intimacy is built on being amateur investigative journalists who go around sleuthing together. On this safer ground, Jughead feels comfortable still being honest with Betty. But leading with “honestly” is not very smooth there, Jug, and to me indicates how conflicted he is about lying to and concealing things from Betty.

Betty: “But is it wise to be writing about gangs and drugs while you’re going to school here?” Um, Betty dear, if you were going to Southside High, you’d do exactly the same thing and to hell with the consequences. A message written in pig’s blood and the implied threat of the hanging Betty doll did nothing to slow her down in 1.13. The ambient danger of Southside High wouldn’t stop her chasing this story either. But Betty is perfectly okay with feeling intense concern for the safety of others combined with a reckless disregard for her own. That’s just how she rolls.

Betty and Jughead are vulnerable in different ways, of course. The threats against Betty were explicitly sexualized: “Serpent slut.” Betty is vulnerable to sexual violence in a way that Jughead culturally is much less vulnerable to and Betty has even less of a shot at defending herself physically than Jughead.

But Betty also has a lot class-based privilege that Jughead doesn’t, which keeps her safe in ways Jughead never will be.

And Jughead here is taking a bigger risk chasing this story than Betty did publishing a controversial editorial at Riverdale High.

Jughead: “Are you worried about me?” If Jughead wanted to shut down or dismiss Betty’s worry, asking if she’s worried is not a very effective approach. Jughead could come up with any number of comforting or placating things to say to Betty here.

But he doesn’t.

Forget the smoke screen of swagger in his body language and the smirk. I translate this question as, “Please reassure me that you’re worried about me. I need to hear that someone gives a damn what happens to me.” Because Jughead has to already know that Betty is worried about him. Jughead is aware that one of Betty’s default modes is intense worry. Betty has told him before that she is worried, repeatedly and in a lot of specific detail. Betty just asked him a question obviously motivated by worry. Betty’s expression is communicating an almost pleading sort of worry at him right now.

Think about where Jughead is, mentally—how scared he must be and how alone he must feel—to still need to hear yet more reassurance that someone cares about what happens to him in the face of all that.

Betty: “Well, yeah, Jug.” Betty’s voice contains so much hurt and frustration when she says this. And notice how Betty crosses her arms over her stomach because Jughead is asking her to be vulnerable while seeming not to take her feelings seriously. Consider how that smirk must land, how obnoxious and invalidating this question must feel to Betty in light of everything she has already told him.

That record scratch moment of “you like me reckless”

Jughead: “I thought you liked me reckless.” And here we have the most puzzling line in a conversation full of Jughead saying puzzling things that don’t add up. This line isn’t delivered as a joke. It’s not even delivered with effective sarcasm. The best description I can come up with for Jughead’s tone here is flirty. And as @onceuponamirror put it very succinctly and accurately: Jughead’s dialed up flirting is fundamentally driven by the boy being just fucking scared.  

Because Jughead is not a reckless person. Jughead is, in fact, by far the least reckless person in his social circle. Betty? Reckless as fuck when she is on the warpath. Archie? Not even smart about how he is reckless. Veronica? At the very least, a bold and cagey sort of cavalier. Kevin? Not that Jughead would be likely to use Kevin as a benchmark, but really freakin’ night jogging for anonymous sex in the woods with the killer on the loose reckless.

And you know who else is reckless? FP. Anyone whose sad, slow descent into criminality starts with stealing supplies from his own company is reckless. Most of the reckless things Jughead has done like riding that bike or sort of joining a gang have been either voluntary or involuntary emulations of FP. In fact, “I thought you liked me reckless” sounds like exactly the sort of thing FP would be able to say with conviction right before he turned around and fucked up his life again.

Jughead knows Betty doesn’t like him reckless. She has explicitly told him that one of her biggest fears is that he’ll get hurt or hurt other people as he slides into the same life of crime and violence as his father. Betty continues to be devastated by Jughead’s seemingly reckless decision to continue down this path that can’t end well for either of them.

My theory is that this baldly false statement is a test balloon to see what Betty says in response. Jughead is afraid that he will have to become more like his father to survive. I’d call this a change in his protective coloring. The most common kind of protective coloring for animals is camouflage. But protective coloring can also be used to convey warnings, like the way venomous creatures often have bright, distinctive patterns to warn off predators by visually signaling that they are dangerous.

For Jughead, being bullied isn’t a matter of taunts and shoves anymore. And as the son of FP in a world where that means something, Jughead no longer has the option of trying to disengage and mostly being left alone.

But Jughead is also terrified that he is going to lose Betty in the process of doing what he must to maintain a minimum level of safety in this new world. Jughead is flirting with Betty here about recklessness as a convoluted and ineffectual way to try to gauge whether she’ll still like him if he changes his protective coloring from weirdo sardonic loner to something a lot more like his father’s recklessness—doubling-down on the bike, the jacket, the gang, and maybe finding a way to add in a believable threat of violence that’ll get him the respect he needs to keep himself and the people he loves safe. Or, well, safer anyway.

That’s the path forward for him from here.

But Betty is in no position to fathom what is going on with Jughead. Her life experiences don’t give her any background or context for this. And it’s not helping that Jughead is actively trying to keep Betty from understanding because he can’t bear to admit to himself what is happening and what the consequences will likely be.

Jughead is in the unenviable position of being afraid that Betty—as loyal and fierce and reckless as he knows she is—will stand by him and get hurt as a result. At the same time, he is also afraid that, like everyone else, Betty will reach the familiar breaking point where she decides he is just not worth the trouble anymore. So Jughead is stuck: desperate to avoid the looming confrontation with Betty about what this all means for him and for them while also desperate for reassurance to take the edge off the fears and doubts that are tearing him up inside.

So let’s switch to a different channel

However, as little as Betty is able to understand what’s going on with Jughead, I do think she can tell that talking about this isn’t working well. I also think that she is tired of putting her emotional vulnerabilities out there over and over when Jughead isn’t acting like he takes her concerns seriously and isn’t opening up to her in return. Crossing her arms over her stomach is such a telling, self-protective gesture.

So it’s Betty who leans in to kiss Jughead here; Betty who is nudging Jughead’s mouth wide open, holding his face and pushing him down on the nearby table. It’s a response that narrows in on what is still working between them and the one form of closeness where their connection is stronger than ever—at a time when so much else between them feels like it’s falling out of sync and slipping away piece by piece.

But switching over to making out instead? That feels a lot better than talking in circles. Because their feelings—how much they love and want each other—haven’t changed. Think how vivid and intense that rush of feeling connected again must be when they’re able to let all the white noise of external circumstances drop away in these moments.

I read Jughead smiling into the kiss as relief—although the relief gets filtered through his current coping mechanisms into a kind of smirk. And, because Jughead tends to communicate emotional responses non-verbally, to him this feels like the reassurance he was fishing for combined with the heady kick of a welcome distraction from the reality of his situation.

Of course, sex won’t fix anything between them or solve any of the external problems they face. I think Betty is more aware of this than Jughead, who’s deeper in denial, in more desperate circumstances and more acutely afraid.

But at least desire is something that feels good and neither of them has much in their lives right now that does.

Yet another terrifying social experiment

2.03 for Jughead was an experiment to see if he could keep his previous identity in this new context: a test of whether he could still be the kid who’s smart and not afraid to be a bit dickish about it as a form of protective coloring; who's an aloof loner opted out of as much of his surrounding social structure as possible and riding out the miserable slough that is high school; and who just maybe could build on his cautious new willingness to be part of something bigger than himself by creating a sister publication for the Blue and Gold and reaching out to Toni the way Betty reached out to him.

In the back of his mind, he had to know how unlikely this was to work. But I love Jughead’s stubborn, improbable optimism for trying anyway.

Of course, it failed and badly, as Jughead hit a literal dead end and took the beating he’d been warned was coming. In response, Jughead escalates from concealing things from Betty to actively lying to her, out of shame and an understandable desire to keep her as far away from the nasty, brutal parts of his life as possible. But, all the same, the distance between them stretches that much wider and the signal of their connection gets degraded with that much more white noise.

And the inevitable, irreversible changes slip a notch closer. Some couples make it through or find their way back to each other afterwards.

Others don’t.

Jughead and Betty have come back stronger and closer after hurtful conflict before. I hope that happens again here.

But either way, for better or worse, you don’t come back the same from what Betty and Jughead are lurching towards: that long bad skid out to a hard fall.

Or, as Jughead puts it, that’s what happens to kids in fairytales who get lost in the woods. If you come back at all, you come back different.

[sagebodisattva]

The Conspiracy Brain Syndrome

I’ve already made this point a few times in the past, in a couple of different videos, but I think the time has finally come, to where, it needs to be more significantly emphasized, and finally be made absolutely positively unmistakably clear. Laid bare in such a way, so as to leave no question, dispelling any lingering doubts, and, hopefully, finally lay the whole issue to rest in it’s entirety. And the issue in question today is, conspiracy theory. The ideology, of which, we’ll refer to as “conspiracism”, and the adherents, of whom, we’ll classify as “conspiracists.”

Right now, these particular terms are strictly Meta Sage neologisms; as, the field of interest concerned with conspiracy theory is not generally called “conspiracism”, and the people who gravitate towards this field of interest are not commonly referred to as “conspiracists.” So the purpose of using these labels is just for the ease of discussion, even though, overall, these kinds of titles are probably ill advised, as they imply a sense of acknowledged legitimacy, which isn’t warranted, and ends up only providing them undue platform. And that’s the issue I’d like to address today. This type of allowance is the whole reason this dubious ideology has ballooned so far out of proportion. This pervasive degeneration is no longer restricted to a peripheral fringe element. No, unfortunately, the malignancy has now entered into the blood of the mainstream. So, it’s too late to nip it in the bud, as flagrant inattentiveness has allowed this disinformation to permeate into the psyche of the collective subconscious; and, at this point, only a direct vigorous attack will suffice to remedy the situation. This is no longer just a minor concern. I know that it wasn’t too long ago, when this whole issue was the equivalent of a little unassuming hapless baby lizard, but that time has passed, and we are now dealing with a full grown acid spitting nine headed hydra. We’re not looking to cut off just one of the heads of the nine headed hydra, no. We are looking to accomplish more efficient long term solutions; like hobbling the hydra, right at his fucking ankles. Kill the body, and the heads will die. This is no time for the mere treatment of symptoms. That’s wasted energy; effort that could be much better spent re-directed to more worthy applications. No, for this type of affliction, you have to go directly to the core of the disease, then root it out, systematically.

So, I’m here today to educate you as to the exact reasons why conspiracism is a crock of horse shit. But first, before we go any further, there’s a few things you need to understand, up front. Conspiracism is not a philosophy. Conspiracism is not raised awareness. Conspiracism is not righteous trutherism. Rather, conspiracism is a huge dirty lie; and, point blank, a symptom of a particularly nasty underlying mental illness. That’s gonna be the main thrust of this video. To get locked up in this kind of mind-trap is a mental disorder; even though “conspiracism”, isn’t yet listed in the DSM-5, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders; but it should be. And this needs to be seen to, immediately. And we could call this particular mental disorder:

“The Conspiracy Brain Syndrome.”

It needs a stigmatizing title, because the idea is to try and actively discourage it, and, ultimately, smother it out of existence. So anchoring it down with a heavy stigma will really help to put things in the proper perspective; because not all that much has been done to denounce or condemn this type of mental sickness thus far. Obviously, most people must have been dismissing this sickness as merely benign, as it’s been left alone to wreak havoc on people’s minds, unchecked and unchallenged. But the time has come to take the matter way more seriously, and begin to majorly disincentivize any path that will lead to a conspiracy mindset. People that espouse conspiracy theory are a major issue, and I’m not sure the general populace is even aware that it’s such a grievous problem. Unaware to such an extent, that conspiracism has now begun to infect the minds of an unprecedented amount of everyday people. To such a degree, that now, even the government of the United States is perpetuating this sickness, making implications that’s there’s some fight going on behind the scenes against “a deep state”, attempting to lend credence to the idea that a hidden government lurks behind the legitimate government, pulling the puppet strings, even though that’s all just a flat out deception, designed to scare you into continuing to assign power and responsibility elsewhere. That’s right. So actually, if you think about it, conspiracy theory is really a part of the conspiracy. Conspiracism is just another method of fear and control, designed specifically to weaken and oppress your mind.

So, I’m just so deeply sorry to all the conspiracists out there, who have just so much invested in this, but, just so you know, you have invested in a major turkey. A jive turkey, at that. Are you surprised? What, you thought you were doing something constructive for the people? Where do you get these outlandish ideas in your head that your conspiracy theory mongering is somehow a form of activism? You ain’t activating shit. At least not activating anything positive. You are only sowing anger, distrust, paranoia, and divisiveness; which, if anything, makes you an agent of disservice. So get it straight. You are not blazing a path of honor and truth, you are suffering from an acute delusional syndrome; a mental disability, that has blighted the minds of it’s fanatical adherents, and rendered their functional value down to almost completely useless. The only thing these types of warped zealots are good for, are straightjackets, rubber rooms, court ordered prescriptions of medication, and many many years of deep intensive therapy. Simply put, people who are obsessed with conspiracy theories, are mentally ill, period. There’s no reason to make any bones about it. There’s no caveats to consider, nor the slightest concern that there may be some possible hidden value to be found, veiled underneath it’s plainly unavailing utility. No, it’s quite safe to toss this one in the garbage can, without a second thought.

And people really need to step it up, when it comes to condemning these types of delusions, and step it up when it comes to shaming and ostracizing those that herald this type of message. These people deserve to be relentlessly shunned and outcast by society; so you really have to go out of your way to make their lives a living hell, otherwise they won’t find any motivation to upkeep their mental health. They will actually neglect their own mental health, to your detriment, so you shouldn’t wait too long to denounce and repudiate it, otherwise it will become too late, and soon, the disease will have spread throughout the whole community, and before long, you will quickly become overrun. You need to do whatever you can do to combat it, right now; by any and all means necessary. And much of this starts out by understanding that, you owe absolutely no allegiance, nor respect, to conspiracism. Why would you? It doesn’t have any value in the construction and maintenance of a civilization, and doesn’t have any value in the ideas, wisdom and philosophy of a civilization. So what is it, other then a cavity in the mouth of society?

And if your answer to anything I’m saying right now has anything to do with yet more conspiracy, you can put a sock in it, and save your breath, even though you are a huge waste of oxygen. Sorry, but conspiracy theories are not valid as arguments. If anything, they are indications of a deeply troubled psychology; but little else. Perhaps they serve as coping mechanisms for the malcontent, but if so, it’s a festering malignancy that’s doing more harm then good. At best, maybe this type of thinking helps you to feel better about yourself, as you fancy that the wool has been pulled down over the eyes of everyone in the world, except you, but, in reality, much of this grandiose delusion is just due to simple intellectual immaturity, and hence, it’s way past the time for you to grow up, and stop fervently clinging to juvenile belief systems.

If you can ever finally manage to emerge out from underneath this oppressive mental scourge, then you’ll eventually come to see that, all this time, you were just being an ignorant narrow-minded belligerent jackass. So you really need to get over yourself. Understand: in the wide spectrum of philosophical milestones, “conspiracy theory”, is nearly at the bottom of the barrel on the philosophical totem pole. This is the domain for beginners, not contenders. Conspiracism is barely only a notch or two above superstition and religion. Let’s put it this way: if we were to consider religion as kindergarten, then accordingly, conspiracy theory can be regarded as the 1st grade.

And speaking of conspiracy theory and religion, did you know that these two positions share a little more in common, other then both being adjacent to each other at the bottom of the spectrum of wisdom and intelligence? Indeed, these positions might even be said to be ideological cousins of sorts. Sometimes the conceptual playing field can present conditions that make for some very strange ideological bedfellows. Case in point, conspiracy theory and religion. They are more similar then most people would like to believe. They both distrust mankind and society, they both despise science and technology, and they both enjoy demonizing anyone or anything that dares to disagree with their dogma. And if you have any doubts, conduct your own survey. I would say probably upwards to 80% of people who subscribe to conspiracy theories, also subscribe to god theories. Fact is, over time, these two positions have become allies; and it’s not all that surprising to see why. If you are already of a mind that thinks mankind and civilization are inherently untrustworthy and evil, then how far can you be from a mind that declares it all to be the work of Satan? Not that far at all, I say.

If you look more closely at the association between these two positions, you will discover that, the type of mind you find gravitating towards something like conspiracy theory, is cut from the exact same cloth as the type of mind you find gravitating towards something like religion. In other words, stupid superstitious people. Deluded people, who want to desperately avoid the truth at all costs, by embracing some alternate false version of reality. An alternate false version of reality that, conveniently, assigns them more importance, and helps enable them to think that they are part of some great divine order; which they then use as the justification for their self important assumed sense of entitlement, and their aggressively invasive need to impose, oppress and demonize others. And yet, ironically, in truth, these people are of extremely low moral fiber, and have broken characters, completely bereft of any existential quality. Yet, these people feel they are in some position to tell other people how to think and what to believe, and which way they should live their lives. It’s a complete joke. It’s like a homeless crack-head trying to criticize you and give you advice on how to properly conduct your life. Gimme a break.

So bare this in mind, before you start to go too crazy, patting yourself on the back, telling yourself how much of a big fucking hero you are, for doing us all such a great favor by educating us with your fear porn, and, spew-projecting onto everyone, all of your depraved paranoid insecurities, with vomit projectile accuracy. Thanks, but you are not a hero, by any stretch of the imagination. You are not thinking outside of the box. You are not a “critical thinker.” And you are not distinguishing yourself as some great knowledgeable shepherd, who stands apart from the masses, ready, able and willing to lead the sheeple away from the darkness with some great liberating truth. No, in reality, meaning outside your fantasy, you are still a mainstream sheeple; you are just a disgruntled mainstream sheeple, who thinks that they’re somehow being less of a patsy simply by suspiciously distrusting everything. Wow! (Sarcastic clapping sound.) Great fucking job, malcontent sheep! You’ve achieved distrusting everything! Wow! You’ve accomplished a great feat of cynicism! Woot! Hurray! Sorry, but you are not some tough maverick rebel, you are just a plain ole mainstream malcontented sheep. I bet if we shove a million dollars down your blowhole, you’ll shut the hell up and go away real fast, because, in truth you are just a big lying disgruntled fake, blowing lots of hot air.

Yeah. So in case you were a little confused, now you can be unconfused. And I don’t care how much research you’ve fixated into this unbending obsession, your research means diddly-squat, and doesn’t change a damn thing. I know that you believe this self-deceptive fallacy that, the more and more research you do, the more and more crazy you start sounding to all the ignorant people around you, right? Uh huh. Well, newsflash: Your research means jack shit. You haven’t even figured out yet that sensory perception is an illusion, and yet you think that, somehow, by deeply researching the illusion, that you are actually accomplishing something useful? Shit. You may sound crazy to the ignorant lemmings, but so what; that’s like having misgivings from a donkey. Who cares. What should worry you a bit more, is that you sound like a complete and total blockhead dumbass to anyone with any degree of higher wisdom. You come across no better then a ravenous junky, struggling with an addiction, desperately seeking some way to find that next fix. So, no, you are not uncovering a truth with your “research”, you are only wallowing in a delusion: and yet you think you’ve discovered something earth shattering by noticing some sort of interconnectivity in reality. Wow! You’ve made interpretations of symbols, codes, and anagrams! Well, congratulations. Only problem is, you’re taking the whole thing way too damn literally; so it’s no surprise that you think it’s all just a matter of rooting out some secret group of dark ominous “others”, who are plotting to control or destroy a so called “world.” Your underlying intentions may be good, but your mission is utterly misdirected and futile; as, your remedy to the problem is ultimately ineffectual, because it’s an approach that addresses the wrong area of concern.

This is why you will never be given any true legitimacy, because, after all, if what you are promoting is not the truth, then, really, what the hell are you really doing? Obsessive compulsive rituals. Thoughts and actions of attachment and addiction. In other words, masturbation. So why should anyone take anything coming out of your mouth seriously, when it’s so abundantly and redundantly obvious that you have a seriously perverse hang up? It would be one thing if, every once in a while, you took note of a possible conspiracy theory, considered it briefly, and then moved on, but no. You get STUCK; and that’s how you know this obsessive fixation is really just a mental dysfunction. Where now, everything in life becomes a component of some dark nefarious plot, and there’s no conspiracy theory in existence that could possibly be too far fetched a consideration to be believed and accepted as an ironclad truth. It’s like looking at the world through murky colored glasses: everything considered must now be skewed to fit the narrative of the conspiracy theory worldview. It’s an, “When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”, kind of situation. A one trick pony, who’s time has come to be put out to pasture. Because, after awhile, the whole thing just becomes so incredibly tiresome, and BORING; and, notably, a position that seems to mostly be gravitated towards by the intellectually infantile; which, of course, means a whole lotta people. And these douche-bags are annoying as hell. They’d rather scapegoat a boogeyman, then lay down on the ground and wait for rescue. And that’s what’s so seriously infuriating about these conspiracy brains: they don’t actually do anything; other then pissing in the punch bowl. Or maybe an occasional mass shooting. But other then that, very little else. And this madness needs to change.

You claim that you want to confront some kind of evil in this world? Then stop searching ‘out there’, for secret societies of elite plasma drinking pedophile reptilians to blame. You want to confront evil? Then you need not look any further then at your own damn ugly face looking back at you in the mirror. Or, how does the adage go? Sweep around your own front door before you start looking to sweep around everyone else’s. You distrust society? It’s you who can’t be trusted. You think mankind is rotten? It’s you who’s really rotten. Stop playing the victim, and stop playing the blame game. Your entire perceptual reality is sourced from the pure mind, so if there’s something out here you think is evil and an injustice, then the source of that evil and injustice, is within yourself. If you don’t like it, then do something about it, within yourself. Otherwise, just shut up about it; lest I punch a cloth gag so far down your fucking throat, it’ll come out your asshole.

Thank you.

[readersforum]

The 5-Step Process HubSpot Uses to Optimize Facebook Advertising Costs

New Post has been published on http://www.readersforum.tk/the-5-step-process-hubspot-uses-to-optimize-facebook-advertising-costs/

The 5-Step Process HubSpot Uses to Optimize Facebook Advertising Costs

When Mark Zuckerberg shocked the digital marketing world with his announcement that Facebook would overhaul its algorithm to let users engage with their friends and family more and less with brands, the social media giant’s CPM skyrocketed 122% — the highest spike in Facebook ad prices over the previous 14 months.

Today, organic and paid reach are still flatlining, causing ad costs to balloon to unprecedented levels. And in a space where advertising has historically been cheap, how can marketers sustain their revenue without having to increase their Facebook ad budget?

One word: optimization. In a nutshell, ad optimization is getting the maximum bang for your buck for every single dollar you spend distributing content. But to do this, you need to constantly test your Facebook ad strategy and use data to course correct it enough to maximize your results every time you send out an ad.

Fortunately, we sat down with Rex Gelb, HubSpot’s paid acquisition team lead, and asked him about his approach to Facebook advertising. Check out his five-step process for running efficient campaigns and start optimizing your Facebook advertising budget today.

The 5-Step Process HubSpot Uses to Optimize Facebook Advertising Costs

1. Choose a campaign objective.

From a fifty-thousand foot view, our paid acquisition team usually pursues two types of Facebook advertising campaigns: direct response and branding.

Direct response campaigns aim to get people to take a desired action, like a download, signup, or purchase. Branding campaigns aim to get as many eyeballs on our content as possible. Clicks aren’t the goal here, exposure is.

Facebook also knows which users are most likely to click on ads and which ones are not, so whatever objective they chose at the start of their campaign, the social media giant will distribute their ads to the right audience.

2. Pick a bid strategy.

On Facebook, there are two main ways to buy advertising space: Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) and Cost Per Click (CPC).

When our paid acquisition team uses CPM bidding, the risk is completely on them. They’re paying for impressions, not clicks, so if their offer or creative isn’t compelling, they’re wasting their money.

When they use CPC bidding, they share the risk with Facebook. They need to craft compelling ads and Facebook needs to distribute them to the right audience. Otherwise, both parties lose.

3. Build out targeting.

One way our paid acquisition team likes to target their ads is by building a custom audience. A custom audience is a list of people who have specific attributes, like being one of HubSpot’s monthly active users or CRM signee, that they plug into Facebook. Facebook then analyzes this list of people to match them with their Facebook profiles and build a more robust audience for our paid acquisition team. 

A couple of years ago, our paid acquisition team used a custom audience to target ads to CMOs who use Google Chrome. They wanted to see if their strategy would decrease their cost per acquisition and cost per click for one of HubSpot’s Google Chrome extensions.

But they also had a hunch they could convince CMOs who use other browsers that HubSpot’s extension was valuable enough to switch browsers for. They ended up being right. When the paid acquisition team broadened their targeting to all browsers, they discovered that they could acquire twice as many users for HubSpot’s Google Chrome extension compared to only targeting Chrome users.

Experiment Cost Per Regular User Cost Per Click Chrome $19.32 $3.60 All Browsers $9.63 $1.07

Another way the paid acquisition team targets their ads and optimizes their spend is by creating lookalike audiences. To do this, there are two relatively easy options they can leverage:

1) Pull lists of people who have specific attributes from HubSpot’s database, like anyone who is a CRM signee or invited additional team members to sign up, and plug them into Facebook.

2) Pixel one of HubSpot’s web pages, like the blog’s homepage, so the list of people who visited the page are tagged with a cookie. This way, Facebook can match these people back to their Facebook profiles and distribute ads to their newsfeed.

Whichever route they choose, Facebook will generate a much larger group of users who “look like” the people in these lists. The paid acquisition team can then distribute ads to a cohort of new prospects who are likely to convert into users.

For instance, during one of their Facebook advertising campaigns that promoted CRM signups, the paid acquisition team found out that creating lookalike audiences based off people who have decision maker titles, are activated users, or are listed as a sales rep in HubSpot’s CRM helped them acquire team registrations at a lower cost than lookalike audiences based off people who visited certain pages on HubSpot’s website.

Seed List Cost Per Team Registration Decision Maker Titles $20.31 Activated Users $20.48 All Sales Reps In CRM $23.95 Registered Users $24.33 CRM Homepage Visitors $27.66 Sales Exec Same $28.55 All HubSpot Visitors $31.48 SB4 Visitors $33.48 Sales Blog Visitors $34.14

4. Craft compelling ad creative.

When our paid acquisition team sits down to write ad copy, their goal is write something so compelling that it can grab the attention of a distracted millennial slouched in front of the TV, with their smartphone in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other.

So what’s the process for convincing their audience to ignore that pizza and read HubSpot’s content? After testing over 500 ad creatives during the past two years, our paid acquisition team has boiled the art of crafting compelling ad creative into three steps.

1. Pique your audience’s curiosity.

A little intrigue goes a long way in marketing. Humans are biologically driven to investigate our world rather than respond to it. And if you can evoke enough curiosity in your audience so they can’t help but satisfy it, they’ll click on your ad.

For instance, when the paid acquisition team used the tagline “The hidden gem buried within your Google Calendar, brand new from HubSpot”, it produced better results than the tagline “Scheduling meetings just got a whole lot easier with HubSpot’s CRM”.

Why? Without revealing what it actually is, the first tagline describes a new tool that’s right in your email inbox, evoking curiosity and excitement for something that seems valuable yet easily accessible.

On the contrary, the second tagline immediately gives away what the new tool is — a meeting scheduler. This doesn’t evoke enough curiosity or interest to compel people to click on the ad.

2. Blend into the news feed.

Most of your audience’s news feeds are filled with posts from their friends and family, especially after Facebook’s latest algorithm update. To avoid screaming “I’m an ad”, include a photo that actually looks natural.

For instance, the picture below looks like a stock photo. And when people see a stock photo, they’ll immediately know the post isn’t authentic.

However, the next picture looks like a regular picture a friend might post, organically blending in with your audience’s newsfeed and making a genuine first impression with them.

3. Sell a feeling, not a product.

Psychology tells us that emotions drive our behavior, while logic justifies our actions after the fact. Marketing confirms this theory — humans associate the same personality traits with brands as they do with people. Choosing between two alternatives is like choosing your best friend or significant other. The people we decide to live our lives with makes us feel something.

This is also the reason why pitching a product’s features is a lousy attempt at persuasion. Features only appeal to the logical part of your brain, which science suggests doesn’t drive action nearly as well as appealing to the emotional part of your brain does.

To pinpoint the exact emotion that resonated with our audience the most when our paid acquisition team promoted our CRM through Facebook ads, they tested over 30 angles against cost per regular user and click through rate. Here are their best and worst ones.

Angle Cost Per Regular User Click Through Rate Free/Alleviates Frustration  $2.86  1.07% Transformation Version 2  $3.95  0.76%  Data Enrichment   $4.08  0.68%  Saves Time  $4.10  1.02%  Transformation Version 1  $4.97  0.72%  360 Degree View of Sales Process  $9.65  0.53%  No More Falling Behind On Leads  $10.47  0.56%  Cuts Down On Stress  $10.57  0.64%

5. Design a simple landing page.

Just because you’ve grabbed someone’s attention with your ad doesn’t mean your work is done. You still need to design a compelling landing page that clearly conveys the value of our offer. To help you do this, here are three principles our paid acquisition team lives by when they design their own landing pages.

1. Again, pique your audience’s curiosity.

Curiosity is the best way to convert an audience. Don’t reveal too much about your offer, but make sure to highlight its benefits.

2. Don’t distract your audience with external links.

Allowing people to exit your landing page through an external link pokes a hole in your funnel — users will leak through, diminishing your conversion rate. If visitors can leave your paid acquisition funnel, there should only be two exits: exiting out the page or signing up for the offer.

3. Test out a video.

Even though videos can explain the value of your offer in a more engaging way than text, they also serve as a distraction. This might lead to a dip in your landing pages’ conversion rates, but our paid acquisition team has noticed that videos actually increased their landing pages’ activation rate, which compensated for their loss in conversions.

Variation Cost Per Regular User Cost Per Activated User Video $21.56 $78.37 No Video $15.76 $85.32

Never stop testing.

Testing your Facebook ads is like gambling — most of the time you’ll fail. But if you can quickly figure out which strategies work and which ones don’t, you can refine your Facebook advertising to the point where you’ll almost always earn the maximum bang for your buck on every dollar you spend distributing content on the social network.

[lindyhunt]

The 5-Step Process HubSpot Uses to Optimize Facebook Advertising Costs

When Mark Zuckerberg shocked the digital marketing world with his announcement that Facebook would overhaul its algorithm to let users engage with their friends and family more and less with brands, the social media giant’s CPM skyrocketed 122% -- the highest spike in Facebook ad prices over the previous 14 months.

Today, organic and paid reach are still flatlining, causing ad costs to balloon to unprecedented levels. And in a space where advertising has historically been cheap, how can marketers sustain their revenue without having to increase their Facebook ad budget?

One word: optimization. In a nutshell, ad optimization is getting the maximum bang for your buck for every single dollar you spend distributing content. But to do this, you need to constantly test your Facebook ad strategy and use data to course correct it enough to maximize your results every time you send out an ad.

Fortunately, we sat down with Rex Gelb, HubSpot’s paid acquisition team lead, and asked him about his approach to Facebook advertising. Check out his five-step process for running efficient campaigns and start optimizing your Facebook advertising budget today.

The 5-Step Process HubSpot Uses to Optimize Facebook Advertising Costs

1. Choose a campaign objective.

From a fifty-thousand foot view, our paid acquisition team usually pursues two types of Facebook advertising campaigns: direct response and branding.

Direct response campaigns aim to get people to take a desired action, like a download, signup, or purchase. Branding campaigns aim to get as many eyeballs on our content as possible. Clicks aren’t the goal here, exposure is.

Facebook also knows which users are most likely to click on ads and which ones are not, so whatever objective they chose at the start of their campaign, the social media giant will distribute their ads to the right audience.

2. Pick a bid strategy.

On Facebook, there are two main ways to buy advertising space: Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) and Cost Per Click (CPC).

When our paid acquisition team uses CPM bidding, the risk is completely on them. They’re paying for impressions, not clicks, so if their offer or creative isn’t compelling, they’re wasting their money.

When they use CPC bidding, they share the risk with Facebook. They need to craft compelling ads and Facebook needs to distribute them to the right audience. Otherwise, both parties lose.

3. Build out targeting.

One way our paid acquisition team likes to target their ads is by building a custom audience. A custom audience is a list of people who have specific attributes, like being one of HubSpot’s monthly active users or CRM signee, that they plug into Facebook. Facebook then analyzes this list of people to match them with their Facebook profiles and build a more robust audience for our paid acquisition team. 

A couple of years ago, our paid acquisition team used a custom audience to target ads to CMOs who use Google Chrome. They wanted to see if their strategy would decrease their cost per acquisition and cost per click for one of HubSpot’s Google Chrome extensions.

But they also had a hunch they could convince CMOs who use other browsers that HubSpot’s extension was valuable enough to switch browsers for. They ended up being right. When the paid acquisition team broadened their targeting to all browsers, they discovered that they could acquire twice as many users for HubSpot’s Google Chrome extension compared to only targeting Chrome users.

Experiment Cost Per Regular User Cost Per Click Chrome $19.32 $3.60 All Browsers $9.63 $1.07

Another way the paid acquisition team targets their ads and optimizes their spend is by creating lookalike audiences. To do this, there are two relatively easy options they can leverage:

1) Pull lists of people who have specific attributes from HubSpot’s database, like anyone who is a CRM signee or invited additional team members to sign up, and plug them into Facebook.

2) Pixel one of HubSpot’s web pages, like the blog’s homepage, so the list of people who visited the page are tagged with a cookie. This way, Facebook can match these people back to their Facebook profiles and distribute ads to their newsfeed.

Whichever route they choose, Facebook will generate a much larger group of users who “look like” the people in these lists. The paid acquisition team can then distribute ads to a cohort of new prospects who are likely to convert into users.

For instance, during one of their Facebook advertising campaigns that promoted CRM signups, the paid acquisition team found out that creating lookalike audiences based off people who have decision maker titles, are activated users, or are listed as a sales rep in HubSpot’s CRM helped them acquire team registrations at a lower cost than lookalike audiences based off people who visited certain pages on HubSpot’s website.

Seed List Cost Per Team Registration Decision Maker Titles $20.31 Activated Users $20.48 All Sales Reps In CRM $23.95 Registered Users $24.33 CRM Homepage Visitors $27.66 Sales Exec Same $28.55 All HubSpot Visitors $31.48 SB4 Visitors $33.48 Sales Blog Visitors $34.14

4. Craft compelling ad creative.

When our paid acquisition team sits down to write ad copy, their goal is write something so compelling that it can grab the attention of a distracted millennial slouched in front of the TV, with their smartphone in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other.

So what’s the process for convincing their audience to ignore that pizza and read HubSpot’s content? After testing over 500 ad creatives during the past two years, our paid acquisition team has boiled the art of crafting compelling ad creative into three steps.

1. Pique your audience’s curiosity.

A little intrigue goes a long way in marketing. Humans are biologically driven to investigate our world rather than respond to it. And if you can evoke enough curiosity in your audience so they can’t help but satisfy it, they’ll click on your ad.

For instance, when the paid acquisition team used the tagline “The hidden gem buried within your Google Calendar, brand new from HubSpot”, it produced better results than the tagline “Scheduling meetings just got a whole lot easier with HubSpot’s CRM”.

Why? Without revealing what it actually is, the first tagline describes a new tool that’s right in your email inbox, evoking curiosity and excitement for something that seems valuable yet easily accessible.

On the contrary, the second tagline immediately gives away what the new tool is -- a meeting scheduler. This doesn’t evoke enough curiosity or interest to compel people to click on the ad.

2. Blend into the news feed.

Most of your audience’s news feeds are filled with posts from their friends and family, especially after Facebook’s latest algorithm update. To avoid screaming “I’m an ad”, include a photo that actually looks natural.

For instance, the picture below looks like a stock photo. And when people see a stock photo, they’ll immediately know the post isn’t authentic.

However, the next picture looks like a regular picture a friend might post, organically blending in with your audience’s newsfeed and making a genuine first impression with them.

3. Sell a feeling, not a product.

Psychology tells us that emotions drive our behavior, while logic justifies our actions after the fact. Marketing confirms this theory -- humans associate the same personality traits with brands as they do with people. Choosing between two alternatives is like choosing your best friend or significant other. The people we decide to live our lives with makes us feel something.

This is also the reason why pitching a product’s features is a lousy attempt at persuasion. Features only appeal to the logical part of your brain, which science suggests doesn’t drive action nearly as well as appealing to the emotional part of your brain does.

To pinpoint the exact emotion that resonated with our audience the most when our paid acquisition team promoted our CRM through Facebook ads, they tested over 30 angles against cost per regular user and click through rate. Here are their best and worst ones.

Angle Cost Per Regular User Click Through Rate Free/Alleviates Frustration  $2.86  1.07% Transformation Version 2  $3.95  0.76%  Data Enrichment   $4.08  0.68%  Saves Time  $4.10  1.02%  Transformation Version 1  $4.97  0.72%  360 Degree View of Sales Process  $9.65  0.53%  No More Falling Behind On Leads  $10.47  0.56%  Cuts Down On Stress  $10.57  0.64%

5. Design a simple landing page.

Just because you’ve grabbed someone’s attention with your ad doesn’t mean your work is done. You still need to design a compelling landing page that clearly conveys the value of our offer. To help you do this, here are three principles our paid acquisition team lives by when they design their own landing pages.

1. Again, pique your audience’s curiosity.

Curiosity is the best way to convert an audience. Don’t reveal too much about your offer, but make sure to highlight its benefits.

2. Don’t distract your audience with external links.

Allowing people to exit your landing page through an external link pokes a hole in your funnel -- users will leak through, diminishing your conversion rate. If visitors can leave your paid acquisition funnel, there should only be two exits: exiting out the page or signing up for the offer.

3. Test out a video.

Even though videos can explain the value of your offer in a more engaging way than text, they also serve as a distraction. This might lead to a dip in your landing pages’ conversion rates, but our paid acquisition team has noticed that videos actually increased their landing pages’ activation rate, which compensated for their loss in conversions.

Variation Cost Per Regular User Cost Per Activated User Video $21.56 $78.37 No Video $15.76 $85.32

Never stop testing.

Testing your Facebook ads is like gambling -- most of the time you’ll fail. But if you can quickly figure out which strategies work and which ones don’t, you can refine your Facebook advertising to the point where you’ll almost always earn the maximum bang for your buck on every dollar you spend distributing content on the social network.

[selkiewife]

I know i’m late on this but I wanted to talk about The Dragon Demands videos based on the Game of Thrones Season 8 blue ray commentary and the original archived scripts for Game of Thrones, Season 8. 

Basically, YouTuber, The Dragon Demands went to the Writer’s Guild Library where he was able to see the archived scripts of Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Both the archive scripts and commentary on the blue ray confirms that most of the destruction in King’s Landing was originally supposed to be caused by the caches of wild fire left by Aerys being accidentally set off by Drogon and not because Daenerys herself “went mad.” The script says that civilians being used as human shields are caught in the crossfire as Daenerys is targeting Lannister soldiers in a strategical maneuver right before she heads to the Red Keep to enact revenge on Cersei. However, Daenerys is never described as specifically targeting innocent civilians needlessly. 

My thoughts under the cut:

I have to say, that this makes me feel slightly better in a strange way. I mean, it doesn’t erase the bad writing, the ridiculous way the war against the white walkers ended, the misogyny, the inconsistency, etc etc ETC... but this crucial plot point was the one I just couldn’t let go of because it was just baffling to me. With other controversial plot points, I would disagree with them, but I could at least understand what they were going for and what the motivations of the characters were. But Daenerys turning on innocent civilians was truly baffling to me because it comes out of nowhere, is entirely out of character, her motivations are incredibly unclear, and was not set up at all. But with all the fandom discourse, I had really started to think that maybe I am lacking comprehension skills or something. But no, there is actually a reason it made no sense. The “madness” plot line was added later. Emilia Clarke was never given the opportunity to portray Daenerys as mentally unstable. Emilia was portraying grief and revenge on Cersei (as the original script and directors told her to do) in contrast to D&D’s final editing which was portraying the “mad queen.” No wonder it came across as completely false and bewildering- before we even get into the discussion of whether or not this is in character or not.

I think this is definitely more than just a theory that the script was changed pretty late in development because of all the evidence- it is confirmed by Emilia’s commentary, the Visual Effects team member’s commentary, and also the original concept art. But even if there wasn’t all that evidence, there is also the fact that the original ending makes so many other confusing things in Season 8 suddenly make SENSE. 

For example, when Jon confronts Daenerys in the throne room and he talks about the women and children that were burned, Daenerys responds with “She used their innocence as a weapon against me.” Which makes total sense for Daenerys to say if she thinks she is talking about civilians that were used as human shields that died in the crossfire. But it doesn’t make any sense if she carpet bombed the city- although it does make her seem delusional, which is probably why Dave and Dan kept those lines in- hoping it would make her appear “mad,” since Emilia was never actually given the opportunity to portray Daenerys as mentally unstable.

There is also the scene where Jon asks Tyrion, “Was it right?” to assassinate Daenerys and Tyrion responds, “Ask me again in ten years.” There is really no reason for them to have that dialogue if Daenerys really did target and massacre innocent civilians. That is the kind of dialogue they would have if they were discussing someone who had done something more morally ambiguous. 

Then there are the lines that are out of place in the final version but that would have made complete sense in the original wild fire version, such as Jon saying “now and always” as he stabs Daenerys. “Now and always” as any Theon fan will tell you, is a phrase that belongs to Theon and Robb and what they said to each other when Theon was pledging loyalty to Robb. Having Jon say this to Dany as he is killing Daenerys represents the ultimate betrayal but also calls back to Theon’s struggle and how difficult it is to chose between loyalties- between families. In this case, Jon is choosing the Starks over the Targaryens. Kit Harrington even says that this is motivation in an interview he gave with winteriscoming.net. But given the fact that in the final edit, Daenerys massacred innocent children and civilians on purpose, Kit’s motivation for Jon seems like a relic of an earlier script: 

Kit Harrington: “Jon essentially sees it as Daenerys or Sansa and Arya, and that makes his mind up for him. He choose blood over, well, his other blood. But he chooses the people he has grown up with, the people his roots are with, the North. That’s where his loyalties lie in the end. That’s when he puts the knife in.”

And Yara Greyjoy’s lines. She surprisingly remains completely loyal to Daenerys, despite the fact that she massacred the entire city for no reason:

Yara Greyjoy: I swore to follow Daenerys Targaryen. 

Sansa Stark: You swore to follow a tyrant. 

Yara Greyjoy: She freed us from a tyrant. Cersei is gone because of her, and Jon Snow put a knife in her heart. Let the Unsullied give him what he deserves. 

This kind of conversation only seems plausible if they are discussing Daenerys taking out Cersei after she had surrendered and killing human shields in the process, something I can see Yara completely defending- since she was always in favor of attacking King’s Landing as seen during her war counsel scenes in Season 7. 

There is also the Emilia Clarke quote in the behind the scenes video HBO put out after the episode where she explains that Dany was targeting Cersei herself:

Emilia Clarke: “It’s just... grief. It’s hurt. And she has this ability to make that hurt a little bit less just for a minute. And here she is, sitting on this ridge and there’s the emotion and there’s the feeling and the feeling is to fucking kill her.”

Note that she does not say “the feeling is to fucking massacre the city,” or “the feeling is to target innocent civilians.” She says “the feeling is to kill her” as in Cersei Lannister- who is responsible for the death of her dragon and Missandei- and who massacred countless innocents herself when she blew up the goddamn sept lol. 

Not to mention all of the set up lines between Cersei, Tyrion, and Varys about Cersei using “human shields” which never came to fruition in the final edit, now make complete sense:

Cersei: Keep the gates open. If she wants to take the castle she’ll have to murder thousands of innocents first.

Varys: Tens of thousands of innocents will die. That is why Cersei is bringing them into the Red Keep

And yet, lol, we never actually SEE Daenerys attacking the Red Keep. We never see innocent civilians inside the Red Keep. We only see civilians being massacred in the streets. 

I also remember people who had seen the post Season 8 Game of Thrones Live Concert saying that Ramin switched to footage of the other wildfire scenes in past Game of Thrones seasons during his Bells sequence, instead of showing the massacre of innocent civilians by dragon fire. I use to think he did that because Daenerys was his favorite character. But given what we now know about the original ending, he probably chose to show the wildfire scenes because that was what he had specifically written music for before it was changed- the destruction of Kings Landing by wildfire.

I really wish they had kept the original script the way it was. It still would have been an incredibly controversial ending. Daenerys still goes after soldiers and a Queen who is surrendering- and that action unintentionally leads to the destruction of the entire city. Jon Snow still assassinates his lover and betrays one part of his family for the other. But, it would have at least made logical sense. People would have gone back and forth over whether it was in character or whether it was a good ending. But it would have been something people would be able to actually debate on an intellectual level- the way we debate Daenerys crucifying the slavers (who themselves crucified children) or Jon Snow executing Olly... It is a very grey and tragic ending with a lot of moral questions. It still might have gone over like a lead balloon. But... the ending we have is so much worst because it’s nonsensical.

The only reason I can think that they changed it was to make Jon and Tyrion appear less morally grey for plotting Daenerys’ assassination. They probably knew that the ending would be very problematic and were trying to smooth that over by turning Daenerys into a super villain. Yet they did this too late in the process after already showing Daenerys to be heroic in fighting with the north and then having Emilia Clarke finish her filming still believing she was playing a complex and at times ruthless character but not “mad” or “evil.” And then, there is also the intensely problematic issue with them conflating mental illness with mass murdering super villain. Even if it had been clear throughout the entire season that Daenerys was losing her grip on reality and becoming more and more mentally unstable, it still would have been incredibly controversial and I am not entirely sure it would have made the men look any better anyway.

Even though it is tragic as fuck, at least with the original wildfire ending, all of the characters are incredibly complex and morally grey and you can understand the motivations for everything they do, even if you don’t agree with them. For example, if Daenerys attacks Cersei after she surrendered, it is wrong, but it is also completely understandable. And in my opinion, it’s even more understandable when you remember that Cersei cannot be trusted. She can’t be trusted to send her armies to the north- why should Daenerys trust her to surrender in good faith? This kind of ending would also have said something very powerful about unintended consequences. Even though Daenerys did not intend for so many people to die needlessly, they did because war is horrific. And that message becomes even more powerful if her motivations are understandable. But yeah, this kind of ending would have still been hated and debated but... at least the debates would have been more about the story itself rather than everyone trying (and failing) to make sense of what the fuck the story even is.

[chroniclesofawkwardness]

Ite, emoji est

For as long as I can remember, expressing myself verbally has never been easy. My mind seems to move much faster than the rest of me. I can’t tell you how many jokes I’ve spoiled through the years because I made the comedically fatal mistake of leading with the punchline instead of building up to it. The joke would sound great in my head, but unfold more awkwardly than a junior high dance with the boys on one side of a dimly lit, poorly decorated gym, and the girls on the other. You remember, don’t you? Everyone just sat around looking confused until the DJ announced, “Alright, lets slow it down a little bit.” Water Runs Dry by Boyz II Men would come on, but even then nobody really knew exactly how far apart to stand or what to do with their hands. 

My mom attended the same Catholic school as I did. She told me that the nuns who chaperoned her school dances would make sure that there was enough room for the Holy Spirit between dance partners by separating them with balloons. If a balloon popped, so goes the theory as I understand it, the partners had gotten too close. As for the Holy Spirit, I have no idea what happened to Him (or Her). Mom never said whether He escaped or was was squashed to death. Maybe He (or She) was punished by being forced to write in a right-handed desk despite being a natural lefty, which was a favorite corrective action option among the brides of Christ at the time.

By the time I got to high school, there was just one nun left. I took four years of Latin from her, and three of those years were spent in classes at her apartment. Though I left the parochial education system after my freshman year, my parents wanted me to continue studying with her because she was the best at what she did. A true master of her craft, Sister D. was very demanding. She didn’t care if the Reds had blown a four-run lead in the bottom of the ninth the night before, or if the most awkward of all school dances, prom, was approaching. I had to bring my A-game when it came to Virgil’s Aeneid or Cicero’s Orations Against Cataline. If I didn’t, it was going to be a long night, much like games of Cards Against Humanity years later. Sister wouldn’t allow me to feign ignorance of Catilinarian conspiracies to overthrow ancient Rome, just as players in CAH wouldn’t let me play dumb when it came to smegma or pixilated bukkake. Teachers may not have been able to dispense corporal punishment as in years past, but they could still prepare you for future traumatic experiences. 

Trauma can also come from something seemingly as innocuous as a text message. My texting skills have gotten better over time, but I still haven’t mastered the art. One area I struggle with is the use of emojis. I knew what they were long before I tried using them consistently, but this did not occur without a learning curve since I was more familiar with their predecessors: icons and emoticons. 

I initially encountered icons when we got our first computer that ran on Windows 3.1. I knew we’d arrived in the 90s when all I had to do was click on any one of dozens of tiny pictures to be instantly transported to the far corners of the Internet or deep within the bowels of the computer itself. Hundreds of years from now, maybe historians will mark the beginning of the end of humanity as the mid-90s. This was when almost anything you could ever want became available with just a click of a mouse. Along the way, we became so dumb and temperamental as a species that we had to have things explained to us using short words, microscopic pictures, and dioramas that had previously been confined to second-grade classrooms. 

When I got to college, I learned yet another use of icons. They are important to Orthodox religions because they represent significant figures within each Orthodoxy’s narrative, such as Jesus Christ, or Saint Sava. When I visited the Krušedol monastery on Fruška Gora near Novi Sad, Serbia in 2006, I was struck by both the reverence religious practitioners displayed toward the symbolism of the icons, and the presence of a distinctly modern donation box despite the fact the monastery was originally built in the early 16th century.

If reverence towards the symbolism of icons and the occasional donation can take the place of words unspoken, one could make the same argument for the precursor to the emoji, the emoticon. Entire sentences could be replaced in just a few keystrokes:

😊

😉

:P

:@

The last two are supposed to be a face with its tongue sticking out and a head exploding with rage. Word doesn’t know what to do with everything, but it did convert the smiling and winking faces above into emoticons without even asking me first.

Until I upgraded my phone in January 2018, I was largely incapable of viewing emojis, let alone sending them. I lost out on a lot of laughs while texting because my Samsung Galaxy S III (which I held onto long after its heyday) would essentially give me technological middle fingers in the form of blank squares whenever someone would send me an emoji too complicated for my 2012 technology to handle.

Fast forward to July 17th, also known as World Emoji Day. As one of several event leaders for a volunteer organization in my city, I was asked via text to choose which emoji best represents me. Our board wanted to create a Facebook post featuring our contributions to honor the occasion.

Without a second thought, I chose the eggplant emoji. I proudly explained that as someone who eats healthy most of the time, the eggplant symbolized the plant-based diet I try to follow. My objective was to encourage others to eat well without coming across as pretentious. 

A few minutes passed before my phone buzzed in reply.

Uh, Dave… would you mind choosing another one? The eggplant emoji has some vulgar connotations. We wouldn't want your choice to be misconstrued. 

As luck would have it, I was on my way to work when the response came in. By the time I got to the office, I could read it, but I couldn’t answer immediately since there’s a strict policy against using cell phones at our desks. Eager to share what had just transpired over the course of the eggplant exchange, I told a co-worker about being asked to choose another emoji even though I felt the eggplant suited me best. 

He started laughing uncontrollably.

When he’d finally calmed down, I asked him why.

Dude, the eggplant emoji looks like a dick. Don’t you know that?

I did not know that. When looking in the mirror, I don’t see the resemblance. I have no clue who thought of it, or how it caught on. Still, I had to confess my ignorance just like in Cards Against Humanity the first time someone played the smegma or pixilated bukkake white cards. We got a good laugh out of it, and I didn’t mind being shamed because I knew I’d have my shot at revenge on this coworker soon enough. By his own admission, he doesn’t “word well” so I’d just have to let him talk. Without fail, he’d say something that would give me a chance at a verbal jab in his direction.

The worst part was having to wait two hours to reply to the member of the board. She’s one of the nicest people I know, and her smile really does light up a room. She’s someone who makes the most of life, and I’m glad she’s a part of mine. When I went outside on a break, I texted my apology and chose the apple emoji instead. I half expected her to inform me that the apple emoji symbolizes both temptation and adultery, but such a reply never came. 

I also want to acknowledge my friend Liz, who didn’t judge me despite my use of the eggplant emoji early in our interaction when I sent her several of them simply because they were the most ridiculous things I could think of while we were both enjoying a conversation. She could have easily dismissed me as a creep who just wanted to get in her pants, but she didn’t. I imagine she laughed hysterically when I told her portions of this story.

Going forward, I’ll stick mostly to sentences. Punctuation should be enough to convey my thoughts and emotions without using emojis or their ancestors. Yet I could just be late to the emoji party. Maybe they do add value to language instead of invading, conquering, and dumbing down everything in their path. 

I’m not quite ready to scream: Veni, Vidi, Emoji from atop the seven hills of Rome. Maybe by the time I am, there’ll be an emoji specifically for that feeling; that’s one I’d proudly use. For me, it would signify acceptance. As my language changed, so did I, for the better.

[skintagsgone]

Can Skin Tags Cause Rashes?

See Can Skin Tags Cause Rashes? on The Skin Tag Treatment Authority or read the entire post below:

Acrochordons, more commonly known as skin tags, are one of the most common skin conditions. Although they aren’t contagious, somewhere around half the population suffer from skin tags at any one time. Your chance of developing skin tags rises with age. If they become irritated, a rash could form in a nearby area. It's also possible that skin tags are confused with more problematic skin issues.

Despite being so prevalent, skin tags are NOT considered as worrying as other skin problems. After all, they are benign and non-contagious. Since they can appear similar to other skin conditions, it can be difficult to be sure exactly what they are, what causes them or whether you should be concerned about them. It's important that you make an accurate self-diagnosis or get the opinion of a medical doctor (if you're unsure).

It can be quite unsettling to find that you have developed skin tags, especially if you have never had them before. Many people find them embarrassing, and unattractive to look at – especially if they are in a highly visible position. They are not aesthetically attractive.

There are many skin tag removal methods at home that can be used to correct the situation. But if you choose not to treat them, could they cause a rash, or pose any other problem for your health? And if you find that you have developed a rash near your skin tags, what exactly could be causing it? The following guide will tell you everything you need to know.

Do I Really Have Skin Tags?

So you think you have skin tags – but what are they? This may surprise you to hear, but skin tags are miniature tumors. Before you start panicking, you should know that they are benign growths. They are not a sign of cancer or anything severe.

Skin tags are named as such because they hang off the skin on the end of a stalk. They look like soft, smooth, skin-colored bumps. They can sometimes resemble a deflated balloon. Skin tags are typically quite small, only a few millimeters long. That being said, their size can vary. And depending on where your skin tag is located, you might notice it growing larger with time. Skin tags are made up of skin cells, collagen, blood vessels, and fat cells.

Sometimes, one single skin tag can form on its own. However, it is also common for many skin tags to form a cluster in one area. The most common areas are the neck, armpit, groin, anus, and eyes, though skin tags can develop anywhere on the body.

Occasionally, skin tags can be confused with other skin conditions. Most commonly, skin tags are mistaken for warts, as the two can look quite similar. However, warts are usually rough-textured, whereas skin tags are smooth. Warts are also often flatter than skin tags. Warts are also caused by the HPV virus, which is not associated with skin tags.

What Are the Reasons for Skin Tags?

Unlike other skin conditions, which can have a viral, fungal or bacterial cause, the same does not apply to skin tags. Warts, as mentioned above, are caused by HPV (human papillomavirus) – they are a direct symptom of having caught the virus. Skin tags are a little more mysterious. They have various causes, and nobody is precisely sure why they develop.

The most popular theory is that skin tags are caused by friction. Patches of skin that are frequently rubbed or chafed are more likely to develop skin tags. This friction is often a product of the skin rubbing up against itself, which is why they form in skin folds. For example, skin tags are commonly found in the armpit due to the friction from moving your arm. However, friction can also come from clothing or jewelry. That’s why a lot of men get skin tags around their neck, where they may wear a collar or a tie.

Skin tags can also have a genetic cause. Studies have shown that if your parents are prone to skin tags, you are far more likely to develop them yourself. Scientists have not yet been able to identify a single gene responsible for skin tags, though.

There are also other causes. Hormonal fluctuations can be responsible for more skin tags appearing, which is why they are a common symptom of pregnancy. You are also more likely to develop skin tags if you have diabetes, due to skin tags being associated with high blood sugar levels. Being overweight or obese can also put you more at risk of developing skin tags.

Skin Tags and Rashes

A rash is a reddened area of the skin which may be itchy, bumpy or painful to the touch.  Rashes may be flat or raised, and they may occur in small or large patches. Rashes can have many different causes. If you have a rash in the same area as one or more skin tags, you may be wondering if the skin tag has caused the rash.

Skin tags are a benign condition. This means that while they may be annoying or look unpleasant, they don’t tend to cause any harm. As skin tags are not caused by a virus or infection, there are no negative symptoms associated with them. So for that reason, skin tags don’t directly cause rashes.

Important: a rash can often appear in the same area as a skin tag. This is because skin tags usually grow on areas of the skin that are exposed to repeated friction. This friction or chafing can also cause skin reddening and irritation, leading to a rash. So if an area of your skin is being irritated every day, for example by a tight piece of clothing, a rash could appear in the same place as a skin tag. This does not mean that the skin tag itself caused the rash, but rather they both have the same cause.

You may also cause a rash by continually scratching, picking at or pulling on your skin tags. Skin tags are not itchy, but they can be quite bothersome. If you find that you consistently touch or play with your skin tags, to the point where you begin causing a rash, you should look into having them removed.

What Else Could It Be?

If you have a rash in the same area as a skin tag, but you haven’t been bothering or picking at it, your rash could be completely unrelated. There’s a chance that your rash has a separate cause, and the fact that it appeared near your skin tag could be a coincidence. There are many different types of rash. Depending on what your rash looks like, or when and where it occurs, you may be able to identify what is causing it.

Rashes are commonly caused by allergic reactions. You may have an allergy to a specific food, medicine, or skin product. Some people are even allergic to certain kinds of detergent. So if you notice that you develop a rash after eating a particular food or using a particular product, this may be your answer.

You may also be suffering from a condition such as eczema (dermatitis) or psoriasis. These conditions cause itchy, red, dry patches on the skin. These patches can also be flaky or scaly, especially in psoriasis. Psoriasis is thought to be an autoimmune disorder, whereas the cause of eczema is not fully understood yet. Eczema and psoriasis can usually be kept at bay using medicinal creams, though they are hard to cure outright.

Of course, your rash may be caused by something else entirely. If you have a persistent rash and you aren’t sure what’s triggering it, especially if you have other symptoms such as fever or feeling unwell, you should visit your doctor.

What Should I Do?

If you have caused a rash by touching or picking at skin tags, you may want to look into having your skin tags removed. By removing your skin tags, you won’t have anything to pick at or play with, and your skin will no longer become irritated.

There are many different ways to do this. A very popular method is called ligation (or ‘tying off’) and is accomplished by tying a band around the skin tag to cut off blood circulation. This results in the skin tag dropping off. This can be carried out by a medical professional, but you can also do it yourself at home with a kit. You can also freeze skin tags off using liquid nitrogen, or burn them off using cauterization. Some people even use essential oils such as tea tree oil as a more gentle method of removal.

However, if you think that your rash may be caused by something other than irritation and chafing, it is essential to visit a doctor. Rashes can be caused by a number of different skin conditions and illnesses, so you ought to have your rash properly examined.

Your doctor will be able to diagnose your rash by examining it, and may even take a biopsy to check for a fungal or bacterial infection. They will then be able to advise you on the proper treatment method and prognosis.