#also i futzed this perspective so hard
Photo
nO, nOOOoo wHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??!!
closeup + their original colors bc i think they look so pretty together :3
#y'all were ruthless in the tags#please don't eat them#this totally wasn't an excuse for me to draw them next to each other#definitely not#also i futzed this perspective so hard#don't look too closely :)))#mocha art#daycare attendant#dca#five nights at freddy's#mer au#fnaf sun#fnaf moon#sun#moon#mer sun#mer moon#sea butterfly!sun#firefly squid!moon
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40 questions meme: 11,13 and 37👀
[forty questions!]
11. Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?
I don't really think of writing as a passion or a hobby. Rather, it's something I feel compelled to do. (I realize this is incredibly self-aggrandizing phrasing. I don't mean that I feel called to it, but rather that there are questions or scenes or potential worlds I'm moved by and can't get out of my head, except by writing them.) But also, I love words and language and picking apart how we put them together to make people feel things. I enjoy playing in that sandbox—the act of writing—and at the end of the day, I write because it's what I want to do most with my free time (and even more with my not-free time). So I guess, in that sense, it is both.
Though, really, is writing actually fun?
13. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?
Deeply paraphrasing here, and others have said this much more eloquently, but simply: You can't edit nothing. None of the other advice matters until you have that first, scrappy draft, so get it down on paper and go from there. (I am not taking this advice very well right now.)
37. Talk about your current wips.
My current WIPs are, unfortunately for all of us, the same WIPs I have been talking about for a good six months, plus a few more! Below the cut because I have SO MANY??? (Send help.)
We have on the TG:M docket:
The other FWB fic (love you like a lover should): The Google doc for this was created in March 2023! It is still nowhere close to being done! This is the story that started as a foray into Rooster/Phoenix and quickly evolved into an exploration of Hangman/Phoenix if Phoenix had an unrequited crush on Rooster but started banging Hangman instead.
The Olympics AU (no rules in breakable heaven): Exactly what it sounds like! And also a past lovers to exes/enemies to angry lovers to second chance romance fic. (How many tropes is too many tropes?) I had a good two-day run with this during NaNo, but then work knocked me on my figurative ass, and I haven't been able to make progress since then. My goal is to finish this before the opening ceremony this summer. This is looking less and less achievable.
The politics AU: This is mostly just vibes right now. It's very roughly outlined, but the words aren't flowing yet. I got the idea futzing around on Pinterest and realizing Glen Powell really does look Like That. I'm also just really compelled by different permutations of ambitious woman/arrogant asshole, and the political world is made for stories like that.
wreck my sundays: I heard Maggie Rogers's new single and needed to write something, because "My friend Sally's getting married / And to me that sounds so scary" resonated a little too hard, while "take my money, wreck my Sundays" wrecked me. This will have a spot of fake dating. I want to keep this in the 6,000-7,000 word range, which is ironically what's keeping me from writing it, because my deep-seated need to provide context and world build is making it too verbose, and that is not a rabbit hole I want to go down.
For other universes, we have:
the truth about dreams: A Sally-focused companion piece to i dreamed you a sin and a lie. For some reason, it's been a lot harder to write this one. (Some reason: Poseidon's POV is much more interior, because it's all speculative. To give Sally's POV justice, I actually need to build the world.) And yes, I did have fun looking up songs with "horse" in the title, because I am hilarious. What serendipity that Horses fits so well.
An untitled coda to The Artful Dodger that explores what would happen if Governor Fox gave Jack a pardon, from the Governor's perspective. Governor Fox's "my wife and daughters think I'm a simpleton, and they're probably right" got to me the same way Daisy Buchanan's "a beautiful little fool" line did. There is something there and it is incredibly compelling!
#come talk to me!#these felt like the hot ones of ask meme questions!#my open tabs are shaming me every day i don't work on these wips
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I really enjoy Star Wars but only from your perspective/takes do you have any fic you recommend your mind is a wonderful place to observe Star Wars much better than those movie should be
I still haven’t seen the movies lmao, and a lot of the fics I read aren’t necessarily the kind of thing I actually futz about with? But here are a few that mostly err on the side of comedic (I don’t have the energy to include disclaimers and warnings, so please check tags before you read anything):
Either outright comedies, or plot-heavy with significant comedic moments:
Untitled Soulmate Game - soulmate AU where the main plot device is that one morning a goose shows up and bothers you until you find your soulmate
Be Careful What You Sith For - Palpatine does A Sith Magic that results in everyone in the galaxy getting the name of their death (in the default timeline) written out on their arm. I... can’t remember if this is actually funny but there are certainly moments.
Sith Lord Swell - Luke and his students (Ben Solo is mid-teens) end up pre-TCW and... decide the best cover is to pretend they’re all Sith Lords. It’s all very silly and Luke goes in real hard on being a big ham, it’s great.
Wake the Storm - Mid-TCW Anakin swaps places with ANH Vader. His body comes with him. It’s all very confusing. I don’t remember how funny this one was, but.
Lies About Jedi - Cody uses a shiny trooper to guilt-trip Obi-Wan into taking a nap
Shining Bright Above You - chatfic clone hijinks
The Happening - yet more chatfic clones
GAR Requsitions - clones deal with bureaucratic nonsense
Soft Wars - TCW but, like, soft
Senator Obi-Wan AU - AU where Obi-Wan isn’t a Jedi, but insists on running into danger even more than Padme does
Old Man Luke - Sequels Luke ends up mid-TCW
Shifting Sands - Sequels Leia shows up on Tatooine a year pre-TPM, forcibly adopts herself into the Skywalker family. It’s not... technically a comedy, but there are a lot of satisfying “Why are you LIKE THIS” moments for everyone involved
Realign the Stars - time travel (Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, Cody, Rex) not primarily a comedy but there’s a lot of moments that are just like “Anakin won an entire moon and half of Tatooine by rigging the bets in a race” and that’s just. It’s choice.
An (Un)fortunate Haunting - Anakin is haunted by Vader’s ghost
The Corteous Art of Correspondence During A Galactic War as Performed Aptly by Certain Sith and Jedi - Rael Averross sends bitchy letters to Dooku during TCW
Bar Fights and Beaches - short and sweet, Anakin is very “dis mine” about his soldiers
Everyone is confused but R2-D2. - Vader finds out his children exist while on the Death Star, proceeds to cause problems
Din Djarin and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Time Travel Incident - Din Djarin time-travels to mid-TCW. Everyone assumes he’s a Mandalorian from so far in the past that the Jedi/Mando rivalry didn’t exist yet. He does not realize this, and accidentally keeps confirming their suspicions.
Not comedies but very good, mostly time ravel:
Living in Borrowed Time - Ahsoka & Rex do mental time-travel from their deaths to a day or so before their first meeting
wilder mind - Force-sensitive Rex!
Don't Look Back - shortly post-OT Leia gets physically transported back to just before AotC
Of Queens, Knights, and Pawns - Sequels Leia goes to sleep the night after Han dies and wakes up nineteen again, on the Death Star
Reprise - Ben Kenobi dies, wakes up physically thirty-five and several hundred stories below the Temple main floor, claims he’s 16yo Obi-Wan’s uncle, things spiral wildly in directions that make political sense but are also Very Odd if you want stations of the canon
Probability Matrices - Darth Vader dies, Ben’s ghost does A Thing, Anakin Skywalker wakes up a week before Qui-Gon arrives with almost forty years of memories he shouldn’t have. This series is like 50% therapy by volume so I love it. Din Djarin and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Time Travel Incident
The Dark Path Lit by Sun and Stars - Mental time-travel for Ben, de-aging and physical time travel for the OT trio. Feelsy.
The Desert Storm - Ben time travel, mostly serious, very long, good if you have a few weeks to waste (I admittedly took only a few days but binge-reading your weekends away is not recommended)
Double Agent Vader - a classic
into the desert - Anakin doesn’t go evil, fic is very heavily
Well It Goes Like This - Anakin doesn’t Fall, but everything else mostly still happens as it did; he manages to save a handful of kids and escape O66
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From Darkness Into the Lantern Light - Chapter 2
Another week, another chapter... How exciting~!
Thanks, of course, to the great @leio13 for everything she’s done to polish up this story!
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a cold-hearted queen. Although the Tsaritsa, as she was called, possessed her own divinity, she coveted the powers of the other Archons. Aiming to steal the Geo Archon’s gnosis, she sent her strongest warriors to Liyue Harbor. But just when Rex Lapis was almost defeated, he escaped to another vessel, that of a powerless baby, and was swept away to a hidden tower for his protection.
Many years after the great fight, the young and ambitious Harbinger, Childe, arrives in Liyue to grant the Tsaritsa’s desire, but, on his search for the Geo Archon’s gnosis, he ends up tangled in a mysterious man’s dreams to see Liyue Harbor’s Lantern Rite.
This chapter can also be found on Ao3 here. Without further ado, please enjoy!
Childe yawned. He had been keeping guard by the window while Zhongli pulled himself together. True to Zhongli's words, not a soul passed through the area. How boring.
The true object of Childe's curiosity was, of course, Zhongli himself—although Childe dared not watch him directly while he was so on edge. He had made thousands of laps around his tiny tower home, futzing around with every little thing.
What little information Childe did know about Zhongli painted a strange picture. Most notably, the man had never had a haircut in his lifetime. Although Childe was certainly not an expert in hair care, letting it grow out indefinitely had to have more downsides than up. Underneath all the hair, though, was even weirder. Zhongli had let slip that he had never encountered another person since he came to the tower, which was starting to seem like a very long time. Given the virtual non-existence of passersby and Zhongli’s paranoia, his outrageous statement appeared like a plausible fact. Unfortunately, due to their contract, Childe could no longer ask about either of these mysteries.
But they were, nevertheless, exploitable. If Zhongli distrusted the entire world, all the better for Childe, his only ally. In pernicious Liyue, even Childe could be a hero, and ultimately, that feeling of gratitude and indebtedness would be paid back with critical information.
Well, at the end of the day, Childe did not expect Zhongli to have any pertinent information on his target, so perhaps forging trust with him was not necessary. Even still, Zhongli’s fearfulness worked to Childe’s advantage in yet another way: he could be free of him sooner. After all, how hard could it be to scare this man into wanting to turn back? Whether or not Zhongli could tell him something of value was insignificant compared to the pressing need to recommence his search for Rex Lapis.
“Hey, you almost ready to go?” Childe, reminded of his impatience, called out.
“Not yet.” Zhongli was standing by a chair he had already revisited 20 times.
“At this rate, you’re never going to wanna leave!”
“You’re right. Sorry.” Zhongli came slightly closer, still armed with his pan.
If there was one thing Childe couldn’t handle about Zhongli, it was his aura. Despite the absurdity of his paranoia and weapon choice, under his demeanor, there was a vague, latent power that kept Childe on his toes. This man’s a potential threat.
“You’re going to bring that?” Childe asked.
“I don’t know what else to bring.”
“Right.” Childe sighed into his palm. “Let’s just get going then. Oh yeah, where are we going exactly? You didn’t say.”
“Liyue Harbor.”
Childe’s hands dropped to his side. His stomach capsized in its own digestive juices.
“I want to see the annual lanterns.”
As all his thoughts jammed in his skull, not a single one made it to Childe’s lips. It’s okay. It’ll be fine. This is just a special challenge to see how fast you can get him to turn around. “Yeah.” Finally, Childe snapped to his senses. “Great, so where’s the exit?”
“I’m unsure.”
“What do you mean?” Asking that question was not unlike juggling a bomb before it explodes, hoping to lessen the impact.
“I’ve never left this tower before.”
BOOM
Luckily, Childe had time to dig his feet in the ground, lest the explosion bowl him over. Another statement that provided no real answers, only more questions—too many questions to be worth pondering over—and he couldn’t even ask for the answers. At the core, however, one overarching question throbbed in his mind: how did Zhongli even survive?
Not one to show his weakness, Childe posed a joke instead. “So, you couldn’t even find one during your many laps around?”
“No, unfortunately, but I did have an idea. If I hook it up here, by the window, we can use my hair to climb down.”
Childe’s brain overheated and shut down. That was fine. Thinking only seemed like a detriment in this situation. Much like a fight, it was time to rely solely on instincts.
Although it was Zhongli’s idea, he appeared reluctant to let Childe hold his hair, but finally he handed him a section with a wince. Conversely, after all that had happened in the day, Childe didn’t even hesitate to tie himself up in a hair harness and jump out of a high-up window. While Zhongli mustered the courage to jump down, Childe inhaled the crisp air surrounding him. This was his last moment of freedom.
***
Zhongli was surprised at the speed with which the mysterious man, Childe, freed himself from his hair; Zhongli hadn’t even the chance to jump down yet (although, he was aware that he was taking a long time). Finally, he took a breath, closed his eyes, and jumped. He was less afraid of death and more afraid of betraying his obligations, his deal with that woman: his mother.
As far as he could possibly remember, Zhongli had always lived in that tower. He spent most of his time in complete solitude, but it wasn’t a lonely existence. He enjoyed immersing himself into books, absorbing all the information they had to give him. Whenever he was reading, he was always filled with a slight nostalgia, which his mother once simply explained, “Maybe you’ve just read too many books. Aren’t they all starting to blend together?” But that wasn’t remotely true. Each book stood out vividly in his mind.
This, however, was the first time he would physically step foot out of his tower. The gentle compression of the earth under his feet set his heart aflutter with excitement and trepidation. Although tiny particles of dirt were displaced in a cloud by his movement, the ground beneath was an unbudging solid. Yet, despite its sturdiness, the ground had already powdered a thin veneer of dirt on the soles of Zhongli's shoes.
As Zhongli stared at his feet, the residual dirt morphed into evidence of a crime; there was no way this dirt wouldn't leave a trail when he returned to the tower. Then, his mother would undeniably know that he had broken the "contract" of their living conditions.
While Zhongli and his mother had never officiated the terms of their coexistence, they had abided by them in mutual understanding since Zhongli could remember: so long as Zhongli was obedient and never left the tower, his mother would provide for and protect him. It was only natural.
If Zhongli's mother were to discover he had left, she would have every right to be angered by his unjustifiable betrayal. She had cared for him all these years without fault. To leave was an act of ingratitude, a suggestion that she had not been good enough, when she, in fact, had. But worse still, what if she returned before Zhongli? How much would she fret and worry over his selfish decision? A display of lanterns he could distantly make out from his window was not worth her suffering. Maybe it was better if he went back and pretended this little exit never happened.
But it was already too late to completely erase the evidence of his departure, in which case, Zhongli had no choice but to look forward. Besides, he was probably old enough to make this decision. The contract, although unofficial, had no end term, but it surely couldn't last this long. Zhongli had already reached a maturity where he could take care of himself. As it was, as he grew older, the length and frequency of his mother's trips had grown incrementally. She trusted him on his own. The only difference was that now he would also be taking an excursion.
Zhongli’s own journey started on the other shore of the lake. While he was in his tower, Zhongl had not appreciated the movements of the water: the gentle lapping against the sand and the harsh crashes against the small cliffs. At the center of these interactions was the same lake with the same calm waves. Near the shore, the crystalline blue water refracted shallow shadow patterns on the sand, but as the water grew deeper and murkier, the ground disappeared altogether. As short a distance as the lake seemed to span, it was nevertheless insurmountable.
Zhongli couldn’t swim. As he stared across the waters to the other shore where plants and slimes coexisted, he realized that swimming was just a small obstacle. On the other side, there would be creatures and people that Zhongli wouldn’t be able to handle. He could hardly imagine what was out there. Zhongli was trapped by the dirt which soiled his shoes and the water which would engulf him.
But, it wasn’t all hopeless nor unknown. There was one factor Zhongli had not yet factored in: Childe. Unlike Zhongli, Childe was experienced in travelling and in society as a whole. Zhongli was not exploring on his own; Childe would guide him. From that perspective, most of Zhongli’s fears were trivial.
However, Zhongli’s greatest fear was Childe himself. The man’s entire presence was a mystery. Both his arrival and motivations were dubious. Although he carried himself casually (probably a pretense to make Zhongli lower his guard), Childe seemed dangerous and unpredictable. Zhongli questioned the intentions of every move he made as he tried to stay ahead. In fact, the contract was the only thing which made their cooperation possible. The contract not only assured that Zhongli would achieve his goal, but also that when it was all over, he would be safe from Childe. The contract was written in such a way that even if Childe were to ask about his hair for his treasure, Zhongli could escape without worrying about his secrets being spilled nor Childe coming after him.
Well, it couldn’t hurt to ask about Childe’s target before they set off. “Childe,” Zhongli called to him as he fidgeted with the mask in his hair. “What exactly are you looking for?”
"Do you have to ask that already? Let's save some of the fun for later, shall we?"
So he's employing the privacy clause for a matter as simple as this?
Childe's constructed smile quickly vanished. "Well, I suppose I should tell you something. I'm looking for a treasure beyond human imagination, something worthy of a goddess."
Just as Zhongli thought, he could not trust Childe at all. Though Childe wouldn't say, Zhongli knew what he was after, and he wouldn't let him have it.
Childe must have noticed Zhongli's scowl because he quickly forced another laugh. "Hey, don't worry about it for now. Your job right now is to keep your eyes open and enjoy the world!"
If that's all there was to it, Zhongli could certainly manage this journey, but he'd be keeping his eyes on Childe first and foremost.
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i just need to rant
i feel so stuck
in march i really felt like things were going my way. i was phasing out of my current nanny job to some extent, ready to pick up on a new one. i was going to move into an apartment, i wanted to get a cat.
then the plague. then my sibling and their family moved in. we’re all living in my parents house and everyone keeps making jabs about how i’m going nowhere and still living at home, when part of why i was living at home was to help with my sibling’s kids and keep an eye on an alcoholic family member. i COULD have moved out months ago but i stay to help and i’m rewarded with constant lectures about how my life is going nowhere, as if part of the reason it’s going nowhere is that we all have to stay inside because of a fucking plague.
my nanny kid is in school but i’m still picking them up which means most of my day is still dedicated to them and it’s hard to get another job with hours that can work with that and i’m afraid of taking any jobs in public for fear of more contact with others. my family acts like it’s so easy, i just need to rip off the bandaid and leave this kid, but i’ve been watching them for 3 years and i’m basically their third parent. is it really best for a child’s emotional and mental wellbeing to tell them that someone they love can just fucking leave?? no!
my family wants me to get a “real job”, but “real jobs” make me want to commit suicide, and being a nanny, the only job that makes me happy and that i’m really good at, is something i can’t do because i’m still taking care of the same kid but with fewer hours (though on a diminished salary i’m still being paid more per week than my all 3 of my office jobs... hm hm hm)
i don’t want a real career and also i can’t get one, i want a new nanny kid but this one, who admittedly i do love as if they were my own, still needs me. i want a life, but outside the house is death. and on top of all that i finally figured out my gender and sexuality, except fuck me for that too because the second i show the slightest hint of dressing non-conforming my mom starts buying me a bunch of dresses and asking why i dress so ugly. this week i have a hair appointment to get a feaux hawk and dye it pink because it makes me happy. and that should be enough, but it’s not, because my family insists changing my hair will mean i can’t get a job i don’t want but they want me to get because they don’t think my current job is a real job, and i can’t leave my current job because the kid needs me.
everything is just so fucked and frustrating and this weekend i got dragged to an overcrowded flea market where i didn't buy anything because none of the fucking people there were wearing masks, but my mom insisted i buy something because “i never do anything for myself”
i do, it’s just you hate every single thing i do.
i’m 27 but i don’t get treated like an adult, because every choice i make to actually make me happy and not want to fucking kill myself goes against the norm so therefore it’s bad and i’m just so tired and pissed off and i love my family so much but they don’t know how much their constant jabs and ignoring what i do to help hurts me.
i clip the kids’ fingernails. i never cook my own food so i don’t muck up the kitchen. i buy food for myself unless food is offered to me. i stayed in this cramped house to help my family and it doesn’t even matter because no one sees it from my perspective. they just see me as this aimless loaf futzing around all day and wasting their potential.
i’m not. i just don’t have the options to reach my potential, and the ways i reach my potential aren’t what they want.
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(( Obv I’ve been thinking abt a p.ersona 5 AU bc that’s who i am so im just gonna dump all the ideas i got in here & futz and add later or something idk i make aus via the ‘throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks’ method
also just bc this has been a problem lately & i lack the energy to deal w things after the fact rn: pls personals do NOT reblog my posts ^^ ))
Manfred
Manfred absolutely has a Palace. Look at him.
The detention center / prison, courthouse, and prosecutor’s office all appear distorted, but I’m gonna go with the courthouse being the kinda ‘center’ and being where his Treasure actually is.
The detention center / prison looks like an extensive trophy room commemorating all of his won cases. The trophies tend to have design elements that hint at the damning evidence and crime in question while also having the name of the defendant in question somewhere. All of them are gold, except for the one representing the IS-7 case. That one is a bronze and notably smaller in size.
Both the courthouse and the prosecutor’s office appear as temples that worship him as a god. The office is a bit more like a bustling hub of priests that are incredibly incompetent. The courthouse is grand and opulent with perfectly sculpted marble statues and busts of him.
There’s a slight infestation of insects which all have a pattern similar to the defense attorney badge. They mostly scurry and run away from just about everything. The Shadows take the form of judges, prosecutors, bailiffs, and detectives.
Safe Rooms correspond to defense lobbies.
There is a depiction of the DL-6 Incident actively showing Manfred shooting Gregory, but the style frames it more as a heretic being righteously smote than the reality of an unconscious man being shot by a petty fossilized man child.
There are cognitive versions of both Miles and Franziska and neither of them are great. Cognitive Franziska actually still appears as child and would fight any intruders but, due to Manfred’s low opinion of her and her capabilities, she actually cannot win. Cognitive Miles is dressed in that horrid Manfred-style red suit but like resembles Gregory to a much higher degree than Miles actually does.
The Treasure is held in a large, central courtroom. In the Metaverse, it is a golden, weighed scale and, once brought out, is a prosecutor’s badge.
Also you bet him as a boss utilizes a lot of Electricity skills. Also some Gun skills. What can I say, I’m not that subtle.
KAY
Kay vc: i can steal shit AND have superpowers?????? hell yeah!!!!
100% agree with @flairer Kay would be Sun Arcana with Yatagarasu P.ersona absolutely no doubt let’s go
Have nothing firm on how they actually.... get there???? Maybe during the Quercus Alba nonsense.
tfw an ambassador keeps flaunting diplomatic immunity so u just gotta come into incredible power to force the bastard to admit to murder himself
also just
Akechi: my codename is Crow
Kay: absolutely not u Mask☆DeMasque lookin motherfucker
not that im really trying to super integrate w the existing team, but kay was extremely offended by akechi’s codename choice & i have to share that
KLAVIER
Tragically started thinking that after Turnabout Succession, Klavier would develop a Palace due to worsening paranoia and lack of healthy coping.
The distortion does cover the entire city... kinda? The thing is that Klav is very ‘the whole world’s a stage’ in an absolutely unhealthy way. The layout and buildings are retained but it has the vibe of a music festival or other celebration?
Everything leads toward the courthouse though, which is 100% a very large and elaborate stage. It’s hard to notice from the ground, but a tightrope is suspended way, way above it. There is no safety net below it. Just the cold, hard stage.
Shadow Klavier is always in the middle of a concert on that stage and the crowd oddly alternates between vicious heckling and overwhelming praise. It turns on a dime and seems to have nothing to do with the actual performance.
Various cognitive versions of familiar faces exist in the Palace and perfectly match the mannerisms / personalities of the real counterparts... when talking to any Thieves. If the subject of Klavier comes up, though, they tend to grow more harsh and disparaging toward him.
Cognitive Miles has the role of a manager and at first attempts to discourage any interaction with Shadow Klav because it might distract him and ruin the show. He immediately relents, however, with the thought that he’s always wanted to fire Klavier and so any mishaps with the show would be the perfect excuse.
Shadow Klav isn’t that overly aggressive, but there are still traps and Shadows swarming the area. While he is certainly civil, he does not hide his mistrust at all and can be surprisingly gloomy, though is somewhat like Shadow Futaba in that he’ll drop cryptic hints or express support for the Thieves’ actions.
I love the idea of Klavier getting pulled into his own Palace due to Shenanigans™ and Cognitive Nick sees him and tells him he’s almost late for walking the tightrope and forces him toward it
Meanwhile Klav is just ‘wow idk what the hap is fuckening but my overwhelming sense of guilt compels me to do whatever Wright(?) says so i guess im abt to do a very dangerous stunt that will most certainly end in my death’
Shadow Klav does a very aggressive intervention because he does contain Klavier’s wish to help people. He insists that Klavier cannot survive living solely like he’s a product to be consumed and destroyed. A ticking time bomb of contradictory desires based on unknowable perceptions.
Meanwhile, Cognitive Nick grows more twisted and manipulative and begins to viciously antagonize and guilt-trip the hesitating Klavier. The crowd likewise grows more and more restless and demanding of a spectacle. Still, whether the crowd wants Klavier to succeed or fail is hard to determine.
Also like Manfred having a Palace kinda implies Nick as a Thief too and the idea of Nick also being there and seeing that this is how Klavier sees him is... oof ouch.
But yeah Shadow Klav is like “Are you going to continue to let yourself be chained to expectations? Even when it will kill you?”
Obv Klav’s like “yeah, you know what? I will live for my own damn self.” And comes into his P.ersona which is like... halfway unnecessary. Cognitive Nick is just an asshole... not exactly a giant fucking sphinx
Can’t decide whether Klav’s Arcana is Death or Moon, though. I like Death’s message of metamorphosis and change for him. But also Moon’s got fun bits about facades and fear.
Nick afterward: hey um... i just wanna say that im so-
Klav: i finally have some capacity to be mad at you without feeling like the scum of the earth for doing so so im gonna be 100% unashamedly pissed for a while just... give me some time. also im abt to sleep for 1000 years because holy shit
And yeah it’s not a 100% fix and Klav still has paranoia and the unhealthy perspective of being a product for consumption but like... he’s got somewhat better footing to seek and accept help. And, likewise, does not have the subconscious desire to be hated so that he may self-destruct without guilt. So, like, that’s a plus.
#(( me: long rambles for mvk & klav#me: 100% memes for kay#it's what they wouldve wanted ))#(( btw im having a Time™ rn so sorry for the complete absence ))#just a witness | ooc#v { manfred }; an empire for the taking | persona 5 au#v { kay }; swatting lies in the making | persona 5 au#v { klavier }; on a razor's edge | persona 5 au
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10 Questions M-Thing
I got tagged by @nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui! Whee!
1. When/how did you start making yourself “at home” on the webs?
Getting involved with Tolkien fandom really gave me the kick in the pants to become more than just a casual Internet user. Before that point--we’re talking the early 2000s here--I was pretty ignorant user. (Almost everyone was!) I could email ... but I also forwarded hoax emails about Congress imposing a 5 cent tax on every email sent and thought I was Fighting the Good Fight. (Embarrassing!)
I remember getting involved in Tolkien fandom and setting up my LiveJournal (because everyone had one) and then frantically emailing my sister to teach me some super-simple HTML because the LJ rich-text editor was completely whack. Over the next few months, I learned LJ, mailing lists, instant messenger, and basic HTML, then moved on to full HTML and CSS and eFiction and eventually built my own website. Now I’m learning intermediate-level Drupal and always threatening to learn PHP and finally take over the world.
2. What current (or past) hype leaves you completely cold?
I really am monofandom (Tolkien). I see the occasional thing slip past on my dash for another fandom that is moderately interesting, but one of the reasons I feel like a square peg here is because I’m so boringly monofandom.
3. If you could have dinner with any fictional character, who would it be? Why? What would you like to talk about?
Maedhros. I find him one of the most fascinating characters in anything I’ve ever read.
I’d love to hear his side of the story and how he regards “Pengolodh’s Silmarillion.” I’d love to hear what his youth in Valinor was like. I’d love to know what was truth, what was exaggeration, what was propaganda. I’d want to know what his mother, father, and brothers were like. I’d want to know a whole bunch of stuff about Elven culture.
I’d probably need to take him to dinner again to fit it all in! :D
4. What’s your favourite holiday/ holiday tradition?
My favorite holiday is Halloween/Samhain. I love the secular Halloween traditions because I like creepy, scary things, and it gives Mr. Felagund and me the flimsy excuse to do nothing but watch horror movies all October. (Right now, we’re watching only Christmas movies, which I like much less and am honestly sick of with still a week and several more to go.)
From the perspective of spiritual practice, Samhain is the day when we honor those who have departed before us. We set an empty place at the table that night to remember those we’ve lost. I feel especially close to them on that night.
5. You’ve got the chance to be involved with a TV adaptation of The Silmarillion! Which role would you like to take?
Screenwriter or consultant. My biggest fear of any adaptation of The Silmarillion is that it will lack nuance and will favor a good-evil interpretation of the characters.
6. If you could have one language magically uploaded into your brain so you can speak and read it fluently, which one would you choose? Why?
Old English. It would make my research so much easier. (I’ve taken an Old English course but still suck at it. I did all of my own translations for my MA thesis, which was akin to rolling boulders up a steep hill.)
7. Favourite time in history (to read about, not necessarily to live in)?
Anglo-Saxon England. I wrote my MA thesis on oral theory and Beowulf.
8. Favourite sport (either to watch or to practice yourself)?
Freestyle rollerskating. I used to be quite good when I was younger and had regular access to a rink, but even now, skating feels like flying. My first skating teacher also did a lot to heal the damage that had been done to me after five years being bullied by my elementary PE teacher.
I also love kayaking and cross-country skiing. Any team sports can buzz off. The aforementioned elementary PE teacher ruined me forever on anything where I could be humiliated in front of or let down my teammates.
9. What was your dream job as a kid? How do you feel about that job now?
I wanted to be an entomologist! Throughout third grade, I signed all of my papers “Insect Walls.” I remember my mom getting mad at me for bringing home permission slips that said, “I give permission for Insect Walls to attend the field trip to Washington, DC.” She’d erase the “Insect” and replace it with “Dawn.” No fun! (My third grade teacher was supportive of my name change. She was the best teacher I ever had.) And my sole elementary school friend once forgot to make an anniversary gift for her parents, so I gave her an essay I’d written on flies, and she gave it to them as a gift.
Herein lies why I was so unpopular until I divested myself of my childhood classmates by choosing a high school where almost none of them went.
But honestly? I still love insects and spiders and would go back to school in an instant and study entomology just for the fun of it.
10. You’ve got one year to travel the world, spending each month in a different location. Which 12 places would you choose?
Oh man! This one’s hard ... One month in Ireland and the UK to visit the places I’ve missed and do research. One month in Denmark to visit @hrymfaxe and do more research. (I’m apparently still the type of person who will give an essay on flies as an anniversary gift!) One month in India. One month in Egypt, followed by a month in southern Africa. One month in Australia and/or New Zealand. One month in Thailand, then a month in Japan. One month to visit the Amazon. (It was my dream as a young, fly-essay-writing, wannabe entomologist to work in the Amazon studying ants.) One month to live in an indigenous village in Central America or Mexico. One month in Antarctica. Then finish up in the Western U.S. to visit my sister and SIL, see California, and visit the Southwest.
Then back to Vermont. :)
11. What’s the next creative project you’ve got planned?
I really need to finish the Tamlin novel I started for last year’s NaNoWriMo.
But as far as fresh stuff, I’ve been mentally developing a new novel for several years now. The tentative title is The Goddess of Unloved Things. I have so much in my head for it and absolutely nothing written down. I hope I don’t die before I do something with it ... not like it will be a loss to anyone but me and I won’t exactly be in a position to care! I am loosely constructing it based on the imagery that seeps into my brain when I listen to the Smashing Pumpkins’ album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It’s in the Midhavens universe, not like many people are still around who remember when I was futzing with that.
I got tagged for this by @independence1776 as well, so I’ll submit my questions and tag people when I post the answers to that one!
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Now we come to the Best Director category. Like quite a few categories that year, the Academy still seemed to be finding their feet. They divided up Best Director into two categories, one for Best Dramatic Picture and one for Best Comedy Picture, not unlike how the Golden Globes eventually ended up dividing some of their categories. I’m sure they soon realized that some years this wouldn’t have ended up feasible, for while there’s always a ton of great dramatic films each year, it’s much harder to find good comedies. It’s much harder to make someone laugh then make someone cry. I will stand by this no matter what anyone says.
The first picture nominated in the category was Sorrell and Son, directed by Herbert Brenon. Maddeningly, as much as I scoured the internet, I was unable to find a copy of it anywhere, though the Academy Film Archive is said to have a partially restored print. Someone tell them to get that out on a DVD and for download toot-sweet!
So that takes us to the other picture nominated that year: The Crowd. As finding a copy of this film on the net is an exercise in maddeningly ever getting closer to the edge of the abyss while you tear your hair out, I’ve included a link for it above. Now, I am all for paying money to watch films in a legal format and supporting good films that way, but that’s only if they’re actually available. But TCM, who runs this movie occasionally, has not done so, so I was forced to watch the pirated version. I feel no shame in telling you to do the same.
The Crowd is an All-American tale of a young man named John who moves to the big city with the intent of making it big. He wants to be a somebody that people will remember as his late father always wanted him to be. Rather hard in New York City, where there’s millions of people right along side you who want the same thing. Now, The Crowd managed to make this picture feel larger-then-life by filming right on the streets of NYC, sometimes covertly for crowd scenes. You get a sense of just how massive the place is as people stream about going from place to place. The camera has large, sweeping shots all over the place, as well as a lot of tracking shots, a style which would be lost for quite some time due to the limitations that sound pictures would soon present.
Now, just to get the elephant out of the room right away, there are a few moments in the picture where black actors are portrayed in the title cards to have the “black minstrel accent”, examples like ‘Did I hear you-all speakin’ ’bout havin’ yo’ bed made up?’ and ‘I detend to be a preacher man! Hallelujah!’ There’s also a moment you might cringe as the token black boy in John’s childhood town is nicknamed Whitey. So if you’re a bit sensitive to these things, which are somewhat common in this silent era, turn it off or fast-forward a bit. Remember, not everything in the past conforms to today’s standards. To be fair, in a nice bit of solidarity, Whitey is shown to be playing with the white children of the neighborhood without being ostracized or shown to be anymore comical then any of the other little boys, a scene that would begin to be lost as films progressed. Alright, with that out of the way, time to move onto the rest of the picture.
As usually happens in these kinds of pictures, he finds a nice girl named Mary, and they soon marry, with his best friend cynically saying it’ll last maybe a year. Despite her disapproving brothers and mother, and a few small squabbles, the two weather the storm together, and soon Mary is pregnant. They have a boy and then soon a little girl some time later. The picture skips ahead five years and everything is going along alright.
The family is at the beach on a picnic and their characters are laid out nicely for us: Mary is trying her best to make the picnic nice while John sits there lackadaisically playing a ukulele instead of contributing any help at all. When Mary asks him why he hasn’t gotten anywhere in his company, he protests it takes time. But based on what we’ve seen thus far between young John blowing off his studies to go on a date with Mary, then blowing off spending time with Mary’s family to get drunk with Bert, and this idea of letting his wife do all the work while he futzes around, it comes off more like he’s just lazy. She points out his best friend Bert has gotten somewhere and again he protests that rubbing elbows with the big bosses will get you anywhere. Well…yeah, and what’s wrong with that? A little hard work plus kissing up to the bosses never hurt anyone in my opinion.
But things seem to be turning around for the family as John, who keeps sending in slogan after slogan to contests that will select them as the new one for their brand finally wins a bit of money in the form of $500. ( That’s $7,345.99 in today’s money, people!) They happily pay off debts, buy a new dress for Mary, and buy new toys for their children. They excitedly tell them to come inside and that’s when tragedy strikes. In a masterful series of shots that hype up the tension by never showing us the actual moment of impact, their little girl is struck and badly injured by a truck.
The scene fades to a sad one as the little girl starts to slip away. Small wonder that John seems to lose it a little bit, hyperfixating on the idea that if it’s just quiet enough, she’ll get well. He goes all the way to running into the crowded streets of the city, battling against the crowd and futilely trying to get them and the fire trucks to be quiet. There’s a wonderful parallel here as the crowd which was once a source of inspiration and happiness has now turned cold and unfeeling, with a policeman flat-out telling him that the world isn’t going to stop just because his baby is sick.
The little girl dies, and in a scene full of pathos that never goes over the top, we see Mary and John in the throes of grief, both trying to be comforted by their family and failing. What happens next is best summed up by the title card: “The crowd laughs with you always… but it will cry with you for only a day.” John can’t focus on his work anymore and quits his job. This proves to be a dumb mistake as he then spends his time getting jobs and losing them just as quickly. This would be eerily prescient for the Americans watching this film, soon to be plunged into the Great Depression. By the time the story picks back up, they’ve moved to a small, dingy house, Mary is forced to take in sewing to make ends meet in addition to all her other work, and their poor firstborn son Junior is completely neglected.
Mary’s brothers sum it up nicely when they bitingly ask John if he plans to go on a vacation from life for the rest of his life. At this point, I started to lose my sympathies for John a bit. He just sits around in a daze, which is understandable, but in the meantime, his wife is holding the family together by taking on the lion’s share of the work. To contrast, while he’s throwing a fit and impulsively quitting his job, she’s busy making a feast for the company picnic while still in the throes of her own grief. As I’m sure all of you well know who have lost any beloved family member, life doesn’t stop just to let you spend your days grieving. Eventually, you have to get back out there and try.
Then comes the part in the picture where I wanted to smack him. Mary’s brothers say they’ll give him a job, but he refuses, saying it’s a “charity job.” This comes from a 2019 perspective, and I’m sure things were different ninety-one years ago, but this seems to me to stink with a bit of toxic masculinity. So it’s “charity” to take a job from relatives because of your stinking pride but sitting on your ass day after day moping is what…heroically supporting your family? Men have their pride, but they also have families that need to eat. Mary rightfully calls him out on this stupid line of thinking and slaps him, saying she almost wishes he were dead.
Junior follows his father as he walks around town depressed. He considers killing himself by jumping off a bridge but then reconsiders. After all, what’s the point? The shots here of the train and bridge are beautifully done. Junior, the poor little neglected son, finally breaks through to his father by telling him he believes in him. This finally snaps John back into action. He looks all over town for a job, eventually finding one as a clown wearing a sandwich board who juggles. It’s a contrast to the start of the picture when he made fun of just such a man with the same job when they were on a date.
But it appears to be too late, as when he returns, Mary seems set on departing with her brothers and taking Junior with her, even after he reveals he’s gotten a job. It’s a very tender scene, and at the end of it, Mary can’t do it. She stays with her husband and her brothers exasperatedly toss her luggage onto the porch when it becomes clear she’s not coming. The picture ends with the family attending a vaudeville show and seeing John’s winning slogan from earlier in the program. The shot fades out into a masterfully done tracking shot, pulling back from the little family we’ve followed until once again, they are lost in the crowd of people that make up the audience.
Now with such a good picture done about ordinary people, it is a bit of a headscratcher as to how it didn’t win a single award that year at the Oscars, though even I will admit the eventual winner was a smidge better. However, it makes a little more sense when you discover Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, hated the picture and vocally urged his fellow members at the Academy not to vote for it, which honestly might have caused it to lose in both categories that it was nominated in. Small wonder, with the country going into the Depression five months after the awards ceremony, that people didn’t want to see movies with downer endings. Honestly, by today’s standards, it seems pretty optimistic, but back then, it was a bit of a bummer to see the family still struggling.
King Vidor was actually forced to shoot anywhere between reportedly seven to nine alternate different endings so that theaters could choose which one they wanted to show. To quote IMDB, one of the alternate endings was “set in a mansion showing John and Mary by a glittering Christmas tree. John has become a success at writing ad slogans. Mary’s new dialogue title was to read: ‘Honest, Johnny, way down deep in my heart, I never lost faith in you for a minute.'” Overwhelmingly, the theaters still showed the original ending, which says something about how people viewed it despite the negativity the ending might have stirred up.
Best Director, Dramatic Picture 1929: King Vidor for The Crowd and Herbert Brenon for Sorrell and Son Now we come to the Best Director category. Like quite a few categories that year, the Academy still seemed to be finding their feet.
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Two Kickstarter campaigns between the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2017 set out with relatively modest goals: Each intended to raise around $20,000 to create products that claimed to relieve stress. Instead, both made millions and ended up helping to create an entire economy out of the treatment of anxiety with simple items.
The first, the Fidget Cube, raised nearly $6.5 million and predicated the most omnipresent toy trend of the following year, the fidget spinner. The second, the Gravity Blanket, raised $4.7 million with the promise of a better night’s sleep.
Neither went viral because a corporate behemoth like Mattel or Amazon decided to blindly diagnose the entire country with anxiety — they became so popular because regular people came across a video and donated with the belief that the devices might actually work.
Both, however, helped give rise to the growing anxiety economy, composed of adult coloring books, aromatherapy vapes, essential oils, and other products designed to calm us down. And though these items often have little, if any, scientific data supporting whether they really “work,” their explosive popularity sends a clear message: Americans are anxious as hell, and we’re trying to buy our way out of the problem.
Anxiety is quite possibly the defining characteristic for not only my own generation, but everyone alive at this particular time in history. It is already the most common mental health disorder in the US, affecting 18.1 percent of Americans each year and nearly one-third of Americans over their lifetimes, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America and the National Institute of Mental Health. And it’s quickly getting worse among college students: The American College Health Association found in its annual survey that in 2011, half of undergraduates reported they felt “overwhelming anxiety.” By 2017, 61 percent did.
There are plenty of places to point fingers: your phone, the president, climate change, the recession, FOMO, divorce, social media, student debt, terrorism, the 24-hour news cycle, the economy, “the economy,” living farther from family, toxins in your gut, too many choices, too little sleep, too little sex. Or maybe we’re just overdiagnosing anxiety and actually, everything’s fine.
Unfortunately for the millions who do suffer from anxiety, everything is not fine. Though the disorder may be affecting a growing number of people, finding suitable care is increasingly difficult due to funding cuts for both treatment services and research programs and a generally broken health care system.
So it makes sense that more people are turning to digital therapists, meditation apps, and even tampon brands in lieu of access to medical care. Media companies have been built around the mental health crisis, while videos designed to calm us down go viral. Even our most primitive need — sleeping — has somehow become a fun, sexy industry.
As a member of that near-one-third of Americans with an anxiety disorder, none of it surprises me. My desk is filled with random bouncy, squishy, or clicky objects that have no use other than being futzed with, and cataloging them all makes me feel like a person who is laughably unfit for modern life — particularly when I live in New York, one of the most stressful cities on the planet. But it also makes me the Platonic ideal of a consumer of our era’s most marketable products.
Denver brothers Mark and Matthew McLachlan were tinkering with the idea for a few years: It would be a small toy, one that wouldn’t look out of place in the average office, that workers could click, flip, and spin. It would be intended not to help them escape the monotony of cubicle life but rather to give them something to fiddle with discreetly in order to better focus on actual work.
In September 2016, that idea became the Fidget Cube, which ended up becoming the 10th most funded project on the site of all time.
That was thanks to a few factors: a slick, well-produced satirical video that went viral when major Facebook pages like NowThis and Unilad began sharing it, a near-universal message (most of us have experienced the urge to fidget), and the novelty of an entirely new kind of product. After all, as Matthew explained to Vox over email, this was a time when “the phrase ‘fidget toy’ was not a household expression.”
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The spinning toy that was to take over classrooms was not the same one shown in the McLachlan brothers’ viral video. Due to trouble with manufacturers thanks to the unexpectedly massive scale of the Kickstarter campaign, the official Fidget Cube was plagued with delays, by which time the market had already been flooded with knockoffs.
Plus, there was already a cheaper toy ready to take its place: the fidget spinner, developed in the early ’90s by a Florida inventor named Catherine Hettinger. She had an autoimmune disorder that caused muscle weakness, and with a 7-year-old daughter at home, she wanted to create a toy that could distract and soothe young children.
After shopping the spinner to multiple toy brands, she secured a patent and even had a meeting with Hasbro, though the toy giant ultimately decided against producing it and let the patent expire in 2005. Later, variations of the fidget spinner were marketed by small manufacturers as therapeutic aids for children with ADHD, anxiety, and autism, but by late 2016, versions of spinning toys made with materials like stainless steel and titanium were being sold for as much as $199.
Even if the Fidget Cube had lost some of its edge in the market, by Christmas 2016, Forbes claimed fidget spinners as the “must-have office toy for 2017,” and in April 2017, they became the second-most-popular item bought on Amazon, right after the free 30-day Prime trial. Though it’s impossible to say how many have been sold, the payment platform Square, which is often used by smaller independent retailers, noted that while in January and February of 2017, only about 30 fidget spinners were purchased each month, by the end of May, 151,241 were. The market research firm NPD estimates that at least 19 million were sold, with others claiming more than 50 million.
Eight-year-old Tom Wuestenberg plays with a fidget spinner in a park in New York on May 23, 2017. Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
Spinners were a massive hit with children: They’re fun and cheap, and you can do cool tricks with them on YouTube. But they certainly owe the cube that came before them a big thanks for helping fidget toys rise out of their clinical niche.
Around the same time, another Kickstarter was blowing up. In the fall of 2016, the small media company Futurism, which covers science and technology, was attempting to build a new revenue model in the face of an increasingly competitive pool of advertiser dollars.
The newly created product team noticed that articles about the science of sleep and stress were getting a lot of traffic. In the process of brainstorming ideas, the team tossed out the idea of a weighted blanket. It would be around 10 percent of the user’s bodyweight (available in 15-, 20-, and 25-pound versions) and consist of a polyester cover atop a cotton inner shell filled with plastic pellets, providing the weight.
Though they’d been around for decades, weighted blankets were, until then, generally used to treat children with autism or adults with PTSD, among other disorders. Futurism’s prototype, called the Gravity Blanket, was different: Like the Fidget Cube, it took a previously niche clinical tool and adopted the aesthetics of a slick startup to market it to a mainstream audience with the promise that it could relieve stress and anxiety.
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“It felt like an interesting time to bring a physical product that wasn’t necessarily pharmacy-based or med-tech based, but just a really simple solution to a bigger population, and part of the strategy was to elevate the look and feel of it, too,” explains Mike Grillo, the president of Futurism’s product division. “Anything you saw prior to Gravity that was a weighted blanket was very clinical-looking, and I think would turn off the general consumer, so we worked hard to find the right fabric and came up with a pattern and really elevated it, both from a product perspective and then from a brand perspective.”
On top of its $4.7 million Kickstarter campaign, to date, the company has sold more than 70,000 blankets at a retail price of $249. Gravity succeeded thanks to similar factors as the Fidget Cube: good design, universal appeal (who hasn’t had trouble falling asleep?), and the product’s novelty. And it too was succeeded by many knockoffs on sites like Amazon.
Like the Fidget Cube, it took a previously niche clinical tool and adopted the aesthetics of a slick startup to market it to a mainstream audience
Meanwhile, other startups were creating conversations in the mental health space, like TalkSpace (the chat-based therapy app) or Calm (the meditation app whose goal is to become the “Nike for the mind”). “They’re more tech-focused, of course, not necessarily physical products, but all of these non-pharmacological, non-medical offerings for people to relieve their stress,” says Grillo.
There is also the fact that this was in 2016, arguably the most anxiety-inducing year in recent cultural memory (besides, well, the year after, or maybe the current one). Indeed, Futurism came up with the idea for the Gravity Blanket just a month after the US presidential election, in December 2016. When I ask whether it was an attempt to capitalize on the cultural moment, Grillo agrees, to an extent. “It truly felt like it was the right place, right time,” he says. “I wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, we have to hit this while the iron’s hot,’ but it certainly felt like the right environment to go out into the market with something like this.”
To claim that the explosion of anxiety-quelling products was a direct effect of the election would be an oversimplification of trends that were already in place, however. Anxiety disorders among the general population were already on the rise, and mental illness was already becoming increasingly more socially acceptable to discuss. Plus, brands like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop had piqued the cultural interest in non-medical and alternative forms of treatment.
But the year was a turning point that helped create the groundwork for these sorts of startups to take off.
With millions of dollars to be made in the anxiety product economy, there arises the question of whether anyone actually should. One woman who has weighed this more than most is Meredith Arthur. She’d been working at a series of increasingly dysfunctional San Francisco startups while at the same time experiencing worsening migraines. It took five therapists and a specialized clinic before a neurologist told her, a few days before her 40th birthday, that she had generalized anxiety disorder. Like many who finally receive the diagnosis they’d always unconsciously known they had, she felt a deep sense of relief.
“I immediately knew it was true,” she says. “[My neurologist] picked me up off the earth, turned me around the other way, and set me back down. I was like, ‘Oh, okay. That’s what it is.’ Now, of course, because I have generalized anxiety disorder, what did I do next? Okay, research.”
That research eventually formed the foundation of what would become Beautiful Voyager, the online community she built for “overthinkers, perfectionists, and people pleasers.” When she launched the site in 2015, she recalls people receiving the idea with subtle condescension. “People were quiet. There was some, ‘Good for you, Meredith!’” she says with a laugh. But by the time the fall of 2016 rolled around, she noticed a shift in the way people talked about mental health.
“It was a watershed moment, where everyone was like, ‘It’s okay to be completely distraught.’ If I get in deep about it, I think of it as ego disillusion. I had to get over myself.”
Sister Charlene Favreau attends an adult coloring book event in Burlington, Massachusetts, on June 14, 2015. Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
In order to cover the cost of running the website, which also includes paying writers, Arthur has a retail section on her site, where people can buy items like weighted blankets from a seamstress in Illinois, coloring books, sleep masks, and a millennial-pink pillbox. As far as she’s aware, it’s one of the only communities/marketplaces devoted to people with anxiety, which gives her a heightened sense of responsibility to its members.
As a matter of principle, she’s upfront about where the profits go: There’s an entire section on the site devoted to the topic (she keeps 10 percent of sales; the rest goes to the manufacturer), and an updated list of every single item sold on the site. “That’s the only way I feel good about it,” she says. “Otherwise, you’re shifty. You’re trying to make money off people.”
Here is the truth that goes largely unspoken in the growing space where capitalism meets mental health: None of it actually solves the underlying problem, even if it helps assuage the symptoms. Last May, Gravity was forced to change the language on its Kickstarter, which claimed the blanket could be “used to treat a variety of ailments, including insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as circumstantial stress and prolonged anxiety,” after the news site STAT questioned Kickstarter about the claims, which appeared to go against recommendations from the US Food and Drug Administration. The new version simply said that the blanket could be “used” for those conditions.
And what very little research has been done on the benefits of fidget toys is largely predicated on the act of fidgeting itself rather than the specific tools used to do so. As Vox wrote at the height of spinner mania last spring:
There is some evidence that encouraging children with ADHD to squirm and move their limbs can help direct their focus rather than making them sit still. But that study looked at kids’ physical activity, not a small spinning device that barely requires any movement. And kids without ADHD didn’t benefit from the extra squirming.
Dr. Anna Lembke, a clinician and associate professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, explains that to date, nobody really knows for sure how these products work, besides the fact that they can help distract us.
“What’s key with these fidget toys is that they are physical,” she says. “So by engaging this hand motion, we reconnect with our bodies, which often has a calming phenomenon. You can achieve the same thing through exercise, right? People achieve a similar thing through meditation. The mechanism is slightly different, but basically what’s happening in meditation, for example, is you’re focusing on the breath. In focusing on the breath, you’re focusing on your body. And your physical functions are redirecting your focus away from these abstract thoughts that can be so debilitating.”
So, yes, meditation apps may help us meditate, and meditation may reduce anxiety. Weighted blankets may calm us down long enough to fall and stay asleep, which will help us feel better the next day. And fidget devices can distract us so that instead of ruminating on negative thoughts, we’re expending mental energy on something physical.
But no product will solve the underlying causes of anxiety, or ADHD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, or autism, whether it’s a $5 gas-station fidget spinner or a $250 blanket meticulously designed and focus-grouped by advertising professionals. That’s a far bigger task, involving: therapy (often difficult to access), medication (often expensive), or complete lifestyle overhauls that involve fitting exercise and healthier habits into our daily lives (often really, really hard).
So a weighted blanket it is. “We’re not understanding how to deal with [mental health]. Instead, we’re throwing products at it,” says Beautiful Voyager’s Arthur. “It’s very American.”
To be fair to fidget spinners, however, it can be difficult to treat mental health issues even with the tools backed by the best scientific evidence, including the ones Lembke uses with her patients: cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs, such as Lexapro or Prozac), and lifestyle changes like diet, exercise, or creating a more heavily structured schedule.
“We’re not understanding how to deal with [mental health]. Instead, we’re throwing products at it. It’s very American.”
When I started therapy a year and a half ago, I expected my therapist to challenge my methods of fidgeting and physical distractions, developed over a lifetime, as unhelpful ways to avoid facing my underlying issues. Instead, she ended up doing the opposite: Over the course of a few months, she gave me a strip of wax-like putty to morph into shapes, a large stone to hold as a means of separating the concept of my anxiety from my actual self, and a smaller one for little reminders. It turns out that having the stuff did, in fact, help a bit, if only for a few moments at a time.
So when I first heard the term “fidget spinner” in the early months of 2017, I knew it was going to be extremely my shit. The first time I spun one, at a bar in Brooklyn, I joked that I’d never connected with a human baby as much as I’d connected with this. I rapidly acquired five of them.
But here’s the problem with using “fidgeting” as a marketing strategy: As any true fidgeter knows, you don’t need to spend money on a new object to futz with — objects simply appear, and you fidget with them. By the time the spinner craze was over, I’d long replaced them with a pile of other gizmos.
The author’s assortment of desk items. Amelia Krales/Vox
Yet the space only appears to be growing. Gravity, for instance, was able to expand its line to include melatonin spray, weighted sleep masks, a cooling duvet, a collection of infrared-ray-emitting loungewear that promises to help with muscle recovery, and an upcoming “mindful alarm clock,” which lets you sleep with your phone outside your bedroom but still connect to your phone so that a select few people will be able to reach you in an emergency.
The Fidget Cube and the Gravity Blanket raised millions of dollars because they diagnosed people with a simple problem: Have you ever felt a weird desire to fidget with random objects? Of course! Do you have trouble falling asleep? Who doesn’t?
Now that many more of us are aware — that we’re stressed, that we’re anxious, that we’re not getting enough sleep, that anxiety is really bad and will doom us to an early death so we should really take care of it, which of course makes us even more anxious about our own anxiety — it makes sense that our immediate impulse is to buy stuff that promises to deal with it so that we don’t have to. And if fidget spinners and weighted blankets haven’t quite been doing it for you, chances are there will be even more anxiety-quelling doodads to spend your money on in the very near future.
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Original Source -> Fidget spinners, weighted blankets, and the rise of anxiety consumerism
via The Conservative Brief
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The Dodgers couldn’t hit a fastball in Game 3, and the Astros could hit everything
The Astros won, 5-3, and they’re two wins away from their first World Series title.
HOUSTON — Consider what it means for a team that’s been around for 56 years to have never won a World Series game at home. The Astros have had the pomp and circumstance before, the enormous flags in center field, the special guest stars throwing out the first pitch, but they’ve never had the whooping delirium that comes with a win. There’s always a comforting traffic jam down the stairs, ramps, and escalators, with strangers high-fiving each other and yelling things just to yell them. It doesn’t matter if it’s Houston, Los Angeles, or Kansas City. There aren’t a lot of times in your life when everyone around you is completely stoned on optimism. The walk out of a ballpark following a World Series win is one of those times.
Houston has one of those now. It took 56 years, and there were a couple of false starts along the way. Look through the game log from Game 3 in 2005 and imagine the digestive systems of everyone in those 14 innings. Look through Game 4 and marvel at the inability of the Astros to do anything. Those walks out of Minute Maid Park were not filled with whooping delirium. They were Charlie Brown trudges, chin to chest the whole way. White Sox fans in the building knew to shut up, or at least keep it to a dull roar. That was the only chapter of World Series history in the lengthy tale of the Houston Astros.
This was something unique and novel, then, and now the Astros will have to play .500 baseball to win a World Series. Lose one, win one, lose one, win one. It sounds so simple when it’s put like that. There is an addictive quality to the whooping delirium, though, and it’s understandable if everyone in the orange uniforms would just as soon not fly back to Los Angeles. But however they play .500 ball is up to them.
The Astros got that first World Series win in Houston by hitting the ball as hard as humanly possible, several times in a row, over a sustained period of time. They did it against Yu Darvish, and it’s worth noting that he received the loudest boos during the pregame introductions. This was the devil Astros fans knew, the familiar face in a sea of players they’ve had to use flashcards to hate over the last week.
When I close my eyes, the Astros won this game 12-7 instead of 5-3. They were pummeling Darvish, with line drive after line drive. There were outs, but the outs were loud. If “exit velocity” wasn’t trending on Twitter, it should have been. It was obvious that, regardless of the outcome, his last batter was going to be Jose Altuve, who ripped a flat cutter to the wall. It was the shortest start of Darvish’s career, the first time he’d failed to escape the second inning.
Kenta Maeda came in and got the final out, a weak pop-up from Carlos Correa. A single would have made it 6-0. A homer would have made it 7-0, with the inning still going. Maeda ended up throwing 2⅔ scoreless innings because he’s apparently Robb Nen now, and at the time, it seemed like he had the potential to be the hero.
What I would like to suggest to you is that Maeda is a sneaky goat. If Pedro Baez crawled onto the 25-man roster and gave up six straight homers, the Dodgers would have been better off. They would have avoided using their secret bullpen weapon for 2⅔ innings, which made the next two games much trickier. Heck, if they gave up 48 runs in that second inning, we would have gotten a chance to watch Yasiel Puig pitch. The Dodgers are reeling because of Darvish’s early exit, but they were also into the game just enough, which forced them to waste Maeda and give innings to Brandon Morrow and Tony Watson. They were a single away from thinking “screw it” and being far better positioned. Now their bullpen — their special, infallible bullpen — is in tatters.
In Game 3, the Dodgers contemplated an existential question: What happens when all of your good players are bad at the same time? Darvish’s slider was ruinous. Chase Utley is a mummy. Clay Bellinger looks like a rookie who’s gone from a Division III school to the majors in the same week. None of this has to be permanent. It would make just as much sense for Darvish to throw a masterpiece in Game 7, with Utley and Bellinger combining for four RBI. But every so often, the best players are the worst.
Brad Peacock is going to be feted as a hero, and rightfully so. But look at his pitch chart, from Brooks Baseball:
That’s from the catcher’s perspective, but I want you to pay close attention to the top of that zone. The yellow squares are swinging strikes. The reds are called strikes. The purples are fouls. Here’s that top half of the zone again, zoomed in a bit:
There are a couple of options. The first is that Peacock’s fastball was particularly deceptive and hard to hit on this autumn night. It’s possible that nobody would have touched him.
It sure looks like Peacock got away with an awful lot, though. Heck, ignore the yellows in the top of the zone and focus on the nothingness right down the middle. The Dodgers, so fearsome with Corey Seager back in the lineup, couldn’t punish fastballs in the middle of the plate. If you looked at the home runs the Dodgers hit before Game 3, you’ll note a lot of them were hit on pitches that weren’t necessarily bad. The Dodgers are a wheat thresher of violent swings, all designed to punish the rare mistake that strays out of the safety zone. Yet Peacock was pumping fastballs by them, one after another, like the batters were thinking ...
is that a choo-choo train, i want to ride that, how long has that been there, can i make the whistle blow, choo chooooooo
... throughout the whole at-bat. Their minds were elsewhere.
Does this sudden inability to hit center cut fastballs have to mean anything? No, not particularly. Just one of those games. You’re only paying attention to it because there are just a few games left.
But it’s the worst nightmare of every team that reaches the World Series. What happens when all of your good players are bad at the same time? What happens when this keeps happening? Where’s the emergency override?
The Astros won more than the Dodgers lost, don’t get me wrong. It’s one thing for Darvish to futz up his slider, but it’s another for Correa, Altuve, and George Springer to pounce, one right after the other, doing exactly what they were trying to. Peacock left some fastballs up, but they also weren’t touched, which means he was probably doing at least something right. The Yuli Gurriel throw to start a double play was pretty, as was his laser of a home run to get the scoring started, even if he screwed it all up and shined the spotlight on his (our) capacity for ugliness for no good reason.
The Astros outplayed the Dodgers, in other words. This wasn’t very complicated at all when you put it like that. The 101-win team beat the 104-win team, which is about what you’d expect about 50 percent of the time, give or take.
That’s the thing about the World Series, though. There is no give. There is only take. Right now the Astros are taking. The Dodgers are giving. There are still two to four games left, which is more than enough time for the Dodgers to reverse the clinch and throw the Astros into the turnbuckle. We’ve seen wilder postseason series, after all.
It’s all how Houston saw the first World Series win in its history. It took more than a half-century. It required a foundation of garbage, laid down in 2011 and 2012, to get the best possible players in position. It took a lot of skill and at least a little luck.
But the Astros have a World Series win at home. They’re two wins away. Considering where they were in the eighth inning of Game 2, are you not impressed? You’re impressed.
Well, you should be.
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a feminist perspective: an interview
M: Could you tell me about growing up in Iran
F: Ok. What would you like to know, in respect to what?
M: In respects to what sparked your desire to move to America or tell me about the influences growing up, whether that be parents of siblings. Whatever comes to mind when you think about your childhood and your inspiration to immigrate.
F: Sure, sure. Well, the reason I came to America, well not me, but all of my siblings, our parents send us all abroad to go to college after high school, mainly because there were not enough universities in Iran at that time. So, after you graduate from high school, there was a very slim chance you’d get into college, because there are so few of them. So I grew up with this idea of college being something I’d have to leave for. The universities had too many applicants, so therefore that’s what made me want to come to the states. And my parents wanted me to have higher education, and they knew I couldn't have it in Iran, so therefore they sent us abroad and of course, to California with some other cousins that had already came to California, so it was easy to follow them. I grew up with the idea of this trajectory thanks to my older cousins.
I was the middle child and my two oldest brothers and sisters, they were quite older than me, and they had come to the United States much earlier, and then my younger brother and my sister came after me. We grew up with the idea of immigrating.
In Iran, of course, at the time, and even now, women really don’t have much of a voice, as you know. However, my parents, I was lucky enough, that they did not see any difference between a man and a woman. Therefore, they treated their kids, a boy and a girl, the exact same way.
M: That’s wonderful.
F: Yes, it’s awesome. It is part of me, you know, because I grew up that way. And I never saw any difference between myself and my brother. We are thirteen months apart. So, whatever they did for him, they did for me also. Exact same thing. No difference. So that empowered me somehow. I never saw any difference myself, and to me, it was ridiculous coming here and noticing when entering the workforce and even college, that there is a difference, between men and women and how they’re treated. When I was in high school and as a child, I really didn’t know because you don’t notice it in school, but when you’re in the workforce or in the real world of a foreign place, that’s when you notice it, and in university. But that’s why I came to the U.S., to go to university, which I did, and just like my other siblings, we all came here and went to universities and graduated. All of my brothers and sisters actually, with the exception of myself, went back to Iran after they finished college. But, I did go. I never wanted to go back again (Laughs). I loved California. So I was the black sheep. (Laughs). So I stayed. And of course, after the revolution in Iran, which was ’77, all of my siblings and my parents, they all came back to the states. They migrated here. Which was wonderful for me because I was here, and then they came and we reunited. And now, we are all in California right now.
M: You had mentioned that when you came to the U.S. you were shocked to see that there was a difference between how men and women were treated, would you mind speaking to that? Also if there are any other challenges you particularly felt a an immigrant woman?
F: I really truly didn’t experience it myself while I was in university at least. But I heard about it. I didn’t experience it at school mainly because I was, well first, an advertising major, which at that time, being an artist type or art schools, there really were not many men. But from peers and other friends that were in say, enginerring, or business, different academic parts of the college, that’s were I heard about a discrimination based on their sex. Which I personally did not experience myself, but was shocked to learn of this situation. After art school I went to San Francisco State and went into fashion design and merchandising which was mostly women anyways.
M: When you started university had you already know English?
F: No (laughs). I had to learn it here. I did not speak a word of English when I came here. I immediately enrolled, at that time I stayed with my older sister who was in Los Angeles, and her husband was a professor in UCLA at that time, so he arranged to take some English as a foreign language at UCLA, which I was attending in the mornings, and then in the afternoon, they enrolled me in another English for adults school. I did that for about three or four months until I had some sort of an English learning type of situation. But I realized I wasn’t very good at it. And it was really hard, because I worked so hard to get my projects or homework going, and then the next day I would be so embarrassed to even show my projects, I’d hide my face from the others! But the teachers helped me, that’s how fantastic they were. I was really aware that I wasn’t strong in English. That helped me decide that I wanted to change my major to fashion design and merchandising mainly because I was good in fashion before when I came to states and I thought those skills translated well even though I wasn’t proficient in English. My mom always took me to the tailor and said, “Ok you go ahead and design whatever you want.” From teenage years. It was always a passion.
M: Is your interest in fashion mainly in women’s fashion? If yes, why do you think that is?
F: No I always have done women’s clothes.
M: Do you ever feel a connection between the clothes you design and they type of woman you’re designing for?
F: Certainly, I see it as a type of empowerment. I will send you a catalog of our newest collection.
M: Oh great, thank you!
F: If you notice, the designs that I have are mostly for women that are in the workforce. “Young executives” I call them (Laughs). Someone who wants to be empowered and wants to dress right. To me, it’s very important how people dress for interviews. People can get more business if they present themselves well, once they are dressed properly. That’s how I grew up, thinking you are who you represent. That makes a big difference in life. I’m sure a lot of people have told you that. Especially in the states. People are getting more comfortable with what they’re wearing. But if you want to be an executive, you need to feel that, and represent it. Dress for the job you want. That’s whom I’m designing for. For women to empower themselves with their self-presentation and representation.
M: When you started your designs and your company, how did you start, what catalyzed your ideas to become your own boss?
F: Well when I was young, I got married very early. Like, first, second year I came to states, so I was really a freshman in college when I started my own designs in San Francisco. And my ex-husband was in shoe business. He had many shoe stores. And having that background and seeing his idea, made me want to open my own clothing store. So, that’s when I started to get into fashion business. I opened my first store, and I started buying from small designers and retailing stores. After a while, I started to say, ok I’m going to design a small collection for my own stores only, which I did, and it was so successful, that a few representatives from New York approached me to design a collection and give them the samples so they could sell them. So I did. And my God, they kept on bringing me orders and orders and orders (laughs), so that’s how I really got into wholesaling and designing and manufacturing, because the demand was there. People loved the clothes and bought from me and I sold more and more every year. It keep on expanding. So I kept my stores, because I enjoy having them and they’re my flagships, but the major parts of my business comes from this network of designing and wholesaling. We wholesale to 700-800 specialty shops around the U.S. and Canada.
M: What is the most empowering part of being a female business owner?
F: Getting to see other women get involved in business and help them along the way. People think women can’t operate companies, but we’re great at it! We just need to inspire each other to get out of that mindset. I get to be a part of that inspiration every day, and it’s amazing.
M: What is the most challenging?
F: It’s challenging when you realize that the system of America isn’t designed for women’s success. It really isn’t. And it’s a challenge because you just can’t let that mindset get in the way.
M: When you said that you felt as if there was a demand for the clothes you were designing, do you think there was a need for these clothes is connected to the growing demographic of female “young executives”? Do you see a connection between the demand you felt from your work and maybe a trajectory that women are taking?
F: Yes. Of course the collection has evolved from being just a jacket-type of a business. I started with jackets and I was only doing jackets. But now, business has evolved and the women who are my muse a different than the jacket type of attire I used to design. I design shirts, we mostly only make shirts basically now. The shirt business was designed for women at work. The shirt that I designed, they are very special, they are hand crinkled, or pleated if you want to call it. And the fabric has a memory that keeps the crinkle in it, and it will never come out. If you hand-wash and drip dry, it will always be the right. This was, to me, a sense, ideal for women who are in the workforce and travel a lot, and they don’t have time to futz with ironing their shirt or going to the dry cleaning all the time. Very low maintenance. It makes looking professional more accessible for the women. They’re easy to wear and they always look good too because they keep their shape perfectly. And it’s a day to evening design too. You could wear it with jeans or with a formal skirt. It’s versatile and professional, liberating and accessible.
One of the most important aspects of this shirt is that you don’t have to dry clean it and spend so much on dry cleaning every month. That obstacle for looking professional is just unfair to women starting out in business. This shirt is meant to help make it easier. And also for traveling, it’s perfect.
M: When you had originally started your company, did you feel like you faced any challenges as trying to become a business owner as a woman?
F: Well the fashion industry is a little different, but I did feel a sort of strangeness from males around me who noticed my dedication and determination for my business. I felt like a black sheep again (laughs).
M: Shifting gears, how does being a mother influence your sense of urgency towards women’s rights and feminist thinking?
F: I have always been a feminist in my life. I have always believed in women. I believe they are a lot smarter and could do a lot more if they had the opportunity and it is sad that we still have to fight for our rights. Especially when it come to the choice of abortion- I’m truly pro-choice- and I think, to fight for that all the time is s dedication women must have. And I want my daughters to feel that commitment too. To always fight for all women, and believe in us.
M: Do you think, well today we are in a very unique political climate, which has lead to people feeling a sense of urgency towards women’s rights, do you feel any sense of change as times have shifted? Do you feel more inclined to speak out?
F: Absolutely. This is the time, thanks to other powerful women such as Dianne Feinstein and others such as Nancy Pelosi, they have paved the way for us, and we have to take it on now. And respond, and more forward and support each other. Until we get our basic rights that men have always enjoyed.
M: As a women who works in business and immigrated here from Iran, what do you think is most unique about your feminist perspective? How has your identity as an immigrant feminist shaped your experience in America?
F: Since I came from a difference country, I see the U.S. in a different eye than you would if you grew up here. And, to me, it is a lot easier to see things that someone who grew up here in this country would see it. I noticed things a lot fasters than others did. It’s quite different once you are not from this country and all of the sudden you come into this country and think, oh my God, it’s such a difference. If you grew up here, you’ve been exposed to it your whole life, inadvertently. So it’s not that noticeable. To me, it’s extremely important, for my own children, my daughters, to make sure they will go through life being able to notice the transgression and mistreatment and feel the empowerment to overcome it.
M: How do you feel like your feminism is expressed on a daily basis?
F: On a day to day basis, I try to empower my own employees, they’re all mostly women. I’m no help unless I help as much as I can. I try to help them as much as I can to help them get on the right track in life and feel empowered. I try to hire women, I definitely put weight on hiring a woman over a man if I can. Of course, I don’t want to be prejudice in that sense either, but I think women do a great job and are great workers. I truly believe in that. Day to day I try to have customers even, if they have their won stores, I talk to them and help them and try to get them into stores of the contacts that I know. Make sure they’re alright in their business. Since I have a retail background as well, the people that actually buy from us, they’re retailers and they’re mostly women. Mainly small shop owners, so I try my best to make sure they stay in business. By giving them all of my experience basically, and I’ve seen many many people actually follow my direction and they’re doing great.
M: That’s great. And everyday to try to lift other women up and support female business owners is a great way to slowly chip away at the sexism that is inherently a part of capitalism.
F: It’s the best way to support unity.
M: Who would you say is your role model, or models if it’s multiple? How are they influential? How did they support you in your migration?
F: I have an older sister who has been a great role model for me. She’s a fashion designer. She was the head of the fashion design department at Santa Monica college for many years, and she just retired. She has always been a good role model for me, and she helped me so much when I was acclimating to the States. I must say she has the influence on me in many parts of my life. In fashion, in business and in feminism. I always admired Nancy Pelosi. I follow her and she is a great lady and has done a lot for women. Same with Dianne Feinstein. Both are role models for all of us.
M: What sort of advice would you give a young woman who was in the same path as you in terms of immigration, what would you tell her?
F: (Pause) Stay focused. Don’t rely on men (laughs). Make a life for yourself, rather than relying on men to make a life for you, and you could do anything you want as long as you want to do it. Just be empowered just by being woman. And I’m sure we could do just as well if not better than men could do (Laughs). Don’t be afraid. If you fall once, that’s fine, get up and go again. We all go through different experiences during different times in our lives. Don’t let one incident stop you from going forward. And more than anything, help other women along the way.
(Long Pause)
The only thing that I’m hoping is that we all should know, don’t give up, fight for your rights and never let anybody step over you and always fight your way above. If men could do it, you could do it.
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