#to like. adulthood. in separate states. different kinds of jobs. different friends and family...

[cementcornfield]

https://x.com/vikingzfanpage/status/1867748114540433549?s=61

ummm excuse you justin, that is your best friend

lol really though!!

but nah, i touched on this in my tags of a rb of this tweet. like to me it isn't a huge deal or anything. they're obviously still close, they just don't talk in season (which they've both said before). but they spent time in france together this offseason and have also said that they love each other and are always gonna have that connection so i'm not too worried! friendships go through stages sometimes, and adult friendships are just kind of like that, even for football players i guess! (some of my absolute best friends in the world, my favorite people, i only talk to once a month if that. and like a real deep catch up session happens only a few times a year. it's just hard! and i can say for sure that me and my friends do not have nearly as much going on as these two guys lol)

but anyway i'm also gonna take this opportunity to ramble about some more ja'marr character analysis lol. so like, it's becoming pretty clear that ja'marr is deadset on keeping tee and joe with him as long as possible (not gonna get into contract details or likelihood at the moment because that's all still in the air of course. but like, ja'marr's intentions at least are clear at the moment). and it's also obvious how much ja'marr treasures his friendships! he loves his guys and thrives off of being around them! i wonder if like, the evolution of his relationship with justin has to do with how extreme he, tee, and joe are being about contract stuff right now???

like justin and ja'marr were SO close for awhile there. from the hyper competitive but clearly loving friendship they had going on in college. the way they were always together on the sideline and always doing their dances and making up ridiculous elaborate handshakes <3 the way all of their joint interviews involved so much laugher and loving glances. and even after joining the league still talking about each other in the media and how much they love and support each other even as they're still super competitive. hell, when i first became a fan in 2022, ja'marr would still be streaming with justin almost every week lol. (i think justin has stopped streaming and maybe doesn't even do much gaming-wise anymore, which may have been the main way they kept in touch tbh. like, many such cases for the men i know in my life lol)

and now they're at the point where they have so much else going on, that even though they love each other, the constant conversation and all that isn't as present. (and ja'marr has kind of made it clear that that started on justin's end. like, ohhh he doesn't text me back blah blah blah, however true that is 🤔). and i feel like, even though ja'marr probably understands, that had to have hurt. again he values his friends so much and is at his best mentally, emotionally, and athletically when he's around them!!! i wonder if that taught him something about like, "if i want to keep these people i love in my life as much as possible, i need them to stay on my team. justin went to a different team and something that was so beautiful and important to me changed. i can't have that for tee. i can't have that for joe. we need to figure something out" which like, could absolutely be me digging depth into something that isn't there but at the same time it makes sense motivationally for me!!! like did he sob on his agent's shoulder one night about how much he missed justin and how he couldn't stand the thought of that happening with tee (I WANT TO PLAY WITH HIM FOR ETERNITY!!!) and the agent was like, hey, we can do something about this actually! send me his info!

[shihalyfie]

02′s themes in relation to its finale

By “finale” I don’t mean “epilogue”, but rather the final battle and confrontation that make up 02 episodes 48-50. Generally speaking, 02 is a series that is much less about progression of plot events as much as it’s about theme and message, and my feeling is that this becomes increasingly so the deeper you get into its second half and approach its ending. Narratively speaking, we need a big, bad enemy to beat up in a fight, but if we shift our perspective a bit, what does this finale say as a close to 02′s themes and concepts?

The thin boundary between good and evil

Our major enemy for the first half of the series was the Digimon Kaiser, who was later established to be the very naturally kind Ichijouji Ken -- which is a pretty massive swerve, considering that most series with “reformed villains” would usually make them a bit of an edgelord who happens to be a little nicer. But instead, the series goes very deep into the psyche of what could make such a kind child be tipped over the edge, and, even though it’s all revealed to be accelerated by supernatural interference, it’s made very clear that his own trauma and insecurity was most of what did it.

So, anyway, it’s revealed in the end that the “final mastermind” behind it all was none other than Vamdemon, an effective midboss from Adventure. Vamdemon’s popularity aside, this initially seems like a very strange choice. But looking at some statements about 02′s initial planning is somewhat revealing: the original planned concept for the final boss was a Digimon that would ultimately be reduced to only “an idea” (and was rejected on the grounds of being too gory for the Sunday morning kids’ timeslot). When you think about this original concept of “a Digimon that had been reduced to only an idea,” that explains the initially odd-seeming combo of defeating a Digimon with the combined power of idealistic positivity, because it’s a plot point that would certainly make more sense if said Digimon had been reduced to a spirit of malice.

However, the interesting part about this is that the replacement for this original final boss was not Vamdemon but Oikawa and his lackeys, which means that, substantially, the real “final enemy” of this story is actually Oikawa, and the ideological questions he poses for the Chosen Children and those around them. Vamdemon may be the “mastermind” from a plot perspective, but, ironically, his important role is actually to define Oikawa’s narrative -- and, as if to drive this in further, he’s not even voiced by his original voice actor from Adventure (Ohtomo Ryuuzaburou), but Oikawa’s own, Morikawa Toshiyuki (and this voice change is actually pointed out in the series proper, too).

So why Vamdemon and not just a random spirit of malice? Well...

Vamdemon’s presence specifically establishes the precise moment in time Oikawa lost complete control of himself -- and, more widely, establishes the connection between himself as a “Chosen Child who could never become one”. Prior to this episode, we knew that Hida Hiroki’s death and their shared childhood had some relevance to Oikawa’s downfall, but the August 3 “Odaiba fog” incident in 1999 is the exact moment where everything could completely crash down in front of Oikawa’s eyes, with Hida Hiroki having just died, and Oikawa personally witnessing Digimon, the Digital World, and the Chosen Children (and boy, the way this scene is framed with him right next to the waterfront, you might even wonder what he might have done with himself had Vamdemon not interfered...). The Digital World didn’t have a huge amount of contact with the world before then -- in fact, Oikawa not being able to make much contact is a huge part of his character arc -- which basically leaves this as one of the only moments you can have this exact moment of Oikawa being ready to go over the deep end in this way. All of his regrets, of never being able to make proper contact with the Digital World, of Hiroki having died and left him alone, are ready for him in this exact moment -- as his own lackey Archnemon had said earlier, “human weaknesses are easy to manipulate.”

Moreover, of all of the “entities of malice” that made up Adventure’s villains, Vamdemon’s the only one who brought it all the way over to the real world (where the majority of 02′s conflict is set). This brief moment of contact with the real world was established in 02 episode 14 to be the defining moment of “contact” that would lead to Daisuke and Iori becoming Chosen Children. Particularly in the case of Iori, you can see the parallel -- Hiroki’s death and the resulting incident here would shape Iori’s strive to become a model citizen and a hero as a Chosen Child, whereas the exact same incidents shaped Oikawa’s descent into villainy.

Oikawa’s “sacrifice” in the end is not really a sacrifice in terms of sacrificing his life -- it’s said outright that his body is deteriorating, and so he would have died either way. What Oikawa does sacrifice is the ability to take one more step and make proper contact with Pipimon -- it is explicitly stated that he has to use the power of the dream world to grant his wish, meaning that he would never be able to take a proper step into the Digital World as a human, and therefore would never truly be able to have his initial wish granted in the way he originally wanted.

Thus, Oikawa leaves off with one last “regret” -- that, perhaps, if things had been different, he could have been just like the Chosen Children, going on “adventures” like them. But Iori points out right after that he did achieve his dream in some sense -- he got to reunite with the Digital World, and he did get to meet his partner, and so: it’s all about mentality. All of what happened to Oikawa was because of his own closed-in way of seeing himself and his place in the world, instead of being able to move on productively from his perception of what he “could and couldn’t do”.

In the end, Iori, the one who had once been so cold towards the idea of anything remotely associated with evil, is the one to guide him to that answer, and the other Chosen Children, who had previously not been very sympathetic towards him, still grieve over his death because they understand what it means to have a partner, and the sense of loss it would entail to be separated from one. It’s the one commonality they all can understand, and in the end, none of them were really all that different; it was just what they chose to do with what they had.

This is especially because we see extensive flashbacks of Oikawa in 02 episode 47, and his design is that of a completely average adult in 02, nothing like the “look at this instant villain!” design he had during the course of the series. Oikawa was, for all intents and purposes, a completely average person who had dreams that he shared with his friend, dreams that they carried into adulthood -- it took this little to push Oikawa over the edge, and yet the things that did it were the exact same things that, in a different context, Iori took to become a Chosen Child who fought him on the other side.

False happiness and pointless fixations

Tying into Oikawa’s fixation with “regrets” and an unhealthy mentality about his own position, Oikawa blames his inability to go to the Digital World in 02 episode 48 on himself being a “tainted adult”, not recognizing that it’s his own having fallen off the deep end that’s the likely reason he’s being rejected. Oikawa is, effectively, maintaining a fixation on “regrets” and a past he can’t get back; he’s still stuck on the image of his happy childhood playing with Hiroki, and all of the things he “couldn’t do” as a child after having his initial contact with the Digital World cut off. The ending reveals that he had met Pipimon before, and so you can interpret everything he’d done beforehand -- including creating two Digimon that are ultimately his “minions” more than they’re his actual “partners” (and were ultimately ripped away from him by the very same malicious spirit that represents his nihilism) -- as an attempt to reconnect with that partner, even if it resulted in him forgetting his actual purpose.

Beyond that, the Chosen Children themselves are momentarily sidetracked by a “fixation” of sorts --

02 is a series about “accepting things and moving forward”, so each of the illusions presented by BelialVamdemon have to do with a fixation that’s holding each respective kid back:

Takeru’s idea of seeing his family together again might not be completely impossible, but it’s probably not happening anytime soon -- and, as far as 02 episode 17 and 47 showed us, relations are at least improving and everyone else is doing a much better job of actually moving on and accepting the current state of affairs than he is.

Iori’s fixated on the idea of being able to please and be with a father who’s long dead (again, his issue is technically the same one Oikawa’s fixating over).

Hikari’s fixated on a future idea and dream that she wants to see pass, which won’t happen unless she can proactively work towards it now (and the 02 epilogue itself establishes that getting there won’t be all sunshine and roses).

Miyako’s fixated on her surface mood of stress and a desire to escape it, only to be confronted with the fact that it doesn’t actually make her all that happy either.

Ken’s fixated on ideas of “punishment” and “forgiveness” that ultimately won’t get him anywhere.

In the end, the one to avoid it is the most “forward-thinking” of all of them, Daisuke, who’s least likely to get caught up in such fixations. But even he has this to say:

Daisuke understands that not everyone is as simple-minded as him, and that’s not inherently a bad thing -- it’s just that when you need to go forward, you need to go forward (and people who exploit others’ weaknesses against them are still unforgivable jerks). You need to accept that things are the way they are at current, and use the information you get from it to keep moving forward and do something productive with it rather than clinging onto things you can’t have to the point you can’t do anything. Nobody was giving anyone shame for having those internal worries that BelialVamdemon plagued them with -- it’s just that staying in there forever, instead of moving on with important things they had to do, wouldn’t be good for them either.

Hence, that’s what Oikawa actually sacrificed -- he had a choice to use his final moments to spend his remaining short time with his partner that he’d spent so long unconsciously chasing after, but he instead decides to do something to help the Digital World and reverse some of the damage he’d personally caused instead of continuing to fixate on that regret. At the very least, he can continue to be with Pipimon in some other sense, even if it’s not what he originally wanted.

The pressure to be a “perfect person” as imposed by society; the conflict between that and pursuing one’s own happiness

In the last section, I mentioned that Oikawa was the kind of person who fixated on regrets about what he “couldn’t do” during his childhood. You can identify a bit of what was leading up to this in the prior episodes:

We learn in 02 episode 47 that Iori’s grandfather Chikara made the mistake of barring Hiroki and Oikawa from getting too deep into their connection with the Digital World, considering it “nonsense”, which led to the two of them becoming disconnected from it and continuing to wistfully chase after it -- which also led to Oikawa being driven further over the deep end when Hiroki, the only person who understood that, died.

Moreover, Oikawa ended up developing a complex not entirely unlike the Kaiser’s fixation with being a “perfect” person in the first half -- and, just like how he blames his inability to enter the Digital World on being a “tainted adult”, he fails to have the self-awareness that it’s this exact nihilism keeping him out of it, taking even further offense at the idea of him being a “tainted existence” (because of what he’s embracing) and deciding that his reaction needs to be sinking even deeper into it. And while he implants the Dark Seeds into the children with the intent of exploiting their power, he also indicates that he thinks he’s doing them a favor by enabling that ideology of “becoming a perfect person” within them.

Remembering that the final battle in this series is not necessarily about the physical fight as much as it’s about the ideology that Oikawa espoused, in the end, what Oikawa really “implanted” in these kids along with the Dark Seeds was the pressure that they should sacrifice their happiness to be “perfect” people. The Chosen Children reach out to them by asking about their dreams, and the children list off careers that have certainly gotten their parents scorning them for not being “good enough” for them, or gotten them mocked by other people (Hiroshi says that he gave up on his manga artist dreams because people laughed at him for it). In the end, “the pressure to be ambitious” is pressure in itself -- what if what you really want isn’t ambitious as much as it’s something that makes you and others happy (like, for instance, ramen making)? And especially when you’re a child -- shouldn’t this be the time when you enjoy yourself to the fullest?

This is even alluded to in Ken’s Spring 2003 track, in terms of how he and Osamu weren’t able to enjoy their childhood because of that pressure:

You were demanded to grow up fast, weren’t you, Brother? Because we were always being evaluated and compared by someone, we didn’t get a chance to have more freedom. We didn’t have any chances to run down an alley because we felt like it, or pull up weeds, or tumble around… meaningless things, things that didn’t bring any value to us at all. Just like the cat napping on the roof… we weren’t able to fully enjoy any everlasting freedom.

Like Ken and Osamu, the Dark Seed children accepted the Seeds because they decided that it would be better to trade in their happiness in exchange for getting closer to that ideal of “perfection”, only to destroy their own selves in the process. Which is accentuated when acknowledging their own selves is what leads to them meeting their own Digimon partners.

Takeru had said, earlier, that the Digimon will appear if you wish them to -- and given that a Digimon partner is a metaphor for the inner self, it says a lot that the point here is “the key to connecting with your partner is to connect with your actual��self”. Like how Ken managed to reunite with Wormmon in 02 episode 23 by accepting everything about himself and resolving to live with it, and how Oikawa will later meet Pipimon after having come to terms with what he was actually looking for the entire time.

And in the end, what we see of Vamdemon isn’t really all that different from the original “reduced to an idea” concept we got from the original 02 final boss concept -- remember that BelialVamdemon has effectively become the incarnation of Oikawa’s own nihilistic ideology; perhaps he took on a lot more than just a voice actor! Actually, the whole sequence in 02 episode 50 with everyone listing off their dreams and destroying BelialVamdemon part by part is relatively similar in substance to the original proposal (the staff must have been really attached to that idea). And, hence, why what destroys him for good is the combined feelings of everyone together, resolving to move forward instead of chasing after meaningless things.

Oikawa ultimately recognizes that what was holding him back was his own mentality -- everyone here, Ken, the Dark Seed children, and Oikawa himself, all thought they were becoming “strong” and “perfect” people by ignoring them, but instead ended up as pawns for others, and all of these people could have found better ways to cope with their problems through embracing themselves and finding support, and would have come closer to those “dreams” while they were at it. Instead, Oikawa exploited others and clung onto shallow symbols because he thought that kind of straightforward idealism was an impossible route for him, and locked himself out of all of it. But in the end, he’s able to do something -- he’s able to use his “dreams” to have the Digital World healed -- and with that, is able to have his last moments in happiness.

Incidentally, back in 02 episode 49, Daisuke had even outright said that there’s no inherent issue in striving for self-improvement (after all, both Adventure and 02 were about people slowly getting past their insecurities and becoming better people). Daisuke himself is a person who’s improved a lot over the course of this series! But that’s something you need to do on your own terms and in a way you’re comfortable with -- not forcing yourself into the mold of an “ideal person” at the expense of losing everything about yourself, like Ken, the Dark Seed children, and Oikawa all did at some point.

[c-ptsdrecovery]

If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.

...Extended families have two great strengths. The first is resilience. An extended family is one or more families in a supporting web. Your spouse and children come first, but there are also cousins, in-laws, grandparents—a complex web of relationships among, say, seven, 10, or 20 people. If a mother dies, siblings, uncles, aunts, and grandparents are there to step in. If a relationship between a father and a child ruptures, others can fill the breach. Extended families have more people to share the unexpected burdens—when a kid gets sick in the middle of the day or when an adult unexpectedly loses a job.

A detached nuclear family, by contrast, is an intense set of relationships among, say, four people. If one relationship breaks, there are no shock absorbers. In a nuclear family, the end of the marriage means the end of the family as it was previously understood.

... But while extended families have strengths, they can also be exhausting and stifling. They allow little privacy; you are forced to be in daily intimate contact with people you didn’t choose. There’s more stability but less mobility. Family bonds are thicker, but individual choice is diminished. You have less space to make your own way in life.

... The period from 1950 to 1965 demonstrated that a stable society can be built around nuclear families—so long as women are relegated to the household, nuclear families are so intertwined that they are basically extended families by another name, and every economic and sociological condition in society is working together to support the institution.

But these conditions did not last. The constellation of forces that had briefly shored up the nuclear family began to fall away, and the sheltered family of the 1950s was supplanted by the stressed family of every decade since. Some of the strains were economic. Starting in the mid-’70s, young men’s wages declined, putting pressure on working-class families in particular. The major strains were cultural. Society became more individualistic and more self-oriented. People put greater value on privacy and autonomy. A rising feminist movement helped endow women with greater freedom to live and work as they chose.

...Finally, over the past two generations, families have grown more unequal. America now has two entirely different family regimes. Among the highly educated, family patterns are almost as stable as they were in the 1950s; among the less fortunate, family life is often utter chaos. There’s a reason for that divide: Affluent people have the resources to effectively buy extended family, in order to shore themselves up. Think of all the child-rearing labor affluent parents now buy that used to be done by extended kin: babysitting, professional child care, tutoring, coaching, therapy, expensive after-school programs. (For that matter, think of how the affluent can hire therapists and life coaches for themselves, as replacement for kin or close friends.) These expensive tools and services not only support children’s development and help prepare them to compete in the meritocracy; by reducing stress and time commitments for parents, they preserve the amity of marriage. Affluent conservatives often pat themselves on the back for having stable nuclear families. They preach that everybody else should build stable families too. But then they ignore one of the main reasons their own families are stable: They can afford to purchase the support that extended family used to provide—and that the people they preach at, further down the income scale, cannot.

... When you put everything together, we’re likely living through the most rapid change in family structure in human history. The causes are economic, cultural, and institutional all at once. People who grow up in a nuclear family tend to have a more individualistic mind-set than people who grow up in a multigenerational extended clan. People with an individualistic mind-set tend to be less willing to sacrifice self for the sake of the family, and the result is more family disruption. People who grow up in disrupted families have more trouble getting the education they need to have prosperous careers. People who don’t have prosperous careers have trouble building stable families, because of financial challenges and other stressors. The children in those families become more isolated and more traumatized.

Many people growing up in this era have no secure base from which to launch themselves and no well-defined pathway to adulthood. For those who have the human capital to explore, fall down, and have their fall cushioned, that means great freedom and opportunity—and for those who lack those resources, it tends to mean great confusion, drift, and pain.

... The people who suffer the most from the decline in family support are the vulnerable—especially children. ... We all know stable and loving single-parent families. But on average, children of single parents or unmarried cohabiting parents tend to have worse health outcomes, worse mental-health outcomes, less academic success, more behavioral problems, and higher truancy rates than do children living with their two married biological parents. According to work by Richard V. Reeves, a co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, if you are born into poverty and raised by your married parents, you have an 80 percent chance of climbing out of it. If you are born into poverty and raised by an unmarried mother, you have a 50 percent chance of remaining stuck.

... Consider single men. Extended families provided men with the fortifying influences of male bonding and female companionship. Today many American males spend the first 20 years of their life without a father and the next 15 without a spouse. Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute has spent a good chunk of her career examining the wreckage caused by the decline of the American family, and cites evidence showing that, in the absence of the connection and meaning that family provides, unmarried men are less healthy—alcohol and drug abuse are common—earn less, and die sooner than married men.

For women, the nuclear-family structure imposes different pressures. Though women have benefited greatly from the loosening of traditional family structures—they have more freedom to choose the lives they want—many mothers who decide to raise their young children without extended family nearby find that they have chosen a lifestyle that is brutally hard and isolating. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that women still spend significantly more time on housework and child care than men do, according to recent data. Thus, the reality we see around us: stressed, tired mothers trying to balance work and parenting, and having to reschedule work when family life gets messy.

Without extended families, older Americans have also suffered. According to the AARP, 35 percent of Americans over 45 say they are chronically lonely. Many older people are now “elder orphans,” with no close relatives or friends to take care of them.

Finally, because groups that have endured greater levels of discrimination tend to have more fragile families, African Americans have suffered disproportionately in the era of the detached nuclear family. Nearly half of black families are led by an unmarried single woman, compared with less than one-sixth of white families. (The high rate of black incarceration guarantees a shortage of available men to be husbands or caretakers of children.) ... Research by John Iceland, a professor of sociology and demography at Penn State, suggests that the differences between white and black family structure explain 30 percent of the affluence gap between the two groups.

... We can’t go back, of course. Western individualists are no longer the kind of people who live in prehistoric bands. ...We value privacy and individual freedom too much.

...Yet recent signs suggest at least the possibility that a new family paradigm is emerging. Many of the statistics I’ve cited are dire. But they describe the past—what got us to where we are now. In reaction to family chaos, accumulating evidence suggests, the prioritization of family is beginning to make a comeback. Americans are experimenting with new forms of kinship and extended family in search of stability.

... In 1980, only 12 percent of Americans lived in multigenerational households. But the financial crisis of 2008 prompted a sharp rise in multigenerational homes. Today 20 percent of Americans—64 million people, an all-time high—live in multigenerational homes.

...T he most interesting extended families are those that stretch across kinship lines. The past several years have seen the rise of new living arrangements that bring nonbiological kin into family or familylike relationships. On the website CoAbode, single mothers can find other single mothers interested in sharing a home. All across the country, you can find co-housing projects, in which groups of adults live as members of an extended family, with separate sleeping quarters and shared communal areas. Common, a real-estate-development company that launched in 2015, operates more than 25 co-housing communities, in six cities, where young singles can live this way.

[mizutoyama]

Angst Alphabet

Thanks @unfortunate-arrow for the tag! 

I tag @aleksia-aries-hogwartsmystery @mira-shard @samshogwarts @that-ravenpuff-witch & whoever wants to do it and hasn’t been tagged yet.

A- Accident (Would they blame themselves if their s/o died or got into an accident?)

Depends on the situation. If it was related to the vault, both Alice and Charlie would blame themselves if their s/o died or got into an accident, though for different reasons.

Alice would blame herself because she dragged Charlie into that mess. Charlie would blame himself because he didn’t prevent Alice from doing whatever dangerous thing she did because he trusted her.

If it wasn’t related to the Vaults but to something linked to them, they would blame themselves. If it wasn’t related to something they are involved in, it depends. If Alice died doing her job as Curse-Breaker, Charlie would maybe blame himself a little, thinking that if he had pushed her a little toward taking the healer trainee position at the dragon reserve, she would still be fine. But if she got into an accident just doing her daily activities (shopping, walking around town, etc.), he’d be crushed, but wouldn’t blame himself. In Alice’s case, if it was either because of his job as a dragonologist or just while doing normal things, she wouldn’t blame herself, but she’d be devastated.

B- Bad Habits (What are some things that make their s/o mad, or irritated?)

One thing that annoys Alice, but she manages to hide it, is when Charlie suggests dragons as a solution to something where clearly dragons are NOT the answer, like when he suggested the use of dragons regarding the final vault that is probably in the lake.

For Charlie, what irritates him a little is Alice’s tendency to basically go looking for trouble. (Says the guy who goes in the forest looking for dragons…) He trusts her ability to defend herself, but he wished she would at least tell him what she’s planning. He doesn’t need her protection, he wants to stand by her side.

C- Crying (What would make them cry?)

Alice basically cries when she has an overflow of certain emotions. Too stressed? Cries. Too sad? Cries. Too angry/frustrated? Cries. (This means that any events creating those overflows will make her cry.) (Also certain songs and movie scenes can make her cry…)

For Charlie, if anything horrible happened to his family, Alice, and his friends.

D- Death (How do they react to their s/o's death?)

So many variables possible…

If they witnessed the other one’s death, I think they would cradle their loved one’s body, refusing to let go, refusing to accept the other is dead. I think that scene would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

If they were told of the other one’s death, Charlie would probably need to sit down and just remain in a state of shock for sometime, hoping someone will tell him it’s a joke or that Alice will walk through the door. Alice would faint, and spend the next days in bed, either sleeping or crying.

In either cases, they would go after whoever is responsible for the death (unless it was an accident). Charlie would probably cremate the murderer using a dragon. Alice would use all the curses (except the unforgivables) she knows on the murderer. After that, they would throw themselves in their work.

E- Emotion (what emotion do they tend to push away the most?)

For Alice, she pushes nearly all away (stiff upper lip…), the ones she pushes away the most are sadness and discouragement.

For Charlie… That’s harder. He doesn’t seem like someone who hides that many emotions. His feelings for Alice at the beginning… Maybe he tempers his excitement when it comes to dragons because he knows most don’t share his enthusiasm for them?

F- Fear (What is their biggest fear?)

Alice’s biggest fear is that everyone she cares about will suddenly disappear or turn their back on her. (Thanks, Jacob…)

For Charlie, I think while most people would expect his biggest fear to be dragon-related, I believe his biggest fear is most likely related to his family, something along the lines of them being dead or gone. (Remember when Fred & George went missing?)

G- Guilt (What's the biggest thing they feel guilty about?)

For Charlie, breaking up with Alice so she would take the MACUSA offer instead of the one from the Dragon Reserve in Romania. When Andre told him she was going to take the MACUSA offer anyway and ask him to have a long-distance relationship, he wanted to hit himself and find a time-turner to go back in time.

For Alice, in regards to her relationship with Charlie, maybe the fact that she discussed MACUSA’s offer and what she was planning to do with Andre before discussing it with Charlie? (Dragon Boy overheard part of that conversation, hence the breakup… though other things led to the breakup.) Something else she feels guilty about is dating another one of her friends after her breakup with Charlie, because she knows she won’t ever love him like he loves her. (They didn’t start dating straight away and he went after her.)

H- Heartbreak (What would cause them pain in the relationship? How would they deal during a break up?)

The thing that causes pain in their relationship is the fact they keep worrying about the other’s safety. Charlie can’t help but feel worried when Alice goes after a new vault, and Alice worries when Charlie follows her, as she would never forgive herself if anything happened. (It gets better in adulthood, their time apart allowing them to grow.)

Neither of them dealt really well with the breakup. Charlie regretted it as soon as he did it, Andre’s revelation exacerbating his guilt. As for Alice, she managed to maintain her cool in front of Charlie, but broke down the minute she was in her dorm. She cried during the train ride, to the point of falling asleep. Once home, she basically locked herself in her room. At some point, she decided to go clubbing to just forget about everything, but all it achieved is her friends worrying about her and her not feeling any different. That’s when one of her friends tell her how he feels about her, and they start seeing each other casually.

I- Injured (How do they handle themselves/each other when injured?)

They would take care of the other. (Finally! A short answer!)

J- Jittery (What part of their past makes them flinch or even worked up?)

For Alice, the Vaults and her brother’s disappearance.

For Charlie, what happened in the portrait vault and, later on, his break up with Alice.

K- Kill (Would they kill for revenge?)

Depends on the revenge, but if it’s to avenge someone’s death, definitely. Neither would use an unforgivable curse. Charlie would choose cremation by dragon, while Alice would probably use all the curse she knows to make her target suffer.

L- Lie (What's their tell for lying? How do they feel about lying to their s/o?)

Alice looks away when she lies, while Charlie fidgets with his hands.

As for lying to each other, neither feels great about it. Alice probably does it more often than Charlie, as she doesn’t always want him to follow her in her vault adventures to protect him.

M- Mistakes (How much do they want to fix the mistakes of their past?)

Well, if you read all the previous letters, you probably have figured out that Charlie would like to fix his mistake of breaking up with Alice. Except for that, I think he’s rather okay with learning from the mistakes in his past.

As for Alice, while she’s also more the kind to learn from her mistakes, the one thing she wish she could fix from the past is Rowan’s death.

N- Nightmare (How often do they have nightmares? What are they about? How do they deal with it?)

Charlie doesn’t often have nightmares, perhaps a bit more after the portrait vault’s event.

Alice, on the other hand, has had nightmares nearly every nights, thanks to her brother’s disappearance and the vaults. After finding her brother in the portrait vault, her nightmares don’t happen as often. The presence of some people also seem to calm her enough that she doesn’t have nightmares.

O- Outrage (What makes them angry?)

For Alice, bullies and injustice.

For Charlie, feeling powerless and probably also injustice? (Hello cliché!)

P- Pressure (What stresses them out to their breaking point?)

For Alice the responsibility of the vaults.

For Charlie, worrying about his little brothers (mostly Fred & George)

Q- Questions (Do they question their romantic ability)

All the time.

R- Rejection (How would they handle rejection?)

Romantic rejection, I think it would sting, but they would get over it since you can’t force someone to love you.

Rejection in other areas would probably hurt for a longer time, especially if it involved a lot of work prior to the rejection.

S- Scars (Battle or Self-inflicted)

One is a curse-breaker since basically the age of 11 and the other works with dragons. Of course they have scars, but none are self-inflicted.

T- Time (How would they react when finding out their s/o had limited time left to live?)

They would spend all that time with them, and try to create as many memories as possible.

U- Urge (How badly do they get the urge to see s/o after separating?)

Here I’m going to assume is when they are apart and not actually broken up. I’d say they don’t always need to be next to each other. The urge would appear if they saw their s/o talking to someone they see as potential competition.

V- Vent (How do they get rid of feelings they find unnecessary?)

Alice finds a place where she can be alone and lets it all out.

I imagine Charlie just grabbing a broom (or a dragon when he’s an adult) and flying around.

W- Wildcard (Random Headcanon)

After Charlie tells Alice why he really broke up with her, Alice will quickly realize that she still loves him, but won’t break up with the person she’s seeing at the time as she cares about that person and doesn’t want to hurt him.

X- X-ray (How readable are they? Can they see their s/o's emotions easily?)

Alice has basically no poker face, especially for people close to her. So Charlie can easily read her emotions, except when he suggested dragons to help with the final vault. He was too excited by his own idea to notice Alice’s face which clearly read as “are you for real?!”.

Alice isn’t as good as reading Charlie’s emotion, but not because he has a poker face, though I imagine he’s less readable than Alice. I think she can be so into her own head to figure out how to solve the current problem, she won’t notice the small emotional cues in Charlie’s face.

Y- Yearn (What do they want but can't have?)

Charlie: Get back with Alice after their break up.

Alice: Get back with Charlie after he tells her why he broke up with her.

Z- Zero (How do they spend their last moments with their s/o?)

In each other’s arms. (Let’s embrace the cliché.)

[foreveralwaysanauthor]

It’s Right

Monthly Prompts Day 15

August 15th - Self-Help

AU Used: None.

Characters: Miles (OC)

Notes: Eleanor, I know how much you like my Miles content, so I may or may not have added a little something for you!

Song: Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day

It was a very last minute decision, leaving his home. Originally, he was going to stick it out and stay until both of his siblings were old enough to leave with him, but after that night, he just couldn’t take it any longer. Living with his father was a nightmare. Miles wrote out letters to his brothers, letting them know that he would be back to visit but that he needed to find someplace safe where he knew he could protect them; a place the three of them could call home away from their father’s control. He left the letters under the boys’ pillows, taking what little he had in his room and taking off in the middle of the night while his father was passed out on the living room couch with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand.

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road. Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go.

He found a map in the glovebox of his father’s car, taking a pen and marking out the path he wanted to take. His plan was to head as far south as he could, stay there for a while and then see if he could find a way to the other side of the country. He wanted to be as far away from his father as possible.

Miles stole his father’s car that night; he didn’t have a vehicle of his own to use as he was not yet eighteen and his father would have to sign for the motorcycle he wanted. Miles had saved up enough money to get him out of town and that was all he was concerned about, really. He stopped at the Georgia Welcome Center not far over the South Carolina-Georgia border, sleeping in the car overnight so he wouldn’t have to spend any money. The next morning, a nice trucker named Robert Wilson had knocked on the window of Miles’ father’s car, checking on Miles to see if he was okay and insisting on buying Miles something to eat for breakfast as he had a daughter around the same age as Miles.

That bacon sandwich had been the best thing Miles had tasted in quite some time.

So make the best of this test and don't ask why. It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time.

The trucker asked Miles where he was going and, after Miles told him he was heading to Florida, insisted on having the teenager follow him down so he wouldn’t get lost. Miles asked Robert where he was heading and the trucker responded that he was heading home to St. Pete Beach after doing a longhaul trip to Minnesota. Miles told the man that he would follow him all the way, if that was where he was heading. Going from one beach to another seemed like a good idea as Miles already knew what to expect from a tourist beach town.

After they finished breakfast, the two men got into their vehicles and took off for Florida.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right. I hope you had the time of your life.

It took the pair almost six hours to reach their destination, but Miles couldn’t help but feel elated. It was his eighteenth birthday and he was starting out his adulthood in a different state, four hundred and seven miles away from his father. The only thing that could make it better would be if his brothers had come with him. Miles brushed it off. He knew that he would have them with him again once he had a place for himself and enough room for his two younger brothers. He was old enough to have legal custody of them now, not that the court system would listen to him as he had just stolen a car and taken it over multiple state lines.

That day, at Robert Wilson’s insistance, Miles met the man’s family, consisting of his wife Lilian and their daughter, fifteen-year-old Gianna. Gianna tried her hardest to stay quiet during Miles visit at her house, keeping her nose in a book and barely talking to the older boy at first. By the end of his visit, however, the two seemed to be good friends, having talked about books for the duration of Miles’ time there. Lilian was nice enough to ask if Miles would like to accompany them to the nearby restaurant that had opened about two years prior and was a hit with most of the teenagers in the area. It was at that restaurant - a place on the beach named Big Momma’s - that he met Butchy, a tall, loud, and overall kind biker-boy with a very fake sounding New York accent. Butchy quickly became Miles’ best friend.

The slightly older teenager decided to offer Miles the spare room in the house he shared with his sister Lela. Butchy even got Miles a job at a workshop near a shopping center on Sycamore Close. There had been no openings at the same garage Butchy and his friends worked at, but the thought was there. Miles was welcomed into the friend group with open arms.

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind. Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time.

By the end of his first year in St. Pete Beach, Miles had made enough money to start looking for a house. With his friends helping him, he was able to get a recently vacated house just two houses away from the trucker that had helped him find a new hometown. Miles sold his father’s car in exchange for the Indian motorcycle he had wanted for years. He started collecting photographs of his new friends, hanging them on his living room walls and putting some on shelves in his bedroom to make it feel more “homey” than it had been originally.

Slowly, but surely he was making himself a new life with new friends and, even better, new family.

Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial. For what it's worth it was worth all the while.

After a few weeks of being roped into Butchy’s friend group, a motorcycle group calling themselves “The Rodents,” Miles decided to get a tattoo of the gang’s logo on his shoulder. To him, it symbolized new beginnings and a chance at a happier life. In secret, however, he got another tattoo on his wrist of his brothers’ names, a tattoo he kept covered by a bracelet or a bandana at all times. That tattoo had a separate meaning to Miles as it signified a promise to himself and his brothers.

Miles would get them back, no matter the cost.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right. I hope you had the time of your life.

A while later, he fell in love. It hadn’t lasted long as the woman he was with, had to leave after the summer ended. Miles felt as though his heart had been ripped out. He had fallen hard for her. Gianna Wilson, now known as Giggles by her friends, had warned him that it was probably not a good idea. While he hated to admit it out loud, he acknowledged that she was right and forced himself to move on.

Not long after, a girl named Mick showed up and fell in love with his best friend, Butchy. He flirted with her at first, yet found himself seeing her more as a younger sister as he watched her relationship with Butchy grow stronger. Mick and Butchy ended up getting engaged after Mick’s eighteenth birthday. Miles believed that he would end up single forever at that point. He decided he would be okay with that if nothing else happened to change his mind.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right. I hope you had the time of your life.

It was around that time, if Miles recalled correctly, that he met her. It had been a rough few days for Miles as his motorcycle had been practically taken hostage by his boss for an extensive list of repairs that would take him forever to pay off. Tanner, one of the surfers that was Butchy’s sister, Lela’s boyfriend, suggested his twin sister, Caroline, could give him a ride to work until his bike was out of captivity.

Initially, Miles wasn’t sure he liked the idea. He wasn’t a morning person at all, but the talkative Caroline didn’t seem to mind much. His coffee-less morning made him snippy and, although he felt bad afterward, he was very short with her on the ride to work that first morning. He had regretted his actions immensely and made sure to apologize when she returned to pick him up from work that evening. Then, after a nice conversation with Caroline on the ride home, Miles found himself enjoying the blonde’s company.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.

A while later, his brothers, Royce and Bentley, came to stay with him, having sent him a letter not long before showing up. They had followed in his footsteps, borrowing a family member’s car and taking it the rest of the way to St. Pete Beach. The family member took a plane down to get the car and drive it home, congratulating Miles on taking the two boys in. Miles felt proud of himself for the first time in a long time.

He had his brothers, he had a family with The Rodents, and, to top it all off, he had the woman of his dreams. It may have taken him a little while, but Miles had finally found himself living the life he had always wanted.

Miles never expected his life to become what it was, but at the end of the day, he couldn’t be happier with the outcome.

I hope you had the time of your life.

[flyingmustachio]

You know I think maybe some of the rigid polarization issues we’re having here in the U.S. over the past couple of decades especially, might be due to how our concept of family has changed? The bubbled-off, nuclear family of just mom dad and kids living together only really became widespread in the 1950′s or so. Before then, grandparents or other relatives very frequently lived together.

I always think  about how my perspective would be different if I had been raised with my extended family always around. Many cultures raise children even more communally. In many Native American cultures, for example, the role of primary child-carer goes to the grandparents. What would my concept of “mother” be like if I never expected to be raised by her? What roles would she take in my life? How would my feelings towards her be different than under my current conception of “motherhood”?

I imagine that if I were raised in an extended family situation, I would have been exposed to many more viewpoints from the very beginning of my life. In the U.S. children don’t have such close relationships with their extended family. Even with the closest families that visit their extended relatives frequently, it’s simply not possible to attain the kind of intimate relationship you develop by living with and being by around someone directly in your home. The parent’s here authority is seen as pretty exclusive. I feel like there’s a culture of heavy silence, if you will. Even if you are an aunt or cousin or grandfather of the child, you are expected never to contradict what the parents want the child to learn. For example, some parents will get upset if a friend or relative explains something to their child that the parents wanted to censor from the child’s knowledge until they were older. I have seen Christian parents get angry that a family friend admitted they were Buddhist in front of the child, or worse, gave a basic explanation of their differing religion or political view. That’s why there’s always so much hullabaloo around gay representation in our media - “But what am I supposed to tell my kids?!” is a constant talking point, as if it were the rest of the world’s job to keep the existence of homosexuality secret so as not to contradict their personal parenting decisions.

I feel like we Americans are raised in tiny cultural bubbles to some extent. Most of us don’t encounter anything new that really challenges our assumptions until quite late - even into adulthood. Some never end up having any of their beliefs shaken at all, simply because they never encounter anything different enough to make them reconsider their perspectives. If you are born in a family that trends in one religious or political direction or other, you tend to stay in that religion and party, because your parents alone control what type of people, media, news, and perspectives you have access to. Your brain develops in an environment specifically tailored towards those beliefs. Your perspective matures in a place where you are intentionally hampered from too deep a knowledge or insight into opposing views. Anyone who believes differently from your family is “othered.” On the more severe end, which I can speak to directly as I was raised for some of my childhood in a Charismatic Catholic mini cult, anyone who believes anything different from the chosen narrative was outright dehumanized. They were dangerous. Of course we were supposed to love everyone, but oh, our lesbian neighbors, your Wiccan friend, they’re under demonic influence, you know. It’s not that they’re evil, they’re just wounded. They’re not yet saved. Better to pity and pray for them from afar, and be careful not to spend too much time with them, or else they may open you up to demonic influences too!

I remember once my mother shaking her head and saying to me, her voice full of exasperation and disappointment “I JUST don’t understand why you don’t have more friends like you!” At the time I was just confused. My friends were like me! We all liked books! We all liked each other’s music and humor! It took me a while to realize that she meant “why don’t you have more friends who are Christian.” And not just Christian, but our specific brand of Christian. We even avoided relatives who thought too differently. I could spend as much time as I wanted with children of other cult members, with freedom, but my friends from public school had to be vetted, and time spent around them was limited, and with more supervision.

I feel like this is why so many college graduates get told they “changed” after college, or even that they got “ruined.” It isn’t until college that some of us even learn assumption-challenging information. I know for me I DID change during college, simply because I learned so much information I had to expand my perspective on everything. I basically learned whole new ways to think and evaluate. Even if you start to question things, in this kind of bubbled-off environment, from the child’s perspective there can be IMMENSE pressure to toe the family line. In families that have very heavily curated the child’s environment and social contacts, deviating from “acceptable” opinions too far could mean losing contact with not just your family, but your entire community. Not just through direct shunning or disowning, but through coldness or constant arguments or proselytizing. It’s difficult to maintain a deep relationship with a family who only tries to reconvert you every single time they talk to you. 

Americans also don’t travel much - lots of us who live near enough the borders have been able to go to Canada or Mexico, but a huge chunk of Americans never get the chance to leave the States at all. If they do it’s maybe one cruise that goes only to touristy places that already fit their mental stereotypes. I am lucky enough to have family in London, and have had the chance to travel to Europe several times in my life. Traveling is such an important way to expand your perspective, and most of us simply can’t afford to do it.

So here you’ve got a lot of Americans being raised with extremely limited points of view, in separate media bubbles that they continue to stay in into adulthood, to the point where the views of the other political side are completely nonsensical to you because they’re coming from a perspective that you can’t even imagine because you barely know it exists. And in the worst, most culty cases, where you and everyone you’re close to share a cultural identity based on demonizing the “other side,” you’re going to be afraid, deep down, to challenge any of your beliefs because it might mean having to rethink your entire world view, and be considered to be under demonic influence yourself.

Obviously this nuclear family isolation is on a huge spectrum. Most U.S. families are not in cults, and many U.S. families are very open-minded. But I think it’s enough of a thing to be a thing, if that makes any sense.

But if I had been raised in an extended family or in a family model where child-rearing authority were spread out to more adults, whether related or not, I would have had SO much more depth of social knowledge. If I had been allowed to have deep relationships with and rely on and ask questions of more adults, I feel like it would have been much easier to understand other’s perspectives, much quicker. Even if all your relatives are of the same religion or political party, they’re bound to have a much wider range of opinion than a few carefully curated friends who agree completely.

I would really love if someone from a communal-parenting culture would weigh in, I’d love to hear your perspective on this.

[aelrindelwrites]

Prologue for the Looking Glass

I wonder if others have looked through the looking glass as I have. If others have seen the Fae, or that the Fae interact with the common man. The fact they can disguise themselves to look as humans, yet cause us misfortune. Stealing children or turning straw rotten, they seem to be a curse that God... "Jesus, fuck all!" was loudly exclaimed in the large renovated school bus as the book sailed across the room before hitting the wall and falling back onto the bed. Much to the dismay of the young woman sitting on the bed. She gave a weary sigh and shifted slowly. Making her way to the window, the show looked out at the magic particulates that were floating around the RV, subconsciously reminding the woman of her task. Find some missing object for a person who couldn't be otherwise contacted without this unknown item that had no other description than the woman would know it by sight. "Elves and Fae are still up to their usual games," she sighed and moved forward, sliding off her bed and opening the washer that was just beneath is to toss in her day's dirty clothing. Naked, she walked to the bathroom and started a hot shower. Ignoring any of the particles that had floated through the walls toward the shower head as the water heated.  She sat on the toilet and flipped through the various texts that she had received within the past few hours. As soon as the mirror started to fog, she climbed in. She resisted moaning at the heat of the water. It had been a long day and she had driven approximately one hundred fifty miles throughout the day. She had not stopped except to cook a brief meal or to step back to use the restroom. But after 2 days of driving, she had reached the target location that had been given to her by the circle that hired her this time. Death Valley National Park in California supposedly had the stolen item. So the woman found herself parked at Stovepipe Wells. "OK, Eielore, tomorrow, I am going out and finding that... I dunno what it's called..." she trailed off... attempting to give herself a pep talk that left her more depressed. She looked at her silver hair that stuck around her shoulders down to her waist. The color gave her the urge to dye it, something that she had never done. Eielore had been playing with the idea to dye her natural hair; however, she reminded herself again that if she wanted to change her hair color, then she could just shapeshift. But she also recognized that using her magic and skills was a fast way to get herself kicked out of a Human-only park. That is how it worked in this world now. Since the realization of the Fae, the world had separated into human and non-human. Laws had been placed to make the separation, and people were required to declare where they stood between the two. Books were written on how to torture and kill. Others of the Fae had been kidnapped by scientists to study their anatomy and abilities so that humans could 'protect themselves.'  Even though the Fae had lived alongside them for thousands of years. The Fair Folk had existed before humanity, as it currently existed. Eielore had watched the exposure of the Fae as it happened in the year 2004. Since then, in the 16 years since the incident, watched as laws were formed to prevent the Fae from certain areas or keep from what the humans called human rights. Luckily, the United States had not gone back to the way it had been shortly before Eielore's birth. When humans enslaved other humans, and unbeknownst to them, some Elven kind. That blood had mixed down, however, as Elves came to have other children, some mixed and some not. Eielore had watched all the changes quietly, and her family hid and saved. Gaining the money to live quite well. Then the government created Non-human housing areas. They were the only areas that non-humans could live in. Her family and parents had to move from their pleasant home to a small one-bedroom house, with a little bit of land. Her parents had since remodeled the home for them to all have their own spaces. Eielore had already moved out, 34 years before the accident. When Fae were still unnoticed. In 2017 she had bought this school bus with money that she made in some test trial for an Elf repellent, and her parents helped her remodel it so that it looked like a home and how she envisioned it. However, her thoughts turned to that accident... In 2004, a world outrage as a Fae creature revealed their power in public. They were part of a group that had rebelled against the higher council the Fae in the US had formed to hide their identities. This was to promote peace among the Fae and Humans. After the years of watching humans, it was known that the Fae would never be accepted. Humans were not quick to take others that were different. Then a younger group had gotten in bad with people that pushed for others to accept people equally. This was not the issue. The issue was the group attempted to push others to accept people by being aggressive or other forms of assault. Their assault was how they found out that some of the people that they had attacked were younger Fae. Ones that had not reached adulthood yet. The human extremists had accused them of something or other, and they attacked the young ones. One had used their powers. Over time the two groups after that incident became friends, and the young ones had become more violent. They had started a rebellion against the council. One Eielore almost joined. Till she saw the violence. Then a youngling killed a human... publicly. On national news. Then it quickly became international, and all of the Fae were exposed. But since they had been betrayed by violent extremists... All Fae were considered violent. This meant that when humans wanted something not entirely legal, they went to Eielore. She gathered the information for the rich if they wanted it on others. Sometimes she took assassination jobs if they paid well enough. But that also meant that Eielore almost exclusively worked for wealthy humans. Sometimes, if the person was in great need, she helped them also. Whether they were of her kind or not. Sometimes humans who were poor or being abused needed help. Eielore couldn't stand and watch. None of her family could either. "Jeez, if I knew my thoughts were going to get so dark, I would have just looked at the news reports from then." She mumbled as she turned off the water, having finished her shower and ran the hot water well and truly cold by that point. Stepping out, she wrapped herself in a fluffy towel and walked back to her bedroom area and shut the door behind her. She had noticed some guy peeking through her window, someone who was probably out to smoke a cigarette. Eielore also blamed that on her leaving her blinds up. She hadn't disguised herself that well that day. Her ears poked slightly out of her hair, but he didn't seem close enough to notice. And she passed by so quickly that the chances he saw were slim, but that did not stop her worry. She grabbed a pair of ripped jeans and a black lace bralette with a corseted front. Drying her hair, she threw it into a ponytail and hid them. Using her shifting magic, she blunted the tops so that were there any questions she could blame the lighting. Stepping out, the man was still standing there, smoking another cigarette. "You're an elf bitch. What are you doing here? This is a human-only area," he spat, pulling an object from his pocket, something she suspected was a knife lined with one of the poisons meant for elves. Maybe even the one that she helped develop. "I'm human. Sorry for the confusion, my windows and lights tend to cause that," Eielore smiled and lifted her hair to show a blunted tip. "I know what I saw. You are one of them Fae bitches. Now get the fuck back into your little bus and drive off, or I will make sure you're not driving anywhere ever again," he had pulled out a knife. It looked to be iron and definitely coated. Eielore sighed. There weren't many options to prove that she was human. She had a fake ID, and that would work in a pinch. She also had it for the reservation. Holding out one hand as a peace treaty, she reached around and grabbed her wallet, and pulled out the fake ID before passing it on to the man. Proof she was human. He snatched it and looked it over before shoving it back at her. Eielore pushed it back into her wallet and gave him a polite nod before heading off in the direction that had roughly been given to her. He had grumbled about her being some type of whore. Maybe he was right; she was a whore. But at least she was a damn good one that did her job. Not that it mattered to him, she would make sure to never see him. She figured it would be that easy. After she found this item, she would be gone and leave California far behind in her rearview mirror and move on to bigger and better things. After she visited New York to make sure her parents were OK. Tensions there had been rising between the two, and they had been worried. Neither of them learned shaping powers. This made the area dangerous, and they relied on hiding all their marks. Pretending to be younger than they were as they moved around and only coming out with their ID's if they had to. A plan that her mother felt would assure their safety. All the thoughts of what could go wrong swirled in Eielore's head. And before she knew it, she stood in front of a sword that Eielore had seen in books and guides when she was a child. A weapon of the protector of the Annwfn, King of the Tylwyth Teg and Lord of Underworld... Gwynn ap Nudd. "Well fuck," she grumbled as she gently grabbed the stolen weapon. Turning around, she headed back to the bus and took her hike back, not enjoying the next part of her task. A visit with the king of the fair folk meant a long trek. But she would be leaving California. She'd never see the man in the

RV next to her again, and she would see her family. It was almost a dream come true... almost. She just hoped it would stay that way till her next job. Not worry about some rich asshole or new whack job that was out to make her life hell. She had seen a lot of them. There was a police officer that hated non-humans so much that he chased and framed non-humans for crimes they never committed. That had been 10 years ago, though, and last she heard, he died in a shootout shortly after her renovation of the bus. A family of one of the framed had enough. Eielore shook her head of the thoughts. She had to start the vehicle and get moving. Enough was enough of this state, and she was ready to go.

[paulisweeabootrash]

First Impression: Noragami

Okay, after that crappy “reviewlet” thing, I'm back with another show I actually feel like saying something interesting about:

Noragami (2014)

Episodes watched: 5.  Or... actually, 14, but this review is only based on the first 5 episodes of season 1.

Yato is a minor god.  A very minor god.  A god who has no worshippers, no shrine, and relies on doing odd jobs for people in exchange for offerings of ¥5, a service which he advertises with graffiti and hand-made business cards.  His Regalia — a human soul who temporarily takes the form of living equipment a god can use — just quit.  Things are looking down for him.

Hiyori Iki is a martial-arts-loving middle schooler who just happens to encounter Yato, whom she, reasonably, believes to be a regular mortal, on the street.  She is hit by a bus while pushing Yato out of its path and gets reincarnated in a fantasy world temporarily separated from her body.  Hiyori, understandably, has some trouble coming to terms with this, especially when Yato explains to her that she is not dead (or, not completely, anyway), but instead in an in-between state where she is able to repeatedly temporarily leave her body.  Much much more to her confusion and horror, her in-between state grants her the ability to see supernatural creatures usually hidden from humans, including Phantoms, eldritch abominations that often appear as psychedelically-colored flying sea creatures and possess humans, both living and dead, to induce them to do bad things.

Hiyori is now stuck between the “Near Shore” (the world of the living) and “Far Shore” (world of the dead) rather than a resident of either, and those from the Far Shore — Phantoms, human souls, and gods alike — will certainly notice this.  Yato and other gods frequently use their Regalia (what is the plural of “Regalia”?  “Regalias”?  That sounds wrong.) to fight Phantoms in addition to (or as part of) answering the prayers of their followers.  Since Yato needs a new Regalia, at this point, I was starting to suspect this will maybe be a quasi-magical-girl premise where Hiyori becomes Yato's new Regalia and then falls for him in a "please don't think about what is at bare minimum a several century age gap" uncomfortable romcom.  But... no.  This show goes in a more complicated and interesting direction than that.

Regalia must be sufficiently pure (and apparently fully-dead) human souls, so Yato, who seems to look down on humans even compared to other gods, simply drafts the first suitable soul he encounters.  That soul, a teen boy with no memory of his Earthly life, whom Yato names Yukine, luckily turns out to be a very talented Regalia and a quick learner, but also frustrated about his death and prone to sinful thoughts (more on that in a moment).  Hiyori takes an interest in Yukine, mainly to take care of him because Yato is certainly not doing that well, but I actually kind of get the impression she's attracted to him, especially given that, unlike Yato, Yukine is approximately her age (or was before he died... it's not clear how long he, or any other Regalia, have been dead).  She also takes an (academic) interest in the supernatural world in general, which is only partly what she expected or imagined, and she becomes a de facto member of Yato and Yukine's "team" as it were.  But also overwhelmed and mainly just wants her soul to be securely re-attached to her body so she'll stop accidentally leaving it at inopportune times — to her friends and family, it appears that she has now been having severe and unpredictable episodes and collapsing and losing consciousness since her bus accident, and she often leaves her body lying around in public without realizing it.  Or, in one case, draped over the top of a fence, which is... not an ideal sleeping location.  Yato vaguely claims he will restore her, but has no idea how to.

So far, the story has focused on the interactions between the three of them and on exploring the setting/what Phantoms are/how the gods work/etc.  This has revealed a fascinating detail which, beyond the scope of the five episodes I took notes on, becomes one of the main arcs of the first season: although the gods are amoral, or at least behave according to a totally different set of standards, they are still affected by human morality.  Morality, says Yato, is socially constructed by humans, but affects the gods vicariously by causing “blight”.  If humans decide an act is sinful, then a Regalia doing that thing causes a blight to both themself and the god they serve which must be ritually cleansed.  Yukine, despite being initially pure enough to become a Regalia, starts to cause blight to Yato because of his jealousy of the still-living and his attraction to Hiyori, and this proves to be... well... you’ll see.

We also learn from Kofuku Ebisu, goddess of bad luck and poverty, that Yato used to be a war god, with a past darker than Hiyori is willing to accept or think about.  He will grant anyone's wishes to remain relevant, and this may come back to endanger people.  Yato is also dating(?) Kofuku, and seems to have had a previous romantic relationship with a Regalia named Nora who served him and gives off a serious yandere vibe.  Or actually (spoilers), as it turns out, not named Nora.  "Nora", we learn, is a derogatory term for an entire category of Regalia: those who serve multiple gods and generally do jobs normal Regalia would refuse.  This, in connection with the whole thing about gods being corrupted by their Regalia violating human-made moral standards, raises a worrying question I hope we get an answer to: do noras corrupt their gods, or are they somehow unable to produce corruption because they themselves do not believe anything they're doing is wrong?  This is the sort of question this show raises, and it seems smart and thorough enough to try to answer it... if it doesn't, there's the ongoing manga series to turn to, and this is yet another show I've enjoyed so much that I might start reading it.

-----

Revised W/A/S Scores: 7 / 3 / 3 / !

Weeb: Pretty high on this scale mainly because of its very Shinto background, including very specific patron deities of concepts, gods physically residing in shrines, its specific forms of prayer, the dead just sort of... wandering and acting like still-live humans, and of course the presence of shrine maidens because how can you not have shrine maidens?

Ass: Occasional nudity, but not fanservicey.  Ep. 2, for example, has partial nudity in situations like contemplating in bath and locker room that are not framed sexually but probably would be in a different tone of show.

Shit (writing): I have a weirdly specific translation complaint (because of course I do).  I accidentally learned via Wikipedia that "nora" means "stray", and this seems like information that maybe should've been dropped in the subtitles at some point?  It might actually have made the reveal about what "a nora" is work better in English than in the original Japanese because this meaning would be a surprise to the English subtitle-reading audience.  Anyway, enough about that.  I find the characters enjoyable and their arcs pretty believable.  A main plot conflict between Yato and the nora is clearly forming by the end of the five episodes I cover here, and I'll cheat a bit to say that the first season successfully plays out two story threads while leaving others open for the next season, but not in a cliffhanger or "we clearly didn't know how to wrap this up" way.  An advantage of adapting a popular ongoing manga, I suppose: you can pace things better and also be reasonably sure that there's enough interest to get you another season.

Shit (other): Pretty ending, meh opening.  Great reaction faces.  Moods are accentuated well by variations in the art and animation.  I love the design of the Phantoms because I'm a sucker for surreal depictions of the supernatural.  It's not as dramatically bizarre and imaginative as, say, the witches in Madoka Magica, but still excellent.

Content warning: It is a recurring point that the gods' duties include saving people from suicide, and multiple suicide attempts are depicted (although they are thwarted by divine intervention by Yato).

-----

Stray observations:

- Yato starts out appearing to be a magnificent bastard, but it becomes apparent quickly that... uh... maybe he’s just an asshole.  

- I have no idea why, but Yato sneaking into Hiyori's house and mirroring her dad's actions is one of the funniest things I've seen recently.

- You'd think at some point Hiyori would develop a plan, or at least a cover story, for abandoning her body, even if she remains unable to control when she leaves it.  Not to mention that she'd sometimes come back to an injured body or find that someone has moved her or called an ambulance or something.

- The background music includes rap in English with autotune, which is... surprising, but neither good nor bad.

- This setting raises the same set of troubling questions about the concept of an afterlife that a lot of afterlife concepts do, since it appears that people are "frozen" at the age they were when they died but also have the ability to learn (and later, outside the set of episodes I covered here, to mature mentally at least somewhat)... do child Regalia or children's souls in general ever mentally mature in the same way that real children do as they ender adolescence and adulthood?  Are there baby ghosts hanging around with no concept that they are dead, unable to ever gain that concept because they will never age?  (I feel like this is turning into a literary criticism of religion, and that's waaaay outside the scope of this blog, so I'll end this here.)

[cherryblossomcheesecake]

God & His Priests & His Kings V2: Chapter 1 - A FFXV OC Fanfic

I’m rewriting this fic almost 3 years after I finished it since new ideas and plot bunnies have hit so here’s hoping I can stick with the series and see it through this time around. Sequel to How Rare & Beautiful.

Master list Word Count: 2,350 Upload: 05/23/21

Vale of Eternal Blossoms - Neal Acree

I knelt quietly in the palace gardens, praying to any gods who would listen. I was sending off my daily pleas to the astrals and anyone else listening; I prayed for the health of the three princess elects, and their consorts and children. I prayed for the health of my mother, and for the health of the royal families of Lucis and Tenebrae.

Littered around me were piles of flowers and herbs that I had begun bundling either to be put on display throughout the various rooms in the palace or to be dried in the apothecary. The afternoon sun kissed my pale skin, offering some colour to my cheeks. I twirled a blue flower between my fingers, thinking of the little boy I had left behind in Lucis seven years ago, with those big sapphire blue eyes and messy black hair.

Seeing the prince grow through the dreamscape was hard. As Noctis grew older, he began to seek me out less, making our visits few and far between. I hadn't seen him since he started high school this year, his hair trimmed to a short length to adhere to school rules. He had slowly begun to shoot up in height, easily passing my five foot two and continuing to grow.

Communicating in the waking world wasn't any better though. Letters between Goryeo and Insomnia took weeks to get from the sender to the destination, nevermind how difficult it was to find the time to sit down and write a letter. I had sent a response off to Noctis a month ago, but with the exam season just around the corner, it was hard to say when I'd get a reply.

I sighed heavily, turning back to the flowers and herbs I had yet to sort through. Blades of cut grass clung to the dark green fabric of my skirt as I picked through the stocks and bound them together with twine.

I had become so immersed in my task that I let out a small scream when a pair of hands wrapped around my waist, pulling me back against a firm chest.

"You need to be more alert when you're alone, jagiya." a husky voice whispered into my ear, making me fight to turn around and hit my assailant on the arm.

Orion gave me a toothy grin, chuckling as I huffed at him before replying.

"And you shouldn't go around scaring court ladies when they're working. You're lucky I didn't have a knife," I said, poking his chest as I glared at his tanned face.

"You wouldn't stab me, you value my company too much." he stated cockily, pushing a strand of hair away from my face.

"I may value your company and friendship, however I do not appreciate when you disrupt my work." I said as I turned away to continue bundling up the herbs.

I had met Orion when I was thirteen, and he was fifteen. I had been in the market that day running errands for my mother and he had been working at a fish stall that my family frequently purchased from. The older boy had talked my ear off the entire time I was at the stall, and asked after me in the following weeks.

Myung-Hee got it into her head about making a match between me and the half-galahdian boy, sending me down to the market for errands more often, usually to his father's fish stall for random things. Orion and I eventually became friends, spending the afternoons on the coast when we could both get away from our respective jobs.

In the three years that I had known him, Orion had swiftly changed from a boy into a man. As he inched closed to adulthood, his features began to appear sharper as baby fat melted away, and stubble covered his strong jaw. His long dark hair was adorned with braids and some strands bound together with leather strips, pulled back from his tanned face with the sides shaven. It was an attractive look for him, a beautiful blend of his mixed heritage involving both Galahdian and Goryean undertones.

And of course Orion wasn't the only one blooming into adulthood. I was experiencing puberty all over again, dealing with the rushes of forgotten hormones and rapid body changes. My body in this world wasn't too different from that of the one I had on Earth, save for minor differences in the finer details.

My skin was more golden despite how little time I spent in the sun, with my long dark hair falling to my lower back in a sea of black. My eyes were more upturned at the outer corners, my face fuller. My petite frame carried little to no curves, my breasts smaller than before, but I remained at my old height of five foot two.

In comparison, Orion towered over me even when sitting, his palm against the grass as he leaned towards me.

"When is the third princess planning on relieving you of your duties, court lady Han-Farron?" the man asked, smiling roguishly as he came closer.

My brown gaze flicked up to meet his own, taking in the mischievous glimmer that lurked within them, sending my chest aflutter.

"Princess Eun-Byeol usually dismisses me shortly after nightfall, unless she requires me further." I replied, tucking herbs and flowers into a basket for travel from the gardens to the palace.

"I'll wait for you then…" Orion whispered, leaning in even closer as he tucked a blossom behind my ear before swiftly departing.

A small smile graced my lips as I watched him go, my fingers delicately touching the blossom. I gathered up what remained of the flowers before lifting the basket as I rose and hurried off in the opposite direction, my dark green skirt fluttering in the wind.

The stone pathway wound through the massive garden, intersecting with other paths and branching off at various points as it led up towards the palace. The green of the garden soon gave way to the red pillars of the palace, the high walls and soldiers separating the garden from the courtyard beyond.

As soon as I entered, I was surrounded by the people of the palace. Court ladies and servants milled about, no part of the palace was silent as they carried out their duties. I walked among them, heading for the kitchen to drop off the various herbs and flowers so the could be delivered to the appropriate heads of staff.

Upon entering the kitchen, I was directed by court lady Oh to place the basket on the long wooden table that stretched across the kitchen. After words, I approached the older woman, head bowed respectfully as she handed me a tray of tea and rice cakes.

"Deliver this to third princess Eun-Byeol's chambers, she is taking her evening tea with the first princess Gyeong-Hui. Do not return until you are dismissed." court lady Oh ordered in a stern tone, no different from usual.

I accepted the tray with a small nod and a quiet, "Yes, lady Oh," before departing from the kitchens and making my way across the palace. The chambers of my lady, third princess Eun-Byeol, was farthest from the kitchens, prompting me to stride quickly as the air chilled with the slow onset of evening.

The guards posted outside my lady's chambers opened the doors at my approach, allowing me entry to the receiving room where the two princesses sat talking.

"Ah, lady Han-Farron. You've returned from the gardens I see, and with tea and cakes." came princess Eun-Byeol's bell-like voice as I placed the tray on the table, setting the tea pot and rice cakes between the royals.

"Yes, your highness. Court lady Oh believed that rice cakes would be suitable for the first and third princesses." I answered respectfully, my eyes directed towards the floor as my hands pressed against my abdomen as I withdrew from the table.

"A good decision on her part." Princess Gyeong-Hui confirmed as she selected a cake from the plate, "Now, my dear, how are you adjusting to being a personal court lady to princess Eun-Byeol? I know this must be rather different for you." the elder princess inquired, her voice weathered by age.

"The third princess has been nothing but kind to me, your highness. She doesn't ask too much of me and is fair in her orders." came my response as the two princesses continued with their evening tea.

"Good. You may be a lower station than her, but you are still a member of the Han clan and my grand-daughter. It's is an honour for princess Eun-Byeol to have a personal court lady of your standing." the first princess continued, taking a sip of her tea as she spoke.

"Of course, your highness." I answered simply, standing still against the wall behind the older woman.

The two princesses continued to speak with each other, allowing me time to let my mind wander. I thought back on when I became Eun-Byeol's personal lady, when I had just turned sixteen in this new life.

I had been a regular court lady before then, starting when I turned thirteen, learning etiquette and the skills that were necessary to serve and provide for a family. But as my features became more mature and my figure went from girl to woman, I gained the attention of the other two princesses and their court ladies.

I was approached by my grandmother and her court lady following my sixteenth birthday, the pair explaining the role of personal court ladies to me in great detail. We were to be the unseen double of our princess, so that if our charge was in danger or needed to wander anonymously, the court lady would stand in her place with nobody suspecting a thing. The makeup the princesses wore to disguise certain parts of their features made it much easier to pull off the switching of identities; the flowing silks of the ruqun hiding the differences in body shape, and education on politics and mannerisms assisting in the deception. I had only stood in as Eun-Byeol's double a few times, but it was amazing how much we did look like each other when I was dressed as her.

I was brought out of my thoughts at the sound of Gyeong-Hui's chair scraping against the wood floor as she stood to take her leave.

"It was a pleasure to speak with you, princess Eun-Byeol. We don't often converse outside of court," she said, giving a slight nod of her head.

The younger girl rose as well, bowing her head in respect as she replied, "It was an honour to host you. I hope we can enjoy each others company more often."

Gyeong-Hui nodded once more before turning and sweeping out the door with a guard and handmaiden behind her. Eun-Byeol headed towards her bronze mirror that rested on her dressing table, as I quickly placed the empty plate, teapot and cups on my tray before following her further into her living space.

I began to assist her in removing various hair pins and ornaments, watching as sections of her hair began to fall from her formal updo. Once all her hair was released from the various pins and twists, I gently began combing the tangled strands, working through the knotted sections with care. It was a long process due to the length of the princess' hair, but thankfully the knots were easily untangled, and I began to help Eun-Byeol remove her ruqun and redress in her night clothes. The white silk nightdress was simpler for the princess to handle on her own, so I began disposing of the dirty ruqun so that it could be washed.

"Is there anything else you need, your highness?" I asked politely as the older woman stood across the room.

"No, that'll be all for the evening, thank you." Eun-Byeol replied, her cool gaze landing on me briefly before turning towards her bed. I bowed respectfully despite her back being turned to me, and I departed from her living space.

The evening guard had begun their watch as I closed the door behind me, the night's chill touching my cheeks. I sighed and quickly made my way to the small room located not too far from the princess' chambers that had been appointed to me. They were located in a secluded courtyard that was near the walls separating the palace from the gardens, the area free of trees and washed in moonlight.

I slipped into my room, quietly closing the door behind me. The rice paper door that led to the courtyard was open, letting the moonlight into the small room and illuminating Orion's large figure as he laid on the bedding. I smiled silently before unpinning my hair for the night, listening to the shuffling of fabric as the older man shucked his tunic across the room before padding over to where I kneeled in front of my small dressing table.

Kneeling behind me, Orion brushed my hair away from the side of my neck before slowly brushing his lips over sensitive skin. I shivered lightly, allowing him to have his fun as I slowly wiggled out of my outer clothes, letting the silk of my hanbok drop to the floor.

I giggled when his lips brushed over a particularly ticklish spot on my neck, slipping out of his arms and walking over to the bedding, smiling as dark, hungry eyes followed me. Orion slowly followed, the beads in his hair clacking as his lips sought out mine once he stood in front of me.

His kiss was hungry and lustful, large hands roaming my torso as he attempted to remove my under clothes and cotton underskirt. The skin-to-skin contact was heavenly after spending a few nights without him, warmth radiating from his body as we both lost what remained of our clothing. I wrapped my arms around his neck as we lay entwined on the bedding, his lips mouthing a path of fire down my neck and chest, drawing small gasps from me as we slowly succumbed to our lust and passion.

Next Chapter

[chroniclesofawkwardness]

Candy Kane

I’ve never been a big fan of family pictures, or holiday celebrations. When I was about seven, my brother Derek and I had our picture taken with our cousin Kyle, who couldn’t have been much more than a year old. Kyle was smiling, but also pointing at something off in the distance (probably a prop the photographer was using to make him laugh). Derek and I had on clip-on ties that were recycled from a previous Easter. I wore thick, almost square-framed glasses. if I left the house with them on today, they would almost certainly impede my ability to successfully procreate. I had little choice at the time since I needed corrective lenses, and wouldn’t start wearing contacts for at least another six years. 

By the time I’d made the switch, the photo of Kyle, Derek, and me belonged to a museum exhibit—frozen in time like the Iceman—of pictures my grandparents loved, but their grandchildren wished no longer existed. By 1999, they’d moved into a house much smaller than the one in which they’d raised their six children, and the photo had been relegated to a literal wall of shame in their basement. Along the wall were senior pictures of my mother and her siblings, and various photos of the nine grandchildren, including that of a triumvirate of boys c. 1988. I can’t think of a time anyone whose picture was on the wall expressed fondness when looking at it. Each of us probably thought about what we’d tell our younger selves if we passed them on the street, or secretly wished to remain arrested in that state of childhood development, our entire lives uncertain, unfolding, before us one day at a time.

The biggest reason I’ve never been a huge fan of holidays, family pictures, and especially family holiday pictures is because the only capture one moment in time, moments that, for better or worse, are frozen on film or stored in cloud of data and never really gone. Whenever the holidays come around, I have a tendency to cram an entire year’s worth of socializing into 48 hours, or however long I get to spend with my family and friends.

In my family, those occasions are typically when we celebrate some Puritans surviving a hard winter despite wearing ridiculous hats, and the birth of a boy who somehow managed to erase his teenage debauchery from the record. You know he had to screw up those miracles dozens of times in private before nailing them (oops) in public by his early thirties. This must be why we never hear about the zombies of Arimathea he couldn’t quite bring all the way back from the dead, or the numerous weddings he crashed around Nazareth during puberty, flexing to prostitutes about how he could turn water into wine in exchange for performing a number of sins his Dad didn’t have to know about (but would later be considered deadly because Mary Magdalene couldn’t keep her mouth shut) only to deliver vinegar.

I guarantee you Jesus promised Joseph of Arimathea eternal salvation as thanks for the years of resurrection practice, and in return for the use of his tomb one Friday night. Mary Magdalene showed up at the tomb three days after the crucifixion because she finally realized how serious Jesus had been about her fucking up his chances to keep holy the Sabbath day with a bridesmaid, before he hit it big and all the lepers wanted a piece (oops again) of him.

Anyway… If family pictures remind me of who I used to be, holidays remind me of things I used to wholeheartedly believe in.

My first picture with Santa was probably taken in 1982, before I had the surgery to straighten out my leg that left me with a cool scar. My enthusiasm for the holidays faded as I grew older and began to challenge my beliefs that one man could deliver presents to all the world’s children in a single night, and the three wise men could find Jesus just by following a star.

After passing at least numerically through teenage angst, I started to realize how incredibly fortunate I’ve been instead of complaining about what other people had that I didn’t. But what really got me comfortable in my own skin was volunteering, a series of activities in which I put myself in some very uncomfortable positions by surrounding myself with people and places I didn’t know. Still, my desire for the uncomfortable hasn’t weakened my ability to attract the absurd.

I recently had a chance to volunteer at Santa’s Workshop. I put on my elf hat (which I later found out had been on backwards all night) and got to work in the arts and crafts area, but that didn’t last long. Macaroni pictures weren’t doing it for me. I needed a different challenge.

Soon enough, I found my way to where Santa was. My backwards elf hat and I had to keep the line moving so every kid would have a chance to see Santa before closing time at 6 PM. Thee were all kinds of characters around me. Rudolph was there, and so was this character that had Pinocchio’s face, but looked how I imagined the Frisch’s Big Boy would if he’d been on a liquid diet for six months. “Who’s THAT?” I asked the event coordinator. “That’s the Elf on the Shelf,” she replied. “Oh… shit… I was way off,” I said. Whenever I caught the characters waving to children and their families as they passed by, they looked like those people from 80s and 90s workout videos who got stuck doing the low-impact versions of the exercises everybody else was doing at full speed. I wondered if they were secretly asking themselves why they agreed to do this, quietly cursing themselves for not auditioning to sell shit on QVC instead.

I’m not sure if the first child whose Santa aftermath I’ll remember for a long time was just really upset, had a cognitive deficiency, or both. Either way, he or she was not happy. My first post near the man of the hour was standing outside a fence they’d set up around Santa’s chair. My job was to wave the kids and their families forward once the previous family had enjoyed their moment in the makeshift winter wonderland. As the child left Santa’s lap screaming bloody murder and passed through the fence with his/her parent or guardian, they let out a sound I can only describe as a Home Improvement-era Tim Allen grunt mixed with visceral cry for help: UHHHAAHHHOOOOO! 

Before I knew what was happening, the child headbutted themselves against the exterior glass of the Lazarus building, like Kane and the Undertaker from another spoiled childhood fantasy of so many— professional wresting. All the person accompanying the child said was, “Now honey… Don’t hit your head.” All I could think was, “Damn.” But as a man wearing a backwards elf hat, I couldn’t say shit to them.

Not long after witnessing a pediatric concussion, I found myself in the path of low-impact Rudolph herself. I slightly embarrassed myself by giving her a fist bump and talking to the person in the suit as though they were the red-nosed reindeer in the flesh. I came back to my adulthood while low-impact Rudolph was in the middle of muffled sentence about candy canes. I noticed had a bucket in her hands, which I assumed had been filled with the striped holiday icons. There were no candy canes in her bucket, but I did notice a set of Toyota car keys. In my confusion, I almost blurted out, “Shouldn’t you be guiding a sleigh instead of a fucking Camry?” Some things are best left unsaid.  

For the first two hours we were there, the line to see Santa seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see, which made the next encounter I remember even more excruciating. A lady walked up and stood right next to me, thus blocking my view of the line and preventing me from doing the one volunteer task I was explicitly asked to do. To make matters worse, she started offering a running commentary on all the children she saw in Santa’s lap, like a color commentator at a sporting event who didn’t know when to just shut up and let whatever moment they were witnessing wash over them.  

It didn’t matter whether they were boys dressed in identical suits for the obligatory in-lap picture with the big man (Oh, how cute!) or babies whose faces became contorted with red hot agony upon being separated from their mothers and embraced by a strange man (Oh, he is NOT having it!) The line seemed to grow infinitely longer during her soliloquy and I found myself thinking it was a shame the crucifixion of the guy whose birthday everyone would be celebrating in few weeks didn’t draw a crowd like this. In Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk observed that on some crucifixes, Jesus looks jacked enough to be modeling Ray-Ban sunglasses and Guess jeans without a shirt on. I can’t help thinking Chuck would concur that since not everyone will reach that level of supposed piety or physical fitness in a lifetime, it’s a bigger draw to remember God’s only son immediately after he humbled himself to share in our humanity the same way we all started—as a baby.

Anyway… as her commentary droned on, found myself wishing I could be the elf in the holiday classic A Christmas Story who tells Ralphie to get a move on before Santa kicks him down the slide, “Let’s Go!!!” But it bears repeating that in my backwards hat, my powers of persuasion were limited.

Not long after the soliloquy ended, I was approached by what I assume was a mother and daughter pair who were wondering if they’d ever get to see Santa. “I don’t know if we’re going to make it,” the older one said. “Let’s just take my picture with the elf.” “Actually, my name’s Dav…” I wanted to protest, but with my powers weakened, all I could do was acquiesce to their demands. The younger woman held a smartphone at what seemed like six different angles during our impromptu photo session. By the time they were done, I felt certain I was destined for Instagram infamy.  

Eventually, the powers that be decided that I should move inside the fence and stand on the glitter-covered red carpet in an effort the speed up the queue after sunset. Before I went to the other side of the fence, someone asked me if I knew whether or not they’d be cutting people off at 6 PM. I didn’t, but I wished they would. I was growing tired of head injuries, seething, teething infants, and watching people taking selfies or recruiting the other elves to take pictures of them standing under one of the arches leading up to Santa’s chair.

I must have been distracted. The next time someone tried to get my attention, I was accused of holding up the line. The man had on a white, short-sleeved polo shirt. The woman wasn’t wearing a coat, but had on something I never thought I’d see on Santa’s red carpet: a leopard-print dress and dull pink high heels. “I used to be a Santa’s helper in this building,” she exclaimed. She said something else, about 1978, but I was too busy trying to avoid another “Damn” moment to really pay attention. “Actually, we just want our bathroom done. He’s working on our house.” “Fine.” I muttered. She proceeded to throw herself at Santa like he was Hugh Heffner, and she was Playboy Bunny. The whole scene looked ridiculous, but so did I.

After the final patrons had paid Santa a visit, the other volunteer elves and I sat for our own picture with the man himself. It was likely the first time I’d had my picture taken with him since the year the picture of Derek, Kyle, and I was taken. I wasn’t filled with regret over my evaporated childhood and its beliefs, or terribly concerned that no one said a word about my backwards elf hat the whole night. I was glad I’d put myself in another uncomfortable position and come out clean on the other side minus the glitter that will be stuck to the bottoms of the shoes I wore that night for months. I was reminded of the importance of not trying to cram everything into one season, or in Santa’s case, one night. Let the kids have their beliefs and grow up to challenge them. I didn’t have to sit in Santa’s lap to tell him that wish come true was all I wanted for Christmas. I have a funny feeling that whoever he is, was, and has been, he knew what I wanted long before I ever asked.

[countdownto65]

Empathy for Self

What is the nemesis of shame? Empathy.

What is the root of most of your shame? Attention seeking, codependentcy and sexual misconduct.

Empathy. You were the oldest in the family fighting for parental attention against two babies.

You hit puberty early. This was a 2 fold problem. You started getting attention furthering the tight shirts but in turn Everyone in 4th grade started calling you a ho. You had never even kissed a boy. You were not a ho and kids are fucking mean.

But you know who else’s attention you got by having boobs, dressing in body suits and seeking attention at 11 years old? A fucking pedophile. While your behavior made you an easy target, NO ONE DESERVES TO BE SEXUALLY EXPLOITED AT 12, 13, 14, OR 15 YEARS OLD. Did you fuckin get that? No matter what your actions it was not your fault they targeted you. Even if you agreed to it at 13, 14, 15 you can leave that self blame right here bc that was their bad NOT YOURS. This is where you learned sex = attention, power, control. They would buy you stuff, get you high and drunk, make you feel like the best person they know all (not explicitly stated) for sexual behavior. I learned a skewed view on relationships and appropriate sexual behavior in adult married behavior. I learned to emotionally detach from sex. I learned to over ride the “this shit ain’t right” feeling you get in your chest when you are uncomfortable in a situation. All of these things are what set your boundaries and your very left field view of what kind of attention makes you feel worthwild. This was not your fault and sometimes life has shitty things happen that effect our outlook forever.

So it sure was easy to sleep with boyfriends, I mean you “loved” them, they were always older, sex was something that didn’t come from everybody so with my sexual skills I learned from the pedophiles I was the best gf a 16 year old could have. And bc I could so easily separate sex from emotion (as a conditioned response to molestation) and it was a way to get boys I liked to notice me, I gave it up easily. Not necessarily sex, but sexual acts. It was one way I felt power and control. Boys treated me special on the surface bc I was pretty with tight clothes…but I failed to realize the power was momentary at the cost of respect. Both self respect and respect of everyone else. This was when my first experience with the fuck and run type of dude came in. The first time I cared. After that I didn’t at least I told myself I didn't but This was when I began codependency. They didn’t always fuck and run. I was good at getting boys to stick around for a while. I was a serial dater. I had to have a significant other to feel worth so I had too many boyfriends. Always one on hand one on the backburner. This was you reaching out for real connection, something you felt had been missing both with your parents, your abusers and your random sexual encounters. When I had a bf I was faithful. I know that sounds fucked up bc I just said I had a backburner but I was never sleeping with this other guy. I just friend zoned him knowing he liked me so I could establish my safety net. So one day at 17 Ieft home, went to a house party, hooked up with the guy who’s house it was (Matt) and that was the start of my first adult relationship. I loved him from the bottom of my toes but he often cheated on me and I never left him for it. It was at this time that I severed my relationship with my abusers. I was old enough to at least have an inkling something wasn’t right, plus now I considered it cheating and I didn’t cheat on him. He started selling drugs. We both got into cocaine. It was easy bc I dated the dopeman.

Then he went to prison. I continued the relationship with him but continued to date/sleep with men while he was away. This was when I caught an std and began stripping on weekends. This is still caused by poor boundaries and a skewed idea of sex and power… Set in motion by sexual abuse. By now I had slowed way down on cocaine but had a huge weed and alcohol habit. I worked at a catholic preschool during the week but stripped to pay for my substances on Sat nights. This set off a little bit of the uncomfortable double life feeling but I pushed it down. I also hustled people for substances. Although I never slept with anyone for money or drugs. But I def made them think I might so they would get me high. Never felt bad either bc if your a dude willing to be got you deserved to get hustled…that was my mindset. I also saw stripping as a hustle. Hustle to me means fuck with a lame walk with a limp. I mean if your gonna be thirsty I’ll take your money. This is probably when I acquired my mindset that most dudes were creeps and out to get me. I realize now that by appearing easy I was literally attracting creeps but at the time I enjoyed the attention and the feeling of superiority and has a huge sample of men to confirm my bias.

Every now and then though I got tricked out of my hard exterior and caught feelings. This is my deep emotional need for connection, to feel worth while. This is where I met my daughters father. He was a giant red flag but problem with bad boundaries and emotional regulation is if I liked you I would ignore red flags and become overly obsessed with you. This has continued to be a problem throughout adulthood.

Anyways I dated Tony until He went to prison, then Matt got out of prison until we broke up, then Tony got out of prison and we has Olivia. Then Tony went back to prison and I met Jason, I left Jason when Tony got out of prison but when Tony and I broke up I went back to Jason and we had Leah. Are you seeing the boomerang effect of codependentcy and back burner relationships. One stable relationship was not enough.

I wanted Jason to be different. To be a family but unfortunately Jason turned out to be very abusive mentally, physically and emotionally. He was an alcoholic and a mean one. But for some reason I loved him and let him stomp on me over and over. He took my confidence. He took my pride. He took my soul. I tried to break up with him 30 times he would say no and just wouldn’t leave. I was faithful to him until I moved out into subsidised housing. But even then I didn’t have multiple men just one man that to this day I love. This guy put up with being #2 for 2 years on and off. Maybe he knew I loved him, maybe he knew that I was stuck with Jason, maybe he knew I needed to feel wanted and worthy. During this I felt guilty and shameful. I eventually bought a house and moved Jason in. That is when this other guy got a new gf and left me alone. It was like mourning a breakup that I couldn’t tell anyone. Eventually I legally evicted Jason and this left me with a self worth and connection black hole.

I acted out for a minute on my usual single m.o.. Then an old friend from middle school came in. He was different then others in that he was genuinely nice and cared for my well being. Unfortunately he also came with a huge dose of depression leading to at the time an inability to keep a job or help with housework. But I stayed with him on and off for the next few years bc I loved him for his emotional support and that he made me feel worthy. Plus it was safe. As a woman in her 30s, I am at the point that if I’m in a relationship I don’t cheat or scope out new guys or have a backburner. It kept me emotionally reeled in. But bc of my trust issues, bc of my lack of feeling worthy, bc of my resentment for him watching me struggle, and bc of my need for excitement or passion (see drama) I couldn’t be with him forever. Even after he got better and held a job and helped my brain short circuits and told me that our lack of connection was insurmountable. I broke his heart and he did nothing wrong. I am just still searching for that lasting “in love” connection that I am not sure exists. I harbor huge guilt here. Both for his feelings and for what could be wrong with me that I left what I said I wanted. That maybe my brain will never let me really love. My only empathy here is that I am working on my shit and all I can do is that.

Every time in my adult life when I have been unhappy in a relationship I’ve left instead of fixing. I have searched out attention through suggestive facebook posts or selfies or sexting. I have been emotionally raw towards men. I had a shitty attitude toward relationships. Anytime that I was single or had freedom I either had a fuck buddy that I didn’t feel anything for or sometimes I would make a strong connection and go all in. I would rush it sexually (again not necessarily full sex but messing around for sure) and more times then not I get played. Within 2 weeks after they no longer answer my texts or calls. This is the shit adult shame is built from. How can you be so blind and stupid? Why can’t you be stable and happy? But here is where I need an empathy piece. Your sexuality was already not healthy then Jason stripped you of any self worth. He often told you no one could ever love me bc I was such a low down terrible person, a piece of shit mother, a whore. Six years of that and you begin to believe it. So if a man comes along and sells you a dream of being loveable its hard not to want with all your heart to believe them. And sexuality is my only tool I know for reeling them in. But when things get too serious I start getting scared of being broken or having to work on things that historically haven’t worked or old scars become obsessions.

I am at a point in my life now that I want to change but Tbh I don’t know how. I want to regain respect for myself and I would like to change peoples opinion of me or better yet not care. This has sent me into a major mental health crisis. I want to know how to reel it in and gain respect while still being true to myself. I still yearn for spark, sex and connection but I want to do it healthily. I want to take the emotional polarization and shame out of sex. Instead of not caring at all or being a crazy obsessive smothering weirdo and throwing myself at someone then feeling like an idiot for falling so hard. So maybe dates in public, counting actions over words and putting time in between the spark and the sex.

I am still struggling with what to do about social media. I mean I need to chill on the provocative selfies, attention seeking posts, and entertaining anyone that messages me… but I still like to be noticed. I want to post selfies and I think dirty memes are funny. Anyway this is long. I am still figuring shit out. And I can’t just look at empathy without taking inventory of what I could have done differently. But this post is empathy and it did help take off a small piece of that shame.

(*when I say act out sexually I don't mean I've had hundreds of partners but rather I have been quick to sexually experiment but I have also developed a "stop point". Don't get it too twisted.)

[bookofmirth]

Mor defense follow-up - part 1

Hi friends! I wanted to expand on a post I made last week because A) I wrote it in like five minutes and so stuff wasn’t fleshed out/explained, and B) because a lot of the responses I got weren’t actually about what I was arguing? Or were assuming something that I wasn’t actually saying. And I’ve been having conversations with people since then and that’s still happening. So I wanted to get my (developed) thoughts out all in one place. This isn’t a direct response to anyone in particular! So I’m not calling anyone out in a sub-tweety way (which I’ve been seeing lately and would like to see stop?)

Before I get started, I want to reiterate my argument: Mor is not responsible for Rhysand’s behavior towards Cassian (IE beating him). This does not mean that I agree with what Rhys did. I think it was effed. This does not mean that I think she had no role to play. Clearly, she was a participant in this situation. I’d also like to point out that I am not discussing how they are currently handling the topic. That’s a different issue/post, entirely (which will be part 2 of this, maybe in a day or two). All I am talking about right now is The Sex and what occurred immediately after The Sex.

1) She was 17-ish (basically a child by fae standards)

Many people like to point out that we can’t compare the actions of people with different levels of maturity, and then fail to recognize that Mor was barely coming into adulthood at this point. So was Cassian. So was Rhys. This really changes nothing about how emotionally aware or mature Mor was. It’s easy to ignore this point, though, when you are confusing the context of how they behaved at that time, and the context of now. Which is why I am separating these posts.

2) It’s not her responsibility to police her cousin’s behavior.

I was going to say this one is self-explanatory, but maybe not. I have a lot of issues with the way Rhysand uses his privilege, actually (see this post) and this is an example of him taking advantage of it. But people seem to expect Mor to be the mom of the group, taking care of all their feelings and insecurities, and basically making sure that they all behave around each other. Which, no. That’s not her job. Is this because she is a woman? I don’t know. But it’s there. We expect this to happen and I wrote a whole long post about that here, which focuses on Mor and Az, but can be extended to the rest of the group, apparently.

3) She was going through a forced engagement to a man who would have brutalized & raped her.

4) She was in the process of being estranged from her family.

5) She was trying to figure out how to take agency in a situation that would have stripped her of that forever.

These three points go together to explain Mor’s emotional state at the time. On top of being young and immature, she was living/had grown up in a situation in which she was extremely oppressed, and about to go into a future of, as @propshophannah has described it, state-sanctioned rape. There’s really no other way to describe this. She is also experiencing separation from her family, which, even though they aren’t the kind of family you would want, would have its own stressors. She is trying to find her independence in an extremely stressful, potentially horrifying situation, while very young and inexperienced.

So not only are we expecting her to handle her own behavior in a perfectly mature, rational, thoughtful way while she is going through emotional turmoil/trauma and a potential rape-filled future, but we are expecting her to think about others first and police their behavior at the same time? NO, FRIENDS. WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

6) But Leslie, she should have told Cassian she was a virgin/what would happen when they slept together.

Yep. This is true. And this doesn’t actually contradict my argument, but I know some of you are thinking it. She probably should have been more open, but: see above. It’s understandable to me that she didn’t have the foresight and/or emotional maturity to do that. And! I can’t imagine that the Court of Nightmares would have a healthy attitude towards communication in regards to sex? Just guessing there. I have no proof other than the fact that Mor’s virginity was basically sold to the highest bidder, and that this is routine practice.

We can also perhaps guess that Mor didn’t understand the severity the consequences she would face - she says that Rhys was pissed, Azriel more so, and that they were right - indicating that she didn’t understand (at the time) how everyone would react to this. I also wonder if perhaps Rhys, Az, and Rhys’ mom found something out about what might happen to her while they were away in the Night Court - I get that Az was probably jealous, but his and Rhysand’s reaction to The Sex seemed disproportionate. But that’s pure speculation.

Basically this reasoning is coulda shoulda woulda, and given how pissed Rhys was I doubt he would have listened to reason, tbh. *whispers* because of lack of emotional maturity at the time....

7) My last point is that none of this even takes into account what ends up happening to Mor.

I know that a lot of people are concerned about what happened to Cassian, and yeah, it shouldn’t have. But somehow all of these shitty things happening to Mor listed above, PLUS the fact that she ended up being tortured and left for dead by her family, and people still hold her to this moral standard of perfection, basically. IT’S SO UNREALISTIC.

TL;DR Mor is being held to an unforgiving standard for a moment of terror/weakness/immaturity that, let’s be honest here, affected HER far worse than anyone else. Did it negatively affect someone else? Yep. Is her behavior 100% understandable? Yep. Perhaps not excusable, perhaps she could have done better, but find me someone who would have acted with 100% selflessness in that same situation. Please. Ultimately people are going to like whatever characters they want, that’s fine, just please don’t cherry-pick lines, or forget context and things like character’s emotional maturity, or base arguments on things we have no evidence for.

[asenseofagency]

Easy as That

After several days of being gloomy and non-communicative, my husband approached me last night and announced with trepidation that he thought we should separate. I knew it, or something like it, was coming. He was clearly heavy-hearted about speaking his mind. I, on the other hand, had to hold back my DELIGHT.

There is nothing like the feeling of coming to the same hard-won conclusion at the same time. The overriding feeling was relief for both of us I think and I’m so proud that we were able to be honest - with zero enmity so far - about the fact that our relationship had more or less traveled its course and that we wanted different, irreconcilable things out of our futures. 

Mine is still unclear; I don’t wrap up grad school interviews until the end of February and it could be well into March before I’m sure what my options are. At the moment, under the best of possible circumstances, I’d end up in Southern California by the end of the summer but the reality could be very different and a lot more humble. We’ll see what materializes.

I’m a little sad, a little scared, and a lot relieved.

The fear is a product of the realization that as I take a shot at my academic dream, I’ve jettisoned a lot of personal relationships along the way. This has been mostly a coincidence of timing. I began to see that a lot of the relationships in my life took more from me (in an energetic, emotional sense) than they gave back. So I’ve been letting go of a lot. That’s all good and arguably healthy but it has served to isolate me. My relationship with my soon-to-be-ex-husband was one of the last really emotionally intimate relationships I had with anyone. Breaking that off strips me of essentially my last confidante, my last emotional safety net, the last person with whom I was able to be fully, unreservedly honest, which feels, admittedly, dangerous.

I’m also aware that if I did want to replace that relationship with a new one, the trust/honesty/communication bar is set almost impossibly high.

But maybe a high bar is a good thing. And if I do get the opportunity to move, I’ll be rebuilding a life from scratch anyway, and maybe the stripping of personal ties will turn out to have been inevitable. In doing it ahead of time, I might have saved myself some later grief. You never know until you know.

The fear persists. I know I have a tendency to isolate myself. Though I’m not shy or socially anxious, I’m an introvert through and through, preferring coffee and books and cozy rainy days at the house nine times out of ten to parties, events, and girls’ nights out. Losing my husband (and best friend) in this process means making a conscious effort not to allow my natural isolation to become pathological.

Again, a relocation could make a lot of things academic...

I’m a little sad because I know, once the distance happens, once the real break takes place and we’re not co-habitating anymore, I will start to miss his companionship in earnest (and probably vice versa). We lived largely separate lives for sure. That, I expect, will make the change less noticeable but our routine included various weekly dinner and brunch dates, shared sit-downs in front of whichever TV series we might both be following at the time, and the absence of those things - our opportunities to bond and catch up with the events of each other’s week - that absence will be the thing that stings most. Repeatedly, and for a while. That will be hard to prepare for.

The relief, however, comes in many, many forms.

If I get the opportunity to move in conjunction with grad school, or even if I move for the purpose of taking another job, housing becomes infinitely easier under some circumstances. My needs are very minimal. In fact, I thrive on a streamlined environment, for a long while in my young adulthood not owning so much as a single piece of furniture. I look forward to the opportunity again. Minus a partner, a pet, and a pile of shit, subsidized campus housing in the form of studio apartments becomes a really appealing option to me.

And I’m relieved because my husband, at least at the moment, wants to stay in the house we’re currently in. That house feels every bit an anchor. I haven’t got the first idea legally how it might transpire and perhaps it’s financially disadvantageous to me but if given the opportunity to sign the house over to him instead of putting it up for sale indefinitely, I’d gladly take the easy way out to get the payment off my hands. His ability to make that payment on a single salary is what’s in question. He’s got a line on a better job, so it could be an eventuality, but I’m skeptical. In either case, the possibility of having the house end up squarely in his hands is ideal to me. We’ll see under what circumstances it can be accomplished. A troubling outcome would involve living in another state on a shoestring and remaining jointly financially responsible for a monthly mortgage payment; I’m motivated to avoid that at all costs, so it’s imperative we remain on the same team as we sort those problems out.

I’m relieved he was able to be honest with himself too. I didn’t dread anything so much as him convincing himself to relocate and then regretting the decision later. He was able to be totally honest with himself, even when it was painful and awkward, and I’m so happy about that. He likes where he’s at, he likes his small circle of friends and family, and he has zero desire to uproot. Easy as that. I don’t understand it but it was a matter of him acknowledging his own truth. If or when I move, that unloads me of a huge emotional burden; I’ve only got myself to manage.

We had also become more roommates than spouses. There hadn’t been any kind of romantic feelings in a long time and no rekindling was forthcoming. That transition is probably inevitable with all long-term relationships: the slow dying of passion and its replacement by... sweatpants and familiarity. We talked about that openly, that maybe monogamy as we know it is a scam. My mother-in-law, with whom my husband had apparently rehearsed some of our conversation, confessed to him that had it been socially acceptable in her day, she might never have stayed married as long as she did (!). Also, some of our mutual acquaintances who seem the most self-actualized are committed bachelors and bachelorettes, without the stability of a life-long partner, yes, but free to take life’s opportunities as they come. The likelihood that either of us gets into a long-term relationship in the immediate future seems vanishingly small and that doesn’t speak to any kind of bad experience we’ve had together as much as it does the realization that lust (certainly) and love (often) die. Friendship remains, which you can have anyway, at any time, with essentially anyone, to your chosen degree of intimacy. So maybe it’s time for a change of perspective with respect to what you’re looking to get out of romantic relationships. At the very least, it’s worth sampling and an ancient, long-subdued part of me is excited about the idea of casually dating again at some future point in time, without the expectation of longevity. It seems bewildering to navigate at the moment but on the whole, what a relief.

The separation also alleviates some of our long-held grudges. Though we’re great friends, we’re incompatible on some level. I’m disciplined; a thinker, a worker, a grinder. He’s short-term-oriented, easy-goin, and basically unambitious. Those aren’t statements of personal worth or value but they are fundamentally incompatible modes of operating and things that were never going to change about either of us, I’m sure now. He was almost certainly irked by my obsession with productivity; I grated at his escapism and lack of motivation. It’s a relief not to have to fight that fight anymore.

But if I’m relieved that there are no bad feelings toward each other now, I’m cautious, too. We’ll have to live apart for a year before we can legally divorce and in that time, I know, feelings can change. Resentment can grow from the smallest kernel of inconvenience and bad communication, so I’ve got to remind myself that even after we’re not living together I need to prioritize keeping the lines of communication open and constructive. We’ll be disentangling our financial lives from each other for a while and that’s just the type of thing that can go badly wrong if you lose common ground and end up at cross-purposes. Though it seems impossible now, I want to make sure we avoid becoming, in any way, adversaries.

Still everything feels... movable, unencumbered now. There are plenty of compromises to be made but they are the mundane compromises of timing, convenience, money not of personal desire or ambition. It’s an indescribably strange feeling to have made such a big decision and not be able to act on it quite yet either, to be in a holding pattern while the options develop themselves. We’ll be living together at the barest minimum for two or three months more, likely longer, watching, day-by-day with bated breath, as the future pieces itself together into something recognizable, actionable. Without a doubt, it forces you to live in the moment. You put one foot in front of the other and trust that the path will materialize as you go.

[hellofastestnewsfan]

In the late 1970s, when he was 10, Rob Nissen played for the only soccer team available to kids in his middle-class, New Jersey town. “It cost $20 to join, and you got a T-shirt and you played,” said Nissen, who today is a book publicist, still in New Jersey. On Saturdays, he would put on his white canvas Keds and head over to the one park in town that was big enough to accommodate an actual game. No girls’ teams waited on the sidelines—only boys played soccer. Soccer has come a long way in America. Today, millions of American boys and girls play it. It’s a shift that has delighted many: the sport’s fanatics, parents who don’t want their children getting tackled on football fields, and the kids themselves, who often develop a lifelong passion for the sport.

But American youth soccer—and, in particular, the kind played outside of school, on competitive private “club” teams at the highest level—has also come under criticism. The problem, of course, is not with the sport itself, but with the highly demanding nature of the top tier of play. (In the U.S., other sports, such as lacrosse, volleyball, and basketball, have club systems that can be just as demanding as soccer’s, though soccer’s is the most widespread.)

For one, the risk of injury is high, due in part to many kids’ decision to focus intensely on one particular sport. In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned that “the increased emphasis on sports specialization has led to an increase in overuse injuries, overtraining, and burnout.” An analysis in the medical journal Pediatrics of soccer-related emergency-room visits among children aged 7 to 17 reveals a dramatic uptick in injuries: Researchers found that the annual rate of injuries for every 10,000 soccer players rose by 111.4 percent between 1990 and 2014; the annual rate of concussions and other “closed head injuries”—when the head is hit, but the skull isn’t penetrated—over the same period went up by 1,595.6 percent. Girls are injured more than boys. Knee injuries, including ACL tears, are nearly four times more likely to bedevil female soccer players than male. (The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons reported that female soccer players have a higher rate of concussion than football players.)

“Almost all researchers in the field agree that later specialization”—ideally, after the early growth spurt associated with puberty—“is the healthier route (from the perspective of the child’s overall well-being),” Richard Bailey, a senior researcher at the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education, wrote me in an email. “And that is why they predominantly recommend … [the] sampling of multiple sports, the development of a broad base of movement skills, and delayed specialization as the preferable approach.”

U.S. Soccer, the sport’s national governing body, has a different perspective. The organization’s chief medical officer, George Chiampas, told me that findings from an upcoming study that he co-authored, which compared injury rates among boys on teams in its Development Academy, a program set up by U.S. Soccer to cultivate top players, found no difference between those who just played soccer and those who played additional sports. Is it ever too early to specialize? “It depends on the environment,” he said.

Unlike U.S. Lacrosse, which has come out in favor of multi-sport play, U.S. Soccer has taken no definitive position on specialization. “We’re still analyzing the research,” said Ryan Mooney, U.S. Soccer’s chief soccer officer. As evidence of the organization’s commitment to protecting kids, Chiampas pointed to a safety and injury-prevention platform, Recognize to Recover, and to the fact that in 2015, U.S. Soccer instituted a rule disallowing children 10 and under to head the ball. Chiampas also said that the organization has stepped up its coaching education and is deeply committed to creating a “culture of safety” for all players.

Intense youth travel teams can also send unhealthy messages, to kids and adults alike, about a family’s priorities. Club soccer can require heroic measures on the part of adults—driving regularly to and from distant games, giving over sacred weekends to a child’s pursuit, and dividing up the family to deposit different kids at separate venues. One of the main jobs of parents, said Madeline Levine, a psychologist and the author of The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, is modeling for children what adulthood should look like. Youth sports teams that require parents to devote huge amounts of time and income signal to children that grown-ups are an afterthought, and that being a parent is an exercise in passivity and boredom. “We have become so child-centered that what kids have to look forward to [when they become parents] is diddling with a cellphone and sitting passively, not being an active participant,” she said.

Another downside for elite youth-soccer players is that their clubs tend to pull them away from their high-school communities. Those who play for the rarefied Development Academy teams are prohibited from playing for their schools. Even if they make friends on their soccer teams, “the kids lose out,” said Roberta Moran, the athletic director at Kent Place School, a private girls’ school in New Jersey. “They miss the social aspect of playing a sport with their community of friends at school.” Less-competitive club teams don’t draw kids away from school as strongly—many play for their schools as well—but also exact a social cost, as their year-round schedules make it difficult for players to participate in other sports at their high schools.

Last year, U.S. Soccer imposed a new rule that made these problems worse. The rule was seemingly innocuous: Clubs had to start organizing teams according to players’ birth year rather than their academic year, which caused a lot of roster reshuffling. Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross, said that U.S. Soccer made this change to more easily identify the top 20 teenage players for the 17-and-under World Cup, which will be held in Peru next year. He says the change has further disrupted players’ social lives, as it has split up established teams made up of longtime friends. “The entire program is designed to train and identify an elite core of 20 players who will be on the U.S. team in 8 or 18 years,” said Matheson, adding, “this is a tiny fraction of kids who play soccer.”

Part of the reason soccer has this incredibly demanding top tier, said Rick Eckstein, a professor of sociology at Villanova and author of How College Athletics Are Hurting Girls’ Sports, is that it’s one of the most commercialized of youth sports; it contains a flourishing industry of tournament directors, private club and travel teams, and assorted soccer-related businesses whose financial interest is served by the status quo. And unlike basketball, say, which also has a sturdy commercial presence, soccer has developed so that the top players are identified and nurtured only through clubs. While college-basketball coaches still scout players at gyms and high schools, their counterparts in soccer rely on “showcase” tournaments to fill out their teams. “Soccer is the poster child for hyper-commercialized youth sports because it is played across the country and across the world, it has extraordinarily high participation levels, and is equally commercialized for girls and boys,” Eckstein wrote in an email.

Though U.S. Soccer sits atop the pyramid of organizations that oversee all American leagues and teams, it has limited authority over private clubs, and tournament directors, college coaches, and others who make money from youth soccer have little incentive to change. The clubs’ business model “is not our expertise,” Mooney told me, and the most the organization can do is offer incentives for good behavior. Chiampas added that parents need to intervene and do what’s best for their child if a club team is too demanding.

More can be done. Instead of imposing policies that revolve around building a strong national team, regardless of the impact on ordinary players, U.S. Soccer could establish rules that serve more kids (and still cultivate top-tier talent). For example, it could reverse itself and require teams to be formed on the school calendar, so that classmates can continue to play together. It could also use its platform to discourage early specialization and to encourage players to take part in multiple sports, even through high school.

Parents, too, can reassert their authority and insist that their own children not play one sport year-round, especially when their kids are constantly exhausted, sidelined with nagging injuries, and devoid of unscheduled time. “If the sport has knocked out the family environment and nothing else is happening, and others in the family are suffering from the lack of attention, then summon up the courage to say, ‘We’re a family, and we’re not doing this anymore,’” Levine said. “All the things that seem so life-altering when they’re younger—when they get older, you think, That didn’t make much difference,” she added.

Those who care about soccer in the United States could learn something from Belgium. Eighteen years ago, Belgium’s national football (the European term for soccer) team lost in the first round of the World Cup. It was a staggering failure, which prompted the national director of coach education, Kris Van der Haegen, to overhaul the way they trained football coaches. The main principle of the new approach was to put the players first, before coaches or teams, and to “create an environment of freedom” that restored the game’s creativity and fun. In 2015, Belgium became the world’s top-ranked team. “When things are going well, people don’t want to listen,” Van der Haegen said during an interview. The loss “was the perfect moment to get everyone around the table and ask what we were doing wrong.”

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2utev4P

[swsportandspine-blog]

Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him… Finally finds relief with PT

The following story is about boxer, Eric Gonzalez, and how FYZICAL changed his life forever. With his life in complete upheaval due to a condition doctors couldn’t identify, boxer Eric Gonzalez finally finds relief with physical therapy.

“Everything was spinning; I couldn’t function, states Eric Gonzalez. “The dizziness I felt was debilitating and affecting all areas of my life. I just felt so much despair.” Gonzalez was suffering from an extreme balance disorder, only he didn’t know it at the time. In his youth, and into adulthood, he loved doing contact sports like boxing, football, and motocross. “When you’re into those types of activities, you do bang your head a lot,” he says, “but when you’re young you don’t think about it; you get up and if you feel OK you keep going.“ But two years ago, when Gonzalez was in his late twenties, he had a motocross accident where he hit his head and blacked out. It was around that time when he first starting experiencing the symptoms of his balance disorder.

“It was a pretty bad accident,” he recalls, “I landed on my head and banged it pretty hard, even though I was wearing a helmet. And this time, the dizziness didn’t go away. Usually by the end of the day or the next morning it would have gone away, but it stuck with me and I felt I was slurring my words and not making any sense.” Still, Gonzalez managed to live with these symptoms – for a while. There would be some days where nothing would happen, and others where his balance was really off. “There would be times when I would get up, completely lose my balance and shoulder block the wall, and I would think it was funny; I didn’t really pay too much attention to it, but after a while, everything started to get worse.” Soon, simple tasks like shampooing his hair, watching television, and even driving in his car became difficult for him to perform.

“I was a complete mess; I had zero balance…and if I closed my eyes, I lost all sense of orientation. I would get anxiety before going to sleep because waking up in the morning was so terrible; as soon as I opened my eyes, my bedroom would be doing somersaults and I would dry heave and couldn’t get to the bathroom without help… it was horrible.” Gonzalez suffered these balance disorder symptoms for several years in silence. “I didn’t tell my wife or my family. I just kept it hidden… waiting for it to go away, but it never did.” He thought he could handle the symptoms and live with them, but they were beginning to affect all areas of his life.

With his symptoms getting progressively worse, an incident at his job made Gonzalez realize he couldn’t keep it hidden any longer. He recalls, “I was having an important discussion with my boss, and right in the middle of it, I forgot the entire conversation… I asked him what he was talking about, and then I started to feel really sick, really lightheaded, and then I was out. I had passed out right there on the floor.” It was then that Gonzalez knew he had to seek medical help for his condition and find out what was wrong with him. Getting a diagnosis, however, proved to be a frustrating and challenging endeavor.

“I went to every kind of doctor I could think of, but nobody could actually tell me what was wrong,” he states. “I didn’t know what was happening to me and I was just scared! I’d sit in the waiting room of a doctor’s office for 30 minutes, they’d see me for 5 minutes, and then say ‘Sorry, I can’t help you.’ It was very frustrating.”

Finally, after visiting six different doctors, Gonzalez went to see Dr. Lomax, an ear, nose, and throat specialist. “He ran some tests and I’ll never forget his words,” he recalls, “Dr. Lomax said to me, ‘There’s something definitely wrong with you, but I don’t exactly know what it is,’ and I just started getting emotional, tears welled up in my eyes, and I said to him, ‘But, you were my last hope.’ I felt weak and was starting to despair. But then he said to me, ‘Look, I can’t help you, but I think I know who can. I’ll make you an appointment.” After seeing so many doctors already and not getting any closer to an answer, Gonzalez didn’t get his hopes up. But he wasn’t about to quit trying. So, the next morning his wife dropped him off at FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers in Las Vegas, where Dr. Lomax told him to go.

FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Center in Las Vegas is a 5,000 square foot state-of-the-art balance center with some of the world’s most renowned balance experts and cutting edge programs. It is the result of 15 years of evidence-based clinical medicine. It redefines balance and vestibular care and is one of the leading, if not the top, balance programs in the nation.

That’s where Gonzalez met Brian Werner, PT, the clinical director of the center, and Steve Hurtado, PTA, who he would work closely with during his therapy. “Brian Werner was very reassuring and just a kind soul and he made me feel at ease,” explains Gonzalez. “When I first got there, they did some tests on me to try to bring on my symptoms, and, boy, they came on strong!” By bringing on his symptoms, Werner and his team were able to figure out what was wrong with Gonzalez. “I never thought I’d be happy to have a diagnosis, but I was so happy to finally have one and thought to myself, ‘Now, I can move forward.’”

Although Gonzalez finally had a diagnosis, it was still a very difficult time for him. “I remember as I was hanging from a harness tied up to the roof on that first day at FYZICAL, I couldn’t help but think, ‘What happened to me?! I’m an athlete! I’ve been at the top of every sport I’ve ever done; I’ve excelled in all things… and now look at me, I’m hanging from a harness. How did I get here?” Gonzalez asked those same questions of Steve and Brian and they were straight with him; they told him he had had brain trauma.

“I responded, ‘No, I haven’t!’ Gonzalez laughs, “But they told me like it is. I listened to everything they said because they were the ones who finally diagnosed me and right after that, they stated, ‘here’s how we’re going to fix it.’ Honestly, there was nothing more reassuring than that; it felt good.”

The physical therapy sessions Gonzalez underwent started off with simple tasks, such as reaching down and picking things up, walking on uneven flooring, and walking in the safety overhead support system (S.O.S). “During that first session,” he states, “I was a complete mess. I was hanging in the S.O.S. like a rag doll. Any movement, any at all, if it was sudden, and my body would give out, and if I turned too quickly to look at something, the whole room would spin… I must have looked like a lost cause. Steve (Hurtado) and I built up a rapport very quickly; he knew I would work hard and he really knew how to get me moving. We just meshed and worked really well together. After that first session, he became my biggest fan because he knew I was going to push as hard as I could to get back to 100%.”

Though the physical therapy tasks sound simple enough, they were far from easy for Gonzalez in the beginning. He explains, “It was really tough at first, but every day I’d be able to accomplish things I wasn’t able to do before. I knew things were going in the right direction.” Sure enough, little by little Gonzalez started to feel better every day: “Every morning I didn’t feel as sick and after each session I felt more in control. I was able to focus better; I was able to do things like watch TV. I was really starting to feel more like myself again. After a couple of months, I went to the gym where I train and told my trainer what was going on. He told me to take it easy, and, of course, I was going to avoid any shots to the head. I got on the mat and it was a great day! I worked up a sweat, I was there with my brothers, and it was just great.”

After five months of therapy, Gonzalez was back to his former self again, only better, according to him. “I haven’t felt like this in I don’t know how long! I tell Steve and Brian all the time that this is really a life changer! I feel fresh, there’s no cloud. I’m back at work now and things couldn’t be more terrific. In fact, I’ve excelled more and performed better this past year than I ever did in 10 years with this company! My coworkers are happy to have me back. They tell me I look different, my face is different, my attitude is different, I’m funny again; humor is important to me and I did lose that for a time. I feel brand new – it’s amazing!”

Gonzalez no longer boxes, but as it’s his passion, he’s still very much involved in the sport. “I help a lot of fighters get ready for fights. I’ve been in a lot of training camps and help out. My best friend just had his first pro fight and I was able to help him throughout his training.”

“It’s just not worth it,” Gonzalez says of doing contact sports, “after what I went through and how horrible I felt. But now, I’m at 110%. I’m just so thankful for Dr. Lomax, who recommended FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers to me, and for Steve and Brian who worked with me. They got me back to myself again. I will forever be indebted to them… my wife and I speak about it to this day.”

Gonzalez still remains in touch with Steve and Brian and sometimes stops into the center to say hi. “I was just talking to Steve who asked how things are going, and I was happy to share with him recently that my wife and I are expecting our first child. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to separate myself from the folks at FYZICAL,” Gonzalez states, “I am always thinking about them and how they helped me; I’m back to where I’m supposed to be and I will be forever extremely thankful to them. They changed my life.”

Stories like this are told by FYZICAL therapy patients every day. Rehab therapists all over the nation are changing patient lives and their own. To learn more about how you can improve your practice and help patients like Gonzalez, call us today! 1-855-717-8463

For More Info: Balance therapy and vertigo

[ukrainianorphan-blog]

New Post has been published on Ukrainian Orphan

New Post has been published on http://bit.ly/2BV79Jx

The Impact of an Orphan Charity

The Impact an Orphan Charity can have on Children

Before we go deep into discussing how an orphan charity helps around the world, let’s first break down the definitions. This can be useful in determining how the work and what effect they may have.

  What is charity?

Introduced into the English Language through the old French word “charité”, which was derived from the Latin word “caritas” that meant preciousness, high price, dearness, Charity simply means giving. This giving could be in the form of food, health care, money, or clothing, but there are three broad kinds of charity; pure, public, and foreign charity.

While pure charity is completely free, public charity benefits not just a single individual but the whole, and foreign charity is when the individual benefiting from it is in an entirely different country from where the services or funds are being sent from.

You know the saying “Charity begins at home”. Some groups take this into practice and regard charity as assisting members within their particular group. Although giving to those close to you can be regarded as charity, but in the real sense of the word, charity is denoting to individuals you are not related to in any way.

Most forms of charity are based on providing basic needs like food, water, clothing, shelter, and healthcare, but other activities can be regarded as charity. For instance ransoming captives, educating orphans, visiting the homebound or imprisoned, and even some social movements. Donations that benefit the less privileged, either directly or indirectly, like funding research programs, are also known as charity. But we want to focus on charity to orphanages.

  First, who are orphans?

An orphan is a child whose parents are either dead, unknown, or have abandoned him or her, but the word is mainly used for a child who has lost both parents to death. The term is not usually used for children who have reached adulthood since they are old enough to support themselves.

  Now, what are orphanages?

Orphanages are residential institutions that are dedicated to caring for orphans. However, most children living in orphanages are not orphans, in actual fact, about four out of five children living in orphanages have at least one living parent and most of them have some extended family.

Most orphanages have been closed, but there remains a large number of state funded orphanages which are slowly phasing out due to direct support of vulnerable families and also the development of adoption services and foster care where possible.

Few large international charities are still funding orphanages, but, they are still commonly funded by religious groups and smaller charities. Some orphanages in developing countries would focus on vulnerable or less privileged families and constantly recruit children so they won’t lose their funding as they are rarely ran by the state.

The major aim of orphanages is to provide a caring and loving home and family for less privileged and abandoned children. One of the ways they do this is by adoption.

  What is adoption?

Adoption is where a person takes up the responsibility of serving as a parent of another. It can either be a child or a teen, but in most scenarios, it’s usually a child. The child is acquired from the person’s biological or legal parent in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the biological parent or parents to the adopted parents.

Adoption gives adoptees great opportunities that they may never receive elsewhere. Such opportunities include the presence of a family around them, shelter, clothing, food and parents who are able to provide for all their financial needs as well as access to education.

  Well known Orphan Charities Around the World

Before the establishment of state care for orphans, private charities existed that took care of less privileged orphans, and over time more charities have found alternative ways of caring for children. Some of these institutions include:

Hope and Homes for Children, who work with government of states to de-institutionalize their child care systems.

The Orphaned Starfish Foundation; which is a non-profit organization based in New York and focuses on the development of vocational school for victims of abuse, at-risk youths, and orphans. The foundation runs about fifty computer centres in about twenty five countries, and serve over 10,000 children Worldwide.

Lumos, whose drive is to replace institutions with community-based services that enables children access education, health, and social care tailored to each and every one of their individual needs.

Stockwell Home, which was founded by Charles H Spurgeon but now known as Spurgeons Children’s Charity, provides support to disadvantaged and vulnerable families and children across the whole of England.

SOS Children’s Villages, which is the world’s largest non-denominational, and non-governmental child welfare organization, that provides a loving and caring family home for abandoned and orphaned children alike.

Dr Barnardo’s Homes now simply known as Barnardo’s

Previously OrphanAid Africa, OAfrica has been in operation in Ghana since 2002, where it works to get children out of orphanages and into families. They partner with the government and are the only private implementing partner of the National Plan of Action.

Orphan Resources International, which is a non-profit organization that provides orphanages with resources in Guatemala Central America.

Joint Council on International Children’s Services; a non-profit child advocacy organization operating out of Alexandria, Virginia. It advocates for ethical practices in America adoption agencies in addition to working to working in 51 different countries, and is also the largest association of international adoption agencies.

Care for Children, which introduced family placement to China with its first project in Shanghai 1998, where it worked with the Shanghai government. It partnered with the China Social Work Association in Beijing and the MoCA to expand family placement to a nationwide basis. As a result, it is thought that a generation of abandoned children are now in substitute families instead of institutions in China.

The Transition Home for Orphan Boys in Afghanistan; The Transition Home was opened in 2014 with the goal that when at-risk youths or abandoned children leave the transition home, they would be ready to live on their own. They children have full-time jobs, furnishings for their own home, and are taught skills, like cleaning, managing finances, and cooking, needed to live on their own. Before the youths leave the Transition Home, the T-O-M mentors take each youth out and assist them in making purchases in the market for their household items. This teaches them the value of money and how to make purchase. Currently, about 6 boys live in the Transition Home.

Abide Family Center; an organization working in Jinja, Uganda with the aim of reducing the number of children living in orphanages. The belief of the Abide Family Center is that poverty should not be a reason a child is separated from their family. Because of this belief, they provide family preservation services such as parenting and business classes, early childhood education, pastoral/counselling services, as well as emergency or transitional housing.

  Positive Effects of Donating to an Orphan Charity

Many benefits are attached to donating to charity and orphanages, both personal and otherwise. Some of which include:

More pleasure

Helping others in need

It brings more meaning to your life

Promotes generosity in your children

Improves personal money management

Motivates your family and friends

Helps you realize that the little bits matter

These benefits are mainly personal. In a broad sense, what the individual you are donating to has to gain is a happier and easy life.

  How can you help orphans?

It has been well established that they are out there, maybe in our own backyards, or even far across the oceans. Babies, toddlers, teenagers who, for one reason or the other, are abandoned and alone in this world. Orphans, with no one to love them, no one connected to them by law or by blood, so they move through their lives at the mercy of those currently in charge of their life. Tomorrow, next month, or next year, the small space they occupy could be taken away from them, so they would have to change environment. Imagine a childhood with such instability and vulnerability.

In what ways can you contribute to giving orphans a more easy life?

Seek them out

Don’t forget the orphans. It’s known that only a few people actually feel “called” to action when they hear about or come across orphans. The more you expose yourself to their plight and put yourself in their position, the more your role in orphan care becomes clearer.

You could register on an orphan care blog, subscribe to a YouTube channel that is dedicated to improving the lives of orphans worldwide, or you could pray for them like you are praying for yourself.

Virtually adopt a child

Go to sites that have a list of waiting children and pick out a child you would take care of as your own. Frame the pictures of the child after printing, do you can place it on your desk, wall, or even stick up on your fridge. Tell everyone about your adopted child and how they can help him or her. Donate to this child’s adoption grant fund, or you can even send needed items to the child’s orphanage.

Write about your child on your social media platforms and raise awareness of his or her existence and how he or she needs a family. You would see that the child will be committed to in months.

Find a family that wants to adopt

Adoption is stressful and arduous, so families in the throes of an adoption could use all the help they can get. You could help them raise funds, or even write or edit documents and form that they need in the adoption process.

Follow their adoption journey and you will find ways to support their mission, and also connect with them on a different level.

Support ministries

Some ministries work to keep children in their families, train care workers, and even educate cultures. You can volunteer with some of these orphan ministries that are going on a mission to an orphanage, or even connect with an educator that focuses on in-country support.

Host an orphan

The World Orphan Project usually organizes a three week long program twice every year where they give orphaned children from Ukraine the opportunity to spend time with Americans, in caring families, who would open their homes and hearts to these deserving children.

You can register for this program and adopt a children for just three weeks.

We might now want to admit it, but there is an increasing number of orphans and abandoned children out there, and while we can’t really eradicate this, we can try our best by donating to orphanages, or even assisting them directly.