#i love all of them in wildly different ways that cannot accurately be compared to each other

[minecraftbookshelf]

Every time there is any kind of traffic life duo/trio/shipping/grouping poll I'm just sitting over here like "why are we pitting all these bad bitch dumpster fires against each other?" why can't we just study them all under a microscope?

[bookofmirth]

everyones entitled to their opinion but the amount of people who have been saying how “confusing” az’s chapter is and how sjm’s a bad writer for writing it that way honestly annoys me? you said you felt vindication when you read it and tbh, same, it confirmed everything i thought since acowar and made perfect sense with what we know of az as a character - that he’s deeply traumatized and incapable of creating and maintaining healthy relationships (as of rn). but beyond that, i dont see how it was unclear in the terms of which ships will be endgame?? before that chapter i was still uncertain and thought it could go either way (tho i was leaning to elucien bc of the already existing bond), and now im pretty certain its not gonna be elr*el in the long term. idk, i just feel like a part of fandom has built their own vision of the characters and future events that isn’t supported by text and now that theyre disappointed it isnt canon, they blame sjm for it? i really dont think it was a confusing chapter at all, i thought her intentions were perfectly clear with the types of tropes she used, i dont think its fair to say it was badly written just bc it didnt support their fanon ideas that was built more on headcanons than actual textual evidence... idk if i sound mean lol but just my 2 cents, obviously it doesnt go for everyone i feel like a certain part of fandom has a certain version of characters in their heads that they consider as canon bc they want to see them that way, but they aren’t really the same as the actual characters we’re presented in their story

Anon, I am going CRAZY over here.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I take on some arguments and others I don’t, and it basically comes down to 1) what is supported in the text, 2) people’s very wild interpretations of the text, and 3) people confusing their interpretation, fanon, what have you, with canon. 

I actually make my students read this article before they respond to a text because it’s super important to understand what, exactly, they (and we) are responding to. It’s nothing to do with literary criticism, but it still has bearings here because people are taking lines of text and imposing these wildly different meanings that have zero support. Like I mentioned in this post, we cannot say why Elain’s face gets tight or she shrinks from Lucien. There is literally no evidence one way or another, so I could that she like....... has a bad problem with farting when he’s around and is embarrassed. And who’s to stop me????

And you’re right, the problem here is that they think they are responding to canon, when actually it’s this wild interpretation of canon that began before acowar even came out, for the sole purpose of furthering hate on Mor. It had nothing to do with actually, genuinely liking it. But it’s grown into this monstrosity we see today and yeah... people are literally making posts where their “evidence” is two people being a room together and noticing that fact = endgame super romantic ship.

And that’s totally different from actually acknowledging the bare minimum of evidence, and saying “fingers crossed I hope it happens because I love it!!” That would be fine. I literally do not care if people do that. I do care when they willfully misinterpret what’s on the page and try to act like 1) they have found facts, and 2) they pretend like that “fact” should have any bearing on what other people ship. 

So, re: Az. 

I literally made this argument four years ago lol and if you read it real quick you can see that that ship came about (in January 2017) not because of all this “evidence” people found in acowar, which didn’t exist yet for us, but before that for other fandom, fanon reasons. 

And since acowar came out, I’ve pretty much avoided talking about Az because I know that somehow, the fact that he’s dark and twisty is.... controversial??? Yeah, I compared him to Tamlin and I still hold to that (I saw a vagueblog about my idea and I still think that comparison is accurate, but anyway). But people just? Don’t want to hear anything like that about Az. Even though that’s literally what we are given.

There is nothing wrong with saying that he’s dark af. In fact, all of the evidence we have from the book is that he is not only dark, but that he is increasingly  losing control. There was the blowup in acowar, and the increased disrespect of Rhys (and Feyre) in acosf, refusal to take orders from someone he is supposedly so loyal to. Even back in acomaf there were multiple signs that Mor was concerned about bruising his ego (literally the first thing that Mor says about Az is that he would want to know something, I’m not going to look it up but the implication was that he would be upset if he didn’t know).

From acosf:

Az had a vicious competitive streak. It wasn’t boastful and arrogant, the way Cassian himself knew he himself was prone to be, or possessive and terrifying like Amren’s. No, it was quiet and cruel and utterly lethal. (pg. 254)

“He’d tortured it out of someone. Of many people.” (pg. 224)

“Some silent conversation passed between him and his mate, and Cassian knew Rhys was asking about the torture - apologizing for making Feyre witness even the ten minutes Azriel had worked. (pg. i lost my place idk)

“Opening movements in a symphony of pain that Azriel could conduct with brutal efficiency. (pg. 375)

So asdkhasldkjasda if only we could STOP saying that Az is actually a dark soft boi and just acknowledge that he’s fucked up and that him being with ANYONE at this point would potentially be harmful to that person, be it Elain or Gwyn or whoever? That chapter did NOTHING but continue a line of character development that had already been in place, and I get the need to romanticize dark boys, but idk, don’t pretend he’s something he’s not.

[anthropologicalhands]

bro, tell me about three poems you've fallen in love with recently. also, i miss you. also, hi.

hello hello! sorry i’ve been scarce lately!

I’ve been in a wildly romantic mood for the last few months, possibly as escapism, possibly also because I was very preoccupied having feelings for someone from whom I am trying to move on from/have since moved on from, but for those reasons, anything about love or the all-encompassing sense of it has been helping me really sort through all of it.

Onto poetry!

I’ve been reading Rumi recently, and one of his poems that really stands out is called “The Marriage of True Minds”:

Happy the moment when we are seated in the palace, thou and I, With two forms and with two figures but with one soul, thou and I. The colours of the grove and the voices of the birds will bestow immortality At the time when we shall come into the garden, thou and I. The stars of Heaven will come to gaze upon us: We shall show them the moon herself, thou and I. Thou and I, individuals no more, shall be mingled in ecstasy, Joyful and secure from foolish babble, thou and I. All the bright-plumed birds of Heaven will devour their hearts with envy In the place where we shall laugh in such a fashion, thou and I. This is the greatest wonder, that thou and I, sitting here in the same nook, Are at this moment both in Iraq and Khorasan, thou and I.

The footnotes for this poem describe it as a description of a mystical union where lover and beloved become one with the universal essence of love. I’ve been curious about Persian, Arabic, and Sufi traditions in poetry just in general lately. I’ve also read different translations of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám - I have a volume with three different translation versions by Edward Fitzgerald which is supposedly widely reputed to be as beautiful as the original, though it isn’t necessarily the most accurate translation. But even the translator was always trying to get closer and closer, hence the multiple editions. The changes between the translations are very subtle but they change the tone significantly, which is just interesting to think about. I still feel like I’m missing a lot, but I hope to dig deeper here, because damn.

There is also Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness”, which I can link to, so I will. Naomi Shihab Nye has been one of my favorites ever since I started seriously reading poetry, but I’m always re/discovering works by her, and this one has been hitting hard.

And there is “Adore” by Li Young Lee, but I’m going to pull out the section specifically that resonates with me:

You say: We cannot look upon Love's face without dying. So we face each other to see Love's look. And thus third-person souls suddenly stand at gaze and the lover and the beloved, second- and first-persons, You and I, eye to eye, are born. But such refraction, multiplying gazes, strews Love's eye upon the objects of the world, as upon the objects of our room.

I do wish I understood Hindi or Urdu, because many of the Bollywood songs I’m listening to sound like they would be poetry! While the translations give a sense of the beauty, I’m definitely experiencing the songs in a very different way than I would have experienced them if I understood the lyrics. But the ones that just sound beautiful to me include:

Tum Se Hi (linking to a random lyric video rather than the official video because there are these vocalizations in the song itself that you don’t hear in the movie that really add to it.)

Gerua (the visuals for this are just gorgeous. Iceland man!)

Janam Janam (from the same movie as Gerua! I want to give context, but I’m linking these for the SONGS, not the story, otherwise I’ll go into a whole thing about it XD)

Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna (...admittedly as great as this song is, the context makes it EVEN BETTER, but I’ll refrain)

Chaiyya Chaiyya (on a train!!! this song in particular apparently was inspired by an Urdu poem, according to Wikipedia.)

Dil Chahta Hai (best coastal drive music ever)

(Don’t worry about listening/watching these btw! This is more showing where my head has been going. Also, it can be a little weird watching some of these videos if you haven’t seen the movies)

Bollywood’s been great for a lot of my moods, actually,  and I really really wish I could find some critical studies/history of Bollywood books I could sink my teeth into, because calling them musicals doesn’t feel right - like they are very much their own thing and draw from a vast number of traditions that I don’t know, so trying to compare them to western musicals really doesn’t feel right. 

[onedirectionfanfics]

The Shamrock Social Club by @harryonstage​

Somehow you land a consultation with Harry Styles, one of the most renowned tattoo artists on the west coast. He agrees to design your first tattoo and ink it on you himself, but over the course of your sessions together, mischief ensues… 

This month’s featured story, The Shamrock Social Club, brought together avid Tumblr fic readers and Twitter stans alike in excitement and anticipation for each update. It tells the story of a girl determined to get a tattoo and her wildly attractive tattoo artist, Harry—fondly known as “tattoorry” among readers. Check out our amazing interview with the brilliant author behind this masterpiece below!

***

How long have you been writing for?

God, as long as I can remember. I have memories of being in middle school, feverishly writing stories in my composition notebook when I was supposed to be paying attention to the lesson. I was conjuring up elaborate worlds and characters long before I ever planned on sharing them with anybody—before I even realized what I was doing.

Do you have certain habits or rituals you have to do while writing?

A lot of my followers joke about this, but I do a lot of writing in the bath. I turn off all my notifications and commit not to check my texts for awhile, and I cannot write without a giant warm beverage, usually coffee or rooibos tea with honey. I put rainstorm sounds on my bluetooth speaker. The thesaurus app and google dictionary are open at all times. Also, part of the creative process definitely happens long before I ever actually sit down to write—I’m constantly jotting stuff down in the notes app on my phone if I’m out and about when I think of a line to work into a scene later. I have all these sticky notes with like cryptic, half-baked ideas all over my desk at work… I’ll pick one up and all it says is like “The clicks a skateboard makes rolling down the sidewalk” or “The feeling of having an orange peel beneath your fingernails.” And I refuse to throw them away, even if I have no idea what I was thinking at the time. I think most people who write do that to some degree, though.

The ever famous question: how did you come up with this idea?

Honestly I was on tumblr and saw a collage of women with dragon and snake tattoos. I began thinking about the type of person who would want that symbol on them forever, and why. Minutes later, I wrote that “Tattoo You, 1981” blurb on my masterlist—of course named after the Rolling Stones album released that year—and then that became the preliminary blueprint for what is now The Shamrock Social Club. I literally thought it was going to be a one shot at most, but here we are nearly fifty-two thousand words later.

Throughout your writing in this fic, you show a great deal of knowledge about the process of getting a tattoo. Is this from experience or something you learned from researching?

Both! I have a few tattoos. One of them is a stick-and-poke. It’s been awhile since I got my last one though, so I had to refresh myself on the aftercare process. I called the actual Shamrock Social Club a few times to gauge what a master tattoo artist there would charge for something as large as the snake. I also wanted to be sure it was possible for an artist to fill in a tattoo as they work through the outline the way Harry does in the story. The researching process of a fic writer is so funny to me… I wish my readers could see me alone in my room at 2:00 AM eating dry cereal, deeply invested in a fifteen minute Youtube video comparing different types of tattoo inks.

When does a story go from an idea in your mind to paper? Is there a process you go through before writing it out, or do you just get straight in it?

I have so much respect for the writers who can just like, wing it. I personally need to have a story mapped out in bullet points beginning to end before I even open up a new document on my computer. That way, I get more time to sit with it and meditate on how close to reality it seems, and it helps me finagle the order of events and decide if there’s any room for improvement. Also, if I think of a detail or subplot that’s not in my original outline, it’s easier to pop it in and visualize how it synthetically fits with the story.

In all four parts (51k words), not once do you give a name for the main character or call her ‘Y/N’. Was this a difficult task? What was the reason for it?

This is a hot topic right now in the fan fiction community! Sometimes it’s difficult, but I think it helped make the prose in this story more seamless to read. As someone who has written original characters as well as self-insert fics, I think a strong enough writer can make a character feel personable and unique and real without an elaborate backstory, and I don’t feel that it takes anything integral away from the creative process for me. If you can get an audience to root for a protagonist in a couple of chapters through their choices, dialogue, hopes, and motivations alone, to me that’s a much more successful story… I deeply respect writers who are like “write for yourself, not for others!” but that notion doesn’t really keep me up at night. To me, it’s obvious that I’m writing for myself if I’m writing at all, and I’m very comfortable with that fact. Imagine that you’re in school for creative writing and your professor gives you an exercise with a few simple parameters… it’s a bit like that. I still only write about exactly what I want, but undergoing the challenge of writing for an audience has 100% made me a better, more versatile writer. To me that does not feel like a loss, or a compromise. Plus, I think it’s such an interesting way to engage with a story—you are explicitly the protagonist, actively steering your own trajectory with every choice you make.

Was the character ‘AJ’ inspired by anyone you know in real life, AJ?

Guilty as charged. I do tend to Stan Lee myself and my friends into my fics. Aijia, Iz, Steph, Ellen… all of those characters are based on my actual friends. It started out as a joke—I literally just needed a name for the roommate character, but someone suggested I name her AJ and I was like… why not? I love having fun that costs nothing and hurts nobody! Annie and I wrote ourselves into Under the Same Roof, too.

This fic very delicately tells the story of a girl who’s been sexually abused in the past in some way and is on a determined mission to self-healing. A topic not many will brave, but you did. Why?

This is such a good question. Honestly I was on the fence at first. As I was drafting the first installment, Nobody Fucks with a Snake, I knew I wanted Harry’s character to turn her away from the shop at first before he decided to take a chance on her, but I needed a reason why. Like, I needed him to see a glimmer of something in her, and simply him being attracted to her didn’t feel compelling enough to me. I thought it would be really meaningful and it would raise the stakes a little if Harry saw this like… tenacity and determination in her. One of my favorite scenes in the whole story is that pivotal moment in his office when we see Harry really start to understand the gravity of her predicament and how much this snake means to her. He’s so affected by her vulnerability, and it speaks volumes about both of them.

In the drafting process, I was talking with my friend Tanvi who also writes fic, and she wanted to know if there was some reason why Harry’s character feels such a strong urge to help this young woman, and why he goes to such great lengths to respect consent throughout the story. Like, does he have a loved one who was sexually assaulted? Is this a more personal issue for him? I considered this, but truthfully, I thought this story would be so much more poignant and effective if there like, wasn’t some special reason. Consent is necessary. Sexual assault is inexcusable and wrong. It is as simple and as complicated as that.

What was it like writing on an issue that makes a lot of people uncomfortable (but is still so important)? Did you feel like you had a responsibility to fulfil?

As a writer, it’s an enormous responsibility to parse trauma and heaviness and sorrow in a way that doesn’t glorify the pain, especially if you have a younger audience. Most of my readers are in their twenties, like me. I read something recently about how it’s true that writers shouldn’t cover topics such as sexual trauma, eating disorders, or major depression as to avoid romanticizing any of these terrible, life-altering experiences, but that doesn’t necessarily apply to people who have been through these hardships and turn to art or writing as an outlet.

I have an eating disorder. It’s something I talk about openly on my blog—as an aside, you should definitely browse my recovery tag! Through fic, I’ve written about what it’s like to have an ED. I’ve also used fic to write about having a stalker, and in The Shamrock Social Club, of course I write about the complex relationship one has with sex and romance and dating in the aftermath of being sexually assaulted. I write to focus on the triumphs instead of the pain, and I always try to make these experiences awkward, ugly, and honestly gross when they need to be. Without divulging too much of myself online, I’m well equipped to know what all of those hardships feel like. In fact, I’ve read many stories, fan fiction and novels alike, that portray eating disorders, stalkers, and surviving sexual assault in a really misleading light, and I wanted to create something I felt like accurately represented how insidious and terrifying all of that actually is. Most of all, for me, writing this story was so much more about the main character overcoming her strife, and finally feeling like she has agency and control over her own body again. At its core, the Shamrock Social Club is really just the story of a fiercely determined young woman on her own path to healing, who happens to meet a boy along the way. The writing process was very, very cathartic.

Your story got popular not only on Tumblr but across Twitter as well in a short period of time—an amazing accomplishment. How did you react to your (well-deserving) popularity?

Jesus, the memes that have been born out of this story on twitter and tumblr are… beyond hilarious. And trust me, nobody lurks on twitter more than me. I don’t know if I would use the word “popular” about this story or even about myself though. To put things in perspective, suddenly being under a magnifying glass is still super strange and new to me. I literally had about 500 followers for most of the eight years I’ve been on tumblr until the end of 2018, which is when I started posting fic. I think about this all the time, I could write a dissertation on how baffling it is that people suddenly seem to give me heaps of attention and put me on this pedestal when deep down I know who I am and I know how tumblr works and I know it’s just as likely that people could be sending messages and giving praise to literally anyone else. Everybody has something to offer, I just got lucky. In the grand scheme of things, this story has only reached a very small pocket of the internet and there really isn’t anything about me that makes me more special than anyone else, I’m just a person who had a few people’s attention for a little while because I wrote a story. I’m very proud and grateful to have people reading my writing and it isn’t lost on me how fortunate I am that anyone does in the first place.

The one thing I will say though, is that it’s profoundly moving to me the amount of sexual assault survivors who have come forward in the wake of this story. Anonymously or not, people have been so open, and have shared so much of themselves with me. It’s amazing how alone you can be made to feel when you don’t have an example of someone who has been through the same struggle as you and come out the other side, even if it’s a fictional character, and I think this story ended up meaning a lot more to people than I ever expected it to. I can’t wrap my brain around how special it is that something I wrote could offer some small comfort to another person who has survived something so awful. The response this story has gotten blows me out of the water to this day.

Who came up with the name ’tattoorry’?

Honestly I don’t remember but “tattoorry” is shorthand for “tattoo artist Harry.”

Lastly, anything you’d like to say to anyone who read your fic?

Thank you for reading my writing. On principal, I think that if you find something that makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, then that’s worth celebrating. The people who have engaged with this story made into into something so much bigger and more special than I could’ve ever accomplished on my own. 

Thank you very much, this was a lot of fun!

***

Thank you, AJ, for your time and dedication to these questions! Check out more of her work here! 

***If you would like to send in recommendations for next months featured story, please do so here.

[schraubd]

Partial Expression and Anti-Discrimination Law

Today, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote (Judges Stras and Shepherd in the majority, with Judge Kelly dissenting), held that it was unconstitutional to apply Minnesota's anti-discrimination statute (which covers sexual orientation discrimination) to a videography company that wanted to get into the wedding video business but objected to filming gay weddings. Insofar as the statute required the videography company to treat same-sex and opposite-sex marriages alike (i.e., film both of them), it violated the videographer's free speech rights, since it effectively compelled them to express favorable attitudes towards same-sex marriages (which they in fact object to on religious grounds). In the context of anti-BDS law debates and others, I've been writing a fair bit about how cases like this well-illustrate why liberals should be wary about endorsing sweeping interpretations of the First Amendment as conflicting with (and trumping) anti-discrimination claims. As "First Amendment Lochnerism" swells in influence, there is more and more of a risk of huge swaths of anti-discrimination law being struck down as unlawful discrimination. After all, anti-discrimination law inherently asks that people associate with those they'd rather not associate with, and implicitly register their approval of social relations they might not approve of. If this is interpreted as an affront to their free speech rights, then anti-discrimination law as a whole is in mortal peril. That said, it is clearly the case that there are genuine and nettlesome free speech problems that can emerge in cases like this. And I do not think they can be ignored just because the plaintiff is engaged in for-profit work. Movie-making is, after all, often a for-profit business, yet it would be catastrophic if the government could say therefore there is no free speech rights available to directors or screen-writers in the content of their creations. So -- are wedding videographers or photographers different? And if so, how? The core distinction the majority seems to rely upon is that between "expressive" and "non-expressive" activity. Something like making a movie is an expressive act. It is artistic, it requires editorial judgment, it is the creation of art. Movies are thought of as a reflection of a creator's expressive vision; a medium for them to transmit a particular thought or view about a slice of the world. Contrast that to serving food at a restaurant: this is not typically thought of as a means of sending a message. Compelling someone to make a movie they don't want to make would do violence to their First Amendment rights. Compelling someone to serve food to someone they don't want to feed would not. To be sure, all activity can be "expressive" in some sense -- for example, a bigot might say that requiring him to serve a black customer at his restaurant implicitly expresses the view that the customer is his equal and worthy of service. But the idea behind the distinction is that most people do not typically view the act of serving food at a restaurant to be expressive, and so requiring restaurants to serve customers in a non-discriminatory fashion doesn't burden speech even if it "incidentally" has certain expressive feature (like "I'm willing to serve this customer"). The court concluded that making a wedding video is an expressive activity. The videographers, in their words, use their "unique skill[s] to identify and tell compelling stories through video." "They exercise creative control over the videos they produce and make 'editorial judgments' about 'what events to take on, what video content to use, what audio content to use, what text to use . . . , the order in which to present content, [and] whether to use voiceovers.'" This is all quintessentially expressive in nature, and so compelling a business to effectively "editorialize" in favor of a wedding they disapprove of is a First Amendment violation -- it forces them to directly, not incidentally, express thoughts they disavow. There's some force to this. But something about it kept nagging at me, and I was trying to nail down what it was. Here's my best stab at it: Nobody hires a wedding photographer or videographer for the purpose of expressing their genuine views about the wedding. Their job is to make the bride and groom, and their special day, look and feel great. For all I know, our photographer showed up to our wedding and thought that the decor was tacky and that Jill and I were a disaster for each other and that the Jewishness of it all was an offense to God. But of course, he didn't express any of those views, even in his "expressive" photographs. That's not his job, and he knows it, and everyone who sees his photographs knows it too. The flip side is that, when people look at our (lovely) wedding photographs, nobody says "wow -- your wedding photographer must have really thought your wedding was beautiful" (let alone "he must have really approved of your wedding"). A wedding photographer does engage in expression -- but only partially. There are expressive elements to what our wedding photographer did, that can be directly imputed to him: the virtuosity of a shot, or the way he used lighting, for instance. But note the contrast: if I look at my wedding photos, I do impute to the photographer artistic decisions about the staging of the shot, but I don't impute to him views about the merits of the wedding itself. Photography is expressive, but in this case not comprehensively so. It is, we might say, "partially" expressive, and it seems reasonable to say that First Amendment protections only extend to the part of the expression that reasonably, not incidentally, is imputable to the author of the speech. Compare this to the words spoken by a wedding officiant. When she delivers remarks at the altar, most listeners would reasonably take them to be an expression of her own views -- if she says "you two make a great couple", that is (with perhaps some latitude for puffery) her own expressive view on the matter. And so if she was uncomfortable speaking positive words about any particular marriage (for religious reasons or otherwise), it would be wrong to compel her to do so. But the distinction isn't between visual and verbal or textual mediums. On the one hand, a movie (as in one shown at the theater), is fairly thought to represent the vision and expression of the directors (and actors and screenwriters, perhaps collectively) "all the way down" -- not just in terms of technical attributes like how to frame a given scene, but also in terms of the message being communicated. If a documentary filmmaker presents a given subject in a positive light, that's generally imputed to the filmmaker -- they think positively of the subject -- in a way that doesn't track for a wedding videographer. And on the other hand, text if a restaurant serves a dessert that says "happy birthday!" on it, nobody thinks that the chef is actually doing so to express his or her substantive views on the merits of your birthday (I hate to burst anyone's bubble here). That's true even though there may well be expressive elements to the dessert that I do attribute directly to the chef. If I see a beautifully designed cake that says "happy birthday" on it, I view the chef-qua-chef as expressing his or her own message in the design far more than I do in the "happy birthday". So it's not enough to draw an expressive versus non-expressive distinction. I agree that making a wedding video is expressive, but I disagree that (under normal circumstances) it is expressive as to the merits of the wedding. Along that dimension, the videographer's implicit "endorsement" of the same-sex wedding they film stands on identical footing to the restaurateur's implicit "endorsement" of racial equality with regard to the Black customer they serve. In both cases, it is incidental, and so in neither case should it significant weight. Indeed, it cannot be the case that any expressive component in a business transaction sufficed to render it entirely expressive and therefore wholly insulated from regulation under the First Amendment. Even in the food service example -- which we've relied upon as our easy case -- very much can incorporate an expressive dimension, for example, in decisions on plating, interpretations of dishes, and so on. A restaurant can say, accurately, that it exercises "editorial discretion" on these matters, and so could potentially have a First Amendment difference if the state tried to regulate its "editorializing" in these domains (I say "potentially" because while a state law which seeks to declare how a veal marsala must be plated would assuredly fail under the First Amendment, one which insists that a "veal marsala" must contain veal -- "interpretation" notwithstanding -- could at least feasibly survive). But surely the expression here is confined to that domain, and it does not mean that the choice in who the restaurant serves is now expressive as well. Put (sort of) simply, the question is not whether the conduct has any expressive character. It's whether the expressive character of the conduct is what generates the allegedly compelled speech. If it doesn't, then the fact that a given piece of expressive conduct also comes attached to an implicit endorsement of a view that speaker disapproves of is incidental, in the same way that it is incidental where the conduct is not expressive at all. I don't pretend that I've just offered a simple, knockdown solution to one of constitutional law's thorniest dilemmas. But I do think we live in an era where wildly expansive understandings of the First Amendment are being wielded as a weapon against huge swaths of the regulatory state, and anti-discrimination law is one of the most inviting targets. We need to start thinking more carefully about limiting principles, lest virtually all discrimination become enshrined with constitutional protection. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/30GdQvq

[raratorenkebu]

Love, an essay

Shakespeare once asked his mistress “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”. He spent a poem trying to relate an otherworldly beauty to something he can understand. I’m certainly no Shakespeare, but I have come to a point in my love when I fear I cannot continue without finding a way to compare and therefore transform you into something in this world that I can deserve. 

Let’s begin with your eyes. 

When I want to write and I have no words, when I spin around wildly looking for inspiration, it is always your eyes that come to mind first. Somehow, though, I can never compare them accurately to anything, always diving into the deep-end of calling them ocean-blue. But the ocean is dark and dangerous. It holds creatures we know little about, and light breaks through only on the surface. No, that’s not you. 

Maybe your eyes are like opal - a shining blue with specks of silver and green. Beautiful and precious, used to enhance the appearance. But, pretty as they may be, opals are shallow and hard, and simply a decorative item, a vain desire. No, that’s not you either, nor are those my feelings toward you. 

Perhaps I can compare your eyes to the light navy of the sky that always tinges the horizon directly after the sun sets. That would be a more accurate simile - your eyes are the blue that we see in the distance, but beyond that blue lie galaxies and beauties we don’t even know about yet. Your eyes hold much more than we can see. 

And how about your smile? What should I compare that to?

I could say it brightens my world, shoos the clouds away, but that would be a cliche. It is true that your smile kindles a warmth within me, sometimes even ignites a forest fire, but how do I express that so you would understand? 

Maybe imagine your world being confined to a noisy bar on a Friday night. You get used to the noise eventually, it all just fades into the background, but for a long time, or maybe never, you have very little knowledge as to what silence sounds like. Then one day, you finally decide to take that first step outside the bar. The world out here is so different. Everything is quiet, and your ears ring for a while before you get used to the lack of noise. You can finally breathe, even though you never realised you were unable to in the first place. This is the only way I can explain what happens to my mind when you smile at me. 

And your voice? Ah, your voice. 

You can be so boisterous! The depth of thunder billows around the house when you laugh, with no warning from lighting. It is a deep, strong voice, filled with authority and confidence. It’s only when you talk to me that I notice the gentle tones, like a stormy ocean suddenly confining itself to a riverbed. 

What can I say then? Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? No, I certainly will not. I cannot confine your beauty and your person to a single earthly season. No, I will compare you to the ocean, the sky, the stars and all the galaxies in this universe, and still I’ll be unable to understand how I could ever deserve such a serendipity. 

[witchdoodle]

cute headcanons i just made up...

vivienne saw how pad struggled to get his hands on products for his hair type which is common up north but very uncommon south of the waking sea, and went out of her way to procure cocoa butter and castor oil for him. she used to wear her hair in elaborate hairstyles but just kinda got sick of it and wanted a sleeker look so she shaved it a couple years back, so she knows what’s up. she’s also hooks him up with stylists whenever they’re in orlais who know how to handle his hair type. she brought her personal stylist to halamshiral before celene’s ball for his sake, and gave him a lot of valuable advice about how to navigate orlesian racism/colourism within the game.

bull will happily spend hours braiding pad’s hair with surprising dexterity given that he’s missing half of two fingers. in turn pad loves to sit behind him with his legs slung over bull’s shoulders, rubbing balm into his horns (especially where they meet the skin of his head, which gets super dry and itchy) and helping shave the back of his head where he always misses spots.

after pad loses his arm bull helps him a lot with his hair.

meditation is a common practice among the qun, but the dalish do it too. pad’s keeper specifically taught him about mindfulness, which he still practices. pad does guided meditations for bull all the time which he looooves and finds super relaxing, and it helps with bull’s aftercare. (doms need aftercare too!)

silas works for dennet in the stables. dennet knew right away that he was worth his weight in gold as a stablehand and was like ALL THE REST OF YOU FUCK OFF THIS ONE’S MINE. he looked after him in the beginning when silas was still very shy and nervous around all these shemlen, made sure no one was bullying him or pushing him around and helped him gain confidence by backing up silas’ authority with the recruits who might be disinclined to listen to a “knife-ear,” especially a “cripple.” dennet basically was like: shut the fuck up he knows more than you. 

plus, silas introduced him to the halla he’d brought and dennet was D Y I N G to meet one. he’s a little too big to ride one (and halla won’t take human riders anyway) but he got a little giddy just being so close to one. one of them even ate an apple out of his hand.

leliana also saw his usefulness right away and recruited him to teach her elven scouts -- the vast majority of whom are city elves -- how to ride halla. halla are faster, nimbler, more intelligent, and able to traverse terrain horses cannot -- ideal for scouts who need to move quickly and quietly.

leliana also put him to work teaching her agents sign language, instantly seeing how useful that, too, would be -- given that it’s not the chantry’s sign language and rival spies would be unlikely to be able to understand it. now a ton of people in the inquisition know it and silas has a lot more people to talk to.

leliana and shireen had a lot to talk about, having wildly different perspectives on the chantry. shireen and vivienne have more in common as far as their backgrounds go, though the two of them responded to similar traumas by moving in opposite directions. all three of them bond over shoes, but shy’s a little, well, shy because being dalish has made her such a tomboy and she feels like she doesn’t know as much as them about fashion and femininity.

iron bull took one look at kost, BURST OUT LAUGHING, and instantly adopted him. he taught him a lot about the qun, given how little kost has ever known about that side of his heritage since his tal-vashoth mum died when he was a baby and he was raised dalish. it was really good also for bull to be around someone who was vashoth.

one of silas’ gifts to kost was horn balm. kost’s nubs get very itchy in the dry air of the frostbacks. silas eventually confessed it’s nipple cream for horses and kost was like jfsklajkglajhklaeh a. ... but he kept using it. i mean, it worked.

varric looks after shan, makes sure he takes breaks, eats, sleeps somewhere comfortable, washes himself, wears clean clothes, because otherwise shan will only do most of those things if told. he’s gotten in the habit of having shan scribe for him. saves his poor aching wrists (varric does a lot of writing and correspondence) and gives shan something useful to do, which seems to make shan feel content. shan also helps varric with maths and accounting.

pad and josie also definitely takes advantage of shan’s willingness to do that. pad is not very literate -- josephine taught him how to read common, he could only read elvish before -- and having shan read his correspondence to him and write down his replies helps him A TON. josie just finds that shan’s handwriting is EXTREMELY neat and precise and he’s one of her best scribes.

sera keeps trying to teach shan jokes. it doesn’t work very well but she’s taught him how to repeat a few of them verbatim even if his delivery sucks. she’s surprisingly nice to him and she’s the first to kick the crap out of someone for mistreating him, because shan can’t really stand up for himself and it’s not fair.

shan can’t do magic but can still do alchemy, and he makes a serum that really helps ease the pain in bull’s bad leg.

solas and shireen have had long conversations about elven history and culture. solas’ relationship with the dalish is... strained... but he does feel a lot of respect for shireen for making the effort to attempt to connect more to her nature (as compared to, say, sera), no matter how much the dalish got wrong. (and pad has since taught solas that just because dalish culture is different from elvhen culture does not mean it is worse.) and shireen, like pad, is willing to learn and have her ideas challenged. solas taught her a little bit about painting too.

josephine commissioned an artist for an official portrait (and had to fire the first one after absolutely chewing him out for trying to human-wash pad’s elfiness), which pad hated. solas got him to sit for a more relaxed, less formal portrait that more accurately captured his personality, and sketched him many times mostly without his knowledge. he gave one such sketch to bull. 

shireen... has a Huge Crush... on cassandra oh my god she’s like a giggly schoolgirl whenever she sees her like I LIKE... YOUR MUSCLES OKAY BYE runs away giggling

cole helps leith with their trauma, mental illness, and psychosis -- cole does a lot of reality checking for leith, because while they present similarly and are perceived similarly, cole only perceives truth, complicated as truth often is; leith is delusional, their mind just making shit up wholecloth. if leith asks is this real? they know they can trust cole when he answers yes or no, that cole won’t lie to them, in part because cole is a spirit/demon. they have looooong conversations alone, after which leith is usually much calmer and more lucid.

cole is the only one who knows leith’s surname/clan name. that name died with their clan; they won’t tell anyone else. not even cullen. they are just leith.

cullen paints or draws on leith’s arms with ink so they won’t cut themself.

cullen has long one-sided conversations with leith when leith is non-verbal -- he’ll pose a question and then answer it out loud, give a running commentary, just ramble stream-of-consciousness to keep talking, asks yes/no questions. it makes leith feel like they’re still a part of the conversation even when they can’t talk. cullen does a lot of little things like that to make leith feel normal or at least like it’s okay to be different. leith can’t talk today? all right, cullen will talk enough for them both. leith can’t make it outside? fine, they’ll stay indoors, who needs to go outside anyway. leith’s afraid there are people hiding and stalking them? cullen will check every nook and cranny.

solas has also had long talks with leith. solas never practiced blood magic much, we know that, but finds the practice fascinating and useful, so he was very interested to talk to someone who used blood magic as a tool and not as a means to an end in the pursuit of power for power’s sake. solas’ familiarity with spirits and the fade also makes him uniquely equipped to handle leith’s ... oddities.

[redefinedrealtoradvisers-blog]

 One of the questions that real estate agents often get from consumers is “how accurate are the Zillow home value estimates”. There are more tools available than ever for the average person interested in buying or selling a home. The internet provides numerous resources for everything related to real estate – locating properties, viewing, listing, advice on buying and selling and even pricing calculators. Zillow is one of the more popular real estate websites that offer many of these tools. Unfortunately, while these tools can certainly prove handy, there are times when using them can give you unreliable information.

The Problem With Zillow Home Value Estimates

Sites like Zillow have great potential to empower buyers and sellers. Where once the world of comparable sales and real estate values was understood only by real estate agents, now everyday buyers and sellers have the ability to learn tons of useful information about area properties including their own.

They no longer have to go to a real estate agent for every little bit of knowledge. The problem is, the estimates – or “Zestimates” as Zillow calls them – are not always accurate. In fact, they can be wildly off, leaving the buyer or seller worse off than before they looked at them.

Zillow may do its best to give you an accurate price of what a home is worth. In the end though, it is only an automated system that cannot think for itself. It cannot account for variations in any number of things – variations that substantially alter the price from any sort of “average”.

Could the estimations be better programmed to account for these things? Definitely. But we are not dealing with the ideal Zillow, we are dealing with it as it is now. When you are trying to buy or sell, you cannot afford to be off by tens of thousands of dollars in your pricing or your bidding.

So when someone asks a Realtor “are Zillows home value estimates accurate” you will probably see a look like the one in the picture above.

In my personal experience looking at Zillow home values in the area of Massachusetts where I am located they are typically off anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 of the actual market value. Probably better than some markets but worse than others.

How Zillow Estimates Value

Zillow uses a proprietary formula to determine the value of a home based off of information the website has obtained from public records and information entered by users. The site knows what the home sold for the last time it was purchased and it knows this same information for other homes in the surrounding area. Using this and data entered in by homeowners – things like features of their particular home – Zillow comes up with a price that a home is worth.

From what many have gathered, one of the value factors that is at the top of Zillows formula is using a properties assessed value. Unfortunately rarely does assessed home value have a correlation to market value. They are two completely different things. Assessed values are used by towns to collect taxes and in many cases trail the actual market value of a home.

In my experience I have seen homes sell for over $100,000 more than the assessed value. I have also seen them sell for that much under the value. Intelligent real estate agents never look at assessed value when trying to determine market value. If only life were that easy. It would make our jobs as agents so much easier.

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Why Zillow Estimates Fail So Often

On the surface, the method used by Zillow seems like it would give a pretty decent ballpark figure for the value of a home. And sometimes, it succeeds. More often though, Zillow estimates are off significantly – sometimes by 40% or more.

The most recent selling price of a property is certainly useful information to have and is likely the easiest concrete data that Zillow can obtain. This is information that buyers and sellers should know about properties. However, it does not indicate what a home is worth now. The market is changing minute to minute and a sale price that is years if not decades old is no way to estimate the current value of a home.

The recent sale prices of nearby homes are also useful when you are buying or selling. Known as comparable sales, they make up a major factor in how a real estate agent will price a home. The problem is, these comparable sales need to be considered for what they actually are – not as indisputable numbers. Comparable sales can only be viewed as an apples to apples scenario in very specific situations.

If your home is very similar to all the other homes in the neighborhood – such as in a newer housing development of moderately priced homes – and no one has had time to renovate the properties, comparable sales may be viewed as apples to apples. But if you are in an area where the age, size or features are varied, then it quickly becomes an apples to oranges situation. Both fruit, but very different kinds of fruit.

The way a Realtor determines real estate market value is off the charts different than how Zillow does it. Local real estate agents or even an appraiser understand how one comparable sale relates to the next.

A good Realtor is seasoned in comparing drastically different homes in a single neighborhood to get an accurate price on a property. Zillow does not have this kind of ability. This is why it can be off so significantly at times. Comparable sales are only one tool in measuring the value of a home and Zillow is not so great at using this information as it should be used.

Zillow in fact does a good job informing consumers that Zestimates may not be accurate in this web page. The problem however, is that most people never see it. Maybe it would be a good idea for Realtors to share this webpage more?

Another reason the estimates are so off according to Zillow is their evaluation method differs from that of a comparative market analysis (CMA) completed by a real estate agent. Geographically, the data Zillow uses is much broader than just your neighborhood or town. Zillow states that often times, they use all the data in a county to calculate.

So though there may be no recent sales in the “neighborhood”, even a few sales in the area allow them to extrapolate changes in the local housing market. However, the data they gather does allow the models to incorporate the  neighborhood patterns of recent sales.

Is there any wonder why Zillow home value estimates are so inaccurate? All that keeps coming to mind when thinking about using “county data” is you have got to be kidding me. The values from one county to the next in my area varies tremendously! Lets just throw all the data into one big barrel and call it Zillow value soup.

Why So Many Real Estate Agents Hate Zillow

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While hate is a strong word this is how many real estate agents feel about Zillow. Why is this the case? It is all about one word – credibility. Real Estate agents as a whole have a difficult time as it is being trusted by some people. In some circles we are only regarded just above a car salesmen. When a home seller sits down to interview an agent on many occasions a homeowner will already have visited Zillow and taken a look at their “Zestimate of value” for their home.

Along comes a Realtor who presents their comparative market analysis of all the homes in the area that have recently sold, gone under contract and are currently for sale. The Realtor carefully takes the homeowner through all the data until they finally arrive at the suggested list price and probable sale price. The sellers jaw hits the floor. The local real estate expert has just come to the table with a value that is $50,000 less than what Zillow says the home is worth.

This is where the real estate agent has to go on the defensive because “Mr. & Mrs I don’t trust Realtors” is now looking at you like have three heads. How could Zillow be wrong after all they are a really well run organization and we see them advertising on television?

What most sellers don’t understand is that Zillow estimates values of over 100 million homes across the country. It would be impossible for them to accurately predict the value of every home in America.

They don’t know what if anything we do to our homes. You could drop $75,000 renovating your kitchen and baths tomorrow and Zillow won’t know that. The last time I checked there wasn’t a Zillow peeping tom that looked in everybody’s windows. I think everyone can agree though that dropping that much money into kitchen and bath improvements is going to have a substantial impact on market value.

Here are more things to ponder about Zillow:

Zillow doesn’t know that the town data card is wrong and you really only have 3 bedrooms not 4.

Zillow doesn’t know you have a $20,000 structural crack in your foundation that needs repair.

Zillow doesn’t know that your roof is on it’s last leg and needs replacement.

Zillow doesn’t know you have a major easement running through your backyard that limits its use.

Zillow doesn’t know you just added central air conditioning, a sprinkler system, a security system and $10,000 worth of landscaping.

Is the picture starting to become more clear about the accuracy of Zillow estimates?

So, How Zillow is Useful?

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You may be thinking after ready the above information that I am not a fan of Zillow. Actually that is really far from the truth. I love everything about Zillow except for their Zestimates of value. The other information that Zillow gathers can be really useful when you are buying or selling a home.

When you are ready to buy a home they have an excellent platform for looking at properties. The information provided is second to none in my opinion. There is no doubt that tons of folks love their integrated Bing maps that come with every listing. These are super handy when trying to decipher what is around a particular property.

They have all the information you would expect when buying a home like the square footage, bedroom and bath count, age, lot size, taxes, etc. Where they really excel however is their data of the past ownership of the home and what the owner paid. This is information that is hard to find elsewhere and Zillow does a marvelous of putting it at a buyer’s finger tips.

From a sellers perspective the site is excellent because the better a property looks online the greater chance a buyer will be picking up the phone to schedule an appointment with their real estate agent.

Zillow also has an awesome app for those that have a smart phone. While you are out house hunting you can quickly and easily pull up information while in front of a home! This of course really comes in handy when you are out by yourself and don’t have a real estate agent handy to ask question you might not otherwise get the answers to right away.

Folks there is a reason why Zillow is the #1 most visited real estate website on the internet. Despite that fact that many Realtors hate them because of their crude estimating model, they do provide excellent data that is helpful to both buyers and sellers.

Final Thoughts on Zillow

There have been several studies done that demonstrate that it’s possible Zillow can be accurate within 80-90% on the value of a home. This means that its estimates can be a good starting point. However, when you are want to price a home to sell or you want to know what a home is really worth so you can buy now, its numbers are not accurate enough. For on-point accuracy, you need a savvy real estate agent than knows the area and is successfully working it right now.

Zillow also shows you the way prices are trending, either up or down, in a particular area. This is certainly useful information that can help you decide where you really want to buy and when. It is always good to know where prices appear to be going when you are making such a large transaction.

Zillow is a useful too, but it does not provide enough accuracy on home prices to be used exclusively. The site states that its estimates are only a starting point. Keep this in mind when you are getting your own Zestimates. If you are selling a home for sale by owner and were not planning on meeting with an appraiser or real estate agent to help you determine the accurate market value because you thought the Zillow estimate was good enough, hopefully this has been an eye opener. Keep in mind that the number one reason why homes do not sell is because of an unrealistic asking price. If you price your home incorrectly out of the gate more than likely you will end up selling it for less than you would have if priced correctly.

Additional Helpful Zillow Resources

Facts and Figures on Zillow including Zestimates via Wikipedia.

How far off are Zillow Zestimates of value by The Washington Post.

Why portals like Zillow won’t kill off real estate agents via Bloomberg Business Week.

Pricing a home properly is an art and science all rolled into one. It is not accomplished very well by trusting a computer generated value whether it is Zillow or some other online valuation tool. If you want an accurate value of your home always consult with a local real estate professional or competent appraiser.

Thinking about Buying or Selling? Think of Redefined Realty Advisors to help you through every step along the way. Contact us at 262-732-5800 or info@redefined.com to find the right realtor for your situation.

CLICK HERE to request an accurate CMA on your home’s value!

Original Article: Gassett, Bill. "Are Zillows Home Value Estimates Accurate”, Massachusetts Real Estate Exposure, 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 26 Jan. 2017.