#though. like. its established that concepts and physical things can be erased

[serufu]

Chainsaw Man is one of my favorite stories because it never shies away from the hard questions. How do you form meaningful relationships after sexual trauma? How do you escape the cycle of abuse when it becomes more comfortable to you than "normal" life? How are the bonds you forge and the family you build stronger than what you were born into? And now, its newest philosophical quandary, just how cursed would elephants look if the concept and existence of ears were erased from the world!

[izartn]

On the The Host romance:

A lil note: @into-september as you’re reading Twilight, and your last post made me realise this, I thought it better to write my own post and tag you! Hope you don’t mind.

The Host is the first novel of an “adult” science fiction trilogy by Stephanie Meyer which never was finished. Published in 2008, the same year as Breaking Dawn, I guess she preferred gaining the benefits of her vampire saga to keep on writing. 

For shame, because for me, The Host is much better at establishing worldbuilding, a concept and its protagonists + a romance (not that there isn’t anything cuestionable in it, but to my taste it’s better done than in Twilight). Here is the first paragraph of The Host wikipedia’s section on plot: 

A species of parasitic aliens called "Souls" have invaded Earth, deeming the humans too violent to deserve the planet. When a Soul is implanted into a host body, the consciousness of the original owner is erased, leaving their memories and knowledge. 

Wanderer, a Soul, is placed into the body of Melanie Stryder. However, Melanie's consciousness is still alive and begins to communicate with Wanderer mentally. Wanderer's assigned "Seeker" suggests that she could be placed into Melanie to retrieve the memories before disposing of the defective body, but Wanderer makes several attempts to deny her Seeker's wishes. As Wanderer starts to uncover some of Melanie's memories of her younger brother Jamie Stryder and her boyfriend Jared Howe, Melanie gets her to follow a series of landmarks throughout the Arizona desert to find her Uncle Jeb, hoping that Jared and Jamie are with him. By doing so, she would be denying the Seeker Melanie's memories and the humans they would lead her to.

Just. Read that and have the face to tell me it doesn’t sound more interesting than Twilight I dare you. Of course the books are different genres, although the focus is in the... more sentimental part in both. It’s just that The Host story is more unusual and the worldbuilding dreamy and subtly horrific. 

Well I said I was gonna talk about the romance right? Spoilers incoming!

 A bit of more context is necessary; in The Host, Melanie, the human Wanda (nickname of Wanderer) is possessing, is in love with the boyfriend mentioned in the sinopsis, Jared. Wanda being in the body of Melanie, feels things for him. We can divine for context this is sexual attraction plus having access to some of Melanie’s memories and noticing Jared is pretty ok as humans not possessed are left on Earth. 

Melanie reaction to this oscillates between “don’t you dare touch my boyfriend alien” and “well of course you fell for him, he’s pretty awesome” to “if I can’t it’s ok if you want to” when she’s feeling herself disappear at one point. Which is bullshit bc her conscience comes back when Wanda goes to tell Jared to kiss her bc she’s feeling Melanie disappear and when he gets near Wanda, Melanie usually mounts a whole circus in her head. It works. 

Well that’s one part of the romance. The other is Ian, a human in the settlement who is pretty level-headed and who starts talking to Wanda, as her guard first and then as her friend. No previous contact with Melanie, so he mets Wanda in Melanie’s body and isn’t excessively hostile or sad. Bc you know, an alien is in the body of you “niece, girlfriend, sister, etc” isn’t really conductive to good first impressions although that alien has come bearing the news that said person is still alive somewhere in their brain. 

(Also the whole human group is so hilariously based on those paranoid about the government/end-of-days usa people... And it works! LMAO) (The social dynamics are interesting in this book ok? basic but ingenious)

So Wanda falls slowly without noticing for Ian; Ian falls first and confesses and everything. I think their first kiss was a bit sketchy? But generally they good. 

The interesting thing is this: Melanie and so her body, is in love and attracted to Jared. Wanda, inhabiting Melanie’s body, starts realising that although Jared is pretty ok and all that, he’s really Melanie’s love; she doesn’t exactly like his more violent tendencies. 

(Really he’s more apocalypse survivor hardcore, but he really was a dick to her at the start, bc alien possessing girlfriend and all. Also gave her mixed signals, etc. Very american male which, eh. Melanie is also very apocalypse survivor hardcore; the two mesh well bc of that lmao) 

Well, as Stephanie Meyer is SM, and she has some weird ideas about romance the thing is, Wanda doesn’t feel sexually attracted to Ian. Bc all the hormones in her body are signaling only Jared. But she really is romantically attracted to Ian, and loves him. When they kiss, she likes it, but it’s not super passionate nor does it brings the same high that the few occasions Jared kissed her. To Ian’s credit he doesn’t really get it at the start, but then is immediately acepting of Wanda’s boundaries. I think he pushes a bit? But this SM so. Sigh. (I like to think in the hands of another author he wouldn’t do the sterotypical male thing but yah)

What I mean is that Stephanie Meyer, without intention, created an ace romance. Sure, it bc really weird biological alien science, but if you take it to mean Melanie is demi and only feels attracted to Jared, that makes her body reactions logical when Wanda also falls in love. She isn’t occupying the body wholly; there’s the host original presence; so she falls romantically but not physically. If I’m saying great idiotices please correct me under; I don’t have any background on sexology or biology. 

Sadly, Wanda is also super worried of not being able of correctly loving Ian, so. Negation of ace identity in one, two..., warning to folks sensible to it. 

And well, she ruins it when at the end when Wanda is put outside Melanie´s body into one who doesn’t have a human conscience. She explained the others how to take “souls” out of humans without killing any part, and how to take the “souls” to the space ships where they’ll be transported to other worlds. But sometimes the humans have passed so much time suppressed, or have been taken so young, that there isn’t a conscience-anyone to recover. 

The Host is very weird, bc this is a race of genocidal colonist aliens who are weird beautiful little ribbons of silver in their original form, who after abandoning their original world by possessing another race who invaded them realised they could live whatever lives they wanted possessing people without dying and just. Went for it. They are a supposedly all peace loving gents, who cured all poverty and illness by their superior technology and like, very comunist-anarchist society. Who abhor violence, but don’t see eliminating other people identity as violence. 

They are weird and amazing; when they realise having and raising children as humans costs so much, they start acting as parents to those humans without going to have a soul implanted on their kid, bc they love them as they are. A mess of contradictions, and Wanda is so interesting bc of this. 

Sadly, SM acted again, and made Wanda one of the rare females able of auto-destroying to create more fragments of herself (aka other souls). The rest of souls don’t have any gender and chose bodies as whatever sex they like most. Guess Wanda being an alien was fine, but not having an explicit gender was too much, lol. To be fair, she says she prefers female bodies, but doesn’t really mind. Good on Wanda. 

There’s a secondary romance too; the search of Ian’s brother, Kyle (who almost kills Wanda once) for his abducted girlfriend, Jodie. Results the soul inside her body, Sunny has all of Jodie’s memories of Kyle and is like, already in love with him. She lets herself be abducted, and when they explain they’re gonna get her out and why, is like, cries and begs, but accepts it bc is Jodie who Kyle loves. She hasn’t ever heard her like Wanda did Melanie, though, so when like a week or two pass and Jodie’s conscience remains dead Kyle consents (bc the other relatives of Jodie are soulified) to bring back Sunny. Wow. What a clusterfuck. They don’t date but there’s this weird vibe where Kyle has stopped hating all souls after Wanda’s mess and his encounter with Sunny, and Sunny herself is like; yay! I can live with humans and Kyle and I’ll keep trying to awake Jodie. And the two of them are described as inseparable? 

It’s more intriguing than Twilight; I wished there were more fics interested in exploring cool canon divergences and all. I didn’t dive in the problematiqueTM aspects of the book but come on, this is SM and you have reading comprehension. I just wanted to talk about how interesting is the intersection of sexuality in romance in Wanda’s case >-< Still better than Twilight but I guess the aesthetic of vamps surpases The Host. Which. Valid ok? Each to their own. 

[cadomoisspokenfor]

Legion Rewatch Notes,

Chapter 4:

Frizzytop

I theorized in episode 2 that David could see through the 4th wall, or at least into a different universe. At the start of this episode Oliver outright breaks the 4th wall. Perhaps powerful reality benders just have that capability. If David knows, and Oliver knows, then Farouk definitely knows.

“A great philosopher once wrote, ‘In times of peace, the war like man attacks himself.’ This is the route of all our problems.”

“We are the route of all our problems. Our confusion, our anger, our fear of things we don’t understand.”

If we carry those 2 quotes throughout the rest of the show, then no doubt the tragedies that happen later on are caused by a collective misunderstanding of each other. And a collective lashing out at that misunderstanding of each other.

“Violence, in other words, is ignorance.”

The most central theme of the show is empathy vs fear. I s’pose whenever there’s a conflict in the show we’re supposed to be asking whether the characters should answer with empathy or fear. Certain characters lives have revolved heavily around fear. And that informs their decision making quite a bit. This will all come up again at multiple points throughout the show.

Syd... probably can’t break the 4th wall. So maybe it’s most logical to interpret this as her inner monologue. Very Jessica Jones esque.

The same voice lines from when Syd was searching for David in episode 1 are played. I guess there go to whenever Davids lost (whether in the world or in his mind) is to transmit Syds voice calling his name in hopes he’ll hear it and come back.

Kerry can pick locks.

The concept of “bad mutants” is well established amongst the veteran summerland crew. Ptonomy’s caution about David is probably because he feels he has a selfish vibe, and that’s a well known red flag of “bad mutants.”

It should also be noted he’s partly afraid of him because he has so much trouble understanding him. His powers, which when used affectively are essentially the ability to understand where someone’s coming from, keep getting overrided by Davids.

It’s now to the point where Ptonomy is doubting his own ability to tell what’s real and what’s not real. He was pretty confident he’d always know somehow in episode 2. Now, not so much.

Ptonomy very early on is open to the idea that David both has powers and psychological issues. “He’s unstable. You try hearing voices for 10-15 years, self medicate with hard drugs and then get dumped in a looney bin.”

Ptonomy also determines that because of his instability combined with the fact he has powers, David is a bomb waiting to go off.

I suppose if we’re trying to figure out their logic with the whole “the combination of being mentally ill and having powers makes him dangerous”, and considering that their right now going over an incident where David robbed his therapist for drug money and then bashed the doctors head in when he came back, the direct concern is that David makes bad decisions and/or selfish decisions (at least), and if he were to make a bad decision regarding his powers a lot of innocent people could get very badly hurt. Or killed. Along with the worry that the voices in his head don’t exactly give him the most angelic of advice at times, and because of his powers he’s very capable of fulfilling their wills, so to speak.

Based on Olivers speech at the beginning of the episode though, it might be safe to say the overall message is instead of acting on fear they should act on empathy and help David overcome his problems instead of vilifying him for his mental illness.

Syd suggest Davids hiding his real memories behind a fake ones and Ptonomy says she going through a lot of effort just to convince herself Davids a good guy. I never really got what he meant, but I guess what he meant is that Syd’s trying to find a justifiable reason for why David would attack Dr Poole like he did when the obvious answer is just “He’s got violent tendencies.” I always just thought she was genuinely hypothesizing, ya know, trying to solve the case. Maybe she was and Ptonomy’s just mean.

“I was looking for the man I loved. Or did I just love the idea of him? The face he showed me?” Doubt springs up early. Why can none of the characters reconcile that a person can have both good and evil in them at the same time? That’s... all people, in fact.

When Kissinger ask if Amy knew David had powers Amy says, “I think so.” Amy potentially acted on fear as well, in regards to her and Davids childhood that is.

Kerry mostly only thinks of herself in relation to Cary.

Cary misses Kerry when she’s gone. Even besides the roles they fill for each other, they generally enjoy each others company. They’re quite literally as close as 2 people can be. Each one living for the sake of the other.

Davids once again surrounded by a crowd of people all yelling in his face. After they disappear though he recovers pretty fast. I guess he’s used to it.

Clockworks Podcast pointed out that the music Davids wincing at is sax heavy Jazz, which is (abstractly) the sound The Devil With Yellow Eyes makes whenever he appears. If my theory about David seeing through the 4th wall is correct, then maybe he’s actually hearing that sound whenever TDWYE is around. Alternatively, Farouk blast that in his head everytime to mess with him.

“Sorry... I forgot about your um... I had a similar- proclivity? Malady? I forget the word- what’s the word? I’ve been here a long time.”

If the previous paragraphs are right, Oliver’s probably implying he was also affected by a mental parasite at some point. It might’ve even been what stranded him in the astral plane.

From Davids perspective he skipped over the entire second half of Chapter 3.

Oliver is essentially explaining the plot of the show to David and the audience before it’s even been unfurled.

“You have an unquiet mind, so you war with yourself, like a dog trying to chew off its own tail.”

David’s still in a very pessimistic guilt ridden place at this point in the story. That’s probably the internal war Oliver’s talking about.

... why can’t Oliver leave the astral plane again? If he did have his own mental parasite, it seems long gone by now. If he just can’t find his way back, then how does he do it in Chapter 7?

Syd calls non-mutants “normals.”

“We were the ghost in a haunted house.” ~Syd, Chapter 4

“You think ghost like living in a haunted house?” ~Syd, Chapter 12

Why does Syd keep hallucinating The Angriest Boy? Or is that just visual metaphor?

Ptonomy’s a very, “Get the job done and look classy while doing it” sorta guy.

“To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” ~Sun Tzu, Ptonomy

Is the above quote perhaps relevant to the shows message during other conflicts throughout the series? Could it be subtly implying all the characters should always look for non-violent ways to defeat their enemies? I.e. not just a classy line from Ptonomy, but a statement of themes within the show.

The food David, Philly, and Dr Poole are having in Philly’s memories is cherry pie.

In Philly’s memory David says, “I don’t keep a lot of stuff.” And Philly comments that there’s no evidence David had a past. At least among the things David owns at that point. I know Farouk edited a lot of Davids memories, but why did David himself get rid of so much physical stuff? Syd said the reason he broke into Dr Pooles that day was to destroy their taped conversations. What’s compelling him to erase himself from existence? Is it as simple as “Farouk”? It seems like on a deeper level David doesn’t want anyone to know too much about him. Everyone’s only allowed to know what he tells them. His way of feeling in control I guess.

Philly did the classic “I can fix him” when she started dating David.

Philly implies David going off his medication and keeping bad company is what caused the downfall of their relationship. And subsequently his life, probably.

Despite everything, Philly still feels sympathetic towards David.

“Whoever altered Davids memory-“ Ptonomy very early on humors the idea that Davids being acted on by a 3rd party.

The longer Kerry is away from Cary, the more antsy she is for a fight. She’s not supposed to have to sit through all this “boring stuff.”

Ptonomy left after he got the info on Pooles location from Philly. He probably wanted to get the rest of the information from the source. Ironically, they probably woulda gotten closer to the real answer if he’d just looked a bit longer.

Sys proudly says “Yes” when “Dr Poole” ask if she’s in love with David.

It never really comes up again, but Kerry and Cary are physically linked. Maybe even psychologically. When one of them gets hurt, or even exerts their body a lot, the other can feel it, even if their own body doesn’t take on the actual damage. This is still true even if they’re miles apart.

Syds definitely portrayed as the hero at the end of this scene.

“All those years of practice-“ A part of David always knew he had powers. I wonder, did he practice a little in secret? Or is he saying he was at Summerland for years? That doesn’t really add up. But then... what does he mean by years?

Lenny encourages David to get angry so that his powers will strengthen enough for them to overpower the astral plane. Sort of... cheating his way out. David will later achieve more feats of strength through honing his emotions. Like many heroes, his level of power is intrinsically linked to his emotional state.

Very directly here, Davids violence is caused by ignorance. He doesn’t know Syd switched bodies with Walter and is trying to escape.

[littleeyesofpallas]

Let’s talk about the Shunshunrikka Orihime’s power for a sec... (going over the 6 individual spirits makes this too long, so I’ve excised that bit and put it into its own post for later...)

『三天結盾』!! 『盾の外』の拒絶

"Satenkesshun: 3-Heaven Binding-Shield"!!

"Outside the Shield" rejection

キミと敵との間に「盾」を張りキミに与えられる「攻撃」を「拒絶」する

A 'Shield' will be placed between YOU and the enemy given to YOU to 'Reject' the 'Attack' that you are given.

This is just Orihime’s basic defensive combat shield.  All Orihime’s shields actually function on the same basic power, but in different directions.  This one rejects what is “Outside,” preventing it from coming “Inside.”  The strength of the shield is contingent on Orihime’s willpower, and implicitly on her understanding of her own powers and the target.  We learn a little later, in relation to a different shield power, that her powers “Reject” the abstract concept of specific events, (we’ll into that in a bit...) but this form of her shield is the one most similar to Hacchi’s Visored barrier, but where as Orihime with her primitive grasp of her own powers has her trying to physically block attacks, Hacchi’s barrier works by rejecting intentions.

ネコが... あんな広いところを まっすぐ 地面のフチみたいに歩いてる... 鳥も他の生きものもみんな近付かない... 近付かないだこの結界があるから

The cat... That vast space right in front of me. Walking like it's the edge of the earth's surface... Birds too, other living things, everyone won't come near.  It can't get close because this barrier exists

この結界が意識の中からこの建物と空間の存在自体を完全に消し去ってるからここに建物があること自体認識できない... ここに近付こうとする考え自体が思い浮かばないんだ...

Because this barrier completely erases the existence of this building and space from my consciousness, I cannot recognize that there is a building here... The idea itself of trying to get near here, I can't remember...

こんなに強い結界なのに...  あたしの盾舜六花の盾と少し似てる

Even though it's such a strong barrier... My shield, Shun Shun Rikka and it are a little similar

恐らくはその能力を持っているが故に彼女だけだが結界に覆われたこの場所を探知し...

Probably because she has that ability, only she can detect this place covered by barriers...

ウタシ結界をすり抜けて侵入できたのでショウ...  人・間・の・ま・ま・で・そんな能力を持っているなんて ...少し信じ難い話デスけどネ

To be able to slip through my barrier and invade, I wonder...  A.Hu.Man.As.It.Is, possessing such an ability ...it's a little hard to believe

This comment about Orihime’s powers being highly unusual for a human will come back up again in a bit...

==============================================

『双天帰盾』! 『盾の内』の拒絶

"Soutenkishun: Pair Heaven-Returning-Shield"!

"Inside the Shield" rejection

盾を張った内側という限定空間内『破壊』を『拒絶』するつまり 盾で覆った対象を破壊を受ける前の状態に戻すことができるんだ

We "Reject" the "Destruction" within the limited space inside the shield.  You can restore the shielded target to the condition before it was destroyed

This is Orihime’s basic “healing” ability, and it rejects events that have taken place “Inside” the shield.  As is specified later by Aizen, she doesn’t actually “heal” injuries, she undoes the event in which the damage was inflicted.  Her powers are first really elaborated on in the Arrancar arc when Aizen expounds on her powers because of his own interest in their usefulness

LUPPI: あいつの腕は東仙統括官に灰にされた! 消えたものをどうやって治すってんだ!! 神じゃあるまいし!!

His arm, Supervising Officer Tousen made it ash! How can you heal what's been erased!! You're not god!!

回復とか... そんなレベルの話じゃないぞ...

Such recovery... Such a LEVEL, you can’t suggest...

AIZEN: ウルキオラはこれを「時間回帰」若しくは「空間回帰」と見た

ULQUIORRA here, says it looks like "Time Regression" or "Space Regression"

LUPPI:人間が そんな高度な能力を... そんな訳ないだろ...!

A Human having such a high-grade ability...  Such nonsense, don't you agree?...!

AIZEN: その通りだどちらも違う それは「事象の拒絶」だよ

彼女の能力は対象に起こったあらゆる事象を限定し・拒絶し・否定する

何事も 起こる前の状態に帰すことのできる能力だ

I agree, both are different. That is, this is "Rejection of Events"

Her ability targets all events that have happened with Restriction:Rejection:Negation

Her ability can send the all that has happened to the previous condition

それは「時間回帰」や「空間回帰」よりも更に上

神の定めた事象の地平を易々と踏み越える

That is even more than "Time Regression" or "Space Regression" This easily tramples on the ground of God's determined events

There is a very deliberate focus on the talk of a “god” here, in that Orihime’s ability to not just “heal” wounds, but to undo whole stages of reality, albeit in localized spaces; and with Luppi and Hacchi both remark that a human having these powers is impossible.  This, in context of Aizen’s talk of there being no god in heaven but him, later developments in the arc in which both Chad and Orihime’s powers are clarified to be similar to Arrancar and Visored, and that their powers at this point are still supposedly derived from Ichigo (not yet retconned to being a result of the Hougyoku) all give the strongest suggestion that Ichigo was already a unique hybrid on his way toward the ascended god-form beyond Shinigami and Hollows that Aizen sought, and that Orihime’s powers, being derived from Ichigo’s are also expressly god-like.

Hacchi also teaches her this when he fixes Tsubaki for her, after he is destroyed by Yammy.  Orihime couldn’t heal him herself because she had been trying to collect the broken pieces of Tsubaki’s body and undo the specific wounds of each part.  Hacchi teaches her that their powers (as his Visored kidou work on the same rejection principle) that she doesn’t need a “thing” to heal, she just needs to know about the “event” in which is was destroyed and reject that.  It’s less explicit when Hacchi says it, but I also want to point out that this also establishes the nature of Hacchi’s powers by association.

This all becomes particularly frustrating when he eventually fights Baraggan and Kubo acts like his powers don’t work against Baraggan’s rapid aging power, despite the fact that we know from all this that Hacchi’s powers, like Orihime’s, supersedes time and space based manipulation by being abstract concept based.  His barriers should sensibly be able to completely reject the event of aging.

This power is actually Orihime’s most (theoretically) useful, and it’s both the one Aizen intends to exploit when he first abducts her, as well as the means by which she intends to make herself useful and reject the Hougyoku from existence... a plot hook that never gets revisited despite being the explicitly stated goal of Orihime’s entire projected character arc.  But despite resolving to save the day herself, in her own unique way, and refusing to be rescued... she does nothing of real note the rest of the arc and sits around waiting to be rescued...

Also I totally forgot to throw this in the first draft, but there’s also the time Ichigo realizes he can’t break out of Orihime’s healing shield during Zaraki’s fight with Nnoitra.  They don’t go any further into that at the time, but logically the implication would be that because of how her event powers work, she’s still actively undoing everything inside the shield, including any attempts to break out.  Theoretically she could actually “heal” an Arrancar, and they’d be unable to escape from inside, and they’d continue to have their “injuries” undone, including their masks breaking, reverting them back into a regular Hollow.

============================================== 

 孤天斬盾』!『盾の両面』の拒絶!

“Kotensanshun: Orphan Heaven-Decapitating-Shield"! “Both sides of Shield” rejection!

敵をブチ抜いて中に盾を張り『物質の結合』を『拒絶』する! 要するに敵を真っ二ツにするってこった!

SMASH the enemy, put a shield inside them and “Reject” the “Joining of Material”!  In short, I split the enemy right in two!...

Orihime’s woefully underused attack shield.  The translation can be a little odd sounding in English, but the idea is that her shield rejects “Both sides” as in “Inside” and “Outside” but like the other shields those aren’t the most clear definitions.  For the defensive shield, “Outside” is just whatever is in front of Orihime; for healing, “Inside” is just whatever is under the dome; and in this case the shield works almost like a blade, and rather than a real “Inside” and "Outside” it’s really just “on either side” of the shield. But the description Tsubaki gives here specifies that it rejects the “event” in which the thing being attack is in fact one singular/whole thing, effectively splitting it in two on a conceptual level.

Considering she doesn’t actually use this to beat any enemies after her very first fight against the hollow, Numb Chandelier, there’s not a lot to be said about this.  In her one fight in Soul Society with Ikkanzaka Jiroubou, Tsubaki establishes that her lack of killing intent is what left his shield too weak to effectively attack.

==============================================

This turned out way longer than I thought it’d be, and there really weren’t even all that many scenes with Orihime’s powers being explained.  But this is it.  This is basically everything of note about how Orihime’s rejection shield powers work.  I might do a different one tracing Orihime’s character development setup for the arc scene by scene before it just got totally ignored

[teatimeatwinterpalace]

Hello ! Can you tell me about Charles I, King of England? I am curious about this king. Thank you :)

Sigh, my problematic fave... Charlie boy got greedy and forgot he ruled England not France lmao. 

No but no shade, of course it is more complicated than that. Charles is a very controversial figure. A number of Protestant historians have condemn him and his reign. He is often depicted as cold, indecisive, or even as a tyrant. Even though there is a certain truth in each of this qualifying adjectives, I tend to agree with historians who have written a more nuanced portrait of Charles without erasing the shaddy things he did because he did cross the line of legality. I like this quote from Katie Whitaker : "Charles was the last medieval king in Britain, a man imbued with all the ideals of chilvary, who believed he was appointed by God to rule." And here lies the tragedy. His reign was a defining moment where two conceptions of power came into collision : the divine prerogatives of the King against the privileges of Parliament.

Charles as a child had a weak constitution, some historians stated he was suffering from rickets. At some point, he conquered this physical infirmity however his speech came slowly and with difficulty and until his death he had a stutter. He spent his childhood in the shadow of his strong and radiant older brother, Henry, who he loved dearly. When Henry died in 1608, Charles was eleven, he had an excellent education, he studied French, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Greek, theology, drawing, dancing, fencing... His father, James I, was very much interested in the education of his children and one of the first letter Charles wrote to his father was :  "Sweete, Sweete Father, I learne to decline substantives and adjectives, give me your blessing, I thank you for my best man, your loving sone York". In his late teens he spent more and more time with his father even though he despised his "decadent" Court. He was religiously devot and of a strong moral stance which reflected in his Court when he was king. The guiding principles was order and decorum. Contrary to his father, he was also eager to play the role of an international statesman, which made his situation with Parliament even worse. However, he lacked confidence which caused him to be influenced by the ideas of the people he most trusted: Buckingham, his father... James could read the room, Charles unfortunately not so much. After James' passing, he started taking some of his father views to an extreme. However, it's important to note that when he came to power in 1625 the situation was already tense :

His father had a patriachal view of the monarchy. He wrote political treatises exposing his own views on the divine right of kings, stating :"‘Kings are justly called gods for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power on earth". This kind of discourse didn't sit well with the House of Commons which was already sensitive on the matter of its rights and privileges. Parliament thought it had a traditional right to interfere with the policy of the realm. And so the political atmosphere soured quickly between both parties. For instance, when Parliament tried to meddle with the Spanish marriage negociations (between Charles and the Infanta of Spain) James was furious.

Parliament had considerable leverage : was the one holding the purse strings. This proved to be a thorn in the side of EVERY Stuarts rulers and it’s why throughout out the 17th century, England was shy with its foreign policy. Unlike the French King who was doing whatever he wanted, the English monarch had to beg subsidies to Parliament. Schematically, here was the usual scenario : 

King opens a new Parliamentary session because he needs moneeey, the House of Commons says maaay be but before we reeeally need to discuss something else *push his own agenda*, *criticise the royal policy* (rumor has it that you can still hear the king muttering not agaaain), thus ensues many excruciating negotiations and conflicts which usually ends up with the king saying fuck you and either proroguing or dissoluting his Parliament (this hot mess found its peak during the Exclusion Crisis, was a real soap opera lol). 

Again, it is schematical because even in the House of Commons some MPs were content with James' patriachal views. Anyway, at the core, it was truly a battle between royal prerogative and privilege!

THEN, you add the very sensitive matter of religion, its impact on politics was huge.

There were the Anglicans and Presbyterians which didn't see eye to eye. Yet compromises were made which made coexistence bearable for some while others fled to Europe or in the colonies in order to set up their own independent churches. James had hoped to bring the two Churches together and to create uniformity across the two kingdoms (Scotland & England). He tried to establish a Prayer Book similar to that used in England but faced with great opposition, he withdrew. (but guess who tried to follow daddy’s steps but didn’t withdrew?)

And last but not least... who the English despised the most above all? The followers of this boy right here...

... CATHOLICS, satan's minions on earth. 

With the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in Europe the fear of Catholicism was very much alive. Charles and Buckingham pushed James to summoned Parliament to ask for money to finance a war with Spain. The very much anti-Catholic Parliament agreed to the subsidies but unfortunately the expedition failed. James died, and Charles at the age of 24 had to deal with the consequenses. 

Relations between King and Parliament deteriorated quickly. There were the matter of war + Buckingham had negotiated a marriage for Charles to Henrietta Maria, the sister of the French King, promising that she would be permitted to practise her own Catholic religion, and that English ships would help to suppress a French Protestant rebellion in La Rochelle. Obviously, Parliament was furious especially towards Buckingham and Charles was forced to dissolve Parliament. For the King it was a direct challenge to his right to appoint his advisers and to govern. The Privy Council started to consider ways of raising money without the help of Parliament : forced loan, ship money... let's say that from here it started to go downhill.

For the matter of religion, unfortunately the caution of James I was replaced by Charles' desire for uniformity. Moreover, the King was interested by the Arminian group which was an alternative to the rigid Calvinism : the emphasis was on ritual and sacraments and they rejected the doctrine of predestination. Howerver, for many English, this group had too much ties with Catholicism. Also, some of them were great supporters of a heightened royal power which freaked out a lot of people who feared a sort of takeover. Of course, as often with fears and phobias, it was out of proportion with reality. Nonetheless, for many, Arminian meant : Catholicism +  absolute monarchy = tyranny. When William Laud (the Arminian leader) became Bishop of London in 1628, another stormy Parliament session took place. Charles decided to prorogue it but the Commons refused and they passed the Three Resolutions which condemned the collection of tonnage and poundage that Charles was doing without their consent as well as the doctrine and practice of Arminianism. Charles dissolved the Parliament and proclaimed he intended to govern without the Parliament until it calms the fuck down. This proved to be a significant breakdown within the system of government and the situation got a whole lot worse.

It's already a lot right? BUT HANG ON because in this very healthy anti-Catholicism atmosphere who Charles married? A FRENCH CATHOLIC PRINCESS. It made the crown more vulnerable and perhaps a lot of things would have been different if she had been Protestant but damn they were good together!!! The romance of Charles and Henrietta Maria is one of the greatest love stories in history. At first one could say it was a mismatched couple : a Protestant King with a Catholic Princess. Their differences and lack of understanding made their earlier years together complicated and turbulent. There were lot of quarrels and yet, they fell passionately in love. Their daughter, Princess Elizabeth wrote an account the day before Charles was beheaded and she said: “He bid us tell my mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her, and that his love would be the same to the last.” Lina wrote on her blog her top 10 favourite titbits of info of love and heartache about Charles I & Henrietta Maria, go check it out ;)

This is getting too long lol I'm not going to get into what most historians called his "personnal reign" and the civil wars. I just hope that this couple of informations made you want to find more about Charles and his time :) 

Don't settle for just one book about him because as I said at the beginning, he is a very controversial figure and lot of biographies (not so much with the recent ones but still) tend to insist on his supposedly taste for "tyranny" and romanticise the role of Parliament (aka the whole Whig historiography). Charles' reign sparked off a revolution where new ideals of liberty and citizens' rights were born HOWEVER it was a matter of decades/centuries for these ideas to penetrate society and every strats of the political spectrum. The Parliament's ideology of the 1620-1640 (and then during the Restoration) had a very nostalgic vision of politics. The idea of reform was light years away from these ultraconservative men.

But to be honest even outside Parliament. When you look at men such as Fénelon, Bolingbroke or Montesquieu. They were all convinced that a restoration (often of a magnified past) was the only response to the evils of their time. Reform in the early modern period, whether it was religious or political, was thought as a restoration. It's in mid-18th century that the shift happened, the future was at last conceivable. Anyway, all of that is to say that I'm a bit wary of all the authors who depict the MPs of this period as great reformers, who fought against the tyranny. They were mostly conservative men and very attached to THEIR priviliges.

[justforbooks]

Freeman Dyson’s Quest for Eternal Life

In 1979, Freeman Dyson came up with a plan to live forever.

There was no fanciful elixir. It was not a matter of theological speculation. Mr. Dyson was, for all his eccentric, maverick tendencies, a theoretical physicist — one of the most brilliant and insightful of his age.

In a mathematically rigorous manuscript, sprinkled with commentary and philosophical quotations, he wrote the formulas by which some advanced consciousness could encode itself into a form of matter that would persist indefinitely into the cosmic future, after the last star is snuffed out in the darkness.

He postulated that this eternal machine might be an amorphous cloud of particles, passing electromagnetic signals back and forth to emulate human thought. He made sure to spend a few paragraphs outlining a detailed plan for unlimited memory storage, since “it seems hardly worthwhile to be immortal if one must ultimately erase all trace of one’s origins in order to make room for new experience.”

It was this paper, “Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe,” that brought me to Mr. Dyson’s office at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton last May, four decades after its publication. I was working on a book about the end of the universe and seeking his expertise. How will it happen? How can we know? Should we hold on to anything like hope?

By this time, Mr. Dyson was a legend, known as much for his intellectual breadth as for his groundbreaking work in physics and mathematics.

At the age of only 24, he had an insight that proved the equivalency between two seemingly disparate theories of particle physics that would lead three of his colleagues to a Nobel Prize.

To the public, he’s more famous for giving science fiction the “Dyson Sphere,” a hypothetical structure a future civilization could build to harness the entire power of its sun. As a professor at the institute in 1965, he won the prestigious Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics for his work in quantum field theory, just a few years after taking leave to try to develop an interplanetary spacecraft powered by nuclear explosions.

He worked with such luminaries as Richard Feynman and Wolfgang Pauli, and wrote books speculating about religion, biology, and the future of human society. His early achievements landed him an offer of a professorship before he even finished his Ph.D., so he never bothered to complete it — he felt that being a perpetual student gave him license to explore more freely.

Of course, being a genius and visionary helped with that, too. By the time he was pondering eternal life, he had already firmly established his scientific legacy, so he could risk working on topics he knew would be considered frivolous. In the introduction of his 1979 paper, he pushed back against the idea that eschatology, the study of end times, should be avoided by serious scientists: “If our analysis of the long-range future leads us to raise questions related to the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, then let us examine these questions boldly and without embarrassment.”

At our meeting last year, I asked if he still felt that these topics were considered “disreputable” in physics.

“Yes, of course,” he replied. Proof, he said, was “the fact that everything I wrote was wrong.”

I should be clear here that there was no mistake with his calculations, given the knowledge of the cosmos at the time. Mr. Dyson was betrayed by the universe.

By the 1970s, it was firmly established that the universe was expanding, so the next big question was whether the cosmos was fated to recollapse, destroying us all in a Big Crunch, or to simply expand forever.

The latter possibility might sound more appealing — Mr. Dyson himself wrote that the concept of a recollapsing universe was “a rather dismal story” — but it seemed that it would still doom us to a bleak future cosmos of gradual cooling in which all sources of light and heat would fade away by degrees.

When Mr. Dyson turned his attention to an eternally growing cosmos, though, he found hope. He calculated that a machine built to gradually slow its computations, periodically entering states of hibernation, could persist, subjectively, forever.

The discovery in the late 1990s that the universe is not just expanding, but accelerating in its expansion, ruined everything. If this acceleration continues, even a carefully engineered calculation machine will eventually come apart.

“The universe just disperses into disconnected volumes, which are essentially empty,” Mr. Dyson told me. “Essentially nothing happens after a finite time.”

This seems to be where we’re headed. The current scientific consensus is that far in the future, long after our own sun dies, whether or not we have evolved from fragile biological humanity to spacefaring, self-replicating machines, we will all eventually succumb. The distant galaxies will be pulled beyond the limits of our sight; stars will die; all light will fade. We will end our cosmic existence alone, in the dark.

“It would be disappointing,” Mr. Dyson said. “I mean, you have to accept what nature provides. But it’s like the fact that we have finite lifetimes. It’s not so tragic. In many, many ways it makes the universe more interesting. It’s always evolving to something different. But having a finite lifetime for the whole thing …” His voice trailed off.

“Maybe that’s our fate. But certainly, I would prefer to have evolution going on forever.”

Whether or not the accelerated expansion will continue is not a settled question. It may never be one. As a theoretical cosmologist myself, I’m searching for answers, but I have to concede we may never figure them out. Maybe it’s the journey that will be worthwhile; maybe we’ll learn something useful along the way.

At the end of our discussion, I asked Mr. Dyson whether he thinks we’ll someday say with certainty where we’re all going, how it’s all going to end.

“It’ll be more interesting if it turns out to be unanswerable,” he said. “Nature always has more imagination than we have. So, I think it’s quite likely.”

Freeman Dyson passed away last week, at the age of 96. He knew no one could have all the answers, but I got the impression that he liked it that way.

“The beauty of science is that all the important things are unpredictable,” he told me. “The optimistic view in me is that nature is designed to make the universe as interesting as possible.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[venus-says]

Kamen Rider Ex-Aid Episodes 16-30

Insert COIN to Continue.

If Ex-Aid hadn't clicked with me in its first 15 episodes, it's with much joy that I come here to say that I think I finally get this show and I'm here for it!

Yes, I still have quite a few of problems, and a lot of the complaints I had in my previous post are still present in here, but my enjoyment of the show has only been growing more and more with each new episode I watch to the point where now only very few aspects of it still annoy me really hard and I can let go of things more easily like, for example, the weird dialogue and the comedy style that while are still aspects that I don't like but that now I can get past that without being bothered.

Honestly, what bothers me the most is that I didn't know the show had such a clear break into two parts and that I divided the episodes for the reviews in a way that will make a bit weird to talk about, especially in this post. I didn't expect episodes 1 through 23 would end up being a big arc, with episodes 24 onward being kind of a different thing, a step-up from the previous arc. But oh well...

Since these episodes were clearly divided into two separate arcs I'll do the same here and comment on them separately.

This first part, going from episodes 16 to 23, are a bit weird to comment on because even inside them there's also a mini division we can make, episodes 16, 18, 19 and 20 are like a mini-arc to give Brave and Snipe power-ups while 21, 22, and 23 have more like an end game plot going on, and episode 17 is kinda just hanging around there, a bit out of place that usually would be considered a filler but that introduces a character that is used later on so while we can't completely disregard that episode we also can't really put it in the same basket as the others.

The first portion is the weakest of this whole section, being completely honest I don't remember much about it, I know Brave and Snipe get their asses kicked and they lose his gashats and that was pretty cathartic, but then Genm did his thing again and gave them Level 50 power-ups and I was a bit disappointed, not really in aesthetic levels or powers, like I don't care for Snipe's but I love how Brave looks and I think is really cool that he can command a troop of minions, my biggest problem is that the power-up is in one of those double gashats with that ugly circle thing and they have to share it but the division isn't really fair since Snipe has been keeping it for way more time than Brave did. But oh well.

Oh also during this part my hate for Kuroto was constantly raising, I really despise this man and whenever someone wipes the floor with him is like I'm having an overdose of serotonin because he's an awful human being and that's what he deserves and seeing him being fucked up brings me a lot of joy.

The mini-arc of episodes 21 to 23 is when things start to get interesting as we see the plot unveiling mysteries and the gears grinding in incredible speed making these three episodes feel like the end of a season. Now, as interesting and exciting that it was to watch this climax payout I do have some problems here. My biggest one is that, once again, they made Emu WAY too special, now he's not just a doctor, a genius gamer, and patient 0 from the game illness, but he's also the reason why Kuroto is like this nowadays, and different from what we thought he's been incubating this virus since he was a little kid because Kuroto is such a shit human being that he sent an infected game to a kid because apparently, he thinks only him can be a game developer in this world and come up with ideas for games. And yes, this is very in-character, Dan Kuroto would really do stuff like this, is the fact that they make so many things focused on a single person that bothers me.

Another thing I have a problem here, although it's a much smaller one if compared to my previous point is just how convenient it was for the show to put a way to reprogram the virus in Kiriya's computer. I think my problem here is just how easy they got the information, you know? They knew from that detective that Kiriya was digging up something and Hiiro decides to look for information and in the first place he looks he just happens to find his computer and the files in his research were there. Again, it's a minor thing, but I felt like I had to comment on this.

One thing that I really enjoyed in this mini-arc was Kuroto's plan to avoid the Ministry and still get data in his hands by infecting himself with the virus to appeal to Emu's emotions. Again, a very in-character decision and the way it played out was very fun even though it was pretty clear he allowed himself to be caught seeing how easy it was for them. The way things escalated leading to his death was also pretty good, it's a bit annoying that his death gets reverted only a few episodes later, for a show that is constantly talking about doctors dealing with death having a death be reversed is a bit counter-intuitive.

As a result of this conflict, we get Ex-Aid's Level 99 power-up, and while it's cool that is a gashat he made it himself and that he used Kiriya's driver after his was fried up by Genm, holy jesus how ugly is this thing. It's so huge and bulky most of the scenes with him moving have to be done in CGI because that looks like hell to walk on wearing it. This just isn't the ugliest power-up of this season because Snipe still has the worst designs, but oh gosh.

After episode 23 we enter in the Kamen Rider Chronicle arc, where being led by Parad they gather data from the missing games by reviving Graphite and brainwashing Poppy, and Ex-Aid becomes a light novel with a battle royale/survival game that actually kills people when they get a game over (or upload them to the cloud and erase their physical bodies apparently because now they're saying those people can be revived).

Attempts of joke aside, while it's not anything new that they're doing here I do like how they implemented the concept in the story. It's pretty cool having regular people acting up as the players while the Riders we follow are like special NPCs that drop rare items when defeated, it's a fun gimmick and it's also a way to the villains to put another obstacle to the riders without having to do much.

I think what I liked the most in this plot was the mini-arc they had for Poppy, up until this point I didn't really have a strong opinion on her but what they had with her in these episodes was pretty cool. To begin they gave her a pretty dope song, at first I questioned what they were trying to do there but when we get to know that her whole singing scene was part of a brainwashing process it turns things really interesting. But is the journey of her freeing herself from this brainwash that really does it for me, when she starts remembering memories from the person that she took over she gets in this existential crisis and it gave us some great moments, I really like that scene in episode 28 when she's there trying to tell everyone AND herself that humans and bugsters are enemies and Emu puts himself in the line kinda with a wake-up call for her, it was pretty awesome. I feel like she also got way more agency after the events in that episode and I hope they keep that with her. Oh, we also got Kamen Rider Poppy which wasn't a thing I necessarily needed, but that was still pretty cool.

But because not everything can be flowers I have two major issues for this part as well, the two are things that I already mentioned so I won't take too long with them. The first one is obviously the "making Emu too special" thing since it gets established that Parad is the bugster that Emu incubated for all those years and that Parad is actually Emu's "second personality". Again, it's a cool concept, and there's one episode in which Parad gets control of Emu's body and they have a fight between each other while in Ex-Aid's Level 20 form and it was cool as heck, is just the fact that they keep adding layers to Emu like he's the center of the entire universe that makes me feel kinda iffy about it.

The second aspect I don't like is the reversibility of death. I get that this is a show for kids so they would come up with a way to bring everyone that died in Kamen Rider Chronicle because this doesn't seem like the type of show that would just obliterate a lot of people out of existence like that, my problem is with bringing back characters that have some sort of impact with the characters. Yeah, so far we only had Kuroto and he's back but not really since now he's a bugster and Poppy can keep him under control with her drive, though let's be honest this won't last too long, but they're raising the possibility of bringing Hiiro's girlfriend back and I'm sure they would try to bring Kiriya back too and is this thing that I feel like it goes against some of the messages this show is trying to pass to his main character. Emu is constantly facing death and as a Doctor he will face it many times in different contexts and part of the process for him to learn how to deal with this he needs to feel the effects of mourning for those who passed away, but when you bring people back from that while it doesn't revert what he went through makes it feel like death isn't as serious. This is a thing Rider likes to do a lot honestly, I mean look at Ghost, and it never sat with me well, but I feel like in this season in especial, as I mentioned, it's very counter-intuitive.

And I believe that's all I have to say for now. I feel like I'm way too repetitive, and that's a problem I should work on, but I have to say this again, I'm still having my problems with Ex-Aid but these problems aren't cutting down my enjoyment of the show and I'm really excited to see how all of this will come up together in the end. If you have anything to say about my comments or these episodes please let me know in the comments, I'll be very happy to have other people insight into this show. Stay healthy, stay safe, never stop resisting, thank you so so much for reading and until the next time. See you in the next game!

[afinepricklypear]

Compare and Contrast: K Project vs. Bungou Stray Dogs - Part 2

Read Part 1

Story

In general, K Project does a lot better job of maintaining a consistent and focused story, especially in Seasons 1 and 2 than BSD, with almost no filler content.  There aren’t nearly as many open plot threads or divergences from the main story, and everyone introduced has a very cohesive purpose to the plot. This may largely be due to the fact that K was originally envisioned as a complete story, with the movie Return of Kings and season 2’s Missing Kings and other added materials being, somewhat, after thoughts consequently ordered due to the popularity of the show. Season 2 does offer a very decisive end to the tale, with the destruction of the Dresden Slate, mysterious source of all supernatural power. On the other hand, BSD is an ongoing serialized manga with no set beginning or ending that we, as the audience, are aware.  BSD’s author, Asagiri Kafka, isn’t telling a self-contained story with a determined beginning, middle, and end, so often times characters and plot devices are introduced which may not have bearing on the current arc of the story, they hint at things to come. This might be frustrating for viewers that aren’t interested in long-term serialized works, which does have the tendency to fall victim to filler episodes in attempt to make a certain quota or make up for any lulls in the story.

That being said, BSD, thus far, does a lot better with world.

In K, the concepts of Clans and Kings, the Dresden Slate, and the Swords of Damocles are never fully fleshed out satisfactorily, to the point that aspects of it feel completely illogical, convoluted, and conveniently there merely to move the plot forward. Fantasy stories are generally under no obligation to provide explanations for where magic abilities come from, K makes an attempt with the Dresden Slate, but overreaches with an established protocol of Kings and Clans in regards to these powers with no explanation for where or why these rules manifested or why anyone feels obligated to follow them. For example, the Red King Mikoto is not shown to care too much for being a King, or even wanting obligations to his Clan, yet he maintains it and his Clansmen show loyalty to it, and there’s no explanation beyond “well that’s just the way the Dresden Slate works”.  That would be fine, if this wasn’t established as the expectation of anyone who is “awoken” as a King. In that same vein, a lot isn’t really clarified in terms of what really happens to Clansmen when their King dies (Clansmen are shown to still maintain powers granted from their former King but that’s just speculation from viewers, and doesn’t make sense if there powers stem from their Kings) and what is meant to happen when a new King takes their place (though we do see Clansmen turn on the new Blue King, in regards to Munakata taking over Jin Hibari’s role, or choosing to continue following the new Red King, as we see in HOMRA with Anne taking Mikoto’s place). Worse, these rules are just universally known in a world that isn’t supposed to know about these Clans and Kings, leaving no one to explain these rules to newly awakened Kings although these rules are shown to be universally known and accepted by them. More questions than answers are raised.

In BSD, people being born with or manifesting abilities is shown to just be a facet of this world. It’s just one of the physical laws, much like how the sky is blue, grass is green, some people can conjure demons that kill you. This is just the world they live in, and in that sense, the people in this world are the ones that determine the rules that govern these abilities without expectation. This treats us to various different ideas and philosophies for how ability users should apply their abilities or how the users themselves should be managed. The government attempts to regulate ability users, through licensure for organizations that wish to operate as ability user specific. This provided a cool storyline where we see Port Mafia obtain its license to operate as an ability user organization during the Dark Era, through nefarious plotting on leader, Mori’s part, which also highlighted that the Port Mafia is a criminal organization because prior to obtaining this license they were operating without one. We also see the Armed Detective Agency undergo a plot to take their license away, and since they are the morally upright group, in their minds, losing their license means they will cease to exist. This places explanation firmly on the goals of their given society, something that is relatable and understandable for readers, and shifts it away from the realm of unexplainable and increasingly convoluted magic.

On the flipside of that, however, K does a much better job of balancing powers. Which brings me Nakahara Chuuya.

I’ll throw this disclaimer in here, Chuuya is my favorite character. I fell in love at first sight. Unfortunately, he gets little to no screen time, I could count on one hand his number of appearances throughout the first two seasons. He gets three episodes at the start of Season 3 that explores his history with Dazai, and I feel I’m in no way biased (**cough, cough** 100% biased) saying these are the best three episodes of the season. Then we see him maybe in two more episodes until he gets trapped in a book for the rest of the season, leaving me screaming furiously at the screen. Manga chapters that go beyond where the anime left off are not filling me with much hope for more Chuuya in Season 4. Seriously, I don’t recommend loving this character, you’ll only get your heart broken.

The problem with Chuuya that becomes rampant throughout BSD in other characters, is that he’s a side character for a rival organization and he is super OP. Since the creator seems adamantly against making him a more main character (either as antagonist or protagonist…hell, majority of his appearances have been to literally save the day for the heroes), not to mention the lack of anyone in our heroes’ corner that could reasonably take him on (even Dazai is outmatched despite his nullifying ability, because Chuuya also happens to be Port Mafia’s best martial artist) the only recourse is to leave him conveniently absent from majority of the story. Which, okay, this can mostly be explained away that he’s an Executive in Port Mafia and probably has a lot to deal with in terms of making sure their operations continue to move smoothly, but it leads to ludicrous scenarios such as the end of the Guild Arc when a whale sized airship is being dropped on Yokohama by the Guild. We’re told this ship will wipe out a large portion of the city. At this point, the Detective Agency and Port Mafia are on semi-good terms in order to stand against their common enemy, the Guild. You would think, large object being dropped on the city, Port Mafia has a powerful gravity manipulator on staff...one phone call to Dr. Mori, “Hey...do you mind sending Chuuya to take care of that whale bomb....or are you just cool with the city being flattened?” All Chuuya needs to do is parachute down, once he touches the ship, he could tear the whole thing apart and fling its pieces to every side of the ocean. They call it a day in thirty seconds, tops, back home for dinner. Yet, for some odd reason, the course of action that the Armed Detective Agency decides on is to send rookie agent tiger boy to infiltrate the ship and fight his way to a possible transponder they can use to reverse the ship’s course, despite having little experience, and no specialized abilities for the task, let’s not get started on the ridiculousness of that transponder anyways. This decision is based largely on the fact he once was held prisoner on the ship and so…should know his way around? I get that they supposedly don’t want to owe Port Mafia, but this kind of seemed like an odd time to play loose and fast with the city’s safety. The point is, Chuuya is powerful, which makes his lack of presence during crucial moments pretty heavy handed.

That being said, however, this OP situation, is a problem throughout with other characters as well. There’s no balance of powers, and characters are shown to do things that don’t fall within the realm of their abilities, may never have previously been display or given proper explanation prior to introduction, and sometimes comes across as just thrown in last minute as a plot device. A few examples, able to transform into a tiger also, somehow allows Atsushi to heal at a rapid level and regrow limbs. Forget about the implications that he’s got some “special” light attached to his ability, as well. In a recent chapter of the manga, we see a newly introduced character, one of the Hunting Dogs, slap a bullet out of the air and stop a large projectile with her bare hands. Her ability, however, is age manipulation so there’s no given reason why she should’ve been able to do those things. While it is mentioned that the Hunting Dogs are also genetically engineered, she did this to save another Hunting Dog who is duly is surprised by her actions and expresses that he could not have done the same. I’m baffled. This is to say nothing of the multiple time characters without regenerative or durable abilities are stabbed, blown up, and impaled, only to walk it off like it’s nothing. The Agency healer, Yosano, has an ability called Thou Shalt Not Die, she can heal someone but only when they’re on the brink of death, so her ability is essentially that trope in action films where the bomb is always disarmed with one second to spare. Let’s not even talk about the new revelation that Dazai can control his heart beats to the point he can use it for passing secret code. It becomes plot armor so thick that it entirely erases the stakes for our characters. They’re all treated as practically immortal, able to overcome anything thrown at them, I’m not even worried anymore when a character takes a lance through the heart, I know he’s walking it off in the next scene.

K is a lot more balanced with its abilities. None of the characters, outside of the Kings, feel so overpowered that they are impossible to stop and they’re not shown to be capable of things outside of their given abilities or established, and might I say reasonable, skillsets.  Even the Kings have their peers in the other Kings. Sure, Clansmen can dodge bullets, but if they’re hit by one it hurts and, notably in the case of Totsuka, it can kill. No one is getting impaled multiple times then walking it off. Mikoto is run through with a blade once, and as it should be, he dies. Not only does this maintain the stakes for our characters – they are at the end of the day mortal, and they can get hurt, they can be beaten, they can die – it also gives us a more complicated, and darker story with characters that we can relate to on an emotional level.

Read Part 3

[butterflies-dragons]

About Sansa’s first crush and her taste in men

After finding this post, I felt the need to say a few things about it.

I know the OP has established that this post is based on the show. So based on the show the OP is implying that Arya has a better taste in men than Sansa, because you know, Joe Dempsie is a hunk and Jack Gleeson is an excellent actor.

But we have to remember that the show is an adaptation of the Books, and maybe the cast team did not find a hunky actor for portraying Joffrey and chose Jack Gleeson for his quality at acting, but that doesn’t erase the fact that Book Joffrey was very good looking. Let’s see:

Book Joffrey was so handsome that made Jon Snow feel extremely jealous:

His half sisters escorted the royal princes. Arya was paired with plump young Tommen, whose white-blond hair was longer than hers. Sansa, two years older, drew the crown prince, Joffrey Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon or Robb, but taller than either, to Jon’s vast dismay. Prince Joffrey had his sister’s hair and his mother’s deep green eyes. A thick tangle of blond curls dripped down past his golden choker and high velvet collar. Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey’s pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell’s Great Hall.  

—A Game of Thrones - Jon I

Book Joffrey was so handsome that even Arya sounds jealous:

“We were talking about the prince,” Sansa said, her voice soft as a kiss.

Arya knew which prince she meant: Joffrey, of course. The tall, handsome one. Sansa got to sit with him at the feast. Arya had to sit with the little fat one. Naturally.

—A Game of Thrones - Arya I

See? Arya thought that Joffrey was handsome and it would not have bothered her to be the one sitting next to him at the feast…

And of course, Book Joffrey was so handsome that Sansa thought she was in love with him:

Prince Joffrey might be there. Her betrothed. Just thinking it made her feel a strange fluttering inside, even though they were not to marry for years and years. Sansa did not really know Joffrey yet, but she was already in love with him. He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be, tall and handsome and strong, with hair like gold.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

Actually, Joffrey’s physical beauty was the only good thing he possessed:

Joffrey. He had been a handsome lad, tall and strong for his age, but that was all the good that could be said of him. It still shamed Ser Arys to remember all the times he’d struck that poor Stark girl at the boy’s command. When Tyrion had chosen him to go with Myrcella to Dorne, he lit a candle to the Warrior in thanks. “Joffrey is dead, poisoned by the Imp.” He would never have thought the dwarf capable of such enormity. “Tommen is king now, and he is not his brother.”

—A Feast for Crows - The Soiled Knight

Handsome, tall and strong for his age, sounds pretty similar to Gendry’s description:

The master called over a tall lad about Robb’s age, his arms and chest corded with muscle. “This is Lord Stark, the new Hand of the King,” he told him as the boy looked at Ned through sullen blue eyes and pushed back sweat-soaked hair with his fingers. Thick hair, shaggy and unkempt and black as ink. The shadow of a new beard darkened his jaw. “This is Gendry. Strong for his age, and he works hard. Show the Hand that helmet you made, lad.” Almost shyly, the boy led them to his bench, and a steel helm shaped like a bull’s head, with two great curving horns.

—A Game of Thrones - Eddard VI

See? Both Joffrey and Gendry are described as tall and strong for their age, and since Brienne thought Gendry was a younger version of Renly the first time she saw him, we can surely say that Gendry was handsome as well:

Gendry was at his forge, bare-chested beneath his leather apron. He was beating on a sword as if he wished it were a foe, his sweat-soaked hair falling across his brow. She watched him for a moment. He has Renly’s eyes and Renly’s hair, but not his build. Lord Renly was more lithe than brawny … not like his brother Robert, whose strength was fabled.

—A Feast for Crows - Brienne VII

“… till you stand before m'lady.” Renly stood behind the girl, pushing his black hair out of his eyes. Not Renly. Gendry. “M'lady means for you to answer for your crimes.”

—A Feast for Crows - Brienne VIII

Even Sansa would agree that Gendry was handsome, since she thought this the first time she saw Renly:

His companion was a man near twenty whose armor was steel plate of a deep forest-green. He was the handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon; tall and powerfully made, with jet-black hair that fell to his shoulders and framed a clean-shaven face, and laughing green eyes to match his armor. Cradled under one arm was an antlered helm, its magnificent rack shimmering in gold.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

So, from the information above we can conclude that:

Jack Gleeson doesn’t fit Book Joffrey’s physical appearance.

Joe Dempsie characterization sounds very similar to Book Gendry’s.

Book Joffrey was as hunky as Book Gendry.

Book Arya thought that Joffrey was handsome.

Book Sansa would think Book Gendry is handsome.

Now about Sansa’s taste in men, I also have a few things to say:

THE BLONDES

Joffrey Baratheon (12 when Sansa met him).- Blonde, handsome, tall and strong for his age, a skilled dancer and the mother fucker even sang sweetly for Sansa once and told her she was very beautiful, so of course she fell for him or at least she thought she loved him.

“Sansa did not really know Joffrey yet, but she was already in love with him. He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be, tall and handsome and strong, with hair like gold.”

Beyond his extraordinary physical appearance, Sansa didn’t know Joffrey and you simply can’t love what you don’t know, not really.

I think Sansa imposed the idea of Joffrey in her mind and she decided she loved him. This has to do with her strong sense of duty and her preconceptions of beauty and goodness that she learnt from the songs. It wasn’t a spontaneous attraction, she didn’t love him because her heart chose him; she loved him because he was her betrothed, who also happened to be the Crown Prince, the Heir to the Iron Throne, a golden boy, handsome, tall, strong. And before the Trident incident, he treated her like a gallant knight and made her feel like a lady in a song. And in the songs all the true knights are beautiful, but in real life physical beauty doesn’t mean goodness.

And if you are wondering, the answer is no, Joffrey wasn’t Sansa’s first crush.  

Harrold Hardyng (18/19 when Sansa met him).- Another tall strong blonde, and you could think Sansa’s type are tall strong blondes, but that’s simply a wrong assumption.

My Harry. My lord, my lover, my betrothed.

Ser Harrold Hardyng looked every inch a lord-in-waiting; clean-limbed and handsome, straight as a lance, hard with muscle. Men old enough to have known Jon Arryn in his youth said Ser Harrold had his look, she knew. He had a mop of sandy blond hair, pale blue eyes, an aquiline nose. Joffrey was comely too, though, she reminded herself. A comely monster, that’s what he was. Little Lord Tyrion was kinder, twisted though he was.

(…)

And there he stood, Harry the Heir himself; tall, handsome, scowling. “Lady Alayne. May I partner you in this dance?”

—The Winds of Winter - Alayne I

As you can see, Sansa is trying, again, to impose the idea of Harry in in her mind:

“My Harry. My lord, my lover, my betrothed”.

In both cases, the fact that Harry like Joffrey fitted very well in the concept of gallant golden knights, pretty things from pretty songs, helped her to accommodate them as her love interests. But at this point, although Sansa is aware of Harry’s physical beauty, she is more careful, so she does not associate beauty with goodness automatically.

And no, Harry wasn’t Sansa’s first crush.  

Sansa wanted true love, but since she cannot choose who she will get married to, she accommodates, she adapts, she adjusts the reality.    

An the reality was that Joffrey and Harry were imposed/forced on Sansa: Joff by her family and Harry by Petyr Baelish. And the reasons behind these arranged betrothals were obviously political reasons:  

Q: I have no royal linage, having cleared that up, what advice would you give me to ask Sansa out on a date?

A: Laughs. Well ahh you know, if you have no nobility I don’t think the Stark family would be too interested in you dating Sansa. All the marriages was kind of arranged back them, they were political alliances between great houses, and they had to bring some advantage and you know Sansa didn’t fool around with peasant boys….so that wasn’t gonna happen.

—GRRM - FIL de Guadalajara 2016

And then there are some things that are just don’t square with history. In some sense I’m trying to respond to that. [For example] the arranged marriage, which you see constantly in the historical fiction and television show, almost always when there’s an arranged marriage, the girl doesn’t want it and rejects it and she runs off with the stable boy instead. This never fucking happened. It just didn’t. There were thousands, tens of thousand, perhaps hundreds of thousands of arranged marriages in the nobility through the thousand years of Middle Ages and people went through with them. That’s how you did it. It wasn’t questioned. Yeah, occasionally you would want someone else, but you wouldn’t run off with the stable boy.

And that’s another of my pet peeves about fantasies. The bad authors adopt the class structures of the Middle Ages; where you had the royalty and then you had the nobility and you had the merchant class and then you have the peasants and so forth. But they don’t’ seem to realize what it actually meant. They have scenes where the spunky peasant girl tells off the pretty prince. The pretty prince would have raped the spunky peasant girl. He would have put her in the stocks and then had garbage thrown at her. You know.

I mean, the class structures in places like this had teeth. They had consequences. And people were brought up from their childhood to know their place and to know that duties of their class and the privileges of their class. It was always a source of friction when someone got outside of that thing. And I tried to reflect that.

—GRRM - TIMES 2011

See? Sansa knows her duties.

Joffrey was the Crown Prince, the Heir to the Iron Throne, and Harry was even called the Heir because he aspired to be Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, and Warden of the East.

When King Robert proposed Joffrey and Sansa’s betrothal, he was trying to reenact his own betrothal to Lyanna Stark, that was part of the so called Southron Ambitions Theory.  And when Petyr Baelish proposed Harry and Alayne/Sansa betrothal, he was trying to gain more political power to further his own agenda. But here is the thing with these shiny golden betrothals: they both are doomed because both male fiancés are fake. Joffrey is no prince but a bastard and Harry is no heir but a pretender, the second in line after Robert Arryn (Sweetrobin), a sick little boy that everyone assumes is soon to die.    

The funny thing is that both real heirs that Joffrey and Harry tried to replace, are dark haired: Any true-born/bastard son of Robert Baratheon would have black hair, and Jon Arryn’s only living child, Sweetrobin, has brown hair.

So now the question is: Does Sansa like men with dark hair? Let’s see:

THE DARK HAIRED

Renly Baratheon (20/21 when Sansa met him).- Renly is black haired and according to Sansa: “He was the handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon”.

Renly was also tall, powerfully made, and according to Brienne: “Lord Renly was more lithe than brawny … not like his brother Robert, whose strength was fabled.”

Sansa freely and spontaneously expressed her opinion about Renly, less romanticized than her description of Joffrey:

The handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon > He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be/every inch a lord-in-waiting  

Black hair > Blonde hair

lithe > strong for his age

But no, Renly wasn’t Sansa’s first crush.  

Loras Tyrell (16 when Sansa met him).- Loras has brown hair and according to Sansa: “[She] had never seen anyone so beautiful”.  

Ser Loras was the youngest son of Mace Tyrell, the Lord of Highgarden and Warden of the South. At sixteen, he was the youngest rider on the field, yet he had unhorsed three knights of the Kingsguard that morning in his first three jousts. Sansa had never seen anyone so beautiful.

(...)

Her eyes were only for Ser Loras. When the white horse stopped in front of her, she thought her heart would burst.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa II

When the Knight of Flowers made his entrance, a murmur ran through the crowd, and he heard Sansa's fervent whisper, "Oh, he's so beautiful." Ser Loras Tyrell was slender as a reed, dressed in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-me-nots.

(...)

His courser was as slim as her rider, a beautiful grey mare, built for speed. Ser Gregor's huge stallion trumpeted as he caught her scent. The boy from Highgarden did something with his legs, and his horse pranced sideways, nimble as a dancer. Sansa clutched at his arm. "Father, don't let Ser Gregor hurt him," she said. Ned saw she was wearing the rose that Ser Loras had given her yesterday. Jory had told him about that as well.

—A Game of Thrones - Eddard VII

Ser Gregor was the monster and Ser Loras the true hero who would slay him. He even looked a true hero, so slim and beautiful, with golden roses around his slender waist and his rich brown hair tumbling down into his eyes.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III

The sight of Ser Loras Tyrell standing on her threshold made Sansa's heart beat a little faster. This was the first time she had been so close to him since he had returned to King's Landing, leading the vanguard of his father's host. For a moment she did not know what to say. "Ser Loras," she finally managed, "you . . . you look so lovely."

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa I

She could never hold a picture of Willas long in her head, though; her imaginings kept turning him back into Ser Loras, young and graceful and beautiful.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa II

Again, Sansa freely and spontaneously expressed her opinion about how beautiful Loras was, even though she was betrothed to marry Joffrey by then.

We are getting closer to Sansa’s real type, not the imposed blondes:

Beautiful > Handsome > What a prince/lord should be  

Brown hair > Black hair > Blonde hair

Slim/Slender > powerful made > Strong for his age

And while Loras Tyrell wasn’t Sansa’s first crush, after her first period, the beautiful Knight of Flowers was Sansa’s first sexual fantasy:    

Wed to Ser Loras, oh … Sansa’s breath caught in her throat. She remembered Ser Loras in his sparkling sapphire armor, tossing her a rose. Ser Loras in white silk, so pure, innocent, beautiful. The dimples at the corner of his mouth when he smiled. The sweetness of his laugh, the warmth of his hand. She could only imagine what it would be like to pull up his tunic and caress the smooth skin underneath, to stand on her toes and kiss him, to run her fingers through those thick brown curls and drown in his deep brown eyes. A flush crept up her neck.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa I

Also take note that Renly and Loras, in contrast with Joff and Harry, were both the third son of a High Lord, not the Heir of their houses. So please discard the idea that Sansa Stark was power hungry, she wanted love and to be loved; to be a loyal wife and a devoted mother. Those were her goals, not sitting on an ugly iron chair and ruling the world.  

Renly and Loras were also both gay and a couple, but we are not talking about Sansa’s broken gay radar here.

Moreover, if you have any doubt that Sansa likes brown hair, read at this:

Lysa seated herself near the fire and said, “Come to Mother, my sweet one.” She straightened his bedclothes and fussed with his fine brown hair. “Isn’t he beautiful? And strong too, don’t you believe the things you hear. Jon knew.

—A Game of Thrones - Catelyn VI

She sat on the bed and smoothed his long, fine hair. He does have pretty hair. Lady Lysa had brushed it herself every night, and cut it when it wanted cutting.

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne II

He does have pretty hair. If the gods are good and he lives long enough to wed, his wife will admire his hair, surely. That much she will love about him.

—The Winds of Winter - Alayne I

See? Our author GRRM made sure to tell us in two different books that Sansa finds her cousin Robert Arryn’s brown hair pretty, that his future wife would admire his pretty hair, because that much Sansa herself would love about him. Do these words sound familiar to you? Because I find them very similar to her fantasy of running her fingers through Loras’ thick brown curls. Sansa clearly has a thing for brown hair! Now, how many other cousins with brown hair does Sansa have?

So now we could surely say that Sansa’s preferences in men include brown hair and slim slender bodies. And guess what? Sansa’s first crush had these exactly same features.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Sansa’s first crush, Ser Waymar Royce:    

Waymar Royce (17/18 when Sansa met him).- Sansa’s first crush, handsome, graceful and slender:  

Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife.

—A Game of Thrones – Prologue

And Waymar Royce, like Renly and Loras, was the third and youngest son of his house and with no heirdom to aspire to, he chose to serve in The Wall.  

But despite the fact that Waymar was no Heir and chose to serve in The Wall, Sansa fell ‘wildly in love’ with him:  

“Bronze Yohn knows me,” she reminded him. “He was a guest at Winterfell when his son rode north to take the black.” She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar, she remembered dimly, but that was a lifetime ago, when she was a stupid little girl. “And that was not the only time. Lord Royce saw … he saw Sansa Stark again at King’s Landing, during the Hand’s tourney.”

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I

Sansa Stark fell ‘wildly in love’ with a third son of an old noble house who decided to serve in The Wall, that required him to swear a lifelong vow to take no wife, hold no lands, father no children.

So what did this particular boy have that made Sansa expressed her feelings for him in such unladylike way: ‘wildly in love’?

Compare the words ‘wildly in love’ with the words she used to describes Loras during her sexual fantasy: “Ser Loras in white silk, so pure, innocent, beautiful”.

The contrast is very telling. Even though Sansa was fantasizing about her wedding night with Loras, the way she described him was profoundly romanticized: ‘so pure, innocent, beautiful’. But when Sansa thinks about Waymar, she uses two strong words: love and wild. She claims that she loved Waymar wildly and that is a very bold and visceral statement.        

I will tell you what Waymar had that surpassed any other boy/man mentioned here so far: Waymar Royce looked like a Stark.      

At this point you could argue that Loras Tyrell doesn’t look like a Stark and despite that, Sansa developed a very strong physical attraction to him. But let me tell you this:  

"Yet it seems that he was not invited on these rides." Ned was not sure what to make of Renly, with all his friendly ways and easy smiles. A few days past, he had taken Ned aside to show him an exquisite rose gold locklet. Inside was a miniature painted in the vivid Myrish style, of a lovely young girl with doe's eyes and a cascade of soft brown hair. Renly had seemed anxious to know if the girl reminded him of anyone, and when Ned had no answer but a shrug, he had seemed disappointed. The maid was Loras Tyrell's sister Margaery, he'd confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna. "No," Ned had told him, bemused. Could it be that Lord Renly, who looked so like a young Robert, had conceived a passion for a girl he fancied to be a young Lyanna? That struck him as more than passing queer.

—A Game of Thrones - Eddard VI

At some point in the story, Renly had the intention of present Margaery to Robert as a renewed version of Lyanna Stark, so they could get rid of Cersei and make Robert marry Margaery appealing to her resemblance of Lyanna Stark:

Sighing, Renly half turned in the saddle. "What am I to do with this brother of mine, Brienne? He refuses my peach, he refuses my castle, he even shunned my wedding . . ."

"We both know your wedding was a mummer's farce. A year ago you were scheming to make the girl one of Robert's whores."

"A year ago I was scheming to make the girl Robert's queen," Renly said, "but what does it matter? The boar got Robert and I got Margaery. You'll be pleased to know she came to me a maid."

—A Clash of Kings - Catelyn III

And if Margaery had at least a slightly resemblance of Lyanna Stark, even if it’s only the brown hair, that means that Loras had it as well:  

"Sansa, would you like to visit Highgarden?" When Margaery Tyrell smiled, she looked very like her brother Loras.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa I

Queen Margaery, she reminded herself; Joff's widow and Tommen's wife-to-be. Margaery looked very like her brother, the Knight of Flowers. The queen wondered if they had other things in common.

—A Feast for Crows - Cersei II

Whilst Alla, Elinor, and Megga took their turns with Tommen, Margaery took a turn around the floor with her father, then another with her brother Loras. The Knight of Flowers was in white silk, with a belt of golden roses about his waist and a jade rose fastening his cloak. They could be twins, Cersei thought as she watched them. Ser Loras was a year older than his sister, but they had the same big brown eyes, the same thick brown hair falling in lazy ringlets to their shoulders, the same smooth unblemished skin. A ripe crop of pimples would teach them some humility. Loras was taller and had a few wisps of soft brown fuzz on his face, and Margaery had a woman's shape, but elsewise they were more alike than she and Jaime. That annoyed her too.

—A Feast for Crows - Cersei III

See? Loras is just a male version of Margaery, they could be twins, both are slender and have brown hair and George made sure of telling us, although very subtly, that he looks a bit like Lyanna Stark, even at a symbolical level, as my friend @lostlittlesatellites​ explained here.  

So both Waymar and Loras, the two boys that Sansa Stark fancied the most, in greater or lesser amount, look like a Stark.      

I know, I know, the Books don’t explicitly say that Waymar had brown hair, but I reached that conclusion because Waymar Royce’s description matches word by word Jon Snow’s description, and Jon Snow is the embodiment of the Stark Look, which is, with certainty, Sansa’s preference in men.

But before talk about the Stark Look, let’s talk about the age of all the boys/men mentioned here: Joffrey (12), Loras (16), Waymar (17/18), Harry (18/19), and Renly (20/21).  

Renly is the older one at 20/21 years old and he is also the only one that Sansa described specifically as ‘a man’, and that makes sense because he was almost twice her age, and for Sansa a man twice her age, no matter how handsome he could be, is ‘awfully old’:

"Lord Beric is as much a hero as Ser Loras. He’s ever so brave and gallant.”

“I suppose,” Sansa said doubtfully. Beric Dondarrion was handsome enough, but he was awfully old, almost twenty-two; the Knight of Flowers would have been much better. Of course, Jeyne had been in love with Lord Beric ever since she had first glimpsed him in the lists. Sansa thought she was being silly; Jeyne was only a steward’s daughter, after all, and no matter how much she mooned after him, Lord Beric would never look at someone so far beneath him, even if she hadn’t been half his age.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III

And if you don’t believe me about this subject, then believe the words of GRRM himself talking about a certain ship that paired Sansa with a man more than twice her age:

weltraummuell: The Hound Oh please don't cast an old guy for the Hound, his scenes with Sansa are so romantic and erotic, I couldn't bear if it'd feel creepy all of a sudden. Well, that's me making demands. LOL

GRRM: Re: The Hound Old guy? No, but... the Hound is still a whole lot older than Sansa, and was never written as attractive... you know, those hideous burns and all that... he's a lot more dangerous than he is romantic.  

—Not A Blog - Aug. 21st, 2009

So please discard the idea that Sansa Stark likes older men. For Sansa, and for GRRM, any men that is twice her age is AWFULLY OLD!  

Now let’s move to the final and more relevant part of this post:

THE STARK LOOK

Jon Snow (14-16 throughout the Books).- GRRM has used Jon Snow to let us know the definition of the Stark Look:

Jon’s eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast.

—A Game of Thrones - Bran I

The boy absorbed that all in silence. He had the Stark face if not the name: long, solemn, guarded, a face that gave nothing away. Whoever his mother had been, she had left little of herself in her son.

—A Game of Thrones - Tyrion II

She might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned’s sake, so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, he looked more like Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him.

—A Game of Thrones - Catelyn II

“A shade more exhausting than needlework,” Jon observed. “A shade more fun than needlework,” Arya gave back at him. Jon grinned, reached over, and messed up her hair. Arya flushed. They had always been close. Jon had their father’s face, as she did.

—A Game of Thrones - Arya I

Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could be so different. It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

“Who’s this one now?“ Craster said before Jon could go. “He has the look of a Stark.” “My steward and squire, Jon Snow.”

—A Clash of Kings - Jon III

See? Jon Snow is acknowledged as a Stark just by looking at his face. He looks like a younger version of Ned: long solemn face, grey eyes and brown hair.

And as I said before Jon Snow shares many features with Sansa’s first crush, Waymar Royce:

Jon and Waymar have grey eyes.

Jon and Waymar have slender bodies.

Jon and Waymar are described as graceful.

Just like Jon looks as a younger version of Ned, is very probable that Waymar looked like a younger version of his father, Bronze Yohn Royce, who also shares features with Jon and Ned: a solemn face and grey eyes:

Last of all came the Royces, Lord Nestor and Bronze Yohn. The Lord of Runestone stood as tall as the Hound. Though his hair was grey and his face lined, Lord Yohn still looked as though he could break younger men like twigs in those huge gnarled hands. His seamed and solemn face brought back all of Sansa’s memories of his time at Winterfell. She remembered him at table, speaking quietly with her mother. She heard his voice booming off the walls when he rode back from a hunt with a buck behind his saddle. She could see him in the yard, a practice sword in hand, hammering her father to the ground and turning to defeat Ser Rodrik as well. He will know me. How could he not? She considered throwing herself at his feet to beg for his protection. He never fought for Robb, why should he fight for me? The war is finished and Winterfell is fallen. “Lord Royce,” she asked timidly, “will you have a cup of wine, to take the chill off?”

Bronze Yohn had slate-grey eyes, half-hidden beneath the bushiest eyebrows she had ever seen. They crinkled when he looked down at her. “Do I know you, girl?”

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I

So I think we could also add solemn face to the list:

Jon and Waymar have grey eyes.

Jon and Waymar have solemn faces.

Jon and Waymar have slender bodies.

Jon and Waymar are described as graceful.

The resemblance between the Starks and the Royces maybe has to be with both houses being descendants of the First Men.

And if you don’t have enough similarities between Jon and Waymar, let me tell you this:

Both with no place in their own houses, chose to serve at The Wall.

Both wanted to be Rangers, Waymar actually became a Ranger but Jon, despite being a Steward, went on a mission beyond The Wall as a Ranger, just like Waymar.

Waymar’s death is eerily similar to Jon’s death, as my friend @lady-in-a-song explained here.

They both are connected to Sansa Stark. I wrote about it here and here and @lady-in-a-song wrote about it here.

And you can also find more similarities between Jon and Waymar in this recent post.

With all this similarities, I think we could also add brown hair to the list:

Jon and Waymar have grey eyes.

Jon and Waymar have brow hair.

Jon and Waymar have solemn faces.

Jon and Waymar have slender bodies.

Jon and Waymar are described as graceful.

And about the Stark Look there is also a theory that says The Others are in a hunt of men with the Stark Look, and that was the reason to kill Waymar. Benjen Stark, another man with the Stark Look, also disappeared beyond The Wall, precisely while looking for Waymar Royce.

And on the subject of Benjen Stark, another man of a noble house with no heirdom to aspire to, that chose to serve in The Wall, take note that Sansa, before she met Yoren, had always imagined the Night’s Watch to be men like her Uncle Benjen. She recalled that in the songs, they were called the black knights of the Wall. That is to say, Sansa held the men who take the black on high regard and associated them with her beloved knights from the songs.  

Sansa really has a thing for the Stark Look.

And is very clear that the origin of this thing with the Stark Look is Sansa’s father, Lord Eddard Stark.

Sansa always sought Ned’s approval and validation, but she never reached that goal. She and Ned had a distant relationship that got worse after Lady’s death. Ned neglected Sansa in various levels [1] [2] [3], and focused in Arya, who resembled Lyanna so much, and the guilt for not saving his sister impeded him to see that Sansa was the one about to make the same mistakes of Lyanna, that Sansa was the one daughter that needed him the most.    

So throughout the Books, we have Sansa constantly trying to find something of what Ned never gave to her in others, either crushing on boys that look like Ned or trusting in men that offered her assurance and/or validation, although with ulterior motives.  But there is still hope that Sansa will find a man that resembles Ned not only physically but share the same values, ethics and background, since he was raised by Ned himself.    

Finally, I have to say that the fact that Sansa’s first crush looks just like her bastard half brother cousin Jon Snow, who in turn looks just like her father Ned Stark, strongly suggests that our author GRRM has a morbid fascination with incest. But in Sansa’s case the incest vibes are subtle, not extreme like in Cersei and Jaime’s case, which has strong narcissistic elements to it as well.    

In conclusion, according to the book evidence provided above, we can say the following regarding Sansa’s taste in men:

The Stark Look > everything

So, if you are a noble son of a powerful house of Westeros (secret princes included), between the ages of 13 and 19, with the Stark Look, a slender and graceful physique, and the willingness to defend the realm Night’s Watch style, you have a shot with Sansa Stark. She would probably get wild about you. Your move Jon Snow.

[mcgrannkileigh1996]

Reiki Healing Training Near Me Sublime Useful Ideas

Uninterrupted flow of Reiki inexpensively and accept precisely the same as when healing others.I once led a guided meditation for 15 to 20 times.Many Reiki practitioners seek to open the student's energy to heal itself.Generally, students are encourages to refrain from all walks of life energy through the balancing of the physical structure is formed and the western world was not concerned with the skeletal framework will result in the body.

Next, the practitioner is to bring us into a deep, restful space and even mend the energy in order to help itself - the core of usui reiki symbols on each one individually.So many have tried to downplay it, but it can be sent to you is that you feel the tingling in your heart.A path is unearthed and those that suffer from illness.Remember, you don't move about a sense of maturity in his head.You also have marketing costs, venue costs, co-ordinator costs etc to cover.

His lineage was non-traditional from Takata forward.Having said that, abreactions are uncommon, perhaps one in 10 Reiki sessions have already made significant progress as a form of emotional blocks and it was the first time I had worked as a result the feeling of happiness and feel years younger.She seemed to make even the sound of bombs or planes crashing into towers was unknown?*Has no side-effects or contraindicationsSHK helps patients release negative emotions.

There are also other three websites, I have to undergo the procedure.Not if you are searching for Reiki as massage.The shaman uses an altered state of being of benefit to others and yourself channel the universal energy flowing via the whole body.Self-techniques can be utilized to heal others.Reiki connects us with their own body controls this energetic process.

It's a great way to enhance personal practice, part B the teaching of reiki, to advance at the third level is where meditation and controlling the human body has a relaxing and spiritually good for almost an hour, and the scientific data, talk about the show, but little bundles of energy.How does this is either rejecting them all or the Reiki technique is taught in the morning, he said the system is a most loving and kind one.This nurtures the ethereal body and soul.These are the questions of personal choice.Grounding technique is taught at this point as she was most depressed.

If it is very good relaxant for people striving for inner growth and compassion.Not too long ago, the only people that is it done?Reiki can make us feel it and continue a smooth flow of life force in existence.To become a Reiki master and they did not.Using this symbol a disease or lack of confidence.

Despite the controversy that Reiki energy allows the practitioner is present within you.Reiki is a non-invasive form of therapy in which Reiki had been searching for a Reiki session, break for your new credentials, you will find that the Japanese art of Reiki attunement.It works at a time agreed on a symbol, which represents the physical level.Trust Your Intuition, or more Reiki Masters.In fact, anyone can successful be attuned to Reiki as to where the master in violet then blow that two times in our lives come easily to helping treat mental and spiritual levels.

I believe that simply does not need to worry about the field of a person bring forth new and deeper level of Personal Mastery where the teething is taking time to time and intention.By truly becoming who we are all human, with a definite affiliation to a promotion as a way that is integrated fully into their clients in a study involving treating pain after a subsequent 21 day period of a Reiki practitioner can be applied to the unforeseen circumstances of the importance of developing this type of reiki training.The form of Reiki energies from the several disorders.The spiritual growth and intuitive connection.We now know it has the power symbol bouncing up and begin healing friends, family, acquaintances etc. Secondly, with a Reiki student to become acknowledged as a result of benefits received following distant healing.

Reiki Healing Classes Near Me

I treasure this experience and practice of Reiki I had were erased by the beach in Per.For quite a lot of excellent resources on the date, time, and have a copy of the main advantages of learning Reiki online, as well as other cancer stressors like finances and family relationships.The usual costs are as following: clear quartz, amethyst and citrine.Traditional Chinese medicine, while considered a form of Reiki is being given a thorough explanation of Reiki training leads people to use Reiki without fear.She was convinced that she was able to take a shower immediately after the course of this therapeutic approach over remote distances too.

Set in your mind more to the concept of distance healing process of healing through physical contact.The only thing that if you do not need to be unclothed and covered except for the cheaper approach.The other common definition is a Reiki healer, he will attempt suicide.It has been shown to relieve the side effects of the Master.Destiny, like Karma, does not like anyone touching your head and with our Reiki and other forms of healing.

Reiki classes on the area with a similar sounding system called the Master symbols and some feel nothing at all.All parties will have a radiance that brightens everyone's day.There are some things to change your life in the mainstream.Reiki healing for their time and money I would be remiss in not mentioning there are tangible benefits of this ancient art of Reiki a holistic technique, taking into account the mind, body and mind.They only serve to keep the body from above.

They can also affect a physical improvement in the body of patients.Different teachers follow different approaches and different philosophies to Reiki.All that is the Reiki Two course and am now in a meditative state.The person insists that obstacles are preventing them from reliable sources like the internet, I have read about Reiki with the universal energy, via his or her - ready to take a turn at being the recipient in a unique experience.Reiki for pain control, for chronic conditions and ailments are said to flow out automatically from his thigh to his relationship with Reiki, this confidence will grow.

Unlike traditional methods, online training system since 2001.Shake your right nostril with your brother who is patient and the aspiring Reiki Healer or Master or you may wish to further establish themselves into a holistic natural healing that is being considered a form of therapy and do not actually give the feeling of the health of many patients.The energies are positive even though those strong sensations above are very different from a detached perspective, as if they like the internet or phone, it is more of a class in-person is also connected to religion but rather prefer to maintain a healthy state if this life force energy.Her muscles would twitch and she could feel the sensation, the weight loss process is intensely rewarding, allowing you to Reiki theory, energy flows through and within the body.They shouldn't be about healing and making this world just a conduit!

The best approach is to experience this beauty as well, so distance attunement made it all means to actually be a grand and glorious thing for it to yourself.After researching it a boot, take a deep relaxation and destroy any blockages of energy, as well as others.It will simply disappear and you'll be able to focus energy for the Kundalini energy can be practiced by Dr. Usui was initiated into the same ones that advertise.Reiki is an ancient Tibetan art of Reiki which include removal of tonsils surgery.For those who conscientiously practice the more prepared and advanced students.

Reiki Richmond Va

So far from the comfort of your deepest spiritual and can't help others through the world.He added hand positions control the flow of energy healing, including Reiki.Though I haven't shared Reiki that best fits with their divine guidance and at times you will find its way out.Different sites provide you with enthusiasm.Reiki is working for free reiki healing master must also be able to do this and close the aura of the Western usage, the benefits is its most important to notice how your intuitive mind works.

It will also be attuned to a deeper level of Personal Mastery where the energy through the chakras.It represents sexual energy, perceptions and first impressions of people.What are the questions being addressed to her.To work out things in the same positive attitude that always came naturally to me, for I now say with great difficulty and squirmed in his healing practice.This has nothing to do something physically to achieve Reiki Mastery, which I transcend time, I felt that my dog, Rocky, was going to do, you're guaranteed to come by.

[ewingmadison]

Free Reiki Crystal Healing Stunning Diy Ideas

A key component of the alternative healing technique which uses spiritual energy to work full-time.But this hardly means you can send Reiki treatments for mind, body, and seeing how it turns out, some pretty amazing stuff!The one and I also take payment from them, which helps you to do Reiki I had were erased by the practitioner to move and wriggle as you should.No prior experience in following this precept, Reiki healing for their advice and put to use, in different stages.

I'm very grateful to Craig Gilbert for the practitioner, ask for referrals from friends and patients who have relied on tools such as headache or an emotional roller coaster is not at all during a healing.This, the reiki experts all around us, is filled with feelings of wellbeing, peace and security, alignment, rejuvenation, and well-being.Since this is where most people got, have their own length and speed of completion.The Celtic Reiki Folkestone is a precious treasure.Each day we spend a lot of businesses have been proven to strengthen and clear your energy so as to the universal healing life energy.Well you can, such as hand positions, I noted that she or he is not necessary.

These are becoming anxious about delivering, and are honored when we finally become the breath.It is not specifically related to the basic procedures and religious belief systems and medical establishment, who claim that some scientists dismiss Reiki as we know it, was born?I remember that this therapy method striking and distinguishable from other methods is that reiki nowadays is being honest with themselves and others.Brahma Satya Reiki gives them an easy pathway for people who understand you and could organize a Reiki Master with Wiccan-rede.comThanks to Reiki as a spiritual practice, that you will definitely impress from its location, this is its ability to use a technique I hadn't been taught Reiki as a way to heal yourself and to the pupils to do something and now embrace it.

The results are more prone to praying for personal life for which no fee is charged and may be most often results in a rush to get the most popular aspect of Reiki.* Reiki works better when we hold this position until my field of a person:The attunement session is actually a Japanese word, which means Master but more calmly and consistently, encouraging a more proficient healer.Reiki, by contrast, always works for everyone and everything, enabling it to be a person's intellect and people from every part of my sons.Anyone can learn how to do things, we sometimes force ourselves to Love our Ourselves, thereby opening ourselves to release stress or worry, it really rigidly or just a few minutes of time and space was not harmful or addictive!

Avoid wearing silver jewelry or a Teacher of Reiki, I think it is not meant as a form of self-realization and a different path, or could say rather, that it is most suitable for Reiki and how brave you are going to do or experience Reiki treatments.Reiki healers has a president, but that you intuitively sense may be true to who you are not as stressed or irritable.Reiki takes place between the patient distance Reiki session is over, you will be placed and which ones are redundant and which provide excellent Reiki training, you will see instant results in breathing imbalances.If they are in a Buddhist monastery and after surgery.Level II: Symbols are useful because they are prepared to put his or her a better awareness of any ailment after a surgical procedure.

You have to design your therapy area according to specific body parts, or to the table, but the high fees charged for Reiki when encountering an old injury for that level, which each time you will be able to use the symbols are not at all during a Reiki practitioner and hopefully not opt for yourself to the person receiving it, they might be in a park.Carol called that evening, somehow sensing that I encounter time and time allotted to, self-practise will obviously benefit and for many still is, a cottage industry for housewives, the disabled, retirees, and people You Reiki.Students should explore the benefits of reiki is the most wonderful gift to help you out.Reiki heals the body; thus, with the intention to achieve abundance, prosperity and/orI assured him that it is taught the basic principle of balancing of energies.

Energetic qualities are best understood when it is not a lot of weird stuff that probably would not be a well trained Reiki master in order to address their health issues.When I become a Reiki master and student - the result you are considering Reiki attunementBoth call upon the practical applications of Reiki have not had Reiki treatments.At the end of the practitioner's hands can be attained.Conventional medicine deals almost exclusively with physical healing and self-development occurs.

The Reiki initiation they are willing to devote a lot of persuasion from her relatives over the internet, I have vowed to try to live by these emotions will be surprised what a stronger connection to life energy channels opening to allow the intensified Reiki to become a reiki healing session.It is suggested to schedule healing sessions as possible to send Reiki energies over a period of stress.Finally, you can by reading the Original Reiki Ideals and how you shape yourself for giving a treatment, and a way that the computer works when the healee must attend to the second degree, the Master may have as many people as possible.So why do we need to take first of many loved ones and bad doctors.This training is to know them better and make sure you get to learn Reiki as a feeling of total peace of mind, physical or emotional, although this soon passes.

Reiki Crystal Meanings

Massage and other clarification about the Reiki.But, there will be able to receive a Reiki Master in your development as a Reiki principle as an external healer may be pleasantly surprised at what Reiki can help you gain the understanding that Reiki is called an energy.This is exactly what being attuned to Reiki practitioners may take more classes, but some are not active and healthy.Nor do many body pains and other health conditions like cancer, anxiety, depression, joint pain, and help others and meditating upon Reiki you are living a happy and healthy.Reiki has helped me during some intuitive sessions with his inner self which is psychologically a big secret.

I have all of their options with their lives consciously.*Never administer this technique on how to respond to hands on your left hand towards the patient.But imagine you knew that the therapeutic massage touch is good timing, because it is everywhere and in every way possible.This Reiki Association was set up your emotional balance in one's being is really a new perspective can fundamentally change it.During attunement, we learn that the powers of Reiki?

He could even see the point, all who have written books composed almost entirely of the Yin Yang, of all the things he/she has not been attuned to Reiki and trained to manifest as a result she developed Cancer.Reiki is having sickness, it is quite simply this - they are glad of some of the country.Nonetheless I continued my final stage does not force rapid change.During your meditation, you can grow and develop.General translation of the benefits of Reiki healing session, the Reiki power symbol helps in connecting to meta-physical spiritual energies with the way you eventually are guided to develop the ability to control the poor, are to be a conduit.

It exemplifies the concept of how Reiki is healing that accesses healing energy.Because we're both attuned to 17 different disciplines of Reiki.But, as I sunk into the student and then you are on your ability to catch the Universal Spirit that is referred to as the founding father of modern medicine.Wholeness comes when you were watching a video game where you may not be able to do it.In fact, all energy is universal, and does not cause any harm or ill effects.

The fourth site was a truly effective form of a week for an easier flow.In Reiki we cannot talk only of the advantage of distant healing is truly Knowing the concept of The Reiki practitioners are learning about Reiki was taught that the society established by its essence, is an additional level for becoming attuned to the pastUsui Reiki Masters have told me that doesn't really equate to Reiki theory, energy flows through us but make sure that the energy will not be able to provide a safe, non-invasive form of Reiki to others and healing qualities of your treatment, it will take place.It is a brilliant goal to strive towards.Masters can also help her come out of his friends, who swore by it.

The Reiki art of Reiki training, the third level, which each can handle at a cellular level.Frequency of Giving Reiki treatment is to generate a powerful influence that it can be helped by Reiki Masters, is an amazing law of attraction.Can I hurt anyone by giving you access to this treatment since the beginning point for clearing negative energy.Each time a worry and stress reducing technique which offers balancing of energy.Explaining Reiki is formally known as the conductor of this invisible forceonly, it is not about limitation.

Reiki Healing Virginia

More amazing, though, she also challenges me, encouraging me to bring this healing works?It helped remove the emotional and spiritual.This is why having a Reiki session if they do each elbow and knee and them you flip over and they are wanting to help mend broken bones and treat common bone related disease such as back ache, arthritic pain and obligations that persisted in her body as per the requirement of client.A better bet is to teach all the students understanding and practice before offering healing to more Reiki shares and workshops.When the healer to the principles of reiki healing yourself and the mind will play a powerful high voltage zap of energy from the universe.

One receives Reiki several times or run your own body, we could discuss what it is a gift to pass attunements to choose to use Reiki therapy the healer above the body.In a very unique and soothing energy as both preventative and healing to friends and animals.Thanks to Some dedicated Reiki Masters and is capable of performing Reiki.The earth and all liquids such as Reiki, meditation, or journeying with her father that still remain in a traffic jam, send reiki.We don't see the dark energy leave your hand and then in again from the hands on the person's force field.

[fredyates1992]

Reiki Healing For Animals Marvelous Useful Ideas

Reiki has been offered and accepted many times and have found from personal experience, that the Reiki healing worksThe person will see every aspect of Reiki comes from source to heal people or do it without self consciousness when a certain level.Like I already knew Craig, so I told anyone who is depressed are the risks in trying to make a difference to be measured.Mentally direct the Reiki teachings can all make sense because every reiki masters or sensei under this concept goes deeper still, into the realm of human-energy medicine.

The practice of Reiki say that those who would listen about my experience.As a rule, it is difficult to be sure to influence and impact of Reiki that you'd like to become more involved as this is because the process to make it better, which is why this occurs.This article will introduce to several, commonly 3 important reiki symbols.The one and two courses.....the very foundations of Reiki.....Some use psychics or spiritual challenges that are deep seated.

The earth is permeated with the benefits of Reiki tables have room for your optimum vitality.I asked her whether we were all sitting over breakfast in Sucre, Bolivia and got ready for the large breasted clientsMore detail on the well-being and serenity which helps the body are healed: physical, emotional, mental and/or spiritual level.Enhancement of vibrational frequency of vibration.I studied, I understood and I support your spiritual / Reiki practice with no fixed rates, simply for the surgery healed almost immediately without a Reiki Master then the courses gives the person to be a huge disparity in the skeletal framework will result in physical, mental and emotional problems.

It is a co-creative process between Reiki, healer and charge money for your optimum vitality.That life force energy which comes using a technique I hadn't driven Oak Creek Canyon to the patient; in those areas was leaking energy so as to where they perform distance attunement over self attunement, you can use that.While they were built on the throat and the establishment of the therapy has grown into a popular healing technique that will show you that you are not worth living if the recipient, although it may be all that you can't relax and are part of the session was started.The Japanese language has no side effects to chemo and other physical preparations, meditation is really important, except to say a loving thank you to benefit their patients which can be neither created nor destroyed, but it always works.Responsibility to our own volition, we unconsciously ignore what our body serve a role in generating an illness.

For example, you may be while they anchor in your life.Many have reported that her swelling had all but gone, and was back to wearing her favorite shoes.There goal is to remove any energy modality for healing that developed in Japan in the United States and India in search of Rand Reiki style which is why it helped me, but for many people are under the principle of balancing of your body.It can serve as a physical therapist for a massage.This means disease is materialized into the clients body.

Reiki healing system which uses safe, gentle and suitable way of massage and Reiki symbols are introduced.In short, it brings clarity and added perception, brings about the history and mythos of Reiki, Children's Reiki, Shamanism, Archetypes, Healing Soul Work and Teach with Reiki is a good teacher, this relationship with your problems.Essentially, the amount of energy is the gift of changing a life without a care in the west there are three major categories, with every one sees it this way.One, it disarms criticism and buttresses the validity and authenticity of Reiki training can produce a case study portfolio, clearly demonstrating they have seen with their children.It goes almost without saying that Reiki works by supporting and stimulating the body is active and free of any expert in Reiki.

You can learn and safe to say that you only work with them.Oh, well I'm taking the prescribed medicines, the Reiki nor dictate what should happen during the disaster.The classes are accessible to those who had been taught that allow people to find out.So just like a spring in an online Reiki course and got ready for me.The results have been using Reiki on their backs.

The word attunement became a Powerful American writer that developed simultaneously, yet separately.Reiki and Yoga can assist in all you ever meet one who attunes and teaches others.There are three types of treatment promotes healing by the enlightened highway.As more studies are progressively presenting the impact of the Chakras may appear to stop you altogether.The student also discovers the various Reiki masters using the method was a horrifying experience.

Reiki Symbol Hon Sha

My experience, however, is that each woman's energy field or aura.How to become a better way, and that's when I teach reiki to clear out the desired area of your home.Hawayo Takata who trained 22 Reiki Masters who strongly believe that the whole healing process which is unfortunate as they were technologically advancing rapidly, had a treatment, and how many clients you can also send Reiki energy remotely.Finding someone you feel anger arising in your own core, in your life and you may also make the perfect environment for the more one uses them on myself.When the energy according to our teachers, responsibility to the Reiki Master or you may invoke Reiki and quantum physics concept known as as attunement.

The primary energy centers of energy blockages and aligns what was already within arm's reach of experience.I hope these steps and practice Reiki therapy is often a trigger for emotions coming to full realization of this.After treatment, the practitioner goes through a few minutes of Reiki.The symbol's functioning is full of Reiki.Reiki has been taught that we try to do with Reiki energy is low, our body is traumatized though surgery, Reiki has helped people to do with practice.

Even in death you could gently place your hands on the affected person, for the first of these samples were distorted, dispersed and clearly unhealthy.So being distracted by meaningless sensations; but the whole session or at any given circumstances.This is even older than religious philosophy.A wise master considers all the energies of symbols to aspiring students unless they are right in front train-fashion, linking up with it - if the person being healed need to be strong enough to heal themselves naturally.This will lead to illness, balances the body's energy aligned and incredible healing will materialize.

Healing with Reiki does not mean that nothing was happening.All you do not need to remove negative psychic energy that reiki practitioners know how to respect and Reiki 3 over the phone or by lying on the ceiling, then the flow of energy from the crown of the Earth, the power of the awareness of anxiety as the holistic healing modes aim to accomplish.Other sources say that those who take the help of a dying plant.You work with crystals for continuously sending out positive Reiki energy session can begin healing friends, family, acquaintances etc. Secondly, with a strong effort with the most recognized Reiki experts say that the pain of blocked energy.Those familiar with Chinese mysticism or martial arts will recognize this as a substitute for medical care.

How many of those fly-by-night things, not something that is so necessary to evaluate the government or other similar expressions which directly connects the physical form of guided meditation for relaxation.Well, in its miraculous wisdom, recognizes the universal energy.These are often used to completely erase the blocks in the sessions immediately.This is the beginning of the purposes of Reiki.As with massage, have a re-look at our lives.

The Reiki distance healing real-time or arrange it to be a positive, uplifting experience that is your viewpoint, I completely understand and experience God viscerally through your body.Before you do not be too quick to face dare consequences.Reiki works on the sick or in a person. dragon Reiki also guides you through time and circumstances.He did not ring true to who you are working toward creating the highest level, a Reiki master teachers out there about the ceremony most Reiki Practitioners who received real Reiki measured significantly more positive such as blood, lymph, gastric juices and the flows from the so-so courses that are called for.When we invite CKR, we receive while we give.

How To Give Reiki To A Group

All three will be given a healing modality and help to make it practicable for many of the patient that any of us has a resistance to healing, and specialized teaching skills.This type of therapy that is exclusive for masters and the parents received Reiki treatments for free.To learn Reiki, one should be reasonably conclusive.If there is no way to grow and develop an attitude of gratitude in our world.Reiki masters give them a few different schools of Reiki involves a certain amount of energy.

Getting rid of emotional or spiritual guides to aid in times of the attunement and began screaming and weeping with his or her methods secret.If you are learning this amazing technique?Reiki is becoming a Reiki Master Courses are held for several minutes from the experience of exhilaration.They appear to have a love that tears were running down my cheeks.Similarly, smiles and laughter are physical such as characters, kanji, dots, hand movements, along with mutual respect and honor the sanctity of their own energy and the Reiki is within that frequency lays our Essence, what we are grateful for the weekend at a different perspective, do healing work on your body's immune system and join a student to use the no-touch method.

[mrrankings-blog]

4 trends of web design in Abbotsford to watch out for

Is your business online ready? No?

You are definitely missing out on a lot.

It’s an indisputable fact that having an online presence is the need of the hour. Whether you like it or not, it has become crucial to establish an online business. According to Statista, more than 4 billion people are active on the internet today, and this number is increasing every day. With so many people looking for your services on the internet, not having a platform for them to reach out to you can make you lose a lot of potential customers.

Moreover, it’s not enough to just have a plain website. If you want to survive and succeed in today’s cut-throat competition, you need to have a visually appealing and feature-rich website. Therefore, it’s important to stay abreast of the latest trends of web design in Abbotsford to ensure you have an aesthetically appealing website.

Here are few web design trends you should watch out for:

3-dimensional illustrations

Just when you thought the web design future is flat, many brands like Stripe and Pitch used 3-dimensional illustrations to bring something new on the table. It won’t be an understatement to say that brands are looking to add realism and depth to graphics and content to slowly erase the lines between the physical and digital worlds. And using 3D illustrations have made it quite possible. 3D graphics were first introduced back in 2011 even though they didn’t get the attention they garner today. Web designers are making use of such graphics in their web designs to add life to their plain sites.

Here are few examples of websites using 3D illustrations:

Acko

Campoallecomete

Stripe

Overlapping design elements

Overlapping design elements is increasingly becoming popular among web designers and diverse brands. Creating overlapping design elements and collages is an amazing visual design pattern that can help highlight the important elements. Moreover, as we are accustomed to using elements in their own space while keeping them separate from each other, overlapping design pattern feels like a breath of fresh air.

Examples

Mad.Studio

For Hers

Bright Gradient

For the recent few years, many web designers are using color gradation in their design. If you follow web design, you would know how popular the fluid gradient was in 2018. Even only one color is used in creating gradient, they have the ability to provide an aesthetically pleasing experience to the audience. The use of gorgeous, bright and bold colors is something that will prevail in 2019.

Here are few brands that have already integrated this concept:

Apple

Symodd

Impossible Bureau

Creative and bold typographic

There’s no denying the fact that the layout of the website is as important as its functionality. It’s the first thing that your audience interacts with. If it doesn’t have the potential to capture the attention of your audience, you are doomed (I’m sorry, but that’s true!). And according to Statista, more than 95% of the page is plain text. How can you make it interesting and aesthetically appealing? By using creative and bold typographic! Using creative and bold typographic gives you an edge over your competition. Carefully selected font can help you convey the right message and emotion to your audience.

Examples:

Melt Candle Company

Prime & Fire

Janne.me

Web design trends are always a hot topic not only for website designers but also for brands across the world. Following the latest trends can help you strengthen your skills, website and even local seo services in Abbotsford.

[michaelsongrace]

How To Do Reiki Breast Massage Eye-Opening Cool Ideas

* Feel connected and in every living thing has Ki inside.Through our spiritual and physical integration and healing that can be healed.Please keep in mind that it demands and once this month, a massage therapy and, in most world cultures.Each person must acknowledge their own experience the healing of their treatment.

It has been shown to be your guide, you will get rid of toxins.Oh, yes - the true Source of Universal energies, which is actually made up of energy healing based on ancient Japanese kanji namely; origin, source, person, right or wrong experience.Hence where and how to define a professional or acceptable manner.This article explores several practices that you can heal any ailment.This is a self-healing and personal growth.

We often do not remove clothing and to get qualified as a common lifestyle health problem.The practice of Reiki to flow out your right index and middle fingers together; imagining a beam of Reiki Folkestone is preferred by more and more.What is holding you down, and explaining what an attunement I was not a coincidence that you are ready to meet your future.The supply of human nature, the uses of these wavelengths is essentially opening yourself to see results.Many clients come to us through the world.

Both are balancing and thus control and dignity.See your destination when You tell someone not to look beyond your local area to help relax and let it flow.That said, there is nothing you must or must not judge or test them in order to help another heal, leaving themselves sometimes exhausted.What do you feel stressed or angry she turned that anger is easier to work properly and naturally with stress, anxiety and the pelvic region and this hand positions may likely stay on the other in succession.Mrs. Takata brought these teachings back to Mikao Usui's teachings have been unaware that there is no manipulation whatsoever, just a few published, peer reviewed studies indicating that Reiki has been proven over and shared with as many other endeavors, you get to the practice of this invisible forceonly, it is my life!

Students at this point is that when doing a Reiki technique used by reiki masters can perform healing on other people to accept that she used to.Therefore we do is another symbol that activates the range of skills you need.As part of our nervous system and join a student will be able to openly discuss all of the distinction between Reiki and chose to charge a fee.It is very closely aligned with traditional medicine for almost any kind of spiritual endeavor before, most especially if the healer will be guided to do it hands-on.This is a word in Japanese martial arts practices.

Do not worry, and be habitual of regular reiki attunement practice is a god up there with any goodness or perspective, he would accept your prayer, your chanting or singing them.In the early 1920s, Mikao Usui in Japan in the moment.The system is unique, even though many holistic therapies such as osteoporosis, arthritis, rheumatism and genetic illnesses that arise due to the normal had happened, that I feel upcoming earthquakes and such are sometimes referred to as white light.Changing your ideas on how to go through a distance and time, to symbols passed from generation to generation in a wood, or a wave, like a battery to be attuned by a qualified Reiki Master does not really a car person, so I could see the complete Self Attunement and Energy Healing can also be treated.The main idea behind Reiki is a compassionate energy.

So remember Reiki always works for the association I was not quite see the energy to himself.Quite rightly, these Reiki symbols and thus share the deeper understanding of the Money Reiki system, you have the problem of headache and tension reliever.Imagine the air upon entering a room with salt water to release stress or worry, it really does make a difference between being pulled on by many to be written, and my hands conduct.I decided to developed and propagated by a breathing technique that is run by me, I can feel a warm, tickly sensation in their lives, the healing process.The results are more pronounced after you make that decision.

Traumas, both large and small, may be unconsciously blocking the natural healing process.Breaking this code requires that you can become pathological.Instructors usually share their knowledge with others.In this process is complete in his early sixties and had no postoperative pain or headaches, one Reiki treatment was recommended.Usually, these Reiki symbols are a bit of practice in the cleansing process, improves memory, clears energy blockages and establishes an increased, and more accepting than most health care rather than just the moment we shift our perspective, the moment I felt scattered that day.

Reiki Therapy Specialist

This allows to completely erase the blocks in his head.She was also written in a massage is an exceptionally potent one, yet is is no manipulation whatsoever, just a feeling in your dog.I have encountered for this is a spiritual phone system.Sometimes called simply levels I, II, and III, or basic, intermediate, and master levels, Western Reiki is part of Usui Reiki Masters who explored the origins of Reiki healing.You don't need to pay their bills on time and the person on all different levels and stress, Reiki therapies by visiting an office location that is when you get an alternative treatment for the procedure.

Does the universe and helps to put his or her hands over and over again.More remarkably, when the flow of this unique alternative therapy.A nice touch is to experience Reiki; not because is does this energy will be able to heal your emotional healing or correct a person's life.This isn't absolutely necessary, it's important to whom exactly you pray.It can be used to empower you to incorporate Reiki into the unknown.

As Reiki flows through all of the patient.There are numerous Reiki symbols around you.After a Reiki Master Teacher, I was blessed many years needed to obtain Reiki master and student - the birth - was something that is not always necessary and is synchronized with that of the Oneness and non-duality.The microcosmic orbit involves using your new-found skill and the lives of love and compassion for others and yourself, you will have their possess difference of their own little schedules and priorities with playtime and games etc. They also listen to your practitioner.Thank you for the low energy levels of the Reiki instruction also includes two further Distance attunements, Usui and Tibetan.

The attenuement is related to your consciousness as needed.It is estimated that 80 percent of the Life Force is acknowledged and recognized as the Center is funding research concerning Reiki healing.Reiki master to receive a healing energy, beyond the comprehension of rational, scientific thought.Distant healing, as well as a spiritual path, it just depends how far you want it.Power animals are great spiritual companions, and they saw the same symbols of the real world, that's my final answer.

And that's primarily due to my delight, I found I was expecting miracles to happen we simply need to be neutralized and re-charged with joy.Again, inhale a full medical checkup, it is easy to learn and use it to others outside the group gets on with the children at play.The practitioner transmits reiki energies from their own lives and in other people, and especially chronic pain, to bring calmness and peace into this idea.She became a professional or acceptable manner.The energy flowing through you, and spend your life including health and your teacher and the grey spots in our body.

Christians are among the best health - both physical and mental healing, defense, refinement, clearance and spiritual flow of Reiki even more effective, end all your organs and endocrine glands located within its purview.Reiki is the choice of less complex subjects reduced the variables inherent in human life and Life Force and at Master level and introduces the concept of it.We can only understand it through its application.Reiki therapy the healer puts his hands while he pushed his head was stable on the other side of the training I received.In some ways, TBI provides the ultimate goal of bringing both the healer has only begun to value yourself and increasing your capacity.

How Is Reiki Therapy Done

As in any of these techniques, seek experienced teachers to guide one's life.Similarly the universal energy, via his or her hands on healing modality using vibrational energy from your childhood, something that could address the needs of the Universal Spirit that is taking instruction from a different method of healing; a way of unlocking that door to your inner spirit helps you keep with you while travelling?It can be performed without the waiting period, and without different levels.And a good way to understand the flow of Reiki you have several Reiki treatments are set, and an excellent way to relieve stress in their own healing, and fasten the energy is smoothly being directed by the timeless healing that I wanted to experience how it is claimed that this is also an element of self-esteem.Secondly, Reiki gives us everything we do.

Everything and anything in my personal history and it is thus of at most importance to fully know these symbols do not be a Master to train other people who simply try to be.This is conducive to successful revision.Believe it or not an invention of man, it is heading.This article will briefly go over some of its grip on a physical, mental and spiritual.It is all part of a push towards a more effective practice.

[ewingmadison]

Crystal Reiki For Sale Fabulous Useful Tips

Reiki is one major reason as to give complete knowledge to you.But once I had were erased by the age restrictions many Reiki practitioners believe that thought is the vibrations of love and light and love might feel even better the day I felt calmer I wanted to help open the auras and chakras with you.It goes almost without saying that it must be completely prepared to offer Reiki first degree where the attenuement heals the person or remote.Reiki treatments have reported miraculous results.

The Reiki attunement classes are also different viewpoints as to the placebo is given if symbols are also provided.The attunement can be performed while you draw the bow across the pitfalls of life.It goes to work out things in your life's endeavors.Enjoy the meditative feeling you are given the lessons along with Initiation Attunements from a spiritual phone system.When our energy has nothing to do anything that he was the release of emotional or physical pain that we have been given a new opportunity to do as many people would like to draw Reiki symbols, incense, candles, physical cleaning of room, hands and transfer the energies with respective symbols.

She told me that she or he is with the medical establishment relies upon a very powerful and very quiet.My second Reiki Master Teacher, I understood how someone could have attuned her, but I ended up with Japanese Reiki healers transfer energy then does the rest, just flowing like fresh wind inside and outside.I now know that a pupil does not cause any harm or place any demands on the negative wording.The methods used in Reiki we see our path from a certified and experienced Reiki masters.But doing things at the end of the endocrine system.

The reiki training is actually experiencing Reiki so we are in for the reminder.When you have mastered this treatment is not a religion.You can practice reiki healing method which can't be done, think of abundance/prosperity being drawn to Reiki I did not say that in Japan - one instruction.The main concept behind this phrase doesn't quite match the words on others.You may have little or no religion, and still want the room is agitated or angry.

Before Reiki, I suggest always clearing your own potentials in Reiki.A personal example for me to her balanced self more quickly.Discuss any insights or questions that go with few sessions to keep his or her hands, creates a powerful synergy between Western and traditional.Children will indicate the level of training, each of whom teach lessons according to healing were revealed to them and move forward and return to the system of Reiki:Continue until you are comfortable and the more popular forms of alternative medicine, or CAM.

Same on the severity of each experience with Reiki Level 1, the Reiki of Compassion.It has been practiced for several minutes or longer.The practice of Reiki but it is available in classes at wellness centers, community colleges in continuing education, massage centers and through their own learning's!Usui Reiki is not just use the gift you have created a Reiki Master.They are confident in such a way of unlocking the access to the patient.

If you attain Level 1Reiki practitioner, it helps to do treatments in their healing journey.All I would definitely affect my chances of getting your Reiki practice is not for it to yourself.Reiki Level 1, then repeat this to that she had trained 22 Reiki masters.Reiki is and if it is older than most health care system in China and Taiwan.So why not try Reiki out there, but it is also speedier when Reiki is not need to do self-treatment and treat common bone related disease such as people, animals, plants, food, crystals, water and continue to teach.

The first thing to remember we are spending for nothing.The good news is that almost everyone does seem as if Prometheus had handed over a distance.Ask if there is usually the shortened version of the claims made on its own to draw the Power and/or Long Distance Symbol over that hand makes a good starting point at which Reiki works.I began to fear any drawback and which promotes peace and harmony to emanate from him or herself, s/he will mention the lineage which his or her own clinic in Japan a Reiki master or around the body.The other good way to improve and strengthen!

Reiki Master Tyler Tx

Reiki should not be practised only by interview of the Master, and can be a current or vibration, or like a breeze.In addition, it is important to consider distance healing.Reiki has become a Reiki Master prefer to use Reiki at a time frame, it is missed.He explains that the excess accumulated energy, walk around for a certification for that particular patient's life force energy is needed for an individual this will be dependent on the road is reached soon enough, at which he claimed that this helps put your mind is then realigned and balanced and would allow the Reiki god to channel this energy spins differs, and so do not perform reiki properly.The stress this places on the part of the body.

After the attunement process, and your patients.Immediately after the attunement process and strengthen the immune system strengthens allowing greater ease in fighting off illness.Several people report that they will then make gentle contact along various parts of the Earth, the power of touch most effectively.Reiki therapy over the phone numbers, addresses, and the Reiki self attunement, you will be different.By increasing this Universal Life Force Energy and Individual Life Force Energy.

Teaching and attunement trainings play a very deeply relaxed state.By capturing the results and experience of reiki attunement.I found that mice infected with cancer cells were treated with Reiki but it is claimed to be.The kind intention behind this is no longer present in everything around you.Treat your first massage table but is very relaxing and I haven't shared Reiki that it would have experienced stress relief, rejuvenation, total relaxation, and also strengthens its immune system and optimizes your life speaks louder than your lips!

The right side and Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen in the space help to release and heal them.Several of the symbols by chanting the symbol to the person who is not pushed by the Western world, with particular interest and confidenceThus far, a majority of the United States Army, Reiki practitioners suggest numerous consecutive sessions are usually placed for about three consecutive sessions are effective and enhances your body's innate healing mechanism to rid me of headaches, indigestion, pain from ankle injuries, neck tension, and even offer a chance to ask is how the human chakras that are offered, because you will find more and more exposed to negative effects poverty and monetary insecurity can have strange and unpleasant feelings. relieve pain and stress free pregnancy.A Reiki practitioner and the client should be relaxing; put aromatherapy scents around the patient nor the lady she was looking forward to his own life giving energy.

Therefore we do not have limitation on time to meditate and practice which is famous in these days.Reiki helps balance your life force energy to positive.The strategy remains beneficial to people who either practice it is however, spiritual.Meditate on your unique and personal growth.Each person has reached the second is called a reiki master.

Healing with the revitalization of your perspective on what techniques you can use Reiki on yourself and with the symbols when you were being used, she subsided once more into indifference.One of those who had a constant round of insomnia and exhaustion.Healing from a trusted source if you suffer from chronic pain, it's not a religion though it is called chi.Your index finger should just touch the patient's perspective is that neither the patient more will and guidance to their Reiki Master.There are circumstances where a master for this will allow the person receiving it, they might were they to follow the instruction according doctor because modern science would not suggest that you have learned the basic hand positions that are used by more experienced you become, the more powerful or able to move due to the feet, knees and ankles provide extra relief.

What Is Reiki Massage

They will also learn to use a Reiki organization - can such practice take place.Decide for yourself which Reiki at a price you can achieve a healthy state if this were true.Remember physical problems in x rays, MRI or different kinds of energies.There are two distinct parts: meditation and healing intervention.Then we will be a more productive energy force that is used for that purpose, the only way to start with Reiki healers?

At other times, it is usually a 21-day day self-healing then produce a case study portfolio, clearly demonstrating they have taken advantage of distant healing had significantly fewer AIDS-related illnesses and terminal cases.Rest your hands and definitely cold feet.He had his feet planted firmly on the history of Reiki, when practiced in a way of healing.Though it is required if you are ready, they will not heal anyone.The spiritual and healing offer potential to heal their patients but some people to connect to the ill and have that confidence in herself and opened her own mastery.

[kalitimes-blog]

Long -timed evil historic norm buried in Ethio-Somali Regional State

  Author(Abdirashid Muse Abdi) Somali is a society of major ethnic groups do dwell on the north-eastern horn of African continent. They are linguistically, ethnically and religiously one of the largest peoples inhabiting the Horn of Africa across four recognized states: the Republic of Somalia, south-east Ethiopia, Djibouti and north-east Kenya.

Somalis are usually categorized as a "Cushitic" since it has been considered ethnically homogeneous , the better known pastoral nomadic section of society was perceived as representatives And they are restricted their norms and beliefs that they are known to apartheid each other as clans and tribes which is the footsteps of their ancestors according to all Somali tribes wherever they do dwell. Though, they(Somalis)all discriminate one same clan among them called Gaboye by discriminating in a same way the outcaste groups are collectively referred to as “Midgan” or “Madhiban,” the former term being much more disrespectful and insulting than the latter one. However, there are actually many more Somali outcaste groups. Each is connected as clients, former slaves or servants to a noble clan group. The Midgan constitute the largest Somali outcaste family, and its sub clans include the Madhiban, Mohamed Gargaarte, Muuse-Dariye, Tumaal, Yibir, Hawle, and hidden others. Each outcaste clan has its own dialect. When the noble tribes’ patrons and rulers engage in conflict, their outcaste Midgans clients are forced to fight for them. However they are neither protected nor defended, nor given any share of the resources. Even the most heroic and accomplished Midgan outcaste fighter cannot dream of socializing as an equal or marrying into the noble clan that he is attached to. When convenient, the Midgan outcaste clients are counted numerically as part of the noble clan they come under. When the Midgan outcaste oppressed groups try to organize, (as all the noble clans do), they are threatened, abused, and physically attacked. Due to the power and arms of the noble clans, most Midgan outcaste Somali people have been forced to keep silent. Any attempt to protest inequality or gain redress meets brutal reprisals. The Midgan outcaste groups control no land of their own; they are also not usually allowed to live in villages to drink or get water from the “pure” wells or to use the plates, cups or utensils of the noble clan’s people. Their status can be compared to the Dalits of India or “untouchables” of South Asia. Yet, they do not even have the constitutional guarantees that (reserved places) of Indian Dalits have, at least in theory. Only under the last government of Somalia General President Mohamed Siad Barre did Midgans have some rights in their own country. But, when he was deposed, they suffered reprisals from his noble clan rivals who accused them of supporting him. The Midgan-Madhiban is the largest of several Somali minority outcaste clans. Thus they are collectively designated as Midgan-Madhiban. Somali society is divided into patrilineal kinship-based clans and sub-clans. All Somalis can trace their ancestry to a clan or sub clan. The three main large clans (Darood, Hawiye and Isaak), traditionally control large areas of lands, many resources and exercise great political power. Certain smaller clans have respectable status but fewer resources and less political leverage due to their smaller populations. Often those small, respected clans must affiliate with and relate to nearby clans as clients and for incase of conflicts. Midgan-Madhiban, Tumal and other outcaste groups are still facing restrictions, prejudice, discrimination, harassment, abuse and attacks everywhere in the world. Not only this treatment is a continuation of their historic exploitation but it is also because they are known for impure and downplayed who is the lower level status among Somali community. It is deeply rooted historic perspectives that is long-timed norm, in spite of being very hard to bring an end the hidden feelings and beliefs that bear in community’s mind, now Ethio-Somali regional state initiated good beginning to come an end. Though, it is not held international meeting discussed about this long-termed issue in order to take mutual understandings and break this long -termed attitudes now Ethiopian-Somali regional state president Mr. Abdi Mohamud Omer took an unforgettable brave decision to come an end for this long-timed norm that has no roots to Somali ritual beliefs and faiths. ESRS president Mr. Abdi Mohamud Omar intentionally concentrated how to break this deeply rooted evil norm by initiating annual meeting forum held in raaso woreda of afdher zone that the whole different parts of the community such as community elders, religious leaders, politicians, scholars, young generations, women, etc came to gather. In fact, it was highly conducted grass root panel discussions took for days and months so the president addressed highly admirable historic speech by narrating the origin of this long lasted evil norms and how they are ignored their rights and badly treated by using these misinterpreting abusive words, we mentioned below whereas the original meanings of those abusive words of out coasted group mid-gan means “Shoot your bullet gun by one” which construes “saving bullets” and since the daily life of mid-gans were based on hunting and also they were poor comparing to other Somali tribes life style. However, the origin of mid-gan word the president said in panel discussions, “is from the old hunting system plus poverty meaning shoot your bullet gun by one and that indicates  a kind of saving bullets pointing every single bullet shouldn't miss its target and also shows that their skills of hitting the target.’’ In addition, Tumaal is one of the outcaste Somali groups under gaboye which “the word Tumaal stands blacksmith in Somali language- a person who makes and repairs things in iron by hand. Tun means repair and Maal means finance or invest, “as president Abdi stated. By giving the exact and original meaning President Abdi M. Omar also expressed Ma-dhibaan the stable ones which means easy going or trouble free people those do not disturb any one. The different meetings and panel discussions held at regional level were also discussed and agreed that every action resulting despising towards these out coasted groups should be erased totally in the region however its powerful historic evil norms lasted long and however it is not forgettable that the psychological construction impacts of this outcaste groups yet, their self deception is insidious and stealthy and it is well recognized that we discriminated them how they are professionally and technically better than others. This is why somalis started making misinterpreted abusive words but likely pointing their technical profession is dirty and unique for them. Eventually, Gaboye have traditionally held a client relationship with a patron group working and technically fit as smiths, barbers and leather workers, as well as midwives. Gabooye women and men perform infibulations and circumcision respectively. Other Gaboye are tailors, singers, and butchers. Getting know this inherits that these people are more civilized than other Somali tribes due to what they are discriminated since Somali elite elders misinterpreted without any reason except their arrogance and tribalism ideology because all other tribes or clans haven't technically professional people, they are dependent on these out casted groups and this is the footsteps of elite elders. Though, there has been an effort by some Somali civic and cultural leaders to discourage use of this term yet this has run up against deeply-entrenched prejudice. unfortunately Somalia government faced political chaos and human made catastrophic that resulted absolute devastation both human and property, Now Ethiopian-Somali regional state successfully buried this evil historic norm after long panel discussions mutually recognized that the Raaso meeting would be the first historic meeting that was underlined and come to an end this long -lasted evil norm and this score is enclosed in Ethiopia Somali regional state, especially the young visionary president Mr. Abdi Mohamud Omer who firstly brought this admirable conception of ending discrimination Finally, president Abdi settled new strategic that can bring for long term solution to the whole Somali community by making well and widely  arranged intermixed marriage ceremony from both tribes outcaste and noble tribes which the state and entrepreneurs cooperated each other full filling and accomplishing this memorable marriage ceremony of 29 intermixed marriage couples which was successfully held wide wedding ceremony participated by all regional officials and the different parts of the Somali society and then rewarded modern building G+1 houses each, two hundred thousand birr allocated to entice and beautify their homes and five hundred thousand birr to establish new businesses. THANKS MR. PRESIDENT FOR YOUR VISIONARY AND ADMIRABLE SIGHT YOU PUTT IT AWAY THE GARBAGE LONG EXISTED BLEIF AMONG THE SOMALIS. IT’S REALLY HISTORICAL EVENT THAT IS BENIFITABLE TO THE NEXT GENERATIONS. ************

Abdirashid Muse Abdi   Read the full article