#perhaps theyre hard to write because i dont read them often? who knows

[shunshuntaiga]

angst anon back with a Concept ™

btw sorry sorry sorry for clogging your askbox feel free to tell me to stop i won't mind

ok, so... what about.. hear me out!... spadeliano hanahaki au 👀 it could go either way because honestly they're both emotionally constipated enough to almost die from all the unrequited (in their head) love.

I will be extremely honest anon, though I have heard the word, i have absolutely no clue what Hanahaki au's are XD i can presume from your ask that it's something to do with loving someone so much it kills you? But other than that, not the foggiest.

However, they are both so emotionally constipated that if that's the case, yes I could see that being fun. Although after my last fantasy type au (I did a soulmates au) I am a little intimidated by going with canon world breaking au's. Hats off to anyone who can write those because man, I STRUGGLED with it.

[cowboyjen68]

Hi jen! 20 something masc bisexual who just cant figure out if theyre a man or a woman here. I dont really feel comfortable talking about this stuff but writing anonymously is a lot less daunting and you seem like a really chill person and such a good mom. When i was youger, around 16, i cut my hair short and dressed less conventional (stopped wearing what my mom put out for me lol), bc i wanted to express myself. I didnt get the "mens" haircut i wanted originally, but i made up for it with flannels and hoodies. Slowly, occasionally, people started to ask me my sex/gender and when someone read me as male i was over the moon. By the time i was 18 i had stopped wearing makeup and tried hard to pass as male. It became pretty exhausting and my bestfriend is a very feminine guy, who usually gets read as a woman, inspired me to care less what people think i am. Im trying to take things as they come but with my mullet (thick long hair in the back) i noticed people read me as female more often than not. Its not insulting, but i cant help but feel disappointed. It felt so right when people read me as male. Im considering transitioning but i hate the idea of coming out to my family (as trans) and im scared of "being wrong about all this and screwing my body up", even thougt I like the prospect of the physical changes testosterone brings. All in all, I feel like ive been stuck in this undecided period for so long and something needs to change.

Im grateful for any words of advice :)

I am so sorry for the delay, my seasonal side jobs keep me very busy. I owe you some sincerity here because you asked and trust me to give you the truth, at least as I see it.

Of course I cannot in anyway see inside you or know the mix of emotions you have or the complex amount of experiences you have had in your 20 something life. When someone is struggling with hard questions being “PC” does no one any favors so here is my best take, but ultimately you know what is best and perhaps a therapist that will not just be a "yes" person would be very helpful.

Firstly, if you decide to transition for whatever reason, comfort, ease of experiencing the world etc, there is no rule that says you have to do anything at all to alter your body. You can be who you are within yourself. I am a lesbian and a woman whether or not some stranger on the street thinks so. (and the amount of time I am called "sir" in one day changes absolutely zero about me). Same applies to you. If you are concerned about medical or hormonal intervention you are not wrong to have caution. Anytime we take any medication from a blood pressure pill to nasal spray, doing due diligence and understanding the affects on our body is important. And each of us must take into consideration body health, genetics, dr suggestions, past medical history and the reality of what time, money and effort we are capable of exerting, especially if it means for a life time 

That all being said short hair, clothes, your interests and personality are not (should not) be gendered. There is no reason a woman can’t be and exist as a female who is not always thrilled with her body (looks and function) and be a human who loves doing a myriad of things that may or may not fit what society prescribes as our gender roles.  

You say you are disappointed when read as female? Why?  Do you dislike that they are not seeing the real you OR because you know being read as such means, in our culture, you are seen as less capable, treated differently, perceived as weak, not as smart as men and treated as the lesser of our society simply based on your body?  Either way, this is a them problem and not a you problem. You are as flawed, strong, smart, confident as you are no matter how they see you. It is not up to them to decide how human you get to be based on what sex you are. No one fits all the general attributes imposed gender roles wish for us to follow. 

Ask yourself, if I transition and am still consistently read as female, how will that affect me?  Will I become angry because I am putting time, effort and money into presentation and people still see what they see?  Am I going to feel better able to shrug off mistakes make by quick glances or because people have known me for years because I am more true to me?  Transition should happen in a vacuum, in my opinion. (disclaimer: I am not trans so perhaps this is not how trans men feel) You are who you are whether in a crowd of people or alone in a forest. Others should never make that decision or set the bar for you. EVER. They have no investment in your internal self. 

Since you are asking me, this is my experience. In my early years i understood very quickly how I was treated differently when people (men and women) saw me as a little boy instead of a little girl. In my teens I saw the way girls who hit puberty before me were immediately treated sexually, will less respect and I was like” well shit”.  I would have happily been seen as a boy/man and probably went to length to insure that. At 12 I was pretty confident I wanted to be or should have been a boy. My mom very colorfully explained to me there are issues with both sides and am a girl who wants what boys get in the world.. sooo get them as a girl.  THEN I met other lesbians and butches and bi women who are masculine and they told me their stories.. which were just like mine. I realized to be a man I had to give up being a woman and being a woman, my reality, physically and in my upbringing (in the 1980′s and 1990″) was the best and only way to connect to other people because I was not different with them or alone. I needed to be me 24/7 not just in public, not just at parties, not just with friends, but when I was alone, at night or mowing the yard. Perception and societal opinion had nothing to do with my body, my mind, my personality. 

Am I still affected by gender roles? Of course. Our society genders everything from pocket knives (camo or pink camo) to cars, abilities to shampoo! Do i sometimes let it slide when a man thinks he is talking to another man, sure.. why not? I learn somethings (some things I don’t want to know on occasion). But at the end of the day, most of the people I deal with begin to see me as a kind, capable women or...(translation: human) and when it counts I don’t want to be vague or dodgy about my sex, my gender or my sexual orientation. Who I am, who I deserved to be, my right to exist as me is too important. None of these were over night revelations. Time, experience, community as all helped me understand:

You have to live with you forever and always, don’t try to exist as the easiest way for society to view you. 

[theunconcernedembalmer]

what’s the issue with elisop? is it just bc you hc aesop as ace? im so concerned by seeing ppl adamantly opposed to mlm/wlw ships but im also genuinely curious about why you dislike it and other lgbt ships so much lol

hmm. that is a strong accusation, n i find it just a bit odd. are you new here? or perhaps you are taking personal offense at my dislike towards a favourite ship of yours and using the lgbt argument as moral high ground?

whatever the case may be, i thank you for asking. if u r truly looking for an answer, its below the cut n it is very very long. mind u these are all my personal opinions n i am in no way policing how others enjoy ships. just in case this wasnt clear; i dont wish to start discourse on this blog, especially since my takes are probably... unpopular.

firstly i would like to address the “disliking lgbt ships” bit, because this has very strong implications in itself. i have nothing against lgbt ships. i enjoy them, even. if the two characters have chemistry between each other, i ship it. however, the moment characterization is broken for the sake of romance, i lose interest. this is generally my stance on ships in general, n this applies for both straight n lgbt ships. 

the ships themselves are fine. however, i do have issues with the ship dynamics, so ill let u in on that.

i want to touch on mlm ships in particular; i believe u are familiar with the top/bottom dynamic that is rampant in these kinds of ships? (i wont deny that this dynamic can be found in other types of ships, but for arguments sake i will be focusing on gay ships because i feel that this occurs more commonly here) its such a popular dynamic that is prone to stripping the personality from one if not both characters, only for them to be reduced to being dominant/submissive. for a character to be pigeonholed into a stereotypical category based on... preferred sexual positions? its just downright insulting, never mind the larger more problematic implications of it. top/bottom is not indicative of someones personality, by the way. flattening multi dimensional characters into these stereotypes is so so so insulting.

unfortunately this is The Most Popular portrayal of just about any gay ship around. ive seen it being used everywhere in so many fandoms n it just about becomes apparent to me that ppl come to stories looking for a Ship. not the stories, nor the characters, just a ship. while id like to say theres nothing wrong with that, keep in mind not everyone is just looking for 2 characters that look pretty next to each other. if i ship something, i see interesting n meaningful interactions between 2 characters, which is so often not the case once u bring in the top/bottom dynamic. why is it so popular? because somehow this is what ppl like from a gay ship n hence it sells. ppl want the drama, characterizations be damned. ppl want to see the big kiss that happens in the end, n maybe the sexy parts that come after. characterizations be damned.

so u can say im a little wary of gay ships when they cross my feed. hell, as a joseph aesop shipper i see this trope everywhere n im pretty disappointed as well. small tangent but i feel like this is the reason why zh0ngli n ch1lde is so popular in g3nshin. i try to see the appeal, i really do, but after a long while of analyzing their respective characters i dont think they have as much chemistry as ppl think they do. dont even get me started on how incredibly ooc they make either of these very interesting n unique characters in ship portrayals. all because of the top/bottom dynamic that ppl want to see. i say this for that particular ship, but this is pretty much the case for a lot of ships out there, n the latter part is painfully true even when the 2 characters do have potential between each other. ill say it again im disgusted by the blatant disrespect to the characterizations if all ppl ever want is 2 pretty puppets to mush lips together. cos thats what theyre essentially reduced to this way.

n its so obvious to see when an artist subscribes to this rhetoric, because u can so clearly see it in the way they draw their characters. the “top” generally has sharper features to go with their “dominating personality”, while the “bottom” has disturbingly softer, feminine, dare i say sometimes child like features “to submit”. n thats where the uwu soft gay trope comes from, i believe. which, in case u still dont know, i hate with a burning passion.

so again for ppl with impaired reading comprehension, im fine with ships, including lgbt ones, but the moment u break characterization for the sake of the ship, im not that okay with it. u want to do it for a short crack comic? fine. but if thats the only way ur portraying the 2 characters then im immediately wary of ur content. ill still look at it cos usually the art is really good, but im very very wary. so im not “adamantly opposed”, just very critical of how the ships are being portrayed. if other ppl want to enjoy their ships like that, sure. just dont expect me to join in on something i dont agree on.

.

now id like to address not shipping “because i hc aesop as ace”. for ppl who are new to the blog (hello there), im an ace in a romantic relationship, so thats definitely not the reason i dont ship elisop. its more of being in a relationship has largely shaped my views towards romance as a whole. even before i met my boyfriend, i hated the romance genre in stories n media. most of it comes off as incredibly forced, especially those love triangles they seem to love putting into teen novels. thats one reason why i stopped reading when i was younger, but i digress.

did i partake in shipping when i was younger? i did. for a gay ship too (if anyone really wants to know, its kurotsukki from haikyuu. at least this was one that i can remember, i was mostly working on my 20 odd ocs for the longest time). i also used to write little short romance ficlets that i never posted anywhere cos i hated (n still do hate) my writing. but writing romance when u dont have experience was really just a way of projecting n probably a way of coping for myself, not that i knew at that time. but after i actually started a relationship with my boyfriend (whom i love n cherish a lot thank u very much), i began to see how much all these have skewed my views towards romance n have actually done some harm to our relationship. the bullshit that the general media feeds u constantly doesnt help in the slightest either.

quick topic shift to elisop in particular (about time, right?). i already stated that i only ship characters if i sense chemistry between the two personalities, n if u have seen the part where i dont ship elisop then u must have seen how agonized i am over not being able to have a concrete personality for eli. that is the main problem i have with elisop: eli does not feel like a solid character to me. n that is a huge problem, because if he doesnt have any defining characteristics besides being mild n nice, then he can be whoever i want him to be. (i have done this in my exorcist comics, i will admit this. n the fact that i can just do that... it really does not sit well with me personally.)

n that is dangerous.

back to young me doing lil ship things. i think its also pretty safe to say when u really do ship 2 characters, chances are u kinda really relate very very hard to at least one of them. that very quickly can turn into projecting, n shipping therefore is not “exploring the relationship between 2 characters” n it becomes “my preferred dating simulator 101″. of course this isnt always the case, but at least it was for me, n subconsciously it might be for lots of ppl too. n since this is ur mental playground, u call the shots, n there is no consequences if u slightly (or even entirely) alter one or both personalities to fit ur desired narrative. n u wouldnt even notice or know, cos ur blind to ur own biasness.

we bring our perceived notions into real life, im sure u know that. so when ur partner does not become that perfect knight in shining armour, or when they get upset at things that u do (which is a very normal thing by the way), n u think (very subconsciously), That isnt what my otp would do, something is wrong here (nothing is wrong, actually its just ur skewed perception of a stable romantic relationship). why wouldnt ur otp do this? because u are both halves of ur otps, there is no hidden secrets between them (apart from the pining part but thats irrelevant), n again they have been altered to fit ur preferred narrative. 

a real relationship requires a lot of communication between parties, because newsflash, liking someone doesnt mean that u have to like every single thing they do, they will make mistakes n it will hurt u, n guess what, the reverse is also true. if u do go with absoutely anything that they would do with 0 objections whatsoever, ur not crushing on someone, ur idolizing them, n that power imbalance is detrimental to a relationship. these things are not obvious to ppl, especially when the whole climate is hell bent on getting into romantic relationships by a certain age or some bullshit. communication is key n is pretty much the only way to solve relationship issues, because the other person has a lot that u r not seeing n vice versa. as similar as 2 ppl can be, i doubt u can have 100% the same thoughts on all things. i dont make the rules.

so in ur mental playground u focus on the fluffy parts, maybe there is communication, but rarely is there any meaningful conflict. thats unrealistic, n if u bring that mindset to an actual relationship, thats not going to end well. i say meaningful conflict, because yes, generally u shouldnt have conflicts with ur significant other. but inevitably when ur with each other for long enough, u will realize that there are habits that u must change in order to be with the other person. habits that are harmful to the other person directly, or harmful habits towards yourself that indirectly harm the other person. these are meaningful in a sense that if left alone, it will manifest into larger problems that will harm u, the other person n the relationship as a whole. its meaningful to the relationship.

all these is made even worse if ur neurodivergent. maladaptive coping practices, self sabotaging behaviours, inherent disabilities. all these must be adjusted n addressed. im so incredibly thankful for my boyfriend for being incredibly patient with me when working all these out, n it has not been easy for me to work on myself n all my problems, n im still not done working on them. this aspect is often not explored in romance in general (or properly), n there is a very good chance i would have still been stuck in the unhealthy mindset of “this isnt like my otp, maybe we’re not meant to be”. because loving someone is a choice. no one is made for each other, it is a conscious choice made between 2 ppl to make things work. this is how arranged marriages work, i am told, n i do see the appeal, not that it actually does appeal to me culturally.

special mention to the kurotsukki ship, cos from there i found a very, very good fic that explored their relationship before n after getting together, n it actually showed aspects of this problem in the incredibly slow burn of (at that time) 20+ chapters. it was just one fic (n a very good one at that, i believe it was called Leviticus), but it had a lesson i never thought i needed to learn, n learn it i did, with a lot of help from my dear. 

this is also probably the reason why i dont really want to delve too much into romance now. i know its a lot of work, n everything (mostly) that the media feeds u is really false advertising, but ppl eat that shit up n so it remains one of the most popular genres to date. im just very wary that if i do start on a romantic story, i want to be able to show it in a way like that fic did, the truths of relationships, because i dont want to make something that sells, i want to make something that meaningful to me, if a little indulgent. n that also includes being very careful in how the respective characterizations will change in a relationship. almost too careful now that i think about it, but its not something that i mind. i was never one for romance from the start, n now im very careful about shipping because of what happened to me persoanlly.

okay enough about me, lets talk about aesop. in any au u put the character in, the essence of the character must remain despite the change in environment. so lets say we have ur typical modern au. dead mom, check. shitty mentor doing illegal stuff? also check. autistic boy with social anxiety? we’re good to go. all these have implications on aesop as a character, n while ppl are aware of this, again the way they go about portraying it can go, in my personal opinion, very wrong. ppl who immediately woobify aesop completely because he has autism annoy me. ppl who reduce him to uwu soft boi cos he has social anxiety do not know how the disorder really works n as someone who has that i hate it to the core. ppl who do all these for the sake of ship have lost my respect. its insulting.

remember the top/bottom dynamic? not that elisop is completely free from that (even if i dont know much about eli, to put him in either one of those stereotypes feels very insulting to his character. i wont even say anything about doing it to aesop its so upsetting), but its not entirely made up of either. but now i want to introduce another trope i am very wary of, which is “i can fix him”. im sure u guys have seen the meme going around poking fun at this trope (for those who havent, its along the lines of “u can fix him? well i can be his worst nightmare”) n no doubt yall would have seen it n gotten sick of it in some forced hetero romantic bullshit. we have one damsel in distress with a saviour that solves all their problems just by existing n being romo with each other.

remember “my preferred dating simulator 101″? this is not mutually exclusive n from my point of view this is dangerously close to this trope. lets be real, if it was actually a thing that all ur deep rooted trauma magically disappears if someone were to waltz into ur life, we would want it. definitely. no painfully dissecting ur own problems n constantly facing them head on. real life states that this is not the case, but it will not stop us from dreaming. n so this trope is born n lives n will go on.

(finally) pulling aesop n eli into this, at least in my mind, u have one severely traumatized boy with lots of issues n u have this. nice mild guy who can be anything u want him to be. i hope u can see where im going with this, n thats the direction i see some elisop heading towards (i dont read a lot of elisop to be fair). if u came from my eli character talk, i mentioned that it is incredibly one sided. this is exactly what im talking about.

putting it all together in case u havent already, aesop is the damsel in distress, whose problems magically disappear because of elis godly kindness n little to no work on improving himself, n they lived happily n gayly ever after.

can u tell how much that does not appeal to me. 

never mind the butchering of character that inevitably happens somewhere somehow, the unrealistically perfect themes n implications of this trope makes me so viscerally uncomfortable. this is, of course, due to personal reasons, n i definitely see the appeal of this dynamic because i would probably have been interested in this once upon a time as well. but as i am now, with everything i have explained up there n everything i have been through, i would politely rather not.

n its difficult to think of another dynamic, because of how little i know about eli apart from him being this saint, which easily makes him a candidate for being aesops trauma panacea. never mind aesop rarely, if ever, does anything for eli as a character in return, n its so damaging to buy into this rhetoric, where a person like this who would solve all ur issues no strings attached exists somewhere in the world. they really dont. a relationship has to be mutually benefitting, or it will be draining n disastrous. maybe u say, Oh its nice to imagine it once in a while. n yeah, i agree, except once in a while is a little difficult to keep track of n that is sort of what happened to me. id rather stay as far away as possible from this kind of unrealistic fantasy, i just got this shit sorted out with myself n my boyfriend.

i have some other reasons, but theyre more personally problematic, so i wont go into them here. but this is mostly n generally why i do not ship elisop romantically. if u do, u do u, and have fun, but again dont expect me to join u. thank u for coming to my ted talk, this took a lot longer than expected.

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Lie About Everything

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-lie-about-everything/

Why Do Republicans Lie About Everything

Which Came First: Republican Hate Or Gop Misinformation

Do Honest Republicans Still Exist?

Hate is a great motivator. All political parties have used it to get out the vote. Generally, those who seek elected office shape information in a way that helps a certain voting block hate their opponent. Thats how we elect people in America. That is a sad reality we just have to accept in order to fix it. Hope doesnt fix it.

Whats unique and new about negative politics in the post-Obama era is that we have this thing called the Internet and dare I acknowledge itSocial Media. ;Social media has completely isolated the Republican Party base. The Internet and social media have created hard-edged, isolated buckets of information where facts dont matteragreement;and emotion matter. For republicans, agreement with their own bias is considered fact, whereas disagreement is a lie they literally transform reality to support their own opinion: the Post-Truth Era. In order to maintain that alternate reality, they have to hate those who dont agree, otherwise their reality bubble starts to break apart.

This is the case on both sides of the aisle, but the hardliners have taken it to a new level, which is why they seem to hate everything. Theyre even taught to hate things that help them like the ACA, unions, and public education.

Social media and 1000 cable channels dont increase the information we receive they focus the information and repeat it 1000 times more often. Anything can become the truth when its repeated enough times.

The Big Lie Is Gop Gospel

Cheney is not alone in suffering consequences for challenging Trumps allegations.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defended the states counting process against Trumps attempts to interfere with it, was stripped of his voting power on the State Election Board as part of Georgias new voting restrictions law.

In a special House election in Texas held on in early May, the Trump-critical Republican in the race Michael Wood got 3 percent of the vote.

In January, Michigan Republicans removed Aaron van Langevelde, a GOP attorney who broke with the party to certify Bidens victory in Michigan, from his post on the states Board of State Canvassers.

At the Utah Republican Partys convention this weekend, Sen. Mitt Romney perhaps the GOPs leading Trump critic was booed and called a traitor.

At the same time, Republicans who have embraced falsehoods about the election have been elevated.

Rep. Elise Stefanik , who appears likely to replace Cheney in the No. 3 spot, backed Trumps anti-election efforts to the hilt. Most egregiously, she falsely asserted that there were 140,000 illegal votes in Georgias Fulton County alone which would amount to more than 25 percent of all the votes in the entire Democratic-leaning county. The breakout Republican stars in the House of Representatives, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert , both egged on the January Stop the Steal rally that culminated in the attack on Capitol Hill.

Why Do Conservatives Soak Up Lies

The evidence that conservatives crave lies is abundant.

Conservatives loved George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s lies about “Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction” — loved them so much, that the researchers who wrote “‘There Must Be a Reason’: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification” surveyed 49 conservative Republicans, during October 2004, who admitted that they still believed Saddam Hussein had caused the 9/11 attacks, and these researchers found that 48 of those 49 extreme conservatives were entirely impervious to the overwhelming factual evidence that was provided to them by the presenters contradicting this false belief they held. Then, a showed that when Republicans were offered the official 2004 Duelfer report that had concluded Iraq hadn’t possessed any weapons of mass destruction for years before the United States invaded it in 2003, the percentage of Republicans who believed that Iraq did have WMD immediately prior to the invasion shot up, instead of going down . Even all of the exposés that had already been published about Bush’s faked WMD “proofs” didn’t persuade Republican voters that they’d simply been deceived by the people they trusted and supported. They didn’t resent it at all; they just asked for more, from those same discredited liars.

So: why do conservatives sop up lies, on topic after topic?

They do it because, if they didn’t, they couldn’t be themselves; they couldn’t be conservatives. Lie-lovers is whom they are. It’s their identity.

———-

Don’t Miss: Have Democrats Tried To Impeach Every Republican President

The Gop Elite Gave Us This Party

This dire outcome was not inevitable: The best evidence we have suggests that the rise of the Big Lie is the direct result of strategic choices by Republican leaders.

A new paper by Dan Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, analyzes data from a panel survey, which looks at roughly the same group of people over time, running between 2007 and 2020. The survey asked people to rate the fairness of the US electoral system on a scale of 1 to 5, and tracked the changes over time.

What they found was a striking consistency: Support for the American system is both high and reasonably stable when assessed via this measure, Hopkins writes. Though there are some fluctuations, with partisans evaluating the system as somewhat less fair when the other party is in power, generally theyre small.

Hopkinss last survey wave was in October 2020 which means the results dont reflect the false allegations lobbed in the aftermath of Bidens victory. The stability documented here was very likely shattered by Trumps post-election actions, Hopkins concludes.

Other data confirm this supposition. A report from the Voter Study Group analyzed Pew surveys, conducted after every presidential election since 2004, on whether voters thought their vote was counted fairly. You see the same general stability documented in Hopkinss paper, with a majority of voters in both parties saying they were very confident their vote was counted accurately in every year except 2020:

Republicans Have A Good Reason Not To Want To Investigate Jan 6: Theyre To Blame

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Our nations preeminent bipartisanship fetishistsJoe Manchin, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowskiare deeply disappointed that they cant get Republicans to back an investigation into the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill. Indeed, they seem outright baffled that their efforts at compromise have fallen short on plans for a bipartisan panel. There is no excuse for any Republican to vote against this commission since Democrats have agreed to everything they asked for, Manchin said in an angry statement on Twitter. It would be so much better if we had an independent outside commission, Collins, a moderate Republican, told reporters Thursday. Is that really what this is about, one election cycle after another? added Murkowski, blasting Mitch McConnells anticipated filibuster. Or are we going to acknowledge that as a country that is based on these principles of democracy that we hold so dear, and one of those is that we have free and fair elections.

I kind of want that to endure beyond just one election cycle, the Alaska moderate Republican told reporters.

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More Great Stories FromVanity Fair

Recommended Reading: Did Trump Really Say Republicans Are Stupid

In 2009 Republicans Predicted That The Economic Stimulus Package Would Only Make The Recession Worse And Cause More Unemployment

The results show they couldn’t have been more wrong. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ended the recession after only a few months. Although 750,000 people were losing their jobs each month when Obama took office, after the Recovery Act was passed the rate of job loss immediately decreased each month and within a year the economy showed positive job growth.

Considering the severity of the 2008 economic collapse and the total opposition by Republicans to do anything at all to stimulate the economy, it is remarkable that the US economy recovered as quickly as it did.

Looking at the rate of job loss and job creation, its easy to see that the stimulus of 2009 was highly successful in stopping the job losses and turning the economy around.

Republicans Predicted That We Would Find Iraqs Weapons Of Mass Destruction Even Though Un Weapons Inspectors Said That Those Weapons Didn’t Exist

The Bush administration continued to insist that WMDs would be found, even when the CIA said some of the evidence was questionable. As we all know, the WMDs predicted by the Bush administration did not exist, and Saddam Hussein had not resumed his nuclear weapons program as they claimed. Ultimately, both President Bush and Vice President Cheney had to admit that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Don’t Miss: Who Is Behind Republicans For The Rule Of Law

Republicans Said President Obama Would Raise Taxes Sky High

It never happened. Income taxes for over 95% of Americans remained the same or lower than they were before Obama was elected. The only people whose income taxes increased were those who make more than $400,000 per year, and their taxes rose only 3%. For most Americans, taxes are still lower now than they were under Reagan.

In 1993 When The Brady Law And The Assault Weapons Ban Were Passed Republicans Predicted Increasing Rates Of Crime And Murder

Republicans Are Lying To Themselves About Trump’s Toxicity

Thankfully, just the opposite happened. While the rate of violent crime had increased steadily from the 1970s into the 1990s, it suddenly began to drop after 1993 and continued to decline for more than ten years. What could have happened in 1993 to precipitate such a sudden and prolonged drop in crime? Thats the year Congress passed the Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady Law, which mandated background checks and a waiting period to buy a gun.

Despite Republican predictions to the contrary, the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban were followed by the most dramatic reduction in violent crime since the FBI started keeping statistics. The graphs below, based on the actual numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports website, show how the rates of murder and violent crime in the US dropped suddenly after the 1993 Brady Law and Assault Weapons Ban were passed.

These charts show the rate of murder and violent crime over 35 years based on numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime reports.

Recommended Reading: How Many Republicans Voted For Obamacare In The Senate

Here Are A Few More Things Republicans Have Been Wrong About:

Republicans said that Obamacare would have death panels to decide who would live and who would die. Wrong. No such death panels were ever proposed and nothing of the kind ever happened.

They said the 2009 laws to improve automobile fuel efficiency standards would kill the US auto industry. Wrong. The new standards were followed by a resurgence of the US auto industry enabling them to hire back tens of thousands of workers.

They said environmental protection laws requiring companies to clean up their pollution would create an undue burden and kill businesses. Nope, it never happened.

They said Ebola would spread across the country because President Obama allowed American Ebola patients to be treated in the US. The outbreak never happened. Only three people contracted Ebola in the US and all three survived.

They said President Obama would open our borders to illegal immigrants. Wow, were they wrong about that. Under Obama, we set new records for most illegal immigrants stopped at the border and sent home.

They said Obama would drive up the Federal budget deficit. That didn’t happen. Obama cut the $1.4 trillion deficit he inherited by two-thirds.

While someone could no doubt find instances where Democrats engage in over-the-top rhetoric, nothing compares to the consistently false and erroneous claims made by the GOP in recent years. When a political party has been so dismally wrong about nearly everything over the past 30 years, that party should lose all credibility.

‘nothing There’: More Republicans Are Calling Out Trump’s Election Lies

WASHINGTON The more we learn about Donald Trumps baseless, false and discredited claims about the 2020 election, the more baseless, false and discredited those claims have become.

Just consider the revelations over the past week from Republicans:

In Michigan, a GOP-led investigation by its state Senate concluded that it found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in Michigans prosecution of the 2020 election.

Regarding Arizona, a report co-authored by former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson criticized the so-called audit of the election results in that state, saying it does not meet the standards of a proper election recount or audit, and that its being conducted by an inexperienced, unqualified contractor.

And over the weekend, ABCs Jon Karl writing for the Atlantic had former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr debunking Trumps claims about the 2020 election results. If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there, Barr said. It was all bullsh!#.

Predictably, Trump lashed out at those GOP findings.

Michigan State Senators Mike Shirkey and Ed McBroom are doing everything possible to stop Voter Audits in order to hide the truth about November 3rd, the former president said in a statement, which even included those state senators phone numbers.

Even Bill Barr doesnt buy them.

Read Also: Who Won The House Republicans Or Democrats

Get Ready For Another Possible Crisis Like 2020

This is not the first time that Republicans have declared a Democratic president somehow illegitimate. They impeached Bill Clinton on flimsy grounds, after previously accusing him of crimes ranging up to murder; there was a widespread campaign to label Barack Obama an unlawful foreign-born president . These campaigns were effective: A 2019 poll found that 56 percent of Republicans still believed that Obama was born in Kenya.

Nor is this the first time Republican elites have ginned up suspicion of voter fraud for political purposes. After Republicans won a series of statehouse elections in 2010, they spent the next few years falsely claiming that voter fraud was a serious threat in order to pass voter ID laws that were nakedly designed to suppress the vote among Democratic-leaning minority groups. Research has found that, even prior to Trump, this convinced Republicans that voter fraud was a real problem when its exceptionally rare.

These earlier campaigns laid the intellectual groundwork for 2020. Republicans were already primed to believe elected Democrats were somehow illegitimate and to believe in widespread fraud in the American electoral system. Trumps innovation claiming that an entire presidential election result was fraudulent was pushing on an open door.

Paying Lower Taxes Hurts Taxpayers

Less revenue means fewer handouts. Thats bad news for Democrats who lie obsessively year after year about how tax revenue never gets the job done in distressed communities because we still arent spending enough.

Why is it that even when the party is in power, when Democrats call the shots every single year like they do in Illinois, the poor stay right where they are most valuable in poverty?

Recommended Reading: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

Times Republicans Were Wrong

It’s no secret that politicians tend to use exaggerated political rhetoric to get people to vote for them. In recent decades, Republicans have repeatedly made very ominous predictions about the horrors that will result from Democratic policies while painting a rosy picture of what will result from Republican policies. Now we have the luxury of looking back over the years to examine those predictions and policies. Below, you will find twenty-one examples of times Republicans were blatantly wrong.

Most Republicans Said That President Obama Should Be Impeached Because Of The 2012 Attack On The Us Consulate In Benghazi

Their own investigations, however, proved them wrong. Every Congressional inquiry, including those by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, concluded that the Obama administration did nothing wrong regarding Benghazi, that there was no stand down order given, and that neither the President nor anyone in his administration lied about it. Each and every Republican investigation has reached this same conclusion, but Republicans continue to exploit this tragedy for political gain.

You May Like: What 7 Republicans Voted To Impeach

Truth Matters Which Is Why I’m Telling It

I take comfort in knowing that I am doing the moral thing by telling the truth to my constituents.;I also;happen to believe;telling the truth;about;the 2020 election;is good politically.

If Republicans;become the party of the Big;Lie if we encourage this madness much longer we;will lose credibility with;the majority of;Americans on issues where I believe we have better ideas.;We will do;lasting damage to our republic.

True Republicans would never dream of wasting taxpayer money to hire an unknown cybersecurity firm with no elections auditing experience to audit an election that has;already been audited.;This is what the Arizona Senate is doing with their Cyber Ninja audit.

True Republicans would not;stand idly by while auditors paid with taxpayer dollars;chased;insane rumors that ballots were flown in from South Korea to change the outcome of the presidential race, or;that;secret watermarks;on the ballots;revealed by UV lights;would;expose fraud;once and for all.

This is what the Arizona Senate is doing with their Cyber Ninja audit.

Lies Damned Lies And The Truth About Joe Biden

Saagar Enjeti: Media Lets Biden SHAMELESSLY LIE About Hunter Bidens Business Dealings

Joe BidenKentucky state lawmakers vote to scrap school mask mandate Arkansas governor pushes back against Biden’s vaccine mandate RNC vows to sue over Biden vaccine, testing mandate MORE. I know him, said the House Speaker authoritatively, and that was that.

Does Bidens record warrant such confidence? Not really. In fact, Biden has a long history of lying about himself, about his past and about events that never took place.

Democrats want the 2020 campaign to be a referendum on President Trump. Fine, but if this is to be a contest of characters, it is only appropriate that Joe Bidens history of fabrication and deceit often intended to bolster his intellectual credentials also be fair game.

Over the past year, Biden thundered that the Obama administration didnt lock people up in cages. He also claimed that, Immediately, the moment started, I came out against it. And I was always labeled one of the most liberal members of Congress. Politicos rating of all three assertions? False.

No one should be surprised. Lest we forget

A video is making the rounds in which Biden boasts at a 1987 rally, “I went to law school on a full academic scholarship ended up in the top half of my class.”

Biden also maintained that he “graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school” and was the outstanding student in the political science department.

That commentary holds up well, as today more than ever Biden blunders into conversational crevasses, with no way out.

Also Check: Who Created Social Security Democrats Or Republicans

[yeoldontknow]

🖊️writers tag game🖊️

tagged by *deep breath* @ditzymax @red-exo @kyungseokie @j-pping @blackberrykai and...someone else im pretty sure for this sweet little tag game. thank you so much angels!

1. what is your ideal setting for focusing on your writing?

this confused me for a moment...because shouldn’t it be where? im so sorry. ok honestly...my ideal setting is in my bathroom in the tub with no water. this is ideal but i rarely do it. primarily this is because i do my best thinking by water - lakes, oceans, nature - which has resulted in tubs and sinks. i once wrote a midterm paper in my dorm bathroom in the nook under the tall sink. but because its uncomfortable and impractical, and i am not pressured to finish a paper under a time crunch, im kind of...all over the place? sometimes i write in bed with a few candles lit. other times im on the couch in my living room. i have a desk and i did all of chanvember last year at this desk, but since ive been working from home the writing space has become the work space and im still struggling to get the balance right. in all scenarios, i need a good snack (usually hummus + chips/veggies), water, and music playing is an absolute must. if the music is wrong, i simply cant write. thats how its always been.

2. what is your favorite genre to write?

angst, horror, mafia, historical, science fiction. i love love love writing these genres. romance falls thematically into these, but writing strictly a romantic drama is incredibly difficult for me.

3. do you prefer to write on paper, or digitally?

these days im all digital but when i was working in the office i was a mix of both. id scribble ideas on a piece of paper and rip it out to take it home; if i was on the train, id write ideas quickly into my notes app. several paragraphs of hero, replay, currents, and bloodletting exist on paper which i eventually transcribed into docs. but if im sitting down to write a fic, its generally digital.

4. it’s the middle of the night and you suddenly wake up with an idea. what do you do?

i have to flesh out the idea before i transcribe it. it depends on its its a plot idea or a line. if its a line that hits me or feels important, it immediately goes into the planning doc for whatever fic it relates to or suits best. i will then think about this line over and over until it becomes nonsensical an, hopefully though it is highly unlikely, fall back asleep and dream up something inspired by this line.

if its a story idea, i generally dont forget those so i dont need to immediately write them. those kinds of ideas arise out of dreams (assuming it woke me up, in this scenario) and i rarely forget what i dream. in that situation, i will not be able to fall back asleep. anyone who knows me knows that i struggle getting sleep. at best i will average 3-4 hours a night, simply because im thinking too much. so if this woke me up, ill spend the rest of the night thinking about how i want it to go, who it will suit, making a playlist or thinking about songs, gathering inspiration from my fiction fodder blogs, and only when the sun comes up will i consider perhaps its time for sleep. once i officially begin the day, ill review the vague planning doc ill likely have formed in my brain and actually compile it into a tangible document.

5. who is your favorite person to write about?

i mean....hello lmaooo park chanyeol. hes my muse. i do all my best writing for him, even if its unintentional. in other groups, i adore writing for taehyung and namjoon. their minds compel me. ive recently been thinking about writing some pieces for got7 and i do have an unfinished WIP for @red-exo and in all instances writing for JB excites me.

6. do you like making your own characters, or do you usually write about real people?

i mean...its RPS fic on this blog, so its real people but its a face claim. theyre kind of like my barbie dolls i insert into worlds in my head. so in a sense...theyre my own characters but they happen to look like idols lmao conversely, writing original characters (as in wyrm tamer, asas, theoretically TQIS) scares me. ive written rps fanfic for so long its as though ive lost confidence in writing my own characters. this is why many of my stories have started to see the introduction of other characters to practice it.

7. have you ever written a book, or a story with more than 15 chapters (or 100k words)?

ok the answer is yes but its not published. its 30 chapters, 200k words. it was originally a fanfic and ive toyed with editing it over the years in the advent that maybe one day i would publish it if i liked it enough.

fun fact: hero is about 15K away from 100K words. i will be celebrating when it gets there.

8. how often do you get ideas?

like...constantly. all the time. every time i hear music, or watch a film, or read something in a book, my mind commences the ‘would you like to go to another dimension’ quest and i always, without fail, hit the yes button.

9. do you ever get an idea that you really like, but just can’t seem to finish?

*glances sidelong at my masterlist and my 17 unpublished wips* you must be new here

10. what is your least favorite plot?

like...genre? as i said before, idol!verse is something i refrain from reading. i struggle profoundly writing fluff/romantic fluff which is why i try to practice it. plots, in general, in which someone has to go through a makeover of some kind (appearance wise) to suddenly be categorically enough (this isnt just fic...its how i feel in any media). rape/dub-con is a hard pass. otherwise, im down for pretty much anything.

11. tag 5 or more people

@dark-muse-iris @yehet-me-up​ @jiminiethot @iq-biased @yoonia @jamaisjoons @jenmyeons @fairyyeols @readyplayerhobi @johobi @yixingminseokjongdae @imdifferentshadesofpurple  yall i think everyone and their brother has done this tag. if ive tagged you and youve already done it im real sorry :( as always please only do this if you wish

[zombie-nao]

I was wondering.

Lately there are a lot about toxic people and that to stay positive one needs to cut these toxic people out. And thats true. People who bring u down, blackmail or overweight others with their problems shouldnt be in your life. But theres thin line. So thin it mixes and become almost nonexisting. Because there are people who want to control others, who find it amusing or project on others their own issues. And they are usually what one could call a sociopath or psychopath even. They się verbal or physical abuse. And its better to run from them or give them a piece of mind. But those are not always possible, and so toxic people will create maybe a strong person whose hardships will teach them how to deal with other people bullshit, or maybe another toxic person who will try to beat others down because thats how they were taught, or maybe a victim who will look and behave like what we call toxic person but is not. The last one is my point. A victim lives (or dies) while trying to grasp other people attention, recocgnition, justification, validation that they deserve to live and be here. And sometimes they will stumble into another toxic abuser hands, or they will project those needs on people around. Saying "I never look good", "I wish i didint exist ", "im not needed anyway " and other similar stuff they are saying out loud is what they believe, while hoping for another voice to say "you look good", "im happy youre here ", "youre a part of my life and im glad you are". Just like bad voices repeat demeaning stuff in head, they need these good ones on reapeat as well, thats why many people keep their old birthday cards and similar nice messages. But its tiring. Constantly worring about someone, reasuring them its okay and dealing with their sadness is tiring. Thats why good psychologists are in high demand. You remember youre not a pro who gets paid for this shit and decide to cut out this toxic, pity searching, attention grabing, positivity sucker. Time to start new me with better people, lets shine without dealing with toxic victim bullshit. But, you see, you never got paid for it with money because at one time in your life you probably thought as this person as a friend. And a psycholog is not realy a friend. Its a person who is listening to others because its their job, not because they like their patient. There is often a great chance you were paid differently. Maybe this person helped you out when you were dead drunk in the middle of the night in the city, and only they made sure you get home safe. Maybe they were the only person to stand up for you when someone on the streets treated you mean. Maybe they always had their door open for you whenever you needed to rest. Maybe they were this only friend who in school cared that you were sick at home and brought you notes. Maybe they didnt mind waking up at 2 am to listen to you drunk, sad, heartbroken, lonely or just excited on the phone till early morning. Maybe they didnt mind taking hit for u. Waiting hours for you. Looking everywhere for you. Spending time with you whenever you felt like it.

Because they knew that theyre tiring. And so they tried to ease your mind, care for you and dont let you feel like they did when they were hurt the most. Your words meant a lot, your existence was for them like what they wouldve wanted to feel for others. And so theyre treated you the way they wanted to be treated. But the sadness and doubts withing grew and needed to be put down. And their own words dont sounds reliable, but yours, their friend, they do. And perhaps they never told you their biggest saddest thoughts because they never wanted you to even try to understand it as it could be too sad. And yet, you still left.

Maybe you didnt told them to go away, maybe youre just avoiding them, never come to them again, spend time with positive people while ignoring them or just saying "cool" when they message them that they wish to see u. And with time they come to understand. And never write again. And thats your new happy life. Without toxic people bullshit.

I know its not always like this, that its hard to count on this depressed friend, that they crave attention too much. But honestly, who doesnt? You may think " bruh, i dont". But what if only u were not included in a party? What if at karaoke no one listened to you? What if your opinion was ignored or talked over? Your will would not matter. Technicaly theres way to that, but what if for acting for youreslf youre "The drama queen ", "attantion seeker " ect. You want you voice to be heard, to reach and be received. You want attention because thats how people communicate. And when youre sad, who is gonna deal with your bullshit? Positive people will tell you they dont want your bad vibe.

So you call this toxic victim friend who can relate, and they may answer at once, ready for months to see you. Or they may never answer again. Because theyre not here anymore. Because the voices in their mind were loud enough that could be muted anymore. They are gone. And you even more sad, and everyone pity you. Oh, i shouldve been here for this friend, i shouldve seen this. - you poor thing, you couldnt know, no one could do anything!. But everyone knew, and had enough, and wanted peace. And after this little sadness, they will go back to their happy ever after.

Ps no one will read this but half of what i wrote kinda did happen (except i got told im attention seeker, and one person ever told me they love my personality, im ready to bury a body for this friend) and as much as I talk gibberish i think some people can relate. Sorry for being piece of shit, and a coward.

Ps2 if u dont know what to do with sad friend, take them to a doctor. Forcibly if must.

[shsldepressedlesbian]

Few questions to help both us n you get to know the passengers on this cruise to hell better! 1,upon first glance what something someone would immediately notice abt your ocs appearance? 2,does your ocs Like their talent? This says a lot about them as people and feel free to go into detail why or why not they do. 3,do any of the cast have any character quirks? Be it in speech or otherwise

hey this looks fun :0

1:

Yuuki: i think its safe to say the many assortments of flowers she wears in her hair. while she isnt a gardener or anything, one of her siblings is, and they often send flowers to her. yuuki, in turn, usually mends them all into a flower crown, or even plain just puts a single flower into her hair.

Emica: when it comes to it, i suppose her traditional japanese arm band, symbolising her stance on the student council. her many different necklaces is a close competitor.

Arata: he dresses like he just walked out of a time loop from england 1930s. i think thats pretty noticeable-

Mitsuo: the unhealthily dark bags under his eyes, and the very pale skin which does not go well with his very bright, red hair.

Asuka: her very rich, haughty aura. and even though anyone would hate to admit it, shes borderline very attractive.

Manabu: he looks like he came from a very formal ball, not to mention it would be hard to miss the variety of shiny crystals he wears as bracelets.

Seiichi: at first glance, people might say he looks like he just had a ruffle with someone- but if you pay attention, he actually really is neat and tidy- aside from his tie.

Tamotsu: at first glance, people would probably compare him to indiana jones when it comes to his outfit choice. he doesnt deny these comparsions.

Kamiko: her sunhat, for sure. theyre usually wide brimmed, though fashionable. the second thing is probably the many ‘luck charms’ she wears as accesories.

Kenta: how he looks much stronger than he actually is. also his sneakers. everyone notices the sneakers. even if you arent a fan of footwear, you WILL notice his sneakers.

Chieko: chieko is very… ordinary looking. in fact, her normalness compared to any other ultimate is probably the first thing youll ever notice. it actually makes her stand out.

Masa: the first youll notice about masa is her sheer size of accesories. bracelets, rings, hair pins, and necklaces galore. if you pay enough attention, youll actually notice she and tamotsu have matching necklaces.

Fumiko: a notable thing about fumikos appearance is how… scandalous her outfit is. fumiko isnt shameful at all about how much skin shes exposing; though it never gets too crazy. usually. hopefully.

Kohaku: there is nothing really abnormal about kohaku, other then their very bright mint color scheme. the reading glasses hanging from a small chain on the front of their suit is also something noteworthy.

Aika: the first thing youll notice about aika is the fact that her coat is almost completely made out of buttons- each one she sewed onto it herself. for someone who youd expect look to have come out of the 1990s, she has a reasonable modern feel to her clothes.

Satoru: at first glance, you could see satoru as, to be frank, a vsco boy. his casual outfit, sunglasses, and jacket with many pins relating to saving the ocean can give off that feel. however, he resents the stereotypes of ‘vsco’. also, its hard to tell if his murky hair is either white or grey.

Usagi: the first thing youll notice about usagi is the fact she always looks like shes prepared for a hike. her backpack, casual but warm outfit wear, and always pulled up hair can give that impression.

2:

Yuuki: yuuki has a soft spot for her talent, considering how it dates back to her grandmother, and its always been something shes been experienced with. its fair to say yuuki likes her talent.

Emica: emica really doesnt consider herself worthy of her talent. the only reason she got it, afterall, is because of her dad, not to mention this fact has caused her a fair amount of nasty envy with her fellow classmates. still, she tries to honor her responsibility of being student council president. emica doesnt particularly like her talent.

Arata: if theres one thing arata is proud of, its his talent. hes been into history since he was a small child- and to have his research celebrated is his dream come true. he can, however, be a little cocky about it. he really does consider himself the best historian in history. arata likes, and is very proud of, his talent.

Mitsuo: he wont even tell anyone what his talent is. i wonder why…

Asuka: whether or not asuka enjoys her talent is left to debate. it is, however, for sure something she uses to her advantage. shes part of the main student council! of course everyone has to respect her, right? she also considers being the treasurer ‘finally’ a way to use her social skills and knowledge with mathematics to use. asuka likes her talent.

Manabu: manabu was always expected to be helpful in the study of outer space. his whole family line consisted of astronomers, astronauts, astrophysicists, and more. manabu had to choose his career at a young age, and he decided on astrogeology. this didnt mean manabu was stuck in the career. or, at least, he was, until an opportunity arrived. yet even when he got it, he decided not to take it. manabu always had a soft spot for astrogeology, though perhaps if he didnt have his current family line, he would have become the ultimate of a different talent. manabu likes his talent, though that may only be because of his history.

Seiichi: seiichis history of slam poetry goes all the way back to elementary. its his form of venting, if you will, as even though he comes across as nervous, his head is filled with anger at the world. but also hope, of making a new one. a better one. he considers being invited to attend sailing integrity was just a plus to his journey. seiichi likes his talent.

Tamotsu: tamotsu has been interested in tombs and the history of egypt for a long time. the closest thing he could find to fulfilling his interests was becoming a tour guide to show people around said tombs, and he found himself having fun, rehearsing facts and making the otherwise gloomy places bright. making tourists days a little more fun was good enough for him. tamotsu quite likes his talent.

Kamiko: kamikos talent was always something that she did as a fun hobby. sewing tapestries that told fascinating tales was always something she was invested in. and the many tales she sewed was really the only things that kept her company while she kept herself locked in her room. however, even if she likes her talent, she was not a fan of being recognized for it, and being coaxed by her parents to attend the academy. kamiko likes her talent, but isnt a fan of being the ‘ultimate’ of it.

Kenta: if we were being real here, kenta is very… neutral on his talent, which is weird for him. the way he learnt it is connected with bad memories, but doing it has always been refreshing to him. a way to run around, blow off steam. he supposes being called deemed the ‘ultimate’ of it isnt that bad. kenta likes his talent, for the majority.

Chieko: being the ultimate chemist wasnt chiekos first choice, but she takes it with dignity. chieko is neutral on her talent.

Masa: masas talent was born out of curiosity, and it grew from it. masas history of interpreting dreams is affiliated with many different emotions and memories. but for the most part, its been positive. she is very into the persona of it, and considers it a chance for her to act all mythical and wise. but, shes just really happy that she got to be a ultimate along with tamotsu. masa likes her talent, especially the attention she gets from it.

Fumiko: fumiko, probably, resents her talent the most out of the cast. its a very constant, confusing, love-hate relationship. she dislikes the title of ultimate lucky student, as she finds it cheesy, which is the whole reason why she calls herself a blackjack player. after talking to her for a bit, it becomes clear she doesnt want her talent to define her, and that she honestly couldnt care less about ultimates and the academies. her whole reason for applying to the lottery seems to stem from family reasons. while she dislikes the academy, she also takes any chance she can to pump her ego around her talent. its confusing, honestly. fumiko is not a fan of her talent.

Kohaku: kohakus murder mystery career started out as a coping method. however, they get very attached to every story and characters they make, putting love into every book, which is the whole reason they got recognized as the ultimate murder mystery novelist. kohaku has pride in becoming the ultimate murder mystery novelist, though they dont consider it a big deal. whether or not they became an ultimate wouldnt have any effect on the future of their career. theyll always write murder mysteries. kohaku likes their talent.

Aika: aika considers her becoming an ultimate a complete ‘accident’. aika isnt especially invested in vintage collecting- she just had a lot of old stuff she posted online, not even realising how old and valuable they really were, and the next thing she knew, the email and letter came. actually, the invitation to sailing integrity is what really made her consider making collecting old items a hobby. secretly, aika is a little insecure of her talent, finding it boring compared to others talents. aika likes her talent, but only to a certain point.

Satoru: satorus want to study the oceans animals has been active for a long time, especially since he was always close to water, considering his parents were fishermen. he finds the thought of the ocean being 95% explored to be highly interesting, and his goal is to crack down another 5% before he dies. becoming the ultimate of what he loved to do was very much a welcomed moment, especially with the promise that the academy would supply him with items that would help reinforce his talent. satoru has always been especially passionate about marine biology. satoru likes his talent.

Usagi: usagi is also very neutral when considering her talent. in fact, her talent is always at the back of her mind when introducing herself. usagi, truthfully, isnt a fan of most of the school referring to her as the ‘ultimate runaway’, considering how many of them paint it as a form of rebelling and thus delinquency. shes just a girl who likes taking sharing nature with the world whilst traveling, and wants others to see that as well. usagi is iffy on her talent.

3:

(hmmm im not sure what your definition of ‘quirks’ are, but here, have this:)

Yuuki: taps her foot an awful lot.

Emica: none visible.

Arate: can you consider writing almost everything down a quirk?

Mitsuo: taps surfaces whenever hes thinking.

Asuka: none visible.

Manabu: none visible.

Seiichi: as noted before, he tugs on his tie when hes nervous. also has a habit of rising his voice when he doesnt mean to.

Tamotsu: has more of an american dialect.

Kamiko: has the iconic danganronpa stutter, hides her face behind her hat.

Kenta: none visible.

Chieko: also has an american dialect, though hers is less apparent then tamotsus.

Masa: has a very cryptic way of speaking, except when she lets normal sentences slip through.

Fumiko: has a bit of a drawl to her voice.

Kohaku: none visible, surprisingly.

Aika: almost always moving, cannot stand completely still.

Satoru: rarely uses h’s if they are at the front of the word.

Usagi: has an unidentifiable accent.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

I'm a bit embarrassed to ask this. Have you ever read a fic that, stylistically, it's beautiful, linguistically it's tight, and it's obvious the author poured their whole self into constructing the plot, crafting the world, and nailing down the characterizations, but... You just don't get it? Like, perhaps there's some insight you're missing, and it's almost there, you think maybe you're close to getting what the author is trying to portray, but you just can't make the connection necessary?

(Embarrassed nonny continued) You even reread to make sure you didn’t skip anything, but it’s like it just seems that something missing? Or that you’re the one missing something vital? So you go to the comments to see if anyone else is confused, but all you see are lovely, supportive compliments about how beautiful the story is (and it is), or how heartwrenching it is (usually so). But you seem to be the only one not getting it?

(Embarrassed nonny cont. again) Is it destructive to let the author know that I think a story is beautiful in it’s telling, but that I don’t quite understand it? I don’t want to offend the author, who has clearly worked very hard, and I appreciate them so much. But, I want to understand the story they’re telling, even if I’m the only one not getting it. If that even makes any sense. P.S.- thanks for always taking time to listen to fandom woes and fielding requests. You’re a champion! ❤

Hi Nonny!

First of all, there’s nothing for you to be embarrassed about! Stories are partly about authorial intent, and partly about reader interpretation; no two people will interpret a story the same, and no author SHOULD expect a reader to interpret their story exactly as the author intended. SHERLOCK is a perfect example of this (the writers SAY they meant it to be one thing and literally the ENTIRE FANDOM is divided on what’s actually being shown on screen), or if you want to be more classical, the works of Shakespeare as well.

In fact, Shakespeare is a perfect example of your problem: I love Shakespeare: it’s beautifully written, it sounds lovely to the ear, and it invokes imagery based on how someone interprets it. But I sure as heck have NO idea what I read until someone explained it to me, or how I SHOULD have interpreted it (which, is oxymoronic to my point, I know…). Only after I hear how someone else interpreted the work, I can then RE-READ a work and begin to understand what was meant by it, and then develop my own interpretations. 

I’ve read a few fics by a couple authors in this fandom where I LOVED their writing, but I had NO idea what was happening until I re-read the fics… it’s a reading comprehension thing with me, I’m sure (my brain tends to move a bit quicker than I can read and talk, and in turn it also tends to wander when my eyes aren’t going fast enough, LOL), but a lot of times, if I just read a fic a second time I can then grasp the words my brain omitted the first time and then really enjoy and love the fic. I hate that about me, but that’s how my brain works… Perhaps it may be the same with your brain? If a fic is well written and you enjoyed it but just had some comprehension issues, perhaps a second read-through will help you as it has done with me :)

So, now to answer your question: if after reading a fic, and you don’t understand it, is it okay to ask the authorial intent of the story? Unfortunately, there is no yes-or-no answer to this question, Lovely, as every author is different. Personally – and this is just for me speaking, and what I would do or what I would not mind if I were the author – I think it’s alright, so long as you are respectful to them! Dig around their user pages and you can often find ways to interact with the author outside of their fics, or information about whether or not they want to read criticism etc. on their stories. If an author doesn’t want any interaction, they’ll be very clear about it, but most authors have ways to get in touch with them, so to ME that’s a saying “hey, if you have any questions, here’s how to get a hold of me!”. 

If they have a Tumblr with asks turned on, you can even do it like you have done for me here; write exactly what you mentioned, just tweak a few things: Mention how much you love their prose and their storytelling, and you can really feel how much love they put into the story. You found it interesting, though you’re unclear on a few parts. Ask them kindly how they intended for an audience to read it. Many creators appreciate honesty when talking about their works, so just be honest and say that you didn’t understand something and wouldn’t mind a bit of clarification about something. They can’t fault you for not understanding something, and if they do, well… I find that rather ableist, in my opinion: That’s like telling someone with dyslexia to just stop mixing up letters, or someone who’s native language isn’t English to just learn one of the most complex languages in the world with so many structure rules that make no sense half the time…. *shrugs* It’s harsh of me to say, I am sorry about that, writers, but reading comprehension doesn’t come easily for everyone.

ANYWAY, back to my point: An author, so long as you are respectful (and maybe peppering in some compliments and praise never hurts either… a lot of us creative-types have praise kinks) and don’t throw a backhanded compliment (like don’t say: “Your work is so amazing! Though I think you should make it easier for people to understand it, your words are too complex”), they will be more than happy to write out their intent for the story. Let them know it’s YOU who’s not understanding (so, “I have trouble understanding this part” as opposed to “you should make this work easier to read for everyone”… make the onus on YOU). DON’T be demanding (like, don’t say something that can be interpreted as “it’s YOUR responsibility to cater to MY need to understand”), and be patient for a reply.

You can see why this isn’t an easy yes-or-no answer, LOL. 

Essentially, kindness begets kindness, and respect begets respect. And –  this isn’t an attack on you personally with regards to this ask, because I know my audience are adorably shy beans – it might be a show of good faith and intentions to stay off anon when you ask your question; it shows the author that you aren’t being malicious, just simply a smol bean who loves stories and want to learn more about theirs. BUT, it IS okay to stay on-anon if you are shy / worried about not the author but other people interpreting it the wrong way, just make sure you tailor your question to the author in a respectful way that it comes across as respect. Perhaps something like this:

Hi, [author]! I really love your story, [story title]! It’s well-written and I can really tell how much you love this story and how much soul you put into it. I just had a question for you with regards to [name concern here]. [state question here]. I have trouble sometimes with [reading comprehension, English/language, dyslexia, etc.], and I would love to know what your ideas and thought process was for [character, plot point, situation, etc.]. Understanding what the author intended really helps me enjoy the stories even more than I already did, and your thoughts would be really helpful for when I re-read your story! Thank you so much for your time, and thank you for blessing us with this beautiful story!

Or something like that, LOL. And if you genuinely aren’t a native-language speaker, let them know that it’s not your first language so you’re just honestly not grasping a colloquialism that’s common in English but not in, say, German. It’s more common than you think! I’ve had people ask me in private before about a phrase I’ve written or about how they should interpret a meta of mine; I’ve never taken insult upon it, and in fact I love helping people understand my work so that they can enjoy other peoples’ content in the future. 

As an additional thought I just had, I think a good example of fandom-understanding-authors is, actually, the @johnlockficclub; every couple months or so we read new stories, and then at the end of the story, we ask authors our questions about their intent of the stories, and in turn the author gets an interesting (I hope) insight into how various people interpreted their stories. Even during the live-chats leading up to the author q-and-a, we all see how we each interpreted certain sections of the chapters we read that week, and see various viewpoints we never considered. So I think that is a wonderful way to see authorial intent vs. reader interpretation, and as far as I know, all the authors we’ve “interviewed” loved just getting that kind of feedback for their stories. You should join in on at least the author interviews just to see how they go and give you some ideas on how an author will take feedback. It’s so fascinating to me!

Just a fun little anecdote that oftentimes, it is a positive experience for an author because most of them love to talk about their stories – their stories are their children, and they care deeply for them, because it’s a part of them, and it’s an expression of their love. They WANT you to understand and enjoy their work. It’s a cyclical thing: if you understand their children so you can love them too, then they will love their fanbase and will want to continue to write since they received feedback that was validating to them that they produce work that people enjoy and want to know more about. 

Finally, I’d love for some authors to weigh in on their thoughts about this; would you be offended if someone loved your story but would want your clarification on some things, or want to know how you intended for the audience to perceive it? Please let us know!

Sorry this answer was so long, but I hope it helps!

P.S. Aww, you’re far too kind, Nonny! me. XD

[zerochanges]

Valentine’s Chocolates and Glass Masks

The romance genre in anime is a little weird, and honestly on the whole the majority of the genre in anime is probably a bit too slow for its own good. “Will they or won’t they” is something most romantic fiction is guilty of, but I think you’d be hard press to come across 150 episode TV series dedicated solely to that premise anywhere else. And this has nothing on the pure silliness that can come with the genre; hand holding, indirect kisses, masked secret admirers, all that good stuff. Really, I’m not here to trash talk romantic anime though, but as I sat down and tried to think about writing a Valentine's Day blog post I just couldn't help but think to myself how romance anime might be the hardest to explain to anyone not in the fandom. I mean, I think I’d have an easier time explaining the plot of any given saga in DBZ than I would explaining “Notice me, senpai” to somebody.

You know what though, I kind of ironically enjoy all of this. Yeah, pure romance anime can be cheesy, but it’s just the right amount cheese that it’s like, c’mon, how can you not enjoy this? Perhaps the worst (or best!) offender of this are older shoujo titles where they can seem almost downright like a soap opera at times. Shows like these are just so full of bizarre, off-the-walls, and over-the-top melodrama that they manage to suck me completely in. They’re heartbreaking, they’re engaging, and the times when they fail at being those things they are hilarious. 

My most recent experience with an older shoujo title like this would have to be studio Eiken’s 1984 adaptation of Glass Mask. Now Glass Mask (or Glass no Kamen as it is known by some) is a manga that started life in 1976 and to this day has yet to be finished, with the manga creator Suzue Miuchi stating she would like to finish it soon, but hasn't quite figured out when that will be (move over Hunter x Hunter fans). Having been one of the earlier shoujo titles starting back in the mid-70’s the series is full to the brim with pretty much every cliche and trope you can think of for shoujo anime, and to a modern audience it can often be almost hilarious at times to sit through. It is important to remember that for its time Glass Mask was a trend-setter and arguably if not the creator than certainly the reason why a lot of these cliches became cliches in the first place. Over the years Glass Mask has received its fair share of adaptations and even parodies, and currently has 3 different animes as well as a live action drama series and real life stage plays based on it. I heard the most recent anime, the 2005 TMS adaptation of Glass Mask, does a pretty great job at modernizing several aspects of the series, but unfortunately I have yet to watch that to weigh in so all I can say is that I was inundated with more cliches than I could count and laughed a ton while watching the 1984 series and I loved every minute of it. 

Glass Mask is the story of a young 13 year old girl Maya Kitajima, who has a dream to be a great theatre actress. Unfortunately for Maya she’s from a very poor family, and even more unfortunately for her, she is incredibly average looking with no flair--and don’t worry, the anime will remind you of that fact countless times every episode. Despite her damnable curse of “just looking kind of average” Maya will stop at nothing to pursue her dream and eventually runs away from home after getting a scholarship for an acting school. There, the enigmatic Chigusa Tsukikage notices Maya’s talents and takes her on as her protege. Soon, Maya learns that her mentor Tsukikage was once a legendary actress thought to be truly one of the all time greats who due to a tragic Phantom of the Opera style accident had her face hideously scarred and retreated out of the spotlight. 

Tsukikage is looking to pass on her talents to the future generation and eventually pass on her greatest possession, the rights to the elusive Crimson Goddess play--a supposed legendary masterpiece that has not been seen by anyone in decades; not since Tsukikage’s career ruining accident. For some reason the director and creator of the the Crimson Goddess play saw it fit to beseech all the rights to his masterpiece to Tsukikage and thus nobody else has been able to produce this elusive phantom play since. It won’t be easy for Maya and the Tsukikage acting school, as media conglomerate and mega corporation Daito Entertainment will stop at nothing to get the rights to the Crimson Goddess, and isn't afraid to sabotage them at every step of the way. Perhaps Maya’s greatest rival however is the young Ayumi Himekawa, the daughter of an already famous actress who is said to be the favorite to inherit the Crimson Goddess role, and is everything Maya isn't; beautiful, rich, famous and well loved by all, and while not a student of Tsukikage she is more than willing to pass on the rights to Himekawa if Maya fails to prove herself.

It’s easy to already see the cheesiness just from me trying my best to summarize the basic plot, and we haven’t even gotten into the romances yet. Maya’s relationship with the young Yu Sakurakoji is fairly simple at first, as he helped rescue her from a feral dog and despite being in rival acting schools--one affiliated under Daito no less, he’s a pretty chill guy that enjoys spending time with her and doesn't care about all that stuff. It’s only after Maya starts to take off in her career that Sakurakoji starts to spiral into this insane inferiority complex centered around her, where he thinks she has become too good an actress for him to be around anymore and starts to give her the cold shoulder all because of his own make-believe shortcomings. It’s very odd and sudden, and the entire thing is blown out of proportions as Maya clearly does not think that and Sakurakoji eventually has to be lectured by bad boy Masumi of all people to come around and start spending time with Maya again. Even after this however it isn't like the old days anymore and the gap that was created from his own complex still lingers.

And oh boy, don’t get me started on Masumi, he’s quite the character. Masumi Hayami is the 24 year old son of the president of Daito Entertainment and is currently running the corporation in his father’s stead. Masumi serves as both an antagonist and love interest (because of course he can be both) in the early parts of the story and is often behind some (but not all) the sabotage done to Tsukikage’s acting school. Masumi will eventually take a more reasonable approach when it comes to trying to yank the rights of the Crimson Goddess away from Tsukikage’s hands as the anime progresses, often just by having his acting school beating Tsukikage’s students in contest and the like, and it’s here where we usually see Masumi’s employees that work under him being the more underhanded characters instead of Masumi directly engaging in the conflict.

Despite being on different sides, so to speak, Masumi catches one of Maya’s earliest performances, her role as Beth in Little Women, and falls in love with the young girl, impressed by both her potential as an actress and her fortitude for going on with the show despite suffering from a dangerously high fever and immediately being rushed to the doctors after the curtains fall. From this point on her takes the role of “Mr Purple Rose” named for the bouquet of purple roses he sends to her at every show. As her secret admirer and the first fan Maya has ever had he means a lot to her yet as his true identity of Masumi he’s an enemy that Maya cannot stand to breathe the same air as. So in short, Masumi is just your average 24 year old CEO of a mega corporation crushing on a 13 year old girl from a small acting school he is trying to ruin and also her secret admirer. Somehow Masumi is one of the best characters in the series, and is my best boy. Only in shoujo!

So far I've been having some cheap laughs at the expense of the 1984 Glass Mask anime but it’s not all like this. The over-the-top bombardment of old school shoujo cliches and the laughs I got from them may be one of the most memorable component of my viewing but there’s actually a lot more to this anime than that. When you get beyond the silly age gap romances and the flowery melodrama of young teenage love, Glass Mask is a story of artists trying to pursue their passions and dedicating their everything to them. Maya may be cursed to forever be “only average looking” but I really respect her drive to dedicate her entire life to theatre. 

Well, that is to say, the times when she isn't acting like punching bag to the rest of the cast (Glass Mask has a tendency to make Maya into a Cinderella surrounded by tons of wicked stepsisters). When Maya is written not as a Cinderella she’s fiercely determined, and never backs down despite some straight-up abusive behavior she is put through. At times her mentor Tsukikage is absolutely savage, regularly beating Maya and putting her through some training that is definitely highly illegal, at least for today’s standards. For instance she once threw Maya in a shed and locked the door refusing to let her out until she finally understood her character she was assigned. Did I mention it was in the middle of the freezing cold winter and snowing out and Maya only had the clothes on her back for warmth? She was out there for days with no food, water, or even warmth. But don’t worry, she had her script to read and that made it all okay. Like goddamn, somebody call child protective services on this lady.

Speaking about “the art” and everyone’s passions, the more you watch the series the more it becomes obvious that the creator, Suzue Miuchi, really cares for theatre and isn't just using it as a vehicle to propel her own story. There are countless renditions of classic plays shown in Glass Mask, such as the mentioned already Little Women, The Miracle Worker, and Wuthering Heights, just to name a few. Some of these plays are presented without any changes while others may have reinterpretations made to them by the characters who are trying to give their roles a life of their own away from the original source material. Miuchi very much understands theatre and does a great job converting many famous plays into a more compressed and easily digestible form of entertainment that can be viewed on a week by week bases. The analysis characters give about the plays and other characters’ performances, the ways characters interpret their parts, and how the plays that we are privy to see in the series end up all show a deeper understanding of the medium. Watching Glass Mask is almost like taking a beginning course in theatre that covers all the classics, only with way more melodrama and over-the-top romance than you will find in your local theatre group. I hope.

What’s the most impressive however goes beyond just Miuchi’s renditions of other classic works and instead are her own plays that she creates herself. As not only does Glass Mask use pre-existing plays it also has its own original productions that will spring up in-between the real world plays. A lot of these self created plays are very enjoyable too, and some feel way more fleshed out than they have any right to be and you often find yourself regretting that you are only privy to a small part of the performance and not able to just sit there and watch the entire play like the characters in the anime do. Maybe that’s why it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that some of the plays Miuchi has created for her manga have later been adapted into real life plays in Japanese theatres. This is probably the greatest testament to the series’ popularity right there, where its own fictional works are turned real. I can’t think of many examples of something like that happening before.

I’d be remiss not to mention the visual aspect of this series before wrapping up my thoughts on it too. While certainly no powerhouse in animation, Glass Mask 1984 goes for a more picturesque route, and does a great job with tons of beautiful still shots and intricately detailed background images. It’s a humble production but with the right use of lighting a lot of scenes can really shine (pardon the terrible pun it was an accident), especially the night shots which can be pure art. Hang it in a museum, I say. I’m almost surprised we don’t see more “aesthetic” anime blogs mining images from this series. Veteran director Gisaburo Sugii (Dororo, Touch, Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix) leads the production with skilled marksmanship you would expect from his previous (and future) pedigree, and along with legendary animator the late Shingo Araki (Ashita no Joe, Galaxy Express 999, Saint Seiya) the series has a wonderful 80’s flair to it that just fills any retro anime fan full of nostalgia whether or not they have seen the show before.

Studio Eiken’s 1984 Glass Mask adaptation is a short, briskly paced 22 episode series that is easy on the eyes and not hard at all to still sit through for modern audiences. It’s full of tons of laughs (both ironic and sincere) as well as tons of melodrama and over-the-top romance. Most importantly though, it’s a full of passion; lots and lots of passion. During its short episode count the series watches Maya progress as an actress and grow older, with her finishing middle school and beginning high school while also balancing full time acting jobs on the side. The ending is left open--and let’s face it the manga hasn't even ended some 35 years later still--but there’s enough forward momentum in the series to really feel like your time with the characters wasn't wasted and that they were able to accomplish something--not to mention the ending spot is a pretty decent one leaving the viewer wanting more but enjoying a satisfying conclusion to one of the more interesting story arcs adapted. Overall I think anyone who enjoys cheesy anime romance can sit down with this series and have a fun Valentine’s.

[marsixm]

edit sorry this post is both long (if the readmore fails i am truly truly sorry) & longwinded im just reflecting and thinking; (another edit: u can probably just read the tl dr and get it)

anyway allow me to spin some very personally based theory here for a mo while i put off/warm my fingers up from the cold in preparation to email my therapist

so growing up i had, i think only, het ships, but i never quite had the ones you were (narratively speaking) “supposed to” have

in most media i recall when i was a kid, there were like, 2 diff structures of character romance plot arcs in media i consumed, there was the main lead and 2 best friends model, where thered be the star of the show who had outside romantic leads and the 2 best friends (who were always a boy and a girl) would have their secondary romance, OR there were ensemble shows where there was a more clear romance set up between the main boy and main girl, then side characters whod pair off in whatever ways ended up happening. in the first, see: hannah montana, the second, see: zoey 101. obv this isnt a hard rule and there were loads of exceptions but like, lets just say i tended not to care for the romances set up for the main girls in the trio models, or quite as hard for the main boy and girl in the ensembles, and in general if there was an obvious romance between two leads i either didnt care or outright hated it

basically i never liked the ships they set up for us in straight media, as a kid (namely, a girl) i liked being that “ew pink!” “i hate valentines day” sort of contrarian, but what i remember actually disliking was the predictability of it, because i clearly still shipped characters, so it wasnt /really/ that i hated romance, per se

looking back on it i think it was probably or at least to a degree more like that i hated the hetero expectation of it- i can nit pick down to more specific examples of why i disliked the main pairings (kataang, for example, i thought was weird bc katara acted like a mother/older sister figure to aang, and i didnt feel like there was romance between them at all except where it felt shoehorned in) - maybe it was also that i thought it made more sense for a main character to be with someone they clearly already spent a lot of time with and not some random new hot boy in town (i very distinctly remember shipping miley and oliver on hannah montana, and i believe that was the first time i ever read fanfiction @ age like... 11 lol) as is often the case w like these things.

theres another level to this though, which is that i notice i tended to ship characters who were more vaguely similar to each other, like, physically (ie, similar heights, or hair colors mainly) obviously this is funny now since my main pairing is johnlock which is such a physically different ship we can construct them from basic shapes and colors and theyre still recognizable as who they are, but i have some thoughts about this- but i think there might be two interesting things about this again in retrospect

first of all, this sounds silly ik, but shipping the vaguely similar ones as a child’s way of queering heterosexuality is an interesting concept and not that difficult, like, two boys are also vaguely similar to each other in a similar way a boy and a girl with the same hair color and height might be, which is something i thought of a while ago

the other way in which this is really interesting to me now, that i think might have been more actually pertinent to myself as a trans child, is that i think i shipped the characters i did in an attempt to morph the concept of boy and girl? to find the boy counterpart to every girl??? that second one makes more sense actually. anyway, i digress

2 start off i definitely had gender feelings starting from a very young age so i think these observations ring more true than just reflections, PERHAPS

so the first thing i remember shipping, ie wanting them to be together, thinking about it an inordinate amount of time outside watching the films, even imagining them eating ice cream together in their pjs (i was NINE DHFJGghfkg) was jack sparrow & elizabeth swan from potc (basically my franchise of choice as a kid bc i never read harry potter) now this doesnt quite fit the “visually similar” thing bc actually orlando bloom looks more like kiera knightly and is prob due to them like making out in one movie, but i think this works for the “shipping as gender expression” theory, because elizabeth swan dressed up as a boy, spent most of that movie wearing boy’s clothes, etc- meanwhile jack was a wacky pirate which like hello duh i’d want to be. so i wonder if beyond the fact that they kissed and flirted, there was something to this concept of me wanting two characters to be together, meant i wanted to marry together two conceptual things happening with two characters, or absorb the cool dude and the boyish girl characters into each other to make one whole archetype for myself? i likewise shipped aang and toph (toph who, normally doesnt really have anyone to be shipped with, since she likes sokka but he has a gf) who we all know is the VERY boyish girl character, so boyish im p sure her actually being a trans dude later in life is a p decently accepted headcanon (i dont actually delve into aatla fandom though so i can only hope) 

another thing about this ship thing, is most of my ships had brown hair (like miley and oliver), just like i always have, and in certain cases the girl character would look a LOT like me (i also shipped logan and quinn on zoey 101, which to my surprise n delight actually came true later (although looking back im like... 11 yr old me is glad they made out a lot but adult me is like uhhh why were the kids on this show making out a lot? anyway thats another issue) and i def was a weirdo girl with glasses and long brown wavy hair) which sort of further fuels my feeling that this was an attempt by my brain to do 1 of 2 things, if my own involvement really was a greater motivating factor in this thing, 1. ship MYSELF with a boy (which is like def possible for my gay kinnie ass, but not quite my thesis here) or 2. morph these boy and girl counterparts by imagining them together, seeing them together, etc

for example, i realize now, when i was a kid i drew an avatar sona for myself and said sona looked an awful lot like how id imagine a katara/zuko fusion would be, and the fact that i shipped zutara (very hard lol) was what lead me down this thought path rn

i feel like even to me this concept sounds weird and far fetched but like, gem fusion made enough sense for someone to write with its clearly, usually, romantic implications and we all “get” that, so whom knows???

another thing ive noticed while writing this is for a good few of these ships you can argue the boys in them can be read gay, like jack sparrow and zuko and aang, which feels even more strongly like me trying to marry my gay boy feelings to my tomboy realities [thinking emoji]

the biggest reason i think this makes sense to me is because when i was 10 i became obsessed with the idea that this boy i was friends with and i were secretly twins separated at birth, like i was so into the concept that we looked alike, i like hoped and wished so hard for it to be true, i wished a christmas miracle would happen for fucking real and a magic door in my house would open and be his new room and itd all work out perfectly! and you might think this was a manifestation of my difficulties with my family and wishing to leave it, but in my dream world my parents were still my parents and he came to live with us- which makes me think the obsession of ME looking like this BOY was a manifestation of my gender feelings, which i think can maybe be traced to this concept of pairing a visually similar, possibly gay, brunette boy to every brunette and/or tomboyish girl

anyway. if you actually read all of this id love it if you lmk somehow (doesnt need to be a like) like this is clearly very long and strange but i hope it makes sense. i think i stop myself a lot from ever commenting on gender or theory or whatever but i am a living breathing trans person who has experienced things and i have opinions and i dont think im claiming anything destructive with this lol i think its not unusual to reflect on the way you interacted with the world as a gay/trans kid

also im obviously not saying that shipping straight things is somehow inherently queer, im not trying to retroactively claim something about straight ships, like, those two characters are still functionally straight, and i definitely also shipped probably all of them for normal shipping reasons (although, kid ones, so less “oh theres a lot of ACTUAL romantic subtext between these two” but rather “oh theyre friends and would be cute together!” (or like they kissed and i was like O: )) but im just trying to theorize about something its possible my tiny trans brain was trying to express- and who knows maybe im not the only one!

anyway i guess the TL;DR is: when i was a kid i had a lot of “unconventional” straight ships- i already observed that i eschewed the main canon pairings in kids media in what was probably my tiny baby brains rejection of hetero culture, but i also actively shipped side characters who looked like me, and also looked like each other (ie, both tall and brunette, a boy and girl counterpart of Each Other) OR characters who seemed to be a gayish boy and a tomboyish girl, and im theorizing that maybe the reason that was was my tiny trans brain wanting to gem fusion those two together because of my Gender Feelings and fuse the boy with the girl and this desire manifested in shipping therefore thinking about a lot these pairings of boy and girl counterparts

[gayspock]

me: anyway im gonna stop ranting about doctor who

me: but also here’s my latest ramble

each time ive tried ranting about some of these more recent instalments (”recent” - s7 onwards,which isnt but listen) of new who, ive deleted them and screamed because i’d end up following extremely long, convoluted tangents - ones even too convoluted for, like, me rambling under a read more. see, the thing is?? everything is so.. interwoven- the faults, feeding into other faults- and its HARD to describe why its so . Eh! sometimes because for one, im awful with words and for two there’s a lot, but also barely anything, and i think thats actually a good description in of itself with whats wrong???

LIKE personally ithink... mid season 6 is perhaps the place where i think it starts going downhill. perhaps thats just because i loathe A Good Man goes to War because its the beginning of just that. what could have been a momentous episode ultimately fell flat, through sloppiness. honestly, i think that would have been an epic climax just there, for all the reasons the end of s4 was - all of the experiences the doctor went through, finally being reaped, as all people he’s saved and befriended come back to help him  and the whole thing SHOULD coalesce beautifullu but instead it had so many fallbacks. like.... jenny/strax/vastra who i all adore as a dynamic, and want more of, but they dont makeSENSE to appear as mains - not when the doctor has 6 seasons (+26 more, if you really reached) of actual content to draw from. why would you bring in characters we have no emotional connection with? as fodder would be fine, but to have them... be centre stage was so weird and its LITTLE things like that and in the very way the grandiosity COULD have coalesced in that episode, instead its the absolute opposite in all these tiny details seem to band together and drag it down. 

insteadthe execution feels increasingly hollow, and stale and i think thats, like, very much a signature fault of moffats writing (other than the sleazebag perv undertones, lmao) because he keeps doingthis thing where hes so overly ambitious with doctor who - and the nature of the show is somemthing i could ramlble aimlessly about, and get nowher in another read more somewhere, just like ia m now, but LISTEN!!! liek doctorwho is s- AND I HAD TO BACKSPACE EVERYTHING I WROTE, because this keeps devolving into that aforementioned, aimless rant about the nature of who but LISTEN. 

point is, moffat attempts to create a masterpiece with that just in mind. you know, like, when that happens? i hate trying to knock on ppl bc i realise this is a statement in reference to many ppl- andsorry, like. tbh i dont care how ppl write for the most part, bc they caan Do their thing but sometimes llike.... YOU KNOW those people who sometimes write, and theyre oh so fixated on the product rather than actually telling a narrative? RPing (since, like, RPing when i was 10) wise, ive met many people who, when constructing a characters backstory, would try to make “the angsiest, most heartbreaking, SADDEST THING IN THE WORLD :’’(”  and rather than focussing on the actual narrative, they’d fixate on that?????  like moffat... DOES that. he tries to make something extremely clever; he sits himself down, and he thinks WHATS GOING TO REALLY, REALLY SHOCK PEOPLE? perhaps that works for people- but the whole reverse engineering from the effect i want, and working backwards sometimes, often, loses sight of itself, and  all the potential of wht COULD have been an awesome narrative is... AGAIN, HOLLOW? because somewhere along the line, he forgot to...actually write the story, and to give us something to feel for and to be wowed by and instead made it more his mission to tangle up a ball of messy plot-string to make us go WOW! :3 and even that . just falls FLAT in the end 

s7 clara the-impossible-giirl is the epitome of jsut that- a character who exists to serve that eventual payoff, except it isnt much of a payoff when she makes the sacrifice to save everything because they ... REALLY DID just forget to give her a personality and her life outside the tardis- like.. THE FACT THEY DIDNT SHOW THAT SHE WAS A TEACHER UNTIL S8 WAS SO, SO FUCKING WILD. really wild. she just needed something- more motivation- a purpose  for her to exist other tha the fact [jazz hands] SHE’S AN ENIGGMAAAA, BABEY! which really wasnt helped at all by the fact she has NO chemistry with smith

and clara.... well, in my opinion she improves?? over time, until the end at least. like she was BETTER with capaldi, in my opinion, as they had more of a... relationshpthat complimented each other and a dynamic that was far more refeshing and something newer but also very reminiscent of old who with the SACE GRANDAD kinda energy going on but also  her bringing him down when he was Like That, and him bringing her down when she was Like That- and season 9, where she tries becoming the doctor is something else i would REALLY enjoy (untl they ruined it) but still there was still always that element of quite missing the mark, because things were still off the mar but i dont think AS bad-i think s7 was the peak of everythings a fucking mess and s8&s9 are variable and i think i have to go into both of those? to really pick them apart, becase like...

speaking to s8, seeing more insight into clara’s actual.. YOU KNOW... LIFE and who she is as a teacher is a lot better and a lot of the time i just try to ignore the fact s7 even happened(because her existence... as a nanny... i cant remember if that EVER even comes babck up again, or if the fucking FAMILY SHE LIVED WITH FOR A YEAR EVEN MATTERS ANY MORE??? BECAUSE IT JUST- i think whats the worst about her (speaking as a whole) is the inconsistency, and she suddenly just BECOMES a teacher in s8 and thats now a big thing i guess??? what would have made more sense, would be if she was introduced as that in s7- and i think it would hve been beneficial then, too, and would have given her more depth then but instead it feels like theey just cobbled it together in s8 when they realised “god we didnt think about this!!” and the whole danny pink... thing. yoou know?personally, i believe i’d quite like the danny/clara conundrum a lot more if perhaps? instead of having them, UH, YOU KNOW!! just meet there and then in s8 and then him suddenly becoming her whole life, like- it wouldd have been.... easier if they were already dating in s7??? which would have mde her devotion to him all he more ... realistic. what i was thinking was perhaps she’s instead whisked away from him in s7, and then cmes back in s8 and he’s. also MORE in focus? like i think he was cclose to actually being a good facet of the show, and i like the conflict and conversation between both him and the doctor- him forcing the doctor to, like, wake the fuck up about some shit- but i think it would have been more effective if he had a greater present and came along once or twie into more episodes and then maybe it would have felt like his death was also. a loss and not just a plot device you know and - IM RAMBLING HERE IM SORRY IM LSOJGN STEAM AND IM JUST MAD BUT I THINK. LISTEN.

S9. I NEED TO RAMBLE ABOUT S9 TOMORROW WHEN IM NOT DEAD BC THATS WHAT THIS STARTED OFF OUT AND SPOILE RALERT I LIKE WHAT S9 WAS TRYING TO DO BUT I PERSONALLY THINK THE WHOLE THING SHOULD HAVE BEEN RESTRUCTURED, AND-

[thecelibateshoewhore]

Dating in the Church (Part 1)

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33 NKJV).

 “You have been raised to life with Christ. Now set your heart on what is in heaven, where Christ rules at God’s right side. Think about what is up there, not about what is here on earth. You died, which means that your life is hidden with Christ, who sits beside God. Christ gives meaning to your life, and when He appears, you will also appear with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-4 CEV).

Happy Valentine’s Day to all those who’re celebrating! If you’re familiar with my writing, you know that I don’t take the typical approach — basically, the worldly viewpoint — regarding love, dating and celibacy because I’m committed to using my spiritual gift to serve God and His people. That said, be sure to read my previous posts about love and dating if you haven’t already: On Marrying the Wrong Person and On Love, Loyalty & Less Than God’s Best.

This series was inspired by a retweet that came across my timeline, which attempted to address why dating in the church is difficult. First, understand that there’s no biblical position on dating — at least not in the formal sense. There’s no particular scripture or passage that addresses how single believers should date. However, there are godly principles in scripture that can be applied to dating. It’s natural to want companionship, but many believers overlook the necessity and blessing of being single. This is the time to give God your undivided attention and allow Him to mature you in your faith and in your spiritual gifts. Y’all know I’m longwinded — I could write a book on this subject (in fact, I am)! Pull out your Bibles, as I’m going to assume that you’re familiar with the scriptures referenced. The first point listed was:

“We keep promoting this misnomer that marriage is more spiritual than natural.”

 Uh, since when?

 My first thought reading this was, why would any church, which is a spiritual institution, ever downplay the spiritual aspect of marriage? To do so would imply that God isn’t needed for or within a marriage, which is essentially a carnal standpoint. And perhaps that is the problem. Taking on this “natural” approach has led to many believers choosing the wrong spouse or getting married to simply appease their physical (as in sexual) and/or financial needs. God also never intended for us to desire marriage more than we desire Him.

I’m not negating the natural component of marriage. I’m negating that a church should promote marriage as more natural than spiritual, and counsel believers under this notion. To do so isn’t biblically sound. In fact, it’s counterintuitive to the ministry of marriage. (Yes, marriage is a ministry and I’ll explain why later on). Due to the laws that now govern our society, marriage has become a business transaction because Uncle Sam wants his cut in the same manner as if we were to start a business or purchase real estate. That is why when a government institution performs a “marriage ceremony” in accordance with the laws of its jurisdiction, it is known as a civil marriage or a civil union. Many secular marriage proponents believe that it’s not a spiritual or religious institution at all. For them, marriage should be attainable by any person(s) who wish to apply for a marriage license regardless of spiritual affiliation and compatibility.

 For this reason, it’s important to note that there’s marriage and then there’s marriage God’s way. If your desire is for a godly spouse or marriage, then you must understand and adhere to God’s principles regardless of what society is doing. A church that promotes marriage as a natural institution is promoting idolatry. Why? Christ is removed as the center or focal point and replaced with worldly rules and expectations. As Christians, our relationship with the Creator is the crux of our faith and should govern everything that we do, including how we date and who we marry. For believers, it doesn’t make sense that our spiritual component is the core of our lives (and human experience), but not the basis of how we learn marriage inside of the church. I’m not saying that unbelievers shouldn’t marry because it’s a vital aspect of human society. I’m also not saying that only Christian marriages are successful. I’m saying that as believers, we can’t fully experience marriage the way God intended unless He is the foundation and inspiration on which it stands. If we start to condone or accept the world’s ways, which contradict God’s truth, then we risk applying a distorted standard to how God wants us to live.

Furthermore, Colossians 3:1-4 reminds us that the basis of our faith is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It connects us to Christ as our foundation by guiding us with a basic ethical response to living in modern times. Set your mind on Christ! We are living in times where people profess faith in God, yet promote ideologies that are against His word. God is not the one confused. His word was, is and will always be true. Any church that proclaims to be the body of Christ should know not to conform to the expectations of society. God doesn’t lower Himself to meet the desires of man. Instead, we rise up to the standard that Christ set for us. When people state that churches aren’t effective because they’re “out of touch,” the solution isn’t to water down the message so that it’s easier for the masses to swallow it. The solution is to cultivate an environment that promotes real discipleship, healing and deliverance that is also built on sound truth! We don’t have a dating problem in the church, we have a discipleship problem. (Tweet This!) Before the church can minister to your dating needs and grow you into somebody’s spouse, you first need to master being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

 Before we can address dating in the church or “godly dating,” we must first understand why we’re dating in the first place. That is, what is the end goal? For most, marriage is the end goal. That is why it’s important to understand God’s purpose for marriage. For starters, God established the blueprint for marriage as a {spiritual} covenant (contract or agreement) between God, man and woman in Genesis 2:24. There were no courthouses or marriage licenses in the Garden of Eden. In fact, Genesis 2 outlines God’s design for marriage, as well as the governing principles that we should apply to it:

(1) God designed marriage as a covenant. Like most things, in order to understand how something works, the best source to ask is the One who created it! The foundation of a godly marriage involves daily communication with God. If praying and reading scripture isn’t a part of your daily life during the dating phase, chances are you will have cracks in your spiritual foundation that will impact your marriage. (2) God designed marriage to meet our need for companionship. Eve was created as a companion or “helper” because after naming all the animals, Adam wondered why there was no suitable companion for him (Genesis 2:18-20). Also note that God first gave Adam a purpose and a responsibility, and then gave him a wife to support his needs. In. That. Order. (3) God designed marriage as a depiction of our relationship with Him. Simply put, marriage is a ministry. Although He is pleased with sexual harmony between a husband and wife, that’s not why God designed marriage; He created it as a testimony for Him. If you’ve never witnessed a godly marriage, this might be hard for you to comprehend. Witnessing a union between a husband and wife who’re under the submission of Christ is the epitome of what it means to know God and know Him intimately. God created us for purposes that are larger than ourselves to serve Him and His people. In the same manner, He created marriage to illustrate the spiritual relationship between Christ (the bridegroom) and the church (His bride). Just as a husband and wife join as one flesh, we also join as one spirit with the Lord (1 Corinthians 6:18). Just as the church yields to the authority of Christ, the wife yields to the authority of the husband who’s also submitted to Christ. And a husband is to love his wife in the same manner that Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5: 21-25). Finally, just as a husband and wife produce offspring, believers are called to go out, multiply disciples and bring people back into the body of Christ as joint heirs.

 For believers who’re married, it becomes the primary, permanent, exclusive and intimate relationship between the two people who took those vows. No person or thing comes before either spouse (Matthew 19:6). It takes a lifetime to understand this level of commitment, which is why marriage isn’t required for everyone (1 Corinthians 7:7-9). Marriage isn’t a requirement for heaven or salvation. But, for those who choose marriage, choose to pursue it God’s way.

 If you’re a believer who’s not ready for marriage, you might be “casually dating” (not to be confused with fornicating). Casual dating is defined as any relationship where a couple is not exclusively dating each other. It doesn’t mean having sex or one-night stands. Even without sex, however, this kind of situation can bring unnecessary complications. My opinion is that casual dating isn’t inherently a bad thing if both parties clearly define their expectations and maintain boundaries, but I believe it increases the likelihood of misunderstandings and disappointment because as people evolve spiritually and emotionally, what they desire in a mate often changes. Sometimes this occurs at the other person’s expense.

 I purposely didn’t cover sex in great detail because I plan to address it later in this series. If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment below, and let me know that you’re ready for part 2.

 “Don’t change yourselves to be like the people of this world, but let God change you inside with a new way of thinking. Then you will be able to understand and accept what God wants for you. You will be able to know what is good and pleasing to him and what is perfect” (Romans 12:2 ERV).

 I love you.

 xo,

thecelibateshoewhore

[kuro-shit-posts]

A, F, J, P for sebastian, UT, ciel and vincent?

Hello! im so so sorry but im not super familiar with Vincent’s character and i didnt want to write something bad and disappoint you so i decided not to write for him, i hope thats ok! But i dohope you still enjoy the other characters!!———–Sebastian: A-Affection: completed in a previous post

F-Fun Times: Sebastian’s true self is still a bit enigmatic, however I feel that the real, demon, Sebastian doesnt really find many activities to be fun except for things like the manipulation of others or killing things (specifically killing sprees). Regarding his affinity for cats, i feel that playing with kitties would be the closest, if not the only, human “activity” he finds entertaining. As to whether Sebastian prefers to be in a group or alone, Sebastian doesnt really care for other demons, and clearly he isnt fond of angels or reapers either. Though Sebastian finds humans interesting, i think he finds them enjoyable in the way we enjoy looking at lobsters in a tank before we eat them. Its fun to watch them move around and interact with eachother, hell even after you take one home you might name it or think its cute, but ultimately its still food and you intend to eat it, not take it to the park and have a picnic because you enjoy its company. So needless to say Sebastian prefers to be alone.

J-Jokes: Clearly Sebastian is very talented in telling jokes but i think thats simply a product of being alive for so long and the fact that humans’ sense of humor hasnt really change through the centuries. Sebastian enjoys possessing the ability to make humans laugh as he enjoys being the center of attention and earning praise from humans. Though I dont believe he finds much humor in what humans find funny, i do believe he has his own sense of humor and for a demon he’s pretty giggly. For the most part, Sebastian makes himself laugh (especially in the form of puns), though he oftens finds humor in the foolishness of other (particularly Ciel). Sebastian is pretty quick to get a joke that would be considered funny to humans of any century, however, jokes that pertain to current or recent events tend to take him a bit longer, especially if he hasnt been amongst humans in a few decades. I think as the centuries went on, i.e. entering the 20th and 21st centuries, Sebastian would be even slower to get jokes as things move incredibly fast during the modern era. He’d finish a contract in the 80s and come back in 2010’s and be completely lost even though it had only been 30 years. What on earth was a Vine? Why did humans find plants so funny all of a sudden. Wait…when they say vine they aren’t referring to the botanical organism? He’d be one of those people that catches on right as a trend is ending or even way after it has ended because modern era trends, especially in humor, tend to last for months at the very most; which would be like miliseconds to a demon who experiences 10 years like 10 minutes.

P-Personality: First and foremost, I think that an intelligent partner would suit him best. As it is, Sebastian is alot smarter than the majority of humans, reapers, and quite possibly other demons, so regardless of who he chooses as a partner, they need to be able to keep up with his mental abilities. Next on the list of importance, I’d say maturity is something Sebastian values. Sebastian finds immature people destestable and someone’s level maturity makes or breaks his perception of them. After those two traits I think things tend to get a bit more flexible, I feel like Sebastian would prefer someome who had a sense of adventure, he doesnt care for boredom or laziness so someone who would want to get up and do things, or go with him to obscure places would be right up his alley. Someone with a unique perspective on the world would be desirable as well, Sebastian finds humans incredibly perplexing, so a human that even other humans have difficulty deciphering would be attractive to him as he likes a challenge. Speaking of challenges, he wouldnt want someone who’d come to him too easily, though he wouldnt want to work terribly hard either, he likes the chase but only when he knows there’s a reward waiting for him at the end. Sebastian would also find perseverance attractive, especially if it was facing something they feared or a task that proved to be incredibly challenging. I feel like he’d prefer a thrill-seeker as well. Most importantly though, he’d want someone to be able to completely accept and cherish his true form. Sebastian loves being a demon so someone who loved him like he loved himself would be absolutely necessary.

Ciel:A-Affection: Ciel would definitely be the type of s/o to buy you a diamond necklace before he’d think to give you a hug. Ciel hates physical contact, period. But i do think that he would tolerate it if his s/o really wanted physical affection and they were the one to initial it. Ciel’s not too good with words of romance either, so the majority of his love would be shown through the purchasing of items or perhaps the rememberance of a favorite meal or song and providing his s/o with such on frequent occasions. Ultimately he is still pretty distant and any type of affection would be rare. Though I think Ciel would prefer a distant partner who wouldnt demand alot of his attention, i feel like a clingy partner would complement his personality better. The reason being that Ciel acts distant and cold to protect himself, deep down he stills craves affection like any other human, especially one that has been broken. He’d need a partner that is able to understand this and is able to compensate for his lack of means to show affection by being clingy or affection enough for the both of them.

F-Fun Times: Ciel primarily enjoys activities that challenge him mentally, chess(obviously), reading, etc. On the other hand, Ciel is definitely not fond of any type of physical activity. To be even mediocre at anything that involves physical exertion, he has to put in his all. Ciel isnt the most social person, he’ll be social if he has too and he’s pretty damn good at acting but if he has the choice he prefers to do things he finds entertaining by himself. Ciel is pretty introverted and finds the company of others incredibly draining even if he enjoys the person or people themselves.

J-Jokes: Oh no no no, Ciel is t e r r i b l e when it comes to telling jokes. Ciel tends to be very left brained and unfortunately for him, that leaves him pretty empty handed in the comedy department, as we obviously saw during the Circus Arc when it took him hours to make Undertaker (a man who is notoriously giggly) produce even a miniscule chuckle. Ciel enjoys puns on occasion and only when theyre tasteful. Ciel is more so a fan of witty comments but an intelligent pun tickles his fancy every once in a while. However he hates Sebastian’s constant puns (mostly because he is the subject of them). Ciel is actually pretty slow to get most jokes. He doesnt really understand many types of common humor unless its witty or sarcastic. He really doesnt care for humor in general, to be honest, he hates smiling and being happy, it reminds him of the dwindling time he has left, and how he is technically on borrowed time. Ciel hates humor because he almost feels guilty for laughing or enjoying himself. He feels as if he doesnt deserve happiness after what he has sacrificed and for the selfish reasons he did so. In short, humor is not a friend of Ciel.

P-Personality: Ciel would best be suited by someone who has a personality opposite to his. Ciel isnt cold by nature, Ciel is cold because of a traumatic experience. Ciel’s aloof demeanor is more so a shield rather than a legitimate personality trait. Underneath that shield, Ciel’s a sweet person, he craves love and happiness just like anyone else, perhaps more than most people because he has been so fiercely denied it. Because Ciel is no longer able to access those feelings of love and happiness he would best be complimented by someone who could do that for him. Someone who could provide him with positivity and allow him to view things more optimistically would be ideal. Though, he would best be suited by someone with a calmer persona, they would have to be down to earth as he would most likely view them as his stability. Someone with a motherly aura who could take care of him instead of him having to take care of them. That type of person would attract him and be an incredibly good fit for his personality. Other personality traits wouldnt hold as much merit with him, except for maybe intelligence, Ciel wouldnt be fond of a partner who couldnt keep up with him mentally.

Undertaker:A-Affection: Completed in a previous post

F-Fun Times: Undertaker enjoys activities that have to do with the strange and unconventional. Undertaker enjoys things he doesn’t understand, I feel like that’s why he’s so fascinated wih death. Death is quite the anomaly and he very much enjoys the feeling of curiosity. Honestly Undertaker is pretty fond of gore as well, he likes cutting things open in his free time and seeing whats inside, not only because he is fascinated with how the insides of the creature work but because he enjoys the look of bloodied flesh, as gross as it sounds. Aside from things that pertain to death, Undertaker enjoys other unconventional activities as long as they dont bore him. He doesnt much care whether or not theyre productive activities, however he cant stand idle activities that completely waste his time. He’s pretty lazy but he doesnt take pleasure in wasting his immortality on things that serve no ultimate purpose. Discovering new, completely bizarre things is his favorite activity. He doesnt much care whether or not he has any company to do this with, he does what he wants regardless of anyone else. Though if he had to chose he would probably prefer the company of a companion to assist him in his activities.

J-Jokes: This man L O V E S jokes. I mean, he straight up values them in the same way normal people value currency. Undertaker isn’t particularly good at telling jokes himself but he certainly appreciates the art of comedy. He enjoys puns, he enjoys anything that might make him laugh. However, his favorite type of comedy is either slapstick or simply watching someone unknowingly make a fool of themselves. Undertaker is most fond of the comedy that is unexpected and happens naturally. He is always the first to get a joke. Jokes to him are a fine art, and honestly even if he doesnt get a joke, the fact that he couldnt understand makes him laugh anyway. The only jokes Undertaker doesnt enjoy are corny jokes. If unexpected/slapstick comedy is caviar to him, dad jokes are dollar store spray cheese. He hates dad/corny jokes, he finds them terribly overused and believes the only people who find them funny have a horribly underdeveloped sense of humor.

P-Personality: Undertaker would best fit with someone who is somewhat similar to him. Undertaker enjoys happy-go-lucky people whom see the beauty in laughter and pursue happiness. Despite being consistently cast off in the dark shadows of death and the grimness of grim reapers, Undertaker values optimism and positivity. Undertaker also values uniqueness and is drawn to those that possess strange qualities or quirks. He likes strange things and would prefer a partner who could satiate his hungry for unconventionality. Undertaker would also want someone who could make him laugh and value humor in the same way he did. He would clash with someone who was too serious, Undertaker has seen a lifetime of seriousness and gloom, he couldnt stand a partner who took their time in the world for granted and spent it focusing on the bad instead of trying to achieve happiness.

[wlwtsubomi]

do u have bnha ocs? 0:

YES I DO THANK YOU FOR ASKING

akfjafkahglad throwing them all under read more bc i have,,, A Lot(TM)

i actually have a fuckin uhhhhh nextgen au?? and thats where A Majority Of Them come from??????? and i love them all id die for them

ok so like

ok so two of my Main Ones are era and takuma!!!!!!!! ft. some changed designs bc im considering revamping laylaylb bc it Kinda Sucks. 

so era is the shark one!!!!! her quirk is minor shark and its a mutant quirk that gives her vague mutations from a whitetip reef shark!!! that includes (but is not limited to) double rows of teeth, gils, some fins, enhanced smell and like, you know that thing that sharks do where they can find things from like,, those feely things from their chins?? yeah era can do that. she also tends to be more wild at night?? but it can be passed off as loopiness. since shes from a nextgen au shes the adopted daughter of kiri and baku???? her full name is bakushima era and she is like,,, just Rowdy and Easily Excited.

takuma is a more obvious nextgen kid and hes a tododeku fankid?? THOUGH in the revamp im gonna make him a todoiideku fankid with siblings bc ive always had concept for siblings for him but i was a Coward and never went through with them. his quirk is temperature control and its an emitter quirk that, when he touches something, he can adjust the temperature of an object. whenever he raises the temperature in something, the temperature of his body lowers, and vise versa. that often leads him to being cold constantly and having to bundle up his body in like a thousand jackets. its Very Relatable to me tbh. anxiety is hereditary so hes very anxious and withdrawn. he tends to be very scatterbrained and more often then not he forgets words mid-sentence and needs eras help to remember them. that leads him to repeat things a lot and quit a lot of things midway because he cant describe them. thats Also Very Relatable. his full name is midoriya takuma although in the revamp, its most likely that his name will be changed to iida-midoriya takuma

another important character to the nextgen who isnt actually a nextgen kid is siryoku karashiro (despite me often using first names as a way to refer to characters, i called him by his family name (siryoku) so frequently in laylaylb that thats just how i refer to him at this point) and hes really fun to draw. so hes kinda hard to explain without giving a lot about his backstory and eventual character arc away?? but hes from a rich family of lawyers who all have quirks that allow them to intimidate people by meeting their eyes. however, due to a recessive quirk from his moms side, he ended up having an variant of the black hole quirk. unlike thirteen, who (presumably) can channel theirs through their fingers, his is through his eyes. without a lot of practice with his quirk, he cant really control it and it often ends up being an all or nothing sort of trump card. siryokus very socially awkward and often has a hard time keeping up with extroverted people like ame and era. he also tends to miss expressions and figures of speech. but other than that, hes very earnest and despite his fumbles, wants to help others

while takuma era and siryoku are the Main Trio, takuma and era are also in another trio alongside ame, full name uraraka ame. shes a tsuchako fankid who really likes wearing christmas sweaters in the middle of summer. a part of this generations “big 3″ ame is a third year and an intern under thirteen. her quirk is zero gravity, inherited directly from ochako. shes very caring, and the “big sister” of the group if you will. she tries to help people as much as she can, and is the role model of both era and takuma. she is very energetic though, but she misses a lot of social cues and can as such be seen as pushy or overbearing. 

while she hasnt appeared a lot yet in either my comics or in laylaylb, another character who will end up being important is kyousou hansha!!!! she will be (eventually) the vice president of their class and has been shown to be very driven, determined, and almost judgemental. she hasnt come with the intention of befriending people who dont come up to her standards, though what exactly those standards are is currently unknown. (i know it though) all thats currently known is that she often knows how to take charge of a situation with a very analytical point of view, and that perhaps thats what helped her land a recommended spot into ua. (who recommended her and what her quirk is hasnt been officially shown, though if you look through my blog, im p sure i mentioned it at one point)

this is a very bad drawing, because kazankawa (full name kazankawa atsui) is one of my favorite characters to draw (without coloring because her details is hard for me to color) and has one of my favorite character designs out of my bnha ocs. her quirk is volcano, and its a mutant quirk that almost makes herself like a living volcano. however, she cant ‘erupt’. her skin literally has cracks around where it folds the most, so think at the joints of her fingers and in her elbow. it also has cracks below her eyes. the cracks are filled with lava, though it is purely stationary. she gives off heat and can produce smoke from her mouth (though she doesnt know it yet). she is also able to throw up lava, but thats just kinda gross. she comes across as level-headed, chill, and sleepy almost all the time. however, once she gets riled up or in the battle field, she becomes more wild and reckless.

some other characters and wow isnt this a great drawing, is the houkai squad. i dont have an official name for their group, but they have a really fun dynamic to write. houkai genki (the middle one in the screenshot) is the one that this entire group revolves around, because they are the one who taigun and kuroiya are around for. they have an emitter quirk called emp, which is. an emp. yeah. its,, self explanatory. some people think theyre slick, but really, theyre kinda just really stupid and has no self restraint. 

taigun kisaki (the leftmost) is literally the groups voice of reason and impulse control. her quirk is literally the most terrifying quirk ive ever come up with and its an emitter quirk that lets her control the bees. fuck you vigilantes i made it up before i knew you made a character with a similar quirk. shes by all means an extrovert, but has very thin patience and is constantly done by the shenanigans of this god forsaken group.

kuroiya fumukoi was actually the third bnha oc i designed, and was originally supposed to be a very withdrawn softspoken character. but as i wrote laylaylb, she was changed to an enabler of houkais, with just vaguely more intelligence than houkai, but instead of doing things out of sheer stupidity, more out of just ballsy-ness. her quirk is called shadow step and allows her to travel through shadows. it often leaves her hungry, so a lot of times she can be caught munching on something.

some other characters are the rest of the big 3!!! i love them a lot. like,, listen i would die for them. besides ame, theres suiro takara, the one on the right, and her quirk is crystal channel?? shes an intern under aoyama and can channel her own energy into crystals on her body (which is why she wears so many necklaces) in the form of lasers. shes constantly tired and stressed and honestly really offput by ame. ames excited and loud personality is a bit too much for her, so she tends to lash out or act cold. then theres yasuyou natsuki, the middle, whos quirk is flame body. her bodys literally a fire. as a result, all of the the third years had to be made extra fire durable outfits and gym uniforms to withstand being worn or coming into contact with her. ame has a crush on her, though yasuyou isnt aware of it. yasuyou is dense but upbeat, not interacting with ame a lot because theyre in different classes. (ame is in 3-a while yasuyou is in 3-b). also, ame, idk about u, but idk how ur gonna smooch fire.

of course there is A Lot of other characters from laylaylb that i wont write bc i dont have the screenshots or drawings on hand or bc they havent been revealed or i dont have the energy to explain all about the background characters

BUT

i DO have a non-laylaylb bnha oc and i dont have a name or set design for her yet but ive been stewing over the idea of her quirk for the LONGEST time

so basically shes a support student whos quirk is balance. its an emitter/mutant kinda quirk that gives her impeccable balance and things that she touches the same balance as well. it comes in handy when walking/maneuvering with things in her hands, and allows her to stack things without the fear of them fall over. think about that one sasuke figurine that could balance anything on its head and think ‘what if that was a quirk’

she isnt keen on sharing her ideas with others, though when she does, its often for critique. she has an odd sense for knowing when people lie to her about their opinions, and prefers brutal truth. perhaps its because thats how she is-- overly blunt and bad at determining which things are and arent right to tell to someones face. 

i could see her getting along with hatsume

[themoneybuff-blog]

Questions About Car Seats, Leftovers, Medical Insurance, Budget Brands, and More!

Whats inside? Here are the questions answered in todays reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question. 1. Early or late retirement contributions? 2. Purchases for infrequent use 3. Used car seats? 4. Excessive leftovers 5. Friends want me to spend 6. Value of one bag living 7. Buying a house on $35K 8. How to avoid drive-thrus 9. Medical insurance difficulties 10. Budget brands? 11. Starting career advice 12. Thoughts on taekwondo One of the most enjoyable parts of writing this mailbag column is the wide variety of comments and questions I get from readers. I usually try to keep the stuff I choose for the mailbag at least somewhat within the realm of personal finance, maybe slipping in one or two questions or comments a week that arent related to the topic, but I get quite a lot of great stuff from readers that covers completely different topics that I just cant reasonably fit into the mailbag. For example, just in the last week or two, Ive received the following notes from readers: A reader wrote in to talk about the joys of playing Magic: the Gathering with her son and how they were building Commander decks together. A reader wrote in to encourage me to pick up some of the writings of the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, particularly his essays Psychopolitics and The Scent of Time (which Im currently reading). A reader has been trying to get me to debate him concerning a number of hot button political issues. A reader has been writing to me consistently for weeks asking for step-by-step help in getting a batch of homemade kombucha to work. A reader invited me to his dynasty fantasy football league. Thats just over the last several days. Honestly, I love this kind of thing, because it represents human connection. Theres a sharing of ideas and interests and a sharing of concern behind all of it that goes way past merely writing about financial issues, and it means a lot to me, even if its not fodder for the mailbag. Speaking of the mailbag, here are this weeks questions. Q1: Early or late retirement contributions? Is it better to contribute to a Roth IRA early in the year or as late as possible? I have money set aside for my 2019 Roth contribution but I dont know if I should do it now or wait. Brian Unless theres some specific reason thats unique to your situation that points to waiting, you should put those savings in there as soon as possible. The longer the money is invested, the more time you have for compound interest to work in your favor. Having said that, investment markets are unpredictable. Theres always a chance that right after you put your money in, the markets dip. Remember that this could happen no matter when you put your money in there. You could put your money in now and immediately see a dip, or you could wait until next February to put it in and immediately see a dip. The difference is that, on average, its much more likely that the investment youre putting your money into will go up in value over that period. If you wait, its very likely that youre going to miss out on growth. Put your retirement money away in retirement accounts as soon as you can. Dont sit around holding them, because youre usually doing nothing more than missing out on growth if you do that. Q2: Purchases for infrequent use Im considering purchasing a pair of bowling shoes. I only bowl once or twice a year, but it seems like its a wise investment since I could get a pair of perfectly good bowling shoes for around $25 instead of paying $3 or so each time to rent them. How do you view rarely used purchases like this that, while adding to the stuff you own, will eventually pay for themselves? Adam My philosophy on purchases like these is similar to yours. I try to look at the total cost of ownership of the item over an extended but still reasonable period of time, like five years, and I figure out which is going to cost less. I also consider how frequently Ill actually use the item, and it basically has to be annually at the very least and preferably much more frequent than that. That type of thinking requires full honesty to be valuable. So, in your situation, is it cheaper to rent shoes for $3 a pop twice a year for five years or buy a pair of shoes for $25 once? Well, the cost for rental over that period is $30, so Id probably swing toward buying a pair, assuming that Im bowling twice a year. If you assume that its actually going to be much less than twice a year, youre going to be better off renting. I usually use a five year measure for calculations like this, because I figure its pretty hard to predict accurately what my life will be like beyond that time threshold and its also probably a reasonable guess as to the wear and tear that an item can take. Usually, with a five year calculation, its obvious whether its a good move or not. Again, in this situation, those bowling shoes arent going to be worn out after ten wears, so its likely you will be able to continue wearing them at that point or theyll have some minor secondhand value. This pushes the pendulum even more toward buying them. Q3: Used car seats? I am expecting in November. My husband and I are starting to pick up baby items from FB Marketplace and Craigslist. Whenever a carseat is listed on Marketplace someone always comments that you shouldnt buy used carseats because theyre not safe. How are used carseats not safe? Amy A carseat is one of the few baby options I wouldnt buy used. The reason is simple: a big part of whats protecting that baby when theyre in the carseat is plastic, and you dont know how that plastic has been treated. Theres some chance that the plastic has become brittle and could easily crack or break in a severe impact, just when you need it the most. This can happen, for example, if a carseat has been left in the sun too much over the course of years. Its not an issue of negligence its an issue of you not knowing the history of that carseat. It may have had years of sunlight exposure, rendering the protection that it offers your child much weaker. Most baby items are fine to buy used clothes and baby monitors and things like that. Those arent things that will cause calamity if they fail and its usually obvious if theyre doing their job or not. A car seat, though, is something you should invest in. 99.9% of the time, it wont matter, but 0.1% of the time, it matters more than anything else and youll never, ever want to skimp on that situation. Q4: Excessive leftovers On any given night we will have 2-7 people at our house for dinner. By default we cook for 7 but that means that many nights we have a ton of leftovers. We eat leftovers for lunch every day but they still get tossed a lot. We cant give them to the food pantry either. Ideas? Andy My first suggestion would be to simply have a leftover buffet night for dinner twice a week or so. On, say, Wednesdays and Saturdays, just pull out all leftovers, put them on the table, and let people assemble their own plates of leftovers and heat them up (or heat up the hot items before putting them on the buffet). That way, the leftovers get consumed directly and you have a free dinner. Another suggestion is to frequently make meals and side dishes that are easy to remix into another meal if you have a low turnout. For example, if you make a bunch of spaghetti, you can save it for two nights and then mix in a few additional spices, put it in a greased 9 by 13 pan, put a couple cups of mozzarella and provolone shredded cheese on top, and bake it for 30-45 minutes, covered for the first half, to make a nice spaghetti bake. We also often have plain vegetables as a side dish and save the leftovers to make quick soups later on, for example. A final suggestion is that on nights where you have a low turnout, simply prep leftover plates for the next night and have the same thing for dinner again, or prepare a different dinner the next night for just the two who ate the night before. I dont think you need to feel obligated to have a fresh meal on the table for whoever happens to show up each night. Q5: Friends want me to spend Im 23 and got a nice job out of college paying $45K per year. Several of my friends from college are in the same area and have jobs as well so its fun to hang out with them, but it feels like they want to blow their income as fast as possible. They go out drinking and to clubs constantly, upgrade their phones all the time, ride around in Ubers when they have cars, and throw money at stupid stuff. I want to get rid of my student loan debt and start saving for a house and Im already contributing to retirement so I can get out of this as young as possible. Its not like Im avoiding fun but theres a ton of stuff to do that doesnt cost $50 or $100 for an evening. When I suggest anything else other than clubs or an expensive restaurant, I get ignored. Do you have any suggestions? Amy Find new friends? I mean, that sounds fairly cold, but it sounds like your values are diverging from the values that your friends hold, or perhaps they were always divergent and the income just exposed it. While I dont mind being acquaintances with people with drastically different lifestyles than my own, I have found its far more pleasant and easier to have close friends who have similar values and lifestyles to my own. That way, Im not pushed to overspend constantly just to spend time with my friends. I have been in situations where it felt like I had to pay some kind of admission fee (in the form of going out when I didnt want to) just to hang out with a friend and if I wasnt willing to do that, that person wouldnt hang out with me. That just isnt worth it. Id suggest digging into activities that you feel internally interested in doing. Find groups in your community that match up well with that by using things like Meetup and there youll find people who are also interested in what you happen to be internally interested in. Get involved in those groups. Youll find its not too hard to build friendships that way. Q6: Value of one bag living I found your post on one bag living to be interesting but not practical. Its not like more than maybe 0.001% of your readers will actually ever do it. What is the practical value of such an article? Ollie The practical value of it is that it really shows you how few items you actually need to have a happy and comfortable life, and when you realize that, you begin to realize how much extra unnecessary stuff you have and how much that stuff is costing you, both in terms of the stuff itself and the space youre paying for to store all of that stuff. Lets say, for example, that you decided to try it for a month. You packed a big duffel bag full of stuff and aimed to live solely out of that bag for that month. During the month, almost everything you use comes out of that bag other than maybe a few kitchen items, you really dont use anything else in your home. At the end of the month, youre left asking yourself what the point of all of that other stuff is. Why have any of it if youre able to have a great life without touching it? Why have shelves full of books and DVDs you never touch? Why have a television if you have a good life not watching it? This is likely to lead you to start downsizing your possessions, recouping some money along the way, and its also likely to lead you to question almost all of your physical purchases. If you keep going in that direction, youll find that you likely have excessive living space and can easily be satisfied with a smaller home or apartment, and if you downsize that, then youre on the way to some serious financial improvement in your life, as youre losing far less money to utilities, insurance, property taxes, and so on. Q7: Buying a house on $35K I am a single woman with a four year old child from a previous marriage; the father is not involved and avoids paying child support. We live in a small apartment in [a large city with a moderate cost of living]. I make $35K per year. My mom lives about five miles away and takes care of my son when Im working and hes not in preschool as she has a pension thats enough for her to live on because my father died in the workplace. I would like to be able to afford a small house for us and get out of this apartment building before hes too old because theres kind of a rough culture of teenage boys here. I would like to be in a house in four years. I have no debts and am saving about $200 a month for emergencies. Carrie First of all, Id contact a lawyer and do what you can to get child support. The cost of supporting your child should not be borne solely by you and hes legally obligated to provide financial help here even if hes uninvolved. Second of all, $200 a month in savings thats also used as an emergency fund isnt adequate to get to where you want to go in four years. I looked into your area and a small starter home is going to run you in the $300K range now and will probably be closer to $350K by the time you want to buy. 20% of $350K is $70K. If youre saving $200 a month, youll get to about $10K in four years if there are no emergencies. To get to $70K in four years, you need to be saving around $1,500 a month and have no emergencies that tap that money. Considering that youre making about $3,000 a month before taxes, thats an extremely difficult proposition. Thus, to make it to your target, youre going to have to do some radical things. The first thing I would do is sit down with your mother and discuss the option of cohabitation for a few years, with you splitting up the housing costs. If she could move into your apartment or you two could move into her dwelling and its a tenable situation for a few years, youll both save a mint. If youre paying $1,000 a month in rent and it suddenly drops to $500 a month, theres $500 a month toward savings, and probably more than that because youll have lower utility bills and you can more easily share food costs. You may find that after you buy that starter home, it may make sense to have your mother continue to live with you to keep costs manageable going forward, at least for a while. If you can swing something like that, use a lot of smart frugal tactics like sticking with store brand items when shopping, get on that child support issue, and keep working at your career to move toward a better salary, you can make this work. Without those kinds of big changes, this probably isnt a realistic goal. Q8: How to avoid drive-thrus How do you stop relying on the convenience of drive-thrus? I understand that its way cheaper to make meals at home but when I can just go to a drive-thru and get a quick meal and have it eaten before I even get home or eat it right when I walk in the door and theres no cleanup because I just toss the wrappers, its hard to convince myself to make a big mess making a meal at home. Leon There are a few good strategies for solving this problem that work well for different people. I suggest trying one for at least 30 days, see if it clicks with you or merely causes frustration, and either stick with it if it works or move on to another if it doesnt. First, try simply packing a meal for yourself at home before you leave in a small cooler. Make something simple that you like a sandwich and some baby carrots and a drink or whatever. Pack the individual items in reusable containers and put them in something insulated with an ice pack to keep it cool. Take that meal with you when you go out and save it at your desk or in a work fridge until youre ready to leave, then eat that on the way home. You can do the meal prep the night before while watching a television show and if you use reusable containers, cleanup is really just a matter of popping stuff in the dishwasher and wiping off the table (which youd need to do anyway). If you want, you can designate Fridays as eat out days and keep it as a treat for yourself for getting through the week. Another thing I strongly suggest is to simply get better at cooking at home. Cooking seems very difficult at first and even easy things like scrambled eggs feel like a giant mess and a big time and energy investment, but once you get more practiced, it stops feeling so challenging. Start by making really simple meals that you like grilled cheese sandwiches or scrambled eggs or spaghetti. Another strategy is to cook things in advance, make individual meals out of them in reusable containers, and keep them in the fridge. For example, you could make a huge batch of spaghetti one night and pack three or four individual meals of spaghetti with a breadstick in resealable containers in the fridge. Then, you can take them to work with you and youll also know that one is just waiting for you when you get home. Yet another strategy is to use a slow cooker. Start a simple dump meal before you leave (a dump meal means you just dump several ingredients in there and turn it on low) and youll have a hot home-cooked meal waiting for you when you get home. Slow cookers are great for stews, chili, soups, and simple casseroles; it can also make a mean pot roast. The goal of all of these things is to either put something in your hands directly so that youre not tempted to stop or have something at home waiting for you so youre not tempted to stop. Q9: Medical insurance difficulties I am covered by [a major medical insurer] through my workplace. A few months ago, I had a procedure done that my doctors office informed me would be fully covered by my insurance. They filed this with the insurance and the insurance company came back saying that the procedure wasnt medically necessary and wouldnt cover it, so my doctor is now billing me for it at the tune of $30K. I dont even know where to start. Should I contact a lawyer? Petra Without seeing the bills and documentation, I cant give you full advice on what to do. However, my first step would be to document every single detail that you can recall about this entire process, including dates and what you were told by both your doctors office and insurance. If you have any supporting documents, such as receipts and printed information about the procedure or about the costs, thats all valuable here. Then, I would go through the process of appealing this claim with your insurer, providing a copy of all of that documentation. An appeal should definitely be your first action. If you find that your appeal is denied, you should then discuss the matter with your doctor and attempt to get their bill reduced. If youre still finding that youre paying an excessive amount, then I would take all of this documentation to a lawyer and get legal help. It very much sounds like you were given inaccurate guidance from a doctors office and a lawyer can usually help here. Q10: Budget brands? Are there any budget brands you trust for making high quality stuff? Meaning brands that are cheap in price but the quality of their stuff is good? Darren The store brands at most department stores and grocery store chains fit that bill. For the vast majority of product types, the store brand is as good as most of the name brand options. They might not beat some of the really high end premium versions of those products, but the store brand is usually as good as 80% of similar items on the shelf. For things like charging cables and basic electronics like computer mice or keyboards, Ive found that Amazons generic brand, Amazon Basics, is really good for the price. For many different kinds of smaller electronic items, like external batteries for charging devices on the go or headphones or things of that nature, I strongly trust Anker. If theres an Anker option for a small electronic device, youre probably getting great bang for the buck with it. Those are the ones that immediately come to mind as brands that I strongly trust that consistently provide good bang for the buck across a wide variety of products. Q11: Starting career advice My oldest son is about to graduate from college with a degree in electrical engineering. I am collecting career advice from some people I respect to pass along to him. What advice would you give to a fresh college graduate in a technical field today? Robert First of all, treat the first decade of your career as an opportunity to build skills and relationships above chasing salary. A killer resume ten years from now will be worth a lot more than earning an extra $5K or $10K right out of the gate. If one job pays a little more but feels like a dead end, while the other job pays a little less but feels like its overflowing with opportunities and ways to build relationships, take the latter job in the first decade of your career. Second, if your workplace offers a 401(k) plan, take advantage of it immediately and contribute as much as you can stand. You will never regret this. Just do this and then start off with smaller take-home checks theyll still be a lot more than what you had in college. Pay yourself first. Third, no matter how tough a situation is, dont burn bridges, even if it would feel good. If youre moving on from a position, do it as gently as possible and be as positive and flexible as you can on your way out. Finally, eat healthy, get some exercise, get plenty of sleep, and dont work too many hours. If you dont do those things, youll be far less productive during your work time, the quality of work you produce will be lower, and youll have a harder time picking up new skills. If your workplace is obsessed with 80 hour workweeks, carve out as much of that 80 hours toward self care and rest that you can reasonably get away with. Q12: Thoughts on taekwondo I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on taekwondo from the perspective of both a parent of a student and as a participant with an eye toward cost. Is it worth it? Do your kids get value out of it? How about yourself? Brenda I attend a local taekwondo school with the rest of my family. It was an activity that my two oldest children wanted to try and the family plan isnt much more expensive than just the two of them participating, so when our family schedule lined up and our youngest was old enough, we all joined. In effect, our third family member was half price and the rest of us are effectively going for free, and the price has actually gone down as some family members have reached black belt rank (and those who havent are at a belt rank approaching black). First of all, if youre new to martial arts of any kind, its something you should shop around for. Any city of any size likely has a few martial arts schools; a larger city likely has some dedicated taekwondo schools with branches in various locations. Different schools offer different prices and different philosophies. Taekwondo is a martial art thats focused on fast, high kicking. That means that it really works hard on agility and balance. Theres also an emphasis on forms, which are sequences of kicks and other movements that are memorized and done from memory, which challenges a persons memory while physically exerting themselves. Our familys interest in martial arts lies much more in the realm of self improvement, character building, self defense, and fitness rather than training to fight. There are definitely martial arts schools that are very focused on simply training to fight, preparing people for things like mixed martial arts. Theres nothing wrong with that, but its not what Sarah or I were looking for in a school. We wanted a school where the merit wasnt in whether you defeat someone in a fight, but whether youre working hard and genuinely improving yourself so that youre better at the techniques, better in all around fitness, and better in character than you were the day before. Again, I have nothing against a school focused on fight-focused training, but its just not what Im looking for or what I would direct my children toward until theyre old enough to make those kinds of choices for themselves. Perhaps someday theyll take what theyve learned and move in that direction, and Im fine with that. When my oldest son and daughter began expressing a genuine interest in taekwondo, we shopped around for local schools that offered dedicated youth programs and were focused on a self-improvement type of martial art philosophy, and we found one that we liked that had classes near us, and over time, we all joined up. I think it has genuinely helped our children improve their ability to focus, their ability to overcome challenges, their character, and most definitely their ability to defend themselves and get out of a threatening situation. As a parent, Im thrilled with the impact taekwondo has had on them. As for myself, I joined because I agree in a deep philosophical way with the goals and direction of the school, as well as the fact that I was looking for a fitness program for myself and an opportunity to mutually encourage my family to be more fit. This hits all of those marks and with family rates, its pretty inexpensive. If you divide our session fees by five, theres absolutely no way any of us could be in a sport or a fitness program at these rates. If someone is interested in taekwondo or martial arts in general, Id start by figuring out why you want to do it. What are you hoping to get out of it, or what do you want your child to get out of it? Self-discipline? Fitness? Self-defense? Character? What are the one or two things you want most for yourself or for your child that you hope martial arts can provide? Start from there and shop around at a lot of schools in your area. Theyll all have different philosophies and centers of focus some of them will line up well with your own goals and philosophies, while others will go in a different direction (not wrong or bad, just different). Find some that match what you want, price compare them, and give one a try for a session and see if its right for you. Got any questions? The best way to ask is to follow me on Facebook and ask questions directly there. Ill attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive many, many questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours. https://www.thesimpledollar.com/questions-about-car-seats-leftovers-medical-insurance-budget-brands-and-more/

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Why do we feel so guilty all the time?

The long read: Food, sex, money, work, family, friends, health, politics: theres nothing we cant feel guilty about, including our own feelings of guilt

I feel guilty about everything. Already today Ive felt guilty about having saidthe wrong thing to a friend. Then Ifeltguilty about avoiding that friend because of the wrong thing Id said. Plus, I havent called my mother yet today: guilty. And I really should have organised something special for my husbands birthday: guilty. I gave the wrong kind of food to my child: guilty. Ive been cutting corners at work lately: guilty. I skipped breakfast: guilty. I snacked instead: double guilty. Im taking up all this space in a world with not enough space in it: guilty, guilty, guilty.

Nor am I feeling good about feeling bad. Not whensophisticated friends never fail toremind me how selfinvolved, self-aggrandising, politically conservative and morally stunted the guilty are. Poor me. Guilty about guilty. Filial guilt, fraternal guilt, spousal guilt, maternal guilt, peer guilt, work guilt, middle-class guilt, whiteguilt, liberal guilt, historical guilt, Jewish guilt: Im guilty of them all.

Thankfully, there are those who say they can save us from guilt. According to the popular motivational speaker Denise Duffield-Thomas, author of Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!, guilt is one of the most common feelings women suffer. Guilty women, lured by guilt into obstructing their own paths to increased wealth, power, prestige and happiness, just cant seem to take advantage of their advantages.

You might feel guilty, Duffield-Thomas writes, for wanting more, or for spending money on yourself, or for taking time out of your busy family life to work on improving yourself. You might feel guilty that other people are poor, thatyour friend is jealous, that there are starving people in theworld. Sure enough, I do feel guilty for those things. So,itis something of a relief to hear that I can be helped thatI can be self-helped. But, for that to happen, what I must first understand is that a) Im worth it, and b) none of these structures of global inequality, predicated on historical injustices, are my fault.

My guilt, in other words, is a sign not of my guilt but of myinnocence even my victimhood. Its only by forgiving myself for the wrongs for which I bear no direct responsibility that I can learn to release my money blocks and live afirstclass life, according to Duffield-Thomas.

Imagine that: a first-class life. This sort of advice, which frames guilt as our most fundamentally inhibiting emotion, takes insights from psychoanalytic and feminist thinking and transforms them into the language of business motivation. The promise is that our guilt can be expiated by making money.

Its an idea that might resonate especially in the German language, where guilt and debt arethe same word, schuld. One thinks, for example, of Max Webers thesis about how the spirit of capitalism conflates our worldly and heavenly riches, on the basis that what you earn in this world also serves as a measure of your spiritual virtue, since it depends on your capacity for hard work, discipline and self-denial.

But what Weber calls salvation anxiety within the Protestant work ethic has the opposite effect to the self-help manuals promise to liberate entrepreneurs from their guilt. For Weber, in fact, the capitalist pursuit of profit does not reduce ones guilt, but actively exacerbates it for, in an economy that admonishes stagnation, there can be no rest forthe wicked.

So, the guilt that blocks and inhibits us also propels us to work, work, work, to become relentlessly productive in the hope that we might by our good works rid ourselves of guilt. Guilt thus renders us productive and unproductive, workaholic and workphobic a conflict that might explain theextreme and even violent lengths to which people sometimes will go, whether by scapegoating others or sacrificing themselves, to be rid of what many people considerthe mostunbearable emotion.

What is the potency of guilt? With its inflationary logic, guiltlooks, if anything, to have accumulated over time. Although we tend to blame religion for condemning man tolife as a sinner, the guilt that may once have attached tospecific vices vices for which religious communities couldprescribe appropriate penance now seems, in a more secular era, to surface in relation to just about anything: food, sex, money, work, unemployment, leisure, health, fitness, politics, family, friends, colleagues, strangers, entertainment, travel, the environment, you name it.

Equally, whoever has been tempted to suppose that rituals of public humiliation area macabre relic of the medieval past clearly hasnt been paying much attention to our life online. You cant expect to get away for long on social media without someone pointing an accusatory finger at you. Yet its hard to imagine that the presiding spirit of our age, the envious and resentful troll, would have such easy pickings if he could not already sense awhiff of guilt-susceptibility emanating from his prey.

It wasnt meant to be like this. The great crusaders of modernity were supposed to uproot our guilt. The subject ofcountless high-minded critiques, guilt was accused by modern thinkers of sapping the life out of us and causing ourpsychological deterioration. It was said to make us weak(Nietzsche), neurotic (Freud), inauthentic (Sartre).

In thelatter part of the 20th century, various critical theories gained academic credibility, particularly within the humanities. These were theories that sought to show whether with reference to class relations, race relations, gender relations how we are all cogs in a larger system ofpower. We may play our parts in regimes of oppression, but we are also at the mercy of forces larger than us.

But this raises questions about personal responsibility: if its true that our particular situation is underpinned by a complex network of social and economic relations, how can any individual really claim to bein control or entirely responsible for her own life? Viewed in such an impersonal light, guilt can seem an unhelpful hangover fromless selfaware times.

As a teacher of critical theory, I know how crucial and revelatory its insights can be. But Ive occasionally also suspected that our desire for systematic and structural formsof explanation may be fuelled by our anxiety at the prospect of discovering were on the wrong side of history.When wielded indelicately, explanatory theories can offer their adherents afoolproof system for knowing exactly what view to hold, with impunity, about pretty much everything as if one could take out an insurance policy to be sure of always being right. Often, too, thats as far as such criticism takes you into a right-thinking that doesnt necessarily organise itself into right-acting.

The notion that our intellectual frameworks might be as much a reaction to our guilt as a remedy for it might sound familiar to a religious person. In the biblical story, after all, man falls when hes tempted by fruit from the tree of knowledge. Its knowledge that leads him out of the Gardenof Eden into an exile that has yet to end. His guilt isaconstant, nagging reminder that he has taken this wrongturn.

Illustration: A Richard Allen

Yet even within that source we see how mans guilt can bedeceptive as slippery and seductive as the serpent who led him astray. For if man has sinned by tasting of knowledge, the guilt that punishes him repeats his crime: with all its finger-wagging and tenor of I told you so, guilt itself comes over as awfully knowing. It keeps us, as the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has written, in thrall to that boring and repetitive voice inside our head that endlessly corrects, criticises, censors, judges and finds fault with us, but never brings usany news about ourselves. In our feelings of guilt, we seemalready to have the measure of who it is we are and whatit is were capable of.

Could that be the reason for our guilt? Not our lack of knowledge but rather our presumption of it? Our desperate need to be sure of ourselves, even when what we think of ourselves is that were worthless, useless, the pits? When we feel guilty we at least have the comfort of being certain ofsomething of knowing, finally, the right way to feel, whichis bad.

This may be why were addicted to crime dramas: they satisfy our wish for certainty, no matter how grim that certainty is. At the beginning of a detective story, were conscious of a crime, but we dont know who did it. By the end of the story, ithas been discovered which culprit is guilty: case closed. Thus guilt, inits popular rendering, is what converts our ignorance intoknowledge.

For a psychoanalyst, however, feelings of guilt dont necessarily have any connection tobeing guiltyin the eyes of the law.Our feelings of guilt may be a confession, but they usually precede the accusation of any crime the details ofwhich not even the guilty person can be sure.

So, while the stories we prefer may be the ones that uncover guilt, its equally possible that our own guilt is a cover story forsomething else.

Although the fall is originally a biblical story, forget religion for a moment. One can just as well recount a more recent and assuredly secular story of the fall of man. Its a story that has had countless narrators, perhaps none finer or more emphatic than the German Jewish postwar critic Theodor Adorno. Writing in the wake of the Holocaust, Adorno argued famously that whoever survives in a world that could produce Auschwitz is guilty, at least insofar as theyre still party to the same civilisation that created the conditions for Auschwitz.

Inother words, guilt is our unassailable historical condition. Its our contract as modern people. As such, says Adorno, we all have a shared responsibility after Auschwitz to be vigilant,lest we collapse once more into the ways of thinking, believing and behaving that brought down this guilty verdict upon us. To make sense after Auschwitz is to risk complicity with its barbarism.

For Adorno too, then, our knowledge renders us guilty, rather than keeping us safe. For a modern mind, this could well seem shocking. That said, perhaps the more surprising feature of Adornos representation of guilt is the idea expressed in his question whether after Auschwitz you cango on living especially whether one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed, may go on living. His mere survival calls for the coldness, the basic principle of bourgeois subjectivity, without which there couldhave been no Auschwitz; this is the drastic guilt of himwho was spared.

For Adorno, the guilt of Auschwitz belongs to all of western civilisation, but its a guilt he assumed would be felt most keenly by one who escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed the Jewish survivor of the second world war.

Adorno, who had left Europe for New York in early 1938, was probably attesting to his own sense of guilt. Yet his insight is one we alsoget from psychologists who worked with concentration camp survivors after the war; they found that feelings of guiltaccompanied by shame, self-condemnatory tendencies and self-accusations are experienced by the victims of the persecution and apparently much less (if at all) bythe perpetrators of it.

What can it mean if victims feel guilty and perpetrators areguilt-free? Are objective guilt (being guilty) and subjective guilt (feeling guilty) completely at odds with each other?

In the years after the war, the concept of survival guilt tended to be viewed as the byproduct of the victims identification with their aggressor. The survivor who may subsequently find it hard to forgive herself because others have diedin her place why am I still here when they are not? may also feel guilty because of what she was forced to collude withfor the sake of her survival. This need not imply any incriminating action on her part; her guilt may simply be anunconscious way of registering her past preference that others suffer instead of her.

On this basis, then, it may be possible to think of survivors guilt as a special case of the guilt we all bear when, aware or unaware, were glad when others, rather than ourselves, suffer. Obviously, thats not a pleasant feeling, but neither is ita hard one to understand. Still, there remains something deeply uncomfortable about accepting that survivors of the worst atrocities should feel any guilt for their own survival. Instead, shouldnt we be trying to save the survivor from her (in our view) mistaken feelings of guilt andthus establish, without smirch or quibble, her absolute innocence?

This understandable impulse, according to the intellectual historian Ruth Leys, saw the figure of the survivor emerge in the period after the second world war, alongside a shift in focus from the victims feelings of guilt toward an insistence on the victims innocence. This transformation, Leys argues, involved replacing the concept of guilt with its close cousin, shame.

The difference is crucial. The victim who feels guilt evidently has an inner life, with intentions and desires while the victim who feels shame seems to have had it bestowed from outside. The victims of trauma consequently appear to be the objects rather than the subjects ofhistory.

Shame, then, tells us something about what one is, not what one does or would like to do. And so the effect of this well-intentioned shift in emphasis may have been to rob the survivor of agency.

It may be tempting to assume that survival guilt is an extraordinary case, given the abject powerlessness of the victims of such traumas. But, as we will see, attempts to deny the validity of the guilt of others often have the similar effect of denying their intentions as well. Consider the case of liberal guilt, the guilt we all love to hate.

Liberal guilt has become a shorthand for describing those who feel keenly a lack of social, political and economic justice, but are not the ones who suffer thebrunt of it. According to the cultural critic Julie Ellison, it first took hold in the US in the 1990s, on the back of a post-cold-war fragmentation of theleft, and a loss of faith in the utopian politics of collective action that had characterised an earlier generation of radicals. The liberal who feels guilty has given up on the collective and recognises herself to be acting out of self-interest. Her guilt is thus a sign of the gap between what she feels for the others suffering and what she will do actively to alleviate it which isnot, it turns out, a great deal.

As such, her guilt incites much hostility in others, not least in the person who feels himself the object of the liberals guilt. This person, AKA the victim, understands only too well how seldom the pity he elicits in the guilty liberal is likely to lead toany significant structural or political changes for him.

Rather, the only power to be redirected his way is not political power, but the moral or affective power to make those more fortunate than he is feel even more guilty about the privileges they are nonetheless not inclined to give up.

But just how in control of her feelings is the guilty liberal? Not very, thinks Ellison. Since feelings arent easily confected, her guilt tends to assail her unbidden, rendering her highly performative, exhibitionist, even hysterical. In her guilt, she experiences a loss of control, although she remains conscious at all times of an audience, before whom she feels she must show how spectacularly sorry she is. Her guilt, then, is her way of acting out, marking a disturbance in the liberal who doesnt know herself quite as well as her guilt would haveher think.

The idea of guilt as aninhibiting emotion corroborates the common critique of liberal guilt: that, for all the suffering it produces, it fails completely to motivate the guilty subject tobring about meaningful political change.

But what if the liberals guilt actually has another purpose, to allow the liberal respite from the thing she may (unconsciously) feel even worse about: the lack of a fixed identity that tells her who she is, what her responsibilities are and where these come to an end.

If anything can be said to characterise the notoriously woolly liberal, guilt may be it. Liberal guilt suggests a certain class (middle), race (white) and geopolitical (developed world) situation. As such, despite the torment it brings to those who suffer it, it might, paradoxically (and, again, unconsciously), be reassuring for someone whose real neurosis is that she feels her identity is so mobile and shiftingthat she can never quite be surewhere she stands.

If this is what chiefly concerns her, then one might envisage her guilt as a feeling that tells her who she is, by virtue of telling her who she is failing to be for others. Who is the liberal? She who suffers on account of those who suffer morethan she. (I know whereof I speak.)

This may suggest why, in recent years, there has been mounting criticism of the liberals sensibilities. To her critics, the liberal really is guilty. Shes guilty of a) secretly resenting victims for how their sufferings make her feel, b) drawing attention away from them and back towards her, c) having theaudacity to make an exhibition out of her self-lacerations and d) doing practically nothing to challenge the status quo.

For critics of the guilty liberal, in other words, feeling guiltyis part of the problem, rather than the solution. And yetthis criticism is itself subject to the same accusation. Giventhat criticising someone for feeling guilty is only going to make them feel guiltier, guilt has, asweve seen, proved atricky opponent one that its various modern combatants have yetto defeat.

Once again, therefore, in the case of liberal guilt, we encounter a feeling so devilishly slippery that it repeats the problem in the course of confessing it. Because there is, of course, aform of guilt that does not inspire us to act, but prevents us from acting. This type of guilt takes the uncertainty of our relations with others (and our responsibility for others) and turns them into an object of certainty and knowledge.

But since the object in this case is our own self, we can see how liberal guilt, too, mutates guilt into a version of shame.Shame, infact, could well be a more accurate appellation for what motivates the guilty liberal in her public and private self-condemnations.

However, before we declare the liberal guilty as charged as in guilty of the wrong kind of guilt its worth reminding ourselves of the survival guilt that has likewise been viewed by many as guilt of the wrong kind. For as we observed in that case, in seeking to save the victim from her guilt, the victim becomes deprived of the very thing that might distinguish herfrom the objectifying aggression that has assailed her: asense of her own intentions and wishes, however aggressive, perverse or thwarted these might be.

For this reason, then, its vital to preserve the notion of survivors guilt (and, despite obvious differences, liberal guilt) as that which could yet return to the survivor (or the liberal) apower of agency such as must be absolutely necessary if sheis to have a future that isnt bound, by the resolving or absolving of her guilt, to repeat the past ad infinitum.

If religion often gets the blame for framing man as sinner, thesecular effort to release man from his guilt hasnt offered much relief. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben suggests that subjective innocence belongs to a bygone age, the age of the tragic hero. Oedipus, for example, is someone whose objective guilt (parricide, incest) is matched by the subjective innocence of the man who acts before he knows. Today, however, says Agamben, we find the opposing situation: modern man is objectively innocent (for he has not, like Oedipus, murdered with his own hands), but subjectively guilty (he knows that his comforts and securities have been paid for by someone, somewhere, probably in blood).

By falsely promising a tabula rasa bound to his historical and intellectual emancipation, modernity may not only have failed to obliterate mans subjective guilt, but may even have exacerbated it. For what many a modern man is guilty of is less his actions than his addiction to a version of knowledge that seems to have inhibited his capacity for action. As such, the religious assignation of man as sinner a fallen, abject, endlessly compromised, but also active, effective andchangeable creature begins to look comforting bycomparison.

Such a view also shares much in common with a certain psychoanalytic conception of guilt as a blocked form of aggression or anger toward those we need and love (God, parents, guardians, whomever we depend on for our own survival). But if guilt is the feeling that typically blocks all other (buried, repressed, unconscious) feelings, that is not initself areason to block feelings of guilt. Feelings, after all, are what you must be prepared to feel if they are to move you,or if you are to feel something else.

Main illustration by A Richard Allen

Adapted from Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) by Devorah Baum, which will be published by Yale University Press on 19 October at 18.99. To buy it for 16.15, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

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