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jikookuntold · 4 years ago

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Jungkook Being Open about Himself

TW: This is a heavy analysis and contains deep theories and some conspiracy theories. If you don’t feel comfortable about gender and sexual orientation discussions, this post is not for you. I’m not going to talk about any ship in this post, it’s all about Jungkook and the image this fandom made of him.

Enough talking let’s get the bread!

The Wrong Image

After spending almost three years on ARMY-Twitter and other apps like YouTube or Instagram, I came to the conclusion that the majority of this fandom has this image of a masculine, bad boy, cold-hearted heterosexual Jungkook in their minds, something we can even consider as toxic masculinity. But is it true? Is this what he has tried to show us all these years? We can’t deny the fact that he wants to look mature and he doesn’t like to be called a baby, he made this clear many times despite doing some aegyo for the sake of ARMY’s satisfaction but his masculine and feminine sides are another story.

Masculine or Feminine?

Wearing makeup or jewelry on stage for an artist, can’t be considered as a feminine attitude but when someone does this on daily basis and recommends forgetting about the gender stereotypes it mean they don’t care about gender and “Not Caring about Gender” is a feminine attitude. Jungkook buys his clothes from local gender-neutral brands, he likes makeup and he’s called himself pretty many times. He said the great style is wearing what you want regardless of gender.

In Feb 2021 Elle Korea wrote: “Most of Jungkook's favorite fragrance products have sweet & lovely scents regarded feminine.” He is a sensitive and emotional person and he cries very easily. There are so many discussions about feminine body-language signs which all do apply on him but I don’t discuss them here because they are mostly not deterministic. Anyways, can we all agree getting tattoos or being buff doesn’t make you masculine? Jeon Jungkook has embraced his feminine side and he is far from toxic masculine qualities inside and out.

Sexual Direction?

I’m not in a position to discuss someone’s sexual orientation when they haven’t talked about it themselves but it surprises me how the majority of this fandom is so sure about Jungkook being heterosexual. In my opinion, this mindset comes from the image of him being super-masculine and being associated with girls in the early years after debut. We all know he had one (or two?) girlfriends before the age of 17 and he actually was open about it. In American Hustle Life he talked about how at some point he felt dating and not dating that girl doesn’t make any difference for him and he believes all girls are the same.

We all know how this industry works and idols never open up about their relationships, especially at such young age but Jungkook wasn’t hesitant, despite being a shy and introverted person. I’m not claiming to know him but I know him enough to believe what he says is the truth. This man never lies, maybe he won’t disclose every aspect of his life but when he speaks up he is telling the truth and nothing else. He could deny or ignore those dating rumors of early debut years but he wasn’t afraid of confirming them and showing his real self.

While I’m speaking about American Hustle Life, I should refer to another thing related to the topic. (I personally believe this AHS had such a big impact on all the members’ growth and not just Jungkook) When Jungkook was chilling near the pool with Yoongi, he told him about a woman he saw there who had a big tattoo on his back and he said he wants to get a tattoo. Yoongi believed this act will disappoint ARMY but Jungkook didn’t agree and said: “If they love us, they won’t mind.” Jungkook wants to be himself and shows his real self to us and believes if our love for him is real we would accept him as the way he is.

In my opinion, somewhere around Jungkook's 17th birthday something changed in him. This change has started earlier but at this period (Danger Era), it became more detectable. I'm not saying that he wasn't like this before, on the contrary, he was always like this, he was born with it but fully acknowledging it and embracing it took time for him. None of us had known or accepted ourselves in our teenage years and we tried and pushed lots of things to find our true nature. I believe the same happened for Jungkook and it was way harder for him because of the situation he was in.

Anyways, in late 2014 and especially 2015, the changes in his attitudes and manners were too visible to stay unnoticed by ARMY (I have to declare skinship and fanservice for the cameras are not my point, In this post, I have tried to draw a line between his work as an idol and his life as a person and my emphasis is on the latter part). He started to suggest openly gay artists’ works in his tweets. He even did cover those songs and used them for his G.C.F videos. If you have read the lyrics of the songs he suggests, covers, or uses for his works, you’d notice that all the pronouns are gender-neutral or male (he). The most interesting thing was when he eliminated the word "girl" from the lyrics of Savage Love but didn't do anything with the f word. He has used LGBTQ+ symbols several times, He has read gay novels, He named his flower bouquet “Various types of love” Now think about it again; does it make sense to consider him as a heterosexual?

Rumors...

Most of you know about the incidents when BTS had their short break in the summer of 2019. Jungkook started to get tattoos and when he was on a trip, two pictures of him got leaked and rumors of Jungkook and a girl (I'm going to call her person B) went viral. I'm not going to analyze those pictures or the rumors because BigHit’s statement did seal the deal for me, I knew Jungkook wouldn't lie or hide anything about it. If he had dated that girl or anyone else it was his business and when he denied it, I was 100% sure he is telling the truth but apparently it wasn't the case for the others. The pictures weren’t showing anything intimate or controversial, but since it was a boy/girl interaction they made a huge deal of it (Remember in a heteronormative world, boys and girls can’t be just friends!) The rumors haven’t died down after almost two years and they are using this to keep their fantasies of heterosexual Jungkook alive.

As someone familiar with this industry for more than a decade, I know they can’t let any of the popular fantasies to die, no matter it’s the fantasy of gay shippers or straight shipper or Y/N’s, no one has to be disappointed. Fantasy of Jungkook being straight was dying down in the middle of 2019. But how did that happen? Of course, any ship moments or interaction between members never been taken seriously. It would be interesting if you know the situation became serious just a few days before the person B incident. That day, an insulting and homophobic private conversation from one of the most infamous fansites of Jungkook got leaked and it almost outed him as someone who isn’t in the hetero world.

When ARMY called out this fansite for her toxic behavior and insult towards Jungkook, she threatened them to ruin his life and we knew she could do that because she had ruined other idols’ lives before that. Just one week after that the person B incident happened and the news of Jungkook having a girlfriend went viral. I’m aware the whole situation could be a coincidence but the timing of the events and many other facts prove it was a conspiracy to frame Jungkook and ruin his image and beside that, many people benefited from it.

Person B acted as shady as she could in this situation but I'm not going to go there because this post has become long enough already. Firstly we thought she is a victim of this conspiracy and pitied her but her subsequent acts proved otherwise. She did benefit from these rumors much more than anyone expected and did everything to stay on the top news.

Enough talking of person B, let’s speak about the fansite lady. Her actions were terrible enough to get blacklisted by BigHit but surprisingly she didn't and after that, she took part in Japan fan-meetings, Melon, and Mama (or other programs I’m not aware of) until the COVID19 made everything canceled. Many people know she is more of a saesang than a fansite, and saesangs have a close community and they know each other very well. On the other side, we know many companies hire saesangs for their idols to find out about their private lives and have more control on them without being strict. And this is why I believe BigHit can be the mastermind behind all of this.

Why am I so pessimistic about BigHit? Think about the statement they made to deny the rumors, I know this statement was made with Jungkook's permission but he didn't write it himself obviously and the wording wasn't the wisest. We heard months later from the guesthouse manager that Jungkook went there with his own manager but they didn't even mention it in the statement. Why? Let’s not forget the worst, when they made him apologize in the last episode of BV4. That was unnecessary either and brought back everything to the surface when it was about to die down. I know they support the members and they try to protect them in every way but that statement always makes me think of them as a shady and hypocritical company like any other company in Kpop. I know BigHit benefited from these rumors and I think BHxFansitexSaesang collab is a possible scenario.

What did Jungkook do after all of these incidents? Obviously, he had no choice other than to accept his fate but the fact is we failed him as fans. He loved and trusted us from the bottom of his heart, he showed his true self to us, he gave us lots of hints about himself but the moment he sat next to a girl, everyone forgot everything. We disappointed him and he came to the conclusion that no matter what he does, the fans will think what they want to think.

If you were patient enough to reach this far in this post I’m gonna salute you but you probably think I’m delusional and went too far in my theories (I had the TW at the beginning of the post and I had to get all this off my chest lol) but for the last thing I’m going to quote and analyze something Jungkook mentioned in JHope’s Vlive after the release of CNS.

“I never thought I would fall for a man”

This was his very first public appearance of Jungkook after the person B incident and managing to say these words in this situation was definitely meaningful and remarkably wise. What did he mean by this? Did he have to state he never thinks he can be gay at the exact time when the rumors of him being with a girl were breaking the internet? No, it doesn’t make sense at all. In fact, it was the exact opposite, he said that to make it more clear and chastise us for not getting him all these year. His face was very expressive while saying this and considering their conversation topic (watching JHope’s dance) I believe he had this statement ready for days and he left it to us to understand him or ignore him again.

The End.

#jungkook

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wtfockinternational · 5 years ago

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An article about wtFOCK translated from Dutch:

How wtFOCK conquers taboos through trial and error

wtFOCK: for one person a key player, for the other a rather strange combination of consonants. Young people can’t seem to stay away from the successful web series. The new season has started, so we can look back at the previous one. For three months many fans were glued to their screens for a sixteen-year-old’s coming-out. Did this pave a way for more and honest representation of LGBTQ+-problems, or did they occasionally stray from that path?

“‘Secret’ series wtFOCK became the most popular search term on Google in 2019”, various media reported in December. This news seemed to come as a surprise, because many people seemed to have never heard of the term, let alone the web series. And still the series could crown itself the proverbial king of last year’s Google. How did that happen?

The online series that arrived here from Norway mostly seems a hit with teenagers and young adults. In nine weeks’ time the third season got about 11.8 million online views, SBS Belgium said. In total around 400,000 young people between 15 and 34 would be watching the series.

The presumed reason for the success? Young people can follow the characters daily via their smartphones through short, real-time updates and real Instagram-accounts. So ideal in a world where watching linear television, especially for the younger generation, becomes more out of the question. Besides that the series is kept out of the media consciously, to preserve its authenticity and let young people discover it on their own. So far, so good, it seems.

Homosexual main character

Concretely wtFOCK follows the lives of young people in secondary school, where all kinds of teenage troubles don’t get avoided. Since the previous season more social problems are being discussed, too. The series tackled a topic that still hasn’t completely removed itself from the taboo atmosphere: homosexuality, a coming-out, and everything that comes with it. From absolute peaks to the sometimes painful lows we are witnesses to the bumpy road towards self-acceptance that sixteen-year-old Robbe experiences.

But is that a new thing, an LGBT-character in Flemish fiction? Florian Vanlee researches the LGBTQ+-representation in Flemish television series at Ghent University. He clarifies: “About 20 percent of productions is said to have a prominent LGBT-character. Regarding supporting characters, it’s about 33 percent. That’s a relatively large part.”

It does seem the first time that in a commercial youth television the full attention of the main character goes towards homosexuality. “It’s remarkable how instantaneously the focus explicitly goes towards homosexuality. wtFOCK is therefore a very valuable program”, Vanlee says. The question therefore arises how the new form of representation was received by the LGBTQ+-community.

About recognition and self-acceptance

Amver Maselis, a 20-year-old bisexual student from Hove, has been a fan of the original SKAM. When the series ended in Norway, she started to follow the other remakes. Therefore her interest also brought her to wtFOCK. Passionately she talks about a series which she clearly values a lot. “I’ve been following the project for several years, and despite the subtle differences between shows, the main topics are always portrayed nicely.”

Out of all the remakes she thinks wtFOCK is the best one. Then again, the Flemish version connects the most with her own environment. “Now that the series has arrived in Antwerp, in my own culture, it suddenly feels very close to home.”

It helps that she really recognizes herself in Robbe, the main character that comes out of the closet to his friends and family in his teenage years. “It touches me, because I notice that I’ve sometimes said or felt the same things. Back then it was a huge secret I kept to myself. Now I know that it’ll all be fine,” says Amber. ‘ For other young people the series could be encouraging, like SKAM was for me three years ago, when I had just come out of the closet and I has to learn to accept myself.”

22-year-old Fabio Olivieri from Antwerp seems to share that opinion. As a teenager he barely saw a gay character to which he could relate. It comforts him to know that that’s different for the youth today. Besides that he commends the portrayal of the fact that members of the LGBT-community often have to learn to accept themselves, too. “sometimes it’s hard to learn how to deal with it, to know how you feel and if you want to feel that way. That’s portrayed beautifully.”

“Do you have questions?”

So the storyline can be a comfort to youth who can relate to it. wtFOCK also consciously wants to focus on that aspect. Not only by pushing the subject forward, but also by working together with the online platform WAT WAT. This initiative of the Flemish Government is a bundling of forces of more than 70 organizations to inform the youth. Together, those organizations want to make sure that “all young people are confident and can develop their identity in a positive manner.” On the website, youth can find answers about exam stress, problems at home, but also about sex, sexuality, … you name it.

After every clip of wtFOCK the possibility to visit watwat.be is shown, “in case you have questions”. That initiative pleases Ferre Lamber, a 25-year-old man from Antwerp who remembers how he also went to the internet for questions about his homosexuality when he was younger. “Sometimes it’s just hard to tell someone directly that you’re doubting your sexual orientation. So I can definitely imagine that young people will look online for answers.”

This way, wtFOCK wants to do more than just entertain. “Even though it’s fiction, which automatically entails the aspect of entertainment, that is not the essence of our show”, screenwriter Bram Renders says, incidentally also the writer of youth series W817. “We mostly want to show the youth that they’re not alone. That element is strongly present, and it’s nice that we can convey that message like this.”

The harsh reality

Thus, the series carries an important reality, which can be harsh sometimes. Fabio isn’t sure if he can always appreciate that. “I thought that the homophobia in wtFOCK was pretty cruel sometimes. Somehow that’s a good thing, because real life is like that, too. I’ve already experienced that myself. But in series the focus is generally on all the problems gay characters come into contact with. It would have been nice to see that this wasn’t the case. It has two sides.”

One specific scene that, for the same reason, caused a bomb of critical reactions on Twitter to explode, was when gay bashing was shown shortly, but very explicitly. The choice to portray it, is understandable based on the fact that it’s still a real and current problem today. At the end of December, two LGBT-boys in Ghent became victims of gay bashing. In Het Nieuwsblad they called for other victims to not stay silent, but to report such senseless violence to the police. However, in wtFOCK it’s shown how the main character and his boyfriend decide not to go to the police.

Ferre can understand that decision. “As a victim you want to avoid even more trouble and je need the strength to do something about it. I understand that not everyone would have that. One single right way to deal with gay bashing doesn’t exist.”

Ferre is concerned by, is the way in which the show depicted the incident as a while. The scene depicts how Robbe and his boyfriend get verbally abused and attacked. It end abruptly with the two left injured. Only the next day do we as viewer get to know if everything is okay. “Two years ago, when I hadn’t been with my boyfriend for that long, we were followed, too. After, we cuddled, drank tea, and watched a series, … at moment like that you just want to be together lovingly. You want to know if everything will be okay. But in wtFOCK nothing happened on the night itself and the matter was resolved quickly afterwards.”

Criticism

So more clarity would have been appropriate. The possibilities that you have as a victim after such an incident weren’t emphasized enough according to Ferre. Especially not for a show that has the support of a platform like WAT WAT.

This is clearly not the first time that Bram Renders hears this criticism. He has already given up on reading reactions on Twitter, he jokes. Hesitantly he does admit that they could’ve handled the scene better.

‘How it was protrayed, is more intense than how I imagined it during my rose-colored writing process.’ He says. ‘ That’s no criticism towards the director, because you can never know something like that beforehand. But in hindsight it would have been appropriate to show a follow-up-clip, in which they come home for example. As writeryou always have moments of which you think that it would have been better if you handled them differently; this is one of them.’

Besides that it was a conscious decision to make wtFOCK more heavy than the original SKAM. That decision came after prior conversations with people from the LGBTQ+-community. ‘According to the most people I talked to, was the internal struggle of the main character in the original version too small en was the world around him to rose-colored. So we made that world more raw.’ said Renders.

Ignorance

Then again, benefit of such heavy scenes is the awareness it brings about in viewers outside the LGBTQ+-community. “If you don’t know anyone who’s gay, then you also don’t know how we feel and how we experience certain things,” Fabio emphasizes. “I think that because of wtFOCK people can become more aware. Especially with the amount of young people that watch the series, it can provide more understanding and tolerance.”

Ferre also thinks that larger audiences are show what LGBT-people have to deal with. “Nowadays we don’t know enough about each other’s lives. I noticed that when colleagues or friends asked surprised if certain scenes are really like that, and if I’m really scared to hold hands with my boyfriend in the streets. The different seasons of wtFOCK provide good insights into different problems and how people handle them”, he decides.

Of course, purely scientifically it’s hard to determine such an impact on the audience. But intuitively speaking, that impact is already very logical, researcher Florian Vanlee (UGent) clarifies. “On one side, it can be important for people who do not meet the social standard to see their own experiences portrayed. On the other side, it can make those experiences for those who have less knowledge about it more obvious.”

New insights get subtly imparted throughout the series, but sometimes also in a more explicit manner, like in the part about the Gay Pride. At one point Robbe sneering tells his homosexual roommate that he isn’t the kind of person to dance around at Prides with “plumes in his hole”. That roommate is a more extravagant character that is mostly portrayed as support, with wise advice. He offers Robbe (but mostly the viewer) rebuttal with a short, but emotional history lesson. “Do you know that those people had to fight to be who they are?”, it sounds.

The show is undoubtedly referring to the protests of Stonewall which later grew into the Gay Prides all over the world. Something that is often forgotten, gets emphasized here: that people in the LGBTQ+-community had to travel a long and difficult path to have equal rights today and to be able to completely be themselves.

Amber thinks it’s very important for that history to be highlighted. “That people would rather die than not be able to be who they are, is the basic principle of the Gay Pride. There’s more behind it than semi-naked, dancing people, as some still see it.”

Better representation

Referring to the Gay Pride, Ferre admits to be somewhat disappointed about the type of main character in this season of wtFOCK. According to him it also could’ve been a more pronounced type for once. According to him, LGBTQ+-representation is focused on the so-called ‘mainstream’ LGBT-people too often.

At the start of September the topic got a lot of attention, when radio-dj Wanne Synnave (MNM) made the following statement in the talkshow Vandaag: “The biggest problem is that all the role models you see conform to the cliché image. I’ve never been able to identify myself in that area. I think that there’s a need for more mainstream LGBT-role models, the normal man and woman in the street. So not those flamboyant role models, which are pretty cliché.”

That statement caused a lot of outrage in the LGBTQ+-community. Many people didn’t agree, and had the opinion that there were already plenty of LGBT-people portrayed according to ‘hetero standards’. Florian Vanlee (UGent) confirms that in Flanders very little stereotypical characters are portrayed. “You could almost go so far as to say that the majority of the LGBT-characters are a sort of reverse-stereotype. For example, you will very rarely find very flamboyant gay characters.”

So television program makers represent (admittedly with good intentions) in a very general manner. “But exactly because of that, a large part of the LGBT-community are kept out of the picture”, Vanlee says. So there is need for more varying representation.

Balance

In the specific case of wtFOCK we can argue that the show follows the original format from Norway, and takes satisfaction in the extravagant gay character Milan, the roommate. “It’s hard to find a good balance”, screenwriter Bram Renders says. “In this case I thought that that balance with the ‘out in the open, take it or leave it’-roommate was enough.

In addition, according to Florian Vanlee, it’s not fair to judge individual series on those choices. “That’s not the right way to deal with what we want to see in media and popular culture”, Vanlee thinks. “Nowadays, in Flanders, it’s normal to represent LGBT-characters, for example Kaat in the soap Thuis. That was already an important step. What could be better, isn’t the responsibility of the television-industry, but also the discourse it generates,” he decides.

Finally, representation in Flemish media doesn’t just concern LGBTQ+-characters. It’s also important to look at the portrayal of people with a migration background or with different religions, for example. But wtFOCK doesn’t shy away from that either. In the fourth season, the show takes a new taboo by the horns by making Yasmina, a Muslim character, the main. It remains to be seen how the young, but critical audience will find the new theme.

#wtfock #wtfam #skam

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flve-hargreeves · 5 years ago

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( chris wood, 28, he/him ) class is in session for ANSEM WARBECK. their resume says they’re a WITCH and they’ve been teaching MENTAL MAGIC at the academy for THREE YEARS. the psychological report says they are LETHARGIC and CONTEMPTUOUS, but they’re also IRONWILLED and COMPASSIONATE. we wish them good luck in the new school year.

— * | ansem warbeck is the oldest child of ragnor and celena warbeck. he has a twin brother named arson and while they are identical, they couldn’t be more different. both ragnor and celena are influential members of the magical community and always prided themselves on having a stellar reputation. stellar isn’t quite so stellar though; they are morally gray. they never get into dark magic themselves, but their family has profited heavily from it over the years. ( think … war profiteers, i guess. they never get their hands dirty but they have plenty of blood money ). arson is the dutiful son, the good son, and ansem’s always been the disappointment who couldn’t live up to their expectations. ( the michael bluth )

ansem was never good at doing what he was told and rebelled against the behaviours his parents tried to ingrain in him. he never listened, always liked to do his own thing, and never bought into the whole ‘pureblood supremacy’ thing that they tried to drill into his head. so what if they came from an old witch family? la creme de la crop? magic was magic. he figured if you could do it, you were just as good as anyone else. ( his family disagreed. ) he started at arcanas when he was eleven, like his descendants before him, and was a member of house aquis.

personality wise, ansem is sharp, sarcastic, and doesn’t have a high tolerance for people. the list of people he dislikes is longer than those he likes. he likes to have a good laugh ( sometimes at the expense of others ) and isn’t one to take on responsibility. ironic, given he’s now teaching at the school he used to go to. for someone as intelligent as he is, he does the least amount of work possible and does well but never really exceeds his own expectations. he’s incredibly lazy and can usually be found snacking or napping around the school.

shortly after graduation he worked as a for hire curse breaker. if there was a hex you couldn’t undo, or a curse on your family name, he was the guy you called to fix it. he was good too. it was only after a curse backfired and nearly killed him that he got scared and backed out of it. the fear was greater than the love he had. arcanas was safe, a reminder of good days (and far far away from his family) so he was happy to ya yeet out of the real world. less than a year after graduation, he was enrolled at a magical college and eventually became a mental magic teacher.

another point of irony, given how much he claims to hate people, is the story of how a twenty/twenty one year old mess accidentally adopted an eleven year old. it was an assignment from one of the teachers or housemasters, a mentorship program between tenth and first years. he was assigned jade brantley and at first ? oh boy did he hate her. or rather, the responsibility he felt towards her. it became pretty evident the more he got to know her that they were put together for a reason. her family had sent her to arcanas without so much as a second look and couldn’t have cared less if they ever saw her again. she stayed behind at the school for christmas, as did he to avoid tense family dinners with the warbecks, and that was when their mentorship started to become more like family.

by the end of the year, he looked at her like — his kid, if he was being honest. it was kind of terrifying, wanting to protect another person from the realities of their life, but he knew it was the right decision to make. it helped that his partner agreed; they’d come to care about jade in those months too, and they both knew it was the right call. he contacted her parents, assumed temporary guardianship, and she moved in with them that summer after they graduated. ( the individual that set all of this up, the cheeky bastard, sent them a potted plant as a housewarming gift. a plant that would have needed to have been potted SIX MONTHS EARLIER. he’d be mad about getting played if he wasn’t so happy. )

they formally adopted jade a few years later. they were already family in everything but blood and name — it was simply a formality. the three of them — four, if you counted jessica the cat ( famously known for stepping on faces ) — had been more of a family than any of his blood relatives had ever been. he’s never regretted his choices.

that being said, things weren’t always happy. he and his partner fought a lot, sometimes over nothing and couldn’t remember why they ever loved each other in the first place. but this isn't a story about vindictive exes, it's about two people that do love each other, probably always will, but just didn't love being together anymore. they're excellent co-parents to their adopted daughter and they're working their way back to being best friends even though it's a little awkward. they split up roughly three years ago, shortly after ansem started teaching at arcanas.

he was a bit of a mess that first year, i won’t lie. he probably drank too much, smoked like a chimney, and was trying to remember how to be a person instead of 1/2 of a couple. he’d been with his partner almost his entire life, it was a process — discovering himself again. he eventually started seeing jude montague ( who, ironically, he’d always had a schoolboy crush on when he was a student ) who also taught at the school. one thing led to another and they’ve recently taken things to the next level: they got married. ansem’s still a little terrified this one is going to go belly up too, that he’s going to mess things up, but they’re still in the newlywed phase so he’s not quite as pessimistic on their outlook. it also helps that his family hates jude: 1. he’s much older, even without the whole phoenix thing, 2. he’s not a pureblood witch who comes from a good family name, and 3. he’s a man. yeah, celena warbeck was not happy and threatened to cut him off. she didn’t, of course, but his father hasn’t spoken a single word to him ever since they got married. it’s a game now, trying to see if he can say or do something to make him break. so far, he hasn’t won.

when he’s not staying at arcanas, watching over his water demons, he’s at his house nearby. now that he’s married jude, however, the clan ( bc ansem doesn’t go anywhere without jade, jessica, and by extension kit ) will be moving into his definitely-haunted house nearby. it’s an old victorian, fits jude’s goth boy aesthetic perfectly, and tbh as long as it has decent wifi and an espresso machine? he’ll be fine.

he’s been teaching mental magic at arcanas academy for three years, so connections can be assumed with other staff members and students !! he’s also been the housemaster for aquis, who he refers to as his water demons, so that’s opportunities for connections too! ( there’s also a 99% chance he calls all of his students by pokemon names. sorry not sorry. ) he’s your typical panic first, think logically later, type person, so if he heard about the orb being stolen he’d fear for their inevitable demise. y’know, chaotic and assuming the worst case scenario from the get go.

so that’s basically him in essence. see some quick stats below for more tidbits.

— * | BASICS !

NAME: — ansem ragnorius warbeck.

NICKNAME(S): — ansem.

PRONOUNS: —he/him.

AGE/DOB: — twenty seven / july 25th. ( he’s almost 28, so don’t @ me )

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: — pansexual.

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: — panromantic.

ETHNICITY: — caucasian.

NATIONALITY: — british.

HOMETOWN: — manchester, uk.

EDUCATION: — he previously attended arcanas, aquis house. four years @ a magical college near aurora / arcanas school.

— * | PERSONALITY !

STAR SIGN: — leo.

PERSONALITY TYPE: — ESTP.

ALIGNMENT: — chaotic neutral.

PHOBIA(S): — enclosed spaces, clowns, snakes.

VICE(S): — cynicism, impatience, vindictiveness, spitefulness.

VIRTUE(S): — accountability, candor, realism, honesty, loyalty.

— * | RELATIONS !

PARENT(S): — ragnor and celena warbeck.

SIBLING(S): — arson warbeck ( twin brother. )

SIGNIFICANT OTHER(S): — married.

— * | PHYSICAL !

FACECLAIM: — chris wood.

HEIGHT: — 6'0.

WEIGHT: — 71kg.

EYE COLOR: — brown.

HAIR COLOR: — brown.

GLASSES/CONTACTS: — n/a.

TATTOOS: — n/a.

PIERCINGS: — n/a.

SCARS: — jagged scar across his collarbone.

— * | MEDICAL !

ALLERGIES: — shellfish.

SMOKING/ALCOHOL/DRUGS: — former smoker. he hasn’t had a cigarette in approx. 112 days. he drinks more than he should. no drug use.

DIAGNOSES: — n/a.

BLOOD TYPE: — universal donor.

***

AESTHETICS:

NEATLY TRIMMED BEARD, LAZY SMIRKS, SARCASTIC QUIPS. THE MICHAEL BLUTH. REAL LIFE NATHAN DRAKE. BLEEDS COFFEE NOT BLOOD. UNHEALTHY OBSESSION WITH TEEN MAGAZINE QUIZZES.

CONNECTIONS

students with an aptitude for mental magic that he provides additional / advanced work for to challenge them. (2/2) dominic masters & rome hawks.

students who need extra help in one or more of the aspects of his curriculum. this would include after hours help, extra assignments, or one on one attention if they were struggling with concepts (1/4): ella bloom.

students that give him a hard time in class for one reason or another. could be people who sleep in class, talk back, distract others, etc. (1/??): morgan stife.

the unholy trinity: fellow teachers who like to get together and be chaotic, shittalk their students, and forget they’re not seventeen anymore bc they’re fucking idiots who like to troll (2/2): maximus & reserved

fellow teachers who like to get together and drink wine after stressful days, or just when they feel like it tbh. (1/????) maxwell gray.

a rival/enemy from when he was @ arcanas who now also works at arcanas. he can’t remember why they don’t like each other but he’s dedicated to the feud. it’s petty, he knows, but he sucks at admitting he’s wrong. (0/1)

ex-wife. see wanted connections. (0/1)

childhood friend. fellow witches who would have hung around people who were haughty and thought they were better than everyone else. ansem’s parents thought they were hot shit so maybe their parents felt the same. they both rebelled against what their parents wanted for them and it bonded them. (0/1)

partner in crime. (28 years old) this person was very different from ansem. different species, a little more serious, the kind of person you wouldn’t expect to be friends with him. they’re probably the only reason ansem even passed his exams, forced to study, and he forced this friend to actually have fun and live a little. they’re still close but maybe fell out of touch over the years. this person would be new to arcanas as a staff member, or teacher, but would be an alumnus preferably from house aquis but could be any.

others to be added when it isn’t 2am and my brains fried.

#arcanas:intro

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millennium-thejiaqiverse · 6 years ago

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Chapter 3: One Unusual Paper

Summary: What does the birth of revolutionary technology bring along with it? It certainly has a big impact on the world and the the ones whom brought this technology to everyone. Let’s introduce the center stage technology in this chapter—the chips. Find out how they changed Miles’s home world. Hey, I don’t only cover the magic topic, behold as civilizations develop technology-wise.

“This is the first time I take my exam at another school, ever! So exciting!” Phillip is ultra-excited. “Calm down dude, haven’t you been at our school already on Orientation Day? I mean, we checked out the exam hall together.” Adele pets Phillip’s back, “besides, you’re from Dawn City Academy, probably the coolest school ever.” “Meh, pretty sure that’s just our schools reputation,” Philip snickers, “I don’t see what the fuss is about.”

Miles is sitting next to the windows of the shuttle, looking out to the cityscape. Sitting right next to him is Nick, who’s focused on his tablet.

“Remember that one past paper in which life literally gives you lemons?” Rose starts the topic. “Yes, that’s a good one. What do you do with a crate of 30 lemons in one and a half hours?” Elly asks with a laugh. “Start small businesses like everybody did in that one particular group we studied—every one of them was an inner entrepreneur, they used the weather, what’s trending, blah blah blah; plus each of them could really think out of the box. Hey do you think our exam group would also coincidentally take the same approach like they did? We all have the same paper and we prepared as a group, it’s possible.” “That’d still be too much of a coincidence, as we’ll be separated into individual cubicles.” Ryan shakes her head.

“Hatch Station 50,” an announcement sounds as the shuttle makes its stop, “welcome to our SCI (Suspended & Concealed Islands, the “sky” above the ground-level city parts), you may switch to the Gate’s shuttles at this station.”

Looking at the Gate’s giant ever changing spherical hologram logo, Miles sighs a light sigh.

Ever since the great idea of the tech company Quartz took off (tiny chips connected with the brain, which serve a main function of allowing users to quickly and effectively research and access information with their minds), society changed drastically; and now, there is the Gate—Dr. Mary Millward, Miles’s mom, one of the most prominent Inventors ever, founded this company with her team. She brought forth a tech revolution, largely increasing the reliability and security of the chips and the internet system. Through this competition, Quartz is now obsolete, the Gate takes over and keeps on growing, building the SCI and who knows what next.

“Yo Philip, the animator guy’s from your school right?” Tinaye asks. “The animator guy?” Philip repeats while thinking. “You know, the guy who made a short animation to express how mankind’s coexistence and co-development with Mother Nature is important, in 1 hour 30 minutes?” “Oh you meant Ian!” Philip snaps his fingers, “that guy’s legendary. He’s not from our branch though, our branch is the one with the infamous ‘party kids’.” He winks. “Sounds like fun!” Rose says. “Hey I think we’re here.” Elly tells everyone. “Station Sky Secondary School. Dear passengers, may I have your attention please,” an announcement comes up, “we are now on school ground; midterm exams are in progress, please do not disturb. Station Sky Secondary School.”

Philip, Adele, Miles, Nick, Rose, Elly, Ryan and Tinaye all get off the shuttle after it makes its stop, Tyler is already there, waiting at the front entrance of the school.

School is open for students to do their assignments from 0:00 to 23:50 every day of the week, except Orientation Days. With the chips being long implanted in everyone by now, teaching students time management, how to utilize knowledge and work as a team becomes the main focus of all schools. Before their midterms, each student must complete all 9 personal assignments and 3 group assignments they have relating to the subjects they pick, with help from their class tutors. Students are allowed to do their assignments at anytime they wish to. Some finish their assignments lightning fast, days or even weeks before midterms, like Lisa, the girl who arrives last with a shuttle going a different route.

Rose happily greets her, “Lisa, you made it!” “Of course,” Lisa smiles charmingly, “we are one of the 11:00 groups, shall we head inside?” “Great idea,” Rose agrees.

“Welcome to the 11:00 midterm exams. Please go to your corresponding cubicles. Note that you may no longer enter the exam hall after the start of an exam, or leave the exam less than half-an-hour before the end; you must not have any unauthorized material or equipment with you; any attempt of tempering with the examination programs will result in immediate disqualification...”

There are two 11:00 papers (paper A and B) assigned to the students. The 10-student-study-groups will be mixed together when assigning their cubicles so the students next to every student would be working on a different paper. Everyone is suited up in their gear and logged in to the VR system to do the 5 minutes pre-exam warmup. After making sure everything’s fine, the invigilators start the exam. “Good luck!” Nick says last minute before their individual cubicles are sealed off. “Good luck guys!” Rose follows suit.

For this exam, Miles enters a small brightly lit room, which appears to have only a desk in the middle. The door vanishes after he shuts it. A piece of blank A3 paper lies on this desk, with a pen on top of it. Miles waits for a few minutes, only to realize the usual bell followed by an announcement of what he needs to do to complete this exam never came. This is new. Miles turns over the paper only to confirm both sides of it are indeed completely blank, holding the paper to the light reveals no hidden messages. He looks around the room to find nothing, then inspects the lone desk and finds no details that deserve attention; he then looks at the pen, and notices a small dial with numbers 1 to 9 at the end of it, the little red pin currently pointing at the word “off”. Miles doesn’t want to rush to work on the blank paper or do anything else in the room, a girl failed her exam and had to repeat a year in the past, just because she didn’t pay much attention to what was required by the exam that had been announced to her, resulting in her misusing her provided materials big times.

After waiting for another few minutes and still no bell or announcement, Miles starts to be worried. He decides to just turn the dial on the pen, as soon as the pin points to “1”, a screen in front of him that he previously thought was a wall turns on. Miles is very surprised to find himself looking at Nick, flying a swarm of drones, looks like he’s fixing some pretty broken light panels under one piece of the SCI. It looks like some aircraft has bumped into the panels. Nick seems to be getting on pretty well with his exam. Miles smiles a little, thinking about how Nick always says he wanted to be a SCI engineer or beyond after he graduates from school, this exam must be easy for him; but what about the others in their group when faced with the same problem? Miles knows for sure not all of them enjoys this line of work. Wait... This study group is supposed to be working on the same exam, judging by what Miles’s doing now, at least he doesn’t have the same exam as Nick. Does everyone have different exams now? This hypothesis is (kind of) proven as Miles turns the dial to “2”, he sees Rose on screen, trying to cheer up this old man who looks worried and angry with something.

After turning the dial and seeing all others in his study group doing completely different things, and still no bell or announcement to tell him about his exam, Miles is needless to say stressing out. What does he have to do? Is he supposed to observe his group and note things down? Is he even supposed to be working with that piece of paper? Reviewing the past papers Miles finds not one is quite like this one! So many aspects are different and new. Miles considers hard. Another thought comes up, perhaps his hypothesis is wrong, perhaps everyone in the group does have the same exam taking place in identical small rooms, they would just think the others don’t when they see what’s on screen. If that’s so, this exam is an unexpected mindf*ck situation. More importantly, should he write these guesses down when he still doesn’t know what the exam’s about? Miles is astonished to find out he’d actually be more certain of what to do when faced with magic stuff, i.e. time travel, etc. than now, when faced with this unusual midterm exam.

“Well I’m definitely not expecting this from school!” Miles can’t help but murmurs. “What was that?” Adele, currently on screen, stops her work with the blue palo verde beans and says, “could you please repeat? I didn’t catch that.” “Adele?” Miles asks, “is that really you? Can you hear me?” “Yes I can, is this Miles?” Adele says back, “how are you making the announcements?” “I am?” Miles gasps. “Yeah, the announcement bell rings every time you talk... kinda annoying.” Adele explains. “Hold on a sec,” Miles requests and dials to “1”, “Nick, can you hear me?” Nick jumps a little, turns his head and has this weirded out look on his face. Miles bursts out laughing at this, “wow, I don’t know if I’m supposed to be doing this...” “D... did you hack the program?” Nick stammers then calms down, “but you don’t seem to be disqualified, that means you probably didn’t. What’s up?”

Poking around, Miles learns that he can not only observe but also talk to everyone in his group through announcement (but he can only talk them one at a time when they’re brought on screen); the others cannot hear or talk to each other though. As he asks on, he learns that same as him, no one has heard an actual announcement about this exam, they’re just doing what their “friends, coworkers or bosses” from the VR asked them to do and assuming that’s how they’ll be given the exam tasks now. Then he also learns about some specifics on what everyone’s doing.

It is quite clear now that no announcement would indicate to Miles what tasks he’ll have. It is around this time Miles notices the dates and time in the lower right corner of the screen, he checks with everyone and now knows in this simulation everyone is working on different tasks on 9 different days, spanning 2 weeks. Miles goes through all nine work environments one by one and inspects everything closely.

Tyler has the earliest date of all, he is in a great mood, happily setting up a drip irrigation system for this huge garden and getting ready to have some planting drones plant flowers when he’s done. “I see you’re doing very well with the garden,” Miles watches the drones place the plants down one by one orderly, “who’s garden is this?” “It’s the Wales family’s,” finishing with the irrigation system, Tyler starts to check the little garden maintenance drones’ condition, “they have an awesome house. I still find it strange they have no surveillance drones flying.” Temporarily, Miles forgets about his blank A3 paper as he starts thinking about this clue. He remembers hearing Rose say she’s helping with a Mr. Wales with his charity, and she noticed the guy’s father was unhappy.

“Well, keep up the good work.” Miles says to Tyler then connects with Rose, “Rose, how’s the charity going?” “So-so,” Rose shrugs, “I’ve came up with some fresh ideas though. How’s your assignment.” “I can’t say because I’m not sure what it is.” Miles says, “say, did Mr. Wales or his dad tell you why they were upset?” “Not really, guess it’s too personal,” Rose shakes her head, “but the dad was super ticked off about their home surveillance system, he says someone shut it off? Wouldn’t say who.” “That could be why there are no surveillance drones!” Miles exclaims, “I just have a feeling Tyler worked for the same Wales family as yours, if so he worked on their garden on March 3rd.” “Could be,” Rose nods. Miles keeps on connecting the dots, Ryan and Tinaye work at the same hospital, and they had this guy who swallowed a large diamond pendant with a ‘W’ engraved on it, and his last name is Kirkland, definitely not W-something. Did this guy steal the pendant? Rose continues with her job in the background. “I’ll leave you alone,” Miles hops onto someone else, “I wonder... does this ‘W’ stand for yet again the same Wales...”

“Did you say ‘Wales’?” Philip is now on screen, currently letting the tour group he takes care of roam around and shop, “this lady from our tour is telling everyone that she knew all about how some burglar stole a diamond family heirloom from a Wales family—her friends; she gossips that because old Mr. Wales weren’t happy to go public or see his son go to the authorities with this, only very few people’s heard of the incident.” “Ohhh shouldn’t have trusted information with that lady,” Miles teases. “Yea some people thrive on gossip. By the way, have you noticed this nice process bar that tells you the percentage you’ve completed on your exam? It’s a new feature.” Philip comments. “Well, I don’t see one,” Miles denies, “my interface is pretty bare.”

Miles next has a question for Adele, “Adele, where are these beans you’ve been testing found?” “The back of this dude’s pickup truck,” Adele quickly spits out her words as she hands in the DNA analysis and comparison reports she’s completed, “I heard this Pete Watt allowed a search of his home and truck without thinking when the police got him. Probably being arrogant because he’s one of the criminals we’ve learnt of who thinks as long as they don’t have a chip in their head the police will have nothing on them. Guess what, I’ve just proved he was near the Wales family’s house with some old-fashioned plant DNA testing. Totally inspiring.”

Nick has the latest date of all. Miles chats him up and learns from him that the broken panels he fixed was caused by police chasing the burglar Kirkland when he knocked into them with a helicopter; not causing a major damage to the SCI. At this point, Miles has a pretty good image of the sub-storyline of the 9 days simulated for this exam. Amongst it all, it seems irrelevant at first sight but Lisa’s been working on Kirkland’s older son’s braces, he does appear to be a little disrespectful; Elly’s watched Kirkland’s angel of a younger son at a daycare. Returning to what he has to do for his exam, although still not sure if what he’s seeing on screen is what everyone’s really doing, he feels that maybe that’s not the point here—maybe the purpose of his exam is to find out the connection that links everyone’s work, and appreciate how by simply doing their parts, they are pushing this simulated society forward. Some past papers had indicated ambiguous themes like this for students to find, Miles thinks this might be it. If that’s the case then this exam is quite easy but still fascinating in some ways.

Just as he decides on taking that approach, the screen Miles has been looking at divides into nine portions that shows everyone along with their progress bars. Miles finally hears the announcement bell ring, followed by a “students, you have 10 minutes left” announcement. A previously not so obvious pandemonium has now really broken out. “What the heck, how come the progress meter says I’ve only got 43% for all the work I’ve done?” Adele breaks down, “what have I been missing?” “Miles, are you there?” Nick only has a 48% up till now, “how’s it going with your part? I hope your doing alright.” Miles quickly checks everyone’s progress bars: everyone is stuck with 40-something-percents, no one has a score above 50%. It’s like everyone’s missing half their scores.

Watching everyone trying to boost their scores (a minimum of 60% is needed to pass the midterms), Miles falls silent, but not for long. “Can you all still hear me?” Miles clears his throat and reaches out. Everyone confirms. “I can see thus tell from your scores that it seems you’re missing parts of your exams, but don’t worry, I have an idea,” he proposes, “the reason I have a blank paper and a pen—as you all know—could be suggesting that I can come up with something to help you all. Maybe that is it!” Is this actually what he needs to do? Observe and help, instead of playing detective? Confusing! “What do we do?” Adele asks desperately. Miles proceeds to command the group, “Please work on the tasks given by the simulation, then clap your hands 3 times.” “What? Clap our hands 3 times?” Adele repeats. “I made my announcement, that could count as an exam task.” Miles hints. “Hey this might work!” Elly says then claps 3 times.

Everyone does what Miles asked and waits for their scores to go up, and of course, nothing happens. Miles face palms, ok, maybe that is a bit too far fetched... and too easy. “What now?!!” Everyone resumes panicking. This sucks, Miles thinks to himself, my plan failed, that means I’m still not getting what my exam is, in that case what if the approach of finding what connects everyone’s work is also false? There isn’t even a process/percentage bar for me to check on.

“5 minutes remaining.” Time flies when you’re trying to work things out. Not wanting his friends to keep losing their minds, Miles starts talking, trying out the theories he has is better than just waiting, “here goes nothing... All your parts have something to do with a stolen diamond pendant, a crime orchestrated by at least 3 people, that comes from what I’ve learnt from you. It started with someone in the Wales house disabling their surveillance system, and from the looks of it, Rose’s boss’s father, old mr. Wales had an idea of who it was or there’s family drama involved, hence he doesn’t want to get others involved; the family member probably handed the pendant to someone who’s driven Pete Watt’s vehicle to the Wales house then with the pendant in hand away from the Wales house. Watt himself, or Willy Kirkland could both be the driver. Kirkland was captured attempting to go somewhere with the pendant. He swallows it in an attempt to get away, only to be rushed into the ICU and have the pendant removed from his body. Taking on your tasks as you see them and completing them kept the story moving.”

Seeing no difference in the grades, and now everyone’s silent, Miles decides to calm his group more and go on trying different approaches, “to be honest with you all, I have no idea what to do with my part yet, I doubt my ever approach—this whole time I kept getting different ideas only to doubt and end up scratching them. Everything is so new on this exam, we are all doing different things, it’s just that I didn’t really take part in the big story you’re in, I have no process bar. All I can do is observe...” Miles pauses to think, then starts again, “Guys, I’ve seen how hard you’ve worked on your parts, there’s no way you can squeeze in any more tasks in this amount of time. We prepared well; if this is all real, seeing your excellent work today, these percentages seem fishy to me, they are likely fake or tempered with—not your real scores, maybe it’s just there to see if we’ll panic over them, we are in a simulation after all all this could be a trick; the point is, this whole exam could be messing with us. With all the new and different stuff, it’s trying to blast us with what we’ve never seen before, we have to take control by ourselves along with working on the more specific exam tasks. I think the key here is certainty, something I didn’t have up until now, something we have to decide to let into our minds. We’re encouraged to work on problems in our own ways on all the past papers we’ve done before this one, maybe this paper demands us to explore a new concept on top of that, a state of mind—believing that what we’ve done for this exam is sufficient, not doubting how you play your part. We have to beat the exam in a sense.” The group appears pretty convinced by him.

Guess this is the true stressful part of an unstandardized exam—anything can be accepted or not accepted as answers, you don’t know for sure if your efforts are enough. Miles clears his doubts and places the pen back onto the desk, on top of the blank A3 paper. The exam ends.

Leaving the exam hall, the group quickly meets up. “You guys ok?” Nick asks the group. “I never thought the percentages could be a hoax.” Lisa says. Miles doesn’t need to ask if the group was working on different papers anymore, what Nick and Lisa said and the rest’s silence were enough of an answer. “What percentages?” Bob approaches their group. “Your group had the easier paper Bob. So how did you guys do? I think I did fantastic this time.” Pete jumps into the conversation. “Our paper’s unique...” Miles looks at the two newcomers, realizing it. “Hey Pete... wouldn’t you know, this villain guy we had has the same first name as you, right guys?” Nick tries to lighten the mood for their group, “guys?”

Well, at least he tried.

“Dr. Mary,” a grader calls, “I have to inform you that Miles did not write a thing on that A3 paper...” he pauses, “well, this is unexpected, you tailored this exam just for him and it appears...” “He failed? No.” Mary rewatches the recorded exam for the third time, “no, his performance exceeded my expectations.”

Miles’s phone is blowing up with texts of excitement and congratulations from the group chat. “Turns out our scores were halved, Miles, you know you are a genius for noticing the percentages were fake right?” Nick calls him. “Well I did not feel like one during the exam...” Miles laughs. “Can’t wait to go to your late bday party and bowl!” Nick says. “Of course,” Miles says back, “and I appreciate how you tried to cheer everyone up enough to remind them of my bowling party back at school.” “More proof that you’re a genius,” Nick puts his thumbs up. “Not really, that’s just because we’ve know each other for more than 10 years.” Miles puts his thumbs up too.

@cadewrites

#original #original story #original character #thejiaqiverse #scifi #sci fi #scififantasy #mystery #education

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zelmagludina-blog · 6 years ago

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Black facing

In this blog, I am going to be discussing how black facing, a widely historically known event has still been seen throughout our generation through social media platforms such as Instagram, Tumblr or any other easily assemble internet source. The purpose of this blog is to bring awareness to how black facing has been promoted throughout history and has traces of it still seen in today society that have been overshadowed by other events guided towards the general public. Blackface movement has been seen throughout history and thought to have been disappeared in the 2000s yet is purely masked by social media that presses on other topics that gain the general public eye and overshadows movements like black facing.

Black facing originated around the early 1830s and had really taken the general publics attention around the year 1845 when people began to perform mistral shows, musicals and wrote music that was orientated around black facing, the performers were most often white middle age men who changed the style of their language, movement, and overall character by painting their skin black in order to play the role of a black man/women primarily to entertain the middle age class.

Black facing is a very important topic because it can influence one's life in a negative way by being surrounded by such immoral events that no human should ever experience. We need to take such events more importantly and bring justice to people that have to experience things like black facing in their daily life. In my research blog, I will be analyzing how all of these events have led to where black facing is now and how the society views it in the current age vs. how it was view back in 1800′s.

In a news article that was published on February 7th, 2019 a news report has released an image of Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam back in 1984 was spotted in a racist yearbook for Eastern Virginia Medical School he discussed how his values have changed since that time. He also does not plan to resign from his position yet he was later asked to resign from his position after the incident had come to be heard by more people. I believe it is outrageous how someone with a history of clear black facing could even become affiliated with the government, I thought there were stricter laws on the background check, especially for the government? Or was it because of previous family history that he was so easily accepted into becoming a governor?

The photo on the right shows an image of two men, one dressed in a KKK costume and the other is in blackface, the photo is taken from a 1984 yearbook of Ralph Northam. He does not admit to which one was he said it was an irrelevant fact. Under the photo the quote “ There are more old drunks than old doctors in this world so I think I’ll have another beer”. The quote can be interpreted in many ways but my view on it is that he wanted to be like the general public, follow trends and fit in. People like Northam have taken positions in the government and have been a part of the society, with a background of black facing nobody should be allowed to have power over governmental issues dealing with society.

An article discussing the historical events that have had a major influence on black facing found on “Blackface!” Blackface! - Blackface History Prior to Minstrel Shows article states that Thomas Dartmouth “the father of American minstrelsy” performed song and dance routines in blackface in 1828 New York City. he was a widely known artist that really helped the growth of blackface throughout history.

In 1842 songwriter Daniel Decatur Emmett had devised a program of singing and dancing blackface. 1850’s minstrel shows developed into a standard format of three parts developed by Edwin Christy. There Are multiple different personas that have made an enormous impact on the blackface movement, each from a different aspect which combined made the blackface movement a normal, day to day aspect. There were no laws that had made blackfacing illegal and so black people had to be exposed to such unhuman instances throughout their life.

A current event that has made the headlines on December 15, 2018, was Prada's new collection which depicted blackface in their new collection. The figures were black and had large red lip monkeys. People believe such controversy would have never occurred if Prada had a more diverse workforce with having very few people of any other race then white working on their staff. Prada has made many apologies regarding this event but the collection and idea should have never been made in the first place.

Pradas collection had a very strong similarity to a “Three blackface masks Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture” It was a gift of the Collection of James M. Caselli and Jonathan Mark Scharer. The blackface mask has the same style as Prada's hoodies, with a black and red mouth. The similarities cannot be mistaken and Prada has crossed the line with releasing the 2018 collection, “When are you going to allow black folks to be decision-makers, to be something other than window dressing at your company, so you don’t have Sambo window dressing?” states a reporter. She had observed that most of the population that worked in the store had been of one race, and so no other cultural influences had been introduced which led to such outcomes.

A current event posted on November 24, 2018, shows a Video posted by a family-run hardware store in Ireland that had his skin painted black, the video was to promote Black Friday sales, not only is the painting in black he also waggles his tongue during the video resembling a savage look to add on to the black painted skin. These portrayals of African Americans were what created jezebel and uncle tom and others. Such events still occur in today's society and could be detrimental to ones mental health on how one views the world.

Rachel Dolezal a box braider extraordinaire who has recently changed her name to avoid going to trial for welfare fraud has agreed to pay over $9,000 in restitution and complete 120 hours of community service to avoid going on trial for welfare fraud. Rachel claims to have seen herself as black rather than white beginning with her childhood, even though both of her parents are fully white. Through all of the lies, she has been through she “has made multiple allegations that she’s been a victim”. Rachel has made multiple statements that she has “a huge issue with blackface” she also had mentioned in the article “that she wants to be photographed in the sun so that her skin looks darker”. It is one thing to want to have a more complex skin color and have your hair curly, Rachel Dolezal took it to another level by claiming to be black, receiving support from the government and many more.

Many factors influence the way black facing had originated, drawing from all of these sources, there is great history in black facing, and multiple factors have influenced the growth and evolution of such performances and how It had become a social norm throughout the years. Blackfacing is still seen in today's society and there are many structural aspects such as dialogic arrangements, character, narrative mechanics of blackface that became the dominant ways in which one represented blackness. There were many widely known people that greatly affected the mass entertainment of these performances throughout history and in today's society we see people that are involved in the government field have had an association with black facing.

From analyzing multiple sources that all involve a type of black facing, some direct and some indirect, we can see how any of these events could make an impact on someone's life. If events such as these went unnoticed they would end up growing and possibly shifting back into the way it used to be in the 1800s, social media is a powerful tool and people need to learn to utilize it to our best abilities and to grow as a society.

Methodological issues are associated with being socially acceptable and thought as humor. The methods that we could begin to establish in a society are to bring awareness and not undermine any morally wrong situations that could lead to trauma. methodologies involving racial differences could be viewed as a socially influenced, could lead back to colonialism involving power and control ones has upon someone else.

MLA citations

“Blackface!” Blackface! - Blackface History Prior to Minstrel Shows, www.blackface.com/ blackface-history.htm

Barr, Sabrina. “Prada Issues Apology after Accusations over Blackface Imagery.”www.independent.co.uk/life-style/prada-blackface-racism-backlash-criticism-apology-statement-fashion-a8684636.html.

Rahim, Zamira. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/black-friday-2018-blackface-smyths-homevalue-ireland-racist-promotional-video-a8649841.html.

Hopper, Nate. “Rachel Dolezal, White Privilege and Appropriating Culture.” Time, Time, 20 Apr. 2017, time.com/4748965/rachel-dolezal-stranger-interview/.

Kelly, Caroline. “Northam Apologizes for 'Racist and Offensive' Costume.” CNN, Cable News Network, 7 Feb. 2019, www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/politics/northam-blackface-photo/ index.html.

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waywardskylarking-archive · 7 years ago

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LFRP [ Balmung ] - Mahv Kelsin

[[ Due to both the ever-changing nature of character information and the length of the profile provided, all information shall be placed under a ‘Read More’ to allow future editing. ]]

:: BASIC INFORMATION ::

FULL NAME: Mahv Kelsin NICKNAMES/ALIASES: ‘The Whisper’ GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female, she/her AGE: 27-30-ish RACE: Half-Elezen, Half-Garlean BIRTHPLACE: Garlemald CURRENT RESIDENCE: The Mist, La Noscea SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Asexual RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Married OCCUPATION: Maelstrom First Storm Lieutenant and researches/fights Primals for them, Allagan researcher in her spare time, Summoner

:: CHARACTER APPEARANCE ::

HAIR: Wine-red, semi-long, usually in a messy ponytail and/or hidden under her hat SKIN: Tawny-fawn color, not as tan as she used to be. EYES: Hazel-green HEIGHT: A smidgen over 6′ WEIGHT: Rude. MARKINGS (scars, tattoos, etc): Light scarring over her body from claws and blades and stupid accidents. Her back is covered in knotted skin that looks akin to damage caused by excessive lashings. BUILD/PHYSIQUE: Short for an Elezen, and slim, built for speed over strength. She’s toned, however, being an active combatant and constantly on the move.

:: TRAITS ::

extroverted / introverted / in between

disorganized / organized / in between

close minded / open-minded / in between

calm / anxious / in between

disagreeable / agreeable / in between

cautious / reckless / in between

patient / impatient / in between

outspoken / reserved / in between

leader / follower / in between

empathetic / unemphatic / in between

optimistic / pessimistic / in between

traditional / modern / in between

hard-working / lazy / in between

cultured / un-cultured / in between

loyal / disloyal / in between

faithful / unfaithful / in between

:: PERSONAL INFORMATION ::

SOCIAL LEVEL: Mahv is cheerful and easily approachable - though if left to her own devices, she’ll sit in the background and watch others. She knows the value of allies in many places, and so isn’t often openly hostile to others. RELIGION: The Twelve PATRON DEITY: Oschon the Wanderer LIKES: Alcohol, technology, books, learning, alcohol, dancing, loyalty, alcohol DISLIKES: Being forced to stop drinking alcohol, liars, judging a person based on their blood/heritage rather than their deeds MISC. QUIRKS: Severe alcoholic, severe workaholic, constantly paying attention to people around her, likes to tinker with and fix old Allagan technology. She technically has a subdermal third eye and the center of her forehead is tender. Being a Primal fighter, she does have the Echo, which by default is more of an AoE centered on her and can protect those around her.

:: RELATIONSHIPS ::

SPOUSE: Zeuk Taren CHILDREN: None PARENTS: Absent Elezen father, her Garlean mother disowned her, her adoptive Garlean father (biological grandfather) is dead. SIBLINGS: A half-brother and half-sister, identities unconfirmed. OTHER RELATIVES: Potential nephew, potential other family members she’s never met or heard of. AFFILIATIONS: The Maelstrom, the Rogue’s Guild, the Arcanist’s Guild, Axiom Free Company

:: POSSIBLE RP HOOKS ::

— Are/were you in the Maelstrom? Lieutenant Kelsin is often called on when matters regarding Primals pop up, though she will occasionally be brought in when matters of stealth or infiltration are important. — Are/were you a Rogue? Mahv is still known as the Whisper, as while she rarely engages in the more physical/fighting aspects of being a Rogue, she excels at gathering and sharing information. Not that anyone has put a face to the Whisper yet, but maybe a letter requesting aid will reach her. — Are you interested in the art of Arcanima/Summoning? While Mahv isn’t overly fond of teaching, she is willing to help out someone who has questions or needs some pointers, though she will stress the danger that Summoning often involves. — Are you looking for help with Garlean or Allagan magitek? While she’s not an expert by any means, she does have an uncanny knack for fixing it and likes new things to examine. — Any other ideas? I’m all ears!

:: OOC INFORMATION ::

SERVER: Balmung TIMEZONE: EST EXPERIENCE: 15+ years on forums/chat programs, 6+ years on tumblr, 3+ years in-game TYPE OF RP: Tumblr, in-game, Discord THEMES: Any/all! [[ Except romance, naturally, as Mahv is happily married to her handsome Lalafel man~ ]] LOOKING FOR: Friends, contacts, allies, enemies, frenemies? AVAILABILITY: Usually afternoons/evenings EST, though I may reply to tumblr or Discord messages through the day if work is slow. HOW TO CONTACT ME: On here first, and if you prefer, you can ask for my Discord!

#Mahv Kelsin #Mahv #LFRP #FFXIV LFRP #Balmung LFRP

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reuxben · 8 years ago

Photo

This was our MTGinktober for “Ship,” starring Precinct Captain and its corresponding Soldier Token! Yes, I totally ship them--I have seen it. Seen the end, seen the beginning, the beginning of the end--and I have the photos to back it up, which I collected over the years during my time in the Boros Legion.

Relax, spare me the “thank you for your service” stuff, I was just a Legion photographer. I never saw combat. Though I did get a papercut once, which technically qualified me for a Purple Core signet--and don’t get it mindtwisted, “technically qualified” is the best kind of qualified, though I grant you that paranoia’s all I got left on that theory. Look, I wanted to go to photography school, but figured it’d be smarter to do the Boros work-study program in the Arts and Propaganda (A&P) department, since I could study photography, do nominal but obligatory (and minimal) soldier stuff, get out after my term was up, and then use that sweet, sweet Boros bonus to start my own studio. They were desperate for recruits back then (no idea what it’s like nowadays, don’t really keep up), so they just threw money at unguilded chumps to enlist.

I should note this was during the disastrous “Feathernomics” period of exorbitant deficit spending on recruitment and propaganda, which is why I had it so good as a new enlistee in the A&P department (our nickname was “Twinkle Toes Company.” Other companies did that “OOH-Rah! OOH-Rah! OOH-Rah-Rah!” chant you always see in the spectacles, but they’d shout “OOH-Lah!” at us, as in “Ooh-la-la.” It was stupid.). So I wasn’t exactly Agrus Kos, ok? Just a photographer too cheap to go to a proper art school and aware enough to take basically free money for the inconvenience of doing all that idiotic marching and saluting nonsense while having to dress like 80,000 of my closest friends.

But today is a salute to just two of these fellow marching enthusiasts. I can’t believe it never really clicked until I was going over some old photos from back in the day as research for an upcoming project (I’m doing a pictorial book on daily Boros life, plug plug plug), but I kept seeing these two doofs together in photo after photo, so here’s what I remember:

I wasn’t terribly close with anyone in the service, (again, just there for the [essentially] paid education), but my staffbook confirms the guy’s name is Sten Scott, the girl is Tev Pres. I was embedded in the Ravnica 254th Precinct Corps to cover them for one training cycle to simulate wartime conditions, so I had to be a fly on the wall and they had to pretend I didn’t exist, meanwhile I was popping up out of bushes and from under eaves, snapping photos like a filthy Hazoret. These guys were part of the newest wave of recruits and the earliest photo I found of them was right after they presumably first met at the orientation party for new enlistees in the Noble 254th, which is why they’re in their full cadet uniforms.

Scott was nervous because he didn’t know anybody and wasn’t really gelling with anyone, but Pres was super outgoing and forged a fast friendship. She was the life of the party, especially a party of two, so that’s why I remember wanting to follow her around at the party because she got all these great reactions from people, which made for great candid shots--I hate static, posed shots, is there anything more pointless?

Scott was from a higher up family, but I gather he was running from his roots since the 254th is known for being comprised of, shall we say “less financially-secure” families? He definitely didn’t talk about his family life, that’s for sure. For my own curiosity one night, I do recall pulling his file for “research” (Twinkle Toes credentials has its perks), and yeah, his family was pretty loaded. He should have been in Champagne Company like all the other snots. His file says he was indeed placed there originally, but filed a transfer request before he even arrived on campus. And they granted it. Curious.

Pres came from a larger family, according to her file, so that’s probably where she got her more outgoing personality, necessarily screaming over siblings to get a word in, and being generous in her affection for those close to her. 254th families are famously close-knit because for many of them, they need their families jealously looking out for each other in order to survive their rougher districts. That’s why they call it the “Noble 254th,” there’s so much pride in that Corps: their motto is Fogi di Pesn to Nobus di Regi, “The fire of peasants and the nobility of kings.”

So Pres was like your best friend set to eleven, everything was amplified with her, like she didn’t want an ounce of life wasted. She obviously sticks out in my memory more than Scott, but as a “professional,” I tried to maintain my impartiality in my daily rounds of covering the 254th, but judging by my catalog, I invariably found myself gravitating towards photographing her and by extension Scott since these guys were like two shells in a Mortarpod ever since that orientation party.

I’ll briefly address here that there was always that controversial aspect of the Noble 254th. Honorable in conduct, but always with that iffy aftertaste of perpetuating the cynical cycle of the poor fighting rich men’s battles, who would rather send their kids to various Azorius schools for legal training, or if they must enlist in the Legion, then they’d cut straight to higher-placed officer training, like the aforementioned “Champagne Company,” which of course had the widest outbreak of “bone spurs” you’d ever come across. Those poor, delicate orchids. Yeah, I’m one to talk, twinkle twinkle. Regardless, I never heard of anyone rejecting Champagne placement before--nor did anyone else since Scott conveniently never brought it up.

Anyway, the photo under the one from orientation is from boot camp. You always went on IPT (Independent Physical Training) with a buddy to spot you, and these two randomly got paired that first week--pairing was random the first three weeks, after which you elected your buddy having had a breadth of experiences with fellow Legionnaires--I do respect the Boros embrace of the perfect balance of randomness and order, as dealing with these factors is a necessary life skill they make sure you master, even we Twinklers.

I remember this day of IPT pretty well because I love the rain and we all got entangled in this one, despite my otherwise stellar ability to stay out of subjects’ ways. Pres got caught in a sudden downpour during an IPT session, but fortunately Scott had brought an umbrella for that day since, unlike his more spontaneous colleague, he had actually heeded the morning’s weather intel. She promised to pay more attention next time and gave a hug of relief to her trusty backup “fuddy-duddy-in-chief” (I believe was the rank she ascribed him, even addressing him in written communications as FDIC Scott rather than his proper rank). He sheepishly brushed off all credit to the umbrella, as if it were only randomly packed in his supplies that day, and he only perfunctorily lectured her about compromising the rescue mission by getting him just as soaked as her when she rested her sopping wet head on his shoulder.

We were all packed under an awning or something when I snapped this photo, and this is where I got the impression they might have something going on, looking back on these old photos, though to be fair, most people I talked to think it was just her being naturally more tactile, and him being over-prepared as always and being unable to handle *Solemn Simulacrum voice* hu-man e-mo-tions (he definitely chilled out the more they were together, though, and these photos certainly capture how comfortable he felt around her). I dunno. I do know they became pretty much inseparable after that, and were always on the same squad, obviously did their future elected IPT together, everything. Again, easily just that “spirit bond” soldiers get, but come on. Look at them.

I mean, during Rec Day, the 254th’s annual mid-bootcamp morale festival, they of course hit up the photobooth and snapped all these cheesy buddy shots. Before you ask, I processed the photos, so I have a copy in my records--I didn’t mug them for these like a Bramble Creeper, all right? Anyway, again, I guess you could flip a coin on this photo-roll as evidence, pro or con. They were pretty close by then, half-way through bootcamp, spending bloody, sweaty, and teary hours upon hours together, so maybe it’s just them being pals, having achieved dat soulbond doe.

Real talk, though, that’s how the Boros gets you. They lure you in with some attractive benefits package, you build these absurdly strong bonds with your partner or squad, and then you end up re-upping after your term is up, signing longer and longer contracts, and before you know it, you’re off fighting for some rich, bloated Orzhov oligarch who doesn’t even know who you are and would without hesitation send you to die to secure him a greater tax cut or clear out unguilded protestors who figured out what’s up, etc. The house always wins if you play long enough. Twinkle Toes Company is full of artists and diva creatives, so the turnover is higher, thus we don’t suffer from that unfortunate development of blind obedience. Besides, who would ever trust an artist on anything worthwhile? Seriously.

The last photo is from their commencement ceremony afterparty, I was on photography duty of course, so all photos got that dumb, overly formal, commemorative dressing at the bottom. As meh as I am about the Boros, or the guilds in general--it’s all a scam, man, every guild is just out for your cash in the end, yes, even the Gruul (if you think Bobo ain’t gettin’ paid, wow, I’ve got a Planar Bridge I’d like to sell you)--regardless of all that, I thought it was cool to see them in their formal uniforms at long last. Even I get a little emotional seeing companies finally don their fray apparel, ok? It’s the spectacle of it, I guess. I’m a photographer, I appreciate visuals. But I mean, who doesn’t get caught up in all that? Be human. Or whatever. Goat people, whatever you call them. You know what I mean. I just had the good sense to get out when my contract was up. I shredded my guild card and have been living just peachy out here unguilded, though I do collect my vet check every month. Thank you for your postal service.

The last document...I won’t tell you how I got it. I won’t tell you who wrote it. I will say though...how many letters do you write to mere friends like that? It turns out that commencement party photo was the last time they ever saw each other because, as far as I know, one of the two found this letter slid under-door the next morning and meanwhile the other was already off on a separate assignment on a totally different plane. No transfer requests in the file, nothing. Silence.

Even if you know you’ll never see them again by virtue of the sheer time and space imminently separating you...Do you ever tell your friends you love them? Ought you to? Am I just an emotionally stunted photographer living vicariously through my subjects, being unable to live life myself, and can only rely on the fantasies I invent about the vivacious people I cover to bring me any semblance of a satisfactory life? Don’t answer that.

Love,

Thanks,

Click this post’s Source link for this piece’s Making-Of.

More MTGinktober here.

Daily art updates on Instagram and Twitter.

Not normal,

Reuxben

#Reuxben #MTGinktober #Magic: The Gathering #Inktober #MTG #Illustration #Boros #Ravnica #Comics #MTG Fanart #Fan Art #Inktober 2017 #Precinct Captain #Inks #G-Pen #Microns #Written

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pope-francis-quotes · 6 years ago

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8th July >> (@ZenitEnglish By Virginia Forrester) #Pope Francis #PopeFrancis Pope Francis Addresses Members of Permanent Synod of Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Full Text of 5th July Talk to Group Gathered in Rome.

The Holy Father Francis received in audience this morning, in the Bologna Hall of the Apostolic Vatican Palace, the Members of the Permanent Synod of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, and he gave the address, which we translate below.

* * *

The Holy Father’s Address

Beatitude, Dear Brother Major Archbishop,

Eminences, Excellencies,

Dear Brothers!

It was my wish to invite you here, to Rome, for a fraternal sharing, also with the Superiors of the competent Dicasteries of the Roman Curia. I thank you for accepting the invitation; it’s lovely to see you. Ukraine has been living for some time a difficult and delicate situation, for over five years wounded by a conflict that many call “hybrid,” made up as it is by war actions where those responsible blend with one another; a conflict where the weakest and littlest pay the highest price; a conflict aggravated by propagandist falsifications and manipulations of various sorts, including the attempt to involve the religious aspect.

I carry you in my heart and I pray for you, dear Ukrainian Brothers. And I confide to you that sometimes I do so with the prayer that I remember and that I learned from Bishop Stefano Chmil, then a Salesian priest. He taught it to me in 1949, when I was twelve, and I learned from him to serve the Divine Liturgy three times a week. I thank you for your fidelity to the Lord and to the Successor of Peter, often costing dearly in the course of history, and I entreat the Lord, so that He may accompany the actions of all political leaders to seek not the so-called one-sided good, which in the end is always an interest to the detriment of another, but the common good, peace. And I ask the “God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3) to comfort the spirit of those that have lost their dear ones because of the war, and those that bear wounds in the body and in the spirit, those that have had to leave their home and work and face the risk of seeking a more human future elsewhere and far away. Know that my gaze turns every morning and every evening to Our Lady, of which His Beatitude made me a gift when he left Buenos Aires to assume the office of Major Archbishop that the Church had entrusted to him. I begin and end the days before that icon, entrusting all of you and your Church to the tenderness of Our Lady, who is Mother. It can be said that I begin the days and end them “in Ukranian,” looking at Our Lady.

In the face of the complex situations caused by the conflicts, the principal role of the Church is to offer the witness of Christian hope. Not a hope of the world, which is based on things that pass, come and go, and often divide, but the hope that never disappoints, that does not yield to discouragement., which is able to overcome every tribulation in the gentle strength of the Spirit (Cf. Romans 5:2-5). Christian hope, nourished by the light of Christ, makes the resurrection and life shine even in the darkest nights of the world. Therefore, dear Brothers, I believe that, in difficult periods, even more so than in those of peace, the priority for believers is to be united to Jesus, our hope. It’s about renewing that union founded on Baptism and rooted in the Faith, rooted in the history of our communities, rooted in the great witnesses: I think of the array of daily heroes, of those numerous next-door saints that, with simplicity, have responded among your people to evil with good (Cf. Romans 12:21). They are the example to look at: those that in the meekness of the Beatitudes had the Christian courage of not opposing themselves to the wicked, of loving enemies and praying for persecutors (Cf. Mathew 5:39.44). In the violent field of history, they planted the Cross of Christ, and they have borne fruit. These brothers and sisters of yours, who have suffered persecutions and martyrdom and that, close to the Lord Jesus, rejected the logic of the world, according to which violence is answered with violence, have written with <their> life the most limpid pages of the faith: they are fecund seeds of Christian hope. I read with emotion the book “Persecuted for the Truth.” Behind those priests, Bishops, Sisters, is the People of God, which carries forward with faith and prayer the whole people.

Some years ago the Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Greed-Catholic Church adopted the pastoral program entitled “The Living Parish, Place of Encounter with the Living Christ. In some translations, the expression “Parrochia viva” was rendered with the adjective “vibrant.” In fact, the encounter with Jesus, the spiritual life, the prayer that vibrates in the beauty of your Liturgy transmit that beautiful strength of peace, which soothes wounds, infuses courage but not aggression. When, as from a well of spring water, we draw this spiritual vitality and transmit it, the Church becomes fecund. She becomes the Herald of the Gospel of hope, Teacher of that interior life that no other institution is able to offer.

Therefore, I wish to encourage you all, in as much as Pastors of the People of God, to have a primary concern in all your activities: prayer <and> the spiritual life. It’s the first occupation; no other goes before it. We know and all see that in your tradition you are a Church that is able to speak in spiritual, not worldly, terms (Cf. 1 Corinthians 2:13), because every person that approaches the Church needs Heaven on earth, nothing else. May the Lord grant you this grace and make us all dedicated to our sanctification and that of the faithful entrusted to us. In the night of conflict you are going through, as in Gethsemane, the Lord asks His own to “watch and pray”; not to defend themselves, and much less to attack. However, the disciples slept instead of praying and, when Judas arrived, they pulled out the sword. They hadn’t prayed and fell into temptation, in the temptation of worldliness: the violent weakness of the flesh prevailed over the meekness of the spirit. Not sleep, not the sword, not flight (Cf. Matthew 26:40.52.56), but prayer and the gift of self to the end are the answers that the Lord awaits from His own. Only these answers are Christian; they alone save one from the worldly spiral of violence.

The Church is called to carry out her pastoral mission with various means. After prayer comes closeness. What the Lord had asked His apostles that evening, to stay close to Him and to watch (Cf. Mark 14:34), He asks today of His Pastors: to be with the people, watching beside one going through the night of pain. The closeness of Pastors to the faithful is a channel, which is built day by day and which brings the living water of hope. It’s built thus, encounter after encounter, with the priests that know and take to heart the people’s concerns, and the faithful that, through the care they receive, assimilate the proclamation of the Gospel, which the Pastors transmit. They don’t understand it if the Pastors are only intent on saying God: they understand it if they spend themselves in giving God: giving themselves, being close, witnesses of the God of hope that made Himself flesh to walk on the roads of man. May the Church be the place where hope is drawn, where the door is always open, where consolation and encouragement is offered. Never closure towards anyone, but an open heart; never looking at the clock to send home one who needs to be listened to. We are servants in time. We live in time. Please, don’t fall into the temptation to live as slaves of the clock! –Time, not the clock.

Pastoral care includes in the first place the liturgy that, as the Major Archbishop has often stressed, together with spirituality and catechesis, constitutes an element that characterizes the identity of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. She, to the world “still disfigured by egoism and greed, reveals the way towards the balance of the new man” (Saint John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Orientale Lumen, 11): the way of charity, of unconditional love, within which every other activity must be directed, to nourish the fraternal bond between persons, inside and outside of the community.

With this spirit of closeness, in 2016 I promoted a humanitarian initiative, to which I invited the Churches of Europe to take part, to offer help to those most affected by the conflict. I thank again from my heart all those that contributed to the carrying out of this collection, be it on the economic, be it on the organizational and technical plane. And to that first initiative, now essentially concluded, I would like other special projects to follow. Already in this meeting, some information could be provided. It’s so important to be close to all and to be concrete, also to avoid the danger of a grave situation of suffering falling into general oblivion. A suffering brother can’t be forgotten, regardless of where he comes from. A suffering brother can’ be forgotten.

I would like to add a third word to prayer and closeness, which is so familiar to you: synodality. To be Church is to be a community that walks together. It’s not enough to hold a Synod, it’s necessary to be Synod. The Church has need of intense internal sharing: a lively dialogue between Pastors and between Pastors and faithful. In as much as Oriental Catholic Church, you have already in your canonical order a marked Synodal expression, which foresees frequent and periodical recourse to assemblies of the Synod of Bishops. However, every day the Synod must be done, making an effort to walk together, not only with one who thinks the same way — this would be easy — but with all believers in Jesus. Three aspects revive synodality. First of all, listening: to listen to the experiences and the suggestions of Brother Bishops and Presbyters. It’s important that each one, inside the Synod, feels he is heard. To listen is all the more important the more one goes up in the hierarchy. Listening is sensitivity and openness to the opinion of brothers, also of those that are the youngest and also those considered less expert. A second aspect: co-responsibility. We can’t be indifferent in face of the errors and carelessness of others, without intervening in a fraternal but convinced way: our brothers have need of our thought, of our encouragement, as well as of our corrections, because, in fact, we are called to walk together. One can’t conceal what is not right and go on as if there were nothing to defend at all cost of one’s own good name: charity is always lived in truth, in transparency, in that Parrhesia that purifies the Church and makes her go forward. Synodality — <the> third aspect — also means involvement of the laity: in as much as full members of the Church, they are also called to express themselves, to give suggestions. Participants in ecclesial life, they are not only heard but listened to. And I underscore this verb: to listen. One who listens can then speak well; he who isn’t used to listening, doesn’t speak, he barks. Synodality also leads to widening the horizons, to living the richness of one’s tradition within the universality of the Church: to benefit from good relations with the other rites; to consider the beauty of sharing significant parts of one’s theological and liturgical treasure with other communities, also non-Catholic ones; to weave fruitful relationships with other particular Churches, as well as with the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia. The unity in the Church will be that much more fecund, the more agreement and cohesion there is between the Holy See and the particular Churches is real. More precisely: the more <there is> agreement and cohesion between all the Bishops with the Bishop of Rome. This must certainly not “entail a diminution in the awareness of one’s authenticity and originality” (Orientale Lumen, 21), but molded within our Catholic identity, that is, universal. In as much as universal, it is put in danger and can be worn down by attachment to the particularism of various sorts: ecclesial particularisms, nationalistic particularisms, political particularisms.

Dear Brothers, may these two days of the meeting, which I desired intensely, be intense moments of sharing, of mutual listening, of free dialogue, always animated by the search for the good, in the spirit of the Gospel. May they help us walk together better. In a certain sense, it’s a sort of Synod dedicated to the themes that are most at heart of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in this period, marked by the still on-going military conflict and characterized by a series of political and ecclesial processes much more ample than those regarding our Catholic Church. However, I recommend this spirit to you, this discernment on which to verify yourselves: prayer and spiritual life in the first place; then closeness, especially with one that suffers; then synodality, walking together, walking openly, step after step, with meekness and docility. I thank you. I accompany you on this path and I ask you, please, to remember me in your prayers. Thank you!

[Original text: Italian] [ZENIT’s translation by Virginia M. Forrester]

8th JULY 2019 18:43EASTERN CHURCHES

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scrlvts-blog · 8 years ago

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hi my dudes, i’m taylor and it’s been one hell of a day, i’m incredibly stoked that there was a spot here for my girl because oc hollywood roleplays like these are my brand. beneath the cut is a little bit more about my baby scar, feel free to like this post for me to appear in your ims for plots or hmu, i’m ready to jump in and start interacting w/ all you beautiful, beautiful people !

( SELENA GOMEZ | SHE/HER, CISFEMALE ) quick, snap a picture that’s SCARLET CARRILLO coming this way. you know the TWENTY-FIVE year old SINGER/SONGWRITER that sounds exactly like KESHA. in interviews SHE always comes off as SAGACIOUS and PEDANTIC, but every time gossip is covered by GLC, SHE is painted as MERCURIAL and RECALCITRANT. GLC is always referring to HER as the BYZANTINE. the last story they did on HER was about BEING SPOTTED AT A CLUB POST-REHAB, but they’d have a field day if they knew that SHE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR A GIRL OVERDOSING AT ONE OF HER PARTIES. i hope no one finds out because crowned just might drop any artist with too much drama.

scarlet was born and raised in nashville, it was just her and her mother growing up. her mother’s dream had always been to work in music but when she’d gotten pregnant with scarlet, it was no longer in the cards for her and she couldn’t take the chance waiting on a dream when she had a daughter to raise? but they stayed in nashville because her mom couldn’t bear to leave the city of her dreams (compromise, lmao) so her mom worked a couple of jobs to balance things and while they weren’t off the greatest they could’ve been financially, scarlet had a relatively happy childhood

she’d spent countless hours hanging out at the bar her mom worked at as a child since they couldn’t afford a babysitter or a program and the manager had okayed it (mostly bc scarlet’s mom was sleeping w him on the side), reading books and listening to music or the live bands that would play and she very quickly fell in love with words and music

during her school years, she was the odd man out — most kids didn’t like her if only for the fact that they thought she was weird and brash, which she was, no doubt, and while scarlet (and her mother) tried to convince her that she didn’t mind being cast out, it certainly bothered her

she suffers from pretty severe anxiety and depression, and her coping mechanism was without a doubt music ; melodies and hooks were her specialty, and she liked writing songs that encapsulated a party vibe? they were happy, dance-y songs that made her feel better whenever she heard them and she figured that even though it wasn’t “serious” music, it was music that made her want to get up and dance and allowed her to forget about her problems since it made her happy when she heard it, and that was the kind of music she liked to make, she wanted to share that with the world

spring break, her senior year, she and some of the kids she’d managed to make friends with (all of them were older because, again, scarlet spent her time in fucking seedy bars or roaming around nashville doing as she pleased — her mom trusted her enough to let her be Independent) road-tripped all the way to los angeles and while they were there and stoned, they dared scarlet to submit a demo to one of the massive record labels as a joke

never one to turn down a dare (because bby just wanted for them to continue to accept her bless) she did it, recorded a few songs while she was still high and they dropped it off at crowned records and to their surprise, they liked it for some reason? and they wanted her on the label??? because she brought something different to the table????

when she and her mom found out, they danced around their living room and her mom let her “drink for the first time”

the label liked what she was pitching song-wise, but they weren’t crazy about the way she was recording her songs for a little while?? scarlet has a gr8, incredibly unique voice and she can sing but for whatever reason, they didn’t want that out of her?? like, she wound up selling a lot of her songs off to other artists even though she didn’t want to pass them off (kesha’s unreleaseds are a blessing) and she kinda got frustrated, yelled at a producer and mockingly did the same voice she’d done in the demos kind of as a middle-finger to him and they were like YES there’s our girl!!

so yep that’s where the "accent” comes in in all of her early songs, it was because her label really wanted to cash in on the fact there wasn’t really anyone in the industry like her and she’s wasn’t...crazy about it, but she knew why she was making music and figured this was just a means to an end, didn’t matter all that much to her

stage-wise, she’s known as scarlet, no second names attached (and yes, there was a pitch meeting about $carlet but she was like fuck no)

album-wise, scarlet has released animal (nineteen), cannibal (twenty-one), and warrior (twenty-three), and now she’s in the beginning of stages of working on her fourth album (rainbow) and that’s going...interestingly, will touch on this in a Mo

not only did scarlet release party music, she literally was the party queen of hollywood - no one thought her habits were normal or healthy by any means, since the paparazzi would spot her usually twice a week at a party (she got very good at evading them and usually went to more during the week) and parties were kind of an extension of her music to her — she’d go to a party, drink, dance, maybe get her hands on a drug or two, and have a good time and it would put a band-aid over a bullet hole, so to speak

and the more exposure her music got, the more famous she got, the more partying she did — she didn’t like the “fame” aspect of making music but she liked the ins she got, the stuff she was able to get away with because she was who she was (pun totally not intended but at the same time, so intended lmao) and she got pretty hooked on cocaine for awhile

the making of her warrior album was just a trainwreck, she was literally coming apart at the seams (this was roughly a year and a half ago, timeline-wise) and arriving to all her sessions completely stoned, she was just a mess and she wasn’t willing to admit she needed help, she thought she really had things handled

there were a few interventions between her team, the label, her family, and scarlet gave them all a big Fuck You and kept going about her business, the album came out, la la la, she was getting ready to start planning for the tour and then at one of the parties she threw, things went south really fast — basically, some groupie was there and scarlet encouraged her to do cocaine and it went wrong, it was a perfect disaster and the girl ended up od’ing and scarlet literally had a panic attack when she found her

the place went on lockdown after ; once her management got in there it was decided that everyone would be in agreement, the party had never happened and the girl hadn’t gotten anything from scarlet (this was followed by a hefty pay-off to make sure all loose ends were tied up, since the girl did pass away) and because it scared scarlet so badly, she was finally willing to go to rehab and so two days later, she was off the grid

she definitely took advantage of being in rehab and kinda prolonged her stay there by her own choice? she was diagnosed w bipolar disorder, learned how to deal with it and kick her addictions and really believed she was making progress, and as time went on she realized that she was doing well in this place and was able to express herself creatively and she didn’t have any of the added pressures of fame on her back so like why tf would she wanna leave?? she got a lot off her chest while she was there and leaving kinda scared her, so she just...chilled until she literally had to give up her bed, the total length of her stay rounding out at like thirteen, fourteen months

she’s been out of rehab for roughly six months and is definitely staying much more low-key than she had ; she doesn’t go to many parties any more unless they’re for friends which, she doesn’t have too many real friends in her corner since most of them only liked her when she was Party Queen and when she does, she sits in the back and literally pulls out a keyboard app on her phone and writes melodies, she’s just not interested in it anymore??

she wants to be taken seriously in music now and that’s why she’s having trouble moving forward with her fourth album, the label wants her to ofc keep up with the dance/party music but she really doesn’t feel like that’s her anymore?? she’s like, pulling her hair out at this point because she doesn’t feel like anyone’s listening to her, and she knows people really don’t think of her as a legitimate singer but....she can? and she wants to prove that? so yeah

personality wise scarlet is very go with the flow; she’s incredibly smart and detail-oriented, a hella perfectionist and she’s the kind of person who just says what she means and doesn’t really care if it comes out wrong. has a weird sense of humor and really just loves to dance in her underwear, meditate (oh my GOD she loves meditation, got hooked on it in rehab and dedicates a good chunk of her day to meditation) and enjoy the little things in life? she’s got a better appreciation for it now

is hella stubborn, it’s like arguing with a brick wall and she’s like walking on a landmine, any little thing will set her off. she knows what she wants and if you’re in the way of it, sorrryyyy. kitty’s got claws and she’ll use them without hesitation

is openly bisexual

is just trying to maintain her sobriety and keep in a good mental place while in the lion’s den lmao

connection wise i want all the things, i’ll put a legit serious page up l8r

give me friends who just used scarlet for her parties and are kinda...yknow towards her, give me True Friends (by hannah montana) who stuck w her in rehab or got to know her while she was in rehab and know the real her, give me someone who she sold a song she loved dearly to that did very well on the charts and she’s still highkey bitter about it, give me exes of ANY NATURE, give me “we bicker all the time but we’ve got mad sexual tension going on and lowkey enjoying going back and forth”, give me people who don’t like her for whatever reason, give me people who believe in her and people who don’t, give me literally anything you want okay?? okay

#「 •• ʏᴏᴜ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ɪ'ᴅ ʀᴜɴ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ᴛᴏ 𝔀𝑜𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇𝓁𝒶𝓃𝒹 ; ʙᴇʜɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴠᴇɪʟ.#lhq:intro

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tuyetlonghoanggia · 5 years ago

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hermanwatts · 5 years ago

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Sensor Sweep: Antiheroes, Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. van Vogt, Dreadstar

Popular Culture (Adam Lane Smith): Much has been made about the oft-lamented shift from Hero to Antihero and the modern obsession with romanticizing evil. Most frequently, I’ve heard this complaint directed at modern western media’s fixation on selecting one unyielding human trash fire after another as every main character. There’s a reason modern book sales and movie sales are struggling. To understand the shift over the last hundred years of stories and main characters, one must understand the cultural environments and the mental aspects at play, particularly attachment formation and its impact on society.

Writing (Rawle Nyanzi): With every passing day, it seems that global pop culture disappoints us more. Classic franchises are vandalized into self-parodies to “modernize” them, creative talent increasingly treats fandoms as the enemy, and geek-oriented media champion the intimidation and silencing of creatives who don’t toe a very particular ideological line. The Pulp Mindset is not a book on how to make millions with one simple trick. It is not a book about gaming Amazon’s ever-changing algorithm. It is a book about having the right mentality for storytelling.

Hugo Awards (Dark Herald): This years Hugos went so far beneath my radar I didn’t know they had happened. I think we have finally reached the point where a Hugo Award is actually damaging to an author’s reputation. Certainly, no one who loves Science Fiction will want to buy a book with the words Hugo Award winner on the cover. As you may know by now. George R.R. Martin hosted the 2020 Hugo Awards and he was apparently too old to be Woke.

Fiction (DMR Books): Now I don’t have to wait six months to release my collection! Necromancy in Nilztiria will be available in next month, and the cover illustration (which you can see to the left) is based upon “A Twisted Branch of Yggdrasil.” In this tale, the Norseman Hrolfgar and the Atlantean Deltor have been drawn through the labyrinths of time and space to the world of Nilztiria by a sorceress, who commands them to slay her enemy, Xaarxool the Necromancer. But as you can see this is no easy task, for Xaarxool has giant skeletons to defend him.

Fiction (Marzaat): Like most critics, he regards Sturgeon’s supreme strength as characterization. Sturgeon was allegedly good at seeing the cruelty behind civilization and the ways “conventional morality” (supposedly Sturgeon distinguished that from “fundamental ethical systems”) created anxieties and phobias hence some of his horror stories like “Bianca’s Hands”). Stableford contends Sturgeon never was onboard with John W. Campbell’s enthusiasm for science and technology. He suggests that Sturgeon’s “Killdozer!”, with its bulldozer under the control of a hostile alien force, is a hostile metaphor for that enthusiasm.

Fiction (Wasteland & Sky): Much credit should go author and editor Richard Paolinelli for all the work he has done in the Planetary Anthology series. After Superversive Press shuttered it looked unlikely that the project would ever be completed and was destined to be a what-if, but not only has Tuscany Bay released more volumes than Superversive did (and next month will have re-released all of Superversive’s old volumes), it has also carried the project into a whole new medium. That would be into the burgeoning audio book world.

History (Jon Mollison): The pre-history of the Americas is a true dark age – a time of great uncertainty and filled with mysteries for which we may never have solutions. The most basic of these, who was the first to arrive, remains shrouded in conflicting narratives and contradictory evidence provided by scattered and controversial archaeology sites. The question assumes the Bering Straits Theory is the only one that holds water. A rather sizable assumption given the dearth of evidence. And the possible explanation lies in the stone-age sailing ship piloted by Thor Heyerdahl.

Dragon Awards (Dragoncon): In this three-part series, past Dragon Award recipients talk about their award-winning novels and their Dragon Awards experience. During this time, nothing provides a better escape from the world than diving into the pages of a Dragon Award winning novel. The Dragon Awards, launched in 2016 in tandem with Dragon Con’s 30th anniversary, allows readers, writers, publishers, and editors a way to recognize excellence in all things Science Fiction and Fantasy. These Awards are by the fans, for the fans, and are a chance to reward those who have made real contributions to SF, books, games, comics, and media.

Cinema (Other Master Cylinder): John Saxon was born Carmine Orrico in Brooklyn, the first child of Antonio and Anna Orrico. His mother was born in Caserta, a small city near Naples in Italy. There’s some confusion about John’s age, partly due to his fiddling’ of the dates for his first contract. “I was born on August 5, 1936. Many have it wrong because I made myself a year older to get a Universal contract at the start. If I had been younger it wouldn’t have worked.”

Review (George Kelly): The 9th book in the Harry Dresden series features Dresden in a desperate quest to clear his vampire brother, Thomas, from a cunning plot by powerful Magical Interests. Harry Dresden, professional Wizard and Private Investigator for the City of Chicago, grew up an orphan. His upbringing included a lot of physical and mental abuse which explains his taciturn disposition.

Comic Books (Totally Epic): Finally! After 3400 pages of Epic Illustrated, we’ve (that is, I) have finally arrived at the first thing published by Epic Comics! Er, or, rather not, because first we’re doing Marvel Graphic Novel #3, Dreadstar. I mean, I kinda have to, because it bridges the story started in Epic Illustrated and The Price (over at Eclipse) and the Dreadstar series proper.

Fiction (Amatopia): I’m three-quarters through The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons–sequel to Hyperion and book 2 in the 4 book Hyperion Cantos series–and I can’t stop singing these books’ praises. I think so far I’ve convinced over ten people to give Hyperion a shot. It has been a long time since I’ve found a novel or series that has engrossed me to this degree, particularly a sci-fi novel.

Fiction & RPG (The Other Side): Over the last couple of years, I have been on a quest to find and read all the Raven books by “Richard Kirk” who was, in reality, the pen name of authors Angus Wells and Robert Holdstock. Both wrote Book 1 and then they alternated with Wells on Books 3 and 5 and Holdstock on Books 2 and 4. The story is one that is simple, but close to many FRP gamers. Raven wants to kill Karl Ir Donwayne. How is going to do that? Well, they need to Skull of Quez to appease this ruler to get to Donwayne.

Review (Rough Edges): The Digest Enthusiast, Book Twelve – Richard Krauss, ed. Interviews

Tony Gleeson (Fantastic, Amazing Science Fiction, Mike Shayne, Personal Crimes).

John Shirley (Weirdbook, Fantastic, The Crow, Constantine, Wetbones).

Games (25 Years Later): From the very beginning, you are made readily aware of not only the stakes but the epicness of the tale at the heart of Darksiders. The tale I speak of is at first set in modern-day Earth, and you take up the role of War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who finds himself in our realm in the midst of a battle between Heaven and Hell. This is where Darksiders gives us a taste of War’s power before stripping it all away when he is killed during the battle. After War’s demise, he is brought in front of the Charred Council, where the blame of the apocalyptic events is placed squarely on his shoulders.

Pulp Fiction (DMR Books): The story starts in the “author as ghostwriter” conceit, as was the fashion of the time ever since its popularisation by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Sword and Planet tales, and indeed utilised by Merritt himself in other stories such as The Moon Pool. So ubiquitous is this method of acclimatising the reader to tales of death-defying derring-do, it almost lulls the reader into a false sense of security – that this adventure will be just another ripping yarn, good for the mental exercise, but could safely be put down after reading.

RPG (Black Gate): Getting into Conan 2d20, for the casual gamer, or for the merely curious, demands a fair amount of cognitive load. This is because, I believe, the system is so innovative — and those innovations are precisely what makes this a Conan game. I have encountered many anecdotes of gamers and consumers gleefully obtaining this gorgeous hardcover tome (or PDF), riffling through it, saying, “Huh?” then setting it aside with a “Sorry, not for me, but the art is pretty, and this still makes a good resource.” adventures, the pandemic hit, and these two players weren’t interested in online play.

RPG (Silver Key): Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s all about execution. The title of the post should speak for itself, but a little context. Heard on the intranets recently… “Gary Gygax ripped off Dave Arneson! Dave is D&D’s true creator!” My response: Horse shit. Ideas are like a@#$holes. We’ve all got one, and most stink. I can sit here in the calm quiet of my living room and fire off a dozen. “Weight loss app.” “Online mentoring program for pediatricians.” “Telehealth scheduling interface.” “Dying Earth role-playing game.”

Comic Books (Bleeding Cool): Sylvian Runberg writes: “When I was offered to do an adaptation of Conan, I was immediately thrilled, and for several reasons. The first is that this character was a part of my childhood, especially with the comics drawn by John Buscema and obviously the film with Arnold Scharwzenegger. But the second, and maybe the most important reason, is Patrice Louinet, one of the worldwide best specialist of Robert E. Howard, who could advise us during the making of this adaptation, offered me the possibility to discover an another Conan from the one I had in mind from this childhood, a more complex character living in a more complex world, even if we’re still talking about fantasy, magic spells, epic adventures and monsters.

T.V. (Dark Worlds Quarterly): In 1982, Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian was brought to the big screen in a film featuring Arnold Schwartzenegger. The success of Conan the Barbarian spawned a plethora of bad Sword & Sorcery films (including Conan sequels). I will make no comment on those films here but state none was better than average and most were far below the worst of the Ray Harryhausen’s classics. Until 1999’s The Thirteenth Warrior I can’t think of a post-Conan film of a heroic fantasy of any real interest. Since the release of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Fantasy films have been experienceing another renaissance.

Tolkien (The Wert Zone): The Hugo Awards are the premier awards for science fiction and fantasy literature, first given out in 1953 and every year since 1955. One of the more interesting mysteries of the award is that J.R.R. Tolkien, widely regarded as the most prominent fantasy author of the 20th Century, was never given one despite being eligible on multiple occasions.

Science Fiction (Fantasy Literature): This collection of nine short stories, novelettes and novellas originally appeared in hardcover form in 1952, from the publisher Pelligrini & Cudahy, and sold for $3.50. By the time my edition came out, the Berkley Medallion paperback from 1963, with another wonderfully abstract/Surrealist cover by the great Richard Powers, the cover price had dropped to 50 cents but the number of stories in the collection had been reduced to seven. Missing were the novelettes “Vault of the Beast,” from the Aug. ’40 ASF, and “Heir Unapparent,” from that same magazine’s June ’45 issue.

RPG (Grognardia): I bought Mörk Borg solely because of its physical characteristics. A local friend of mine raved about it months ago and then, while perusing Free League’s website recently, I caught a glimpse of it in all its lurid glory. I was so intrigued by its bright yellow cover and black, white, and red artwork that I ordered a copy and anxiously awaited its arrival. I was not disappointed when it appeared at last: the 96-page A5 book is sturdy and well-made, like so many European RPG books these days. Most of the paper in the book has a satin finish, but its last section, presenting an introductory adventure, has a rough, natural feel to it.

Fiction (Adventures Fantastic): Today, July 24, is the birthday of John D. MacDonald (1916-1986). MacDonald wrote for the pulps and transitioned to paperbacks when the pulps died. (I wish someone would collect all his science fiction.) For today’s birthday post, I want to look at One Monday We Killed Them All. Dwight McAran beat a girl to death and went to prison for it. He’s about to get out. Dwight is Fenn Hillyer’s brother-in-law. Fenn is a cop. They don’t get along.

Sensor Sweep: Antiheroes, Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. van Vogt, Dreadstar published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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oovitus · 6 years ago

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Enhanced Community Care Management: A Nurse’s View

Highmark Health’s Enhanced Community Care Management (ECCM) program is an innovative “high-touch” approach to patient care (see sidebar). A central aspect of the program is placing specially trained nurses in primary care provider (PCP) offices, where they provide 1:1 help to patients with complex health issues.

The approach has been successful. Highmark health plan members in the program have consistently had 15 percent lower total medical costs and 30 percent lower inpatient admissions compared to similar groups not enrolled in the program. Providers benefit as well, not just in gaining a focused nurse to help with their most challenging patients, but also in learning about motivational interviewing and other care approaches.

Just as importantly, nurses in the ECCM program consistently report high job satisfaction. The extra training, collaborative and supportive culture, and excitement of building a new program likely all contribute to that. But the program also gives nurses something that can be elusive in traditional settings — the chance to work with patients in focused, personalized ways that may feel closer to what they had in mind when they decided to become nurses.

To learn more about ECCM — from a nurse’s perspective — I talked with Kelley Fishovitz. One of the first nurses hired when ECCM launched in 2016 through Allegheny Health Network (AHN), she is uniquely qualified to talk about how the program has evolved as well as her experiences as an ECCM nurse.

Nursing — from Hospital to Home Care to ECCM

Cheyenne Knight (CK): Let’s start with learning more about you. What is your background in nursing, and how did you end up working with ECCM?

Kelley Fishovitz, nurse in Highmark Health’s Enhanced Community Care Management (ECCM) program.

Kelley Fishovitz (KF): I was a hospital nurse for a number of years and then began working in home care and hospice care part-time as well. With home care, I saw some very sick people and the challenges they and their families faced once out of the hospital. Seeing that outside world changed the way I felt about the inside world of hospitals. I realized that these patients needed more than I had been sending them home with as a hospital nurse. I began sending patients home with more supplies to last until a home nurse was able to come, I gave more detailed instructions, and I made sure they had medication at home instead of just assuming they did. It completely changed the way I worked at the hospital.

Eventually I went to home care full-time. Again, I was seeing sick people without a lot of assistance — it felt like it was just me and them against the world. I had to encourage them to make all of their appointments and teach them everything about their medications. The trend in health care to send people home sooner has some benefits, but it also means that care needs in the home may be more complex.

I learned about ECCM from another nurse I’d worked with for years. She told me, “This is a unique opportunity — we’re building this program that’s going to be really special.” When I interviewed and then started to be part of conversations at the beginning of the program and heard what Mark Valenti was proposing, I had that same feeling: “I’m so excited to be part of something this special.”

Being an ECCM Nurse

CK: How is being an ECCM nurse different from being a nurse in other places?

KF: Well, let’s start with the patient’s perspective. The ECCM approach is unique in allowing us to really develop a personal, ongoing relationship with each patient. For my patients, I’m not one of several nurses they see during a hospital stay and then never have contact with again, and I’m not some random person calling them — I’m here in their doctor’s office when they come in for appointments. I make a point to meet them and say hello so they can put a face to a name, and then I’m going to be there for them, in person, by phone, however needed, in ways that just aren’t possible for nurses in most settings.

Building on that, the way we work in ECCM means I can take time to get to know a patient and really listen to what’s going on. That allows us to uncover issues that you may not typically think about when trying to improve someone’s health. Instead of saying well, this person’s health is deteriorating because they keep missing appointments, we’re trained to ask questions like, “How involved do you feel in making decisions about your health?” We try to find out if they’re feeling a disconnect, or if something else is causing them to miss appointments. It may be something like, “I don’t feel the doctor spends enough time with me, so I don’t see the point of coming,” or it could be something practical like transportation issues. We’re taking the time, and asking the questions, to find out, and then we can address whatever will help.

CK: That kind of questioning — that’s the motivational interviewing technique that Mark Valenti talks about in another article?

KF: Yes, as part of ECCM training, we learn motivational interviewing. And — it’s not just a class. We also help each other, and Mark helps us, to continuously sharpen our motivational interviewing skills as we deal with real patient communications.

The whole premise of motivational interviewing is impactful — talking to your patients, reflecting on what they’ve said, affirming what they’ve done well, and not just jumping in to “correct” them. Often, when patients come in, one of the first things I’ll say is, “This must be really important to you because you came to your appointment today.” That sets a tone — it highlights that they’re making positive choices. Even patients that are struggling, they might say one little thing that’s positive, and if you can bring that out, it changes their demeanor and you can help them continue on that path.

Honestly, I feel like motivational interviewing has improved my overall communication with everyone in my life. Getting back to what’s different about ECCM nursing, patients can often tell me things that they maybe hadn’t felt comfortable telling the staff or a doctor who popped in for 10 minutes and then left. Patients know I’m super open, trusting, nonjudgmental, and a good listener.

CK: Aside from motivational interviewing, what other training do ECCM nurses get?

KF: What’s great is that there’s a lot of training, and it is more interactive than typical training. It’s not, “read these things you don’t want to read so we can check it off.” We want to attend interactive trainings because we see real value in them.

As examples of other training, we have a course in health literacy. I never would have considered health literacy an issue had I not taken the course. We take for granted that resources and instructions we give to patients are written in a way they understand, but the truth is that there are varying literacy levels and differences among patients. So that becomes something we learn to watch for and then go that extra step with explanations.

There’s another course on nonverbal behavior. It helps you understand that things you’re not saying, but are doing or not doing with your body, can really affect people. For example, if a patient or staff member comes to see me and I sit here with my arms crossed, they may feel like I’m not willing to help them.

There’s also a series on activating your audience and your team. That’s been helpful with embedding yourself in a practice. You’re coming into a well-oiled machine, and you’re an extra piece. Maybe the practice has already seen programs like this, and you’re trying to convince them that ECCM is different and you want to work as a team.

CK: I was curious about that — what’s the reaction like from doctors, nurses and staff when an ECCM nurse is embedded?

KF: It varies. They want to know what we can do for their patients and why they should use us, so you have to demonstrate those things. In the research we’ve done and feedback from providers, one thing that came out about other programs is that doctors and staff didn’t necessarily know what the program person did day to day. So we try to be as transparent as possible and make sure we’re reaching out to physicians and staff about questions and concerns that we can address.

One thing I did in a practice where I’m embedded is start a monthly staff meeting. It helped to have that regular touchpoint to say, “This is why I’m here, this is what I do, and if you have patients that need help, please come to me.” I’ve also shared resources with staff that they can use with their patients. So ECCM really is about building strong relationships with the providers as well as the patients we are partnering with.

One of Kelley’s patient care teams. Left to right: Rebecca Cleland, health coach; Kelley Fishovitz, ECCM nurse care manager; Emily Reider, registered nurse; Dr. Christine Mackey; Shane Collins, certified medical assistant.

Being Part of Highmark Health

CK: ECCM started as an AHN program, but now it’s under Highmark Health, the parent company of AHN and Highmark’s health plan companies. What has that transition been like?

KF: Highmark Health saw that ECCM was proving its worth by helping patients manage their health better, and the impact that could have in reducing costs. There was already so much collaboration and everyone moving toward a value-based care model, so in many ways it felt like a natural transition rather than a disruption.

When it was just a few of us, we had to be everything to everybody — we knew we were doing good things as nurses, but we also had to make time to network and get the word out about ECCM and think about how to develop it. As much as you might want to be part of all that, it can get exhausting to do it while also doing your work as a nurse.

Once we became part of Highmark Health, there were people to help with that other work, so we could get back to why we’re here every day — I’m here for my 78 patients, and for the staff at my locations. So the support Highmark Health provides has had a very positive influence on what we can do.

It also helps that the core values are pretty consistent across the organization. We want patients to get the right level of care, at the right time, in the right environment. The patient is our priority — we place the patient at the center of everything that we’re doing, and surround that patient to make sure they’re getting everything they need.

Getting Health Care Right — for Patients and Nurses

CK: Do you have a patient success story you could share that shows how an ECCM nurse can make a difference?

KF: I have a patient that I first met in December 2016 — one of my first ECCM patients. When I looked at his records, he had been to the emergency room (ER) 12 times that year.

Once we started talking, I discovered that he wasn’t coming to appointments because he couldn’t afford to pay for a ride, so his access to care was an issue. He was also taking care of an elderly father that he didn’t have help for. I was able to get some services in place for him, and then, as we built up trust, he began to know that, if he wasn’t feeling well, he could call me so we could try to fix the issue before he ended up in the ER.

In 2017, he had seven ER visits — from 12 down to seven in that first year working together. This year, he’s calling me more, he’s more willing to use the specialty services he needs, he’s seeking preventive care — and he’s only had two ER visits so far. That’s huge for him. He’s healthier, he’s taking his medications, he’s calling when he needs to, and recognizing symptoms before they get worse. He’s made big improvements in being able to manage his own care.

CK: It’s wonderful to hear that the program can make a difference like that. It seems like this would be very rewarding for nurses, too.

KF: Our nurses want to be educators. We want to help patients, families, and caregivers through the tough times they’re having. With ECCM, we have the luxury of both 1:1 time with patients and the time to address the obstacles making it hard for them to manage their health. We’re all very passionate about this program and how we have touched patients. This is my first job where I have that “I really, really love what I’m doing” feeling. And I get to see the impact I’m making in my patients’ lives.

Enhanced Community Care Management: A Nurse’s View published first on https://storeseapharmacy.tumblr.com

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perfectzablog · 7 years ago

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Helping Families Ask Questions Could Be Your Most Powerful Engagement Tool

Fifth-grade teacher Deirdre Brotherson has been teaching long enough that she knows how parent-teacher conferences will likely go. Parents will come in feeling uncomfortable and a little ill at ease; she’ll have a general conversation with them for 15-20 minutes; and they’ll leave. Neither party will get much useful information about the student out of the conference, although it’s a good relationship builder either way. She knew this precious face-to-face time with parents could be so much more.

“Parents might be concerned about some test scores, but it was never a time when either one of us could gather any information on the student — who they were, and how they worked at home,” Brotherson said.

She has been using the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) with her students and thought it might be useful for parents, too. The QFT is an exercise to practice asking, categorizing and reflecting on questions. Many educators have found that students are out of practice when it comes to asking their own questions, but when they do, they’re often more engaged with class content.

Brotherson thought the process could help parents get more out of their interactions with the school, too.

Since she doesn’t have a lot of time with parents at each individual parent-teacher conference in November, Brotherson lays the groundwork in the first few months of school. She teaches her students the QFT and uses it in class a few times. Then she asks them to take a question focus home and teach their caregiver the technique while coming up with questions about their family heritage. Right before parent-teacher conferences, she sends a note home reminding parents of the technique and asking them to use it to generate questions for their meeting.

“It’s kind of a nice way to have them take control of the parent-teacher conference,” Brotherson said. “And I’ve actually had parents say, you know, this has been so nice.”

It’s also been helpful for Brotherson because it takes time to get to know each new group of students — and parents can provide valuable insights into who they are, what challenges they face and their learning history. For example, Brotherson had one student who she’d noticed was having issues with reading. After sitting down with her a few times, Brotherson had identified comprehension as a big issue.

When the girl’s parents came in for their conference, all their questions were about reading. But they also had other concerns about things they were noticing around their daughter’s memory and comprehension, things Brotherson hadn’t noticed because she doesn’t spend as much time with the student one-on-one.

“It drove us to refer her for testing, which then identified some really unusual and rare issues that had been missed,” Brotherson said.

She’s also found that if she has already had contact with families because of behavior issues earlier in the year, using QFT-generated questions at the conference gives parents the chance to ask about how different strategies are working or voice concerns over her communication style. It opens space for a different type of interaction.

“I’ve found that it helps me understand the student a lot more,” Brotherson said. And, although she’s had good relationships with parents for the most part, she thinks this question-based conference style has deepened those relationships.

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HISTORY OF THE QFT

Although the Question Formulation Technique has become more common in classrooms as a way to stimulate student curiosity and deepen their questions, the technique actually started as a way to help parents advocate for their children. In the 1990s, Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana were working to get low-income parents involved in their children’s education. They heard over and over that parents were intimidated in front of teachers and administrators because they didn’t know what to ask. That jump-started years of research into simple ways to empower people to ask their own questions, culminating in the Question Formulation Technique.

“They named a fundamental problem in parents participating and a fundamental problem in education,” said Dan Rothstein.

Now, the Right Question Institute is going back to its roots, leading workshops with parents and districts around using the QFT to learn about three important parts of parenting in the American education system: supporting, monitoring and advocating for one’s child in school. Additionally, they’re helping parents to look beyond simple answers in order to question how decisions get made at the school and district level.

Many schools struggle to engage parents with school. It’s a tricky problem with a complex web of reasons ranging from busy parents to fear and distrust. Some schools even have active parent communities willing to raise money and volunteer, but who don’t know how to support their students’ academic work in the classroom.

“I was very resistive to the school and what they would tell me I needed to do,” said April Ybarra, a mother of two daughters in Sacramento, California. “They represented this institution that failed me, so to me, they didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Before she started making better connections with teachers at her daughters’ school, Ybarra thought her job was to parent and the teacher’s job was to teach. She didn’t trust teachers or administrators because she’d had negative experiences in school herself. Forming relationships with teachers helped her let down her guard and actually listen to what school staff were saying.

“I learned that we have to be co-educators,” said Ybarra, who didn’t come to this realization through QFT, but participates in programs that advance improved parent-teacher relationships.

“We have to work together. My child is with me more than she’s with her teacher. That helped me understand that if I don’t support what the teacher’s doing in the classroom, my child’s not going to get ahead. I wouldn’t have known that before because of the barrier that was up.”

Ybarra also said it’s human nature to talk about what’s happening at the school, the good and the bad. When parents spread a positive message about their interactions with staff or the progress their child has made, it’s the most effective outreach a school can have.

“The first thing that you’ll hear from schools is that ‘we try to reach the parents, we try to get them here, we reach out to them. But basically it’s not working,’ ” Rothstein said.

Rather than trying to get all parents to engage with school, he and Santana recommend deepening engagement with parents who are already willing to visit the school using the QFT. If those interactions become fruitful and positive, word will spread.

“Teachers and administrators are able to have more productive conversations with the parents,” said Luz Santana. “The parents feel more comfortable about communicating, interacting and participating.”

Those parents are also the ones that start seeing results. As they become more confident in their roles as supportive figures who monitor what their kids are doing in school and who advocate on their behalf, they start to ask different kinds of questions. There is often a move from questions about the reasons for a problem or decision, to process-oriented questions, and finally questions about the role a parent can play in solving the issue. That move is a powerful one and often signals that a parent has become comfortable as an advocate.

“There’s a lot at play here and our focus is very sharply focused on parents feeling more confident,” said Rothstein.

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HOMEWORK EXAMPLE

Rothstein and Santana described one example they detail in their new book, Partnering with Parents to Ask the Right Questions, about a teacher who noticed that a student suddenly stopped turning in homework. She wanted to engage the boy’s mother on the issue, but was aware that if she called a meeting and laid out the problem it was likely the mother would feel defensive, as though the teacher was accusing her of doing something wrong.

“One simple shift changes that dynamic from one of obvious defensiveness to one of actually working collaboratively,” Rothstein said.

The teacher called the meeting and quickly taught the parent the QFT. The teacher guided the parent through the process of asking her own questions, categorizing them and choosing the ones that were most important to her. Initially the mother focused on behavior issues, but then started asking questions like: When did this start? What will this mean for him? And, crucially, what should I do to make sure he does his homework?

That last question was likely the one the teacher hoped they would get to, but when the mother came up with it herself after all her other questions, it became a real “need to know” for her.

“Because she was the one who named that, it’s more likely that she will follow through,” Santana said.

There are many opportunities for schools to work with parents on the QFT. It could be worked into every parent workshop, back-to-school night, or other event at the school. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time, and once parents get used to the process they start doing it automatically in all aspects of life.

FRAMEWORK FOR ACCOUNTABLE DECISION-MAKING

As Rothstein and Santana worked with parents to bolster their question-asking skills, they began to see patterns in the ways they engaged.

“We would notice they had lots of questions about the reasons,” Rothstein said. “They had fewer questions about the process and they had very few about the role they could play. That speaks to, or reveals, so much of the issue. They don’t even see themselves as having a role in these decisions.”

To try to change that dynamic, the Right Question Institute started leading workshops about how to ask questions about the ways decisions get made in schools, at the district level, and even at the state level. They’ve found that when parents understand that what’s happening to their child is a decision — not the only way it could have been — and that they can ask questions about how that decision was made, they become more effective participants in the school system.

In their book, Santana, Rothstein and Agnes Bain share an example of a group of English Language Learner parents who were concerned for their children’s safety after a school shooting. The parents turned to a trusted community-based organization, which in turn taught them the QFT.

The parent group called a meeting with the principal and superintendent to get some answers. Staff at the community-based organization were worried that the district would brush aside the parents’ important questions, so they also taught them the Framework for Accountable Decision-Making. That allowed parents to ask their leaders followup questions about who made decisions around school safety and how to fund alternative options. With more confidence in their questions, their right to know and their ability to push for more information, the parents became much more effective advocates.

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Teaching parents to question might sound like the last thing a principal or teacher wants if they are accustomed to angry parents in their office demanding answers. But if it’s a true collaboration, parents will also learn the challenges that educators are up against. While they may start out asking questions about decisions made around their child, it could open up a better understanding of the testing environment, class sizes and limitations that schools face. And when parents are informed about those things, they can push for change at even higher levels.

And for districts interested in taking on big cultural shifts that require the buy-in of the community, the QFT could be a powerful way to surface questions and concerns that could derail the project down the line. Several states in New England have moved toward competency-based grading, but they’ve encountered challenges making deeper shifts because parents are confused and pushing back. Without transparency, clear communication and a commitment to understanding parent concerns, big changes often lose momentum.

Helping Families Ask Questions Could Be Your Most Powerful Engagement Tool published first on https://greatpricecourse.tumblr.com/

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topmixtrends · 7 years ago

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The following is an excerpt from Annelise Orleck’s “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now”: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages (Beacon Press, 2018). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.

GIRSHRIELA GREEN FELT a weight lift from her shoulders when she founded Respect the Bump, an advocacy group for pregnant Walmart workers. “We used to blame ourselves and blame each other for everything,” she says. “Once we got educated, we knew that something needed to be done. Because this was not a give-and-take relationship with Walmart. It was just take.”

Venanzi Luna, leader of the 2012 Pico Rivera strike, felt a rush of power “being part of OUR Walmart. I learned what retaliation is, what intimidation is, what rights workers have. I would never have imagined in my life that I have so many rights at work. Walmart likes to say that the union puts words in my mouth. I say: Nobody speaks for me. This organization gives me the knowledge I need so I can speak for myself.”

At first, recalls Green — a 48-year-old mother of seven — getting a job at the Crenshaw Walmart in South Central Los Angeles was a tremendous boost. “I got the job through welfare-to-work,” she says. “I knew absolutely nothing. I was a loyal Walmart employee, dedicated to my job and my employer. I was told at orientation that I could have a career at Walmart. That was a dream come true for someone like me. So I fought for that career.”

Green says she was a model employee. She “exceeded expectations” during employee evaluations and was promoted “a couple of times.” Within three years, Green had become a department manager for health and beauty products. It was a great feeling. “Then I started to realize that something was really wrong.”

For starters, the promotion brought her only a 20-cent raise — to $9.80 an hour. Then there was the pressure. Store managers are constantly pushed to cut staff, Green says, to come in under the “preferred labor budget” determined by corporate executives. Green never had enough workers in her department to do everything her store manager wanted. The stress was killing her.

Walmart is the world’s largest private employer — with two million employees in 11,695 stores in 28 countries, under 69 corporate banners. It imports more products from China than any other US company. By some estimates, those imports cost four hundred thousand American workers their jobs. Walmart’s managerial culture has been adapted in stores worldwide. In China, a hundred thousand associates work in an environment that employs the cult-like aspects of Sam Walton’s business vision within hierarchical structures of Chinese communism. The result has been called “Wal-Maoism.”

It’s not much better in the United States, says Green. Surveillance of low-wage workers has been growing worse for years. “This call may be monitored for quality assurance.” We’ve all heard that so many times, we never think about what that means for workers. It’s just as bad in person, say Amazon and Walmart workers. Computers monitor how many items a cashier scans per hour, says OUR Walmart activist Cesare Davunt. Everyone is expected to meet quotas. “It’s gotten so bad, associates are afraid to go to the bathroom.”

Surveillance, speed, stress, and understaffing are why so many Walmart workers get hurt on the job. Ever cost-conscious, Walmart fights hard to avoid paying compensation or providing medical care. The company has waged a long campaign to allow employers to opt out of paying into the federal Workers’ Compensation program. As of 2015, only Texas and Oklahoma permit that. Still, Walmart cuts costs by self-insuring. All settlements with injured workers come from company coffers, so Walmart contests every worker claim vigorously.

Girshriela Green believes she got hurt because “we were severely understaffed. I was doing the work of five people and I developed a repetitive injury in my arm. Since management told me to keep on working, I compensated with the rest of my body and ended up with a bone spur in my throat.” Injury on the job is an all-too-common story at Walmart.

“I was given 24 hours to return to work or quit,” Green says.

“But after I was injured, I was treated so badly at work.” She shakes a little, remembering. “After all the work I had put in, that was heartbreaking to me. But I had kids. I couldn’t afford not to work.”

Walmart tries to avoid firing workers, she says, because “corporate” does not like to pay unemployment. Instead, they make life so unbearable that workers quit. This has been especially true for pregnant workers, Green believes.

“I didn’t tell my boss at first when I returned to work that I was pregnant. I was terrified. I knew the odds were already against me because of my injury. Then I came in with a release from my doctor saying I shouldn’t do heavy lifting.” Her manager was furious and things deteriorated quickly. Before long, Green’s injuries became debilitating.

She was sitting at home in a neck brace, warned by a doctor not to move too much, when the phone rang. It was a group she had never heard of: Organization United for Respect at Walmart. She wanted nothing to do with them, afraid she’d lose her job. Then a close friend was fired without warning after 20 years. “That was it for me. I knew then that we weren’t the problem. They were.” She and her friend joined OUR Walmart together.

Green wanted to take OUR Walmart in a new direction, organizing pregnant workers. She began by using the OUR Walmart Facebook page to link workers in different stores. Meanwhile, she studied the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act to learn what accommodations pregnant workers could legally request.

At first, pregnant Walmart associates only “met” online. Then Green started traveling for face-to-face encounters. The United Food and Commercial Workers funded her journeys. Green recalls meeting a Texan named Chrissy Creech whose manager had refused to give her bathroom breaks. Creech’s mother patted her daughter’s pregnant belly and said to Green: “They need to respect this bump.” The name stuck.

A new kind of labor organization was born, dressed in fuchsia maternity smocks. Green was amazed at how many women wanted to join Respect the Bump. Maryland Walmart associate Tiffany Beroid received nine hundred responses when she posted stories about her experiences of discrimination. Latavia Johnson in Chicago had a similar experience.

“A lot of women started speaking out about their hardships,” Green says, “about being retaliated against, discriminated against, being pushed out early, not given accommodations, being told that they had to lift a certain amount or they needed to leave.” Respect the Bump called on Walmart to change its policy of not accommodating pregnant workers. They announced plans for a pregnant women’s protest at the 2014 Walmart shareholders’ meeting. Corporate caved before the meeting, Green says, smiling, and for the first time agreed to accommodate pregnant workers. “They smelled a lawsuit coming.”

Green was pleased with the victory, but the policy change mostly helped women with “high-risk pregnancies,” she says. All pregnant workers needed accommodations to be safe at work. Thelma Moore was hit by a falling television set at the Chatham, Illinois, store. Ordered back to work, she refused and was fired. Moore came to Respect the Bump for help. “I’m here to stand up for myself, and other pregnant women all over the world,” Moore said.

Respect the Bump gathered an army of angry pregnant Walmart workers at its first national conference in Chicago in September 2014. Delegates demanded that Walmart comply with the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. They also announced a campaign to press for a more expansive bill, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. State versions of the bill have since passed in 21 states, and in 2017 it was reintroduced in Congress.

Attorneys from the National Women’s Law Center and at A Healthy Balance — a law practice dedicated to improving working conditions for pregnant employees and workers with small children — helped Thelma Moore and other pregnant associates file suit against Walmart. Respect the Bump picketed the store where Moore had worked. Among the protesters was Bene’t Holmes, who miscarried in a Walmart bathroom after her manager forced her to lift 50-pound boxes containing bleach and other toxic chemicals.

“They don’t even follow their own policies,” says Denise Barlage. “The rule is ‘two for a lift of 50 or more.’” When the store manager came out to ask the protesters to leave, Holmes handed him a water bottle and a stool. These two “little things,” she told him, can prevent miscarriages at work.

In the spring of 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that pregnant workers have a right to workplace accommodations. Respect the Bump was a party to the pregnancy discrimination case brought by United Parcel Service worker Peggy Young. Interestingly, the Young decision, like the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act on which it was based, was supported by conservative as well as feminist groups, working-class and middle-class women, pro-choice and pro-life organizations. Pregnancy discrimination was clearly an issue that transcended traditional political divisions, and the court’s conservative justices concurred.

Four years earlier, the Supreme Court had rejected a sex discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of Walmart’s 1.4 million women workers. Originally brought by a 52-year-old African-American woman named Betty Dukes, the suit claimed that Walmart managers discriminated against women. Plaintiffs pointed to a workforce that was 72 percent female, and a managerial team that was more than two-thirds male.

Lawyers for Dukes showed that Walmart corporate had, at every turn, prevented women from building the kinds of careers that Girshriela Green had been promised. But in the Dukes case, the justices split along partisan lines, with conservatives ruling that lawyers for the plaintiffs had not proven their case for sex discrimination. Women’s right to pursue careers free from sex discrimination remained controversial even in the 21st century. But in the 2015 Young case, joined by Respect the Bump, the court affirmed women’s right to remain safe at work through a pregnancy. Some said the victory belonged more to babies than their moms. Still, it was a victory, and a significant one.

Unfortunately for Green, by the time it came, she had been fired by Walmart. “I knew they were aware of my organizing. I was doing a lot of speaking out in public at that time.” Still, she thinks she crossed a line when she was quoted in the Los Angeles Times. “I hope to send a direct message that we will not take the abuse, the disrespect, the impoverished wages, the neglect of communities, associates and small businesses any longer,” she told reporters. The movement to hold Walmart accountable was growing, and that heartened Green. “My voice is louder with each and every one of these voices.”

Respect the Bump continued to organize and Green remained at the forefront. The group began to “take on issues of single parents too, especially not having a regular work schedule that will let parents maintain a healthy environment for their children.” Walmart’s insistence that workers come in whenever managers call has gotten some single parents in trouble with Child Protective Services, Green says. They don’t always have time to get a sitter. Fearful of losing their jobs, they leave their children alone. “It doesn’t matter if they are 11-year or nine-year or just two-year associates,” she says. “Walmart expects them to jump the minute they call.”

And usually they go, says former deli manager Venanzi Luna, until the day something breaks inside. Then, says Luna, “you know you won’t jump, even one more time. There is only so long you can live in fear.” The corrosive disrespect builds up scar tissue that becomes ever more inflamed. Her floor manager yelled at her in front of customers many times before she finally exploded. Called into the store manager’s office to explain, she seethed: “How dare he? I am not his daughter. He is not my dad.”

Denise Barlage remembers the moment she reached her limit. “I told my manager: ‘My husband knows better than to talk to me like that. Who do you think you are?’ He said: ‘Denise, sit down.’ I said, ‘No, this is done.’ I told him I knew my rights and walked out.”

Learning their legal rights has been transformative, Luna and Barlage say. They throw around the phrase “unfair labor practice” (ULP) whenever managers bully them. “I will always have to fight,” says Barlage. “I understand that. But the constant intimidation gets you down. When you just want to do your job and you are constantly getting ‘coached.’”

“One time a manager pulled me over, physically you know, and he said: ‘You just took a 22-minute break.’” Barlage shot back: “‘Are you counting my bathroom time?’ I had to pull out my wallet and show him my card, which shows my right to take a break. ‘I know how to file a ULP,’ I said. ‘This is getting old, guys.’ And it was.”

Walmart specializes in intimidation and retaliation, OUR Walmart workers say (and the National Labor Relations Board has affirmed this repeatedly since 2010). “As soon as they found out that I was part of OUR Walmart,” Luna says, “it all started. They gave me a verbal, a write-up, and my last warning all in one week. That was unheard of.”

When managers ordered Luna to write a statement explaining why she wanted to keep her job, she replied: “You’re not going to get that from me. You never asked me how many times I didn’t take a lunch. How many times I never took a break! How many times you asked me to fix the time clock so that it shows I took a break when I didn’t, so it says I took a lunch when I didn’t. I’ll show you who Venanzi is.’ That same day I filed a ULP.”

Salvadoran immigrant and 11-year Walmart associate Evelin Cruz came to the boiling point after years of watching managers and corporate executives be gratuitously cruel to workers. Cruz was treated well. But she grew ever more horrified watching managers demean grown women and men.

At daily morning meetings, she recalled, “It was drilled into all of us how replaceable we were.” Cruz felt that Walmart intentionally made “predatory hires: single mothers, felons, people they knew would keep quiet just because of their situation, because they’re the sole supporters of their families or because they have a record and are not able to get better employment.” She burned watching. “It was just so wrong.”

The final straw for Cruz was when her store manager denied leave to a co-worker whose daughter was dying of cancer. Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, Cruz told the manager, the woman had a right to take time with her daughter. The manager refused. “How dare they?” Cruz was incredulous. “It’s hard enough to have a child who’s dying. But to not be able to take care of that child because you have to work? To worry about putting food on the table and a roof over your children’s heads at such a time? To worry about not having medication for your child to survive a little longer or to lessen her pain? I couldn’t stand it. What I saw in that one instant opened my eyes. That’s when I became an activist.”

Jenny Mills says she became an activist when her son was injured on the job and Walmart “gave him the runaround.” She had been working at Walmart for nine years before his accident. Looking back, she can’t believe it took her so long to open her eyes.

She told me her story on a hot September day in 2015, over a breakfast of banana and smoothie at the Denny’s where she washes up each morning after sleeping in her car. Mills was wearing the green OUR Walmart T-shirt with thumb and forefinger forming an O and three fingers pointing upward. That was the signal activists would use to silently connect inside the stores. Managers listened for any talk of unionizing. So activists created a hand sign.

Jenny Mills was not one of those pioneers. “I was afraid,” Mills says. “I had never done anything like this before, so I was nervous about what the repercussions would be.” But a friend said that it was her responsibility as a mother to fight for young people. OUR Walmart probably won’t save middle-aged workers, her friend said. “But we need to help the next generation.”

Mills’s son was a night-shift worker. In small towns like Pico Rivera where Walmart contributes 10 percent of all tax revenue, it is common for multiple family members to work at the same store. Working and living together, pooling income to pay the bills, they can get by on Walmart salaries — until something happens.

The men who steam-clean the floors each night at Pico usually put rugs down to prevent workers from slipping, Mills says. One night they forgot. “My son was pushing a cart when his feet went right out from under him. He landed on his back and elbows. After that, he was in such pain it was ridiculous.” The company delayed sending him to the doctor, she says. Meanwhile, they told him to return to work or lose his job.

Finally, he got to see a Walmart doctor who said he would have to live with the pain. Jenny insisted he get a second opinion. “That doc told us my son’s tailbone was hanging on by a thread. He needed surgery, and soon.” Three years later, Walmart was still refusing to pay.

The injury would not have been so debilitating, Mills says, if Walmart had given him time to recover. Instead, they had him “lifting and twisting and doing all the things he could not do” until he was completely incapacitated. Since then, he has been unable to work.

At the time her son was injured, Mills still had her job at the Pico store. The two lived together. Then her son lost his job and the landlord raised the rent from $1,000 to $1,400. “I lost my apartment because I wasn’t getting paid enough to keep it on my own. I was making more than $13 an hour. It took me nine years to get to that wage and I couldn’t afford my apartment. New people come in making $9 an hour and they don’t get to work full-time. Come on!” She raises her voice. Heads turn. “Who can rent an apartment in California on $9 an hour part-time?”

When I met Jenny, she was living in a small hatchback with her husband and cat. And she wasn’t the only homeless employee at the Pico Rivera store. “There were at least three others,” she says.

For a few months, her manager let her park (and sleep) in the store parking lot. But after she joined in a protest when Walmart board members were meeting the prime minister of Japan, she was evicted. “A guard came and told my husband that corporate had seen my name in the newspaper and we couldn’t park our car there anymore.”

The owners of Party City, a nearby store, told the couple they could park and sleep in one of their parking spaces. It was right across from Walmart. Her old boss could see her get out of her car every morning and walk deliberately to Denny’s to brush her teeth and wash her face.

Walmart closed the Pico store in April 2015 and Mills lost her only income. The UFCW gave her husband a part-time job but it didn’t pay enough for them to put together first and last month’s rent on a new place. At 53 years old, Mills applied for and received a Pell grant to study computer science at a nearby community college. She is hoping an associate’s degree will help her find a job that pays enough that she can rent an apartment, or at least a mobile home. Meanwhile, she says, being active in OUR Walmart keeps her spirits up.

“I’m very enthused about the movement. I think we have a lot to gain,” she says “It’s empowering to stand up. Maybe we won’t benefit right away. But I’m really doing it at this point for future generations. It’s for them that I keep telling the story of what happened to me. I’m going to stay active in the movement no matter what. We need to help people get better jobs.”

Though it is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act to fire workers for organizing, every OUR Walmart activist I interviewed had been fired. One large wave of firings came after the 2013 Ride for Respect, which brought a hundred associates from across the country to Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Girshriela Green recalls the meeting.

“They wouldn’t let us in. The senior VP for Labor Relations and Human Resources came out and we stood in the parking lot with her for an hour. The workers kept saying to her: ‘You need to respect your associates.’ All of us were underpaid, so for associates to insist on respect before talking about a fair wage should have let them know how wrong things were.

“She assured us she had no idea we were being treated badly and no one else in corporate did either. We told her we were in fear for our jobs when we got back.” Green shakes her head. “She said she would not tolerate retaliation from any manager. Of course, as soon as we got back, the firings started.”

The next time activist protesters traveled to Walmart headquarters, Green says, “we were met in the parking lot with dogs. Yeah. Police dogs and private police were blocking us and telling us we were not welcome as associates in our own home office. So we said to them: ‘We are the heartbeat of the company. How dare you treat a vital part of your body like that?’”

Barbara Collins remembers it too. She had worked in the Placerville, California, store for seven years before she joined the second Ride for Respect. She was fired three weeks after she came back to work. She joined other fired workers filing suit with the NLRB.

The NLRB ruled that their rights had been violated. Walmart protesters won NLRB suits in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Denise Barlage believes that this was because the corporation’s behavior was so egregious and so obviously illegal. The NLRB had no choice, she says. In January 2014, the NLRB ruled that Walmart had illegally disciplined and fired 60 workers in 24 states for participating in Black Friday protests. Eleven months later, the NLRB ruled that managers at two California stores had broken the law by threatening to fire workers and close stores if employees organized. That’s how Barbara Collins got her job back.

In January 2016, the NLRB ordered Walmart to rehire 16 laid-off workers, including Evelin Cruz, and to compensate them “for any loss of earning and other benefits suffered as a result of the discrimination.” Walmart appealed. In May 2016, the NLRB ruled again that Walmart was guilty of illegal retaliation against workers. In an extraordinary punishment, it ordered store managers in 10 states to read aloud to workers the statutes affirming their right to organize.

Collins was excited to return to her store. “It takes a long time for anything to happen through the government,” she says, “but I wanted to go back (at a higher wage of course) and just smile at the manager who fired me.” In the midst of her ebullience she grows serious. “There are still a lot of people who are just consumed by fear. I want to be an example. You can win.”

For some, victory took too long. Evelin Cruz, who suffered from chronic heart disease, died before she could enjoy her victory. Barlage will never forget the night Cruz called her, crying, to the hospital. “I told her things were going to be okay but she just shook her head and said: ‘Promise me you’ll keep with the program.’” Barlage told her friend to calm down and rest. But Cruz was anxious and insistent. “Promise me!” she said as tears rolled down her face. Barlage did.

Barbara Collins returned to her job at the Placerville Walmart but she says she was a different person than when she was fired. The movement had changed her. “I learned about the economy. I registered to vote. I was 40 years old and I had never registered to vote. I didn’t think my voice mattered. OUR Walmart taught me that our voices do matter.” Collins learned she was good at lobbying. When California passed the paid-sick-leave bill she had worked on, Collins was invited to stand with Governor Jerry Brown when he signed it. Barlage stood beside Brown when he signed the $15 living-wage bill.

“Besides the historic stuff,” says Collins, “protesting is fun.” Gleefully, she boasts that she has been arrested eight times. She was among 42 Walmart employees who shut down Park Avenue in November 2014, sitting in the street atop a giant OUR Walmart blanket. Facing Alice Walton’s building, they chanted: “Didn’t your mother teach you to share?” Collins was also blocked the doors to Walmart’s lobbying firm in Washington, DC. To celebrate her daughter’s high school graduation, the two plan to get arrested together.

Tyfani Faulkner was fired on a spurious charge but she has no intention of giving up the fight for Walmart workers. She now works as a home-health aide, caring for fragile, elderly patients. She likes the work. It feels meaningful and the hours are flexible. She works back-to-back 24-hour shifts. “That leaves me plenty of time for OUR Walmart,” she says.

Faulkner, Green, Luna, Barlage, and other OUR Walmart leaders are in for the long haul. But they know well that the stakes are high and victories hard-won. “Everyone in OUR Walmart has suffered a lot,” Luna says. The Pico women, widely known for their courage and militancy, were badly shaken in April 2015 when Walmart closed their store. In a husky, whispery voice, Luna notes that 533 families “lost their breadwinner.” And it wasn’t just Pico. Five stores in four states were closed, 2,200 workers laid off without warning.

Luna came to work that day and found the doors locked. Full-time workers and a few part-time employees received 60 days’ severance. Many got nothing. Walmart claimed that workers who wanted transfers to other stores were given them. Luna says that is not true and that no activists were offered transfers.

Management claimed the stores were shut down to repair plumbing problems. OUR Walmart and allies in the UFCW say it was punishment. Walmart had warned workers they would shut down stores to punish organizing, says Barbara Collins. When meat cutters in a Texas store voted to unionize, Walmart moved to prepackaged meats. It’s how they respond, workers say, swiftly and with imperial coldness.

When the Pico store reopened, not one OUR Walmart activist was rehired. “I was suicidal for a while,” Luna admits. “People came to me and said: ‘If it wasn’t for you, we would still have our jobs.’” For a moment, she rests her forehead on her arms, then resumes. Court injunctions prevent OUR Walmart activists from entering Walmart stores, except to shop. Even that is denied her, says Luna. When she walked into the reopened Pico store to shop, someone recognized her. She was escorted out by security.

Deep friendships are the gift that compensates for many losses. “It’s all her fault.” Barlage nudges her younger friend. “She’s the one that signed me up. When I first started doing this, there was so much negative feedback from everybody else. You know: ‘If you don’t like what you’re doing, get another job’? I was ready to say, ‘Venanzi, I’m out. I can’t do this. It’s too negative.’ But she said: ‘It’s okay, mom. We’re going to change things.’”

Over a long lunch of Mexican food, they reminisce about their high times. They begin with the first walkout at a US Walmart, back in 2012. Barlage lets out a hearty laugh. “Venanzi said to me, ‘Mama, we’re going to strike over our ULP.’ I didn’t even know what a ULP was then. She said, ‘Just be there. Tomorrow. We’re going to strike.’ I thought, ‘Oh, crap.’” Barlage pressed herself against the back wall, hoping Luna might miss her. “But she took my hand and said, ‘Come on, mama. Let’s do this.’”

Luna says, “I didn’t know if the associates would really walk out.” But she and Barlage and Cruz had done their jobs well: Luna organized the fresh-food workers; Evelin, health and beauty; and Barlage, the night shift. The night workers liked the idea of striking, Barlage says, because they were the ones most frequently injured. “Everyone is scared to leave their position to ask for help so they lift heavy boxes alone, and they get hurt.” After a quick visit to the “No Care” clinic, she says, “they are given an aspirin and sent back to work. So when I said, ‘Let’s get together, let’s make a change,’ they were receptive. You bet.”

Still, the workers were nervous, says Luna. “They kept asking me, ‘Can we get fired?’ And I said, ‘No, we cannot get fired. We will file a ULP for you.’ I tried to hide how scared I was.” Luna’s manager glared as she walked the strikers out the front door. “They were on the phone with corporate as I said: ‘Clock out everyone. The strike begins now!’ And people were like, ‘Oh, my God. Walmart workers just went on strike to protest retaliation.’”

It wasn’t until she was outside, Luna says, that it hit her. “Oh, my God! We are on strike. She heard management tell reporters that the strikers were not Walmart workers, that they were outside agitators, union organizers. Luna laughs. “I told them, ‘Come see me inside at the deli where I work.’”

Support came from across the globe. The best was the busload of unionized Walmart workers from Uruguay, South Africa, Italy, and elsewhere, who came to walk them back in. When she saw the parade of foreign workers marching behind her, Luna says: “I got goose bumps. I felt like the president of the United States walking into the store with all of them behind us, dancing and singing. When the store manager tried to throw them out, they said, ‘We’re Walmart workers. We have a right to be here.’” Luna heard workers whispering that the strikers were going to be fired. She didn’t think so. It felt “so good having that support from everywhere. I said: ‘No. This is what happens when you actually believe in something.’ Our emotions went wild that day.”

Barlage nudges Luna in the shoulder. “She’s an emotional girl.” She tells of the time they shut down Cesar Chavez Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. They were all there: Evelin Cruz, Tyfani Faulkner, Girshriela Green, and a raft of supporters from organized labor and from Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice.

“The day was so hot,” Barlage remembers, “and we were all nervous. I looked at Venanzi and she was on her knees hyperventilating. She wouldn’t look at me. The cops were coming down the line, reading people their rights. I was three people down from Venanzi. There was this young guy next to her and I said: ‘I need you to put your hand on Venanzi’s back because she looks like she’s going to pass out.’ He looked at me funny. But he did it. And then I said, ‘Now rub her back.’ He did, and I saw Venanzi start to breathe again.”

Luna had not told her parents that she was going to be arrested. “I didn’t want them to see me on TV,” she says. “They would be: ‘Oh, my God, what are you doing?’ I was okay once we were arrested. But those few moments, in the streets waiting, I was nerve-racked.”

In prison, Rabbi Jonathan Klein of CLUE relaxed them by getting everyone to sing: old civil rights and labor songs, even Motown. “In one cell were the women,” Luna and Barlage recall. “On the other side of a brick wall were the men.” They heard Rabbi Klein start singing. “He said, ‘Come on, everybody. Let’s sing.’” Luna laughs. “It was like a party in jail.” Luna says she started to joke with the police. “I told them I didn’t like my mug shot. They needed to let me get my lipstick, let me fix my hair, and take it again.”

The pleasures of protest, the rush of feeling a part of history. When Barlage, Luna, Faulkner, and 25 others shut down the Crenshaw store in November 2014, they made the national news. It was the first retail sit-down strike since saleswomen occupied Woolworth in Detroit and New York in 1937.

“We shut down the store for almost two hours,” Luna says with glee. “Corporate was freaking out.” They taped their mouths shut to protest Walmart’s attempts to silence workers, wrote the word “strike” in thick black letters on the tape. Leaning against the display cases cross-legged, they held up black-and-white pictures of the Woolworth strikers — role models, allies from another time. Barlage and Luna grin, remembering. “We enjoyed that.”

That same night, Cruz led hundreds of protesters in Pico singing “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Then, tweaking Walmart’s slogan “Pay Less, Live Better,” they sat down in traffic holding hand-lettered signs that said: “Sit Down, Live Better.”

“But maybe the best times, and the scariest,” Luna says, were their trips to Walmart shareholders’ meetings. They’ve all gone several times. Faulkner went four years in a row. “It can be shocking the first time you go,” she says, “because they hold it in a basketball stadium. And when you think of how the workers live and you see this extravagant concert and show that they call a shareholders’ meeting, it can feel very overwhelming.”

“Walmart Moms” came one year to speak about their children’s needs for clothing, food, and medical care. Another year, the fired Pico strikers demanded their jobs back. The protesters cornered Walmart’s CEO and spoke directly to him. “Doug McMillon was very polite to us,” Barlage says. “He talked for about 30 minutes.” Over the years, they have even gotten face-to-face meetings with Alice Walton.

In June 2013, two months after the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Walmart workers helped bring Kalpona Akter to Bentonville. She spoke directly to the Walton family, asking why they would not spend even one percent of one year’s personal dividends to save the lives of the workers who sew the clothing that has made them a fortune.

Venanzi Luna introduced a petition from the floor in 2012 asking CEO Rob Walton to step aside. She spoke again in 2015, demanding to know why the Pico store had been closed and hundreds of workers laid off. “I get really nervous speaking in front of people,” she says. “This was thousands of associates and Walmart corporate. And the family. My hands were shaking. If you look at the video you can see my entire body was shaking.” A working-class hero is something to be. But Luna will let you know that her fierceness is just covering her fear.

Since the 2016 election, Tyfani Faulkner has been trying to heal rifts in the movement, reaching out to Walmart workers who voted for Donald Trump. Though she voted for Clinton, she says she understands those who didn’t. “They wanted to believe in what Trump said he’d do: bring back manufacturing jobs. Then they wouldn’t have to work at Walmart anymore. That excited them.” Faulkner says she’s trying to “reunite us around the goals we all share. If you voted for Trump because he said he’d help workers, then hold him to it.”

Luna has been through a lot since the 2012 strike. She’s lost her job, lost Evelin, lost her mom, whom she nursed through it all. “It’s not easy,” she says. “Everybody who is part of this movement has suffered. But without that suffering we wouldn’t be where we are.”

I ask her where she thinks they are. She says, “The ladies that made a revolution at Walmart, we literally started a chain reaction. First it was the Walmart workers, then the fast-food workers, the car washeros. … It’s still going on. We did that! We started it.

“People never expected Walmart workers to take a stand against the world’s biggest company. But you know what? If we can change Walmart, we can change everything. People don’t realize how much power they have as workers. But if you put your little bit of rights on the line and go from that, you can change anything in the world.”

Annelise Orleck is professor of history at Dartmouth College and the author of five books on the history of US women, politics, immigration, and activism, including Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty.

Liz Cooke was born and raised in Brooklyn. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to photograph Holocaust survivors and Soviet émigrés in her childhood neighborhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in numerous publications. Most recently her photographs of Newburgh, New York, were featured in the Guardian (UK).

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