#it's possible in the sense that buying a lottery ticket makes it possible for me to win

[catsnuggler]

.

[wumblr]

let's have a hard talk. these insufferable takes on AI are not advancing the discussion. the discussion was miles beyond this "takes work from artist" "consumer boycott must be the answer" dead on arrival poor substitute for an analysis, years ago, when timnit gebru got fired from google, for making what is now, because of her, the trivially obvious observation that large datasets may be too large to manually analyse for bias.

like congratulations. you have hit upon the point of capek's RUR, origin of the word robot, from a hundred years ago. were you going to take another point from back before the dust bowl or was that it? it's not just automation that takes surplus value from labor, it's any increase in efficiency. this is the first textbook feature of the economic model we're living under. luddites genuinely had more sense for nuance when the loom threatened to extract value from their labor at a pace never before seen. this is not that. luddites were producing textiles that people actually bought. you aren't.

aside from that, the implication that this is on par with like, a museum heist, or art forgery (both of which are, by the way, through a lens that includes class analysis, badass) is laughable. you are not selected for exhibition by making posts online, you are participating in a social medium where your continued pageviews are the source of advertising revenue. you are not bourgeoise, you are proletarian. your deviantart was search engine optimized to the point that it was trivial to pull five billion carbon copies of you off google images with like a two-line API call. you are not unique, you are one drop in a lost generation's renaissance. maybe if you don't want your work "stolen" you shouldn't be posting an endlessly reproducible digital copy to the world wide web? it's been seven years since twitter killed vine for trying to set the precedent that collective action can produce wage, can we bring back that level of foresight yet? or are you happy settling for tiktok because they deign to curate a ""creators fund"" for white heterosexuals? go buy a lottery ticket

i've said it before but this is a structured argument, presented to you with two neatly-collimated "sides," one that says every possible piece of data should be available for free for capitalist class to build automation out of it, and one that says pirating endlessly reproducible goods belonging the capitalist class should have harsher punishment. this is intentional, not unique, not new. it's the perverse dialectic of capital. you can only argue a side that benefits it.

the absence of nuanced intersectional perspective here is embarrassing. beyond that it's painfully obvious people are taking it personally, as if you had any chance to make rent as an artist, regardless of what procedural generation or neural networks might do. it's a selfish, blindly individualistic, mass manufactured wholesale bargain basement opinion, one that does not serve to advance any collective good, because it's based in the pipe dream of suddenly jumping three tax brackets to become bourgeoise. beyond that, doesn't it cheapen your art to only ever make saleable products? beyond that, it's painfully obvious none of you have ever tried using a neural network. from computer science or statistical perspectives, these constructs are novel and fascinating (or, the advent of cheap processing power sufficient to allow decades-old theory to flourish, which let's be honest, this power relies on an exploitative global network of rare mineral resource extraction and high precision manufacturing, which is yet one more topic i haven't once seen broached in the months this stultifyingly dull conversation has been ongoing.)

blaming a novelty for the ills of capitalism is nonsense, and it's not why luddites opposed the loom.

and let me just tell you, working with a code construct also does not improve your chances as an artist, which is the main point i wish i could get across. aside from the absence of intersectionality there's also an absence of class analysis, in which context it's, again, painfully obvious that no capitalist has ever cared one whit about art. even when they deign to take on a patronage it's as a backhanded PR stunt, like the unpaid notre dame roof pledges, to offset the ill repute they've accrued from extracting value for personal gain, while contributing nothing except the directive power their birthright of wealth gave them. this is the main critique i had about age of surveillance capitalism -- zuboff seems to think a return to ford-era capitalism, where the rich bothered to endow museums (to curate what they exclude) or pay a livable wage (in order to recapture it as sales), would solve the fundamental problem of value extraction from labor and natural resources for the barefaced sake of the profit motive. unremarkable and unsurprising for tenured faculty of harvard, how else would she sell books? but for some foolhardy reason i expected better from my peers.

your aspirations of small business aren't going to flourish if you suddenly got everything you claim to want and they banned every code construct from competing with you. you are not in competition with capital. you are nothing to it, it will kill you in total indifference without blinking, surely you ought to know this by now, it will bus in scab slave labor from prison to ramp up production despite a boycott in solidarity with a strike, and it's going to remain this way as long as capital survives. whether or not an algorithm or a network or an artifice is involved is irrelevant to the fundamental problem that it's a winner-takes-all game that ended before you were born. unless and until you want to start challenging the police that uphold the state or the insurance trust that pays to replace its points of failure, you're doing surface level armchair analysis on a problem that only the extremely online care about. arguing over what color of icing is on the cake you're never going to be eating while you starve for lack of bread.

and like... i get it. after the pandemic that we're still going through, you want to refocus on the things that really make you happy. but i've got to say, refocusing on art until you starve because you didn't manage to figure out self-sufficience during a recession is a sad way to die. perhaps you should consider the necessity of survival as a precursor to contentment. and to be clear i am saying this specifically because i care whether you survive and because i am interested in the artworks you are making or in your future potential. but you can't focus on that to the exclusion of all else, dog eat dog world and that means every day i have to see someone get ate. now for the last time, for god's sake can you stop yelling "this is because of code constructs" every time a dog eats your purported art commission revenue because it's really hurting MY purported small business revenue, selling products of code constructs,

[rubexa]

Increase Your Chances Of Winning The Lottery

In the event that you are anything like me, you probably get delight from playing the lottery however are as yet hanging tight for the enormous win. You may try and be frustrated you don't at any point prevail with regards to winning prizes at the flip side of the scale all things considered.

Some time ago lottery disappointment came to me every week also.

Although everyone knows that the likelihood of collecting the jackpot are very poor - many thousands of people actually win smaller payouts on games like the English National lottery every week. I just didn't appear to be one of them.

That was until I begun to discover some of the mysteries a couple of select people in the loop are establishing week by week to -

a) greatly improve their likelihood of winning the jackpot and b) win smaller prizes on a more normal premise

What precisely are these insider facts?

One of the most straightforward ways of increasing your probability of winning is to just buy more sections. However, that implies you need to spend more money and

However,Increase Your Chances Of Winning The Lottery Articles there is a way of playing the lottery with a greatly increased chance of winning without spending a parcel.

Now I have come across many dreadful occasions about lottery syndicates winning a sizable cash prize and someone escaping with the winnings or members suing eachother in the law courts.

Such problems can be avoided in the event that you become a member of an efficient lottery syndicate; even better, an efficient lotto syndicate that uses a certified numerical formula that allows you to win more with similar numbers than you would as a sole ticket holder.

You must be thinking, how could that at any point be? In the event that you need to divide your winnings as a member of a lottery syndicate how is it possible to win more with similar numbers?

I will attempt to make sense of...

As part of a lottery syndicate you can unite your spending power and play with a staggering odds advantage.

To participate in the UK National Lottery you pick six numbers from 1 to 49 inclusive.. Now lets say that you are part of a lotto syndicate with totalling 49 members. Every week the lottery syndicate keeps up with similar five numbers and uses its spending clout to purchase 44 tickets.

[ziee]

Blinky x Reader (18+)

Arcadia. Back once more after the 15 years you've been gone. You were a friend of the Domzalski's, and the un-paid babysitter of their baby son. The day they won the lottery, you cheered in excitement for them. And the day they fell into the sea, you cried for them.

The heartbreak of your 2 best friends struck you so severely, you couldn't stand being in Arcadia any longer. The memories, the high school all 3 of you went to, the restaurant you went to after every celebration. You just couldn't bear it. The last memories of the small town were bidding little Toby and Nana goodbye.

But now, you're back.

Nana had contacted you, saying she needed help with Tobies. Half-blind and all, old and raising a teenager, you could see why. You didn't want to be out of your best friend's childs' life completely at the loss of his parents, so once in a while, you phoned your adoptive nephew. Just checking up on him, seeing how he was.

You had accepted, of course. Slightly jumping at the opportunity and a reason to come back to Arcadia, you called in sick for an indefinite amount of days and packed a suitcase. Filling up your car, you hopped into the driver's seat and started the long drive.

You were kind of thankful that you didn't have to buy a plane ticket, hating planes and airports, but the long, lonely roads brought into account new emotions. This is the first time you're going back to your hometown in 15 years.. You're going to see the high school. And the restaurant. And.. Their house.

The house you saw them buy, build and love. You remember watching them set up a room for the new baby. Deciding the colors, layout, and designs of the wall. You remember getting sloshed in the living room, accidentally breaking one of the photos upon the fireplace. Your kind of glad you did, seeing as you took the photo and hung it in your house.

The photo of the 3 of you.

The days were long in your small car, the best you could afford. Stopping at family dinners and shitty motels to rest. The cycle stopped on day 6, finally reaching the sign with bold letters spelling out, 'Arcadia'.

You picked up your phone and dialed Nana. She picked up after the 3rd time. "Hello dear! Y/n, are you coming soon?" She spoke happily, a bag crunching in the background.

"Hi, Nana. I just got into Arcadia, I'll be there in less than 10 minutes!" You smiled as you heard the old lady scolded one of her many cats.

"Alright dear. See you soon." She ended the call before you could bid farewell. You chuckled and rolled your eyes, setting your phone down into your cup container. You took in a deep breath as you entered the small town.

Driving past the buildings that seem so familiar but have changed so much, you felt an array of emotions. Happy your here. Confused as to why they would change things. Sorrow as you remembered multiple memories in the areas you passed.

Driving into the neighborhood, your car stilled at the infamous yellow house. Their house. You stared at it through your window, looking into their own as light shone from within. You sighed and started your car again.

Eventually, you pulled into Nana's driveway. Strolling up to the doorsteps, you knocked 3 times before waiting. A shuffle, a huff, and then the door opens. You smiled as your eyes suddenly felt teary. "Y/n! Oh dear, come inside, come inside." She urges you inside, holding a foot out to prevent a black cat from escaping.

You enter the warm house, the smell of bread and... Burritos filling the room? You shrug it off as you're ushered to the couch. Sitting down, you let out a heave of relief. You're not sure why. "So, how have you been?" You ask as Nana moves towards the kitchen, presumably to make you some tea.

"Oh, I've been fine. Toby and the cats keep me busy." She laughs as she grabs 4 cups. 4 cups? You could understand that the other 1 would be for Toby, so who was the other one for?

"That's great Nana." You smile, sinking into the soft cushion. Your car was not the worst, but my god the seats were terrible. It felt like nails were digging into your back and ass. Not that good for almost a week's road trip.

"So how are you dear?" She spoke as she took the kettle off the burner as it began to scream.

"Oh I've been better, I mean- WAIT- NANA, LET ME HELP YOU!" You shout, running towards the old lady, taking the opened kettle out of her hands. Unbeknownst to her, she had almost poured boiling water onto her cat.

"Ohoho, your so helpful already." She mumbles, skittering off into the living room. You look down at the tea bags sat in one of the empty cups. Orange Pekoe..  She still knows what kind you like after all these years. Your heart swells as you pour hot water into the cups, your lips rising like a goofball.

Stirring the drinks, 2 of the cups had hot chocolate and the other 2 had tea. You could guess which is which, so you handed Nana a cup while placing your own on the table before grabbing the other 2 mugs.

"I'm gonna bring this to Toby and..?"

"Oh! Toby has a friend over. His international friend, his names Arthur-San." You nodded and headed upstairs. From the top, you could hear loud cheers from inside the room you thought to be Tobies'. You knocked and waited, but you don't think they heard you from the loud volume of a video game.

You sighed and opened the door. Inside, 2 backs were turned to you. One, obviously being Toby and the other.. It was a white sheet. A large, very large in fact, figure was sat beside Toby, wearing a bedsheet. Uh-

"Hey Toby, and Arthur, Nan-" You stopped mid-sentence as the heads turned to you. A large, circle-ish face appeared from the draped sheet. A green, mossy beard decorated its chin, a mouth with 4 long teeth sticking out, and are those- HORNS??

"T-Toby.. Who is that?" You cautiously, and very slowly, set the drinks down onto a nearby dresser.

"Aunt Y/n?! What are you doing here?" Toby gets up and comes near you. You quickly grab onto him, wrapping your arms around him as you run out the door. "Wait- Auntie Y/n, he's a friend!" You turn around and quickly shut the door as you place Toby back down.

"Toby, go get Nana and run!" You scream. He just stands there, sighing. A knock from the inside of the room startles you. "Wingman?" A gruff voice speaks. You shriek as the knob is pulled from your grip, the door opening as the large head sticks out, right in front of you. Its black nose presses against your shoulder, pulling in a long sniff.

"Oh go-" And your fainting. A stone hand stops you mid-fall, preventing you from hitting a hard bottom as your eyes closed.

"I'll call Jim."

-

You awoke on a soft plush. Feeling around, you realize you're on a bed. "Master Jim, Lady Y/n is awaking." A deep voice calls out, sensing that you knew he was close to you from how loud he was. You sit up, rubbing your eyes as you adjust to the light of the room. Looking around, it was just a regular room. Including a monster with 6 eyes.

"AHHHH!" You scream, scrambling off the bed. The moment you do so, 2 teenagers including Toby run into the room. You move near Toby, your eyes locked on the monsters.

"Woah! Calm down Miss Y/n, if we can just explain everything-" You cut the boy with twig legs off.

"Oh, you kids better explain as to why there is a- .. A-"

"I believe the word is 'Troll." The blue monster says.

"Yes! That! Why there is a troll with 6 eyes and 4 arms staring at me right now!" You pointed to Toby, "And you! Explain what happened earlier, with that big guy. Right now." You huffed.

"Is she talking about Aaarrrgghh?" The girl with a blue streak in her hair spoke.

"Aaarrgghh? Wait a minute.. Arthur?!" Your brows furrowed. "Toby, have you been lying to Nana about this 'International student'?" You made finger quotes as you looked upon your nephew's embarrassed face.

"Uhhh, maybe?" He shrugs. You sigh, disappointed in your nephew.

"If you'll allow me to explain, Lady Y/n,"

Oh- no man, or at least you think it's male, has ever called you lady..

"Aaarrrggh and I are trolls. Master Jim as you see over there," He points to chicken legs, "Is the troll hunter. Underneath your world, there is a magnificent other world, filled with trolls and things you couldn't possibly believe." He waves his hands up in the air.

You nod, taking it all in.

"Ugh, this hurts my head." Another world? Trolls? Troll hunter?? Jim moves beside the blue troll whose name you don't know and speaks to him softly.

"Hi, I'm Claire." There's a hand that's shoved in front of you, in which you awkwardly shake.

"Hey, I'm Toby's aunt. Not biological but I knew his parents well." She nodded before removing her hand from yours. You leaned down, whispering into Toby's ear.

"Who's 6 eyes?"

A voice answered you before Toby's mouth even opened. "My name is Blinky. A pleasure to meet you, lady Y/n." The troll paddles over to you, his stone feet making satisfying clicking sounds as he walks. He holds one of his upper hands out for you to shake.

He didn't seem like such a threat, in fact, he seemed like a gentleman. You smiled and shook his hand. His skin was stone, as you could feel the cracks engraved into it as your hand flooded with a strange warmth.

"Nice to meet you too, Blinky." You release his hand after a few seconds of shaking.

"Master Jim and I were discussing a matter regarding you. If you would like, we could show you Troll Market."

"Troll Market?" You question.

"The home of trolls such as myself, and Aaarrrgghh over here." He points behind him, your eyes wander over to the window as you see that large head. The large troll waves a hand and smiles, seeing as everybody's eyes are now on him.

"Has he been out there the whole time?" You ponder. Why isn't he just in the room?

"Rooms too small." You look around, finding it is indeed smaller than your nephew's room. Oh well. You think about the opportunity to travel to this unknown world. Eh, why not. You would be keeping an eye on Toby as well, so that's always good.

"Um, well, if your offering then, of course, I'd come. Thank you for inviting me." You smile at the blue troll. He smiles back, his 6 eyes staring into your 2. His eyes just seemed so soft.. And mesmerizing, having never seen anyone like this before. Your eyes ghost his face, inspecting upon closer details on the stoned troll.

...

"Ahem." Jim coughs. You both suddenly break eye contact as Blinky coughs, making his way towards the exit.

"Aha! Yes, we should be going. Daylight is rising." He muttered as the teens follow him out. You follow, exiting the house as the breeze of the night flushes your already pink cheeks. Your lead to the bridge you had driven over while entering the town, but now under it.

Aaarrrgghh is tossed a glowing stone by Blinky, creating a semi-circle on the stone of the bridge. He punches the wall, creating a crack before it starts to fall apart. Yellow swirls around the stone before creating something like a portal?

The trolls head in, followed by Jim and Claire. "Cmon auntie, it won't hurt you." You begrudgingly sigh and follow him inside the glowing portal. Stepping inside, you wince as you close your eyes.

Not even a second later, you could feel your area darken. Opening your eyes, you see everyone else staring at you. Your cheeks flush in embarrassment. Goddammit. The kids laugh as Blinky looks at with you an indescribable expression.

Is he disappointed? Shocked? Unbeknownst to you, the corners of the blue troll's lips rose. "This way, lady Y/n." His 4 hands motioned you to the crystal stairs, swirling downwards in a circle. Oh my god- Wow.

Everyone makes their way down the steps, in comfortable silence. Coming further down, you stop as you take in the view. The magnificent, one-of-a-kind, breathtaking, OH MY GOD, view. "Wow." You mumble in awe, looking up at the enormous, orange crystal in the center. Everything was so beautiful.

"Welcome to HeartStone Troll Market!" Blinky exclaimed from behind you. The other smiled as they watched your reaction. Stepping down the steps, you ended up beside the 6 eyed troll as you stopped.

"Where should we go first?" Toby asked as you gazed upon the well-spoken mystery. Now taking a better look as the others speak, you watch as his eyes blink simultaneously. How the 2d tooth on both sides of his mouth is cracked. The deep grooves into his stone skin. You paid minor attention to what he was wearing before, but now looking closer you see the 2 satchels sporting each hip on his brown overalls.

Your gazing ventures further down, looking at his flat feet. Heh, they look stumpy. "Great! We'll take you to the forge, where you can see my impressive hammer skills!" Toby proclaimed, steering your head up from your gaze.

6 eyes met yours. Oh god, did he see you staring at him? Did he see you staring below his waist??? He doesn't bring it up if he did, instead leading the 5 of you to the 'forge'.

"This is the forge, where many of our great warriors have trained." Blinky gestures around the grand room. You look around in awe, feeling a little overwhelmed by such a beautiful realm.

"It's amazing." You whisper, settling yourself on the sidelines of the giant arena as the kids grab weapons. Weapons?! Oh god.. Aaarrrgghh comes and sits behind you, jolting you with a loud thud as he sits. Blinky stands beside you, gazing out at the children.

"Indeed they are." Your eyes meet his 6, a glance before breaking contact. You smile, proud of your little nephew.

"Aunt Y/n! Look!" The ginger boy yelled from across the large expanse. You watch as he pulls out a small item, before smashing it to the ground. It sprouts a large, flaming orange hammer. Your mouth widens in shock as you see him swish the weapon around. "Impressive, right? It's my war hammer." He says as he trudges over to you.

"Uh yeah, just please be careful with that." He laughs before skittering off. Guess he gets that from Nana. You sigh as you watch the kids spar, rather impressed by Jim's armor and Claire's staff. After they were done fooling around, you see as Claire checks her watch.

"Guys, it's almost 6:30. We should get going." Mumbling as she puts away her shadow staff. Toby groans, retracting his hammer as Jim takes off the amulet.

"Ughh, I forgot we had school today." You slightly chuckle at the kids' words, being the exact same as a child. Jim, Claire, and Toby all run towards the exit of Trollmarket whereas you stand still. Toby looks behind him, seeing your unmoving form.

"Are you coming, auntie?" He cocks his head.

"Oh! Yeah, yeah, I just thought I would have more time checking the place out.." You trail off, glancing at what you thought to be your last look at the mysterious underground world. From behind you, Blinky and Aaarrrgghh look towards each other.

"Ahem, if I may, Aaarrrgghh and I will accompany Lady Y/n down here while you're at school. If.. That is alright with you?" His dark, red eyes turn to your form. You nod excitedly.

"Yes! Yes, I would love that." His lips form a smile, 6 eyes gleaming at you before turning back to the other 3 humans.

"Now, run along kids. Aaarrrgghh and I will keep Lady Y/n safe." 2 of his hands form a 'shoo' motion as they smile. You move towards Toby, wrapping him in a hug before bidding goodbye. Turning towards your new-found troll friends, you couldn't help but grin as your leaded into the busy streets of the market.

"This place is so beautiful. How long have you guys been living down here?" You wonder, looking around at all the shop stalls.

"A few centuries, after the battle of Killahead bridge, we had traveled until we found the heartstone you see today." Blinky gestured a hand to the bright, orange crystal towards the center wall of the market.

"Hated boat." Aaarrrgghh chimed in from behind, his large statue circling both the conundrum troll and the female human.

"Yes, we all did." Memories flashed in his 6 eyes before he shivered, obviously not liking that part of his life.

"Killahead bridge? What's that?" You question. You're stopped in front of what looked to be a bookstore. The 2 trolls enter, you following closely behind them as you take in the view. Books littered the walls everywhere. Bookshelves, books on tables, and some even on the floor.

"Ah, and that's the reason why I took you here. You seem like a lover of history, as I am. Therefore, Lady Y/n, I have taken you to my lodgings to learn about troll history!" He exclaims, clearly excited.

"This is your house?" Looking around, it does suit him.

"Indeed, now make it as if your own. I will fetch you some books you can read that will fully satisfy a craving for troll history." He runs around the room, 4 arms stacked full of large books that would most likely take you hours to read. Aaarrrgghh yawns from the corner, bored.

A few minutes later, he sets the books down with a thud on a large table. You sit in one of the chairs presented, grabbing one of the books from the top of the stack. Opening it up, you stare blankly. Turning the pages, you realize you can't read the language.

"Blinky, I can't read this." You say, head popping up from the pages, meeting his 6 eyes. He walks over to you, standing closely behind you as he looks over your shoulder. Your heartbeat quickens as you can see the strands of each of his hair. His long ears softly flap as his eyebrows furrow while reading what you can't.

"Hmm.. That is an issue." He sets a hand on his chin, pondering for a quick while before getting an idea. Sliding a chair over, he sits in front of you, grabbing the book from the table into his 2 upper hands. "Well, I'll just read it to you!" He smiles as you nod, eagerly wanting to learn about something you didn't know existed until 2 hours ago.

And so began the many hours of Blinky reading trollish to you. At some point, Aaarrrgghh decided to leave the hole, leaving you and the conundrum troll alone. You arch your strained back as he finished reading the last sentence of the 3rd book. "And those were all the creatures starting with an A!"

"Wow Blinky that was really, informational." Stretching your legs outwards, you bump onto his foot with your own. Recoiling your legs, you speak quickly, "Oh, sorry." Your cheeks flush.

"No worries Lady Y/n." He sets the book down on the table. "This may sound a bit odd," His eyes find yours, "but I've always been fascinated with the human body. If it's alright with you, lady Y/n, may I take a look at you?"

You thought for a second. Of course, you would also be curious about a different type of species other than your own. Plus, although you've only known him for a few hours, you trusted him. You nod, "Yea sure." He visibly relaxed at your answer. "But," You continue, " I want to look at you too."

He blinked, processing your words before smiling. "Of course." You were unsure of what to do now, sitting in silence as you both watched each other. It was only when he scooted closer, the sound of his chair scraping the ground broke you from your gaze.

"If I may..?" He gestured towards your resting arm. You quickly lifted it up and bent closer, showing him your fleshy arm. He told ahold gently, stone hands that were surprisingly warm against your skin. He traced up and down your arm, squishing a few times.

His breath tickled your skin, resulting in tiny goosebumps forming. "What are those small bumps?" He mumbled, eyes fixated on your arm.

"Those are goosebumps. Humans get them when we're cold." You answer, enjoying being the teacher for once.

"Fascinating." He moved down from your arm towards your fingers, squishing, prodding, rubbing. Your hands tingled in his own as he poked your fingernails. "And these?" He pointed towards them.

"Those are fingernails, they're made of keratin." He nodded, placing your hand down.

"Thank you for allowing me to look at you, lady Y/n." You smiled, waving your hand.

"No problem. Now it's my turn." He lifted his lower arm and extended it towards you. You grab hold, a bit taken aback at the size. His hand could easily fit around your whole face. You rub the warm stone, strumming your fingers along it as you play a rhythmic tune.

Unlike you, he only had 4 fingers, every one of them very large. While your head is down playing with his hand, his 6 eyes gaze upon you. Never did he allow a human he just met to poke and prod at him, so why did he allow you? The moment you had awoken in Toby's house, a scream and a stumble he had expected when you saw him, but he didn't expect you to shake his hand for so long.

He would have sufficed a quick shake and a fearful let go, leaving you in his 'ok' books. But, you just kept staring at him, even now, he feels his heart shake a little as you examine his arm. Standing near him willingly, refusing to leave with Master Jim and the others, but to stay and explore more of his world? Oh dear.

"You know," Your voice snaps him out of his daydream, "even though you're made of stone, you're actually very warm." You note as you caress his arm.

"Ah, yes, rather strange isn't it?" He brings an upper hand of his to his mouth and coughs. He could feel as you trace the engravements on his skin, your fingernails scratching him a little.

"Can I touch your belly?" He sputtered at the question.

"My stomach?" You lift your head, watching as his face contorts into a confused expression.

"I mean, uh- never mind." You release his hand and try to laugh it off. Well, that was embarrassing. You feel your cheeks rise in heat as you look at the ground.

"You may." A soft voice beckons you to look up, staring at the oh-so-kind troll, looking down at you with gentle eyes. You smile, giving a small thank you before moving your hand towards the troll's exposed stomach. Settling your hand on the stone belly, you felt him jolt slightly.

Tracing the engravings upon his skin once more, you lean closer and place your other hand onto him. Your eyes focus on his body, not daring to make eye contact. Whereas, his 6 eyes stared intently down at you. Watching, feeling your every move. He could somewhat feel your breath on his stone skin as well. Although he did find it odd you would want to touch his stomach, it did feel nice.

Your hands caress his body, leaning your face in as you stare into the cracked stone. Wonderous. As you slid your hands up, you went a bit further than you assumed as your hands went upon his chest. "Oh- sorry about that, getting a little handsy heh." You remove your hands and scratch your neck as you mentally slap yourself. Goddammit Y/n. You could feel your cheeks reddening.

He says nothing, so you look up at him. His eyes, half-lidded, staring at you with an unexplainable expression. What is..?

"May I smoosh faces with you?"

"Pardon?" You lower your hand from your neck, head shooting up from his words. Smoosh faces? Wait.. Did he mean kissing? "Do you want to kiss me?" You whisper.

"Yes! That's the word." He nodded.

"Then, yes." You nod, slowly leaning back towards him. He swallowed as you closed your eyes, coming towards him ever so slowly. He pushed his face towards yours, his large lips pressed against yours. His teeth touched your cheeks, but he was careful not to hurt you. 2 of his arms came and clutched onto your shoulders.

Unconsciously pulling you closer towards him, you lifted yourself out of your seat and onto his lap. Lower hands settle onto your waist, holding you close as you continue the kiss. He pulled away first, 6 wide eyes settled upon you.

"That was.." You try and find the word.

"Magnificent." He breathed out. His arms slowly slid up and down your waist, caressing your clothed skin. "May I.. Remove your shirt?" Struck with lust, you nodded, lifting your arms up as he removes your shirt. Discarding the shirt to the floor, he leans in and breaths in your scent.

"Blinky," You whisper in his ear, "take off my pants." You slowly grind against him in his lap, breathing heavily. He aides you in removing your clothing, until your sitting on him with only a bra on. You unclip your bra and toss it to the side, your breasts free from the barrier. Your nipples harden at the cool air, gaining the troll's attention.

He asks for your permission, "Blinky, I wouldn't get naked just so you can't touch me." He removes his upper hands from your shoulders and placed them over your breasts. He experimentally kneads, pushes, and rubs your fat lumps. You softly moan, encouraging him to continue.

"You are very squishy.." He mumbles, softly pinching your nipples. You arch your back, pushing your chest further into him as one of his lower hands moves to support your back. You grab his hand attached to your waist and pull it between your legs.

"Touch me here." You release the stone as he complies, his large fingers fiddling between your folds. He takes experimental rubs into you, finding your clit with your help as you release a loud moan. His hands continue to rub your tits, rubbing your nipples with soft strength.

"O-oh.." You grind into his hand as he rubs your button.

"I'd like to take a closer look, if I may?" He puffs in your ear. You nod, frowning as he removes his hands from your body, only to lift you up and carry you towards a back room. Entering the new room, you see a pile of pillows and blankets littering the floor. He sets you upon them before removing his overalls.

You move a hand between your legs and feel your wetness, circling your clit a few times as you beg for him in your mind. He lays his clothes on the side before returning to your side. Settling his face between your legs, he inhales your scent deeply through his large orange nose. "Human anatomy is rather fascinating up close."

He says it as if he.. You sit up, bumping against his nose before he brings his head up, a confused expression on his face. "Blinky, is this the first time you've done it?"

"Done what?"

"Had sex..?" He smiles at your worried expression. "Cause we can stop if you want to-"

"My dear, this is only the first time I've done anything with your kind. As well, I am positively overjoyed to be with you right now. Rest assured, I want to do this." You exhale and smile, flopping your head back down.

"Well, that's a relief. And I am too, Blinky, really happy to do this with you." You avoid eye contact, your cheeks too flushed to be seen. He returns his head back down, his fingers spreading your lips as he explores you.

He blows air, rubs, licks. As his mouth plays with your outer part, a stone finger gently prods your entrance. Sliding into you with ease, you gasp as you thought how a single digit was so thick. You're having sex with a troll, duh.

Soon enough, with all of his stimulation, you came around his finger. "AhhH~" Crying out, he halts his movements as you come down from your high. He leans up as your thighs twitch, bringing his soaked finger to his mouth before licking.

"Was that alright?"

You panted, holding up a thumbs up. "Amazing." He gave an innocent smile, amusing in the situation that had just occurred. You leaned up, sitting on your butt. "Blinky, so um," You gestured towards his blank pelvis.

"Ah, for me to release my, 'intimacy', I will need to be coaxed open. Protective plates will shift, revealing myself." You nodded, crawling closer towards him as he leaned back, parting his legs. You didn't know exactly what to do, so you started with rubbing the stone. Looking up towards your lover's face, he seemed to like it as his 6 eyes fell half-lidded, staring down at you.

You continued rubbing until what he had said happened, his plates parted, revealing not one, but 3 appendages. The middle, being the largest, whereas the other 2 were shorter. "Ah.. Yes, the middle one is the functioning one, carrying the sperm. The others are for added stimulation." He muttered as your hand softly caressed his cocks.

"So, how do you wanna do this? You lie down or me?" You stroke him as he ponders.

"It is your first time with a troll, so allow me to take command." A breathy voice mutters, hands removing yours from himself as he sets you on your back. "I fear the other way around would have you in pain." He was right, cowgirl position usually gets deeper.

You settle down as he scooches near you, hands ahold of his larger phallus. The smaller ones swirl and wrangle as their placed near your thigh creases. He angles the middle one to your hole, as 2 of his hands grasp your waist. Pushing his hips forwards, he slowly slides in, stretching you no man, or toy had ever done to you.

Your hands find his attached to your skin, grasping onto his hand and signal him to slow down. He does, waiting for you to adjust to his girth. It takes a long while as you wait for the pain to settle as he pushes himself in little by little. After a couple of minutes, you finally have him all inside without any pain. Discomfort? Yes, but nothing you cant handle.

As he pulls out, the first few pushes are testing. Testing your levels and discomfort. Hearing the soft sounds you make as he slowly enters you, he speeds up his thrusts. Rocky digits hold onto your skin, moving upwards towards your breasts as another set comes onto your skin. He leans over you as he rhythmically pounds into you.

His smaller tendrils wiggle and surround your opening, gently prodding your hole. You couldn't dare to fit another one inside, could you? He stares at your form, looking for any signs of pain. "Are you alright so far?" He rolls his hips against you.

"Yes! It feels so good.." You lift your arms and place your hands onto his cheeks. He gives you a toothy smile before returning to the task at hand. Your arms fell to clutch his own around you as he gives a sharp thrust. You moan as he bites his lips.

A deep growl resonated within the bookworm's chest as one of his smaller tendrils slowly pushes its way inside of you. You whine as it snakes its way through your hole, wiggling against your walls. You feel so full. You could feel yourself coming undone, a ball in your stomach forming as he slithers inside of you.

The outer phallus slides up your vulva, towards the top of your lips, finding your little pink button. You squeal as you are overwhelmed with pleasure. He grunts over you, clenching his teeth as he continues to thrust. Wet sounds surrounded the room, the slapping of him against you is the only sound in the room.

You clench down around him, both of his cocks still moving as you release onto them. Soaked in your juices, they glisten in the light as they're pulled from you in mere milliseconds before pounding back inside you. You cry out from the overstimulation, your face contorting into many expressions as your opening's abused by large cocks.

As he nears his end, his chest rumbles as he begins to make curious sounds. Deep throaty rasps, before a loud yelp lets out from his tusked mouth. Hot seed envelopes your insides, soaking your walls. He continues to thrust, riding out his orgasm before he settles down. Pulling out from you, he leans to the side and flops down.

You pant and turn towards him, grabbing onto his hand as he heaves. You both lay in silence, catching your breath from such an exhilarating activity.

[fireblogger]

Have you ever wanted to win the lottery?

Not going to lie, I have daydreamed about winning it sooo many times. Planned exactly how I would invest all the money, how I would retire on it. How I would be able to help my family out financially, etc.

But, it’s impossible for me to win. Why? Because it doesn’t make sense to buy lottery tickets. Your return on investment is going to be extremely low unless you’re extremely lucky.

However, I recently found a “bank” (its a pass through bank like Chime where your actual money is under a different bank but you use their app to access it) with a weekly prize drawing. Prizes up to 10 million dollars.

You get a ticket per $25 in your account. And can get bonus tickets for setting up recurring deposits and direct deposits.

The beauty of it is you don’t have to spend anything to get tickets and chances to win. The money you have deposited is FDIC insured. What you are paying with is the opportunity to make more money elsewhere, for the chance to win here.

The bank is called Yotta, and it pays 0.2% interest (compared to a 0.6% high yield savings account you can get elsewhere). However, depending on your winnings your returns might be higher. Think of it like a slightly riskier and slightly more rewarding investment than a regular high yield savings account is, with no risk regarding your principal (the money you deposit) the only thing you stand to lose is that extra 0.4% interest rate!

One last minor perk! If you sign up with my link you get an extra 100 tickets - but they aren’t applied to your account immediately. They apply at the beginning of the next week (or current week if a number hasn’t been drawn) to maximize your possible return!

Im seizing my chance to play the lottery! And I’m going to continue to do it until high yield savings accounts start offering rates a bit better than 0.6% 😁

Hey - Join me on Yotta using my referral code AMANDA9374 and we’ll both get 100 tickets. Yotta is an FDIC insured savings account recently featured in Bloomberg and Forbes where you can win prizes up to $10M every week. https://join.withyotta.com/AMANDA9374

[nso-csi]

200910  KHN 'Volume Up' Radio Show  

Q: Why do you not age since 16 years old? T: I do age, it’s just that I manage myself well. Recently I try to sleep early and wake up early.  cr.

Q: The pronunciation for 'destroy me more' sounds like 'run away from me' to some people, is it on purpose? A: Wow, you see through it correctly. It's 'destroy me more' but because I also have to say it quickly it also could be heard as 'run away for me'.  cr.

Q: What's the content of the news in the song? I heard you find out about it yourself. A: It's talking about Stockholm Syndrome, I heard they record about 8x for the news section. We discussed if we should use only the Eng news but we finally decided to mix between Eng & Kor.  cr.

Q: If you had an auspicious dream would you buy a lottery ticket or sell the dream to your BFF Ex0’s KAl? T: Option 1! It doesnt make sense to sell my dream and I feel sorry to get money from my friend for that.  cr.

Q: What’s one thing you lost or absurdly ruined by your hands? T: It happened again recently. I lost my wallet and I was wondering what I should do and in the end my manager bought a new one for me. End up I found it at home.  (Then he relayed his earpiece-waterproof story again)  cr.

Q: Since you live alone now are there any bugs in your house? T: Luckily no! And i also live on a high storey so there seems to be none. Last time I used to live near the river and a park so there were. But now since I live in the city centre and im high up so there are none. Though there’s still the elevator and they (the bugs) can ride it up. (Not exact words) cr.

Taemin about enjoying lower-body bathing: I don't have a bathtub in my place so when I went overseas I enjoyed bathing in hotel but nowadays I can't do it I miss it much so i'm taking shower long time instead.  cr.

What’s in Taemin’s bag Mask, perfume, ipad, hand sanitiser, ipad, ear phone  cr.

Taemin's what's in my bag: -underwear -wrist guard coz he had it injured -perfume, mask, ipad, hand sanitizer, earbuds  cr.

Q: What do you want to be left behind as an artist even after years later? A: My heart/mind, my members. 40 years later we might not be able to have activities together but I just want them to be with me, like stay beside me and close with me. cr.

T: I’d like for us to live close to each other. Preferably upstairs-downstairs close. I’d take living upstairs if Possible so I won’t be affected by the noise. cr.

[archerofthemists]

Althea Lynch SFW Alphabet

TW for under the cut: mentions of abuse and su*cide

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

Affection is foreign to Althea, at least genuine  affection. It took her a long time to learn what real affection looked like and even longer for her to figure out how to show it properly to the people she cares about. 

She tends to show affection through gift giving, and acts of service and generally spending time with you.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

Althea has basically gone her whole life without friends. She grew up alone with her cold mother, and due to her Semblance she basically avoided people on a whole.

It takes a great deal of time and patience to get her to let someone in and become friends.

After joining Team WTCH you could say she became The Mom Friend. (Right up there with Hazel as The Dad Friend) 

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

  

Althea has always distanced herself from people, physically and emotionally, and her mother certainly wasn't a cuddly person with her, but once she began to allow others in, her touch starvation began to outweigh that. (Please please please cuddle that poor woman.) 

Likes to be the little spoon, it makes her feel protected. 

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

Althea wouldn't mind settling down, she just doesn't see it as a possibility for her. Before, it was because of her Semblance,  but now it's more due to her situation working for Salem. 

However she is very good at cooking and cleaning, she keeps her living space in order and will sometimes cook for the others if they're around and hungry. 

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

 

Althea would probably leave a note and run away when she got the chance, and for her, that's the kind way. Confronting her partner would most picky lead to her Semblance slipping out of control and only hurting them even more.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

She doesn't really see much point getting engaged or married. If she and her partner are truly in love and committed to one another, she doesn't really see what the point of a ring and a legal document are, they just seem like complications.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Althea can go to the extremes in both ways. She'll gently braid your hair and sing you to sleep, or she can use her Semblance to make a whole room of people want to kill themselves. (And they'll do it too.) 

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

She isn't used to being hugged, but let me refer you to "Cuddling". Again I say: please please please hug this woman. She might be a little stiff when you do and might not hug you back, but she needs it, badly. 

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

If Althea says she loves you...go buy a lottery ticket. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Over the years she's basically been conditioned to believe no one could love her, so she's learned to never admit to her feelings for others, and after some *ahem* incidents during her short time at Beacon, she feels unworthy of being loved.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

In her younger years at Beacon, Althea got jealous very easily, and would use her Semblance to manipulate people into "falling" for her. After a horrible incident that caused the death of two of her teammates at Beacon, she fled the school and promised herself to not even bother with love again.(kinda broke that promise after she joined WTCH but oh well)

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Althea's kisses are soft and gentle, like she's afraid her partner will shatter under her lips if she's too passionate. She loves kissing along necks and kissing hands/fingers and adores having her neck and spine kissed.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

Althea is alright around children, but refuses to be around them too much for the same reason she isolated herself from people in the first place. But she knows whatever her Semblance does to a child would be worse than its effects on a fellow adult. Her emotions are too strong and complex for a child to handle it properly if her Semblance slipped around them.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Althea tries to sleep in as long as possible, she is perpetually tired, but she would do her best to wake up before you and make breakfast for you both and maybe talk over coffee.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Well if she's letting you sleep in the same bed as you, you best be cuddling her through the night. Try not to be too disturbed by her tossing and turning and when she wakes up with night terrors. 

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

Althea learned at Beacon that opening up to her team then was a mistake. When she talked about her neglectful mother, her traumatic memories were laughed off like they were nothing. 

With WTCH it was almost impossible for Althea to open up about anything of her past. (Salem heard it all first, because I believe when she takes in a new member she needs to know as much about them as possible.)

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

She's much more easily angered than she looks, which is a lot more dangerous thanks to her Semblance, but hey, Salem keeps her around for a reason.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing or do they kind of forget everything?)

Althea is like an elephant, she never forgets anything. Tell her how you like your eggs and coffee once and she'll always remember. 

Did you mention you disliked a certain song? You'll never hear it again.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

When she began to realize that maybe this was real and that she was genuinely loved for once in her life and that maybe the world wouldn’t implode if she let herself love someone back.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

Althea is almost insanely protective, emotionally and physically. She's so used to everything being stripped from her, so used to having to go without, so when she finally has something she'll be loath to let it get hurt or taken from her, and she hopes you'd protect her the same way.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

Althea maybe tries a little TOO hard. She goes the extra mile even if she's assured that it isn't necessary, because she is so used to not being enough for the people around her and she's terrified that if she stops trying as much as she does that she'll be cast aside once again.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

Her worst habit was abusing her Semblance. It seemed to be the only way to get people to really notice her, to seem to care about her. Especially during her Beacon years she would use her Semblance to make people love her, because she felt they never would any other way.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Althea is a bit concerned about her looks in the sense that she's insecure and not necessarily vain. 

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Absolutely. She has felt incomplete her whole life and having her partner, her real partner who genuinely loved her, would mean everything. 

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

   (Here have three)

Her birthday is August 24 (She's a Virgo ♍) She sings. She has made two attempts on her life. Once when she was still living with her mother and once at Beacon.)

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

Being overly controlling. She dealt with that all her life growing up with her mother and she won't put up with it ever again

Z = Zzz (What are some sleep habits of theirs?)

She has a very hard time sleeping and will often wander around at night instead. (Watts has given her a prescription for a strong sleep aid to help her.)

(I'll be doing a ns/fw alphabet for her as well soon)

[purplesurveys]

1155

survey by shanynx73

Do you have a dry erase board? We probably do somewhere here at home. We don’t throw school supplies like that away just in case we’d all of a sudden need them.

What do you remember most from last summer? Thinking if I’ll ever get a graduation ceremony (which I didn’t); lots of pressure about applying for grown-up stuff like a bank account and social security; and being naive about my relationship that I had no clue was already quickly going down the drain.

Where is the last place that you shopped? If online spaces count, I was just at Lazada around an hour ago trying to see if there’d be a local shop somewhere selling Good Dye Young.

What kind of shoes did you wear today? Didn’t go out today so no shoes were worn.

Have you painted lately? No but it would be nice to, now that you’ve mentioned it.

Which season has the best clothes? We don’t get 4 seasons, soooooo can’t relate.

Do you know about the many uses of coconut oil? Not too familiar.

Do you watch Dr. Oz? Back when we still bothered to have cable I remember occasionally catching his show on TV as I’d flip the channels, but it never looked all that interesting to me.

When was the last time you got balloons? My dad’s birthday, three months ago.

What color is your favorite purse? I don’t have a favorite.

What are your plans for tomorrow? Take more surveys, try not to spend money, and maybe do a couple of daily reports I usually have to do at work so that I don’t have to skim through 4 days’ worth of data by the time I get back to work on Monday.

How was your past Christmas? It was amazing; it was the time I put my foot down and finally firmly decided to start moving on from Gab, so there was a lot of self-love and self-acceptance going on. It was a very personally enlightening time for me. It also helped that I got to spend time with my extended family (in the most socially distancingy way possible) to keep me distracted and remind me of what I do have.

Do you prefer the game Sorry or Trouble? I’ve never tried playing either and I can’t remember each of their main concepts off the top of my head.

What color are the sheets on your bed? They are blue.

Do you prefer pull-over sweatshirts or zip-ups? Zip-ups, so at least I have the option to open or close it.

Have you ever had quiche? Sure.

Have you ever had a conversation with a priest (etc.) outside of church? I might have. It wouldn’t be a kind of memory I’d save in my head, but a part of me thinks there is definitely a chance this has already happened before.

What do you order when you go to McDonald's? I feel like I’ve answered this recently lol but I usually get a Burger McDo. But now that I can afford to get pricier meals, I’m looking forward to the time I’ll finally be in the mood to get a 20-piece box of McNuggets all to myself hahaha.

What do you like to put in your coffee? I don’t really make my own coffee...I prefer mine made for me already, which is why 3-in-1 sachets work perfectly for me lmao.

What is a political issue you feel strongly about? Locally speaking? All of them. Being apolitical is just privilege at work. I do take breaks from reading the news once in a while for the sake of my mental health, but I’ve never stopped giving a shit.

How often do you have to charge your phone? The battery’s health has started to slowly dwindle down; and let’s be real, it was thanks to the time I had YouTube videos on 24/7 as a coping mechanism after my break-up. So for that reason I have to charge it 2–3 times a day; it now gets drained a little faster than it used to when it was still at 100% health, but overall I’d say it’s also still holding up well.

Do you have a song stuck in your head? Sugar on the Rim - Hayley Williams. I swear I listen to other artists too.

What makes a good movie to you? Screenplay. Lines can so very easily make or break a movie.

Do you have any yellow shirts? Yes, and other kinds of tops as well.

When was the last time you wrapped a present? 2015. That was the first and only time I attempted to, and when I saw that I proved to be terrible at it, I’ve since either 1) just bought paper bags, or 2) paid my sister to wrap the gifts I’ve bought.

Do you normally win or lose at rock, paper, scissors? I typically win, actually. No idea why.

Do you like Fruity Pebbles? No. This is honestly not a Filipino/Asian thing and I had absolutely never heard of it until The Rock started calling John Cena a big bowl of Fruity Pebbles like a decade ago on WWE TV. My tween ass felt like I had to fit in so I had my mom buy me a box of Fruity Pebbles the very next day even though it cost like a bitch, and it wasn’t even that delicious.

Do you have any stuffed animals from when you were younger? Nah, I wasn’t big into stuffed toys even as a kid.

What is the craziest thing you've heard or seen on TV lately? A guy getting arrested for picking up his own McDonald’s order outside of his own house. That is the clownery of the country I have to live in.

Have you ever hyperventilated? Yes.

What was your favorite book to read in English class? Without Seeing the Dawn.

Do you wear scarves? Nope.

Are your nails painted? They are not.

Do you like to dress up? Sure.

Are you looking forward to anything in the next week? Eh, not really. I was looking forward to this week because of the Holy Week break, so I’m actually dreading next week because there won’t be any other work break as long as this anymore until Christmas.

Do you buy lottery tickets? I’ve never done so.

What is your favorite flavor of Gatorade? I’m traumatized by Gatorade lol. My mom made me chug that shit down endlessly when I was 4 when I had multiple doubts of diarrhea or whatever it was, and I never got over it. To this day I refuse to even smell it.

Do you think most people wear masks? LOL I had already typed out a full-blown answer for this talking about Covid until I double-checked and saw that this survey was made in 2013, so it must’ve been talking about masks in the metaphorical sense...that’s my  “ohhhhh” moment of the day for sure lmao. Anyway, yeah sure.

What feature do you get complimented on most? Skin.

What are you planning to do next? Look for another survey to take, and maybe some nice instrumental music to listen to.

[lovemesomesurveys]

survey by shanynx73

Do you have a dry erase board? I do.

What do you remember most from last summer? Being hot and miserable and sad cause I couldn’t go to the beach at least.  

Where is the last place that you shopped? I bought stuff online at Bath and Body Works not too long ago.

What kind of shoes did you wear today? I haven’t worn any.

Have you painted lately? No, I’m not a painter.

Which season has the best clothes? Fall and winter.

Do you know about the many uses of coconut oil? Several of them, yeah.

Do you watch Dr. Oz? No.

When was the last time you got balloons? My birthday a few years ago.

What color is your favorite purse? I love my mini backpacks, which I have a few of. 

What are your plans for tomorrow? Sigh, this question.

How was your past Christmas? It was nice. 

Do you prefer the game Sorry or Trouble? I loved both as a kid.

What color are the sheets on your bed? Mint green.

Do you prefer pull-over sweatshirts or zip-ups? Zip ups.

Have you ever had quiche? Yeah.

Have you ever had a conversation with a priest (etc.) outside of church? Yes.

What do you order when you go to McDonald's? Either their breakfast burritos and a hash brown, or a Big Mac and fries. I haven’t had McDonald’s in awhile, though.

What do you like to put in your coffee? Flavored creamer or cream and sugar. Or if I go to Starbucks, my go-to is a peppermint white chocolate mocha, which consists of flavored syrup and sauce.

What is a political issue you feel strongly about? I don’t want to get into politics.

How often do you have to charge your phone? I just charge it every night.

Do you have a song stuck in your head? Just the stupid Wendy’s jingle because they air that commercial constantly.

What makes a good movie to you? Good plot/storyline that hooks me in and keeps me interested, as well as good acting of course.

Do you have any yellow shirts? Yeah.

When was the last time you wrapped a present? This past December.

Do you normally win or lose at rock, paper, scissors? Win.

Do you like Fruity Pebbles? I love Fruity Pebbles.

Do you have any stuffed animals from when you were younger? Yes, several.

What is the craziest thing you've heard or seen on TV lately? There’s constantly something...

Have you ever hyperventilated? Yes.

What was your favorite book to read in English class? A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was one of them.

Do you wear scarves? Nope.

Are your nails painted? They are not.

Do you like to dress up? No.

Are you looking forward to anything in the next week? I just hope I start to feel less crappy.

Do you buy lottery tickets? I have a few times.

What is your favorite flavor of Gatorade? I loved the blue one. I haven’t had Gatorade since like high school, though.

Do you think most people wear masks? LOL I had already typed out a full-blown answer for this talking about Covid until I double-checked and saw that this survey was made in 2013, so it must’ve been talking about masks in the metaphorical sense...that’s my  “ohhhhh” moment of the day for sure lmao. Anyway, yeah sure. <<< I automatically assumed that as well, haha. Hard not to now. Anyway, let me quote the movie, The Mask, “We all wear masks, metaphorically speaking.” What feature do you get complimented on most? I very rarely receive any compliments.

What are you planning to do next? Possibly another survey. I haven’t watched the latest episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier yet, so I don’t want to refresh my dash and get spoiled.

[letterboxd]

Satisfied?

We examine what Letterboxd reviews of Hamilton reveal about the musical’s cultural currency in 2020.

In this absolutely insane year, when our love of movies feels helpless in the face of pandemic-induced economic collapse, some extremely good decisions are being made on behalf of audiences. Studio Ghibli on streaming platforms. Virtual screenings to support art house cinemas. Free streaming of many important films about Black experience. And: Disney+ releasing the filmed version of Hamilton: An American Musical—recorded at the Richard Rodgers Theater in 2016 with most of its original Broadway cast—a year ahead of schedule, on Independence Day weekend.

“Superlative pop art,” writes Wesley of the filmed musical. “Hamilton wears its influences and themes on its sleeve, and it’s all the better for it. Lin-Manuel Miranda and his team employ an unlikely cocktail of not only hip-hop and showtunes, but also jazz (‘What’d I Miss?’), British-Invasion pop-rock (‘You’ll Be Back’), folk music (‘Dear Theodosia’) and Shakespeare (‘Take a Break’) in service of developing an impressively vast array of themes. This is a testament to the power of writing, an immigrant narrative, a cautionary tale about ambition, a tragic family drama, and a reevaluation of who decides the narrative of history.”

2016 may only be a half-decade ago, but it feels like an eon in American political years. With theaters dark and America’s long record of racism under urgent scrutiny, the complex smash-hit lands back in the spotlight at an interesting time. Is Hamilton “the most offensive cultural artefact of the last decade”, as Lee writes? Or “timeless and wholly of the moment”, as Tom suggests? The answer, according to a deep read of your Letterboxd reviews, is “all of the above”.

First things first: why now?

Sophie has a theory:

“Disney executive: Hey we’re losing a lot of money because our parks are closed. How do we start making money again?

Other Disney executive: It might be nice, it might be nice… to get Hamilton on our side.”

Sure, business. Still, it’s historically unprecedented that a Broadway show of this caliber (a record-setting sixteen Tony nominations, eleven wins, plus a Grammy and a Pulitzer) would be filmed and released to the public while it’s still, in a Covid-free universe, capable of filling theaters every night. Will people stay away when Broadway reopens because they’re all Disney+’d out?

No chance, reckons Erika. “I’d still kill to see Hamilton live with any cast… I get why producers are afraid that these videos might hurt ticket sales, but I’m fucking ready to buy a ticket and fly to NY one day just to see as many shows as I can after watching this.”

Not every musical fan has the resources to travel, often waiting years for a touring version to come near their hometown. And even if you do live in a town with Hamilton, the ticket price is beyond many; a daily lottery the only way some of us get to go. So Holly-Beth speaks for many when she writes: “I entered the Hamilton lottery every day for almost two years but I never got to be in the room where it happens… however, this 4K recording of the original cast will do very nicely for now! Finally getting to see the context and performances after obsessing over the music for years was so, so satisfying.”

“Finally” is a common theme. Sydnie writes, “I love this musical with every fiber of my body and it was an extraordinary experience finally getting to watch it in Australia”. Flogic: “To finally be able to put the intended visuals to a soundtrack that I’ve had on repeat for such a long time: goosebumps for 160 minutes.” Newt Potter: “Now I fully understand people’s love for this masterpiece of a musical!”

I’ve got a small query for you.

Where’s the motherfucking swearing? Unsurprisingly, Disney+ comes with some limitations. For Hamilton, it’s the loss of a perfectly placed F-word.

“I know Disney is ‘too pure’ to let a couple of ‘fucks’ slip by,” writes Fernando, “but come on, it’s kind of distracting having the sound go out completely when they sing the very satisfying ‘Southern Motherfucking Democratic Republicans!’ line.”

Will agrees: “Disney cutting ‘motherfucking’ from ‘Washington on Your Side’ felt like sacrilege akin to Mickey Mouse taking an eyebrow pencil to the Mona Lisa.”

Nevertheless, sings Allison:

“Even tho Disney stripped the story of its f***s, Don’t think for a moment that it sucks.”

(Yes, she has a vegan alert for Hamilton.)

Does it throw away its shot?

The crew filmed two regular shows in front of live audiences, with additional audience-less sessions for a dolly, crane and Steadicam to capture specific numbers. The vast majority of you are satisfied. “It’s the most engaging and expertly crafted life filming I’ve seen since Stop Making Sense,” writes ArtPig. “The film does an incredible job of placing you right in the action. It feels like the best seat you could get in the theater. You can see the sweat and spit.”

“Translates perfectly onto the small screen,” agrees Ollie. “There’s a level of intimacy that feels hard to replicate in any other filmed production. We see those close ups, the passion and gusto behind every actor’s performance.”

“Shockingly cinematic for something filmed on such a small stage,” is Technerd’s succinct summary, while Paul praises director Thomas Kail: “He knows when to back away along with moving nearer when appropriate, and the choices always serve to govern the power and stamina of the performances.”

Though cast members’ voices were recorded on individual audio tracks, Noah had a few quibbles with the sound quality. “Some of the audio capture is off in the recording, sometimes voices being too soft or too loud. It’s not immersion breaking, but it is noticeable enough to irk me a little in pivotal moments. Some of the shot composition doesn’t fully work either. Of course nothing is going to be as good as seeing it in person.”

Robert, recalling another recent cinematic escapade of musical theater, lets his poetry do the talking:

“This will do for now until the true movie’s made, Though if Hooper directs, there’ll be an angry tirade.”

I think your pants look hot.

Hamilton fans have their cast favorites, but something about being able to see Jonathan Groff’s spittle and Leslie Odom Jr’s scowls in 4K has you losing it all over again. Several specific shout-outs we enjoyed:

“Daveed Diggs the Legend! Go watch Blindspotting (2018), it’s one of the best movies ever!” —Kyle

“It’s hard to believe anyone will ever top Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr. I already loved him from the original cast recording, but seeing his full performance in all its glory was just godly.” —Erika

“Thankful that it was made possible for me to view with such clarity the phenomenon that is Renée Elise Goldsberry and spectacular Phillipa Soo.” —Thea

“Daveed Diggs was electrifying and Jonathan Groff was absolutely hilarious. If they interacted together the stage would’ve combusted from the sheer will of their talent.” —Nick

This is not a game.

On one hand, the release of Hamilton is sweet relief for music theater nerds riding out the pandemic. A generation of kids knows every word by heart, rapping (this version of) American history like it’s no thing. On the other, the Obama-era musical already feels behind-the-times, even for many Hamilton lovers, and the filmed version has brought that into sharp focus.

“I listened to the OG cast album about 50 times when it came out, the production is about as good as I’d always hoped,” writes Josh. “Since then however there’s been a very important and broader reckoning with the failures of neoliberalism and the Obama years ([from] which this has to be the most emblematic piece of art) and for me personally a drifting further to the left that has resulted in a very different relationship with the material. So my feelings today are a bit more complicated.”

“Hamilton is extremely non-committal about its politics,” writes Sting. “It doesn’t examine much of what Hamilton dictated besides ‘he wants complete financial control of the country’ (which would sound like a fucking supervillain in any other context, including reality).”

That lack of political commitment, reckons Morgan, is what helped Hamilton as a musical become so popular: “It’s fun. It’s catchy. It interweaves trendy and socially relevant artistic tools to infer a subversive subtext, while simultaneously sanitizing and, at times, flat out fabricating the historical narrative and downplaying the brutality of the true origin story, for the sake of appeasing those in power. Classic Bill Shakespeare stuff.”

History has its eyes on you.

Much criticism lies with the fundamental storytelling decision to make a modern ruckus about America’s Founding Fathers, the men (including Alexander Hamilton) who in the late eighteenth century united the thirteen colonies and co-wrote the Constitution. Undisputed titans of history, they also have blood on their hands, and HoneyRose writes that the musical “glorifies these men, and paints them as self-sacrificing heroes, and honestly normalizes and validates slavery, as well as the behavior of slave owners.”

Stevie, who saw the Broadway production as well as the filmed version, confesses: “I’ve tried (I’ve really tried) to understand what makes people lose their minds over this but I’m still completely baffled by the hype… These were horrible men and a romanticism of them through song and dance just seems entirely misguided.”

Sean is not convinced that Hamilton is a hagiography. “I can’t imagine anyone watching all of this and thinking it paints a portrait of the Founding Fathers as anything other than childish, greedy, venal and self-aggrandizing.” Wesley agrees: “I don’t think Hamilton is trying to be a history lesson, so much as a lesson about how we think about history. It’s a compelling human story told in a revolutionary way.”

That “revolutionary way” is the musical’s central conceit: that of a cast-of-color playing the white founding fathers as they bumble towards independence. Journalist Jamelle Bouie, who regards the musical as “fun, exciting, innovative and, at points, genuinely moving,” wrestles with the “celebratory narrative in which the Framers are men to admire without reservation. Through its casting, it invites audiences of color to take ownership of that narrative, as if they should want to take ownership of a narrative that white-washes the history of the revolution under the guise of inclusion.”

It’s complicated for Matt, too: “It’s widely agreed upon that the show encapsulates the Obama era better than anything, how it coddles white liberals with a post-racial vision of history in a superficial sense, overlooking the insidious and oppressive systems that they benefit from (hearing the audience clap to ‘Immigrants, we get the job done’ unsettled me). Of course hopefully its legacy will be that it opened up more Broadway roles for POC. But I really think that the show doesn’t make Broadway more appealing and accessible to POC, it just makes hip hop more accessible to white people, a launching pad of course to listening to Watsky or something.

“No hate though to anyone that’s completely in love with this, it’s definitely worth seeing despite any hang ups.”

I wanna build something that’s gonna outlive me.

The story doesn’t end, just because the music does. Kai_Kenn has a suggestion: “I have been a part of discussions that dissect the culture that created Hamilton, as well as the culture that Hamilton created, and whether or not Hamilton appropriately addresses the modern issues [that] the cult following proposes it does.

“This is an ongoing discussion that I am trying to be an active listener in and, if you consider yourself to be a conscientious consumer of art, you should too.”

Noah is on board with that: “Reflecting on the past and focusing on the future are not two mutually exclusive actions. Both are a must, regardless of who you are or what you do. A five-star experience in a four-and-a-half-star film. I think that’s just fine.”

Related content

Want to see more of the key cast? Watch Daveed Diggs in ‘Blindspotting’; Renée Elise Goldsberry in ‘Waves’, Jonathan Groff repeat his role as Kristoff in ‘Frozen 2’, Lin-Manuel Miranda in ‘Mary Poppins Returns’, Leslie Odom Jr. in ‘Harriet’, Phillipa Soo in the forthcoming ‘Broken Hearts Gallery’, Christopher Jackson in the forthcoming ‘In The Heights’, Jasmine Cephas Jones in ‘The Photograph’, Okiereriete Onaodowan in ‘A Quiet Place II’ and Anthony Ramos in ‘Monsters and Men’ and ‘A Star is Born’.

Ways to support the Black Lives Matter movement

Official Black Lives Matter’s Resources

Teenagers that have ‘Hamilton’ stuff on their bedroom walls

Films where they mention ‘Hamilton’

[earlgreytea68]

case open, case shut (but you could pay to close it like a casket) (baby boy can't lift his headache head) (isn't it tragic?)

once upon a time for some reason @elizabethminkel asked me to write a self-insert fic where I was Fall Out Boy’s lawyer???? I can’t remember why???? But here’s that fic: 

It would be so nice if clients ever listened to her, thought Seraphine Magenta Chloe Sheen, as she found herself dealing with the latest complaint served. Puppets. Motherfucking puppets.  

Seraphine did not call Pete, because Patrick was infinitely easier to deal with.  

Patrick didn’t answer his phone, though, because Patrick was terrible at answering his phone. He preferred to live like a hermit instead of someone in the twenty-first century. Patrick never picked up his phone to make up for Pete never putting down his phone. As always, when you put them together you got something that made a lot more sense than when they were apart.  

Seraphine texted Pete to ask him to have Patrick call her.  

Instead Pete called her.  

Seraphine sighed. Clients. “Hello?” she said, hoping her world-weariness was not showing in her voice. She needed to buy a lottery ticket to see if she could get out of being a lawyer.  

“I haven’t talked to Patrick in days,” Pete whined. “What do you think he could be doing?”  

Seraphine sighed again. “I don’t know, Pete.”  

“I would think he was dead except he keeps returning my texts, but they’re, like one-word replies. I sent him a whole thing about how Roman chariots dictated the size of the space shuttle solid rocket boosters and he responded with ‘cool.’ Cool!” shrieks Pete.  

“I mean,” said Seraphine. “I guess that’s cool?”  

“Do you think he’s been kidnapped? He might have been kidnapped. Should we call the police?”  

“No. He’s fine.”  

“Have you talked to him?”  

No, but Patrick was probably just taking a Pete break, everyone deserved one. “Pete, you know those puppets?”  

“Puppets?” Pete echoed blankly. He sounded like his mind was already on something else.  

“Yeah, the llama things.”  

“Oh,” said Pete. “Frosty and Royal Tea.”  

“Huh?” said Seraphine.  

“Those are their names. Frosty and Royal Tea.”  

“…Okay,” said Seraphine. “Did you get permission to use the puppets?”  

“Permission from who?” asked Pete.  

“Never mind,” said Seraphine.  

“Hey, let me know if you hear from Patrick, right?” said Pete.  

“Yeah, sure thing,” said Seraphine. Then Seraphine texted Patrick. When you get this, we need to talk about the puppets.  

Seraphine expected a text back. Seraphine didn’t expect to run into Patrick Stump waiting for her outside the subway station. He looked self-conscious about it, his eyes flitting around nervously.  

“Patrick,” said Seraphine, surprised. “Are you okay?” She thought of Pete’s wild suspicions, and wondered if they might be true. Only Pete would guess something so outrageous and have it turn out to be correct. “Have you been kidnapped?” she whispered. “Blink once if you’ve been kidnapped. Fuck, did you just blink? Okay, wait, blink twice if you meant to blink once the first time.”  

“I haven’t been kidnapped,” Patrick said.  

“Then what are you doing here?” Seraphine asked. “Stalking me outside the subway station?”  

“He wishes to know about the puppets,” inserted a smooth, British voice. A jaguar inside of a cello.  

Seraphine looked at the man who appeared. Much taller than Patrick, with a head of tumbled dark curls and a really beautiful coat. “Hello?” Seraphine said in confusion.  

“The puppets,” the man clipped out. “What did your text mean?”  

“He thinks it’s a clue,” Patrick explained reluctantly.  

“A clue?” Seraphine repeated. “A clue to what?”  

“Mr. Stump has engaged my services,” said the British man briskly.  

“And you are…” Seraphine looked from the man to Patrick and hissed, “Tell me he’s not an escort, I don’t feel like cleaning that up.”  

Patrick looked appalled. “He’s not an escort, he’s a detective!”  

“A consulting detective,” the British man said.  

“He’s…consulting and detecting,” Patrick faltered.  

“Consulting and detecting what?” asked Seraphine.  

“That depends on what you have to say about the puppets,” said the British man.  

“The puppets have nothing to do with this, please can we just go?” Patrick pleaded.  

“You engaged me to solve your pedestrian little puzzle, and solve it I will. The puppets, if you please, as quickly as possible, I’m getting bored.”  

He did look bored.  

Seraphine said to Patrick, “What puzzle?”  

Patrick looked as uncomfortable as it was possible to look without actually melting into the sidewalk. “I’ve been getting these, like, packages.”  

“Packages?” said Seraphine.  

“But, like, really personal packages. They have personal things in them. And it’s not from a fan. They come to my personal address.”  

“A fan could have gotten your personal address,” Seraphine said, concerned.  

“It’s not a fan,” said the British man. “They’re of an extremely personal nature.”  

“Fans can sometimes—” Seraphine began.  

“Intimate,” the British man said.  

“Yeah, fans can send intimate things—”

“No, he means they know me intimately,” Patrick explained reluctantly. “Like, they’re…they’re things I would have wanted. You wouldn’t know to send these things to me unless you knew me. So if it’s a fan, it’s, like, a serious stalker, it’s—”

“Hang on,” said Seraphine. “You’re getting really lovely gifts sent to you? That’s why you called this guy?”  

Patrick paused, considering. “Well, when you put it that way—”

“They’re from Pete, you idiot,” said Seraphine. “Pete is sending you gifts.”  

“How do you know that?” asked Patrick, looking shocked.  

“Because he’s in love with you!”  

Patrick blinked a lot, it was a good thing Seraphine wasn’t still trying to do a blinking code with him. “How do you know that?”  

“Because I had to spend forty minutes on the phone with him a few weeks ago doing therapy about how in love with you he was and whether I thought it was a good idea if he should start sending you secret love gifts. I want you to know: I billed him the entire time, it was a very expensive phone call.”  

Patrick stared at her, mouth gaping open.  

The British man exclaimed, “Are you joking? This whole time there has been no mystery at all!”  

“So you didn’t solve the mystery,” said another British man, sounding amused. Seraphine hadn’t noticed him until just this moment: blond, shorter, more unassuming than the dramatic British one.  

“I didn’t solve the mystery because there wasn’t a mystery to solve,” the dark-haired British man spat out.  

“Uh-huh,” said the blond, sounding even more amused.  

“We’re going now,” the dark-haired man spat out furiously, and stalked away.  

The blond gave her a little nod and a friendly smile and then followed him.  

Seraphine turned to Patrick. “Who was that?”  

Patrick said breathlessly, “When’s the last time you spoke to Pete?”  

“Today,” Seraphine said. “He thought you’d been kidnapped. He texted you something about the Roman empire and the space shuttle and you said it was cool.”  

“It was cool.”  

“That wasn’t enough of a reaction for Pete Wentz.”  

“I feel like I should really call Pete,” said Patrick, still sounding thunderstruck.  

“Yeah, I agree,” said Seraphine. “Also, like, at some point we’ve got to talk about the puppets.”  

“Frosty and Royal Tea?” said Patrick.  

“Okay,” said Seraphine. “Fine. Yes. Frosty and Royal Tea.”  

“I’m going to call Pete first,” Patrick decided.  

“I’m going to bill you for every second of this conversation,” Seraphine told him.  

(And then later she won the lottery and got to quit her job.)

[mkzmerryfriend]

Let’s Talk About Ticketing (LONG)

So. Ticketmaster needs to die.

Let’s talk about it. 

First off, we need to establish a few things. First, Ticketmaster IS THE PROBLEM. The way they have set up their ticketing is almost criminal. Because of fucking capitalism they’re allowed to do what they do. Next, there are things about their ticketing practice that are not meant to be bad things, and I don’t think they operate as bad things either. The queue, as unfair as it feels, is a much fairer system than first come, first served. We’ll get to it. Last, I think it’s important to remember that the band almost definitely didn’t have a say in this fiasco. We all know that if it were up to them, their shows would be fucking free.

So, let’s get into it a bit. 

The Queue 

The queue, for all the griping I hear about it, is probably the only part of the ticketing process that I like and agree with. When you have a band as popular as MCR, and a band as far-reaching as they are, it can feel like an impossible task to be first in line to buy tickets. The randomized queue set up, while some people say it feels like a lottery, I think is the best possible solution to give every fan a fair shot. Back before the internet, first come, first served made sense. You ran to get in line and buy physical tickets before they sold out. Post-internet, however, is much more complicated. You want to make sure, as a fan, that you have the time to be there and buy tickets. You want to make sure, as the venue, that as many people that are actual fans are getting tickets. Both these things are hard to do if online tickets were set up first come, first served. So, the queue makes it more fair. If you’re there first, you could end up 300th in line, and if you’re there late, you could still end up 1st. It gives more people more chances.

The Pricing

This is when it falls apart. I have a lot to say about this. Two things, up front: ticket prices should be publicly announced by the venue before they go on sale, and the prices should not fucking budge from those initial prices. Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” shit needs to die in a barn fire. It is the most capitalistic abuse of power I’ve ever seen for something as culturally important as concerts. Being able to adjust prices “based on demand” is the absolute shadiest thing in the world. Here’s why: it’s a fucking scam. If we want things to be fair, like with the queue, pricing needs to stay the same. Everyone knows the range, everyone knows what they can afford, and everyone pays what they’re promised. Raising prices halfway through the buying process is criminal, if only by morality. I saw a story from someone that they put an $80 ticket in their cart and when they got to the checkout page the ticket was $300 before fees (and Ticketmaster’s fees are a whole other story). This is NOT OKAY. 

The Band

We all know this wasn’t their fault, but let’s say it together for posterity’s sake: THIS WAS NOT MCR’S FAULT! Ticketmaster is the one you want to sharpen your pitchforks for, the ones you want to light your torches for. I can’t see any of the boys thinking this is okay. If they’ve heard about it, they’re most likely either very sad for their fans or livid at Ticketmaster, too. I can say, as an educated guess, without a shadow of a doubt, that MCR would lead the fucking charge against Ticketmaster if they could. And they probably can’t, for contractual reasons. Because truly, where else would they sell tickets and be able to keep as many scalpers away as possible? Believe it or not, but Ticketmaster and AXS are better than venues themselves selling tickets in this day and age. 

So, what now?

There needs to be a reform in ticketing, ASAP. Finding a better way to deter scalpers is tough, and “dynamic pricing” is not the answer. All that does is make it harder for fans to get tickets. Ticket prices need to be announced prior to the ticketing date, so that everyone knows how much they’re going to spend on tickets. These prices should not budge, not even a cent, while ticketing is happening. That’s what I feel would be the best practice in terms of ticket selling for concerts like MCR shows and BTS shows.

AXS

As a side note, before I finish this off, I wanted to say how much I actually like the system AXS has for transferring tickets. The way it works is that, if you buy tickets through them and a friend has an AXS account too, you can send them a ticket securely and digitally to their account. This, coupled with security checking IDs and matching them to the names of the AXS accounts (a practice that was done at the Shrine Return show) is a wonderful way to deter scalpers (even if many people got turned away for the return show, my heart goes out to you). Because, if you know this will happen (which you SHOULD, they should have told people they would be doing that when tickets went on sale) you are way less likely to try to buy from scalpers because you know you won’t get in anyway. This keeps tickets in the hands of fans, or at least makes it easier.

Anyway, I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about this. Please, if you read this, join the conversation. Think critically with me for a moment and let’s have a chat about ticketing and what you think needs to change. Because we all know something needs changing, and it isn’t our fucking attitudes.

[myncisworld-2point0]

[NOTE: This article is from 2014.]

According to some people, Mark Harmon is best known to his fans as Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs on CBS’s hit drama series NCIS. Those people are wrong, of course, because he’s always going to be Freddy Shoop, a summer school teacher in over his head in 1987’s appropriately-titled Summer School. Harmon turns the ripe, young age of 63 today, and it’s clearer than ever that this man is in possession of a map that leads to the Fountain of Youth, because Harmon ages with grace, am I right, ladies? In fact, while it’s no wonder why this actor was named People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1986, it is rather shocking that he never received that accolade again, specifically in 1987, when the most important work of his career was released.

The coke-fueled era of the 1980s in Hollywood was filled with more high school movies about slackers and smartasses than anyone actually needed, especially when it came to featuring students who looked like they were older than the teachers. Summer School was always perhaps the most underrated of the decade’s tributes to slackademics (trademark pending) because what it lacked in the typical star power of, say, a John Hughes film, it more than made up for in creating arguably the most creative collection of “teenage” dipshits than any film of the genre. At the same time, it showed that Harmon, who was probably best known at the time for his role as the HIV-positive Dr. Robert Caldwell on St. Elsewhere, had a strong sense of comedy, while also confirming (along with her debut on Cheers that same year) that Kirstie Alley was much, much more than just a really attractive Vulcan.

Summer School isn’t just some cult classic that people love to mention whenever someone randomly asks, “Hey, whatever happened to Dean Cameron?” It was actually well-received at the box office, earning $36 million in theaters on what I assume was a budget of a few rolls of nickels and someone’s baseball card collection. Critics, however, were a little more mixed on this mindless comedy, as Roger Ebert gave it one-half star out of four, which sounds a lot better than one star out of eight, so you know what? I’ll take it.

Maybe in the movie business we could coin the term vaporfilm, for movies that zip right through our brains without hitting any memory molecules.

“Summer School” is a movie like that, a comedy so listless, leisurely and unspirited that it was an act of the will for me to care about it, even while I was watching it. This movie has no particular reason for being, other than to supply employment for people whose job possibilities will not be enhanced by it. (Via RogerEbert.com)

Here’s a tip for all of you aspiring film critics out there, courtesy of King Ebert – if you’re watching a movie with a title as lazy as Summer School, and the opening of the film features a school’s teachers trying to haul ass after the bell on the last day of the semester so they don’t get suckered into teaching the titular course, get up and walk out. Leave the movie for those of us who love to watch stupid movies and go to the next theater to watch and analyze La Bamba. Perhaps that’s why the fan reviews of Summer School on Netflix seem to be so glowing, as I only found three that were two stars or less. In fact, here’s the worst of them all:

Nothing but trash. Nothing worth seeing. Degenerate teens in bad need of harsh discipline. It’s depressing to think that so many young people actually enjoy this trash. This movie is immediately available from NF while so many more interesting ones languish in the ‘saved’ section, or in ‘short wait’, ‘long wait’, or ‘very long wait’ status. Just one more nail in the coffin of American culture, or lack thereof.

Thank God Armond White weighed in. The majority of people, myself included, fondly remember Summer School for what it is – a fun, stupid movie that was meant to make us laugh, while perhaps also rubbing our noses in the awesomeness of 80s California if we didn’t live there. But I’ll take this analysis one step further by laying out these 10 very important lessons that I took away from Summer School after watching it this morning, in paying tribute to Harmon, a man who was Kevin Costner before Kevin Costner was Kevin Costner.

Always put sunglasses on your dog.

Fact: 100% of movie posters that have dogs wearing sunglasses on them are movies that I’m willing to at least watch. The movie could be called This Dog Dies from Space AIDS, and I’d still be curious to see why that dog is wearing sunglasses.

Always have an escape plan.

When everybody else is hauling ass from the faculty parking lot at the last second, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t already be packed for your trip to Hawaii. I don’t like to point fingers, but Mr. Shoop’s girlfriend is clearly at fault here. All she had to do was pack the car for him, and he could have jumped in and taken off for the airport. Instead, Kim kicked her man while he was down and not only snatched her ticket to Hawaii from the pocket of his rad flowered shirt, but she also told him to drive her to the airport. I don’t mean to offend anyone who is overprotective of fictional characters, but I hope that Kim was eventually fed to the volcano gods.

Also, let’s consider this a lesson within a lesson – would you walk away from your teaching job right now if someone handed you a winning lottery ticket for $50,000? I say no. Just pass all of the morons while you spend the class time reading up on investment opportunities.

Never be afraid to encourage the creativity of your students.

https://youtu.be/-5Pku48YPFo

The true sign of a teacher’s efforts in a classroom is how far the students are willing to go to show others their appreciation of his work. In Shoop’s case, once he resigned because his students were greedy little pricks, those same students objected to a new teacher taking over the class by staging a gruesome and horrifying murder scene, complete with two of the students wielding chainsaws, declaring themselves psychopaths and thus taking credit for the violence. Of course, I can’t stress this enough, no high school students should ever think about trying to recreate this scene today.

On a side note, and I hate to nitpick true artistic masterpieces, if you’re going to have a severed hand pull a dude’s tongue out of his mouth and slap him with it, it’s really important that he not blink. Damn it, people, we need accuracy.

Being a male teacher in California in 1987 was probably terrifying.

https://youtu.be/farC0cWkpvc

Between Summer School and Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, 1987 was a huge year for Courtney Thorne-Smith. Hell, both movies came out in the same week in July, when she was just 19 years old and poised to become the next big things in terms of girls that all teen boys wanted to marry. Unfortunately, her movie career never really panned out, as the last live action role she had on the big screen was as Natalie in the Carrot Top hot fart Chairman of the Board. Her TV career was obviously a lot better, but that’s neither here nor there. Having her play a lovelorn surf goddess crushing on Shoop probably lured a lot of guys to the teaching profession, only to have them learn the hard way that prison sucks.

Additionally, there was the foreign exchange student Anna-Maria Mazarelli, who would grow up to win our hearts as Alotta Fagina. Was it standard procedure for foreign exchange students to be shoved into remedial English classes upon arrival? Sure.

It’s important to support fine arts programs.

https://youtu.be/u0kF24ceZMI

When I write about how hilarious it was how Hollywood tried to make us buy that some actors were teenagers when they were clearly at least a decade older, Ken Olandt is really Exhibit A. The guy who played Larry, the sleeping student by day and male stripper by night, was actually 29 when he was portraying a 17-year old, which is pretty hard to pass when very few teenage boys A) look like that and B) are hired to shake their dongs in strip clubs. Still, glaring age gaps and statutory and employment laws aside, it was nice to see that Shoop was so cool about Larry’s awesome after-school job. That is until he was busted by his mom and presumably spent the next decade in therapy.

It’s not lying if the company ripped you off in the first place.

The first time that I ever saw Summer School, I was convinced that the part about writing letters to companies to get free stuff would work every time. I spent a lot of time trying to write letters to the companies that made my favorite toys, so I could convince them that the action figures and especially the vehicles that I couldn’t afford had been broken. But then I realized that I might be called on my BS, and guys in suits might show up to my home demanding to see the broken toys, and then I’d be screwed and sent off to prison for lying. Ultimately, owning Krang’s fortress wasn’t worth a life spent in prison making license plates, which is how TV and movies taught me that license plates were made.

Jail in California looks very scary.

I still don’t know what the guy with the mustache is doing with his hand, but it’s really scary and I don’t want to ever have someone do that to me, so I’ve chosen to lead a life on the straight and narrow. Thank you, Summer School, for teaching us that jail is filled with scary perverts who want to do bad things to shirtless men on roller skates.

No matter the risk, steal your boss’s girlfriend.

https://youtu.be/B7ZTNm5o780

Vice Principal Gills was a pretty big bite in the ass, so we had to cheer for Shoop in pursuit of Robin Bishop, because Shoop was the coolest and his girlfriend had only recently taken off for Hawaii without him. Sure, Robin was kind of stuck up because she questioned the legitimacy of taking students to something as awesome as a petting zoo, which produced adorable moments like this:

And she also wore a denim shirt tucked into a different shade of denim skirt, because it was the 80s, but she had a good heart and she just wanted what was best for all students, even if it meant agreeing to a date with Shoop to get there. Also, Gills looked like a total goober-douche, and there’s no reason he should have been with Robin.

Education can be a compromise.

https://youtu.be/LzdoMQL_jR8

Is Alan Eakien one of the most underrated teen nerds of cinema? I say yes. That kid may have been dumber than rocks compared to his genius brothers, but he negotiated circles around Shoop. In exchange for a slightly-above-half-assed effort from less than half of the original class roster*, Shoop’s couch was set on fire, his goldfish murdered and car wrecked, bookending that whole going to jail for the two D-bags thing. Things could have been considerably worse, too, because Robin could have tried to get him banned from teaching for the rest of his life for allowing a female student to live with him.

But ultimately Shoop sacrificed so much for the sake of helping a few of his students learn some lessons about life, since they didn’t all pass their exams. Is he a good teacher for that or was he just an idiot being taken advantage of by other idiots? Especially idiots who looked like this:

Being an idiot isn’t all that bad, so long as you’re not a total idiot.

https://youtu.be/8fvhchY0UmY

Hey, in the end, some of those kids passed their exams, and the most important of them all was Pam, because that meant she could move on and not try to make it so Shoop returned to jail. This guy went from being just a run-of-the-mill bro’s bro gym teacher to making an impact in the lives of some kids who looked like they were grown adults. Sure, he couldn’t even talk a 17-year old out of stripping, and he allowed some of his students to treat the foreign exchange student like a sex model, but Freddy Shoop probably learned more than anyone.

Also, he totally stole the douchebag Vice Principal’s girlfriend, and Wonder Mutt found Bobby again in the end, so this really was a movie with a beautiful and happy ending.

[life-is-pure-when-love-is-true]

Okay so because my last post gained so much interest from one or two anons, that didn’t quite understand how I just write things here as a way to vent sometimes, I figured I should try to clarify it for them a little.

I mentioned my life is a bit shit etc. venting out and such. At the end I mentioned some simple facts, that if things don’t somehow change this year then it could cause a lot of issues and end badly. This could be a number of things, and one of which as I mentioned was potentially being homeless, with nowhere to go. If it comes to that, as I said I would rather not bother living anymore.

This doesn’t make me negative thinking, or suicidal or depressed in that sense. It was just a fact being made from that possibility. My life is depressing sometimes, I deal with a lot of stress and pain and shit every day, but I do my best. I have spoken with many psychologists and doctors and none find me to be suicidal or be suffering from depression in that sense, I just have a complicated life and it has depressing tendencies which rate high on such tests. In other words I experience depressed moments like everyone does, but I am mentally okay.

I am not scared of death, I’ve embraced and welcomed it over the years. So for me to say I’d rather be dead than homeless isn’t a bad thing it’s just honesty. My life is enough of a struggle as it is, if I’m also homeless, that makes things a lot harder for me, and frankly I wouldn’t do very well in that situation long term due to my health and such. It’s also unlikely if I ended up there that I’d ever be able to somehow bounce back from that because I know how the system works and I know it’s a bad place to be.

This is just logical thinking. It’s no different then a cancer patient choosing to end their life with euthanasia and die on their terms than spend their last moments dragged through hell. Quite frankly I wouldn’t wish those kinds of moments on anyone, least of all would I ever wish to experience it. It makes me sad that it is not something that is legal in very many places, because everyone should have that right to choose.

The one anon, mentioned knowing me, and if they do know me as i know only 2 people ever knew my tumblr that have ever met me, and a couple others on here who know me well enough online, have ever really known about this tumblr. I’ve made some tumblr connections over the years as well, but none of them would bother using the anon feature. Those that once knew me, well they haven’t known me in a long time. They saw me at my worst when I attempted suicide perhaps, but even then they didn’t really know me as much as they might think they did. Why? Because I keep myself to myself mostly, I don’t open up very much or talk much, I don’t share everything. There is no one who knows everything about me or my whole story.

So am I suicidal or depressed right now? No.

Is my life a bit shit? Yes.

Chance of it improving? Doubtful.

My outlook on that? Honest as it is, taking each day as it comes.

Do I want things to change? Yes, and I keep trying to do what I can, from recovering from spinal surgery, buying a lottery ticket when I can afford to, and looking for a job that might ever turn up that I can actually apply for and have a chance with etc.

Life is not easy though or fair, and I’d rather be realistic and honest and prepare for the worst than to pretend like everything is awesome while the world around me falls apart, because if I was in denial about it that would be a far worse predicament! I know where I stand, I know the options and I’m prepared for whatever may happen.

If I win the lottery, I have a plan, this ensures I’m ready and not likely to just waste it all and be stupid. If things turn to shit then I’m prepared to do what I must. I even have preparations for other kinds of eventualities like if some idiot starts ww3 I can be prepared in a sense. It’s just about being rational and logical and honest with myself. Maybe that’s a bit blunt and such but it just is what it is.

[strigwrites]

Wherein I Gripe About Story Pacing

Shadowberders spoilers below the cut.

The pacing of post-expac story content really grates on me. Square built this excellent, incredible, apocalyptic world in 5.0 and introduced us to it in a way that builds connection and investment in its fate in an impressively short time. They dragged us through bleak times, hopelessness, and gave us a glimpse at some human ugliness in places like Eulmore, places that defy regular social order and go full nihilism in the face of the end times.

So why, then, would its most pampered citizens simply pack up and accept that it’s equality time now that their pleasure ticket’s been torn up by the WoL? Not much time has passed since the defeat of Ran’jit (who was well-respected in the city) and Vauthry (who enabled their comfortable and worry-free lifestyle, even at great expense), and yet there is an almost universal acceptance that they’ve all had a sweeping change of heart and their eyes have been opened to the wrongs they bought into and perpetuated. Indeed, the Chais have apparently been sleeper agents for justice just waiting for code word ‘democracy’ to be whispered and they just seem to get the concept and its importance to equality and the weight of civic duty. Dulla-Chai becomes fully cognizant of how privilege makes work less appealing to her and her kin and even tells you as much in pretty explicit terms, and we’re all just supposed to accept the new Wokemore...I guess?

It’s not the concept of Wokemore that grates on me, as I think an eventual outcome of a population coming to terms with its own ingrained social problems makes for an extremely interesting story...it’s the pacing of problem-solving in worlds that start out complex, but then get boiled down to simple, obvious moral quandaries that are solved within a patch or two with very little fuss. Let’s examine the evidence for a minute.

Eulmore was a seat of feared power up until recently, where citizen loyalty was shored right the hell up even among its poorest outliers in the Derelicts who bought into the lottery. They ran a pretty effective scheme of not only tightly controlling citizen safety and comfort and fostering dependency, but giving those left out a reason to continue to buy into it through random meol drops to keep them dependent on that farce for their existence, as well. There’s a clear caste system and pretty glaringly obvious privilege being exercised by those who benefit from it and by all means should have a deep interest in perpetuating it. We’re talking about an extremist colony with military power that is running an end-times pleasure cult. It’s been a hundred years since the Flood, so yeah...this stratification has also had at least a couple of generations to build into attitudes and beliefs to form a foundation, one that is apparently as structurally sound as a city built on rock and roll.

These are complex issues we’re talking about, systemic ones. Even in a world of miracles and Warriors of Light, you might expect just a tad more pushback against the massive lifestyle disruption that happened extremely quickly. What’s going to become of the citizens who were reliant on meol? Is it possible they might have complicated attitudes about regime change when the previous one helped keep them fed, albeit at a terrible cost? Where did the Chais learn this inherent sense of civic duty when they’ve been keeping playtoys for their amusement? Who gave the citizens the idea of democracy? Who convinced the upper class to roll with it, to recognize others as their equals? To me, these are all fascinating questions that would have made for rich, complex storytelling, but we absolutely handwaved it in favor of telling another yawning tale of inherent goodness that comes as easy as breathing, that has just been quietly in repose all this time like a moral Sleeping Beauty awaiting Prince(ss) Warrior of Light’s magic kiss.

I love ShB immensely. They took some storytelling risks and broached more mature subjects that they previously hadn’t come near. I just wish they carried that quality and that careful story pacing forward rather than dial it in to the same easy after-school special we’ve seen a million times before.

[bluewatsons]

Bert Musschenga, Is There a Problem With False Hope?, 44 J Med & Philosophy 423 (2019)

Abstract

This article offers a general discussion of the concept of false hope. Its ultimate aim is to clarify the meaning and the relevance of that concept for medicine and medical research. In the first part (Sections I–V), the concept of hope is discussed. I argue that hope is more than a combination of a desire and a belief about the probability that the desire will be fulfilled. Imagination and anticipation are as well components of hope. I also discuss if hope implies orientation to action. In the second part (Sections VI–VIII), I examine the concept of false hope. I show that hope is false if it cannot be justified epistemically. There is, I argue, an intimate relation between false hope and ignorance. Hope is justified—“realistic”—when the hoping person knows and accepts experts’ judgement about the probability of hope fulfillment. I then argue that what matters for evaluating a person’s hope is not only whether it is realistic, but also whether it is reasonable in the light of the aim and goals that a person strives for in (the remainder of) his life. Part three (Sections IX and X) goes into the question of what is morally wrong about having or causing false hope. In the fourth part (Sections XI and XII), the relevance is shown of the insights from the previous parts for the debate on false hope in medicine and clinical research.

I. Introduction

Hope is a term frequently used in everyday situations, including existential crisis situations. “I am hopeful that we will get the house at that price,” a woman says to her friend after they have made an offer on a house. “There is still hope!” says the doctor to a man whose wife was taken to a hospital after a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Being a Dutch citizen, I hope that the Netherlands will be spared from terrorist attacks. Besides hope, we also have the term “false hope” which clearly has a negative connotation. In the discussion in the Netherlands about the “Bed, bread and bath”-scheme for illegal immigrants, it was repeatedly said that one should not give asylum seekers false hope. Hope for a better life encourages tens of thousands of people to leave their homes and to begin a gruesome journey through many countries toward a future which—they think—will be better than the insecurity, poverty, and hopelessness in which they live. According to some, their hope is usually false. Hope of postponing death increasingly drives many who suffer from a lethal disease to undergo new treatments, including experimental yet insufficiently tested treatments. Their hope is also often called false. But when is hope false? Is it bad to have false hope? Is it better to have no hope than false hope? This article explores these questions. In the first part (Sections I–V), I discuss the components of the concept of hope. In the second part (Sections VI–VIII), the concept of false hope is discussed. Part three (Sections IX and X) goes into the question of what is morally wrong about having or causing false hope? In the fourth part (Sections XI and XII), the relevance is shown of the insights from the previous parts for the debate on false hope in medicine and medical research.

II. What Is Hope?

Many important thinkers have discussed hope, but only a few of them have made hope the central theme of their thinking.1 For most thinkers, hope is just one of the themes to which they pay attention. When we classify them according to the tradition to which they belong, it is mainly thinkers of the Continental phenomenological tradition such as Marcel and Pieper who deal with basic hope—hope in existential crisis situations. Another classification of thinkers places emphasis either on what hope is and when we hope or for what we (may) hope. The last question is primarily discussed by theologians or philosophers from the Christian tradition.2 Because my focus is on what distinguishes false hope from hope, I largely restrict myself to a philosophical tradition that offers the best tools for dealing with that question: the analytic tradition. My starting point is the definition by John Patrick Day (1969) who departs from David Hume’s (1896) ideas about hope.

According to Hume, hope and its counterpart, fear, are emotions—passions. Both are mixtures of two different emotions, pain, and pleasure. He relates pain with the term “grief” and pleasure with the term “joy.” If something that, when certain, would make us pleased is uncertain and only probable, then it brings us hope. If something that, when certain, would bring us insight is that probability is the cause of hope and fear:

Tis a probable good or evil, that commonly produces hope or fear; because probability, being a wavering and inconstant method of surveying an object, causes naturally a like mixture and uncertainty of passion. (1896, Book II, Part III, Section IX)

Day follows Hume in his ideas about the role of probability in hope. Contrary to Hume, hope and fear are for Day not themselves mixtures of the emotions joy and grief, but they bring these emotions along. Hope consists not of one, but two elements: a desire for something (conative aspect) and a be- lief regarding the likelihood of fulfilling that desire (cognitive aspect). When Hume says that hope and fear cannot occur together, Day says it is possible. Mixed feelings do exist. Those who hope to win are at the same time afraid to lose. Both elements of hope are, according to Day, expressed in the following basic statement, which in my free interpretation reads as follows:

The statement “A hopes that p” is true iff “A desires that p (is fulfilled), and A thinks that there is—however small—a chance that p (will be fulfilled)” is true.3

For Day, “desire” and “belief that the probability of fulfilment is greater than 0 and less than 1” are both necessary conditions for hope. Together, they form a sufficient condition. This view is shared by another influential English philosopher, Robert Downie.4 Day’s definition is not undisputed. Some of Day’s critics find that hope has nothing to do with probability, whereas others believe that the definition is incomplete. I will briefly discuss both forms of criticism.

III. Hope and Probability

The uncertainty that desires will be fulfilled is for Hume the cause of hope. Uncertainty means that the probability of fulfillment is greater than 0 (0 = impossible) and less than 1 (1 = certain). In this approach, hoping is not irrational. However, some thinkers hold the opinion that hope is basically something irrational. Nicholas Smith (2008) refers to a statement by the Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers, known for her publications—with Ilya Prigogine—about chaos theory, which she said in an inter- view: “If we follow [the] probability, there is no hope” (Stengers, 2002, 245). In her view, one can only be said to hope for a thing or a state of affairs if a rational calculation of chances and probability indicates that it makes no sense to desire that thing or state of affairs. Hope goes beyond rationality. To give an example of what she might mean: No one has ever returned from death. This does not prevent Peter from hoping that he will be the first to come back.

Is Stengers right? Suppose that 5 million Dutch people buy a lottery ticket. The chance of winning the prize is 1:5 million. Rationally speaking, buying a ticket is a waste of money, but I suspect that only a few people decide to buy a ticket after making a rational calculation of the probability of winning. Still, all participants hope that they hit the jackpot. Why else would they take part in the lottery? All that matters to them is that it is possible that they hit the jackpot. I do not deny that people sometimes deliberately do not want to know the probability of winning so as not to get discouraged. Yet, even those people must not only believe that it is possible that their desire gets fulfilled, but also—at least implicitly—assume that the chance of winning is greater than zero. As Hume said, the question of when I can be said to hope for something cannot be answered without referring to prob- ability. For Hume, Day, and Downie, having a desire for p and believing that the probability of fulfillment of p is >0 and <1 are both necessary conditions for hoping p. I agree with them. Now does this also constitute a sufficient condition, as they claim? Various contemporary authors deny that. I limit myself to discussing two proposals for completing these two conditions with other elements: the elements “imagination and anticipation” and “action orientation.”

IV. Hope, Imagination, and Anticipation

First, I will discuss the element that I call imagination and anticipation. Spinoza calls hope a feeling of unstable joy generated by the image of a future or of a thing in the future or in the past (1985, Part III, thesis XVIII, note 2). Are imagination and anticipation essential to hope? Jan gives a party for his friends. Late in the evening Clara, a good friend, appears. “Did you hope I would come?” she asks Jan. He replies that he had expected that she would come and that he is glad that she is there. Clara is not satisfied with that answer. She responds by saying: “I don’t want to know if you expected me to come, but if you had hoped that I would come.” Suppose that Jan had neither thought of Clara and nor wished that she would come. Could he then in good faith answer that he had hoped for her to come? It seems clear that the answer would be negative. If he had really hoped that she would come, he might perhaps have noticed she was still not there and might have wondered whether she would still come. This example makes it clear that hope is more than the sum of an uncertain expectation and a desire. What is needed in addition, says Luc Bovens, is “mental imaging.” A prerequisite for hope is that you imagine from time to time what you hope. That is what Martin Luther King did when he said he had a dream (Bovens, 1999, 674). Those who say they hope for a better world, but never devote a single thought to it, do not really hope for it. A woman who is pregnant does not wait until the child arrives, but tries to imagine what the child will look like and what it will be like to be a mother. She does not wait, but anticipates a future situation (Waterworth, 2004).5

V. Hope Between Resignation and Action

The next element I want to discuss is what I call, for lack of a better term, the action orientation of hope. Suppose I hope to become very old. What precisely it means to be very old, I do not know. Moreover, I consider it more or less likely that I will reach old age, but whether that will happen I also do not know. I am aware that what age I will reach depends on many factors beyond my control. Because of that lack of total control, Ariel Meirav (2009) characterizes hope as a resignating desire. Speaking of resignating hope does not mean, says Meirav, that the desire cannot be fulfilled, but that one does not have total control over the fulfillment of the desire. This does not mean that it is completely impossible to exert any influence at all (Meirav, 2009, 229). Having a resignating desire implies recognizing that something other than yourself—an external factor—will determine the fulfillment of your desire. Hope is believing that this external factor will play a positive role.6

Is Meirav right when he emphasizes that hope means admitting not having total control over the fulfillment of a desire? If I apply for a grant for the re- search I want to do on the determination of the risk-benefit ratio in clinical studies, I hope that it will be honored, even when the chance is perhaps only 10%. The influence I can have on the outcome is very modest. But if I do my part badly, the chance of the application being honored becomes even smaller. Other authors therefore emphasize that hoping implies striving to do whatever is possible to do. We must, says Victoria McGeer (2004), learn that the limitations that we experience when trying to realize a desire should not be seen as limitations of our causal influence, but as side-constraints that we can move when acting. Hope is the energy and direction that we can offer, not only making the world into how we want it to be, but regulating and developing our capacities to act. Hoping is to offer the motivational force for using and developing our abilities to fulfill our desires. Hoping is using our abilities to be imaginatively and constructively engaged in the world around us, even in the face of our limitations. Hope is inseparably connected to the belief in self-empowerment. We find a similar view in Philip Pettit (2004). He says that substantial, non-superficial hope is based on a cognitive decision—a volition—to act as if the desired prospect will become a reality or at least as if it has a good chance to be realized. Just as taking preventive measures means acting as if that which is feared will happen.

For McGeer and Pettit, hope seems necessarily to be active hope. Those who hope commit themselves to do what is possible. However, for Meirav hope seems to be mostly passive hope. The active conception of hope is supported by the “hope theory” of the American psychologist Charles Snyder.7 He considers hope as a process of thinking. Hope is primarily a combination of thinking about goals and thinking about pathways that can be followed to achieve those goals. Moreover, hope is also “agency thinking”—thinking that focuses on the person’s abilities to find ways that lead to the desired goals, and to keep following those ways. “Agency thinking” especially occurs if one is confronted by obstacles and difficulties, and then one must also provide and channel the mental energy (motivation) to overcome them. Thinking about goals and about pathways to those goals occurs repeatedly, and they cross-fertilize each other.8

The active and passive visions of hope are not mutually exclusive. Although the view of hope as resignating desire emphasizes recognizing the limitations of one’s own influence, it is consistent with the recognition that accepting not having total control over the fulfillment of a desire does not exclude being active where one can still exert some influence. McGeer, a supporter of the concept of hope as active hope, is well aware that hope cannot operate without insight into the limited opportunities one has to influence the achievement of that for which one hopes. She also emphasizes that it is imperative to act where and when this is possible, and to develop capacities for acting constructively and creatively. My conclusion regarding the claim that hope needs to be orientated to action is that hope is not necessarily active hope. Hoping does imply acting where possible and adopting an attitude of resignation when acting is no longer an option. If two men compete for the hand of the same woman, there comes a time when they can only hope that the woman’s choice will be in their favor. However, if they had not fought before that time to get the woman’s favor, one might have wondered how strong and sincere their desire was to win her.

If we accept the two discussed additional components, we come to the following definition of hope: The statement “A person S hopes that p” (a thing or an event) if and only if he or she:

desires that p;

(implicitly or explicitly) thinks that the probability that p being realized is greater than 0 and less than 1;

imagines how it will be if p is realized

anticipates it; and

is actively working to bring about p where possible, and where this is not possible resigns thereto.

VI. True and False Hope

Snyder—the father of “hope theory”—wrote with some colleagues an important article about false hope (Snyder et al., 2002). Many people, they say, claim that true hope is grounded in reality whereas false hope results from significant distortions of reality. According to Snyder et al., people with “high hope”—a high degree of hope—are not guilty of distorting reality. However, they do have positive illusions. They have a too positive view of themselves, reality, and their possibilities and opportunities. People with “low hope”— little hope—are the ones who suffer from distortion of reality, as well as processes of denial and repression, according to Snyder et al. People with “high hope” stay within what the psychologist Roy Baumeister (1989) calls the “optimal margin of illusion.” Their illusions have beneficial effects and improve their adaptation to reality. According to Snyder et al., false hope is also associated with the pursuit of too many objectives at the same time or by choosing the wrong paths to achieve one’s goal. Even those phenomena do not occur among people with “high hopes.” They conclude that false hope does not exist, by which they mean that false hope is absent among people who really hope—who have “high hopes.” However, one of the premises which Snyder et al. assume is that positive illusions do not distort reality, but only color reality in a way that benefits the one who hopes. The difference between coloring and bias seems to be exclusively based on the quality of the effects on the welfare of the person who hopes.

Snyder et al. suggest that the counterpart of false hope is true hope—hope that is free from distortions of reality, but not free from beneficial positive illusions. This conception of true hope seems to rest on the assumption that it is not only possible to distinguish between views that distort reality and views that positively color reality, but also between views that distort and do not distort reality. Although it might be possible to agree to a certain extent on which views distort reality, the possibility of an agreement on an undistorted view of reality seems to be an illusion.

A more fruitful approach to false hope ties in with Day’s distinction between having hope and having justified hope (Day, 1991, 76–80). As we have seen, hope has two elements: a desire and a belief (about the probability of fulfillment of the desire). The justification of hope is directed at both elements. Hope is, according to Day, justified if it can be shown (1) that no objections are possible to the object of desire on moral, prudential, or aesthetic grounds (= conative element), and if it can be shown (2) that hope is reasonable (realistic) (= cognitive element). The criterion for reasonability is the intersubjective judgement of competent judges about the probability of the fulfillment of what is hoped for. I call justification of the conative element of hope normative justification and justification of the cognitive element epistemic justification. False hope is an epistemic concept. Only epistemic justification is relevant for determining if hope is false. Epistemologists distinguish between true belief, justified belief, and true and justified belief. Justified belief can nonetheless be false. Applying the same distinctions to hope, we get true hope, justified hope, and true and justified hope. False hope would then be the counterpart of true hope. However, since the belief that is part of hope is not a statement of fact, but a probability statement, from an epistemic point of view hope cannot be true, it can only become true. Neither can hope be false, it can only turn out to be false. Hope changes into certainty as soon as it has become either true or false. If stating that S’s hope for x is false is not a descriptive but a predictive statement, what is then the practical use of such statements? Is it only a warning for becoming disappointed? My proposal is to reinterpret false hope as epistemically unjustified hope. Saying to someone that her hope is false should then be regarded as a call for critically examining the grounds of her hope.

VII. False Hope and Ignorance

If false hope should be conceived as unjustified hope, what is the cause of this lack of justification? In my view, ignorance is the cause, the lack of relevant information about the chances that the desire that constitutes hope will be realized. To illustrate the role of ignorance in false hope, here are some examples. Emma is an unhappy young woman without friends and admirers. She thinks that her unhappiness is due to her physical unattractiveness and plain looks. She decides to consult a cosmetic surgeon who advises her to have a breast enlargement and a facial surgery of mouth, jaw, and nose. These operations indeed make her more attractive and liked. Although satisfied with these changes, she still feels unhappy. After consulting a psychotherapist, it becomes clear to her that the causes of unhappiness should be sought in neglect during her childhood. Emma’s false hope with regard to the effects of cosmetic surgery were caused by ignorance concerning the real nature of her problems. Another example: Peter applies for a research grant at an organization for scientific research for a study on the ethics of phase-1 trials. Two of the reviewers gave the application the highest rating (A +) and one a slightly lower rating (A). On the basis of the very enthusiastic reports of all three, Peter had good hope that the grant would be awarded. His hope was false because he did not know the policy that applications that do not have three A + are rejected automatically. A third example: Shania, an obese woman of 43 years, wants to lose weight. She hopes to lose 30% of her weight. However, after treatment, she has only lost 16 kg. As with many other women in her situation, she is disappointed with the result of the treatment. The cause of their false hope is lack of knowledge and insight about the difficulty of losing weight. Overweight dieters tend to believe that weight is malleable (Polivy, 2001).

People with false hope base their hope on an assessment of the prob- ability of fulfillment that does not correspond to what Day would call the standard assessment of competent judges. False hope results from cognitive deficiency, from ignorance. The example of Emma shows that false hope not only results from an unjustified belief about the likelihood of fulfilling a desire, but also from an unjustified desire. Hope can also be false if it is based on an incorrect picture of the value, the desirability of the object of desire, in Emma’s case cosmetic surgery.

If false hope is indeed based on ignorance, hope must disappear when the ignorance is lifted. Many refugees set forth to a country in Europe where they hoped to be welcomed and have the possibility to build a new life. They often started out ignorant of the many dangers and problems they would meet. It turned out that their journey was more costly and more dangerous than they expected and that they were not welcome in a lot of countries. It seems evident that their hope was false. However, although some of these refugees might not have gone had they known beforehand what would happen to them, I suspect that many of them would still have gone. The majority of the refugees would probably still have hope, even when they were no longer ignorant but well informed. It is important to make a distinction between hope that is based on ignorance and hope that goes along with ignorance without being based on it. Hope can only be called false when it is based on ignorance. The hope of the majority of refugees goes along with ignorance but is not based on it. Therefore, it cannot be called false hope.

VIII. Realistic and Reasonable Hope

If false hope is based on ignorance, its counterpart seems to be well-informed hope. However, having all the information one needs for making a decision does not mean that one also takes all the information into account. Knowing the probability of the realization of a desire is not the same as being well aware of it. Someone who hopes for a job, knows that the probability that she gets it is 10%, but is already looking for a house in the vicinity of the location of her future employer, demonstrates that she is not very aware of the low probability. Her hope is not realistic. Realistic hope is the term I prefer for the counterpart of false hope over well-informed hope. Determining if hope is realistic is, as we have seen for Day, one of the aims of justifying hope. His criterion for justification of hope is the intersubjective judgement of competent judges about the probability of the fulfillment of what is hoped for. I do not think that experts’ judgement about the probability of hope fulfillment is the only thing that matters for evaluating hope. The following example makes this clear. Andrea and Johan have both applied for a job. They are both aware that their chances are no more than 10%. Contrary to Andrea, Johan still hopes to get the job. The explanation is that they have a different threshold for the acceptability of the probability of fulfillment of hope. Andrea’s threshold is much higher than that of Johan. She continues hoping when Johan finds the low probability a reason to give up hoping. Judgements about what an acceptable threshold is are not objective but person-relative.9 Experts assess the probability of desire fulfillment, not the acceptability of thresholds of the chances for desire fulfillment. Johan’s hope is realistic. It would have been false if he could only keep hoping when rejecting the experts’ assessment of the probability of the realization of the desire as too low. What matters beside hope being realistic is if it is reasonable in light of the purposes that the person who hopes is striving for. Hoping for the job is reasonable for Johan because it would give him the opportunity to realize his deepest aspirations whereas it is not realistic for Andrea, for whom it means no more than fun and well-paid work. Refugees’ hope for getting a better life in Europe is realistic if they accept the low chance. It is reasonable if there no alternative available. 10

It is time for an interim balance. I argued that false hope is hope that cannot be justified epistemically. False hope is hope that is based on ignorance. Hope is justified when the hoping person knows and accepts experts’ judgement about the probability of hope fulfillment. Justification determines if hope is realistic. What matters for evaluating someone’s hope is not only whether it is realistic, but also whether it is reasonable.

IX. Is Having False Hope Morally Wrong or Bad?

Although it is strange to ask whether having or instilling hope is morally desirable or undesirable, in the case of false hope it is a legitimate question. If false hope is a moral problem, having or instilling it should be counteracted.

False hope can occur in various situations and contexts. Some people are possibly more susceptible to having false hope than others, but no one is immune. The moral evaluation of false hope can be approached from two ethical points of view. One point of view is to look at the ratio between positive and negative effects of false hope as a form of hoping, first of all for the well-being of the person who hopes, but also of his or her social environment. That is the consequentialist perspective: When the positive effects of having false hope exceed the negative ones, the right thing to do is to promote false hope. The other point of view combines elements of the virtue-ethical perspective and the deontological perspective. False hope can be caused by either the actions, omissions, and vices of the bearer of hope, or by the actions, omissions, and vices of other persons. Deontology evaluates the intrinsic value of the actions and omissions resulting in false hope. Virtue ethics looks at the moral quality—the character—of the actors.

I start with the consequentialist perspective, which focuses on the effects of hoping, first of all for the well-being of the hoping person. Psychological studies show associations between self-reported hopefulness and academic achievement, athletic performance, physical health, and wellness, coping with illness and loss, psychological adjustment, social-emotional problem- solving, and the quality of interpersonal relationships (Rand and Cheavens, 2009). Hope can have positive as well as negative effects. The negative effects of hope are limited to the disappointment and frustration that occur when the hope does not materialize. This also applies to false hope. Some psychologists think that it does not matter whether hope is false, because all hope that does not come true turns out to be false (Lazarus, 1999). This view seems to be wrong because it is plausible to assume that the feelings of frustration and disappointment may be bigger and more destructive if it appears that the hope was false. If someone who hopes for a job does not get that job, she will be frustrated. She will be extra frustrated if it turns out that her hope was false, that she was wrong in assuming that she had a chance when she did not have a chance from the very beginning.

From a consequentialist perspective, false hope only becomes a moral problem when the negative effects outweigh the positive ones. Consequentialists, however, do not pay attention to the causes of false hope. As I argued in Section VII, false hope results from a cognitive deficiency, a form of ignorance. Contrary to a consequentialist perspective, a moral evaluation of false hope from a virtue-ethical and deontological perspective also looks at the sources and the causes of the ignorance that are connected with it. Ignorance can result from the actions, omissions, and the character of either the hoping person him or herself or of others. Ignorance caused by the actor him or herself can either be culpable or not culpable. Ignorance is culpable when a person has made insufficient effort to take notice of available information or to collect information necessary for making responsible choices. If a motorist killed a child because the brakes of his car were worn—a fact he was not aware of—his ignorance is culpable. He can be accused of negligence, because motorists are required to have their brakes checked regularly. When a motorist causes a bomb explosion by running into a wire stretched across a road, his ignorance is not culpable because there is no obligation to check whether there are wires stretched over the road, unless he knew that he was driving within a war zone.

Does the falsity of hope affect the moral character of hope—universally regarded as a virtue—if it results from actions, omissions, or the character of the hoping person? Does it make false hope a bad thing? Ignorance, the source of false hope, rarely flows from an intentional decision to shield oneself from information or not to collect information relevant for making decisions. It is more common that it is caused by both epistemic and moral vices such as laziness, carelessness, and sloppiness. False hope caused by such vices is clearly blameworthy when it leads to harming the interests of others. Think of the father who decides to leave his country with his family during a war, without informing himself about the best routes and the best destination. If by taking another route he could have avoided crossing the Mediterranean Sea on a dangerous ship, he is morally responsible when his family drowns. Should we also blame a person for his or her ignorance-based false hope if it does not cause any harm to others? Imagine that a young unmarried woman suddenly decides to leave Syria and starts out for Germany without careful preparation, hoping that she will be welcomed with hospitality. She falls into the hands of a criminal gang who demands that she pay €5,000 for crossing the Mediterranean by boat from Libya to Italy. However, the criminals just cash the money and disappear, leaving her behind without a penny. Did she commit a moral wrong by leaving uninformed and unprepared? What she did was, although morally permissible, certainly not virtuous. Her ignorance was culpable.

Some forms of ignorance are not easy to classify as either inculpable or culpable. I especially have in mind ignorance that results from self-deception. According to Alfred Mele, self-deception occurs when people have a belief p, and only if p is false, that is formed in a “suitable biased way” (Mele, 2001, 120). Examples are positive or negative misinterpretation of information, selectively dividing attention and selectively collecting evidence. The wife of a sailor whose ship perished years ago can continue hoping that he comes back, as long as his body is not found. However, that is extremely unlikely since the ship sank at a place where the sea is 1-km deep. Her hope, originating from self-deception, is false. Self-deception might be seen as morally permissible as long as it does not harm a person’s own interests and welfare or that of others (Martin, 1986). Let us assume that the wife of the sailor invests all her energy in the search for her husband while neglecting her children and other obligations such as her job. Can we hold her morally responsible for these undesirable consequences of her false hope? Opinions diverge on this issue. Mele (2001, 103) argues that many sources of bias are controllable and that self-deceivers can recognize and resist the influence of emotion and desire on their belief acquisition and retention, particularly in matters they deem to be important, moral or otherwise. Neil Levy (2004, 309), however, finds that, since it is rarely the case that self-deceivers possess the requisite awareness of the biasing mechanisms operating to produce their self-deceptive belief, they are unable to curb the effects of these mechanisms.

X. Is Causing False Hope Morally Wrong?

In many cases of inculpable ignorance, it is still possible to designate someone who is responsible for the actor’s ignorance. How should we judge those who cause false hope in the hoping person? When a motorist’s car had been in the garage for maintenance, but the mechanic failed to alert her that the brakes had to be replaced, the cause of her ignorance was the negligence of the mechanic. The mechanic may have deliberately failed to inform the motorist because he hoped that she would crash with the car. This is a clear case of malicious intent. Omitting information need not be motivated by malice. It can be done with the best intentions. A father may conceal from his son a letter informing that he is not admitted to a master’s program at one of the leading universities. He wants his son to keep hoping that he has a chance to be admitted. He does so in order not to spoil his son’s holiday.

The father acts morally wrongly. It is contrary to the principle of respect for autonomy to keep someone ignorant by withholding information, even with the best intentions. The son does not get the opportunity to draw his own conclusions from the information that is kept from him. The father’s act is also morally wrong from a consequentialist perspective because he can expect that the son will not only be frustrated but will also feel deceived if he hears that the letter was already delivered before their holidays.

More complicated are cases in which others have the opportunity to expose false hope caused by self-deception. One could argue that it is morally wrong not to expose the sailor’s wife’s self-deception and her false hope, even with the best intentions. However sad the truth may be, she should get the chance to resume her life in an autonomous way after accepting that her husband should be considered dead. Not exposing the wife’s false hope is prima facie wrong. There might be circumstances that justify an exception. The sailor’s wife might be so extremely unstable that she cannot bear the truth without completely breaking down mentally. In such a case, the moral wrong of causing a breakdown outweighs the moral wrong of not telling the truth.

I argued that causing someone to hope falsely is prima facie wrong. So is not exposing false hope. Having false hope is morally wrong if the hope is based on culpable ignorance and may harm the interests of others. False hope that does not affect the interests of others is morally permissible but not virtuous.

XI. False Hope and Medical Treatments

False hope is a topic frequently discussed within the medical community. In this section, I discuss false hope in the context of decisions about treatments that are a matter of life and death. In the next section, I turn to false hope in the context of medical research. In the context of treatments, false hope is related to the chance that a treatment results in a cure, prolongation of life, improvement of health, or the quality of life. A large number of studies show that having hope is very important for those who are ill. Hope makes ill people feel better, improves their mood, strengthens their motivation to undergo treatment and may even increase the chance that treatments are successful (Snyder, Irving, and Anderson, 1991; Schrank, Stanghellini, and Slade, 2008).11 Although they are aware of the risk that patients may acquire false hope or persist in their false hope, doctors fear that without the belief in a possibly effective treatment patients may fall into despair. They are not aware of the distinction between disappointment and despair or hopelessness. This mistake is also made by authoritative psychologists. “We hope because we must despair without hope,” says Richard Lazarus (1999, 674). Immediately thereafter he says, “As such, the capacity to hope is a vital coping resource. The coping process is, as it were, built into hope as an emotion” (Lazarus, 1999, 674). The assumption, that when a particular hope does not become realized a gap is created that is automatically filled by despair, is not correct. Despair or hopelessness is, according to Mathew Ratcliffe, not the loss of a particular hope, but of the ability to hope. Ratcliffe distinguishes between “intentional hope”—hope for p—and “pre-intentional hope.” The latter is a more fundamental attitude of hopefulness. Loss of the hope for p does not imply the loss of the fundamental attitude of hopeful- ness (Ratcliffe, 2013, 600). A sick person who hoped that the first treatment would be successful may lose hope for success of this particular treatment without losing the hope that an effective treatment will be found.

It used to be common for physicians not to give a patient complete information or even to withhold the truth when they thought that he or she could not cope with the whole truth. Currently, doctors tip the balance sometimes to the other side: telling patients everything. In his book The Anatomy of Hope, the oncologist-hematologist Jerome Groopman (2004) tells that he first learned from his mentor not to tell the whole truth to patients. After seeing how angry patients and their families can be when they realize that they are lied to, he became a follower of “the ideology of the right to know” and told his patients everything about their illness and their prognosis (Groopman, 2005, 43). Only later did he come to realize how important hope is: Doctors should not only tell their patients the truth but also gave them hope. They must know how to find the middle ground between “hope” and “truth” (Groopman, 2005, 57).

To what extent are physicians responsible for their patients’ false hope? False hope can arise because doctors do not, or do not completely, inform patients about the treatment’s chance of success or about the quality of life after treatment.12 If a doctor does this unintentionally, his omission is still a form of culpable negligence. Because of his negligence, the doctor is responsible for instilling false hope. When a doctor informs a patient incorrectly or incompletely because he is afraid that the patient cannot bear the truth, his behavior is paternalistic. “Lying at the bedside” is prima facie morally wrong because it is contrary to the principles of respect for autonomy and veracity.13 Prima facie means that there is room for exceptions, provided that they are justified. Let us take a look at a possible exception.

Suppose that a mentally unstable patient with lung cancer responds very well to chemotherapy. The tumor remission is already more than 50%. The patient regains hope and thinks that it is possible that he will get a few extra years. The doctor then finds that the tumor has spread to other parts of the body but, knowing how important and beneficial having hope is, she is hesitant to tell him that because she is convinced that he will lose all hope, fall into despair, and may want to stop the chemotherapy. Not telling the truth may perhaps mean that the patient only starts preparing for his death, when the spreading of the tumor becomes undeniable and death is imminent. I do not think that an exception to the principles of respect for autonomy and veracity is justified in this case, but a final judgement requires knowledge of the relevant facts of the case. As we have seen, loss of hope does not necessarily imply that a patient falls into despair.

XII. False Hope and Experimental Medical Research

Most medical literature on false hope deals with false hope of patients participating in experimental medical research, and especially in phase-I trials. Participants in phase-I trials of an entirely new drug are usually patients who no longer respond to standard treatments. After hearing the bad news, such patients often ask their doctor: “Is there nothing that you still can do for me, doctor?” The doctor might respond by saying that the patient possibly fulfils the inclusion criteria of a phase-I study for a new, experimental drug. Being a phase-I study, this study does not focus on the effectiveness of the drug but aims to establish the maximum tolerated dose. The probability that the study participants personally benefit from participating is no more than 1%.

People rarely participate in phase-I studies solely for altruistic reasons. They (also) take part because they think it will benefit them personally— usually by extending their life or by improving their quality of life. When is hope for personal benefit false? When patients think that the personal bene- fits of participating are greater than they actually are and especially when they think the chances of these benefits are greater than they really are. In such cases, patients’ hope cannot be justified and is therefore unrealistic. The majority of patients with cancer at an advanced stage who participate in phase-I studies think that the aim is to determine what their therapeutic effects are (Cox, 2002; Daugherty, Ratain and, Grochowski, 1995, Joffe et al., 2001). Two notions are used to capture this misunderstanding: therapeutic misconception and therapeutic misestimation (Pentz et al., 2012). A therapeutic misconception exists when individuals do not understand that the defining purpose of clinical research is to produce generalizable knowledge, not personal benefits (Appelbaum, Roth, and Lidz, 1982; Appelbaum et al., 1987). Therapeutic misestimations are overestimations of either the general or the personal probability of the benefits of a trial.

Therapeutic misconceptions and misestimations are very persistent. Some patients still think that participation in a trial will bring them medical benefit, although their doctor has repeatedly emphasized that medical benefits are not the goal of the treatment and that the chance of “collateral” personal benefit is almost nil. In such cases, the doctor is not responsible for the occurrence of false hope. What should a physician do when he observes the persistency of a patient’s false hope? Should he exclude a patient from participating in this study if it shows that his real motive for participation is false hope? If he does, he may take away the patient’s last hope. But if he admits the patient to the study, does he not become complicit in the patient’s self-deception? I want to emphasize again that hope should not be regarded as false too soon. If a patient knows, and is aware, that the probability of participating in a study will result in personal medical benefit of only 3%, and he still hopes for benefit, his hope is realistic. His hope is also reasonable if it serves his personal objectives. Hope is false if a patient persists in an incorrect assessment of the probability that she will benefit from participating in an experimental study, despite her doctor’s repeated attempts to correct this assessment. Apparently, the patient does not want to know the truth. In such a case, the doctor should admit her to a study if this is what she really wants.

Physicians may also be indirectly responsible for the occurrence of false hope. If a doctor is personally involved in the study as a researcher, then the information he gives to the patient may become biased. When doctors have an interest in enrolling a sufficient number of subjects in a study, this may influence the way they frame the information about the pros and cons of participating. That does not mean that they are not honest or do violence to the truth. Information is always framed. A salesman who does not give as much attention to the weaknesses of his product as to its strengths can still not be said to cheat the customer. A doctor who is also on the research team is expected to inform potential participants about the risks of side effects and the minimal chances of personal benefit. In addition, he will undoubtedly also mention the benefits of participation: regular visits to the hospital will enable patients to give structure to their life, subjects receive extra attention and the best care, the research is of great importance for science and for future patients. It is not inconceivable that patients will then acquire false hope that is insufficiently based on the facts.

XIII. Conclusion

In the first part of this article, I aimed at clarifying that hope is more than a combination of a desire and an assessment of the probability that the desire is fulfilled which is >0 and <1. Imagination and anticipation are also components of hope. Moreover, hope implies acting where possible and resignation when acting is no longer an option. In the second part, I showed that hope is false if it cannot be justified epistemically. There is, I argued, an intimate relation between false hope and ignorance. Hope is false, if it is based on ignorance of the correct assessment of the probability that a desire is fulfilled or on ignorance with regard to the desirability of the object of desire. Hope is justified—realistic—when the hoping person knows and accepts experts’ judgement about the probability of hope fulfillment. However, I argued, what matters for evaluating a person’s hope is not only whether it is realistic, but also whether it is reasonable in light of the aim and goals for which the person strives in (the remainder of) his life. Part three was about the question of what is wrong about having or causing false hope. If false hope is a moral problem, having or instilling it should be counteracted. I showed that from a consequentialist perspective, false hope only becomes a moral problem when the negative effects outweigh the positive ones. From a deontological and virtue-ethical point of view, having false hope is morally wrong if the hope is based on culpable ignorance. False hope that does not affect the interests of others is morally permissible but not virtuous. I argued that causing someone to hope falsely is prima facie wrong, and so is not exposing false hope. In the fourth part, I show the relevance of the insights from the previous parts for the debate on false hope in medicine and clinical research. I discussed to what extent physicians are responsible for the false hope of their patients and what they should do when patients cling to their false hope in spite of being properly informed. I showed that a person’s hope that an (experimental) treatment may prolong his or her life or improve the quality of his or her life can only be called false when he or she thinks that the chances of personal benefits are greater than those estimated by experts. If he or she does accept their judgement, continuing to hope is realistic. Hope is moreover reasonable if it contributes to realizing what a person strives for in (the remainder of) his life.

Notes

Examples of twentieth-century thinkers for whom hope was the structural principle of their philosophy or theology are the neo-Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch (1963), the Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann (1964), the phenomenological philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1962), and Catholic philosopher Joseph Pieper (1997). According to Nicholas Smith (2008, 6), “Hope was a matter of ‘first philosophy’ for them; that is, of significance for solving the basic problems (or deciphering the fundamental enigmas) of metaphysics, philosophical anthropology and philosophy of history. For all the interest these thinkers still have for us, it is hard to see how the ‘principle of hope’ can be made plausible in quite such an emphatic fashion today.”

Among them—again—Moltmann, Marcel, and Pieper.

This is Day’s own formulation: “A hopes that p” is true iff “A wishes [i.e., desires] that p, and A thinks that p has some degree of probability, however small” is true (Day, 1969, 89).

According to Downie there are two criteria that are independently necessary and together sufficient for “hope that”: first is that the object of hope must be desired by the hoper . . . The second . . . is that the object of hope falls within a range of physical possibility which includes the improbable but excludes the certain and the merely logically possible (1963, 249). Downie makes a distinction between “hoping that” and “being hopeful that.” For the definition of being hopeful a third criterion is needed: “ . . . a belief that the object of hope is likely to be attained” (1963, 250). That criterion goes beyond the minimum conditions for the probability of hope. 

According to Nicholas Smith, the experience of hope is best described as “ . . . an anticipation of something, in the sense of seizing it in advance and projectively uniting ourselves with an objective of which we are uncertain (and perhaps even unconscious)” (2008, 17).

This is Meirav’s formulation: “More generally to think of an external factor, personal or impersonal, as good is to think of it as operating like someone who, to a substantial degree, can benefit me, wants to benefit me, and knows how to do so” (2009, 232).

Snyder is the (co-)author of numerous articles and books on hope. Here, I refer to Snyder (2002).

In his research Snyder focuses primarily on the differences between people with a lot of hope (“high hope”) and little hope (“low hope”). People with a lot of hope have, for example, more positive emotions than those with little hope, and focus on more targets, also with more attention. Hope is, according to Snyder, first of all a thought process; emotions are secondary. The idea of being successful in achieving one’s goals evokes positive emotions whereas the idea of not attaining one’s goals evokes negative emotions. The probability of achieving goals hardly plays a role in the “hope theory.” Snyder initially thought hope was only relevant when pursuing goals whose implementation was uncertain and less likely. He later dropped that restriction. The reason was that his conversations with “high hope” people made it clear that when working on easy targets they always came up with additional tasks for them- selves, the success of which was uncertain (such as doing something faster or in a more complex way).

See Williams (2013) about the actor relativity of probability thresholds.

Day does not distinguish between realistic and reasonable hope.

See, for a general discussion of the role of hope in health care, Christy Simpson (2004).

William Ruddick (1999) offers an excellent discussion on “hope and deception.”

The “principle of veracity” stems from Sissela Bok who formulates strict conditions for justifying a violation of that principle which she calls the “Scheme of Applied Publicity.” That scheme consists of critical self-examination and consultation with a group of people representative of the general public (Bok, 1978).

References

Appelbaum, P. S., L. H. Roth, and C. W. Lidz. 1982. The therapeutic misconception: in- formed consent in psychiatric research. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 5(3–4):319–29.

Appelbaum, P. S., L. H. Roth, C. W. Lidz, P. Benson, and W. Winslade. 1987. False hopes and best data: Consent to research and the therapeutic misconception. Hasting Center Report 17(2):20–4.

Baumeister, R. F. 1989. The optimal margin of illusion. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 64(2):899–922.

Bloch, E. 1963. Das Prinzip Hoffnung. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp.

Bok, S. 1978. Lying. Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. New York: Pantheon Books.

Bovens, L. 1999. The value of hope. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59(3):667–81.

Cox, K. 2002. Informed consent and decision-making: Patients’ experiences of the process of recruitment to phases I and II anti-cancer drug trials. Patient Education and Counseling

46(1):31–8.

Daugherty, C. K., M. J. Ratain, and E. Grochowski. 1995. Perceptions of cancer patients and their physicians involved in phase I trials. Journal of Clinical Oncology 13(9):1062–72.

Day, J. P. 1969. Hope. American Philosophical Quarterly 6(2):89–102.

———. 1991. Hope: A Philosophical Inquiry. Helsinki: Philosophical Society of Finland.

Downie, R. S. 1963. Hope. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 24(2):248–51.

Groopman, J. 2004. The Anatomy of Hope. How People Prevail in the Face of Illness. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Hume, D. 1896. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press.

Joffe, S., E. F. Cook, P. D. Cleary, J. W. Clark, and J. Weeks. 2001. Quality of informed consent in cancer clinical trials: A cross-sectional survey. Lancet 358(9295):1772–7.

Lazarus, R. S. 1999. Hope: An emotion and a vital coping resource against despair. Social Research 66(2):653–78.

Levy, N. 2004. Self-deception and moral responsibility. Ratio 17(3):294–311.

Marcel, G. 1962. Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope. Trans. E. Crawford. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Martin, M. W. 1986. Self-Deception and Morality. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

McGeer, V. 2004. The art of good hope. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 592(1):100–27.

Meirav, A. 2009. The nature of hope. Ratio 22(2):216–33.

Mele, A. R. 2001. Self-Deception Unmasked. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Moltmann, J. 1964. Theologie der Hoffnung. München, Germany: Chr. Kaiser.

Pentz, R. D., M. White, R. D. Harvey, Z. L. Farmer, Y. Liu, C. Lewis, O. Dashevskaya,

T. Owonikoko, and F. R. Khuri. 2012. Therapeutic misconception, misestimation and optimism in subjects enrolled in phase I trials. Cancer 118(18):4571–8.

Pettit, P. 2004. Hope and its place in mind. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 592(1):152–65.

Pieper, J. 1997. Über die Hoffnung. München, Germany: Kösel.

Polivy, J. 2001. The false hope syndrome: Unrealistic expectations of self-change. International Journal of Obesity 25(1):580–4.

Rand, K. L., and J. S. Cheavens. 2009. Hope theory. In Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, eds. S. L. Lopez and C. R. Snyder, 323–33. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ratcliffe, M. 2013. What is it to lose hope? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12(4):597–614.

Ruddick, W. 1999. Hope and deception. Bioethics 13(3–4):343–57.

Schrank, B., G. Stanghellini, and M. Slade. 2008. Hope in psychiatry. A review of the literature. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 118(6):421–33

Simpson, C. 2004. When hope makes us vulnerable. A discussion of patient-healthcare provider interactions in the context of hope. Bioethics 18(5):428–47.

Smith, N. 2008. Analysing hope. Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory 9(1):5–23.

Snyder, C. R. 2002. Hope theory. Rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry 13(4):249–75.

Snyder, C. R., L. M. Irving, and J. R. Anderson. 1991. Hope and health. In Handbook of Social and Clinical Psychology: The Health Perspective, eds. C. R. Snyder and D. R. Forsyth, 285–305. New York: Pergamon Press.

Snyder, C. R., K. L. Rand, E. A. King, D. B. Feldman, and J. T. Woodward. 2002. False hope. Journal of Clinical Psychology 58(9):1003–22.

Spinoza, B. 1985. Ethics. The Collected Writings of Spinoza, vol. 1. Trans. E. Curley. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Stengers, I. 2002. Interview. In Hope: New Philosophies for Social Change, ed. M. Zournai, 244–274. Annandale, Australia: Pluto Press.

Waterworth, J. 2004. A Philosophical Analysis of Hope. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Williams, B. 2013. The agent-relative probability threshold of hope. Ratio 26(2):179–95.