#it’s super short even for a short story but the meditations on morality and how in changes based on where you stand and who you are and what

[inkykeiji]

so i’ve read rashōmon + in a grove by the real akutagawa, and i’ve begun reading crime and punishment by the real dostoevsky (absolutely loving it so far!!) but i’m kind of terrified to touch any of the real dazai’s work, especially no longer human, because i don’t want to accidentally trigger myself LMAO (*/ω＼*)

[lenbryant]

LONG RE-POST (NYT refrigerator magnet)

Lost in the Froth Oh, to have sycophants of one’s own. by Heather Havrilesky

My husband Bill and I were lying around in bed, reviewing the big blunders made by the second richest man in the world, previously heralded as a genius, now suspected of falling far short of that term. Bill was trying to figure out how a thing like this could happen. “It’s like you initially succeed by surrounding yourself with smart people,” he said, “but once you get super rich you surround yourself with sycophants.”

Then we both lay there silently, staring out the one very small window in our bedroom at tall oak trees shivering in the autumn wind, and tried to imagine smart people leaving and sycophants taking their places.

“I want that kind of money,” I said, finally.

“What would you do with it?”

“Surround myself with sycophants.”

I meant it. I would make the world’s best tech bro. I would build an office complex that looks just like that ice castle on the mountaintop in “Frozen,” and I would pack it full of yes men and flatterers and panderers and yes-yes-yes men. I’d wear an ice princess gown to work every morning and I’d glide through the corridors of my ice castle offices, singing Italian opera in my searing ice-princess voice.

Amarilli, mia bella,

Non credi, o del mio cor dolce desio

D’esser tu l’amor mio?

And even after my soul-lifting, world-altering technologies flopped and the kitchens in my glass offices were no longer stocked with kombuchas and microgreens and microbrews, and none of my 15 remaining yes men had the energy for micromanaging or microblogging or microwaving the last remaining lunch items in the glass kitchen cupboards, I’d still put on my gown and glide through those glass hallways and sing my morning KEEP YOUR SPIRITS UP! team-building, world-building memo in the form of an Italian opera:

Credilo pur: e se timor t’assale,

Dubitar non ti vale.

Aprimi il petto e vedrai scritto in core!

You might not know this, but ball gowns and Italian opera and a castle packed with fawning minions are the only surefire cures for burning out and losing it. If you think about it long enough — if you really meditate on how you, too, deserve to be flanked by a gaggle of sycophants — you might start to wonder how anyone puts their pants on in the morning without them.

This is why people get married and have kids: to create their own thriving microcosms of sycophants. Any spouse worth his weight in microchips doubles as a fawning yes man, a microanalyst dedicated to forecasting the microvariations in the microclimates of his betrothed’s micromoods, micromanaging every microscopic dip and variation in his true love’s micromindsets.

Later that day, at around 5 p.m., I find myself waiting in the very, very, very long drive-thru line at the Starbucks with my two teenagers. We have been sitting in the car for 30 minutes and counting. The line is barely moving. And suddenly I’m having one of those weird out-of-body, Talking Heads experiences where you look at yourself from a distance and you ask:

What bad life choices led a glorious ice princess to this sad fate?

Which brings us to the moral of our story: Anyone who aims to be flanked by sycophants eventually becomes one of them. Because what else explains landing in an eternal drive-thru line just because my teenagers experienced a few microseconds of unpleasantness in their brick fortresses of public education today, so now they’re craving pointless, expensive, frothy comfort? Why else would a former demigoddess willfully subject herself to such indignities, just to send a KEEP YOUR SPIRITS UP! team-building, world-building memo to her moody teens in the form of overpriced sugary foamy decaffeinated multi-flavored froth?

And what is it with froth these days? Why is froth so sought after? What warped values led us to this frothy crossroads in human history?

Well. It’s the emptiness, of course. It’s the bubbles of nothing that turn us on so much. Because even when you know your mommy is just a yes woman, micromanaging your micromoods with microscopic microbubbles, the emptiness of the gesture is what makes it so reassuring. Your mom is doing something deeply stupid and completely worthless for your benefit, kind of like when she lost track of the major plot points of “Attack On Titan” somewhere in the middle of the fourth season, but she still sang the theme song at the top of her lungs, every single time, in order to signal her total allegiance to ultraviolent cartoon sagas about gigantic cannibals.

Loyalty is perhaps best expressed in empty microgestures, bubbles of nothing, inside the volatile microclimate of family life and also inside the microcosm of friendship. “Tell me every pointless detail,” you say to your kid or your spouse or your true friend. “Let’s do something absolutely worthless together,” you murmur over a drink that ideally has froth on top of it.

This is the sweet sound of the sycophant. And everyone craves that kind of reassurance. Everyone wants to know that even when they’ve got absolutely nothing to offer, even when the world feels broken and they’re starting to lose it completely, they’ll still be adored like a gatekeeping gaslighting girl-boss in a sparkling ball gown in an ice castle on a snowy mountaintop. Everyone longs to gate-keep, gaslight, and girl-boss their way into complete isolation, the kind of isolation that can make you super stupid and deluded about your own importance.

Sitting in the Starbucks line for 30 minutes with the rest of the complete idiots in my town is sort of like turning myself into froth for the sake of love. I am saying, “I will take this utterly fruitless and impotent action, an abject waste of time and money and brain cells, to secure foamy inorganic chemical compounds devoid of nutrients, lacking any redeeming value or function, in order to signal my love for you.”

That’s devotion. You can show up empty-handed, feeling less than your full self, and you can trust that I will love you fiercely anyway. Take these empty microbubbles of nothingness and drink them as a symbol of my love for you. Enter my glass house. Put down your stones. Drink in the froth of my love. I’ve got nothing, and it’s all yours.

Heather Havrilesky writes the Ask Polly advice column on Substack and is the author of four books, most recently the memoir “Foreverland.”

[starglow-xx]

(About the brother!atsushi) aRE YOU READING MY MIND MISS?! Because that has been on my mind for MONTHS. TYSM For writing it was amazing!! If you don't mind, may I request (if requests are open) atsushi, still an older brother, but with a sister that's 10-13 yrs old? It's totally fine if you don't wanna do it. Keep up the good stories, ily mwuah!

*sobs* you’re so kind thank youu 🤧🤧

i wrote this a bit differently i hope that’s okay anon! at first i planned for this to be mainly abt atsushi and the reader, but i decided to add in relationship hcs with the agency bc i ran out of ideas

if you guys liked this don’t worry! im planning a special part two for this one so be the look out for it hehe

atsushi with a tween! sister

ft. the armed detective agency

like in my baby sister hcs, you’re still the most important thing to him period

the two of you got picked up by dazai and kunikida when he was 18 (obviously) and when you were 12

for a 12 year old, you were a bit small bc of malnourishment (which makes atsushi feel so bad) so both dazai and kunikida thought you were a bit younger than you actually were

they assumed you were about 9-10ish

you and atsushi both share a favorite food !! chazuke :)

so when kunikida treated the two of you, he made sure you got more bowls bc like i mentioned above, he feels really bad that you were malnourished and under weight

(don’t bring this up but kunikida felt bad too hehe)

when dazai went with your brother to the warehouse, you were with kunikida

imagine the surprise of the other ada members when kunikida came in with a little girl dressed in rags that popped out from behind him

kenji was the one who vocalized his thoughts 

“kunikida-san you have a daughter?! wow! i didn’t know that! :D”

when you found out your brother was a tiger, you were a bit concerned but you were actually kind of excited

you were even more excited when you found out the two of you were going to be taken in by the agency

anything was better than the stupid orphanage

and besides!

you got a tiger for an older brother and a bunch of other super powered agents to take care of you! who could want anything else?

at your age, you’re very impressionable and can be influenced easily so atsushi makes sure to teach you more in depth of good morals and the importance of kindness

his heart swells with pride and relief when he catches you being kind to others

pride bc he’s proud that even after all the two of you have gone through, you still ended up being a good kid and having a bright view of the world

and relief bc he hasn’t failed as a big brother

pfftt like he could ever fail

but please, from time to time reassure him that he’s perfect and the only big brother that you’d ever want bc he rlly needs that kind of validation

with his salary and savings, he tries to buy nice things for you

what a sweetheart 🥺

he saw you eyeing that one dress at a store window? fast forward abt a week and half and it’s inside a pretty gift bag for you

you wanted to try that dessert from the nice bakery? that’s dessert after dinner at one point

but other than buying you things, he sets money aside for you

like all the time

(y/n), here have this, you might need it”

“but nii-san you just gave me—”

“take it”

#1 spoiler

also your #1 confidant and source of physical affection

you tell him anything and everything (except crushies and those kinds of things)

atsushi loves it when you talk abt your day and he can see the big smile on your face and the sparkle in your eyes

it gives him the strength to keep going 😖😖

the two of you aren’t as touch starved as you’d probably think, but that’s only bc the two of you had each other

in your opinion, no one can match the hugs of your big brother

and it got even better bc YAYY he has tiger arms now ٩(◕‿◕)۶

if you ask, he’d carry you around too hehe

you also get nightmares quite often so he’ll always be there ready to calm you down, talk if you need to, and rock you back to sleep

god i love him 🤧🤧

atsushi will do everything in his power to protect you and make sure you get to grow up happy, supported, and loved

port mafia attack? oop he’s already taking you to the nearest escape route

someone is starting to harass you? they just got suckered punched into the next week

you want to go out to have some fun? he’ll go ask the president for a day off

you’re not feeling well? he’ll take another day off and take care of you

whatever you want to do, he’ll do it with you! (as long as it’s within reason)

will always be your #1 supporter! and he’s the president of your fan club hehe

he loves you so so much and will do anything for you; your life and happiness will always be more important to him

you are his reason to keep going

agency head canons !!

atsushi is your big brother, but kunikida is most definitely some sort of father figure

everyone can see it

except kunikida of course

kunikida scolds you lightly if he thinks your manners need work or if you make a mess in the agency

you listen to him of course and in turn as some sort of a reward, he’ll give you pieces of stationary

he always gives you the nice, good quality kind and you’re over the moon

atsushi adores it when you come running to him showing your new notebook or fountain pen and blabbering what you’re going to do with it

sometimes it isn’t even as a reward for being a good child; he’ll just give it to you and he’ll say smth like “i noticed you’ve used up your last notebook quite quickly, so here’s another one” or “did you run out of ink? here have this then”

he usually has a soft spot for children in general, but he most definitely has a soft spot (or a thousand) for you

yosano is kind of like a motherly figure to you

she gives you the guidance a mother should and goes on shopping trips with you!

atsushi always gets dragged along by you, but he thinks it’s worth it seeing you look so happy

yosano being a doctor also tries to teach the things you should know, or things that would be helpful to you

she’ll teach you the basics of cooking, sewing, how to treat a cold/fever, etc

also gives you excellent advice 1000% of the time

“remember (y/n)-chan if someone hurts you come tell me and then i’ll chop them into—”

“yOSANO-SENSEI DONT TELL HER THAT—”

fukuzawa is like a father to most in the agency but you see him more as a grandfather figure

bi weekly tea and gossip sessions hehe

along with cat talk!

most of the time though, it’s just you talking and him listening to you, but the two of you enjoy it nonetheless

“and then kunikida-san ended up crashing into a pole and dazai-san started to laugh at him and i did too because it was really funny but we ended up getting scolded—”

“hmm i see...”

he’ll let you stay in his office as he fills out paperwork; you’re usually doodling or drawing in your notebooks

sometimes he’ll meditate and you’ll join him, but 4/7 times you’d fall asleep

you always wake up with a blanket over you

dazai is like a cool but a highly concerning and kind of high maintenance uncle

frequently takes you out with him when he ditches work

walks in the park, eating at uzumaki so he has the excuse of treating you so he doesn’t have to pay his tab avoiding kunikida and sometimes chuuya and akutagawa, all that fun stuff

also tries to not talk abt suicide in front of you especially if it’s just the two of you alone

he knows that you mean the world to his pupil and that said pupil would probably hate him for putting suicide inside your brain

he teaches you random but useful things like how to pick a lock, how to steal kunikida’s notebook if you’re looking for some information, how to sweet talk your way out of things, etc.

is also the one to tell you that if you ever get a significant other to introduce them to the agency first

he always wants all of your gossip; some of them work pretty well for blackmail

“dazai-san! dazai-san! did you know that kunikida-san lost his glasses and he was looking for them for nearly an hour when he was just holding them the entire time??”

“woah really (y/n)-chan?! hey hey can you say it again into this recording device so kunikida-kun would believe me when i tell him—”

always ends up giving kunikida a heart attack when he says that you’ve been with him all day

ranpo is also like a cool but a highly concerning and kind of high maintenance uncle

will share some of his snacks, but don’t push it or you might not get anything at all

loves it when you compliment him

if you tagged along with him and your brother on a case, he will show off to impress you

“...and that’s how the crime happened”

“UWAHH RANPO-SAN YOU’RE SO COOL”

atsushi is lowkey and kunikida is highkey stressed that ranpo’s eating habits will rub off on you

“ne (y/n)-chan do you wanna try this highly caffeinated drink and this concerning amount of sugar filled snack?”

“can i really?!”

“rANPO-SAN NO—”

ranpo definitely does stuff like that on purpose 

the tanizakis are like siblings to you!

a weird set of siblings but siblings nonetheless

the two of them adore you and think you’re precious

atsushi definitely knows how to do your hair whether it’s long or short but he got even better at it when he asked the two

hehe braid trains are definitely a thing + kyouka and kenji (and maybe even dazai)

sometimes you have sibling swap days

you’re with junichiro for most of the day and atsushi is with naomi

strange i know

each of the tanizaki siblings try to make it fun bc they know that the two of you did not at all have a happy upbringing

junichiro likes spending time with you by taking you out to different places that naomi likes to frequent

like the mall, different stores and restaurants, the park, places like those

naomi does the same thing with atsushi so if you ever bump into them, you go out and eat together :)

besides atsushi, the next one in line who spoils you the most would be junichiro (and yosano & kunikida both coming in at a close third)

he honestly can’t help it; you remind him of how naomi was when she was younger

and besides

he’s always been a sucker when it came to the happiness of a little sister

“would you really buy this for me junichiro-san?!”

“of course! don’t worry about it” :)

wanna talk abt boys/girls/celebrity crushes things like that? naomi is your girl

you feel a bit embarrassed to go talking to yosano or your brother abt that and kyouka does not know a thing abt them either

“uwahh naomi-san look at all these people in this magazine! they look so good!”

“right?! but of course onii-sama is still the best—”

you get along with kenji and kyouka quite nicely being roughly the same age as them; they’re also like siblings!

just pure, wholesome vibes from the three of you

you’re over the moon when she finds out that kyouka is staying with you and your brother

atsushi is twice as happy seeing you talk your mouth off and finally having a girl around your age to talk to

“do you think demon snow can change how she looks?”

“hmm... im not sure...”

you and kenji talk abt anything and everything

he even teaches you how to take care of plants!

sometimes the two of you are kind of in the same boat bc you don’t know much abt yokohoma being stuck in the orphanage and kenji doesn’t know much abt cities in general

“wait where are we again kenji-san?”

“ah we’re close to the ports! but im not really sure how close because i don’t know what the symbols on this sign mean”

“don’t worry! neither do i!”

bonus things!

yosano was kind of too late teaching you abt you know what

“NII-SAN IM BLEEDING IN BETWEEN MY LEGS”

you’re sobbing in the agency’s bathroom and atsushi is panicking trying to get you to open the door

“Y/N?! H-HOLD ON LET ME GET YOSANO SENSEI”

ranpo overhears and cackles making everyone around him confused

suddenly atsushi bursts in the agency basically on the verge of tears rambling incoherent sentences abt the bathroom, you, and blood

it just clicked for everybody in the room

(im going to pretend that kenji has sisters back home so that atsushi is the only one who remain oblivious here hehe)

atsushi is genuinely confused and sort of concerned that no one is freaking out with him

yosano waves her hand saying smth like that she’d take care of it and junichiro pulls atsushi to the side to talk to him

fast forward like half and hour and dazai and ranpo are cackling on the looks of both of your faces

honestly not sure who’s more traumatized, you or your brother

“why does this have to happen” :(

“ne ne (y/n)-chan!~ you’re too young but at some point you��re not going to have it!”

“uwahh really dazai-san?” :D

“yeah! but first you have to have ANFK—”

next thing you know your ears are being covered by your brother and dazai is thrown across the room by kunikida

you know

the normal

you’re twelve and have never gone to school, but the agency takes care of that

it’s too dangerous to go to school so they teach you what’s necessary and whatever else they can

kunikida takes care of math (obviously)

yosano takes care of science/biology/anatomy/health (whatever you wanna call it)

ranpo even dragged poe to help you with english

atsushi even got lucy to help you out with english too!

as tanizaki and naomi used to be students, they give you their old work books and they try to teach you all the other subjects

sometimes kyouka and kenji are there learing with you too!

sorry if there’s some errors! i’ll read through it again later :)

and as always, reblogs and shares are appreciated! i hope you all stay safe! and just in case nobody told you they loved you today, i love you! you are enough! <3

writing belongs to me! please do not plagiarize! the reblog button is there for a reason

[taggedmemes]

TEXTING MEME ⟶ WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE TWEETS ( 2020 ) always feel free to tweak the sentence to fit your muse.

[ text ] –– within the house, a creature sleeps.

[ text ] –– new idea: life, but with more flattering angles.

[ text ] –– parting is such sweet sorrow. it really rules, so great.

[ text ] –– space tip: bring a sweater.

[ text ] –– a ghost story: one day a family moved into a house. the family was haunted by the sublimated hurt between them and the still fresh bruises of their country’s history. none of them talked to each other about it. time passed, and then it didn’t.

[ text ] –– kids birthday ideas: fire theme, yell at ponies, theft and vandalism, who can sink, which one is lying.

[ text ] –– float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, caw like my neighbor’s awful pet parrot.

[ text ] –– may all your dreams come true. all of them. ALL of them.

[ text ] –– fake it until you pretend to make it.

[ text ] –– we like birds. we think you should too.

[ text ] –– birds! they’re our friends who fly.

[ text ] –– all of your potential has been inside of you all along. it’s a little black pellet near your heart. doctors are afraid to touch it.

[ text ] –– don’t hide your feelings, frame them. display them ostentatiously on the wall. mount them on plinths, behind velvet-roped stanchions. curate an exhibit of your feelings. charge admission.

[ text ] –– *to a tree* hate to see you grow but love to watch your leaves.

[ text ] –– listening to some lesser known bob dylan singles. ‘the trample at bone creek’ and ‘oh, to be a farseer’ and ‘writhing creatures under my skin forming strange words blues’.

[ text ] –– we fear birds. we think you should too.

[ text ] –– birds! they’re cameras in the sky.

[ text ] –– lips! the toes of the face.

[ text ] –– new idea: hands, but more so.

[ text ] –– don’t worry.

[ text ] –– lift with your knees, and only your knees.

[ text ] –– guitar lessons. all ages and talent levels. in the walls of your basement. area of expertise: jazz, modern rock, scuttling, squirming.

[ text ] –– drink more water. drink entire lakes. guzzle the ocean. suck dry the universe. your skin looks great.

[ text ] –– one day at a time, one foot in front of the other. one mouse inside another mouse. one cloud made out of mud. one dream about a 6-eyed puppy.

[ text ] –– tide pods. remember when they seemed like a big problem?

[ text ] –– when shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he was really scared every single day and had trouble sleeping.

[ text ] –– i’m a little teapot, short and stout.

[ text ] –– why did you pour boiling water in me oh god.

[ text ] –– first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes napkin, and here’s offal, and finally principate.

[ text ] –– podcasting: it’s like movies for your ears.

[ text ] –– fingernails.. weird, right? like, what even are those things?

[ text ] –– during these difficult times, i’m here for you. i’m very close, inches away.

[ text ] –– you told me to keep my eyes peeled, i did what you said.

[ text ] –– the road to hell is paved with cobblestone. it’s super bumpy, not at all comfortable, and really bad for your car’s suspension.

[ text ] –– you should always chant when you wash your hands.

[ text ] –– life is what you make it. i made this. it’s an ashtray, i think? or a small plate. or just a little decorative disc.

[ text ] –– was there always that vast, completely smooth and featureless planet between jupiter and saturn?

[ text ] –– the trick is just to run faster than death can run, and he’s pretty fast.

[ text ] –– generational wealth, crime, or sheer luck are the only ways to get rich.

[ text ] –– in this house we: hug often, laugh always, offer up to the eyeless god, hide from witches, and eat a handful of dirt every sunday.

[ text ] –– how am i supposed to explain this to my children? talk to them?

[ text ] –– lost cat, orange with white stripe on tail. do not listen to its answers, they’re all lies.

[ text ] –– it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. averaged out, the times were basically mediocre.

[ text ] –– it’s like uber, but for trees.

[ text ] –– it’s like google, but for dreams.

[ text ] –– it’s like twitter, but for secrets never shared.

[ text ] –– a bird in the hand is worth two in my ribcage.

[ text ] –– the moon will be closed for renovations this week.

[ text ] –– please do not look at or think about the moon.

[ text ] –– types of dogs: good, very good, who’s the best, weird, imposter, imaginary, blue whale ( big ocean dog ).

[ text ] –– still bummed about the universe breaking up.

[ text ] –– aim for the stars. we hate those things.

[ text ] –– that’s an adorable dog. should we get a dog?

[ text ] –– anything can rhyme with ‘orange’ if you pronounce it right.

[ text ] –– the known universe, the unknown universe, the decoy universe, the forgotten universe.

[ text ] –– some people are cat people, some people are dog people.

[ text ] –– please stop yelling about whales and give me a call.

[ text ] –– quoth the raven, ‘nah’.

[ text ] –– for all of his contributions to science, schrödinger was a terrible pet-sitter.

[ text ] –– it takes fewer muscles to smile than it takes to scream obscenities at the moon.

[ text ] –– the universe continues to expand, yet still no mass transit system.

[ text ] –– current mood: mad at the sun. it knows what it did.

[ text ] –– try transcending the physical concept of the body. become pure aura and light.

[ text ] –– revenge is a dish best served cold, but only if it’s something that’s better hot. like chicken soup. the best revenge is to serve them cold chicken soup.

[ text ] –– don’t bite the hand that feeds you. go for the legs, it’ll throw them off-balance.

[ text ] –– new hobbies: imaginary pottery, long distance cat seeing, count every cloud.

[ text ] –– my interests include music, movies, walks on the beach, and transcending the human form using durational meditation for 23 hours a day.

[ text ] –– this restaurant had no name or employees or food. it was just a small section of rocky beach that i pretended was a restaurant.

[ text ] –– do you dare try to escape? where could you run, insignificant mortal?

[ text ] –– top gift ideas for demanding gods: animal/human sacrifice, nude group dance ritual, scented candle/bath bomb, handmade coupon book of chores, festive pentagram cookies.

[ text ] –– looking for a strange glimmer i once saw between the stars on a cold autumn night in the woods when i was 12.

[ text ] –– if you hear movement in your chimney, please do not panic.

[ text ] –– it’s only a secretive intruder who is here to judge your moral worth.

[feminist-propaganda]

The Star Wars Saga Is A Meditation On Single Motherhood

It recently dawned on me that the entire story line of the Star Wars saga is built on the lives, loves and tribulations of 3 generations of single mothers. There are monsters to slay and aliens to find and planets to explore, yes, but if you think about the powerful message in the movies, you’ll come to realize it was mostly a reflection on the status of single mothers, the outcomes of their offspring, and the conflict that lives forever in their descendants.

Each trilogy, once reframed, becomes the story of one woman, who finds herself in a situation that is as old as time. She is with child, but the person who planted the seed in her is not by her side.

Shmi Skywalker or The Good Single Mother

In the Phantom Menace, Jedi Knight Qui Gon Jin meets Anakin Skywalker, a slave boy with a talent for repairing machines. The Jedi knight is impressed with the child’s abilities. He’s knowledgeable, intuitive, and most importantly he’s also kind and thoughtful. When a sand storm threatens the group of travelers, Anakin takes them to his own home and offers them shelter. 

We meet Shmi Skywalker, who in many ways is the archetype of the good single mother. She is not just quiet. She has completely erased herself. She has no personality, apart from being Anakin’s caretaker. She expresses no needs, no desires, no dreams. She simply loves Anakin, and when she sees an opportunity for him to leave the desert planet ruled by the Huts, she doesn’t stand in his way. 

In a now famous scene, Qui Gon asks her about the child’s origins and Shmi famously responds “There was no father”. The line continues: “I carried him. I gave birth. I raised him. I can’t explain what happened”.

The immaculate conception myth refers to the idea in Christianity that Mary, much like Shmi, was impregnated by some magical force, a holy spirit. Both are parabols: images we use to discuss painful topics. Single motherhood has probably always been a part of the human experience. Jared Diamond explains in “Why Is Sex Fun?” that in terms of evolution, it is more rewarding for human males to be “super spreaders “ rather than “good fathers “ . The “good father” gene does not pass down to future generations, because in effect, not sticking around to raise the child is a better strategy for a human man to pass on his genes to the next generation. Not convinced? Just count how many women have been impregnated by a rapper like Future (8 last time I checked). If you’re not into hip-hop, you can think of the offspring of the Mongol Genghis Khan

The purpose of the parabol is to provide an image, to extract ourselves from the technicalities of onr person’s story and to instead talk about all single mothers at once. Indeed, single mothers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are widowed, some are abandoned, others are lied to, and some run away from abusive environments.

Shmi raises her son the best she can, and her love for him is unconditional. She doesn’t bat an eye when he is freed while she is to continue her life as a slave. She doesn’t even seem to mind when Anakin leaves the planet and never returns to free her, even after he marries into some serious money. 

But the story of Star Wars tells us that Shmi’s relationship to Anakin, because it was so fusional, because it was all that he had, led to his undoing. In Episode 2, when he senses she is in danger, he jeopardizes his mission to protect Padme to go rescue her. When he eventually finds her, he is so upset about her ultimate death that he commits mass murder, targeting the Tuskan riders of the sea of Dunes.

When Yoda first lays eyes on Anakin, he senses Anakin’s pain, he is just a child whose been ripped away from the only human that’s ever cared for him deeply. The turmoil inside the boy is palpable, and Yoda advises against training him. 

Padme Amidala or The Bad Single Mother

Anakin develops feelings for Padme, and in Episode 2 the pair decide to secretly get married in the lake district of Padme’s home planet Naboo. Their relationship is very intense. Both share a strong sense of civic duty: Padme was elected queen of the Naboo when she was just 14 &  Anakin is a keeper of the peace. They care deeply about issues such as how the galaxy must be governed, how much action needs to be taken versus when diplomacy must be prioritized. 

Their strong sense of service has made them lonely young people. They’re far away from their families, surrounded by advisors, servants and droids - not friends. 

They jump into their relationship with an eagerness that suggests it is their original caretakers they crave for.

Padme becomes pregnant while the Clone Wars are raging, and immediately Anakin begins to experience trouble with his sleeping. He imagines Padme is dying in childbirth, and the visions haunt him during the day. His fear that she will die ultimately leads to his decision to join the Dark side of the force. Senator Palpatine has manipulated him into believing that Sith Lords have discovered the power to prevent death itself. 

Just like his mother before him, we need to look at Anakin’s story in terms of symbolism. It isn’t really about his specific experience with fatherhood : it’s about the universal conflict that men feel towards their own offspring. Even the way it is announced to him, in the Senate chambers, barely hidden from the rest of the Coruscant elite, implies some sort of entrapment. The columns around them seem to be like a cage that is closing in on his life. He is in the middle of the Wars - he should be celebrating his victory over General Grivious, but instead he is stuck with his wife and he has to absorb her anxiety & reassure her. 

Anakin makes a weird, forced smile and says : “This is a happy moment.” But neither Padme nor the audience believe him. Nothing about him feels happy, he isn’t relaxed: he is tense.

At the end of Episode 3, Anakin attempts to kill Padme when she condemns the mass murders he’s committed against the younglings in the Jedi temple. Hr uses for the first time his “strangling” trick, which becomes his signature move in the original trilogy. 

Palpatine makes Anakin believe that he’s killed Padme, but the truth is somewhat more nuanced. She dies of heartbreak shortly after giving birth to twins. For anyone who thought this was corny, it’s actually been proven by the scientific community that heartbreak reduces your life expectation (it diminishes the size of the telomeres in your body cells, which is the molecule that helps replicate your DNA). 

As Lisa Feldman Barret wrote in How Emotions Are Made: 

Emotional harm can shorten your life. Inside your body, you have little packets of genetic material that sit on the ends of your chromosomes like protective caps. They’re called telomeres. All living things have telomeres—humans, fruit flies, amoebas, even the plants in your garden. Every time one of your cells divides, its telomeres get a little shorter (although they can be repaired by an enzyme called telomerase). So generally their size slowly decreases, and at some point, when they are too short, you die. This is normal aging. But guess what else causes your telomeres to get smaller? Stress does. Children who experience early adversity have shorter telomeres. In other words, emotional harm can do more serious damage, last longer, and cause more future harm than breaking a bone

More severe cases involve patients actually dying of a broken heart, the myocardia just collapses under the weight of the sadness the human feels.

The original trilogy should be re-viewed with all of this new information we have. In the 80s, when Empire Strikes Back came out, the “I am your father” line became instantly iconic. But the plot twist was more like an “Oh My gosh!” moment rather than a profound reflection on fatherhood. The audience sympathized with Luke not because his father had been absent and negligent, but because his father’s job was to serve a fachist leader. It was the actions of Darth Vader as a political servant that were questioned, not his refusal to nurture a smaller being. 

Padme is the opposite of Shmi. She is the archetype of the “bad” single mother. The bad single mother is the single mother who can’t deal with the situation and checks out of it. She collapses under the weight that she feels on her shoulders. She can't get over the heartbreak, she can’t find the will to live. 

Society tends to punish the Padme’s just as much as it praises the Shmis. Television programs like “Teen Mom” are set up to shame the young deviants into adopting the correct behavior. The purpose of the show is to judge these young women into becoming self-sacrificing mothers.

Leia Organa - The Non-single Single Mother

Leia Organa is Anakin Skywalker’s daughter. She is raised by an adoptive frailly on Alderaan after she’s separated at birth from her brother Luke. Much like her mother, she becomes a dedicated public servant, a trusted leader and a beloved public figure. 

She is raised by a wealthy family in the central galactic systems. The Organas teach her the ways of the elite political class. As an adult she serves the cause of the Rebels, and when she meets Han Solo in Episode 4, the mediocre smuggler fascinates her. 

In the now famous scene from Hoth in Episode 5, Leia declares her love for Han Solo right as he’s about to be frozen in carbonite. The ultimate bad boy responds his chilling, because realistic  “I know”.

Han is nothing compared to Leia. He drives a broken down ship, doesn’t have any morals or even a simple code of conduct, much less a cause that he’s dedicated his life to. He has nothing to offer her, and is definitely not in her league. But still, in Episode 6, the pair become an official item.

The last Trilogy was an opportunity to explore Leia’s experience with motherhood. By now we know that Leia’s grandmother was a “Good single mother”, she completely sacrificed herself to protect her son & more importantly she never questioned her status of sole caretaker (remember the “there was no father“ line). We also know that Leia’s mother was a public servant, and a passionate woman who allowed herself to fall deeply in love with a sensitive young man with a non existing support system. Leia’s mother was the “bad” single mother: driven only by her career (Queen of the Naboo, later a Senator of the Old Republic) she did not step up to the task when her destiny revealed itself to her.

Leia seems to share her mother’s taste in reckless young men with a lot of attitude and no emotional security to offer. It’s the excitement she craves, not the tranquility.

Her fate will be the same as her foremothers. She has a child with Han, but when she sends him away to be trained by Luke, she loses them both.

Their dialogue in Episode 7 goes like this: 

Han Solo : Listen to me, will you? I know every time you... Every time you look at me you're reminded of him.

Leia : You think I want to forget him? I want him back.

Han Solo : There's nothing more we could have done. There's too much Vader in him.

Leia : That's why I wanted him to train with Luke. I just never should have sent him away. That's when I lost him. That's when I lost you both.

The last trilogy develops Leia’s character in a way that allows her to be something else than just a single mother. She loses her husband, she even loses her son to the dark side: but she never loses herself. Leia doesn’t allow her condition to define her. She becomes a leader of the Resistance even if it means going after her son’s New order. 

In Episode 9, Leia even destroys her son to protect Rey - the symbolism is that she’s overcome her role as a mother, she’s rejected the notion that she must sacrifice everything for her son even if it goes against her own self interest (like Shmi). She also rejects the idea that her partner abandoning her is the end of her. It isn’t. Unlike her mother, she finds the will to live, and to lead the next generation of freedom fighters and peace keepers.

The saga ends on a hopeful note for all of us single mothers out there. It comes with a message for us : we don’t need to choose between the austere Shmi and the weak Padme. We can instead decide that this “single mom” problem is kind of like beauty : it lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Single moms don’t need to think of themselves as failures, they don’t need to live in modest conditions, they don’t need to beg society's forgiveness for merely existing. They don’t need to be ashamed. 

Single moms don’t need to erase their brains and their lives, and sink into an ocean of denial either. They don't need to be obsessed with their careers or caught up in romantic entanglements that are only going to exhaust them.

Single moms can just decide that they’re women, with beautiful, inspiring personalities and kind, loving hearts. Mothers are first and foremost, the leaders of the young, the protectors of the realm and the makers of the future. It’s not that it doesn’t matter that they’re alone. It’s that they don’t have to be alone at all.

[hunxi-guilai]

Are you in any other fandoms? Just curious, I feel like I will like anything you like too

Hmm... I’m not an active contributer in any fandom but CQL so I can’t testify to the fandom culture of other media? But I can do a quick skim of things I’ve enjoyed.

If you’re looking for more Chinese period dramas, I gotta say that 《琅琊榜》Langyabang / Nirvana in Fire is worth the hype. To this day it remains my favorite TV show of all time.

I’ve mentioned Brandon Sanderson in too many posts for me to track down and link gratuitously, but suffice to say that my main blog is a Sanderson blog because I was Going Through It back in August and needed somewhere to vent. But if you’re into:

fantasy

steampunk fantasy mystery detective stories wild west thrillers

exceedingly detailed worldbuilding

hard magic systems (no seriously the physics of Mistborn check out)

even more hard magic systems (have I mentioned that BSandy comes up with a brand new magic system for each series/short story that is totally unique but still interconnected)

taking everything you thought you knew and turning it on its head

an entire trilogy’s worth of meditation on faith, morality, heroism, legacy, and the human condition

jk it’s two trilogies worth

jk this also applies to Stormlight, which is outlined as a ten book series

nuanced character arcs 

characters dealing with mental illness in fantasy settings

engaging with the ethics of heroic violence

thousand-page tomes (#willworkoutforcosmere)

arranged marriages that always turn out into really wholesome love stories

the character archetype of the mysterious gremlin jester, because Hoid shows up in every single Cosmere book with no complete explanation as to who he truly is or what he’s up to as of yet

some really kickass one-liners (shout out to my boi Kaladin Stormblessed in Words of Radiance for the most iconic one-liner of all time)

a giant cosmic conspiracy theory that involves killing God, featuring some minor deicide along the way

you might be into Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. Personally I’d recommend starting out with the Mistborn series, but Stormlight Archive has saved literal souls, including my own.

WAIT gonna eat my words -- I do know about the Cosmere fandom, and the Cosmere fandom is the best. No, literally, the fandom tag is ‘cfsbf’ aka ‘cosmere fandom is best fandom’ and everyone’s super nice and supportive and enthusiastic in our shared love for this incredible text

I read Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle back in November and was surprised at how hard I fell for it? I was like ‘okay YA paranormal romance not really my thing but I’ll give it a try’ and was just??? floored???? It’s so beautifully written and just has this way of crawling inside your brain and articulating a million things you’ve felt but never had the words for??? and also gay?????

Hmmm, what else, what else... oh! I enjoyed The Umbrella Academy last year, I think I watched all ten episodes in 36 hours (I was STRESSED okay), and I’m excited for season 2! What can I say, apocalypse and found family and time travel and black humor, all things I’m down for

I was super into RWBY for a few years, but idk the second half of volume 6 and pretty much the entirety of vol 7 just weren’t doing it for me, but the premise of the show is fun and the fight scenes e x q u i s i t e

oh! more books: I heckin love silkpunk. Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee might dethrone The Lord of the Rings as my favorite book of all time. I was personally floored by R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War -- I don’t usually go for grimdark books, but it’s spectacularly well-conceptualized and researched (though when I say grimdark, I mean grim AND dark -- book one has two genocides and a massacre, and it’s not like the rest of the book is a walk in the park either. Its historical inspiration comes from both the Opium Wars and WWII, which are Chock Full of Drugs and Atrocities, so like... proceed with maximum caution and emergency chocolate). I would die for Chen Kitay, just putting that out there

ummmmmmmm that’s all I got off the top of my head for now! I literally keep a running document of book recs for my friends, but it really depends on what genre they’re looking for

[woolishlygrim]

Spring Weebwatch #4+#5

Yyyyep, I’ve been so all over the place lately that I actually spent so long not doing this post that another entire week of anime episodes passed. In fairness to me, though, Digimon Adventure 2020 has gone on indefinite hiatus, so I also needed to find something else to fill its slot.

Kami no Tou - Tower of God.

★★★★☆

So, in these last two weeks, we got the Crown Game, and the introduction to the training arc that I’m supposing will take up the next few episodes.

The Crown Game actually marks a surprising sea change in the story, even though it ends in a stalemate with no winners. We’re introduced to two new characters, the more interesting of which appears to be a particularly cunning, scheming Princess of Jahad; Bam loses the Black March to Anaak, which seems weird when he only just got it and has used it maybe once or twice; Bam becomes semi-aware that Rachel is also on the second floor; and we find out that Bam is some kind of Super Shinsu User who might pose a threat to the entire Tower.

With the dynamic firmly shifted on its axis, the story heads into an arc that, for Bam, will be all about him learning to use Shinsu, forming a wider team than just him, Khun, and Crocodile Man, and whatever it is that Anaak and this new Princess are up to. The mystery of Anaak is particularly prominent, as Newbie Princess alludes to her being a ‘fake’ and, we learn along with Khun, the real Anaak Jahad is dead.

Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS.

★★★★☆

I really do enjoy both how stupidly silly this show is and how utterly depressingly fatalistic it is.

As expected, the first of the two episodes we’re covering today deals with Yugo duelling Gakuto, whose deck is themed around the idea of imposing extra rules and penalties, fitting with his … I mean, just his whole Thing, really. The second episode, meanwhile, deals with the looming spectre of government censorship and the impossibility of fair news coverage when the press is controlled by the ruling class in all but name, with the right-wing exerting soft power to influence the news and subvert fair journalism.

That’s a really heavy topic to just, like, bring up and then basically never try to address. By the end of the episode, the newspaper is still massively corrupt, and they still gleefully print utterly untrue news, except now they’re doing it on behalf of one of the main characters.

I’d call this protagonist-centred morality, but it’s not, that’s not what’s going on here. It isn’t that the story wants to tell us that it’s bad when the villains do it but good when the heroes do, it’s that the story is a vicious satire with a really pessimistic, fatalistic edge to it, revelling in the nihilism of heroes who really have no meaningful goals beyond ‘get what they want.’

Listeners.

★★★☆☆

Listeners is fun. It’s a lot of fun, actually.

More to the point, Listeners is an … interesting kind of beast. So, years ago now, Re:Creators aired, and despite its very action-y, ridiculous anime fight kind of premise, it wasn’t really interested in its big action set pieces so much as it was interested in exploring the manga industry, and meditating on the relationship between creator and fan.

Listeners is like that. There are giant robots, and at least one fight per episode usually, but it’s not really about those things. What it’s about is the music industry. In the short span of half a series, we’ve had episodes on how the music industry predates on teenagers, about drug use within the industry, about unfair working conditions, about the tumultuous and often passionate romances that the music industry has seen, about how the industry can often provide a degree of freedom to explore gender identity while at the same time often being very restrictive in how it will allow you to express that freedom, about how music can inspire but also how your audience can turn against you, about the conflict between music as artistic expression and music as a business.

It’s all wrapped up in a loose plot about shadow monsters called the Earless, and about the main characters’ search for legendary singer Jimi Stonefree, but again, it’s not really about those things. I don’t have much interest in the music industry, but there’s undeniable passion on the part of the writers.

[aplaceforthesoul]

Anonymous submitted:

i messed up and it's kinda destroying me (22/f) hi, thank you for providing this space <3 your love and support is so amazing! if this could be posted anonymously i would really appreciate that.

i really messed up about two days ago and it’s all i’ve been able to think about. i’ve had an upset stomach and can barely sleep.

basically, i’ve been seeing this guy the past 4 months. things were going great. we met each others families, talked about the future, had a great sex life, and our love languages match up perfectly / we mesh so well. but he kept saying he doesn’t want to be boyfriend and girlfriend just yet (for a few reasons, one being that we are both looking for work and aren’t sure if we’ll end up in the same city). so i kept saying i agreed that we should wait before we are super serious/put a label on things. i hadn’t been seeing anyone else or sleeping with anyone else these past 4 months but was still a bit confused about us. so, last week i asked him how casual he wants us to be and he said he hasn’t seen anyone else and doesn’t want to, and i said the same.

which was true, but, this week i went out of town to stay with some friends. long story short we went to a party one day and i got so unbelievably drunk and hooked up with one of the guys there. he was flirting with me a lot and for some reason i went with it. we had sex for like 1 minute and then in my blacked out state i realized that was not something i wanted to be doing.

i have never regretted something so much in my life. the next day i facetimed the guy i’ve been seeing these past few months. i told him everything and was crying the entire time and told him how sorry i was. i really hurt him and he says he feels like i dont care about him, which isnt true at all.

i guess in the moment, my drunk mind was like “yeah im still single, im nobody’s girlfriend.” but it still feels like i cheated??? (this whole thing is v out of character for me)

maybe i didn’t realize HOW MUCH i liked him until after, which feels like it makes no sense. anyway, he was supposed to call me today to talk through things… but hes really upset and said he’s still not ready to talk.

i know i was only seeing him for 4 months… but im falling so hard for him and part of me even feels like he could be the one. im terrified that i just messed it up and im scared he won’t wanna see me anymore. he’s one of the best people i’ve ever met and i dont know what to do but i know now that whether we have a title on this thing or not, i only want him.

how do i calm down until i hear from him? is there anything i can do? i have bad anxiety and the advice i’ve been getting from family and friends isn’t helping :( just earlier my mom said “if you liked him so much i dont know why you would jeopardize the relationship” which only makes me feel shittier. please help! thank you so much <3

guilt can be such a destructive emotion to feel, it’s awful and I can relate a lot )-:

technically? you haven’t actually done anything morally wrong. even if you both liked each other? he was the one to say no to a relationship, no boyfriend / girlfriend labels. I get his reasoning, for sure! but I think it boils down to communication and he should have been clearer about what he wanted this to be, because it’s not really fair to say “I don’t want a relationship” and then get upset when something like this happens. 

I’ve been in a “I don’t want a relationship but I like you” type situation before, it really is a confusing place to be? and that means that communication is more important than ever.

all you can really do is distract yourself, as much as you possibly can. find activities to full engage your brain, it helps a lot to keep your mind occupied. maybe that’s baking something fresh in the kitchen, doing some gardening, maybe drawing / painting if that’s your thing? yoga or meditation can possbly help you to maintain a sense of calmness, but they’re activities that can allow your mind to wander so it may not be the best distraction to improve your mood. 

I don’t think you’ve ‘ruined’ all chances of this working out, I think if he’s this upset then chances are that he does have feelings for you and doesn’t want to let you go. hopefully when he is ready to talk? be very honest and direct, if you want things to continue with him then have a very open conversation about boundaries, what you are / aren’t ok with, what you want this to be. ask him those questions too, hopefully you guys are both on the same page about things.

it’s tough now but we’re only human, mistakes happen sometimes. some people might say that’s a shitty cop-out or an excuse, but it’s honestly true! it’s ok if you’re not perfect -- unfortunately you can’t get in a time machine and reverse what happened, but you can learn from it for the future. all you can do at the moment is apologise, use words and actions to show you’re sorry, take it one day at a time. let us know how things go for you lovely, good luck xxx

- tash

[zenosanalytic]

Great Beasts of Legend: Centaurs, Sirens and Chimaera: The Greeks and th...

I know I’ve posted this lecture by Dr. Jeremy McInerney before, but I was watching it again(third time; really love this one uwu) and at 41:55 he starts a discussion of a boundaries-based reading of Centaurs(good target for that given the melding/muddying of boundary btw animal and man Centaurs represent[1]), beginning with the Herakles, Deianira, Nessos Myth that I feel he doesn’t quite hit though he makes/brings up other great points and it made me want to write a short little thing about why this myth, specifically, is really open to such a reading:

Ok so the basic outline: Herakles and Deianira are traveling, they come to the river Evinos where Nessos[2], the Centaur, is selling his services as a living ferry(ppl sit on him and he carries them across). Herakles, of course, decides to swim across and pays Nessos to carry Deianira across. While doing so, Nessos attempts to rape her, Deianira calls for help, and Herakles whips out his bow and arrows dipped in Hydra’s blood, and shoots Nessos dead. As he dies but before Herakles reaches them, Nessos tells Deianira to take a vial of his blood(sometimes blood mixed with his semen). The story splits interestingly here, so remember this point for later. Years down the road, Herakles is off in some part of Greece partying in celebration of yet another city he’s plundered, and he sends a train of new slaves taken from said city-plundering back home, along with a messenger with an off-hand request to Deianira that she send his favorite cloak along cuz he plans to keep partying for quite a long while. This is another point of ambiguity in the story and its retellings so remember it, too. She steeps his cloak in water mixed with the vial of Nessos’s blood, sends it along and, while the poison doesnt kill Herakles cuz he’s part god and Hydra’s poisonous blood isn’t powerful enough to do that, it DOES cause him such enormous, unending pain that he builds his own funeral pyre and burns himself alive, apotheosizing into a god in the process.

So, regarding Boundaries:

Nessos, obvsl, is a physical manifestation of the close and ever-present boundary between humans and beasts; btw self-control and indulgence; btw “civilized” behavior and “uncivilized”, as discussed above, and particularly of the threat of rape Greek men present to Greek women.

This story involves a River, a physical boundary

Rivers are ALSO what separate the world of the living from the world of the dead to the Greeks, and this is a story ABOUT TWO DEATHS, both tied directly TO a River(one taking place in it, during the act of crossing it; the other a long-term effect of that event[but also Herakles’s hubris, though most versions, being written for men, don’t emphasize that totally obvs aspect of it]).

Not only that, it’s LITERALLY the story of Herakles’s apotheosis: of how he comes to finally transcend the boundary between God and Mortal which he has straddled his whole life.

Herakles is celebrating the sack of a city, ie, his violation&destruction of the Boundaries defining said city, when he dies. Greek cities are often protected by female divinities(Athena usually), so it’s yet another symbol of rape.

So Split 1: In most versions, the reason Nessos gives for why she should take his blood is that it is a powerful love potion that will ensure Herakles remains faithful to her if his eye ever strays. BUT, also in most versions, this is a lie and he’s secretly trying to poison Herakles, though how would he know Herakles’ arrows are poisoned with Hydra-blood? I remember reading a version where he presents it to her AS POISON, explaining about the Hydra, but I cant find any mention of it online, so maybe my brain’s just making it up(or maybe this was the Hercules TV Show version X|).

Split 2: BUT BUT, while in most version Deianira sends the cloak out of desperation to keep him faithful(and of course there’s a particular slave girl in the train she’s warned about just so all of this can be EXTRA the fault of women, rather than Herakles for being a giant asshole like he always is), in other versions she sends it OUT OF VENGEANCE, TO FUCK HIM UP because Herakles is being a giant asshole, wrecking up Greece, partying as much as he likes, flaunting his rapes and his victims in her face(this is VERY RELEVANT given the nature of other versions of this story), and leaving her to run his household alone while ordering her around like she’s a slave rather than his Wife.

These are mutually exclusive: she cannot be both seeking to punish him, and trying, in anguished desperation, to keep him faithful to her[3].

Herakles in this story, as is ALWAYS THE CASE IN ALL HIS STORIES, is flaunting the boundaries of Proper Behavior, in this case those defining a happy and successful marriage(IE Hera’s Domain; which you’d THINK would be kind of relevant, given the deep narrative connection between Hera and Herakles and her quickness to anger regarding marriage violations, yet it somehow perennially goes unmentioned), and getting punished for it.

Now here’s an ADDED kicker. There’s a version of this story were Herakles initiates the conflict. one day he visits the house of Deianira’s father, Dexamenus, and while a guest, rapes her. Dexamenus can’t fight Herakles, of course, but he demands by the gods and tradition that Herakles marry Deianira to “repair” the injury(WE LIVE IN HELL!), and Herakles agrees. After he leaves to prepare for the wedding, a local Centaur, Eurytion(name meaning “Widely Honored”) visits Dexamenus and proposes to marry Deianira himeself(you know: without the whole BEING HER RAPIST thing), and Dexamenus complies. Herakles arrives a few days later, kills Eurytion, and sees that their marriage is carried out. Presumably in this version, the blood poisoning the cloak would be Eurytion’s.

What I’ve tried to get across here is that, among other things, there are readings of this myth were Herakles is the bad guy and Deianira the agent of divine punishment, if not the actual Protagonist. And those readings suggest certain ideas we would be prone to consider “modern” about the agency of women, consent, personal and social boundaries, morality, Greek ~Heroic Masculinity~, and yes even Centaurs, might not have been so alien and “anachronistic” to the ancient Greek mind as we tend to think.

But anyway, even if you think that particular part of my little argument here is total Bunk, I hope I’ve managed to get across that Deianira and the Cloak is a myth Absolutely LOUSY with the theme of Boundaries, what they mean, what it means to Cross them, and the Consequences for which you Cross, when, how, and plain just choosing to cross them in the first place. It’s a really great example for him to suggest for this particular topic, and it really inspired me quite a lot today, and I just wish there was a lecture online where he developed it further uwu

[1]And not only that, but of course owning horses was a common sign of aristocratic status, and trading horses a common aristocratic activity(this is one way you know Hesiod’s claims of poverty are a put-on; his family breeds and sells horses). I feel like it��s pretty well understood that Centaurs are in someway a commentary and meditation upon the nature of Greek masculinity, on the capacity for violent cruelty and wanton appetite Greeks inculcated men into beside all the talk of civilized society, but I also feel it’s less well understood how open they also are to a similar reading regarding the appetites and barbaric capacities specifically of the upper classes of Greek society.

[2]In some versions Nessos and Herakles actually have a history, and the whole incident is Nessos’s attempt at vengeance. There is another story, where Herakles visits a centaur who is his friend named Pholos, and a gang of nearby Centaurs(I like to think they were Rowdy Teens myself u_u) smell the wine they’re drinking and crash the party to share some. Herakles, being Herakles, of course immediately begins killing them for the perceived insult, which inevitably leads NOT ONLY to Pholos dying(cuz Herakles isn’t careful and shoots him too, or in other vers bcuz he refuses to so much as retrieve his arrows from the bodies due to concerns with “pollution” from the corpses, and Pholos cuts himself on one of the arrows), but ALSO the poisoning, and eventual death, of Chiron, who was one of Pholos’s neighbors and who Herakles accidentally knicked while wildly chasing down and shooting the interlopers. Nessos is one of these Centaur teens, and the only centaur in the whole situation to survive (:T

[3]Which, btw, the whole “faithful” thing doesnt make much sense(even though it pops up regularly in Greek Myth), because her “competitor” in these versions is a slave. These next sentences are going to be gross and awful, but in the society which told these stories male slave-owners already had unrestricted sexual access to their slaves and, beyond that, I’ve never read a single example in Greek or Roman sources of a slave being legitimized and married as a wife(which doesnt mean such examples dont exist; I’m an amateur). So the idea that a slave could threaten Deianira’s position as Herakles’s wife seems very dubious to me(as does the general trope of slave women as threats to wives in Greek stories). Again: this is all super-awful, but it’s something complicating the traditional presentation of the myth, which is rarely addressed because most academics writing for a general audience are super-loath to deal with classical slavery as the awful, body and soul crushing institution which it was.

[realitachifacts]

HCs about Itachi and his dreams, nightmares, sleeping habits and alternate states of consciousness. Does he get insomnia? Anything about parasomnia? Maybe a brief writing about it.

okay i just finished this and wtf it ended up being so long. i am not editing the story so if there are typos or anything sucks to suck for me.

headcanon time! i’m really excited for this one not gonna lie.

itachi has nightmares. many of them. this… makes sense, really, considering traumatic experiences induce vivid nightmares and, actually, blind people have more nightmares (though the difference is much slighter that that of the average person if you become blind later in life). 

i’m gonna get into the blindness first before i get into the nightmares. some of this is probably going to be scientifically inaccurate, but i mean… this is an anime headcanon.

the more his blindness progressed, the less visual the dreams became, focusing more on sensory experiences; at the same time, the imagery incorporated became more “familiar territory”, by which i mean the elements involved show up in a way he’d been familiar with for a longer experience of time. i guess the best example would be, before the final showdown, he’d seen sasuke once, at around age thirteen. the last few times he was able to see even anything in dreams, one of the few visuals that remained was his family, at the age he killed them; despite not seeing them in years, playing solely off of the most prominent memories. 

as he began to see less and less in general, before blacked-out dreams, the more the things less important to him would fade away, out of sight.

as far as dreams go, it’s likely he had very few positive ones while in the akatsuki. i’d imagine more of them came when he could no longer see, but it was still painful, to hear the voices of loved ones and not be able to look into their faces again in the only way you can, knowing you have only a few months left to live.

now onto the nightmares.

more or less as an interesting concept alone, but for the majority of his life, itachi never had nightmares. stress at night manifested solely through insomnia rather than having bad dreams. since he’s a ninja, i would imagine learning to remain composed is sort of an essential asset of the job, and he was probably taught how to do this, so he could at least force himself into sleep, even if he woke up several times or barely felt rested in the morning.

he’s had dreams though, but that’s never been something all that significant to him; i don’t think any of them have been super good dreams. 

[ okay just note that i haven’t gotten to the shisui death scene yet i just know that it happens and that’s about it so i’m probably interpreting some stuff wrong ]

but when that happened he couldn’t sleep for 10 full days until he passed out from sleep deprivation.

the first time he had a nightmare was the first time he was able to sleep after killing his clan. 

okay actually that’s cool i’m gonna write something with that. ugh OP… your mind…

obviously the nightmares were trauma-based. he had them up until his death, but the further away from the time the event occurred, the more abstract elements worked their way into the dream. he still had the dreams after he lost sight in his dreams, and he felt a bit guilty about it, but he was grateful he didn’t have to look at the eyes and faces of his clan members as he killed them.

for a while after the sasuke encounter during part I, sasuke played a more prominent part in his nightmares, for a good while.  

the majority of the nightmares involve bad things happening to sasuke, or him killing his clan, or havoc in the leaf village, since i doubt anything harm that could come upon itachi scares him as much as the thought of those three things. 

i imagine both dreams and nightmares are very vivid for itachi, being an observing/calculating/analytical individual he takes in more and has more to process.

as far as parasomnias go, dream-enacting behavior might’ve happened once or twice but i can’t imagine much beyond that. 

as for sleeping habits, probably just mindfulness exercises before sleeping, because being someone introspective and having done/been through terrible things you feel guilty about that giving yourself time to think before you sleep is probably not the best of ideas ever. 

with worsening depression/illness, itachi’s wanting to just sleep all the time probably amplified. it’s particularly hard, knowing that after closing your eyes the misery will continue or even worsen. 

):

as for altered states of consciousness, i have a personal headcanon that using genjutsu efficiently requires a calm/collected/well cared for mind, otherwise you might not be able to control or even, worst case scenario when you’ve totally lost your marbles, get trapped in your own genjutsu. so i would assume something like meditation/mind training in some way would help you maintain that.  

i think that covers everything?

now for a story.

Itachi Uchiha has never had a nightmare before in his life.

“Why?!”

He doesn’t need to.

“W-Why would you do this?!”

He’s living one.

Itachi talks about wanting to prove his vessel.

Doesn’t mean a single word of it.

… , …

He spends the rest of the night running, getting away and putting as much distance between himself and the Hidden Leaf Village as is completely possible, and in his head the moment plays over and over and over, but it doesn’t feel real, he’s existing in this dreamlike state, as if he’s repeatedly reading some page of a book because his eyes are blurred, unfocused.

He appears calm, at least, he thinks, as he stops running; the one area falling short of perfection in his academy exams was stamina, but a fighting style rooted primarily in genjutsu more than makes up for that missing proficiency. He has… a lot of emotions to process, really, it’s foreign territory when the majority of his emotional responses have a tendency towards being at least moderately underwhelming. This whole endeavor, every part of it, it’s been so stressful, so painful, deep hurt powerful enough that it manifests physically in his body, chest bleeding with.

Sadness.

Loss.

Loneliness.

Remorse.

He wonders if he should feel remorse, or at least, if remorse is logically applicable here. He was doing this to save the village, it would have happened either way, but at least this way Sasuke his safe, holding that sword with the metal drinking in and shining out the colors of moonlight, silver gleam broken by patches of slightly rusted crimson, red like roses lovers give to each other; blood of his ancestors and uncles and aunts and cousins and his parents and. And anyways. His little brother would’ve died, if it had been anyone but him. His clan was going to stage a coup, start a war, the death toll would’ve been worse, so many of the Uchihas would’ve died in it anyways, at least he put them out of their misery fast, and-

These are rationalizations.

Itachi knows this.

But he saved the village, he thinks. 

It was going to happen anyways.

Sasuke will grow stronger, Itachi will ensure it, kill him and paint the clan name in new colors; clean off the bloodstained sins Itachi left on his blade. Sasuke will go back to the village a hero, Itachi thinks. Find happiness and acceptance, slaughterer of his criminal brother, sociopathic mass-murderer, heart and soul black as the eyes of crows.

Itachi is orchestrating his own divine justice. Playing as a deity in order to be purged by an angel of his own creation.

… , …

He’s sitting underneath a pine tree, long bark-wrinkled branches with needle fingers hang lazily from its sides. It’s still night, but in a few hours, it’ll be dawn, Itachi’s internal clock estimates. Still, the sky above him is as dark as a scorpion’s carapace, white stars speckled across like the shine on its shell. By now the world up above the deciduous forest is moonless, clouds consume it like parasites. It’s not that cold, or it could be colder, but maybe Itachi’s body is just numb from.

Everything.

Anyways, he’s exhausted. Doesn’t know where he’ll go from here. Thirteen-year-old self too life-drained to carry on much further. He lays down on a bed of pine needles, rough against his back, stinging in minutely; closes his eyes.

He thinks sleep won’t come easily.

He’s wrong.

But Itachi promises himself one thing before he fades down into unconsciousness.

If he can, he never wants to kill anyone, ever again.

… , …

Itachi is in the Uchiha compound, night’s almost fallen, the sky is painted indigo from the tail ends of dusk.

-

Many battles ensue. 

Itachi wins all of them 

-

His parents sit next to each other, in their room, side by side, execution style.

They talk about some things.

Itachi kills them.

-

Sasuke is crying.

If you want to defeat me, you need these eyes, Itachi says.

He’s already mentioned that he never cared about him, this whole time.

There’s nobody else in the world Itachi could ever care about more.

… , …

Itachi wakes up with tears heavy in his eyes, breathing hard, the milky pink of dawn has managed to claw its way into the sky and the first breaths of light whisper down between leaves and what was that.

Rationally, Itachi knows it’s a nightmare, but his heart is still fast and his breathing is a bit sped up and his eyes are wide, less characteristic emotional expression (though the normal tends to be majorly apathy, with any other responses muted partially). 

He’s.

He’s never had one of these before.

It felt so real, and his dreams, they’ve always been vivid, mainly processing stressors or other events that provoked a more intense response from him; he’s never needed to analyze them, because his sleeping mind still holds hands with reality, and so now, this, this reliving it, as it happened, had to look into his relatives’ death-fearing eyes, had to act on notions antithetic to his moral code of pacifism, had to murder so many people. 

Itachi shakes his head, tries not to dwell on it for too long.

He has a life he needs to figure out what to do with, until its preordained end.

… , …

He has that dream many, many more times.

It doesn’t get better, any of them.

… , …

Itachi is already halfway out of one of the two beds he’s rented at the inn, soft and luxurious and feather down mattress, as Kisame begins to speak. Asks Itachi if it’s another nightmare.

Itachi says nothing. The yes is unspoken.

Kisame asks Itachi if it’s the same one.

“Partially.” Itachi says. “Though devoid of all visual imagery.”

Kisame makes a jest, something along the lines of ‘finally, huh’? Itachi finds it non-offensive. He’s trying to be supportive, lighten the situation. Itachi doesn’t laugh at much anything, anymore. Kisame still tries.

“It’s been this way for some time, actually.” I just never wanted to talk about it.

He’s going to sit outside, take some space, as he does. This is a regular occurrence. Kisame tells him to come back soon.

… , …

Itachi comes back after around thirty minutes. Kisame is still awake, likely awaiting his safe return. It’s considerate.

He reminds Itachi that they’ll be at the Uchiha Hideout soon. 

Itachi wouldn’t have forgotten ever. The scene of the final showdown, holy retribution, smite by the angelic.

… , …

This is Itachi’s last night alive.

He hopes the night is dreamless.

… , …

It isn’t.

But actually, in a good way.

… , …

Itachi is practicing shurikenjutsu, he’s around thirteen, sort of, leaps into the air in cat smooth motions, the throwing stars bounce off of each other and white shines across the metal. It’s warm and summery and the rare breaths of wind are hot, comforting almost. The trees are painted golden at the edges by sunlight, shuriken impale the targets on them, biting into their canvas skin.  

Perfect score.

Sasuke is there, too, a child, around seven. He’s smiling and there are stars in his dark eyes and he’s looking at his older brother like Itachi is going to give him the world. 

“Can you teach me that, too?” His voice just bleeds excitement and awe, he wants to be just like his older brother who is the Best Ninja Ever. Itachi extends his hand, moves his fingers in a ‘come here’ motion. There’s a half moon smile of white teeth suddenly there on Sasuke’s face, he runs towards his brother, and Itachi uses his index and middle finger, pokes in the middle of Sasuke’s forehead, who flinches back, makes a pouting face, knowing the next sentence by heart.

“I’m sorry Sasuke, maybe next time.”

“You always say that.”

Itachi smiles apologetically, then thinks about it. Is he really busy right now? He usually is; he planned to finish his training and help his father with some mission work. But… Well, considering the state of things, he might not have more opportunities like this.

So that can wait until another time.

“I think I may be free now, actually.” Itachi sees Sasuke’s whole being shine brighter and warmer than the sun.

-

Itachi teaches Sasuke the beginnings of shurikenjutsu. Sasuke learns quickly, and glows in every word of his older brother’s praise and encouragement.

-

At the end of it all, Sasuke grabs Itachi, hugs him tight.

“Thank you, older brother.”

And Itachi feels…

Happy.

… , …

Suddenly, things are different. His body hurts, all over, it’s cold around him, dark, Itachi’s vision is blurred and then he realizes where he is, remembers that this world, this is his reality. Kisame is already awake, it’s morning, they have to get ready for… what’s next, for Itachi.

Kisame tells Itachi that he should’ve woken him up earlier, but he didn’t.

“Why?”

Apparently he was smiling in his sleep. Kisame asks what he was dreaming about.

Itachi has to think for a while, before he finds the right thing to say.

… , …

“How things should have been.”

[mypralaya]

I think I have written about this before, but I’m gonna do it again and longer: Haven has problems with anger. Or rather, a lack of anger. She’s constantly calm. She’s consistently chill. She’s unceasingly serene. That’s how I write her, even in the face of insults, violence, horror, you name the nastiness. She doesn’t get mad. It’s freaky.  There is one time we see her get angry in canon. She’s approached Xavier to try to explain herself, why she’s doing what she’s doing, hoping for compassion and understanding and for him to join her. Which is absurd because what she’s doing is killing 75% of the world because a voice in her womb is telling her to for religious reasons, but she’s sincere in it. And Xavier, being Xavier, of course receives her with kindness and -----oh wait no he pretty immediately starts calling her a murderer and yelling at her. She snaps at him for him, but then immediately apologizes, and explains she’s been under extreme stress. Which is true. She confided in Valerie Cooper earlier that her work tortures her (which makes sense) how she has sleepless nights, nightmares when she does sleep, this is fucking her up even as much as she believes in it. So yeah, when she reaches out to a man she idolizes, who inspired her, who is famous for his kind and peaceful and understanding approach even to his enemies, and he reacts like. . . .that. . . .and she gets mad for a moment, that’s understandable. And again, she apologizes right after. Bless her. And then Xavier keeps pushing, he keeps telling her she’s insane, which I understand but is not a good way to handle this jfc, and then he keeps trying to invade her mind despite her asking him not to, and she’s so upset by this---she actually expresses it feels violating and it’s VERY UNCOMFY---she doesn’t hurt Xavier. She destroys HERSELF. She unmakes herself from reality itself and reforms herself later from nonexistence, to get away from him. And she still thinks of him with kindness and respect and admiration, and how she regrets that she believes she will have to do so now, and how she intends to do so with compassion because “one must love one’s enemy” So, this is the one time we see her mad. And how she handles being mad. And it’s under the worst circumstances possible, as described, not to mention she’s literally demon-possessed and she has such power that she could have easily wiped XAVIER out of existence then and there instead. But she chooses first apology, then retreat, and even when she resigns herself to murder, it’s not out of anger or hate but understanding that Xavier will stand in her way and stop what she truly believes then is the good thing to do for the sake of thousands of future generations. So, I think it’s safe to say, if this is Haven at her WORST, then any other time it must be like, impossible to rile her. And I think there are likely a lot of reasons why Haven not inclined to get mad unless really pressed like this. Namely, how she would have been raised and treated by the world based on her gender, race, culture, the expectations of a high-class woman in particular, and so on. And I think religion is another reason. Haven is an extremely religious character, one who was raised by a Hindu father and Zoroastrian mother to embrace all world religions so long as love was at the heart, and I think she does exemplify that. But for better or worse, anger is A Bad Thing in a lot of faiths; the concept of “akrodha” of being without anger even when there is cause, is a virtue in Hinduism, and since Haven is someone who very much lives her faith, I do think she’d have worked via meditation to achieve this as much as she could, and she’s had a long time to do it, since she’s 40 when we meet her and has been devout since childhood. Hell, even her height probably is a factor---Haven towers over not only other women, but men. The average height for a man in India is 5′5. She probably has to do everything she can to seem as soft and feminine and passive as possible so as NOT to be taken as an aggressive masculine monster purely because of how big she is. Not to mention she’s dark-skinned, which is associated with ugliness and being poor/low-class and unfeminine, so that’s already all working against her. Which....honestly might explain why she has such an exaggerated feminine presentation, though I also think that is just HER and who she is. It can be both. Like, I’m very femme, and I’m very happy that way, and I think that’s who I am. I also think it would be the height of naivete and denial to believe that my being that way wasn’t shaped by society and culture to some degree or another. I think Haven is naturally a feminine person and naturally a calm person, but I think a lot of external factors also contribute to and exacerbate that. She’s not faking, though. She *is* this way, for one reason or another. So that’s why I don’t think she was easy to get angry in the first place. And I write her as EVEN MORE constantly serene and un-ruffable even in the face of mistreatment now not because I think that’s anyone *should* be (though I do admire her resilience and dignity and decorum, it does take a lot of will and self-control, I just don’t think that should be held as a standard to aspire to either ESPECIALLY for women and POC in the face of mistreatment) but because. . . I think it makes sense. Because the last time she got angry, with Xavier? She was wrong. Her reaction wasn’t wrong, in my opinion, if anything her reaction was INCREDIBLY GENEROUS considering what she COULD have done to him (and she STILL thinks of him with LOVE AND ADMIRATION AFTERWARDS and with DEEP REGRET that she believes she’s going to have to eliminate him) but the story validates Xavier and punishes her. It’s.....uncomfy as hell but that is what happens. So from her perspective? The last time she lost her temper at someone, she was as wrong as wrong could be in a BIG way. If you add that on top of how she was basically punished by the universe itself for it and all the contributing factors as to why she probably was someone who Did Not Anger her whole life, I think that’s why she’s super duper calm and forgiving and enduring now. Well, part of why. As with being very conventionally feminine and very kind and very all those other things women are taught to be, I also think that’s just HER. Haven does NOT come off to me as someone with a secret well of anger that she’s repressing. Even as a child, her reaction to injustice is shown as sadness and compassion, not fury at the systems and people that cause injustice. Some people are born less inclined to anger, and I think Haven was one of them to start with in the first place, and that is probably why it’s easier for all the aforementioned stuff to take hold of her. I’m the same way. I definitely get very upset in the short term, unlike her, but I have a hard time holding on to it, and I am not angry at those who harm others even when I really REALLY should be. And that’s just how I am, and I don’t think that’s necessarily morally superior at all the way society tends to frame it, it just is me. And I think it’s just Haven too. Basically, I think there’s a lot of reasons Why Haven Isn’t Angry Almost Ever and some are good, some are bad, some are neutral, some are from external experiences, some are just how she is. I think that’s the case for a lot of people, that there’s typically a LOT of reasons for one trait, especially a strong one, and I’m not trying to say anything about the morality of anger, or lack thereof, with how I portray her, just what it is and why.

[aryas]

Targ Restoration Rant (aka I made the mistake of venturing into the pro -Targaryen tag & discourse)

"You know nothing, Jon Snow. A true man steals a woman from afar, t'strengthen the clan. Women who bed brothers or fathers or clan kin offend the gods, and are cursed with weak and sickly children. Even monsters." --- Ygritte, ASOS

Clearly, GRRM has never painted Cersei x Jaime or Craster x his daughters in a very favourable light. But suddenly, incest between the 2 good and heroic guys (though the jury is still out on Daenerys) of the story is a-ok? Is it because they are a couple of magic übermenschen and are thus above morality and law of nature? Am I supposed to think GRRM now advocates for incest? But only under certain conditions, only when it involves the special and God-like Targaryens? Why do fans suddenly rejoice about this and wish for a Targ restoration? What kind of fresh hell has this fandom turned into?

[Cut for length]

Their main argument seems to be

Jon and Dany are nephew/aunt which is not considered incest in Westeros so it's all good! No one would bat an eye because even outside the Targs, there are cases of avunculate marriages.

And then they bring up the two known cases; Jonnel x Sansa Stark and Edric x Serena Stark. The former was (probably) a purely political union without issue. The latter did yield heirs but Serena was the daughter of Edric's half brother, so they weren't as closely related (same goes for Sansa, who was Serena's sister and Jonnel's half brother's daughter). Both probably happened for political/practical reasons and to solve major succession issues as Rickon Stark & Jeyne Manderly had two daughters but no male heir.

This comparison is not a very pertinent one because a marriage between Jon & Daenerys would be neither purely political nor practical as they are already involved and supposedly in love. Additionally, what kind of political gain would there be for either of them if we assume Jon's true parentage will be revealed publicly, combined with his ostensible betrayal of bending the knee and falling for a "foreign whore woman" (from the Northern lords' viewpoint), resulting in the loss of his already tenuous hold over the North or the election of another KitN or QitN? Over the last few seasons, the show dropped numerous anvil sized hints about how unwelcome foreign leaders are in the North, especially Targaryens. The Northern lords were already ready to unname Jon because they deemed he'd been away too long. It makes little sense that a Jon x Daenerys marriage would placate them post R+L=J unless they inexplicably decide to suddenly support what would essentially be the restoration of a dynasty they despise. It would also mean R+L=J and Jon's actions in season 7 (i.e bending the knee to a Targaryen, consorting with said Targaryen while being a secret Targaryen himself) would have little to no long-lasting effect and any conflict it caused would be resolved by a marriage that would have happened anyway if Jon had remained Ned's natural son.

Jon wouldn't need Daenerys if he decides to pursue the Iron Throne since his claim trumps hers. What's more, the people of Westeros are more likely to accept him as king of the 7 kingdoms over Daenerys given his Stark blood and the fact that he was raised and groomed for leadership in Westeros. He could potentially have the loyalty and allegiance of the Starks and their bannermen, the Wildlings, the Reach (through Sam), the Iron Islands (through Theon), the Vale (through Sansa and Sweetrobin) and possibly the Riverlands (through his Stark cousins' Tully heritage), in contrast to Dany whose sole remaining Westerosi ally is Jon. If they were to support a Targaryen candidate for the Iron Throne, I think they would favour Jon alone (or you know, married to someone who isn't a Targaryen conqueror).

And while Daenerys could absorb Jon's claim (and potential allies- though again, why would they support Jon x Daenerys over Jon on his own?) and make hers stronger by marrying him, she doesn't need him to lay claim to the 7 kingdoms either, what with her dragons and huge armies. Moreover, an "alliance" - if you can call giving up your kingdom as such - already exists with Jon seemingly having pledged himself to her and Daenerys naming him Warden of the North. She would have been better off marrying someone else to extend or strengthen her control over other regions and territories if there weren't so few candidates left on the show. The most logical way to strike an alliance would have been to marry Jon while he was KitN, pre parentage reveal, but for some obscure reason, the show completely bypassed this option.

But R+L=J turns everything upside down and Jon, once revealed as a trueborn Targaryen, would need to marry into a Northern house if he wants to keep/take back his kingship of the North. Marrying Daenerys would only strengthen his ties to the South and house Targaryen, which would be counterproductive and work against the desired outcome- uniting North & South or two major Houses.

In short, neither party would truly benefit politically from a marriage if Jon's parentage is made public and/or he ultimately loses the North, which is very likely. This is particularly true for Jon. Only Daenerys could somewhat profit from a political union but it would be at the risk of becoming Jon's queen consort in practice if not on paper (something I doubt she would accept) and, more importantly, it would be opening a whole can of worms given the stigma of Targaryen x Targaryen unions.

Because no matter of how (un)common and (un)acceptable avunculate marriages are in the universe of Westeros, Targ restoration fans usually ignore the fact that it wouldn't be just any nephew/aunt, it would be a full Targaryen union, which would have wholly different connotations for the people of Westeros given the fairly recent trauma of their reign. A reign that ended with a mad king whose madness is believed to be hereditary and blamed on generations of close interbreeding. I doubt the people of Westeros would readily accept a Targ power couple back at the helm if they have any say in it.

Plus, Daenerys' first impression didn't exactly help matters: a Targaryen conqueror with huge armies and grown dragons in tow who roasted a father and a son of a prominent House alive and destroyed the last harvest of the Reach in the beginning of winter and unwittingly handed over the greatest weapon of all times to their greatest enemy of all times and indirectly caused the Wall to fall and wants to marry her only other living Targaryen relative, of all people? The sense of déjà vu would be pretty disconcerting, to say the least.

These Pro-Targ fans also tend to dismiss the fact Jon & Daenerys are genetically closer to full siblings than aunts/nephews by claiming modern notions such as DNA conveniently have no bearing in a medieval-fantasy setting such as ASOIAF. In other words, people in-universe wouldn't realise or be bothered that Jon & Daenerys are more closely related (44-47%) than typical nephew/aunt (25%). I think they must have an inkling of the notion and dangers of consanguinity, however basic it may be, if cousin marriages are considered quite normal for the highborn while anything involving more closely related people is frowned upon or downright forbidden. As mentioned previously, even the two known cases of avunculate unions were between uncles and their half nieces, their degree of consanguinity being thus less than that of full uncle/niece and comparable to first cousins (12,5%). So people could at least vaguely understand that Jon & Daenerys share a higher degree of consanguinity than their relatedness would suggest.

All this begs the question; if GRRM wants the restoration of this dynasty and wants us to perceive this as a positive development, wouldn't he aim to improve it and stop the perpetuation of the very proclivity that precipitated their downfall and was at the root of so much suffering in Westeros? Would he "reward" an incestuous and destructive house by having it win out while others are extinct/on the brink of extinction?

If there is supposed to be a Targaryen reinstatement, there has to be a clean break from this dynasty's nefarious characteristics and habits i.e. imperialism, tyranny and incest. What would otherwise be the narrative point of Robert's (very justifiable) Rebellion and everything that unfolded in its aftermath? There should be some kind of progress. Jon & Daenerys, if they decide to take back the IT and get married after the R+L=J reveal, would mean regression. It would be synonymous with more incest, more super inbred and possibly cray-cray Targ heirs and more political (and genetic) isolationism. And with 2 grown dragons/WoMD (if they survive), their reign would equal more subjugation, intimidation and fear for the people of Westeros, even if Jon & Daenerys' initial intentions would be to create a new and better world. In other words, a repeat of everything that was toxic and problematic about the Targaryen dynasty. This scenario seems particularly unlikely when you take the author's personal anti-war/WoMD stance into account.

And lastly, this is what GRRM said about Targcest:

"The Targaryens have heavily interbred, like the Ptolemys of Egypt. As any horse or dog breeder can tell you, interbreeding accentuates both flaws and virtues, and pushes a lineage toward the extremes."

ASOIAF is a meditation on war, power and corruption but it's also a story about extremes --- wights/WW/Ice vs Fire/Daenerys/dragons, the inevitable clash and destruction they bring about and the importance of seeking balance, moderation and finding a middle ground in all things: justice instead of vengeance, sovereignty instead of oppression etc. Even Jon himself is the embodiment of the metaphorical balance between ice and fire. As such, the Targaryens/Targcest can be viewed as another extreme to be avoided. It's the antithesis of "balanced". What he says about accentuating both flaws and virtues is evocative of this famous passage:

"King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land." 

Some Targaryen fans like to think what the coin metaphor refers to is nothing but a myth but I would think the fact the author alludes to it in the above quote kind of refutes this theory. I also happen to think Jon & Daenerys each represent one facet of the coin. This analogy also effectively illustrates how unstable and inconsistent Targaryen rule truly was and could be again. Even if Jon & Daenerys end up being fair and progressive monarchs, what of their inbred children? On which side will the coin land for them? If there is anything Westeros needs after years of war waging, power struggles, political instability and the probably disastrous aftermath of the battle against the Others, it's consistency and stability.

Furthermore, the fact GRRM compares them to the Ptolemaic dynasty is not exactly a ringing endorsement. The Ptolemys were originally from Macedonia/Greece and ruled for close to 300 years over Egypt. Because they never deigned to mix their blood with outsiders and only wed brother/sister and occasionally uncle/niece and cousins, they never actually became Egyptian. Even Cleopatra was genetically Greek. They didn't assimilate with the local people, culture or language (Cleopatra being the only one who bothered to learn the language) and justified their incest by drawing comparison to Greek mythology and thus perceived themselves as Gods. The intermarriages also exacerbated feelings of jealousy and rivalry. Complot and murder within the family were a common occurrence. Aside from a couple of exceptions, they were quite inept rulers and the last +/- 200 years of their reign kind of sucked.

Sounds familiar? In broad strokes, this is pretty much a copy/paste of the history of the Targaryens. Does this sound like something we're supposed to root for? Their reign ended when Egypt submitted to Roman rule. And no, there was no Ptolemaic restoration.

[life-coach-collins-blog]

Oh Shit, a Lion.

So you’re a Zebra. You spend your days chilling by the watering hole, hanging with your striped homegirls, and living a pretty chill existence. One day while doing your Zebra thing, one of your friends yells “oh shit girl, a lion!” Everyone freaks and scatters like partying high-schoolers during a police raid. Of course the lion picks you out of the entire herd to chase, wonderful. You run as fast as you can, thinking only about not getting eaten. As luck would have it, the Lion trips over its own tail, face plants hard onto the ground and you get away, (in real life I imagine this is pretty unlikely but it’d be kind of messed up to kill you off in this story.) You rejoin your squad all “So I just escaped a lion attack, no big deal,” and spend the rest of the day relaxing, getting your heart rate to return to normal and questioning the meaning of life.

All animals, humans included, are born with a pretty complex “Oh shit, a lion” survival system. When your brain senses a great deal of stress, it assumes that you are about to die, so it triggers a crazy amount of physiological responses to allow you to either GTFO of danger or fight for your life. A cocktail of hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline, course through your body. Your muscles tense up. Your heart beats fast. Your breathing becomes labored. Your pupils dilate. Your blood pressure and blood sugar rise. The brain also goes into battery saving mode and starts shutting off any non-essential systems to conserve energy, including your digestion and immune systems. All of this is pretty traumatic for the body, but thankfully a lion attack typically only lasts a couple of minutes. When the perceived threat goes away, the body begins to go back into normal mode and recovers. The problem is that your brain has not evolved enough to recognize the difference between a lion attack and just the ‘normal’ stress of being a 21st century human. When you are freaked about a work deadline, or panicked about paying your bills, or in a tizzy about getting little Emily to ballet class on time, your brain thinks “oh shit a lion,” and triggers all the bells and whistles it thinks you need to survive. Unlike a lion attack, however, your stress probably lasts for more than a few minutes, maybe even it never stops, (you know because God forbid little Emily skips ballet this season). This means that all of the “oh shit a lion” physiological responses never shut off, including higher blood pressure, lots of cortisol and a suppressed immune system. During periods of stress do you gain weight or get sick easily? Don’t blame your brain; it simply thinks it’s keeping you from being lion-lunch.

Stress isn’t all bad. Ever notice how sometimes you work better or faster when you’re under a tight deadline? That’s because, just like during a lion attack, your brain wants you to be hyper-focused on the task at hand when you’re stressed.  And, it’s not like stress is all that avoidable. You still need to perform at work, pay your bills and shuttle little Emily to class before she has a meltdown. However, lots of people seem to think that if you aren’t completely stressed all the time it’s an indication that you aren’t working hard enough. Stress, however, is not the currency for success. In fact, stress actually makes you less productive, because your body can’t actually “run from a lion” forever. Eventually it will become exhausted and just shut down. I don’t care how much you think being a martyr of stress makes you look like a rock star, once you get to the point of complete exhaustion, you’re basically useless in terms of productivity. 

Don’t believe me? Think about NASCAR (as I’m sure you do regularly, anyway.) The greatest drivers in the world typically travel at speeds upwards of 200 mph in the best driving machines money can buy. But, do you know one of the biggest “make it or break it’ moments during a NASCAR Race? The Pit Stop. Drivers know that there is no way that they can truly compete unless their pit-crew has properly lubed the... okay, I’m not even going to pretend like I know what they do, but trust me, it’s important. 

So what’s the solution? How do you balance not-freaking your body out with stress, while still getting your work done, paying your mortgage, and helping Emily pursue her ballerina dreams? It really comes down to how long you allow yourself to be stressed. If you’re feeling pressure from work, it’s essential that you give yourself breaks throughout the day. And for all of you workholics out there, I’m not saying this to be all “love yourself, you deserve it” in a life coach weirdo way. Think about this in terms of the absolute minimum you need to be able to perform at your optimum level. 

It’s not rocket science. You’ve heard all of this before, but these stupid little tricks actually work (life coach tested, life coach approved): 

1. Meditate: They have actually proven that there are medical benefits to meditating, even for miniature chunks of time. I highly recommend the app “Headspace” if you are a newbie. They literally have guided meditations as short as one minute, meaning, it takes longer to cook a hot pocket than it does to help yourself relax. 

2. Breathe: This may sound obvious, but we can forget, especially when we’re stressed, to take regular breaths. When you feel your stress pile on, take five super deep breaths in a row, and I promise you’ll feel like a new person. Don’t believe me? I dare you to try it right now.

3. Go for a walk:  By physically separating yourself from your stressor, even for as little as two minutes, you can help your brain mentally separate from the stress. Come on’, you can take a two minute walk a few times a day, can’t you? Everyone has to get up to pee at some point, right? Use that time to focus on anything other than what you’re so freaked about. 

4. Fantasize about the Worst Case Scenario: I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but I promise this works. Sometimes when we’re stressed we get so caught up in emotion, that we lose sight of what’s really going on. The next time you feel that pain of overwhelm, get out a sheet of paper and make a list of literally everything that could possibly go wrong in the situation. Get creative. Once you’ve explored every horrible scenario, including apocalyptic alien attack, then ask yourself how likely it is that any of the scenarios would really happen. Be realistic. Then ask yourself, even if the worst case scenario happened, would you survive? 

The moral of the story is that making your brain think you’re about to be eaten by a lion all day is really not the best way to live. Take care of yourself with just a few small steps each day. Still having problems keeping your cool? You know what I’m going to say... YES, reach out to a life coach. We’re masters at helping to come up with easy strategies for reducing stress, and we very rarely chase-attack our clients.

[meetingmuppets]

CATFISH BLOG

“If they seem too good to be true they probably are”

The meaning of Catfish

Wikipedia

lure (someone) into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona.

BLOG

 So, I decided a few weeks ago to dip my toe back in pond of the dating world, I‘d had a 6 month break, done a lot in that time, joined diverse social groups, learnt African dancing, Drumming, Kizomba, Meditation, all kinds of weird stuff really,   Met lots of great new people and did lots of socialising but never came close to meeting that special someone.  I‘d had the time to get over the trauma of last year’s dating and was ready to throw caution to the wind,

Unfortunately, what started as a dipping my toe in the pond turned into the biggest Tsunami dating disaster I ‘ve ever had, I found the worst type of guy no woman should ever have to experience, to sum it up in one word  I met “ CATFISH’

As I am writing this blog there are some common words I know I am likely to use and In order to make reading this blog easier I am putting some abbreviations in place for these words to stop repetition

CF The guy (never got his real name so I will just call him CF – Catfish)

AB Absolute Bollocks -referring to most stories he told me 

ABR Alarms Bells ringing

PAP Psychotic and Paranoid – referring to me and my frame of mind ie whenever I questioned his stories which were not adding up I was made to feel like I was crazy, and was imagining everything. :”Babe why you being so paranoid and negative, you need to chill… “

Anyway I found this guy on Tinder (oh no not Tinder I hear you moan) Yes Tinder, Advantages – free, quick and easy to use, Disadvantages – a hunting ground for catfish, you can float around in cyberspace with no digital footprint so hard for anyone to catch you if you are on there for anything other than a relationship. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that Tinder is also used as a cheap hook up at the end of the night, based on finding someone in close proximity to you.  I do not judge anyone who is into extra marital affairs.  What does piss me off in the dating world is not declaring what you are on the site for (or downright lying that you are single and after a relationship which is clearly not the case.)  Like for example POF (Plenty of Fish) you can opt for a Relationship or admit you are not after a Relationship – just after a bit of fun. It easy, just click the option you want.   

  As long as you are open and honest that’s fine.  But when you are lying about your situation and making out you are single when you are actually married that’s when it becomes a nightmare for the other person, who is using the site for serious purpose. 

So back to my CF story.

I noticed since I last used Tinder there was now a new added feature to help you find someone quicker rather than having to go through the cumbersome process of getting a Match.  THE SUPERLIKE BUTTON

Just to explain a bit about SUPERLIKE, if you know about Tinder, you will know that if you like the look of someone’s profile you swipe left and if you no likey you swipe right.  However the Match process only happens if that person also sees your profile and happens to swipe left also.   It can take weeks for that to happen, it may never happen and I don’t have time to wait around! However, the Super Like button bypasses all of that waiting game.  If you Super Like someone, they get an instant notification, they see your profile and if they accept you, IT’S A MATCH  Get your coat lad you’ve pulled!!

You only get one SuperLike a day, you can pay for more if you want, but believe you me, with the PondLife you get on Tinder, one Superlike a day is more than enough. I decided to use my Superlike Power when I did surprisingly find a guy I liked the look of.   Hit the button and yippee within 10 minutes he liked me back, we had a Match.

Indeed The Superlike button has great powers, but with great powers comes great responsibility

I opened his message to a very excited ‘I am so happy that you have chosen me, I have read your profile and you seem the perfect kind of woman I am after’…!!

Well that was flattering,

I responded and we swapped numbers and started to text, they was a lot of banter and I decided he had passed the first test (the Text Banter) and we started to discuss meeting up for the FIRST DATE.

I must admit I do not have time to text and email guys for weeks and weeks,  I prefer to just arrange a meet up pretty quickly and decide over a quick drink if I like them or not.  Which is probably my downfall as I do not research the person I intend to meet or ask many questions.  As long as they have a decent job, and can make me lol on a text message that’s about the only criteria I need initially.

Anyway the date was set up that weekend, a Saturday afternoon in a beer garden.  I got there first got myself a glass of wine and when he turned up I was not disappointed, nice to look at, Well dressed, easy on the eye, Dapper clothing,  Tick, Tick Tick.

We chatted about a lot of interesting topics, he told me about his job, he was a trainee solicitor for Immigrants.  He helped people stay in the country who arrived here with no paperwork from war torn countries. 

Said he found his job very rewarding.

Spoke about his high morals and that he would never go out and sleep around with different women, his church values would not allow it.  He was a one woman man.

He then had to cut the date short because he said he had a church meeting in his local community about supporting immigrants.  (BTW All of the above turned out to be AB)

I did query before he left the fact he had De-matched me on Tinder pretty quickly which was a bit strange.  The ‘De- Match button’ is when you are matched with someone but then change your mind.  By ‘De matching them’ you are throwing them back into Cyber space so you are not connected anymore on Tinder and it’s a strange thing to do if you are planning a date with someone.  You tend to keep them there,  as a sweet reminder of how lucky you were in the first place to be matched with that person.

He said that he had 14 other Superlikes on Tinder (That is a lot – I get 1 Superlike a year) and all the women’s profiles were cluttering up his inbox.  And he decided he liked me the best out of all of them, and wanted to see me,  so he did not need them anymore. 

I left my date feeling quite uplifted, but also sensing this guy may not be all he seems.  Did I really believe he had deleted 14 Superlikes (including mine) before he even met me??

Anyway, having both accepted the first date was a success, the second date was set for a drink and meal the week after at my local.   He came to my house first of all with a present, 2 bottles of my favourite Red Wine, he certainly knew how to impress.  I did pour out a lot of my insecurities to him as well as the wine, my previous dating disasters, men promising everything but giving nothing, the ghosting horrors.  He said he would never ghost Me, that he could see us together in a year and if anyone was going to end it, it would be me.  That he could really see us in a long term relationship. 

  WARNING

“ If they say that they care about you and they act like things are getting serious after only a short amount of time, you might just have met a catfish”

When we later had a meal, he did mention he had a bad and serious allergy to prawns, I joked that if he wronged me I would come to his house and sew prawns in his curtains.

By 11pm the date was ready to end, and at this point he mentioned ringing a taxi to see his brother (ABR).

At this point I immediately sensed he was lying I mean why would you have to meet up with your brother or to go to his house at this time of night???.  I tried not to be PAP and instead joked about the fact he was going to meet another woman

Being a polite host I then offered to ring him an UBER which he accepted. 

Now my main reason here apart from the fact I love the UBER magic of a taxi turning up within 1 minute of ordering it, is because UBER tracks the journey and saves you a record of the exact journey taken.  (I am not sure he knew this, so this was to my advantage).  If he was lying to me as to his whereabouts I was going to find out.

When he got in the taxi I poured a glass of wine, and sat down to watch his journey home, SAD I know, but I wanted to see if he was really going to the place he said he was going.  The taxi ride home took about `10 minutes and did go to the area he said,  although I am pretty sure at some point there was 3 minutes stop at the University.

That was a bit strange, had he picked someone up another woman perhaps???? (PAP).

Reassured myself it was just the bottle of wine making me a bit squiffy, as soon as he got out the taxi (Yep you can even tell that) he text me to say goodnight and rest assured there is no woman here.  All ok, went to bed feeling relatively happy.

What a difference 24 hours makes. 

Saturday

I woke up the next day and looked at my phone. Now for the past week or two CF normally sent a good morning Text but there was nothing. Never mind, sure he is still in bed I thought   I went to Whatsapp to text him good morning.  Half an hour later I went to check he had got my message to see it only showed one grey tick (undelivered) which was strange, he tended to respond really quickly.  In addition his timestamp and picture had gone. 

I did not panic too much as sometime I remove my timestamp if I don’t want to get back to people quickly but I still felt uneasy.  Had he blocked me?  Surely not. . ???

Just to make sure I was not blocked I called him, he picked up straight away and said he was sleepy and I would call me back.  I did question ‘Have you blocked me on WHATSAPP??”.  Did not want to sound PAP but felt the need to ask.  He assured me he had not blocked me “No, I do not have Wifi here that is all, I am not online I will call you as soon as I get up”

17:00 I had still not heard, and I was really feeling a bit annoyed.  There was something not right here, call it my instincts I just knew.  My jovial morning message was still not delivered and according to ‘4 steps as to how to tell if you are defo blocked on WHATSAPP’, I was 90% blocked. 

I decide to confront my fear, I text him and said “There is something not right here and I know you have blocked me, I have a really bad feeling about this”

Two minutes later he called, assured me again he still did not have WI FI and had not blocked me.

Said he knew I was going out that evening and that was why he had not called.   I was not really convinced but I was getting ready to go out and just decided to put my PAP thoughts behind me and enjoy my evening.  He even text me saying “stop being so negative about this, lol you are so paranoid”

  Sunday

By Sunday afternoon I was getting really annoyed.  More Google Searches about ‘How to know if you are blocked on WHATSAPP were carried out with an additional test you can do to prove 101% if you are blocked (I was 101% blocked) I get a flashing message from Google now– Hey - accept it GAL you ARE SOO BLOCKED, get over it and move on.

And now my phone calls to him were going straight to voice mail. 

Leading to more Google searches ‘How do I know if someone has blocked my calls “If it rings only once and goes straight to voicemail you could be blocked”

The test to check this for certain– ring immediately after from another different phone and if it rings as normal then that will prove you are 100% blocked.

 I did the TEST and now know that I am 100% blocked from calls !!!.???

Hours and hours of Google and Quora searches about whether or not I am blocked from calls and messages were started to take their toll.  

By Sunday evening I was tired, confused and at the end of my tether. I wearily sent him a text, ‘I’ve had enough, you are lying to me, I don’t want to see you anymore”

CF- “Well you certainly made your mind up about me, I told you that you would be the one to end it “

Me  (annoyed at his smugness)  Texting – “You were obviously fully aware of how untrustworthy you are and knew you would let me down”. 

Me - Looking up at the unfinished bottle of RED WINE

Texting back “And the irony of this “The bottle of Wine has lasted longer that you have “

CF - LOL

 Monday,

Spent morning feeling a bit miserable about the fact it was over, without me even knowing the truth.

11.00  - WHATSAPP text appears suddenly his profile and time stamp are all back.  He asks if we can talk.  I agree (not sure why) and when he calls later he says again that I am imagining it all and being paranoid. 

And still insisting he has no reason to block me.  That he reinstalls his WHATSAPP for certain reasons and that must be causing the problems.  I argued my point and all my research on WHATSAPP and the 4 ways to discover you are blocked,  to which he says   ‘What are you, an FBI agent or something??”

For the next two hours I start to question my own sanity, maybe I wasn’t blocked, maybe his ex- girlfriend has synced his computer and is messing with his head, maybe there is a  WHATSAPP fault just between our two phones that is causing this ????

15.00 I check my WHATSAPP again and cannot believe it

He has blocked me again.

17.00 I wanted the truth now, CODE RED.    I was not going to rest until I get it.

I decide to ring him but know I am blocked.  Another Google search -How to adjust my phone settings so he does not know it is me calling.

It shows me a video how to hide my profile ID so when it called him it says private number.

I did this and make the call, and he immediately picks up (GOTCHA)

When I say ‘Hi its me’ I can tell he is not sure who he is speaking to, his brain was frantically trying to work out which out his 14 Tinder Matches he was dealing with.  

I could hear music in the background from his TV but he started spluttering he was in a shop and could not speak, muttered some rubbish about trying to call me all day and would call me back when he got home. The lines goes dead. 

Right, am done with this, I am really angry, the fear in his voice when I called confirmed there was a secret here. I will use my own detective skills to work out what the hell is happening.

I go through my phone and all the pictures he had sent me to try and get some clues about him. When we first matched,  he sent me about 20 pictures of himself, some pictures are beside his house some are beside his car (of which I can partly see the registration plate).  Along with the address from UBER I am pretty sure I can find this man, hunt him down and expose the truth.  I start to get excited, I know what I can do, I can buy some prawns, find his street his car and dump them all around it.  I have a long conversation about this with my friend, who seeing me on the verge of a meltdown says she will get her boyfriend to drive me there.

I then worry this may be extreme, I don’t want the police involved after all.

And then I have another idea,  I think back to our conversations and remember he told me the club hangs out most weekends, it is in a certain area of Leeds and it’s a club one of my girlfriend goes to, maybe if I send her his pic she will recognise him?? Lightbulb moment 

I send her a text

 Me “Hey how you doing, I think I ve been CATfished and there is a chance you may know him, he goes to the same club as you, if I send you his Pic can you have a look?”

Her: OMG did he take your money?

Me “God NO” (you can have a go at taking my heart and my mind but I am a Yorkshire girl, you aint getting my money that’s for sure)

Her “Ok send me the pic”

I then sent her one pic to identify him and as I was about to send her picture no 2 in case picture number 1 was not clear enough I could see her typing back, Message flashes up :

YEAH I know him

 OMG I was about to get my answers,

I nervously rang her and told her I had been dating him

Is he single I asked – “No he is married ” (Bugger, slightly freaked out at this point, but to be honest I not overly surprised)

Is he a Solicitor I asked, “No he is unemployed” she laughs (I am quite upset about this revelation. More so than being married, all those conversations about those immigrants he saved and text messages saying he was at the Crown Court defending them (AB)

Does he have a Car? I ask, - No that must be his wife’s car.

Is his name “CF”     “No that’s not his name “she said.

Does he live in LS….. I ask, NO he lives in LS…..  (the address she confirms where he lives is the address I have got him the UBER too)

With a sinking feeling I realised my £8.50 taxi fare had taken him back to his marital home

  Apart from being shocked and sickened by my new found knowledge I also felt slightly euphoric.  I had managed to get all my answers without even leaving the house,  I did not have to get my friends boyfriend to drive me round his estate whilst I wear a headscarf and dark glasses and then sprinkle prawns all around his car, trying to avoid any CCTV.  I had brought him down in 48 hours, years of guys lying to me was finally starting to pay off, I now knew the signs and how to reel them in.

Lady Detective Agency here I come. YEAH

So what do I now do with my new found knowledge?

I decided immediately I wanted him to know that I knew.  To make him sweat a bit that I had knowledge that could damage him.

Still feeling slightly euphoric and well as a bit nervous, I decided to leave a voice message

When it clicked to Voice Mail my message started, (I really should have prepared more for this.)

I had not meant it to sound threatening but it went into  a creepy and strange Liam Neeson mode ( I know who you are, I know where you live and when I find you I will….)  No,  I did not want to threaten him, he knows where I live after all.

So half way through I changed my tone to a more upbeat and preppy, ‘I do not intend to take this further, you disgust me and I just feel sorry for your wife’ I HANG UP.

I slept really well that night, there is something about knowing you were right all along that fills you with a sense of calmness, all my worry about the fact I was turning into a PAP girlfriend was not the case, I was right all along.

CF did call me the next day, no doubt having received my strange voice message.  I picked up quite intrigued as to how he was going to worm his way out of this one and if he was bricking it a bit, WHAT DO YOU WANT I said?  In my creepy voice.

There was an uncomfortable pause as he cleared his throat.

“Errmmm”, I just wondered, he said, “If your new found knowledge has changed our friendship/relationship””????!!!!!!!    

OMG was he frigging kidding me  “You mean the fact you are married and unemployed “ I retorted???”

After a few expletives, I confirmed I wanted nothing more to do with him. 

He then said he was disappointed that I had sent his private photos on to other people, said he found that very disrespectful!!!!!   That he would never disrespect me by showing my photos around.   (So I am the one disrespecting him now!!!!???)))  How do guys have a habit of turning things around when they are in the wrong, making us to be the bad guy????????.

I mean Dude- you disrespected me the moment you put your dodgy Catfish Profile out there and then accepted my Tinder request.   I thought I was seeing a single solicitor, I had in fact met an unemployed, married, sick Fantasist. 

After a few long awkward pause it then got to point where there was nothing left for either of us to say and I just told him he disgusted me and hung up.

I have not heard from CF since, but I did feel worried about the 14 other Tinder Matches he was involved with, they should not have to go through this.  I feel a need to protect them.

I decided to send a strong worded email to Tinder about the type of men that are using their website and gave as many accurate details about him as I could.  (Well his phone number which was about the only thing that I did have on him, that was not false)  I also had his Postcode thanks to UBER. 

To be fair Tinder did take it seriously and said they would launch a full investigation.  24 hours later they confirmed they had dealt with it, but for privacy reasons they could not disclose what happened.  I have no idea what they did, hoping they took him down and took action to ensure he does not prowl on their site again.

Moral of this story – apart from the fact there are many dishonest people on these websites, always trust your gut instincts, if something does not feel right, there is a good chance that it is not.   If a relationship seems hard work in the very early stages, it is probably not meant to be.

“If it walks like a Duck and Quacks like a Duck, it is a Duck.”

I did read last year about a woman who wanted to make Catfishing illegal having been involved with a married man for over a year who was in fact leading a double life. 

At the time I found this amusing but I do see now how woman can deem this act to be a crime, you are left feeling very raw and violated. 

You can just as easily meet a guy in the outside world who lies and cheats, you can hardly make it a crime, where does one draw the line?

Maybe Dating websites should have more controls in place to prevent people lying on their site in the first place, getting them to fill in some kind of honesty disclaimer, and making it very clear that there is a report button is anyone abuses the intentions of site.   Persuading people to be honest about what they are after rather than tricking people.  We need to take more action to make it harder for these douch-bags to get onto these sites in the first place.

In the meantime I will carry on with the dating lark I will not be defeated by my Catfish. You will not break me, “Come and have another go guys if you think you are hard enough”…..

I now have the skill and experience to bring you down in 48 hours, I may not tell you wife, but you can be 100% guaranteed that a very uncomfortable voice message and then an even more uncomfortable blog may be coming your way…….

[meryableblog]

Some Ideas To Make The Most Of Staying In

We’re clearly navigating unprecedented times. It seems like every hour there’s a replacement update from officialdom, we’re collective during a heightened sense of panic, and it feels impossible to tear ourselves faraway from our devices. While many folks are getting to spend far more time reception within the foreseeable future, that doesn’t mean we've to succumb to pure chaos or neglect our mental and physical health within the process. And stepping up your self-care may be a good way to remain positive, and busy.

Here’s the thing: practicing self-care isn’t selfish and it can even be quite simple. attempt to reframe this newfound downtime as a chance to take a position in yourself in ways you haven’t been ready to before. It’s an opportunity to raise yourself, to foster deep human connection around you, and honestly to only relish in some R&R. Here are a couple of belongings you can do reception to stay your spirits up.

New Podcast Series & Organize

It doesn’t matter how niche you go: there’s basically a podcast for each genre out there. Whether you dig true crime stories, deep-dive exposes, reality TV rehashing, beauty gossip, science spins, or interviews with influential people, you’re covered. We recommend finding an excellent podcast and binging your way through the entire thing while you organize or deep clean.

Some of our favorites are Crime Junkie (serious crime), Wine & Crime (somehow they create crime funny), The Dropout (a juicy expose on Elizabeth Theranos), Fat Mascara (all beauty talk), Forever35 (beauty and life), Freakonomics (science), and Throwing Shade (political comedy).

Now is also an excellent time to travel through your closet and cupboards and spring clean, and there’s literally just one thanks to rolling in the hay. For the foremost effective organization and decluttering life hack ever, check this out.

Commit to a Daily or Weekly Physical Challenge

There’s joy in sitting around a la fat and sassy lady, but tbh, which will start to urge boring after a short time. It feels dang good to maneuver your body a touch, so make it a daily/weekly goal to urge physical. It is often as simple as doing jumping jacks and crunches in your front room (maybe during commercial breaks?) or some light yoga once you awaken to urge the time off to an honest start. If you’re feeling unmotivated, let somebody else motivate you. We love Cassie Ho of Blogilates and Jessica James of Dance with Jessica – both provide free workouts on YouTube.

Consider Learning a new Language

All those times you thought to yourself, “Hmm… wouldn’t it's cool to find out a replacement language” have all led to here? you'll even combine your audible lessons with something else, like an indulgent bath, tending to the backyard, doing the dishes, etc. Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, and Babbel are all top-rated programs with many languages to settle on from.

Start a Virtual Book Club with Friends

Seeing as how the hour and brunch dates are off-limits for a short time, why not get your crew together by way of a virtual book club? alternate choosing the book (we suggest light choices), then set weekly reading goals followed by a virtual chat date to dish on everything. Ordering books online might get tricky, so stick with either audiobook or e-book options. Amazon features a ton of options then does Audible. attempt to make the virtual date feel special – bring a snack or a glass of wine along and dedicate a full half-hour to an hour!

Catch abreast of Your Netflix “Must Watch” List

This one is pure indulgence, and that’s 100% OK. We’re sure you’ve got an inventory of your own, but just in case you would like a couple of suggestions we recommend The Goop Labs (it’s a stimulating watch – the selection is yours), Broken (the counterfeit makeup episode will cause you to gasp), Love is Blind (a crazy dating experiment courtesy of Netflix), Cheer (you’ll be the one cheering for these cheerleaders at the end), Next in Fashion (we love you Tan!), and Miss Americana (even if you’re not a Taylor Swift fan, it’s soo good).

Start a Gratitude Journal

It is often hard to feel grateful the planet "> for love or money when the world seems like it’s collapsing around you, but writing down even the tiniest things that you’re thankful for can boost your morale. It also can cause you to appreciate all the great that also exists around you. If you've got a physical journal that’s great – the art of putting pen to paper is often therapeutic in and of itself – but a virtual log also works! the thought is that you’re taking five minutes a day to mindfully write down your gratitudes.

Take up a Meditation Practice

We all need a touch calmer in our worlds rn, and meditation may be an excellent spot to start out. Meditation is often as simple as mindfully breathing for a couple of minutes, pressing pause on everything else to concentrate on a song that brings you joy, or sitting outside and taking note of the planet around you. If you’re seeking guided meditation, try Headspace or Calm. For a free option, do this YouTube video from Calm. Yoga is another amazing thanks to focusing your mind, so determine our guide to finally giving it a go, if you’re still not a yogi.

Learn a replacement Recipe

If there’s ever a time to urge creative within the kitchen it’s now. You don’t need to leave and buy a bunch of latest stuff, either. Instead, find out what you've got available and make something delicious from there. It also doesn’t need to be super extravagant. Maybe you’ll try your hand at making a loaf of bread, a replacement dessert, or a tasty sauce for your go-to protein. Documenting the method on your Instagram stories can assist you to feel more connected to the surface world. Get others to hitch within the fun!

[chickeninthewoods]

2004 films

| The Bachelor | Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004 (late-nite) | Pulled from the pile of purchased DVDs at the folks'... to great disappointment. This is a bad, bad film, and Chris O'Donnell truly sucks. Phoned-it-in sucks. This explains why he hasn't worked much in the last 5 years - which was a bit of a mystery up until now. Avoid this like the plague.

| Spanglish | Dec. 27, 2004 (afternoon) |

| Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Sunday, Dec. 26, 2004 (late-nite) | Dark and long. The kids are growing up, and the films are, as well. I think my mom is borrowing this from my sister. She has all three, unfortunately mostly in fullscreen.

| Snow Falling on Cedars | Sunday, Dec. 26, 2004 (late-nite) | Fantastic and incredibly sad. This was pulled from the stack of purchased DVDs at my parents' house over xmas vacation (who knows why they buy what they buy).

| Rivers and Tides | Saturday, Dec. 25, 2004 (afternoon, w/ the 'rents) | A gorgeous, nearly-meditative study of the work of Andrew Goldsworthy, who creates sculptural installations in and from nature.

| Seabiscuit | Saturday, Dec. 25, 2004 (w/ the 'rents) | Oddly-paced, but exciting. A book moved to the screen doesn't always work well, though, for the reasons well-illustrated here. The historical snippets might have worked well as chapter introductions, but they make for a confusing set of transitions on screen.

| De-Lovely | Friday, Dec. 24, 2004 (evening) | A mess of a film, though pretty and entertaining. But maybe that was intentional. Porter's life was a mess, albeit an entertaining one.

| Before Sunset | Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2004 (late-nite) | I had planned to watch this on the plane to Indy, but after watching the original last night, I couldn't help popping this one in today before my trip. I'm frustrated as hell by it, and the sudden ending, but I guess that's the reality part.

| Before Sunrise | Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2004 (late-nite) | Luminous, like Julie Delpy's skin.

| 24: Season 3 | Week of Dec. 17, 2004 | My current policy is to review television series all at once, rather than a disc at a time, but I wanted to begin by noting that this season does not start out well. The tech is particularly bad, and I don't really care about what happens next.

| The Door in the Floor | Saturday, Dec. 18, 2004 | A little less dark than I thought it might be, and more tangible. I haven't read any Roth, ever, and now I'm prompted to start. I'll have to rent it again to watch the commentary and featurettes -- I'm fascinated by writer/screenwriter collaborations, and the adaptation process (so long as the writers can also talk).

| The King of Comedy | Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2004 | I think it's not possible to watch a film on the recommendation of someone who says its their favorite. I just don't have much to say about it.

| Jersey Girl | Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2004 (afternoon) | Ooh, this was cute! 13 Going on 30 cute, 3 Men and a Baby cute. The kid was great, and the Sweeney Todd bit was cute even in its un-cute-ness. A definite recommendation for parents and families who want to see a decent movie.

| A Home at the End of the World | Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004 | I'll admit, I rented this for the much-anticipated kiss between Colin Farrell and Dallas Roberts. It wouldn't have been worth waiting for, if that's all there was to this film. But all the things I disliked about marginally similar films, I liked about this. Where Forrest Gump was nearly campy, this was understated and honest. Where the Myth of Fingerprints was sarcastic, this was lacking all irony. At the same time, where Big Eden was celebratory and fantastical, this was pretty raw. So I don't know exactly how I feel, but I'm glad I saw it.

| Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind | Saturday, Dec. 4, 2004 (afternoon) | Reviews were generally positive, but I had received a recommendation against watching it just a few days prior. I enjoyed it, and would certainly keep it out of the "never again" bin, though it probably won't end up on a best list. As other reviewers noted, its the emotional core that saves this film from a bad sort of quirky, and I did appreciate that. But I felt it didn't go far enough exploring the morality of doing such a bizarre and radical thing. I would have preferred a "what if" movie with a love/life story running through it, to a love/life story with lots of other stuff piled around it. Jim Carrey didn't annoy me, though, and that's a rarity. Kate Winslet is yummy.

| Capturing the Friedmans | Nov. 27, 2004 (afternoon) | Truly one of the most amazing films, ever. While working on a short film about children's pary clowns in NYC, the filmmaker happened upon an extraordinary story of a family caught in an avalanche of molestation charges and media frenzy in the mid-1980s. The film includes footage shot by family members during the time of the arrests and court proceedings, as well as present-day interviews with police and other persons involved. If netflixing, be sure to get Disc 2 as well, as there are hours of additional footage and follow-up interviews with the filmmakers.

| Maze | Nov. 1, 2004 (afternoon) | This scared me off initially, fearing it was a Rob Morrow vanity piece, but then I forged ahead on faith in Laura Linney. And I wasn't disappointed -- the film is quite lovely, surprisingly nuanced, and I forgive Rob Morrow his salary whining in the 90s (Janine Turner, however, is getting her just desserts in dry-eye commercials)

| Ghost World | October 25, 2004 | I held off on seeing this when it was playing at York Sq., but it was fun on dvd. Scarlett and Thora bring so much to the table.

| The Apprentice, Season 1 (all discs) | Oct. 20, 2004 | Addicted to S2, thought S1 might be good. Soapy fun.

| Seeing Other People | Oct. 20, 2004 | Julianne Nicholson is always great, but the movie wasn't my favorite. Vulgar and ultimately a little boring.

| Dopamine | Sunday, Oct. 10, 2004 | I like Sabrina Lloyd, and the story here was interesting, but I didn't ever really latch on to anything in this picture. There was so much unexpected darkness, maybe that pushed me away. | Normal | Friday, Oct. 1, 2004 | I was so skeptical... but this was handled with about as much grace and dignity as I could ever have imagined.

| Uptown Girls | Sunday, Sept. 19, 2004 | Decent fluffy entertainment.

| Dinner for Five: Season 1, Disc 1 | Sunday, Sept. 12, 2004 | Never as interesting as it promised.

| High Art | Saturday, Sept. 11, 2004 | Not as hot on the most recent viewing, but I'm sensing the ambition element more clearly each time I see it.

| Alias, Season 2 (all discs) | Week of Sept. 6, 2004 |

| Tuck Everlasting | Sunday, Sept. 5, 2004 |

Alexis is a wonder, and I'm so glad she has a spot on the WB for a while.

| Charlotte Sometimes | Sometime in September, 2004? |

| 13 Going on 30 | Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2004 | I watched this on the plane, BDL>>DTW, and finished in the wrap place in terminal B. Cute, cute, cute entertaining fluff.

| Mona Lisa Smile | Monday, Aug. 9, 2004 | I don't know why I haven't returned this yet; it was good, though not in the Wonder Boys-kind of way I had hoped. Not much new to say, though it was interesting to watch how the juxtaposition of super-smart-capable and wanna-be-housewifey played out

| Watching You | Friday, July 30, 2004 | This was a set of short films, all lesbian-themed in some way. I got it because I was looking for a short called "travelling companion," which had been on another set of shorts on VHS a few years ago. The quality of gay-themed cinema has come so far in the last few years, though. My favorite ("10 rules") was actually in the "extras" section, though I wasn't sure exactly why there was that division. The title short, "Watching You," was set in Israel (??), though that never was mentioned explicitly.

| The Cucumber Incident | Monday, July 27, 2004 | This was an indie (so indie it's not even in IMDB yet) documentary, viewed on the Sundance Channel's DOCday. It tells the story of a group of three women in a family who basically raped and beat the husband of one of the women, who had been molesting his daughters. It's complicated and awful -- the wife who let her husband back in the house after he'd been to prison for molesting her older daughter, the child protection system which didn't intervene after subsequent charges (and let him back in the house after his imprisonment), the complicated revenge / scare tactics they exacted, and the overwhelming weight of the justice system that fell on them as a result. Everything about this is awful, and though I never felt like we really got to the heart of the women's fury as they prepared to terrorize this guy, that may be as much a result of midwestern stoicism as it is a comment on the film's ability to draw out their story.

| A Mighty Wind | Saturday, July 24, 2004 | I've watched this more than once now - I don't know why, but it's silly and entertaining and even ok musically.

| Travelling Companion | Tuesday, July 20, 2004 | I watched this on an interminable train ride from New Haven to Boston, when the train literally broke down in the middle of rural Rhode Island. Nice.

| Casa de los Babys | Monday, July 12, 2004 | I may need to give this another look before I comment too much. I rented this while my sister was visiting, and I'm not sure we finished it.

| Along Came Polly | Sunday, July 11, 2004 | B+

| Girl With a Pearl Earring | Sunday, July 4, 2004 | Watched this at T's up in New Hampshire -- it was a lovely portrait, and a really creative and daring way to make a film about a painting.

| Dead Like Me (entire first season) | July, 2004 | So bummed I don't get Showtime anymore... rent the dvds if you get the chance, it's almost as good as Six Feet Under (the first year of SFU)SHO

| Things You Can Tell Just by Looking At Her | Wednesday, June 30, 2004 | I watched this in the car, driving from my parents' house in Michigan down to visit my sister in Indianapolis. It's not a bad car-movie (if such a category exists), except that I did get a tad claustrophobic at one intense point. I really thought I had seen this before, but I had only vague moments of deja vu as I watched it. The women were just amazing -- Glenn Close, Callista Flockhart, Amy Brenneman, Cameron Diaz (and more) -- but I was particularly amazed by Callista Flockhart. I don't think it's reasonable to question her talent after watching her work in this film -- something so far from Ally McBeal, so different and difficult. The movie is a set of one-acts, each focusing on a different character. The supporting characters in each act are extremely sparse, though there's a bit of connection woven throughout the film, between the characters. It's important to understand that they're living in the same time, the same world. Glenn Close is an Ob/Gyn with real emotional maturity and intimacy issues; Cameron Diaz is a relatively well-adjusted blind girl whose sister (Amy Brenneman) is taking a backseat; Holly Hunter is a successful, albeit lonely bank officer who reels at the pointed analysis of a homeless woman who buns her cigarettes; and Callista Flockhart is a woman tending to her dying lover (Valeria Golino). There's also a piece with Kathy Baker who infantilizes her new short-statured neighbor, but I found it really odd and jarring compared with the rest.

| Raising Victor Vargas | Tuesday, June 29, 2004 | Watched on the plane from Detroit to Hartford -- though I think I'll want to see it again when I can hear and concentrate better. This would make a great double-feature with "Real Women Have Curves", for the sheer heart of both

| The Banger Sisters | Sunday, June 27, 2004 | Watched mostly on the plane between Hartford and Detroit, and finished up at my parents' house in Michigan -- this was a fun little showcase for a variety of veteran and newcomer talent. Goldie Hawn's butt really is amazing, Susan Sarandon proves she can give up scenery-chewing for Lent, and Eva and Erika somehow manage to look like sisters (though moreso if their parents were Susan and Goldie...)

| Nobody's Baby | Monday, June 14, 2004 | Caught this one on Showtime, found by the Tivo's Radha Mitchell wishlist. I'm not sure what Radha's doing playing these desert waitresses (e.g., When Strangers Appear), but this one wasn't bad. A little anachronistic, maybe, but not awful.SHO

| All the Real Girls | Saturday, June 12, 2004 | Though I really like some of the actors, I just didn't find this movie that compelling. It was slow, and maybe would have been better if I had seen it on the right kind of day (e.g., long, slow, cold and weathery).

| Trembling Before G-d | Saturday, June 12, 2004 |

| Purity | Saturday, June 12, 2004 | I watched this nearly in a double-feature with Trembling Before G-d, and it was so stunning. Clearly bitter and biased, but stunning.

| Saved | Friday, June 11, 2004 | Saw this Heathers-in-a-Christian-High-School in the theatre, opening weekend. Not terribly crowded, which was surprising. The movie was just delightful; funny and interesting and terribly attentive to the details, which was important. It's fun to see someone like Mandy Moore play a character this deliciously saccharine, too. Go see.Orange

| Marathon | Thursday, June 10, 2004 | Caught on the Sundance channel -- and couldn't tear myself away. It's a faux-documentary of a girl who does an annual 24-hour crossword puzzle marathon in NYC -- mostly on noisy subways and buses. The dialogue is minimal, the plot is pretty much nonexistent, and yet its riveting to watch, for some reason. It's one of the few times watching a film where I felt like I was in that zone of a conversation where I was truly getting to know someone.

| Out of Season | Sunday, June 6, 2004 | A surprisingly ok new grrl movie, which is unusual. And since I wasn't expecting anything at all, I was a very thrilled little camper. This definitely goes on the recommendations list, maybe even above 'Go Fish' (though after 'Get Real').| Soldier's Girl | Friday, June 4, 2004 | A really wrenching look at the story of a particular casualty of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (pre-"Don't Pursue," I think). I don't know how close to the truth this story was, but I'm not sure it matters. It was beautiful.

| The Company | Wednesday, June 3, 2004 | I've been dying to see this ever since it came out, but I was a bit disappointed. While the dancing was just out of this world, I had trouble adjusting to all the jumps between performance and slice-of-life/rehearsals and story. I think that was intentional, but it just didn't work for me. I love the Joffrey, though, and it was worth the time spent just to watch them dance. Neve included. While I'm usually the first to scrunch up my nose at something that appears to be a vanity piece, this is most certainly not one of those times. No one hires Altman to do a vanity piece, for starters. For an Altman-esque look inside the ballet, this is what you want. But I still prefer Center Stage for the energy of the dance world (as soapy as it can be).

| xx/xy | Tuesday, June 1, 2004 | I wasn't sure what to make of this -- it sounded too much like that other film with Kathleen Robertson in a menage a trois -- but with Mark Ruffalo, I wanted to give it a shot. It was interesting for the blurriness and for the look at a particular kind of person's behavior in a relationship, but I didn't love it.