#weeks to a couple of years) and during that period your entire life revolves around the thing youre hyperfixated on

[haemosexuality]

one thing that always made me doubt my autism self diagnosis is special interests. my life has always been dictated by my very strong hyperfixations (since i was a baby!), but those are different from SI and i felt like nothing that i had matched the description of special interests. but i just fucking realized. that my special interest is English

[auburnaudry]

Fractured Family - Matthew Tkachuk

Chapter 1:

A/N: So this is the first time I have ever written literally anything. If you have any suggestions or feedback just let me know! I kinda want to make this a series, so if you are interested or have any suggestion on where to take this story I’m all ears!

Next Chapter —>

Summary: You and Matthew had a long history, dating for two years, until you guys “mutually” decided to split. It was civil and seemed liked the best option at the time. But shortly after splitting, you found out you were pregnant with Reign and everything in your life, including your relationship with Matt, became more complicated. (Flashbacks are in italics.)

Word count: 3293 words

It was really late at night and you just wanted to get your son to sleep. Him being only 3 months old, it was hard to get a consistent sleep schedule going, especially when you were sharing custody with someone who lives a completely different lifestyle than you.

After spending two nights with his father, your sons usual 10 minute bedtime routine turned into a long, drawn out, difficult ordeal, that you would be trying to correct for the next week. And once he was finally adjusted back to your routine, he was off to stay with his father again to continue the never ending cycle.

You rocked Reign in his chair for almost 40 minutes and finally settled him down enough to lay him back in his crib. You reached over to the changing table and turned the sound machine on, hoping that it would put him to sleep for even just a little while. You needed a break from the loud crying.

Walking over to the dresser sitting by the door, you grab the baby monitor and walked out towards the kitchen.

You mindlessly stared at your phone as you made your way down the hall. Distracted by your new notifications, you hadn’t noticed the handsome young man still sitting at your island waiting for you to return.

“Y/n/n”

“Oh my god, Matthew you scared me” you shouted, dropping your phone as your body jumped slightly from the shock of seeing someone unexpected in your apartment.

“I thought you left already, what are you still doing here” you continued as you picked your phone up off the ground, checking to make sure the screen wasn’t cracked.

You were caught off guard and slightly confused because Matt always left right after dropping your son off. You two had an arrangement that worked, minimal interaction that only revolved around your son. So when Matt was still lingering around your apartment almost and hour after dropping your son off, you couldn’t help but let your mind travel to the worst case scenario.

“Did something happen today with Reign?” You asked before he had a chance to respond to your first question.

You and Matt had a long history, dating for two years, until you guys “mutually” decided to split. It was civil-ish and seemed liked the best option at the time. But shortly after splitting, you found out you were pregnant with Reign and everything in your life, including your relationship with Matt, became more complicated.

“You should have been honest with me from the start then” you screamed at your boyfriend. You had been arguing for what felt like forever with no end in sight.

“I didn’t know what I wanted at the time y/n” he calmly responded “Fuck, I still don’t even know what I want, but I know its not fair to you, to keep going the way we are”. You two had been talking about where you see your relationship going in the future and this was the first time Matthew was really opening up to you.

As much as you begged Matt to express his emotions more over the course of your relationship, this time you wished he had kept them to himself.

“Y/n, you want to take the next step in this relationship and I’m not ready. I don’t know why I’m not ready but you are and I can’t hold you back.” Matthew sounded so sincere that you almost believed this was what you wanted too. “You need someone who is gonna take that step with you” key word was almost.

The past couple of weeks you had been hinting that you wanted to move in with Matt. You loved him and were sure you wanted to start the next chapter of your life with him. You never thought in a million years this would be his reaction but maybe you pushed him too much? Or maybe this was inevitable and he wasn’t looking at you as a long term investment. Whatever the reason, you now regretted even bringing it up.

“Okay, so two years down the drain I guess” you said as you rolled your tear filled eyes. His face fell at your words, he truly did love you and just wanted you to be happy. You were looking for forever and he admitted to not being ready for that kind of commitment. Instead of continuing a relationship that seemed to be at a stand still, the only option at this point was to end it. You weren’t going to sit there and beg him, you had too much pride to do that.

“I’ll just pack my shit and go” you walked past him to his bedroom to collect all the things that no longer belonged in his space. You almost expected him to follow after you, to fight for your relationship, but he didn’t, which hurt your heart even more. So you continued to pack up the things that had migrated from your apartment to his over the two years of being together. Your thoughts were now consumed with figuring out how you were going to move on and find someone to spend the rest of your life with, while he continued to live the bachelor lifestyle he was all so famous for.

Even though you rarely voiced it in your two years of being together, you were madly in love with him and broken hearted that he wasn’t willing to put in the effort to make your relationship work. You left his bedroom and made your way down the hallway, past the living room where Matthew was still sat, and out the front door with your bags in tow. You didn’t bother glancing back at him, out of fear you might do or say something you would regret.

2 weeks later…

You woke up and still hadn’t gotten your period. Your period had never been even a day late since you got it back in the 7th grade, so waking up for a 4th day in a row with no period, was worrisome. You didn’t think there was even a chance you were pregnant since you were on birth control, so you made an appointment with your gyno to ensure everything was okay. You were convinced it was just the stress of your recent breakup that was causing this irregularity in your cycle, but you couldn’t be sure without getting checked out first.

...

You pulled up to your doctors office for your appointment feeling extremely anxious. You just wanted to get it over with so you could stop stressing and go back to feeling sorry for yourself for getting broken up with.

You sat in the waiting room for what felt like an eternity. You scrolled through Instagram and somehow found yourself on Matthew’s page. It was definitely an unhealthy habit you had picked up since splitting. You couldn’t help it though, he was following new ig models everyday and in a sick way, you liked to compare yourself to them. It was a reminder that you weren’t what Matt wanted and Matt couldn’t be what you wanted anymore.

“y/n y/l/n” you looked up from your phone as your name was called “We’re ready for you”

You followed the nurse back to a bathroom located right next door to the exam room you usually got checked out in. The nurse handed you a cup to pee in, as you usually did at these types of appointments, and instructed you to change into a gown in exam room #2 once you finished up in the bathroom.

After you changed into the gown, the nurse came back to collect your sample and left you sitting on the exam table as you scrolled on your phone again, waiting for Dr. Cooper to come in.

“Y/n, congratulation you’re pregnant” Dr. Cooper walked in holding your charts. You had been going to Dr. Cooper since you were 16 and you had built a nice relationship through the years, talking about your personal lives and future plans during appointments. He was aware of your long term relationship with Matthew and by his enthusiastic tone and happy energy, it was clear that he was unaware of your recent breakup. You obviously didn’t expect him to know, the breakup was new and you only see him a couple times out of the year.

You couldn’t even process the news or anything else Dr. C had to say after that. Everything went fuzzy and it felt like you were in some crazy nightmare that you couldn’t wake up from. The only thing you did hear him say was that he expected you to be 8 weeks along from the information you told him and the ultrasound he performed.

You were a traditional person and always imagined you would be married or at least in a committed relationship before getting pregnant, so this entire situation had you in shock.

You were so numb from the news that you continued on throughout your day as normal, unsure of what else to do. But as you pulled into the parking lot of your apartment building, you rushed to get inside so you could finally breakdown and feel everything you had pushed aside for the past few hours.

You were silently praying your roommate wasn’t home when you walked through the door of your shared apartment so you didn’t have to face anyone. To your dismay, she was sitting in the living room calling for you when you walked through the door.

You hadn’t told her that you and Matthew broke up because you were so ashamed that the man you thought you’d spend the rest of you life with , didn’t feel the same way for you. The past 3 weeks you had been pretending Matt was away on a road trip or too busy with hockey to hang out whenever she asked about him. At this point you needed to get this off you chest so you walked right into the living room, sat down next to her, and unloaded the entire story before she even had the chance to say hello. As you spoke, her face turned from confusion to concern.

“Kay idk what to do, I don’t even want to tell him because I don’t need his help, but i feel icky when I think about having his baby and keeping it a secret.” You guys were talking through what you were gonna do about the situation.

Kaylee was the perfect person to ask because she also knew Matthew really well! Kaylee was the one who introduced you to Matt in the first place almost 3 years ago. They continually ran into each other while out at bars and talked so often they eventually became good friends. Being Kaylees best friend, you were later introduced to Matthew at a bar and you guys hit it off right away. You became really close friends and later started dating after a typical drunk love confession.

“And you’re definitely sure it’s Matt’s? Like there’s no chance it’s someone else’s right?”

“Yes of course I haven’t talk to anyone since the breakup, let alone slept with anyone!”

“I just want to make sure cause you didn’t even tell me you guys broke up, I wasn’t sure if I was missing any other important parts of the story” she paused for a second giving you a sympathetic look. The father was indisputable since you had only been with one man in the last two years.

“he’s a good guy y/n/n, I think he will be really understanding and a good father, it’s important you tell him, him and his family would want to know” She was right, she always is.

Before your talk with Kaylee, you fully prepared yourself to raise the baby on your own and expected nothing from Matthew. But when you thought about his family, a family that you had become a part of in the two years you were together, you couldn’t help but think of how disappointed they would be if they ever found out that you kept a part of them a secret. You had become extremely close with Brady and Taryn and their parents treated you like one of their own. They loved you and would unconditionally love your child, it wasn’t fair to them and more importantly, it wasn’t fair to your baby to keep them apart.

...

After a week of thoroughly thinking through all your options, you finally took Kaylees advice and reached out to Matt. You almost hoped he wouldn’t see your message or he would see it and just ignore it since you two hadn’t communicated since the breakup.

Y/n:

Hey Matty, it’s y/n, I’m not sure if you have free time in the near future but I kinda need to talk to you!

To your surprised he responded within minutes of your text.

Matty:

I’m happy you reached out, lets meet up! Can you do lunch tomorrow? Our usual lunch spot?

This all seemed too familiar, why was he texting you like you had never broken up and why did he respond at all? He could have easily said he was busy or trying to move on and didn’t want to talk, but he didn’t.

Y/n:

I was actually thinking we could do takeout or something and eat at my apartment?

You figure a private setting would be better for the news you were about to spring on him since you weren’t sure of the reaction you were going to get.

Matty:

Anything works babe

He had practice the next morning and a free afternoon so it was the perfect opportunity to tell him, giving him time to process since he had nothing going on for the rest of the day.

Matthew walked up to your apartment door the next day giving it his signature knock. You slowly walked to the door, opening it to find him standing there, carrying the to-go bags, filled with your favorite meal and wearing his perfect smile that almost made you forget why you called him over in the first place.

As you went to greet him, you caught a slight whiff of the food and the nausea that washed over you was so sudden and instantaneous, you almost didn’t make it to the bathroom.

On your run to the bathroom, you heard Matt’s footsteps following closely behind, but luckily you had enough time to lock the bathroom door before emptying the contents of you stomach in the toilet.

Matthew sat outside the bathroom knocking lightly “y/n are you okay” he waited patiently for your response.

When you felt the wave of nausea had completely passed, you stood up, flushing the toilet and making your way to the sink to rid your mouth of the taste that plagued it.

As you opened the door to the bathroom you were met with Matt’s concern filled face. If throughout your lunch date you wanted to change your mind about telling him, that option was completely off the table now. You had no choice but to explain what was going on and you just wanted to get it over with.

Matthew stood there staring, waiting for a response. “I���m pregnant” was all you could come up with.

He stared at you in complete disbelief but then realization washed over his face. “Who’s the father” was all he could manage, as if you would invite him over to tell him you were pregnant with someone else’s kid.

You wanted to roll your eye but they were so full of tears, you were scared that if you moved them, the tears would start running and you would fall apart in front of him.

“Yours” you whispered with a cold tone trying your best to keep your emotions at bay.

Matthew had alway wanted to be a dad and was great with his teammates kids, so you weren’t entirely surprised when he told you he wanted to be a part of your kids life.

You two spent countless hours and had countless lunch dates over the course of your pregnancy, talking about how you were going to co-parent and make everything work. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t secretly wish that you and Matt would end up back together, raising the family you always dream of having, but it seemed that ship had sailed for Matthew. His only concern was making sure his kid lived a happy and healthy life.

You were now waiting for a response from your ex on why he was still sitting in your kitchen so late at night.

“No no, Reign is fine everything is fine, I just need to talk to you about something” he said, not making eye contact with you. You were even more nervous now because you had no guess as to what he could possibly want to talk about.

“I’m talking to this girl” your entire world stopped spinning and your ears started to ring a little. You still weren’t use to Matthew talking to other women, you probably wouldn’t be for a long time, and now he wanted to talk to you about one of his hoes?

“Ummm okay” you said, unsure how you were even suppose to respond. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Things between us are getting a little more serious” you could literally feel you heart aching in your chest, but you continued to act unfazed by Matt’s admission. “I was just wondering what the appropriate time would be to introduce her to Reign”

You were almost stunned that he was even asking you such a stupid question. If it were up to you, Reign was never going to meet some trashy whore his father would bang every once in a while. Your son was only 3 months old, so to think that introducing him to a random, clout chaser was even an option for Matthew, made you extremely angry. Or maybe you were just jealous he had been seeing someone and it had gotten so serious that he was willing to introduce her to his newborn son.

You can’t even describe the feeling of the love of your life breaking up with you because ‘he wasn’t ready for commitment’, and then not even a year later he is in a serious relationship again but with someone else. You couldn’t help but think everything Matthew had told you was a lie, that he wasn’t afraid of committing, he was just afraid of committing to you.

“Y/n/n, did you hear my question?”

“Obviously” you spat “I just have to think, I wasn’t exactly prepared for this kind of question tonight or honestly at any point in the near future so I need time to think about it” you were bitter but you tried your hardest to not make it seem that way as you spoke.

“Take all the time you need, no rush, we’re obviously new to this whole parenting and co-parenting thing so we don’t have all the answers yet, but I don’t want to do anything you aren’t comfortable with.” He finally made eye contact with you for the first time all night. You forgot how pretty his eyes were.

“Thanks for checking in with me, ill let you know when I figure it out” and with that he got up and made his way out of your apartment.

“Goodnight y/n” he said as he opened the front door and pulled his car keys out of his pocket.

“Night” you responded as you close the door behind him. Just as the door closed, Reign’s screams came over the baby monitor, distracting you before you had too much time to think about how alone you actually were.

[orderuponthe99prettygrimmdiaries]

Road to Recovery 👣

Well, this is gonna be a long ass one. Also, this has been kinda drafted over the past... week? So it’s gonna be a real rollercoaster of a ride. 

Had just binged Lucifer’s new season and was on reddit, looking at comments of redditors yelling at Luci to enjoy whilst he was finding stuff to freak out about. 

Like him, I should have just been in the moment. Appreciated it. Instead of worrying about the next. 

The past week has been.. emotional. Have been getting used to the fact that I might never speak or hear or see him again. Been also trying to focus on the bad to kinda ease the pain. At least it hurts a little less, less crying too. But it’s also like one day you do great, no crying, not much of missing and pain, but then the next, everything creeps in altogether and you fall apart. 

The thing is... why does it hurt so bad? Things had been weird for months. I mean, I was the one who was always preparing myself for him to leave, I was the one who told myself I’d be okay even if we never went on the date. And I guess it just boils back to... expectations. 

I expected him to care more, I didn’t expect that he’d be able to leave just like this. From regular convos to nothing in a week, now almost 2 weeks. I mean, we’ve had breaks. 1 day, 5 days, 10 days... It’s kinda strange if we were actually interested in the other. Maybe he wasn’t much of a texter and wanted to talk when we met. But did we really share much when we met? It’s odd... He doesn’t reply properly to texts, he disappears, he doesn’t really care much at times, but for some reason, I seem to remember the good more. It seemed like he does listen (at times), there were moments when I felt like he cared. A part of me still trusts him or sees the best in him. 

Initially, I was trying to avoid talking about him so I would also stop thinking about him and I could move on. But I think talking about it also helps. Did also google about moving on from crushes, and that is a major point. Maybe I’ll never figure out what really went wrong, but maybe I could still give myself some sorta closure.  Though reminiscing does hurt too. Going back to the place where we met, which is basically my workplace which I’ve to be at almost every day... The memories flooding in about the conversations we had. But it also helps me to acknowledge my feelings and fears, stuff that I suppose I didn’t acknowledge then. Maybe if I had been less afraid and tried harder, especially during the times we were both around considering how hard it was to get our schedules together. He probably thought I wasn’t that interested and moved on. Guys fall fast, but they seem to move on pretty quick too.

Ended up dreaming about him last night... It was really nice. There was a shipment, I didn’t let myself have hope that it would have been him. And he turned around, and it was him. I said hey and touched his arm. I headed off downstairs talking to the other guys, one of them was teasing me for giving him my number. He came down too. We sat there for a bit, and I asked if I could lean on his shoulder, and we ended up hugging too. That was just wonderful, but it’s sad to know it’d never be reality. 

And I guess all those breaks we had throughout the months still gives me the slightest bit of hope that he might return... But now, 2 whole weeks of not speaking. The glimmer of hope fades as each day passes. Maybe, distance is just what we need, I tell myself. 

But now, there’s also a new guy. So I’m guessing the likelihood of seeing him ever again is almost impossible. But is it really so bad if we never spoke or see each other again? Did he even really care? What were we? 

Feels like history is repeating itself, and honestly, after re-reading old posts, maybe it is. Okay, but this time was slightly different. I fought harder. I should be proud that I got his number, or well, convinced him to get mine. I should be proud for initiating those texts, for finally picking up that video call, for asking him out. 

I do wonder at times if it would have been better if I was just honest from the start, that I was interested and I felt there’s something special, different, but not entirely sure what it was. I had friends tell me that I shouldn’t be too emotional about too much, especially at the start. I mean, I did do this the last time, granted they were all online friends, and now we’re still friends. Maybe it’s different being online vs irl. 

Should I continue fighting for him or just let this be another regret/what if? I guess I chose the latter. I was still too afraid to make a move, I was still too afraid to admit my feelings. I wanted to tell him, I wanted to give him the choice. But I was afraid, what if he only says he feels the same because knowing what I felt? I couldn’t take the leap. 

And the more I thought, the less I knew. What did I ever really know about you? What did I like about you? I guess I didn’t listen to myself enough, or to the rational part at least. The closer you look, the less you see. By the time I remember this, it was a little too late... 

I guess I need to stop trying to define everything. Some questions don’t have answers. Some stories won’t get closures. Not all friendships require daily talking. Why aren’t I okay with this? Am I just too attached to everyone? Does my life just basically revolve around people? Who the fuck am I?

I had been looking back at my old posts, all the way back to 2015, the darkest period of my life. I wanted to see what I did then, how did I handle it and pushed myself through. How the heck did I move on? Sure, it took me like... at least 2 years of moping around, then finally actually properly reaching out to get the help I needed. A couple months of counselling, pushing the focus back on myself, on self love and self care.

And all this unravelled within a couple months.

Granted, I think it was already starting to unravel early this year. All these work and personnel changes really fucked things up, with Covid just adding to it. And then comes those unexpected feelings, not knowing how to deal with it, worrying about how I’m gonna fuck it up, and in turn, fucking it up. Also, not giving myself a break when I truly needed it. I was afraid that if I took a break from texting him (okay I wasn’t really obsessively staring at my phone and replying immediately either, but I could have taken a proper break), I might have ended up losing him, and now, I’ve lost myself, I’ve lost him. 

So yep, losing myself... this time, I don’t think I was able to keep it as contained as I did previously. Loss of appetite, exhaustion... I guess at least I don’t exactly sigh as much as I did during the start of the year? But I guess now with Covid and mom at home, she’s noticed the symptoms too. And I guess how I tend to stay cooped in my room, retreat back after meals etc, not really making as much convos with my parents too... Maybe even agitation or irritation as my mom noticed too... 

She thinks it’s more physical, with my abnormal periods and stuff, like maybe I’m anaemic. Oof, and that one day she asked if I was alright because I didn’t seem happy. I literally broke down when I went back to my room. I try so hard to mask it all because I don’t want people to worry, and I want people to still be able to count on me when they need to. Though I’m pretty sure my colleagues noticed too. So I push myself. Sometimes I guess I pretend to be alright, cope with humour as my defence mechanism (self preservation through dissociation, amirite?), but then it comes crashing down the next day or next minute. 

I’m just human. I need to allow myself to feel. I need to embrace that I feel a lot, sometimes a little too much. I shouldn’t hate myself for caring too much, for feeling too much. I need to remember to allow myself to rest, or else this burnt out and exhaustion won’t do me or anyone any good. Yes, I want to be there for others, but sometimes you need to save yourself first. 

I’ve got one life to live, so I gotta live it. Right now it feels like I’m just surviving, otherwise basically floating through time and space. But it’s time to really live. it’s time to stop trying to keep everything under control. Sometimes a mistake is a destiny and sometimes we mess things up for the better. Stop comparing your progress and path to others. 

Recovery isn’t a straight line. You’re gonna feel good and then bad. You’re gonna feel like a bad-ass bitch who needs no one, but then the next you might be crying from the pain of missing him. Sometimes it will just get worse before it gets better. Real growth isn’t linear, it’s a step forward and 20 steps back. You’re gonna be tempted to text him, to hear his voice, to try one more time, but then you also gotta remember all the progress you’ve made. People are hard to forget and change takes time. 

Like Chandler and Joey were nudging Ross to move on from Rachel back in Season 1, maybe your friends had nudged you to move on too. My friends have been. Maybe our happiness just aren’t meant to be with each other. But I would love for you to be happy, even if it’s without me. 

So, I guess imma do a separate post about all the lessons I’ve re-learnt. It was a real headache trying to write this piece already. Thanks to anyone who’s actually taken the time to read this. Take care everyone! 

X

[httplovecraft1890]

The Theme of Free Will in Yandere Simulator

So in the past, I’ve speculated at length about what some broad story points might be for Yandere Simulator and while I’ve revised my opinion on the significance of a character like Fun Girl (her statement of “YOU BELIEVE EVERYTHING I SAY. I WONDER WHAT ELSE I CAN TRICK YOU INTO BELIEVING?” feels a bit embarrassing in hindsight) I do think there are broad strokes that can be taken from what I wrote and applied to newer story points that’ve been shared with us since. You can consider everything below a refinement of those original ideas, I suppose. Let’s start by going back and revisiting Saikou Corp. Note: some of this information doesn’t have a specific source other than vague recollections aside from what YandereDev has said on Twitter, Reddit, etc. so apologies in advance.

What, exactly, do we know about Saisho Saikou? If we’re taking Fun Girl less as an actual plot point herself and more as a vehicle to deliver exposition to the audience then we can summarize a fair few things:

He was drafted into the service of the Imperial Japanese Army at age 17 in the closing days of the war. This retroactively confirms his date of birth was some time in 1928, meaning Saisho is 91 in 2019.

Saisho was confined to kitchen duty after being transferred to Okinawa at first. This changed after a bomb tore his dorm apart and he was trapped with the corpses of his friends for hours until he was rescued by other troops. During the attempted retreat after their rescue operation he called them cowards for wanting to fall back in the face of American forces. The memories of being stuck there with his dead friends still haunts him.

After being moved to a bunker, he was under constant stress from air raids and a chronic lack of sleep as well as malnourishment. When the U.S. finally found their hiding spot he tried to pull a pin on a grenade but it failed to detonate; he was promptly captured afterwards.

- From the June 1, 2018 Fun Girl text files We know little of his life after the war at the moment other than in 1946 he was reduced to running the company that would become Saikou Corporation out of his family’s garage (much like the company it parodies, Sony, was forced to do at first in our world by its creators). Given his later characterization I suspect that he probably ruthlessly took advantage of the breaking of up so many of the zaibatsu (large financial or industrial conglomerates owned by specific families; Mitsubishi is an example) by the American occupying forces following the war. In the decades following his country’s defeat Saisho created an enormous megacorporation that makes most of the consumer products seen in Yandere Simulator’s universe. As Headmaster Shuyona later relates to us, once he puts his mind to something he never takes no for an answer. Aside from the obvious wealth aspect that it grants him, though, what else is at work in his mind?

Like so many others, the defeat of Japan in the war simply unimaginable to him and, as far as he’s concerned, even if everyone else surrendered he never did.

The brainwashing and propaganda of the early Showa period never left him; as more and more Western influence began to creep into Japan, the more he began to freak out about it. Progressive politics and democracy are things he utterly despises.

Unsurprisingly, his reactionary politics have a racial component to them. For Saisho, the only people fit to rule the world are the Japanese and that if only everyone else realized it, there’d be a worldwide utopia. Though not outright confirmed, this also goes some way to explaining the almost eugenics-like obsession with ‘purity’ in the modern Saikou clan.

Even so, probably through careful PR stunts and knowing when to keep his mouth shut, Saisho’s worst beliefs aren’t known to the public.

- From the December 1, 2018 build’s Fun Girl files

It’s with some surprise then we know for a fact that Saisho wanted his firstborn daughter to inherit the company after he was ready to retire and only kept his son, Megami’s dad, as a backup. Despite the grueling and inhuman training that each Saikou generation seems to be put through, it seems that Saisho did genuinely love his daughter based on what Headmaster Shuyona confirms in Headmaster’s Tape #1. While this seems incongruous at first with his far right politics I think it’s helpful to see it less as a belief in equality between men and women, but instead that since she was a Saikou, she was inherently a cut above others because of that. Not many fathers would have schools built for their children in their honor if something wasn’t genuine, I think.

Megami’s aunt is a very interesting character at the moment. We know nothing about her other than the fact that she was first in line for the proverbial throne and hasn’t spoken to Saisho in 30 years because of him disowning her after they got into an argument. Fun Girl seems to hint that the conversation revolved around her trying to remember a supposed sister of hers (i.e., her) but this might just be her trolling us all. I think there’s something else very important given that time frame we also need to keep in mind: the date. What’s 30 minus 2019? 1989.

If we assume for a moment that Akademi opening its doors in 1985 was her first year, then following traditional Japanese high school length, it stands to reason her graduation occurred in 1988. The following year, Ryoba’s murder of the girl who was almost certainly Headmaster Shuyona’s daughter must’ve sent serious shock waves through Buraza Town. Megami’s aunt would’ve probably followed the proceedings with a lot of interest and I think a reason she parted ways with Saisho is because Saikou almost certainly tipped the scales in favor of Ryoba during her trial against the journalist. Why? Because of the country’s insanely high conviction rate. It’s greater than 99%. You’d practically need a miracle to get through it all and make the person who tried to take you to court look like a monster for doing so - something we know she pulled off. It’s not something that she could’ve done on her own without money changing hands or judges being properly blackmailed and flipping the media circus around. Headmaster’s Tape #6 also confirms that by 1999 Ryoba had seemingly regular contact with Saisho and Megami’s dad but it’s easy to extrapolate that they must’ve been speaking with one another prior to then; after all, just because Shuyona didn’t know about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen (it doesn’t help him either that Saisho almost certainly sees him as a useful idiot). Learning a dark secret like this about your own family, coupled with the hell they put you through growing up, would break anyone and I think it’s a good explanation of why she left. If we accept that Saikou Corporation are Ryoba’s and Mr. Aishi’s employers then several things fall into place - why they haven’t ever had to move, why they live in a well off neighborhood, how they can simply up and leave for 10 weeks at a time to a foreign country - and the picture comes into focus. One of the things that Fun Girl seems to confirm is that Saisho’s love for Japan is equally as strong as what Ayano feels for Senpai. Knowing what we know about how the Aishi family curse seems to work, that’s pretty bone chilling. Coupled with every other horrible thing he thinks, combined with his vast wealth and influence, and it’s a recipe for disaster. The question becomes, however, what the point of all of this is. What could a murderous young woman possibly offer one of the most powerful companies in the world? Her body and mind. Stick with me here. Pretend you’re a scientist working for Saikou Corporation and you’re tasked with finding out what makes Ryoba tick; we’ll ignore for the moment any possible supernatural angle that the story might develop to explain their condition. The Aishi ‘curse’ seems to be a psychological condition, effecting the maternal line, that results in its carriers possessing severely stunted emotional growth, antisocial personality traits, flat affects, monotone voices, etc. This begins to alter in the host, however, an intermittent time after puberty in their late teens when, through various circumstances, meeting an individual causes an unknown psychological trigger to occur, acting as a kind of drug that for a time rewires the brain to enter a euphoria-like state wherein they begin to function on a neurotypical level, but only in contact with the source of this change (19 being the median age when an Aishi woman typically marries their victim). What if you could isolate the factors that cause such a thing to occur? 30 years is a long time to study something, after all, and decades’ worth of research must’ve meant some kind of breakthrough. Assuming that Saikou Corporation is like any other megacorporation in fiction then they’re sure to have their hands in medical technology. Imagine taking the research you’ve done on a so-called ‘yandere’ and began to try recreating it. After all, the idea of being able to use certain external symbols or things as stimuli is practically dystopian in its usefulness. Like, say, introducing a corporate symbol and ensuring its customers only felt a sense of satisfaction when buying a certain product.

Let’s go further than that. What if you could engender the same feelings of emptiness, followed by unbridled joy, when looking at something as simple as a flag? Not only could you brainwash an entire nation, but any other place on earth that allows the services you provide as a global company...

From this perspective, the “why?” of Saikou Corporation involving themselves with Ryoba becomes evident. After coming to this piece of speculation, if it is the case, something else also really clicked for me. Two things, actually. The first is that it’d give new meaning to the speech Megami tells you on the Skype chat you can have with her at school:

Is someone there?...Ah! It's you...Why have you come here? Have you come here to taunt me? Do you even know who I am? I know who you are. I know WHAT you are. My father won't allow me to attend school while you are..."active". He has a reason for tolerating your presence at this school. I don't. You are a vulgar creature that is only allowed to exist because you serve a purpose. If it was my decision, then every last one of you would be exterminated. Have fun while you can. If you and I ever cross paths...you're going to have a bad time.

The purpose is to further Saikou Corporation’s knowledge of the yandere condition and to find further ways to exploit it. Megami’s dad is in on this scheme and has purposefully kept Megami off campus while Ayano is on her murder spree as a way to keep her safe. What’s more, Ayano isn’t the only yandere that’s active either. Such a statement is more revealing than you might imagine it to be too. I think it’s pretty accepted at this point that the journalist’s wife was a yandere herself. He tells us as much in Mysterious Tape #6

But as soon as we met, she wanted to spend every waking moment with me. She wouldn't let me out of her sight, and got possessive if another woman so much as looked at me.

I quickly began to depend on her for everything. It wasn't long before I couldn't live without her. I certainly wasn't in any state to take care of myself... I was like an adult-sized baby. Helpless and vulnerable. Who knows...maybe that's what she was attracted to. Maybe she just wanted to experience the sensation of owning a person. Maybe she wanted to keep a human pet.

Isn’t it odd how she showed up in his life only a year after his ordeal with Ryoba in court? How his marriage to her didn’t involve them leaving the town at all? If I were him, I would’ve probably left it behind a long time ago, especially if it brought up memories as traumatic as what he’d experienced (and the fact he was directly threatened by Ryoba too). But instead his marriage and alcoholism caused him to never get out until it was too late. The timing seems... convenient, doesn’t it? Almost as if it were planned.

It wouldn’t be hard, I think, to sic some girl afflicted with the condition on someone either in hopes they’d ‘imprint’ on them or alternatively try to induce that very same response in them somehow. It’s a safe bet, again, considering how long Saikou Corp. would’ve had to pour over the data they’d collected. There surely would’ve been theories on how it happened and they’d be unethical enough to try it on human test subjects. So if they could do that, who might it happen to?

I think that an overarching narrative theme in-game is going to be that of free will. Let’s consider for a moment both Megami and Ayano as parallels to one another. Both are incredibly driven women who will stop at nothing to get what they desire - order for Megami, Senpai for Ayano - with familial histories of treachery and abuse. If Megami’s life has been lain down before her without her having much say in the matter, how does this similar struggle reflect in Ayano? Arguably, Megami could have everything she ever materially wanted in life just as Ayano has in the form of the feelings Senpai gives her but the issue goes deeper. If the price for Megami was having every moment planned out for her, is it not possible that the feelings Ayano has are just as manufactured? I don’t mean that in the ‘love at first sight’ kind of way; I’m questioning if the meeting with Senpai was something that was set up for her to go through, a test to see if this poor schmuck could be the thing that would let them begin to move onto a new test subject to put them through their glorified obstacle course (Akademi). Not to mention the fact that it essentially occurs right after Ryoba and Mr. Aishi leave for America is an immediate red flag. If Megami is trying to stop Ayano, though, then it must mean that she’s rebelling against the wishes of Saikou Corporation itself. After all, they don’t want something that they’ve put years of investment into slipping through the fingers if they can help it. The end game she has in mind is anyone’s guess at this point but I suspect it will be the purge of anything related to the above secret project. As such, there’s going to have to be someone to offer us an alternative to bringing down the current iteration of Saikou - and I think we also have an inkling of who’s going to aid us in bringing her down.

Kencho is emblematic of the status quo. He desperately desires his father’s approval (the one who’s likely continuing his father’s wishes and pursuing this whole endeavor to begin with) and will do anything to gain it. If Megami steps out of line too much, he’s certain to know that means she’ll fall from grace. He’s only been prevented from doing anything about his current situation because he’s only second best and hurting Megami would upset his dad. However, if she were to have an unfortunate accident... well, it isn’t as if he could be ignored anymore. In exchange, I imagine he’ll give Ayano exactly what her mother had: a nice house, a life untouched by anyone who’d take Taro or Taeko away from her, and a way for the two of them to have children if you go the latter route. All Ayano has to do is just give in to being a pawn like her mother did, like Kencho did, and like his father did. Or she can, at last, have the first real choice she’s ever had in her life by siding with Megami and tearing it all down (with Senpai still the promised reward in exchange for her help, certainly...).

[cassraven]

The Drama of WTF I never wanted this Holiday Season...

This is going to be one hell of spilling unwanted tea that happened in the last few days for me...it wasn’t welcomed by me with the holiday season coming this month but sadly, my toxic 2nd older sister decided to bring drama into our family and household lately...warning: It got ugly to the point where it left me in freaking tears, crying, needing emotional support from my cats, boyfriend’s hugs, and comfort from my Mum letting her know I had her back forever like she does mine...it seems like I’m the only child out of her kids who has her back lately.

The Tea: It’s quite ugly, so read at your own risk my friends...you might want to hug or cry for me man. It got that bad.

Two days ago, My parents were already home back from their road trip around the southern states. My sister’s birthday is the coming week, and lately she’s been drama wise always it seems finding any excuse or reason no matter how big or little to just want to argue/pick a verbal spat or fight with our Mother. (Their relationship has been like this ugly wise for a couple of years, for some reason my first older sister feels like despite having success with her life/education and high paying job as a teacher for a top grade school in our city that she’s the shit, with her type A personality/huge ego, and thinks she’s better than everyone else and has that major attitude of it, even at times talking down to our own Mother and mostly me as a the weird black sheep sister who is an artist with no real college major/future degrees/plans who will never amount to anything as great or ‘successful’ as she or our other sister who’s in law enforcement will. She’s the type that believes she’s always right, it’s her way or the highway.)

Usually, during my sister’s drama power trips of wanting to pick a verbal spat at or against our Mom, I am like my brothers or Dad, make myself scarce, try to ignore it, stay out of it or try to...this time, with this particular verbal attacking my sister was doing towards my Mom...in front of me and my Dad, I just couldn’t stay quiet, not after hearing all the crap she was saying at my Mom, and it was beyond messed up, some of the things she was saying and bringing up stuff and past arguements/fights from the past, blaming it all on my Mom, calling her a bad mother etc and I couldn’t take it. So I stepped in and told her to back off of Mom, stop yelling at her, to stop talking to her in that tone of voice like a grown adult would speak-talking down to like a child or like someone is ‘stupid’ or slow...we were all raised better than that by our parents to NOT talk to anyone more so our Mother like that. And there my sister was, talking to her, treating her like that. So who could blame me for stepping in trying to defend/protect my Mom? I told her to back off, was honest and told her the reality that the world doesn’t revolve around so-called perfect her, how could she berate and talk to our Mom like that when she’s always been there, been the best she could to her as a Mom, etc. and that she wasn’t right for acting like that regardless of her reasons why she was going at her like that...all over some stupid text message, claiming she didn’t send her the text about Thanksgiving etc when she in fact did, and it apparently “interfeared with her plans she had for her celebrating her brithday on the weekend instead of the week day of her birthday....yet for weeks prior, my sister never once told anyone of us in our family, or me or Mom about what she wanted to do even when we asked her so we could know concerning our own plans we had ourselves in our lives too....that’s what provoked her to go at our Mom, her damn changing schedule for her birthday...refusing to communicate properly like a mature adult would with their parent.

I got to witness my older sister, once again, talk down to-yell at-lecture-argue at our/my Mother when my sister brought up her "birthday plans" to use it as an excuse to hash out other arguments to start drama with her verbal spat wise. Like WTF? She got pissed off when I stepped in to defend Mom, and just verbally attacked me, said it wasn’t my concern or business and to fucking but out...well sorry but when it involves you or anyone attacking “our”, MY Mother like that and so cruelly, guess what...I’m stepping in to defend her against your negative cruel words of bullshit! She was raised better than that, our parents raised her better than that to ever be that cruel, rude, or mean or disrespectful towards anyone, especially my parents themselves! Yeah, it sucks having a sister who acts like that and then keeps claiming that she isn't like that when she truly is. Type A Personality much? Knowing that's what she really thinks/feels about me and my educational goals, doesn't support/believe in me...it feels shitty. She just lashed out at me, said I wasn’t even her real sister....a repeat of crueler words she used in the past last year of a verbal war fight she blasted at me towards my parents of some messed up crap....I’m adopted, was adopted from the time after I had been born; our parents, were my foster and later became my adopted parents, while my older sisters are actually their biological children...thus our age differences. We used to have a great relationship....until some things, issues and incidents in our family circle happened, and after a younger sister of ours ex-communicated herself from our family selfishly due to her own issues/being a liar/drug addict/hit my Mom, things changed and my older sister decided at some point to take shit out/see me as someone to just pick on, bully verbally, and just make the joke of the family since I’m different health wise, goth, feminist, riot-grrrl witch, the weird art spooky goth girl in the family....yeah.

So, after that and her saying her screw you, etc. to me and I left the room when my Mom asked me to just leave the living room, that it was okay, she could handle the crap drama my sister was dishing out at her, later messaging me in texts, thanking me for ‘Having my back and trying to defend me from your sister’s petty dramatics and spoiled brat entitled hellraiser attitude’. I thought, you’d think the whole arguement of what happened would be over and she’d later cool off and apologise if not to me, but to our Mom....you’d think that...

No chance...things took another turn...sadly. When my sister doesn’t get her way, things don’t go in her favor, or if anyone...ANYONE calls her out on her bullshit, her bullying on others, her whole her way of the highway, or even stands up against her....she will want to get even and resort to some lying and making herself look like the only victim. She manipulated the situation and lied to my other sister. My sister after yesterday’s spat, called my other sister (the cop/law one), lied not telling her the entire story of she had said leading up to me defending our Mother. She in return took bitchy entitled sisters side (as always), told Mom she does not want Want to see or hear from me period until “Cassie apologizes for what she said sticking her nose into ‘my’ sister's business! I don’t want to talk to her or see you guys for holidays. It’s your fault Mom! You all ruined our family Christmas!” So yeah, my sisters blame me for drama one of them started when all I did was defend our Mother verbally from one of them verbally attacking her and acting like an entitled spoiled bitch. And they say Mom and I ruined X-Mas, them choosing to act this way. WTF. My sister told Mom because of that she didn't want to see, talk to me anymore...nor want anything to do with me. There were apparently words of her saying I wasn't her "sister because I'm not blood". Once again both of them threw the fact that I'm adopted out, that I'm not family. How messed up is that? So yeah, this holiday season is looking to be somewhat shitty. My sisters suck. If that's how they want to be, feel and excommunicate towards me. Fine. I'll just ignore/turn deaf and mute towards them since they do this/treat me like this all the time anyway.

At least I can spend the holiday season spending it with my parents and with my boyfriend and his family who are so much normal and actually accept and care/love me.So yeah, that’s the tea...of crap that just happened...right around the week before my week of finals at college...and the holidays for me is just going to be a bit...tense and shitty somewhat.

[dustinreidmusic]

Mac's Wild Years: By Michael Hurtt.  Originally published in Offbeat Magazine

Mac Rebennack was born in 1941. Dr. John was born in 1967. What happened in between would color his whole musical career. "In New Orleans, everything--food, music, religion, even the way people talk and act--has deep, deep roots; and, like the tangled veins of cypress roots that meander this way and that in the swamp, everything in New Orleans is interrelated, wrapped around itself in ways that aren't always obvious."--Mac Rebennack In 1967, Malcolm Rebennack, Jr., exiled to the West Coast after a final drug bust that forbid him "to go to or through New Orleans," donned face paint, glitter and plumes and emerged as Dr. John the Night Tripper. His debut album Gris-Gris, and the stage shows that followed it, hawked a brand of psychedelic New Orleans R&B that mixed Mardi Gras Indian street chants with the primal gospel of holiness churches, the pianistic funk of Professor Longhair, heavy doses of hoodoo mysticism and nearly every shred of ritualistic South Louisiana culture that he'd absorbed during his decade and a half in the New Orleans music scene. From the drag shows at the Dew Drop Inn to the electric guitar evangelizing of the Reverend Utah Smith, it was a netherworld far stranger and more colorful than anything the pioneer of voodoo rock could have dreamed up. His role in it, though often been eclipsed by his later metamorphosis, established a reputation that would inform every aspect of his later musical life. Populated by high school greasers, high-rolling gangsters, down-and-out dope fiends and jive-talking record men, it was a world that had rapidly begun evaporating with the election of District Attorney Earling Carothers "Jim" Garrison in 1961. Prior to his widely known investigation into the Kennedy assassination, Garrison made his name locally by leading a systematic crack down on Crescent City vice that padlocked night clubs, juke joints and gambling dens. He often led the raids himself, pistol in hand, and by 1963 had managed to single-handedly dismantle the around-the-clock-party that had been Rebennack's entire young life. It had been one of after-hours jam sessions that lasted well into the next day, followed by "record dates" that produced aural snapshots that just reeked with crazed rock 'n' roll atmosphere: Jerry Byrne's frantic "Lights Out" and "Carry On," Roland Stone's narcotic anthem "Junco Partner," and Mac's own sinister, tremelo-charged "Storm Warning." "If we didn't have an artist and we had some studio time we'd just be the artist," Rebennack says of the sessions that produced hundreds of singles under monikers from Ronnie and the Delinquents to Drits and Dravy. The former's 1959 "Bad Neighborhood" was a greasy period piece if there ever was one. Meant to commemorate "the end of the zoot suit era," its gleeful lines of "Lie, steal, drink all day / good folks try to keep away," was an outright celebration of the lifestyle that Garrison sought to eliminate. And the Delinquents moniker was really no joke. "When we hired Ronnie Barron to be the singer with us, he was a li'l thug," says Rebennack, who'd had remarkably bad luck with great front men thus far. "We lost more singers to the penitentiary," he says, naming nearly everyone who preceded Barron with the exception of Frankie Ford. "Deadeye went to the joint for manslaughter, Jerry Byrne fell and went up for statutory rape, then Roland Stone went up on narcotics." Local disc jockey Jim Stewart once recalled that Rebennack's teenage bands "were always high, always late." But somehow through the haze, Mac would manage to simultaneously wear the hats of talent scout, A&R man, composer, producer, arranger, session musician, and when the need arose, singer. It might have stayed that way had Barron not refused to take on the Dr. John persona, which was invented with him in mind. Rebennack had started flirting with drugs when he was 12, already well seasoned in the art of skipping school and Mass to catch the street car to the early morning R&B jams at the Brass Rail. Since his father owned an appliance store that serviced jukeboxes, his childhood was spent wearing out stacks of hillbilly, jazz and blues 78s when they came off the boxes. Schooled on "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" by his piano-playing aunt, he soon took up the guitar. By the time rock 'n' roll hit during his freshman year at Jesuit High School, he was more than ready. At Jesuit, Rebennack formed his first band the Dominos, with Henry Guerineau, then joined Guerineau's the Spades with whom he played "the Holy Father Circuit," as he refers it, starring at CYO dances from Redemptorist in the Irish Channel to Saint Anthony's in Mid-City. His teachers were current and future Fats Domino guitarists Papoose Nelson and Roy Montrell, who took an axe to young Mac's brand new green and black Harmony guitar. "He broke it all up, called my Pa and said, 'Mr. Rebennack, I ain't teachin' your son on that piece of shit. Go pick him out something nice.' I thought I was going to get killed. My Pa was hip, though. He knew it wasn't about the guitar as much as having that guitar to bring on the gig." Montrell took Mac to a pawnshop where he picked out a Gibson that he worked off lugging appliances for his dad. "My father didn't say a word til later," Rebennack wrote in his autobiography Under a Hoodoo Moon. "Apparently Roy had taken him aside and told him, 'I taught your son a lesson, that you don't get things because of the way they look. You get them on how they work." "He had a way of teaching that kept me coming back for more. During the lesson, he strung me along with ordinary riffs--but then right at the end he'd play some killer lick, his back turned so I couldn't see his fingers, and say, 'Hey, wanna learn that shit, kid? Come back next week. Now get the fuck outta here." Having already met studio owner Cosimo Matassa, who was a friend of his father, Rebennack spent his schooldays honing his songwriting skills. "Man, I used to go to school, I had a couple of comic books where the outside cover looked like a loose leaf binder. And I'd sit there in class reading that. They thought I was doing something in school but I'd be sitting there writing songs, ripping them off from Mad or Tales from the Crypt." He'd also begun hanging out at Warren Easton High School on Canal Street, a hotbed of hip musical activity that had already birthed New Orleans first bona-fide white rock 'n' roll band, the Sparks. It was here that he first encountered saxophonist Leonard James, whose band was blasting out a set of Sam Butera songs in the school gymnasium. It turned out that James knew all about the Brass Rail too, and dug the same hard-driving sounds as Rebennack did. They were soon rehearsing at James' house in the notorious St. Roch park neighborhood with guitarist Earl Stanley--now playing the recently introduced electric bass--and drummer Paul Staehle. "Leonard lived on Robertson not too far from the park and Stanley used to live around there on Dauphine," Rebennack says. "One of the things St. Roch Park was known for was as a good cop spot. St. Roch church was famous, too, because they'd take the grease out the bells by the cemetery, mix it with some graveyard dirt and some gun powder, add extra nitrate and put that all together with Patchouli oil to make goofy dust. Now, what you did with it was according to how rank a motherfucker you were." The mysterious worlds of drugs and hoodoo fascinated young Mac, but in his new musical partners he found an even deeper magic. "Paul Staehle was bad. I remember him having drum battles with Edward Blackwell and all the top drummers. And Stanley had a finger-plucking style of guitar like Snooks did, North Mexican shit that he'd learned from his daddy. He was into Earl King and Guitar Slim just like I was. We liked those cats because they did something different." Rebennack had picked up on the flamboyance of his guitar heroes a little too acutely for the priests at Jesuit, who'd brought his high school career to a halt after a Christmas talent show where they accused him of making "lewd gyrations" with his instrument. The real beef, Henry Guerineau later told Tad Jones, was that they were playing R&B instead of big band swing or Dixieland. "At the time," he recalled, "it was heresy." Stanley, who became the Spades' guitarist after Rebennack left the band, was having his own issues over at Nicholls High. "I used to hang with the gangsters, all the tough guys," Stanley says. "I was so bad they threw me out of Nicholls but they couldn't throw me out of school. So they asked me to leave and I went to McDonough on Esplanade for a couple of months, then I quit when I was 15. That was in '55. "I didn't know Mac when he was in the Spades. I just remember seeing him playing guitar at the dances. I thought, 'That guy's pretty good.' Then I got with Leonard and through Leonard I met Mac. They had a guy playing piano with them, Hal Farrar, he went by the stage names 'King Helo Attaro' and 'Spider Boy.' Now Hal was a character, he was the character of them all; the main lunatic. He liked to drink vodka, he could care less about anything, just a wild man. He used to have this Cugat jacket he'd wear and he'd play piano and try to do all of Little Richard's stuff. He even had the little moustache. In fact, he recorded the original demo of 'I've Been Hoodood' (later to become the flip side of the Dr. John hit "Right Place, Wrong Time") with Leonard." Vocalists Wayne "Deadeye" Herring and Jerry Byrne were also drifting into the group at this point. "We used to do the old low-down blues," Herring told Jones. "There weren't too many white bands that could do it. Back then if you sat in with a black band, boy, they'd jump on your ass when you come outside. People took a dim view of that but we did it anyway." While band names revolved from the Skyliners to the Loafers to the Night Trains to the Thunderbirds, the foundation remained James, Rebennack, Stanley and Staehle. "Crippled" Eddie Hynes and Eddie Shroeder often floated in on trombone and baritone sax respectively. "Whether it was Leonard's band or my band, it was all pretty much the same crew of guys," says Rebennack, "Nothing really changed other than we changed the name of the band quite frequently. It kinda helped us get some gigs and win some talent shows. We lost them under one name and won them under another." The core foursome debuted on wax with an album of raunchy guitar and sax instrumentals, Boppin' and A Strollin' with Leonard James, recorded for Decca in 1956. Rough, ready and loose, the LP was the perfect soundtrack of noir New Orleans; at once evocative of French Quarter strip joints, high school dances and hood hangouts like the Rockery Inn. Along with discs like the Saxons' "Camel Walk' and the Sparks' "Merry Mary Lou," it stands as a testament to city's incredibly potent--but often obscured--white rock 'n' roll underground. "Leonard always took pride in combing his ducktail perfect," recalls Rebennack. "I mean, he would stand in front the mirror for an hour and then put his be-bop cap on--perfect. He had his little zoot suit pressed, more than the rest of us. We'd just wear them. They were the kind that didn't wrinkle any way. "Leonard was a great hustler. He used to walk in joints where they never had a band in their life. I remember us getting a gig in the Ninth Ward at a grocery store. Leonard conned this guy into hiring us but he wanted country music. We didn't know any country music so we'd play 'Comin' Around the Mountain' or whatever. As long as we were working, we didn't care nothing about none of the rest of it." From dives like the Club Leoma, the Blue Cat and the Jet Lounge, they moved up to the Clock on St. Charles Avenue and finally, the Brass Rail. "While we were working there Paul Gayten says, 'If y'all want to keep the gig, you're going to have to quit playing songs like the record.' And that became kind of a theme with our band. We didn't play them like the records, we played them our way." Gayten also took issue with their slightly out-of-date stage wear. "We had the same suits for so long that I don't think anybody ever considered getting new uniforms until Paul started fuckin' with us: 'Nobody wears zoot suits in Chicago; they wear continental suits.' Man, here we had all our money invested in these royal blue zoot suits. And what do we do? We got some new suits from Harry Hyman's or old man Sutton's on South Rampart--continental suits--and we wore them in Gretna when they had a gang fight at Cass's Lounge. They throwed us all in the drainage ditch out behind the joint. We ruined our new suits and we hadn't even paid for them yet! "When we worked at any of them joints on the West Bank, shit happened. At Spec's Moulin Rouge, old man Spec used to have guys walking around with pieces dressed like police but they wasn't official police, they was just guys who worked for old man Spec. Gang fights was, like, prevalent. When the Choctaw Boys and the Cherokees would have their annual beef at the Wego Inn on the Hill, it would be around Carnival. And it would be like, 'Goddamn.' You know the shit's going to happen; it's just when it's going happen. I would be trying to play close to the slot machines that were on the bandstand because I figured the slots could deal with the slugs better than me. When I saw anything that looked like it could be trouble, I'd back up toward the slots. But this is the kind of shit you had to endure back in them days because you were dealing with a bunch of crazy motherfuckers. And we were crazy, too." If there was one song that distilled the insanity into the length of a 45 RPM record, it was Rebennack's "Lights Out," cut by Jerry Byrne for Specialty in 1958. Punctuated by stop-time drum breaks, a foghorn-like saxophone riff and a searing piano solo courtesy of Art Neville, "Lights Out" has justifiably been called "the perfect rock 'n' roll song." Byrne's breakneck vocal nods to a personality so bent on bringing the house down that fights--and sometimes worse--often ensued. "Jerry was one of them suckers who worked the house," says Rebennack, "but he was a piece of work. He drove me crazy a number of times in my life. He was special with that. Hey, guys wanted to shoot me over things Jerry did. He had the ability to kick up more shit with more motherfuckers than anybody I know." In 1959, Byrne cut Mac's equally boisterous "Carry On" and then got sent to prison on a trumped-up statutory rape charge. Deadeye was already behind bars. "It was a never-ending thing," says Stanley, "just make a record and things happen, you know?" Despite the trouble, says Rebennack, "our band was really popular." They'd toured with Frankie Ford behind "Sea Cruise" and Byrne behind "Lights Out" as well as backing the traveling rock 'n' roll caravans at both the Municipal Auditorium and Pontchartrain Beach Amusement Park. And the records kept coming, from Bobby Lonero's "Little Bit" to Morgus and the Ghouls' "Morgus the Magnificent." "I don't think any of us thought that much about doing a record date," reflects Rebennack. "The gigs were the fun part. When I started working for Joe Ruffino's record company, Joe asked my daddy if I could be the president of the company and my daddy says, 'What are you crazy? This boy can't even find his fuckin' shoes!' But there were so many guys we did sessions for like Andy Blanco at Drew-blan in Morgan City and a bunch of other guys that had different little labels in the country. We played on all of Cos's Rex stuff and then we did a lot of crazy stuff all through the days we were working for Johnny Vincent over at Ace. I remember we stole 'Jimmy Crack Corn' and called it 'Ain't No Use.' We cut 'Row Your Boat' with Big Boy Myles. And I don't know how many different versions of 'Junco Partner' we cut with Roland Stone. We were some plagiarizing motherfuckers." Stone, the most prolific of Rebennack's vocalists on record, had already blazed the white R&B trail with local luminaries the Jokers when he waxed the regional smash "Just a Moment" with Rebennack in 1961. His entrance roughly coincided with the departure of Leonard James, who was replaced by Charlie Maduell after he joined the Air Force. "Charlie was just as crazy as Leonard was, but Leonard never got high. On the other hand, Charlie fit right in with the rest of us because he liked the narcotics, too. Probably the only one that wasn't a really serious drug addict was Stanley. If we were somewhere in the country, we would burglarize drug stores. When we were in the city, we forged 'scripts. We were strung out dope fiends, what the hell you going to do? There was a pharmacy on the corner of Dorgenois and Canal that used to sell to all the dope fiends. You had to go in there and ask for certain things, that's when I started getting my collection of Mad comic books together. If I got a comic book and a bag of pork rinds, that meant I wanted some opiates. Everything you ordered meant something else. We used to have so much fun that who'd have ever thought we'd wind up in jail? "My favorite gig was when Roland was singing with us and we started working at Little Club Forest on Jefferson Highway. At Club Forest, you could tell what audience hit because when all the junkies would come in, they'd just want to hear 'Junco Partner' over and over. When the whores came in they'd want to hear whatever their song was that night. So there were all these songs that fit the set. That gig was so fuckin' off the hook, so much crazy shit happened at that gig alone, I couldn't even describe it. "Between Charlie Maduell and Paul Staehle, they would always hide the stash for the band. One night they had a raid and Paul had the whole band's stash in his sock. They didn't shake us down, but the FBI came in and they emptied the joint. Somebody paid everyone's bond and before the night was over, Wes, the Jefferson Parish narc, was selling the customers back their dope in the band room! This is how out there it was. "And then Charlie went out and walked the bar and did the dance of the Seven Veils. He's out and there doing a striptease walking the bar. It's one of them gigs that's printed in my brain. And we always had what we used to call our 'band-aids' back then. Before they called them groupies, we called them band-Aids." When Stone fell for one of the young ladies a little too hard, friction arose. "I told Roland, 'Hey, listen, you can't marry this girl. She's our girl. She belongs to the band.' I thought I was doing him a favor but it backfired. He was obviously pissed." Stone showed up for his next recording session with three henchmen in tow including prizefighter Pepi Flores. "They stomped my ass. Charlie went out and got a gun and was firing in the air. I says, 'Charlie, quit shooting in the air! Shoot these motherfuckers!' He didn't even have real guns. They were replica weapons he'd loaded up! But we all went to work the next night together. Me and Charlie wound up having to wear shades and makeup to hide the black eyes. That's when I learned, hey, when it comes to matters of somebody's heart, stay the fuck out of it." The good times had to come to an end and they eventually did. Stone was busted on a narcotics charge, as was Maduell, who remains in Angola today. Within just a few years, Paul Staehle would die of a drug over dose. Rebennack's own luck ran out on Christmas Eve of 1961 when he intervened in a scuffle between Ronnie Barron and a jealous club owner who accused Barron of having an affair with his wife. "I walked in to get Ronnie at the last minute because Ronnie was like Leonard James, he'd take forever to get himself all perfect. So I go to get him and the guy's pistol-whipping him. Miss Mildred, Ronnie's mama, said if anything happened to her son on the road she was going to take a butcher knife and chop my cajones off. So I'm thinking, 'Man, if anything happens to this guy, his mama's going to fuck me up.' And hey, she was much more frightening to me than this guy was. I thought I had my hand over the handle of the gun, but it was over the barrel. I'm beating his hand on the bricks and as I'm hitting it, all of a sudden the gun went off and my finger's just about to fall off of my hand. It was hanging by a piece of skin and then I went crazy. I took Paul Staehle's ride cymbal out the case and just fucked up the guy's face. I was trying to pull his eyeballs out his head." Doctors managed to reattach the finger, but Rebennack had trouble playing guitar with the intensity he'd become known for. He concentrated on the keyboard, playing organ on virtually all of Huey Meaux's New Orleans sessions, most notably those of Barbara Lynn and Jimmy Donley. The first--and perhaps wildest--chapter of his musical career officially came to a close when he was busted and sent to federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas. Upon his release in 1965 he headed to California and his future as the Night Tripper. "You know what the kicks of it was?" Rebennack asks. "We wanted to play music so bad that we didn't ever think about it. We were trying to make a hustle just off of the gigs and that was part of the fun of it. Everything we done, we had fun doing it. That was the one thing that I always treasured about them days. It was just something that happened. When you're young and crazy and stupid, you do a lot of crazy, stupid shit. But a lot of that shit is great because you're too stupid to know better. I know that we made it a point to always have kicks, to always have good times no matter what was going to go down. We never thought, 'Oh, this is a suck-ass gig we're going on.' We went on all kinds of suck-ass gigs! But while we were doing them, we had a ball."

[771lljosephkwesiasemnor]

Modest Money

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Kailey Guillemin 2 months ago Categories: All Recent Investing NewsFinancial Advice

Must-Have Money Habits for 2019

We’re far enough into 2019 that you can say you’re either continuing strong with your new year’s resolutions, or that you haven’t thought about it since January 2. Does that mean you give up and try again in 2020?

Well, if that’s the way you want to take it, you may as well stop now. Although I highly recommend you keep reading and let me change your mind.

Just because you fell off the bandwagon for your new year’s resolutions, that doesn’t mean you can’t restart, or start brand-new. Pretty sure I’ve redone my new year’s resolution about five times a week, so you’re good. You just have to keep trucking along and give it another shot, but actually mean it this time.

Let’s make 2019 all about improving your quality of life and being happy with who you are.

Okay, so you may think this is one of those cheesy articles that tell you to look yourself in the mirror to get yourself pumped up every morning, or to smile at everyone you walk by (although they aren’t terrible ideas, to be honest). Instead, I’m going to talk to you about other habits that you may not have thought to focus on.

Now, it’s true that we need habits that boost our confidence, improve our mental health (now more than ever), and help to ease our stresses throughout the day. However, some of those habits come in different shapes, sizes, and ways we would never have recognized.

Enough of the chit chat and let’s get down to business. I have some habits you may want to consider testing out.

Learn to Manage Your Money

What’s a typical new year’s resolution or habit people want to get into? Making more money, managing their money, saving their money, just MONEY in general!

I don’t blame them. Money is one of the top stressors in life. It can cause tension in relationships, affect your job, and bring down your overall mental health.

How do you get rid of the stress of money? In more than one way, but learning to manage it is a good start.

How many times have you read an article that tells you to budget, watch your spending habits, and to track your income and expenses? Well, it’s because they all have a point. How can you keep tabs on where your money is going if you don’t pay attention to it? And don’t think you can rely on memory alone.

I’m a huge fan of physically seeing where I spend my money and by how much. One way of doing that is by setting up an account with something like Personal Capital. You can safely link all of your accounts into one program that will help you keep track of your financial life.

The point behind it is to give you a snapshot of what you’re doing with your money and to help you save. Retirement, a house, school, or even a pair of shoes you’ve been eyeing up, it doesn’t matter what it’s for. When you know where your money is going, you’ll know where you may need to slow down and adjust your savings plan.

Take Control of Your Finances

It’s one thing to say you’re going to learn how to manage your money, but if you don’t actually take control of your financial life, there’s only so much you can do. So, how can you take control?

Besides using programs like what’s listed above, to help you track everything, you can find ways to bring in more money. Now, don’t think you need some crazy job on top of what you’re already doing. We don’t need to make 2019 the year you burn yourself out (trust me, been there done that).

You can earn and save money quite simply actually. For example, you have Ebates where you’re basically getting paid to shop from the comfort of your home. Have a bunch of gift cards to random places you’ll never use? You can sell them for cash on Raise. Answer a few questions for companies and earn money through surveys like Survey Junkie.

You’re probably thinking that I’m trying to sell you on these things (maybe only a little bit). The point, though, is to show you how easy it is to bring in additional money on the side without stressing yourself out.

Start Investing, Seriously

Are you investing yet? If you answered no, then why aren’t you? Is it too confusing, too difficult to get started, or just not enough interest in it? I wouldn’t say these are great excuses…

Learning to invest has never been easier than right now. For starters, there are tons of blogs out there that are waiting to prove to you that investing can be interesting and a good thing to get into. Also, there is so much help to get your portfolio going that you barely have to do any work.

You have online platforms like Ally Invest that are an excellent tool for beginners to get you going. They give you guidance, information, and help you buy stocks and set up your portfolio. They’re worth taking a look.

Investing is a way to bring in a passive income. If you really enjoy it, you can pursue it even farther and turn it into a part-time job if you wanted to. Just make sure you set yourself some limits and have all the information you need.

Obviously, these three habits revolve around finances. Since money is such a significant stressor in people’s lives, it made sense to focus on habits that will help ease that stress and make finances the least of your concerns.

Now, don’t let money be the only focus in 2019. You still want to enjoy life, work on your mental health, and to be happy with yourself. Your finances, though, are just one of those aspects in life that once you take control over, you may find yourself being able to focus more on other parts.

Let 2019 be the year you take control of your finances and your life. You’ve got this.

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Tags: money advice

Kailey Guillemin :Kailey graduated with a degree in Journalism and Religious Studies from the University of Regina, Saskatchewan. Now she lives a double life in Manitoba – writer by day and dance teacher by night. When she’s not at her computer, you’ll find her curled up with a glass of red wine and knitting, or obsessively taking photos of her puppy.

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[readmylip-s]

thank u, next.

so here we are, a week left until we usher in the new year. 2018 is probably one of the more major roller coaster rides i’ve had for a while now. i’ve had quite a few accomplishments and fcos the usual emotional-down-turns. i’ve also had tons of blessings and a lot of lessons learnt through the year. i’ve always been told to count my blessings so thats exactly what i’ve been doing. 

if you know me you’d know i prefer keeping my social circle small, though it may not seem that way on socmed. but thats the thing, thats social media. i dont revolve my life around social media. i think i’ve said this way too many times - what you see is only what i choose to show. on a personal level, i rlly prefer the company of a small group of people, even if it means just hanging out with one or two friends. i think 2018 is also the year i’ve had one of the most me-time. i enjoy going to the movies alone, having the entire couple seat to myself, i love sitting at starbucks sipping on GT Cream or seasonal drinks and occasionally with a plate of beef pie. teehee.

i’ll prolly share some positive and not so positive highlights of my year, as well as all the blessings i’ve had through the year. 

this year, just like the past 2 years, i landed myself in the hospital. 

pretty much because of the same old issues i’ve been having. was put on oxygen supply for quite a fair bit, had multiple needles poked through my skin, and multiple bags of glucose. it was a crazy period because it was during the fasting month and prior to the hospitalization, i was fasting. and even when i was in the a&e and eventually warded, i was still not allowed to have food. i was cranky, i was upset and best of all? i felt like i was gna faint. i was due for surgery, again, the next day so i couldnt eat. but i was a rebel. during the night, i secretly chewed on Mr Bean pancake that my brother got me when he accompanied me for a bit. so glad i didnt get caught hehe. fast forward, post surgery, i ate like a monster. the little brother was supposed to fly off the next morn for his school trip but he still came to visit me during the night. he even brought me bubble tea?! i was discharged after what seemed to be a torturous 3d2n staycation at NTFGH. 

2018 was the year i get to tick off certain things in my bucket list. i finally, finally did something i really wanted to do.

i got myself a septum piercing. its a pretty unorthodox thing considering how i dress and all but hey, a girl can dream, and make her own dreams come true. it was on a very random sunday that i decided to get it. but i’m kinda glad i did. i guess all the needles from all my hospitalizations helped me coped with the needle that poked through my septum. pretty sure this is only gna be a phase so all you hateful people, shut your trap. hahahaha. :)

also this year, i finally got to climb a mountain again. 

it was DFOALC’s first overseas staff expedition. (no, i wouldnt consider pulau ubin ‘overseas’, haha) it was the toughest climb i’ve had of all the 4 climbs i’ve done before. in summary - my injury acted up during the ascend and descend, and i also almost lost my life to Gunung Berembun. i survived, alhamdulillah. i just needed my cast when i got back to Singapore. phew. 

moving on to counting my blessings, i call them my constants. 

#4. 

its no surprise that AY is one of the greatest blessing i never knew i needed in my life. i never know where to begin when it comes to how beyond blessed i am for his presence in my life. its still so surreal how we were friends for the longest time and now we’re planning for a future together?! WHAT. hold on, time! 

it is rlly crazy how this whole love thing works. but whatever that is, it has brought so much joy in my life. and AY has made me the happiest kid ever since we began our journey in chasing NZ! thank you, AY. you’re so bloody amazing, and i can’t wait to spend forever and a day with you. dont know what i did to deserve you but i’m glad i did. x

#3.

my bestfriend; nurul. we went through our poly days together, and even when we were separated in to different classes, we still made it a point to have lunch together atleast once or twice a week. clingsterzx much. we even applied for the same job together and among our group of friends who applied, only the two of us got it. is this fate or what?! thank you sissy for being there, always. and for always being the one with the sneaky pick me ups, and listening to all my sob stories. but please dont degil when i try to help you find a boyfriend??? but if you insist then i hope you find your oppa lah okay. we have had our differences and our bumpy ride but what doesnt kill us makes us stronger, yes? so much love for you, sissy! x

my other bestfriend, zulh.jsmn. this photo is the exact representation of our bestfriendship. he annoys the living shit outta me but i have got no choice but to accept him the way he is. unlike nurul, this one is lowkey always asking me to find him a girlfriend. smh. your day will come soon, buddy. i’m grateful for all the times you made sure i was always in check. also for being my guitarist bcus i’m that much of a loser who cant play the guitar, and most importantly for the letter you wrote to me 5 years ago for me to look back to when i feel like the worst person on earth. oh and all the times you traveled down for me just to send food that you cooked so i’d have food to break my fast with during my internship?!?! you always have the most interesting gifts for me whether its for my birthday or just a random gift. the box of clouds from genting, i still have it! appearing in Chicago with SD and a guitar to sing me a birthday song at midnight for my 19th birthday. and the lantern we flew for my 20th birthday in Tennessee at midnight? i choose to believe its still flying somewhere in the sky! thank you, buddy for everything. smell ya in futura tomato saucin, buddiok! #OHOS #GBT #NZV lives! 

#2

my sister, SD. oh sisthur, the resemblance we have is uncanny. it is no wonder people automatically recognize us as sisters through photos. our taxi stand incident will always be etched at the back of my mind. it is one i would never forget bcus it is that one short incident that led us to how close we are up till today. though things cannot be exactly how i imagined it to be, i’m still glad i have you almost entirely. here’s to more sisthur hangz! sayang sawah! x

#1

and of course, my number one constant, my only older brother. you suck and you’re such an idiot but you care for me in ways no other human would. no one, and i rlly mean no one, can ever take your place in my life, for blood is thicker than water. i promise, to always make you proud of me. and i too promise that when the day comes that you shed your tears for me, i’d cheer you up and promise to always be the same baby sister you grew up with. thank you, for calling me your bestfriend, and for loving me with all your life. growing up together hasnt been an easy feat but i’m glad our rivalry only lasted through the times we wore the same sneakers, shared the same room and have the same mp3 player. you rlly suck sometimes but i love you every other day. x 

/wow so much of a summary and a wrap up, nurfa./

but yep, these pretty much sums up my 2018. fcos there were pockets of crazy shit that happened through the year; from suffering cuts and bruises bcus of anxiety attacks, to losing my sanity, to falling out of a relationship, to my injury and to losing friends i thought who would be around a little longer. 

some other things i ticked off my bucket list was meeting Haqim Mokhtar and watch him perform live, singing on stage (i got to sing with sufian suhaimi!), being present for TLV gigs, and fcos, completing my desired Nike Collection hehehehe.

i am very much thankful to God for allowing me to unlearn and relearn whatever i needed to. i dont really do resolutions but in 2018, my goal was just to seek happiness. i’m glad to say that i have achieved my goal of being happy. and in 2019, i pray for constant happiness with the people i love most, and for inner peace. may 2019 be the year i break the chain of having to be hospitalized, and may 2019 also be the year of recovery. 

x, nvrfa 

1623 | 23rd December 2018

[lunasaturnine]

Surprising Resurrection

Two easters ago was the dopest easter ever. I had just spent a whole season acclimating to the Episcopal church schedule and the sense of a lil spiritual community. Enough immersion so that Lent and its pared down services with less music and no flowers and stuff like that really affected me. Then I did all the holy week shit which is all super dark and spare, getting more and more somber as the week goes. Including the night services. And then, Easter BLOOMED, so many fucking flowers, gorgeous amazing huge music, candles, incense, and taking communion... I don’t want to make a LONG post about it here but it was like, I really felt the potency of the ancient Church of England bringing hope to the poor wretched Europeans, distributing this beneficience and this promise of a welcoming world beyond this one... ok side note in the context of wretched old Europe, the notion of heaven was necessary because the way life was, was just so freaking bad and low-quality. Life was filled with so much suffering. Humans caught glimpses of the divine in love, music, humor, etc. but so much sickness and poverty... even rich people lived terrible and uncomfortable and uncertain lives. Sewage dumped in the streets. All those babies dying all the time. The promise of a life beyond where things are good, means a promise of an existence where things are good period. It had to emphasize mortality to get to the idea of goodness. Anyways, whatever. I really felt the ancientness of the ritual at play, the generosity of it, the big machine, the circle of the people giving the communion goblet as we poor sinners all knelt in surrender... it was DOPE. I was very affected by it on a somatic level and was spiritually hung over the next day.

Easter last year was covid easter. We got out of choir for spring break and never came back. So many people we never saw again. Lent had just started. We made jokes thruout the year about how long lent was lasting... I submitted a video for the easter service of me battling a bach prelude. DIdnt watch the service. God I would never watch a church service of my own free will

Easter this year...

Last night I was feeling blue and I wept a little, remembering the easter of two years ago. How much lent had allowed the rose of easter to bloom, how much the steady meeting of the church community allowed for the rhythmic wheel to turn of the church seasons. During covid, no communities were meeting (in my life). No wheels were turning. It was more than a long lent. I didn’t stay penitent during the “long lent.” I didn’t stay anything. I just released and got fat eating cheese and coping. I was too fat for my cute easter dress. I was/am also premenstrual, last night, and I wept a little at how Easter was not going to be in a rhythm. And I wept at how much had been let go of. How disoriented and numb I felt. Partially because I was so fat and bleary from cheese. Partially because of covid. An entire year feeling released in some ways from the wheel of... the world we build together. I reminded myself other people feel it so much more than I had felt it. People who love being in the world, who have the energy for a lot of things like that.

One thing that didn’t change was the rhythm of the earth. Funny how the Christian holidays ride this rhythm and also sorta try to deny it, try to make the Christ story the driver of it all. At my church the rector really likes botanical metaphors and alludes comfortably to the turning of the seasons - it aint so bad at all - it’s just, come on, those are clearly the primary things. Pagan ritual is so fun because it’s tied directly to that. Solstices, equinoxes, and those fat mid-season celtic holidays in the fixed signs.

At its core, church should be people gathering regularly to honor what is sacred. And, I think it would be nice, if ... life revolved around it. If one’s life work had the rhythm of preparing what to bring to the sacred festival as part of it, and then release from it, and then do it some more. Because, we want community, we need community, and church’s best function is a way of creating an artifice for community interaction w/ each other, and its second best function is creating/celebrating/sculpting a shared value system (second best bc it’s dysfunctional usually). The pagan way is pleasantly neutral. If your community chooses a certain style or set of divinities... there might be cliquey responses but there’s no sense of blasphemy. It’s tied fundamentally to the earth. It’s sensual in that way.

Here’s what easter was this year. This is particularly good because it was inspired directly by the sermon that the rector gave. He is a smart good-minded dude who is finding his stride. His 9AM service was better than his 11AM one he didn’t emphasize it in the 11one come on dude. He talked (among other things) about how the ladies who went to jesus’s tomb went expecting to find him there, dead, even though they had heard him say over and over that his body would be resurrected. He said it wasn’t bc they were dumb, it was bc we are not fully capable of comprehending the idea of resurrection. He talked a lot about the impossibility of resurrection.

I sat with that while I looked at the trees and shit (outdoor service ftw). Our bodies know death. Our bodies know death. Our bodies know death. Our flesh is mortal. They know it really fundamentally. Our spirits are immortal, and know immortality. They do the death process, but for them it is not a spookery thing at all, it is just a transition. So there’s this wild dissonance in the human existence. I thought about how lent comes in the context of the church cadence to create a sense of a fast, a sense of quiet, a sense of death. It’s like those old fashioned mystery rites when you go into the cave of ceres or whatever. You are repeating ideas of death with your mercury words so that they imprint on your spirit, and your body likes to resonate with your spirit. And it’s also enforced by the darkness in the church and the darkness of those rituals... so you are using all of your resources and harmonizing to the mortality part of you, the idea that death is indeed real, you embody death you live out death. The quiet the sorrow the misgiving the mourning. And THEN, YOU EMBODY THE LIFE. And not just new life. Not birth of a baby so the cycle continues. YOU EMBODY THE ETERNALNESS OF LIFE! YOU EMBODY ETERNAL FUCKING LIFE! HE IS RISEN!!!! It’s the GOOD NEWS, when you talk to Christians who really believe it it’s the BEST NEWS THEY’VE EVER HEARD, THE BEST NEWS THEY COULD EVER TELL YOU, and when the church believes it and gives it to you, they are being the most generous as its possible to be... you embody the eternal nature of the soul that your spirit knows is true. You glow on both sides of the yin yang... This is the main focus of Christianity and Christian alchemy. It’s... COOL. 

What happened this easter was, there were services inside and outside. The music director put me and my 2 favorite people in a thread and told us to come up with the music. I did, and they acquiesced. I picked just like a bunch of my favorite music from Mozart operas, plus a couple other pieces that I liked (turned out to both be by Aquarius composers). One of the pieces was a hymn to Isis and Osiris but it turns out sometimes Christians put “When I beholdthe wondrous cross” to it so that worked :)))) Ummm... the whole process was so easy, everyone respected me and each other, no one fought, I practiced but not too hard, I played ok but not too great hahaha, the others played very well, we all cooperated, we all saw all the community, we all picked up right where we left off. I didn’t feel the incense eternal life high I felt two easters ago. But, everyone was there, the weather was beautiful, nothing was the matter. Without any sense of cycle or attachment to a wheel, without stress and labor, resentment drama expectation criticism strife... it was simply, a wonderful musical time, that I was given to create and enjoy, and I really enjoyed it, and we all three got a hundred bucks. It was the type of experience that I’m used to trying to plan, but get frustrated and it turns impossible... and look, it was just Given to me. And. I didn’t believe in it yesterday. I didn’t believe in Easter’s promise last night. I thought the magic of the world was broken or wounded. I sat with my sorrow and embodied it with my bleary fatness on my meditation cushion. I couldn’t see or feel anything clearly... just a sense of being a broken toy. And it was beautiful. Mild. Meaningful. And just right there. So accessible. 

I have to tell my church I’m leaving them for the other church. It feels fine... it still feels like the right thing. It feels like it’s going to be a growth of this energy. All the welcoming open feelings are even stronger at the other church. And I think it will open the door to even more collaboration, b/c collaboration is already starting to happen. I think it will be fine I just gotta rip the bandaid off.

[gb-patch]

Our Life- Game Announcement

Us at GB Patch Games are ready to announce the next major project we’re working on: Our Life: Beginnings and Always! Our Life will have a Windows, Mac, and Linux version, of course. But this is also the team’s first big push to creating an Android and IOS project. The PC and mobile versions will have the exact same script, however we’ll look to already released phone games, such as Mystic Messenger by Cheritz and Cybird titles, to figure out how to better optimize an interface system for the mobile build. The PC build, shown below, will have the type of GUI arrangement we normally use in our projects, which we know isn’t perfectly suited for phone screens.

There will be a completely free-to-play base game and optional paid DLC events. We’ll put out a demo late 2017 or early 2018. The full release will be during the second half of 2018.

Feel free to join our Discord Channel to chat about OL and our other games~

Basics

A twenty dollar bill, four summers, fifteen years, and a one of a kind life.

Jamie has spent the last couple weeks on a summertime high. At eight-years-old nothing is better than what feels like endless days of school-less adventures, especially when you live walking distance from the beach. While coming home under a scorching sunset one fine evening, Jamie is approached by a stranger. The man is looking for a kid who can do him a favor, and he’s even offering to pay for it. He wants Jamie to be friends with his son. The person is Mr. Holden, Jamie’s new neighbor as well as the father of the odd, and oddly named, boy Cove. Whether Jamie wants to play along or not, that weird child isn’t going anywhere. And somehow the long days of vacation finally do come to an end. Summer may not be able to last forever, but Jamie can take comfort in knowing it will come back again someday...

Time is always moving, things are forever changing. All you can do is enjoy the precious moments and build towards a future you can cherish just as much.

Our Life is built around seeing what comes of your life and your relationship with one specific character. The protagonist is highly customizable. You’ll decide their appearance, gender, personality, interests, relationships, and what becomes of them in the future. Cove is the only major love interest and he is similarly changeable, though you don’t have an exact say in his development. He’s a person of his own and there’s little way to tell how his experiences will shape him. There are a couple side romance options that take place over a shorter period of time with guys who have personalities/futures that remain consistent.

Cove

Our Life features a fair sized cast of characters to spend time with. As with most things in life, though, they come and go. There’s only one person who remains a constant: Cove Holden. Whether he’s a friend, lover, acquaintance, or something else, Cove will be around every step of the way to one degree or another.

As a child Cove is eccentric, anti-social, emotional, and an open book. He may or may not change significantly with the passage of time.

Gameplay

The only gameplay in Our Life is making choices. However, there are various unique types of choices you get to make that all work together to create a super custom experience.

Character Creation

At the start of the game you’ll design a protagonist for yourself. You’ll be able to choose their first and last names, face shape, skin tone, hairstyle, hair color, and if they have any extra details or not. At the start of each new time period you’ll have an opportunity to change your MC. You’ll be free to update what name you go by, your pronouns, your look, anything except your last name.

Opinion Deciding

After meeting Cove you’ll get to create a custom opinion on the boy that determines how the MC reacts to him. You can pick your level of Comfort around him and your level of Interest. Comfort and Interest will be combined together to describe your overall feelings. There will be multiple points in the game where you’ll have the option to alter your opinion on Cove. You can move the meter up quickly or gradually or you can leave it at the bottom for the entire time. But once you officially set your opinion, going back down to a lesser level of Comfort/Interest isn’t possible.

Initially the highest Interest can go is ‘Crush’. At 18-years-old you can go all the way up to ‘Love’.

Moment Selection

There are automatic events that always happen and always in the same order. That’s not how the entire game is, though. Much of the play time revolves around the Moment Select system. With this you can choose to watch disconnected vignettes that center on different topics. When you’ve seen all of the Moments (or all the ones you want to see), you can choose to continue with the required events.

Not every Moment is available in the free version, several are optional DLC content.

Event Choices

Lastly, there’s the classic style of VN choices: dialog/action selections. There’s a nearly constant flow of this type of choice which amount to hundreds of options in the full version of the game. Your decisions will change the course of scenes, shape your interests, determine parts of your future, and effect Cove.

And that’s it for the basic details. I hope you’ll look forward to seeing more! We’re certainly excited about this game. Thank you so much for reading this far, ahah!

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[johnboothus]

EOD Drinks: Peggy Noe Stevens

In this episode of “End of Day Drinks,” Peggy Noe Stevens discusses her organization Bourbon Women and what the bourbon industry needs to do to promote inclusion. After becoming the world’s first female master bourbon taster, Stevens used her expertise to create Bourbon Women. There, other women can learn more about the spirit through workshops and what she calls “edu-tainment.” While some events revolve around bourbon food pairing and education, Bourbon Women has also debunked industry-wide myths that women prefer weaker bourbon. In fact, after holding a series of blind tastings, Stevens’ team found women actually prefer stronger, spicier, higher-proof, and more robust whiskies.

Here, Stevens shares what a master bourbon taster does day to day and some of the bourbon pairing advice from her new book, “Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon?”

She also discusses some of the issues in the bourbon industry and what steps retailers and trade show pros can make to take women seriously in the whiskey world. She insists that producers don’t have to “pinkify” a product, and should instead ensure they’re making space for more women to ask questions about different products.

Bourbon Women will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, with thousands of women now in its ranks. Since Covid, the team has shifted to virtual events that have increased access to bourbon education for hundreds of women, including past “Sip-posiums” and an upcoming Toast to the Tenth Celebration.

Listen Online

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Or Check out the conversation here

Adam: From VinePair’s New York City headquarters, this is “End of Day Drinks,” where we sit down with the movers and shakers in the beverage industry. So pour yourself a glass and listen along with us. Let’s start the show. On today’s episode of “EOD Drinks,” we’re talking with Peggy Noe Stevens, the first female master bourbon taster and the founder of Bourbon Women.

Bourbon Women is an organization for women who are passionate about bourbon culture, women, and the promise of adventure when the two are combined. It’s an independent forum that brings women of all walks of life together over a glass of bourbon with a focus on initiating, cultivating, and inspiring deep and meaningful relationships; encouraging the development of women personally, professionally, and courageously; and supporting members in their journey to become the best versions of themselves in the world of bourbon. Additionally, they provide a safe, inclusive environment for fun, discovery, and learning. This was an interview that we recorded with Peggy right before the holidays. So she also gives us a little bit of information on pairing bourbon with some of her favorite dishes. All right, Katie and team, take it away.

Katie: Hello and welcome to VinePair’s “End of Day Drinks” podcast. I’m Katie, I’m the editorial associate here at VinePair. And I’m lucky enough today to be here with Peggy Noe Stevens. Peggy, thank you for joining us.

Peggy: Oh, my pleasure. Happy holidays to you.

K: You, too. Peggy is the world’s first female master bourbon taster and the founder of Bourbon Women, which is the first women’s consumer organization in the beverage industry, so we’re really lucky to have her on. I’m also joined by some of my fellow editorial team. So Adam Teeter, VinePair’s co-founder. Hey, Adam.

A: Hey Katie, what’s up?

K: And then Cat Wolinski, who is VinePair’s senior editor.

Cat: Hey, everyone, and hello, Peggy. So exciting to have you on.

P: Thank you.

K: So, Peggy, we’re so excited to have you, especially right before the holidays, and talk about everybody’s favorite fall and winter drink — that is bourbon. And we all brought a bourbon drink today. Right? So I’m curious what everyone decided to mix up.

P: I got to tell you, I’m even more curious on what y’all gravitated towards. So I’m all ears. I’m all ears.

A: I’m drinking bourbon the way I normally drink it, which is straight.

K: And what bourbon did you choose?

A: What am I drinking?

K: Yeah.

A: I mean, Peggy, are you gonna get mad at me if I tell you — I’m drinking Evan Williams single barrel.

P: Why would I be mad about that? In fact, I think I’m a little jealous, actually.

A: I just find it to be like, an amazing bourbon for the money.

P: Absolutely.

K: Cat, what about you?

C: So I also usually sip my bourbon neat, but in the festivity of the podcast, I tried to make a cocktail really quickly. I was going for a Hot Toddy because that’s sort of my thing the past couple of weeks. But I didn’t really have time to make it hot. So I basically just tried to mix in a drop or two of honey into a couple of ounces of Rare Breed. And I expressed some fresh mint leaves and dropped them in there, and mixed it up with an ice cube. The honey did not dissolve, which is probably not surprising, but it’s actually really tasty.

K: That’s quite fancy for a last-minute cocktail.

P: I’m impressed, actually.

C: We got creative in all that time working from home. You know, it’s like this is my chance to have some fun and do something weird.

K: Totally. What about you, Peggy?

P: Well, I have been doing some blind tastings today because I’m a whiskey reviewer for American Whiskey Magazine. So when I do that and I’m just tasting straight, I always want a real cocktail after I do that. And so it was perfect timing for your podcast. And I made a black Manhattan. And what I love about those, it’s your typical add your bourbon, but I also put a little bit of bitters, some cherry syrup, and then I put some amaro and that’s why they call it a black Manhattan, because you just put enough to change the color of the cocktail to a darker color.

K: That sounds delicious.

C: I don’t think I’ve ever put amaro in my whiskey like that.

P: And that’s the thing. It’s so funny because I find out that so many people don’t because they do vermouth instead. But I was turned on to this, oh gosh, probably five years ago. It was actually another bourbon woman that taught me about it. And once I did, I was hooked. And it’s kind of my go-to cocktail these days.

K: That’s awesome. Well, I’m drinking some apple cider that I heated up and I just put a little bit of Maker’s Mark in there. It’s really delicious. There’s a place right near by me that smells like fresh cider. So I’ve been drinking it a lot, spiked and not, throughout the days here because it’s really cold. I’m in Colorado, Peggy. So it’s been snowing, and it just feels like the perfect winter drink.

P: That sounds delicious. Absolutely. I hear a lot of Toddies, of course, and I just wrote an article about warm winter drinks. So you all are right in line.

K: We’re on trend. That’s good to know.

A: Always good to know.

K: So, Peggy, can you talk a little bit about Bourbon Women? I know that bourbon is obviously a very male-dominated industry, so I’ve just been curious what it’s like for you to lead a bunch of women in that space. And how have you seen things change over the course of your time working in bourbon?

P: Oh, wow. Well, it’s been an evolution, and the best way I can say it is when I was young in the industry and I worked for major spirits company, I was a master taster, female master taster, and I would travel around and conduct tastings and largely 90 percent, if not 98 percent in the audience were male. And if there were any kind of trickle of women, it would be just a couple. But I’d never hear from them during the seminar. They would always come up after the seminar and I was really understanding their loyalty to bourbon, how they loved it, how engaged they were during the seminar, but they just never raised their hand. And so fast-forward to when I started my own company and the industry still really wasn’t having what I call a conversation with women. They were out there. So I conducted a bunch of focus groups throughout Kentucky and asked women, what do you want? You know, if there was an organization or a way that the industry would talk to you about bourbon, what would that be? And would you like it? And it was just overwhelmingly unanimous. And so Bourbon Women Organization was born right after that. And that has been literally 10 years ago. And I’m happy to say that we now have thousands of women across the U.S., some international, we’re celebrating our 10-year anniversary. We’re calling it a Toast to the Tenth in 2021. I’m glad it wasn’t in 2020. And we’re having a two-day virtual where we celebrate 10 cities with distilleries and we have formal branches in, a little bit over 10 now, like New York, California, etc. And I’m just so excited about the enthusiasm that these women have shown because we’ve conducted well over 250 events across the nation in that period of time. All lifestyle events, whether it’s cooking with bourbon, bourbon tastings, whiskey comparisons, we’ve had distillery speakers, master distillers come in and the women just love it. And virtually where we thought we were so disappointed that we couldn’t do our annual sip-posium. That’s “Sip-posium” in 2020 because usually about 350 women come in for an entire weekend for bourbon excursions and culinary dinners at distilleries and all of these things. It was OK because we ended up doing a three-day virtual conference back in August and our reach through that virtual conference — there’s always a silver lining to 2020 — really extended it to more women. So we don’t know what to expect at our next conference in 2021 because we had just so many women reaching out saying, what’s this about? How do we join? They just loved it. So I could not be more pleased with how the industry has supported us, helped fund us at these different events, and how the women have responded.

K: That’s awesome. And so you said that you’ve been kind of conducting that virtually, which I think is really cool because obviously it does help gain access for people who might not have been able to go travel. So I think that’s really awesome. I’m curious, as a master bourbon taster, first of all, if you could talk about — what does a master bourbon taster do, and how does that work during this virtual world that we’re currently living in during Covid?

P: Right. Well, first of all, I became a master bourbon taster. I was the first female master bourbon taster in the world, if you can believe it. That was back in the ’90s. And I remember almost taking a pause when they said, do you realize you’re the first one ever given this title as a female? And I thought that was, as excited as I was, and honored that I was, it was almost odd to me. Right, because I couldn’t believe that in the 1990s that we were that far behind. But what a master taster does, it can be different from distillery to distillery because that’s how we roll in our industry. And there’s master blenders, master distillers, and we each kind of do our own thing. The master taster is usually quality control, it is usually identifying flavor profiles within the whiskey to have the consumers understand what they’re drinking. And I would conduct tastings. I served as an ambassador for a particular brand for quite some time, and then in my own company, it became truly part of my business. Business being sourcing whiskey for different companies that wanted to start a distillery. I mentioned just a minute ago that I was doing some blind tasting. I do whiskey reviews. I’m a spirits judge and invited to many spirit competitions to really kind of profile different whiskeys and judge the quality of them. So a master taster can really envelop quite a few areas within the industry. And it’s been tons of fun. It has been something that I purely enjoy and have truly parlayed my love for a whiskey palate into food pairings with bourbon. And so that’s another passion of mine. And so I just came out with a book along with my good friend Susan Reigler, who’s also a spirits writer. It’s called “Which Fork Do I Use with my Bourbon?” Because people are almost gun shy. They think wine is the only thing that could ever go with food. And that is certainly not the case because bourbon is so complex. So we not only teach in the book the tricks of the trade, but how to conduct a tasting, what to look for in a bourbon, how to food pairing, how to entertain in your home using bourbon. So we kind of took everything that I’ve ever learned, I think, in bourbon and entertaining, and put it in the book so that a consumer could enjoy it in their own home.

A: So, Peggy, you’ve been around bourbon for a very long time, obviously very famous family connection to bourbon. I’m curious to really dig in here and talk about what the bourbon industry needs to do, and I think the whiskey industry, in general, to make itself more welcoming to women, because there are so many people that talk to us, readers who say, “I’m a massive whiskey drinker, but I just don’t feel like the industry ever talks to me. I don’t feel like the brands talk to me. They always assume that it’s just something that men drink.” And so what does the industry need to do better? And what do we as a publication need to do better in order to ensure that we are talking to women equally when it comes to talking about whiskey?

P: Well, I simply love that you’ve identified that and have asked that big, bold question. And there’s quite a bit that can be done. One of the premises, too, of the Bourbon Women Organization was not just to start a conversation with women and give what I call edu-tainment to women, but it was also to debunk the myth that the industry had. They thought that a woman, in order to drink bourbon, that they would have to dumb it down and make it sweeter and lighter proof and not so robust. And it was quite the opposite. So one of the things that we really dug into was research. And we conducted, again, blind tastings. We conducted tasting profiles based on a woman’s palate. And what we found hands down is that women across the board, this is no coincidence, liked stronger, spicier, higher-proof, and more robust whiskies. And so when we deliver that information, we kind of what I said, debunked the myth that’s out there to let spirits companies know, don’t dumb it down, you don’t have to “pinkify” it just for a woman to enjoy it, to make it more welcoming for a woman. And I’ll just take a quick example. Take your whiskey trade show. I have attended so many of those across the country and scores of men will come in, women will come in. And I have noticed that the representatives sometimes behind the table that are pouring the whiskey, they really pay attention to the men. And they’re pouring the whiskey and they’re talking to the men. And the women almost have to beg for a glass or say, “Hey, I’m over here.” And they need to identify with women when they are approached by a woman. To talk to them, to welcome them, to give them that glass, ask them if they have questions. Because what we have found is these women are no whiskey 101 people. They know their stuff. They are researchers, they’re educated, they’re working women. They study just like men do. Another area that I think is really important, too, is in the retail stores, especially when you go to a liquor store and a woman is going down the aisle looking at bourbons, to ask her if she needs any assistance and let her ask questions. That’s another area that I think is really important. Some of the events that we hold, we just did one, for example, with Four Roses. We call it the Sip and Stream. And we did a hand-selected barrel pick with Four Roses and bottled it and sold it in the liquor stores and it was specified to a women’s palate. We did another one with Maker’s Mark this holiday season. It sold out in two hours, a whole barrel of bourbon sold out in two hours by the women buying it because that shows passion. So I think the more we show the love that females can have with this industry and with a product, it’s quite profitable for the industry because we’re the other half of the population.

A: Exactly.

C: More than half, in most cases. I was going to ask, Peggy, what you think about the cross-collaboration with other beverage industries? Because today, we actually just published our 50 Best Beers of the year, and one of them was the Brooklyn Brewery Black Ops 2019 Vintage, which was aged in Four Roses barrels. And that was a really special treat for us to try and ended up in our top 50. And something we see a lot in beer, like bourbon-barrel-aging products, and we see it everywhere now, I mean, what’s your opinion on, is bourbon reaching beer drinkers that way, or is beer reaching bourbon drinkers? And then finally, what about bourbon-barrel-aged wines?

P: Well, I have to tell you, I think you struck a really hot trend right now, and first and foremost, I shall say I’m an equal opportunity drinker. I will have a beer, I will drink wine, I will drink my bourbon. So that’s good because we can all play together and we can play together very well between all the different industries. What’s a very hot trend right now are what is called “finishes” or barrel-aged products. In fact, I just wrote another article called “The Final Finish,” where a lot of bourbons are traditionally making their bourbon as they normally do, but they are sourcing different barrels. They might be an Armagnac barrel. It might be a Calvados barrel, it may be a rum barrel. And they’re doing a finish by letting the bourbon, some of the bourbon rest in that secondary barrel. And that is called technically a barrel-finished product. So with beer, using the interior of a barrel, we can only use in our industry a barrel one time. That’s according to our bourbon definition, white charred oak barrel, one time use. And then we sell it to people like wineries and tequila will buy bourbon barrels, the Scotch industry, etc. But what everybody needs to know is that usually up to 85 percent of the flavors, the best flavors of that barrel are given to bourbon. And then the used barrel you can still, of course, get great-quality flavor. It just takes a little bit longer. And because bourbon is complex and adds so many great congeners to beer, wine, etc.,  that’s why you’re seeing such a trend, because of our complexity. And there are some really great bourbons that are Cabernet-finished that I have tasted. There are really great beers that are bourbon-barrel finished. So I think it’s really insightful. I think it’s innovative, and I think we need to keep playing with each other.

K: So going back to something that you mentioned a bit ago, you were talking about how a lot of people think that wine is the only thing that you can pair with food, and that you completely disagree. You think bourbon can pair really well with food. Can you talk a little bit about some of your favorite bourbon and food pairings?

P: Oh, sure. It depends, of course. I love to pair bourbon throughout the course of the meal, so when I entertain in my home and have groups of people over that are bourbon fanatics, we don’t serve wine. I pair a different bourbon with each course and also with the appetizers. So we have a ton of fun doing that. But I would say appetizers to me are the most fun to pair because you can really get layers and layers of flavor. One in particular that I’m making for Christmas, it’s a Christmas holiday, one that I favor, it is a mushroom cap and I take country ham and Boursin cheese, which is kind of an herbed cheese, and I blend those together. I stuff the mushroom, brush it all with olive oil, and then I bake them until the cheese is kind of bubbly. And I serve that with a barrel-strength whiskey, because it is a very earthy flavor with between the country ham, very savory, and earthy again with the mushrooms. And then that herb cheese with the olive oil — it is just phenomenal how it harmonizes with that salty country ham. So you almost need, because it is so rich, you almost need a barrel-strength bourbon to almost cut through some of that savoriness. And what it brings to the table is this overlay of caramel note and vanilla note. So think about all the flavors that I just spoke of coming together and taking a bite of that.

C: That sounds delicious.

A: Yeah, you’re making me really hungry.

P: You know, that’s why I just love dissecting an appetizer and kind of breaking down all the flavors and then, you know, what to pair it with.

A: So you’ve obviously seen the bourbon industry evolve over the past few decades. What do you think is to explain for two things? One, just it’s explosive growth in general. And two, the recent sort of explosion of these certain bottles that become collector’s items and then the prices just become insane. So I’m thinking, obviously we all know Pappy Van Winkle, but, you know now it’s basically anything that comes out of Sazerac, right? It’s all of these different producers that I remember for example, I used to be able to buy some of these for 30 bucks, you know, five, six years ago. And now I can’t even find some of these producers on the shelves. What do you think is explaining all of that fervor around bourbon?

P: Well, I will tell you, going back, let’s say, to the mid-’90s bourbon, actually, I’ll go back to the ’80s, bourbon actually had a decline in the ’80s, and we weren’t doing a great job of marketing across the world. Globally, Scotch was kicking our butts, if you will. And so I think what happened in the ’90s, we started to see a resurgence and it was a myriad of things. It was the cocktail culture. For example, bartenders were starting to bring back some retro cocktails like the Manhattans, the Old Fashioneds, Highballs that demanded use of bourbon. And so I think cocktails really helped people gravitate back to bourbon. I think pop culture had a huge hand, like “Mad Men,” if you watched that, they drank a lot of bourbon.

K: Totally.

P: And so with all these influences happening, we became better marketers. We launched the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, which, it’s a bucket list thing to do now, where you can travel around to the different distilleries throughout Kentucky, I think we now have over 60 distilleries in Kentucky. So we just started to do a better job globally as well, breaking into markets, having other destinations. Japan especially fell in love with bourbon. So globally, we developed a better footprint in reach. And so that’s really — it didn’t happen overnight. And we’ve seen a trajectory. I think the Kentucky Distillers Association, about five or six years ago, did a 20-year trajectory that our growth would continue. And so far it has, so knock on wood. Now, the other side of the coin I think that you spoke about was limited expressions and exclusivity. That seems to be right now anyway, the name of the game. I think that scarcity of product like Blanton’s for example, you mentioned Sazerac. It’s really difficult to find right now and where once I could buy a case at the local liquor store.

A: Me, too!

P: And its fervor, as I call it, or fever, I should call it, of consumers who, it’s all kind of word of mouth. “Oh, this you’ve got to try this. They’re running out of that.” And also the distilleries now jumping on that bandwagon of limited expression. You see Woodford Reserve doing a bit of that, just saying we even put this in a smaller bottle because there’s only a limited amount. The more exclusive, the more people want. And that is my distinct impression. And there are, believe me, some bourbons out there that I just think are incredible that are worth the price of purchase. Peerless is making a beautiful rye right now. Colonel Taylor, I can’t even find myself.

A: I can’t either. I love Colonel Taylor, too. And I can’t find it anywhere.

P: Right. It’s exceptional, but it’s so darn hard to find. So even though those have become what I call “cult products,” you just wonder, though, when people kind of give up and say, we’re just going to have to start drinking something else because we can never find it. So when does the pendulum swing?

A: Well, and just as a follow-up there, that’s what I’m wondering. Because that’s what we’re hearing on the editorial side from Irish whiskey producers, from Scotch, again, who are starting to say, well, we’re producing liquids with age that is sometimes older than a lot of these 10-year-old bourbons people are going crazy for. And you can find us and we’re also 35 bucks. And is this our opportunity? And I think what you’re talking about here is really interesting, because the fact that you’re recognizing that that could be a problem, that that’s a threat for bourbon, that the scarcity that everyone’s obsessed with now could possibly hurt the category is really interesting to me.

K: Yeah, definitely.

P: Well, it’s my perspective, and they’ve proven me wrong many times, I’m sure. But my perspective is I think it’s really cool that people are excited about bourbon and exclusivity. I think it’s really exciting. It’s just at what threshold will a consumer stand back and say, we’ll wait for that whiskey to come out or we’ll wait for that — you know, I just don’t know that answer. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder. And I described it recently to somebody as an analogy of art. You know, I know that if I look at an art piece, it might touch me personally, but it might not touch my husband personally because he thinks it’s ugly. And so bourbon is kind of in the eye of the beholder, just like art is.

A: I like that.

C: So, Peggy, I actually have a question that’s taking the opposite perspective from long loved-legacy bottles. In the Bourbon Women group, how many people are you seeing who are aspiring entrepreneurs, who are looking to start their own bourbon brands or whiskey brands or launch another kind of business in this industry?

P: Many. Now, we are a consumer group — we just happen to have industry people that like us and join as well — but we are truly a consumer group. However, within that consumer environment, I know there’s a woman right now who actually retired from her first industry love because she fell in greater love with bourbon. And now she has a job in the bourbon industry. And we see a lot of that, that people have fallen in love with the culture. They had no idea that it could be a career. So we try to network women as much as possible. That’s part of our mission with Bourbon Women is to create a great networking resource for those young females. I was on the phone just the other day with another young individual millennial that is in a totally different industry, but she worked during the summers at a distillery, really wants to start a career in that. So she sent me a resume. I’m circulating her resume. We have those kinds of connections and we can’t do it, of course, for everybody. But as many as we can touch that are female, we do.

K: That’s awesome. Well, Peggy, thank you so much for coming today and talking to us about all things bourbon: Bourbon Women, bourbon pairings. You are clearly super knowledgeable about the subject and we were very excited to have you come. So we really appreciate it.

P: Well, I loved it. And if anybody is interested in joining Bourbon Women just go to BourbonWomen.org. You will see our February event Toast to the 10th on Feb. 25 and 26. And I hope everybody joins us. You’ll see what we’re about.

K: Great. Well, congratulations on 10 years, that’s so exciting.

P: Thank you.

A: Thank you so much.

C: Thank you, Peggy. It’s been a pleasure.

P: All right. Bye bye.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of “EOD Drinks.” If you’ve enjoyed this program, please leave us a rating or a review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people discover the show. And tell your friends. We want as many people as possible listening to this amazing program.

And now for the credits. “End of Day Drinks” is recorded live in New York City at VinePair’s headquarters. And it is produced, edited, and engineered by VinePair tastings director, yes, he wears a lot of hats, Keith Beavers. I also want to give a special thanks to VinePair’s co-founder, Josh Malin, to the executive editor Joanna Sciarrino, to our senior editor, Cat Wolinski, senior staff writer Tim McKirdy, and our associate editor Katie Brown. And a special shout-out to Danielle Grinberg, VinePair’s art director who designed the sick logo for this program. The music for “End of Day Drinks” was produced, written and recorded by Darby Cici. I’m VinePair co-founder Adam Teeter, and we’ll see you next week. Thanks a lot.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article EOD Drinks: Peggy Noe Stevens appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/eod-drinks-peggy-noe-stevens/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/eod-drinks-peggy-noe-stevens

[fallingfromdepression]

10/14/20: something i wish i could post on my personal IG but never will

back in april of 2019, i watched spiderverse for the first (and so far only) time. it was also the first time since middle school i considered seriously a career in animation, in character-focused stories. i admittedly have not consumed as much western animation as i should have before making this next claim, but spiderverse was one of the first western animations i had seen which felt similar to the animes i watched that i felt pushed the boundaries of the medium (namely, mob psycho 100); growing up, i had seriously (but maybe not as seriously as some of my peers who did go on to schools specializing in the arts) considered growing up to be a manga/anime artist, but manga/anime as a career had always felt distant since it was based in japan, an entirely separate country and far away from me (yes i was aware western comics and animation were a thing but i didn’t care about /their/ aesthetics at the time even though in retrospect some of them do have very dope styles and animation). spiderverse was one of the first times that i felt maybe the style i grew up consuming and wanting to create myself was possible in the west where i lived, accessible to me and not unreachable in a faraway land (theoretically. it is only a plane-ride away and manga/anime very much do influence current western media/animation).

the rekindling of my interest in art as a career also came at a time when i was entering grad school for an industry i was not really sure i actually wanted to pursue (public policy). i had already had doubts about even going to grad school for this from the beginning of deciding to apply for the program, but as i had done no job searching or had any job offers waiting post-graduation, grad school seemed to make the most sense (as other people told me. and honestly i believed too as someone who had gone through college and yet never found my “passion”). i hoped that i would somehow fall in love with public policy, or at least learn to like it enough to drive me through the next 2 years. back in april, i had just recently either submitted my application to grad school or had just received my acceptance offer (i don’t remember which), so this rekindling did not come at a great time since i had to start priming my mind for a policy career rather than an art career. i’m writing this as me who is currently in my 2nd year of the public policy program, and i’m sorry to say to my past self that i still haven’t fallen in love with public policy as i had hoped (in fact, i had imagined being able to drop out of the program but it could only be in my imagination as it was ridiculous to quit after only 1 quarter in grad school. and a potential waste of time and money despite literally my microeconomics professor in that first quarter saying ‘if, theoretically, someone here were to regret coming to grad school for public policy ... it’s better to quit now rather than slug through the next 2 yrs in a program you don’t like’). in the past year, i have continued to struggle with the idea of pursuing art as a career... and with my own art.

this latter is a completely new struggle, as i have enjoyed drawing for, the most part, my entire life. while i did try to wean myself off of this interest in high school in preparation for my (assumed) future career as a medical doctor, i still went back to it at the end of high school/beginning of college and have been drawing on and off ever since. it really is just a hobby, as i do it in my free time and i don’t make money off of it. however in the last year, i have really struggled with keeping my art as just a hobby, especially with my desire/dream to do art as a career. despite my excitement in april 2019, i don’t believe i can ever make it in the art industry and this is a belief i’ve had since high school: i don’t have much creativity or unique new ideas to bring to the table (most of my current creative endeavors usually include fanart or being inspired by memes/someone else’s work that my own work is then based off of) and i don’t have the drive that i feel like i’ve seen from actual art professionals. depression and mental health issues that influence this drive aside, the reason i never pursued art seriously back in high school was because i didn’t think i had the ability. the people i know who did end up going to school for art had styles different from mine -- admittedly leaning on the photorealistic side, which now i consider a separate style from manga/anime and both are just as valid as art. but back then i didn’t think of it like that -- and they were thinking about art and creating almost all the time. (admittedly again, they did have more art classes in their schedules but i had my hands full trying to keep my grades and motivation up for science and math classes. obviously other things were at play here from that very sentence alone, but moving on.) all in all, i don’t think i have what it takes even though admittedly the drive i keep mentioning is kind of something i need in /all/ industries, regardless of whatever i’m producing for it... so time and time again i keep coming back to square one. i want to pursue a career but also i don’t/can’t. but well, you don’t have to go to art school; i’ve seen people online who manage to side-gig or get by by just posting online while doing other things academically/professionally full-time.

but in a recent attempt to do a month-long drawing challenge, i realized ... i don’t know what i want to do with my art. my frustration with my art during that challenge (which i only ended up doing a full week of before i stopped) coupled with me reading write-ups of artists talking about their inspirations to create made me ask myself ... what am i drawing for? what do i want to ultimately create? at this current point in time i’ve realized those reasons again, but during that challenge i thought that i didn’t have any reasons. i was just drawing just to draw... which is fine as a hobbyist but as a professional who is creating character-driven/focused stories? now, i said i’ve realized those reasons again, and they revolve around me wanting to create stories about mental health, stories with representation. except for the former i have never successfully drawn anything pertaining to my own mental health story bc i find it impossible to put down tangibly, and the latter i feel like i don’t feel as strongly about it as some other artists i follow (namely a specific artist who had talked about how important it was for them as a malaysian singaporean to represent muslim malaysian culture well. and you could tell through their writing how strongly they felt about it. it’s a level that i am not at admittedly with my own representation goals). and not having a strong sense of direction with my art is the same problem i have with public policy, in which i don’t know what exactly i want to do with it. i have a concept, ideas of what to do but i have no idea what it actually looks like in practice to execute. as someone who is most comfortable coming up with ways to execute other people’s ideas and not coming up with and executing my own, trying to figure out my own life trajectory for myself with a limited time frame (i’m in my 2nd year of grad school for christ’s sake) is a Feat to say the least.

in spiderverse, in the mangas i used to read and still do today, characters with problems like me get to see them solved linearly and with good endings. they struggle to get to that ending though, and so i should expect to struggle too. but as someone who has not maintained friendships through any period of my life (separate can of worms to open) nor has any concrete idea/desire for what i want to do in the future ... i’m already missing 2 major factors that the fictional characters i read about usually have to help guide them. i’m still struggling with this desire to pursue art as a career as i currently take classes on public policy, and with my motivation to draw. i’m struggling to draw now because i feel that there is no future in my art, that even if i keep it as a hobby it isn’t worth it. i get it, you don’t have to monetize your hobbies, and if it’s just a hobby you can go at it at your own pace and not compare to others. but being on social media more recently and looking at more art has been really damaging lately, even if i keep reminding myself that these artists are good because they’re either 1. younger and have more time to draw and churn out art to practice more or 2. have literal careers in art and have studied art and drawn repeatedly for essentially years ... it still hurts to see art and realize how much work you have to do yourself to get to that level. this fear of that amount of work is almost an entirely different issue than just a struggle on whether or not to pursue art professionally though... 

recently, in a fit of frustration, i considered just not drawing ever again and to try to forget about art and attempt to more seriously pursue public policy. but the idea of just not drawing ever again literally brought tears to my eyes, and i feel it’s because drawing has been a part of my life for so long (it was essentially my identity in middle school, and maybe that’s why i have such a complex with art) that i don’t know what i would do if i gave it up. drawing and my confidence in my ability to draw has been there for me through decades now, and i still like being able to visually depict others’ and my ideas. but sometimes i look at my art and i’m like ‘wow i’ve improved a lot since back then’ but sometimes i look at my art and think of everything i’m lacking compared to what i want my art to be like.

[r-743-a]

How to Move on When Business Ideas Don't Work: Some Business Solutions Don't Seem Right

I find myself coming up with something new all the time. The majority of my business solutions revolve around my center assignment, but recently I followed someone who I trusted into one of these business ideas that appeared"in line" with my assignment in the beginning, but as time passed, it simply didn't feel suitable. I was not enjoying what I was doing and dropped heart in it entirely. This is a partnership that just did not work for me. Has anything like that happened to you before?

How invested are you on your own company solutions?

When you get in these conditions, there's always some quantity of investment. Not only did I spend money, but I was emotionally invested in exactly the exact same time. As usual with all my hair-brained business thoughts, I put my heart and soul into it. Does this situation sound familiar? I could not see the forest for the trees; it is almost like being in love. You know, like when you can not see anything wrong with another person you are in love with because you're"feeling the love". This scenario has happened to me a couple of times since being in business since 1995. So, I'm now actually able to hone in on the moment this starts happening. Even after all of the years in business and dealing with this scenario repeatedly, I continue to keep an open mind into business ideas, but I have become better at figuring out the moment they are not likely to execute.

This specific time around, it literally took two weeks until I began to become acutely aware that the business solution was moving in a way I did not like. The older I get, the better I become at learning fast the moment a business idea is simply not very likely to work out. It is funny how being an entrepreneur involves"gut feelings". I understand entrepreneurs who pick up on this while other individuals pick up on these feelings with time. I truly feel it is a matter of practical experience.

Listed below are a couple of things that I've learned that can help you proceed from business solutions that don't work.

Revisit or re-read your small business assignment. Frequently you'll learn that business ideas that seemed suitable for you in the time are actually not in accordance with your business model.

Remain open-minded even in case you might be emotionally invested. You must recognize issues as they arise and being aware if it is heading in the wrong direction.

Listen to that inner voice. I know that seems strange, but most entrepreneurs typically know when there's a red flag in business. Therefore, don't ignore it. I have got a very dear friend that did dismiss these voices and ended up losing everything to the point of insolvency.

Know when problems appear if they can be adjusted in a manner which makes your life better or not. Business ideas should not be so problematic that you can not enjoy living. Thus, if you see that one of your business ideas that has one problem after another, it is probably not worth the headache.

Some business ideas go against You, Inc..

I remember there was a time for me when all I thought about was that the fiscal element of their new business ideas that I began. I just stepped out and refocused after a time period once the money wasn't what I thought it could be and was not really worth my time. As time progressed, I have learned that money is an important factor to an entrepreneur. Having said this, realizing when the business ideas do not make you satisfied may be the perfect way to ascertain when to proceed. Money does not particularly have anything to do with happiness to this degree. This is a widespread misconception about business entrepreneurs. It's not merely about the money.

My advice is to keep real to who you are as a person together with your core values. This will let you prevent business ideas that don't function in the first location. Knowing your values and mission further assists with knowing when to proceed and give up business ideas that don't work.

Ideation - Where Business Ideas Come From

Once we plan to establish a new business, we leverage an existing concept or we create our own unique idea. The same is true for developing an existing business. I've always struggled with determining that's harder - locating the thought or implementing on it.

Sometimes ideas are simple enough to conjure, and the tricky part is deciding if it is good enough as the foundation for creating a profitable business. For those who have what you think is a"good idea", another challenge is to establish or test it will translate into a successful venture.

Then there are times when a workable idea is the hardest thing to find. It may look like all of the good ideas are accepted, and you're left on the sidelines with the tools and desire to begin or grow a business but with no excellent idea. The ideation process can take a day or it may take years, and as with the creative process, it is usually unproductive to hurry it. Besides another common barriers of resources (people and money ), the absence of a"great idea" is often what prevents people from taking action in their dream of becoming their own boss.

Developing a new business begins with the idea. The process of developing that idea, and your business concept, may perhaps incorporate some degree of testing through prototyping and iteration. During these early stages your thought will undoubtedly evolve and might even morph into something entirely different. There are three basic classes for business ideas, and contemplating these classes might help with sparking that next great brainchild or validating your present one:

New - a new invention or business idea. Examples could include the Segway, Virtual Reality and other product creations. This is the toughest category for new business ideas. There are very few truly and totally new ideas. By"new" I mean something which absolutely doesn't currently nor previously exist at all. It's easy to confuse a new idea with what's really an improvement or disturbance of an existing or standard means of doing something. Truly new and special ideas are tough to find, so don't get duped by believing this is the sole source of viable new thoughts.

Most small businesses likely fall into this class. You take an existing product or service and you make or send it in a better manner, either directly or indirectly. You may use better quality raw materials, by way of instance, or you might add value to the service or product by adding additional services or add-ons.

Examples include Uber, AirBnB, and Amazon. Our modern interconnected world - supported and made possible by the internet - now enables us to completely reinvent, disrupt and transform entire industries. The internet and other technologies aren't the only means to execute on a tumultuous business idea, but it's certainly accelerated our ability to do so. Where do good ideas come from? Sources of ideas may include podcasts, reading, artwork, architecture, personal experiences, travel, discussions, hobbies, borrowing from other people, audience creativity, audience sourcing, and trying to solve present problems on the planet. For existing businesses, the best source of ideas is usually your clients. Yet it requires somewhat more than simply experiencing or studying something to ignite your next great idea.

From the article"How to Generate Good Ideas" by Belle Cooper, Steve Jobs is quoted as sharing that creative individuals can"connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things." In his observation, inventive individuals always have"had more experiences or they've thought more about their experiences than others ."

Consciously and experiencing new things will surely influence and nourish your creative skills, and it's among the most productive ways we can continue to develop our capacity to create fantastic ideas.

Does this mean you need to be creative to create decent business ideas? I think creativity is definitely one of the key ingredients necessary for ideation, together with creativity and vision. The challenge for many people, however, is that they have very little confidence in their inherent creative skills or do not have the guts to express and tap into it. The idea generation method is similar to the creative process because we're putting forth something personal to be judged by other people. You should have the courage and confidence to submit ideas that others may believe are frivolous or absurd. It is appropriate to recall what George Bernard Shaw wrote:"all great truths begin as blasphemies."

The perfect procedure is to identify one or more business ideas, test them, and then continue with creating the thought that has the best potential for success. Of course, always bear in mind that the real test of an idea's business viability finally rests entirely with the client. Also bear in mind that if your concept was simple, it would probably have been done by somebody else.

There are some question to ask yourself to help your business ideas:

What need does my service or product fill? What problem does this solve

What is my competitive advantage? Why is this idea truly unique in my marketplace?

What tools will I want to create this idea into a viable business?

Does my notion resolve a billion-person issue, or the issue of just a couple?

Can I imagine myself executing with this concept for another 5 to 10 years?

[notbroken-norbruised]

Body Image

Hi all this is something I don't typically post about because this is still something I battle with to this day but I realized I need to push through my fears and insecurities because I know how many people suffer with this so here's goes: BODY IMAGE !! Almost everyone I know has or has at least at some point in time has had poor body image. But why? Bodies are fundamentally different and unique to each and everyone's bodies of course we're going to come in all different shapes and sizes so WHY are we depleting ourselves like this? From the day we're brought into this earth whether we know it or not our minds are being morphed and seeing what an "ideal body" looks like. I remember hating my body for as long as I could remember. When I was 7 and had my communion I cried in my dress because I wasn't as skinny as the other girls. But how can a child want something this bad? As a millennial I grew up to adults going throw the fads of extreme dieting & although my mom never literally never took part in them (and she was the person who influences me the most to this day) they were still EVERYWHERE. We heard about them saw them and I understood that even at 7 I was considered 'fat.' I remember in 5th grade I tried the special k diet because that's what TV told me to do. How I would look like the other girls, how I would be deemed attractive to others. Mind you I was 10 years old. When I went to a funeral when I was 12 a family member approached me saying that I lost weight and I look great and that I should keep it up. This was after I limited myself to 600 calories a day for weeks and I felt dizzy every time I stood up. Little did I know that these very small instances and 'motivational' words would warp my sense of self TO THIS DAY. Some of my first ever compliments from distant relatives were about my weight loss so I registered that as what was normal. "Oh if you're skinny people will like you." I went on to struggle with purging and binging all throughout high school and at 16 when my binging became more like a marathon a psychiatrist recommended I loose some weight. Yes a person licensed to treat people's mental illness told a person recovering from purging and unhealthy dieting to loose weight. What a G!! All these tiny instances and all the times my childhood was warped around my body has led me to this day. I have always battled with hating my body and weight has fluctuated my entire life because i would go from determined to drop 20 pounds to hating myself and telling myself I deserve to stay unhealthy and binge eat for months on end. It wasn't until I went vegan until I truly began to understand how much I have truly tortured my body and how bad I let my weight take a hold on my every decision in life. I have maybe told a total of 3 people about this but when I first went vegan almost 2 years ago I stopped eating. I hid behind it saying "oh I can't eat anything here" or "no I ate before I came I'm so full" and just didn't eat. I had maybe MAYBE one meal a day and I would feel proud when hunger pains came. Luckily at the time I had already started healing through reiki and energy work and I understood within a couple weeks how bad this has become and how I was slowly killing myself with my dislike of self. I confided in my mom and she immediately began making sure I eat 3 meals and talked to me everyday about what I was feeling. I swear if I didn't have that woman I would not be alive today and she has saved me more times than I could count. I never talked about this time truthfully cause I was so mad at myself and so ashamed. I was preaching self love and positivity and love for all creatures while I was destroying myself. I was a complete hypocrite and I hated that I got so low and hateful towards myself during one of the best periods of my life. I always say going vegan is one of the best things to ever happen to me and it's true to this day. After I fully recovered and began to eat normally I full force focused on my health and I can say at the moment 2 years later I am the healthiest I have been in my whole life. I can say after 2 years of forgiving myself for bringing so much torment on the earth through eating animal products I'm still not 100% okay with the fact I ever took away lives for my own personal pleasure. But I'm getting there and understand that I am now making a difference everyday with my choices. To this day I still go through phases of doing extreme cleanses and then eating like I'll never see another meal but I'm slowly attaining the balance of bringing in knowledge I learned during cleanses into my every day lifestyle and choices. All of this is about balance. I'm not eating lettuce leaves every meal and praising almonds. I think about buffalo tempeh wings at least twice a day but I'm learning to find a happy medium of normalcy in my eating habits. The moral of the story is that there are things, small instances, one conversation that can stick with us in our brains and warp our entire sense of reality to this day. I still cringe when someone tells me I look good or I lost weight and it makes me resentful that weight loss is something praised in this world instead of people cherishing their bodies. I also understand no one means anything by it when they say it and they have no idea that comments like that take me back to times where I felt like I was nothing. Times where I would beg for comments like that because I registered that as normalcy and positivity. But newsflash people: this should not be normalcy and I refuse to continue to live in a world where people are expected to have to change themselves for praise. I will live my life praising all bodies and all types of people that ravish in themselves and are trying the best they possibly can. Listen no matter if you 90 pounds or 400 you are beautiful and if there's one thing I learned is that weight does not define you. It doesn't control you and it doesn't change you unless you let it through your mentality. One of the toughest lessons throughout all of this is learning that I look outward for praise and confidence when the only way to TRULY achieve confidence and positive body image is from looking into yourself and finding it there!!!! If we keep looking for others approval for our happiness we might as well all begin digging our graves because we'll never be happy and never be satisfied. This is the most important fucking lesson I've learned so far that I want to scream it from the roof tops. YOU PRAISE YOU 👏 NO ONE ELSE GONNA DO IT FOR YOU AND YOU GOTTA RAVISH IN YOUR BEING‼️ RELYING ON OTHERS APPROVAL IS EMOTIONAL SUICIDE AND SELF ABUSIVE👏 I still go through days where I wake up and look in the mirror and want to cry. I still go through days where I ask people if I look okay because I'm insecure. I still have the thought in my head when I go to eat about how it will affect my weight. It doesn't just disappear. But it begins to dissipate as you begin to get to the root of where this all began & when you begin to accept yourself for who you are. My instability of eating and poor body image is a part of me and always will be and I can now say I'm proud of that. Im proud that I struggled for SO long and that I'm still standing and F I N A L L Y got the courage to speak out about it. Affirm yourself and face the dark thoughts you have in your head and tell them to go fuck themselves. Accept that they're there and know why and begin the trials of working through them. I am at a place where I do cleanse and work out and yadda yadda but at this point I do it because I FEEL good not because of weight or this or that but for my mentality and to uplift myself. It's taken me so long to get here and I promise you can get there too. P.s. This post was primarily revolved about being overweight but this applies to all body types. I'm so sick of seeing thicker girls picking on skinny girls HUNNY they didn't have a choice either!!! Like I said in the beginning everyone has a unique body, shape and size and there is no RIGHT OR WRONG TO THIS THING!!!!! Be proud of you and how far you've come regardless of what you look like externally in your skin suit. (I really enjoy calling my body my skin suit lately I think I'm HILARIOUS) keep doing you and have a great day ❤️