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megashadowdragon · 4 years

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ironwoods tragic fall from grace

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When a hero becomes the villain, all hell breaks loose. Especially when the fallen hero is general of the Atlesian army.

The only thing that I noticed was that Ironwood has constantly grown a Beard as time passes. He's slowly decending towards from Hero to Villain as a "Fallen Hero" Catagory. James Ironwood WAS a good man, utterly dedicated to protecting his people. It was with the best of intentions that he charged down the path he’s taken... but you know what they say about good intentions.

I didn’t think his semblance was much of a factor into his decisions before Vol 7 but now as he’s become more unhinged every chapter, it’s becoming even more strikingly obvious that he’s become a slave to it. The fact that his semblance increases his resolve to go through with bargaining with Watts, willing to blow up Mantle just to save Atlas.

He's like the antithesis of Leonardo Lionheart

You know, this is a really good counter for all those people saying Ironwood is suffering character assassination. He's not. He's giving in to fear and letting his worst aspects take command.

I’m personally asking again why would the writers talk about something like Ironwood’s semblance outside the show when for the most part the majority of people only watches the show, that’s like how the Russo brothers (the writers and directors of Avengers Infinity War and Endgame) choose to answer the hows and why on Twitter when the majority of people are only watching the movies I personally love those movies but it also would’ve been nice to see those things get explained or talked about in the movies just like how it would be nice to at least mention Ironwood’s semblance in the show

Honestly, I love what they're doing with Ironwood. His slow, inexorable descent into extremism is a wonderful exploration of how an idealistic person who believes themself to be the hero can tumble into villainy without trusting others to keep them grounded. It's the very real problem of the philosophy of "The ends justify these particular means;" if you can justify one morally gray decision to achieve a good goal, it gets easier to justify the next, darker gray decision. Without someone outside to call you on your bullshit, you're eventually justifying genocide because it will be for the "greater good."

Ironwood is literally the Darth Vader of RWBY. He starts of as a respectable character, commanding his own army for the good of all. But he gives in to all of his fears, looses a limb or 2, and slowly turns misguidedly evil, willing to kill ANYONE who stands in his way.

I've said before that Team Rwby is a foil to the Headmasters. Ruby keeping secrets like Oz, Leo/Blake, the faunus who ran away when things got hard, and Ironwood's parallel is Yang.

Not just obvious stuff, like both having metal arms. But both of their semblances are double edged sword. Yang get stronger taking damage, but if she leans on it too much, an enemy that takes one hit just destroys her since she can't fight back. Volume 4 has her training with Taiyang to correct this flaw in her thinking, leading to her overcoming Adam in her rematch in V6.

Ironwood's semblance can be incredibly powerful. Just off the top of my head, he basically no sells the Apathy, which is an incredibly dangerous Grimm in a group with other, stronger Grimm. But it has downsides, and we're seeing it. The correct way to use it is after you've made a choice, to focus on the task at hand. But making large choices while under the semblance is not smart. He's too focused on one action to see others that have opened. Atlas has to be raised, because that's what he's already decided to do. The idea that they've made contact with the world and reinforcements might be coming never entered his mind. Similarly, he's so focused on forcing Penny to heel that he's not seeing he has a chance to have her come willingly by aiding in Mantle's rescue.

He's so focused on winning this one battle (Having Penny raise the city to escape Salem immediately) that's he's making choices to doom the larger war (defending the kingdom's people, defeating Salem, reuniting the world).

He clearly knows that it isn't smart to rely on it this way, since he's shown the ability to take criticism and adjust his thinking in Volume 7 (Nora would've been Slate'd if he couldn't). But the combination of Yang/Blake going behind his back to tell Robyn, Ruby/Oscar not telling him the truth, Qrow seemingly killing Clover, and, right when he thought that he'd saved everyone, the idea that every single thing he's done might've been exactly what Salem wanted has fairly understandably shaken his faith in the others around him. He can't rely on them to rein him in, he has to do that... which is exactly the problem with his semblance. If the only person who can stop you is yourself, and you're convinced you're always right, you've doomed yourself.

I'm assuming that he could probably be talked down by Glynda or potentially Oz or Qrow (fat chance of that one) if they can break his aura, but as it stands, unless someone beats him down, he's not going to be able to stop himself.

With Ironwood I am reminded of a very profound quote from CS Lewis, that I feel summarizes him very well: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."Show less

Dude Ironwood didn't have a problem with trusting people and didn't have a mentality of not being able to trust people. He trusted to much and trusted people who both betrayed his trust (Yang/Blake) and didn't reciprocate the trust he gave them (Ruby and the rest of the main cast). Honestly, he would have been perfectly right to have immediately put the relic of knowledge into the vault at the start of v7 and then send the students on their way and have nothing more to do with them.

Ironwood saw Atlas and his fleet as a way to inspire hope. It's ironic that his plan was one of lifting them up so high that nobody would ever be able to see them anymore.

My only criticism with Ironwood is that I really really wish his semblance was brought up in the show. Are they ever going to bring it up? I absolutely LOVE how he has been written and watching his tragic descent into becoming a villain but having his semblance mentioned in show would be great. Is someone going to have to break his aura or something before he or someone else mentions it?

In a way he is. His semblance is a double edge sword, as someone in Ironwood's position is all about making calls. Ironwood was able to climb through the ranks because his semblance allowed him to follow through with his actions to save people (I also still wonder what happend to halve of his body as he already had a metal leg and arm in volume 2, we can asume the paladin project, but some confirmation would be wonderfull). Now he's following through on his words agains Salem, that Ironwood isn't going to let Salem take the relic of creation. Ironwood essentially only has this thought he is focused on and is disregarding everything else. Right now Salem is piecing herself together again and Penny is going to the vault, if Ironwood semblance of Mettle wasn't interfering he would be able to see the bigger picture of let Penny open the vault, take out the staff of cration and chuck whatever goop Salem is right now with the bit of land she is piecing herself on right now and throw that into the vault and close it for good by blocking off the entrance with concrete. Voila. Ironwood doesn't notice at this point his actions as he even thought councilman Slate, who was asking Ironwood to explain his action got put down by Ironwood himself. Same for Marrow later on, but Winter was able to step in. Ironwood needs to be saved from this mindset and I think the team up of Qrow and Robyn (also who ever was on the elevator, I think it was Winter and Marrow as Winter was taking him away to be put in jail) could save Ironwood to the point of breaking his aura that way the influence of Mettle will loosen.

Gonna be honest, I dislike the whole concept of his semblance and it being what's driving him to this is just dumb to me. I loved him as a character and this entire volume feels like every bit that made him an interesting character has been ripped away. It's likely just me, but prior to Oscar using the built-up magic to beat Salem it felt like they had painted themselves into a corner. Either Ironwood was proven right that some sacrifices had to be made for the good of the people, or Salem was going to be beaten and even if she can come back, she no longer feels like a huge threat to me. I loved Ironwood in volume seven and many of team RWBY's choices have infuriated me for how contrived and stupid they manage to be while also contradicting themselves so easily. To be frank, I feel like his semblance was just an excuse for this utterly stupid character assassination they're trying to justify.Show less

I kind of feel like the writers 'forced' Ironwood to become a villain. Some of his decisions just don't make sense.

#rwby #james ironwood #rwby ironwood #rwby volume 8 spoilers

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raijinhasverybigpecs · 4 years

Text

THE RE-UP: Tu’er Shen, the Leveret Spirit 🐇

“While other gods may proclaim endlessly over the power they have over their domains, causing no end of trouble for their fellow pantheon members and their followers as a result, Tu’er Shen patiently and quietly tends to those who request his services with unmatched loyalty and dedication.”

Name: Tu’er Shen, the Leveret Spirit

Pantheon: Chinese, Minor Diety

Class: Hunter/Healer Hybrid, Medium Difficulty

Positives: Healer, High Movement

Negatives: Hybrid Specialisations

please click on the read more for everything else lol

appearance details 🐇

old (above) vs new (below)

so perhaps i made him a bara rabbit after all lmao. blame the new outfit and how much better it’d look if tu’er shen has big ol bitties to work with :^) it’s still the same hair as the ears work really well with that colour but the basically the whole face has changed to be a lil more Dramatic(tm). the makeup skills have also improved with new tu’er shen rocking more subtle eyeliner alongside some very pretty and shiny pink liner. the eyes are also another major change, they’re a pretty grey as it goes nice with his hair. i still love the idea of his eyes changing colour according to his mood and grey is just a neutral mood :^) anyways, yes he looks beautiful, yes you can compliment him!

outfit details 🐇

tu’er shen now has an in-game outfit!! yay 🥳 it’s been a while coming mostly bc i have no art or visual character design skills but i’m pretty proud of how this turned out lol. it’s super cute and p goddamn chinese if i say so myself but it’s still very hoe and feels modern enough to fit smite’s standards i feel lol. big thanks to @izahunny (who is dead on that blog but a clown on twitter) for helping me with designing the outfit, the back layers and lil extra dress fabric for the front bottom left corner of the dress were his idea and they make everything much more balanced 🥰 i didn’t add a weapon but he’s just using a bow, i might update this later if i care enough to add that lmao

abilities 🐇

(please note that i am terrible with stats and don’t care about how viable in-game he actually is, these are just general ideas and the stats can be changed lol)

PASSIVE - Protector

Tu’er Shen passively grants a medium range aura of regenation around him to his allies, increasing their HPS, MPS and magical and physical protections by 5% of their totals for each statistic. Additionally, Tu’er Shen gains a 3% movement speed bonus every 4 levels.

40 unit aura radius, 5% increase of total HPS, MPS and protections

3% bonus movement speed every 4 levels, total bonus is 12% at level 20

ABILITY 1 - Passion Arrow

Tu’er Shen charges his arrows with passion, amplifying his next basic attacks with a small AOE on hit or at max basic attack range and causing them to go through minions. If Tu’er Shen hits an ally while Passion Arrow is active, he heals them for a flat amount. If an enemy is hit the charges deal increased damage on impact and if they are hit 3 times they are charmed and walk harmlessly towards Tu’er Shen for 1.5 seconds.

Cooldown: 10 seconds

3/3/4/5/5 charges, Heal: 50/75/95/125/150 + 30% scaling

Extra damage: 10/30/60/90/120, Mana cost: 55/60/70/75/85

ABILITY 2 - Matchmaker

Tu’er Shen calls upon his matchmaking skills to select and connect two allied gods or one ally and one enemy god with each other in a 55 unit targeter. If two allies are linked then their damage is increased by 10% and they receive a heal over time. If an ally and an enemy are connected then the enemy is revealed to Tu’er Shen’s team and the enemy deals 20% less damage to their partner. Additionally, the connected ally receives 50% of their enemy partner’s healing.

Cooldown: 20/19/18/17/16 secs

Duration: 6 seconds, Heal over time: 20/25/30/35/40 + 20% scaling

HOT ticks every 1 second, Mana cost: 50/55/60/65/70

ABILITY 3 - Bunny Hop

Tu’er Shen hops in the direction he is currently travelling. If Tu’er Shen hits a wall, player-made deployable or god he bounces off the surface, doubling his movement. Additionally, enemy gods are stunned for 1 second upon impact. Tu’er Shen can store 1 charge of this ability.

Cooldown: 14/13/12/11/10 secs

2 charges maximum, range of 55 with an amplified range of 110 units

Damage: 100/150/200/250/300 + 100% scaling, Mana cost: 70/80/90/100/110 mana

ULTIMATE - Romantic Rush

Tu’er Shen, after a short duration, channels the full extent of his love powers, amplifying all of his basic attacks with the effects of Passion Arrow for 10 seconds. If an ally is hit and they are at full health they receive a a health shield equal to half of Passion Arrow’s healing. On enemy hit, the charm duration is doubled but they cannot be charmed again while Romantic Rush is active. The effects of Matchmaker are doubled and Tu’er Shen receives a 20% damage buff if he is linked with another male god.

Cooldown: 80 seconds

Duration: 10 seconds

Mana cost: 80/90/100/110/120 mana

lore 🐇

While other gods may proclaim endlessly over the power they have over their domains, causing no end of trouble for their fellow pantheon members and their followers as a result, Tu’er Shen patiently and quietly tends to those who request his services with unmatched loyalty and dedication. For he is not a god who takes to the spotlight easily, but one who will see his responsibilities through to help and protect those who he serves, an opportunity he was once not afforded in his youth.

Such are the origins of Tu’er Shen, the Leveret God.

Once a young man known as Hu Tianbao, he fell deeply in love with a handsome imperial inspector of Fujian Province. Such was the intensity of his love that he looked upon the inspector while he bathed, peering at him through a bathroom wall. Tianbao was caught in the act, confessing his sincere affections for the other man in hopes of reaching an understanding. The inspector was quick to retaliate in violence, sentencing him to death by beating.

Underworld officials, seeing his crime as one of love, sought to justify his death by appointing him the god and safe guarder of homosexual affections. A month after his death, he appeared in the dreams of a man from his hometown – not as Hu Tianbao but reborn as Tu’er Shen. From this came the erection of a humble shrine for his worship and Tu’er Shen has dutifully served those who seek him ever since.

The battlefield of the gods is a strange place to find Tu’er Shen, usually one so far removed from the world of ugly violence and mindless bloodshed. Even so, perhaps love can soothe and heal the wounds caused by the warring of pantheons, or maybe it can even help end the war in some way. Knowing firsthand the true cost of thoughtless hate and violence, Tu’er Shen picks up his bow in the hope that he can protect even one person of those who cannot protect themselves in the war of the gods.

voicelines 🐇

god selection

“Tu’er Shen!” (duh)

introduction

“Is anyone in need of my services?”

“Let’s see what I can do.”

“Wonder if there are any cute gods around? Wait, no! Work first, then play later!”

“In their own ways, everyone here is fighting for love.”

(this isn’t an official one but as a joke it was highly entertaining) “Come on Season 6 let’s get sickening!”

abilities

ability 1 - passion arrow

“Fallen for me yet?”

“I’ve got you!”

“Coming for your heart!”

ability 2 - matchmaker

self/ally match - male gods only

“Our connection is strong.”

“Let your heart speak to me.”

self/ally match - general

“Together we’re stronger.”

“I’ve got your back.”

ally/ally match

“You’d make a good pair.”

“Another successful match.”

ally/enemy

“Swipe left next time!”

“This’ll end badly.”

ability 3 - bunny hop

“Excuse me!”

“Coming through!”

ability 4/ultimate - romantic rush

“Feel the love!”

low health

“I will not give in just yet.”

“I don’t mind playing rough, but this is a bit too much even for me…”

items

when placing wards

“Reveal their hearts to me little ward.”

“Any romantic confessions I should be aware of?”

when buying consumables

“Isn’t this interesting?”

“The colour is lovely.”

when buying offensive items

“I don’t want to harm others but if I must.”

“Love hurts indeed…”

when buying defensive items

“Will this protect my ears?”

“Hope this won’t slow me down.”

“Even the gods have to use a little protection.”

kills

when in a killstreak

“I can heal them later on, right?”

“Love never misses its mark.”

when killing a jungle boss

“That creature was awfully big…”

“Thank you for your sacrifice.”

when destroying a tower

“Love conquers all, man and structure alike.”

“Ack, that’s so loud!”

death

“You’ll never kill my spirit…”

“Love is eternal…”

directed voicelines

Aphrodite - “It’s a great honour to finally meet the goddess of love, I have much to learn from you.”

Cupid - “Speaking from... past experiences, it seems as though you should work on your aim.”

Jing Wei & Xing Tian - “I admire your perseverance in the face of insurmountable odds, we are not too dissimilar in that way.”

Loki - “If you haven’t already, I suggest you pay Chiron a visit at some point. He is single after all...”

Bellona - “Any luck asking Amaterasu out yet? She’s still waiting for you to make a move you know..”

Raijin - “I’m willing to bet you’re more satisfying in bed than you are an opponent on the battlefield.”

Bacchus - “I’m not the drinking type... but perhaps you’d like to come in for tea?’

Achilles - “How’s Patroclus doing? Maybe you should spar with him more often, you’ve gotten rusty.”

Apollo - “Playing the lyre isn’t the only thing you make look easy.”

Ravana - “When I see you, the term ‘rope bunny’ comes to mind...”

jokes

“I hope Cupid doesn’t get jealous of all the time I’m spending with Aphrodite…”

“Technically I’m not this closely associated with actual rabbits, but the aesthetic was too cute to pass up.”

“Considering what I’ve been through, I think I’ve earnt the right to proud of who I am.”

“It is technically homophobia if you hit me. Just saying.”

“The Jade Rabbit? He’s certainly cute... but I think there’s another rabbit who’s cuter.”

taunts

Animation: Tu’er Shen draws a neon heart in the air, shooting an arrow through it shortly after.

“[Yawns] I think I might have a nap, perhaps that’ll give you a chance to catch up.”

“You have an awfully big weapon there, are you compensating for something?”

“I’ll show you why they say love hurts.”

“Fighting for your overblown ego isn’t a good reason to wage war.”

“Take it from a matchmaker, I don’t think anyone’s standards are low enough for you.”

skin concepts 🐇

new tu’er shen body

floral fairy

squeaky clean, night corps, bunny server

country cowboy, casual, devilish

old tu’er shen body

kitsune, spring revelry, leather bunny

hello nurse, debonair devil

old notes 🐇

this concept is super inspired by Kaios’ concept for Tu’er Shen (which you’ll find linked in the description of this post), i loved his ideas for rabbit lad and wanted to add more to the concept. my final kit concept is a lil bit similar but i think i’ve changed enough for it to not be a copy lmao. anyways, i’ve wanted a hunter support since i played tyrande a while ago in heroes of the storm. she was super fun and the mix of dealing strong consistent damage and still being able to support allies is something i’d kill to have in smite

tu’er shen is also a really cool god, and recently I’ve been prokoved by my mutuals making lots of god concepts when i haven’t made any in a very long time lol (if you remember my other smite oc you’re a real stan). obvs i don’t think hi-rez would do him justice and gamerbros would totally complain about the Gays™ shoving their unsatiable need for Representation™ down their throats and what not but it’s still a fun concept regardless!

new notes 🐇

he’s back and 10x beefier and sluttier looking than ever lmao. the self-insert squad may be missing plenty of people (y’all better come back like...) but it’d be a waste of time and effort to not do more with tu’er shen. also i love him so! i’m still kinda sad over twink tu’er shen being replaced by bara tu’er shen but it’s for the best, he’s v handsome now and big ol bitties in that dress? iconic. he does fit better into the male cast, the added beef makes him more attractive to basically everyone (he’s serving taric teas now lol) and he was a soldier so there’s plenty of reasons to make him a hunk. anyways... i don’t have much to say about the outfit than it’s flawless lol. it was interesting and p fun to make although i always feel awkward about posting drawn stuff in a serious context. it’s weird but i’m happy about the final product 🥰 i’ll try to write more stuff about him soon but don’t expect too much lol

links/resources 🐇

personal

headcanons (they’re a lil outdated in reference to his body lol)

tu’er shen’s tag

original post

my smite oc tag

other

kaios’ super cool concept for tu’er shen you should check out as it’s cooler than mine lol. his art of tu’er shen goes full furry and it’s kinda cute ngl

other links you can read for more information about tu’er shen: 1, 2

a beautiful short film about tu’er shen helping a guy accept his sexuality, gore warning towards the end

thanks for reading if you got to the end! please send asks or whatever, i’m dying for any excuse to talk about him lmao 🐇

#smite #smite game #hi-rez smite #smite oc #gay rabbit stuff #MY OCs #pwease support my boy. i care him

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arkus-rhapsode · 6 years

Note

Why do some people hate Erza from FT?

Okay, wow. Loaded question right there. I’m going to assume you’ve read the entire series of FT because explaining this is kinda hard. In fact, describing how one feels about characters is difficult in the sense we all have varying reactions. Like there’s no checkbox list for good character that everyone has and abides by, but I will try and give you the general reasoning. I use a general reasoning because there is literally no way for me to send a survey to potentially millions who have read FT and ask “what is your opinion on Erza and why?”

Now to describe the reason why one might not like Erza it goes back to her introduction. Erza came in the series and was much beloved by almost every reader: she had a badass looking ability and attitude, she had a very appealing design, and in critical sense she brought something to the table of FT and that was she was conflicting to the guild. Her personality and way of doing things conflicted with the others and it made her more memorable in how she handled herself and in guild interaction. It also helped that she was a strong female because FT came out around this golden age of manga: age of One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto all running, Toriko, etc. FT was the only one to introduce a female character that seemed to be treated as on the same level as the males in a mainstream shounen series.

She then proceeded to have one of, if not the best, arc in FT, the tower of heaven arc. At this moment, Erza is at her pinnacle of character and we the audience are ready to see here it goes and it goes… Nowhere.

Yeah the first, and probably the biggest thing with Erza that people hate, and something that a lot of other characters with FT had, was she never developed post her time to shine. She has no goal, so there was journey. She doesn’t make like an endearing vow post tower of heaven. What she ends up getting is Jellal. Like in terms of character, the thing that only actually seems to change and effect her is whatever long distance relationship she had with Jellal. Another was in terms of character she just kinda stopped being consistent.

Now some would cite that they still lover her. “So what if her personality doesn’t change. I like her like that.” Well there isn’t anything wrong with a character like that, but as I said, no development (Beyond Jellel). When a character doesn’t seem to be changing then it actually causes the story to meander and causes one to question why is she even around. Eventually at the last arc Erza meets her mother and they have a big,confrontation and it result in nothing for her character. Like after the fight Erza isn’t changed on her opinion of like Dragon Slayers or Alvarez. During the fight she doesn’t say anything the is new, “You might be my biological parent, but my real family is Fairy Tail!” Yeah, no one saw that coming. And then the revelation of Wendy and Erza having a close, sisterly bond of Wendy wanting to protect Erza, not only comes out of nowhere (seriously, I think Wendy would be saying this to Natsu, but hey then we couldn’t have naked Wendy hugging naked Erza) which is referenced before the war, is not a focus until the fight with Irene, which is then dropped.

But hey, some don’t even care about the story, some just care about the Jerza ship. Fair enough, you like your ship to want more moments for it gives you an excuse to keep looking for new material. But then at the end Jellal and Erza don’t get together. That’s right, all this time spent on Erza being her most relevant thing to the plot aside from being, the strong one, which was her romance, didn’t get together. Oh I remember the day that happened. Tumblr filled with rage.

So that goes for character development. Well what about power? She’s still a badass female anime character? Wellllll… Erza came onto the scene strong with a few cool fights and even somewhat lost to Jose early on. She also probably has one of the best fights in the series when she faced Midnight. But a lot of that was early on and as more time went on people began noticing a certain pattern to how Hiro wrote not only her fights, but a lot of characters fights. Eventually I’d like to say around Tenrou (I honestly have no cool about fan reception around edolas) people notice Erza stopped winning fights because she was just that bass or she came up with a unique strategy using what skills she’s had at her disposal. No, she won by nakama power.

Now power of friendship can be a tricky thing. When done well it can convey a strong emotional bond that pushes one to push past their limits. But with Erza and Hiro, it literally became a tangible power. Her power increased and she made her way through combat situations with no actual strategy or reason, just having friends made her feel really strong inside and then plow through opponents. It didn’t help that in context that all these fights she had and extreme issue of being so thoroughly trounced that when she gave the patterned friendship speech it actually seemed like reality warpped to give her the win.

Erza vs Azuma? After he matched her blow for blow then detonates a massive tree bomb on her while she has no protection, she gets up cause she thinks of her friends and the symbolism of drawing energy from them manifest literally as now it so strong to cleave through Azuma and a massive tree root with no issue. Erza vs Minerva? First has a fight with Kagura, then proceeds to lose to a persona who has all of space at her beckoning and then new armor out of nowhere (and don’t second origin. why does she even own it in requip if she never had the strength to use it). Erza vs Kyoka? Kyoka is growing perpetually more powerful and then robs Erza of all five of her senses and increases her sense to pain. Erza wins with just her bare fists and the reason this is all possible is because, as Happy, says, “She’s Erza!”

“She’s Erza” quickly became a meme and go to phrase for an undeserving victory that seems to defy logic and only makes sense of why the character won was just because “she’s Erza” and nothing else. This would describe other anime characters to, even if they didn’t actually power of friendship their way through. I remember reading Tokyo Ghoul re and around the time Arima had fought against Sachi, a martial artist ghouls who when introduced beat the shit out of kaneki. And in their fight, Arima kills Sachi almost like its nothing.

It did help that with this friendship speech power Erza really stopped using her moveset to its fullest and uniqueness. Now, I’ve made a whole post on Erza’s powers before and I implore you to check it out. But in short, what happened was basically, Erza’s moveset involved her mixing and matching of different armors. But then eventually she just started to use the clear heart clothing or Samurai Pants more and more. And armor who’s sole purpose is to raise only attack and sacrifice all defense. I was then no surprise when it seem Erza got beaten up or wounded because for a mage whose magic was armor she seemed to completely forgo it and use a more whose whole thing is higher attack. She also seemed to use it with this cherry blossom katanna that is suppose to be more powerful the more magic a user pours into it, but there is never any indication of that. (Like nothing visually to symbolize her putting magic in it. Nothing like a glow or aura. Not even the handle starting crouch up on her arm to symbolize how it eating her magic. Nothing.)

Now Erza was S-class, so of course she is suppose to be strong. But in this world your power comes from your magic. Like Laxus is S-Class and he isn’t going in and fighting bosses with just his bare fists, no lightning. SO watching her not utilize her powers became inheriting when more and more villains she fought had these insane gaps in magic power to her. It seemed like this shift to clear heart clothing was more of a way to retroactively make Erza come off as this swordfighter similar to Kagura, but we were both introduced to her as, and for a while I might add, her weapon was also her armor and what power extended from it. All this was then compounded in her last real fight of the series where a samurai pants Erza is swapped by Irene’s dragon paw and breaks all of the bones in her body minus her arm, then value herself in to sky while proclaiming friendship, radiating magic that who’s origin is never explained, and cutting a meteor in half with only her clear heart power. Then falling to the ground where she fought with a still completely shatter body for a bit.

Now I’ve heard the defense of many for Erza fights. A lot of Erza fans will try and justify any of her wins, with the reveal of Irene being a dragon being what is sited as why Erza is so powerful, because genetically she’s the descendant of a dragon. But we have two problems with that, the first being Irene stress that thanks to her enchantment, Erza is still in her womb as still a “human child.” The second being, Erza never shows any indication beforehand that her strength is similar to a dragon. Like she doesn’t grow like scales or something dragonic like during a fight, but we’re suppose to take her as being this powerful and just looking completely natural.

But then there’s the fan who is like, “Pfft, what do I care about fights? I read FT for the story and character. All y’all getting to hung up on the wrong thing.” Well that is a fine stance to take, I mean a lot of FT fans love the characters of the series. Well as I pointed out the issues one might have with how Erza developed. Then there’s the excuse, “Rhapsode, stop holding her to the standard of males. As a man you have no right to judge the development of a female character.” (I’m serious, someone used this argument on me) Well first off, Mashima is a man, and he created and is writing Erza. Second, for this strong female, she then got really really demeaned in fanservice.

Look, there isn’t anything wrong with fanserivce or ecchi. I’ve defended it a great number of times and can be seen as the just a necessary of the industry trying to appeal to young boys. The problem with Fanservice is when it starts to demean a character or ruin the weight of a moment. Erza became hugely fanserviced in scene like her torture scene where an emphasis was put on titillation than actual horror of the scene. But you can combine strong and sexy in a character. Like Erza’s Heaven’s Wheel against Eisenwald. Sure it was was cleave exposing a maybe not the most practical looking thing, but attention wasn’t draawn to that. Attention was drawn to how she cleaned house against the thugs. But then it became progressively less so, not just in terms of the armor’s appearance, but also how Mashima laid out panels seemed to exist more to heighten the sexy even if they didn’t actually make sense. Erza’s armor against Irene was literally a bunny girl suit and with the instances of her fighting there are scenes of her downward slashes that literally are angled so the audience can see less of the action and more Erza’s thonged behind.

Like for a female character put on the same level of males, she sure does seem to get exploited more than the males. But again, people will still not have a problem with this and will hide behind the excuse of something like “Its ecchi!”

It also doesn’t help that around the time of the GMG, many turned on FT and by extension Erza. It was then in Tartaros with the she’s Erza moments, many high followed reviewers and internet critics of anime basically blasted her and that earned her a spot on the not liked characters list. With many following that same feeling.

But as you can see, my running point is that all of the examples I give for why people might dislike Erza, there is still numerous people who will find a way to defend Erza and love her. Whether its through conjecture of her personality and feelings, whether its justifying how she wins her fights, or whether its claiming that fanservice doesn’t detract to them.

And then there are some who are like, “I know Erza’s flawed, but I still like her in other people’s head canons.” Which nothing is wrong with that. And then there are those who have opinions of her that won’t change because they are holding on to their love for the Erza at the beginning, or Erza in a way had an effect on their life. But all and all, if there is one thing to take away from this is its that Erza is flawed. Not a flawed character like Shaiapouf from Hunter x Hunter or Oedipus from Oedipus. And its because of those flaws that some do not like Erza and if we are being honest, even my enjoyment of the character became stifled thanks to a lot of the writing for it.

#erza scarlet #hiro mashima #fairy tail #jerza #jellal fernandes #tenrou island arc #gmg arc #grand magic games #tartaros #grimoire heart #azuma #wendy marvell

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jassmarie19 · 8 years

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Favorite Fics List

Here is my list of the best fics I have ever read regardless of fandom and in no particular order

Twist and Shout by gabriel, standbyme - Supernatural, Destiel - I’M LEADING WITH THIS BECAUSE IT’S GETTING TURNED INTO A BOOK AND THEREFORE WON’T BE AVAILABLE ONLINE ANYMORE SO READ IT WHILE YOU CAN Summary: What begins as a transforming love between Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak in the summer of 1965 quickly derails into something far more tumultuous when Dean is drafted in the Vietnam War. Though the two both voice their relationship is one where saying goodbye is never a real truth, their story becomes fraught with the tragedy of circumstance. In an era where homosexuality was especially vulnerable, Twist and Shout is the story of the love transcending time, returning over and over in its many forms, as faithful as the sea. If you were part of the SPN fandom and you didn’t read this fic were you ever even a part of it? (COMPLETED)

A Thousand Beautiful Things by superpotterlock (fvalconbridge) - Supernatural, Destiel - Summary: Accidents happen everyday, like someone accidentally hitting you in the face with a ball and then you mutually getting off with them in the school showers. Now Dean’s not saying he’s gay, but the thing he has going with Castiel isn’t exactly straight either and he isn’t even sure if it matters any more. Basically Cas is a rebellious teenager instead of a goody-goody like in most stories (UNFINISHED but worth it imo)

A Hole in the World by AnnelieseMichel - Supernatural, Destiel, A/B/O - Summary: Dean Winchester never wanted to go home again. Going back to Lawrence meant people who knew what he was, who didn’t buy into the lie. But with a tragic accident, he’s back and dealing with the death of his father, the social stigma and objectification of being an out Omega, and the lingering aftermath of a long-ago crime. (COMPLETED)

Fingers Tap Into What We Once Were by 2ofacrime24 - Supernatural, Destiel - Honestly, I read this fic so long ago that I don’t really remember what happens, but it left such a lasting impression on me that when I saw the title again I had a physical, not just emotional, reaction to it. So it makes the list. Summary: Human!AU. Castiel never expected to see Dean again, the man from one marvelous one-night stand. However when Dean walks back into Castiel’s life on the arm of his twin sister, Anna, a year later, Castiel’s world is turned upside down as he realizes just how much Dean affects him. (COMPLETED)

Out of the Deep by riseofthefallenone - Supernatural, Destiel - THE MERMAID AU TO END ALL MERMAID AUS! Honestly though, I consider this is seminal piece of Mermaid AUs. Summary: Stay away from the light-beds. Stay in the deep.It is the first thing hatchlings are taught the moment their fans unfurl and they can swim without their parents to buoy them along. It is the first rule, the first law. It is the beginning of every boogey-monster bedtime story told when they settle against the cliffs to sleep. Castiel should have listened better. This was also the first fic I experienced that had its own culture and fandom surrounding it. (COMPLETED)

Shootin’ You Straight by rockstarpeach - Supernatural, Destiel - I started reading the first chapter of this fic to remind me what it was about and then I just read the whole thing because it’s that good. Summary: AU. Dean Winchester is in a band and Castiel is a fan. Not of the music, of Dean. An opportunity presents itself one night after a concert and Castiel can’t pass up the chance of a lifetime. Neither of them is happy to leave things at just one night, though, so they start up a romance troubled by long distances and Dean’s rock star lifestyle. It’s not perfect, far from it, but this is their story. (COMPLETED)

Vita Nuova by worldaccordingtofangirls - Supernatural, Destiel - Summary: AU. Dean Winchester takes a job as a teaching assistant to get his little brother into a prestigious academy. He doesn’t quite expect such long nights and snobby kids, but the real surprise is professor Castiel Novak: or falling in love with him, that is. Excuse me while I go re-read this whole fic because I forgot it existed and really need to back in my life. (COMPLETED)

Blue Lips, Blue Veins by romanoff - Avengers, Stony - This is a LONG FIC (145 chapters) but WORTH IT Summary: Tony Stark is Iron Man.Before that, he was an man with bigger heart than brain. Before that, he was an asshole with a bigger mouth than sense. And before that, he was was a scared little boy. Not that it matters. Stark’s always have had iron in their backbone. Basically, it’s Tony’s life story. (COMPLETED)

Born from the Earth by venusm, Avengers, Stony, A/B/O - This fic takes world building to a whole nother level, like I am telling you! Summary: Tony Stark’s born an omega in a world where that means he’s supposed to follow certain social rules. He becomes Iron Man anyway: Fuck biology.If only his biology (and the world) would quit fucking him back.Note: This is a multi-pairing fic; this world works very differently; not all pairings will be tagged until work is complete. Read with caution. At 81 chapters this is also long and very complicated. There’s also LOTS of trigger warnings and stuff but the author tells you what’s gonna be in each chapter (in a code! which is cool). (UNFINISHED)

Go Ugly Early by just_another_tinker - Avengers, Stony - Summary: He’s The Captain?This was not good. This was so not good.There were theories of course, of what The Captain would look like. Most followed the typical Hollywoodesque belief that he was some version of the Godfather, sitting in a dark room with a cigar, commanding his forces with a flick of his wrist. There were even some that even thought that The Captain was not one person, but a whole network of people with eyes and ears everywhere.The blonde Adonis in front of him was definitely not what Tony was expecting.Of course, in the end it didn’t matter.There was a reason no one knew what The Captain looked like.Because anyone who saw his face never lived to tell the tale. It’s a Mob!AU!! (UNFINISHED)

Liquid Lunch by romanoff - Avengers, Stony - Summary: Tony’s turned into a vampire. It’s very sad for everyone involved.Especially Steve. Not just because Tony keeps trying to eat him alive. There are other reasons too.“Just let me try a little bit,” he pleads “I won’t take all of it, oh, just a little taste—” He presses his palms flat against the glass and tries to scrape his teeth down the window “I can, I can control myself, promise.” And then he turns those eyes on Steve, looks him straight on, and they’re pleading, and innocent, and really, it’s selfish of him not to give Tony his blood, why would he not, he can’t see any justifiable reason, so he just starts rolling up his sleeve and nodding as Tony salivates into the glass. This fic is a WILD FUCKING RIDE OKAY but like, you gotta read it it’s just too good. (COMPLETED)

Playin’ For Keeps by Artemis_Day - Avengers, Jane/Loki - I’m putting this fic here 1) because I think it is a fantastic fic but 2) because I want more AUs like this Summary: The year is 1987. Jane Foster is just another struggling grad student, trying to reach her dreams and resist the urge to kill her crazy metal loving best friend. Until said friend drags her along to her favorite band’s concert, and one very mysterious and sexy guitarist throws her whole life out of order. (COMPLETED)

Power and Paradox by The_Kinky_Pet, Avengers, Stony, A/B/O - This has all the world building of A/B/O fics and puts it right up there with Born From the Eart IMO. Summary: “Billionaire, genius, engineer, philanthropist, submissive. Yeah, submissive. Any questions?”OR Yet another BDSM-AU. (UNFINISHED but might start being updated in April of this year)

Standard Deviation by jennagrins, karengrins - Avengers, Stony - Summary: Okay, so maybe Steve isn’t Professor Stark’s biggest fan at the start of term but first impressions can be mistaken.Now Steve doesn’t care what Clint says, Tony is not his boyfriend. Another fic that gave me a physical reaction when I saw the title even though I vaguely remember what it’s about (COMPLETED)

Nothing Like the Sun by Lomonaaeren - HP, Drarry - Summary: Harry finally realizes that he has trouble keeping lovers both because of his looks and because he isn’t very good at sex. He does what he can to alter that, but it seems he’s never going to be good enough to satisfy a wizard lover. When Draco Malfoy offers, Harry thinks a casual relationship with him might be the solution to his problems. But he should have remembered one thing: when it comes to Harry, Malfoy has a problem staying casual. BRB have to go re-read this fic because it’s so good (COMPLETED)

Pricking the Velvet by Teland - HP, MWPP Era - This fic is…I don’t even know how to describe it honestly. It’s an experience. But completely worth it. If you think you’ve read everything, you need to read this fic. NOT FOR BEGINNER Summary: It starts with James being a right twat. Okay that’s not helpful here’s some stuff from the AN on the first chapter: This happened because, back in September, on hir way to dreamland, Jack muttered sleepily ‘if James Potter went into velvet, it would be like him having a period on his *head*’. At which point we riffed on the concept for the next two hours while snickering like twelve-year-olds. I began writing the next day, even though I was already working on Plenary. Jack came up with the title immediately, too, bless hir. Pfft. (COMPLETED)

Nox by penceyprat - HP, MWPP Era, Wolfstar, Jily - Summary: The Marauders are starting their fifth year at Hogwarts; Remus is starting with a massive scar across his face - a byproduct of the increasing severity of his furry little problem, which is a definite cause for concern despite his insistence that it it’s fine.Sirius is starting with the memories of a certain morning at 12 Grimmauld Place in August: memories that he might not ever forget, yet is desperate to cloak underneath the facade that every is fine at home and that he and his parents just sometimes encounter minor disagreements.James is starting his fifth year, yes, but more importantly, he is starting phase five of his plan to woo Lily Evans: somehow his friends seem doubtful that he might succeed, but James, being James, is in no lack of confidence.And Peter, well, Peter is starting to wonder just why he puts up with these people, and if he should really be feeling sorry for Lily Evans, and maybe if he should have asked to have been sorted into Hufflepuff. The title of the first chapter is “ohmygod i am so in love with this fic already” and that is how you will feel after reading that first chapter. (COMPLETED)

Alone on the Water by MadLori - Sherlock, Johnlocl, Probably THE Sherlock fic that everyone has to read. This is the first fic that ever made me cry. Summary: Sherlock is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Warning: angst like whoa. (COMPLETED)

Stronger Than This by Laiquilasse - Sherlock, Johnlock, A/B/O - I wound up re-reading this whole fic while I was making this list. Summary: Sherlock is convinced John is stronger than his Alpha instincts, and he stronger than his Omega. So when Sherlock goes into heat, this is the first time John remains at Baker Street with him. There is MPreg in this but like not actually? I don’t like MPreg usually and I was fine with this. It’s also part of a series. (COMPLETED)

A Cure for Boredom by emmagrant01 - Sherlock, Johnlock - WOW is all I can say about this. Summary: They’d never talked about sex in the year they’d known each other. Well, that wasn’t quite correct: Sherlock had never said a word about sex; John had bemoaned his personal dearth of it on many occasions. (COMPLETED)

Sherlock: Give Me A Label (I’ll Make Confetti) by IBegToDreamAndDiffer - Sherlock, Mystrade - Summary: Gregory Lestrade is the local badboy. He drinks, he smokes, he has sex, but that’s what a lot of seventeen-year-old boys do. Not Mycroft Holmes, of course; that posh git wouldn’t know what to do with a bloke. That’s what Greg thinks until he sees a new side of Mycroft, and every label he’s ever used is torn down in seconds. (COMPLETED)

how the mighty fall (in love) by braveten - Yuri!!! On Ice, Viktuuri - Summary: Every Victor Nikiforov fan has three things in common. 1. They have unrealistic expectations for romance. 2. They mark their calendars with the dates of his newest book releases and the premieres of his latest movie adaptations. 3. They either passionately hate or love his greatest rival, a mysterious author whose pseudonym is only two letters: “KY.” It’s an authors!AU! (WIP)

You Can’t Plan For Everything by RivDev - Yuri!!! On Ice, Viktuuri, A/B/O - Summary: Yuuri forgets that he has a scheduled heat coming up until it’s just a couple weeks away. He scrambles to get everything ready in time, including deciding whether he’ll spend it alone or with someone. Victor only wants to help. SLOWBURN like you don’t understand how slow this burn is. (WIP)

Until My Feet Bleed and My Heart Aches by Reiya - Yurri!!! On Ice, Viktuuri - If you’re in the YOI fandom and you haven’t read this I don’t know what to tell you except go read this. Summary: ‘…Of all the rivalries in the world of sports over the years, perhaps none has become so legendary as that of Russian figure skater Viktor Nikiforov and his rival, Japanese Yuuri Katsuki…’A single event changes the course of Yuuri’s life, throwing him into a bitter rivalry with Viktor Nikiforov that spans across his entire skating career. But as the years go on, rivalry and hatred begin to develop into something very different and Yuuri doesn’t seem to be able to stay away, no matter how hard he tries.Hatred and love are two sides of the same coin and even though everything changes, some things are still meant to be. (COMPLETED)

Execute Order 69 by imgoingtohellforthis - Star Wars, Obikin - THIS IS A CRACK FIC but honestly this is just as important to me as My Immortal so its going on this list. Summary: Palpatine ditches the whole idea of “Make Anakin evil” and decides to open up a strip joint instead! Glitter, money, drunk Obi wan, and whole lot of madness. (COMPLETED)

Love of the Second Star by SteeleStingray - Captive Prince, Lamen - I don’t think I can ever say enough good things about this fic. Summary: In the book series, Laurent and Damen thought aloud about what life might have been like if their countries were at peace and Auguste had lived…In THIS story Vere and Akielos are allies and 17 year-old Damianos is spending four months of every other year in the Veretian Court. It is there, he begins to feel attracted to the prince of Vere and discovers darkness hiding under the surface of court. Spanning nearly 8 years, Damen, Auguste, and Laurent are embroiled in bittersweet feelings and intense passion.“I would court you with all the grace and courtesy that you deserve. There’d be no lies between us. We’d have time to be together.”(TW FOR LATER IN THE STORY: Implied CSA; Implied Sexual Assault; Sex) (COMPLETED)

The Veretian Flytrap by Just_Another_Day - Captive Prince, Lamen, A/B/O - HOLY SHIT THIS FIC. Summary: The court treated it like a joke. His uncle told him it was a weakness. Laurent chose to listen to what Auguste had said it could be: an advantage. You know that posts that’s like “I went into this expecting Yaoi and I got Risk” that’s what this fic is like. (WIP)

In The Same Candlelight by Like A Dove - ATLA, Zutara - Summary: In a world where there is no war, Zuko and Katara spend their summers together. Growing up is messy, embarrassing, and at times sad, but they think it might be okay because they have each other. One of THE Zutara fics. (COMPLETED)

The Black Games by Mrs Pettyfer - ATLA, Zutara - This is an EPIC journey that is in three parts and still being updated. This is the first story in this EPIC Summary: Once bound by ice, now bound by fire. 12 provinces. 24 tributes. 1 winner. Let the games begin. (COMPLETE)

The Sparrowkeet Series by audreyii-fic - ATLA, Zutara - Summary: Ba Sing Se has fallen and Katara has been captured by the Fire Nation; a more adult take on the potential progression of S3. AU series of interconnected one-shots. Zutara. Rated for lemons and general darkness. (COMPLETED)

His Majesty Prefers Blue by ShamelessLiar - ATLA, Zutara - Summary: A year after the war’s end, the gaang returns to the Fire Nation for a week of diplomatic meetings. There, they hear rumors about a vigilante who wears a blue mask and Katara finds herself digging deeper into his identity and motives. Blue/Zutara Lemons (COMPLETED)

If any of your favorites are missing let me know!

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fionawesome · 8 years

Text

A world that wants me dead

I live in a world that wants me dead.

I didn't realise it until recently.

Until about a month ago I was naive enough to think that, because I'm not properly disabled, the world had spared me the ordeal of a life marred with death, just because I'm not useful to society. For some reason I thought that because I was managing well enough or because I'm not physically disabled that I was spared the horror of living as a disabled person in a world built for non-disabled people.

My earliest memories are of feeling different and at the age of 7 or 8 I was diagnosed with Dyspraxia, a form of developmental coordination disorder that affects motor control, coordination, memory, perception and processing.

When I was 20, The Tories (along with the Lib Dems) got into power in the UK and quite soon after they started doing their best to make life for the rich, easier, and life for the poor harder. It started with small things that could be reasoned away but after a few years their disregard for anyone who wasn't born with a silver spoon up their asses was more blatant than ever before and it wasn't long before a large proportion of the population were vocally riling against the government in a way unprecedented since they tyrannical rule of Thatcher in the 80's.

One of the first things that they started with was the dismantling of the glorious institution of the NHS. It started by underfunding services and then bringing in outside contractors as a way to deal with the difficulties faced by a health system that's crumbling and falling. It then continued with an attempt to stretch doctors so thin that medical care failed at the point of service so that, once again the services could be sold off to the highest bidder, and so that the suffering of the poorest in society could be justified in the eyes of those either, easily misled by the media, or those used to closing their eyes and sticking heads in the sands.

A while later, this assault on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society continued by making the conditions of that society so unbearable as to either force many people to commit suicide or to cause people to die after being declared "fit for work". The longer that this continued (and indeed, as it still continues), the more blatant it became that this was an outright attack on those most in need of help and the larger the divide seemed to get between those who are classified as "disabled" (and therefore of no use to society) and those who are considered able to "function" within society (and thus, not disabled; no matter how many difficulties they).

It was around this time that I started to become increasingly frustrated with the way that society was drastically devaluing disabled people and my compassion for those who I saw as having it worse off than myself, was increased tenfold. Of course, all of this took place from inside my ivory tower of university life, reasonable accommodations and disability supremacy.

A returning theme in my life is one of self-hatred, caused by the self-doubt instilled in me by an educational system that would not deign to change itself, lest it make my life easier, or my education more worthwhile but I still held inside of me some supremacy when it came to the dichotomy between disabled and not disabled. I didn't engage in the wider disabled community because because I didn't see myself as being disabled enough to face difficulties on the same size/scale as those faced by people with physical disabilities. This was pure ignorance on my part, and I will never attempt to explain away or excuse my views at this point in my life because it shows a complete lack of understanding about disability and throws a fair few people (myself included) under the bus. I'm including it here to highlight how people outside of the disabled community can think about disability, and also to highlight the way in which, at one point, I disregarded the onslaught towards disabled people, purely because it didn't affect me personally.

After I graduated from university I sought out help for the all pervasive feelings of inattentiveness, and attention based difficulties and was eventually diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 23.

I eventually began to see how my Dyspraxia and ADHD were causing me issues within my life and how the world outside of student life was vastly effected by my inability to adhere to neurotypical standards of "functioning". This was so much so, that after a few failed attempts at employment the DWP suggested that I seek help from the charity Scope. It was through this that I saw my disorganisation, inattentiveness, and general lack of knowledge about the world, catch up with me at full speed, and it was through this that I finally realised that I needed more help with my life than I was willing to admit.

Flash forward a few years and at 27 I am currently experiencing autistic burnout.

After my partner broached the topic of me fitting the diagnostic criteria for autism, and after a few years of self-examination and self-discovery, 6 months ago I started self-diagnosing as autistic.

It was around this time that I started to feel my whole world fall apart.

I've asked myself so many times whether this is all related to my realising that I'm autistic, or whether it's all just some cosmic coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence that's for sure, so mostly my answer has landed on "shit I'm autistic, I should probably be autistic". Of course this is an over-simplification and implies that I had any choice in the matter which is simply untrue, but I can't help but feel like on some level, once I realised I was autistic I became more autistic on purpose. This probably isn't the case and there's plenty of anecdata to suggest that it's a natural progression in the life-cycle of diagnosis for an autistic person (self or professional).

The point is, that I started to feel as if my whole life was falling apart. I could no longer organise myself as easily as I was once able, I was finding social interactions increasingly difficult and I was finding the world of employment to be filled with sensory, emotional, and cognitive challenges on a daily basis. There was a period of about a month where this got so bad that every time I woke up I was (with barely any sensory input), overwhelmed by everything and was forced to either sit in bed on the verge of tears, or fall back asleep in the hope that facing the world might be easier after a nap. It was during this time that I eventually created a set of "communication cards" to allow me to help myself communicate effectively during moments of distress or overload, in the hope that I could regain some kind of "control" over my life and my descent into "burnout".

Whilst this form of alternative communication has proven very useful for me and has helped me on countless occasions, it did nothing to slow my descent into burnout. That, it seems, was inevitable.

It is in the depth of this burnout that I realised a few key things.

The first is that I need to figure out better ways of taking care of myself. My current strategy of burying my head in the sand and hoping that things will get better on their own is damaging not only my mental health but also (at times) my physical health. This is something that I can do something about and it is something with measurable outcomes that allows me to attempt to improve my life, or at the very least navigate the difficulties that I face on a daily basis.

The second is that I live in a world that wants me dead.

It's taken me a long time to come to this realisation but it is undoubtedly true.

I see this now.

I live in a world that constantly devalues my existence, that insists that I adhere to neurotypical standards of "functioning" and of "productivity". I live in a world that will NOT under any circumstance change the rules because my brain cannot follow the rules already set in place. I live in a world that will throw me to one side and close their eyes to my daily struggle, just because it's not their problem. I live in a world that drives compassionate people into media-driven malevolence, towards those who need some help. I live in a world where I do not ask for help on a daily basis because I know that there's not much chance it will make any difference.

I recently wrote a long post about how I struggle with incontinence and after seeing various doctors, multiple times I have given up on ever finding out why it's an issue, and just resorted to "navigating" the issue myself.

I did have a referral for an ultrasound on my bladder but I missed it because I had a last minute, emergency, appointment with the out of hours GP at 5am that same day, because I had misplaced a whole box of my anti-depressant medication a few days earlier and was feeling an significant decrease in my mood.

I can almost hear the replies already.

"It's not up to the NHS or the government or anyone to help organise yourself."

"You could quite easily just get re-referred for the ultrasound."

I could write more but I'm too tired of this kind of shit to be bothered.

There's been plenty of proof that survival of the fittest is a lazy concept invented by dominant (white, cis, straight, middle class) people to justify their treatment of the subservient (working class, disabled, queer, POC), and I'm not going to justify that kind of attitude with a counter argument other than to say; get your fucking act together and pull your heads out of your arses before I forcibly do so myself.

I have "severe" problems with;

Attention

Organisation

Social interactions

Talking to people

Memory

Planning things in advance

Losing things

Following instructions

Sitting still

Changes in routine

Understanding social rules

The list could go on.

Why don't you try re-arranging a referral to a specialist, whilst facing these difficulties? You probably wouldn't fucking do it, let alone manage to get the second referral.

I have these problems not because I'm lazy and not because I don't try to overcome them, but because my brain works in such a way that I find these things difficult.

I did not choose this. I do not enjoy having these difficulties. I do not have these difficulties because I don't try to overcome them.

I face these difficulties on a daily basis because this is the way my brain works.

I have no control over the fact that I find these things difficult, just like I have no control over my eye colour, or my height.

To ostracise a whole section of society and to force a great number of them to commit suicide, or be forcibly killed by unfair and unsafe assessments to their health, JUST BECAUSE of something they cannot control, (be it neurological or physical differences), is vile, heinous, and makes it very blatantly clear that although society believes the genocide of people (based on their differences) is consigned to our history, it is very much a part of our present.

I live in a world that wants me dead.

I live in a world that wants me dead and most people wouldn't bat an eyelid.

I LIVE IN A WORLD THAT WANTS ME DEAD BUT FUCK THAT SHIT I AIN'T DONE RAISING HELL JUST YET.

If you're not angry, then follow these steps;

Take your left hand.

Hold onto your right wrist.

Punch yourself in the face a few times.

See how it feels to beaten by someone who's supposed to be helping you.

Cry

With Anger

The Finnarchist/FionAwesome

Cross posted from my other blog: https://unremarkablethings.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/a-world-that-wants-me-dead/

#ableism #ableists #autism #autistic #dyspraxia #dyspraxic #adhd #society #conservative party #tories #ableist society #self hatred #internalised ableism #internalized ableism #death #mention of death #mention of suicide

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maritzaerwin · 4 years

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5 Tips to Improve Focus During the Summer Vacations

Ask anyone what their favorite season is, and there is a high chance they will say it’s the summer. It is this season that we often look forward to because of vacation. This is something that begins during our school life – summer is the time that the school is out! It only continues as we enter the workforce.

Summer means planning summer vacations – taking road trips with friends, going to the beach, or just shutting everything off and taking one long nap. However, after the summer is over, your efficiency might tend to flop.

It doesn’t matter if you are a student getting ready to start reading again, developing a home business, or anxiously dreading the day you go back to the office. We all feel a bit “jet-lagged” by our vacation, and fight to go back to the way things were before.

In simple terms, although we can use the summer vacation to recharge our batteries and replenish our energy, we are at risk of losing a lot of focus. This is why you should find out some ways to improve your focus during your summer vacations.

So, let’s take a look at various ways and methods you can use in order to hit the ground running after your summer vacation is over!

How to Maintain Focus During the Summer Vacations

1. Procrastination Is Our Biggest Enemy

Psychology Today talks about procrastination as sometimes hard to define. Many agree that it is a type of delay in the things we are doing, but why this delay happens is where the definitions diverge.

Dr. Steel clarifies, in his article, that although this definition is correct, procrastination is something irrational. “Procrastination is when you planned or felt that you should have done the thing earlier, and then delayed anyway. In short, it is putting off despite expecting to be worse off,” he says.

Sadly, this is a problem many people face nowadays, and the reasons for it are many. A lot of people are just incapable of dealing with the stress of facing the task. They postpone it until the very last moment when the deadlines must be met. However, this only builds up the stress, which – obviously – is not healthy.

Others even go as far as forgetting about their tasks. They are easily distracted by technology, friends, or anything else happening in the world.

Whatever your reason for procrastinating, it can get even worse when you are on your summer vacation. During this time, you have an “excuse” not to think about your work or study. This only serves to drop your focus when you come back from the vacation and slow you down completely.

This is why you need to actively think about procrastination and the ways you can fight it even during your summer vacation. Plan out your work – especially if you are working remotely. You do not need to do it during your vacation, but you can still spend an hour or two planning things out.

The point is to divide all your tasks into smaller groups. This way, you make it much easier to tackle one by one, and it will be easier to complete in the long run. The objective you have doesn’t matter – you can be working on your degree, learning a new language, or just dealing with your regular office chores.

Whatever it is, the process is the same. Sit down and jot all your ideas. Then, start prioritizing and time managing each task. This way, you will not be facing the same levels of stress when you start with something smaller. And, as you go along, there will be less and less stress to fight with!

Of course, this might not be a bullet-proof way of fighting procrastination. There are always obstacles on the way that you need to fight through. However, with a little dedication, you will start moving during your summer vacation, and you will not lose the focus when the vacation is finally over.

2. Time Management Is Quite Important

As you can see, you will do a lot of work just by sitting down and creating a thorough schedule. Even if you do not completely stick to it, you will be able to keep your focus when you start your activities.

The goal is to always be able to track your progress. With a good schedule, you will know exactly if you are working as planned or not. From there, you can change up your tempo as needed.

If you feel like you are running behind, then you can adjust to starting working more efficiently. Conversely, if you are making enough progress, you can slow down and take some time to rest.

There are many ways in which time management skills can positively affect your career – and boosting your efficiency and focus after the vacation is one of them! So, while you are on vacation, make sure you tinker with your schedule and plan. This will keep you busy and working, while still not stressing over someone checking your work.

However, you might also want to look into different ways in which you can manage time. There are a lot of resources to read up on this and a lot of different ways to organize your work. You can use your vacation to explore and experiment so you can see just what works best for you.

The alternative, of course, to do this while you work. However, this can only cause added stress and worry – and a drop in efficiency if you do not pick the right method. So, the summer vacation is a perfect time for it.

You do not even need to plan your work tasks. You schedule some of your summer activities and see how well you can handle them. Whether it is taking a walk, doing some exercises, or hanging out with friends – you can use your vacation as a unique experiment that will help you boost your workplace performance.

Another thing that you can try is a plethora of time management apps and tools. There is something for everyone, really! From tools that will keep track of how much time you are spending online, to those that will reward you or motivate you if you are doing your work – anyone can find something that works for them.

Of course, if you are a person who does not want to be too dependent on technology, then we encourage you not to use the apps. Instead, you can keep and manage your time yourself. This way, you will get a hands-on insight into just how you are spending your days, which can help you regain focus during your summer vacations.

3. Do Not Forget to Have Some Fun, Too!

When going through these tips, this all can sound like quite a lot of work to do over summer vacation! The first thought you might have is to viciously object to any or all of these methods -and you would be somewhat justified.

After all, the summer vacation is the time to rest and relax, recuperate, and recharge your batteries. We are not saying you should refrain from this. On the contrary – spending some fun, relaxing time can actually help you improve focus during the summer vacations.

Harvard Medical School, for example, has shared a list of exercises and techniques that can help you boost your focus while also relaxing your mind and your body. You can incorporate these into your everyday activities, and you are bound to feel more relaxed after just a short time.

But you are not going to spend your summer vacation only doing breathing exercises! Summer is the time when people go out – biking, hiking, swimming – enjoying all kinds of adventures and being overall active.

This activity can also be a powerful tool for regaining focus after your vacation. Physical activity is a great way to deal with your stress and expel it out of your body. If you are full of stress, then a couple of weeks of activity ought to help you feel fresh when you finally come back to your everyday life.

What’s important, though, is to find a balance. It can be easy to get lost in the array of fun summer activities and forget that there is an end to it all. Instead, you can blindly run through the whole thing and crush into the wall called “the end of your summer vacation,” – which can hurt quite a lot.

So, make sure you split your time between having crazy amounts of fun and doing some smaller, menial tasks. This way, you will not lose your focus – what’s more, you can improve it! This is also why we suggest you do some planning during your vacation – so you do not feel out of place when you come back to work. Instead, you will slowly ease into it and feel right at home the day after your vacation.

But if you are looking to actively improve your focus during the summer vacation, you can also do that too. All you need to do is think of your focus as a muscle, and work on it daily. You can find many amazing exercises for increasing your focus online.

For example, you can mix up some meditating with exercises. Then, you can spend some time each day working on your memory and reading. Also, throughout the day, try to practice mindfulness. All you need to do is to slow down and completely focus on what you are doing. For example, feel the flavor and the texture of your meal. Small exercises like these ought to keep your mind running at optimal speeds at all times throughout your summer vacation.

4. Consider How Your Environment Can Help You Improve Focus

Photo Credit – Pixabay.com

There are two things that will always affect the way you work, no matter who you are. The first one is deadlines; the second is your work environment.

No matter where you are, your surroundings can help you build and improve focus during the summer vacations with ease. Similarly, they can easily distract you from your work and make you lose all your efficiency.

For example, if you are working from home, then your roommates or family can become a real distraction. You might also be distracted by your pets or the technology around the house. However, the same can apply for the office – your workmates might be popping in and out of your workspace, causing you to lose your focus.

This is why it’s important to really think about where you are working and how it is influencing you. Sometimes, a simple change of scenery is all you need to take a deep breath and regain your focus. And is there a better time to test out different environments than during your summer vacation?

If you can work from your laptop, then you can grab it and try to move around the house. If you have a home office that doesn’t work, try moving to another room. If you are a student writing paper, maybe you can sit down on a park bench and type away there.

You never really know if until you try! What works for some people might not work for others. Of course, if you cannot really change your environment physically, this might not work for you. However, there are other ways in which you can fix up your workspace for improving focus.

Some people find motivational posters cliché, while others enjoy them. You can add some greenery to your desk with a couple of small pot plants to bring the outside in. If you can, you might try placing your desk on the other side of the room, and testing what the light does for you there.

There are many little things that you can change up. And of course, not all of these will work with all offices. You will hardly be allowed to move your desk in an open-plan office, but you can still bring a spark of joy to it.

The point is to break the rut, which can slow us down and mess with our focus. And if you are working from your office, you can spend some of that mindful vacation time just thinking about what you can do with space. You might be surprised by what you can come up with!

5. Create a Routine to Keep You Going

Even though we just talked about breaking the rut in order to improve focus during the summer vacations, for some people, it is having a routine that can help you stay on track. There is a reason why most of the workforce starts their day at similar times and ends it together too.

If you keep doing something over and over at the same time, it will become a habit. For example, a lot of writers will advise you to sit down and write at the very same time each day. This way, even if you do not feel like writing, you might feel an itch when your “writing time” comes. And if you sit down to write, you will already feel more focused than if you were to write randomly.

Similarly, if you shape up your whole day around separate tasks, you will manage to bounce from one to the other without losing too much energy or focus. This again ties into the time management skills we already talked about, as well as creating your schedule.

Of course, during your vacation, you will not be working, but you can spend this time actively doing work-related things that we already talked about. This way, when that first day back at work comes, you will already be itching to work – and thus, you will be focused and prepared!

Final Thoughts

Although you might be anxiously awaiting your summer vacation, sometimes it can come with a few drawbacks. The major thing that can suffer while you are resting and relaxing is your focus.

This is why it is important to keep thinking about ways in which you can improve it. Summer vacation is the perfect time to learn how to better manage time and test some new scheduling methods, as well as come up with ideas to improve focus during the summer vacations when you come back from it. So, keep thinking outside of the box, and you should hit the ground running once the work finds its way back to your life!

The post 5 Tips to Improve Focus During the Summer Vacations appeared first on CareerMetis.com.

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healthtipss · 6 years

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Weight Loss Tips

1. Be consistent

“This doesn’t mean you have to do the same boring squat routine every day – it just means you have to be consistent with your fitness routine,” says Kira Mahal, trainer at MotivatePT. “It’s easy to start a new fitness routine but it’s very difficult to continue it. Write down your workouts for the week and make sure to stick to that.

“I recommend working out five days a week with two rest days in order to see results. Keep your workouts exciting by switching it up every day. After a few weeks, working out will become a habit and you will start to crave it.”

2. Beware added sugars

These can creep into all kinds of foods that you might not expect to be full of the sweet stuff, like condiments and shop-bought sauces. “Opting for foods without added sugar is a must,” says Jonny Mills, trainer at boutique fitness studio Sweat It. “Sugar spikes your blood glucose and if you don’t burn it off it’ll be stored as fat.”

3. Upgrade your tastes

try to remember you’re a grown-up and you eat like one“Make it easier for yourself to make better choices. The phrase ‘acquired taste’ is basically redundant for food – all your tastes are acquired, so acquire healthier tastes and you’ll want to eat healthier. Make the change to black coffee instead of cappuccinos or dark chocolate rather than a slab of Dairy Milk, and after a few weeks you’ll never want to go back. One good tip is to try to remember you’re a grown-up and you eat like one. When reaching for a snack, think: would a child want this? Don’t rely on willpower – this stuff isn’t supposed to be hard.” – Jess Wolny, personal trainer

4. Stay accountable

“Being accountable to yourself goes hand in hand with support from friends and family. Accountability comes in many forms – it could be just a promise to yourself or telling the whole world via social media – but it’s essential for keeping you motivated when the going gets tough. And a support network is also crucial for times when things go wrong and you need to get back on track. Even better, find someone who has been there and done it themselves because their advice and insight can be invaluable.” – Phil Graham, personal trainer and physique coach

5. Be a goal getter

“Too many people start their fat loss plan without setting an end date or a realistic goal. You need targets to keep yourself motivated, especially for situations when it would be easy to make bad decisions – when you get offered cake on a colleague’s birthday, it’ll be easier to turn down if you know you’re only two weeks from your goal. Set a finish date that you are 100% confident you can hit. There will inevitably be times where you’re tempted to go back to old habits – and having a specific goal, with smaller milestones along the way, can keep you on track.” – Leon Kew, personal trainer

6. Track your progress

“It’s vital to take photos and measurements and keep a training diary that details not just moves you do and weights you lift, but also how the session felt. This will give you the insight to make smart changes to your programme to keep your body guessing so the fat keeps falling off.” – Olly Foster, personal trainer and fitness model

7. Record what you eat

“Writing down what you eat is a great way of tracking your eating habits. Does your nutrition differ on weekends or under times of stress? To go one step further, you could do this with a training partner and show each other what you’re eating. No one wants to write down McDonald’s or Krispy Kremes if they’re in friendly competition.” – Adam Jones, personal trainer

8. Clean out your cupboards

“If I am trying to get lean I won’t keep foods at home I know I should be avoiding. Even if you have amazing willpower it can be almost impossible to get in after a very long day and eat the food you know you should when there’s a stack of tasty treats just an open cupboard door away.” – Shaun Estrago, personal trainer at UP Fitness Marbella.

9. Separate fats and carbs

“Avoid eating fats and simple carbs together, especially once your rate of fat loss begins to stall. When you consume carbs insulin levels spike (the extent depends on the type and amount of carbs), and insulin’s job is to shuttle any recently ingested energy to the areas of the body that need it most. If you’ve been training hard these nutrients will be delivered to muscle cells to repair and rebuild them. But any excess energy you consume, particularly from fats and simple carbs like sugar, will be stored in fat cells, which is the last thing you want.” – Matt Sallis, personal trainer

10. Indulge yourself

“The number one priority in any fat loss challenge is compliance. If you can’t sustain the programme in the long term you’ll never achieve your goal – or you’ll simply rebound as soon as you do. Calculate your calorie target for the week and allow 10% of that to come from your favourite foods. Most people feel like they’re cheating when they eat their favourite foods, so incorporating them into your nutrition plan helps keep you on track without guilt or painful sacrifice. The psychological impact of this is huge.” – David Godfrey, performance director at One Performance UK

11. Don’t rely on fat burners

“At best fat burners are an expensive combination of caffeine, green tea and other ingredients designed to raise the metabolism or mobilise fat. At worst you may be taking be something detrimental to your health. Many people take a fat burner as an excuse to skip the gym when they’re tired (often because they aren’t eating enough) or short on time, in the mistaken belief that it will do the job instead of exercise. But even if your fat burner does mobilise fat you still need to exercise to burn it off or it will just continue to be stored.” – Sean Lerwill, personal trainer and fitness model

12. Eat gut-friendly foods

“Nutrient absorption through the gut is the key to successful fat loss. Inflammation of the gut lining can prevent absorbing nutrients, which can make you more hungry and knock your hormones out of whack, encouraging fat storage. Avoid foods that you’ve found to cause gut discomfort and eat more fibre (veg) and omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D3 (oily fish), as well as taking a high-quality probiotic to replenish your gut with good bacteria.” – Matt Warner, head of personal training, Ultimate Performance Manchester

13. Be smart with carbs

“One effective method to get you losing fat is to swap starchy carbohydrates, such as bread, grains, rice and potatoes, for fibrous carb sources like broccoli, cauliflower and dark leafy green vegetables. This will shift your body from fat-storing mode to fat-burning mode. You’ll also consume more fibre and more vitamins and minerals essential to good health. And don’t skimp on veg portions – load up on it to keep you feeling full.” – Anthony Nyman, personal trainer at Transform Antics

14. Build new habits

“The crucial factor to success is forming new, healthier habits. When you first learn to drive a car you must focus on changing gear, indicating and braking all at once, which can feel overwhelming – but it soon becomes automatic. Once you start to develop new habits, such as planning your meals, sticking to a structured training programme and getting better-quality sleep, it becomes easier not only to lose body fat but also to keep it off.” – Jamie Alderton, personal trainer and fitness model

15. Exploit your fasted state

“At any given time, your body is in either a fed or fasted state, and being in a fasted state offers the best physiological conditions to optimise fat burning. So schedule your eating and training to take advantage of this: avoid eating anything for two hours before and two hours after working out. Just drink water instead.” – Richard Scrivener, personal trainer at Fitness Industry Education

16. Make your own meals

“If you don’t prepare your own food then you can only guess at what you’re actually eating in terms of calories, macronutrients (carbs, fats and protein), micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and fibre. If you don’t have a clear idea of what you’re eating, you simply can’t stick to the daily limits needed to create a calorie deficit, which is when your body has no choice but to burn fat stores.” – Gus Martin, personal trainer

See related

How To Lose Weight Fast

The Best Exercises For Weight Loss

Whip Yourself Into Shape With This Weight Loss Workout

17. Boss the supermarket

“The most important session of the week for fat loss isn’t in the gym, it’s in the supermarket. The choices you make when you’re food shopping will determine how well you set yourself up for the week ahead so buy, cook and eat real food. Sustainable long-term fat loss is about ingraining good habits and that all starts with what you put in your food basket.” – Steve Kowalenko, personal trainer

18. Avoid post-gym coffee

“A pre-workout cup of coffee can improve gym performance thanks to the powers of caffeine, but you should avoid it after training because it raises cortisol. Exercise increases levels of this stress hormone, which helps you make positive physique changes, but you need it to return to normal levels once you leave the gym. Coffee will keep levels elevated.” – Ashton Turner, co-founder of Evolve353 gym

19. Avoid sugar mixes

Think ordering the protein-feast half chicken at Nando’s justifies a cheeky Coke on the side? Think again. A 2017 study published in the journal BMC Nutrition found that having a sugar-sweetened drink with a high-protein meal can decrease metabolic efficiency and prime the body to store fat. Fat oxidation was worse with a higher-protein meal, so a fizzy drink can undo all your good work. Stick to sparkling water.

20. Keep good food close

Get your laziness to work in your favour for once. Volunteers at Saint Bonaventure University in the US who were given a choice of apple slices or popcorn ate whatever was closest – even when the popcorn was only a metre or so further away and they claimed to prefer it. There’s an upside to choosing an apple, too: research suggests that they promote the growth of healthy gut bacteria which aids weight control.

21. Sit down to eat

Research from Cornell University in the US suggests you’re likely to eat more in social situations – especially at the buffet, or when you’re walking while you eat. If you’re hitting the buffet, use this slim-diner checklist: pick a seat facing away from the food, use chopsticks if there’s an option, and scout out all the food options before you pick up a plate.

22. Use your illusion

Everyone loads up on food when the plates are bigger – that’s just basic buffetology – but can you use the effect in reverse to trim your waistline? Yes, according to new research published in the journal BMC Obesity. Researchers designed plates designed on the “Ebbinghaus illusion” – the one where the size of surrounding circles makes a central circle look bigger or smaller – and asked volunteers to load up as they saw fit. Results were clear: the group with the optical illusion plates self-selected small portions throughout the test, although they also ate less than the government-recommended amount of veg. The moral? Serve your desserts on the smallest plate possible, and your veg on an oversize platter.

23. Stay relaxed

In research from the University of California, test subjects who ate high-sugar, high-fat foods were at more risk of a larger waistline and higher belly fat if they were chronically stressed. For the less stressed, negative effects were less apparent. Use what the US Army calls Tactical Breathing at stressful – four seconds in, four seconds holding, four seconds out. It’ll tell your nervous system to chill.

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how2to18 · 7 years

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IN HIS 2004 GQ essay “Upon This Rock,” about an excursion to the annual Creation Festival of Christian music and worship in central Pennsylvania, John Jeremiah Sullivan describes his take on the difference between rock music that happens to be made by Christians and “Christian rock” music:

Christian rock is a genre that exists to edify and make money off evangelical Christians. It’s message music for listeners who know the message cold, and, what’s more, it operates under a perceived responsibility — one the artists embrace — to “reach people.” As such, it rewards both obviousness and maximum palatability. […] A Christian band, on the other hand, is just a band that has more than one Christian in it.

Assuming this is accurate and supposing it is applicable to other art forms, what are the implications for Christians looking to make an impact on (or through) popular (or high) culture? For individuals with the talent and gumption to look at an entire pantheon of artists and try to force their way among them, circumscribing their output entirely to a genre that “rewards both obviousness and maximum palatability” is clearly not the best route. According to Sullivan, “Talent tends to come hand in hand with a certain base level of subtlety.”

Denis Johnson, who died earlier this year, called himself a Christian, although he once told David Amsden of New York, “I’m sure you could find any number of Christians who could assure me that I’m going to hell.” To say Denis was a great writer is not controversial. There have been many eulogies and appreciations of his work written in the months since his death, and while many allude, in a cursory way, to the spiritual character of his writing, none that I’ve seen explore the details of the realities he described or questions he posed, much less Denis’s personal beliefs and religious experiences. The closest is Will Blythe’s moving New York Times Book Review essay “A Lot Like Prayer: Remembering Denis Johnson,” and in the course of writing this I encountered Justin Taylor’s insightful “Gonna Try for the Kingdom if I Can” in n+1.

I had the incredible good fortune to be Denis’s friend, and I know some of his beliefs concerning God and religion. I observed him practicing his spiritual disciplines, which included prayer and daily readings of Alcoholics Anonymous, The Bible, and A Course In Miracles. I am a massive fan of his writing. I believe Denis’s faith suffuses his writings, although I could be wrong about the ways the two correlate. While Denis was incredibly, and famously, open and vulnerable among his friends and acquaintances, I suspect this had the unintended effect of pushing the unknowable parts of his identity even deeper. I would hate for any reader to think I were trying to shoehorn Denis’s work into a literary genre akin to Christian rock music, but my hope is that readers will be edified through my sharing, just as I have been by Denis’s life and work.

Denis believed he was personally affected by miracles, that God is supernaturally active in individuals’ lives in profound and unexpected ways. God saved Denis from alcoholism and addiction through Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 Steps. Denis named his Idaho property “Doce Pasos North” and dedicated two of his novels (Angels and Tree of Smoke) to “H. P.,” which, I assume, stands for “Higher Power.” I’m tempted to say that in the firmament of Denis’s beliefs, faith in a Higher Power at work through AA and the 12 Steps is the fixed star. Substance abuse and addiction figure prominently in Denis’s fiction and plays, and he always extends to his characters the possibility of the same grace that he himself experienced.

Getting clean through AA marks the dividing line in Denis’s life. In his 2000 Paris Review essay “Hippies,” he describes his youth as a “criminal hedonist” followed by growth into “a citizen of life with a belief in eternity.” AA meetings provide ritual, prayer, and fellowship that includes the sharing of struggles, confession, and accountability. Denis, who regularly attended meetings as long as I knew him, told me that he hated small talk and that AA meetings spoiled him in this regard — people there only talked about real, personal issues.

He also read Alcoholics Anonymous, the program’s so-called “Big Book,” throughout his sober life. In it, alcoholics working the steps are encouraged to use whichever religious tradition, if any, works for them — “We think it no concern of ours what religious bodies our members identify themselves with as individuals” — while the foreword to the Second Edition (1955) claims that AA includes “Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and a sprinkling of Muslims and Buddhists.”

I believe this perspective colored Denis’s thinking on religion. The last time I visited him, in 2015, something I said reminded him of an Emo Philips comedy bit that illustrates the absurdity of denominational hair-splitting, and he pulled it up on YouTube to share it with me. Viewed from the perspective of AA, doctrinal disagreements and accusations of heresy can seem like narcissism of small differences and thus suitable subjects for ridicule. This perspective dovetails with that of Denis’s hero Walt Whitman, who says in the introduction to Leaves of Grass, “argue not concerning God.” Denis felt that paying attention to or participating in these disagreements obscured the most important thing about God: He is active in one’s life.

Denis did get more specific in his faith, however. I know from many visits with him that he read the Bible regularly and found great, practical solace in it. The first time we met, in 2006, he told me he was a convert to Catholicism and that he had encountered Jesus during a Cursillo retreat. He said he had not been to Mass in years. I asked him if anything had changed in his faith since he wrote his “Bikers for Jesus” essay (from the 2001 collection Seek: Reports From the Edges of America & Beyond), and he said that nothing had.

“Bikers for Jesus” includes the clearest description in Denis’s oeuvre of his relationship to contemporary American evangelical Christianity. Describing his visit to the Eagle Mountain Motorcycle Rally sponsored by televangelist Kenneth Copeland in the 1990s, Denis writes:

In the heart of someone who might have just stumbled onto this rally, the man from Idaho, let’s say, fifteen years a Christian convert, but one of the airy, sophisticated kind, the whole business is a millstone — if he’s going to Heaven, shouldn’t he be more excited? Is he going to Heaven? In his questions, his doubts, his failure to submit unconditionally, hasn’t he been nothing but a cruiser, a shopper? Impressed with the drama of his own conversion — but as drama, rather than conversion — was he ever really broken? And more important, was he ever really healed?

This questioning of his own faith and sincerity is not surprising in the context of his familiarity with Jesus’s teaching that people will be surprised at the Final Judgment regarding whether they are counted among the saved or the damned (Matthew 25:31–46), and Paul’s teaching that Christians are to work out their salvation “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

Denis recounts — not uncritically — the messages preached to him and the fellowship he shared with other attendees over the course of three days, and his reaction is one of increasing approval: “The white buckets ride the rows. On the first day the Idaho man put ten dollars in, twenty dollars on the second day. This time it’s a fifty.” The 1992 story collection Jesus’ Son, which is almost universally beloved by worldly literati and was recently hailed as a “modern masterpiece” by John Williams in the New York Times Book Review, was authored by a man who donated money at an event sponsored by the Reverend Kenneth Copeland, one of Earth’s ripest targets for ridicule.

“Bikers for Jesus” also contains details that point to Denis’s willingness to believe in God’s continuing revelation. When Denis encountered people who claimed to be hearing God’s voice, he tried to take them at their word. One particular exchange at Eagle Mountain seems to justify his faith in this approach:

The Idaho man introduces himself to the nearest person in his row, a middle-aged black woman who turns out to be Nancy, from Chicago. “God is saying something,” she says intensely as they shake hands, and won’t let him go, staring into his eyes … “He says you’ve been seeking, and just go ahead, you’re doing fine. He says you got a cross in your back, but that’s healed. And He says be sure and take a pen and a notepad with you, so you can write things down.”

The man turns away, but something about what she’s said strikes him now — more than the coincidence of the pen and the pad and the seeking. “Excuse me,” he says, returning to her. “Nancy, did you say something about my back?”

“You got a cross pinching your right back, down low. But it’s gone now. He fixed it yesterday.”

For four months the Idaho man has been undergoing weekly treatments for a pinched sciatic nerve in his lower right back. It hasn’t occurred to him until this minute that it didn’t bother him last night and hasn’t bothered him all day. “I believe you’re right,” he tells Nancy.

“You didn’t want to ask for healing,” she says, “but He healed you anyway.”

“Do these little incidents happen to you very often?”

“Every day.”

While all believers necessarily employ heuristics to address claims of supernatural revelation, Denis’s stance was skewed, more than anyone I have ever met, toward curiosity and the reservation of judgment. He was drawn to claims of miraculous new revelation just as he was drawn to settings of political collapse and anarchy (in Liberia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere). He believed his encounter with Nancy was a miracle from God. Denis also visited the Children of the Light at their Agua Caliente commune and recorded their stories of miracles in his essay, “Three Deserts.” This attitude toward the miraculous, that “[m]iracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong,” is actually one of the principles listed in the first chapter of A Course in Miracles.

In “Hippies,” Denis references a friend of his, “Mike O,” who at the Rainbow Gathering dispenses “information about the Course in Miracles, a heretic sort of gnostic brand of Christian thinking that doesn’t recognize the existence of evil and whose sacred text is mostly in iambic pentameter.” I met the famous back-to-nature hippie “Barefoot” Mike Oehler of Idaho in 2006, and after I overheard him speaking with Denis about the Course I bought a copy and attempted to read it. When I saw Denis in 2008, I told him I had not been able to make much sense of the book, and he sympathized. He told me he only read the Workbook section, and he gave me a copy of what he called the “Reader’s Digest version” of the Course: a slim paperback with cartoon illustrations called Love is Letting Go of Fear by Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD.

A Course in Miracles, which resembles a Bible, is purportedly a divinely inspired text that failed to fully convince the person who wrote most of it down. Beginning in the mid-1960s and over the course of several years, psychologist Helen Schucman heard an inner voice and transcribed what it said with the help and encouragement of her colleague Bill Thetford. The voice claims to be that of Jesus Christ, who teaches that the world we perceive is an illusion and that the way to return to God is through love and forgiveness.

The Course also refers to a concept called the “holy instant.” I don’t claim to understand it, but to the extent that the concept describes how much import can be packed into a moment of subjective experience, I see a relationship between it and Denis’s writing. Some of the most moving and memorable passages in Denis’s stories deal with radical subjectivity and time slowing down, especially in moments on the border between life and death, and how these moments reorder the characters’ priorities: Bill Houston’s death in the gas chamber in Angels (1983); Grandmother Wright floating endlessly in the sea after fleeing the fall of Saigon in Fiskadoro (1985); Nelson Fairchild Jr. making his way, bleeding, down to the beach of the Lost Coast in Already Dead (1997).

There are other echoes of the Course in Denis’s books. The narrator of The Stars at Noon (1986), a sometime-prostitute who insists that Nicaragua in the year 1984 is Hell itself, states: “Anger is fear. Lust is fear. Grief, excitement, weariness are fear — just feel down far enough, look hard enough.” This thought aligns with the Course, which simplifies all human experience to two reactions or choices: love or fear. There are probably more such examples, but it would be difficult in most cases to determine whether Denis’s use of metaphysical concepts and vocabulary springs from the Course or from orthodox Christianity, as there is substantial overlap.

Did Denis believe in the Course? All I know is that he used it. I think of his use of it in the context of his remark to David Amsden noted earlier — it could be that Denis did not want people categorizing him, boxing him in, from either within or without Christianity, with all the judgment and baggage it carries in our culture. Denis was a storyteller fascinated by the question of who has authority in spiritual matters, but he didn’t want to force a set of answers on his readers. He was not a theologian, but he knew what worked for him.

Denis was a Bob Dylan fan (he was the first person I ever heard suggest that Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature), and it may be that in living out his faith he was reacting to or mirroring Dylan’s conversion experience. A final point regarding Denis’s use of the Course: it is something I am personally grateful for, because meeting me — a stranger who approached him at a gala — presented him and his wonderful wife Cindy with an occasion to choose either love or fear, and they welcomed me and offered me friendship without reservation. This seems like a miracle to me, looking back.

When I first traveled to Northern Idaho and met with Denis, he was still writing Tree of Smoke. The first night I stayed at Doce Pasos North, I slept on a sofa bed in Denis’s office with a draft of the novel sitting next to me in a cardboard box. I noticed Denis had handwritten notes taped up by his desk. One was from Emerson: “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards — SELF RELIANCE.” Another said this:

If I’m some kind of James Hampton and this is some kind of Throne of the Third Heaven, if it’s two thousand pages and two hundred years, SO BE IT.

A photo of the Throne, Hampton’s midcentury religious art assemblage, was taped up underneath. Readers of Denis’s poetry will not be surprised at this reference to Hampton’s famous work; Denis’s collected poetry was published in 1995 under the title The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly, and it includes his poem of the same name, which describes a visit Denis made to the Throne with the painter Sam Messer:

Sam and I drove up from Key West, Florida, Visited James Hampton’s birthplace in South Carolina, And saw The Throne At The National Museum of American Art in Washington. It was in a big room. I couldn’t take it all in, And I was a little frightened. I left and came back home to Massachusetts. I’m glad The Throne exists: My days are better for it, and I feel Something that makes me know my life is real To think he died unknown and without a friend, But this feeling isn’t sorrow. I was his friend As I looked at and was looked at by the rushing-together parts Of this vision of someone who was probably insane Growing brighter and brighter like a forest after a rain — And if you look at the leaves of a forest, At its dirt and its heights, the stuttering mystic Replication, the blithering symmetry, You’ll go crazy, too. If you look at the city And its spilled wine And broken glass, its spilled and broken people and hearts, You’ll go crazy. If you stand In the world you’ll go out of your mind. But it’s all right, What happened to him. I can, now That he doesn’t have to, Accept it.

It’s not hard to imagine the Throne as a sort of visual analogue to A Course in Miracles. Both Hampton and Schucman had private conversations with God, and the message imparted to each was “FEAR NOT,” the highest words written on the Throne.

Denis appreciated, sought out, and befriended outsiders, mystics, and misfits, past and present. They included Julian of Norwich, mathematician/philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, and the anonymous author of the 14th-century religious text The Cloud of Unknowing, in addition to Hampton and Schucman. I was blessed to be one of the misfits.

Finally, Denis believed in the power of prayer. In 2007, he told me that he had had an addiction relapse while in Vietnam doing research for Tree of Smoke, and that prayer was what saved him. He and I prayed for one another as we both went through cancer diagnoses and treatments. I was surprised when he died, because he had shared that his treatment for liver cancer was successful. I had thought he was in the clear. I now suspect he was simply adopting a perspective increasingly aligned with the eternal. One of his last emails to me paraphrased the message Julian of Norwich received from God: “All is well, all will be well, all was always going to be well.”

Brian B. Dille recently finished his doctorate in Policy Analysis at Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica. He now lives in Georgia.

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russellthornton · 7 years

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How to Build Self-Esteem & Love Life with 10 Simple Life Changes

If you’re not happy with yourself, you don’t have to live like that forever. Learning how to build self-esteem is possible with these life changes.

If you think you’re the only person to ever suffer from a lack of self-confidence, you might just be crazy. We’ve all dealt with it to some degree or another. But you don’t have to struggle with it for your whole life. You can easily learn how to build self-esteem with a few simple, but very powerful life changes.

Getting rid of old habits is only half the battle

Before you can really learn how to build self-esteem, you have to get rid of all the bad habits that have contributed to the problem. Holding on to toxic behavior might feel like your norm by now but that way of life is only making your self-confidence a lot worse.

Your job before even trying to gain confidence is to ditch the bad habits. Stop being so negative all the time. If you feel the need to complain, look for the positive. Stop insulting yourself when you feel down about how you look or feel.

These might seem like normal things for people to do but on a high level, they could be responsible for derailing your self-esteem. You could feel awful about yourself every day because of those things, so make an effort to change them. [Read: Is negative thinking ruining your life?]

How to build self-esteem with some simple life changes

Just because these changes are simple doesn’t mean they’ll be easy or have a large impact right away. Self-esteem is one of those things that is harder to fix than it is to destroy.

You really have to work hard and be willing to put forth the mental effort in order to rebuild your self-esteem. These life changes can make a huge difference in how you think, see, and feel about yourself.

#1 Wake up and think about something positive every day. Even if you’re not a morning person, do this. Most of the time, we wake up and think about how awful it is to be awake and how much we want to go back to sleep.

We don’t often see a new day as a new opportunity because we take it for granted. In order to build self-esteem, start each day on a positive note. Be thankful to have another day. Wake up and immediately tell yourself something positive that can stick with you throughout the day. [Read: How to be more positive and increase the quality of your life]

#2 Stop looking in the mirror more than you have to. This will be extremely difficult even though it’s a simple concept. Just look in the mirror when you need to. Instead of going to the bathroom to check on your makeup or whatnot, don’t.

Obviously, if you’ve just eaten and want to check to make sure you didn’t get anything on your face, that’s fine. The goal is to reduce the amount you look at yourself to pick yourself apart. Stop looking in the mirror for flaws.

#3 Smile more. Your brain is a very powerful tool. If you smile more, it’ll trick your mind into being happier and more positive. Not only does this help you gain confidence by boosting your mood, it’ll also help you enjoy life a bit more.

When you’re happy with life and enjoying yourself, you’ll naturally have more self-esteem. Even if you’re not 100% happy with yourself, you’ll still be more positive and that can give you hope and a better outlook on yourself and life. [Read: How to smile more and change your life forever]

#4 Work on your health and fitness. This actually has nothing to do with what your body looks like at all, even though it might seem that way. The idea with working out and eating well is that you’re treating your body better.

When you’re nicer to your body and give it what it wants, it’ll be nice to you. The better you eat, the better you feel. Not only will your confidence benefit from the physical changes, but when you feel healthier and stronger, you’ll feel great about yourself.

#5 Compliment others whenever you think something nice. People with low self-esteem often hold compliments in. They don’t want to tell someone how much they like their skin or outfit or hair. Why? Because it often makes them compare what they like about that person to what they don’t like about themselves.

Don’t let this stop you from complimenting other people. In fact, telling someone what you like about them can actually make you feel better. You’ll feel great about yourself just by making someone else happy. [Read: 50 complimenting words and their true meanings]

#6 Spend more time around those who care about you. Stop surrounding yourself with people who don’t value you. That’s a good way to always feel down about yourself. Instead, only keep people who make you feel good around.

Those are the people who actually care about you and are worth sticking with. They can help you see your strengths and they’ll help you see your value far more than people who don’t appreciate you.

#7 Do more of what you really love. What’s something you absolutely love doing? Your passion is very closely tied to your self-esteem. If you’re happy and enjoying life because you get to do the one thing that brings you joy, you’ll be more confident.

It’s all about your mental state. Being more positive and happy naturally aids in your self-esteem. If you’re happier, you tend to put yourself down less and you’ll be more likely to see the great things about yourself. So do more of what you love. [Read: How to be happy in life and live it to the fullest]

#8 Thank people when they compliment you. Those with low self-esteem often make excuses or try to justify why someone is complimenting them instead of just saying thank you. It’s as if they have to make up a reason as to why someone would say something nice.

Just thank people. When someone compliments you, believe them and realize that they’re being genuine. There’s no excuse that’ll discredit their compliment. Say thank you and take a moment to recognize the thing they’re complimenting you about. [Read: How to accept compliments without feeling awkward about it]

#9 Stop comparing yourself to people on social media. This might also be one you’ll have trouble with and that’s mainly because so much is done through social media nowadays. You get your news there, keep up with friends through it, but it’s also hurting your self-esteem.

We see these dolled up people on Instagram and they’re all beautiful and seemingly flawless – keyword here is SEEMINGLY. The pictures they post aren’t representative of their real life and you have to remember that.

Getting away from social media can help you see that you are amazing and beautiful. The “Instacelebs” on social media have makeup artists and teams of people to make them look great. It’s not real. [Read: Why social media is dangerous and makes you feel insecure]

#10 Figure out what you love about yourself, and love it harder. Make a list of your greatest attributes. Memorize it and start loving those things even more. When you recognize your strengths and the things you truly like about yourself, they start to overshadow all the things you don’t.

So find out what you love and make sure you pay extra attention to those things and ignore the stuff you don’t.

[Read: How to gain confidence and turn your life around for the better]

Learning how to build self-esteem won’t be that easy. Even though these tips are simple, it might take a lot of effort and determination on your part to do them long enough to see a difference. Don’t give up.

The post How to Build Self-Esteem & Love Life with 10 Simple Life Changes is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.

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furynewsnetwork · 7 years

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By Kitty Testa

As I rode into work Friday morning, I switched on the radio and happened upon The Mike Gallagher Show. I caught him in mid-sentence, complaining about malcontents who criticize the police. He was discussing the fatal shooting of Justine Damond by Minneapolis police officer, Mohamed Noor. Apropos of nothing, Gallagher quickly pivoted to another story in the news, that of Officer Scott Naff of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, who was denied service at a McDonald’s drive-thru while he was in uniform. “This is the kind of thing that police have to put up with every day!” said Gallagher, as if suffering a slight at a McDonald’s drive-thru were the equivalent of losing one’s life to a police bullet. The Police State has its fans.

There is a dangerous hero-worship of police in particular and law enforcement in general, specifically among neoconservatives. The police are always right; the civilian is always wrong. When police kill or injure a civilian, the civilian had it coming, as if the proper role of police is to serve as holy agents of karma. When the actions of a police officer are ridiculously difficult to justify, the actions are excused because “police have a hard job.”

During Donald Trump’s campaign for president, the candidate made clear his affinity for the law-and-order crowd. He praised “our men and women in blue.” He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose treatment of prisoners in his Tent City Jail (which is currently being shuttered) has been inhumane. Using examples like the city of Chicago’s bloody street violence, Trump’s campaign speeches painted a horrific picture of escalating crime in America, despite the fact that, on the whole, violent crime has been decreasing overall.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was an early Trump supporter, and Trump praised him effusively during his campaign. It was obvious that Sessions would be granted a high-ranking position in Trump’s cabinet. I was hoping he might be named ambassador to Zanzibar or something equally innocuous, where the former senator and Alabama Attorney General could do little harm to the country. When Trump nominated Jeff Sessions as Attorney General I knew that Trump was serious about his unquestioning support for law enforcement, including its excesses.

About 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States in federal, state and local jails. About 20% of them have never been convicted of a crime and are simply unable to make bail. 35% of prisoners have been convicted of violent offenses, while 16% have convictions for drug offenses. The remaining 29% or so are split evenly between inmates who have been found guilty of property crimes, and those who were found guilty of public order offenses, including weapons charges. We have no idea how many are actually innocent, but both 2015 and 2016 were record years for proving wrongful convictions, and 2017 is proving to be on track to break those records.

Evidently there aren’t enough prisoners in the United States for Jeff Sessions.

Sessions has made it clear that he believes that many more of his countrymen deserve to be rotting away in prison, and given far longer sentences. As chief law enforcement officer of the United States, Sessions supports policies that will lead to more abuse by law enforcement across the country, more people charged with crimes, and more people in jail for non-violent offenses. Not one of these five policies will make us any safer, and may put innocent people at greater risk as they increase the power of police and threatens individuals’ rights.

1. Escalating the Failed War on Drugs

If you’re sitting in your living room enjoying a marijuana cigarette or a whiff of hash oil, Jeff Sessions believes you ought to be in prison. Seriously. He would think it perfectly reasonable to send a SWAT team into your home to terrorize you and your family. If they happened to kill you or someone else in your home, well, that would be your fault. Sessions is a drug warrior with a deep-seated hostility towards drug users. At a Senate drug hearing in April 2016, he stated, “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

I, myself, prefer scotch on the rocks or a classic gin martini, but my particular drug of choice doesn’t bother Mr. Sessions. When my kids were teenagers, I warned them about the dangers of drugs, specifically addictive drugs such as heroin and cocaine that they were certain to encounter. When it came to pot, I warned them about the dangers of the police. While the opioid epidemic was developing, with upper-middleclass teens overdosing on oxycodone and heroin, law enforcement’s response was to go after marijuana with a vengeance, as if picking up every kid with a pipe in his pocket was going to address the health crisis of addiction. Focusing on a non-causal correlation between cannabis users and heroin users, law enforcement determined that to save kids from heroin, we needed to save them from weed. Science does not back up this claim, and it has fallen out of favor with the populace, and now most Americans support decriminalization of marijuana.

The congress was so concerned about the AG’s belief in reefer madness that they specifically adopted a budget amendment that prohibited the Department of Justice from using any of its allocated funds to prevent any state “from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

In addition to Sessions’ irrational fear of pot, there are other reasons the War on Drugs has been maintained for so long. The myriad of government employees who work in law enforcement are now welcoming the AG’s position. Surely, some of them have good intentions, but many derive income and power from drug criminalization. Prohibition has been very profitable for many stakeholders. More drug laws means we need more cops. More prosecutors and defense attorneys. More judges. More courtrooms. More jails. More lab technicians. More probation and parole officers. More fines. More pharmaceuticals. The participants in the War on Drugs are in some ways no different than a pusher who wants to get you addicted. Both are in it for profit and neither cares if you’re a victim of their enterprise.

2. Supporting Civil Asset Forfeiture

Civil asset forfeiture may be the most un-American law on the books. First, for the state to lay claim to your assets, the state needn’t even charge you with a crime. Second, in the civil legal procedure, you are tasked to prove that you did not obtain your property through illicit means, i.e., you are presumed guilty. Also, if you cannot afford a lawyer, one will not be provided to you by the state, because the process is—quite cleverly—civil as opposed to criminal.

Civil asset forfeiture has been the Howitzer in the War on Drugs. The idea was simple: take drug money away from drug dealers and use it to fund police departments, who share in the proceeds of the property they lay claim to by mere suspicion. Who knew that a few decades on police departments would end up funneling billions of dollars in seized property to the Department of Justice? While the fight against illegal drugs was initially the rationale for those who supported the program, most certainly it’s been a cash cow, and they don’t want to give that up, including Jeff Sessions. While many states have been reforming their asset forfeiture laws to address abuses, the Attorney General issued a directive aimed to override such reforms.

So now, even if your state has curtailed or eliminated civil asset forfeiture programs, you are not safe from having your cash, car or house stolen by the police just because they happen to think you’re up to no good.

3. Seeking the Highest Possible Charges Against Suspects

Another of Sessions’ directives instructs US attorneys to pursue the highest charges possible against all indictable suspects. This is an about face from the Obama administration’s policy to avoid mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders. As a blanket policy, this may result in those who should be charged with manslaughter being charged with first-degree murder, or those who should be charged with assault being charged with battery, or a person who sells cannabis oil in one state to a sick relative in another state would be tried just as if he were a drug king pin.

This policy may, in fact, backfire. The DOJ may find that juries are not likely to concur with severe charges that result in extended, harsh sentences for people whom they feel may have had extenuating circumstances. They can’t count on every juror to be a fan of The Mike Gallagher Show.

Sessions’ directive also deprives prosecutors who are familiar with facts of a case of the ability to make a discretionary call about how to proceed with charges. It is a blanket push to put more people in jail for longer periods of time.

4. Pushing Mandatory Minimum Sentences

Along with pushing for the most severe criminal charges, Sessions also strongly supports mandatory minimum sentences which were introduced in the 1980s and were codified in 1994 at the federal level.

Mandatory minimum sentences were implemented to undercut judicial discretion as many felt that too many judges were soft on crime. The sentencing rules also include so-called three-strikes laws, where mandatory life sentences were established for those who received three felony convictions. Because many felony convictions are related to drug possession, many non-violent offenders have ended up serving life sentences.

The end result has been a massive increase in prisoners in the United States that is costly to taxpayers and has placed increased economic pressure on already impoverished communities. Despite the fact that crime is decreasing, AG Sessions, along with a lot of Americans, support these punitive policies against non-violent offenders, despite the fact that they don’t affect violent crime rates.

Ironically, neoconservatives who generally support lower taxes do not seem to see the connection between rising taxes and the costs of law enforcement from cops on the beat to housing the prison population.

5. Rejection of Forensic Science Reforms

The National Commission on Forensic Science was an advisory panel to the DOJ which was chartered in 2013 to address junk science used as forensic evidence, faulty interrogation techniques, and other procedural flaws in law enforcement. Sessions did not renew the commission when its second term expired in April.

It’s quite possible that the people who make up juries across the country have developed an admiration for forensic science from watching TV shows which have glamorized the profession, from the 1970s show Quincy, M.E. to the current iterations of CSI. In reality, forensic science is not fool-proof. Bite mark analysis, firearms identification, hair sampling, and a variety of other forensic methods are not scientifically validated.

According to The Innocence Project, the misapplication of forensic science is the culprit in 46% of wrongful convictions based on DNA evidence.

Still, many people are convicted based on faulty forensic evidence, and law enforcement clings dearly to these methods because it helps them do what they aim to do: put more people in jail.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is now the leader of the Prison Industrial Complex. He is hostile to individual rights, states’ powers to reflect their citizens’ views on law enforcement, and to any reforms that would improve our criminal justice system. Recently President Trump has expressed frustration with Sessions, not for the reasons outlined here, but because he did not believe that Sessions should have recused himself from the investigation into Russian influence during the 2016 election. Regardless of Trump’s reasons, Sessions was a poor choice to head the DOJ, and we will all be better served if Trump makes a call to Sessions and says, “You’re fired.”

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