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asgardian--angels · 4 years

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4 Ways to Connect with Nature During COVID-19

Hi everyone! As someone who studies pollinators and conservation biology, I have found the last few weeks difficult, because I struggle when I cannot be outside in nature most of the time. Connecting with nature is known to be beneficial for our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health, and never has that been more important than right now. I thought I would compile a few of my favorite ideas that I can offer about ways you can still connect with nature while social distancing, or even if you cannot leave your home at all. Know that these are obviously not all the ways you can experience nature - just the ones I’m familiar and knowledgeable about. Most of my resources apply to the eastern United States, but these things are applicable worldwide. If you ever have questions, just message me!

1. Go Birdwatching!

Whether you’re a pro already or someone who’s never even attempted to tell the difference between the ‘chip’ and the ‘cheep’ coming from your bushes, birdwatching is a fun hobby that can be done anytime, anywhere, by anyone. While human activities may have slowed or stopped around us, the natural world is always moving and changing. Birds are one of the easiest animals to observe and learn, and their boundless zeal for life can renew our hope and lift our spirits. Whether you live in the country or the city, there are more kinds of birds than you think to be found right outside your door. The springtime is an especially good time to see birds, because they are migrating to their breeding grounds, bringing a whole assortment of colorful and sometimes unusual species close to your home.

It doesn’t take much to start birdwatching. Most of us have an old pair of binoculars up in the attic somewhere, and plenty decent pairs for beginners are available for under $30 online (I just bought my mother a pair of Bushnells for $15 that had very good reviews). There are countless resources online to find an overview or quick guide to birds in your area. If you live in the United States, the best all-around every-need bird resource is Cornell’s AllAboutBirds and eBird websites. Together these two resources cover almost every bird species in the entire world - let me briefly go through each individually.

AllAboutBirds is a guide to every North American bird, with stunning photos, ecology, and identification help. But more than that, from here you can lose yourself in dozens of offshoots of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology - from their several live feeder and nest cams, to their hundreds of articles and interactive bird biology resources. One I recommend for those who want to do some basic yard-watching is the site for Project Feederwatch. This has ample information to get you started in recognizing the (North American) birds around your home. Here’s even a free download of common feeder birds! You should also check out Celebrate Urban Birds, which has ID help for city birds in the US, Mexico, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Panama!

eBird is a global citizen science site where millions of birdwatchers from Nepal to New Mexico share their sightings to build the largest database of bird knowledge on the planet! I cannot begin to cover everything you can do and learn on this website. You can scope out new places to visit with their ‘Explore Hotspots’ tool, or see where any species on earth has been seen by other people. It will keep your statistics if you enter your sightings, making a convenient way to keep track of all the birds you see! They have a helpful article here about how to start birding near your home.

Birdwatching is an activity that you can put in as much or as little time as you want into it. You will always be rewarded with getting a new perspective on the world around you, discovering neighbors you never knew you had! It can be a refreshing escape from a human-centric world, and maybe spark a curiosity you weren’t expecting! Birds are a bundle of personality, and you will find yourself falling in love with them before you know it. Consider keeping a “life list,” or entering your sightings into eBird to advance bird conservation. Birdwatching can be solitary or you can go with others. When this is all over, maybe you’ll have the chance to meet up with local birders and make new friends! There are birding clubs EVERYWHERE.

2. Plant a pollinator or wildlife garden!

As spring approaches, now is the perfect time to start planning a garden. This is a great way to be outside often but not have any risk of contact with others. Maybe you’ve never gardened before, or maybe you have one but would like to replace some of those exotic flowers with beneficial native ones. No matter your living situation or location, there’s always something you can do to make your little patch of earth a better place for all living things.

Our world is dependent on plants, which make the sun’s light available to other creatures. They interact with the most ecologically important animals on earth - insects. Insects are food for almost all songbirds, as well as the majority of all terrestrial animals in one way or another. “Traditional” gardens try to deter insects with pesticides and non-native plants that insects cannot eat. But we should try to encourage insects, because they pass a plant’s energy up the food chain, as well as pollinate flowers, keep “pests” in check (if you like growing vegetables), and are critical decomposers. The biggest thing you can do to help the local ecosystem is ditch the hydrangeas and hostas, and especially some of that turfgrass. Insects will almost exclusively only eat native plants, and being the most biodiverse animals on the planet, there’s an insect for every plant out there! It’s been shown that yards with few native plants support low levels of insect abundance and diversity, and that means fewer birds and fewer everything else too. Plus, insects are AWESOME in their own right, and once you encourage them, you will discover some incredible, colorful, brilliant species right in your own yard!

Native gardens are easier than you think. In fact, they’re way easier than what most of us are doing now - by definition, they’re plants that want to grow here! They require less maintenance, no mowing, and no pesticides. They may not be readily available at Home Depot or Wal-mart, but they are easy to find once you locate resources from your region. There are online nurseries to buy seeds or root stock from, like Prairie Moon in the eastern US. Many regions have resources that compile lists of local nurseries and hold native plant sales. To benefit insects and wildlife, figure out what the general conditions of your yard are - soil type, moisture, climate zone - and then choose some plants that will grow there. For pollinators, you should find out what the recommended flowers are for your area - universities and cooperative extensions often produce this kind of information (example here for the northeast), as well as the Xerces Society. This kind of info is becoming much more common in the last few years, due to the popularity of pollinator gardens! Try to plant a few things that bloom in each season, so bees will have food year-round! Native grasses will support the caterpillars of many butterflies and moths too. Pollinator gardens easily overlap with wildlife gardens, which seek to support other animals too, particularly birds. Choose plants that have flowers that turn into seeds or fruit eaten by birds (native dogwoods are one of my favorites!). Plant flowers, shrubs, and trees if you can fit it - this gives insects and birds all sorts of choices for food, and places to hide or nest. Your local Audubon can provide a ton of information about bird-friendly gardening and the best plants.

Another easy way to benefit animals is to be the ‘lazy gardener,’ whether you actually have a garden or not. This means simple steps like, don’t rake your leaf litter, leave logs and rocks, and make a slash pile when you cut branches or trim bushes. This creates habitat for everything from bees to salamanders!

Don’t have a lot of space? Try an herb garden, or patio garden. Small herb or vegetable gardens will be loved by pollinators even if the plants are not all native, and they will allow you to grow some foods you can harvest, reducing your dependence on the grocery store. Native flowers can be grown in pots as well - goldfinches, for example, will land on any coneflowers you plant, and eat the seeds right in front of you! And if you have no land at all, you can still help out by putting up a bee hotel, and sharing your knowledge with others.

3. The power of the written word - READ!

Can’t go outside? Live in the most inner of inner cities? Feel like you don’t know enough to get out there and identify what you see or know what it means? Books are a naturalist’s best friend. Now is a perfect time to dive into the wealth of literature about the natural world, from stories to field guides. I am always gung-ho to recommend books for a budding naturalist, or anyone who wants to learn more about a new topic!

Were you intrigued by the things I talked about above - native plants, insects, birds, and the relationship between all of them? I highly recommend Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy. It is the bible of native gardening, in my opinion. It’s an incredible and humbling book explaining in detail and with beautiful photos why we need native plants, just how important insects are, and what we can and should be doing to help.

Want to learn about pollinators and plan your garden? There’s lots of books for that, and they’re so well made that both beginners and experts can use them. Try any of these:

The Bees In Your Backyard - Olivia Messenger Carril and Joseph Wilson

Pollinators of Native Plants (OR its companion book ‘Bees: An Identification and Native Plant Forage Guide’) - Heather Holm

Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees - Thor Hanson (a narrative, not a field guide, excellent read)

Books about birds? Heck, I mean there’s hundreds of those. It’s a popular genre. I don’t have any on hand but if you want to know more about gardening for birds, check out Planting Native to Attract Birds to Your Yard by Sharen Sorenson. To learn birds, I recommend a Peterson or Kaufman field guide.

Looking for books on nature in general? Not field guides, but non-fiction narratives? There are some absolutely stellar writers in our age that regularly move me to tears with their descriptions and connections to the natural world. My top author pick is Bernd Heinrich, an ornithologist and naturalist who has written over a dozen books on a variety of topics. I particularly recommend Summer World (and its companion Winter World), One Wild Bird At A Time, The Homing Instinct, and Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death. But they’re all really really good. There are SO MANY books of folks writing about their experiences with nature, from scientists in the jungles of Borneo to the average Joe exploring the concrete jungle. I have a small collection at home, but in my current locale, I can recommend The Secret Life of Bats by Merlin Tuttle, or Unseen City by Nathaniel Johnson. But there are, really, hundreds. All will change the way you view the world around you. You cannot read enough.

Want to learn more about how important nature is to human beings? The biophilia hypothesis that states that we as a species need nature for our very souls, our physical development, our mental wellbeing? Please read Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. It’s humbling, enlightening, and sobering.

4. Citizen Science, Volunteering, and everything else!

You may feel alone right now, but know that everywhere, there are millions of people waiting to share their love of the natural world with you. Anyone who has a second to spare and the interest to look out your window should consider becoming a part of a citizen science project. These sorts of projects vary widely in their commitment time and energy, but most are solitary activities that you have complete control over. Some are more organized than others - many just ask you to report a sighting of a certain kind of organism, and others have a data sheet and timetable to follow. All contribute valuable information to conservation, making you a part of something bigger even when you cannot leave your yard. They also give you the opportunity to learn a new skill - like photography, or data collection - and help you notice aspects of the natural world you may have never given a second thought about before. A lot of them are a community that you can interact with online. Below are just a few of the MANY MANY citizen science projects out there. Again, this is US biased, but it is easy enough to find ones in your own country or those that are international.

eBird - I mentioned this before, but eBird is quite likely the biggest citizen science project in the entire world. There are a googleplex of ways to interact with others, learn more about the birds in your area or anywhere else in the world, find out who local birders are, and keep track of your own sightings. The data you submit has been used in countless peer-reviewed scientific papers and has a direct, significant impact on bird conservation worldwide.

iNaturalist - a worldwide platform for sharing sightings of any species, anywhere. A great community of naturalists, amateurs, and experts, here to help you identify your creature and explore what others find.

Project Feederwatch, The Great Backyard Bird Count, Christmas Bird Counts, Global Big Day, etc - offshoots of eBird and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. These are specific events that ask backyard birders to keep track of what birds they see for a couple of weeks. This helps track migration patterns and population declines!

BugGuide - similar to iNaturalist, but for insects only and in North America only. I’ve been on this site for 12 years now, I’m a diehard! Experts will help you ID insects, and your data becomes part of a huge database to help scientists learn more about our native insects. Requires photos - a good chance to start two hobbies at once!

Bumble Bee Watch - submit photos of any bumblebee you find in North America. Bumblebees are declining and scientists need regular people to help track populations of these pollinators.

Guys, there’s so many more. A few more quickies: iMapInvasives (for spotting invasive species), National Phenology Network (for tracking when things change - when flowers bloom, when animals nest, great if you see the same things reliably every day!), The Great Sunflower Project (plant a sunflower, monitor what bees visit it), Zooniverse (a compilation of different digital projects that need eyes and ears to help sort through data - like trail cam photos for instance! You’d be helping real researchers, often grad students at universities, but sometimes big ticket names too!).

These are large-scale projects. But there are always smaller, local community projects that need your help. Become more aware of what’s coming up, even for after this pandemic when you can get outside and volunteer at something like a BioBlitz, a cleanup, or a tree planting. You would not believe how many volunteers we always need to make conservation possible. People like you are the backbone of what we do. Check your local and regional Audubon, your universities, your cooperative extension. They have resources, things that can give you information you need or ways to afford things you want to do. I’m sure there’s plenty I’ve forgotten to mention, since I don’t have all my things with me here. But never feel isolated. The natural world is always around you, and you are never alone! Every creature big and small is a lifetime of stories to tell. Pick one and get going!

#nature #covid19 #covid-19 #covid19 resources #birdwatching #citizen science #insects #mine #guys if you could do me a solid and reblog this it took me like... uhhhh 3 hours to write #i just want to help some people and so if this could get more than like 20 notes i'd appreciate it #other naturalists please feel free to add more to this #i know i didnt cover amphibian crossings

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racefortheironthrone · 5 years

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Thoughts on House of X #6

The penultimate issue!

While You Slept, the World Changed:

Before I get into the content, let me say that I think Hickman et al. really brought it with their two final issues, which are some of the best of the miniseries.

Showing Hickman’s love of circular storytelling, we flash back to the speech from the very first page of House of X #1, where Xavier announced the formation of Krakoa. The always-frustrating timeline is cleared up a little: Xavier’s speech happened a month ago, although we know from that same issue that work had been going on on Krakoa for “months” before the announcement - more evidence that the schedule was important.

Despite this all of this preparation, Xavier takes a moment before the speech to ask Moira and Magneto to join him for this “leap of faith,” which requires “total commitment.” (Which is interesting, given Namor’s questioning of same.) Moira agrees quickly, but then hangs back and watches, as is her wont (as we’ll see in Powers of X #6).

By contrast, Magneto makes a significant shift from his earlier pledge of unrelenting accountability to burying the hatchet completely (I love how “all the anger at the other’s relentless ideology and unyielding persistence” so perfectly describes both men) and promises his complete support (and possibly more, depending on how you interpret the hand-on-hand-on-shoulder panel) going forward. That’s a big moment for the two of them.

And then we get Xavier’s speech in full, which I’m going to do my best to annotate.

“Humans of the planet Earth...I am the mutant Charles Xavier and I bring you a message of hope. ”

The first thing I’ll note is that we’re already seeing a rather significant change in Xavier’s behavior: for decades, Charles Xavier refused to come out of the closet as a mutant even when asked directly, and only did so in New X-Men when possessed by Cassandra Nova. Here, he’s straightforwardly describing himself as “the mutant Charles Xavier,” putting his group identity before even his name.

Secondly, there’s an interesting tinge of classic sci-fi in the way that Xavier addresses “humans of the planet Earth” - it’s very reminiscent of The Day The Earth Stood Still - and I wonder whether part of this has to do with the so far largely unspoken Krakoan ambition of beating humanity to the Moon, to Mars, and the stars themselves.

“In the coming days, you will learn of several far-reaching pharmaceutical breakthroughs that have been discovered by mutant scientists. These drugs extend human life, heal disease of the mind, and will prevent - or cure - most common maladies. Influenza, Alzheimer’s, ALS, many cancers...gone. Overnight. These drugs will make life on this planet...better. Remarkably so.”

First, this is very much of a part of Hickman’s technocratic futurism from his F.F run, which I have to imagine often leads to a bit of frustration with the editorial mandate not to use super-science to make the world unrecognizable.

At the same time, I’m all the more convinced that the point of this proffer (in addition to buying U.N votes and diplomatic recognition) isn’t to mess with human biology - I think the drugs actually do what’s advertized, rather than mind-controlling people or activating the X-gene - but rather (according to what we learn in Powers of X #6) to dull the drive to achieve post-humanity, solving humanity’s problems but leaving the source out of their hands. This is a theme that featured quite heavily in the finale to Hickman’s Transhuman.

“All this...we have made for you. In the past they would have been a gift. Something freely given by me -- to you -- because I believed it would create harmony between our two peoples. That was my dream -- harmony -- but you have taught me a harsh lesson: that dream was a lie. You see, all I ever wanted was peace between humans and mutants. All I ever wanted was to love you and for you to love us.”

Here’s a great example of how comics can use text and imagery in different ways. Visually, what this page shows us is different levels of humanity: ordinary people in a hospital room, who see Xavier’s speech as a message of hope, the promise of deliverance from disease; a board room full of businessmen who probably see either opportunity or competition, depending on their market position; and a situation room of national security types who represent human power structures that have always viewed mutants as a threat.

At the same time, I think the text is an answer, if not a rebuke, to those fans who’ve been decrying Charles Xavier as acting “out of character” or spinning conspiracy theories about how it’s actually the Maker or the like. This is clearly the same Charles Xavier, who has come to change his mind about his vision of society, because he’s seen how humans have responded over again. (I think it also gets at one of the problems of grounding the X-Men in a “dream” of harmonious co-existence when genre conventions prevent that dream from ever coming to fruition. Especially given how the serial nature of comics leads to repetitions of “anti-mutant hysteria,” it’s not surprising how much of the fandom have shifted to a “Magneto Was Right” perspective.)

“We wanted to save you -- and we did, many times -- but in return, all you did was stand by while evil men killed our children. Over 16 million of them. So there will be no gift...for you have not earned it. We will -- however -- let you pay for it. In return for two things, we will provide you with the means to have a better life. One without pain or suffering and full of hope -- and it will cost you so little.”

Here, instead of constrasts, the text and images are working in concert, with the art giving pointed examples of whom Xavier is referring to - pointing to the Avengers as “stand[ing] by while evil men killed our children” (given that the Avengers tend to specialize in threats to the planet, but have had a decidely mixed record when it comes to threats to mutants specifically, to say nothing of the fallout from the Scarlet Witch’s actions), or the Fantastic Four as having “not earned” his “gifts,” given that the FF haven’t exactly been at the forefront of applying scientific advancement to specifically mutant concerns. Similarly, Doctor Strange was willing to brave the dangers of hell to bring the city of Las Vegas back from the dead, but didn’t do the same for the victims of Genosha.

At the same time, it becomes clear that what Xavier is getting at isn’t just direct complicity in anti-mutant violence, but the broader systemic problems of human apathy towards anti-mutant violence. (Although, to be fair, he’s bringing this up as, essentially, emotional blackmail to justify his economic policies and his political demands.)

On a different topic, it’s interesting that Xavier is offering something of a utopia for humanity - “a better life...without pain or suffering and full of hope” - but may instead be planning to put humanity inside a walled garden where they will be cared for but kept out of mutant-kind’s way.

“First, you must accept the island of Krakoa as the nation-state of all mutants on this planet. We will happily go through the same process as any newly formed nation with the U.N, but there is an expectation that our sovereignty will be recognized. Second, all mutants -- by birth -- can claim Krakoan citizenship. And with that citizenship, we expect a period of amnesty. So that those who have been singled out as criminals -- or punished and imprisoned by humans -- can overcome man’s bias against mutants.”

So here we get Xavier’s main political ask: international recognition of Krakoan sovereignty, mutant citizenship, and amnesty for mutants in prison.

It’s clear from his tone, however, that Krakoa is going through the “same process as any newly formed nation” mostly as a formality, with “an expectation that our sovereignty will be recognized” - both because humanity needs what Xavier is offering and the unspoken fact of mutant power.

One thing that caught my eye is that the citizenship/amnesty isn’t just a one-for-one copy of Israel’s law of return; given the heavy focus on human judicial system’s “bias against mutants,” it also borrows heavily from the 1966 platform of the Black Panther Party, which called for “freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails,” because they had been denied a trial by jury of their peers.

“From this day forward, mutants will be judged by mutant law, not man’s. These are our simple demands, and they are not negotiable. In return for making our lives better, we will do the same for you. And if you find yourselves asking, who are these mutants to think they can dictate terms to us? We are the future. An evolutionary inevitability. The Earth’s true inheritors. You closed your eyes last night believing this world would be yours forever. That was your dream. And like mine...it was a lie. Here is a new truth: while you slept, the world changed.”

Here’s where we get a firm statement of mutant-kind’s manifest destiny, although how accurate a description of “evolutionary inevitability” it might be is up for debate, given what we learn about Moira’s Sixth Life in the next issue. No wonder that Magneto is eating it up, but Moira seems more ambivalent.

One important thing to note: as the art demonstrates, ORCHIS is very much in operation when Xavier makes his announcement. Rather than being a response to a more militant and separatist Krakoa, their motivations are much more driven by eugenic fears of demographic replacement, which is way less defensible.

Quiet Council of Krakoa Infographic:

In the wake of Powers of X #6, we now have to ask ourselves whether the (un-elected, possibly temporary) Quiet Council is, if not a Potemkin government (this would be a bit much, given what they get up to in this issue), but perhaps not the only locus of authority on Krakoa.

In addition to continuing the naturalistic themes of Krakoa, I wonder whether the Autumn/Winter/Spring/Summer designations suggest a kind of rotating chair system for a council in which all are supposedly equal...but who is primus inter pares? Xavier is acting as speaker, setting out the agenda and moving the action along, but he’s not the only voice in the room - a sign that he is sharing power to a significant extent.

So let’s talk about the membership of the Quiet Council:

Autumn: here we have the three ideological leaders whose ideas have led to the formation of Krakoa (although Apocalypse’s contributions are less public), and potentially Moira’s exes (although we never learn whether Moira was romantically involved with Magneto in her Eighth Life).

Winter: is “where we parked all of the problem mutants” other than Magneto. Mostly, this seems to be on the basis of both necessity and “better inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.” One question I have is whether Exodus, as someone who used to basically worship Magneto, is a vote that Magneto can count on, since clearly he and Sinister aren’t on the same page, and Mystique is very much on her own.

Spring: here is Emma’s quid-pro-quo, and a recognition that the economic and foreign policy might of the Hellfire Corporation has to be represented within the governing structure of Krakoa. Given the structure (down to the very seating), I have to think that Xavier and Magneto had always planned for the third vote that Emma demanded. It’s also quite notable in later deliberations how limited Sebastian Shaw’s influence is on the Council.

Summer: as we might expect, given who’s extending the invitations, Xavier gives three seats to “my children,” which gives Xavier at least four votes that he can count on - although Ororo, Jean, and Kurt clearly have their own minds and priorities. As the Krakoan national project continues, counting votes will only become more important.

Speaking of which, we can’t forget about Krakoa and Cypher. While not formally one of the twelve, they are nonetheless a powerful influence who have a voice if not a vote on the Council. And ultimately Krakoa’s voice is quite loud, because the whole enterprise cannot happen without its consent.

The Great Captains:

So here we see the division of civilian and military government, with the “great captains..assum[ing] the responsibility of defending the state” during “times of conflict or war.”

The more curious question to me is what counts as a “state-related excursion” - it would seem to cover X-Men missions like the one at Sol’s Forge and at the ORCHIS facility in X-Men #1, but does it mean that Kate Pryde wouldn’t be in charge of her own vessel if Bishop steps on board? Does it cover X-Force clandestine operations, or would plausible deniability be important? Who does X-Force report to?

Cyclops as first among equals makes sense, although it does raise a question of what happens when you have two other captains in the field.

So Bishop makes sense as a head of whatever the name of the agency in charge of resurrection-related investigations is (possibly X-Factor), but I was surprised to see him show up in Marauders #1.

I wonder what Magik’s role as a Captain is supposed to be, especially since it seems she’ll be heading off to space in New Mutants. Down the line, I’m going to guess she’ll be involved in Krakoa’s version of Inferno, but what’s her intended role supposed to be?

Finally, what’s Gorgon’s role as Captain supposed to be.

The First Laws of Our Nation

Before I get into the content of this section, I want to talk about the beautiful panelling here that starts wide, shrinks down to the nine panel grid as the political debate intensifies, and then opens up again once the decision is made.

Similarly, I like the use of the two key symbols: the X of the chairs and the sigil on the ground (secular authority), Krakoa’s face looming over them all like a heart tree (spiritual authority)

Given what we learn in Powers of X #6 about why various council members was chosen, describing three of the four seasons as “family, friends, and allies” is highly ironic.

Sabertooth is removed from watery confinement - which, if Krkaoa can just hold people in water bubbles for an extended period, why isn’t that the punishment used late? - and Kurt sets an appropriately Biblical tone by noting that “our first bit of business is the oldest kind on this planet...judgement.” (Appropriately for Kurt’s themes, the judgement in question also centers on how to punish the first murder in this new land, and ends with exile.) Also, for those of you keeping track of how much Krakoan justice accords with human conceptions of justice, I will point out that Sabertooth comes out of the bubble threatening his judges/jury, which is never a good look for a defendant.

So let’s talk about the trial:

One of the things that jump out to me immediately is that it’s interesting seeing Magneto in the role of an idealist - “this is the establishment of a nation...and I would have it be one of laws.” - whereas Xavier’s acting as the pragmatist, acknowledging that “I cannot say everyone here best represents the ideals of what any society should be based on,” but that they have to do the best with what they’ve got. Ultimately, I think this is a tension at the heart of all national projects.

Meanwhile, we get precisely three speakers in before conflict erupts: Sinister is a camp shit-stirrer who (publicly, anyway) really only partakes in the meeting to poke at Xavier and Exodus. Meanwhile, showing how little bloc voting there will be in the “problem mutant” camp, Exodus goes right for direct threats, prompting Sinister to propose criminalizing “mutant-on-mutant violence” (again, the political resonances here are obvious), not because he believes murder is wrong but because he’s enjoying trolling Exodus.

Showing how much Krakoan technology and the...unique worldviews of the Council members are going to produce new forms of political philosophy, Aopcalypse opposes Sinister’s motion, because he doesn’t think it should be “a crime to kill someone who cannot be killed,” since killing mutants is now a non-lethal way of testing them for social Darwinian worthiness.

This clearly does not track with Storm’s morality, and in a rare moment in HOXPOX where we get to see Jean Grey operating as a forceful political presence, she uses Storm’s interjection to pivot to an appeal to “the highest of ideals” (perhaps aiming her words at Magneto as well as her fellow X-Men) that it should be the “highest crime...killing someone who cannot come back.” (This is more in line with her more recent appearances in X-Men: Red.) Thus, the Second Law of Krakoa is established...without actually taking a vote. It seems that the Council operates on the basis that any proposal not actively objected to becomes law, which I imagine the political scientists out there have some thoughts on.

Before the law passes, Mystique raises the question of self-defense against human aggression (which fits her first X-appearance nicely). Showing how much his earlier views have shifted now that he’s operating in the context of a mutant nation-state, Magneto distinguishes between “murder” and killing “done in defense of a nation,” and while that question is formally tabled, it does suggest an exception for formal armed conflict at least in the founder’s intent.

Supporting my theory that he’s going to be the de-facto Chairman or Speaker, Xavier not only drives the agenda (although he’s not alone in this, Magneto is definitely acting in this capacity), but also makes sure to “call the question,” deciding when proposals become law as long as no one objects.

Another point wrt to the justness of this process: well before he’s found guilty, let alone sentence is passed, Sabertooth threatens murder and cannibalism against his judges...which isn’t a persuasive defense against murder charges (even if he’s just threatening the murder of mutants...which isn’t legal AFAWK, just not as illegal as the murder of humans.)

A nice bit of character work, and another rare rmoment where we see Jean’s power in action, Emma and Jean collaborate to silence Sabertooth’s ranting.

With the Second Law established, and Sabertooth’s trial technically in abeyance, the Council moves on to “any new business.”

As we might expect from a neoliberal robber baron, Sebastian Shaw calls for “property rights, wealth, currency,” to be legislated for next.

In an interesting turn of events, Doug Ramsey interjects that “Krakoa is alive. Not a place, or a biome -- a person.” Krakoan (real) property rights will have to have a decidedly non-capitalist orientation, because as we see further in Marauders #1, in addition to not having rights in the land, you have to ask for Krakoa’s consent in order to build grow a house.

In a development I didn’t see coming, Storm takes the position that that mutants can still own property, but “it has to be...out there...in the world. No one has said we have to run from it.” This is somewhat more capitalist than I might expect from Storm, but it does make sense that someone with her particular entanglements in the wider world would take a less isolationist position. This raises an interesting question: if mutants own property in a sovereign nation, and they decide to plant Habitat flowers on their property, does that make that property now part of Krakoa?

Doug’s position gets supported by Exodus (in a characteristically religious tone), and Xavier once again calls the question, creating the Third Law of Krakoa. For those of us keeping track of the colonial theme, it is interesting that this largely European-led nation state has taken a legal position on land ownership that’s much more associated with indigenous peoples.

Befitting her role as the true power in the Hellfire Trading Company, Emma Frost tables the discussion of economic legislation, due in no small part to it impinging on Krakoan diplomacy and international economic policy.

With a decidely mocking air aimed at her son, Mystique shifts the agenda from the secular to the sacred. After a moment’s thought, Kurt who fires back with the original “manifest destiny” out of Genesis (the first creation), and we get the First Law: “make more mutants.” In addition to continuing the very horny feel of the issue, this law raises a set of interesting questions about Krakoan attitudes with regard to the right to choose, access to family planning services, and sexuality - although as Hickman has pointed out, the implications of an egg-based system for (re)growing people point in completely different directions. Why assume Krakoa will follow human social mores in any area?

With the fundamental laws established, the Quiet Council can now decide how to apply them to Sabertooth:

In an example of how subtly powerful agenda-setting can be, Xavier makes the question of voting guilty or not guilty a question of “making an example...that no one is above mutant law” or “giving you one last chance.” Fitting his somewhat collectivist bent in Powers of X #1, he frames this question not in terms of the civil rights of “Mr. Creed,” but in terms of how the decision “benefits our new society.”

While it doesn’t quite settle the post facto question, Magneto argues that Sabertooth’s killing of the Damage Control guards violatted the “strict instructions” he was given when Magneto dispatched him on the mission, making it not merely a question of the First Law but also of obedience to the chain of command. Apocalypse, who knows something about managing an aggressive workforce, agrees.

Sinister and Exodus, for once, are on the same page, and while Mystique ultimately goes along with the emerging majority, her body posture and dialogue suggests a degree of internal conflict - after all, she was the one leading the mission, so some responsibility falls on her shoulders.

Turning to the X-Men side of the room: as befits his spiritual role, Kurt feels shame for not turning the other cheek, Jean takes a moment but is more assured, and of course Storm has no problem with a bit of divine judgement.

Continuing the trend of divisions among the Hellfire Club, Emma is all about getting rid of Sabertooth, while Sebastian goes along with the emerging consensus because he doesn’t care.

And once again proving that a defendant representing themselves is always a bad idea, before all the votes are in (and we don’t know whether Krakoan juries require a unanimous verdict) or the sentence is given out, Sabertooth threatens familicide of the Quiet Council. Not exactly a strong argument for leniency, since Sabertooth hasn’t exactly been pleading innocence at any point.

Finally, Doug asks Krakoa to bring the hammer down, and Sabertooth is dragged down to hell put into an oubliette. As Xavier explains, “we cannot send you back into the world” (because Sabertooth is a serial killer who can’t restrain himself, and Krakoa just promised the world it would hold mutants accountable for their actions), they won’t jail him because “we tolerate no prisons here” (this seems a technicality), they won’t kill him, because seemingly the “resurection protocols” are non-optional (which is interesting, given what we learn about Destiny in the next issue), and so they “exile him.”

One interesting question: given the resources available to them, why is it necessary to leave him “aware but unable to act on it” rather than have him be unconscious during stasis? My guess is that Xavier wants to motivate Sabertooth to “redeem” himself down the line.

And then finally, we get Xavier’s concluding statement, where I think Hickman’s views on nation-states (“it’s distasteful, I know, this business of running a nation”), the proper attitudes one should have about holding and exercising political power (”I pray we never get used to it...never grow cold from it...never learn to love it”), and even parenthood come through.

Just Look At What We’ve Made:

But in the meantime, the council emerges to what almost everyone has analogized to the Return of the Jedi celebration: not only do we see bonfires and fireworks and a riot of color everywhere, but we see mutants flying around, using their powers, for the first time really feeling that they can live as mutants without fear for their lives.

As the Quiet Council walk down the steps, we see some of the reasons why and the consequences: the Five party as one, but near them we see the formerly dead raising a glass with the living. And echoing Magneto’s earlier statements about how Krakoa will change the way mutants see their own powers, we see Siryn and Dazzler combining their powers for the purposes of culture rather than warfare or high tech.

Xavier’s final message is that the Quiet Council will work like hell to ensure that the next generation of mutants “sleep in soft fields of lush green, staring at the stars and dreaming of a future where they hold those stars in their hands.” Once again, a sign that Krakoa’s manifest destiny lies in space, a common theme of Hickman’s from his FF run. As this happens, we see three of the O5 goofing around (I’m surprised how many people didn’t notice that Bobby had frozen Warren’s drink while he wasn’t looking), and Exodus leading storytime with the children as Sinister watches in the background.

But that’s not what people are really here for - as nice as it is to see Broo and Synch and Skin and Pixie, what people really care about is the Jean/Logan/Scott panel. As the now infamous architectural diagram in X-Men #1 makes very clear, this is not a case of a mere open marriage: the most famous romantic triangle in X-Men history is now a throuple, founded on the principle of beer and tummy rubs.

Almost as exciting for much of the fandom is the next page, where Jean goes to make peace with Emma while Scott hangs out with Alex. One of the big questions going on is what Emma’s role is in the polycule, since she doesn’t seem to be living at the Summer House. My guess is that Emma is “part of it” (to quote David S. Pumpkins), but may only be with Scott, and definitely would refuse point-blank to share communal living quarters with Logan. We will have to wait for more evidence to be sure.

And so we end with Xavier and Magneto looking out over the celebration, taking a moment to feel (rightly?) proud of “what we have made.” And yet, all is not well, because Apocalypse, the third ideological force who (through Moira) helped to create Krakoa, broods on what he lost when Krakoa was born.

Krakoa Infographic:

With Krakoa now extant as a nation-state, we get one more infographic...that shows us that there is a Krakoa Atlantic to go along with Krakoa Pacific. This points to an important truth about this new polity - it would be a mistake to see Krakoa as an island nation like Genosha or Utopia, because the nation of Krakoa exists wherever the physical entity of Krakoa exists. It’s in the Pacific and the Atlantic, it’s on the moon, it’s on Mars, it’s everywhere a Krakoan flower has been planted. Which makes it a post-geographic power.

So what’s on Krakoa Atlantic?

The Pointe is one of Xavier’s Cerebro back-up locations, so that an attack on Krakoa Pacific won’t destroy the database.

Danger Island is the X-Men’s new and expanded training facility.

Transit allows for instant transportation between Pacific and Atlantic to allow the X-Men to respond to a threat to either island or cradle, and possibly a final keep to fall back to if everything else is lost.

And finally we get one last map of Krakoa (All), and there’s a lot we don’t know about these locations:

The House of X and the House of M are Xavier and Magneto’s residences, and the location of one of the Cerebro “cradles.”

The Arbor Magna is the big tree where the Resurrection system is located in/on.

The Arena we don’t know anything about, but from the name it suggests that it’s a combat-oriented location, either for training or for entertainment purposes.

The Akademos Habitat is almost certainly Krakoa’s educational facility that Jean mentions back in House of X #1, but the fact that it’s a Habitat is interesting, because a Krakoan Habitat is a ”self-sutained environment” of its own that is “part of the interconnected consciousness of Krakoa,” and I had thought that having a Habitat on Krakoa itself, as opposed to one out on the moon or Mars would be redundant. My guess is that this is meant to provide an additional layer of safety to the next generation of mutants.

We saw Transit back in House of X #1, this Transit location is the Grand Central Station for Greater Krakoa, linking all gateway locations together. Yet another sign that, for Krakoa, their nation has a different conception of distance.

The Oracle is, I would guess, probably one of the Krakoan Systems, most likely either Sage’s or Beast’s part of the system.

I don’t know what the Grove is supposed to be, but given its proximity to the Akademos Habitat, I think it’s supposed to be a living space, possibly just for the young and possibly not.

The Cradle, it turns out, is just a cradle.

The Resevoir could be that lagoon we saw back in House of X #1, which would make sense if the Wild Hunt is a nature preserve, because animals love to congregate at watering holes.

The Carousel’s name suggests it’s an entertainment facility.

We know what Bar Sinister is from its last appearance; it turns out that Sinister recreated his little island Edwardian eugenics nightclub on Krakoa. Interesting that it’s locsated so close to Transit; maybe Sinister wants to be able to make a quick getaway.

Speaking of the fruits of faustian bargains, it turns out that the quid-pro-quo for becoming the economic engine of a nation is that the Hellfire Trading Company gets a whole Hellfire Bay to itself as its headquarters.

Red Keep is almost certainly Kate Pryde’s new pad, which is conveniently ocean-ajacent for our newest mutant pirate privateer queen.

Blackstone is Sebastian Shaw’s Gilded Age “gentleman’s” club.

The White Palace is naturally Emma’s boudoir, complete with buzzsaws and spikes.

The unnamed location 18 is clearly Moira’s No-Space.

#xmen #xmen meta #house of x #spoilers #hoxpox

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animebw · 6 years

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Wandering Son: Series Reflection

The stories we tell are more important than popular opinion often gives them credit for. They can shape our values, teach us new concepts, broaden our worldviews, and give us lenses through which to process out own experiences. Personally, I know for a fact that my high school life would’ve been a lot easier if I had a show like Kimi ni Todoke through which I could see my own struggles with social communication reflected on screen. That’s why diversity both in front of and behind the camera is so important: plenty of kids from historically oppressed backgrounds could use a couple more stories that speak to their struggles, letting them know that they’re not alone in this confusing, infuriating world. And it’s also why it’s so important that those stories be good: the stronger the story they tell is, the more positive impact it will have on those watching. And that’s why, especially in a medium that isn’t always kind to trans people and their struggles, I’m really happy that a show like Wandering Son exists.

Of course, you don’t need to be trans yourself to get swept up in Hourou Musuko’s tale of adolescent growth, love, and self-discovery. The emotions it communicates resonate on such a timeless level, speaking of failed relationships, complicated friendships, and a growing sense of the person you never realized you were all along. It’s a story about the messy, confusing period in your life when you’re just starting to figure out who you really are, and it communicates those emotions with a subtlety and nuance that grounds them firmly in reality like few shows manage to achieve. The gorgeous watercolor aesthetic and top-notch visual storytelling really drive home what an ephemeral, impactful time this moment of life can be, almost like a dream looking back but bruising and defining in the moment. This show feels like adolescence, in all its highs and lows alike.

But make no mistake, before anything else, Wandering Son is the story of what it means to be transgender, to grow up knowing that the face you present isn’t really yours, and trying to come to terms with how that affects you and the world around you. And it’s on that level that this show isn’t just excellent, but important. It explores the lives of kids who are questioning their own genders as they grow into the people they always knew they were, touching on themes of gender expression, dysphoria, social stigmas, flawed support systems, connection, isolation, despair, and above all, hope. It reaches out to those watching who feel or have felt like Nitori or Takatsuki, showing them that they are not alone in their confusion. It’s a deeply personal, deeply affecting coming-of-age tale for those who don’t always have those kinds of stories told about them, steeped in love and understanding as much as grit and bitterness, a full portrait of life in all its bane and beauty.

If I had a criticism, it’s that for all its beauty at grasping the nuances of life, the side characters sometimes feel like they stepped in from a less naturalistic anime, threatening to break the impactful immersion. But such criticism doesn’t amount for much with a tale this important. These stories matter, perhaps now more than they ever have. And Wandering Son stands as a testament to why. For all that, I award it a score of:

8/10

What a wonderful little show. Thanks for joining me on this journey! I’ll be getting back to Mushishi now that I’m finished, so I hope you stick around for that!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #wandering son #hourou musuko

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juliette-binoches · 6 years

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My thoughts on Non Fiction and High Life from NYFF56

I apologize for this being late, I've had a busy several days. Anyway I'm excited to give my thoughts on both Non Fiction (Doubles Vies) and High Life. Also there may be some spoilers throughout but I would still highly recommend seeing both films. I’ll also try to keep the spoilers towards the end my thoughts for each.

Seeing Non Fiction was extremely exciting as I had previously seen Clouds of Sils Maria at the 2014 NYFF which had first introduced me to Olivier's work, making him one of my favorite directors working today. Set in the book publishing world, Non Fiction is mostly a set of conversations with characters discussing the the state of and the way in which we consume literature alongside their personal lives and dilemmas. Olivier's scripts have always had a way of tackling things in the real world and making reference to real things, such as Google and Facebook, without seeming like an out of touch old man, and Non Fiction is no different, talking about e-readers and smartphones and whatnot without it sounding forced. The characters really feel like they live and breath the world he has written. But even more so then what the characters say is how expertly Olivier has written and directed their actions. Watching someone unplug 5 devices from various chargers before putting them all in their bag is a fantastic visual gag all by itself, but coupled with the commentary of the film and a callback later on when a different character laments not being able to get in contact with that person makes it pure gold and those kind of tricks get pulled several times in the film.

While Juliette Binoche may not be the star of the film she is part of the main ensemble, all of whom are fantastic and have their various moments where they shine. Along with the ensemble nature of the film an enjoyable aspect of that is seeing how all the different characters interact with each other one on one. No one person really has a one dimensional relationship with another. In one scene two couples could be having a conversation, with say the wife of someone could be friendly with her husbands friend, and in the next it could be revealed they have been having a long lasting affair. Watching those layers be peeled back or a relationship being thrown in your face for dramatic effect is exciting and at times hilarious. Juliette Binoche is a shining part of the film, being able to pull off comedy almost pitch perfectly most of the time weather intentional or not. Watching her tell someone shes going to make their life a living hell if they do her wrong was particularly hilarious to watch. And even though she is fantastic her performance is relatively understated and very naturalistic, no overacting or dramatized inflections or movements from her à la Ma Loute.

I also have to give a shout out to two jokes in the film. The first being probably the funniest joke involving The White Ribbon (yes the film by Haneke) you'll ever hear (sounds impossible, right?) and the other being an absolutely hilarious and out of left field meta joke towards the end of the film, I promise you I will make a gif of it the moment the film gets released. I really liked Non Fiction, I’d say it’s Assayas at his funniest which is a fantastic thing.

High Life on the other hand... was something completely different. Now mind you I’ve only seen Let The Sunshine In and Bastards as far as Claire Denis films are concerned so I had no idea what to expect going in. Considering that Let The Sunshine In is apparently not what she usually does and Bastards I barely remember. Now with that being said I’m glad I went in with few expectations because Claire Denis really did that with this film. I saw and felt things I probably shouldn't have seen and don’t necessarily like feeling, High Life is an insane movie.

Robert Pattinson is a convict on a spaceship heading towards a black hole for extremely vague reasons that involve saving humanity on Earth. The catch is that he’s not alone, the ship is full of convicts, all of whom volunteered for this same mission because they were all on death row for one reason or another. I don’t know about you but a ship full of death row inmates and nothing to really reign them in other then a life support system on the ship they have to check in with every 24 hours sounds like a recipe for disaster. Apparently Claire Denis thinks so too because the things that go on in said ship are awful and bizarre that range from people being forcefully impregnated to a masturbation chamber call the “fuckbox” to all the awful things people would probably do to each other if there weren’t any consequences. If you are easily sickened by things like sexual assault or gratuitous violence at times then this film is not for you, sorry.

Juliette Binoche is a doctor in this film and it could be argued that she is one of the absolute most evil people I’ve seen a film, and trust me I don’t say that lightly. Her character is primarily concerned with reproduction which appears to be a problem in space because of radiation or something, honestly I don’t remember because I was mostly concerned with the fact that you see her do terrible terrible things to make babies happen in space. She has a bit of an obsession with Robert Pattinson’s... shall we say DNA, because she claims that it’s strong and would survive in space. Trust me, that’s quite an important plot tale as things go forward.

Now with all that being said what did I think of High Life? It’s fucking amazing honestly. It’s far from being for everyone but that’s part of it’s beauty. First of all the acting across the board is great. Robert Pattinson is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors working now. He Between this and Good Time he’s really doing his damn thing. Andre 3000 is also in the film (he also introduced the film with Claire and Robert) and is one of the few characters you have sympathy for and actually like but is that a surprise, how could you NOT like Andre 3000? The score, which I have heard no one mention, is absolutely perfect, like There Will Be Blood levels of perfect imo. Yorick Le Saux ‘s cinematography is absolutely beautiful, the warm hues he captures of the spaceship are basically the opposite of what most space set films look like, cold and clinical. He’s constant closeups with shallow focus are great as well, easily one of the most gorgeous film’s I’ve seen in quite some time. Sidenote but I believe he was also the cinematographer for Non Fiction so there ya go. The film as a whole is a great package, even if it can seem a bit shakey. I personally loved it but there are a few issues I had which I’ll detail in the next paragraph, along with some spoilers.

Okay so first off I actually don’t know what to think of Juliette’s acting in this. Her delivery of some lines is... odd? Like they almost sound a little stilted and bad. Her behavior is strange to say the least but I don’t know if that’s Claire’s script or Juliette’s acting. Of course she has a couple shining moments but even those sit weirdly with me. In one scene she euthanizes someone on the ship after they suffer a stroke and she shows shades that make you sympathetic for her but her acting is still weird. The whole scene is disturbing, frankly, and while I’m sure that was intentional it’s just odd. Also watching Juliette ride a sex machine for around 3 minutes straight with those previously mentioned shallow focus closeups is odd to say the least. Beyond Juliette’s acting another thing that bothered me was the casting of a particular character. One of the prisoners on the ship is basically a sexual predator, you get very creepy vibes from him early on and later he sort of masturbates in a hallway while watching Juliette stand in front of a fan, ya know standard pervy shit. The problem with this is that he looks a bit like Bo Burnham, at least I thought he did. He later tries to rape a female inmate while they’re sleeping and bad things proceed to happen to all involved. Everytime he was on screen I just thought about Bo Burnham and in my head just called him “pervert/rapist Bo Burnham” and it really took me out of the film. And while I loved Andre 3000′s character he seemed out of place to say the least. He is essentially a cool and nice guy and you don’t really get an explanation of how he ended up in prison or this ship. It’s disappointing because it’s shallow characterization and it doesn’t really do a great job of hiding it. He does say something about doing it for his wife but it’s kinda half-assed sounding honestly. Also not a huge spoiler and it is positive but Robert has several scenes where he acts alongside a baby and honest to god it’s some of my favorite acting I’ve ever seen. It’s really beautiful and lets us see shades of his character we probably wouldn’t see otherwise, in this film or any other with characters like this.

Overall High Life is incredible, It demands a second viewing although I’m honestly not prepared for it, it shook me.

One last thing - where do this movies sit as far as Juliette Binoche is concerned? Well Non Fiction is another great role for her, she shows very human and funny shades in it that I don’t feel like we get to see all the time, she should be extremely proud of it. I hope she keeps working with Olivier for a long time, their chemistry is perfect. High Life is a bit of an anomaly as at times it seems almost poorly acted on her part but perhaps it’s because her character is so bizarre. It also has a couple absolutely emotional moments from her and it’s a testament to her as an actor because her character is so evil. I need to see her again in it, it both disgusted and captivated me in equal measure.

#I'm sorry this took me forever #juliuette binoche #Non fiction #high life #olivier assayas #Claire Denis #NYFF #personal

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cchie · 7 years

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Poppy Heathcliff’s Big Ol’ Honkin’ Questionnaire

A. Psychology

What of the Meyers-Briggs personality types they most fit into? INFP, ENFT, et cetera… Poppy is most definitely an INFP “The Mediator” - gentle, shy, passionate, pure, emotional.

What alignment are they? Chaotic neutral, lawful evil, et cetera… Neutral good. She only wants to do what is best.

Do they have any emotional or psychological conditions? Are they aware of it? Do they try to treat it? When she was younger, she used to have agoraphobia and anxiety. She still experiences them to this day but to a severely lesser degree. Taking medication for it was something she had considered but once she found her passion for horticulture, she’s found ways to deal with it.

Are they a pessimist or an optimist? Optimist! She always wants to find the brighter and sunnier things in life. The darker parts scare her and make her sad, but she knows it’s important to accept those as well.

Are they good at handling change in their life? Sort of. Change can be pretty hard for Poppy since she just likes being comfortable. However, she can be resilient. So while it might be hard for her mentally and emotionally, she’ll get used to it after the initial discomfort.

Does your OC tend to assume their interpretation of events and reality is correct, or do they question it? I.e., “I’m sure that’s what you said” versus “It’s possible I misheard you.” Because of her anxiety and people-pleaser ways, she generally questions it. If somebody confronts her and says she said something different, she’ll shrink in size and say something along the lines of “O-oh, I’m so sorry. I thought I-I said the r-right thing!”

Is your OC confident in their reactions to life in general, or do they get embarrassed or easily shamed for it? I.e., if something startles them, do they insist it WAS scary? When they cry, do they feel like they overreacted? Oh, god, Poppy is very easily embarrassed and shamed. She hates it. If someone were to startle her, she’d probably squeal and cry, and then feel completely humiliated. Whenever she cries, which is indeed a lot, she does feel like she’s overreacting but only because kids picked on her when she was younger. Her parents have taught her that it’s okay to cry.

Is your OC a martyr? She absolutely would be.

Does your OC make a lot of excuses? For themselves? Others? Nope! Poppy prefers being honest with people. She doesn’t like lying because she knows it’s wrong and disrespectful. She used to make excuses for herself when she was younger but now she’s grown and learning to love herself. If she’s late to something, which she rarely ever is, she’ll be honest and let them know ASAP.

Does your OC compromise easily? Too easily? Yes. Poppy is scared of not pleasing everybody and wants everyone to be happy, even if that means compromising something. Generally, if it’s something she feels incredibly strongly about, she won’t back down. After fighting for it, she would be highly reluctant to compromise at all.

Does your OC put others’ needs before their own? Yes, that’s one of the downsides of Poppy. She’ll put others’ needs before hers at all times and it destroys her a bit inside. It’s tiring and exhausting but she’d rather everyone around her be happy than solely herself be happy.

Does your OC have any addictions? If so and problematic, have they admitted it to themselves? While Poppy loves gardening, I wouldn’t call it an addiction.

Does your OC have any phobias? If so, where did they come from? Many things scare Poppy and freak her out but I wouldn’t think to go as far as diagnosing her with multiple phobias. She had agoraphobia and has a mild case nowadays but she’s getting better with it. Really, her anxiety makes her afraid to fail, displease people, and lose loved ones.

Is your character empathetic? Poppy is actually my most empathetic OC. She feels so deeply and strongly and doesn’t necessarily know how to handle any of it, though she’s trying really hard. This is why she tries so hard to make everyone around her happy, because she can feel what they are feeling.

Is your character observant? Yes! In a quiet way. She doesn’t actively seek out to observe everything. Rather, she does it in a way that she’s trying to learn and the anxiety also makes her aware of her surroundings.

Does your OC have to go through their own trials to learn a lesson, or do they listen and learn from observation and lecture? I.e., does your OC listen when someone tries to tell them the importance of budgeting, or do they have to go experience what happens if you don’t budget first? Listening to others and learning from that is primarily how Poppy functions. She values the words of others and would rather not go through trials herself in fear of failing or doing something wrong.

What’s one of your OC’s proudest moments of themselves? After squeezing through the hectic halls of Hope’s Horizon, the small pigtailed blonde stepped out of her school’s back doors and into the sun soaked courtyard. The sun beat down on her freckled face and she had to squint her leaf green eyes to see for a few seconds. She took a deep, relaxing breath, and decided to head for the school’s garden. This was shared between her (the Ultimate Horticulturist), the Ultimate Florist, the Ultimate Pedologist, and the Ultimate Entomologist. While she didn’t like crowds, she had become friendly with these fellow students since they all shared similar interests and had to share the same garden area. Although, Poppy was allowed her own Greenhouse in which she would also graciously share it with the first three. She was a bit drained socially after having to bump into classmates in the hallways and apologize profusely. It was always a challenge for her, especially because she was so small in stature. As she hummed to herself and walked towards the Garden, she heard two angry voices and one...anxious one. Her heart stopped in panic as she heard and she quietly snuck behind some nearby trees. She peered from behind the tree trunk and saw two rather tall boys, one holding what appeared to be a violin. In front of them was a rather upset-looking, but gorgeous, brunette. She was wringing her wrists and stammering. “Ha! Ultimate Violinist, what a lame Talent! What are you without your violin, huh? Just a stuck up rich girl, huh?” the first boy snickered, holding the violin up high. “Ah, please, give th-that back,” the brunette’s voice shook. The second boy mimicked her stutter and laughed. “Hey Scott, what if we smashed it?” The first boy gave a wicked grin. “Yeah, Kaden, I think that sounds like fun!” Before Poppy was even aware of what she was doing, she sprinted towards them and planted herself in front of the brunette. She could feel the fear and anxiety radiating off of the Ultimate Violinist. “S-stop it! G-give it back to h-her!” her voice squeaked. The two boys looked at her and laughed. “And who the hell are you?” “P-p-p-” she cleared her throat and tried again. “Poppy Heathcliff!” she said confidently. “I-I’m the Ultimate Horticulturist. And you n-need to, um, stop being so c-cruel!” The two bullies just laughed. “Huh. And whatcha gonna do, shrimp? Kick me in the knees?” the first boy sneered. “A-actually, I h-happen to h-have some poison ivy leaves on m-my person at the moment, and it would be a sh-shame if they happened to touch you two,” she said, in a panicked but fierce tone. “Y-you know what poison ivy, um, d-does, right? It gives you a rash and a fever and-” she reached into her pocket and grabbed a ziploc bag with leaves inside of it. The two boys narrowed their eyes in suspicion and as she pulled out the bag, they straightened up and a very brief flash of fear appeared in their eyes. “A-and I know that V-Violet Adams would be sad to hear about t-two bullies, and Redd Blaze certainly doesn’t l-like bullies, and-” she stammered hastily. The two boys looked at each other and scowled. “Fine, this isn’t fun anymore anyways. Let’s go, dude!” They started walking away and before Poppy could shout that they still had the violin, the first boy tossed the violin behind him without even looking. The brunette tried to grab it but with not much dexterity and much more clumsiness, it bounced out of her hands and headed towards the pavement. Seeing this, Poppy instinctively dove to catch it and did so successfully, while also scraping her knees in the process. “Oomph, ow!” she winced, softly whispering. The tall brunette kneeled down and avoided eye contact with her scraped knee. “Oh, ah, my goodness, I am so sorry!” Poppy smiled and looked into the eyes of the girl for the first time. They were a beautiful light brown, so light they were almost golden, and it was like looking into two small suns. Her heart skipped a beat. This woman was gorgeous in the classic and elegant sense. “Ummm, uh, I-I’m Poppy. It’s n-nice to meet you!” she exclaimed, giving a big smile. “I’m Aria. Aria Arpeggio. Lovely to meet you,” she said, giving a small smile. Poppy and Aria shook hands and she gently handed her the violin back. “Here, this m-must be very, um, important to you. It’s a lovely violin. It’s made out of the best wood for s-string instruments, too. You r-really know your stuff,” the small blonde said happily, all the while taking a small first aid kit out of her backpack and caring to her wound. “Haha, well, I would surely hope so. Thank you, ah, for saving me from those two...those awful boys,” she shut her eyes and shook her head, then looked in the direction of the bag Poppy had. “Erm, are those actually poison ivy leaves?” Poppy giggled, it was like a wind chime. “No, not at all. Those are just some bay leaves I’ve gathered for a friend. Not dangerous at all. I d-don’t even know if I w-would have, um, had the courage to h-hurt them with it, anyways.” She looked down and gave a small sad smile. “Well, I think that’s rather, ah, noble of you, Poppy Heathcliff. You did more than I could, certainly.” Poppy’s heart swelled and small tears welled her eyes. “Let’s be friends, okay?” Aria blinked with surprised and stammered. “A-ah, sure, P-Poppy. That sounds nice.” Poppy smiled. I can’t believe I stood up for somebody, she thought, and I can’t believe I just made a friend.

Do they get jealous easily? Do they feel bad if they do? I mean, she gets envious but more in a unselfish way. She’s envious of how others can be the life of the party and be so outgoing but it’s more of an admiration type of jealousy rather than an ugly jealousy.

What instantly irritates them or puts them in a bad mood? Bullies, her anxiety kicking in.

Are they harsh on themselves? Yes. She wants to be good at what she does and she wants to make people happy. She pushes herself a lot and doesn’t take care of herself as much as she should when it comes to pleasing others and making other people happy.

Do they make excuses often? See previous question about excuses.

Is your OC intended to be found generally attractive? Unattractive? Average? Is there a reason why? Poppy can be very pretty when she decides to dress up. She’s got dandelion yellow hair she usually puts into a ponytail or pigtails. Her eyes are a beautiful leaf green, and she has freckles. Her right cheek has a scar from a rose bush years ago and her hands are surprisingly rough and scarred from gardening. While she uses lotion, it doesn’t always work. “Cute” and “adorable” are better words to describe Poppy.

Does your OC place much importance on their appearance? Do they feel confident in it? Poppy is not a very confident person but she tries. She likes wearing cute, comfortable, and practical things. She’s concerned with appearance in terms of just making sure she doesn’t look ridiculous. Her taste is more floral prints, frills, lace, and simple.

What are some of your OC’s biggest personal obstacles? This could be emotional, physical, social… Are they aware of it? Are they trying to overcome it? Some of her biggest obstacles are overcoming her anxietys, her fears, her struggle with her gender identity versus her biological sex (intersex), and her selflessness. She’s aware of all of this and trying her hardest to work on it.

B. Social

Do they believe you have to give respect to get it, or get respect to give it? She’s somewhere in between the two. Basically, she believes in showing respect regardless of being shown it first. However, if there is a continual disrespect, she no longer believes respect should be shown to that individual.

Do they get frustrated when lines at places like pharmacies, check-outs, delis, banks, et cetera, are moving slowly? Not at all. She’s rather slow moving herself and she daydreams a lot. So while she may be waiting a while, she’s very patient and understanding.

Under what situations would they get angry at servers, staff, customer service, et cetera? Virtually none. As I stated above, she’s incredibly patient and understanding and would not get upset. The only thing I can imagine her getting upset over is blatant discrimination.

Do they tip well? How easily can they be moved to not leave a tip? Over 25% is how Poppy tips, even if the service isn’t great. She is empathetic to people working in the food service and knows they rely on tips to survive.

Do they hold doors open for people? Yes, if she notices people are walking in the same direction. She always wants to be polite and show manners.

Would your OC let someone ahead of them in line if your OC had a big cart and the person behind them had very few items? Yes! She would always offer them to go in front of her.

How do they respond to babies crying in public? Being empathetic, she would wince a little at first and worry about the child and eventually walk over and ask to hold the baby. She’s really great with children and can almost always calm them down and soothe them.

Is your OC considered funny? Do they believe they’re funny? Not funny in a conventional way. She’s funny in the way she’s innocent and cries a lot and is just super adorable. She likes to believe she can be funny sometimes but overall she doesn’t think she is. Humor is not her strong suit.

What kind of humor does your OC like the most? Slapstick, ironic, funny sounds, scare pranks, xD sO rAnDoM… Plant humor. Any plant puns or anything similar makes her smile and laugh and it makes her days brighter.

Does your OC find any “bad” or “mean” humor funny? Do they wish they didn’t? She actually abhorrently hates that kind of humor. Having her empathy she feels what the victim feels and also suffers severe secondhand shame and embarrassment. Why is hurting or scaring people funny?

Your OC is running late to meeting someone: Do they let the other person know? Do they lie about why they’re late? When she rarely ever runs late, she’ll let the person know as soon as possible and is always honest.

Your OC orders something to eat and gets their order done in a pretty wrong way, something they can’t just pick off or whatnot to correct, or something major is missing. What do they do? Honestly, she would struggle with letting them know but would do so after 15 minutes of internal struggle. Then, she would let them know in the most polite way possible and apologize profusely and reassure that it’s not a big deal.

Do they have a large or small group of friends? Small, with the potential to become large. She’s just usually never the instigator with friendships due to her wilting under social anxiety.

Do they have people they are genuinely honest with about themselves? Herself, her parents, Aria, Sam, and Violet. And occasionally Piper. Hawkbit and possibly Effy once they ever meet.

Does your OC enjoy social events, such as parties, clubs, et cetera..? No. She likes the idea of them but she can’t deal with the crowds, the loud music, etc. If she does end up going, she either stays in the corner or runs outside, or stays incredibly close to whoever she goes with.

Does your OC like to be the center of attention or more in the mix? More in the mix, for sure. Being the center of attention is uncomfortable for her. While she likes attention and craves it because she’s deathly afraid of ending up alone, the limelight freaks her out.

C. Morality

Does your OC have a moral code? If not, how do they base their actions? If so, where does it come from, and how seriously do they take it? Poppy just wants to do what is best for everyone, and she wants to do that if it’s moral. If it isn’t mean, dishonest, hurtful, offensive, etc. she’s okay with it. If it violates anything of the sort she wants nothing to do with it. Even in the end, if she’s put in a situation like she was in Tabletonpa, she wouldn’t kill. She would always choose Mercy.

Would your OC feel bad if they acted against their morals? If not, would they find a way to excuse themselves for it? Yes, and no. Poppy is not the type to act against her morals unless it’s critical to do so (like lying about the poison ivy leaves). She would feel immense shame for it but believe it was the only option that left both parties unharmed.

Is it important for them to be with people (socially, intimately, whatever) whose major ideological tenets align with their own? Yes. She has tried to be friends with people who have different ideas than herself and it was very hard for her. Like-minded people make it easier and more comfortable for her. If they have drastically different personalities, but similar ideological tenets, the friendship can still exist.

Do they consider themselves superior or more important than anyone else? Lesser? If anything, Poppy believes herself to be inferior to everyone else. She has self esteem issues but tries not to dwell on it too much.

Do your OC’s morals and rules of common decency go out the window when it comes to those they don’t like, or when it’s inconvenient? Aka, are their morals situational? Nope! Even when she was in the killing game she didn’t act against those morals. Even if it was inconvenient. The only time she’s okay with lying is if it is to save somebody.

What do they do when they see someone asking for money or food? If they ignore them, why? If they help, how so? Poppy can never ignore the hungry or homeless. She actively participates in soup kitchens and even brings bags of vegetables and fruits to the homeless. She visits them and always brings those bags and some money for them.

Do they believe people change over time? If so, is it a natural process or does it take effort? She does believe in change, very firmly so. It can be either natural or very hard, and she holds these beliefs very close to her heart.

Is your OC more practical or ideal morally? I.e., do they hold people to high expectations of behavior even if it’s not realistic for the situation, or do they have a more realistic approach and adapt their morality to be more practical? Definitely holding everyone else to the same high expectations. In the events of the killing game, she was always dismayed and disappointed in those who murdered fellow classmates and friends.

D. Religion and Life and Death

How religious is your OC? What do they practice, if anything? If they don’t associate with any religion, what do they think of religion in general? Poppy is actually polytheistic! She believes in multiple gods and she’ll pray but she doesn’t believe it necessary to do everyday or go to church or anything like that. She believes that religion can be important to science and vice versa and respects beliefs.

Do they believe in an afterlife? Yes. She believes in an afterlife because it just sounds too lovely to be fake.

How comfortable are they with the idea of death? Poppy is aware of death, obviously, and accepts that it is a part of nature. Unnatural causes unnerve her and upset her. Death upsets her even though she knows it is a part of life and is frustrated that she can accept that and yet still feel so miserable when somebody or something dies.

Would they like to be immortal? Why, why not? If they are immortal, would they rather not be? No, she would hate it. She would have to watch all of her loved ones grow old and die without her.

Do they believe in ghosts? If not, why? If so, do they think they’re magical/tie into their religion, or are they scientifically plausible? Poppy is very uncertain about her belief in ghosts. She believes that it’s definitely possible and is scared of them, while also sad for them.

E. Education and Intelligence

Would you say that your OC is intelligent? In what ways? Would your OC agree? Poppy is smart and above average, but not by a lot. She likes to be a sponge with knowledge but has trouble retaining all of it.

Which of the nine types of intelligence is your OC strongest in? Weakest? (Linguistic, existential, naturalist, et cetera) Unsurprisingly, Poppy is strongest in naturalist and intpersonal. Her weakest is probably intrapersonal or logical-mathematical.

How many languages do they speak? Two! English and Spanish.

Did they enjoy school if they went to it? She did! She enjoyed learning the subjects and field trips but didn’t necessarily love the social aspects. They made her anxious.

What’s their highest education level? Do they want to continue their education? As of Tabletonpa, high school. As of currently, she’s double majored in Horticulture and Therapy..

Do they enjoy learning? Do they actively seek out sources of self-education? Poppy loves learning! She loves learning knew things and actively seeks out more sources.

Are they a good note-taker? Are they a good test-taker? Do exams make them nervous? Poppy is a great note taker, but taking tests make her very nervous. For a while, her teachers were aware of her severe anxiety and had her take the tests after school instead of in class to ease the anxiety and show her true academic potential.

What’s one of your OC’s biggest regrets? In tabletonpa, her biggest regret was not telling Sam or Aria that she was intersex. Currently, her biggest regret is letting people walk all over her when she was younger.

F. Domestic Habits, Work, and Hobbies

What sort of home do they live in now, if at all? How did they end up there? Poppy lives in a small house with her parents in the country area. It’s a small white house, complete with a picket fence and a beautiful garden (a past birthday present for Poppy).

What’s their ideal home look like? Where is it? Ideally, she’d like a slightly bigger house than the one she has with her parents. It would have plants and flowers all over, complete with the love(s) of her life.

Could they ever live in a “tiny home”? Yes! She doesn’t mind tiny homes at all and finds them charming.

How clean are they overall with home upkeep? Pretty clean. Even though she gets dirty outside from gardening, she makes sure the inside of the house is clean. Even what she considers messy is still pretty clean for the average teen.

How handy are they? Can they fix appliances, cars, cabinets, et cetera? Poppy isn’t super handy with appliances but is super handy with medical remedies and first aid. Usually she’ll call Piper to come and help her, or have Piper FaceTime her and walk her through the process.

How much do they work? What do they do? Do they enjoy it? She works as a local horticulturist and sometimes lends fruits and vegetables to local farmers. Poppy loves working with plants. They are the light of her life.

What’s their “dream career” or job situation? She’s already pretty much got it. Just gardening and working with plants. She’s interested in plant therapy and wants to get into that.

How often are they home? Pretty often, though she enjoys traveling to see the sights and exotic plants.

Are they homebodies and enjoy being home? Yes! She loves her garden and her parents and being comfortable.

Do they engage in any of the arts? How good do you intend them to be? Would they agree they are? Poppy loves drawing and the arts. She’s not very good at it though as we’ve discovered through her art collaboration with Piper. Although, she’d like to believe she’s really good at it.

What are some of their favorite things to do for recreation? How did they get into it? What part of it do they like the most? She loves to garden, listen to soft pop and soft indie and classical, and be with nature.

Would they enjoy a theme park? On one hand she would love all the cute themes and food, but on the other hand, she would be terrified of roller coasters and the crowds.

G. Family and Growing Up

Is your OC close to their family? Yes, she’s very close with her parents. She is an only child. Her parents were kind and nurturing and overall excellent. Poppy loves them so much and admires them more than anything.

Who makes up your OC’s family, at least the more important members to them? Just her parents!

Does your OC find their family supportive? If not, what would be an example why not? Yes! They have been super supportive since day one. They’ve actually helped her so much in terms of her acceptance towards being intersex and her dealing with it.

What kind of childhood did your OC have? At home, her life was just fine. Her parents were loving and accepting, she didn’t misbehave, and she excelled in school. School was a little rough due to her agoraphobia and anxiety, but she’s overcome most of that.

Did they go through any typical phases growing up? Not really. She did have that little girl horse phase though, the one where horses are the best thing ever.

Do they have any favorite childhood memories? Her favorite childhood memory is her parents taking her to a butterfly garden park.

Do they have any childhood memories they’d rather forget or be less affected by? Poppy would love to forget the types of bullying she went through but she can’t.

H. Romance and Intimacy

What is your OC’s orientation, romantic and/or sexual? Has it ever been a source of stress for them? Have they always been pretty sure of their orientation? Oooo boy. Poppy is polyamorous, panromantic, and demisexual. It’s been a great source of stress to her because for a while, she thought being poly was bad. This lead to her feeling even more different and left out in society, until she came to her parents about it. They reassured her and calmed her down and let her know it was completely normal.

Is your OC a thoughtful partner, in whatever aspect of that you want to cover? Yes! Poppy absolutely is thoughtful with her partner(s). She always gets them gifts from the heart and pays attention to what they love and what they don’t like.

Does your OC believe there’s only one ideal partner (or multiple ideal if not monogamous) for everyone, or that there are many people who could be right? Nope! She believes that it’s different for everybody. She’s polyamorous, but doesn’t mind being monogamous if it makes her partner uncomfortable with dating others. Poppy loses eyes for everyone else when she’s in love with somebody monogamous.

Does your OC believe in love in first sight? Absolutely. She’s a sucker for love.

Does your OC believe in marriage (or their culture’s equivalent)? Yes! She loves weddings and wants to get married.

Has your OC ever cheated on anyone or been cheated on? God, no. Poppy could never. And she would never want to.

What do they look for in partners? (Emotionally, mentally, physically..) She looks for somebody who strives for her to be a better version of herself. She looks for a loving, gentle person. Someone who understands her and is accepting.

What’s your OC’s idea of a perfect date? A small quiet picnic somewhere, with some nature involved. And soft, playful touches and games.

What are some things that your OC finds to be an instant turn-off in potential partners? Ignorance, impatience, meanness.

I. Food

What are their favorite kinds of flavors– Sweet, salty, sour, spicy, creamy, et cetera? Sweet and healthy are her two favorite. Yes, healthy is a flavor. She loves veggies and fruits, cheeses, and breads, generally snack food.

Do they have any eating requirements or preferences? Allergies, vegetarian, organic-only, religious restrictions… Poppy tries to stay vegetarian but understands that meat is nutritious and important for diets. So every once in a while she’ll have fish, chicken, turkey, etc.

Are they vegan/vegetarian (if their overall culture/species generally aren’t)? If so, why? Do they think animal products are wrong in all circumstances? As I said above, she’s okay with eating meat because of nutrition but she likes staying as close to vegetarian as she can. She thinks the way they kill animals for food is extremely cruel and wishes they would do it in more humane ways.

How often do they cook? Do they order out a lot? Poppy is actually pretty good with cooking due to her knowledge of herbs, veggies, and spices. She doesn’t order out a lot but she’s not against doing so.

Are they a good cook? See above!

Could they eat the same thing they enjoy over and over and not get bored of it quickly? Yes! She does that a lot, but she prefers eating different things.

J. Politics, Current Events, Environmental Aspects

Where does your OC stand most politically? What would they align with most? Poppy is independent. She doesn’t like taking sides and sees positives to both sides.

How politically aware are they? Poppy is pretty politically aware due to her concerns about the environment and global warming.

How politically active are they? Poppy will speak up to her followers about certain acts that limit funding for the environment and so on and so forth. She’ll go to protests but only if somebody goes with her and holds her hand.

Is your OC the sort to fall for fake news? If not, do they ignore it or make a point to clarify that it’s wrong? She used to be until she learned that that was a thing. Now, she talks to Violet and Jack about reputable sources.

Are they or would they protest for a cause they’re passionate about? Absolutely. She wants somebody to be with her when she does so, but she’s passionate about some things and would absolutely go to a protest about it, i.e. Women’s March, Science March, LGBTQIAA+ March, etc.

How do they react to people whose political viewpoints are very opposite of theirs? She tries to be respectful and debate with them and see where they are coming from, but once they resort to ad hominem she leaves.

How much interest in environmental health do they have? SO MUCH. Naturally, Poppy is very interested in environmental health since she works around plants.

In reality-based or applicable worlds, do they believe in global warming? Do they recycle? Yes and yes. She tries to be as environmentally conscious as she can be.

L. For the Writer/Owner

How have your characters changed since you created them? Originally, Poppy was going to be a redhead who wasn’t very empathetic and rather was very apathetic and quiet. Instead, she somehow became this tiny ball of emotions and love.

What do you consider the biggest themes in your character, if any? Nature, gender identity, love, anxiety, mercy, morals.

Did you create the character to be like yourself, did they end up being like yourself, or are they very different from you? I initially created her to be who I used to be, and then she ended up turning into the softer side of who I am today. She’s an emotional mess, much like me. She’s also a huge people pleaser and terrified of letting people down, also taken from me. However, she’s more moral and full of love than I am, and she’s more eco-friendly.

Would you hang out with your OC if you could? I would love to. She’s adorable and so full of love.

How did you come up with your OC? So, in the Danganronpa Tabletop game I created her for, I wanted to make the Ultimate Horticulturist so I could have somebody working with plants. I love plants but I haven’t done a lot in terms of caring for them so it was cool to do research for that. Then, I wanted to make her different from everyone else, so I made her intersex. It’s also cool to have an intersex character because it raises a tiny bit of awareness as to what intersex is. It’s sad because intersex people don’t get a lot of reputation in the media, or at all, really. Poppy transformed into a small, sensitive ball of love and adoration who had so much love and respect to give and I fell in love with that concept much more. She was also a good contrast to Redd (the fireball of energy and excitement) and Violet (my serious and logical character).

#poppy heathcliff #tabletonpa #my ocs

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sciencespies · 4 years

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Meet the Organizers of #BlackBirdersWeek

https://sciencespies.com/nature/meet-the-organizers-of-blackbirdersweek/

Meet the Organizers of #BlackBirdersWeek

Smithsonian Voices Conservation Commons

#BlackBirdersWeek: Celebrating and Encouraging Diversity in Conservation

June 4th, 2020, 9:43AM / BY

Cat Kutz

The first #BlackBirdersWeek celebrates Black birders and nature enthusiasts while inspiring more conservation-curious to join their community.

At Earth Optimism, we try to curate good news in conservation to spark hope and action. But while we are in the midst of such atrocious social and environmental injustices and a public health crisis – optimism is incredibly difficult to find. Fortunately, a group of passionate Black birders in the nature-enthusiasts community have found an inspiring way of turning heavy emotions into a weeklong event to encourage visibility and growth in this field. We had the honor of listening to stories from organizers: Ashley Gary, Sheridan Alford, Chelsea Connor, and Joseph Saunders, and learning not only how this particular movement was sparked but how all of us in conservation can do our part to promote and foster inclusivity.

Can you tell us your personal story of how you got into birding?

Ashley Gary: The first time I realized that I really liked birds was after watching Sir David Attenborough’s Life of Birds. There was such a variety of adaptations that I was truly in awe. The fact that they have made a home for themselves on every continent was so impressive and that’s not even touching on their diversity of colors and shapes and calls and so much more. I didn’t officially start birding until recently. In 2019 I went birding for the first time with Jason Ward and Tyus Williams and it was just so much fun. There is something special about being out in nature with friends, admiring the surroundings and wildlife, and just enjoying yourselves. Since then I always look and listen for birds when I take nature walks and use apps like Merlin ID to try to identify what I see out in the field.

Ashley Gary with fellow birders Jason Ward and Tyus Williams.

Sheridan Alford: I’ve always had a fascination for birds but that didn’t manifest into birding until I was invited on my first bird walk by a colleague of mine. She was a big supporter of connecting Black naturalists and told me that the walk would be led by Jeffrey and Jason Ward, who I had to google at the time. I was so glad that I did, I was almost star-struck when meeting them and realizing these are two Black men that bird and are THRIVING. Seeing someone I could identify with birding is what really propelled my confidence that THIS is what I wanted to do.

Chelsea Connor: I’m from Dominica (it’s a beautiful island in the Lesser Antilles), and its nickname is The Nature Island because of all of the untouched forest on the majority of the land. I have three distinct bird memories that really fostered my love for birding. The first being the nostalgia from the sound of tiny fluttering wings of the small flock of bananaquits my grandmother would feed sugar at her house when I was growing up. They’re called sugarbirds on some islands for a reason and I had so many questions about how birds “worked”. I could watch them forever. The second involves one of the endemic species of parrot on my island. My first time seeing the mated pair of Sisserou parrot (or Amazona imperialis) that used to live at the Botanical Gardens left me awestruck. And lastly, going down Indian River on my uncle’s boat, seeing yellow warblers flit through dappled sunlight, calling occasionally. Birds are little bits of wonder and magic. I wanted to keep catching those moments.

Joseph Saunders: Not unlike my peers in BlackAFInSTEM, my interests in naturalism began at a very early age. Unlike the dedicated birders, mine was founded as a herper and later expanded to entomology. I really have to credit my new family in BlackAFInSTEM for the push to include a love of birds. I am a professional wildlife photographer (@reelsonwheels: Instagram) and I hadn’t photographed birds until becoming immersed with this amazing group of Black scientists and naturalists.

What challenges did you face entering this field, and what recommendations would you give someone else who might encounter the same obstacles?

AG: The biggest challenge for me was just never having that sense of community. As I was growing up I didn’t know anyone else who loved nature and wildlife in the way that I do and that was always something that I had to cherish alone. For me personally, I love to be able to share my passions and I had less desire to be out alone, especially because there are issues of safety being at parks and in more remote areas by yourself. I encourage people to take advantage of social media and apps like MeetUp to find others who have your same interests. It is easier than ever to find and connect with people. If you’re a Black birder, please scroll through the #BlackBirdersWeek hashtag on Twitter and Instagram, you may be able to find fellow nature lovers in your area.

SA: Getting an education in the south and within the same realm as hunting, forestry, and natural resources, I often felt that I needed to constantly prove my knowledge and worth in a space that was dominated by white males. It was important for me to understand that I am enough and I do belong in the same room and being offered the same opportunities. Learning to be confident in your abilities is the key to becoming comfortable in necessary spaces, people will be drawn to the light that you exude!

CC: Since I’ve moved to Texas I’ve been nervous about going out with a pair of binoculars. Even though I am looking at birds, I’m not sure if everyone would see it that way. The racial history in America is palpable and constant and I don’t the privilege to pretend it doesn’t happen. Another issue is having your IDs second-guessed, like when you identify a bird or mention that it occurs here (because you’ve seen it and records of it!) and being told that that’s not true because they haven’t seen it for themselves!

JS: The challenges I faced are probably different from my peers. I have been a permanently disabled paraplegic since birth. Many of my challenges surround mobility and accessibility to wild spaces. Ironically, using a wheelchair full-time presents to most people the idea I am not as powerful (or threatening per the imagination of racist people) as able-bodied Black men. Typically, I am left alone, or even asked if I need help rather than threatened. This however does not apply when I am driving. I have been chased by locals out of rural towns while seeking birds, reptiles, or beautiful landscapes to photograph. In fact, this happened most recently in April, and it was my BlackAFInSTEM family who cared for me, and supported me in the aftermath of that traumatic experience. I may not have had the chance to photograph April’s full moon, the largest of 2020 if not for them. They gave me the courage to keep searching after an event I thought might be my last as a Black naturalist. I was honestly fearful for my life in those moments.

April 2020 full moon photo by Joseph Saunders. Follow him at @reelsonwheels on Instagram to read his story about this image.

How did the idea for #BlackBirdersWeek come about? Did you expect it to get as much traction as it has?

AG: #BlackBirdersWeek was the brainchild of Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman. She pitched the idea to the BlackAFinSTEM group after the racist incident in Central Park involving Christian Cooper as the intended victim. Unfortunately, many of us had shared experiences of racism experienced while being Black outdoors. We wanted to amplify Black birders and Black outdoors folks to say that we’re here and we want our experiences to be acknowledged by our non-Black counterparts. Fellow members agreed and members mobilized to create this week very rapidly.

I expected this week to do very well on Twitter because, in my experience, Twitter has been very welcoming and supportive. However, I must say it has been amazing to see this progress to something so large with members of the BlackAFinSTEM group being able to have their voices heard in a wide variety of forms and on so many outlets. I am very proud to be in a group with so many intelligent, caring and ambitious Black people who strive to make a difference in the lives of others by shining a light on Black experiences and making room for conversation in the birding community while promoting diversity.

SA: After the incident involving Christian Cooper surfaced on the internet, a lot of the members in the group identified with the pressures of being Black and carrying out our field tasks in a world that marginalizes minorities. We wanted to create a positive initiative that would 1) draw visibility and representation to uplift and recognize Black birders and naturalists in their respective professions, 2) create a necessary dialogue within the birding community to facilitate a comfortable environment for all, and 3) promoting the importance of diversity in these public spaces.

We knew we had a good idea but this reception from others has been astounding! Seeing all the allies and people posting with the hashtags has brought tears to my eyes. I love that people are feeling comfortable enough to share their stories with us.

CC: The idea was pitched by Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and a group of us and her just really went ahead and put events together. All of the members had input also for the details and content we put out and help for direction. Even our statements, there’s a piece of each of us in every one of those.

We definitely didn’t expect that there would be this level of response. We knew that it would resonate and people would respond, but to see how it has grown is just… We are awestruck.

Chelsea Connor in Dominica during a break from field research on anoles.

JS: The idea of Black Birders Week came from Anna Gifty Opoku-Ageyman, which is sort of funny as her academic and career track is economics. She is sort of our odd-duck in a room full of naturalists, and we wouldn’t change a thing about it. She arrived at the idea after the group had many conversations sharing our frustrations, anger, and fear about the assault on Christian Cooper in Central Park while comforting one another through it. Initially, I was not sure what to expect from it as this was new grounds for me. Very quickly everyone began to participate with generating ideas for the event, afterward people began taking action. It was at this point I knew we had something special. It was evident we all were willing to devote ourselves to the success of Black Birders Week.

Conservation tends to be a historically, predominantly white field. What can do we do to support diversity in this conservation?

AG: If you want to draw in a diversity of people, you really have to make outreach efforts that support underrepresented communities. It can change someone’s life to see another person who looks like them in a career. It crystallizes the possibility that this could be something they can also do. It is also important to check the biases within your institutions. The culture of many organizations does not make it pleasant for Black people or other people of color to be in that space. No one wants to feel ignored or alienated. Systemic barriers are in place that discourage more diversity and they have to be dismantled if you want progress and change.

SA: I think the biggest thing that helps promote diversity is providing resources for disenfranchised groups to participate. Representation is key, but children in inner cities or high school students looking at programs for college never see the images that were meant for them due to lack of presence. There is a lot of infrastructure already in place in schools and nonprofits that would greatly benefit organizers and shed a positive light on the supporters that is also vitally important.

Sheridan Alford in the field with a female cardinal.

CC: Supporting diversity is more than just opening hiring or saying you want to have more BIPOC in a space, you need to also work to make sure that they are heard and that they feel safe. Its not enough to just put there, what are you doing to make sure that once they are in they want to stay? That they are not facing discrimination on the inside? Are you making sure they get to do the same opportunities? Are you actively fighting racism, even when it’s not overt? If there’s fieldwork to be done, what measures have you taken to ensure field safety in case they are approached? There are more questions in this vein and the answers need to be along the lines of, “Yes, we are being open and listening.”

JS: To support diversity in conservation, related fields must first realize conservation is a global initiative, and globally, white people are a numerical minority. The prevention of global ecocide cannot succeed without Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. For domestic efforts, all institutions committed to conservation must adopt and enforce a zero-tolerance policy related to racial discrimination. The privileged opportunity to save the planet should not be granted to people of such poor character who see it fit to oppress other demographics. The consequence of allowing this to persist is a marginal turnout of people dedicated to this planet’s most pressing problem. The survival of our species and that of countless others depends on us getting this correct. Additionally, it is not enough to continue to only promote initiatives of inclusion. Often, what this means is people from oppressed demographics are merely included in spaces that are not safe for them. We cannot perform our best work while also coping with constant microaggressions, or worse, explicit forms of discrimination. This is perhaps the greatest value of BlackAFInSTEM. Not only does this work promote conservation, but it does so in a safe, caring, and supportive environment we have created for ourselves. Opportunities like this should be made available for all institutions with conservation as their objective.

Joseph Saunders in the field.

Are you optimistic about the future of nature and conservation becoming more inclusive?

AG: I try to be optimistic that not only with nature and conservation will become inclusive, but also that society as a whole will evolve and begin to see that we are all people worthy of dignity, respect, love, and belonging. This is truly a possibility, but it requires hard work, hard truths, and being uncomfortable. Growth is never comfortable, but it is necessary.

SA: I genuinely am. I’ve seen a tremendous step taken by supporters of #BlackBirdersWeek to highlight their Black colleagues and amplify the work that still needs to be done. I think the interest is there and all parties just need to continue to act on it.

CC: Oh definitely! At first, I thought it was just like 15 people out here that looked like me. I saw them on Twitter and I followed them, but then that grew as I saw interactions and questions being asked and retweets. Now with #BlackBirdersWeek… Honestly from day 1, #BlackInNature, I was beside myself because I had never seen so many black people outside enjoying nature. A stereotype is that we don’t like being outdoors and doing those things, and maybe sometimes we joke about it but that’s not true. We love the outdoors and seeing the actual flood of pictures of Black people doing that, unapologetically taking up that space? I’ve been in tears on and off since we started.

JS: It is difficult to find optimism in the current climate of our country. I don’t want our only option for inclusion to be an environment that does not value our talents and even seeks to undermine them or harm us. I want us to be afforded the opportunity to work in environments created with our best interest in mind, and not as an afterthought or corporate quota. After this experience of creating Black Birders Week, I have grown more confident we will show what work is required to create infrastructure for marginalized demographics to show their talents.

“I may not be taking photos of birds without the infectious passion of the birders in BlackAFInSTEM.” A meadowlark beautifully captured by Joseph Saunders.

Follow #BlackBirdersWeek on Twitter and Instagram.

You can also follow the organizers here: @BlackAFinSTEM

Sheridan Alford: Twitter, Instagram

Cheslea Cooper: Twitter, Instagram

Ashley Gary: Twitter, Instagram, thewildlifehost.com

Joseph Saunders: Twitter, Instagram

#Nature

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coachingreviewsite · 5 years

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What Everyone Ought To Know About FEELING BETTER TO BE BETTER

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/what-everyone-ought-to-know-about-feeling-better-to-be-better/

What Everyone Ought To Know About FEELING BETTER TO BE BETTER

As fun as planning to re-work your own life may seem, it is a very important to make positive changes so that you can live healthier and happier. You can free your life up of what cause you problems and can work towards being a better person. These tips below can help you start.

Stress and happiness do not go together. When we are stressed out, it harms us mentally and physically. All of us need to have clear, relaxed thinking to enable us to plan and execute our life's purpose, and this only happens when we let go of stressful thoughts. Set aside a period of time each day when you can be alone, clear your thoughts, and completely relax. Having this time every day can make you more peaceful and happy with yourself.

Great resources for overall personal development are books. Books can be audio, print or digital versions. The information contained in these sources will not only provide you with motivational quotes and tips, but also inspire you to take control of your situation and have you on your way to feeling more fulfilled and in tune with your emotions and behaviors.

When you are trying to better yourself, set a deadline. Decide how long you will need to make up your mind and stick to that time-frame. How much time do you need to reflect and gather information? When you decide, set your deadline and tell your self that you are ready to live a better life.

5 Parenting Tips to Raise Your Children for Success

www.jackcanfield.com

"Success is no accident, it takes hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do. For parents, success is something that children should be encouraged to achieve. However, in order for children to be successful, they must first be given the tools and habits Read More The post 5 Parenting Tips to Raise Your Children for Success appeared first on America's Leading Authority On Creating Success And Personal Fulfillment – Jack Canfield." https://www.jackcanfield.com/blog/parenting-tips/

Keep a change of comfortable clothes and shoes in your vehicle. That way you can always dart into a public restroom and change into something more comfortable after that hectic day at work. Who knows? You might even be inspired to stop by the park and take a walk if you have appropriate clothing on hand.

Schedule time for your personal development to make sure it does not get lost in the chaos of daily activities. Developing yourself takes effort and commitment and deliberately scheduling time for development activities gives them the importance they deserve. Whether you schedule short blocks or longer ones, the key is to make your personal development a documented priority.

Realize the trade-offs of saying yes to people. Every time you say yes to one thing, you are, without speaking, saying no to many other things. When you give time to one thing, you take it away from other activities you could have done. Choose to say yes to the right goals in your life and you will automatically be saying no to the less important things.

Ask your friends and family for honest, positive feedback on your character. Earnestly requesting feedback is much different from simply fishing for compliments. Explain that you need help discovering things about yourself that make you a good friend, or what you could work on to become a more reliable and supportive friend.

Learn to trust in yourself. If you can find a way to believe in yourself, you are sure to find more success in your life. If you know and believe in the potential that you have to succeed in life, you will find it easier to meet the goals that you have set for yourself.

Harnessing Self-Compassion and Altruistic Behavior Improves Quality of Life

www.pickthebrain.com

"You're reading Harnessing Self-Compassion and Altruistic Behavior Improves Quality of Life, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

For centuries, people have contemplated and argued over the merits and flaws of the human condition. Philosophers and psychologists have theoretically and scientifically dissected elements of the human psyche to get a better understanding of who we are as a species, and why we do what we do.

While much focus has been given to negative aspects of personal choices, I thought to put this discussion on an upswing through positivity by focusing on self-compassion and altruistic behavior.

Self-Worth May Come from the Outside In

More than ever, it’s become difficult to acquire self-awareness without partnering in self-defeating thoughts and misperceptions. True, in part, we are all a result of where we come from, what we’ve experienced, and the meaning we put behind it individually and collectively. Additionally, social media and the quest for being seen and heard instantaneously put added pressure on being our best, whether real or through a Facebook filter.

Responding to Others’ Plight

When considering how we represent ourselves to others, those we know as well as those we’ve yet to meet, research has shown that compassion towards others weighs heavy. When a person readily shows kindness to another, it is one of the most coveted and desired traits. But is this an attribute people are born with or acquire?

Caring Is Influenced by Early Environment

Studies have shown that humans and animals may be prewired for compassion. Think about when you’re feeling down or upset about something. If you have a household pet, a dog, reflect on how many times he or she somehow knew you needed comfort and came to your side for a nuzzle or a hug. Similarly, it’s hard to shake off the feeling of seeing emotional or physical pain in someone else.

Yet, why can some people turn a blind eye to a homeless person on a street corner in need of food or water, for example, while others possess the desire to help? The art of giving can be compartmentalized into two separate cause-and-effects:

The desire to make someone else feel good without the expectation of anything in return, or The intent to help another and receive a reward for doing so.

Is one way of giving any more or less effective than the other? It may come down to the benefits each provides the person doing the giving.

Altruism Can Be Different than Compassion

Many people can exhibit empathy towards others without actually taking action. Ask yourself this question: The last time you encountered a homeless person, did you feel badly for them, give them what they needed in material things, or have someone else provide them sustenance on your behalf (on your dollar)? Compassion is that emotional connection we have and exhibit, related to another’s feelings or situation and, the authentic desire to provide help to ease someone else’s suffering.

If a homeless person tugs on your heart strings, you exhibit empathy or the ability to take on what another person is feeling. Should you want to take action and provide them a meal or a room to sleep, that is known as altruism. Although altruism connects empathy or compassion with feeling, it transcends it through action that will positively impact the person or entity on the receiving end.

But can a person engage in altruism without taking credit for it? Absolutely. Altruism is all about doing something for the greater good. For example, providing an anonymous monetary or other type of donation to a person or a cause is a form of altruism. Just as any other action is often a learned response to something, altruism can be taught—so too, can compassion.

The Culture of Compassion Starts by Practicing Self Love

At some point in your lifetime, you may have heard a friend muse the following sentiment: “If you don’t take care of you, how can you effectively take care of someone else?” This is often evident in the case of family. I would know. I remember the anguish in witnessing my younger brother fall from the limelight due to drug addiction, before he finally received proper treatment and manage his opioid withdrawal symptoms using the Bridge Device.

When one member is going through a hard time, others will often sacrifice something of themselves to care for the one hurting. While this is noble and in the moment perceived as necessary, in the long term, it might bring about more harm. But by practicing self-compassion day-to-day, it puts each person in the position of loving oneself and honoring each aspect of their existence: mind, body and soul.

In doing so, we are practicing a heightened level of consciousness and with it, are more available to exercise compassion to others. But there’s an instinctive side to compassion as well.

Paying It Forward, Squared

Renowned naturalist Charles Darwin said this of the human race and survival of the fittest : “The greater strength of the social or maternal instincts than that of any other instinct or motive.” He also held firm that the communities made up of the most sympathetic individuals would do better, as a whole, than others and continue onward.

To take this into your own life, consider the impact you can make, simply by performing one random act of kindness each day. Now, what if the person on the receiving end of your graciousness would do the same for someone else? And so on. And so on.

How long would it take for these acts of humanity to heal your family, your circle of friends, your community, your city, and reach global proportion? Treating the world in kind begins with you.

Self-Love Is Essential to Emotional Survival

Neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have long been involved in the study of how the brain responds to compassion, specifically in the act of giving and receiving. Whether you are engaging in helping someone else or receiving the help, the brain’s pleasure/reward center ignites during the process. A flood of wonderful feel-good hormones is released to our internal systems, boosting emotional and physical wellbeing.

Yet, many continue to take in unhealthy sources to elicit our natural pleasure responses such as medications, alcohol, illegal drugs, junk foods, gaming, gambling, and more that certainly don’t support emotional and physical balance in oneself or others.

Removing Judgement

Understanding and accepting personal flaws and transgressions, as well as bodily imperfections, is difficult as society bombards us with messages that dictate what we should be and how much we fall short.

A crucial part of self-love and self-compassion is to remove the self-judgment that shrouds the way we view ourselves. Once you are able to hone the ability to keep judgment from derailing personal confidence, the time spent judging others will also fall away leaving more opportunity for compassion to arise.

The Courage to Be Vulnerable

One of the many repercussions of living in self-judgment is that it allows us to keep a barrier within, keeping emotions at arm’s length from our intelligence. A mind-to-soul disconnect then exists. Not only does this prevent a knowing and accepting of whom each of us is, but also from being open to true self-expression and reciprocal compassion.

Eliminating Personal Façade

Before a person can experience vulnerability, self-imposed walls often used as coping mechanisms will need to be identified and eliminated. These kinds of personal walls are built on the inside and used to shield us from life triggers that can bring about fear, anger, or discontent from unresolved issues in the past. In addition, when people create specific personal façades about themselves such as the selfie culture on social media, it casts a false truth while expressing what we want others to believe as real. This is a self-defeating ritual that can compromise self-compassion.

Accepting What Is Real

Removing the veil of pretense is perhaps the most fulfilling undertaking one can do for oneself. It takes the pressure off of achieving unrealistic expectations while opening up the door to realizing self-esteem and the need to help others experience the same. The power of living authentically and surrounding yourself with people who are just as real is life-changing, exponentially.

Improve Quality of Life by Opening Your Heart

Nurturing compassion in any moment of the day empowers both the initiator and the receiver. Through self-love, you can reassess how to value yourself better and be gentle with yourself, ultimately serving the greater good. When humanity can get past the fear of what was and enjoy what is, the what will be is more fruitful to us all.

You've read Harnessing Self-Compassion and Altruistic Behavior Improves Quality of Life, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles." https://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/harnessing-self-compassion-and-altruistic-behavior-improves-quality-of-life/

When working on personal development it is important to find out exactly what it is that you want to do with your life. If the word life sounds too big, you need to at least have a plan for the next 5 years. Having goals bigger than what you are is a way to add value to your life. Make the time for quiet contemplation of where you want your life to go.

One of the keys to happiness is success. That is why it is important for you to achieve your goals in order to become happier. This could be work related or something from your personal life, whatever it is, work hard at it. Do not let any setbacks stop you from achieving your goal.

Realize your personal strengths and play on them each day. Your personal strengths have a great deal to with personal development, helping you to go forth from day to day with the ability to deal with the stress and challenges that arise. However, only when you realize these strengths can you really play upon them and use them to your advantage.

A great tip that can help you with your personal development goals, is to surround yourself with people who are positive and supportive. If you're around negative people all the time, it can be hard for you to make any positive changes. Being around positive people can help a lot.

How to Be a More Interesting Person: 11 Strategies to Captivate Someone’s Attention

www.developgoodhabits.com

"Being interesting is equally vital as being successful. Gone are the days when being busy to cultivate hobbies is considered a badge of honor. At present, people are more willing to listen to what you have to say when you have a “life.” It shows that you’ve got a balanced personality. Furthermore, being an interesting person helps […]The post How to Be a More Interesting Person: 11 Strategies to Captivate Someone’s Attention appeared first on Develop Good Habits. " https://www.developgoodhabits.com/be-more-interesting/

Keep a journal of your private thoughts, feelings and ideas. This is a great way for you to be able to take a trip back in time and see how much you have grown over that time. Taking the little bit of time needed to jot down these things is really going to go a long way in your personal growth progress.

Make a decision about where you want to go in life and stick with it. You won't get anywhere if you only think about what you want to do. Fulfill your dreams and make what you desire a reality.

Keep in mind that you are not perfect. Even if you have come a long way or if most people usually compliment you, this does not mean you have reached perfection. You should always look for things to improve in your life. Be demanding with yourself and make efforts towards perfection.

A great way to develop yourself is to make sure your body, mind, and spirit are all in harmony. Once you are in complete harmony, you will notice an immediate calm fill your entire body. This is needed to reduce the stress from our hectic lives that we lead. The only way to possess complete harmony is to have true love.

While re-planning your life seems like a lot of fun, you should feel better that you know how to do it. You can now apply your newly acquired knowledge to making positive changes to live your life and to become a better person. Now is the perfect time for you to change things.

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personalcoachingcenter · 5 years

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What Everyone Ought To Know About FEELING BETTER TO BE BETTER

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/what-everyone-ought-to-know-about-feeling-better-to-be-better/

What Everyone Ought To Know About FEELING BETTER TO BE BETTER

5 Parenting Tips to Raise Your Children for Success

www.jackcanfield.com

Harnessing Self-Compassion and Altruistic Behavior Improves Quality of Life

www.pickthebrain.com

While much focus has been given to negative aspects of personal choices, I thought to put this discussion on an upswing through positivity by focusing on self-compassion and altruistic behavior.

Self-Worth May Come from the Outside In

Responding to Others’ Plight

Caring Is Influenced by Early Environment

The desire to make someone else feel good without the expectation of anything in return, or The intent to help another and receive a reward for doing so.

Is one way of giving any more or less effective than the other? It may come down to the benefits each provides the person doing the giving.

Altruism Can Be Different than Compassion

The Culture of Compassion Starts by Practicing Self Love

In doing so, we are practicing a heightened level of consciousness and with it, are more available to exercise compassion to others. But there’s an instinctive side to compassion as well.

Paying It Forward, Squared

How long would it take for these acts of humanity to heal your family, your circle of friends, your community, your city, and reach global proportion? Treating the world in kind begins with you.

Self-Love Is Essential to Emotional Survival

Removing Judgement

The Courage to Be Vulnerable

Eliminating Personal Façade

Accepting What Is Real

Improve Quality of Life by Opening Your Heart

How to Be a More Interesting Person: 11 Strategies to Captivate Someone’s Attention

www.developgoodhabits.com

Make a decision about where you want to go in life and stick with it. You won't get anywhere if you only think about what you want to do. Fulfill your dreams and make what you desire a reality.

youtube

0 notes

eirinizp-blog · 5 years

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The Best Movies of 2019 (So Far)

The cinematic dry season (post–awards season, but before the good spring months have arrived) has officially ended, and the summer blockbusters are upon us. Will we remember any of them by the end of the year? Hard to say, but we can point to a few gems among the more conventional genre releases of 2019 so far: a politicized zombie slasher, a documentary about two nights at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, a Mary Kay Place vehicle, two Swintons for the price of one. Here are the best movies of the year that Vulture has reviewed, according to critics David Edelstein and Emily Yoshida, and frequent contributor Bilge Ebiri.

Arctic

Enjoyable and excruciating. In Joe Penna’s survival drama, the riveting Mads Mikkelsen plays a man whose plane has gone down in the frozen wilderness. That’s all we know about him and all we really need to — it’s what he does and keeps doing that defines him. Thrown together with a grievously wounded, non–compos mentis woman, he tugs her well-swaddled form on a sled into the unknown, trudging and grunting and falling and trudging and heeeaving and trudging and heeeaving — and just when we think it can’t get more horrible, we realize that up until then he’d had it easy. The movie really takes your mind off your own troubles. —D.E.

Birds of Passage Set in the north of Colombia among the indigenous Wayuu, Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s knockout film is part ethnographic documentary, part The Godfather. Over 20 years (from 1960 to 1980), people whose ways first seem strange metamorphose into a familiar breed of narcos, moving tons of marijuana and become avid materialists. As in Guerra’s last film, Embrace of the Serpent, the disjunction between ancient ways and modern, ephemeral fashions and technology, is not just jarring but toxic, a shock to the system that will almost certainly kill the host. The drive toward revenge kills the characters long before anyone dies — it kills their souls. —D.E.

Escape Room Escape Room didn’t need to be good, and its release during the very first week of the year seemed destined to make it a 2019 B-movie footnote. But the ensemble thriller from Insidious and Paranormal Activity vet Adam Robitel is a whole lot of fun, throwing a group of strangers together into a hyperbolically lethal version of the titular team-building game. It’s much more of a puzzler than it is a horror film, and Robitel doesn’t need gore or jump scares to keep the whole thing tightly wound. The grand finale is so audacious that you’ll be ready to buy a ticket for the sequel before the lights come up. —E.Y.

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Fighting With My Family The unlikely collaboration between writer-director Stephen Merchant and executive producer the Rock is an unexpected joy — a true story that skips along its inspirational sports-movie template while finding real pathos and tough truths under all that sparkly spandex. As WWE champion Paige, Florence Pugh is equal parts ferocious and tender, a misfit struggling to find the right way to share her talents with the world. It’s a WWE production, but if it’s propaganda for the sport, it’s the kind you’ll gladly let win you over to the joyful absurdities of the sport. —E.Y.

Transit Director Christian Petzold (Barbara, Phoenix) changes the time of Anna Seghers’s 1944 novel, in which refugees from the Nazis stuck in Lyons wait for ships to North America: It’s still Lyons, but the period trappings are gone and they’re now fleeing all-purpose “fascists.” At the heart of the story is a slow-motion mistaken-identity farce in which a concentration-camp escapee, Georg (the charismatic Franz Rogowski, who bears a resemblance to Joaquin Phoenix), assumes the identity of a famous writer whom only Georg knows committed suicide — and then falls madly for the writer’s discombobulated wife (Paula Beer). The physical, temporal, and emotional geography is very confusing, but the film is still potent. Petzold is part acrid realist, part romantic: His protagonists lose everything but their passion, emotion being the last refuge.

Climax It’s Step Up crossed with Battle Royale, a house-music Suspiria, and exactly as fun and harrowing as that description would suggest. French adulte terrible Gaspar Noé (Enter the Void, Love) brings together a vibrant ensemble of dancers led by dynamo Sofia Boutella for a party gone horribly awry thanks to some no-good sangria. In what feels like more or less real time, we watch a cohesive, unified group of very-much-alive young people devolve into screaming, hallucinatory chaos, all set to an incredible disco-techno soundtrack. Noé’s desire to shock is still ever-present, and all trigger warnings still apply. But the dizzying, acrobatic camerawork and the impressive physical and emotional work of Boutella and the rest of the cast make this his most crowd-pleasing — dare I say, even sentimental? — work yet.

Diane A stunning platform for Mary Kay Place as a compulsive do-gooder out to expiate her sins as everyone around her is either dying (a first cousin with end-stage cervical cancer) or on the brink (her addict son and a slew of elderly friends and relatives). Kent Jones’s drama—mostly naturalistic, but with the odd expressionist flourish — is generally regarded as one of the most depressing ever made, but once you accept its un-transcendent, death-centric baseline the movie is strangely exhilarating. In between scenes are shots through a windshield of rural landscapes passing in every season, with soft, haunting music by Jeremiah Bornfield, the film’s protagonist (like all of us) going from someplace to someplace on the road to who-knows-where. In its mundane way, Diane shows you glimmers of the sublime. —D.E.

The Brink Alison Klayman’s On the Road With Steve Bannon doc is essential, sad to say, given that Bannon is not a fringe hate-monger but a man with the ears of protofascist, xenophobic movement leaders in the U.S., France, Belgium, Hungary, Germany, and the U.K., as well as sundry billionaires. Why would Bannon let Klayman be a fly on his wall — or in his ointment? He has faith in his message. He already has “a solid enough minority that’s immoveable.” He just needs to sway an increasingly susceptible 15 percent of the rest, and he’s excellent at making people feel as if they’re being marginalized by a dark (in all senses) cabal — while he denies and denies and denies that he’s saying what he in fact is. Klayman doesn’t have to editorialize to make the point that Bannon is one of the most dangerous people alive.

Ash Is Purest White Jia Zhangke’s epic revisits many of the themes he’s explored throughout his past few films (Mountains May Depart, A Touch of Sin) particularly the near-absurdities of a rapidly changing modern China, and its as profoundly wrought as ever. With Ash, however, there’s a genre twist; a sort of pulp gangster romance shot through Jia’s patient, wide lens. A deceptively steely Zhao Tao stars as a woman separated from the man who, for better or worse, is the love of her life, and sets out to find her way back to him over two and half decades. It’s as much a story of a country rebuilding itself as it is of one woman doing the same, and by its gutting resolution you’ll feel as if you’ve walked those miles and years in Zhao’s shoes.

Us A politicized zombie-slasher film in which subterranean doppelgängers — separate but mystically “tethered” to their aboveground analogs — swarm our world with scissors and the message, “We exist.” Once you get over the disappointment that Jordan Peele’s second feature isn’t as trim or impish in its satire as his marvelous debut, Get Out, you can settle back and salute what it is: the most inspiring kind of miss. It’s what you want an artist of Peele’s sensibility and stature to attempt — to broaden his canvas, deepen his psychological insight, and add new cinematic tools to his kit. Fans will rewatch the film to savor the fillips, the purposeful echoes, and the “Easter eggs,” as well as a dual performance by Lupita Nyong’o that’s otherworldly in its brilliance. As the double, “Red,” her voice is the whistle of someone whose throat has been cut, with a gap between the start of a word in the diaphragm and its finish in the head. It’s like a rush of acrid air from a tomb.

Amazing Grace Over two nights in 1972, Aretha Franklin, then at the height of her fame, came to Los Angeles’s New Temple Missionary Baptist Church to record a selection of gospel classics. The resulting album, Amazing Grace, was one of the most acclaimed of her career. Director Sydney Pollack documented both nights with a small array of 16 mm cameras, but the footage languished for decades until producer Alan Elliott bought it and put together this concert documentary, which was then further delayed by Franklin’s own, somewhat surprising refusal to let it be shown. But now it’s here, and it is transcendent. Resplendent in her caftans but otherwise humble, Franklin gives off no diva or rock-star airs. But as soon as she starts singing, she’s in — eyes closed, head up, half-grins turning into flights of ecstatic joy. So is her audience, shouting their support, cheering her along, dancing in the aisles. And so are we. The movie itself feels like a church service, and it’s enough to make you get religion. —Bilge Ebiri

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote Terry Gilliam’s notorious film maudit, three decades in the unmaking and already the subject of a 17-year-old documentary about the collapse of its production, is, uh, here. And it’s surprisingly light on its feet. The story follows a slick commercial director (played by Adam Driver, an inspired choice) who returns to the Spanish village where he made his thesis film ten years ago, an adaptation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, and discovers that the lives there were ruined by his production. Reuniting with the aging cobbler who played his Quixote (Jonathan Pryce), he discovers that the man still imagines himself to be the 17th-century knight-errant. Their ensuing journey mixes medieval gallantry, contemporary topicality, and typically Gilliamesque chaos — a swirling vortex of disguises, dream visions, broad humor, and a delightfully disorienting look at both the creative and destructive power of imagination. —B.E.

Trial by Fire Murderously hard to sit through, which is not something you’ll see on top of an ad. Maybe that’s why the film had been a commercial bust. But this portrait of Cameron Todd Willingham (Jack O’Connell), a Texas ne’er-do-well executed for burning his three little girls to death, is painstakingly well-made and important. The director, Ed Zwick, isn’t cynical about the motives of the investigators who allegedly screwed up so badly in interpreting the evidence. The lie of most police dramas isn’t that they’re on the side of the angels — it’s that they’re always competent at what they do and that there are fail-safe mechanisms to keep innocent people from the death chamber. Laura Dern plays the divorced mother who volunteers to be a pen pal to someone on death row and gets sucked in when she reads the trial transcript. Dern is a great detective actress — she externalizes thought.

Souvenir A coolly intelligent autobiographical film by the British writer-director Joanna Hogg, who doesn’t often give you your narrative bearings — and spoils you for over-shapers, the spoon-feeders. Her protagonist (Honor Swinton Byrne, daughter of Tilda, who plays her mother onscreen) is a well-off, socially conscious 24-year-old film student who wants to make a movie about a boy growing up by the grotty docks near Newcastle but is thrown off course by her foppish, madly pretentious, and (as it turns out) heroin-addicted boyfriend (Tom Burke). At times the film seems too distanced, but it’s never obvious or banal. Hogg convinces you that incoherence is the only honest way to tell a story with any emotional complexity.

#thebestmovies

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m-a-r-d-blog · 6 years

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Happy Birthday to You: Expectations of Parenthood and Gender in Birthday Cards

This week team Flash is going into the world to explore how gender expectations are inherently reflected in our understanding of parenthood. To do this, team Flash visited Hallmark (online) and selected a total of ten birthday cards: five made for a mother and five made for father. By comparing and contrasting the activities, appearance, and themes present in these cards, we realized how masculinity (the social construction of what it means to be a man) and femininity (the social construction of what it means to be a woman) are inextricably linked to the expectations associated with fatherhood and motherhood.

Activities

Overall, the cards we selected did not feature many activities or tasks. Of those depicted, however, there are a variety of similarities and differences, all of which demonstrate the gendered nature of these cards.

For women, only one card we selected had an illustration of an activity (pictured below). It features a mother placing her hand on the shoulder of her child, who is presumably her daughter. The mother is looking down, while her daughter gazes up at her, an arm wrapped around her legs. In general, we interpreted this image as a metaphor for the way children look up to their mothers. Additionally, we viewed it as an illustration of the way mothers are expected to guide and reassure their children. By placing a hand on the back of her daughter’s shoulder, the mother is not only demonstrating love and affection, but encouragement as well. Overall, this activity maintains the notion mothers are nurturing, reassuring, and supportive.

For men, three cards we selected had an illustration of an activity. Two feature a man lifting their child, presumably a son, into the air. In general, we interpreted these images as a metaphor for the way children are held, supported, and captivated by their strong, loving fathers. In this way, fathers’ support their children through their strength (emotional, financial, etc.). Another card features an illustration of a gingham work shirt with a tie. We interpreted this as a depiction of the way fathers’ are expected to work in order to provide for their families. In this way, the notion that fathers demonstrate love and affection through their strength and commitment to work is maintained.

Regardless of whether the card was intended for a mother or father, we found it interesting that the gender of the children matched the gender of the parent. Overall, this pattern suggests that girls learn and model their behavior from their mothers, while boys learn and model their behavior from their fathers. This maintains gender norms by suggesting children act in accordance with the gendered behavior exhibited by their parents. In this way, girls should be nurturing and reassuring like their mothers, while boys should be strong and hardworking like their fathers.

Appearance

In addition to activities, there are several, notable differences in the appearance of the cards depending on the gender they were intended for. Again, these differences highlight the differences in expectations we have for men and women.

For women, the first aspect of appearance we noticed was color. Overall, various shades of pink, purple, and blue are used; colors which are typically described as “feminine” due to their association with women. Additionally, four of the five cards we selected featured some type of floral pattern. Which, by the way, if you’re ever at the store and need to find a birthday card for your mom in a pinch, we suggest grabbing one with a flower on it. You’re pretty much 110% guaranteed to get one designed with a woman in mind. Women just LOVE flowers, apparently… We digress. What are some characteristics typically associated with flowers? Soft, dainty, fragile, pretty. What is a symbol commonly associated with women? Flowers. As a consequence, the pervasive use of floral patterns maintains the notion that women are beautiful and delicate, valued primarily for their physical appearance. Additionally, the font featured on these cards is thin, curvy, and often in cursive. This reinforces the already “feminine” appearance of the card; soft, subdued, and pretty.

For men, the first aspect of appearance we noticed was, again, color. Overall, these cards featured various shades of blue, green, and occasionally orange and brown; colors typically described as being “masculine” due to their association with men. Apparently blue is man’s favorite color. We’ll be sure to keep that in mind for our future birthday shopping endeavors. Most of the cards we selected featured naturalistic settings, or pictures of clothes typically associated with work (such as a tie, collared shirt, hat, etc.). These images emphasize the notion men love to explore in the great outdoors and are dedicated to their jobs. Additionally, the text on these cards is typically larger, bold, and printed, although a cursive font is occasionally featured to highlight a specific word or phrase. This, again, reinforces the “masculine” appearance of the card.

Themes

There are various themes present in the birthday cards we choose to examine. However, we noticed an interesting pattern emerge in our discussion of themes that we believe is important to emphasize. Regardless of who they were intended for (mother or father), each card featured one or both of the following themes: love and support/guidance. Interestingly, despite each of these themes are consistently mentioned in the cards, the way they are defined varies depending on the gender they are being ascribed to. To give you a better sense of what we mean by that, we discuss each theme and how they are described differently below:

Love: When associated with mothers, love is described as unsolicited, unending, and selfless: “Your love never stops, never ends and is always open for business” and “You are the constant in my life, the one I go to for unwavering love.” Here, love is expressed explicitly; constantly demonstrated and reflected in the daily actions of mothers. Contrastingly, love associated with fathers is described as merely knowing the affection is there: “There’s one thing that’s remained straight and true; no matter what, I’ve always known you loved me” and “No matter what his job, a dad’s love works full time.” This implies that while a father’s love is not constantly present, it is always there. It is implicit. This not only maintains the notion that men typically work and thus, have less time to devote to their families, but rewards and praises it as well.

Support & Guidance: As with love, support/guidance is a theme present in both cards, yet described differently depending on the gender it is being ascribed to. When associated with mothers, support is described as a continual process of give and take. Mothers support and guide their children by picking them up when they fall, cheering them on when they succeed, and stepping in when they are in need of direction: “You are reading to celebrate when I have good news, ready to catch me when I’m falling, ready to guide me when I need your wisdom” and “From my very earliest memories, you’ve been the gentle voice in my ear, the warm hand in mine, the comfort and peace in my days.” In this way, support is defined as an act of unsolicited encouragement, constantly provided regardless of the circumstances at hand. Contrastingly, support associated with fathers is described as the act of “being there”: “You’re the strong man who doesn’t walk away” and “The kind of guy who takes life year by year, day by day, moment by moment, and makes it work.” In this way, being supportive is equated with being present. By taking a moment to show interest and spend time with their children, fathers are considered encouraging. Additionally, these cards also describe guidance as an exemplative process: “You’re the honest man who teaches by example” and “It takes a man of gentleness, patience, strength, and compassion to be the fine example of fatherhood that you’ve been.” In this way, guidance is seen as a passive process of leading by example, as opposed to an active, engaged process of teaching and nurturing. In this way, the notion that men typically work and thus, demonstrate support by taking time away from work to be with their families, is maintained. Additionally, this implies that women, who are typically at home taking care of the family, must compensate for their absence by being constantly involved in their children’s development.

So, what?

Overall, we think the differences and similarities between the birthday cards intended for mothers and fathers demonstrates how notions of gender inherently influence notions of parenthood. In this way, the signs and symbols utilized in these cards maintain traditional notions of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a women. This is particularly important to understand in relation to Nancy Armstrong’s definition of culture as “a struggle among various political factions to possess its most valued signs and symbols.” In this way, the signs and symbols used by card manufacturers and designers in our examples, maintain the status quo. Rather than redefine masculinity and femininity be attributing different signs and symbols to the cards intended for these audiences, these cards reinforce traditionally held notions by using (and failing to re-define) the signs and symbols already associated with each gender. In this way, these cards simply uphold different expectations for not only men and women, but fathers and mothers as well.

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phooll123 · 7 years

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How Hair, Makeup Team Age Mandy Moore for ‘This Is Us’ – Variety

“America has been tortured enough already.” But alas, not Mandy Moore. It’s the last day of filming on Season 2 of “This Is Us,” and for the sixth time on the finale’s eight-day shooting schedule, Moore begins her day in the hair-and-makeup trailer, girded for the three-hour process that will turn the 33-year-old actress into the 68-year-old Rebecca. Moore estimates she’s gone through the transformation more than 30 times — 20 this season alone. Not that she’s complaining about it. “I love that I’m given this opportunity to play this character from 25 to 68,” she says. “That’s so unheard of. So I don’t begrudge the process that comes along with it.” The finale chronicles the wedding day of Rebecca’s daughter, Kate (Chrissy Metz), and Toby (Chris Sullivan), which means the present-day action calls for Moore’s near-daily transformation. Given the death of her husband, Jack (Milo Ventimiglia), Moore’s Rebecca is the only character who exists in all of the show’s multiple timelines: from the 1980s when she and Jack first meet, through the ’90s when they’re juggling tweens (her favorite age, she admits) and then teenagers, to the present, where she’s remarried and trying to resolve long-simmering issues with her three adult children.

“It’s such an honor to be the glue of this family,” she says. “I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility.” Playing older Rebecca she says is the most challenging age, not just because of the labor-intensive process but also because of the deep-seated emotion it inevitably carries. “If I’m in age makeup, something dramatic has happened,” she says. “I’m being confronted by my son about the fact that I’ve been lying to him, meeting his biological father and pretending I don’t know him, talking about the anniversary of my husband’s death.” Even amid all of the show’s mysteries, the transformation is “one of the most asked-about questions,” she says. The hair-and-makeup trailer is well lived in, fitted with six chairs for the actors and crammed with mementos of an intense season. Taped on the walls are photos of the cast in a range of stages (tracking Jack’s famously fluctuating facial hair), as well as a chart listing their relative ages through the show’s complicated timeline. Jack’s stops abruptly in 1992. There’s a jubilant feeling of senioritis in the air — everyone’s talking about the wrap party, set for the following night. The set is also abuzz about paparazzi photos that were leaked the day before, and crew members debate camera angles to try to identify the culprit. Throughout the morning, other stars filter in and out of the trailer — Metz, Justin Hartley (Kevin), Caitlin Thompson (Madison). Ventimiglia is on set, too, even though he’s not filming, to lend his support: “Someone made some money,” he says regretfully of the spoiler-laden photos. They’re accustomed to Moore’s lengthy stay in the trailer, but they know all too well their time might also be coming. We’ve gotten a glimpse of future Randall, which means Sterling K. Brown spent about four hours being transformed. He’s on deck for another session later in the day. And those leaked photos revealed that another of the show’s stars had his turn too. “It gives me a kernel of satisfaction that other people now know what it’s like,” says Moore with a sly smile. Moore arrives in the trailer promptly at her call time of 8 a.m, her long brown hair still wet from a shower, clad in a robe, jeans and Uggs and carrying boxes of croissants from a favorite bakery. (None for her, though — she’s gluten-free.) On cue, hairstylist Katherine Rees first offers her conditioner, then Advil. It’s not that she’s hungover; she’s preparing for the headache that inevitably comes as her hair gets pinned up ever so tightly. Moore gratefully accepts the pills as hair department head Michael Reitz wraps her hair around her head to fit under the wig cap, the first and easiest step in what will ultimately be a nearly three-hour-long odyssey. Fifteen minutes later, she moves to the makeup chair for a far longer haul, and turns on the timer on her phone, ever hopeful that this time things just might be quicker. Crafting the right look for older Rebecca was an ordeal of its own, with several tests that went too far — inflated lips, a floppy neck waddle, long gray hair. “We went to 12 and had to bring it back down to 6,” says makeup department head Zoe Hay, who’s worked on shows like “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.” “We came at it with the least we could do, but had to keep stepping it up to find what really works.” Paramount to the effort was maintaining a sense of continuity about Rebecca’s naturalistic style. Twentysomething Rebecca might be more playful with color (“A young woman would experiment with how she looks,” says Hay), but as she ages, she settles down into more neutral, safer choices. What solved the problem were some leftover prosthetics from makeup artist Stevie Bettles that Hay happened to have in her trailer from a recent commercial shoot. They’re impossibly thin silicone stickers, color-matched to Moore’s skin and placed precisely around her face and neck.

“Her gestures are completely different … in terms of there having been a fair amount of tragedy and sadness in her life. She carries it all. And that was not something I ever discussed with her.” Dan Fogelman

She can still emote through them — an important detail, given all of the crying Rebecca is wont to do — though Moore reveals she doesn’t know when tears are running down her face. “It’s a very weird sensation,” she says. “Sterling told me I was crying last night, but I couldn’t feel it.” The team knew it had finally found the right look when Moore shot a scene with Ron Cephas Jones (William), who’s 61, and it played seamlessly, as if she were truly the same age as he. “This Is Us” showrunner Dan Fogelman says he briefly considered casting two actors for the role (à la “The Crown,” which is replacing Claire Foy with Olivia Colman as the queen ages), but that scene with Jones proved he was right to trust his “gut instinct” of letting Moore pull it off alone. “Her gestures are completely different; her voice changes; her shoulders carry the weight of a life lived hard — not in terms of drugs or alcohol, but in terms of there having been a fair amount of tragedy and sadness in her life,” he says. “She carries it all. And that was not something I ever discussed with her.” Before the prosthetics can be applied, though, Hay — along with makeup artist Elisabeth Chang — begins the process of wrinkling Moore’s normally clear, smooth skin, painting on speckles and age spots and delicately applying an ager onto her skin and hands that will form lines and creases. As one dabs, the other pulls her skin tightly; Moore’s coloring turns red as they poke and prod. (Removing it all at the end of the day will take another 45 minutes to protect her skin: “We call it the devil’s glue,” says Chang.) It’s a well-choreographed dance; Hay and Chang are careful not to bump into each other in the cramped trailer, and Moore doesn’t need to be directed which way to turn her face, when to stick her thumb in her mouth to stretch it out, or when to turn herself nearly upside down in her chair, so they can paint under her neck. “The first time I was like, ‘You want me to do what?’” she says, laughing. They move painstakingly from her eyes to her forehead to her lips, where Hay paints on additional delicate lines, erasing the lips’ natural edge. “Smoke and mirrors,” she says. After an hour, they take a 10-minute break before moving on to the prosthetics — there are 10 in all. (Four for her eyes, two for her laugh lines, two jowls, one neck piece, one for the bridge of her nose.) “It’s like putting on a Band-Aid, but not quite,” says Hay as she peels each one off the board they’re all pinned on. After she carefully puts them in place, she brushes over them to melt them into Moore’s face and neck. The rest of her body is spared — if Moore has her way, we’ll never see older Rebecca’s legs or feet. “I hate wearing panty hose, but I will wear them every single time I have to be older Rebecca,” she says. Nor will we ever see her in a bathing suit. “That would have to be a body double,” she says with a laugh. One thing remains constant: Her nails at every age are always a light pink. “It’s the last thing I want to think about,” she says. They’ve had to navigate a few unforeseen challenges — when Hay broke her hand and three people had to fill in, or when Moore banged into the shower door, and they had to cover up her black eye. Luckily it was the Halloween episode, so Rebecca as Cher sported purple eyeshadow. Each character has a detailed bible with his or her history, and one crew member is tasked with maintaining continuity. Given the show’s tendency to jump back and forth in time and revisit past scenes, each look needs to be carefully tracked. When Hay is ready to put the tiny crow’s-feet prosthetics on Moore’s eyes, she yells out: “Eyes! We’re doing eyes!” That’s a signal for everyone to stop moving — no one steps in or out of the trailer as she applies the stickers. “The miracle is me not sticking myself to Mandy,” says Hay. “That may or may not have happened before.” Matching Moore’s face side to side is the trickiest part, and Moore points out that one eyelid feels heavier than the other. There can be no cheating. “They like to put the camera everywhere,” complains Hay. “The cameras are not our friends.” She inspects her work through a magnifying glass, looking for spots she might have missed. At least today’s shoot is indoors; daylight makes matters worse. “When they shoot outside, it gives me a heart attack,” she moans. And then Hay layers on the usual stage makeup, but she has one more trick up her sleeve: frosted eyeshadow. “It shows every wrinkle,” she explains. “You wouldn’t want it as an older woman, but it helps Mandy.” Finally it’s back to Reitz for the wig. With eight precisely planted pins and more application of glue, he secures the stylish yet age-appropriate bob on her head. Says Moore with a satisfied look in the mirror: “There she is.” Credit that senioritis: They’re done in near-record time, just under three hours, and Moore’s finally ready for her close-up. Director Ken Olin leads the cast through a rehearsal, figuring out their marks. It’s a short scene, but the quick exchange between Rebecca and Kate speaks volumes about the tension in their relationship. “Did I say something wrong?” Rebecca asks her sons after the encounter sends Kate marching out of the cabin. “I feel so bad for her,” Moore says of Rebecca after the scene has wrapped, over lunch in her trailer. (There’s a pizza truck on set, but she opts for a healthier salad of grains and fish.) “She’s so acutely aware that she ruffles Kate’s feathers, so she’s trying to be on her best behavior. I see myself a little bit in my relationship with my own mother. It’s very complicated.” And while audiences have focused on Jack and his death, Moore hopes that they’ll come to find sympathy for the character, too, even if she has made questionable choices. “I have a real soft spot for her,” she admits. “She’s just not the same. The life force is out of her eyes. Is it just Jack? It has to be, but she breaks my heart.”

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