#bootstrap homework help

[gattsuru]

I expect he's lying, because he's a politician and his mouth is moving. That said, I'm not able to find any media review with people from Middletown Ohio (or Jackson, Kentucky) saying he lied about his family.

Similarly, the SSC review seems... weird. Scott may have been judging him compared to the Henry The Fifths Scott ran into as a shrink or compared to Trump, and by that contrast Vance comes across somewhat clean, but by politician (and especially Republican!) standards the book comes across as a rap sheet. Looking at a tots-not-pirated copy of the text:

I didn’t know it, but I was close to the precipice. I had nearly failed out of my freshmen year of high school, earning a 2.1 GPA. I didn’t do my homework, I didn’t study, and my attendance was abysmal. Some days I’d fake an illness, and others I’d just refuse to go. When I did go, I did so only to avoid a repeat of the letters the school had sent home a few years earlier—the ones that said if I didn’t go to school, the administration would be forced to refer my case to county social services.

Along with my abysmal school record came drug experimentation — nothing hard, just what alcohol I could get my hands on and a stash of weed that Ken’s son and I found. Final proof, I suppose, that I did know the difference between a tomato plant and marijuana.

Vance brawls at length with his by-varying-degrees family, forges signatures to avoid getting in trouble for skipping school, provides (pot-tainted) piss to help a doped-up nurse keep her job a little bit longer, lies to child protective services, tries to use dayquil and nyquil like "magical elixirs", has to be held back from returning road rage a hundredfold by his wife, blows up (if only emotionally) at her for other random stuff.

I don't think he's a good person, even by Borderer standards, and I think a large part of his analysis is lackluster at best (media focuses a lot on his 'we do this to ourselves' Bootstraps and Crabpot-style arguments that aren't complete, but there's also a lengthy aside about Adverse Childhood Experience studies that is academically true and also a really convenient excuse for his own bad behavior in a way he never examines).

I have a memory -- a faint memory, and perhaps a false one -- that I once read an article about Hillbilly Elegy that seriously called the book's factual accuracy into question.

Something by a journalist who'd gone to Middletown, Ohio and talked to people who knew Vance or his family, and found that Vance was apparently lying or misremembering a lot of things. Or... something like that?

I feel like I can remember reading this article, and thinking "wow, no one should trust anything that comes out of JD Vance's mouth," and retaining that impression of Vance ever since. This probably would have predated his Senate bid and his pro-Trump turn, if it even occurred at all?

It seems likely that I reacted in this way to some article about the book, but it's possible that I jumped to conclusions on the basis of a much less inflammatory (or much less well-documented) article and then allowed my memory of the article to inflate over time into something that would justify the conclusions. Such things do happen, alas.

Given Vance's increased national prominence, these kind of claims would be "big if true," so now I really want to know what it was I read and whether it justifies the strong impressions I retained from it.

Anyone know what I might be thinking of? It could have even been a blog post, or something, I don't know.

(I tried some web searches yesterday, without success. I found many book reviews that accuse Vance of drawing over-generalized lessons from his remembered experiences, or the like, as well as various brief, unremarkable articles based on interviews with Middletown residents about Vance. I didn't find anything that I could have even plausibly misremembered as fitting my description above, nor did I find anything that felt familiar, as though I'd already read it.)

[rprogrammingassignmenthelp-blog]

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[izicodes]

could you please tell us more about what SheCodes is?? Maybe you could answer this ask later once you’ve had time to really get familiar with it if you don’t know much yourself right now :))

i’m just suuper curious about it, is it free and what stuff do they teach you, will you share your progress from it?

SheCodes (L I N K) is an online coding Bootcamp that is more targeted toward women. SheCodes helps bridge the gender gap in the tech programming industry by training more women to join tech roles as women currently hold 25% of coding jobs and earn 30% less money than men. SheCodes' mission is to change all of that.

They offer to train you through 3 steps:

Product Development: How the Internet works, Frontend development & basic coding practices

Product Design: Basics of UX and UI

Product Management: How to validate an idea, the tools to manage a project and how to have conversations with developers

SheCodes is self-paced so you can study very quickly if you have lots of time on your hands but, for people like me, who have school and work, you can do little at a time and complete in your own time. There is no rush, it's up to you.

Companies like Google, Facebook, IKEA, and Zara highly recommend SheCodes and SheCodes has been the ‘Best Coding Bootcamp of the Year’ in 2020 and 2021, so they are one of the best!

SheCodes Express

This workshop is completely free and it’s 60 minutes long. It's online and live. You’ll have to reserve your spot as it’s very popular but they talk about:

◎ Learn about popular coding languages and technologies today

◎ Discover some trends in the industry

◎ Learn how coding knowledge can be useful for you

◎ Get some of your coding questions answered

◎ Find out more about SheCodes Workshops

→  → link to the workshop ← ←

SheCodes Basics

△ £79 one-time payment (check in your currency)

△ 3 weeks with 5 hours of work (Part-Time) or 1 week with 20 hours of work (Full-Time)

△ Perks: Homework and project review, Live chat support, Weekly deadline, Lifetime access

△ Technology learnt: 

→ ◎ HTML5

→ ◎ CSS3

→ ◎ JavaScript

→ ◎ Code Editor

△ Produce 1 real-life project

△ Get a verified certificate at the end

→  → link to the workshop ← ←

SheCodes Plus

△ £599 OR £249 per month for 3 months (check in your currency)

△ 12 weeks with 5 hours of work a week (Part-Time) or 4 weeks with 20 hours of work a week  (Full-Time)

△ Perks: Homework and project review, Live chat support, Weekly deadline, Lifetime access

△ Technology learnt: 

→ ◎ HTML5

→ ◎ CSS3

→ ◎ Advanced JavaScript

→ ◎ Code Editor

→ ◎ API

→ ◎ GitHub

→ ◎ Bootstrap

→ ◎ Hosting

△ Produce 2 real-life project

△ Get a verified certificate at the end

→  → link to the workshop ← ←

SheCodes Plus React

△ £790 OR £249 per month for 4 months (check in your currency)

△ 8 weeks with 5 hours of work a week (Part-Time) or 3 weeks with 20 hours of work a week  (Full-Time)

△ Perks: Homework and project review, Live chat support, Weekly deadline, Lifetime access

△ Technology learnt: 

→ ◎ HTML5

→ ◎ CSS3

→ ◎ Advanced JavaScript

→ ◎ Code Editor

→ ◎ API

→ ◎ GitHub

→ ◎ Bootstrap

→ ◎ Hosting

→ ◎ React

△ Produce 2 real-life project

△ Get 3 verified certificates at the end

→  → link to the workshop ← ←

SheCodes Pro

This is a new and the most expensive workshop they have - not included in the image above because it has its own tab in the navigation bar. This is the workshop I chose and will be starting next week.

△ £990 OR £199 per month for 6 months (check in your currency)

△ 6 months with 5 hours of work a week (Part-Time) or 8 weeks with 20 hours of work a week  (Full-Time)

△ Includes all of the other workshops combined

△ Perks: Homework and project review, Live chat support, Weekly deadline, Lifetime access

△ Technology learnt: 

→ ◎ HTML5

→ ◎ CSS3

→ ◎ Basic and Advanced JavaScript

→ ◎ Code Editor

→ ◎ API

→ ◎ GitHub

→ ◎ Bootstrap

→ ◎ Hosting

→ ◎ React

→ ◎ Flexbox

→ ◎ SEO

→ ◎ Responsive

△ Produce 4 real-life project

△ Get 4 verified certificates at the end

→  → link to the workshop ← ←

There are discounts available if you are a student or unemployed. They tend to be up to 30% off which is nice! The discounts apply to all of the workshops.

Other discounts come from people who are in partnerships with SheCodes such as influencers in the tech community or just students/ex-students of SheCodes like Mili.Codes (link) who has given out a 20% discount for all of the workshops (link) I used her discount on the SheCodes Pro and I don't have to pay £199 but instead £159 which is nice!

The SheCodesFoundation (link) is available for women who are refugees and they can apply and get all of the workshops for free. This gives the opportunity to those who don't have the luxury to succeed as well. Every time someone buys any of the workshops, 10% of that goes right to the foundation which is very smart and sweet.

I just signed up last night and my class starts on Mon 29th Aug. I am very excited. The classes are pre-recorded so it is very much self-paced. You have to submit homework every Monday. I haven't read my pre-class to-do list yet, as I was slowly falling asleep, the website is easy to use and you get connected with other students as well!

I will definitely post more on this to track myself! I think I will do most of the work on the weekends (Fri-Sun) as I still have my apprenticeship to do!

[lamb-of-dog-activated66642069]

tl;dr i need help. thanks for bearing with me yet again.

struggling to pay for gas/food/meds! trying to get my shit together, going to school and hurling out job applications, but im cosplaying as an abled person and can't function anywhere that doesn't offer accomodations. my doctors are wrestling with me over approving a wheelchair, and the standard medical supply store model isn't exactly built for people with neurological diseases anyways!

i just want to feel like i can get around without and take care of myself without depending on my roommates who have been unable to give me the time at best and tell me to bootstrap up at worse. i need help. all that is really mine is a backpack and a bike and a room that is likely to disappear under me the next time someone has a crisis and needs a punching bag.

tl;dr ive been bled of everything i have and need help, so, here's my cashapp. if you like tarot readings or watercolors, or maybe need help with an essay or STEM-related homework, message me and we can work something out.

$maneatingmonster

[schmergo]

I have a mostly-incoherent, partially-thought-out thought about some of the messaging I'm seeing around "In-person education and activities are vital to mental health" and stats about how kids' mental health is suffering right now.

Yes, I know there are many reasons why in-person schooling is important, from providing much-needed structure and routine to giving kids with an unhappy home life a place to spend the day, and I know most parents can no longer stay home to supervise their kids during the day-- but I rarely hear people state what feels obvious to me: no matter what, living through a pandemic is detrimental to mental health. Not all of the mental health symptoms we're seeing are from kids learning remotely. And there is no easy answer here that creates the best outcomes for all students or that prevents any kind of pandemic-related trauma.

Seeing family members and teachers and maybe friends become severely ill or even die from the virus is detrimental to mental health. Having sick parents isolate away from you in another room, unable to give you a hug or help you with your homework is detrimental to mental health. Developing long-term lingering symptoms of 'long COVID' that make life harder is detrimental to mental health, as is watching family members struggle with those long-term effects. Missing out on milestones like graduation and prom is detrimental to mental health. Having parents struggle financially because they lost their jobs due to the pandemic is detrimental to mental health. Having to move mid-year due to a change in family life caused by the pandemic is detrimental to mental health. Uncertainty about what kind of future is possible in a month, six months, a year, ten years, is detrimental to mental health. And, of course, long before the pandemic, so many aspects of school were traumatic and stressful for young people. Now those elements are mostly still there, but with even fewer opportunities for fun.

The way I hear some people talk about mental health in this context, it kind of reminds me of the misguided way I sometimes hear people talking about having a 'positive attitude' and practicing 'self care' in other respects. I think there's a real fear of admitting that bad circumstances can lead to feeling really, really bad and it's not always the person's fault for not being able to stop it or deal with it better.

Have a chronic illness? You might get advice for how to face it with a positive attitude, distracting yourself from symptoms with a busy and active schedule, remembering to take time for 'self care' with cute stuff like aromatherapy or massages-- basically push through it so you can do things that make you happy, never mind that pushing through it is exacerbating your symptoms that make life harder. Struggling financially? Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, make some small sacrifices, remember how lucky you are, focus on your goals, think positively and manifest success! If you still can't pay rent, you must not really want it, or you'd work harder! Incredibly stressed out by impossible demands at work and home? Remember to practice self-care and reframe your thinking to be more positive! Don't say, "I can't do all this work and still live a healthy lifestyle!" Say, "I CAN do all this work and still live a healthy lifestyle!" You can do anything you put your mind to!

Yes, it's good to try to make the best of any crummy situation, but I feel like the pandemic is being viewed as, "Well, it's bad, but we can't let it stand in our way! Canceling and closing things is bad for the economy and mental health! If we just make a few minor changes that won't damage productivity or necessitate implementing any big alterations to the way we do things, then everything will be fine and there's no reason to stay sad or anxious about it!"

That just isn't sustainable when dealing with a big, long-term problem. Imagine you have a broken leg. If you ignore the broken leg and try to go about your daily life, walking on the broken bone, you will break down midway through and be unable to get anything else done because you'll make it so much worse, and it'll take way longer to heal. If you decide to return to normal life with some creative modifications and changes to keep you safe like crutches and a cast and a wheelchair, you'll soon find how physically and mentally taxing it is to do everything you did before while your body is busy healing and while tiring out your uninjured body parts from the extra strain.

And if you realize that this is going to be a slow and gradual process and that healing takes time and isn't easy, you'll also have to realize that you CAN'T do everything at full speed ahead. You have to prioritize the things that are really important, which means dropping some balls, and you have to understand that a broken leg is a serious injury and not just something you can ignore with enough mind over matter and productivity. And even if you do all of that, you may end up with some scars, some weakness, a limp, long-lasting effects.

But, of course, although that third solution may be what's healthiest for you, it is a lot harder to do in practice. Working more slowly and dropping more balls means less productivity and profit. Doing what's safe for you means that your relationships may suffer. You may miss events you were excited for but just know you can't safely attend with a broken leg. It may be the best way to heal, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

Living through a pandemic is the same. I don't think anyone's getting out of this completely unscathed, whether because they lost someone or lost opportunities, got sick or suffered from the detrimental mental effects of the pandemic. People who are suffering are suffering because of the circumstances largely beyond their control, no matter how much individual responsibility they take and how much self-care they try to practice to soothe their negative thoughts. I'm tired of hearing that 'thinking positive' is the most important thing right now. After all, nobody wants to be "positive" when it comes to COVID test results.

[jspark3000]

Culture breakdown.

There’s a philosophical principle in South Korea called Hongik-Ingan (홍익인간), the devotion to benefit all of humanity. It’s a good thing, but it also has some very dark implications.

Basically, many Koreans are told that if their life doesn’t measure up to a surplus benefit, they might as well take their own lives. In other words, always contribute and never consume—or die.

The upside is that Koreans (and easterners in general) have a remarkable work ethic. We work crazy hard. But the downside is that if any of us encounter failure, disaster, or even imperfection, we immediately fall into an abyss of worthlessness.

I’m convinced this is one of the reasons why South Korea has the tenth highest suicide rate in the world.

The westernized philosophy of American Exceptionalism is not a lot different than 홍익인간. You see it in hustle-porn podcasts and bootstraps literature: “Believe it, dream it, achieve it, ”—but with the hidden clause, “And if you can’t, it’s all your fault. Why can’t you just ...?” The eastern judgment is based on how others see you, but the western judgment is based on how you see you. It’s the same problem wrapped in different coats.

The overarching message: If you fail, you’re somehow no good. If you can’t beat this, it’s your problem. If you haven’t succeeded, it’s on you. Bigger, faster, more, or you are literally smaller, slower, less.

So when it comes to mental health, racial trauma, chronic illness, problems in the larger system—all of these are considered “excuses.”

Both the east and west are brutally unforgiving to those in uncontrollable circumstances. “Maybe you’re depressed because you’re not trying hard enough. You’re homeless because you didn’t do your homework in high school. You got abused because you were asking for it. You’re always sick because you don’t have faith. That wasn’t racism, you just weren’t acting right.”

These shaming statements revolve on the same terrible axis: that when life is bad, you are bad, and that you attracted the terror to yourself. We believe this because it fits a logical worldview. But it is not a rational one.

Here’s what I know. Your goodness absolutely does not hinge on what happens to you. There is no 1:1 ratio of your value and your life, of your effort versus outcome, no matter how someone got here. And no one ever became successful by themselves; no one is a self-made person. So it is also true that no one has ever totally failed themselves.

If it were all on you: every rainstorm would be your fault, every disaster would be your doing, winning the lottery makes you a saint, and being Jeff Bezos makes you god. Which, of course, is straight up lunacy.

Sometimes the environment or system or leaders or our own bodies were hostile, and so we never stood a chance. Unfortunately our world is not always kind to those “lesser” because we see it as their fault, therefore they’re not given an opportunity, which only reinforces a vicious cycle. You and I simply do not get better by being told, “Hey it’s entirely your fault, so good luck.”

Yes, I believe in both personal responsibility and interdependent community. We must make wise choices. I’m proud of much of my culture and how strong we are. But our choices can be limited by the mechanisms that surround us. We can always choose, but the world often determines how far we move.

All our philosophies may have many strengths, but they are built on a lie: that somehow it’s all up to you. The truth? It never was. At times the world around you has failed you. And sometimes you need help, and you won’t be able to contribute for a time because you need others to support you. And it’s okay to ask for that.

It must not be shameful to ask for charity. Any culture that makes this shameful is in itself a shameful culture that must be dismantled. You and I need help. We need each other. We need the gift of grace, a God-given help outside ourselves. We need to be okay to fail. And that does not make you less. The best of us emerges when we find where we need help.

My hope is that my daughter knows: your worth never hinges on your work. Sometimes life is just hard. It is unfair. It is ruthless. You will need help. That does not make you less. In fact, to ask for help makes you more. It makes you yourself.

Or as esteemed theologian Captain Jean Luc Picard says, "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."

— J.S.

[akechicrimes]

i’ve been thinking about the nature of the velvet room and what that means for goro akechi and also sae’s promise at the end of the game for adults to do better by the younger generations. by this i mean that i work in student services, and i have a headache.

there’s a pretty strong conclusion in the field of education that students do not succeed alone. they’re constantly being guided, assisted, and advocated for by adults. parents go into schools to argue for their child’s rights. they call the school to change grades. they help children at school with their homework--it’s an expectation that parents have the time and education to do so. learning disability staff work with teachers to help the students in the teacher’s class receive appropriate accommodations. college guidance counselors are in fact critical for the jump to college, because admissions officers don’t have the time to meet every single student in the world, and rely on college counselors to introduce them which students are worth speaking to. coaches guide students through athletics, but athletics is socialization, character-building, and sometimes also therapy. coaches in turn also function in the same way that college counselors do, because they also will promote and advocate for certain student-athletes to talk to recruiters. 

on and on and on. adults at every single turn are helping children. it’s advocating, evaluating, assisting, and guiding all rolled into one. 

i work in student services right now, which is an entire industry that’s popped up in higher ed under the assumption that the higher education system on a structural level is a) too complicated for one teenager to go through alone, and b) that left to their own devices, students are unlikely to succeed alone. when in need of help, student services is an entire office dedicated to providing adults as a resource for students, so that students can come in, speak to someone with administrative power, and get help. in the office that i work in specifically right now, these students have committed some sort of infraction or are reporting another student’s infraction, and are seeking to get through the university’s disciplinary system, hopefully unscathed.

there’s something that relieves the tedium of being a desk jockey by thinking about the place as a real life velvet room, but the more i think about the comparison, the more i feel like it’s not a silly, surface-level comparison. the underlying assumption of student services, and the velvet room, is that you cannot succeed alone. you cannot succeed without a significant amount of help, either from your peers, local adults, or long-nosed men who never give you a straight answer.

the reason why student services, and family/coach help, is so emphasized in student success is because this support network can and often IS the difference between failure and success for a student. student success is so often correlated with how much money the parent has to fund their education, how much free time they have to do their homework, whether or not they have reliable transportation, whether or not they had an adult to walk them through their lowest emotional moments, whether or not they had someone who believed they could succeed, whether or not they had someone to tell them to shoot higher and farther, whether or not they had a benefactor to give them the resources to do that.

now that i type this out. i would like to propose that most of navigating schools, systems, and life depends on your benefactors. 

ok. benefactors, so i can get my own story straight, are defined by advocating, evaluating, assisting, and guiding. i would say that this is very similar to a lawyer. (the french word for lawyer is “l’avocat,” by the by.) the main distinction that i think a benefactor has from a lawyer is that a benefactor is also supposed to provide resources for the person they’re advocating for, and that the benefactee is supposed to, yknow, be able to do things for themselves, and actually use the resources they’re given, rather than just sitting pretty and having the lawyer do everything.

and now i’m going to shift this entire essay to be about benefactors, but i just figured out that that’s what shido is, but i’m also too lazy to go back and restructure the stuff that i’ve already written to reflect this discovery. so i’m typing this paragraph instead. i have a headache and i can’t sleep. fuck you

what’s compelling to me about akechi--and adachi, since we’re on the topic--is the ways that he’s set up as “he could have been the main character if not for X.” for adachi, the statement goes “he could have been the main character if he hadn’t self-isolated and blamed other people (specifically women) for his ensuing loneliness.” for akechi, it’s “he could have been the main character if adults in his life hadn’t consistently let him down, put him in the worst possible situations, given him very few resources to work with, and refused to advocate for him in any way, shape, or form, leaving him to do all of this himself.” that is to say, the phrase goes it takes a village to raise a child, and akechi was forced to do the work of what should have been fifty-something different people. 

the shorter version of this is “akechi could have been the main character if he’d had a benefactor,” aka someone who actually took interest in his life success, gave him the resources to do it, and guided him on how to use those resources. 

which brings me back to the velvet room.

akira, like most of the persona protagonists, loses parental and adult support in the beginning of the game. minato’s parents are dead, and his mental health seems to reflect the fact that he’s got very little adult support in his life. souji’s parents don’t call him once during his year in inaba, and dojima is, how do we say, not exactly much of a functioning adult himself. akira being cut off from adults in his life is more explicit in that his parents literally try to get rid of him.

but from the beginning of the game, from literally the first thing that happens in the game, akira gets a benefactor. the game starts off with finding sojiro sakura. it is the first thing the game asks you to do. 

the thing about sojiro is that the game starts off presenting him as a manifestation of adults further driving akira into the dirt, but the fact of the matter is that sojiro is akira’s first benefactor. sojiro complains and whines and vaguely threatens akira in several different ways, but (1) sojiro’s threats for akira to stay in line are actually him taking an investment in akira’s success, because he’s telling akira to not get in trouble. they just don’t look like it, because he’s being gruff and hard-assed about it. (2) sojiro gives akira a place to stay, a physical and very fucking important resource for akira. akira doesn’t have to worry about being homeless, and akira doesnt have to worry about rent. the game would be very different if akira was homeless. (3) sojiro, again, complains and whines and threatens akira in several different ways, but he goes to shujin, where three adults (the principal, kawakami, and sojiro) all get together to, theoretically, talk about how to help akira succeed at that school. (this doesnt happen, but that’s what the talk was supposed to be. again, it’s an example of the ways that kobayakawa isnt doing his job as well as he should, and the ways that kawakami in particular is not being a good benefactor/advocate for her new student for whom she’s responsible for. kobayakawa tells akira he expects good behavior; kawakami says in front of akira and everyone and also god that she’d rather him transferred to another class. as a teacher, her entire JOB is to help him succeed, and the first thing she says is that she’d rather not do it. in comparison, sojiro IS doing his job as a parent, especially by asian-father standards, by showing up at the school, telling his charge to stay in line, demonstrating investment in akira’s educational success, providing transportation, etc, etc.)

the game would be very different if sojiro were not here. akira would be homeless or paying rent, and making rent would be consuming most of his time. akira would not have the time to be a phantom thief, and probably not even the time to maintain good standing in competitive academics. he’d get through his probation, i’m sure, but with great difficulty, and also despite great odds. being underfunded and under-resourced would only create greater incentive for akira to look into illegal activity, potentially falling prey to someone like kaneshiro who promises quick cash. like lavenza pointed out, the game is rigged and unfair, and it’s remarkable how we don’t find it supremely fucked up that the people most in need of support are those who are denied it and told to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” to “work hard and deserve your success,” to “keep your head down and do as you’re told.” 

not to say that sojiro was THE deciding factor that determined akira’s life trajectory, but sojiro was really really really really really really fucking important, is what i’m trying to say.

literally like forty-eight hours after this, akira gets a whole bunch of new benefactors, including:

1) caroline/justine, providing resources and access to personas

2) yaldabaoth, providing a stable link to the metaverse (and if i can elaborate on this for a second, consider: rejection syndrome, that fun thing where shinjiro’s persona goes fuckin wild and tries to kill you, occurred in persona 3 but not in persona 4 or persona 5. persona 3 is the game in which people just sort of come by their ability to manifest a persona and wind up in the dark hour by accident. persona 4 and persona 5 has izanami and yaldabaoth, respectively, ensuring that persona-users get in and out of the TV world/metaverse safely, aka acting as a benefactor and providing a resource for persona-users. there’s a more stable link by far. this is, of course, complicated by the fact that izanami and yaldabaoth are also the gods that are proposing the harsh conditions for which usage of personas is required, but i would also like to point out that izanami and yaldabaoth are both beholden to the collective unconscious of humanity, and that yaldabaoth himself was born from that, and both of them actually have very little choice in the matter as a manifestation of humanity’s will.) 

3) igor, even if igor is not igor, in that igor provides general guidance, the third eye, and encourages akira to pursue healthy relationships and support networks

4) MORGANA. 

LITERALLY THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF MORGANA IS SO FUCKING WILD TO ME. 

LIKE. 

THINK ABOUT IT.

morgana being a literal manifestation of humanity’s hope and then condensed into a fucking CAT and then sent out with a mission to help AKIRA SPECIFICALLY is like. a FUCKLOAD of aid. hypeswap pointed out that morgana is basically kind of a minor deity, in that morgana (like yaldabaoth) is a manifestation of some aspect of humanity’s subconscious, and then morgana is MADE TO HELP AKIRA SPECIFICALLY. morgana doesn’t even LEAVE akira at the end of the game!!!!!! morgana was SO PERFECTLY TAILOR-MADE TO BELONG TO AKIRA that morgana STAYS with him!!!!!!!!! LIKE!!!!!!! imagine having a fucking SMALL GOD HAND-MADE FOR YOU, TO HELP YOU THROUGH YOUR DAILY LIFE, BEAT UP SHADOWS, TALK TO YOU ABOUT YOUR ACADEMICS, POINT OUT WHICH FRIENDS YOU SHOULD MAKE (LEGITIMATELY HALF OF MORGANA IS JUST HANGING OUT IN AKIRA’S DUFFEL BAG AND SAYING “HEY YOU SHOULD TALK TO TORANOSUKE NOW”), AND ENFORCING A HEALTHY SLEEP SCHEDULE. ON GOD. literally anyone who complains about morgana enforcing a healthy sleep schedule better be some ungodly motherfucker who gets nine hours of sleep EVERY DAY because i REFUSE to have yall discounting the importance of a healthy sleep schedule for a growing teenage boy

and as more than a few akechi-centric fanfics have pointed out, morgana is like, THE singular reason that akira and the phantom thieves even KNOW about stealing hearts in the first place. they don’t know anything!!!! ryuji and akira wouldnt have even made it out of kamoshida’s palace without morgana!!!! it was because morgana specifically told them about finding treasures, removing it, and leaving the shadows alive that they knew THE FIRST THING about pulling off a heist.

okay, so, akira had help. so what. why am i telling you this.

the reason why im telling u this is because traditional morality tells us that people do things because they are bad, and that circumstance is an excuse, not a reason, and that everyone always has a choice when it comes to doing bad things.

AND THAT’S TRUE. that’s super true. that’s very extremely true. correct. absolutely. especially when it comes to doing harm to other people, everyone has a choice to either cause harm, or not cause harm. period.

WHAT IS ALSO TRUE is that from a macro-scale, odds are NOT in certain people’s favors when it comes to succeeding. (and again, persona 5 would like us to look at things from a macro-scale, because it keeps referencing the rigged game and how odds are not in akira’s favor.) the rules are set up to have certain people lose, and keep losing. 

bringing this back to akechi, akechi lost from the literal moment he was born, because he was the son of (a) wedlock, (b) political scandal, (c) and non-consensual sex, apparently. literally the only way he could have been any more disadvantaged by nature of his birth would have been some extremely dramatic birth-related complication, or a genetic birth disorder, or some other medical complication. so he’s already lost.

the part about “keeps losing” comes from his mother’s difficulties in raising a son alone while supporting herself, further underfunding her to do a task that should be done by at MINIMUM two people. her mental health suffers because of the strain, the lack of resources, the sheer fact that she’s raising a son she didn’t ask for and also didn’t consent to conceiving, resulting in her death. things get worse. akechi’s shoved into the foster care system. more adults who don’t care about him who do not invest in his success or well-being. more schools full of more teachers that are in themselves under-funded and under-resourced, meaning that akechi, amongst a bunch of other under-funded and under-resourced kids who by this point probably have a shitload of emotional and mental trauma, are all stuck together in an environment that is in itself increasingly less equipped to support these students. 

the great irony of education is that schools receive more funding if the students in the school do well. hilarious, right? a school produces good students, and suddenly they have alumni funding, stakeholders, donations, so on and so forth. a school starts failing, and people pull out. students in struggling schools get even less help when, arguably, they’re the students who need more help. 

like i said. rigged game. you lose, and you keep losing. 

in comparison to akira, akira “loses” his skirmish with the justice system, and everything in his life sets him up to keep losing--and literally sojiro is THE ONE PERSON standing in between akira and continuing, successive losses, that would have piled up and compounded upon each other. 

all this in mind, i’d like to propose that one of the reasons why akechi is so attached to shido is because shido is akechi’s benefactor. shido provides equipment for akechi, likely provides cash, most certainly gave akechi the gun he uses, probably had a hand in akechi attending whatever school he attends. 

and to further complicate this, i’d like to mention that benefactors can and do come in terrible types: madarame, for example, was yusuke’s benefactor. i’ve mentioned yaldabaoth is a type of benefactor. kaneshiro is arguably a type of benefactor, although a particularly malicious and overtly parasitic type. as i’ve pointed out before, kobayakawa is a type of benefactor for makoto, in that kobayakawa offers explicit aid to makoto’s educational career.

having a benefactor puts you at their mercy. again, not to draw parallels between yusuke and akechi, but yusuke’s entire social link revolves around potentially getting a new benefactor post-madarame. yusuke ultimately declines for a variety of reasons, but i’d like to point out that one of the reasons is arguably that yusuke is hesitant to put himself at the mercy of a new benefactor’s wishes. if yusuke accepts that money, he’ll be beholden to please whoever’s funding him, and this greatly restricts his artistic freedom.

this is also part of the reason why it’s so fucking funny that you can mouth off to sojiro and sojiro, apparently, gives not a single shit. you tell sojiro that you’ve been a criminal for eight months and he helps you. you tell sojiro that you’ve gotten his adopted daughter involved in criminal activity and he’s just like “well it’s good futaba has friends i guess.” 

sojiro is a type of benefactor whose help is... probably not unconditional, but hilariously close. morgana is the same way. caroline and justine are the same way. notably, morgana and caroline/justine were, yknow, made to help akira, and likely cannot do anything else. akira has a lot of benefactors who will help him regardless of what he chooses and how he utilizes their help.

a lot of the abusers we see in persona 5 are benefactors using their pull to make the benefactee behave in a way they want--people who can threaten to stop sponsoring, people who can threaten to leave if the benefactee doesn’t do as they like. this puts the benefactee in a precarious position of having to behave in a certain way in order to continue to receive aid. 

circle back to shido: shido is akechi’s benefactor.

but akechi’s plan is to become shido’s benefactor.

NO IM SO SERIOUS. THAT’S WHAT AKECHI’S PLAN BOILS DOWN TO.

as some people have pointed out, akechi’s plan isn’t actually to kill shido. akechi’s plan is to make shido dependent on him. akechi is trying to position himself as having a valuable resource that shido cannot do without (access to the metaverse). what akechi’s trying to do is to position himself in such a way that shido gets a taste of his own medicine.

(which, personally, amuses me greatly, because akechi’s plan boils down to “oh well you abused me? i’ll abuse you back,” which is just. so fucking stupid and also very much exactly what anti-goro fans do 99% of the time, so the entire thing is just an endless source of schadenfreude.)

but as we know, this doesn’t really work out. first of all, shido likely operates as akechi’s benefactor in financial ways, and the fact that akechi requires shido alive and in power in order for his STUPID fucking plan to work means that shido has akechi by the throat. even if both of them are benefactoring each other, this means that, at best, they’ve come to a situation in which both of them are an equal threat to each other, so it’s really no surprise shido wanted to cut akechi loose. 

and i think it’s important to note that shido is probably one of the very few adults in akechi’s life who actually helps akechi--again, in the same way that madarame helps yusuke (with a lot of fine print, coercion, and other hidden knives involved). people have pointed out that akechi did rely on shido’s praise--the value of emotional stability and improved mental health, no matter how slim, cannot be understated. (there’s a reason why people wind up in self-destructive behaviors; the behavior itself fulfills some need that the person has.) i’m not sure that akechi would even have a job at the police force if shido had not pulled strings to get him there. i’m not sure akechi would have the grades that he does at the school he attends if shido had not helped him get there. like any other employer relationship, when akechi proposed to help shido by utilizing the metaverse, shido is expected to provide the funds to ensure akechi can actually do that job, and those funds would have made a remarkable difference in akechi’s life. and all of these are conditional on akechi killing people. 

when sojiro decided to invest in akira, sojiro drastically changed akira’s life trajectory, and protected akira from a lot of future misfortune, all at basically no cost to akira and without any strings. shido investing in akechi does the same, not only stopping akechi’s “losing streak,” but reversing it altogether into a winning streak. 

suddenly, akechi’s in a school that actually gives him schoolwork that pushes him intellectually, actually prepares him for college, actually teaches him things. the better akechi does, the more he’s rewarded for it, because there’s actually teachers who are there who will notice. he gets paid for working with the police, which means better pay, better hours, better living conditions, more free time. people take note of his success. people start talking about him. all of a sudden, he’s getting interviews for being so remarkably young and still so adept as his job. and again, it’s all conditional on akechi fulfilling his deal with shido.

compare and contrast to akira, who has sojiro, morgana, and the velvet room all acting as his benefactor. the entire POINT of the velvet room is to  be an unconditional, no-strings source of aid. meanwhile, akechi only has shido, whose help is highly conditional. the difference is remarkable. the difference between akira and akechi comes down primarily to the adults and other forces who took the time to invest in their success, future, and well-being.

*

all this in mind, persona 5 (although it has very little backbone in a lot of its execution and doesn’t like following through on its own train of logic) has the audacity to say: maybe people doing bad things is not certain people’s faults. it’s the fault of the rigged game itself. 

so the question becomes: who’s setting up the game?

this is usually answered by “who’s the shitty benefactor?”

who has more resources and more ability than someone else, and provides those resources/abilities on a conditional basis? who has power over someone else and is using that power not to help, but to harm the person with less power? who’s using what they have in order to make someone else act according to their needs? who’s rigging someone else’s life circumstances?

the plot of persona 5 is the phantom thieves seeking “who’s setting up the game,” which turns into a sort of matryoshka nesting-doll escalation as they move further and further up the chain to find bigger and more comprehensive sets of games. start with kamoshida, who’s setting up unfair conditions and a rigged game in which ann, shiho, ryuji, mishima, and akira are at his whims in an increasingly-unfair situation. kamoshida, as the rule-maker of the game, needs to go. but kamoshida is ALSO part of a different game, which is shujin itself, which is being funded by (apparently) shido’s conspiracy to some extent. kamoshida is an olympic medalist who has no other prospects in his life and is stuck in a job he doesn’t really like because shujn has a deep investment in providing a competitive athletics program, because competitive athletics programs is a mark of a good school, and there’s a lot of money involved in making shujin a good school. kobayakawa is the next chain up, in that he’s strongarming makoto to catch the phantom thieves, but even kobayakawa is not the person making the rules; kobayakawa is at the whims of an even larger game. so on and so forth. 

which brings me back to shido. 

(for the record. it was this point that i realized that this essay had gotten out of control. because i’d started a whole other meta essay one other time, so i already had a bunch of thoughts about loki and the importance of akechi’s plan to take down shido in the way that akechi was hoping to, and i realized that this entire train of thought was rapidly taking me into “norse mythos analysis hours,” and i was like. fuck. fuck. god fucking dammit. i started this essay as a way to pass the time and cure my headache and now we’re doing this??? we’re really doing this????? fuck me)

“who’s setting up the game” is a neat observation that systems of oppression are intangible and operate without humans, but at the same time, are maintained and composed of humans simultaneously. (i know. it doesn’t make sense. it sucks.) palace rulers, then, are an attempt to locate intangible systems of oppression into a single human person.

in reality this doesn’t happen quite so neatly, but masayoshi shido is a nice fantasy that maybe, a very large portion of systemic corruption can be boiled down to one bald man with ugly glasses. he embodies literally EVERYTHING wrong in the world: corruption, misogyny, embezzlement, gross adults, manipulation and blackmail, murder, child abuse--basically everything you can think of. and from akechi’s point of view, shido is not only at the heart of government corruption, but also most of akechi’s personal hurts as well. 

watch closely this very cool narrative trick that persona 5 forgot to capitalize on: you store all the shitty things in the world in one person, and then you take him out, destroying him and all the world’s sins all at once. if you locate all the sins in one place, you don’t have to worry about the fact that systemic injustice is permeated throughout every aspect of the fabric of our world, from the policies in place to the ways that we think to the ways that our imaginations are arrested from imagining new possibilities (the prevalence of anti-goro fans who insist that he’s scum of the earth being fair evidence of the ways that traditional morality prevents people from re-imagining a kinder world in which people can be held accountable for their actions in conjunction with empathy).

akechi, in particular, would like us to think that all the sins of the entire world are stored in the masayoshi shido--again, from his perspective, it certainly looks that way. but i don’t think we should underestimate the degree to which akechi engineered his own shitty situation with shido, and the degree to which akechi is a highly unreliable narrator of his own circumstances.

the SECOND after shido goes down, the PT are wondering why very little has changed. it turns out that shido is not the source of all the world’s evils. 

shido was a symptom of the world’s evils, that’s for sure. shido is a uniquely-perfect piece of garbage that, by some freak accident, was a well-placed and well-timed fit for the government system’s flaws. the fact that shido got as far as he did is a symptom of the situation, but he isn’t the cause, or the source.

okay, now the phantom thieves have to go one level higher. they’ve got to kill yaldabaoth. yaldabaoth is the cause of everything, isn’t he?

also no. yaldabaoth is also a symptom of humanity’s desires. yaldabaoth was made by the human subconscious and, despite yaldabaoth being a bitchass motherfucker, yaldabaoth wasn’t just being a shit to the phantom thieves when he said that ultimately he’s just fulfilling humanity’s own wishes. 

well, akira takes down this fucker too, but by this time the damage is done. we’ve realized that corruption cannot be contained in a single person. one person alone cannot be conceptualized as the Source Of All Evil. we’re forced to confront the fact that corruption is widespread, everywhere, and exists within individuals as well as in the relations between individuals.

compare and contrast this with the ending of persona 3, in which humanity calls down nyx to enact the end of the world out of some mass collective suicide drive. since nyx cannot be killed, and humanity cannot be stopped from wishing to die, minato becomes the seal to prevent humanity from calling out to nyx. in killing yaldabaoth, akira destroys the manifestation of humanity’s desire to be controlled and kept apathetic, but in both of these situations, the enemy is still humanity itself.

so as it turns out, despite the phantom thieves’ desire to take down shitty individuals in order to dismantle large-scale systems of injustice, the game would have us turn to the fact that this is not enough. the solution is always in the mass population--in everyone everywhere, and that our responsibility as individuals works in conjunction with the fact that everyone is collectively responsible simultaneously.

which brings us back to sae niijima.

i know, i know. i talk about akechi and the velvet room and shido and akira and sojiro for howeverthefuckmany words, and now i’m going to talk about sae. 

sae is the center of persona 5. or at least, she should be.

all the threads that persona 5 has been tracking (or at least has been attempting to track) ultimately boil down to sae and her decision to become a defense attorney. sae takes up the idea of being a benefactor and makes it her profession. and sae, very specifically, tells akira that she, as an adult, will start taking responsibility for the younger generation.

sae says: we might be collectively responsible, and the injustices of the world may be a product of everyone everywhere. but it’s also true that the actions of the collective start with individuals. and that individual is going to be me.

persona 5 begins and ends with an adult saying that the game might be unfair, but i’m going to take it upon myself specifically to do what i can to try and stop that. i will be the benefactor that this kid needs. i will be the difference in someone else’s life. i will stop unfortunate events like akechi and shido from happening.

the truth is that benefactors can and do make a meaningful difference in someone else’s life. that’s the entire reason why they’re so critical to a child’s success in life. as it turns out, people cannot and do not succeed alone. and that it’s not unusual for a child to seek out adult help in any way that they can, and that in fact they should, and it’s normal and understandable, and that adults should seek to help children in any way that they can, lest situations like shido occur.

this is part of the reason why i really like that the velvet room has become such a staple in the persona series. the entire premise of the velvet room is based on the idea that people do need help, and that it’s not a moral failing if you aren’t able to succeed without someone in your corner. 

anyway. say thank you sae, sojiro, and igor.

[jet-bradley]

dont know what happened but ive been really set off by unreality for the past week - every time ive woken up slowly its thrown me into a spell because i dont know whats real and whats not. i forgot an Entire Exam existed this week and i think it messed with me a lot - it really slapped me in the face that my bootstraps attitude that i have towards my own mental health (and no one else's)... doesn't... work. as well as i thought it did.

since tht exam ive been having multiple times daily episodes for the past few days where i dont think im meant to exist and i get really terrified over essentially nothing. and it doesnt help that a lot of the things i seek out for comfort are really unreality-heavy, so i fall back on those and end up having another episode because of it.

if ur in a groupchat with me and i left this week its nothing personal but, taking time off and focusing on what i need to get done is the only thing that helps - i spent yesterday working on structures homework and it was the happiest ive been in months. if i reach out to you abt stuff we can talk but please don't dm me hours later asking if i need anything, if i've finally got out of that mindset i dont wanna get anywhere near it again. thts all i ask

[oliverparkers]

[   aron piper, questioning, he/him   ] ⁠— * oh, here comes OLIVER “OLLIE” PARKER ! the twenty one year old scorpio is often referred to as the insurgent. people say they have a tendency to be reactionary and stubborn, but from what i’ve seen, they can be empathetic and loyal too. when they walk by, you’ll probably hear rock ’n’ roll high school by the ramones playing out of their headphones, but they’re also associated with the faint smell of cigarette smoke, bruised knuckles, and staying up too late listening to loud music. i hear they’re  waiter at the roller derby diner & want to become a musician when they’re older, but who knows what will become of ‘em !

Born to a musician father, and a mother who left when he was still a baby, Ollie spent the beginning of his childhood backstage at shows, or on tour with his dad. The backseat of his father’s van was anything he could imagine it to be - a stage, a cliff above boiling lava, a space ship. The tour life perhaps wasn’t what one might imagine as the ideal situation for a child growing up, but it was what Ollie knew, and where he was comfortable.

When he was seven years old, however, his grandfather stepped in, saying that what Ollie really needed was stability, and he was never going to get with a father who lived that sort of lifestyle. After that, Ollie moved into the spare bedroom in his grandfathers house, though when his dad was in town, between shows, sometimes he would go and stay at his apartment.

Ollie never got along with his grandfather - The old man was always a hard ass, and probably wasn’t the exact right person to be raising a child, after his own was already grown and out of the house. Especially a kid like Ollie, who had always been somewhat of a trouble maker. 

Throughout school, he was constantly on the brink of expulsion. Sometimes he’ll claim that he had the record for the most detentions, although there’s no proof of that (though it isn’t unbelievable).

More than one person was convinced that Ollie wouldn’t graduate at all, and the only reason he did in the end was because of summer school (and probably help with homework from some of his friends). He’s also probably been held back at least once.

He’s been working at the Roller Derby Diner as a waiter now for a couple years now, and he’s trying to save up to move out of his grandfathers house (except he usually ends up spending money on weed instead). It’s a bit of a wonder he hasn’t gotten fired yet. 

He (mostly) loves all his friends and would do anything for them, anything which usually ends up being punching anyone who messes with them.

Yo Ruthie - 

so summer school fucking blows. and I do promise, actually, I swear, on my guitar, all my tapes, and the car that I’m definitely gonna get eventually - that I will be at the lake this weekend, because pissing off my grandpa is a sacrifice I’m willing to make. for friendship. and yes, I am pretending that I’m working on English homework right now, and no, I don’t want to hear any criticism from anyone about how I’m not going to graduate. who cares if I don’t graduate anyway? I’ll just start a band and become a famous rockstar instead. I don’t even really want any of the shitty futures that adults try to tell you about, or convince you that you need to have. Especially the adults who used to be cool, or at least who think they used to be. If I ever end up working in an office, wearing a suit, and eating the same thing for lunch every single day, I’m going to need someone to kill me. Is that a responsibility you’re willing to take on?

Do you ever think about what Lucky was probably like, when he was our age? I highly doubt that he was anything short of fucking kick ass, because I don’t know, how could you be a total square and then turn out like that? Unlikely. I’ve decided that I’m gonna ask him for a job, actually, and I bet anything I’ll get it. Grandpa was just lecturing me this morning about the ‘value of hard work’ this morning and something about pulling myself up by the bootstraps and not ending up like my dad. But honest? I wouldn’t even mind ending up like my dad. He always brings me cool shit when he comes to visit, and last week he sent me a postcard. From Canada. We should all drive up to Canada, when I get my car - I’m thinking it would be cool to have a van. Also I saw one with a for sale sign the other day, so if I get the job at the diner, I bet I could save up pretty quick and buy it. Or try to convince grandpa that I NEED a car and I’m maturing and being responsible and shit. I think he’d buy that, if I got a job, right? And if I got Olivia or Delilah or someone to help with the convincing - He likes them. I mean, I’m pretty sure he likes all my friends more than he likes me, but also I think he’s probably pretty fucking biased. Whatever.

ANYWAY, LLOYD LAKE THIS WEEKEND, I PROMISE, I’LL BRING WEED. I’ve been saving it for the next time we all get together, which I hope you deeply appreciate. Because I’ve basically been bored out of my fucking mind up here.

x ollie

also here is his pinterest!!!

[izicodes]

Hi! Could you please explain (inspire) your night classes routine? Thank you 😊

Hiya! I'll be happy to answer your question!

So, basically, I enrolled on a coding night class that the UK Government gave away for free (I know, shocking). I thought "Why not try it out?" so I submitted my application and I got accepted! If you are in the UK and a UK citizen, you should totally try it out! It's called "Trilogy’s Skills Bootcamp in Front-End Web Development" - it says BootCamp but it's really just classes. The instructors themselves nickname the BootCamp as being "night classes" so that is why everyone calls it night classes as well.

🌙 Basic Info on the Night Class

The website for more information - LINK

Part-time - 16 weeks long

4 days a week - Tuesday to Friday

3 hours long per class day - 2 hours on Friday

Over Zoom meetings

Very interactive so you get to know your classmates a lot - made 2 friends from there!

🌙 What do you learn in the classes?

HTML, CSS, Advanced CSS, Bootstrap 4 & 5, JavaScript, Web APIs and React.js - then towards the end you build 2 big projects in groups to complete the class and get the certificate.

🌙 What do you learn in the classes?

Above is my Google Calendar that shows my class set - this is next week's classes btw. You get to choose during your application either the day classes (2pm-5pm) or the night classes (6pm-9pm) and so obviously I am at work and doing my apprenticeship during the day, I chose the night classes.

I give myself an hour before each class as a study time for the classes so I catch up on any homework from the previous day or week I haven't done and to even study ahead of time on what the next week's topic is about. Each week is different e.g. week 1 was all HTML, week 2 was CSS3, week 3 Advanced CSS3 and so on. Therefore, it's good to study ahead if you're falling behind a bit, like some of my classmates are. But I also add another 1 hour after class to go over my notes from that day's class.

On Fridays (really after Thursday's class) we are given our week's challenge (weekly mini-projects really) to complete by next week's class which is on a Tuesday. Friday's classes are really going over the challenge's requirements, going over some demos and even starting the challenge during class and we have the instructors to help us, which I really appreciate. During class, it is flexible as they do give us 15 mins breaks to go do stuff

So my night-time routine really looks like this:

5 pm: Study last week's classes' work or study ahead for this week

6 pm: In class

7 pm: In class

8 pm: In class

9 pm: Go over class notes / maybe start the challenge

10 pm: Break

10:30 pm: Work on apprenticeship work or actual work's projects

On my Instagram, which I have abandoned oops but I'll go back to posting, I shared about the earlier weeks' experience in the night class so you can check that out to see what it's like! But I hope this post answered your question! If not, leave more questions - that goes to anyone reading as well!

Thank you for reading, have a nice day/night and happy coding! 🙌🏾💗🌷

[heartbeatan]

No Expectations (Chapter 6)

Return to Chapter 5.

Return to Table of Contents.

Return to Taehyung Fanfictions.

Return to Masterlist.

Chapter 6

You were a bit of a mess the next day. You didn’t get much sleep that night, and you cried on and off throughout the day. It was difficult not to reach for the phone and call Taehyung. But you didn’t. You made your decision. You also committed to yourself that you would get one day – one day to mourn Taehyung’s departure, then after that you weren’t allowed to feel sorry for yourself. What was the point of this whole exercise if you were just going to wallow in self pity the whole time? You had to pull up your bootstraps so that you hadn’t sent Taehyung away for nothing. You wanted to love him, and the sooner you could get along without him, the sooner you could figure that out and hopefully have him back.

Unlike the movies, there wasn’t a big “ah ha!” moment when you realized you were in love with Taehyung. It was like a puzzle coming together. Each piece made the picture clearer.

The first piece of the puzzle came when you were flipping through the photos Amy had posted online. You came across one of you, Taehyung and Woori. Woori was in Taehyung’s arms, his fist in his mouth the way he did when he was too excited. Taehyung was looking adoringly at him laughing, and you were smiling along with them. It was such a perfect image that you thought about where on the walls you could hang the picture to represent your happy family.

The second piece came when you were visiting Suzy’s house for a play date. She had a toddler and an infant not much older than Woori, so the arrangement worked out perfectly.

“You talk about him a lot,” Suzy finally said, after you had told her yet another story about Taehyung.

“Do I?” you asked.

“Yes.”

“Well he’s pretty much been the only person heavily in my life for months. I don’t know if I have a story that doesn’t involve him. That doesn’t mean I love him that way necessarily.”

“No,” she agreed. “But let me ask you something. What if I told you that you would never see him again, how would that make you feel?”

Another piece of the puzzle came one night when you dropped Woori off at his grandparents and you took yourself out to the movies. Along the route you saw a bowling alley. Not the one you and Taehyung frequented, but you could see through the big, front windows the patrons inside. There was a young couple there clearly on a date of their own. They were canoodling in between turns and it made you wish Taehyung was there with you.

That’s how it happened. Piece by piece the world around you pointed towards Taehyung. Inside jokes you had; experiences you shared; feeling you had felt; until finally one day the words just slipped from you – in a precarious circumstance.

“I love you,” you said out loud. You had been hanging out with your vibrator once again. As did every other time, you tried to imagine a faceless man making love to you, but, like every other time, the faceless man soon became Taehyung. Just as you were about to climax, you looked into his eyes staring deeply into yours and spoke the words.

When you were done and cleaned up, you reached for your phone. When you unlocked the screen, you found a new voicemail waiting for you. You listened to the message.

I’m sorry to call. Can we meet up?

That was the moment you decided it was time. You picked up the phone and pressed dial.

You were early to the coffee shop. You wanted to be so you could mentally review everything that you wanted to say before he got there. You ordered a second cup expecting that he wouldn’t be on time, but, to your surprise, Jae showed up five minutes early. He noticed you immediately and shuffled uncomfortably before he made his way over.

“Hi,” he said as he took the seat in front of you. You nodded back.

“You, uh, going somewhere?” he asked, noticing the bag sitting in the chair next to you.

“Jindo. I catch a plane right after this.”

“Where is Woori staying?”

“That’s not your concern.” He went silent and you defensively crossed your arms in front of you and stared him down. “Is there anything you want to say to me?” you raised an eyebrow at him.

He winced. “I’m sorry about the wedding.”

“What about the wedding are you sorry about?”

“Everything. I shouldn’t have said those things to you.”

“No. You shouldn’t have.”

“I’m sorry.” He tried to avoid your intense gaze. You took a deep breath before you responded.

“But, Jae, I can handle being called names by some drunk idiot. I can handle being embarrassed in front of a room full of people. What I cannot tolerate is you addressing my son that way.”

“He’s my son to-”

“No. He’s not,” you interrupted.

“I made a mistake, Y/N. I shouldn’t have walked out on you two like tha-”

“But you did.” Your tone was firm.

He sighed.

“You even put it on paper,” you reminded him.

“I could have that rescinded in court; you know.”

“Don’t threaten me, Jae. This isn’t going to go very well if you do.”

He was quiet for a minute but then nodded.

“What is it exactly that you want, Jae? Because despite me not wanting it, you and I are going to run into each other. I can’t have you popping in and out deciding if he is or isn’t your son. So, we need to make things clear, today.”

“I want to come home.”

“No. Out of the question.”

“Then I want to at least have a relationship with him.”

“What kind of relationship?”

“I don’t know… when he’s older, take him out, throw around a baseball. You know… the things dads do with their kids.”

“No, Jae…” you let out a sigh. It was clear he didn’t get it. “That’s not what dad’s do. Dad’s stay up all night sometimes cleaning up the vomit and shit. Dad’s help with the homework, and they take them to practice and they cut the lawn that they throw the baseball around on. Their heart aches when they need to discipline their child, but they do it because they know being the bad guy for a minute is in their kids’ best interest. They feel the guilt when they’ve let them down. Dad’s teach their children how to respect others – and they don’t call their mother a whore. Dad’s don’t just show up for the fun stuff, Jae. They show up for the hard stuff too. Do you have any idea what it takes to be a parent?”

Jae sat quietly across from you. You could see how anxious he was becoming at even the thought of doing all those things.

“That’s what I thought,” you concluded.

You both sat in silence for what felt like eternity until Jae cleared his throat.

“I’d still like to see him sometimes,” he said quietly.

“Not right now, Jae. Not like this. But, in the future, if you shape up and prove to me that I can trust you, then we can talk.”

He nodded.

“But, Jae, you will never be Dad. Do you understand?”

He nodded again.

“At best, you could be Uncle Jae, but that’s all. You will not tell him you’re his dad. When he is old enough, his father and I will decide when he is ready, and we will tell him. Not you.”

“I understand.”

“Good.”

After another uncomfortable pause, Jae began to move, “I guess, I’ll get going, then.”

“Wait… I have one other thing I’d like to say,” you took a sip of your drink before you continued. “You were right. I did want the white-picket fence. I still do, and there is nothing wrong with that. I’m not ashamed for wanting that. But you were wrong when you said I wanted a lap dog. I didn’t want a dog, Jae, I wanted a partner. I wanted someone to love who loved me and wanted to build a home together. You, however, wanted a mother. Someone who paid the bills, fed you and cleaned up after you. I can’t promise you won’t find someone who will do that for you, but I can promise it’s going to be difficult. Woori isn’t going to grow up believing that’s how life goes for men and women.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized.

Ten minutes later, you found yourself in the backseat of a cab enroute to the airport. The meeting with Jae, as expected, ended awkwardly, but you felt a sense of closure. You now had one major reconciliation completed – now, it was time to reconcile with Taehyung.

[elfyourmother]

@shadow-hikari

I used to work for a big bank doing customer service for their credit cards so most of this was Bootstraps(tm) combined with my insider knowledge and also doing my homework

All the bad shit on my file was from upwards of a decade ago so I basically was starting from scratch. Nothing bad on my report but nothing good either. Nothing at all period. I knew I wanted to start over with a secured credit card and after doing a lot of research I applied for the Discover IT chrome secured card with a $300 deposit, which was my limit. I made small purchase every month and put my Netflix bill and Sephora Play! subscription box on it and paid in full (PIF) either manually or thru autopay. After they reported to the credit bureaus and I got a FICO score of 650 or so, I kept it nice and easy. Small purchases, PIF. Kept my utilization (how much I spent vs total limit) very low. Score kept creeping up. After a few months when I hit low 700s I applied for a regular non-secured card (Capital One QuicksilverOne) and got it, albeit with a tiny limit. But I used the same principles as with the Discover. Kept utilization low, put a small recurring bill on it (this time, Hulu), PIF every month.

The nice thing about Discover is that as long as you keep paying on time and show responsible use of the card, they graduate you to the unsecured version of the IT Chrome after about 9-12 months. I “graduated” at 9 months and they bumped me up to $1500 limit and returned my security deposit. 1 1/2 years later I have a wallet full of rewards cards with significantly higher limits including a couple of semi-premium travel cards, Chase is throwing mortgage preapprovals at me when I’m not even in the market for property, and my credit union is practically begging me to get an auto loan from them. That humble $300 Discover secured card has grown into the best rewards card Discover offers (I was able to upgrade the regular chrome to the regular IT) and is responsible for all of this, all with my hard work and discipline.

A lot of ppl are afraid especially if they’ve gotten in trouble in the past with them but it’s honestly the “quickest” way to start. I like secured cards for this especially because they have such tiny limits that you have to try really fuckin hard to fuck up. It’s like a training wheels card to help you (re)build a sense of discipline. I have color coded calendars and spreadsheets for my CCs.

Stay away from predatory subprime lenders like CreditOne. They charge insane fees and prey on desperate ppl. Discover is fucking amazing and imo has the best secured card on the market (it’s the only one I’ve ever seen with any kind of rewards program) as well as amazing non-outsourced customer service but IT Chrome is not the easiest secured card to qualify for. If you can’t get that then Capital One has one. Best yet if your bro can qualify for a credit union membership (and it’s easier than you may think), they tend to have secured ones available also.

A word about CreditKarma, NerdWallet, etc. I use them but I caution people. First of all any time something is”free”, that means you’re the one for sale. In this case, these sites make money off referral links for the credit card application links they throw at you (their “approval odds” are similarly tainted bc of this). Secondly the “FICO” score they give you a something credit card hobbyists call a Fake-O score; it’s something called VantageScore 3.0 which virtually no lenders use to determine eligibility for credit. FICO 8 is what lenders use. VS are generally inflated by comparison BUT if you take them with a grain of salt they can give you a decent ballpark estimate of whether or not your score is on the right track. That’s how I use those apps.

I will say though that depending on where you live there may be non-profits or gov’t agencies that do free financial counseling if he wants help specific to his situation. In NYC the Dept of Consumer Affairs runs Finanical Empowerment Centers in conjunction with local non-profits to offer free one on one counseling.

Biggest advice: be patient. It won’t happen overnight. Plant the seeds and watch them grow.

[reading-writing-revolution]

In Texas, where 5 million people already go without health insurance, nearly 1.2 million more are projected to join their ranks — far more than any other state.

That’s the estimated collateral damage from the coronavirus recession, assuming the national unemployment rate hits 20%, according to a recent Urban Institute report. Some believe the real jobless number for April may already be that high.

--

This is simply the reckoning for people who are apathetic and don't think politics are important, people who are lazy and refuse to do their own homework to make sure that they're covered and would rather just let politicians tell them what to think and what to do and how to vote. This is what happens when people vote against their own interests because they're too afraid of whatever fears someone else is stoked in them.

That sounds like a lot of BS, but America could have a health care system that works, works well, takes care of everybody and is not in danger of completely failing when times turn sour. But Americans don't react, or rather all Americans do is react. Thinking ahead, saving for a rainy day, these things just don't occur on a natural and normal and regular basis. Wisdom is no longer a thing. I don't know how that happened but wisdom seems to be no longer a thing. Americans, in general, just don't seem to be capable of thinking ahead. All they can do is wait for a crisis and then be forced to take action that they should have taken a long time ago, only now it's too late. Now people are going to lose and lose big.

And that spirit of rugged individualism, that spirit of the old Wild West, is simply not going to save them. There are no bootstraps. And no one is going to be able to pull themselves up. Or rather, almost no one because that's how many people have always been able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps - almost no one. Only the exceptional people can do this, and it's high time that Americans look around and realize that the person they're seeing in the mirror is probably not one of those exceptional people. This is a fantasy. This is a lie. This is a falsehood that we tell ourselves and that our politicians tell us.

You probably cannot save yourself in today's modern, interconnected world. You need other people. You need systems that work for you. You need support systems, social support systems that give you the ability to navigate the world and give you a chance to look at your bootstraps. But you can't do it by yourself. Almost no one can. And you're not almost no one. If you're reading this, you're probably not.

Stop and think for a minute. In 169 days you're going to get the vote for a system that can help you protect yourself, maybe even save yourself and your family.

[glitchphotography]

It’s so great to see the glowing coverage of Anthony Abraham Jack’s book the “The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students,” like this great bit from The Chronicle of Higher Education that introduces the author and the book’s subject matter. This resonates strongly with me, because for one, I went to middle school and college with the author. He literally helped me with calculus problems and gave me a ride from the airport and now he’s a professor at Harvard (!!!), publishing his first book. All that makes you feel proud and hopeful, you know. 

But it’s also the the subject-matter of Mr. Jack’s book (which you can buy for yourself here), which hits deep, because we were both “the privileged poor” during our forays at Amherst College. Glowing narratives of diversity and bootstrapping cloud how elite colleges exist to preserve class inequalities. Measures of racial diversity in Ivy league enrollment contrast starkly with measures of economic diversity (i.e. how many poor kids enroll). When I attended Amherst, the school was a leader among elite institutions in admitting poor and working class (i.e. from community colleges) students. That sounds nice until you realize that 3% of Amherst’s student body were from “economically diverse” backgrounds compared to 1% for the Ivies. That number is ludicrous and these institutions exist to tokenize working class and minority students for the benefit of bougie kids, parents, donors, and administrations.

I was an undocumented student at Amherst during a time of minimal awareness to what it meant to be undocumented. I couldn’t get financial aid and I was scared to tell the school of my status because I was made to believe that I would be deported. While I grew up comfortably in Miami, I had to defer my admission for a year because my dad had a hundred dollars in his bank account and needed my help flipping merchandise on eBay. So when I attended Amherst, I not only had to worry about tons of homework, I also had to hustle $40,000 in tuition money, while trying to convince the school comptroller accept payment in 10 predated checks that never had funds in them. The fucked up part is that I barely barely pulled it off until the recession hit. During that time I flunked out, took a semester at UMASS to get back on track, got kicked out for not paying tuition and managed to finish when I learned that Amherst low-key gave help to undocumented students. I learned about this not through a google search but through my friend gossiping about it during a party at a professor’s house. Seriously bless that friend.

The reality is that the college was in no way prepared to deal with my issues and economic situation, because the vast majority of students had no jobs and never had to rely on a job to exist. The few students that were living off of work study didn’t have a $45,000/year rope around their neck. So yeah, being poor and undocumented made it harder to brown-nose professors during office hours, or to befriend all the really fancy econ kids that went to be investment bankers. To make matters worse, the college did nothing to teach working class students how to network, how to write resumes or cover letters, how to find jobs in the fields you want to go into, and why would they, when the majority of students rely on their family connections and bureaucratic visibility to get by in life. A fancy degree is meaningless when you are undocumented. The privileged poor aren’t even that privileged.

[documentarynuclear]

Know Your Audience - Tips For Developing Your Own Reality TV Show Or Documentary Film Concept

You've got a hot new concept for a Reality TV show. You've been doing fashion styling and image consulting for top executives in your area. You are often blown away by the lack of understanding most of your client's have when it comes to the importance of how they present themselves. Most of them know the nuances of packaging and presenting core issues to hundreds if not thousands of people. But, when it comes to their personal presentations, most of them fall short. You think there's an amazing Reality TV show concept that will help educate business people about the importance of proper attire. Sounds like an amazing concept, but who's going to watch it? Where are they going to watch it? Knowing your audience is an important step in developing any concept for a Reality TV show.

First and foremost, begin by defining who your audience is, and exactly why you are absolutely convinced that they will tune in to watch your show whether that is online or on the boob tube. Try to understand everything you can about your audience. What gender are they? How old are they? What do they wear? Where do they eat? What kind of movies do they go to? Do some homework on the target audience's media consumption habits. Find out where your buyers are likely to already be spending their time online. This is where your business creativity will really pay off. One of the hardest things to do on a shoestring or bootstrapping budget is to build qualified traffic to your website. However, if you get creative with the right partners on board, you can make any project happen. Click now Nuclear bomb documentary

Now, how do you best reach these folks? Are they watching TV? Are they spending their spare time on MySpace or Facebook? Are they Blackberry or iPhone junkies? These are all important questions to consider as they will shape the landscape of opportunity for your program. If you really want to get your show made and you want to make a living doing it, then don't think inside the span of traditional media. The underdogs are gaining strength and power in a completely transitioning media industry. Your primary goal should be to create your content, offer value to the audience and make an honorable profit doing so. Look for emerging media distribution channels that can help you deliver the audience you need in order to satisfy a potential underwriting sponsor. The internet is a fantastic place to start, but dig deeper and keep a close eye on what your competitors are doing.

[133crowdfund]

What is crowdfunding and how does it operate?

Learn about crowdfunding and how it helps businesses grow. Discover the different types of crowdfunding and how to get involved.

There used to be a few different ways to raise money when someone wanted to support something, whether it was a project, a business, or anything else that needed money to get started. They might take on loan-related debt. Friends, family, and angel or VC investors could help them raise money. They could even choose to finance the project themselves by “bootstrapping” and collecting as much cash as they can. Crowdfunding emerged as a fourth practical choice for anyone looking to start something in the late 2000s.

A lot of people can contribute money through crowdfunding. To raise the money required to launch a business or initiative, large groups of people pool their small individual investments together. Anyone can participate in a campaign that has been started by an individual, a charity, or a business.

What is 133Crowdfund?

We adhere to the basic principles of legitimacy, safety and efficiency, take improving the company’s main body credit and solving its problems as the starting point, seek common development with investors as the purpose, and ensure the safety of funds as the responsibility. Systematized, diversified forms, service integration” model, adhere to market-oriented operation, professional operation, adhering to the management principles of preventing risks, resolving risks, honesty and trustworthiness, and established a formed relatively perfect management system. We have a standardized credit review system, risk supervision system and legal guarantee system. We have established and developed good and various forms of cooperation with various national banks, and are committed to creating value for customers, continuing to exceed customer expectations, and jointly building an OTT crowdfunding brand.

3 Step Investment Process

Step 1: Log in to the official website of OTT crowdfunding, and after easy registration, you can browse the high-quality commercial real estate projects selected by OTT for investors on the “Investment” page.

Step 2: When you find a satisfactory project on the platform, you can complete the entire online investment process from anywhere through fast and safe platform operations.

Step 3: Once the investment is successful, we will distribute the principal and share dividends to your account after the project ends.

How to crowdfund a project

Choose a cause or a product.

There aren’t many limitations on the kinds of goods or enterprises that might be crowdfunded, however the most prosperous initiatives frequently share several crucial characteristics:

A particular product

The majority of the biggest crowdfunding success stories, not stores, but rather individual products, were funded. There’s a reason for it: backers like to fund concrete projects rather than general concepts. Consider getting support for your best product for the greatest likelihood of success. You can construct a store once your original idea has gained traction.

A specific, niche market

Find a market that is hungry for a product you’ve created to fill a need or a gap. As the Mind Journal inventor did when he couldn’t find a journaling tool that was made for what he required, founders frequently create solutions that address problems that they experience in their own life. Create a prototype that meets these demands

Significant differentiation

Your product needs to be unique if you want to create excitement and draw backers. Do your homework to make sure your product is unique.

What makes crowdfunding unique?

Crowdfunding allows a large number of investors to participate and give their piece of the action. This is a radical departure from more conventional fundraising, in which institutions and businesses look to one or a small number of significant investors for funding. Another difference between crowdfunding and other forms of financing is that crowdfunding is typically done online.